The Smartphone Ate My Family – Interview with Phillip Telfer

Smartphones are disrupting kids’ relationships, depersonalizing sexuality, drawing away their affections, and influencing their beliefs – but we can’t very well ask our elders how they dealt with these problems in their day. Kevin talks with Phillip Telfer, author of “Help! The Smartphone Ate My Family” about surviving the digital age as a parent. They discuss the importance of guardrails, rules, awareness, conversations, and escape routes…and the methods Phillip himself has used to keep his kids safe.

Download the episode MP3 here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2520780/episodes/19467546-the-smartphone-ate-my-family-interview-with-phillip-telfer.mp3

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome friends to Generations Kevin Swanson, your host with you, and today we are coming back to a very important subject. In fact, it may appear that we're we're back on media more than we should, and yet media is consuming, consuming. The consumers are being consumed by so much of the media today. Ironically, of course, we use media, and yet there's a good and a bad purpose for these things, a good purpose for books, bad purpose for books, or good purpose for uh human relationships, and sometimes bad uses for human relationships. The same thing applies to media in the modern world is for us to be discerning on these things. It's for us to wake up and smell the napalm in the social battles that are engaged in our modern uh civilization society. So uh one of the questions I ask on a fairly regular basis, doesn't matter where I go, I pull out a cell phone and I'll say, you know, this did not exist. This smartphone did not exist in 1990. If kids wanted to have some access to media by themselves, they would have to carry a 300-pound television set into the bathroom, and that would crush them to death. So it was very difficult for them to do that kind of thing, uh, to enter into a more isolated, privatized form of media. And so they sat in the living room with the family. And so there was something of a family integration when it came to entertainment, and there was an accountability that took place with your average family in 1992. So you could count on the fact that even if you had friends, uh neighbors, etc., that had some access to media, at least the family was somewhat engaged and involved in the media choices that children would take. But now the iPhone has changed the game big a time. And so it doesn't matter where you live. Uh you're looking at uh children who have access to iPhones as early as eight, nine, 10 years of age, and they can go anywhere they want to, meaning that media uh can take them to the x-rated sites and to uh all sorts of negative social experiences, so to speak. And so now you can control the media in your home, but you can't control the media in the homes of all of those kids that attend the charter school down the street, or all the kids that uh are living in the neighborhood around you. So what do you do? Well, I guess as parents, it's going to be more and more difficult to send your kids off into a social situation where you're not sure there's all that much control, all that much attention, all that much accountability happening when it comes to the media choices of the children. And therefore, homeschooling may be the only solution uh to the current malaise that we find ourselves in. That is, homeschool parents can very much be involved, parents who are concerned and care and are discerning and want to be sure their children are not stumbled. And by the way, Matthew 18 is a pretty serious passage, perhaps the most serious statement Jesus made in his whole ministry. He said if anybody stumbles, one of these little ones that believes in me, it would be better for him that a millstone be hanged around his neck and he'd be drowned at the bottom of the sea. It's really like, I guess think of it the mafia treatment. It's not not a pleasant consideration. But parents or others who stumble, these little ones uh that uh believe in Jesus. Jesus said it'd be better for them that a millstone be hanged around their neck and they'd be drowned at the bottom of the sea, which means it's a deadly serious matter that we're talking about today on the Generations Broadcast. And with me, uh Philip Telfer joins me and he's Media Talk 101. It's good to have you back with us, Philip. It's uh wow, your your ministry has been so crucial uh to the lives of tens of thousands of families across America. It's good to have you back with us. Thank you, Kevin. It's good to be on your show. Yeah, Media Talk 101. And your latest book is Help the Smartphone Ate My Family, a parent's survival guide for the digital age by Philip Telfer. Philip is a pastor, he is president of Media Talk 101, and uh he's authored a bunch of other books. I remember why Why Save Alexander? There was Media Choices, Convictions are compromise, and now Help the Smartphone Ate My Family. That's a great title. I like that title, Philip. That's good. Thank you. Thank you. And I think it's happened. The consumer is getting consumed. I guess that's the point here.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yeah, there was a there was a preacher in the 1950s who was uh lamenting about the encroachment upon the devotional life through television, radio, and the newspapers. And uh he likened these things like a pet tiger cub that once you invited him in the home, grew up and threatened to devour the whole family. If only he could have known what we would be facing today. And so, yeah, it's kind of that idea, uh, help the smartphone eight my family, that uh oftentimes parents either ignorantly or defiantly are bringing something into the home that they think is innocent, that they think is going to make things better. By the way, I mean, we've we've both spoken at a lot of homeschool conferences, and I have yet, in my 20 years of ministry, had anybody come up to a booth and tell me, oh, you know, our family was a disaster, we were just so disjointed, everything was was going sideways, and then we got our children's smartphones, and it has been the savior of our household. Like that's that's not gonna happen. Never happened. It's the the conversations I have with families over the last, well, of course, 20 years ago I was still speaking about media. We weren't speaking about smartphones 20 years ago. But when the smartphone really became ubiquitous among uh culture, then yeah, what you know, all the conversations are like, wow, like I I thought this was going to be a good thing. I brought, I I gave a smartphone to my child, and now they've turned into a little monster, you know. And so again, the uh big question is you know, can that can the smartphone be tamed? Yeah, it's a question I ask you. Yeah, it is, yeah. Can it be tamed? And go ahead. You could test this, you know, you could test it. Uh you just take your smartphone, encourage people to do this, take it, set it on a table somewhere, put it screenside down, make sure it's charged up, and then leave it for 24 hours. And uh if you come back, you'll find out that um it really hasn't gotten into any trouble, hasn't burned the house down, hasn't taken anybody hostage. But you you could do that same experiment with like five kittens or two puppies or even one toddler, and it would be a whole different story. So the the smartphone is not entirely tame, it's it's mostly tame because it what needs to be tamed are the users, you know, where we have a problem. And if if adults don't know how to be tamed in their use of a smartphone, how are we expecting uh children to be able to handle such a powerful piece of technology in their pocket? Where you've got the world's largest collection of video games, world's largest collection of porn, world's largest collection of movies, world's largest collection of music, 24-7 connection appears, uh connected to the internet all the time, and for the most part, it's been it's been sponsored by mom and dad. How would any of us I would not have survived that as a teen? I had enough trouble as a teen. I don't know about you, but my teenagers were hard enough without the smartphone.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

You you heard my intro. Do you think that the situation has gotten like tougher? Like, I mean, it's just a lot tougher than it was in the early 1990s.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Well, it's unprecedented. I it's not just tougher, it's unprecedented. This is part of this is a point I make in the book. We have no ancestral wisdom. Like, I could not, like, my parents live on our property. I'm so grateful. I got four generations around me. But when my kids were growing up, I couldn't go to my mom and dad and say, How how did you deal with smartphones? They would say, Well, we didn't have those when you were growing up, Philip. Or how did you deal with social media? Well, we didn't have social media. We had enough trouble, like I said, but it wasn't those things. So this is an unprecedented and this book that I've written is really calling parents to be Christian trailblazers in the digital age. We need brave parents willing to say, let's let's figure out a path that we can pass along to our children so that they can gain wisdom and because the technologies aren't going away. Uh, you know, I don't know about you, Kevin, but I mean, if there was a big red button somewhere that if you hit it, it just reset everything back a couple hundred years. I would be the I would be the guy everybody would hate for pushing that button, but you know, I would I would do it. I would love to just let's just reset. Yeah. But we can't go backward. We have to figure out how do we navigate this forward. And honestly, people are not navigating this very well, and especially children or their parents. So that's what I wanted to address as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

What are the biggest dangers? Let me start with that. The biggest dangers, like if you were to give top three, four, five issues to parents, to anybody, okay, yeah. Well, this thing will consume you if you give way to this.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

The biggest danger is the fact that you have a device that's connected to the internet all the time. And uh so, of course, there's good things you can find on the internet, but a child who's still developing, who's still being discipled, who's not really, you know, they're kind of fledgling at best, they're not in a state to be able to use wisdom and discernment, how to handle the things that again, that adults are having difficulty. So just being connected to the internet with all the trouble that comes along with that is probably one of the biggest problems. But also, it's interesting that even though we have this 24-7 connection through these pocket devices, uh there was a report that came out uh not too long ago that actually said that this is one of the loneliest generations. And you might scratch your head and go, like, well, why why is everybody lonely? Uh they they have 24-7 connection to their peers. Like nobody's ever had that. The reason they're lonely is because this digital technology does not meet the deepest needs of their soul. It does not, it's it's a it's what is described um by God through Jeremiah as a broken cistern, you know, that holds no water. And God really called out his people and said, you know, I have two things against you. One is you have rejected the source, you've rejected me, the source of living water that will satisfy you. And as an alternative, the second thing I have a problem with you is that as an alternative, you have hewn out cisterns. Those are the place to hold water in the ground. You've hewn out cisterns to try to collect your own water, except they're broken and they don't hold any water, it just leaks out. And and that's what's happening in this digital age. No matter, I mean, the the statistics for screen time just continue to go up and up and up and up. And you're like, how how much further can they go up? It's actually cutting into sleep, it's cutting into other things because it's a broken cistern, it just doesn't hold any water. And so the biggest problem, going back to your question, is how it's disrupting relationships. Yeah, first of all, our relationship with God and our relationship with family and our relationship with our neighbor, that that's the relationships in church.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

It's that's those are the big problems. And it disrupts sexuality. I would put that on the top of the list as well. Which by the way, happens to be a very core element in real human relationship. Yes, but it it obviously depersonalizes sexuality, meaning it takes relationship clean out of sexuality, which is one of the most uh horrible things that you could ever imagine could ever happen to the human race by means of pornography.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Yeah, well, and again, uh the Apostle Paul said in uh the book of Colossians to uh be careful not to be taken captive by philosophies or empty deceptions. And if you think about the philosophers of the day, they would have been traveling itinerant speakers and maybe going from village to village trying to get people's attention. And so he's he's warning Christians like don't get taken in by philosophies and empty deceptions that that are really opposed to Christ. And so he would never have imagined a world where not only you were inviting philosophers into your home, but but you get like multiple philosophers per child because as soon as you have access again through a smartphone to the internet, you are connecting, you are allowing them to be connected to what we call the influencers because those were the philosophers, they were the influencers, and it's interesting that it's called the influencer culture. And uh, yeah, so what do influencers do? They influence. So that is also one of those challenges where we're not heeding what the Apostle Paul said is to be not be taken captive.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Yeah, and pop media has done the same thing, it's really eroded so much of the um the biblical worldview, I mean, to the point where only 1% of Gen Zers hold to the very minimum of a biblical worldview, down from 12% back in the early 1990s, largely because we're competing against you know massive pop media, social media, online uh influencers, and it's just almost impossible for the church to face that unless, unless, unless families get a hold on this. So, so the internet and the smartphone can disrupt relationship, disrupt sexuality, disrupt the human psyche, disrupt truth, and disrupt families and church life. And we've seen that. But now, how do we how do we find redemption in this? Uh what do we do? We throw away this thing. What do we do with this, Philip?

SPEAKER_02 15:04

I'll be honest, I like my smartphone. It's a very productive tool. Uh, but you know, when you think of it as a tool, imagine that you were in your backyard and you see your neighbor over in his backyard and he's building a shed. Old school, he's got a hammer, he's got nails, and you look over and you say, Hey, Joe, that's looking good, doing a good job. He says, Hey, thanks, Philip, you know. But the next day you see Joe in the grocery store and uh he's shopping, and you're shopping, and you cross paths, you try to get his attention, but he's got his hammer in his hand, and he's just fixated on it. You know, and he won't even look up because he's he's like just admiring his hammer. You'd go, that's a little weird. And if you saw him the next day driving and he's you see his car is swerving, you're like, wow, what's wrong with Joe? And he's got his steering wheel in one hand and his hammer that he's staring at in the other, you'd go like, what is the problem here? And then you go to a restaurant the next night and you you see Joe with his family, and he's totally distracted, not not focused on his family at all. And you even try to get his attention and he's so fixated on his hammer. At that point, I think most of us would say, Joe's got a problem. Yeah, he's got some real psychological problems. He needs he needs some good biblical counseling. But as soon as you replace the hammer with a smartphone, now that's how everybody behaves. Everybody behaves this way. Yeah, so it's a power it can be a powerful tool, but this is where smartphones are not tame. And that is the apps and the designers of the apps have crafted these using psychological methods like um, you know, classical conditioning to train people, to train you, just like Pavlov learned, you could train dogs, how they would salivate even if there was no food coming to them. And so these app designers know this. They they have actually structured the how you interact with these apps to be distracting, to keep your attention coming back to your device. In fact, now they call it checking behavior, they got a name for it. And uh the average American checks their phone over 200 times a day. Ouch. And it's and it's usually just like small things. It's a notification goes off, you know, oh, and it's like Pavlov's dog. They you start salivating. Well, what are you what are you hungry for? Well, you don't know. It's like, what's just sense of mystery? Maybe it's good news, maybe it's bad news, maybe it's uh maybe I got a like, maybe I got a thumbs up, maybe someone shared a post. I don't know. And so so yeah, if we're not careful, so redemption really starts with, as Jesus said, He was the light of the world, and and uh truth sets people free. So you need to understand what's going on. Is it turning into an idol?

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Is this thing turning into an idol, Philip? Is that is there's an idolatry issue where we're not focused on God and beholding our God in all of this?

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Yeah, it can be totally idolatry, and uh in fact, you know, this the old TV show American Idol didn't even try to hide it that uh entertainment has become an idol and not just entertain it's when we think of entertainment, we're often thinking of like maybe television or sports or music, but now it's scrolling, it's doom scrolling, it's it's this constant attention to a device, and you know, you might even be well-meaning and and maybe you've even intended to do something positive with it, but now you've been distracted. So, yeah, it has become an idol for sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

How does warned against that? Yeah, how does one control himself? I mean, it just could be somebody checking their email, it could be checking the news, it could be checking their apps, I mean, it could be a lot of different things. People are drawn into, you know, some people just absolutely avoid the news, but some people love their games. And so, how do we control this? So, do you recommend a media fast? Uh what what how do we get started?

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Yeah, first step would be a media fast. I've been encouraging people to do that for over 20 years now. That's how I got started at the age of 17. Nobody told me about this. I got convicted by the Holy Spirit about the garbage media that I'd been consuming as a teenager, and I went on what I was gonna be just a two-week media fast. We didn't have the internet then, but oh, it was so life-changing for me. And then I didn't want to go back to it. So it went way longer than uh two years until I could gain wisdom. So sometimes you do have to unplug in order to allow your heart and your mind to reset. I kind of liken it to when I lived in Chicago, I didn't grow up there. I grew up in the country. So moving to Chicago after high school was kind of a shock in that you'd look up at night and you can't see any stars. In fact, you could barely see the moon on most nights. And that's not because there are not stars above you, it's because there's so many man-made lights, they just block the view of the stars. So, you know, getting out in the country, you you get away from the man-made light and you look up and you can see the Milky Way galaxy. Likewise, that's why a media fast can be very helpful because it's like getting out in the country, it's like getting away from all the man-made light and allowing the light pollution to fade, and you're beginning to gaze again at that which is eternal, and it really helps uh people to reset. So that's kind of step one. But what about day-to-day? And this is where people, you know, need to be more disciplined. We have all the health food crazes going on, and you got exercise crazes, and and everybody's focused on their physical well-being, but we need to be thinking about the discipline needed for spiritual well-being. And the Bible talks about discipline, it talks about self-control. And we're we're called to be like soldiers, or we're called to be like athletes and very disciplined, and that's what it's gonna take if we're going to uh navigate the digital age moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

And Philip tremendous amount of discipline. Let me confess for just a second that there have been moments at which, time at times at which, and probably within the last week or two, at which I've been, you know, running through some YouTubes uh over there on the side, you know, and you'll hit two or three of them. And after about 17 minutes of this, I ask myself, what am I doing? Yeah. And then I ask myself, what am I supposed to be doing? And then I ask myself, who am I? And realize I'm the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, who's steward the time and the resources that he's given to me. And then I think to myself, maybe I should be about my father's business. Are you with me? So what I'm saying is I keep putting myself into a particular identity. I'm I I have to identify myself as somebody who has no right to do whatever he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it. I I just have to come to that conclusion that this who am I? Who are we? Are we just random creatures just doing whatever we want to do with no particular meaning or purpose or function for real life? So maybe I'm a little more intense than the average person, but I ask myself these more basic questions, you know, like you know, and then I and then I confess to God, I I I just blew 15 minutes, I'll never get that back again. Please forgive me, God. I'm back on your business. So that's that's kind of the process for Kevin Swanson.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

It's a good one. And I think more people would benefit by following that. You know, the Bible tells us to redeem the time for the days are evil. You can't, you know, it's interesting use of the Term redeem because redeem is like purchasing back something that was lost. So you can't really buy back more time. So I th I really believe the intent there is like because you've wasted time, now you need to be more careful with the time that you have. And as you get older, as you know, uh when we're younger, it just seems like the like time is is infinite and it's not. And uh so we we have a finite amount of time that has been allotted to us. God has determined our day of our our birth, our day of our death. And uh in between those two points, we what you're talking about is we need to have purpose. And in the book I talk about that's one of the big problems, is a lack of purpose. And when you lack when you lack purpose, then time is not valued as something as a precious commodity that God has given you. You're a steward of that time, and yeah, so I love it.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

You have recommendations just generally. Um don't give a four-year-old an iPhone, don't do porn, don't do social media or limit it to just this and this. I mean, is is have you come to some conclusions here?

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Yeah, well, I have some in the book. I actually have quite a few just practical tips. So there are a lot of like like there's a chapter 10 tips for taming tech, but like what you're asking, first of all, there's no reason an eight-year-old or even a 10-year-old needs a smartphone, yeah, or even a 12-year-old necessarily. So I it demonstrate in the book, I take the approach like we do with a driver's license. You know, all 50 states have rules, they have age limits, and uh so you know, here in Texas, when your child turns 15, they could get a driver's permit. But before they get it, they can't just go up to a counter and say, give me a driver's permit. They have to pass a test. They have to prove that they know the rules of the road. We need to start behaving that way with technology and saying, no, you don't get access to this. You need to first understand the dangers as well as the benefits. You need to know the rules of the road that mom and dad are going to set. And then, you know, maybe you get a permit. But think about that permit stage at 15. They don't get to drive alone, they're driving with a parent. But see, this is the challenge, this is the biggest hill to climb for most parents. It's so convenient just to give them the device and not be a shepherd over your children. But God's called you to be a shepherd. That means you have to be present. So, yeah, there's a there's uh it's a lot more work. And you know, as parents go like, well, you know, should I get my child a smartphone? Or, you know, when should I get them? It's like, well, when do you want them, when do you want their life to be wrecked? You know, tell me telling wait when do you want their life to become really complicated and your parenting to become even more complicated? And you should so probably walk through this stage with our children, helping them prepare.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

And you should probably lay out some expectations as well. Mom and dad are gonna check the history, you know, twice a week um on Wednesday and Saturday. Just be aware of that. That's what we're gonna do. And by the way, if you erase uh the history, uh, you don't get it for the next six months to a year, so just keep that in mind. You know, just some some basic, this is the way the accountability works in our home. We'll do covenant eyes or whatever. Uh you know, we we we need some accountability rules uh if we're going to be doing the full iPhone in the family. Seems to me that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Well, and and you don't have to go full-blown smartphone. Like today, there's a lot of alternatives, and we've we've tried those. I in the book I have a chapter on just like four experiments I did with my children. Since I didn't have ancestral wisdom, you're kind of navigating this not knowing. So my first one, my the oldest child gets it the most difficult, you know, because you're very ultra colorful. So my my 18-year-old daughter, that she was 18 when she got her first phone, and she had a lot of wisdom. She was more mature, she handled it very carefully, and and she was married by the time she was 19. So, um, but but my next kids, I like yours, you've gotten your kids involved in entrepreneurial things. And I taught my children to be entrepreneurs, and so they ran a farmer's market booth every Saturday for a decade. And like you can't run a booth today, even at a farmer's market, without like technology. You gotta be able to swipe cards, you gotta so what we did was we had I had an old phone and I and that's I used it as a loaner phone. I'm not giving this to my children. This is a phone you can use through your service provider. You can actually set it up in a parent-child uh relationship between the phones, okay, and you can have a lot more control over what lockdown. For example, in with that scenario, no apps could be added without me giving permission on my phone, you know, so I'd get alerted, and that's just and I could shut down like when it cuts off the internet, I could monitor it, all sorts of things. So that was experiment number two. And uh we had and then my three children at the time that were in business together all had to share that one phone, and it wasn't theirs, it was mine, and that's a big, that's a big aspect. It's like, no, that's not yours. This is dad's phone. And that means, you know, this is I I can take it, check it anytime. Now, the third option though, which uh when my when my youngest daughter was about 14, I was contacted by a company, and uh, I won't give their name now, but there's several companies that all do the same thing. But they said, Hey, we like what you do, we hear this is your space, we'd like to send you a phone and uh to to try it out. So they sent me this phone and it looks like a smartphone, but it doesn't connect to the internet. And uh so it may look cool in the back of a child's pocket. That doesn't really matter, but sometimes they feel it does. And uh, but it doesn't do anything. You know, you can call, you could text, you could take a picture with it, it's got a calculator. And uh so I actually tried this with my 14-year-old daughter, and uh, she never used it. It sat on the counter because it didn't do anything. And we had no trouble with that. But the fourth experience, check this out. Let's I think this was I maybe this is a one-off because I've been so I've been shepherding this in my home for so many years. When that same daughter turned 16 and was helping not only run the family business, but was also helping somebody else run a business, she came to me with a two-page document that she wrote bullet pointing an appeal for a full-blown smartphone, what um restrictions she would agree to, what parameters, and it was it was great. It was like her just a great document. I scratched one thing off of it, I add one of the things, we signed it, and I said, and one of the things that I added is like, yes, even though you're paying for the service, you're paying for the phone, uh, you're still in my home, that gives dad executive authority to it any time that this becomes a problem to confiscate it and it becomes mine, you know. And uh, but we didn't we didn't actually have problems uh with that. So anyway, those are some examples of some of those practical things you could do as a parent.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Yeah. Philip, is there are there any other uh points you want to make to to the average family that's just really struggling in the middle of it all and they just need to be delivered from the bondage of the digital page?

SPEAKER_02 30:24

Yeah, so I I use an acronym in the book called Grace, because I think we could all use a little bit of that, but it'll help you remember. So G stands for guardrails, which which those are some tech, those are some of the technological tools you can use to lock stuff down. Like you were mentioning, Covenant Eyes is one of those. That would be a guardrail. That's a filtering software, blocking software. Yeah. And then the next one is rules. Good old-fashioned family rules. This is what parenting is about. You know, we we do have to set up rules, and it's for your children's safety, it's for their well-being, and and uh good rules exist for good reasons. But then the so that's R. So G, R, guardrails, rules, and then A is what a lot of parents miss awareness. We need to have conversations about this, and they need to be age appropriate. But we need to start talking with our children at a young age why we have guardrails and rules, why this is important, why and when your child begins to say, yeah, but so and so down the street, they get to do it's like, what's your last name? I do this to my children. I'd say, What's your last name? They say Telfer. Okay, what's their last name? Smith. Okay, well, you have different last names, you know. This is you're a Telfer. This is how Telfers do things. And uh so that awareness, and as they get older, especially if you're gonna allow them to have uh the technology, access to the technology at some point, then you must, as a parent, have some really serious conversations about porn, about predators, about like uh sextortion, this new problem of sextortion where kids are getting hoodwinked. They think it's uh it's another young person, and they get asked for uh uh an inappropriate photo, and then they in a moment of of non-discretion, they give that photo, find out it's some gang in Africa that's now threatening to ruin their life unless they uh come up with money. It's called sex tortion. Kids are killing themselves over this. Terrible. So so this so these con so that leads to like the awareness why the conversations as they get older, we need to go deeper. And then the last one, E, on this grace is escape routes. And that means if all else fails, because kids can be are little sinners, they can be devious. I was when I was I was a little devious sinner, always figured out ways to get around the rules, the guardrails. And then, but if they if if all else failed and they find themselves in trouble like that, like being extorted online or some horrible situation, they need to know that at the end of the day, mom and dad are their safest place to come to, and to say, let's work this, let's we can get through this together. We love you, we love you more than anybody else on this planet other than God. And uh, we want we're we're thinking about you. And so that helping, talking about those escape routes so that they know they can come to mom and dad.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Good stuff, G-R-A-C-E. Friends, it's in the book help. The smartphone ate my family, a parents survive a guide for the digital age, my guest today, Philip Telfer, a good friend of this broadcast. Philip, thank you. Thanks for all that you've been doing, and I just trust this book will reach so many. Uh, I would say there's only about 180 million people in America today that need the book. So I'd recommend it to all of you out there. I hope you've got enough copies. But yeah, Philip Telfer's latest book, The Help, the Smartphone Ate My Family, and that's been the subject on this edition of the program. May God be with you and pray through this and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit, because remember, greater greater is he that is with us than he that is in the world. The Holy Spirit is big for this, he's good for this. And uh so follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit and don't be guided by the spirits of this age. Uh, Philip, thank you for joining us today on Generations Appreciative. And folks, we want to take a moment to encourage you to come behind the ministry, support our uh media ministry uh this time of year. Election cycles, you know, they come and go. Politicians make their promises, uh, laws change, but the greatest battle for our nation is not really being fought in Washington, D.C. It's fought in the home, in the lives, and the relationships of moms and dads and the kids. I've said this before, I think it's worth repeating. If we lose the family, we lose the culture, and ultimately we'll lose the nation. So that's why generations exist as a ministry, uh, not simply to comment on what's happening in America, but to strengthen uh relationships, to strengthen families with the truth of God's word. Whether it's through the radio program, through our books, our podcasts, our articles, our desire is to see that parents are discipling their children and building households that will stand for generations to come. Ultimately, it is generational faith, that the hearts of the fathers will turn back to the children, children to the fathers, and uh, and this would be a blessing upon the nation. Uh, to me, the the future of the world, the future of the kingdom of God, the future of families and nations rely upon the blessing that comes by this uh generational faith. And so if you believe in our vision, would you pray for us? And if God has given you means, uh just ask you to consider partnering with the ministry by uh July 31st. And you can learn more at generations.org slash gift. That's generations.org slash gift. It's it's Kevin Swanson, and I want to invite you back again next time as we continue to lay down a vision for the next generation. This has been a production of the Generations Media Network. For more information, go to generations.org/slash media.