The Digital Cohort Dilemma

About the Authors

Saira Khurram

Program Leader, Foreign Qualifications, Roots IVY Educational Complex · University Lecturer in Psychology · MSc Zoology, BS Psychology, B.Ed

Saira Khurram is an educator, researcher, and author whose academic path bridges the biological sciences, psychology, and education. Holding an MSc in Zoology, a BS in Psychology, and a B.Ed, she has established herself as a versatile academic leader specialising in innovative teaching methodologies, curriculum design, and interdisciplinary research.

As Program Leader of Foreign Qualifications at Roots IVY Educational Complex, she guides students through international curricula including IGCSE, O-Level, A-Level, AQA, Pearson Edexcel, IB, and OCR, with a sustained emphasis on fostering critical thinking, integrating technology-based learning, and promoting research engagement among students and faculty alike.

Alongside her leadership in secondary education, she serves as a university lecturer teaching undergraduate and postgraduate psychology modules and supervising research projects across psychology and biology. It is this interdisciplinary vantage — at once educational, biological, and psychological — that she brings to the developmental questions at the heart of this volume.

Dr. Sameena Iqbal

Lecturer & Clinical Psychologist · Founder, “Healing Playground” Child Psychotherapy Lab, Department of Psychology, International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) · PhD, Clinical Psychology

Dr. Sameena Iqbal is a lecturer and trained clinical psychologist with more than thirteen years of experience in psychotherapy, clinical assessment, teaching, and research. Her professional and research work centres on child and adolescent mental health, parenting practices, and the management of disruptive behaviour disorders, culminating in her doctoral thesis on the efficacy of parent–child interventions.

She has published extensively in national and international journals on parenting, student mental health, mindfulness, psycholinguistics, AI and communication, domestic violence, self-esteem, and clinical populations. Her practice integrates evidence-based psychological methods with culturally responsive, research-driven insight across clinical, academic, and community settings.

She holds professional certifications as a Certified Hypnotherapist (NGH, USA), Certified Islamic Psychotherapist, NLP Practitioner (NFNLP, USA), and Behavioral Neuro-Leadership Practitioner, with advanced clinical training in CBT, MMPI-II, Schema Therapy, Narrative Exposure Therapy, and Neurofeedback. She recently established the “Healing Playground” child-psychotherapy lab in the Department of Psychology at IIUI, supporting children’s psychological well-being through community-awareness programmes and direct psychological services.

Endorsements & Reviews

“A bracing reframing of a debate too often reduced to willpower and screen-time limits. By treating digital childhood as a structural determinant of health — and the ‘digital cohort’ as its central unit of analysis — this book gives educators, clinicians, and policymakers the vocabulary the moment demands.”

“Rare is the study that speaks fluently to epidemiology, developmental psychology, and public policy at once. Rigorous about the evidence and honest about its limits, it refuses both moral panic and complacent dismissal — and reframes a debate that has badly needed this clarity.”

“The closing chapters on developmental infrastructure and cohort responsibility are the most practical I have read on this subject. Rather than blaming children or parents, the authors show how schools, platforms, governments, and researchers each carry a share of the duty. Essential reading for anyone raising, teaching, or studying the first fully digital generation.”