How She Creates a Healthy Tech Culture

 

I remember when I was a kid in the 80s and my family got our first remote control. I thought it was the most absurd invention ever. How lazy were we that we couldn’t even get up to change the channel?

Now we don’t even have to leave our couch to go shopping, banking, or, well, surfing—if kids these days even surf the web anymore.

Adam Grant recently posted on Instagram that dial-up internet is the xennial equivalent of walking to school both ways up hill. Yup!

Parents today are at an interesting time in history, where digital pioneers like me, who just vaguely understood what the world wide web was when I graduated from high school, are parenting alongside digital natives who held that world in their hands in high school.

We are all actively inventing digital culture together, as a society, but also in our individual homes.

I’ve been meaning to do a series of episodes about managing screentime since the beginning of How She Moms—I’ve been doing interviews on the topic since 2018—but I kept waiting to start an official series until I felt like I had a handle on tech use in my own family. Spoiler alert. That hasn’t happened. I feel as conflicted as ever about how we use technology in our home and how it affects our family culture. And it still takes up so much of my time and energy. My kids just keep getting older and getting more devices, and technology just keeps changing. And honestly, that’s the boat we’re all in together for the long haul. Trying to stay afloat on the ever-changing tides of technology. Capsizing from time to time.

So I guess now is as good a time as any to pool the research I’ve been doing for all these years and share it with you, as long as you know I’m still treading water right along with you.

This episode kicks off a series of three or four episodes about screentime—I’ll figure out just how many as I keep working on it. This first episode will focus on the strategic level: creating a healthy family culture around technology. We’re also going to buoy ourselves up in this episode by talking about some of the positive things about technology, and how it can help us connect. (That’s the last of my oceanic references for this episode, I promise.)

Then the next couple of episodes will go into more detail about the tactics and logistics different moms are actually using to manage screentime in their families—how they set and enforce boundaries. I’ve already released interviews with two of the moms you’ll hear from throughout the series: episode 67: How Andrea Manages Screentime and episode 107: How Catherine Teaches Kids to Manage Technology, so you can go back and listen to those if you want to hear more from Andrea and Catherine, which you probably will because they’re amazing.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to focus on tech culture first is that I feel like it’s the biggest challenge for me, and the most important piece of the puzzle. Over the years, my biggest mistake has been unintentionally setting up tech as a battlefield. I’m this crusader against tech, and guess which side my kids are on?

What I’m working toward is a healthy, more peaceful culture of curiosity and collaboration, where we work together to find balance and use tech intentionally as a tool, not an obsession or distraction. Ah, a mom can dream.

But the dreaming is important. Thinking about what our ideal tech culture would be. Asking our kids what their ideal would be. Talking about the big picture together.

To help us start these conversations with our own families, I’ve organized advice from seven different moms into seven ways we can create a positive and healthy tech culture in our homes. As we begin this series, remember that you’ll hear from moms whose boundaries are both tighter and looser than your own. I always try to do this, but I feel like screentime is an area where many of us feel especially vulnerable. Try not to feel either guilt or judgement. We’re all doing our best!

1. Have No Fear!

The first tip is probably the most important tip—that’s why I put it first. Don’t be afraid of screens. Your children will smell your fear. And that puts them on the defensive and it cripples open conversation about tech. Can you tell I know this from experience? I think it’s what started the battlefield culture I mentioned.

But as we’ll discuss more in the next episode, there are a lot of things to fear about technology. There are the big ones, pornography, exploitation, manipulation, addiction, depression. And the smaller, yet more pervasive one like wasting time, comparing themselves to others, fomo, and commercialism.

Andrea is the founder of Better Screen Time, which she started shortly after getting her oldest daughter her first phone. Her family had been remarkably screen free up to that point—they even kept their TV in a closet and just brought it out from time to time, like a crock pot. She felt unprepared for the world of teens and tech, so she did what Andrea does—she researched the heck out of it and soon realized that she should share this research to help other families navigate screentime. Now she teaches courses, writes books, and speaks to teens and parents, including you, right now:

“As I was looking for resources, I felt like there were two camps that was like really fear based information. And then there was just like, the free for all where her parents were like, Oh, this is the world that our kids live in. Let’s you know, give it to them and let them learn how to use it. And I thought, Okay, where’s the middle ground here? Yes, we do live in a digital world. But how can we really mentor our kids and not just monitor them or not just say no. And I thought there must be some happy, happy middle. And that’s when we started better screen time. My main goal has always been to help parents worry less about tech and connect more with our kids. And that was really what my main concern is, with my own family and with other families is seeing that technology can get in the way of those relationships, whether that be in a marriage, or between a parent and a child. And again, to me that’s like the core behind why I do what I do. It’s a little less about the technology, and it’s way more about the relationships. And so how can we enjoy technology and use it without letting it get in the way?

Andrea has definitely succeeded in these goals. She’s been a go-to source of education for me whenever I feel that fear and uncertainty welling up. I love her focus on relationships. You can find her plentiful resources at betterscreentime.com and on Instagram at Better Screen Time.

2. Assess Your Current Screentime Culture

The second tip is to assess your current screentime culture and examine your values. I’m going to pepper you with a bunch of questions you can use to evaluate your own family here—if you want to find the list after you listen, you can go to the transcript of this episode at howshemoms.com.

1. How much time are we spending on screens?

Every once in a while, I take a look around and I see that whether we mean to or not, as a family we’re treating screens like they’re our number one priority. Because the way you spend your time shows what you actually prioritize. There have been times when some of my kids have definitely prioritized Minecraft over homework, TV over living in a clean home, Instagram over face-to-face interaction. There are times when my husband and I prioritize scrolling on our phones to interacting with our kids. One of my weaknesses is word games like wordle and waffle.

The idea isn’t to feel guilty every time we choose to spend time on a screen, but to take a step back and look at what amount of screentime we’re comfortable with, what feels healthy, and when the scales start to tip.

2. When do we spend the most time on screens?

Are there specific times of day we default to screens?

3. Why do we use our various devices—for what purpose?

When my niece got her first phone, my brother Brad Singley and his wife, Meg, were very good about teaching her that it was a creative tool. The only apps she had at the time besides basic calling and texting were apps to help her make movies, music, take and edit photos, etc. It was a great way to introduce the phone as a tool instead of a form of entertainment or distraction.

4. Where do we watch screens?

Where are the TVs and computers located in your home? Are phones or laptops allowed in your kids’ bedrooms? Do they use them there anyway like they do in our house? Do you have a charging station?

In every home we’ve lived in, my husband and I have been very intentional about not having a tv in our main living area, because we don’t want it to be the main focus and seem like a priority. I’ve liked this, partly because we don’t have TV noise in our kitchen and living room. It has downsides too, though, because when the TV is in a main area of the house, it’s easier to keep tabs on what and when people are watching. No right answer here.

5. What are our tech pain points?

What drives you crazy about your family’s screen habits? When do screens seem to instigate fights or disconnection?

6. How do screens have a positive impact on our family?

We’ll talk more about that a little later.

7. Are we as parents too controlling or too lax about screentime? And do our kids think we’re too controlling?

This is a big struggle for me. But I felt better about it after talking to Dr. Catherine Pearlman, a licensed clinical social worker who wrote an excellent book called First Phone—a Child’s Guide to Digital Responsibility, Safety, and Etiquette. Here’s that part of our conversation:

Whitney: So one of the things I struggle with the most is that kind of seesaw of like, micromanage, micromanage, micromanaging, then “Oh, I’m micromanaging. I’m gonna give him some freedom with either the amount of time they spend on TV or video games, or what I’m allowing them to look at, or the amount of time I’m giving them on social media.” How do you navigate that balance between agency and micromanagement?

Catherine: So I think on some level, that kind of seesaw approach is great. Because I think as long as you’re regularly kind of reassessing, then I think you can make changes as needed. I think that that’s okay. We can’t know everything. Sometimes there’s unintended consequences, or something we didn’t foresee. And now it’s just gotten out of hand.

I will say, when I was writing the book, I looked at my own screentime usage, which I had never done before. And I was horrified by how much time I’m spending on Instagram and Facebook, I mean, hours and hours a day. And so I added a limitation to my phone. So I can only spend an hour a day, total. But it’s something that I didn’t think about, I didn’t even realize I was doing. So I think that kind of seesaw is okay. And parents should give themselves a little bit of a break. This is hard stuff. We can’t know all the time how to handle. But I do think, you know, parenting changes as our kids get older, like the way we parent a eight and nine and 10 year old is really very different than how we should be parenting, a teenager. And we need to shift to less micromanaging, which is hard for all of us to more empowering.

And I once heard Julie Lythcott-Haimes talk about this issue of adulting. And saying that our job as parents is to put ourselves out of a job. And that just really struck me. And I think about that all the time. Is what you’re doing actually helping your kid learn how to manage themselves in the real world? Or is it just you worried about the dangers.

Instead of worrying about the dangers, educate your kids so they can make good decisions, and then give them a little bit of space, and let them work on it and then give them a little bit more space. So progressive independence is what we should be going for. And I think as parents of teenagers, it’s hard for us to let go, partly because we can sense they’re moving out of our realm. And sometimes we grasp on harder, or we feel just so good doing something for them. It just makes us feel close to them. But we shouldn’t be doing for them all the time because then we’re sending them out in the real world unprepared. Right? So it is a little bit of a balance but I do like the idea of really shifting the way we parent as our kids age. I think that’s really important.

You can listen to episode 107 to hear the rest of our conversation, and you can find Catherine at thefamilycoach.com.

The eighth question is one that Andrea already talked about:

8. How do screens impact our relationships and connections?
9. What is screentime replacing?

Be careful with this question, because it’s easy to talk yourself into the idea that your child would become a world-class pianist if only they would get off their phone.

Sometimes screentime is replacing nothing. And even that can be a bad thing. I’ve been thinking about this idea since I learned the term Solitude Deprivation in the book Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. I think we all may be suffering from this these days, to various degrees. When is the last time you just sat alone with your thoughts in silence. I mean, podcasts are great, but sometimes you just need quiet. But sometimes we, and especially our teenagers default to popping our airpods in any time we have a lull.

One of the many benefits of quiet and yes, even boredom is that it forces us to think and be creative. I love Chanelle Nielson’s thoughts about this.

“So with my younger kids I say, if you’re bored, the last thing I want you to do is watch TV. And that’ll often go together. I’m bored. Can I watch TV? Or can I use your phone or whatever? Right? No, absolutely not. You’re bored? This is awesome. Something great is about to happen.

But for my older kids, they aren’t telling me they’re bored. They’re just hanging out on their phone. And that’s really my biggest concern is you are dulling your senses. And you’re, you’re missing that boredom piece where all these amazing things are gonna happen. But it’s when they step away, my high school son will go out and do woodworking in the garage or he’ll go skateboard and stuff like that if he doesn’t get distracted by his phone, right? So, balance–it’s a continual process. Sometimes it’s just reminding him or even pointing out to him like, hey, how long have you been on your phone? And I don’t have to really say more than that—next thing I know he’s out riding a skateboard. But I think it’s such a challenge. As a parent, we’re still navigating that one.”

Chanelle is a coach for moms at chanelleneilson.com.

10. Are we using screentime as a reward, and is that a good or bad thing?

I threw in this controversial question because it’s one I’ve thought a lot about. I’ve read many things about how we need to be careful that we don’t use screentime as a reward for getting chores done or other behaviors—like I’ll let you have some screentime if you clean your room, or if you leave the park without throwing a tantrum you can have some iPad time. The thought there is that if you use screens as a reward, you make it seem even more enticing to your child.

On the other hand, you also probably want to teach your kid that they have to get their work done before they turn on the boob tube. (another phrase that shows my age. I don’t think anyone uses that one anymore.)

After thinking about it and experimenting, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a very child-dependent situation. Some kids have electronic time so high on a pedestal already that using it as a reward isn’t going to affect that status one way or another. But some kids may really be influenced by reinforcing screentime as a reward. Alex Fales, of Mindful with Media agrees:

“There is a lot of truth to that, like it does give the screens power right, and makes screen times seem better than other things. It’s kind of the same concept as like not using treats as a reward for eating vegetables–just serve it all together–that’s the concept behind it. I think if you can make that work, that’s awesome, but also every person and family is unique and maybe that works great for you. I was just talking with my sister and over this summer she started a thing where once her kids were done with their chores in the morning, they could watch an episode of T. V, and she’s like this is amazing. It was just so good for their family. She has one son who has very high energy and like, he would get his chores done so fast and then he would watch T. V, while the others could like finish their things in peace and it just worked so well for them for that season.

And so I think sometimes we get so caught up and like I’m going to ruin my child if I do it this way like we just hear like bits and pieces of advice and information on line that we get like I can’t do it. But take a step back. Take a deep breath, and maybe that’s what works for you for that season, and that’s awesome. And you know your child and you know what’s best for them.”

When my kids were littler, mornings getting my kids off to school could be a nightmare. One of the things that worked for a long time was to let whichever kids were ready have iPad time in the car. That got them motivated to be not only ready but in the place they needed to be. And we were way better at being on time for school when we were doing that.

I recently started doing this again, because my kids just suddenly all got into Duolingo, an app that teaches you how to speak Spanish. I don’t let them play Duolingo before school unless they’re totally ready and in the car.

3.Envision What You Want Your Screentime Culture to Be

Ok, so once you get an idea of where your tech culture is right now, it’s time to dream—to envision what you want your culture to be. Be realistic here, if you were raised pre-internet like me, you may have dreams of your kids living an analog culture and only watching cartoons on Saturday mornings and Saved By the Bell after school. But that’s not the world our kids live in.

What would a balanced approach look like? How would you like your family to use screens? What do you consider healthy screen habits? You can get really granular here and imagine a typical day in this ideal culture.

Then ask the rest of your family what their ideal would be—without judgement. There will be differences in these visions. But that’s a great jumping off point for conversation.

Kailan Carr is a great example of someone who decided early on that she didn’t want screens to ever be a default. Before I share her comments, know that she is not judgmental about families who use screens more than she does like, ahem, mine. But she is a great example of someone who decided what kind of tech culture she wants and then put in the work and creativity to make it happen.

“My kids were born around the time as an iPad. It was new, and it came out about the same time. And so it was like the greatest new thing like this was really cool. And then I started to notice patterns with my kids after using it. And I just like that mom intuition at that time, I was like, I don’t like the way they’re behaving. And they’re acting, and I’m going to put this away, and it’s not for us. And now like, all this research has come out and proven it actually has effects on their brain development and too much is not great. So my mission and focus is to help parents and grandparents have screen-free activities.”

Kailan remembered a quiet book she had as a kid—you know those cloth books that have lots of fun activities for young kids–and decided to make one for her own kids. She enjoyed it so much that she started a swap with friends and has now expanded it to a thriving company, called Quiet Book Queen.

“I’ve experienced the devices and we’d use them for potty training as an incentive. I’ve been there. I know it’s not the best thing to do. But I was, I was doing it. And I realized that’s not, that’s just not something that I wanted to be a part of our family i. And I knew from like, before having kids, I was a teacher. And I just knew that I wanted my kids to be able to entertain themselves and not have to rely on these devices. So when we bought our kid car, I did not want a device or a portable DVD system, or, you know, any kind of media system in there because I didn’t want that temptation. And I thought, you know, if it’s out of sight, out of mind, and if we do need something, I can always bring something in later. And restaurants, that’s what I just knew, that was kind of my outline of like, my limits, but we watch TV, I used TV, when they were little as my break because I was a stay at home mom, and the days are long. And I totally get that. So we just stuck to slower paced shows, like Daniel Tiger was a favorite in our house. I know Bluey is a big one now, but my kids are older now. Yeah, similar type shows, we avoided YouTube because it’s just, you know, just goes on and on and on. And I didn’t want to give my kids that control. Now that they’re older, at age eight and 10, they’re in school. And so they get a lot of screen time at school through their assignments and the activities there.

“So we just say no screen time on the on the weekdays, because you have you’ve had it at school, and you have other things to do when you get home. And then on the weekends, we usually have like just a family movie night TV show, like Lego Masters is on right now. And so that’s our family family show as they get older. And I keep telling my kids yet because I read the book Glow Kids, by Nick Kardaris, and he talked about, the addiction aspect of like video games and how the brain is not developed yet to handle all that stimulation and the dopamine trickles that they get. And so he is in his book, he recommended by age 10 for being able to handle video games. So I’ve told my kids just like not yet, like you’ll get to play games, I have great memories of Mario Kart when I was a kid, but like, we’re gonna wait, because your brain has some growing to do and it needs to, you need to focus on those foundational skills. Like, I’m not telling them that but that’s what I’m thinking in my head, I want to build my kids foundational skills to be able to know and experience how cool tech can be when they know, like, the old fashioned way, like, you know, if you just give a kid a iPad to color on with their finger, it’s like they’re not experiencing coloring with crayons, and I want them to know that and then when they get older, and can use, you know, like procreate as a tool. And actually use it for like design or for illustrations, like the not understand like, Oh, this is really cool, like you can just delete without having to start all over again.”

So what advice do you have for moms who just think? Yeah, I believe that I get it. But it’s just so hard. What do you say to encourage them and to help them find some screen free alternatives that are similarly low effort for those times when you need low effort?

Right? Yes. Well, I have to just say that I know like screentime is the easy route. It is like, completely like it can be a godsend from parents to like, this is so easy. I can just put it on it. They’re quiet, and they are engaged and it works. But you have to think of it as an investment in the long run. And like I put in the hours, I was the mom who would pack up all the activities and have my diaper bag to go out and about carry around my quiet book. I had the messy house because kids were playing and had all the things out. But now it is paid off. Just huge. I like it’s this investment and I’m like reaping the rewards right now because my kids know how to entertain themselves and they don’t need a screen. They turned to books on Saturday mornings. They’ll get up and just read and I can sleep later and I’m like, Okay, this was worth it. This was so worth it. But I do understand that that it is very tempting. So since suggestions that I would, I would give or take keep like a special drawer like you said like special things and special places that they can play with someone like one of my kids were little I had a kitchen drawer that I just put toys and different busy bag activities and, and things in there and magnets on the refrigerator. So those were things when I was cooking dinner, like they could be near me. And they could be in there if they chose. And if they wanted to just go play on their own and do their own thing that was fine. But it’s definitely they want to be close to you. And you just make it easy on yourself. And then another really good idea that I that we use often is podcasts or kids or online stories, because that keeps them quiet. And still, if that’s what you’re looking for, if you need like a rest time. But it’s not that overstimulating portion of the screen, it’s just listening. And then they can do like a coloring activity. Or you can just sit with them and listen or you can be you know, involved in other things.

I love Kailan’s commitment and creativity. She has so many great ideas, wherever your own family’s screentime habits fall on the spectrum.

We’ll talk more about a wide range of screentime boundaries in the episode about managing screentime.

4.Have Ongoing Discussions About Tech

Our next tip is to have open and ongoing conversations about technology in our families. These can be formal family meetings or just casual conversations as situations come up. Better if they’re not freak outs like happens at my house more often than I’d like to admit, when my house is a mess and I need help and I realize every kid is on some kind of screen or another. Or when I can’t sleep and decide I should check out the screentime app to see how much time my kids have been spending on their phones lately. That’s when I do my best over-reacting and my kids wake up to all kinds of excessive limits and restrictions. Not the healthiest way to handle it, and the opposite of open communication.

Andrea Davis, on the other hand, is so good at screentime discussions that she wrote a book about it, called Creating a Tech-Healthy Family: Ten Must-Have Conversations to Help You Worry Less and Connect More With Your Kids. I have used her book with my family, and it’s wonderful. You can buy it on Amazon, and the kindle version is only $5. I asked her about the first conversation in the book.

“As I was looking for information, I came across an article that I really loved by Richard and Linda Eyre. And they said  don’t tell your Kids, the screentime rules, decide on the rules with them decide on the boundaries with them. And just like that simple article completely changed my mindset. And I thought, wow, what if as parents, we could see this problem as an opportunity, and not only an opportunity to teach our kids, but an opportunity to connect with them.

I decided, okay, we’re going to connect first as a family. And I think a lot of families are familiar with this, they might do a family council meeting or just like a family night. But the whole idea is we’re connecting first. I like whiteboarding, like pulling out a whiteboard or a flip chart just because I’m very visual. And so that’s not unusual for my kids. But you know, some families, it might just be a conversation around the dinner table or around a bowl of ice cream. I don’t think it has to be super formal. But we just made a thumbs up and a thumbs down list of all the things that we loved about technology and all the things that we knew we needed to watch out for, like what basically what are the pros and cons, and thumbs up and thumbs down works really well for kids, because they know what that means. And our kids had so many great ideas and hadn’t even thought of shared things that I hadn’t thought of certain pitfalls of technology. And that’s really how it started. And I liked that. Because at that point, we weren’t making any decisions. We didn’t set up any rules, or any boundaries. We just had a conversation about, really about that skill of discernment, which is something that Richard Eyer talked about, that we can see this as an opportunity to teach our kids a skill of discernment, which is to be able to tell the difference between good and bad. And that’s so important, because we’re not always going to be there. The filters that we put in place in our home are not always going to be there. Our kids are going to go to school, they’re going to be on the bus, they’re going to go to their friends houses. And in all those places, we’re not going to have like the perfect scenario where mom and dad are there are the filters are in place. And so we have to start from that place of that framework of teaching.

At the end of Andrea’s 10 discussions, the idea is to have a Family Tech Plan, that all of the family has helped to create, including a vision for what you want your tech culture to look like as well as specific rules and boundaries. We’ll talk more about setting and managing those boundaries in the next episode or two.

Alex Fales is the youngest of the moms I interviewed about tech, so she actually grew up with a family tech plan herself.

I always thought a family media plan was something really strict and formal, because growing up we often had one, and it was like pasted up in our front room.

Which I think there are good things about it right now. It’s kind of just like this continuing conversation of like what our rules and plans are, anyways, But I do think it’s important to let your kids have input on what that plan is like–let them you know what’s important to them with technology and let them help create the rules and create the plans, because they’re smart people and they have perspectives on things and they’ll probably have a lot to offer to your plan that you create.”

Such great advice. We’ll hear more from Alex in the next section.

5. Model Healthy Habits

The fifth  tip is a hard one, but you knew it was coming. This is the part of the podcast where I say that before we can talk about our family tech culture we have to examine how we as parents use and think about our own screentime. Here’s Andrea Davis’s experience with this:

“I think anyone that has a preteen, or a teen starts to realize how much teens hate hypocrisy. They really don’t love it when you tell them to do one thing, but you’re doing something else. And so I thought, ‘yeah, I guess I need to leave the screen out of the bedroom.’ And so since then, that’s been like three and a half years ago, I’ve kept my phone in the charging station at night instead of taking my phone into the room. I just don’t even carry it around in my pocket anymore because it will end up going other places in the house. So I just leave in the charging station, or sometimes it’s sitting on the kitchen table. And one of the reasons why is because I realized, in my early days of parenting, I didn’t have a smartphone. So there wasn’t that distraction. But with my younger kids, I noticed I’d be giving one of them a bath, or I’d be reading Harry Potter, and all of a sudden my phone would ding or buzz. And then I would think, ‘Oh, I got to answer that I need to respond to this person right away.’ And I realized, no, we live in this always on culture, that doesn’t mean that I that person needs me right now the person that needs me most is right in front of me. That’s the kid that I’m reading to or the kid that I’m bathing, or, now with my older kids, it might be the teen that that is telling me about something that seems totally silly and unimportant. But just like listening and making eye contact and paying attention. And so that was one of the big things that I think was a real struggle for me in the beginning.”

This is where Alex Fales comes in. Alex is a mom of two kids. One just turned two and one is 18 months old, so she is just starting the parenting adventure. Because her kids are so young, she focuses her advice to parents and their own relationships to technology. As a digital native, she now knows the tech world from both perspectives—the child and the parent.

Alex: Your screen time use as a parent is the number one predictor of how your kids use screen time. More so than setting up their own screen time boundaries and managing theirs. So I feel really passionate about modeling and working on my own screen time to teach my kids more so than just deciding what they can and can’t watch, and how much they can watch.”

Whitney: So what is your strategy for keeping your own screentime in check?

Alex: I guess two things come to mind. One,  focusing on how are media and screens serving me? How can I make them serve me more? And then if I find that I’m serving my screens more than they’re serving me. What’s triggering that? Usually there’s some sort of trigger where like I’m bored or I’m lonely or I’m having some sort of uncomfortable emotions and I’m turning to my screens and serving my screens more.

Whitney: Is it about positives and negatives? This is helping me in some way and this is harming me?

Alex: Yeah. I want to really set up my life in a way that my screen can help me. And then if I notice that they’re they’re pulling away from my life. Yeah, like harming me or my kids in some way, then I want to make changes so that’s not the case.

Whitney: How do you look at the time you spend on screens and evaluate it in the moment? How do you train yourself to be aware of that?

Alex: Yeah, I think something that I’ve thought a lot about is just taking some time to think about what you value and what’s important to you, I think, especially as I’m raising little kids and there’s a lot of different ways to raise kids. And so just thinking about what’s important to me and then when I’m going throughout my day and I’m either feeling off or just kind of don’t

feel good. How am I using screens that’s not aligning with what’s important to me, and then just living your life out loud. Like, no, I just wasted too much time on my phone and I’m feeling blah and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m going to put my phone away.

What a great tip—to actually say out loud when you feel like it’s time to put down your phone. And if your kids hear you talking to yourself, so much the better. They already think you’re weird. And it’s actually a great way to model your own thought processes about phone use.

Alex doesn’t just talk out loud about how being on her phone makes her feel, but she talks about what she’s doing on her phone.

“I use my phone for so many things. I use it for ordering groceries, and I use it for studying scripture, and I use it for planning things and texting people to make plans. like use my phone a lot for relatively good things.

But when my kids see me, all they see is a phone in front of my face and so I’m like I’m the person at that party that’s just has my phone in front of my face. And so that’s something that I’ve tried to be really intentional about Is lot of times I’ll just speak out loud what I’m doing on my phone to my son. You can help me. I’m ordering groceries. What should we make for dinner this week? Just involving them and speaking out loud with what I’m doing on my phone.”

And, probably most importantly, she lets her kids know when she messes up.

“Often in the afternoon it’s kind of like the roughest time of the day. It’s not enough time to go anywhere. The kids are more fussy. Were like trying to make dinner. Anyway. It’s just kind of a hard time of day and so it’s really easy for me to want to go on Instagram to a break from a kid And so  a couple of weeks ago I had gotten on Instagram in the afternoon when my son

was needing something and I was wanting a break from him, so I was scrolling on there and he’s kind of nagging me, and then I realized what I was doing and so I got off and I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, Beck, I’m on Instagram and I wish I would have been present with you. I’m going to go put my phone away in my room and I’m going to be present with you.’ So just talking out loud about mistakes you’re making. How do you want to be using tech? And just letting them know and being okay with being imperfect.”

I love this advice, especially because a few weeks ago, my son and I were talking and I asked him what I could do better as a parent, if he could choose one thing. He said that I really zone out when I’m using my phone and don’t even notice when he’s trying to get my attention. Wake up call! We talked about how sometimes I’m doing important things on my phone, like texting someone or responding to an email, and I just can’t talk right at that moment. So we talked about how I will try to be more aware of it, and try to use my phone less, and if he needs me while I’m on my phone he can put his hand on my shoulder so I know he wants my attention and I can either ask him to wait while I finish or I can take a break. And I can do the same for him.

We all make assumptions, and we usually assume that the other person is just wasting time on their phones. One day I thought that same son was just vegging out and playing games on his phone on a Saturday, and I came into his room to get him to stop. Instead, I found out that he was making an awesome animation. Had he been drawing on paper, I would have just left him to it without saying a word. But his creativity wasn’t less valid or valuable just because it was on a device.

6. Listen to and learn from our kids

The sixth tip comes from Hillary Wilkinson, a teacher and founding member of an organization called Healthy Screen Habits, whose mission is to “empower families to create healthy habits for screen use, and to maintain technology as a tool– never as a replacement– for human connection.” Hillary also hosts the organization’s podcast, also called, Healthy Screen Habits. You can find an episode on any challenge you’re having with screentime. Hillary does such a good job.

Hillary’s entire interview was so great that it will actually be our next episode, so be sure to tune in in two weeks. One of my favorite tips from Hillary is to utilize and respect our kids’ expertise.

Hillary: We have to remember that developmentally, our teens are in a place where they put they prioritize peers, peer relationships over parents, I mean, this is how it’s how we’ve evolved as a species, right. And we have to recognize that the phone holds the key to their peer relationships. So the tech is gonna win. So we have to become allies. So that’s kind of, you know, you’ve got to like crack this code a little bit. And one of the, one of the best ways that I have found to connect with my own teens, is to make them the expert.”

Whitney: Boy, have I found this to be true, especially when it comes to finding ways around the boundaries I set up.

Hillary: Oh, yeah. And what’s what’s amazing, like, to me is how they outsmart me. But it’s not coming from a place of like devious behavior. It’s just, I’m just watching them navigate their world. Yeah. And I’m doing what I can do. I’m like, How are you doing that? You know, and they’re like, Oh, it’s just this, this and that, you know, which also is it goes back to that thing of putting your child in the experts seat. They can teach you a lot. Just recently, I was trying to figure out how to post something on social media. And my daughter had done a picture that I wanted to know how to do that. But she was the one that taught me.

But I don’t think we should use them only for that, like, oh, what’s the hippest coolest way to use things? I think the real truth telling starts coming out when you say hey, I just saw this report say that started that most cell phone usage is starting in fourth and fifth grade now. What do you think about that? I’ve really enjoyed getting their perspective on things. And it helps me I feel that connection with my with my kids, but also, it keeps me grounded in reality of what do they think, what do they care about? You know?

Catherine Pearlman also suggested that we make an effort to learn and even participate in the tech our kids love.

“I also think that parents should try and be curious with their kids, you know, instead of lecturing, or you know, saying bad things about social media, I think that the more parents get into what their kids are into, so if your kid is really into Tiktok, sit down and watch your Tiktok videos with your kid. Find out what it is that they’re doing, try and relate to them on what it is they’re doing. Like, I could care less about video games, but my son really likes video games. And so I can either lose him, and just be like, that’s silly game, I don’t know why you spend so much time on that. Or I can sit with him and kind of learn what he’s doing here, his friends talking, see what he’s learning in the game. And then as I want to, I can advise, but I think, you know, we have to approach it in a more positive light, that, you know, not all technology is bad.”

7. Connect Through Tech

I saved the best tip—and most fun–for last. And it’s also the best way to follow tip one and stop fearing tech. But really, we’ve been talking about this tip all along. It’s to use tech to connect with your family. There are oh so many ways to do this. We’ll start with some ideas for families with young kids, courtesy of Alex Fales again.

Alex: You can have a dance party together. That’s been our one of our favorites is just pulling up some music on my phone and having a dance party. They have like Just Dance Youtube videos.

If you want to do that.

We love doing work out videos together. I love dance workouts, but honestly, any workout videos together are really fun.

One of my son’s very favorite things is looking at pictures together on my phone. so I have an album in my phone and it’s called B’s favorites and it just has all these pictures of people he loves or like fun memories that we’ve had together. He’ll ask several times a day, pictures, pictures pictures. But it’s really fun to just talk about people that we love or to share, talk about memories that we’ve had together.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Skillshare or even just Youtube works fine, but you can learn a skill with your child, like anything that they might be interested or even that you’re interested in and just pull them along with you. There are so many cool things you can learn online like cake decorating or animation or video editing or…

Whitney: Back flips. That’s what my said. My son showed me this thing on how to spot him. So we’d watch them together like I’d figure out how to spot him and he would figure out how to do the back flip.

Alex: See like that. It’s so cool what we have available to learn something together and do it together. Baking or I don’t know. Just whatever you’re into.

Another one that I think is actually really important, especially as kids get older, is to edit posts together, so like have them sit with you. Create a post together, and you can teach them about how to use social media to share goodness, and what’s appropriate to shar and what’s not appropriate to share. To create that post together and let them help have say in what you want to share. And then also, it’s helpful to go on social media together and show them how it can be a positive experience on there. So comment on people’s posts, uplifting things, or respond to people’s stories, or show them what it looks like.  Back in the day, kids could see everything you did. Now kids don’t see what you’re doing on social media unless you have them sit down with you and you show them what you’re doing on there.

Use funny filters. So like Instagram, has, I don’t have Snap any more, but Snapchat has them too. If you like take pictures with your kids and it puts funny filters on your face. It’s so fun. It makes you both laugh so much, and then you these funny pictures to look at again in the future. When you’re looking at pictures, That’s a really fun way to connect with your kids.

And then the last one I think is obvious, but face timing people–l we Facetime my mom almost every day. It’s actually great because she started reading books to my son while I make dinner and It’s amazing like that afternoon slog. It makes it so much better and he gets to read books with grandma.

For the family Alex Fales grew up in movies were a gateway to good conversation.

“That’s my number one thing. Just talk about it. When watching a movie as a family, and something that doesn’t resonate with what you believe or what you teach comes up, talk about it. My parents did this all the time, and we always teased them about it, because can’t we just enjoy the movie? Every time we come home from the theater and they’d be like. ‘No, I didn’t like when this happened. Because it it portrayed that pre marital sex is okay and doesn’t have any consequences. But that’s not the truth. you know. they would always always always talk about it the time. It’s really annoying and not that you intentionally want to show your kids bad things. It does provide an opportunity to teach them what you believe and teach them truth. When you’re when things do come up in movies, just talk about it.”

Jen Brimhall started a web site called raisethegood.com based on this premise that media can be a very positive force for teaching values and building a healthy family culture. She shares so many resources and movie lists for uplifting media. Here’s what Jen had to say about family movie nights.

“Aristotle says “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” And that really, really resonates with me. I feel like sometimes we forget to educate the hearts of our kids, and movies, who in particular have a way of doing that in a really powerful way, with the images with the music with, you know, their storytelling abilities. They really have a way of, of touching us for good or for bad, right?

So  we approach tech in a way where it feeds our hearts and it feeds our minds, and it feeds our connection. And that’s how how we approach it. We try to watch movies about real heroes. We try to watch YouTube clips and documentaries and different things like that, that teach us emotional intelligence. We just watched this last weekend Twelve Angry Men, that old old movie. And as we watched it, I said, “You guys, look at the emotional intelligence of each of these characters, you know, how is how is this or acting and how is that you’re acting and who you respect the most? Who accomplishes the most?”

And so it’s great for being able to pause for a minute or talking after the show to say, what do you think of that? Who do you want to be in that scenario? And it’s just a great way because my kids get tired of listening to me lecture them, right? And I get tired of lecturing them, too. But they learned a lot about emotional intelligence from watching that show, they learned what kind of a person they want to be without me really saying a whole lot. And so it’s just a powerful teaching tool.”

Another great way to connect with our kids through tech can actually be through social media. For all its dangers, it isn’t all bad. Here’s Hillary Wilkinson.

“My son goes to school out of state, and he and I will send memes back and forth to each other. Like, I mean, probably two to three a day. And it is a girl, he and I have a very similar sense of humor. And we have all played, you know, the same funny things together. So he’ll find and you he’ll find a new account that is very fatty, and he’ll like send me a clip and be like, you should check this guy out. And you know, I’ll send him something, you know, that I thought was funny as well or something I thought it’d be interested in. And that is a way that he and I have completely stayed connected, that I realized my daughter did not have.

And my second tip my my daughter and my son have very close relationship. There have always always been a very, very tight, and I have a vested want to continue that. So that I that is just one of those things where I recognize that the communication of choice for my son is more in like the DMS and the sharing of like, quick little funnies back and forth, then a long text or a call. And because my daughter did not have the platform, they were starting to lose touch with one another because she would send him a text. And she’d send him you know, a thick text. And he’d reply back with one line, just because he’s a he’s a guy of few words, he always has been, you know, and he, so I was like, Okay, wait a minute, but it was very cute to see how excited he was that she was on Instagram now as well. He’s, he immediately set up like a group chat of a group thing for us to all share, like memes on and he put in a few that he knew she’d like, right away. And I was like, Okay, this was the right move for this time in our family. Yeah, but, but we’re in a very different place than I was, you know, say when he was 15, she would have been 11. No way.

And here’s another connection tip from Hillary:

“So if you want to build more tech friendly culture, what I recommend do, like, easiest, easiest thing in the world to start is start generating family playlists, like on, you know, Spotify, or whatever, and just have each and put in five songs. And then when you have the playlist going, whether you eat dinner with music, or whether you drive with music, you kind of try and guess who was it who put this song on. And so, so it brings connection, you know, so it turns it makes it a little bit of a game. So that’s a very easy one to do.”

And of course there’s texting, which by now feels like old-school technology.

Catherine: One thing that I always talk about is with teenagers texting is another way to talk to your teen in a way that’s much easier for them. So if you think your kid is going to tell you their problems face to face, that’s not happening. Most teens have a hard time initiating the conversation. But they have a lot easier time texting. And so if I see my daughter’s going through something, and she can’t talk about it, I might just say, text me, text me what’s going on. And that will start the conversation and break the ice. And then we could bring it offline again, and then talk in person. But you know, there’s so many fun things that kids are doing in terms of making videos and keep parents can do all that stuff with their kids.

Whitney: I like that idea of an addition, that texting is an addition and not a replacement. Because I think sometimes people feel threatened, like, oh, people don’t talk anymore. It’s just replaced with texts, especially between teenagers. But you know, they still talk when they get together. And to look at it as a just a different form a different medium. Even today, that happened with my son and I he was I was busy while he was leaving for a sporting event. And I just was able to say, oh, wish I could be there. Good luck, all that stuff. Now he has that, like a physical reminder that I am excited for him. And you know, that just saying that as he left the door might not have made such an impact, you know?

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the ways we can connect with our family and friends through technology, and these things are not new. But sometimes we just need a reminder of all the good that technology brings into our lives, especially when we feel afraid or even just annoyed by the extra workload this digital realm ironically brings to motherhood, in the name of progress. Stay tuned for Hillary Wilkinson’s interview April 12, and How She Manages Screentime April 26.