5 Organizations Who Take $$$ From Tech That You Should Know About

And why this makes it really hard to trust their advice, unfortunately.

There are a lot of organizations opining on what digital content is safe for our kids to read and watch, and what digital products and tools are fit for the classroom. The problem is that sometimes these organizations who are giving advice are funded by tech companies, whose business model— time on device and engagement— is fundamentally at odds with child development. I believe that if an org takes money from Meta, Meta will not like that org telling parents that “social media is bad for kids” and instead, that org will feel pressured to instead offer softened takes, like “how to help your child engage safely with social media.”

The reality is, there is no such thing as safe social media for kids, and we need these organizations to say so.

Here’s my take on 5 organizations with problematic funding ties:

1. Common Sense Media is no longer the advocate for children it once was, and this is disheartening to many of us who previously relied on their recommendations and research. Sadly, today Common Sense Media is a multinational tech industry lobbying organization, taking funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Gates Foundation, and the Bezos Family Foundation, to name a few. They lost my support a few years back when they published an article about the “top five apps” my child needed to be prepared for kindergarten. Nope.

   Source: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/about-us/our-partners/foundation-partners

2. The National PTA is funded by Discord, Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Google, and more. Yes, all of those and more. Very disappointing.

   Source: https://www.pta.org/home/About-National-Parent-Teacher-Association/Sponsors-Partners

3. American Federation of Teachers (AFT), United Federation of Teachers (UFT), and the National Education Association all have partnered recently with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to form a teacher institute for artificial intelligence (the National Academy for AI Instruction).

   1. Source: NEA https://www.nea.org/about-nea/media-center/press-releases/nea-receives-microsoft-grant-expand-ai-literacy-and-leadership

   2. AFT/UFT: https://www.uft.org/news/news-stories/news-stories/ai-academy-launches

      1. Two side-by-side quotes from this press release are revealing: “…The AFT and the UFT do not endorse specific AI tools or platforms,” the press release states,

      2. The following paragraph opens with: “Unveiled at UFT Teacher Center courses this summer, AI workshops introduced attendees to tools such as Microsoft’s Copilot, MagicSchool, and Khanmigo to help teachers plan, manage their workload and meet student needs more effectively.”

4. Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s is led by Michael Rich who describes himself as “the Mediatrician.” Claiming to be nonprofit research center whose mission is to “seek to understand and promote positive and healthy digital media experiences for young people, from birth through young adulthood,” Digital Wellness Lab’s connection to Boston Children’s and Harvard Medical School might lead us to trust them as a trustworthy source. Unfortunately, their list of corporate sponsors does not reinforce that feeling: Digital Wellness Lab takes funding from Snap, Microsoft, Character.ai, Discord, TikTok, and Roblox, to name a few.

   1. Source: https://digitalwellnesslab.org/supporters/

5. Sesame Street has recently partnered with Google to build resources centered around “digital well-being.” Normalizing commercialized products for use by children seems antithetical to what Sesame Street has historically stood for. Elmo himself is pitching “digital wellness,” which you can watch in this marketing video here. This decision is brought to you by the letter “C” for “Corporate” and “S” is for “Sellout.” Oh, Elmo. Sad, Elmo.

   1. Source: https://sesameworkshop.org/about-us/partners/google/

My goal in sharing this information is to encourage you to always follow the funding. It seems to be a conflict of interest to take advice about children and screen use from organizations who financially benefit from children using screens.

We have to do better.

Are there are any independent orgs that I do recommend? Yes! You can find that list here.

Notes:

• See this article by Dr. Richard Freed at Smartphone Free Childhood.

• Also check out Dr. Freed’s book Better Than Real Life that goes into depth on some of these compromised organizations.

• As always, my work is entirely independent and reflects my own thoughts and opinions. I do not endorse apps or products, I do not accept funding from technology companies, and I do not share research that is compromised or influenced by tech-funding.