Recent study findings reflect a concern brewing in the hearts and minds of parents and educators: Are we adequately preparing students for this increasingly digital age? For example:<\/p>\n
Pew Research Center revealed that nearly half of U.S. teens now believe that social media<\/a> has a mostly negative effect on people their age; this is a sharp increase from the 32 percent who felt this way in 2022 (Faverio, Anderson, & Park, 2025<\/a>). Journal papers and news headlines regularly bring us new findings along these lines. The world is rapidly changing, so homes and schools need to keep up. But how?<\/p>\n Amid this unprecedented terrain, veteran educators Steven Shapiro and Nancy Shapiro Rapport cofounded Our Family Culture to help parents raise emotionally healthy kids. Their angle on this goal is unique: building intentional family cultures. Intrigued by this approach\u2019s potential, I joined their Board of Advisors and asked them about how intentional family cultures can help children and teens withstand today\u2019s (and tomorrow\u2019s) digital forces. The sibling<\/a> duo\u2019s answers follow each interview question below.<\/p>\n Jenny Rankin (JR): How has technology, including AI, increased the challenges of parenting?<\/p>\n Steven Shapiro (SS) and Nancy Shapiro Rapport (NSR): If you feel like parenting<\/a> is harder in the digital age, you\u2019re not imagining it. Modern parents are navigating unprecedented competition<\/a> for their children\u2019s attention<\/a>, hearts, and minds.<\/p>\n Historically, parents could count on their surrounding community to reinforce the values and beliefs they taught at home. Neighbors, extended family, and local institutions largely reiterated those lessons. Now, a fractured and increasingly contentious world has eroded, and at times negated, that reinforcement. <\/p>\n Instead of community support, parents now compete with a litany of social media influencers vying for their kids\u2019 attention. The range of influencers shaping our children\u2019s worldview is staggering, and the impact can be devastating. Many parents are losing their kids to voices promoting unhealthy values and actions, from the misogynist \u201cmanosphere\u201d to pro-eating-disorder influencers.<\/p>\n With the rapid rise of AI companions and bots, children are also subject to influence from non-human \u201crelationships.\u201d The most tragic examples involve young people who have taken their own lives at the encouragement of an AI chatbot<\/a>. Clearly, it is a very challenging time to be a parent.<\/p>\n JR: How can parents protect their kids from these influences?<\/p>\n SS and NSR: Jonathan Haidt, in The Anxious Generation, makes a compelling case for delaying children\u2019s access to social media. We concur.<\/p>\n But responsible parenting in the digital age requires something more: the intentional practice of raising children grounded enough to resist negative messaging from social media influencers and AI companions. That means taking deliberate action to cultivate deeply rooted values at home, creating a clear family culture that protects children from the seductive and often corrosive influences they will inevitably encounter online. <\/p>\n People easily recognize the importance of team culture in sports and organizational culture at work. However, many parents overlook the most important culture of all: their family culture.<\/p>\n JR: How does one build a strong family culture?<\/p>\n SS & NSR: There are three steps:<\/p>\n 1. Identify Your Core Values. Building a strong family culture begins with defining the values you most want your children to internalize. There is no single correct set; they should flow naturally from your own core beliefs. Some families center on kindness, creativity<\/a>, and wonder. Others emphasize integrity, hard work, and resilience<\/a>. What matters is that parents can clearly articulate the kind of kids they hope to raise, and that in two-parent households, both partners are aligned.<\/p>\n 2. Translate Values Into Behavior-Based Language. Values alone are too abstract to teach. Parents should, instead, focus on actionable language. In his book Culture by Design, David Friedman calls this the Fundamentals System: turning values into concrete, behavior-based phrases. \u201cDo the right thing\u201d is more teachable than \u201cintegrity.\u201d \u201cBounce back\u201d is more actionable than \u201cresilience.\u201d This shared language becomes a shorthand families can use every day.<\/p>\n 3. Practice Consistently. Culture isn\u2019t built in a single conversation. It emerges from many small, repeated interactions. The practical approach is to choose one Fundamental each week and give it a small amount of attention daily: a question at dinner, a personal story, a short video, a moment of reflection. Cycle through your Family Fundamentals, then start again. Over time, they stop being words and become the essence of who your family is: \u201cWe are the Shapiros. We show up for others.\u201d<\/p>\n JR: What can parents realistically expect from this kind of intentional effort?<\/p>\n SS & NSR: The most immediate shift families notice is in the quality of everyday conversations. When a family shares a common language around values, difficult moments become opportunities to talk about principles rather than problems. A child who pushes back, siblings in conflict, a parenting partner who sees things differently: all of these become chances to ask, \u201cWhat does our family believe here?\u201d rather than simply reacting.<\/p>\n Beyond that, the work strengthens something that is often underestimated: the parent-child relationship itself. That trusted connection makes parents the first call, not the last resort, when children encounter the darker corners of the digital world. And in an era when the outside world has never been more aggressive about shaping who your children will become, that connection is everything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recent study findings reflect a concern brewing in the hearts and minds of parents and educators: Are we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-668403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nCommon Sense Media found that one in three children are already using AI for social interaction and emotional support (Robb & Mann, 2025<\/a>).
\nThe U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)\u2019s National Center for Health Statistics reported that teens spending four or more hours daily on screens are more than twice as likely to experience anxiety<\/a> and depression<\/a> (Zablotsky, Arockiaraj, Haile, & Ng, 2024<\/a>).<\/p>\n