FutureProof :: Conversation Recap
The Family Support Field in the Digital Age
Held on August 19, 2026
Co-hosted with the Children's Trust Fund Alliance and the National Family Support Network
The Mission
FutureProof helps parents of young children (ages 0–8) build the skills their kids need to thrive — and stay safe — in the digital age, with AI readiness as the edge.
The Gap, stated plainly
Government, nonprofits, and industry have converged on pre-teens and teens — that's where the policy fights, the funded programs, and the public attention are. In the process, they're missing the generation right behind them: the children whose habits, trust in AI, and relationship with technology are being formed right now, years before most systems are even looking. That's the gap FutureProof exists to close.
At-a-Glance
On August 19, TinyMoves convened family support and child-abuse-prevention leaders from across the country for the first FutureProof conversation — a working session on what the digital world means for young children, and the role the family support field can play in helping parents guide them. More than 60 family support network leaders from the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance and the National Family Support Network signed up. This included more than 50 organizations across 20 states. Live polls in the session demonstrated the field’s interest in taking an active role both at a personal and a network level. The registration and poll data show that interest and momentum is building, but current activity across the field is thin and uneven. In short, the field is primed to move and looking for tools and coordination to make it happen.
64
leaders registered
~50
organizations
20+
states represented
17 / 17
endorsed a
parent-tools role
Who We Talked With
Sixty-four leaders registered, representing roughly 50 organizations across more than 20 states plus national bodies — a cross-section of the family support and prevention field. Several selected more than one role, reflecting how interconnected leadership across family support networks are.
Primary role at registration (N = 64) | % | Count |
|---|---|---|
Children's Trust Fund leaders | 17 | 17 |
Other roles across the field | 19 | 19 |
Parenting-program & parent leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family support network leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family Resource Center network leaders | 15 | 15 |
Figures reflect the primary role selected; several leaders identified with more than one.
The conversation was opened by Teresa Rafael, Executive Director of the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance, and Brenda McChesney of the National Family Support Network, and was facilitated by Nilofer Ahsan of TinyMoves.
Where the Field Stands Today
Two questions at registration captured where leaders sit on these issues before the conversation began. Together they confirm the core premise of FutureProof: the interest is real, but the work on the ground is early and engagement is uneven.
Involvement in Digital Child-Safety Conversations
Primary role at registration (N = 64) | % | Count |
|---|---|---|
Children's Trust Fund leaders | 17 | 17 |
Other roles across the field | 19 | 19 |
Parenting-program & parent leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family support network leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family Resource Center network leaders | 15 | 15 |
Nearly a third already lead or actively participate; another third are watching closely.
Program Activity
Primary role at registration (N = 64) | % | Count |
|---|---|---|
Children's Trust Fund leaders | 17 | 17 |
Other roles across the field | 19 | 19 |
Parenting-program & parent leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family support network leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family Resource Center network leaders | 15 | 15 |
When asked whether the programs that were part of their state networks were active in supporting parents around these issues, more than half reported at least some program activity underway — but 22 report none or don’t know of any.
What Was Covered
The session moved through three parts: the research, the field’s role, and a first pass at mapping where the field already stands. The briefing deliberately focused not just on the real risks in the digital world (predatory contact, harmful content, emotional dependency, privacy, misinformation) but also the genuine opportunities (critical thinking, on-demand learning, and AI as a potential equity equalizer for families without tutors or specialists).
The scale of the moment. Digital life now begins in the earliest years — well before most support systems are looking.
From the briefing: The Equity Imperative
The equity imperative. The heaviest users of digital tools are often the least likely to receive the guidance that turns exposure into opportunity.
From the briefing: The Equity Imperative
A theory of change. Four ideas anchor the work — informed parents, the primacy of early childhood, the power of trusted relationships, and the need for intentional investment.
From the briefing: The Equity Imperative
The FutureProof framework. A framework for the earliest years (ages 0–8), built on three pillars, each anchored by a core question for parents. We discussed the need to visually highlight the anchoring role of parents across these pillars in future presentations.
From the briefing: The Equity Imperative
What the Room Said — Live Polls
During the session, attendees were polled on whether the field should take on each of four possible roles. Endorsement was overwhelming (unanimous, in fact ) on the role closest to the field’s core work — putting tools and guidance directly in parents’ hands.
Primary role at registration (N = 64) | % | Count |
|---|---|---|
Children's Trust Fund leaders | 17 | 17 |
Other roles across the field | 19 | 19 |
Parenting-program & parent leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family support network leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family Resource Center network leaders | 15 | 15 |
Remaining responses were “not sure”; no one selected “no.”
A second set of polls fielded at the end of the dialogue asked about continued involvement. Every respondent expressed interest in every option — and on most, the majority chose “both,” signaling interest personally and on behalf of programs in their network.
Primary role at registration (N = 64) | % | Count |
|---|---|---|
Children's Trust Fund leaders | 17 | 17 |
Other roles across the field | 19 | 19 |
Parenting-program & parent leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family support network leaders | 5 | 5 |
Family Resource Center network leaders | 15 | 15 |
* "Both" = interested personally and believe programs in their network would be interested.
Key Themes from the Discussion
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Put parents at the center. The strongest and most consistent message was that parents must be a central, visible part of any framework — not a peripheral concern. Leaders also urged attention to community norms alongside child and parent behavior.
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Youth mental health is urgent. Participants raised rising mental-health concerns among young people — including among Black youth — linked to social media, AI, and phones, and noted how often parents are unaware of what their children face online.
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The parent knowledge gap is real. Children are often further ahead than their parents, creating a pressing need for resources that help parents guide with confidence — including the day-to-day tension between schools and families over phone use.
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Local efforts are already underway. From technology contracts in rural parenting classes to school resource officers leading digital-safety sessions, promising local practices exist — but leaders stressed that guidance must stay fluid as tools like chatbots evolve.
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AI, friction, and learning. Leaders wrestled with “frictionless” environments that can short-circuit the effortful engagement children need to develop — and the growing question of how AI is used in schoolwork.
What's Next
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Update materials. Feedback during and after the session focused on a few themes:
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Ensure that the materials more clearly underline our themes that we must start working with children on digital well-being starting in the early years and that parents need to be the core partners of these efforts.
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We need to build into our framework and work a community lens that underlines shared norm setting within communities of parents.
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Distribute the recap. The TinyMoves team committed to share notes from the conversation, including chat contributions, with all attendees.
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Launch the field survey. A short (~10-minute) survey will go out through the Alliance and NFSN networks to programs network members reach— capturing what parents are asking about, what practitioners are already doing, and where appetite for coordinated work is strongest.
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Keep the conversation moving. The discussion continues at the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance national meeting (September 15) and the NFSN Together for Families conference this fall.
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Turn interest into pilots. The strong poll response becomes the starting pipeline for programs ready to help pilot concrete parent tools.
Bonus—Deeper Responses to Issues Raised in the Chat
A few thoughtful questions and comments came through the chat during the webinar that we didn't have time to pause on. They raise important issues, and we wanted to make sure we responded here.
Question: I worked in K–8 technology integration during the first big internet-safety wave/panic, and I watched legitimate concerns sometimes turn into fear-based approaches led by people who understood children but didn't necessarily understand the technology. I'm curious how FutureProof is intentionally avoiding that history—particularly by combining family-support expertise with real technical expertise and defining what healthy technology use looks like, rather than simply what families should avoid.
The concerns about children's safety in digital spaces are large and real, and it is easy to let fear lead the conversation. Avoiding that has shaped how we've been designing FutureProof from the start:
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We're defining what healthy use looks like, not just what to avoid. Our developmental framework is built around three pillars — emotional and relational health, development and learning, and safety and protection — and each is anchored by a question about what good engagement looks like ("What habits of mind are being formed?") rather than a list of prohibitions. The aim is to give parents a picture of what to build toward, not only what to fear.
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We're pairing family-support expertise with real technical expertise. We take seriously the risk of understanding children without understanding the technology. Before launching, we did background research into how Trust and Safety professionals in the tech sector think about children's well-being, and we are deliberately building that technical and Trust and Safety expertise into our team and design process — so it informs the work throughout, rather than as a one-time consult. (For anyone who wants a primer on the field of Trust and Safety and how it approaches these issues, TSPA's fundamentals curriculum is a great resource: https://www.tspa.org/curriculum/ts-fundamentals/.)
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We're framing the work around well-being, not just safety. We want to be aware of and responsive to the threats embedded in the digital landscape — but also to the opportunities, and to making sure those opportunities reach the communities that need them most. That dual focus is intentional and constant: our interest is in both managing risk and opening up opportunity.
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We want to shape how children engage with technology, not remove it from their lives. The research is clear that restriction alone isn't sufficient — limits can play a role, but on their own they don't build the skills children need to navigate these spaces. Those skills develop when children are supported from the start by adults invested in their well-being.
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We're starting in conversation. We've been interviewing and talking with partners across the tech sector, and even within it we find a wide range of perspectives, levels of concern, and views on what needs to happen next. This is a landscape we need to learn to map and navigate — and we'd welcome others who've lived this history, like the questioner, as thinking partners and potential pilot collaborators as the work takes shape.
Comment: This might be obvious, yet want to ask for the tools for parents be divided out by age- what a child needs at age 2 is different than what they need at 14
Agreed. FutureProof is focused on families with children under age 8, and even within that band the needs vary widely. The developmental framework we're building aligns three things for each stage: what technology is actually in use, what the key developmental tasks are, and what foundational skills are being built that will shape the larger arc of a child's engagement with technology. What a two-year-old needs — co-use, and early cues about what a "relationship" with a voice assistant means — looks very different from a seven-year-old's first independent use and the first habits of questioning what a screen tells them. Expect to hear more about this as we move forward.
Comment: There is a role for parent and caregiver advocacy in urging policymakers to better understand the digital world and AI, so they can develop informed policies that safeguard young children.
We agree, and connecting parents and policymakers is a role we think the field is especially suited to play. In fact, it was one of the strongest signals from this very session: 93% of the leaders who responded to our live poll endorsed the field serving as experts and advocates in exactly this policy space. A number of efforts are underway to better understand children's experiences and to make regulatory, platform, and other changes that support their safety — and parents belong in those conversations. Family support programs, with their trusted, in-community relationships, can play an important role in making sure parents are at the table and that the voice lawmakers hear is grounded in real family experience.
Want to help shape what comes next? Contact Nilofer Ahsan at nilofer@tinymoves.org.