teens

Sometimes we think of reading apps as being for little kids, but reading apps for kids in high school and middle school can be extremely helpful. Whether your kids are voracious readers or a bit more reluctant to get lost in a book when …

With back-to-school here, or just around the corner for some of us, I like to take the time to have reinforce some basic tech rules with my kids and have some important tech conversations before things get super hectic. Whether your kids…

I know firsthand how hard it is to decide when is the best age for kids to have their own cell phone . On one hand, we want them to be able to reach us if soccer practice gets out early or they want to leave a sleepover at 1am, but expos…

We always have the best time looking for cool tech stocking stuffers that go beyond the usual. And by usual, I mean batteries. Whether you're just kicking off your holiday shopping by going through our gift guides or almost wrapping thin…

You may have seen this hilarious sketch on SNL that has a bunch of adults using the app BeReal during a rather tense situation. (if you haven't seen it yet, go watch now! I'll wait.) This sketch does a great job explaining what BeReal is…

We know shopping for the best tech gifts for teens can be pretty challenging, but in our experience, tech is pretty much always a hit -- provided it's age appropriate. And we've got that down! For more than 10 years now, we've been in on…

We've spent the past several years evaluating the best headphones for students for remote learning, and while kids are back in school, one of the residual effects has been more online learning (and social!) opportunities. Whether kids ar…

Recently, Meta announced it would be launching new parental safety controls for teens in the form of tools and resources for both the Instagram social media app and their Meta Quest VR gaming headsets. The goal is to help parents better …

I'm among millions of parents all over the country concerned about widespread efforts to ban "controversial" books in our public libraries. Especially when the lists include some of our favorite books , and plenty of them are not "contro…

We've officially hit the point of full Apple product saturation in our household -- and as so many parents in our Out Tech Your Kids community tell us, they have too. So what do you do when you're all basically on Apple devices, your kid…

My teenage son and his friends are avid online gamers , so I recently broached the topic of good gaming etiquette for kids and teens with them. “What?” they asked, “You mean like when people tell you to go kill yourself when you mess up?…

If you've ever said, "Alexa, play When the Party's Over " then you'll be thrilled that Amazon has just announced the launch of the Billie Eilish special edition Amazon Echo Studio and it's pretty darn cool if you're a super-fan. Remember…

When your teen takes the time to text you the news about InnerSloth's official Among Us costume for Halloween this year, you know that the party game that got millions of kids through the worst of the pandemic last year is only growing i…

We're all talking about "that" Wall Street Journal article about Instagram: Facebook Knows It's Toxic for Teen Girls . You're probably talking about it. Or your kids are. I know it's all we've been seeing in our social feeds this week ar…

We recently got a question in our Out Tech Your Kids group asking about apps that read texts out loud while you drive, which got me started thinking about some tips and apps to help minimize distracted driving for teens. As parents, we n…

This past week, we had a fantastic chat with college coach and essay consultant Betsy Cadel on the Spawned Parenting Podcast. She offered so many incredible tips on making the college search and application process easier and less stress…

In our Out Tech Your Kids Facebook group, a parent asked for recommendations on the best stylus for kids who are getting into digital art, and the recommendations from our readers were so helpful that we wanted to share them here. From t…

Parents of tweens and teens, we've got good news! YouTube is launching new parental controls specifically for kids in this age group. What a relief to those of us who see the value in letting them watch some of the content on YouTube...b…

Has anyone else's teens struggled with interrupted sleep since the pandemic? My kids' slower social lives and reduction in extracurricular activities certainly plays a part, but turning to tech to connect with friends is making an impact…

Let's take a minute to applaud our teens who've been willing to quarantine this year. It's been brutal to lose so many activities they love, and they've handled it with flexibility and (mostly) good attitudes! While we'd hoped we'd be "b…

While there has been a lot of gaming going on in our house since the start of the pandemic, no game has quite gripped my family like Among Us . This easy and free-to-download game, which launched in 2018, has became HUGE during this pand…

Okay, so plenty of us gave up on the same screen time limits we had pre-Covid. But that's not to say we don't still have screen time fights with the kids. Or uh...arguments? Debates? Gentle disagreements? If you're looking to cut back on…

Kids are pretty darn smart, but we can be smarter, parents! On this week's Out-Tech Your Kids podcast , we're talking about the ways kids can circumvent parental controls so you can be prepared, thanks to the members of our Out-Tech Your…

We've always said that all screen time is not created equal! And on this week's Out-Tech Your Kids podcast , we're talking about the benefits of social media for kids. Social media tends to get a bad rap -- let alone specific channels li…