The Unplugged Edge: Raise Resilient Kids Who Thrive in a Digital World

Renee Finley is a parenting educator, speaker, and writer who has spent the past fifteen years helping families navigate the intersection of technology, child development, and mental health. She holds a master's degree in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan, where her research focused on how digital media environments shape executive function and self-regulation in children and adolescents.

Renee's work has been featured in *The Atlantic*, *The Wall Street Journal*, and *Psychology Today*, where her monthly column on digital parenting reaches over half a million readers. She has spoken at SXSW Edu, the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference, and hundreds of school districts and parent organizations across the United States and Canada.

Before becoming a full-time writer and educator, Renee spent eight years as a school psychologist in public school systems in Michigan and Oregon, where she worked directly with students struggling with the mental health impacts of technology overuse. That frontline experience—watching bright, creative children lose themselves in screens, and watching families find their way back to each other—shaped everything she writes and teaches.

Renee lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children, ages twelve and fifteen, who provide daily, humbling, and hilarious reminders that no parenting book—including her own—has all the answers. She is an enthusiastic but terrible gardener, a proud owner of two rescue dogs who shed constantly, and a firm believer that the best parenting happens not in the grand interventions but in the ordinary moments when we choose presence over distraction.

She can be reached through her website at reneefinley.com, where she publishes a weekly newsletter on parenting in the digital age, or on Instagram and Threads at @reneefinley.parenting, where she posts daily tips, research summaries, and the occasional photo of her dogs.