Today our topic is kids and technology.  I'll be talking about why every parent should be talking with their kids about unplugging distractions and plugging into life, and because it's our first episode I'll share a bit about how I got into teaching parenting and cyber safety.

Format of every episode

• Topics: parenting, online safety for kids, cyberbullying, data privacy, school online safety, tools to help keeps kids safe online, apps to avoid, online challenges to avoid
• Lisa solo or with a guest
• Conversation starter to try with your kids
• Unplug and Plug In segment

Topic: Kids and technology

Kids today have no sense of being unplugged from their devices. Ever.

• The internet is accessible 24/7
• Being disconnected causes anxiety
• Games and apps are designed to be addictive and keeps kids online
• Watch the movie The Social Dilemma as a family

Introduction to our host Lisa Honold's parenting story

Takeaway

Your kids need your guidance, your life experience, to navigate all the tricky situations online. It's not fair to hand them a phone and "hope for the best".

Tune in for future episodes on guiding your teens and tweens to be smarter, safer digital citizens, supervising what they are doing online and building your relationship as your kids want more independence.

Our sponsor

Our sponsor today is the Center for Online Safety. Their mission is to keep kids safe online and they offer training for parents and schools to protect kids from cyberbullying, predators, pornography and other inappropriate content.

Conversation starter

Ask your child:

When you have screen time, what’s the first thing you want to do online? (If they’re under 10 years old, you may think you know this answer, but it changes a lot!)

As a follow up, you can ask--How does it make you feel if you don’t get to do this?

If you’ve got a teen on social media:

Who is one famous person you follow on social media. And why do you like to follow them?

Unplug and plug in segment

What are you plugging into this week? What are you choosing to unplug from? Our host shares her thoughts.

Next Steps

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Today our topic is kids and technology. I'll be talking about why every parent should be talking with their kids about unplugging distractions and plugging into life, a bit about how I got into teaching cyber safety and give you a peek at the work that we do at the Center for Online Safety.

Since this is the first episode, I want to explain how every episode will be organized before we get started. I’ll start with a topic, either alone or with a guest, then offer you a conversation starter to try with your child and last, share my thoughts on unplugging and plugging in for the week. A new episode will be released every other week.

This episode is sponsored by the Center for Online Safety--our mission is to keep kids safe online. Get your free guide to learn the 3 secrets to getting your child to put down their phone (or tablet or gaming system) by visiting centerforonlinesafety.com

Back to our topic--kids and tech. Kids today have no sense of being unplugged from their devices. Ever. They have the internet accessible 24/7 and they tend to get anxious if they are disconnected. So much of their life is online, especially as I record right now with so many kids still in Virtual School, they wake up and check their phone to see what’s new, get online for school lessons, do homework, connect with friends, play games and socialize, all online. Screen time is through the roof!

But the research shows that kids need time away from screens. They actually need to be bored before they can be creative. Physically their eyesight suffers when they look at screens too much, we know sitting too much, being sedentary isn't good for human bodies, and kids’ brain needs time outside of a screen, when it’s not being stimulated. Mentally, there is a direct link between social media use and anxiety and depression. The more time spent online, the more messages of “I’m not good enough, smart enough, rich enough, cute enough” kids get. Even if you have a younger child and they are just watching totally appropriate YouTube videos--their brain is being trained to want more screen time, and the natural progression of that is to fill any extra time with a screen, to never experience boredom.

We know technology for kids is designed to be addictive. Have you watched the netflix documentary The Social Dilemma? It compares scrolling on social media on a smartphone to a slot machine.Sometimes you pull the lever on the slot machine, and you get something good – you get five new likes or extra rewards in your game; other times you refresh your screen and you get nothing. It’s that randomness that makes it so addictive. When you get something good online, your brain releases dopamine and you feel excited to see what’s new.

And it’s not just older kids on social media who are being targeted, it’s also us, their parents. And for younger kids--it’s educational games with hooks to be addictive and perhaps an ask to pay real money for add-ons. We are all being manipulated!

So how do we help kids know when enough is enough?

The best way to do that is by talking about how YOU’RE unplugging from the things that distract you from what you want to do, what your real goals are for the day.

You can model what it looks like to unplug and talk about it out loud. “Geez, I think I've had enough screens today” or “Wow I didn't even realize I was scrolling for 30 minutes. I'm going to put my phone away now and just talk to you.”

I love technology and I'm so grateful for it--but, sometimes it distracts us from what's most important. Research shows that spending the first 30 minutes of the day without checking our phones lets us accomplish more and puts us in a better mindset to get stuff done. It makes sense, right? Your day isn’t starting off distracted by who posted what online and going down the rabbit hole of all the drama.

The other thing that adults can do is talk about plugging into things that matter: helping someone else, being a friend. Plugging into sports and learning and body movement and nature and pets and calming techniques like breathing. Those are all things that make me feel better. What about you?

A couple of months ago I was a part of a youth Town Hall in Orange County California (we'll talk about that in a later episode because I've learned so much from these youth) and one of the things that they made time for was teaching all 190 people that were on the zoom a box breathing meditation.it was so cool to be led by a teen in box breathing!

I got into this work kind of accidentally. Actually my kids have influenced my work for at least a decade. I'm the kind of person that starts something, realizes it’s not actually going that well, and dives into researching and learning everything about it. So when I became a mom I realized pretty quickly that the parenting strategies I had were not serving me and were not serving my kids. I wanted to learn a new

peaceful way to parent. I took all the parenting classes I could get my hands on and ended up falling in love with a parenting philosophy called positive discipline. I took so many classes I am now a positive discipline parent educator. What I love is that Positive discipline is about connecting with your child emotionally before correcting their behavior. Don’t forget, I'm a mom of three teens so I get lots of chances to practice this!

So a couple of years ago I got a phone call that would change my life. Another Mom told me one of my kids was doing inappropriate things online. I was horrified, shocked, so embarrassed. After all of the conversations we had about staying safe online and not doing stupid things, and all the technology I was using to block inappropriate websites, my child still messed up and another mom had to tell me about it.

From that situation, I spent hundreds of hours researching online safety and what ELSE I could do to keep my kids safe and filtering through all the google searches. I needed solutions that didn’t require an IT expert. When I found simple things that worked I started sharing them with every parent I could find.

So many parents are completely overwhelmed by all of the options in cyber safety--should I use a router that filters the bad stuff or pay for an app that does it? Should I devote my whole day to locking down parental controls on the xbox? Parents end up feeling paralyzed and hopeless. They never make a decision.

And if they mention the internet and the dangers out there, they say some version of “Well he's a good kid... I think he'll be okay” or “I’m just hoping for the best” with kind of a terror in their eyes.

My friends, “hoping for the best” with online safety is not a great parenting strategy. Our kids are in danger mentally and physically--I’m talking about things like getting cyberbullied by a classmate, getting explicit private messages on Instagram from a child predator doing a TikTok challenge that nearly kills them. I need you to hear that the average age kids see pornography is now 11 years old, even if they don't have their own phone, even if you're supervising what's going on at home-- there are too many other places that are not supervised and not filtered.

My cyber safety work with parents ended up with me starting the Center for Online Safety. That’s my company that works with schools and parents to help kids create a healthy relationship with technology. Digital wellness is the umbrella term for my vision for our kids’ future. Digital wellness is using technology mindfully so that it doesn’t hurt you or anyone else, mentally and physically. Digital wellness gives us a place to talk about mental health, relationships, productivity, as well as the traditional digital citizenship lessons like keeping your information private and only following or friending people you know in real life.

You can find out more information about the work we do with schools and parents at www.centerforonlinesafety.com

What I know for sure is that paying attention to what your child is doing online can SAVE THEIR LIFE. It literally can save their life. I worked with a family that started out thinking 15 hours of screen time a day was normal for their 13 year old boy. He was a gamer and just obsessed with playing this first person shooter game. All his friends played too so there was a sense that he was letting them down if he didn’t keep playing. Anyway, as we talked about how the teen brain develops and how teens still need guidance, his parent started to see that he needed some limits on screen time, that it was affecting his health, his ability to do other things, his ability to plug into his family, to pull away from gaming and think about something else, his future, his goals for life. They started asking him questions and realized he was depressed, he had actually been having suicidal thoughts for a while; he felt like gaming was the only place he was successful, he was bullied at school, and couldn’t move forward in his life because he didn’t know how. Over time, with the help of a therapist, he was able to see pockets of hope and the family set up some expectations for him with his collaboration and input on who he wanted to be as a person. This is just one story. Paying attention to what your child is doing online can save their life.

To wrap up this conversation, what you need to remember is that your kids need your guidance, your life experience, to navigate all the tricky situations online. Imagine they are driving down the road, the superhighway of information, and they get distracted and start swerving to the edge of the road, where there’s a sharp rocky cliff. I want you to be the guard rails on that highway, the guide that says you stay on the highway where it’s safe and if you hit the guard rail, I’ll do my best to redirect you back to the road. Be the guard rail.

Now I want to move into this week’s conversation starter: Going back to paying attention to what your child is doing online, I want you to ask your child--when you have screen time, what’s the first thing you want to do online? If they’re under 10 years old, you may think you know this answer, but it changes a lot! As a follow up, you can ask--how does it make you feel if you don’t get to do this? If you’ve got a teen on social media, ask them who is one famous person they follow on social media. And why do they like to follow them?

Let me know what you learn! I love to hear from you.

Our final segment is called the "unplug and plug in" rapid fire and in it I’ll share one thing I want to unplug from and one thing to plug in to this week.

This week I want to unplug from tech when I wake up. This isn’t a new one for me and when I do it, I get so much more done, so this is a commitment to no phones the first hour of the day. And plugging in--this week I want to plug into getting outside. Not to work. Not to do chores. Just to look around and see what's happening.

What about you? What do you want to unplug from and plug into this week?

Take care and see you next time.