Epi 164 Parenting in a Digital World pt 1

Screens are everywhere—but what are they doing to our kids, and to us? In this eye-opening episode, Crystal Coon joins us to unpack what’s really at stake in a screen-saturated world—and why awareness is the first step toward change.

Resources Mentioned:
 – The Tech-Wise Family and The Life We're Looking For by Andy Crouch
– The Screen Time Solution by Emily Cherkin
– The Anxious Generation by Dr. Jonathan Haidt
– How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims

Transcript

 Christie, you and I know we have a really special guest in here. Yes. Today. And so I'm gonna turn the mic over to you and let you introduce her to us. 

Oh gosh. Okay. Well, besides being our. Precious friend. We're so thankful you're here with us. Uh, we have Crystal Coon with us today. . Welcome. Welcome. Hi guys. Welcome. 

Love being here. 

We are going to talk about a topic that I was trying to remember this morning. We've never done an episode on this topic, right?

No, we haven't. Yeah, 

and I would say if there's any topic, Uhhuh that's been requested more, uh. Than this. I don't know what it is. I know.

And it's funny because it's not because we don't talk about this topic.

No. We talk about this outside of the studio, which is exactly why we've invited Crystal here. Mm-hmm. We got to be a part of a great discussion that Crystal's on the panel of and just blew us away with insight. Yes. And . Aw. Cheryl grabbed her and said, you need to be in our studio so we can share this with our listeners.

So welcome and here you are. Thanks guys.



So we are going to tiptoe into the topic of digital media and screen usage with our kiddos and dun, dun ourselves. And the reality , of the cultural moment we're in. Yes. Yes. So, crystal, tell our listeners about you 

first. Well, I'm mom to three. I have a 24-year-old and 11-year-old and an 8-year-old.

I've been married to my husband, Brandon for almost 13 years. Wow. My professional background. Uh, was in political consulting and communications and public relations for almost 20 years. And so I did that before I hung up my hat to be mom. 

Yeah, I think when, anytime it comes to tech usage, you know, what we're talking about and being intentional and building wisdom around that. I mean, I'm definitely a fellow Wayfarer in the struggle. You know, we live in a modern age and. It's ubiquitous in our lives. And so I think I am right alongside every other mom or dad that's out there trying to navigate a lot of these issues that really have come online since the invention of the smartphone.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so now you are dealing with. Coming into teenage years. Right. And pre-teen years with digital media. era.  Right. So let's hear what that  feels like. 

you and I both, um, have girls who are in their mid twenties. Mm-hmm. And so they were that first generation that when the iPhone came online, I believe it was in 2013, um, a lot of us had kids with unfettered access to phones, and we really didn't understand the impact. Um, I mean, we were learning how to use them ourselves.

I mean, there really was nobody talking about these issues, about the impacts to our kiddos.

I think sometimes as Americans living in the West, we're like, show me the data . What's the data say? Mm-hmm. Well, let's just look at your kiddo and how are they doing? Right? Yeah. How am I doing with my phone? Right. You know, and so. Nobody was giving voice to the impact on our kids at that time. And so it really was the Wild West, but there was a lot of destruction, um, that I saw coming out of kids with developing brains mm-hmm.

Who were not meant to handle access to these types of products. And we really didn't understand the intentionality behind the addictive aspect of these products. And so, yeah. The way that we do today. 

Right. And Crystal, what I saw with parents who begin to see issues and realize is the knee jerk reaction of, okay, no screens, no phones, no outside media, right?

And they just cloistered like that thinking, okay, this is the answer. Right.

Right? Yeah. And, and I would say for most of us who parented through those years, I mean, that was the best answer. We probably had at that time. I mean, you know, when dangerous things are happening on the phone, you, you do have to take it away.

, You know, back then you would Chinese jailbreak a phone and remove the internet from it. Right. And then they would find another way to use it. Mm-hmm. And that is still true today. I would say that that's something that's still the same today.

These are digital natives and our kids know how to use these. Um, technologies in these devices far better than we do, and they will always have ways of workarounds and I, I don't mean to make this sound negative, but they're much better at it than we are. Right. Well, and that's what you mean by digital natives, right?

Right, right. , I mean, I think we have to take a step back and look at. Our childhoods, right? Most of us represent the last generation before. You know, having a digital landscape, being ubiquitous in our childhood and so we can look back at our childhood and know. I mean, our screen time usage was three channels of reruns in the afternoons after school, you know?

Um, and so it's just a totally different landscape. And learning how to navigate all of that is really tough because reality is, our lives are built around modernity and these aren't going away, right? They're only getting more sophisticated. And so how do you. Build healthy habits around these things , and I think Cheryl, that's what you're driving at.

Yeah. You can't just clamp down and say, no, not gonna have it. I mean, you can, and there, there is an aspect of that that is appropriate and Right. Given certain circumstances. But, but also how do you take a step back and I think what. What we're talking about today is how do you become intentional around technology?

Yeah. Because the more things change, the more they stay the same. If we look back at our own childhoods, the forbidden fruit is a real thing. Yeah. If you can think of whatever the temptation in your era of growing up was teens, pre-teens will find a way, like you're saying to. Get around the rules, put on them when they aren't bought into the motives behind and trust from their parents that they are intentionally working on their hearts, not just putting unnecessary rules and regulations on them.

And so , we're not saying these things about our kids to shame them at all. No. It's just what is typical of , a child, you know, and parent relationship when you have these rules that you put on your kids and they think that you're forbidding them from something that they want.

Right. , I remember, um. Finding out , the kids who were not allowed to have phones at all were using like their Bible apps. Yeah. To connect with one another in very inappropriate ways. Right. And I was just horrified.

Okay. So we've talked about what it was and our struggle. Crystal, what's different about the challenges and landscape for parents in real time right now? 

Well, I think intuitively we all know something's gotta give and I wanna say before I dive into this, don't.

Be disheartened by this because the tide is changing. There's a lot more research. There's a lot more awareness. And since the pandemic, I would say if there was. One silver lining , to all of the many challenges coming out of the pandemic and kids and screen time usage is we no longer can ignore the issue.

We know, right? We know the damage. We can see it. We don't need data. We can look at our kids and go, okay, she can't hold a conversation with me because she's so distracted, or, frankly, I'm so distracted by my phone. I'm not paying attention. Mm-hmm. And so we all know that it's an issue. The difference today is these are products that are intentionally built for distraction and addiction.

And we can get into that later. . And so I think the awareness around that, where we didn't have awareness 10 years ago. Yeah. For example. Uh, I have a good friend who's a tech, CEO, lives right here in Oklahoma City, and she develops, , products with Apple, her and her husband.

Wow. They fly out to California. And they, um, develop in the hospitality space. And one thing that she was explaining to me is Apple has their own casino that they built out in Las Vegas. It's closed to the public. The reason why they built it is to study gambling, addictions, and, um. The techniques that casinos use to keep people on machines and at games.

Oh. And then they deploy that psychology and those strategies in their own products. Wow. Um, and I want you all to be clear that my data . comes from research and we can get into. those sources Later, Uhhuh. The other thing that we really need to understand, But not only are the products developed with the intention of increasing addiction, but what we also don't understand is the purpose of these technology companies and the purpose of a lot of these apps and social media.

We have to filter everything through the reality that social media companies and companies that develop apps, how they make money is off of our eyeballs and our children's eyeballs and their brains. Mm. Being on these platforms, it's data harvesting. Mm.

And so you always have to keep in the back of your mind. We are the product. Our kids are their product. Mm-hmm. We are not the customers. The way that these companies make money is by harvesting , our data and , the way that we use these devices, the ways that we interact with them, the content that we consume, that is how they make money.

And the longer that we're on there, the smarter these algorithms and these platforms get at discerning what we like. what we want. Mm-hmm. And so they continually get better at feeding it to us, which allows these companies to make more money. 

So what you're saying is their intent is continually analyze me Correct.

As their target and say, wow. Oh, she likes a far side cartoon, or, mm-hmm. She likes lots of colors, or she's interested in education or something and they're continually using all the AI to target. Cheryl

Correct. 

for marketing research. 

Really? Right? Well, for, for marketing research. Correct., That's just another way of saying data harvesting.

Mm-hmm. Right. And so they sell our data to companies , I mean, that's how they make money. Mm-hmm. And so that's an oversimplification of it, but, um, it's called, the predictive design,

. Um, that's just chilling, honestly. Yeah, sure. So think about,

well, let me just give you one example. Okay. YouTube kids. Mm-hmm. Right. It's supposed to be filtered for content.

Mm-hmm. Which is really a misnomer because anytime you have a social media platform mm-hmm. Most parents think of social media in terms of TikTok. Yeah, Instagram, social media is anything where other users can interact and comment on the content that your kid has put out or engaged with.

That's social media, so YouTube kids is. Proliferated with child predators who are constantly trying to find workarounds to the content filtering system. Mm-hmm. Because they know kids are on there. But not only that, YouTube kids, they record your children's voices and they build profiles of your children and then they sell that.

So what seems innocuous. There's really a lot going on behind the scenes. Mm-hmm. Or let's just take Roblox. It's one of the number one apps out there. That's a game that's available. Yeah. For free for kiddos. Yeah. Everybody's on it. It has the highest rate of child predator instances of any game.

That's out there. I can give you two personal examples. I have a family member who's a therapist who, um, deals almost exclusively with teens. And she had a 14-year-old girl who was, um, somebody that she's treating now because this child was victimized by a child predator who contacted her via Roblox.

This person lived in Florida, they drove to Oklahoma. They found this girl and they victimized her. Oh my. 

Oh, crystal. 

I wanna commend three experts to parents to, to dig into, andy Crouch is somebody who comes at it from a spiritual formation perspective and he has written several books, the Tech-Wise Family. He also wrote a book with his 18-year-old daughter, Amy, who talked about the joy of missing out on technology.

So they were a family that, wow, that's insightful completely. Mm-hmm. Um, delayed all access. And then there's Emily Chikin, and she has written a book called The Screen Time Solution. And in my estimation, out of everything that I've read and listened to, hers is the most nonjudgmental, practical hands-on, okay, here's how you start to put the genie back in the bottle.

Mm-hmm. Or, here's how you. Battle your school? Oh. On the, you know, hours of screen time usage at school, because it's not just in our home. If you've got a kiddo that's in public or private school Yes. Often they're spending hours a day using screens. Yeah. As, as a learning platform. 

What was the stat you shared with me The.

Over seven hours a day. Yeah.

Yeah, . Children aged eight to 18, average about seven and a half hours of screen time daily. And that is excluding schoolwork. 

Mm. I mean, I can see how it would happen, you know, kids are, can I stream, this show?

Right. Oh, sure. We'll allow that. Oh, could I text my friend? Oh, I need to check my Instagram for this. You know? Right. One thing after another and it's adding up. Or Mom, it's our 

soccer team. We have to get on and yes. I mean, right. Actual 

usage. 

Yeah. 

Plus all of it just adds up. Yeah. And we can put this in the show notes, but there's a lot of research out there.

It's so, it's not just the, the dangerous aspects of the internet. What kids are exposed to the digital harvesting of our information. The intentional addictiveness of these products. These are also developing brains, right? And we have a lot of fresh research out there that is showing how destructive this is on a developing brain.

And you know, honestly, this goes back to you really don't need the research. Just take a minute and examine your own heart and your own mind. I regularly have to stop myself and say. What have I paid attention to today? Wow. Mm-hmm. How many times have I been. Disgruntled by my children disrupting me. What do my kiddos see in me today?

Do they see the back of my phone? Mm-hmm. When they're trying to talk to me, how much have I not gotten done? Because I'm constantly checking Instagram or X. Mm-hmm. Or am reading, you know, the latest political post from so and so. Mm-hmm. We know that our brains have changed. Yeah. I mean, I would just invite parents to think about, this is something I think about regularly.

I often have difficulty finishing a good book that used to be no problem for me to read, right? 

Yep. Mm-hmm. 

And that is how these products change us. , But the research is clear. More than one hour a day. Is, has a similar effect to cocaine on the prefrontal cortex of our kiddos  developing brain.. Wow. Okay. Now explain 

what you just said.

Yeah, that's an incredible statistic, 

right? So, okay. I. The reality is . Mm-hmm. Our kiddos are spending multiple hours a day. Our kids' brains are not fully formed, and we don't have to be neuroscientists. We know that. We know that if we can't handle our phones, they certainly cannot handle their phones.

Wow. And so. The growing consensus of researches is if they're exposed to more than an hour a day, it really, it's declining cognitive function, executive function. I mean, even in schools, I mean, the research is clear. Traditional learning where they're interacting with actual books mm-hmm.

And actual teachers Yeah. Versus lessons online, which are being deployed a great deal. Right. Yeah. In schools, um. It's, it's detrimental to their ability to actually learn and to become fully functioning humans. 

Yeah. 

I think another important aspect to build into this conversation is for all of us as parents to stop and to think about over the last 10 years since we have all gone online, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, yeah. X. How have these things impacted us as parents?

Mm-hmm. How has it impacted our relationship with our families? Mm-hmm. How has it impacted how we interact with our communities and our friends? Because it's dramatic. Yeah. I mean, it's really dramatic. How has it impacted how we perceive the world? You know, my news consumption habits have changed dramatically.

Mm-hmm. And you know, I can just stand back and look at during my time. Um, you know, working in politics, public policy, my time at the Office of Attorney General or just, uh, as a public relations and communications practitioner dealing with news media. I mean, we used to have. You know, legacy media, that was the gatekeeper.

Yeah. With all of its warts and its flaws, now we all can have highly personalized sources of information that affirm our worldview. Mm-hmm. And really allow us to never have to interact with narratives , or information that does not. Uh, massage our personal preferences. Mm-hmm. Wow. And so whether we're conservative, whether we're Christian, whether we're progressive, all of us can exist in a digital, you know.

Ecosystem Uhhuh, where we do not have to interact with other viewpoints, and we are now being fed algorithms that know what our preference is. And so we're constantly being fed our preference and the amount of fear. Yeah. An outrage that we consume. Mm. That is masquerading as news. That's something that I really see that has changed a lot.

So let's just take, like, not even going near like political issues, let's just talk about the issue of our kids being kidnapped. Yeah. How many of us as parents. Have, build our systems and our practices around who's trying to harm my baby today. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. In our collective conscience, we think about our kids being kidnapped all the time.

Right. You know, and this is, well, everybody saw the milk 

cartons, right? Right. And then you go into Walmart and that 

whole right wall of them, Julie Lithco Haynes has a great book called How to Raise an Adult, and she traces our fear and our paranoia . Because let's be honest, we live in a time of not only helicoptering.

Parenting. Mm-hmm. But snowplow parenting? Mm, yes. Okay. She was the Dean of freshman affairs at Stanford for 10 years, and she Wow. Observed all of these freshman kiddos coming in completely unable to deal with life, unable to do basic things for themself, like open a bank 

account.

And so she. Was noticing that kids were unable to cope and also their parents were coming to college with them, doing all of these things for them.

Oh goodness. Now why? Why are we this way? Well, she traces it back to Adam Walsh and Do you remember his show, America's Most Wanted? Mm-hmm. Yep. Okay. Was it, was his name Matt Walsh and his kiddo was Adam, I think. Yeah. 'cause Code Adam came from, yeah. Code Adam. Yeah. So America's Most Wanted came online and we all started consuming.

Media about kids getting uhhuh kidnapped and then milk cartons came online and the pictures. And so that was really the start of the age of fear. Wow. And so we don't even realize that we are frogs in boiling water consuming fear and outrage all day long. And so a lot of us make choices about our digital consumption and giving phones to our kids because we want them.

To be safe. Uh, yes. We wanna have access to them all the time. , And so what we've got to do, and Emily Chikin is so great about helping parents start to distinguish between scary things. Things like my kids being kidnapped or walking across the street and being hit by a bus, or you know, a stranger propositioning them with a piece of candy.

Yeah. Those are all very scary things. The reality is you like it's about the chance of being struck by lightning, that those things will happen to our kiddos. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Versus. Dangerous things. 

Okay. 

And so dangerous things are we give our kids phones early on in the name of safety so that we can have access and know where our kids all the time, but we're not considering how dangerous those, 

wow.

Those things are really, really good. 

Look at how it all just seamlessly has worked together. Yeah. To be where we are in this moment as a society. Okay. Crystal. This is fascinating. Mm-hmm. We're both sitting here listening to what you're saying.

And would you say you see a light at the end of the tunnel?

I do. I do.

And then will you come back and say, okay, so having said that, here's what I propose. Right? And, 

and this is, um, this is the good news.

The, the good news is we all know it's a problem. We can't ignore it. We know it's a problem in our own hearts and minds. Mm-hmm. We see how it's impacting our kids, but really the research and the pushback is starting. It's coming online. And so I think the first thing that I would commend to parents to do is to take a breath.

And to know you're not alone. Mm-hmm. All of us are dealing with these same issues. All of us recognize it , and there are resources that exist to help you engage in these issues thoughtfully and build a plan 

that's really hopeful. It sure is.

Right. So have you personally been encouraged out of that fear and hopelessness, which it kind of sounds like it is. 

Yes.

And I would love to tell you about what's happened in my daughter's peer group and at our church and in with our friend group at our school, we have come together and created community standards.

 So , you've found maybe some ways that actually works.

That helps. 

Give a, give a teaser 

of it. ,

right? Well, . There are people out there that are leading parents through these issues and helping them build not only solutions for their own families, but community solutions where parents can band together and come up with standards of how we wanna use technology amongst our friends, our community, our children's friends.

And that really is the way, that's the future. 

But it's fantastic. we need to wrap this up, Yeah. Oh, this is exciting. I can hardly wait to hear it. Okay. Listeners, Be sure don't miss the next episode. . Okay, so you will come back in, right?

For sure. Okay, so parents, don't miss it. Hang in there. Keep loving, keep persevering because it's worth it.