Hi, welcome back everyone to Everymum the podcast, I’m Aisling Keenan. Today’s guest is Dr Garth Graham, a doctor and public health expert who is the Global Head of Health at YouTube, where he leads the platform’s work around health information, wellbeing and making sure people can find credible, useful information online. He’s also a dad of four, which is particularly relevant to today’s conversation because we’re talking about one of the biggest challenges facing parents right now: how do we raise healthy, happy children in a world where screens and the internet are simply part of everyday life?
We talked about the rise of health influencers and the problem of misinformation online, including what happens when a health myth or conspiracy suddenly takes off, and how YouTube responds. We got into the responsibility that comes with running a platform used by billions of people, particularly when it comes to children and teenagers, and where that responsibility ends and the responsibility of parents begins. But we also brought it right back to family life. Garth talked about the rules he has around technology in his own home, whether his children challenge them, and whether being a dad has actually changed the way he thinks about children, technology and wellbeing professionally. We talked about parental hypocrisy… because how can we tell our children to get off their screens when we're permanently attached to ours?, and the enormous amount of guilt parents can feel around screen time, particularly when a screen is sometimes the only thing standing between you and getting dinner made or having five minutes of peace.
And we got into what healthy screen use actually looks like, whether all screen time is equal, and perhaps most importantly, whether instead of simply trying to ban things, we should be teaching our children how to navigate the digital world for themselves. It’s a really practical conversation about screens, safety, parenting, technology and finding a version of “good enough” that actually works in real family life. Here’s my chat with Dr Graham, I’ll be back next week with more.
","author_name":"everymum"}