Be Tech Wise With Baby!

¡Sea sabio con la tecnología y el bebé!

This unique new resource is designed specifically for expectant and new parents, and aims to help families cultivate healthy screen time habits—for their child and for parents/caregivers while around their child—from the day baby is born. Developed by the Children's Screen Time Action Network and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Be Tech Wise With Baby! is uniquely tailored to an often overlooked but critical period when it comes to screen time advice: baby's first year of life.

Be Tech Wise With Baby! covers:

• how to boost baby's brain development and communication skills from birth;
• ways that screen use by babies—and their caregivers— can impact a child's healthy development;
• and tips for creating a home environment that sets baby up for optimal growth.

This Be Tech Wise With Baby! patient education handout is well suited for pediatrician, ob-gyn, and other medical offices and outpatient therapy clinics; libraries; day care centers; and all other settings that provide information for new parents and caregivers.

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Have a baby at home or expecting one soon? Check out Tech Wise With Baby!, a new, free resource by the Children's Screen Time Action Network and the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Designed for new parents and caregivers, it offers tips for creating a home environment that fosters baby's optimal growth, brain development, and communication skills, including information on how screen use by babies -- and caregivers -- can impact healthy development. Perfect for sharing in medical and therapeutic settings, day care centers, libraries, and more. Also available in Spanish!

Childhood experiences, both positive and negative, have a tremendous impact on future violence victimization and perpetration, and lifelong health and opportunity. As such, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are an important public health issue. Learn how everyone can help prevent ACEs by using strategies to create safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for all children.

"Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress represent a public health crisis. A consensus of scientific research demonstrates that cumulative adversity, especially when experienced during critical and sensitive periods of development, is a root cause of some of the most harmful, persistent, and expensive health challenges facing our state and the nation. 

Research shows that individuals who have experienced ACEs are at significantly increased risk of serious health consequences, including 9 of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States. People with four or more ACEs are:

38 times as likely to attempt suicide

11 times as likely to have Alzheimer’s or dementia

3 times as likely to have chronic lower respiratory disease

2 to 2 ½ times as likely to have a stroke, cancer, or heart disease

1 ½ times as likely to have diabetes."

Breast milk plays a vital role in reducing child mortality. It has all the nutrients a baby needs in the first six months of life and its health benefits extend into adulthood. This is why organisations, like UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO), recommend exclusive breastfeeding – no other food or drink, not even water – for infants in this period.

Globally, numerous policies and programmes have been put in place to promote and support breastfeeding. South Africa has also been promoting exclusive breastfeeding. But the country has one of the lowest rates of exclusive breastfeeding in Africa and globally.

It’s important to understand why mothers, despite the decades of breastfeeding promotion campaigns, still do not optimally breastfeed their infants. Understanding the reasons can inform policy and interventions to make it easier to give babies the best start in life.