nextTalk
How do we keep our kids safe online? How do we protect our children in an overexposed, sexualized culture?
Join Mandy Majors (award-winning author of "TALK" and "Keeping Kids Safe in a Digital World") for real conversations about the intersection of tech, culture and faith.
nextTalk is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization keeping kids safe by creating a culture of open communication in families, churches and schools.
nextTalk
Smartphones Steal Our Most Precious Moments
Have you ever looked up from your phone to realize you've missed an important moment? That's exactly what happened to Joey Odom when he missed his five-year-old son's first-ever soccer goal because he was staring at his screen. That painful moment became the catalyst for a life-changing mission.
KEEPING KIDS SAFE ONLINE
Connect with us...
www.nextTalk.org
Facebook
Instagram
Contact Us...
admin@nextTalk.org
P.O. BOX 160111 San Antonio, TX 78280
Welcome to the Next Talk podcast. We are a nonprofit passionate about keeping kids safe online. We're learning together how to navigate tech, culture and faith with our kids. We have a special guest on the Next Talk podcast today. Joey Odom is joining us.
Speaker 2:Mandy Majors. It's so good to see by the way, I'm sure you've heard this Mandy Majors just flows. My wife, kristen. She had this wonderful maiden name Lombardo how beautiful is that name and then she had to take on Odom. You married into a great name, mandy Majors. What a solid name. Thank you for having me on. It's so good to see you. I'm such a massive fan of Next Talk and really, really excited to talk to you.
Speaker 1:Well, tell our guests who you are. A little bit of background about you and your family and your ministry.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I am my wife Kristen and I. We've been married for 21 years. We met in college at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, oklahoma. We're a little bit Mandy, a little bit of an odd couple. I'm 6'5" and my wife claims five feet tall. She's probably 4'11 and three quarters, so we got a foot and a half between us. As a result, we had massive children at birth. So my poor wife, after my son Harrison, who's now 17,. After he was born he was nine pounds. So 18 hours of labor, emergency C-section, and I told my wife after that nine pound monster came out of her tiny little body. I said you have to find a smaller father for the next child. But luckily she didn't, so she kept me. That was wonderful. Then we had Gianna. Two years later she's 15 years old.
Speaker 2:We live in Knoxville, tennessee, and I'm co-founder of an organization called Reclaim Well. Reclaim Well is an organization dedicated to helping people reclaim what matters most and that specifically comes to helping us curb this distraction of our technology, the technology that we love and that we benefit from but can get in the way of our most important things. So we've been on mission with Reclaim Well for the last five years and just have this vision, this mission, and for people who are listening, who maybe the defenses go up when we talk about curbing technology usage, I promise you we see so much hope in this and if you're listening, you've been frustrated with it, or if you have some victory in it. No matter where you are in the continuum, we all feel it to some degree and, mandy, just like you, I just believe this is such an amazing opportunity, such a hopeful opportunity for us to do something to recapture and reclaim life on the other side of our phones.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a great mission statement. Tell me what started you on this work. Like there's a story that you share sometimes that I can relate to.
Speaker 2:Well, it was. It was the fall of 2013. And my son, harrison, who I mentioned, harrison who is 17 now. He was five years old at the time and, for anybody, he's playing his first youth soccer season. So anybody who's been to a youth soccer game, if you watch these little five-year-olds, you know that the kids who score the goals are these really aggressive kids, the kids who appear to be involved, maybe in a halfway house or in a work release program. Very aggressive children. And Harrison was not one of those aggressive children. So he's this sweet kid at five years old and, as a result no surprise everybody on the team had scored a goal this season, except for Harrison.
Speaker 2:So my wife and I and our daughter Gianna, we went on the sidelines on another Saturday afternoon to take in another five-year-old soccer game. But then, about midway through the first half, in the middle of really the ordinary, something extraordinary emerged and Harrison found himself standing in front of the soccer ball with the goal in his sights and he rears back his leg and he kicked. And what happened next? Mandy, it's a little dramatic, but it has shaped me as a father, as that ball rolled over the grass and you kind of can picture it like a slow motion movie. You cue the james horner dramatic music in the background as the ball glides over the grass into the back of the net for harrison's very first soccer goal. And so that you so these sweet parents, they knew exactly what had just happened. So they're going wild. His coach runs out on the field and he lifts up Harrison. But there was this moment, mandy, right in between the ball hitting the back of the net and Harrison's coach picking him up.
Speaker 2:When Harrison did something the five-year-old boys do Harrison turned to the sidelines to lock eyes with dad, to see the pride on my face, to see the smile on my face, to see the smile on my face and to share this really truly magical moment together. And it and it was magical with one slight exception, and that's that I missed the entire moment. Every bit of what I just described I miss. You see, when Harrison turned to the sidelines to lock eyes with me, all he saw was the top of my head, cause I was looking down at my phone. So I didn't see the goal, I didn't see his coach pick him up, I didn't see his beautiful face scanning the crowd to lock eyes with mine and I didn't see the light in his face fade to disappointment when he realized that I had missed his big moment. So I missed that moment, and I didn't really have the words for it at the time, but I have the words for it now. The words I had at that moment was ugh, just U-G-H ugh, that I had missed this moment. The words I have now, though, is that this relationship that I had with my phone was getting in the way of one of the most important relationships in my entire life, so that was a seminal moment.
Speaker 2:I'd like to say, mandy, that everything got better after I had that realization, but it didn't.
Speaker 2:It didn't really have the toolkit. So I probably missed other moments, and I probably phone stubbed my wife and my kids and other phone conversations, but I look back on that moment to say something's wrong. So I got a call a couple of years later from a good friend of mine, heath Wilson, and he said hey, I have an idea what, what if? And he had known of this story and we were friends, and he said what if we could help other families? What if we could help other people avoid moments like this? What if we could help people reclaim the most important things in life. And that was the beginning of Reclaim, well, of just this question, well, starting with failure, and then a question of what if? What if the world could look different. So we've been on a mission since then to help other dads, other moms, not miss soccer goals, to have great family dinners, to have great conversations, to have nice walks around the block, to engage in deep work, eliminating again, not throwing away our smartphones, but helping to eliminate those distractions in important moments.
Speaker 1:I love this story, joey, because I think we can all relate to it, but I think the difference is not all of us are as humble enough to admit it like you are, and I think it's so great that a dad is willing to step up and say I missed this moment and I got to take charge of this. Now I've got to be intentional.
Speaker 2:Well, that's very nice of you to say. I will say it's one of those moments you're grateful for of forced humility. That was nothing being great on my own, of just being forced into a moment where you just think something's wrong here. And fortunately I had my wife's Mandy. I still have bruises on my ribs from my wife's elbow when I missed the goal, so I still feel that. But it's this recognition again, having a great partner there too, just knowing her, knowing what's important to me, and saying, hey, you missed what's important to you.
Speaker 2:And again, I think a lot of people fall in this category of just saying, yeah, I've messed up and we can get into a big discussion on this and it's probably worth it to some degree, maybe a little bit later. But this is the greatest tool here that's being used against this feeling of shame you know, shame being a good indicator but a bad motivator. And very often when it comes to this, when it comes to this topic, we are so bogged down by shame, we're so bogged down by the mistakes that we've made, that we grow resigned to believe that that's just the way it is. And I just and I think probably anybody listening to this podcast I know you agree with this. I just refuse to believe that. I just don't resign myself easily to things like that.
Speaker 2:When you say it's just the way it is, that's a hard thing for me to swallow and I think a lot of people there raises up in us a little bit of a healthy defiance that says no, I think we can do better. Then that was the case for me and I think people I know listening to this. That's the case for me and I think people I know listen to this. That's the case for them. For you I know that's the case for you. To all the people you speak with, that's the case for them. Just saying I want to do better and help me, and so that's our goal is how can we? How can we help, just like Nextalk? How can we help others and give them the tools they need to improve in this area? That's so important.
Speaker 1:I love how our ministries line up because, um, you know, one of the core practices of next talk is look in the mirror, and it's that looking in the mirror and realizing what are we doing wrong and not getting stuck in the shame, like you said, but being humble enough to be like, yeah, I didn't get that right. I need to apologize to my kid and go back and repair the relationship.
Speaker 1:Here. We call it like recovery and repair. Right, we got to go back and repair because we're all going to make mistakes. We're all going to. We're human. I love what one of my team members said because she she said, you know, he's like next talk for adults, we're next talk for kids, he's next talk for adults. And I love that because you said something that I want to go back to. You said this relationship that we have with our phones, because this is going to impact and have a ripple effect for all the other relationships in our life. So let's dive into that. What does that mean? To have a relationship with your phone?
Speaker 2:Isn't that funny. I just laugh anytime. I hear I'm the one who said it too, but I bet when I said relationship with phones, I bet you nobody bristled. I bet you nobody thought that way. To say that's weird. I bet you nobody did, because that's such a common piece of how we refer to this.
Speaker 2:Now we talk about my relationship with my phone or, collectively, our relationship with technology. It's just, it's in our vernacular now and we started thinking about this a couple of years ago and we thought hold on one second. I think that might be weird that we're talking about relationships with phones. So let's think about other objects in our lives that we as adults let's focus on adults for a second that we as adults have my car eh, not really. It kind of gets me from A to B. I think about my lawnmower. I see my lawnmower once a week for about nine months out of the year, but it's not as if when a conversation gets boring, I go sneak out for a quick mow, right, but we do this, we do this with our phones. Things get boring. We kind of take a look at them and, as we've thought about this, while it's very unique for adults to have relationships with objects. That's very odd. I think this is maybe you find some exceptions I think this is the singular object. We really have a relationship, non-living object.
Speaker 2:But infants and toddlers, they have relationships with objects, as you think about it. They have relationships with their blankies, they have relationships with their binkies, they have relationships with their teddy bears and these all have a word and that word. These are comfort objects. Another word, form, is transitional objects and they serve a very vital purpose in the development of a child. So what it does? A child clings to a transitional object. They cling to a comfort object to give them a sense of security, to give them a sense of comfort in the absence of relationships. In other words, parent walks out of the room, child cries, holds onto the teddy bear and it makes them feel better. But as we know, this is just a phase. Before long a child realizes I can do this on my own. So they discard this comfort object, they discard this transitional object.
Speaker 2:So what's interesting about phones is that phones have reverted we as adults. They've reverted us back to a childlike state of relationship with an object. We cling to this object. But the difference is, where children cling to an object, in the absence of relationships. We cling to this object in the presence of relationships.
Speaker 2:We'll be at the dinner table with people that we love, and we are clinging to our phone. We're looking down on our phone instead of the eyes of the people that we love. Think about Mandy for a second. Think about what happens. Think about infertility issues for just a moment. Think about how hard it is for, how unlikely it is for any human to become to be born. I mean, that is that is, you know, a one in a billion chance for that individual to be born. So we work so hard, some of us spend so much time, effort, money, even to become pregnant, to have a child, and then, all of a sudden, we're clinging to an object instead of looking in their eyes.
Speaker 2:At the dinner table, we'll be in the middle of a conversation, so it's absolute lunacy. Would we do this? And, by the way, let's go back. No shame, this is all of us. You're talking to the chief of centers here, you know, before we start on this journey.
Speaker 2:But we're clinging to this object and we're calling it a relationship and, by the way, it is a relationship. We have a relationship with an object instead of thinking of this as a utility device and this relationship and none of this matters, by the way. None of it matters except for the fact that it is getting in the way of not just our other relationships but our own intentions, the things we want for our lives. If I go ask anybody who's listening here, what do you want? They would go through personal goals, relational goals, spiritual goals. Yet we would also acknowledge that the number one distraction, absolutely the number one distraction is this silly little thing that we have a relationship that sits in our pockets. It's a little crazy, but it is true. And I think when we begin to name it, when we begin to recognize it as a relationship, when we recognize that it's getting in the way of more important relationships, only then can we begin to do something about it that's truly effective.
Speaker 1:I mean it's becoming an idol. It becomes an idol in our life and this is why I love the work that you're doing, because we always say at Next Talk, we are the adult in our home, the culture is not going to change unless we change it, because we're the leaders in our home right. But if we are not leading well with a healthy balance with our phones, we can't get mad at our 14 old that doesn't have a healthy balance right, Because we have created that culture.
Speaker 2:You just said something that we think about this all the time. We call this the 3M parent trap. By the way, what we do as parents is we model a bad relationship with our phones. That's the first M. We model this. And when I say model a bad relationship, let's define bad relationship. I would say bad relationship would be your phone at the dinner table. I would say a bad relationship would be looking at our phone when someone's trying to talk to us, when my 15-year-old daughter is trying to talk to me, if I just take one glance at the phone, that kills that moment. We model that bad relationship.
Speaker 2:One day our kids get a phone and, by the way, whether you've waited until eight or you waited until 10th or you gave it to them in sixth grade, whatever that is, I don't care the age when we have modeled a bad relationship, our kids do something very unsurprising is they mimic what we have modeled. That they have their phones at the dinner table Shocker. That they phone snub us in the middle of a conversation. We're trying to talk to them Shocker. But then we do something crazy. Absolutely crazy is that we have the audacity to get mad at our kids for mimicking what we modeled to them.
Speaker 2:So, everybody listening here, let's let's begin to ask ourselves a really hard question. You said look in the mirror, let's ask ourselves a question Am I modeling a relationship that I want my child to mimic someday? Studies will tell us that the number one predictor of how your child will use a phone someday is how you use your phone today. So we have to begin to model a relationship with our phones that we want our kids to mimic.
Speaker 2:This may sound heavy handed, this may cut to the heart. If you're feeling your defensiveness come up, it may be because there's some truth in it. However, let's not forget this is wonderful news. This is incredible news because, what do we say? The number one predictor of how your child will use a phone someday is how you use your phone today. So if you're modeling a relationship that you want your kids to mimic, oh my, that's powerful, because then the third M instead of getting mad, we start making memories and we start doing incredibly wonderful things, all as a result of us looking in a mirror to your point and beginning to model a relationship that we want our kids to mimic someday.
Speaker 1:And what a cool family journey. I mean I feel like I've been on a decade long journey to be like I got that wrong, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have had my phone out, and they see me apologize for that. I have seen my own kids then be more humble when they get stuff wrong with their phone because I'm again modeling the apology and it's. It's a process Like we're all learning. We're all going to get this wrong sometimes in your home is so great around technology versus no technology. It's off limits, but I'm going to use it forever.
Speaker 1:And then there's this power struggle in the home. You know, we always say teach your kid to use a phone Like you're going to teach them how to drive a car, like in a step-by-step approach. That's what we believe at Next Talk. But I love what you're doing and so if we focus on this relationship, that that we're the solution here, the parents are the solution and we have to have a relationship, a healthy relationship with our phones. Help us put this in perspective for us, because I feel like this is going to be some deep, soul searching work here that you're going to, that you're going to dive into here.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would say, if we view it through the lens of relationship, and again, and let's, and let's clarify, there are a lot of when we think about this, there are a lot of things that can really go awry on your phones from all the things you can access, go into the depths of pornography and all that kind of stuff. I'm going to narrow this discussion, from my perspective, within the impact that it has on relationships. And so, if we view it through the lens of relationship, let's think about okay, well, why is it a relationship? Yes, we're clinging to it like children, but why? Well, the defining characteristic in our relationship with our phones and this is where it's gonna start getting very simple and may sound overly simplistic, but I promise you this is the core of it and when you begin to change this element of it, everything will change and it begins.
Speaker 2:The defining characteristic in our relationship with our phones, very simply, is our constant proximity to our phones, period. They are always with us, and this may sound obvious. Let me explain why this is so powerful. 91% of us have our phones within arm's reach 24 hours a day. That includes when we're sleeping. We use it as our alarm clocks. That's 91%. That is a massive number and that's the defining characteristic in our relationship with our phones. By the way, I'm not demonizing this. Is just a matter of fact that we have our phones with us all the time. So there's the proximity. As a result of the proximity, we are constantly interacting with our phones. So the data will tell us that 89% of smartphone usage is self-initiated. So it's us, it's not the apps, that are grabbing us, it's not the notifications that are grabbing us. It's us because our phones are with us all the time, picking up our phones, and we know what happens when that happens. I'll just out myself here. The US Open tennis turn is happening right now. We are a massive tennis family in our family, so I'll pick up my phone and I'll go to ESPN and I'll just want to check one score. And then that becomes I check my email, which I, then I check the weather and then I check the score again. Then I go to the baseball scores and I look who Oklahoma's playing in football this weekend, and then you go down this rabbit trail of interaction that only began because it was with me. If I didn't have my phone with me sounds obvious. If I didn't have my phone with me, I would have not looked at ESPN in that moment.
Speaker 2:So that proximity resulted in interaction, and what that leads to is a dependence on our phone. We call that the PID loop. Proximity led to interaction, which leads to dependence, and because we feel dependent on our phones, oh, I have to have it with me all the time. What does that do? That leads us back to proximity, which leads us to interaction, which leads to dependence, which leads us back to proximity, and it goes in a cycle. By the way, this is how we form human relationships. We're around somebody, we interact with them more, we become dependent on them, not in a bad way, we just become. We just, you know, lead to some dependencies on them, whether it's practical things like help or emotional support, whatever that is and then we're around them more. So it all. This is how we've formed this relationship.
Speaker 2:The point here is on the PID loop is it all begins with proximity is when you break the proximity, you begin to use your phone. Very obviously, you use it a little bit less. When you use a little bit less, you become a little bit less dependent on it. When you're a little bit less dependent on your phone, you realize maybe I don't need it in proximity with me all the time, but it all begins with that proximity. So what we tell people very prescriptively is spend time physically distant from your phone every day. Now I understand our phones are do wonderful things for us.
Speaker 2:If you're a mom, I bet you your to-do list happens on your phone. I bet you're running the home through your phone. I bet you, if you're, if you're at the office, you use your phone a lot for that. So I'm not necessarily talking about those moments. What I'm talking about are these moments. Maybe when everybody you love is at home with you. It's a pretty good moment for you to spend a little bit of time away from your phone and then, instead of interacting with your phone, you're interacting with the people around you, and then you realize that life may be a little bit better on the other side of your phone.
Speaker 2:What we tell people is, if you're in the 91% club which I bet you are, because that's the vast majority just begin today by spending five minutes apart from your phone. Literally and I know that sounds simplistic Just start five minutes and then tomorrow 10 minutes and start building on that. Build up to what if you spent two hours a day physically distant from your phone. Two hours, and it doesn't have to be consecutive. What if you did some in the morning? Let's say you have morning devotion two hours, and it doesn't have to be consecutive. What if you did some in the morning? Let's say you have morning devotion and then let's say you go on an evening walk with your spouse, or maybe for a family dinner, or maybe if you're tucking your kids in, maybe don't bring your phone in their bedroom with you. And what if you aggregated two hours a day?
Speaker 2:And here's why two hours, mandy, is that when you spend two hours a day physically distant from your phone over the course of a year, you have just reclaimed one month out of your year. So we live in a culture where we're short on time, where we don't have enough time, and you just lived a 13-month year. It sounds so simple and so basic which, by the way, anything valuable is simple. You want to go, get more fit, eat a little bit less, move a little bit more. It's all simple. That does not mean the execution is easy. But that is the answer from our perspective is break that proximity which lessens the interaction, which reduces the dependence, which will result in less proximity, interaction and dependence.
Speaker 1:So you said, two hours a day away from our phone reclaims one month of our time. And I'm going to challenge you those those two hours like maybe it's bedtime with your kids, dinnertime, you know those core, key times that you can really just put your phone in another room and focus on your relationships, your marriage, I mean we're so bad. I mean I remember one night Matt crawled in bed with me and I was on my phone, you know, doing next talk work, and he said to me Mandy, I get you alone for like 45 minutes a day. Can you put the phone down, right?
Speaker 1:And it just pierced me because I was like we are so bad at this, like it has robbed us. And as you were talking to Joey, you know, I thought to myself we're talking here about how it can impact our relationship with our marriage and our kids. But as you were talking, I thought the only person that ever goes with me everywhere is Jesus. Right, like I'm a Christian and so my faith? I don't. My husband doesn't go with me throughout my day, but my phone does, doesn't go with me throughout my day, but my phone does. And I just had this thought of how is this affecting our relationship, our faith with God? Because normally when I'm alone, I'm praying, I'm talking to Jesus, I'm re-quoting scripture, but what have I done? I've filled that with podcast listening and all kinds of stuff with my phone. So how is this impacting our faith on our spiritual journeys?
Speaker 2:This is one of these things and, by the way, this is what's so great about this is, wherever you fall on the continuum of faith, this hits, this applies to you, no matter where you are, and this is why by the way, this is also another reason why I think you should read the Bible. Well, I think you should go to church, because what I'm about to tell you I believe this comes from Jesus's mouth 2000 years ago, and it's never been more applicable than today. And that is the idea when you read through the Bible. The Bible is obsessed. God is obsessed with fruit. He loves it. He talks about fruit all the time. Garden of Eden talks about fruit, talk about fruitfulness. You talk about unfruitfulness. You talk about bearing fruit. There are over five on average per chapter, over 300 references to fruit and fruitfulness and unfruitfulness, all throughout the Bible. So that's five per book of the Bible and it's sitting under our noses.
Speaker 2:But let's look at how prevalent of a theme this is in Scripture is fruit, and when we say fruit, we're talking about increase. We're talking about doing well with the things that we have. Bearing fruit is taking a seed and making it bigger. So the Bible talks about this all the time and Jesus talks about in the parable of the sower. He talks about a seed, talks about seed falling among different, different types of soil and he talks about a soil where he talks about the thorns in the soil. And here's what the thorns do the thorns will choke out the seed and they make it unfruitful. So so a seed has potential. Let's just think about, let's think about, let's think about a time with you and Matt at night. You're 45 minutes. That's a seed that has potential for fruit. That is a seed that has a moment. Let's think about my, let's think about my 20 minutes of quiet time this morning when I read the Bible and prayed. That is a seed that has potential for fruit. Let's think about a family dinner that's a seed that has potential for fruit. And we are, we live, we live in this vast, this unbelievable amount of opportunity, with seeds all around us.
Speaker 2:But there's this thing called the thorns and Jesus says a seed fell among the thorns and the thorns choke out the seed, making it unfruitful. And if you think about the growth pattern, this is so fascinating. We're getting kind of deep in you know, breakdown of the parable here, but when you think about how thorns grow. What thorns will do is they will wrap around, they will coil around a plant, and so you think about it from the beginning. They are positioning themselves, they are growing with a clear intention to choke out that plant, to choke out the potential of fruit being bearing from that plant. So Jesus says and this is where this is where it starts getting into our phones and the representation of our phones Jesus says that the thorns represent three things.
Speaker 2:They represent the worries of life, the thorns represent the pleasures of life, and the thorns represent the deceitfulness of wealth Worries of life, pleasures of life, deceitfulness of wealth. So these are the thorns that have the potential to choke out the good things in our life and making them unfruitful. I don't believe there is a greater representation for our phones than these three things. So let's break each one down. Let's think about the worries of life, the worries of life. Let's just think what lives on our phone. We have our Twitter feeds, we have our news feeds, we have our emails, all of these things. When you go on your news feed, you can't go on the news and not feel some level of worry. And so what does that do? That begins to choke out, choke out our minds. Then you have the pleasures of life, all the ways that we can escape on our phone. Let's think about the Netflix, the gaming, the gambling, pornography, whatever it is. These are those pleasures of life that we're trying to escape the present moment, and we go find that solace on our phones.
Speaker 2:And then the deceitfulness of wealth. This one I love, and this is where Jesus this is why you should read your Bible again. That's such a brilliant way to put it. It's not the wealth, it's the deceitfulness of wealth. Wealth lies to us. It tells us stories. So you go on your Instagram feed, let's say you and your family are on a vacation in Tampa and you're enjoying your time, you're having a great time and connection. And then you go on your Instagram feed and you see a friend who's on vacation in Tahiti and all of a sudden, that Tampa vacation isn't quite as fun and you start thinking, if I had that Tahiti money, if I had that kind of money, then I'd really be happy. So the deceitfulness of wealth is telling you that what you have is not enough.
Speaker 2:And this all lives within our phones. And even to take it one step further, manny, think about even the rhythm of our days. Think about the morning, the worries of life. If we use our phone as an alarm clock, you roll over and you turn off your alarm and you start looking at your phone even before you've gotten in the word or said good morning Jesus, looking at your phone even before you've gotten in the word or said or said good morning Jesus. If you look at your phone, all of a sudden those worries of life begin to choke out the seed before your days even started and make it unfruitful the pleasures of life. Those things usually happen at the end of the day. You've had a long day at work and then you try to escape and so it chokes out that evening time that's so precious.
Speaker 2:Again, we, we, we talked before we went on air about our kids and you have one child, and you know, senior in high school, and you have another graduated from college. I have two high schoolers and I think that's those are the golden hours right there. But it can choke out that seed. And then the middle of the day, when we're, when it's money making time in the middle of the day, and that deceitfulness, wealth, can choke it out. So the implications for all the good things, but in our.
Speaker 2:The specific reference in the parable of the sower is our walk with Jesus, is the potential we have to bear fruit, the spiritual implications even for pastors who may be listening. Think about putting so much time into, into a sermon series and then giving a message on a Sunday. Then all of a sudden, your people receive that word and then all of a sudden that just one glance at their phone totally chokes out the word that God has given you. Again, this is we're talking thorns and choking and death and unfruitfulness and all that kind of stuff. Here's the great news, mandy, is when we recognize that these are thorns whose sole intention is to choke us out and we believe.
Speaker 2:Another interesting thing we were in the yard yesterday. My wife and I were working and there was, there was a vine that grew up with the other, with, you know, in our, in our front garden, and it almost looked indecipherable to the healthy plant Right, and this is how our phones look is it almost looks indecipherable that it's such an inextricable part of our lives. But hold on one second. These are thorns and if we can prune them back and we have to do a constant pruning and we can keep tending to our garden and holding them away, then all of a sudden we are going to be good soil that bears fruit. So the spiritual implications are massive, and if we can recognize these as threats, they are threats. They want to kill us if we let them go untamed. But we can do something about it. We begin to prune these back so that we can then bear good food in our lives.
Speaker 1:I love that visual. I love that visual because you know, when you say bear fruit, I'm constantly thinking about the relationship with my kids. You know we're parenting, we focus on parenting. So much at.
Speaker 1:Next Talk, and I'm thinking about the relationship with my kids. You know we're parenting, we focus on parenting so much at Next Talk, and I'm thinking about the fruitfulness of each conversation that I've been able to have with them over the years. You know late at night, at 2 am, and you know just when they're ready to talk and how. If I could perceive that as but I'm on my phone bed rotting and I don't want to get up out of my bed to check on my kid, that's a thorn that could choke out this moment with my kids. That could be a memory and a major discipling moment with my kid too. Right, If I start to make that switch in my mind, I think it helps make better choices with my phone, which is what you're trying to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly right. And, by the way, this, this will be a lot like anything else in your life. It this is going to be very hard at first. I really do believe that, and we're and you're also going to begin to condition yourself and it's become to feel more natural. And then, when you start doing practical things, like like curating your environment, so that, um, so you don't have to rely so much on willpower James Clear talks about this in atomic habits. He said that environment is always stronger than willpower. So if you're relying if you just imagine you you're a smoker and you're trying to stop smoking you're probably not going to keep a pack of cigarettes in your pocket. You're probably going to eliminate those, the possibility of those being being with you.
Speaker 2:So what are those moments in your life when you can think okay, it is time to put the kids down to bed. What a great moment for me to put my phone down. What if let's think about in your, in your marriage? How cool is this is if you go on a on a date night, let's say you have people will say this I want a date night. What if the babysitter calls Okay, well, let's think about environment, let's think about let's frame it with these thorns want to choke out this potentially fruitful moment with my spouse.
Speaker 2:So what can I do here? I love and this is so very practical when you sit down at the dinner table on a date night with your spouse, do a phone swap so you are accessible, but you're probably not going to doom scroll your spouse's phone. So let's begin to think of it always with the beginning. This is a, this is a potentially beautiful moment. There are thorns here that could choke it out. So what are the practical things that I'm going to do, the environmental shifts that I can make that will begin to ensure that thorns will not choke out this moment?
Speaker 1:I love that. That's a very practical example. The other thing, too is I would just say to my people call me, I'll have my ringer on, but it's in my purse, you know, don't text me, I'm not checking texts. You know, I, when I started getting serious about trying to do this, that was one of the things that I would even tell my team is, if there's an emergency, call me, but I'm not checking my text. I'm going to put my watch on airplane mode. You know that's that's. Take the watch off completely, whatever you have to do. But I like what you said, the example of the cigarettes we have to be serious about. If we, if we truly cannot get away from our phone, we, we have to make space, we have to create the space.
Speaker 2:Mandy, I have a. I have a suspicion. I bet you that you have not gotten that many emergency calls after you've done that you. You did that. You may, you felt good to yourself, but I bet you haven't had this, uh, this plethora of emergency calls in that moment. It's a very good practice, but what we find over time and I'd be curious your experience here, I bet what you found over time is that, oh, not a lot of emergency calls came in. I was actually fine without it.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent could wait. A hundred percent could wait, and that's the other thing, even if there was a DM that was coming in with panicked like I need to have parameters about that, like I can't just start responding to DMS at 2 AM. That's not healthy for me, right? So I need to be sleeping. So so you, you have to create it's, it's boundaries to protect your sanity.
Speaker 1:You know, I want to dive into this like relationship with Jesus more, because, because I keep you know, as a parent, one of the things we teach at next talk, you know, is if we're not okay, if we're not stable, if we're not peaceful, if we're not calm, we're not going to raise kids who are right.
Speaker 1:And part of me helping with my worry, my anxiety, all of that kind of stuff is, of course, you know, therapy, medication, all that kind of stuff. Right, you know no wrong answer. God can show up in all these different places, but if I am not constantly connected to Jesus, I see the ugly that comes out of me. I see the ugly, and so how much is that robbing us of just not having this peaceful time with Jesus to like recenter our soul, so that when we pick the kids up and they bombard us, you know, on the way home from school. With all these things, we're calm and we're ready for that, versus bed rotting all day or on our phones all day, running from one thing to another, being connected all day and not even having a moment with God at all.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing we know from scripture. We know that God speaks in whispers. We know that when Elijah went to the I always get my Elijahs and Elishas mixed up, so don't comment with my wrong Elijah versus Elisha but when God called him out and he said he wanted to be with the Lord, then the earthquake happened and said that God was not in the earthquake. Then the fire happened, but God was not in the fire. But then a still small voice or or another translations that says a gentle whisper, and that gentle whisper that draws us in. And we don't give ourselves this moment to hear the gentle whisper. And I will tell you, for those of you who experienced, those of us who experienced, there's no greater place David says, better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere that we, when we have those moments and here's what's cool about that too we we start to get filled up the fruit of the spirit, the Holy spirit that is in us, that Jesus gave us, the fruit of the spirit. And so back to fruit. And, by the way, this is not something we're creating. The thing that overflows from us is a list that a lot of us know called the fruits of the spirit and I bet you that everybody listening would want these things in their lives. We want love, joy, peace, patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. We want all of those things. But that is only an overflowing of the Holy Spirit in us that only comes from us quieting ourselves down, slowing ourselves down and listening for the whisper. It is a truly by the way you and I both probably experienced this.
Speaker 2:This is something that it's so easy to get away from, but when we experience it, there's nothing like it Absolutely. And what's cool about that, mandy, is it is just like this solution we're talking about. It is available to us at all times of the day. I mean, even someone right now could just press pause for a second and just just that deep breath I mean I haven't felt it all just a little bit of the slowdown. And it is available to us at all times. And let's not forget the greatest threat to that and this is super practical, it's not ethereal the greatest threat to that are the thorns that live in our pocket. These I call them more I'm working on a book on it right now called the digital thorns. These digital thorns threaten to drown out that whisper that's available to us at all times.
Speaker 1:Well, god is available to us at all time and our phones are available to us at all times and we we have got, we've got to get a handle on that. So great stuff today. I do want to end with this, so a lot of parents may be like well, that's it, no phones, no technology. We're done here. We're just taking it all off. And you have a snow white analogy that I would love for you to share with our audience, because I think I want to end on a positive note that tech can be used for good and bad, and it is our responsibility to teach our kids technology and to have a healthy balance with it. So tell us about your Snow White analogy here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually in Sleeping Beauty. If everybody remembers the story, I get my Sleeping Beauty in Snow White. It's confused. In Sleeping Beauty, when the princess was young, when the princess was an infant, there was a prophecy given over the princess that one day this princess would prick her finger on a spinning wheel and send her into an eternal slumber. And so what did her parents do? Is they got rid of every spinning wheel in the entire kingdom. All the spinning wheels were burned. Somehow. They forgot about one in the basement, so that one was there. And when Sleeping Beauty, when she encountered this spinning wheel, she had never seen a spinning wheel before. She had no idea what it was, she had no idea what it did. And so what did she do? She pricked her finger on the spinning wheel and the prophecy was fulfilled.
Speaker 2:When we think about this whole idea of our phones like that that we just want to get rid of them, we know, yes, there are thorns, there's an ability to prick our fingers on the spinning wheel. But what if her parents would have said hey, we're going to teach her to be the greatest spinning wheel stress in all of the kingdom and teach her how to use this thing? Well, I think they had an amazing opportunity to do that. Now we would have not been the recipients of such a good Disney movie if they would have done that, but they had that opportunity. So what's cool for us is that we can begin to do this really, really well. I mean people, even many people, ask us all the time hey, when should I give my kid a phone, when should I give my kid a phone? And I think we want to reduce that down to an age. We want to reduce that down.
Speaker 2:I think it's a combination of factors. If you were to ask me I would we talk about two, four, eight. We say for for two years, prior to your child getting a phone. We believe you need to model a good relationship for a minimum of two years. By the way, three is better than two, five is better than three. So the longer you can model a good relationship, the four. I think you have an opportunity, especially if you're within a church setting or something like that.
Speaker 2:The four band together with four of your kids, friends, families, and I say that order very specifically your kids, friends, their families, not your friends and their kids. So four of your kids, friends, families, so that you are in alignment together, which none of us want our kids to be socially isolated. So what that does is that reduces the potential of social isolation. And, by the way, start as young as you can. It's great to say, hey, we're going to give our kids a phone at this age.
Speaker 2:And then the eight we're just going off with a bunch of smart people say is that your child should not have a smartphone anytime prior to the end of eighth grade. By the way, I didn't do that. I'm still learning at the time, but we have an ability. I think a lot of people you're still, you're even getting studies. Jonathan Hyde is the one who said at the end of eighth grade, but even he says, hey, the longer you can go, the better. Let that child's brain develop.
Speaker 2:So because I believe, if you, if you, whether you give your kid a phone at fifth grade or 10th grade, I still think they're going to mimic what you model. So you have to model that. That's where the two comes in. The four reduces the social isolation and the eight is just relying on the science that telling it it you should wait as long as you can. So this is where it gets into. Back to the two to your point is let's think of this as the spinning wheel. We have a great ability to model a good relationship so that our kids will not prick their fingers when it comes to them getting their phone, at whatever age they get it.
Speaker 1:Amen, I love that so much. I love your two, four, two, four, eight analogy. Yes, I love that.
Speaker 1:We always say and I I really, really appreciated what you said is we want to reduce it to an age. We always say it should be more about behavior than birthday, and so you can say eighth grade but also say eighth grade and you're doing this, this and this. And most of those things that next talk revolve around them reporting things to us, like them confiding in us what's happening in the bathroom at school, what's happening in the locker room at school. The more they're confiding in you, the more they're going to confide in you about what's happening on their phone.
Speaker 1:Both of us recognize it's more complicated. We want to simplify. We want to say, okay, at 16, they're the golden age, Okay, they're good, but it's more. It's harder work than that. It's us being the model, it's us teaching them how to use it. It's all of these components working together and, of course, our main mission is getting them to talk to us like that open communication, that healthy dialogue that we want to have. So I just think this show was so full of good information for our parents. Is there anything else you would like to share with our audience?
Speaker 2:I just want people to cling to hope here. The Bible says I would have lost heart if I would have not believed. I'd see the goodness of God. In other words, we will lose heart if we feel like this is futile, and I promise you it's not. I promise you it's not futile. And a story for mine again, and I'm telling you this was a real struggle for me. This is why we started this. So on May 8th 2020, and I wrote this in my journal because of what happened this night On May 8th 2020, my daughter, gianna and I she was 10 years old we watched a movie together and at the end of the movie, she turned to me and she wasn't congratulating me, she wasn't judging me, she just turned to me and she said dad, did you know?
Speaker 2:That's the first time we've ever watched a movie and you haven't had your phone. So this is right around when we were starting the business and it felt like a real gut punch. It felt like have I really gotten this wrong for 10 years? But what felt good was she noticed. She noticed that moment of presence, even if it was the first moment of presence she had in 10 years when we watched a movie. She noticed it so fast forward May 8th 2024, I read this.
Speaker 2:I have a five-year journal. I read that in my five-year journal and I asked Gianna she's 14 at the time. I said, gianna, do you remember when you said that to me after we watched the movie when you were 10? And she laughed and she said, dad, it would be so weird if you had your phone during a movie now.
Speaker 2:So within four years, mandy, everything had changed. Her entire paradigm of what it is like to be with dad had changed. So at 10 years old, it was dad was partially present. At 14 years old, his dad is fully present. So that has reverberating effects on what she now expects out of relationships for the rest of her life. So for the person who's struggling with this, for the person who feels like they failed at it, I would just encourage you. It can change and it may not be overnight, but that daily work that you put in, that daily effort, that little bit five minutes, 10 minutes, building up to two hours a day and even beyond that, will pay off. It is absolutely worth it and you will bear fruit on the other side of that. So I just want to encourage somebody who's struggling with it.
Speaker 1:Keep digging in, keep digging in, stop at nothing. I promise you it is a worthwhile fight. Amen, amen. Where can people contact you? Do you have a website that you want to tell us about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, people can go to reclaimwellcom. We are generally for organizations, so if you're part of an organization, you say, hey gosh, this would be a really cool wellness benefit for our staff, particularly if you're in a church staff or a values-aligned organization. This is what we do. We provide this for employees of organizations and their families, so, as a group, you can begin to reclaim the most important thing. So that's reclaimwellcom.
Speaker 1:Like a technology wellness benefit. That's right I love the concept. Well, thank you for being here, Joey.
Speaker 3:Say hello to your family for me, and I'm so excited that you took the time to record this podcast are not intended to replace the advice of a trained healthcare or legal professional, or to diagnose, treat or otherwise render expert advice regarding any type of medical. No-transcript.