Parenting Panics Through the Ages

Are screens ruining our kids' childhoods? Is AI going to rot our brains in the next thirty days? Or are these the latest examples of a very human tendency: the catastrophizing of change?

From the dawn of the printing press to the Satanic panic over heavy metal lyrics, we explore the long history of social panics, find familiar patterns, and discuss our findings, including:

• Why parents are often thrust onto the front lines of new technology fears

• Why each generation believes the newest media will cause moral or cognitive decline

• The role of mass media and politics in amplifying fear

• How parents can keep perspective while still setting healthy limits on technology

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

• Brittany Wong for HuffPost: New Study Shows This Social Platform Can Shift Your Politics To The Right — And It Happens Very Fast
• Wikipedia: definition of a moral panic
• Jo Ellen Parker for Liberal Arts Online: Socrates on Technology
• Christie Stratos: Why Did the Victorians Think It Was Dangerous for Women to Read Novels and Newspapers?
• Ana Vogrinčič for Media Research Journal: The Novel-Reading Panic in 18thCentury in England: An Outline of an Early Moral Media Panic
• Sarah Durn for Atlas Obscura: How Gruesome Penny Dreadfuls Got Victorian Children Reading
• Miller Kern for Ball Bearings Magazine: The Downfall of Society
• PS Art Books: The Comic Book Burnings of the 1940s: A Cultural Firestorm

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.

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