Kids, Screens & Mental Wellness in a Digital World

Host Julie welcomes Trish Backman, School Mental Health Coordinator for the Kansas State Department of Education, for a conversation about children, screen time, and mental wellness. Drawing on her experience as both a professional and a parent, Trish explores how screen use can affect kids' social and emotional development. She shares practical strategies for families and highlights encouraging success stories from schools taking bold steps to reclaim real human connection — reminding listeners that change starts with one conversation at a time. 

Transcript

Speaker 0:04

Welcome to Rock Talk, the Telehealth Rocks podcast. I'm Julie Freijat, your host. Telehealth Rocks is a federally funded program that brings behavioral health and pediatric care directly into schools. We partner with local communities to address social determinants of health, support school-based services, and provide telementoring training. Thanks for learning with us. Hi, everyone, and welcome to our second episode of Rock Talk, the Telehealth Rocks podcast. Today we're talking about something that's on every parent's and educator's mind right now: kids, screens, and how to promote mental wellness in a digital world. I'm joined today by Trish Backman, the School Mental Health Coordinator for this Kansas State Department of Education. Hi, Trish, would you mind introducing yourself?

Speaker 2 0:49

Sure. I am Trish Backman and I have been the school mental health coordinator at the Kansas State Department of Ed for a little over three years. It is a blessing to be able to serve our state in that aspect. It is just absolutely a service that I get to do by learning what the needs are in our state and districts of all different sizes and talk with not only just the educators, but the families and the students and hear their voice and hear the choices that they want to have available and the choices that they are making and how we can use all of that together to work and build community amongst the school districts.

Speaker 1:37

That's awesome. Thank you so much for that introduction, Trish. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, Telehealth Rocks also produced a video with Trish last year that covers some of the very same topics we'll be talking about today. So feel free to check that out on our YouTube channel if you're curious. All right, so let's go ahead and get into some of these questions. So I want to start with talking about what's at stake when we talk about kids and screen time and why it matters so much right now. So can you tell me a little bit about that?

Speaker 2 2:04

I think when we think about what's at stake, um, when we hear about it in the media, it seems very high stake. And it is, however, when we look at the old saying, like, how do you eat an elephant just one bite at a time? I do really think that's where we are with screen time and social media. Um, when we talk about what we're really concerned about with screen time, is we are worried about the social and the emotional development of our kids because it seems to be very depressed, very uh slowed down, and not up to the pace that we saw when we were growing up, regardless, I'm in the 50s, um, regardless of 50s down to 30s. We really felt like we were growing up every single day at a really rapid rate. And now our kids are developing emotionally much slower because there's less social interaction. They feel like they're socially connected, but it's a sense of artificial intimacy. And it's it's the AI I'm more worried about because our kids think they're connected, but they're really not making social engagement because social engagement involves mirror neurons. You have to be looking at people, you have to be able to see what their face is doing. And when we're on a screen all the time and interacting, you're not getting that reciprocation. And so when they get in public and they're actually with other people, they don't know how to socialize. And so we see anxiety, we're seeing trying and not being able to, or sitting back and not taking a chance at trying to engage with somebody and it leads to depression. So I feel like that emotional part of our kids is slowed down, maybe even stunted if they don't ever challenge themselves and take chances and get out there. And that is why it has been just really important because our kids are not meeting some of the milestones that we would want them in their social development to be at at the ages where they used to be.

Speaker 4:12

For sure, yeah. You do a great job kind of talking about, you know, what's at stake when we're really talking about screen time, because like you said, there's so much that's involved in it that I think we can kind of get a little lost. So um I also really liked how you kind of talked about uh, you know, reflecting on the way that things felt when you were growing up and the way things feel now as you watch your kids grow up. Um and that leads me kind of into the next question where you know, you wear two hats. You're a mental health coordinator, but you're also a mom. So can you talk about how those perspectives shape the way that you think about technology in children?

Speaker 2 4:46

Absolutely. Um, I think that one of the things as a mom that I really have to gauge, and then I also use it and take it into my my work, is we have to look at what our kids want and what they need. And sometimes balancing between those two is uh it's kind of tricky because we want our kids to be mature and then we need them to have experiences where they can fall and sometimes learn how to dust themselves off and get back up. And sometimes because we feel like they might be a little bit more behind where we were at that age, we baby them or we hover over them. Um, I recently was able to be with over almost 300 kids at the Capitol, and they're all there activating and literally engaging with their politicians so they can advocate for school mental health. And one of our kids was talking about, you know, you guys think you're helicopter parents, but some parents are actually lawnmower parents. And I was like, what is that? And they said, you know, it was one thing to hover and watch and and just not ever let us have any independence, but now we have so many people that are just like cutting the grass and blazing a trail and they're making the path really wide and making sure all the rocks are out of the way so nobody can stumble. And it's like we're walking the path, but we don't know what it's like if there's a difficulty or if there's a hard time because you guys have made it even, there's no snow, there's no rocks, you know, you you've cleared the way and we're not able to make mistakes and learn from them in a safe environment because you're making it where there's no mistakes available. And I thought, oh wow, that is out of the mouth of babes. Yeah, it's powerful.

Speaker 6:32

Yeah, I had not heard that term before. I hadn't either, and so I was like, I'm still mulling on it, but it's not untrue. That's no, that's a really interesting term. And um, you know, what you touched on there about with the lawnmower parent terminology, about how they're kind of clearing this path for these students to, you know, walk down it, um, I think it really reflects kind of what you were talking about as the difference in the, you know, the two generations and watching our children grow up now without a lot of the barriers maybe that we had in the past. And so then what made you realize that screen time wasn't just about limiting hours, but it was also about protecting human connection? Because you talked a little bit about that earlier.

Speaker 2 7:10

Yeah. So when we talk about building human connection, it's hard to do that if you haven't practiced it. So when we think about screen time, when we talk about social interaction and social engagement, it's very important to give kids opportunities and places to build healthy habits. And if they're engaging in things and we think it's not a healthy path that they're heading down, then we also can engage and say, Hey, do you think this is a behavior or a habit that's serving you? Or is it something that you are doing that is building an addiction? So that's where I like to frame the boundaries for screen time because a lot of kids in this in this time that kids are going to school right now, they are getting taught some neuroscience. There's a lot of people talking to them about this is what your brain looks like. You know, you've got your amygdala in the middle, and if your emotions aren't in control, your lid is flipped. But sometimes we don't also layer that with when your lid is flipped and you get on your screen to self-regulate and you're giving yourself dopamine hits, and that is feeding a chemical in your brain, you're not necessarily chemically regulating, you're calming your breathing and maybe your heart rate down, but your brain is still fully activated. And so, blue lights, having those, it stimulates your brain. So the minute you get your phone, even if you're not looking at something that's like really exciting or engaging, that blue light from your phone is a stimulant. And so when we talk about regulating, they know a little bit about the neuroscience, but we need to make sure we go all in and give them that balance that if this is what you're doing and that's where you're getting your stimulation from, is that a healthy habit? Unfortunately, it's a sustainable one because we could sit on our phones all day long. We could be on there 12 week the whole entire weekend if we don't have activities to do. So that's where as parents, we have to balance what we're helping our kids get engaged in and then help them monitor their screen time. Otherwise, they can build habits that we think are, you know, not necessarily damaging, but they're building addictions because of the chemical releases that are there building while they're engaging with their technology.

Speaker 9:27

Absolutely. And I love you bringing in that neuroscience perspective because I do think that can kind of get lost in this conversation about screen time is, you know, the neuroscience of it all and the fact that it does actually impact your brain. So can you kind of walk us through then what happens in the brain when kids are getting those dopamine hits from screens and why their parents should care about that?

Speaker 2 9:46

Absolutely. Um when I think about when my kid is on my phone or when they were younger, like I have a granddaughter who's three right now. Uh, we don't do any screen time when she's with us. And my son's like, when she's with you, what kind of things are you guys gonna do? Do you want me to send an iPad? Do you want and I'm like, nope, because we're not gonna be on it. We're not gonna even, this is gonna be screen-free time, and they're very okay with that because they do like get up and move around. She's an only child. And so while mom's cooking dinner, she might get a tablet to look at, but it's like get up and they do these dances, you know, or it's different activities. So it's not just sit and get, but it's also activities that are layered with the alphabet and the number and the shapes. So making sure it's educational and something engaging physically. So that's one thing. But when we get on devices and we're getting the blue light hits, it totally is nothing but preferred activities. So if you're on your phone, if you just monitor as an adult yourself how many times you pick up your phone, you can look at that on your iPhone. I have an iPhone, so I'm not sure how Samsung does it or the other brands, but if you look at how many times you pick up your phone a day, that should be your baseline because once you start looking and going, oh my gosh, I picked this thing up 149 times today. Like the first time I looked, that was literally, I was like, oh wow, in 24 hours I picked this up 149 times. So sometimes we'll do a challenge as a family, and who had the least amount of pickups? Because that person doesn't have to do dishes, you know, like something like that. But make it a family challenge to not pick that up. What would you do instead? Okay, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna go for a walk or I'm gonna throw the ball to the dog in the backyard. Those are those same hits that you get in your brain with those endorphins, but it's outside, it's with nature, it's engaging with another thing that looks at you, even if it's just your pet, it's gonna be happy and wiggling its tail, you know. But if you're having a conversation with another human, you can still get those. And they may not always give mirror neurons that feed, you know, like you wanting to be happy or thinking you're always saying the right thing, but you're still getting those endorphins, and it's in a way where you're practicing engaging basing on the other person, not always necessarily engaging or liking the thing that you're saying, and it's not always a preferred activity. Sometimes you're gonna have to do what other people want to do. Yeah, you may not want to go shopping or you might not want to go to this store, but you do it because you're receiving and and giving with another person, and it's learning that give and take. So it's absolutely getting the same chemicals in a totally different way where you're learning to engage and like do that reception with other people.

Speaker 12:35

Absolutely. Yeah, I appreciate the breakdown between kind of the two different, you know, ways that you could look at it. And um, yeah, like what you mentioned about looking at how much you're picking up your phone, because I've looked at my screen time and you know, I think to myself, wow, I could have spent this many hours learning a new craft or doing some yard work or something, and it's amazing when you actually get to see the breakdown of how much time you're spending on that device. Yeah. Um, so that's great. I want to kind of shift gears a little bit and I want to talk a little bit about artificial intelligence because it's such a huge topic right now, and everybody is, you know, being exposed to this at different levels, and I think it's important for us to kind of talk about the best ways to navigate that. So AI chat features right now are really embedded in a lot of kids' games. Um and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what parents should be watching for.

Speaker 2 13:23

Uh, this is a really touchy one for me because um I I because of where I sit at the Department of Ed, I get phone calls and sometimes they're suicide postvention calls because we've had a kid who learned how to do something harmful to themselves through a chat that they got. And they may have like engaged with the chat thinking they were practicing a help-seeking behavior. But the thing we have to remember about AI is it is designed to please us, just like we were talking about those preferred activities. AI has not been designed or structured to indicate that if you're asking about self-harm or something like in the area of how to die from suicide, it will tell you how to. And I pause because that's how serious it is. We really need to hear that. It is not uh it it's there to answer the question you're asking. And if you're asking something like that, it should automatically have some safeguards in there that say, please go talk to an adult, or who are the actual live people sitting in the room next to you? When was the last time you talked to a human? When and it doesn't do that because it's it's designed to just give you an answer in the quickest amount of time possible. And then if you ask follow-up questions, it still wants to please you, it will go deeper down the rabbit hole. So when we look at our kids' games, if they have AI chat features in them, we need to know that. And right now, I don't know. I know that our attorney general has been working very tirelessly on uh what does the engagement with social media look like? I have been subpoenaed, so there are things that I don't talk about. I never have talked about social media, but I will talk about screen time because if we're on our screens, if it's social media, a game, anything that we're engaging with, YouTube, anything, we should know where the boundaries are. And right now the boundaries are so unclear, that is what makes it very dangerous for letting our kids engage with it. Because if they can ask a question about suicide and it tells them how to do that, that is not something we want our kids on. So I've been challenging parents to look, if you're letting your kids be on a game, and I'm not gonna say specific ones just because I've learned you don't do that, because that's how subpoenas come rolling down the hill. But if you if you are on a game, do you know if your kid is actually talking with people? How do you know it's a person on the other end and not a chatbot? Right. Is there do they have that clearly defined? If they don't, are you going to have some kind of filter that will block that game out so that they're not engaging with that because you don't know what kind of advice a chatbot is going to give them? We want to think that we're going to get better advice from humans, and there are some humans that are just not kind humans that they might accidentally engage with online. But if AI has no guardrails, it is right now more dangerous because it takes them places that they may not have intended to go just by asking a question that they really wanted an answer for, but should be asking an adult.

Speaker 16:40

Absolutely. Yeah. I appreciate all of that. And it leads me into this next question, which I think is really important of how should parents be talking to their kids about the difference between engaging with an AI versus a real human. Sure.

Speaker 2 16:53

And I do think that we also need to make sure we're still talking with our kids about how to engage with humans because we do, without those mirror neurons, have people who you hear the phrase scream warriors. You know, they just really say things that they wouldn't say to another person if they were sitting in the same room with that person. Because maybe they don't really care if it disappoints the person or if it makes them sad, but they will worry about their own safety if they say something and they think somebody's gonna lash out at them, but they're not afraid to say that same thing if they're on a device. So that is that we've got to make sure that we're teaching our kids. If a kid would say that to you online, do you think they would say that to you if you were face to face? So if they would not, is that a kind thing to say? Is that how we want to be treated? Because we should not engage with others that way if we don't want to be treated that way. But I think that it's important to make sure that our kids understand that there will be people who will say things to try and get them to go to a place, or they may pretend to be a person that they're not. And so it's hard to distinguish if that's a person that really is who they say they are, and that is a good conversation to still have with our kids. The thing with AI, that part doesn't seem to be the issue. It's if you're asking an AI bot something, it's going to tell you exactly what you asked it. So are you knowing how to ask good questions? And if your AI bot or any technology that you're working with is telling you what to do, are you just doing it? Where is that discrimination line? If it's telling you, yeah, I really think you should consider this, or some people consider this, and this is how they release stress, they may be taking you down a path that you didn't really mean to ask a question about. So we should never let our devices tell us what to do. And that is a good piece of advice to follow when you're looking with AI or humans that you're engaging with online. So always ask, what would I do if my mom was sitting next to me? You know, like where is your boundary of what would be a healthy response from this person on the other end? Would I tell my parents that this friend of mine online just told me that this is what we should be doing? That might not be a person you want to be engaging with, whether it's an AI bot or an actual person on the other line.

Speaker 19:22

Absolutely. I think those are really great questions to keep in mind and ask.

Speaker 2 19:26

Yeah, it's personal filtering with your digital device.

Speaker 19:29

Yes, absolutely. And I like I love the statement that you had there about, you know, we should never be letting our devices tell us what to do. Because you know, the first time you said that to me, I was like, wow, I hadn't even considered before that um, you know, my devices could be in control of me. But it's absolutely something that we have to keep our keep our eyes on as we, you know, keep moving into a more and more digital world where um our devices are around us even more and we're using them even more for things.

Speaker 2 19:53

Well, I think about my maps. Every time I go somewhere, I put the address in there and it tells me where to go and I just do it.

Speaker 20:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2 20:00

You know, I know it tells me up here, take a left, and I go.

Speaker 20:04

And you just trust it.

Speaker 2 20:05

If I didn't look at the map ahead of time and see where it was taking me, I may end up in an area that I really didn't mean to go and it's unsafe, but I went there because it told me to. And so it's a guide and it's taking us on a path. But do we really look at pullback and maybe ask two or three other sources if this is the path that I wanted to go on and then make a decision? Or do we just go with the first thing they throw out there? We don't usually do that in real life, but we do it when we engage with technology. And that's where we need to step back and practice impulse control and check it with two or three other sources because it may not take us down the right path, or it may actually take us further into something that we didn't mean to go into without checking with other sources.

Speaker 20:55

Absolutely. And I like that you establish that kind of line between, you know, like real life and technology and just understanding that there is a boundary, right? Because I think sometimes the online world can feel so intangible that it doesn't, it doesn't feel real or like there's not real implications from engaging online. Um, and so I really like that you kind of emphasize understanding where that line is.

Speaker 2 21:15

And in human interaction, if I ask a friend, hey, what would you do in this situation and they tell me something, you get kind of a gut feeling. You get because of those mirror neurons, your body gets like a parasympathetic response where you're like, oh, I don't know if I really want to. I mean, I know how that just made me feel with you saying that, but with technology, that personality is not on the other end of the line. And so it's really flat, and you may not get a good sense of if an of if a red flag should be up or if you should be alerted. So that's why I think it's important to teach our kids don't just ask one question, don't just ask on this chat GPT or uh whatever the other versions of uh Chat bot might be open AI, whatever you're engaging with, did you Google it? Did you did you also maybe ask a human? Did you phone a friend? Remember? Was it Millionaire? Yeah. Like, where is the phone a friend lifeline anymore? Yeah. I think that we need to actually ask a human. Like, did you ask a teacher? Did you ask a classmate? Did you ask a parent? Did you ask your coach? Like, who was the human? Did you only use technology to make your decision with you?

Speaker 22:27

Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great point. And I want to kind of continue this talk on, you know, keeping a balance between, you know, technology and real life. And I want to shift it more to talking about the balance between trust and monitoring because we've talked a lot about, you know, the things that parents should keep in mind when they're talking to their kids about technology or the things that they can do and the kinds of questions that they might be able to ask. But I want to kind of hear from you about how you can give kids privacy while still keeping them safe online, but also teaching them some of these really valuable lessons about how to operate in the online world.

Speaker 2 23:05

So in our experience with our kids, our two older children is when technology was first coming out. And so we made sure, I mean, they were boys, video games were their thing. And so making sure that there was a balance and teaching them, we called it a digital diet. Like you're gonna only be allowed on a device of any kind for this amount of time. And when they're younger, um, my husband was the guy that every day when we come home from work, we were both educators. You know, I would go in, start making dinner. He had the kids out front playing in the yard, or we were going on a walk after dinner. We were engaging as a family in that way. Having conversations with your kids is critical because you learn about their character, you learn about their motives, you learn about the things that really get them excited. You also learn about the things that they struggle with, like some it might be impulse control or good decision making. You know, certain kids, when they're hanging out with that child, they never seem to make good decisions because they both really like to get the adrenaline running and then they just all of a sudden make a bad impulse decision. Well, we need to monitor how much time those two are hanging out together or in a more structured environment where they can't make an impulsive decision other than on a basketball court. You know, like that's a good place to make good impulse decisions. So we have to know that about our kids. And if we don't know that about our kids and we hand them a device, we aren't sure what their decision-making skills look like because we haven't engaged with it in real time. So in real time is very important. And then when you're trusting your kid, you also know that they're humans and they're gonna make mistakes and there's nothing that's broke that can't be fixed. You have you can you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, but you can mend harm or you can repair something if you make a bad choice. It's it's not a permanent thing, it's a it's just a temporary momentum thing, and we can make better decisions. But the monitoring piece is letting them engage with what you're comfortable with them engaging with, and only within the boundaries that you want your family to operate. So we have things blocked like uh we don't want pornography, we don't want a lot, we don't, I don't want to say a lot of cursing, but it's hard to block anything that uses bad language because bad language, when you mark that on filters, it can it can block all kinds of things that we wouldn't necessarily consider bad language. Right. And so, and making sure that gambling isn't a thing with that has been important to me because it is another form of addiction. Anything that can be addiction forming that we don't want them to have access to while they're still developing good decision making and good habits, that is something that we want to make sure we monitor and have conversations with them about this is why in our family we don't value that because we think that you need to make really good decisions. And right now, while your brain is still developing, it's really hard to make decisions when they're throwing 12 decisions at you right away, and then it all of a sudden starts up in the ante and you don't realize you just got in over your head. You know, so what kind of what kind of things can you engage with that don't have that in there? There's a lot out there, there's a lot of great stuff out there, but human interactions, we also need to make sure that we're leveraging that with our friends that we choose to engage with because sometimes we can get in over our head and be making bad decisions there. Okay, how do we pull that back a little bit? This is a friend that can be maybe on the outer circle and not necessarily on the full inner circle that you share all your stuff with. You know, it's teaching that balance and how to navigate social situations before we have artificial social situations.

Speaker 26:51

Absolutely, yeah. And I I like you mentioned, you know, like there's there's so many choices in front of you because that really is what the internet feels like. I mean, you're just it's right out in the wild west, and there's so much that you can do. And so I I agree with you. I think it's important, you know, to have those boundaries and to establish them ahead of time and instead of sorry actively. Yeah.

Speaker 2 27:10

I'm gonna interrupt for a second because I think that one of the things that we as adults have done poorly is made it the responsibility of all the social media platforms to restrict the age of our children of who gets on what. And yes, that is important, and yes, they say they do that, but it is my job as a parent to know if my kid has Facebook and they're nine years old.

Speaker 27:33

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 27:34

I need to know if that's what's on their phone. It is in my name. And if they're getting groomed, if somebody is potentially trying to reach them and trying to traffic them, I have to be responsible for what I've put in my kid's hand and make sure that I understand who could be getting at them on the different platforms. It is so hard for us to stay ahead of that, but sometimes we ask our kids to stay ahead of it for us, and we ask the social media sites to make sure everybody's being exactly who they say they are. When if we think it's that risky, we have a choice not to engage with it.

Speaker 28:10

I like also what you mentioned there about we expect our children sometimes to keep up with uh, you know, keep up with technology for us.

Speaker 2 28:16

Absolutely. We have to model for them. Yeah. I mean, they should not be leading us in this area. It is old lady 52 years old sitting here right now trying to take uh uh being on top of all the social media and websites and the platforms. But it is my job because there's people out in schools that are going, okay, what could we be using? How do we use AI in the classroom? Well, it should be an editor. It should be something that you use as a format or a template or help you to be creative when you don't have an avenue that you know how to do that creative piece, but also understand it created a piece for you, and that's a piece that you could have done differently, but it took that creative piece away from you by giving you a platform that's just kind of a canned platform to plug something into. Don't let it write for you, don't let it speak for you, don't let it make your decisions, but use it as a tool after you've already created something. So after you've already developed relationships, then you can engage on social media. It's just kind of a how do you want to level up? And then at what level do you say I'm done? I tap out. I don't need to be, I don't, I don't want to engage with that.

Speaker 29:26

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to kind of go back to talking about monitoring. And I want, I am, I we talked about this a little bit when we did the video, and you kind of mentioned some of the monitoring monitoring tools that you use. And I'm wondering if you can go ahead and walk us through some of the monitoring tools that you use and and why you use them.

Speaker 2 29:44

I'm gonna grab my phone. Okay, so the one that we use, there's a bunch out there, and we started using this one, and it's probably been 10 years ago, but the one that we use is called Qustodio. And the reason I liked this is because there's one fee for the whole entire year, and you're not always having to pay a monthly or whatever, but you can hit a button that says family pause. So this is a time where as a parent, we're not going to be on our phones either. So, like you can set a time of the day. So it every night at dinner from about five till seven, we have a family pause. Like nobody's doing technology at that time. You will have conversations, you will be engaging, you will be getting dinner, you will be playing in the yard, we will go for a walk, we will do something, and we're socially interacting with each other because that's the expectation. It's also not a temptation for mom to look at her phone and check two emails in between something and then realize 30 minutes disappeared if you're on family pause together. But it also allows you to go through and set up some limits, like what is the time of the day that you're gonna allow your kid to be on the phone? Do you want your kid on the phone before they go to school? Because that can totally put their emotions in the toilet if they see something that's totally dysregulating. So do you want to only open up their phone time at three o'clock right before school gets out? You don't have to deal with if it's in a bag or if it's locked in a locker or if you have your phone turned off during that time only for emergency calls, then you don't have to worry about what the social limits are at the school building if as a family I already put one in place, even if my kids at school. I know they have phones at school. I know if I need to reach my kid, I can call the office. But if there's an emergency and they need to dial 911, they can dial 911. That's, I mean, that is one of the excuses we hear about why kids need to have their phones at school. I can also tell you working with our secure, safe and secure schools, they're like, that is such a huge issue if there is actually an emergency at school. You have every kid dialing 911, yeah. They can't take all the calls. Yeah. So we have to we have to trust the adults that we do allow our kids to interact with at school. But when we're looking at the boundaries, you can set all kinds of different rules. Like there's certain websites I don't want them getting on, dating websites. My kids don't need to date online. Yeah. Period. I want them to meet people. I want them to be able to talk with people. Do they have TikTok? Do they have Snapchat? Yes. But actually, both of my kids have chosen not to have Snapchat because they're like, there's nothing productive when it disappears in a certain amount of time. And what if I don't read it in time? And like, I don't need the pressure to keep up a streak. I want to see my people like face to face 12 days in a row. I don't care if I didn't get to see them online or some a picture of their ceiling. Like, yeah, why do I need that? Is that really a streak? What are we watching streaks for of people's ceilings? You know, like so they've been able to discriminate between what is actual engagement and what is like social engagement that they really want to have. And so if my kids are asking, hey, can I meet up with so-and-so and go have a Coke date? Yes, like that's still a thing. I didn't realize we didn't do that in my time, but they're coming back. Like people want to go meet at the coffee shops. Please do. Please go sit and have a cafe latte. And yes, maybe you need to have a you know, a juice drink. I don't know. Whatever you need so that you're engaging with other human beings, I think that's much better than getting on a social platform and not actually engaging face to face. Yes. So making sure that you can have some kind of boundaries of where your kids are at online, you you tell them that you want them to have freedoms and you trust them. Times when you start interacting and engaging with your phone in our house has been like when they're driving, I mentioned my map. We don't have maps in our cars anymore. I do want them to know how to navigate. I want them to know where to go. And if they're with their friends and they need to get away and go someplace that's safe, I want them to be able to enter something on their phone and know how to get there and trust their device to help them get there. So that is where starting to reintroduce like the technology is when they're driving, that's important. They need to be able to have some safety, they need to be able to know where they're gonna be able to go. Do you have to have a smartphone to do that? I don't know. There's like the dumb flip phones that are out there again now. If you have to judge what you want your kids to have access to and where you want those limits to be, because we are the parents.

Speaker 34:17

Sure.

Speaker 2 34:18

We're the ones buying the devices. We are responsible for what mental health we put in our kids' hands.

Speaker 34:24

Yes. And I love that you highlight that nuance too about you know, needing, you know, maybe needing the phone to help them navigate, but maybe you don't need it for these social interactions. Maybe we can do those in a different way. And and really reflecting that, you know, it's okay to have that nuance and it's okay for things to not be completely black or white or go one way or the other.

Speaker 2 34:40

And if we don't have balance, it also they they will be very quick to point that out to you. When they become teenagers, they they're very quick to not just notice things but speak about them. Yes. So we have to model having good balance. And if we're giving our kid a phone, because we don't want to have to deal with the pressure of them pressuring us about our phone time, there's an imbalance there. And we have to take care of that for ourselves before we hand a phone to our child. Yes. So making sure that we're modeling good phone behaviors ourselves is very important. Absolutely.

Speaker 35:14

So on that note about um, you know, talking with children um and that they will let you know if you don't have that balance. Um, you mentioned um in the video that we did the concept of a digital diet, and you mentioned it earlier too. And so um I wanted to ask, you know, how did that conversation about having a digital diet go with your children? And did they resist it? You know, what was the process like getting them to kind of be involved in that?

Speaker 2 35:40

So there are some boundaries in our house of these are guidelines mom and dad set and their expectations that'll be followed. But there's also the conversation about what do we want our family norms to be? And we don't want to just engage with each other, me upstairs, my kids downstairs, texting each other. Are there I we I tried to make the rule, don't yell across the house, but then I was like, wait, I'd much rather them go, Mom, can you bring, you know, and I'm like, I'll be down, and you go downstairs. I would much rather socially engage than get a text and hey, would you bring me the whatever? No, I would rather hear their voice. And so those were some of the norms, and we sat down and came up with those together. It's very important for kids to have voice and choice because they often will set much stricter boundaries than we actually would put in place. And sometimes they put boundaries in place that we're like, oh, I kind of like to be on my phone at that time of the day, you know? Yeah. And it puts us in check. So I say we need to get the check up from the neck up. So if our head is not in the right headspace, we need to listen to our kids because there's times that they want us to be engaging with them and we're hiding on our phones, and we can't do that because it's not good modeling.

Speaker 36:57

Absolutely. So kind of going back to the the earlier question where we talked a little bit about smartphones and putting apps on them to kind of limit the behaviors that they're doing on there. When parents ask you uh what's the right age for a smartphone, what's your honest answer?

Speaker 2 37:14

My answer is again, going back to how well do you know your child? Um, there's all kinds of situations where kids might need a specific phone. Like we've got kids living in two, three different houses. We've got kids that are staying home with an elderly family member after school because that's what we have available so that they have somebody that's keeping an eye on them. I mean, there's a lot of different family situations, but does that mean they need to have a smartphone? And not necessarily. They can have a flip phone where you can call, text, and maybe use a map, you know, if they're driving. But uh your kids are going to be your responsibility for knowing where their maturity level is. If you know, uh I like to go to um we have the 26 skills that matter. If you look at the Kansas Cannes competency framework, look at those skills and just kind of each kid that you have in your house is going to be totally different. And some of them might be really good at time management, some of them might be really good at problem solving and decision making. Well, if they have some more mature skills, maybe they're able to handle navigating things on a smartphone. But if your kid does not practice those in real time, they are not going to practice them on technology when they can get 20 or 30 preferred activities at the fingertips and jump from one thing to the next. They could jump from one bad choice to a next. And how are we monitoring that? Yeah. You can't block everything. You know, you can you can monitor the categories, but you're not going to be able to keep your kid from going down a digital rabbit hole of something that you thought may have been okay, and they're making one bad choice after another. So you have to know your kid. And at the end of the night, with a lot of those apps, you can look and see where they've gone. And I never spent every night looking through and I didn't read my kids' text messages because that is where my boundary for privacy was. I would have been mortified if my mom would have been listening, watching, and reading all of my notes that we passed in the hallway or like that. I I feel like we have to give our kids permission to fail. Yeah. There's gonna be times that they're gonna fall and they're gonna stumble. We can't that's the lawnmower parent part. We can't blaze the trail for them so they never have any hiccups. We learn from making mistakes. We learn when we have hard times or setbacks. We can't keep that from happening in life because it is not realistic. Absolutely. We don't want to, you know, give them a setup to fail, but we want to make sure that we can coach them through when we see things aren't going well. But with the apps, you can look and see where they're spending their time. And then maybe you give them more time to engage because they're engaging appropriately. And maybe if they're not, then that's your conversation of look, this is something that looks like it's really time consuming for you. And I think you're spending all of your time that you're getting on your phone on nothing but negative and or nothing but you're getting dopamine hit after, like you're not even staying on a on a platform, a website, a game, anything more than two seconds. Like, what's going on? Are you able to have a complete thought without being interrupted? Because you're really developing some bad habits.

Speaker 40:29

Absolutely, yeah. Thank you for that. And yeah, thank you for kind of illustrating again that it really, you know, it comes down to the judgment of, you know, the parents and and figuring out what, you know, who their kids are and what their kids are going to need from them. I think that's a really important point that you made. Um, I want to go to this next question, and I want to talk a little bit about um how having a community around you can really help with navigating some of these things. Because we talked about this in the video, and I think you made some really great points about how doing this together as a community can be really effective. Um and I think it can be really effective when we talk about, you know, we might set these limits for our kids in our own homes, but they go out into the real world and maybe their friends don't have the same limits as them for going online. Maybe, you know, parents have different expectations for their children. So can you talk a little bit about why it's so much harder to manage something like this alone versus managing it as a community of parents and educators?

Speaker 2 41:22

Anytime we can do something with a group of people who not everybody wants to be like exactly the same rules in every house because that's not gonna work. It's not realistic. But when we can have a group of parents that understand this is where we kind of want to come from, like if you're gonna sleep over at the Backman's house, all the phones are gonna be on the counter at 10 o'clock at night. And you guys can stay up and and do dances on the TV, you can watch videos, you can play games, you can do whatever, but I'm not gonna be having to worry about having a sleepover at Backman's where you guys are bullying somebody online or you guys are engaging with some 29-year-old and you think they're 14 when you're for you know, like we're not gonna have technology issues, that becomes a safe place. And there are gonna be parents that are stronger and parents that aren't. And when you know that you have that in place, parents will support each other as long as we're all doing this together. And then some parents sometimes will fall off because they're like, I'm not doing that. And you can't make no, nobody's gonna make anybody do anything. But if you're not in line with the virtues and values of this friend group or this family structure, then your child is always welcome to stay with us. They can always be around us, but do know that this is what we will do when they're here. They're not gonna be on their phone all night. And if you need to get in touch with them, you can call me, I'll wake them up, you can whatever. But they don't need to have their phone all night long when they're at our house because we're gonna give them opportunities to engage in other things that they don't need to be on their phone for. So making sure you have people who are supportive of the same I don't want to say prerogatives, but like that priorities maybe, it's very important because you build that community, you build that strength. I have people at my house all the time and it just cracks me up because you hear, oh, kids are on their phones all the time, they don't even know how to put them down. And I will literally have a group of 10 girls in my house and all of their phones are sitting on the counter and they're out for a walk or they're downstairs or they're doing something together and they don't even have their phones with them. And I think part of that also is because their school, they don't get on their phones. And so it's not part of their day. And so if we build that into them always engaging 247, that becomes their habit. That's what it's their comfort place, it's what they know. So schools have been raising the bar. A lot of schools have shifted away from having technology at their fingertips all the time. If you ask schools who got rid of cell phones the last two years, they will tell you how loud their school has gotten. They will Tell you how many kids are walking around with a deck of cards in their back pocket. They will tell you all the cool games the kids are playing. That's awesome. And it is fun. And you hear that engagement, but you also feel the level of energy in those rooms. And it's a totally different vibe than when you walk in and everybody's got their nose. And there's times when you have to be writing a paper, and that's going to be the nose in the tech and you're doing your work. But that should not be the whole entire day. Because we have to teach them all these different ways to engage. And most schools are not doing tech engagement for eight hours straight unless the kid's online learning. And and and there are there are really good places for that for kids. But the kids who are even in virtual schools, their parents, a lot of them are getting them out and doing clubs, doing activities. They're in 4 H or they're doing a sport with other kids who are in virtual schools. So just finding that balance is very important. Everybody needs different things, but we've got to find that sweet spot for our kids so that they're not just surviving but thriving.

Speaker 45:02

Sure, yeah. And I love you mentioned, you know, when you go to those schools that have implemented those different bands and the loudness. And I remember hearing from one school that the cafeteria had never been louder before. And it's so fun to hear those stories. And could you maybe share an example of what it looks like when parents, schools, and communities get it right?

Speaker 2 45:20

Um, there's a school that one of my friends was teaching there, and she said, You should see the number of discipline referrals that we had last year compared to this year. We thought, and and as teachers, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be the only one that's enforcing this because I really want to do this. I want to get it right. And their their discipline referrals, their behaviors were way down. But the kids were also asking for groups like Y Link and making sure that they had uh like Erica's Lighthouse in Kansas City does some teen engagement groups. They have so many different clubs and organizations because the kids are like, we really want to be with each other. Uh the school that I graduated from, I they I'm my kids aren't there, but they have like fifth quarter, they do all kinds of teen engagement activities because the more kids are around each other and they're used to that social engagement, they want more of it. So it's just getting that dopamine hit again, but they don't know what they're missing if they don't engage. So you hear the success stories. McPherson actually at Christmas break this year had parents bring the laptops back to the school. Laptops will only be used at school, they're not coming home. Because how do you know a kid isn't on a game and getting a chat bot that's dangerous and it's your school-issued device? Well, you know how we know? It's not coming home. It's only gonna be on our server at our building with our adult supervision. And if parents want to give their own device to their kids at home, that's their choice. But they're not gonna be on our school device doing it.

Speaker 46:54

Absolutely. So, what are some resources that you would recommend for parents who want to stay informed on this kind of topic? Books, podcasts, apps. Obviously, we're talking on a podcast today.

Speaker 2 47:05

Yes, yes, and yes. So I love Chase Your Dreams. It gives parents and kids great opportunities and educators to hear what other people are doing that are very trauma responsive, getting kids out there engaged and doing activities. Um, if you're an educator, uh QuickBites that SDAC does is another, it's really quick. It's like eight minutes, 10 minutes, and it'll talk about one topic and it kind of goes really in depth about that one topic. There's a lot of great podcasts out there. You have to kind of just decide what is the topic you're wanting to learn about, and then find one that speaks to you in a way that gets you excited to continue wanting to go back and learn. Uh Jean Twenge wrote a book that I read I can't even remember how many years ago, called iGen. And it was my first, oh my goodness, this rewiring of the brain. And it talked about since iPhones and iPads were introduced, and she just wrote another book, and it's called The Ten Rules, and it's about what are some boundaries every family should be talking about or considering. And so that's her second book that she has out. She just testified in Congress a couple weeks ago, and they were like, these are guidelines that we should be putting in place, but we don't have to have lawmakers or policymakers or school districts give us the boundaries and the guidelines to function in. As a family, we can be the consumers of our own knowledge. We can look things up, we can read books, we can get together with other families and and have these conversations, but we have to be intentional and we can only do that if we're balancing our time. And that's why that digital diet's important because if you're not on digital, you're probably doing something else and you can actually have time to engage with other families. For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 48:58

All right. So uh for this last question, I want to go back to what you said in the beginning about how do you eat an elephant one piece at a time. And I want to ask you if a parent is listening to this and they're feeling a little overwhelmed about where they could even start with all of this, what is one small step that they could take today to tackle the problem? Talk.

Speaker 2 49:17

I really think that if you're talking, and I'm literally saying out loud with your voice to another person, whether it be on the phone, get together, ask your school counselor, ask your school social worker, your principal, hey, are there any other parents that have really expressed that they want to look at this a little bit more? What are what are some uh clubs maybe at your library or what are other groups that are studying this? How do you get in connection? We at our church have different groups that meet together, like on a Wednesday night. Where are places that you can plug in and get with like-minded people to kind of explore this and develop that community? But you will get so much out of it one day at a time, one conversation at a time, one event at a time. But having those conversations and talking, reach out and find out. You you have to do some self-exploration and figure out what it is that you want, which way you want to go, and then find some place or a group of people that you can click in with and then build that community and just get that solid support underneath you because when your foundation is firm, you can stand stronger against the things that are coming at you and not feel like everything's gonna blow you over because it's so overwhelming.

Speaker 50:33

Absolutely. Yeah, that's some great advice. Thank you. What gives you hope when it comes to kids' technology in the future?

Speaker 2 50:43

Well, kids want to put it down, but they don't want to be on it all the time. And I remember when we would tell kids back, I don't I don't remember, it was I feel like it was the early 2020, you know, right before COVID, we would say, get your devices out, and they'd be like, Oh, because that meant we're writing a paper or we're doing research or and and I taught math with an amazing co-teacher, and we literally would teach our math lesson and we would do these move around the rooms and work in kegan groups, but the minute they got their iPads out or their devices out, it was their independent practice time and it would be a game, it would be something math related, and they would have to do repetition and then report back to us how they did. I only got 12 right out of 98 attempts. Like, was it hard time figuring out the game or was it because you're not understanding the math? And we would get more repetitions out of them using the technology, but there were times the kids were like, Do we have to do it on the iPad? Yes, because I want to know where you are and it'll move you up or down based on where your needs are. They don't want to fill the gaps, they don't want to plug the holes. But if you can use the tech the tech to work smarter, that's a great way to use it. But it shouldn't supplement doing that hands-on learning how a kid learns is so important, and making sure that we give kids what they need and when they're ready, that's where you find that balance and that sweet spot. You can bite the elephant one bite at a time, but you have to know you know what you're what you're dealing with. Right. You gotta make a plan. Yep. Yes, absolutely. Start from scratch and work your way up. Nobody expects people to solve the problems of the world in one day.

Speaker 52:21

For sure. One minute at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, before we wrap up, is there anything that we haven't covered today that you want to let parents or educators know?

Speaker 2 52:32

I think that one thing that we don't talk sometimes enough about is that voice and choice with kids. Let them lead some of the things, let them give you ideas of what they want and when they don't want to engage with technology. I do think sometimes we throw technology at them because it makes grading easier or we get those multiple repetitions. What is the way that they want to engage and use it in a meaningful way and that will help them towards their futures? But then where can the boundaries be? And let them negotiate that with you because sometimes they'll go, you know what? I really would rather write this by hand. And I would really rather hand my paper to somebody else to edit it because I can't remember what it said if I don't see different colors or if it's not in a column. I need a graphic organizer. It's hard to see it on a computer screen. They don't know how they learn if they don't know how they learn. And so let them tell us what they need and then gauge it from there. Sure, absolutely.

Speaker 53:32

Yeah, and I love that you reflect, you know, getting talking to your children and getting their input and and and understanding that they will let you know eventually um, you know, what their opinions are and what they think. Um, so I really appreciate that. Well, I just want to thank you again for being here for today and for giving us all of this really wonderful information and talking about some of these really timely and important topics. I think it's really valuable for our parents and our educators to know. So thank you so much, Trish, for joining us on this podcast. I appreciate it. Anytime. Thank you for the invite. Absolutely. Thank you all so much for tuning in to this episode of Rock Talk. We want to take a few moments to give a special shout out to our partners at the Chase program who are lending us such a wonderful space to host this podcast. This podcast was funded by HRSA through the Telehealth Technology Enabled Learning Collaborative Grant, number UU7 TH54332. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And follow our social media to keep up to date on all things related to pediatric behavioral health. You can find us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube at Telehealth Rocks. Keep listening to keep learning with us.