Tech Boundaries That Actually Stick- Family and Individual Practices

We move from tech talk to tech practices that families can actually live out, using the Hang 10 movement to reduce pressure on kids and restore attention, presence, and faith-filled rhythms. We share household and personal habits that help parents lead by example instead of drifting with the current. 
• the Hang 10 “three rings” of community, family, and personal practices 
• why shared community standards cut down “everyone has it” pressure 
• creating phone-free no zones like the dinner table 
• keeping screens in public spaces for transparency and safety 
• using filters, parental controls, and accountability tools wisely 
• giving every phone a home so devices stop following you 
• modeling the boundaries as parents when work and notifications compete 
• owning settings to resist the attention economy and compulsive checking 
• waking before your phone and ending the day without scrolling 
• taking one tech-free hour daily as a mini Sabbath for presence 

Go ahead and share this podcast with them, as well as the link to the Hang 10 movement: hangtenmovement.com. 

As always, we would love it if you left us a review wherever you're listening to this podcast and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss our next episode. 

Send any questions you want answered to podcast@waynechristian.org

This podcast is presented by Wayne Christian School- A Christ-centered community school whose mission is to assist parents and churches in the education of their children from a biblical worldview to impact their world for Christ. You can learn more at waynechristian.org 

Transcript

Welcome And Part Two Setup

Nate 0:07

Welcome to Equipped for Impact, the podcast designed to assist Christian parents, leaders, and educators to raise up the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ. We're your hosts. I'm Nate. And I'm Lewis. And we are glad you're here with us today, where we're diving into part two of a conversation about 10 practices to change the next generation's relationship with technology. So, Lewis, what uh what are these practices? If if somebody didn't listen to the first part, um, what what are we talking about today with these 10 practices?

The Hang 10 Three Rings

Luis 0:44

Well, number one, you have to go back and listen to the first part. Oh, okay, there you go. You have to. But if you really can't, we are going through a resource called the Hang 10 movement. And we are walking through that process. And and one of the key things to remember about that movement is that it it's think of it like three rings. You've got an outer ring, which is the community, right? That's the church, that's the school, that's the people around your life. Then you have your inner ring, which is the family, right? That's going to be what you do in your home. And then you've got the personal side, which is kind of the innermost ring. And and that's and that's what's happening personally within your life when it comes to technology. And we've talked a lot about technology, and I think it's one of those things that's that's a hot topic, right? So I was actually talking to a head of school yesterday, and we were kind of lamenting the fact that technology had accelerated so much over the last six years in education, and then now a lot of the research is like pump the brakes, pump the brakes. Like we like, you know, it's like a code red, right? And so but we should have seen it coming because we knew what technology did in the hands of people over the course of the last five years before COVID, right? Yep. And then what technology was like five years before that.

Nate 2:08

All COVID did was accelerate the i in a lot of different ways, everything in our culture, right? Where it whether it was politically or socially or the emotional issues we've had, it just it just accelerated everything. And technology is one of those.

Community Rules That Ease Pressure

Luis 2:22

Absolutely. And so we last in last week's episode, we looked at the first four practices, and all of them had to do with community. We we talked about waiting until 10th grade for smartphones and social media. We talked about no phones in schools or other teaching settings like like church. We we even joked about what if churches at the front of their when you first walk in, if they had the little pouch.

Nate 2:48

Every person that comes into church has to put their phone in the pouch. But that would take away mobile giving. I just thought about that. Do you have the little like scan the QR code to give online? It's true. That's true. You're gonna have to go start writing checks, which people don't know how to write checks in.

Luis 3:01

You're right. Unless you added your mobile giving to the entrance or like the exit. So that way that way you could put like, did you remember to give today? And then you've got the QR coup. There you go. I have my mobile giving set up like automatically. Oh, yeah. It's an auto draft. I still write checks. I'm not surprised.

Nate 3:17

Okay, good. I'm glad. I have two things that I write checks for, and that is one of them.

Luis 3:23

Two?

Nate 3:24

Two. Yeah.

Luis 3:25

What's the second one?

Nate 3:26

Are you can can can you share the kids who pride? The kids' horseback riding lessons.

Luis 3:29

Oh, okay. Okay, yeah. I I write checks to one place. One place. One place. Just one. Just one. Is it your daughter's allowance? It's not. It's the school that we work at. Like I I write checks, and a lot of times I lose my checkbook. And so you have to go find it. Then I have to go find it. Yeah. And so Oh my goodness.

Nate 3:48

Writing checks. That's going to be the next episode.

Luis 3:50

And then we talked about encouraging important conversations face to face. So right now we live in that world where if you have something mean to say or something important to say, you send a text. With a period at the end. With a period at the end. Because it's passive regard. Because that lets people know you mean business. Did you Google that article?

Nate 4:06

No, I did not. But I was thinking about it when we were texting after we recorded the last episode because you did not send any punctuation in your text messages.

Luis 4:14

Sometimes it's because it's voice to text. Voice to text does not capture punctuation.

Nate 4:18

I tell my voice text to add punctuation, like I'll say exclamation point. And then sometimes it r actually writes out the words exclamation point. I'm not surprised. But I just I just leave it in there because I think it's funny. I'm not surprised.

Luis 4:30

Yeah. And then we talked about adopting communal aspirations, right? So with your community, there are some things that you can adopt together, like as a school, as a church.

Nate 4:43

That's that's what all of these practices are, is their communal aspirations to to work together as a community. And I think this is a great place to plug in here if you have a community you're a part of that you think might be open to implementing some of these. Go ahead and share this podcast with them as well as the link to the hang 10 movement, hangtinmovement.com. It's linked again in the show notes for you guys. But that would be a good thing to get everybody on the same page with some type of aspiration of we're gonna put these practices in place as a group.

Luis 5:17

And you know what I was thinking about last night as I was reflecting on that thought. Kids oftentimes say, Well, all my friends are doing it. Exactly. All my friends have phones. That's the whole point of these this community ring. Yep. And so when parents come together and say, Hey, as a group of parents, because our children are friends, we're going to decide to do this together. So that when your kid says, But all my friends have it, you can say, Nope. I've talked to little Charlie's mom, and we agree that phones will not be, et cetera, right? You're not you're not gonna be able to take them to school. You can't take them to church. You're not gonna get one until you're 16.

Nate 5:55

No, you don't have TikTok because they don't have TikTok. I know I talked to their mom, you know. Or no, it's time for bed, and your phone goes to bed before you do. So no, your your kids, you know, they're not gonna see it anyway until the morning.

Luis 6:09

And you know, I think we live in a culture today where like that happens. Like friend, like like parents connect, like parents become friends with the parents of their children's friends, right? Yep. Like that, like that tends to happen. That may not have been the case so much 20, 30 years ago, but but today most parents' circles revolve around their children and their activities, right? That's exactly right. The children they go to school with, the children they go to church with, the children they play sports with, the children they do other activities. That tends to be the parent group that you end up hanging out with as a parent.

Nate 6:43

That's a whole nother podcast episode, I think, is choosing your community, what who your kids hang around with. Ooh, we need to write that one down. Okay, that one. Stay tuned, make sure you subscribe because we'll come out with that one at some

Pivot To Household Practices

Nate 6:56

point. But I think this is a good time to pivot and and move into the next sphere, that next ring, which is your family, the household practices. So this would be things where your family, at the family level, we are going to put these practices into place. And so you can say to your kid, we don't do that, or we do this because this is our family. So, Lewis, this would be practice number five, but the first of the household practices. What what would this one be for families with their phones?

Luis 7:27

And I

No Zones For Real Connection

Luis 7:28

love this, and we've actually done this as a family for years before I even knew about this hang tip movement, right? It's the no zones, right? We have no zones. Is that where your kids ask you a question and you tell them no?

Nate 7:40

Automatically no. Absolutely not. Remember the yes button that staples used to have? Yes. Well, we need to make a no button. A no button, no button. I feel like we do. I need that in my office. So no.

Luis 7:50

And so the no zones are places in your homes where technology simply does not belong. So the dinner table is a classic example, right? And this isn't just about setting rules, but but it's about having a sacred place where technology isn't distracting. Like we've all been at the restaurant where we see a group of people sitting around a table and they're all in their phones, right? And you've probably been a part of it where you and your family and you're eating dinner and you look up and nobody's talking because everybody's on their phone. Yep. I know I've been guilty of it, right? And so your home is a place for this embodied communal life, right? It's where Deuteronomy 6 is happening in real time, where you're talking about the things of God when you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, when you rise up. And that's not gonna happen if everyone's face is in their phone or in their tablet.

Nate 8:45

Yeah, that's exactly right. So the dinner table, that's the sacred ground. There's other places you can make no zones as well where it's time for you guys to connect, like maybe the back, the back deck or the back patio, you know, whatever it is for you, have a no zone, and that is your area. And this second practice, practice number six, actually, the but the second of the family practices, really flows out of

Keep Screens In Public Spaces

Nate 9:10

that. And it's the idea that screens are only in public places. That's really good. Screens only in public places. And this is really about accountability through transparency. We've said it before, like when your kid sees themselves being seen, like they know we talk about checking in on their social media profiles or their text messages or whatever, they know there's going to be accountability and they will be seen, and so they can't go hide in their bedroom, right? Yeah. So public places like the living room, the kitchen, that's where you are going to have screen time. And so big TV, right? You don't take the laptop into the bedroom to watch something. Yeah. It's all in a public place.

Luis 9:54

And I actually learned this from a parent here at our school several years ago when they shared with me that they didn't allow technology in bedrooms. And so no tablets, no laptops, no phones. Because that becomes a zero-tolerance approach to inappropriate content. Right. There are no screens behind closed doors. There are no devices in bedrooms at night. And it extends to filters and and softwares, right? Don't just physically play screens publicly, but but use parental controls and accountability software to reinforce it. You you can't be naive about this, right? The temptation is so real with your kids, and there are things that are coming at them that you may not even know. I can't tell you how many times I've sat across from a parent and we're having a conversation about inappropriate content on their child's device, and they say, I had no idea they were looking at that. I had no idea they were sending that. I had no idea they had access to that, right? But make it harder for them to be able to give in to that temptation by creating this culture of openness. Like in our home, we we don't allow devices in bedrooms. We, in fact, we don't allow devices in the upstairs. So if you're upstairs in the loft, you you can't have your phone, you can't have a laptop, you can't have a tablet. And we we made a decision very on very early on in the lives of our girls. We we never allowed t televisions in their bedroom. And we were very intentional about that because again, we don't want to have them face the temptation alone behind a closed door where there's not a parent that can be present.

Nate 11:37

Yep, that's exactly right. And what I love is that these practices in the family, like household practices ring, the sphere, they actually build on each other. So we've got the, you know, you've got no zones. There's no phones gonna be there, so the bedroom would be one, right? Screens in public places, which kind of builds on that. And this

Give Every Phone A Home

Nate 11:54

third family practice, practice number seven, is that we have homes for our phones. Yeah. I love that one because it's not just, you know, wherever. Number one, it helps your kid keep track of their phone if they have one. That's a great idea. Or you, it helps you keep track of your phone if you have one. But also it's a place where you know, like, this is where the phone lives, and I'm not gonna carry it with me everywhere. I like that.

Luis 12:18

Um one of the things that that I like about that specifically, right, is that it creates a physical location where your phones come home when you come home, right? So that when you walk in the door, you plug your phone in at that station and you're present with your family.

Nate 12:35

You can even get one of those really cool like mag like wireless chargers if you get a newer phone and it's like this is the little pad where all of our phones get charged.

Luis 12:42

I've heard you mention before that you when you get home, you put your phone somewhere It's on top of the fridge.

Nate 12:47

Top of the fridge and then like you don't actually was a holdover from when my my girls were little because then they couldn't reach it.

Luis 12:53

Oh, that's really good.

Nate 12:54

But it also that's the home, right? So it was on top of the fridge. Yeah. And so I've also heard there's an author I listen to a lot, his podcast, Cal Newport, and he talks about that he he and his kind of audience coined the term landlining. Like you remember when we had like the old phone that had an actual like cord to the wall and all of that stuff, and it was usually in the kitchen, public place, right? Yeah, but then that's the idea is that you're not carrying your phone around with you all around the house, but it's actually got a home and it's gonna be landlined. So if you need to send a text message, you're going to your phone. Yeah, you don't just pull it out, right? And that actually that helps in a lot of different ways. Cal Newport talks about it from a distraction and like just cognitive focus kind of standpoint. But here, like it just helps you so that when you come in, you're not in a f your family being what the term is like alone together. You know, you're all in the same room, the same physical space, but you're alone because you're on your devices, like we already talked about, you know, and so it's a really simple thing, but it it's gonna take some commitment for you to put your phone in its home and not just carry it around with you.

Luis 14:04

And I know that this is probably gonna be one of the hardest ones for parents to listen to, right? Because it's it's it's probably gonna break cycles of years of habits that that that we've done. But parents, it it applies to you too. Like you can't tell your kids to put their phones away and then spend your dinner time scrolling through your Instagram feed or your TikTok feed, right? Yep. You have to lead the way, you have to put your phone away. You've you've got to put your phone in the home. My girls are quick to call me out whenever I pull my phone out at dinner because we have a rule, no phones at the table. And I'm kind of busy, right? Like, you know, I'm I'm a pastor, I'm I'm ahead of school, and so there's constantly things that are coming in. And so my excuse always is like, no, I gotta respond to this text. And my wife said something really good last night, actually, because I did it last night. She said, if you didn't bring your phone to the table, you wouldn't have gotten the notification.

Nate 15:01

That's exactly right. And you can also use do not disturb. There's all the different tricks.

Luis 15:05

So and so, and so look, I'm confessing honesty to you, right? We have these practices in our home, but I'm I'm not perfect. But parents, if we want to see our kids do this, we have to be the ones who model away.

Nate 15:16

Yep, that's exactly right. So

Pivot To Personal Practices

Nate 15:18

that kind of leads us directly into that innermost ring, and these are the personal practices. So you've got your community, you've got you as a family all doing the same thing. That's probably because you lead your family, that's probably the easiest to start moving. But then we can move into this innermost ring of the personal practices. So these are the last three, and these are the habits you build into your own daily rhythm. Yeah.

Own Your Settings

Nate 15:44

So the first one, this is practice eight of the ten. It's own your settings so your settings don't own you. And this is all about master, right?

Luis 15:54

This is about being an expert in your own technology. So, like, do you know what screen time limits you've set? Uh do you know how many hours a day your device says you spent on social media last week? Do you have do not disturb enabled? Have have you turned off notification badges that create this compulsive checking behavior?

Nate 16:12

It's literally what you were just talking about, right? Is that the notifications, the thing, those are all personal practices that that integrate right into those family ones. So, you know, you we've talked about this before, but the cell phone, you know, these apps, they're designed by some of the smartest people on earth. And the one goal they have is to hold your attention. Like we've talked about it's called the attention economy. Yeah. It they make money the more you use their app. And so they are highly motivated and have put billions of dollars into figuring out how they can capture your attention. And so if you don't fight back with intentionality and knowledge, you will lose that battle. So you have to own your settings.

Luis 16:56

And you might be thinking, well, like, I don't know how to do any of that stuff. Like, I uh, you know, my kid teaches me how to use my Google phone, right? But even even the Hang 10 movement has resources on their websites to help you with this sorts of thing, to give you specific things that you can do in your setting. And there's tons of resources out there that help you walk through how to set up the settings on your phone appropriately. Yep.

Wake Before Your Phone

Luis 17:22

This next practice, practice number nine, is wake before your phone and go to bed after.

Nate 17:28

Yep, yep, that's exactly right. And again, this is easier if you've got a home for your phone. So you that's why we're moving kind of inside with these rings. So, and and I think this is one of those that's it's just a little habit that's going to really shape a lot of your relationship with your phone. Because right now, for most people, technology frames their day. The phone is the first thing they see in the morning, is the last thing they see at night. And that means the algorithm of these apps, the notifications, it's forming their first thoughts, and and they're not being intentional about what they're putting into their mind. So the Hang 10 movement, what they talk about is you've got to flip that. You've got to frame your day, you have to be intentional. You wake up, you spend some time with God. We've talked about personal devotions a lot. There's a whole episode we did way back, it was way season one with Chad Harwell about the the quiet time, and that you are putting into your mind what God is telling you before you let the world fill your mind.

Luis 18:30

I love what Psalm 5.3 says, and I'm gonna read it from the New Living Translation because I think it sounds really like really cool. It says, Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord. Each morning I bring my request to you and wait expectantly, right? In the English Standard Version, it says, Oh Lord, in the morning you hear my voice, in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and and watch. We can't do that when the first thing we do is grab the phone, check our Facebook, check Clash of Clans, and make sure that we Is that what you do first thing in the morning?

Nate 19:08

You check Class of Class of Clans.

Luis 19:10

Not first thing in the morning.

Nate 19:11

I do have Clash of Clans. We've talked about this before because I was surprised that you're still playing Clash.

Luis 19:16

Yeah, you know, it's kind of one of those things that just like sometimes after like a long day, I just pop it open and I do two or three attacks and just kind of meander through the rest of the day.

Nate 19:27

Fun fact because our our audience loves fun facts. Clash of Clans came out on August 2nd, 2022. 2012. Yeah. For 14 years. 14 years ago. Yeah.

Luis 19:37

I started playing it. No, I wasn't an early adopter. It was probably 2014, maybe before I started playing it. Wow. And then I took a a break for a while. I also used to play Clash Royale. Um and then but I came to realize that it consumed a lot of my time.

Nate 19:59

Yes.

Luis 19:59

And so I eventually deleted both apps. And I didn't play either one for about three or four years. And so I haven't played it continuously from the time that I played.

Nate 20:11

But that's a a really good picture of like the addictive nature, right? Like you you want to see how your clans are doing. You want to see did your attack succeed. Like, and so you're gonna keep coming back and checking, and it's I mean, they built it in there.

Luis 20:24

And so probably about a year ago, I picked it back up and then I downloaded a class of clans. I only do clash of clans, and I only allow myself to check it once in the morning and once at night. And it's one of those things where I I thankfully, praise God, I I've been able to kind of become more disciplined in that because there was a time where you're right, it was very easy to just always get on there. You just wanted to click on it, and praise God, I've been able to stay consistent with that.

Nate 20:55

That's good. That's good. So this again, you you wake before your phone, you go to bed before your phone or after your phone. Like those things help when you've got a home for your phone as a family. You put it there, that means you probably need to get an alarm clock and let your last thought before sleep be something other than how is your clan doing. So now we're to the last practice. Practice

Take One Tech Free Hour

Nate 21:18

number 10, and that is take an hour off each day. Oh, that's really good. Take an hour off.

Luis 21:24

And that's and that's very simple, right? Like one hour every day. Yep. You and we're not talking about the hours that you're asleep.

Nate 21:31

Yes, right.

Luis 21:32

Like we're talking about when you're awake, when you're functioning.

Nate 21:36

And it probably should be not that your phone goes to bed an hour before you do, so that's your last hour. It needs to be sometime during the day where you're gonna take that time and put it on.

Luis 21:46

Turn the screens off. Maybe it's at family dinner, maybe it's for a workout, putting some of those practices together. Maybe it's for a walk, maybe it's to have a real conversation, but one hour where you are fully physically present with the people in the world around you.

Nate 22:03

Yep. And so this is a rhythm of Sabbath that we've talked before, just a in miniature, right? You're gonna take this time to rest, to in some ways detox from the constant notifications, and it's a time for relationships. So an hour of tech-free presence every day is small, and it's a declaration that we're not slaves to our devices, but we are made in the image of God to connect with other image bearers, and we're gonna live like that. So, Lewis, uh, we've gone through these 10 practices over the last two weeks, and we've gone through a lot of different things, but but what last encouragement would you give to parents who are really trying to start put some or all of these practices in place?

Luis 22:46

Well,

Hopeful Closing And Next Steps

Luis 22:47

you look around you. We are probably living in one of the most consequential cultural moments in the history of our engagement with the world, right? And phones are in the hands of our children and it's shaping their minds, it's shaping their attention, their capacity for relationships, their understanding of identity and worth. And most of us, including myself, right, we've handed them over without a real plan. But the good news is that there's hope. The church has always been at its best when we did what the world couldn't do, when we held together a different kind of community, when we lived by a different set of values, and when we said we're gonna do this differently because we belong to someone who calls us to something bigger. And so we're not telling you to be perfect, we're not telling you to do all 10 of these practices at one time, but you have the option to decide and you get to be intentional about this, you get to decide that you are no longer gonna keep drifting with the current, but that you're gonna take a stand and you're gonna do something different for you and for your children when it comes to technology.

Nate 24:00

Yeah, that's really good stuff right there. So, um, people, if this is something that you guys really enjoyed and you think this is something you want to get your community around, like we said, share this episode with somebody else and go ahead and start putting some of these practices in place. Uh, and as always, we would love it if you left us a review wherever you're listening to this podcast. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss our next episode. But until then, keep leading the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ.