Screens don’t raise kids. You do.
Your Kid
Is the Product

The complete parent playbook

A practical way through the attention economy.

The book explains the machine, draws age-appropriate lines, and gives parents the words and sequence to hold those lines without turning home into a war zone.

Cover of Your Kid Is the Product by Michael D. Halden

By Michael D. Halden

Your Kid Is the Product

A Tech Dad's Guide to Protecting Childhood from Social Media and Addictive Design.

This is not a book about banning every screen. It is about seeing the difference between a tool your family chose and a system designed to harvest attention, then parenting accordingly.

Read the opening sampleStart with the framework
Three
parts.
One
plan.
What is inside

Part One explains the business model, the line between intentional and extractive technology, and why parents begin with their own habits.

Part Two meets families at ages 2–6, 7–10, 11–13, and 14–17.

Part Three handles the reset, the scripts, the other adults, boredom, and the questions that arrive after a parent draws the line.

Opening sample

They’re missing life.

At tables all over the country, children are physically present and somewhere else entirely. The phone is not merely occupying a quiet minute. It is competing with the conversation, the boredom, the small improvisations, and the look across the table that make childhood feel inhabited.

I am probably not who you expect to write this. I have spent my career inside technology, building software and working with artificial intelligence. I am a lifelong gamer. Our family loves movie nights. I do not think screens are evil, and this is not a guilt trip for parents who handed over a tablet because dinner needed to happen.

The problem is not the existence of a screen. The problem is the business model behind the systems that never end: autoplay, infinite scroll, recommendations, streaks, variable rewards, and a stream tuned to keep a person engaged for the next moment. When the user is a child, the product being sold is that child’s attention.

The line does not run between screens and no screens. It runs between intentional technology and extractive technology.

Parents do not need a perfect formula. We need a durable lens, age-appropriate boundaries, and a relationship strong enough that our kids still come to us when something goes wrong. That is why the order matters: stay involved, then lock it down. Controls are the backstop. Presence is the fix.

Screens do not raise kids. You do. The rest of the book is how.

Continue with a real first step

Use the three-question test, choose the age you are parenting now, or begin the eight-step family reset.

Start hereSee the reset