In contrast to the ever-growing business, industry, and science endeavors that have successfully aligned synergistically with technology in recent years, the critical Family Information Technology (FIT) space is actually becoming increasingly chaotic, destructive, and misaligned. Experts are worried, and parents are confused and scared as family life is degrading and kids are dumbing down.
Studies are confirming repeatedly how the psyco-social development of younger and younger kids is insidiously compromised by unsupervised and unvetted digital media use during the very ages when their brains are being hard wired. Older kids have more attentional problems, weight gain, and less imagination. Families with more media at home are more distant emotionally. Parents have a hard time knowing how to manage their own media use around kids. Parents do their best by limiting, restricting, and blocking media consumption, but have little comprehensive guidance and few tools, and are ultimately not very effective. For those of us who are parents today, this is hardly news, although the problem is rarely conceptualized in its broad outline.
MyDigitalFamily, a Chicagoland startup, is the first enterprise ever to provide practical, comprehensive, convenient solutions to support parents and other caregivers by aligning the best of information technology to support healthy child development and family life. Dr. Eitan Schwarz, a thought leader, author, technophile, and double board-certified expert with over 70,000 hours of direct contact with kids and families, has studied this problem for over 15 years and now responds with his startup's first entry into the FIT space.
Dr. S invented FITGOALS(R), the world's first browser fit for children to robustly align technology as parents easily customize the best and safest Internet for each child. FITGOALS embodies his innovative system for supporting parents from the first moments of a preschooler's encounter with technology, through the lengthy childhood years of forming disciplined habits rooted in healthy character, and finally to mature independent technology consumption in late teens.
Ultimately, MyDigitalFamily hopes to offer its FIT solutions through partnerships and licensing agreements to enable appropriate parental management of ALL youngsters' digital experiences, including TV, videogames, apps, movies, music, telephony, credit cards, etc., a potential market of many billions.
For up to five children, starting with a month free and then an introductory subscription at $0.99 a month, FITGOALS v 1.0 is planning easy access in the currently near-ideal expanding iPad app market to parents and other caregivers of America's 73 million youth, and is seeking partnerships and funding.
For updated news and more about Dr. S please see www.mydigitalfamily.org and please get in touch, look for us on the iPad, follow our work, and wish us luck!
