Today on How I See It, we explore the impact of social media on children’s developing minds. We discuss how it affects their self-esteem, body image, relationships, and mental health. Through research, we uncover the risks of excessive screen time including things like cyberbullying. We provide a few how-I-see-it strategies for parents to foster healthy digital habits and open communication. Tune in for insights on navigating the digital landscape for the well-being of our children.

Transcript

I’m excited about today. Are you? You just found out about today. Well, you’re still excited.

I’ve been excited about this opportunity you have, and so I’m excited about the idea of kind of broadening the audience for this opportunity, so sure. Do you mind if I share a little bit about what you’re doing? You go right ahead. So tonight Sunday night? Sunday night, yes, it will be May 7.

Okay. Sunday night. Excuse me.

Mark will be presenting a little bit on some stuff at a church where they’re going to have, I guess, a parent night. Is it going to be a panel? Is that what you said? Not as much as I had. Okay.

It’s going to be a small group. Tell us about it. To the best of my knowledge, Wednesday night, and it’s going to be a panel.

Well, I understand it’s going to be a parent night. Cool. There’s going to be a meal, and then there’s going to be during that meal, there’s going to be a video presentation, basically about how technology affects children and developmentally, how our social media culture is affecting the next generation and in many ways setting them up for addiction.

And so, like you say, that’s what the video will be about. And then they’ll break it out into small group discussion from there based on babies, elementary age, junior high, senior high type families, as far as where they’re at. And then I’ll be following that up.

Small group discussions, kind of following that up with where I see it going, or just to be able to be a voice, to be able to speak to what I see as a counselor working with marriages, families, kids, and what I’ve seen and that kind of thing. And then kind of basically wrapping up with kind of a Q and A time as far as what parents can do and that kind of thing. So that’s how they even probably five to seven would be that time frame.

And yeah, just kind of looking forward to it. It’s been good because I recognize in the day to day, you can kind of do the thing, and I respect the fact that if you just do the same thing over and over again, you don’t always go out and look for the new research or look for the new thing. I probably spend as much time with my quiet time stuff and new ideas come through that devotionals and so forth.

But I’m not necessarily always going out there and looking at the latest research and that kind of thing. So it’s been a good little opportunity for me to just kind of invest again and look at some of this stuff. And it’s been convicting as far as it definitely brings back the timeless aspects of when I’m looking at a cultural dynamic, I routinely think of Esther and stuff like that.

People in scripture for such a time as this. That I fully believe that we are born when we’re born for a purpose and we are given the children we are given because we are uniquely designed to raise those children. None of this is by accident.

None of this is a mistake and none of this is just a biological experience that we’re just here to gratify ourselves and die. That kind of thing. So I really have been thinking about it from that time, from that aspect of, okay, what are we called to what are we to be, how do we address some of these dynamics that some of these social dynamics as families, as parents, as children, that kind of thing.

So that’s kind of where my mind has been in the process of how our brain works, developmental stuff for kids and that kind of thing. Yeah, like you say, it’s good to have an excuse sometimes to have to do some research and spend some time looking at science and all that. That’s cool.

Yeah. But yeah. So like I said, I wanted to have the opportunity to, I guess, hear some of what you’ve been thinking about and preparing, even if it stuff that ends up on the cutting floor, the B roll stuff, or even the stuff you want to share there.

And if as a listener, you’re looking for an invite, it will be over by the time this is released. Don’t ask, you can’t go. But you know what you do get? You get to listen to this podcast.

There you go. How are you getting into it? Because I know the video is going to set up a lot of the conversation for you, I think, right? Yeah, it’s going to set it up. But I think for me, my desire, what I’m feeling kind of led to speak about is hope in the midst of this culture.

You guys have heard this from Mark before. He’s all about that hope. And I guess that’s what brings it back to me from a timeless, because this is part of my dynamic, is I believe there’s the aspects of what is timely and what is timeless.

Yeah. And for me, I wouldn’t necessarily put them on the continuum dynamic because they can be both. Yeah, I can see it’s.

That aspect of being aware of both at the same time. Got you. And so recognizing our culture, recognizing the effects and what is currently going on in our culture is a timely dynamic.

And when I look at it’s just strange that I’m even speaking about technology. So that to you is a credit, Justin, because like I say, I wouldn’t have found myself here years ago or I wouldn’t have thought I would, let’s put it that way. But I think in our culture, technology is here.

So that’s part of the timely dynamic. And I think as parents, and I honestly and granted, I’m probably speaking to grandparents, I know I’m speaking to some grandparents, but at the same time, I realize that may not be much of our listenership, grandparents, actually, who are raising their grandchildren. I think that’s a dynamic of our culture that is newer.

I don’t necessarily see that from a historical I mean, granted, not that it didn’t happen, but I don’t think it’s happened previously, maybe in a war dynamic, world War II, where granted, children lost their parents and therefore other family members came. But I don’t think we’ve seen what we see today on such a large scale. And so I think about it in the context of the energy that we have to be parents, and I think there’s a lot of energy involved to be able to raise children.

Yeah, for sure. And so from a cultural timely dynamic, I feel for parents, and then I feel for grandparents who are raising young children. So I think that’s an aspect of the timely.

But there’s so much of our social media dynamic that is I just found out a new term is Igen. It’s the group of kids who have been basically born, I believe it’s since 1995. So basically a generation.

Well, from that point, we have a group of people who have been raised with smart technology. So like the iPhone generation, I gen, there’s books and so forth, but you get the idea, and this is new information, much like the millennial or what’s right? Before millennials. You probably what’s X is.

That right, yeah. I think Generation X or and or Millennial. So I think Millennials were raised on computers, which is a new right.

Yeah. And Generation X, the number of people kids who had access to computers was much lower. You had the Steve Jobs type people or whatever, and they’re outliers because they had rare access to computers, whereas my generation is like it’s kind of that same shift.

Right. We were raised on computers and had to learn that world, and now yeah, like you said, I gen, I guess, raised on smartphones. Exactly.

It’s cool. It does. And I think that’s where in this, you know, in the timely part of it, you know, I guess, to put it politely, you know, there has been a misleading of what this technology is and what it can do to the developing mind.

And you bring up Steve Jobs, and there’s other people in the tech industry, and the reality of it is, truth be told, steve Jobs never allowed his kids on a screen. So when you think about these people that are engineering this stuff and there’s education systems in Silicon Valley where the execs send their kids to school that have no screen, you follow me? And they recognize the power that the screen had to create this dopamine biofeedback loop that creates this addiction for the screen, and they have first hand view to the algorithms that are created and the science behind it. Sure, yeah.

That there’s basically there’s engineers in rooms designing this stuff to make it as addictive as possible to keep you to be able to give them as much information as they can get about you, to make it as specific to you, to keep you in that loop as long as they can. You know what’s a little bit sad about that? Yeah. Okay.

A lot of it. No, I’m just thinking about, okay, so how big is Facebook, Google, Twitter, how big when it comes to money? And you wonder, where does that money go? $50 million alone goes to lobbying. Okay.

Yeah. That’s just one statistic. I mean, that tells you how sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but from my perspective, that is an aspect of, okay, with this information, why isn’t more being done as far as saying, well, hang on, if it’s not good for their children, why is it so prevalent? And why are we not curbing this? And granted, the version of TikTok is different, but China is actually creating limitations around their children, their children’s exposure to TikTok.

Right. And yet we’re talking hours that young children are spending YouTube, TikTok, that kind of thing. Facebook, go ahead.

Sorry. What I was trying to get at is the amount of money that is spent on science by these organizations. Sure.

We don’t have any idea. What’s sad to me is there’s so much social science that is behind these locked walls in order to build these corporations that they know a lot about social science that’s not published. Right? Sure.

Where a lot of these engineers and scientists outside of those locked walls would be producing pretty amazing stuff. They are, but it’s all behind locked walls. Obviously, we’re learning and scientists are studying from the outside of these walls, these impacts and all this stuff.

But a lot of the stuff that I would say we’re finding out and is being published and stuff, they already knew. That’s why they built it that way. The algorithms and all that came from that study, and then they validated those studies, and then they continued to hone those technologies in order to do those things.

And we’re out here monitoring it and going, oh, we see a pattern here. And you’re like, yes, because it’s working. It’s designed that way.

Exactly. I just think it would be amazing to if that information, that science was able to be published and available. You know what I mean? But sadly, that won’t that will be the case.

In some ways. It isn’t a case, because what we know about that process has been leaked by executives who are leaving that industry, being able to say, no, I don’t want to be a part of this anymore. And those are in different Facebook.

There’s just different people, executives who are leaving basically saying, no, I don’t want to be part of this promotion anymore. I don’t want to be part of this. I’ll call it an agenda, if you will wash their hands of it.

Yeah, and so I think that’s really kind of bringing some of this information to the forefront. And not that this hasn’t been going on for a while, but I just think about it. And so that’s the timely dynamic.

And I’m thinking about it in the context of that aspect of timeless as well, to be able to recognize that the timely is about information. So when you click on that site, you are basically you’re a consumer. Well, you’re part of the product, really, that is being utilized to get information to be able to market to you more effectively.

When you hear that term, you’re the product, not the consumer. What they mean is they are selling you. Right? Yeah.

I think sometimes we get lost in what that means. But it means they’re selling you and you’re a package to be given to something, to someone who figuring that out, marketing matters. Right.

That kind of thing. To be able to market to you more specifically based on the information we have on the searches you do. So, like you say, all that information is out there.

And yet I’m willing to recognize, from my perspective, I would dare say each generation to a certain degree has had its addictions. Okay, we think of the 20s as far as alcohol. What was that called? Prohibition.

Prohibition, yes. We think of prohibition. We think of cigarettes in their production, granted, longer term and granted, I think of it in terminology of even work and food addiction and even sex of the sexual revolution type stuff and the addictions to pornography.

I think there is this timeless dynamic of addiction. And what I do to get this dopamine hit, to a certain degree, this satisfaction. So for me, that becomes a part of the timeless and then being able to take and that’s another interesting part about this dynamic in time is we are now developing a lot of therapy, if you will, around what they call dopamine detox.

You follow me? Now, we have these therapies that are being developed that are helping people recognize, okay, yeah, I’m addicted to this dopamine cycle. And granted, dopamine is a good thing in its design, healthy, yeah, the way God has designed us. But timely executives have found a way to make that an addiction.

And I think they’re not alone. It’s just that’s the addiction of this era. And I think in some ways, from my perspective as a parent, we’re looking back saying, oh, this isn’t just entertainment.

And unfortunately, I think so often in family systems that I see having my child occupied or entertained by this social media dynamic or a screen allows me more time to address my things, whether you want to call it addiction or not. It allows me more time to work. It allows me more time to do things effectively.

And I think I quote that effectively because I’m not interrupted. I can do whatever I want to do uninterrupted, because my child isn’t interrupting me, they’re not being an inconvenience. And I think that becomes a cultural aspect when we see kids as an inconvenience.

This is also a timeless thing and that I think every generation of parents has had something to send their kids to do. Right? Sure. And a lot of older grandparents age type thing would be like, well, we sent our kids outside to play and that was a healthy thing.

But really, it’s that same paradigm of get out of my hair, I need to be effective. Like you said, that was the thing that they sent their kids out to do. And again, back to the timeless aspect.

We look at that nostalgically and think that was best, better than it is now. I think we’ll find out in another generation that there are trade offs to both of those things. Sure.

And kids who are playing on their phones for hours at a time. There’s a lot of negative. That’s what we’re talking about, right? We’re definitely talking about the negative.

But I also think there’s going to be some trade offs where they’re going to learn some things that will benefit them in their life as a result of that. Just like the kids who are sent outside to go play and built forts and all that, they learned some things that were effective in their life. And again, we look at that nostalgically and think that was only healthy.

But I’ve been involved in celebrate recovery a long time. The particular area of addiction I hear a lot about is sexual addiction. And a very common story I hear from guys who are older than me is, well, me and my friends in our fort, one of them brought one of their dad’s porn to that fort, whatever.

So kind of the isolation setting them off where they’re unsupervised. And you also hear about boys molesting other boys because of that time alone. I’m just saying it’s important to understand the timeless aspect to shooing your kids away to do something.

It’s always impacted kids in a positive, sometimes positive ways. And again, I think there’s a lot of independence that was learned through kids going off and biking around town and all those things. Right.

But I also think we nostalgically forget kind of the negative trade offs to that too. Or we left our kids exposed in areas where they shouldn’t have been and now we can be more hover parents. Like, we want to see you at all times, but we stick you in the corner staring at a phone and you’re also unmonitored.

You’re also exposed to the same not the same, similar types of exposure predation, for one. Sure. And yeah, exposure to addicting type things.

But they can do it in plain sight. It looks safer. Yes.

And I think our culture has become kind of consumed with safety and we’re almost becoming risk averse to where there is something beneficial to developing children to be able to take a risk. I think that’s a part of where we are seeing such an increase in anxiety because there is this dynamic of safety and perfection that’s a difficult thing for young kids to be able. Well, I can’t do that.

And we’re creating that safety. And granted, I agree with what you’re saying 100%. That’s kind of where addictions aren’t new.

That’s the timeless piece, that addiction isn’t new. Each generation has its addiction to a certain degree. And like you were alluding to, I’m part of that generation that grew up with too much free time.

But I think our culture has gone the other direction. We know of the predation more than we do. So it’s safer for my kid to be in that room and occupied because I know where they’re at.

The issue is I don’t know who else is out there and who’s influencing them right through that screen. And so I appreciate you addressing that. I think you put it to words better than I did in that process of addiction is one of those timeless things.

And I think we can go from one extreme to the other. It’s like just go outside and play and get out of my hair. Yes, but I think that’s when we see kids as an inconvenience and granted, that’s not to say that we have to this is the other part of it.

I think we have to be able to recognize that sometimes kids are an inconvenient and at the same time, boredom is beneficial. Yeah, okay. I think we’ve grown up to a certain degree with parents who are motivated by the it’s a bad thing if my child is bored.

And in reality, that’s not true. Boredom is a benefit to our bodies, to our minds, the ability to have our minds kind of free, float, if you will, and just think, oh, I wonder if what would happen? Like you said, those problem solving kind of dynamics that boredom alone can create. And I think we’ve taken that to a sense where boredom is bad and being able to recognize, okay, yeah, boredom isn’t bad.

Boredom is is healthy. And I think, you know, it’s interesting because I was thinking about it even with my own kids, it’s like I think they learned not to tell me they were bored. I just made sure they had that.

I fixed that. There’s this to do. There’s this to do.

And I think they learned in some ways how to entertain themselves. And I think that’s a dynamic that people who are addicted to screens have not learned. That dynamic of how to entertain myself, like a broken part of the system where they can’t I even find that true for me.

Right, okay. In the sense where if I’m in line, to me, that’s just an opportunity to look at my phone. I’m never going to just sit in line and I’m to be perfectly honest, so thankful that that’s a thing I can do, right? Sure.

You never have to stand in any line or wait in any line and do nothing anymore. And to me, that is just with the amount of stuff that I have to do in my life, it’s like that’s a great opportunity for multitasking and checking up my email or even looking at something entertaining or whatever. Yeah, I love that.

Sure. I love it. Would you say you’re addicted to it, though? I would say it comes and goes.

Okay, that’s fair enough. Yeah. Because I realize I don’t think we necessarily we don’t like to use the word addiction.

Even in this video, they talk about, well, I don’t want to use that word because it’s too polarizing and I hear where they’re coming from. But at the same time, if it is what it is, that’s what we call it. But I think it does say, oh, no, I’m not that yes, I’m not that bad.

I just take my phone out every time I stand in a line. Let’s be honest, if it’s something addiction basically has, it doesn’t matter what the thing is. It’s my inability not to do it that makes something an addiction.

And that’s what I’m saying. It can be work, it can be food, it can be volunteering. That’s where I say I could not do it if I wanted to.

The classic line. Yes. The classic line of denial, yes.

But being able to recognize, okay, can I stand in a line? Can I wait? Can I sit in my car at a traffic stop, like a flag or highway construction? Can I sit in my car and just observe? Or do I have to pull out my phone and entertain myself? Because I do believe that’s another part of our culture, we have to be entertained. Even as I was thinking about what I may share that kind of thing. This could be part of the B roll.

But I was thinking about it in the context of when I used to do intensive in home. And the one thing that I noticed about the homes that I was in was the inability for quietness. Okay? And I don’t mean silence because silence can mean something completely different, you Follow me? But if there is the inability to have quiet in a home or quietness, then there’s a certain level of addiction there.

From my perspective, if we have to have yes, we have to have the TV on, we have to have music plan granted, all those things can be fine, but there again, music in itself creates a dopamine hit, that kind of thing to where in this culture who doesn’t have 350 songs on their playlist? You follow me? Because we spend the entire day listening or we have to have the TV on even if it’s something we’re not even watching. You follow me. That in itself, from my perspective, is a limited form of addiction.

I think there is this because if we can’t be quiet, we don’t have the opportunity to have a timeless conversation. You follow me because in my mind, and granted, I like the fact that you use the multitasking that’s sometimes lauded as a beneficial thing, but there is a tremendous amount of inefficiency in my ability to think if I’m trying to do one thing. And granted, a young mind can do this rather quickly going back and forth between, but it still makes them less efficient about what they’re doing.

Not that efficiency is the only thing, but we have to recognize that. Yeah. And that’s another dynamic, is the aspect where our attention span okay, I want to say from I want to say early 2010, I’d say our attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.

My attention span went really low and when I couldn’t hear through the thing stuck in your throat to get you a water, that’s all right, I appreciate it. I’m not the only one who’s having a hard time listening. I bet the listeners are going to have I appreciate that.

Not that it necessarily went away, but we made an attempt. Now, you all know we made an effort, so just deal with it because Mark, he’s going to push through the reality of it is at 8 seconds, okay, that makes our attention span 1 second less than a goldfish. So there again, broll material, and you think about how important that is.

Well, I haven’t thought about that. Well, 1 second, you think about how important that is to having a timeless conversation. If my attention span is basically 8 seconds and then I’m looking to as you said, as you said, well, I haven’t thought about that.

8 seconds, it’s my turn. But that’s the interesting part, okay, when I think about that, because I know that we have seven to 10 seconds or basically that 8 seconds to make healthy decisions sometimes. So if I’m automatically on that lower edge of seven to ten, I’m hardly taking enough time to make a healthy decision.

I’m already stuck. Not stuck, but I’m already caught up back in impulse, in that impulse, that biofeedback loop that keeps me doing the same thing. The fact that I’m going to spend 10 minutes on Facebook and suddenly it’s 02:00 in the morning, I’m suddenly realizing, oh my goodness, where did the time go? How often do you hear that? I was just going to do this and suddenly I realized it was an hour later.

Another irony. I forget where it was. I want to say in Europe somewhere.

Parents were brought up on charges for starving their child because they had spent so much time online nurturing their online child. You follow me? They had an online entity that they were responsible for, and they actually spent so much time online that their own physical child was neglected and actually passed away. And they weren’t actually brought up on charges they weren’t convicted because they had an addiction.

But that’s the kind of thing that and that’s where I’m saying a lot of this therapy is coming out of this context of we are so addicted that we don’t even realize how much time we’re spending. But I’m sorry, I want to come back to what you were going to say. I think I had more than 8 seconds to think about it, and it’s a really good thought, and I enjoy thinking about it, but it’s not contributing to this conversation.

Okay. No, I’m sure it’ll come up in a future conversation, likely about multitasking, all that, but that’s I’ll put that in a nutshell. It’s overrated as far as I’m concerned.

Agree. But at the same time, that’s a part of what we’re learning, what we’re recognizing and even being able to recognize. And I think it’s a contributing factor when I think about that child.

As our use of social media goes up, our empathy goes down. You follow me? And I think that’s another I’m not saying that hasn’t happened before culturally, but we know that based on social media, the more impact I have there, the more my empathy goes down. And I think in some ways, even in our I thought of our tech episode where we talked about was it technology? Was it about social media? Yeah, it was about social media.

And I liken that image you had of Silos. Yeah. And how social media tends to create tends to isolate us.

Well, yes, it tends to isolate us, but what we’re thinking is we have the thought, the perception that it’s uniting us. Yes. When in reality, it is dividing us based on the fact that if you do a search and I do a search, we both get individualized information that feeds us what we want to hear.

Yeah. And you and I might end up in the same bucket, or we might end up in separate buckets, and that bucket becomes more and more self feeding. To the degree and this is your point right now, I’m convinced everyone in the world is like this, and if you’re not, you’re super weird, and I’m over here in my bucket.

Or silo, right? Silos. I’m over here in my silo getting the exact same thing, getting only articles that reinforce my beliefs based on things I’ve already searched, based on comments I liked on Facebook, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I’m just over and over and over fed this information that says, you are right.

You are right. You are smart. You are good looking.

We like you. We like you. You’re the best.

You’re on top of the world, all these things, and we’re like, but Mark’s over there, and he must be the only one on the planet who thinks what he just said. That’s insane. And he’s thinking, Justin’s over here.

He must be the only one on the planet. Like, what is wrong with him? Because of these silos we get placed in. And like you said, they have the appearance of being universal, but the reality is they’re silos.

We’re in there along with the others who are like us, but generally in order to keep you engaged, they keep you with more people who are like you and they kind of help you figure out how to get rid of those you don’t like or voices you don’t care for. Sure. And a lot of times, especially in today’s culture, it will be framed in the sense of tolerance or offense, right? Like, if you’re offended by certain material, just tell us and we’ll get it right out of here for you because we care about you and it’s really about no, we want to keep you engaged and we want to keep you in your silo because that’s what keeps you coming back.

It’s good, very good stuff, all of this. Let’s come back to what you started with. And in order to get to there, I want to share a little bit anecdote for Megan because she works in a hair salon and she does a lot of hair for a lot of ladies who are in an older generation than her because we live in a retirement community.

So kind of that generation. And, oh, how often they lament this generation. And they will often say, I don’t know how you do it.

I don’t know how you raise your children in this generation and it is so messed up. And if it were me, I never would have had kids and just kind of like hand washing the way this generation is, and it’s terrible. And the world’s going to come to an end and all this kind of stuff.

And Megan’s always trying to bring it back to hope and ultimately saying, I think we’re doing okay. You know what I mean? And there is some differences in this generation and that’s obvious. Sure.

Let’s come back to hope. Why is there hope, Mark? There’s hope because while there may be all of this information out there to keep us in a loop, we have a choice whether we go there or not. That’s the way I see it.

And the reality of it is we can establish boundaries around this social media time. How much time is spent? The research basically is telling us there’s this opportunity as we’re learning that 2 hours is that window, okay? Kids who spend more than 2 hours of screen time are far more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, body image issues, those kind of things. 2 hours is that window.

Kids who spent less than 2 hours are far less subject to that mental health dynamic. So for me, that’s hope, in other words. Yeah, we can recognize in the timeliness that social media and technology is here.

Now, granted, can something happen that wipes out all the electricity? I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but sure it’s possible, but yet at the same time, for now, it’s here. Speaking of that, you got another topic, the goldfish and the goldfish, yeah, you said the goldfish has certain time, whatever, we have less than they do. That’s what I was referring.

Anyway, have you heard about the people who go and shoot up a power, what do you call that? The big place? Yeah, like a transformer station. Yeah. They’ll go with their semiotics and shoot them up.

No, and it’s part of this conspiracy of like, we’re going to shut down the power grid and it’s going to return the world back to we’re going to go over there with our ahars and take care of that. I was thinking like a solar flare or something like that. But either way, well, that’s a real thing that’s happening.

Funny about your conspiracy, but the actual real world impact of that is pretty minimal. It’s just super inconvenient for a little bit, especially for authorities. And the thing just like all things like this, right, they ruin it for everyone else.

Now we’re going to have basically prison walls built around these things. And anyway, that’s an interesting dynamic though, maybe for another topic. But as AI tends to control more and more of our interaction, if something happens, it’s like I would think about we put one of those little electronic door things on our house, we would punch in, it’s like what happens is the batteries die.

Before I just used to keep a key and I had a mechanic, used to be well, even with the electrical grid, there used to be a guy that stood at a gate that was guarding that transformer station or that switch. Now if something electrical happens somewhere, suddenly some things get shut down just because that switch is no longer available. And that’s just part of technology.

But as we become more reliant on it, it’s interesting. I mean, think about it in the context. How many phone numbers do you know? I know mine.

Do you? And I know Megan. Okay, yeah, those are the only two that I need to know. Yeah, but I’ll be honest, I don’t know my children’s phone numbers, that kind of thing.

I mean, I know my parents, I know more phone numbers from prior to getting a phone than I can still remember certain numbers. I can remember phone numbers of neighbors that no longer exist, that kind of thing. But I don’t know contact now we’ve so I think that’s just another part of our timely dynamic.

I’m trying to remember my childhood phone number. I’m that goldfish. I’m sorry, goldfish.

That’s going to be the new squirrel for us. That’s right, goldfish. But either way, this concept that technology is here and 2 hours is that window of being able to say, okay, this we can establish a boundary around.

And I think as parents, it is important for us to be able to recognize we can do that for our kids. Are we going to get some pushback? Of course. And is your child going to be unhappy with you? Of course.

But that’s why you’re a parent and they’re a child. If we’re expecting our children to be our friends all the time, then we’ve already messed up as a parent. Yeah.

You’re heading the wrong direction. I’m speaking to myself. I mean, I’ve struggled with that, I really do.

I think we have decent boundaries, but man, they are hard to hold on to, especially as your kids get older and they have more logical arguments that you’re like. I see why you think that argument is good. Right.

And I even feel bad that I’m not going to give you an argument that you feel is adequate. Sure. Doesn’t matter.

Yeah. It may not make sense. I know more than you.

It does get harder and harder to hold the line. I hear where you’re coming from, and I think I erred as a parent, I erred on the other side of that continuum that basically I was probably too authoritative at times. It’s tough, though, that balance.

Yeah, it really is. Yeah. And so just being able to recognize okay.

Yeah. I need to be able to deal with the issues that are mine. Like that Matthew 75.

Taking the log, the plank out of my own eye to be able to see, to remove the spec from my child’s eye type thing. And I think I have. Can I speak to that? Sure.

And just go right at preach it. If you’re struggling with looking at porn on your phone, you’re not going to stop your kid from looking at porn on his phone. You’re not going to touch something else.

Yeah, I’m just going right at that one because to me, that’s a very common one that I know of. Sure. Is.

So many again, the world that I operate in, I work with a lot of guys. Whatever. I’m aware that this is very common, and I think it’s kind of a duh thing for most people, like yeah.

I think most people struggle with looking at porn on their phone sometimes. Right. So all I’m saying is that’s a big problem to parenting well, for kids who are on their devices, because why would you say they have to put Covenant Eyes on their phone? Covenant Eyes is a software that helps track what they’re doing and make sure that they’re not looking at the wrong stuff and sends reports to people if they’re looking at the wrong stuff.

Why would you put that on their phone if there’s a chance that someone might say, hey, maybe we should do this on everyone’s phone? Sure. Well, I’m an adult. Whatever.

Let’s not approach that conversation. Or we might kind of be like, I have a hunch he’s looking at porn on his phone, but I can’t approach it because questions might come up. Yeah.

So I think that Matthew Seven kind of that just like you said. Like you said, if I have that log in my the chance that I’m able to see the or deal with the most the small speck in my child’s eyes is problematic because someone’s going to point their finger back at me and now I have to deal with it, and it might even be my child. Right.

Just as a timely dynamic. I deal with this a lot with weed, it’s like, well, who are you to say that I can’t? Why is it not good for me? But I know you smoke that’ll come out in sessions. It’s not that I’m not aware when there’s an essence in a house, in the room, that kind of thing.

And I think as we need to, this is where it maybe in some ways it comes back to our boundaries conversation. If we don’t have healthy boundaries for ourselves as parents, how do we establish them for our kids or help our children establish them? If we’re not demonstrating what healthy relationship looks like, how do we expect our children to have healthy relationship? Those kind of things. And I think so often in that authoritative dynamic, there was this aspect, do what I say, not what I do.

And now we’ve come to maybe another dynamic that’s basically saying, well, I just can’t tell you no, because I’m not dealing with it myself. Yeah. Kind of coming back to Megan’s conversation, she’ll often bring it back to kind of like you started with the timeless aspects to parenting and how sure.

Well, she’ll bring up some of the things we talked about, how it used to be this way, but now it’s this way. And basically it has new challenges and we’re working through that and our kids are doing okay. And yeah, they’re going to have some messed up thoughts based on this particular paradigm they’re in now, just like I had messed up thoughts from the particular paradigm I was growing in.

I think coming back to hope, the hope isn’t that, oh, it’s fine. That’s not the hope. The hope is that it’s bad.

Like it’s always bad. Right. Like there’s always going to be sin crouching at the door.

At the door. Sure. Right.

And it’s always our job to lock that door and keep it closed. And if somehow we let it in, kick it back out. Right.

That’s universal, timeless truth. Yes. And it doesn’t matter what the generation you’re in, it’s going to be at the door.

Sure. And I think the hope is that we have the opportunity there, especially if you’re a believer in Jesus Christ and you have that hope inside you and you have the Holy Spirit operating within you. Greater is he that’s in you than he is in the world.

And we have the power through Christ to transform. Sure. Back to the I referenced this earlier, but Stephen Covey in the first chapter his first principle of the Seven principles of highly Effective People is proactivity.

And what he talks about in that is a concept from Victor Frankel even, which is a psychiatrist from a while back who went through the Holocaust. He had the idea yeah. About between he was stuck in a Nazi prison camp and he realized that they can torture me, but they can’t convert my thinking.

Sure. They don’t have that option because between stimulus and response, I have the option to choose how I respond. Respond.

Now we get into that eight second thing. Right. If you respond within that 8 seconds, you might not be actually choosing.

You might be more in that animalistic instinct. And animals don’t have a choice to think about their response. They only can respond in instincts.

Right. Sure. So I see a human, I run and I don’t think about is that a nice human? Or whatever.

It’s just the instincts kick in where we have that opportunity to decide, is this safe or not? Is this right or wrong? Is this something to should I watch this next YouTube video? Should I click this link? We have an opportunity. And if you feel you’re slipping yourself, slipping into that one video turned into 2 hours kind of thing, maybe one technique is to say wait 9 seconds after each video. Sure.

And if you’re still yeah, I think I’d like to watch another one. And you can make that decision consciously. Sure.

Then it’s okay. Yeah. Because I also think it’s important not to decry all of these things, like standing in line, looking at YouTube or whatever.

That’s not a bad thing, right? It can be a bad thing. It’s important to think about it. Same thing like with sitting down to look on social media after work.

That’s not a bad thing. It can be a bad thing sitting around to watch TV after work. Sure.

It’s not a bad thing. It can be a bad right. And I think you bring up I like what you shared about as a parent.

Our role is to kick it out the door. And I think about it though, in the aspect of technology and much of that is already in our homes. So at that point it’s one thing if somebody’s outside my house trying to get in.

Yes, there’s a lot of options for that. But if something is in my house and it’s become a friend to me, then it’s far harder to kick out. It is.

I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m agreeing with everything you say regarding choice. But I think the things that we have made, pets, if you will, that are inside our house are far harder to deal with. But yet it just means we need to be able to call it what it is, whether it’s an addiction or whatever, and then deal with it accordingly.

And I think that in and of itself still offers hope because there is a choice. There is an opportunity to be able to do something different. And I think there is something to be said for no matter the era, no matter the timeliness, there is something to be said for having routine opportunities to engage one another as family.

Yes. And I think there’s another balance, if you will. If you’re going to spend up to 2 hours on FaceTime, you commit to having at least 2 hours or balanced opportunity for face to face interaction.

And I think so often it is this aspect of we just kind of go to our silos and entertain ourselves until the next day comes. But there are consequences to that as well. And I think so often as parents, we have that ability to say, okay, well, how are you interacting with other people? We need to create boundaries that say, okay, this much time, and then you still go play with the kids, but we know where you’re at, we’re getting rid of you, but we’re just creating this face to face interaction that I learn.

Emotional intelligence. That’s another dynamic that is just being with other people in real life circumstances, being able to read social cues. Yeah, I think I’ve seen this with our kids, but in this generation, trying to avoid real life situations and get to their social media life because it’s easier.

Right. And like you said and it has a lot to do with that emotional intelligence. Exactly.

Not having it and or dealing with others who don’t because you know what I mean, where it’s like, wow, they said that. They think that they do that. It’s kind of hard to believe sometimes, but at the same time not, because when you think about their interactions are only with online social media.

No, I hear you. And I think a part of that aspect of when social media increases, empathy goes down. There’s this inability to really listen to a friend who has an emotional issue.

You follow me? Well, you’re just too sensitive. And I didn’t mean it that way. I just texted that I think there is this yeah, it is a dynamic where the empathy goes down and there are consequences that go along with that.

Yeah. Thinking about you asked me about addiction. For me, if it’s an addiction, I said it kind of comes and goes.

And it just made me think about the life cycle of my kids and how when they were younger, they were kind of just foreign to me. Right. It’s kind of the mother’s time where they nurtured, they do all this stuff not in all families, but in ours.

It was kind of hard to connect with them. And so I’d sit with them and I’d be like, all right, look at my phone. And it became a habit and became addiction to where whenever I was with my kids, I’d pull up my phone, read Twitter.

Yeah. And that was definitely a thing and Megan called me out on it several times. Finally I heard her and I was like, yeah, this has got to stop.

Sure. I feel like I vastly improved in that area. In fact, you can ask Megan if she agrees.

Megan, seriously? But it comes and goes. It moves from Twitter to something else or productivity has become another thing where it’s like, there’s so much to do with my job. I’m always thinking about, well, I could steal some moments right now to check that email or respond to this person that I need to respond to or whatever.

And that becomes its own version of dopamine. Like, oh, I feel a little bit better. I got that checked on my list or whatever.

And life cycle of my kids are now at the age where two of them have phones. Sure. And I see how it feels like when I pick them up from school and the whole way home, they’re just on their phone and I’m like, hello? Sure.

And I’m like, man, that’s exactly what I did when they were kids. They weren’t hoping I was going to talk to them. They were playing with their Legos or whatever, doesn’t matter.

And yet maybe their words right. Exactly. Very eye opening to me.

And it just makes me go, you know what? It’s okay to say this isn’t okay. And so I had the conversation like, hey, if I pick you from school, you don’t get to be on your phone the whole way home. Even if we sit in silence, that’s fine, but it’s just rude to do that to anyone.

Like to be riding a car as they bring you somewhere and just be on your phone. It’s like, that’s not something we’re going to do. You know what’s a boundary, Justin? Do you know what that’s called? Boundary? No.

When someone has too much to do that they have to be on their phone. Addiction. I’m contributing here a little bit.

It’s called fubbing. fubbing. It’s basically phone snubbing because you have so much to do on your phone that if we enter the elevator at the C-H-U-B-B-I-N-G.

So it’s basically I’m too busy with my stuff to interact with you when we step onto an elevator together. You feel fubbed when you’re a child. Like I said, Megan’s worked on me a lot about this because of in our own relationship.

So we’d go out on a date and I’d be checking my phone every once in a while. It didn’t seem bad. Now, looking back, it’s like ill just that I did that, but her saying, hey, don’t do that.

And then we’ve even flipped the script where I’ve said, hey, you said I couldn’t do that. Why are you texting your sisters? That’s the same thing in her mind. It’s perfectly wholesome.

Right. But it’s like I couldn’t have a conversation. It went back.

We both had this thing, we both were fubbing each other at different times for various reasons, and in our mind, it was like, well, this is fine, and, okay, this isn’t about you. I’m not doing this to you. This is about the thing I have to do.

It’s like, no, it is to that it is an offensive thing. Anyway, I brought up the conversation with my kids because I think they can be mirrors, and if you have that blessing in your life of having a child, they can mirror your own behavior. You can start to see, yeah, I need to moderate my own behavior because I see it mirrored in them or I see how it can impact them.

Sure. That can be a great motivator. It certainly was for me as well as Megan in our conversation.

No doubt. A little bit of hope, maybe. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of hope in the process of when we’re able to recognize that there are still some timeless dynamics, face to face interaction, being able to encourage one another, knowing that, yes, even in relationship, there is such a thing as healthy jealousy.

We think of jealousy as a psychotic thing. So often you’re just too jealous. But there is a healthy it just means our priorities are off.

And being able to reestablish some of those in a timely, healthy, timely manner that says, okay, what does God have to say about this? Because I think those truths are still evident, and that becomes another one that just kind of reinforces, okay, am I willing to deal with what’s in my own eye in such a way that says, okay, we can deal with this together? And I think that’s what makes healthy families. And I think, from my perspective, having a healthy relationship, healthy marriage creates healthy families. As you describe your relationship with Megan, as you guys have a healthy relationship, you’re able to develop a healthy family, and that’s just a timeless thing.

And yet I think some of this stuff puts the family very much at risk, culturally speaking. So that being said, I appreciate you allowing me the time to share. Oh, man, that’s good stuff.

Thank you for sharing. Thank you for stealing some of your material. It’s giving us some of the broll material.

It’s not stealing anything. It’s just out there. And like you say like I’m saying, if you’re wrestling, if there is hope, there’s a ton of information out there.

And just being able to identify and live in such a way that says, okay, if somebody’s noticing this about me, it’s probably real, and I may need to deal with it. And if I need to get some help in that process, there’s help out there. I don’t have to continue in that addiction, whatever it might be.

Maybe in the show notes, we can link some of the research and stuff that you’ve been digging into, maybe, or resources. Like, even in this event you go to, I’m sure there’s going to be resources offered. Maybe there’s age appropriate.

I know Covenant Eyes is one that I’ll link to, but yeah, just anything like that, maybe we can in terms of offering hope, we can save. But here’s some tools, too. Yeah, and I didn’t mean to sound that I wasn’t willing to share information.

It’s just doesn’t want to share. I’ll do it it’s not that I don’t want to share. It’s like, in that process, it’s like, where did that come from? With so much that’s the abundance of information, the ability to say, okay, where did that actually come from? Because once it goes into my notes, it’s like I’m not a real stickler for I like to give credit where credit is due, but if it’s just information that’s out there I’m not always a linear person when it comes to saying, that’s exactly where that information came from.

That’s all right. But that’s how I see it. That’s how he sees it.

That’s right.