January 26, 2024 • 56 mins
Do electronics and technology consume your life, as though they're a family member? Today's guest on The Family Balancing Act is Sarah Kimmel host of the podcast Family Tech Talk where Sarah discusses all about everything from the latest family tech news, tech tips, parenting advice, pop culture, gaming, and more!
Each week she discusses topics that will help you manage your family technology, smart home, and digital kids. She has spent the last 20 years of her career working as a Microsoft Certified IT Manager supporting over 100 small businesses. During that time she started Family Tech LLC to help families understand and manage the technology in their home. She has regularly appeared as a family tech expert on local NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX news affiliates, BYUtv and Studio 5, and has been invited all over the world from tech companies like Lenovo, Verizon, Microsoft, Dell, and Samsung.
Check her out at: SarahKimmel.comMaureen Huntley is your host, board-certified Integrative holistic and functional medicine health coach, Emotional Freedom practitioner, mom, grandmother, wife, and CEO of her family’s home operations. If you miss any of our episodes, you can find us on Apple, Spotify, google, podbean, pandora, iheartradio podcast, CTR - Radio Network, and more. Deep Breath ~ Exhale ~ It starts with you.
Sarah KimmelThe Family TechSarahKimmel.comhttps://familytech.biz/https://familytech.biz/community/The Family Tech Podcast
Maureen Huntley, MS The Family Balancing Acthttps://maureenhuntley.com/ https://www.facebook.com/maureen.huntley?mibextid=LQQJ4d https://www.facebook.com/TheFamilyBalancingAct?mibextid=LQQJ4dhttps://www.instagram.com/mohuntley/www.ctrnetwork.com/thefamilybalancingactVIA Character Strengths *FREE assessment:http://maureenhuntley.pro.viasurvey.orghttp://vitalhealthforlife.pro.viasurvey.org
Each week she discusses topics that will help you manage your family technology, smart home, and digital kids. She has spent the last 20 years of her career working as a Microsoft Certified IT Manager supporting over 100 small businesses. During that time she started Family Tech LLC to help families understand and manage the technology in their home. She has regularly appeared as a family tech expert on local NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX news affiliates, BYUtv and Studio 5, and has been invited all over the world from tech companies like Lenovo, Verizon, Microsoft, Dell, and Samsung.
Check her out at: SarahKimmel.comMaureen Huntley is your host, board-certified Integrative holistic and functional medicine health coach, Emotional Freedom practitioner, mom, grandmother, wife, and CEO of her family’s home operations. If you miss any of our episodes, you can find us on Apple, Spotify, google, podbean, pandora, iheartradio podcast, CTR - Radio Network, and more. Deep Breath ~ Exhale ~ It starts with you.
Sarah KimmelThe Family TechSarahKimmel.comhttps://familytech.biz/https://familytech.biz/community/The Family Tech Podcast
Maureen Huntley, MS The Family Balancing Acthttps://maureenhuntley.com/ https://www.facebook.com/maureen.huntley?mibextid=LQQJ4d https://www.facebook.com/TheFamilyBalancingAct?mibextid=LQQJ4dhttps://www.instagram.com/mohuntley/www.ctrnetwork.com/thefamilybalancingactVIA Character Strengths *FREE assessment:http://maureenhuntley.pro.viasurvey.orghttp://vitalhealthforlife.pro.viasurvey.org
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Welcome to where the screen door slamsand the coffee mug hits the table.
You're listening to the Family Balancing Actwith me, Maureen Huntley, Mom,
grandmother, and board certified Holistic andFunctional Medicine health coach. Each episode will
explore the realities of your day today family life and this modern era of
(00:26):
NonStop text means and technology. Afterall, how do we keep ourselves saying
and our family healthy. I'll haveamazing guests and thought provoking discussions, and
we'll take a holistic look at familyhealth emotional, physical, mental, and
spiritual. Whether it's a micro perspectiveof family involving healthy snacks, teenagers with
(00:50):
an attitude, stressed out husbands,partners, adult children, potty training,
eldercare, grandchildren, college rep ora macro perspective of world events including blue
earthquakes, the brainwashing, media finances, and oh so much more. We'll
find a way together. So takea deep rap, exhale and know that
(01:12):
you're not alone. Bring on aFamily Balancing Act. Welcome to the Family
Balancing Act. We're restoring the heartand art of motherhood. Starts with one
conversation at a time. I'm MaureenHuntley, your host, board certified integrative,
holistic and functional medicine, health coach, emotional freedom technique, practitioner,
(01:34):
mom, grandmother, wife and CEOof my family's home operations. So don't
miss any of our Family Balancing Actepisodes because you can find us on Apple,
Spotify, Google, Podbean, Pandora, iHeartRadio and CTI Radio Network and
(01:55):
more. And this is where youcan also sign up for my monthly newsletter
and grab my free year round holidaystressless tips at Maureen Huntley dot com.
And you can also find out howyou can work with me and become one
of my most amazing clients. Ireally love what I do, holistic solutions
(02:20):
for health and well being for women, moms and their families. So deep
breath, exhale, it starts withyou. So when I woke up this
morning, a warm, rainy dayhere in the West of Ireland, I
(02:43):
felt the need to bake and makesome soup. Yes it's July, and
I decided that I would bake muffinsand make soup. Well cooking on my
terms for fun and not for myfamily. It's like a meditation and for
me to be present and create somethingwonderful, something useful and something that I'm
(03:05):
proud of. It's really fast andeasy, and I love to do it.
It also keeps me focused kind ofand completely off of my devices like
my iPhone, my iPad, mycomputer you know. Oh wait, I'm
not being completely truthful. I didhave an online yoga class at the krack
(03:30):
of dawn this morning that was priorto my kitchen connection. And then I
did. I looked up the veganre super recipe online while I was drinking
my coffee with dandelion and coconut oil. Well it's good for you. Well,
then I am. As I wasdrinking my coffee, I checked my
(03:52):
messages and I just sent a fewtexts. It was no big deal.
And then I had to look atmy boxer replies because I had to check
in a few people. And thenand then I listened to this podcast Family
Tech as I started together all mybits together on the counter in the kitchen,
and then boom, my phone diedout. Rather ironic because actually our
(04:15):
guest today is Sarah Kimmel, andshe is the host of the popular podcast
and YouTube program Family Tech Talk.Well, she'll be joining us in just
a few moments. But I wantedto tell you that as soon as I
got back to the business of bakingand soup making in the forced silence of
(04:36):
my kitchen, I felt totally inthe zone connected to what I was doing
and creating there, I say focused. Well, honestly, I have this
little problem of allowing my electronics toconsume my life as though there are actually
a family member. We honestly,every one of my family members attached to
(05:01):
their phones. Well, the ruleof ours is not to bring our phone
into the table at the kitchen,you know, into the kitchen at the
kitchen table, even when I do, of course, because I'm mom,
I'm allowed to do what I want. But of course when you go out
to a meal, we do needto take photos of it, right,
Okay, many families, and it'snot just the children, it's the adults
(05:25):
that have this really big problem withallowing technology to completely take over our lives.
Yeah, I mean, my grownchildren have grown up with it from
the very beginning, and I actuallylearned so much from them because I didn't,
including how to turn on my phoneand to reboot the internet. But
(05:46):
what about when our children are actuallyhiding away from their creative expressions and allowing
tech and games and apps and thefariouscharacters online to block their creativity. What
about getting back to the basics oflife, playing and connecting with others,
music, art, theater are howabout reading a book? Well. Today's
(06:13):
guest who I'm so excited to haveon the Family Balancing Act is Sarah Kimmel,
host of the podcast Family Tech Talk, where Sarah discusses all about everything
from the latest family tech news,tech tips, parenting advice, pop culture,
gaming, and more. Well.Each week on her show, she
discusses topics that will help you manageyour family, technology, your smart home,
(06:39):
and digital kids. She has spentthe last twenty years of her career
working as a Microsoft Certified IT manager, supporting over one hundred small businesses,
and during that time she started FamilyTech LLC to help families understand and manage
the technology in their home. Shehas regularly appeared as a family tech expert
(07:03):
on local NBCCBS, ABC and FoxNews affiliates, b YU TV and Studio
five, and has been invited allover the world from tech companies like Lenovo,
My Computer, Verizon, Microsoft,Dell, and Samsung. You have
to check her out. It's SarahKimmel dot com. Sarah. I am
(07:28):
so honored to have you here todayand I just can't wait to have this
conversation with you. It will beawesome. Hi. Yes, oh,
I like you. There you are, Yeah, I'm here. Hello,
Hello, Hello darling. How areyou? I am fabulous. How are
(07:50):
you? I'm doing well? Thankyou so much. So where do we
begin? How did you get intothe business of this? Well, like
you said, I am an ITmanager, So that's basically how I got
started. Is I have been inthe tech industry for a very long time,
over twenty years, mainly with companiescalled managed services providers, so they
(08:16):
are they provide the IT for smallbusinesses. And in the course of that,
you know, I had my firstchild, and my friends that live
you know, around me would alwaysask me questions because they knew I was
the tech expert, right, I'mthe one that deals with this for companies
every day. So they'd ask me, oh, hey, my computer gout
(08:39):
a virus, can you help mewith that? Or you know, I
have questions about something for my kids, you know, let me know,
and like so, I'd always getall these questions from everybody that I know
and you know, family, friends, acquaintances, Hey, I heard you
were the person to go to fortech advice, so I decided to start
a blog. I'm like, Okay, you know, forget it, We're
(09:01):
just going to put all the informationon a blog, send you a link.
And I'm like tired of repeating myselfbasically, So I started my blog
back in well, I started kindof a version of the blog around two
thousand and six, but the versionthat's mostly there now started in two thousand
and nine, and so, youknow, then, I've just kind of
(09:24):
changed my content with the changing times. So I don't write on the blog
as much anymore. I do YouTubevideos because that's a platform that people are
looking for that information more, andpodcasting and things like that. So you
know, just kind of change thecontent to go with the changing times.
Wow, And you know, thetimes are a changeing for sure. I
(09:48):
don't know how you're keeping up withit, because I do have a couple
of chech people in my family andthey are always being bombarded with questions just
stupid stuff to really complex things things. And so not only is that going
on, but there's just a lotof information coming at us as consumers and
(10:09):
as parents. So like when youhave and I'm going to tell my listeners
that Sarah has the most comprehensive websiteon this matter. I was like rolling
through it and I'm I'm amazed atthe amount of content and information and support
(10:31):
that you freely give. It's justlike wow. So I'm going to brain
drain you here. I wanted toask you, how do you where you
know? Again? Where do youbegin? How do you start the process
(10:52):
of sitting your family down and saying, Okay, people, we all need
to address the amount of time we'respending on our computers or on our phones
or what other things are gaming devicesand sometimes just from my own point of
(11:16):
view, in my own life stuff, it's not only just the kids,
No, it's the adults. AndI'll call myself out totally. Absolutely.
That's funny that you ask, becauseI'm actually running a kind of tech reset
challenge right now on my Facebook community. But it is mainly just a ten
(11:37):
day reset where I'm kind of givingyou small things that you can do each
day to be more intentional about yourtech use because I like, I obviously
love technology. It's totally immersed.Yeah, technology like basically runs my entire
life, but I use it asa tool to help my life run smoother,
(12:03):
run easier. I don't let ituse me, you know, So
I'm not going to get sucked intothese different I mean, obviously everybody gets
gonna get sucked into a rabbit holefrom here or there, but just kind
of walking that back and being moreintentional about what you're using technology for so
parts of the Reset challenge. Bythe time this errors, it's going to
(12:26):
be over. So I apologize toone. I will yeah to do another
one, but I think I willcreate like kind of a printable or whatever
that you can download that will helpyou go through the reset challenge on your
own. You know. Right now, I'm just sending out an email every
day kind of walking people through it, but you'd get the whole thing right
(12:46):
away. But it's things, reallysmall, things like changing one app from
being on your phone to being somewhereelse. So say you watch YouTube a
lot on your phone, Okay,I'm only going to watch YouTube on a
smart TV. And basically kind ofjust changing where you're consuming that content can
(13:07):
really help you be more intentional aboutthat tech you so you're not just staring
at your phone. You're like,Okay, I'm going to watch a YouTube
video, so I'm going to sitdown on the couch and watch it like
I would a television program. Soyou're not eliminating YouTube from your life,
but you're just being more intentional aboutwhat you're doing with the technology. And
(13:30):
so I think that's kind of agood place to start, is just like
looking at your usage and then youcan do the whole thing with the for
your family. So you could runthe challenge with your family, like,
Okay, let's see who can reducetheir usage on their phone this week,
and you know they'll get an icecream party or whatever. So it doesn't
have to be this like serious sitdown conversation. Hey, everybody, we
(13:54):
really need to talk about our technologyuse. You know, you can make
it into a fun game where we'renot you know, and it's kind of
like dieting. I would say,you know, I'm not eliminating the treats
because then I'm going to go aheadand binge on all the treats when I
can, and I'm not really changingmy habits. But it's about allowing yourself
(14:16):
that grace and the ability to enjoythe things that you want to enjoy,
but making sure you're more intentional aboutit. I love how you connected the
food connection to because it is it'san addiction. I mean, addictions can
be so many different things, butfood a lot of people can relate to.
(14:39):
Even if you don't have weight issues, you probably you know, are
addicted to salt, to sugar,or just eating caffeine. Yeah, caffeine,
that's my thing. But yes,it's it's so easy to comprehend,
but not so easy to do forsure. So that is that's brilliant though,
(15:03):
to sit your family down, becauseI can tell you this much.
I didn't. I didn't like Isat them down and gave them a lecture.
I didn't. I didn't go,let's play a game. And even
now, I mean, like mykids are gone and I still have you
know them around in that. Butbut it's the bringing the the devices to
(15:26):
the table and then agreeing we weren'tgoing to do it. And then I'm
of course the first one to breakthat rule, right because somebody might call
me that I'm expecting of course,you know, because we don't have phones
hanging on the walls anymore. They'rein our pockets and maybe so much.
Yeah, there are mini computers.They do everything. Oh yeah, yeah,
(15:50):
yeah, yeah, so at whatage? Another one of my questions
for you is at what age doesa child get a phone? So I
am very much not a hard fastlike age person because every family is different,
(16:15):
every child is different. So Icould be the mother of a family
that has three kids and one kidwas totally ready for a phone at ten
years old, and the other onemight still not be ready at fifteen.
You know, there is so manyfactors that I feel go into whether or
not they get a phone, andI like to kind of step them through
(16:41):
technology instead of just saying like,okay, when you're thirteen, this is
when you get a phone, becausethen it just helps them kind of put
the ownership and the responsibility on thekid where they are earning that right.
So you know, we start out, you know with me maybe a watch
that has communication, and you know, for my son who wanted a phone,
(17:07):
like, okay, well you havea watch and you aren't bringing that
watch when you are out of thehouse, so you're not ready for a
phone because you're not being responsible withthe watch. You know, They like,
oh, this is lame, Idon't want to use this, Like
okay, well you're going to needto show me that you can use this
and that you can use it properlyin order to basically graduate to the next
(17:29):
level. And so it's a constantproving yourself you know worthy, I guess
of that next step in the technologyyou know, hierarchy. So you know,
so I start with like a smartwatch, and then we graduate to
something like a kid save smartphone.There's a lot of options available that are
(17:52):
basically really limited phones that have verylimited apps, like a curated app store
where you're not going to be ableto download every single app, you know,
so that would be the next levelwhere you know, they really want,
like their ultimate goal is like aniPhone or something. But Mike,
okay, well, you're going toneed to show me that you can text
responsibly on this, that you're notgoing to try and get around the parental
(18:17):
controls that are installed on this.So there's a lot of things that you
can show me that you're responsible enoughfor the next level, and then you
keep stepping along the process, sothe kids save smartphone and then maybe an
Android device that has some like reallystrict parental controls, and then you know,
when they're sixteen seventeen, like totallyopen for like an iPhone or something.
(18:40):
If they've shown throughout the history thatthey can use it responsibly, that's
great. I wasn't really aware thatthat Androids were actually had had more of
the parental controls that had more lockson it. Shall we say, were
you know a guy way to abetter healthier version of taking care of yourself
(19:04):
around tech? Sure, And it'sactually not so much that Android has those
like built in, It's just thatthe operating system is more open to it.
So with Apple, the operating system, like Apple is so concerned about
user privacy, even if that useris a ten year old. So because
(19:25):
of that like built in privacy,like blocking, it's not going to allow
third party parental controls the appropriate accessto monitor or control the device effectively.
And so with an Android device,you have a plethora of third party parental
controls that you can choose from.You can pick which one which platform suits
(19:48):
your family the best, and installthat and it has the ability to have
that monitoring of the content and theability to lock it down properly, whereas
they won't have that with an Appledevice just because of the operating system that's
so locked down. Well, doyou think the public really knows that.
I mean parents, they absolutely donot, okay, I think, so
(20:11):
just throw that out there because II didn't know that. But I am
not always I'm trying to keep mykids happy, and that has been I
mean now, like the years havegone by, but I'm still trying to
keep them happy, you know,or trying to be the fix it because
fix it because I'm mom, youknow, just anybody like, okay,
(20:33):
we all get along here, please. But I remember when my uh,
I think my youngest. I wassitting at the counter in the kitchen and
I was sitting there on my phone, just you know, clicking away on
it, and he comes over tome, and I think he's around four,
and because mom mom, moms sortof like that this that uh uh
(20:59):
stewie, yeah, mommy, mommymy, and I'm still not listen, like
not really listening to him, andhe crawled kind of climbs up onto the
other high chair next to me,and he grabs my cheeks and flips my
face towards him and he goes,you must listen to me when I'm speaking
(21:23):
to you. Put that down.And I was like, okay, p
and uh yeah. He that wasrather embarrassing, but we tell that story.
He tells that story, a greatstory. It's really good because I
(21:44):
really because it was new, allnew to me, not new to me,
but I was really getting better andbetter at it. Everything was,
you know, everything was at myfingertips. What about teenagers? And I
know, you know you can andget them. If you haven't, you've
let it be kind of a runawaytrain. Sure, Oh gee, who
(22:04):
hasn't been on one of those?And you know you trust your children.
Everything's fine, they seem to bedoing well. Maybe there's some you know,
little behavioral stuff going on, butthat happens with teenagers. You're just
like, whatever, let's get throughthis. Let's move through this. Okay,
you've hurt my feelings, you know, you move through it. But
(22:26):
some of this is being fed bythe nefarious characters that they're communicating with in
their text message in a text group. It could even be good friends at
school that have now turned on youbecause you now you know, have nicer
(22:48):
shoes than they do, or whatever. The problem is, how do you
pull back from that? How doyou get the power back? Yeah?
That is a very tough one.And I know when my sister she kind
of you know, wild, wild, West with her kids when they got
the phone, and then finally waslike, hey, Sarah, I need
(23:10):
to lock this down now. Andso like I went and helped her lock
down the kid's phones, and likeyou would have thought her daughter like it
was the end of the world,just you know, totally upset, and
you know, it was a veryvery difficult day for sure. But I
(23:30):
think making sure you're communicating properly andit's okay to let your kids know that
you made a mistake, and that'swhere you would approach it from say,
hey, you know what, Igave you access to an adult level device
and I probably should have done alittle more research before I did that,
(23:53):
So this is what we're going toneed to do to correct my mistake,
and not being afraid to just beinglike, hey, you know, mom
made a mistake to and you know, like kind of this is on me
and I shouldn't have let you,you know, have all of this access,
(24:14):
and we need to fix it.And then that way, it's not
you're not blaming them. It's nothingthey did wrong to kind of bring this
punishment, you know, because it'smaybe it feels more like a punishment at
that stage if you're just saying hey, this is wrong and I need to
fix it. You know, ifyou bring that back on yourself and just
(24:36):
say, hey, it was amistake for me to allow this and we
need to fix that, then it'sa little less harsh. I want to
say, yeah, I know,that's that's great. My comment is that
this would work in so many thingsgoing on in our lives is to take
(24:56):
ownership of our own crap, right, I mean, because it's so easy
for us to blame, shame whateverwho, and especially if our kids are
may be the cause of of youknow, discord or a bullying situation or
(25:18):
you know, a part of theparty that is you know, because it
becomes this massive glob moving towards oneor a few people and you want to
blame them for so many things.When I'm like screen bloody murder. But
you first have to deal with takingthe device away and saying I screwed up.
You were not you were not anadult. I assumed you were and
(25:42):
that's my bad. Right, Andnow we're going to deal with how we
don't deal with how we don't treatpeople. Yeah, yeah, and having
those conversations with like how things thatthey do online are permanent and that they
can't take it back, and sothey need to be more careful about what
(26:03):
they are doing online. And youknow, even if it's something that they
feel like is private. That's theThat's one thing that we get a lot
of pushback on as people are saying, well, don't you trust me or
don't I deserve privacy? And mycomeback to that is always, nobody has
privacy online, not even me,not even you. So you're not going
(26:27):
to have private conversations that could getyou into trouble in the future because of
something that you've said. Now I'mgoing to help protect you from that.
But you know, I like toshow my kids like court cases and stuff
here wow, because they like evenlike criminal cases, the like the phone
(26:49):
expert will come testify, and theamount of data that comes out of the
you know, defendants phone or thevictim's phones is like so eye opening where
it's recording how many times they've unlockedtheir screen, when they've unlocked their screen,
(27:10):
how many times the orientation change,how many steps you took with your
phone, so it can track likeall of these things to help like convict
a criminal. But it's eye openingfor the kids to see how much they
don't have privacy because all of thesethings can come back against them in the
future. And so you know,and I talk about uh people who like
(27:34):
tweet something out ten years ago andthey're getting canceled for it now. And
so these things they stay forever,and you can't take it back. Even
if you think you're having a privateconversation with a friend, they could screenshot
it, they could record it froma different device. There's so many things
(27:55):
where you think you might be havingsomething that's private and secret, but it's
never going to stay that way.So so I always say, there is
no privacy online, not for me, not for you. So don't have
any expectation of that. And it'swhen we think of freedom of speech.
Yeah, we do have freedom ofspeech, especially you know, on our
(28:18):
phones, and but but it doesn'tgo away. And so that freedom of
speech is out there and can beturned and used against you. And yet
uh, freedom of speech should notbe taped followed. It's a it's a
(28:45):
sticky situation, right, and onethat we're not going to sell. But
oh wow, Yeah, I havea kind of an odd question and I
don't know if this ever comes up, but with UH, technology or even
you know, with five G let'ssay five GU and what is emitted from
(29:08):
five G? And and how allof these towers now and the amount of
energy and saying people are getting sick, and uh, what is your feeling
around that and technology? What areyour thoughts? You know, I'm actually,
like I said, I love technology. I would go to bed with
(29:30):
technology if I do. The Iphone is next to me, So I
think most people do, even thougheven if they're using a charity bag,
you know, they're not right right. But there is actually an account that
I do like to follow. Hername is The account is tech Wellness,
and she has a lot of contentabout about exactly that. It's not something
(29:56):
that super concerns me. I justthink it's, you know, know,
this is the world we live innow, and it's I'm not going to
be able to do anything to changethat unless I want to, like,
you know, completely go live offthe grid, which I absolutely do not.
So it's, you know, everythingis a trade off. So if
(30:17):
I want access to this, thenI'm going to have to deal with the
consequences of it as well. Shehas some great advice some things you can
do to kind of help eliminate thoselike health risks and things like that.
But it's not something that like Igenerally dig into a ton, But I
(30:37):
just know, like there's a lotof kind of misconception with five G,
I will say, just because there'stwo different versions of five G and a
lot of people get confused with that. And I don't even know if this
is where you want to go withthis right now. No, No,
I didn't even know that, Butthat's great. I didn't know that.
So five there's five G, whichis the cellular network, and it just
(30:59):
means fifth generation. So it's justthe next iteration. Like so it's just
the upgrade, you know. Soif you have an iPhone twelve and then
you have an iPhone thirteen, that'syou know, there was four G and
now there's five G. So it'sjust the fifth generation of the technology.
The other thing people get it confusedwith is Wi Fi. So Wi Fi
(31:21):
five gigaherts is not five G cellularfive gigaherts. WiFi is basically the band
that your wireless signal transmits over insideyour home. So they're completely different things.
And I get a lot of questionsabout, like, oh, how
(31:41):
do I disable five G on myWiFi and I'm like, well, you
don't really even need to it's justthe band that it's communicating on. It
has nothing to do with the fifthgeneration of the cellular network. Fascinating.
I know that I'm and I usethis stuff and I do go to bed
with it, and I don't evenyou know, and I know there are
people who are very sensitive who've had, you know, health issues around this
(32:06):
this stuff. And again it's aboutminding how you're using all of this.
Right as you were talking about yourchallenge, I was thinking about, you
know, doing a detox. Iknow, I was listening I mentioned to
you when we first talked about.I was driving here in Ireland and I
(32:27):
was listening to a radio program andthey were all going on about how they're
doing a you know, a cellphone detox or technology detox, but they're
really talking about their cell phones andmobile phones and how they were like having
like complete conniption fits because they couldn'thandle lot, you know, like I
haven't touched it in an hour,and it's this this addiction to I have
(32:51):
to have this. Uh, Iguess it's again it's like the food thing
is to do a detox and todo as you say, the challenge,
but I can't imagine anybody being offof it. Well, I mean,
I know when my phone was broken, when I had destroyed it a year
(33:12):
ago, I was off of itfor twenty four hours to like cut a
new one, and it was like, because that's the only way I could
make a phone call making a phonecall any other way. Yeah, yeah,
they like, well our phones areand really technology is so integrated in
our daily lives that for me personally, like a detox is a very extreme
(33:36):
effort and one that I I'm notsaying I'm addicted to my technology. I
probably am, who knows, buta detox is too much for me,
Like I would not be able todo that. You know, I went
on a cruise with my family.I had to buy the internet plan.
I'm like, I do still havea full time job. I run a
(33:57):
tech support team, and so Ineed to be available to them to answer
questions and to give them help.You know, our our tech support is
open seven days a week. Soso there's not something that like I'm really
able to do to like leave behindmy technology for an extended period of time.
So I just don't think it's veryfeasible for a lot of people to
(34:20):
do a detox like that. WhatI do recommend is like detoxing on like
specific things like say you watch toomuch YouTube, Okay, I'm going to
not have YouTube for a week orInstagram or you know whatever it is that
you are spending too much time on. And that's something that I like with
(34:42):
my kids. You know, ifthey get grounded from something, say they
were watching too much YouTube and theydidn't get their homework done, well,
then they get grounded from YouTube.They don't get grounded from their entire phone,
because that's the way they're going tocommunicate with their friends, that's the
way they're going to like coordinate,this way they're going to do their homework,
you know. And so taking thephone, want to completely away isn't
necessarily going to be beneficial for anybody. But taking away the problem is where
(35:08):
you really want to like focus yourattention. That's that's absolutely great advice because
it is about the thing. Whatis the the thing that's really pulling you
away. It's not your work.You need your work, You need to
be in communication. But YouTube forme, it might be Twitter, you
know, it's just because it's sofast you could just you know, I'm
(35:30):
not even tweeting. I don't reallyI just like tom like a scroller right
to scroll through it. But it'svery easy to do. Classrooms and and
children with their phones. There arein my area, and when I'm back
(35:52):
in the States, they have totake and they go into the school when
they you know, little school,even the grammar school they're going in,
you have to put leave your phonein the bag at the door kind of
thing. I love that, sothat that kind of works. And yet
there are schools in my area thatwhere friends of mine work, family members
(36:16):
and work as features in that wherethe kids in middle school where they're allowed
to have their phones on them andthey will film the teacher or certain situations,
and therein lies a huge issue.Yeah. So that's one thing I
(36:37):
really would love to promote more isto eliminate phones in classrooms. And I'm
not saying they don't have to,like they can't bring their phone. It
can be in their backpack, youknow, but as long as it's not
out in the classroom. And Ithink because there's a lot of laws and
things that are being passed right nowin the States around social media and kids
(37:00):
and these laws, I just theydon't do anything. They're not beneficial,
they're not going to help really theproblem, and it's a lot of government
overreach, I feel. And ifthe government can just concentrate more on where
they do have jurisdiction, which wouldbe the public schools, and do something
(37:22):
like that where they're eliminating the phonesinside the classrooms, I think that's going
to go really far in helping thesituation because and I'm guilty of it,
and I didn't even realize, likeI'll text my daughter in the middle of
class, you know, and say, hey, you left your car lights
on, you know, so shecan go turn off her car. But
(37:44):
it's the distraction. There's a studylike any notification that they get in the
middle of class, it takes themabout ten to fifteen minutes to get back
into like the educational space. Andwhen you're in class for you know,
an hour, that's and they're probablygetting notifications constantly, they're not learning.
And I think that's the big problemthat I have with the phones in the
(38:07):
classrooms, is the distraction that itcauses. And it's not like I don't
want to take away their ability toreach their family in an emergency or anything
like that. So, like I'mokay with them bringing it and having it
on them, just not out inthe classroom. And I think that's like,
I think it's where government can reallystep in and make a difference and
(38:30):
make that kind of across the board. But the other the other part of
the phones in schools, dang it, And I just lost my train of
thought on that one. But butyeah, I really think that that's something
the government can help with. Well, as you say, the government,
it's amazing just how they don't dothe obvious, right, That's all.
(38:57):
That's all I have to say.It's just it just is like mind blowing
that that would be the obvious thing. Because they do have jurisdiction over that,
they can have a voice around that, and the parents are asking for
that at some level. You know, maybe some are louder than others.
Yet they're backdoring it by trying tocontrol other aspects that have really nothing to
(39:23):
do with the immediate necessary task ofhelping the family, helping the children to
stay focused, that's that word again, right on their work. And you
know after COVID and that these poorkids are struggling anyway. Yeah, I
(39:45):
remembered my train of thought when youwere talking about them recording their teachers.
That actually happened in my daughter's highschool, to want to say, it
was either last year or the yearbefore first day of school. There was
a tea pure and she was kindof spouting off political political things that she
(40:07):
probably shouldn't have been talking to thekids about because you know, she can
have her own views, but sheis right basically, like you know,
she was offending half the students andnot like you know and agreeing with the
other half, telling students that ifthey don't agree with her they can leave,
(40:27):
you know, and things like that, so like just really inappropriate things.
But so some students videoed her fromtheir phone and she ended up like
losing her job because that video wentcompletely viral. But then like the distraction
at the school, like our principalgot hundreds of thousands of phone calls from
(40:47):
parents across the country, both likefor and against this teacher, and like
we had to have like police presenceat the school and everything. That's so
exactly I could have just easily beenwell. And yet that's a situation where
the phones worked because right, honestly, you know, that person that teacher
(41:13):
so called might not ever be caughtright yeah. And it was a chemistry
class, like it wasn't even likea political class. It was because sometimes
political classes go that way. Andif there's a healthy, healthy debate,
that's great. But and that that'swhat should be as a debate, not
exact a schooling on how you shouldbe living your life and thinking correctly.
(41:37):
Amazing, And it was crazy.That was at my daughter's high school,
right right, just like and totallywent national attention and everything. It was
insane. Well, put you inthe limelight away, I know, right,
Paul in the tech expert. Yeah, yeah, they didn't ask my
opinion, but that's too funny.Oh wow, So I had another thought
(42:04):
around uh the oh golly, Ihad all these questions for you. Oh
apps. You talked about apps beforeand about and it kind of segueing into
what is what's the good thing?You know this the good thing about phones
(42:27):
are and and apps. You arequite versed in the you know, good
versus evil apps? Sure, andand of course you know managing it so
that our children get those on theirphone, the good ones and eradicate the
bad ones. Yeah, where doyou I know you have so many sources
that you've put on your website,but where's the where's a parent begin what
(42:52):
what do you do to get theright stuff on your kids' phones? Yeah,
that's a great question because there isso much to choose from and there
are good and bad. And wewere kind of talking about the government,
but uh, the US Attorney Generalor surgeon general, sorry, the US
Surgeon General released a health advisory aboutlike teens and social media and mental health.
(43:19):
And it's actually a really good advisory. I wasn't expecting to be because
like all the laws and everything thathave been coming out, I like am
totally against, but this was areally good advisory because it did talk about
the pros and cons of social mediause. Because there are pros. The
(43:42):
main pro is that, especially withlike marginalized communities, they're finding people that
are like them on social media andthey're able to connect and they're able to
kind of validate their own lives andtheir own experience through social media and have
that like you, validation boost becausethey can see other people. You know,
(44:06):
I live in rural Utah. There'snot a lot of diversity here,
so you know, I can seehow marginalized communities in rural Utah can find
that community on social media, andwhere the danger really lies is mainly the
time spent. So like limiting thattime so they're not on it all night
(44:29):
long. They are, you know, limiting to an hour a day or
something, because it's when they've spentover three hours a day is when it's
really starting to like deteriorate, deterioratetheir mental health. And so kind of
taking that and saying like almost allsocial media platforms can have good and can
(44:51):
have bad, but making sure thatyou are training the algorithm. And I
say this a lot like training thealgorithm to where it's okay to unfollow somebody
who makes you feel bad. Likeif you have a friend on Instagram and
every time you see their pictures youfeel bad about yourself, unfollow a mute
them, do those things. Oryou know, if you're looking through your
(45:14):
feed and it's all stuff like solet's go back to food and you're on
a diet and it's all these deliciouscookies and things, maybe like like tell
Instagram or TikTok or whatever that you'renot interested in seeing these cookie content anymore.
And then you can kind of trainthat algorithm to see just the things
(45:37):
that are positive and uplifting and makeyou feel good about yourself instead of the
things that are making you feel badabout yourself. That's great. I have
a question around why is it thatwhen you're talking about carpeting, just talking
about carpeting because you're having a carpetingdiscussion because you need carpeting, you like
(46:01):
carpeting, you use carpeting. Idon't know it shows up on your phone.
It shows up within two minutes andyou're like, wow, here it
is, I need carpeting, andyou go to a space or I you
know, I do. I havefriends to do that that don't even realize
that what's happened is that it completelypicked up on your conversation and shows up
(46:24):
on your phone. Right. Itgets you get pulled in if it's the
right carpeting right right, because theywant to sell you that carpeting. And
it's funny because as we go backto that privacy conversation, it is really
a testament that no, you don'thave privacy online, you don't have privacy
(46:45):
when you're out and about. Youknow, if you're acting a fool at
a restaurant, I guarantee somebody isgoing to be recording you and you are
going to be going viral for that, so like there is no privacy.
So when you are having like aconversation. I had a recent conversation with
my friend and we were talking aboutnail polish and I was saying, oh,
(47:07):
I love this like nail company,and then like as we're talking and
like, well, you're probably goingto start getting ads for it now anyway,
so here it is like and andshe did, like she's like,
yep, there there, I've gotit. Yeah, We're we're good.
And so there is an element oflistening for sure, but the the platforms
(47:32):
are just actually really really good inthe fact where if I am talking about
like I've done some research on carpetingbecause I'm looking for carpeting, right,
but then I am talking to you, you know, the next day about
carpeting, well, our phones arein proximity to each other at that point,
(47:55):
and my searches are basically going tolike, oh, hey, this
person knows this person and they weresearching for carpeting, so maybe this person
also wants to search for cars,so they're like communicating it basically. I
mean, like it's just like proximitywhere it's it knows your location, he
knows your friend's location, or youknow, maybe you're chatting through Messenger or
(48:17):
something like that, or you're texting, it knows that you know this person,
and this person's looking at this,and like, so maybe you also
want to look at this, solike so sometimes it seems like it's just
like that I was talking and that'show it came about. But a lot
of times it's really just that you'recommunicating with somebody else who was also like
(48:42):
cause you're talking about the carpeting withthat person, right, and they were
looking at carpeting, you know.So it kind of happens that way a
lot of times. But but thereis definitely they say that they're not listening,
but there's definitely an element of listeningas well. Yeah, well,
let's see what shows up on myphone. If I know you're gonna get
this Alcology texting you, I gotit. It's scarpeting and that's going to
(49:07):
be your feeds for the next Ohmy gosh, that's too funny. Well,
I I don't know if you haveany other thoughts that you think that
our listeners would like to know about, just surviving this technology jungle with I
mean, the big thing is tobe informed. So I always say that
(49:30):
if your child was diagnosed with adisease, and you would go online and
you would research everything you could aboutthat disease so you can keep them healthy,
you can keep them safe, andyou can keep like kind of a
level of normalcy for your child.And we're not doing that about technology.
(49:52):
And it can be just as dangerousas a disease. If you're handing over
a supercomputer to your child and youdon't understand the dangers and you don't understand
what you're allowing, then you knowit can get to that dangerous level.
So research what you can do tohelp protect your kid. You know,
parental controls for such and such.You know there are in app parental controls
(50:16):
like TikTok actually has the best inapp prontal controls of any social media platform,
which is shocking for most people tohear. I know, and the
whole thing with TikTok, I know, it's like, oh danger. I
have found there's lots of really greatresources and great info on that, and
I'm thinking, well, if thisis on there, I mean, the
(50:38):
stuff showing up on on Facebook andeven YouTube isn't even this good and it's
short, it's not this long,you know stuff. I don't know.
I mean, I'm for me.The jury's out on on TikTok. I'm
not I've never not like them,right, Yeah, No, I think
it's fine. I think they're Ithink the big thing that the government has
(51:01):
an issue with is who controls thatdata because it's the you know, basically
the China. With Facebook, theycan subpoena Facebook and get data for you
know, everybody in the United States, but they can't do that for TikTok,
and that's what I think scares themand like it doesn't allow them to
(51:22):
have access to that data. Sothat's the that's the big thing I think
that the government has a problem withwith regards to TikTok. But interesting,
very But back to like just researchand then communication with your child. I
really really love to have my kidspresent me with like so, say they
(51:45):
want an iPhone, they want tobe stepped up to the next level of
technology, they want Instagram, theywant like Snapchat. Okay, you give
me a presentation on what kind ofparental controls it has, what it can
do, what kind of content youcan come across, you know, like
you do the research and present thatto me, and then I obviously will
(52:06):
verify this research that they've done.Your kids have they have no no chance
in the sky, Like yeah,so no, that's wrong and that's wrong,
but good try. But just havingthat open communication about you know,
whether or not you're going to allowsomething and why you're going to not allow
(52:30):
it or why are you going toallow it, and what kind of parameters
are going to be put on placeif you allow it, and just you
know, not being sneaky about it. Like I have people who are like,
how do I install this print controlwithout my my kids knowing? And
I'm like, well, don't dothat because you want to, like,
say, you come across something soI'll get alerts on my phone about like
(52:52):
things that my child is you know, searching or whatever. Well, if
I'm getting these alerts sneakily, howam I going to talk to them about
it? You know, they're gonnahave to know that I've I've found out
somehow, and then that breaks thetrust, I think breaks the trust.
And then the next time it's abigger secret, it's a bigger thing.
It becomes because The whole idea ofbeing a child is to see how you
(53:17):
can outdo your parents, how youcan get beyond them, you know,
because they're they're expanding their wings.They have to do that with apps.
I have one more question than Iknow I'm left. Is there a timer?
(53:37):
Is there any kind of a timerbuilt into a phone, Let's say,
where your phone. Can the child'sphone just goes off it's been three
hours, You're done, or oreven with apps, maybe not the whole
phone, but just all the differentapps. Is there a way to control
that? Yeah? Absolutely with iOS. So Apple they have something called screen
(53:59):
time. It's built into the Appleoperating system, and you can set that
up. You do have to havean Apple phone to set that up for
your child's phone because Apple just doesn'tlike to play nice with other people and
so so that's the one limitation there. But yeah, you can set a
time limit for the entire device.You can set a bedtime for the device
(54:20):
so it just shuts down at acertain time every night. You can set
time limits for specific apps. Sothere's a lot of things that you can
do with that. Screen time.For Google for Android devices, it's called
Google Family Link and it's similar,but you just have to download the app
and then you set up their theirGoogle account with that and it's the same
thing. And with Google it's reallyfun because I can just like shut it
(54:44):
down at any time, like soI can just like pause the device and
then they have no access to thedevice. Yeah, like okay, hey,
you know what, it's dinner time. Pause. So it's really nice.
But there's a lot that you cando with time limits just built in.
You don't even have to buy anextra app or anything. That is
fantastic. So there's hope for thefuture. There is absolutely hope. Technology
(55:07):
is amazing. Well, two ofmy kids are very involved in it out
of my four kids, so I'mthey seem pretty together, so that's that's
a good thing. But Sarah,it has been an absolute joy having you
on the Family Balancing Act today.I am, I've learned a lot I
didn't and I went into this knowingI knew very little other than my own
(55:31):
experiences. That I learned so much. Thank you, thank you, thank
you so much. It was wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful having you. And
so where where are you? Youwere all over the place. So let's
let my listeners know where they can. Obviously you mentioned my podcast is Family
Tech Talk that's available on all podcastingplatforms, and then you can really find
(55:54):
me on any social platform just bysearching family tech. I have family Tech
handle on everything, So if youfind family tech that's me, and then
my website, you can either goto Sarah Kibell dot com or you can
go to familytech dot biz. Thatis fantastic. Well, thank you again,
and thank you so much to theFamily Balancing Act listeners, So take
(56:17):
a deep breath and know that you'renot alone here on the Family Balancing Act.
Thank you. Yeah, of coursevery This will be adjusted. Were really good
Welcome to where the screen door slamsand the coffee mug hits the table.
You're listening to the Family Balancing Actwith me, Maureen Huntley, Mom,
grandmother, and board certified Holistic andFunctional Medicine health coach. Each episode will
explore the realities of your day today family life and this modern era of
(00:26):
NonStop text means and technology. Afterall, how do we keep ourselves saying
and our family healthy. I'll haveamazing guests and thought provoking discussions, and
we'll take a holistic look at familyhealth emotional, physical, mental, and
spiritual. Whether it's a micro perspectiveof family involving healthy snacks, teenagers with
(00:50):
an attitude, stressed out husbands,partners, adult children, potty training,
eldercare, grandchildren, college rep ora macro perspective of world events including blue
earthquakes, the brainwashing, media finances, and oh so much more. We'll
find a way together. So takea deep rap, exhale and know that
(01:12):
you're not alone. Bring on aFamily Balancing Act. Welcome to the Family
Balancing Act. We're restoring the heartand art of motherhood. Starts with one
conversation at a time. I'm MaureenHuntley, your host, board certified integrative,
holistic and functional medicine, health coach, emotional freedom technique, practitioner,
(01:34):
mom, grandmother, wife and CEOof my family's home operations. So don't
miss any of our Family Balancing Actepisodes because you can find us on Apple,
Spotify, Google, Podbean, Pandora, iHeartRadio and CTI Radio Network and
(01:55):
more. And this is where youcan also sign up for my monthly newsletter
and grab my free year round holidaystressless tips at Maureen Huntley dot com.
And you can also find out howyou can work with me and become one
of my most amazing clients. Ireally love what I do, holistic solutions
(02:20):
for health and well being for women, moms and their families. So deep
breath, exhale, it starts withyou. So when I woke up this
morning, a warm, rainy dayhere in the West of Ireland, I
(02:43):
felt the need to bake and makesome soup. Yes it's July, and
I decided that I would bake muffinsand make soup. Well cooking on my
terms for fun and not for myfamily. It's like a meditation and for
me to be present and create somethingwonderful, something useful and something that I'm
(03:05):
proud of. It's really fast andeasy, and I love to do it.
It also keeps me focused kind ofand completely off of my devices like
my iPhone, my iPad, mycomputer you know. Oh wait, I'm
not being completely truthful. I didhave an online yoga class at the krack
(03:30):
of dawn this morning that was priorto my kitchen connection. And then I
did. I looked up the veganre super recipe online while I was drinking
my coffee with dandelion and coconut oil. Well it's good for you. Well,
then I am. As I wasdrinking my coffee, I checked my
(03:52):
messages and I just sent a fewtexts. It was no big deal.
And then I had to look atmy boxer replies because I had to check
in a few people. And thenand then I listened to this podcast Family
Tech as I started together all mybits together on the counter in the kitchen,
and then boom, my phone diedout. Rather ironic because actually our
(04:15):
guest today is Sarah Kimmel, andshe is the host of the popular podcast
and YouTube program Family Tech Talk.Well, she'll be joining us in just
a few moments. But I wantedto tell you that as soon as I
got back to the business of bakingand soup making in the forced silence of
(04:36):
my kitchen, I felt totally inthe zone connected to what I was doing
and creating there, I say focused. Well, honestly, I have this
little problem of allowing my electronics toconsume my life as though there are actually
a family member. We honestly,every one of my family members attached to
(05:01):
their phones. Well, the ruleof ours is not to bring our phone
into the table at the kitchen,you know, into the kitchen at the
kitchen table, even when I do, of course, because I'm mom,
I'm allowed to do what I want. But of course when you go out
to a meal, we do needto take photos of it, right,
Okay, many families, and it'snot just the children, it's the adults
(05:25):
that have this really big problem withallowing technology to completely take over our lives.
Yeah, I mean, my grownchildren have grown up with it from
the very beginning, and I actuallylearned so much from them because I didn't,
including how to turn on my phoneand to reboot the internet. But
(05:46):
what about when our children are actuallyhiding away from their creative expressions and allowing
tech and games and apps and thefariouscharacters online to block their creativity. What
about getting back to the basics oflife, playing and connecting with others,
music, art, theater are howabout reading a book? Well. Today's
(06:13):
guest who I'm so excited to haveon the Family Balancing Act is Sarah Kimmel,
host of the podcast Family Tech Talk, where Sarah discusses all about everything
from the latest family tech news,tech tips, parenting advice, pop culture,
gaming, and more. Well.Each week on her show, she
discusses topics that will help you manageyour family, technology, your smart home,
(06:39):
and digital kids. She has spentthe last twenty years of her career
working as a Microsoft Certified IT manager, supporting over one hundred small businesses,
and during that time she started FamilyTech LLC to help families understand and manage
the technology in their home. Shehas regularly appeared as a family tech expert
(07:03):
on local NBCCBS, ABC and FoxNews affiliates, b YU TV and Studio
five, and has been invited allover the world from tech companies like Lenovo,
My Computer, Verizon, Microsoft,Dell, and Samsung. You have
to check her out. It's SarahKimmel dot com. Sarah. I am
(07:28):
so honored to have you here todayand I just can't wait to have this
conversation with you. It will beawesome. Hi. Yes, oh,
I like you. There you are, Yeah, I'm here. Hello,
Hello, Hello darling. How areyou? I am fabulous. How are
(07:50):
you? I'm doing well? Thankyou so much. So where do we
begin? How did you get intothe business of this? Well, like
you said, I am an ITmanager, So that's basically how I got
started. Is I have been inthe tech industry for a very long time,
over twenty years, mainly with companiescalled managed services providers, so they
(08:16):
are they provide the IT for smallbusinesses. And in the course of that,
you know, I had my firstchild, and my friends that live
you know, around me would alwaysask me questions because they knew I was
the tech expert, right, I'mthe one that deals with this for companies
every day. So they'd ask me, oh, hey, my computer gout
(08:39):
a virus, can you help mewith that? Or you know, I
have questions about something for my kids, you know, let me know,
and like so, I'd always getall these questions from everybody that I know
and you know, family, friends, acquaintances, Hey, I heard you
were the person to go to fortech advice, so I decided to start
a blog. I'm like, Okay, you know, forget it, We're
(09:01):
just going to put all the informationon a blog, send you a link.
And I'm like tired of repeating myselfbasically, So I started my blog
back in well, I started kindof a version of the blog around two
thousand and six, but the versionthat's mostly there now started in two thousand
and nine, and so, youknow, then, I've just kind of
(09:24):
changed my content with the changing times. So I don't write on the blog
as much anymore. I do YouTubevideos because that's a platform that people are
looking for that information more, andpodcasting and things like that. So you
know, just kind of change thecontent to go with the changing times.
Wow, And you know, thetimes are a changeing for sure. I
(09:48):
don't know how you're keeping up withit, because I do have a couple
of chech people in my family andthey are always being bombarded with questions just
stupid stuff to really complex things things. And so not only is that going
on, but there's just a lotof information coming at us as consumers and
(10:09):
as parents. So like when youhave and I'm going to tell my listeners
that Sarah has the most comprehensive websiteon this matter. I was like rolling
through it and I'm I'm amazed atthe amount of content and information and support
(10:31):
that you freely give. It's justlike wow. So I'm going to brain
drain you here. I wanted toask you, how do you where you
know? Again? Where do youbegin? How do you start the process
(10:52):
of sitting your family down and saying, Okay, people, we all need
to address the amount of time we'respending on our computers or on our phones
or what other things are gaming devicesand sometimes just from my own point of
(11:16):
view, in my own life stuff, it's not only just the kids,
No, it's the adults. AndI'll call myself out totally. Absolutely.
That's funny that you ask, becauseI'm actually running a kind of tech reset
challenge right now on my Facebook community. But it is mainly just a ten
(11:37):
day reset where I'm kind of givingyou small things that you can do each
day to be more intentional about yourtech use because I like, I obviously
love technology. It's totally immersed.Yeah, technology like basically runs my entire
life, but I use it asa tool to help my life run smoother,
(12:03):
run easier. I don't let ituse me, you know, So
I'm not going to get sucked intothese different I mean, obviously everybody gets
gonna get sucked into a rabbit holefrom here or there, but just kind
of walking that back and being moreintentional about what you're using technology for so
parts of the Reset challenge. Bythe time this errors, it's going to
(12:26):
be over. So I apologize toone. I will yeah to do another
one, but I think I willcreate like kind of a printable or whatever
that you can download that will helpyou go through the reset challenge on your
own. You know. Right now, I'm just sending out an email every
day kind of walking people through it, but you'd get the whole thing right
(12:46):
away. But it's things, reallysmall, things like changing one app from
being on your phone to being somewhereelse. So say you watch YouTube a
lot on your phone, Okay,I'm only going to watch YouTube on a
smart TV. And basically kind ofjust changing where you're consuming that content can
(13:07):
really help you be more intentional aboutthat tech you so you're not just staring
at your phone. You're like,Okay, I'm going to watch a YouTube
video, so I'm going to sitdown on the couch and watch it like
I would a television program. Soyou're not eliminating YouTube from your life,
but you're just being more intentional aboutwhat you're doing with the technology. And
(13:30):
so I think that's kind of agood place to start, is just like
looking at your usage and then youcan do the whole thing with the for
your family. So you could runthe challenge with your family, like,
Okay, let's see who can reducetheir usage on their phone this week,
and you know they'll get an icecream party or whatever. So it doesn't
have to be this like serious sitdown conversation. Hey, everybody, we
(13:54):
really need to talk about our technologyuse. You know, you can make
it into a fun game where we'renot you know, and it's kind of
like dieting. I would say,you know, I'm not eliminating the treats
because then I'm going to go aheadand binge on all the treats when I
can, and I'm not really changingmy habits. But it's about allowing yourself
(14:16):
that grace and the ability to enjoythe things that you want to enjoy,
but making sure you're more intentional aboutit. I love how you connected the
food connection to because it is it'san addiction. I mean, addictions can
be so many different things, butfood a lot of people can relate to.
(14:39):
Even if you don't have weight issues, you probably you know, are
addicted to salt, to sugar,or just eating caffeine. Yeah, caffeine,
that's my thing. But yes,it's it's so easy to comprehend,
but not so easy to do forsure. So that is that's brilliant though,
(15:03):
to sit your family down, becauseI can tell you this much.
I didn't. I didn't like Isat them down and gave them a lecture.
I didn't. I didn't go,let's play a game. And even
now, I mean, like mykids are gone and I still have you
know them around in that. Butbut it's the bringing the the devices to
(15:26):
the table and then agreeing we weren'tgoing to do it. And then I'm
of course the first one to breakthat rule, right because somebody might call
me that I'm expecting of course,you know, because we don't have phones
hanging on the walls anymore. They'rein our pockets and maybe so much.
Yeah, there are mini computers.They do everything. Oh yeah, yeah,
(15:50):
yeah, yeah, so at whatage? Another one of my questions
for you is at what age doesa child get a phone? So I
am very much not a hard fastlike age person because every family is different,
(16:15):
every child is different. So Icould be the mother of a family
that has three kids and one kidwas totally ready for a phone at ten
years old, and the other onemight still not be ready at fifteen.
You know, there is so manyfactors that I feel go into whether or
not they get a phone, andI like to kind of step them through
(16:41):
technology instead of just saying like,okay, when you're thirteen, this is
when you get a phone, becausethen it just helps them kind of put
the ownership and the responsibility on thekid where they are earning that right.
So you know, we start out, you know with me maybe a watch
that has communication, and you know, for my son who wanted a phone,
(17:07):
like, okay, well you havea watch and you aren't bringing that
watch when you are out of thehouse, so you're not ready for a
phone because you're not being responsible withthe watch. You know, They like,
oh, this is lame, Idon't want to use this, Like
okay, well you're going to needto show me that you can use this
and that you can use it properlyin order to basically graduate to the next
(17:29):
level. And so it's a constantproving yourself you know worthy, I guess
of that next step in the technologyyou know, hierarchy. So you know,
so I start with like a smartwatch, and then we graduate to
something like a kid save smartphone.There's a lot of options available that are
(17:52):
basically really limited phones that have verylimited apps, like a curated app store
where you're not going to be ableto download every single app, you know,
so that would be the next levelwhere you know, they really want,
like their ultimate goal is like aniPhone or something. But Mike,
okay, well, you're going toneed to show me that you can text
responsibly on this, that you're notgoing to try and get around the parental
(18:17):
controls that are installed on this.So there's a lot of things that you
can show me that you're responsible enoughfor the next level, and then you
keep stepping along the process, sothe kids save smartphone and then maybe an
Android device that has some like reallystrict parental controls, and then you know,
when they're sixteen seventeen, like totallyopen for like an iPhone or something.
(18:40):
If they've shown throughout the history thatthey can use it responsibly, that's
great. I wasn't really aware thatthat Androids were actually had had more of
the parental controls that had more lockson it. Shall we say, were
you know a guy way to abetter healthier version of taking care of yourself
(19:04):
around tech? Sure, And it'sactually not so much that Android has those
like built in, It's just thatthe operating system is more open to it.
So with Apple, the operating system, like Apple is so concerned about
user privacy, even if that useris a ten year old. So because
(19:25):
of that like built in privacy,like blocking, it's not going to allow
third party parental controls the appropriate accessto monitor or control the device effectively.
And so with an Android device,you have a plethora of third party parental
controls that you can choose from.You can pick which one which platform suits
(19:48):
your family the best, and installthat and it has the ability to have
that monitoring of the content and theability to lock it down properly, whereas
they won't have that with an Appledevice just because of the operating system that's
so locked down. Well, doyou think the public really knows that.
I mean parents, they absolutely donot, okay, I think, so
(20:11):
just throw that out there because II didn't know that. But I am
not always I'm trying to keep mykids happy, and that has been I
mean now, like the years havegone by, but I'm still trying to
keep them happy, you know,or trying to be the fix it because
fix it because I'm mom, youknow, just anybody like, okay,
(20:33):
we all get along here, please. But I remember when my uh,
I think my youngest. I wassitting at the counter in the kitchen and
I was sitting there on my phone, just you know, clicking away on
it, and he comes over tome, and I think he's around four,
and because mom mom, moms sortof like that this that uh uh
(20:59):
stewie, yeah, mommy, mommymy, and I'm still not listen, like
not really listening to him, andhe crawled kind of climbs up onto the
other high chair next to me,and he grabs my cheeks and flips my
face towards him and he goes,you must listen to me when I'm speaking
(21:23):
to you. Put that down.And I was like, okay, p
and uh yeah. He that wasrather embarrassing, but we tell that story.
He tells that story, a greatstory. It's really good because I
(21:44):
really because it was new, allnew to me, not new to me,
but I was really getting better andbetter at it. Everything was,
you know, everything was at myfingertips. What about teenagers? And I
know, you know you can andget them. If you haven't, you've
let it be kind of a runawaytrain. Sure, Oh gee, who
(22:04):
hasn't been on one of those?And you know you trust your children.
Everything's fine, they seem to bedoing well. Maybe there's some you know,
little behavioral stuff going on, butthat happens with teenagers. You're just
like, whatever, let's get throughthis. Let's move through this. Okay,
you've hurt my feelings, you know, you move through it. But
(22:26):
some of this is being fed bythe nefarious characters that they're communicating with in
their text message in a text group. It could even be good friends at
school that have now turned on youbecause you now you know, have nicer
(22:48):
shoes than they do, or whatever. The problem is, how do you
pull back from that? How doyou get the power back? Yeah?
That is a very tough one.And I know when my sister she kind
of you know, wild, wild, West with her kids when they got
the phone, and then finally waslike, hey, Sarah, I need
(23:10):
to lock this down now. Andso like I went and helped her lock
down the kid's phones, and likeyou would have thought her daughter like it
was the end of the world,just you know, totally upset, and
you know, it was a veryvery difficult day for sure. But I
(23:30):
think making sure you're communicating properly andit's okay to let your kids know that
you made a mistake, and that'swhere you would approach it from say,
hey, you know what, Igave you access to an adult level device
and I probably should have done alittle more research before I did that,
(23:53):
So this is what we're going toneed to do to correct my mistake,
and not being afraid to just beinglike, hey, you know, mom
made a mistake to and you know, like kind of this is on me
and I shouldn't have let you,you know, have all of this access,
(24:14):
and we need to fix it.And then that way, it's not
you're not blaming them. It's nothingthey did wrong to kind of bring this
punishment, you know, because it'smaybe it feels more like a punishment at
that stage if you're just saying hey, this is wrong and I need to
fix it. You know, ifyou bring that back on yourself and just
(24:36):
say, hey, it was amistake for me to allow this and we
need to fix that, then it'sa little less harsh. I want to
say, yeah, I know,that's that's great. My comment is that
this would work in so many thingsgoing on in our lives is to take
(24:56):
ownership of our own crap, right, I mean, because it's so easy
for us to blame, shame whateverwho, and especially if our kids are
may be the cause of of youknow, discord or a bullying situation or
(25:18):
you know, a part of theparty that is you know, because it
becomes this massive glob moving towards oneor a few people and you want to
blame them for so many things.When I'm like screen bloody murder. But
you first have to deal with takingthe device away and saying I screwed up.
You were not you were not anadult. I assumed you were and
(25:42):
that's my bad. Right, Andnow we're going to deal with how we
don't deal with how we don't treatpeople. Yeah, yeah, and having
those conversations with like how things thatthey do online are permanent and that they
can't take it back, and sothey need to be more careful about what
(26:03):
they are doing online. And youknow, even if it's something that they
feel like is private. That's theThat's one thing that we get a lot
of pushback on as people are saying, well, don't you trust me or
don't I deserve privacy? And mycomeback to that is always, nobody has
privacy online, not even me,not even you. So you're not going
(26:27):
to have private conversations that could getyou into trouble in the future because of
something that you've said. Now I'mgoing to help protect you from that.
But you know, I like toshow my kids like court cases and stuff
here wow, because they like evenlike criminal cases, the like the phone
(26:49):
expert will come testify, and theamount of data that comes out of the
you know, defendants phone or thevictim's phones is like so eye opening where
it's recording how many times they've unlockedtheir screen, when they've unlocked their screen,
(27:10):
how many times the orientation change,how many steps you took with your
phone, so it can track likeall of these things to help like convict
a criminal. But it's eye openingfor the kids to see how much they
don't have privacy because all of thesethings can come back against them in the
future. And so you know,and I talk about uh people who like
(27:34):
tweet something out ten years ago andthey're getting canceled for it now. And
so these things they stay forever,and you can't take it back. Even
if you think you're having a privateconversation with a friend, they could screenshot
it, they could record it froma different device. There's so many things
(27:55):
where you think you might be havingsomething that's private and secret, but it's
never going to stay that way.So so I always say, there is
no privacy online, not for me, not for you. So don't have
any expectation of that. And it'swhen we think of freedom of speech.
Yeah, we do have freedom ofspeech, especially you know, on our
(28:18):
phones, and but but it doesn'tgo away. And so that freedom of
speech is out there and can beturned and used against you. And yet
uh, freedom of speech should notbe taped followed. It's a it's a
(28:45):
sticky situation, right, and onethat we're not going to sell. But
oh wow, Yeah, I havea kind of an odd question and I
don't know if this ever comes up, but with UH, technology or even
you know, with five G let'ssay five GU and what is emitted from
(29:08):
five G? And and how allof these towers now and the amount of
energy and saying people are getting sick, and uh, what is your feeling
around that and technology? What areyour thoughts? You know, I'm actually,
like I said, I love technology. I would go to bed with
(29:30):
technology if I do. The Iphone is next to me, So I
think most people do, even thougheven if they're using a charity bag,
you know, they're not right right. But there is actually an account that
I do like to follow. Hername is The account is tech Wellness,
and she has a lot of contentabout about exactly that. It's not something
(29:56):
that super concerns me. I justthink it's, you know, know,
this is the world we live innow, and it's I'm not going to
be able to do anything to changethat unless I want to, like,
you know, completely go live offthe grid, which I absolutely do not.
So it's, you know, everythingis a trade off. So if
(30:17):
I want access to this, thenI'm going to have to deal with the
consequences of it as well. Shehas some great advice some things you can
do to kind of help eliminate thoselike health risks and things like that.
But it's not something that like Igenerally dig into a ton, But I
(30:37):
just know, like there's a lotof kind of misconception with five G,
I will say, just because there'stwo different versions of five G and a
lot of people get confused with that. And I don't even know if this
is where you want to go withthis right now. No, No,
I didn't even know that, Butthat's great. I didn't know that.
So five there's five G, whichis the cellular network, and it just
(30:59):
means fifth generation. So it's justthe next iteration. Like so it's just
the upgrade, you know. Soif you have an iPhone twelve and then
you have an iPhone thirteen, that'syou know, there was four G and
now there's five G. So it'sjust the fifth generation of the technology.
The other thing people get it confusedwith is Wi Fi. So Wi Fi
(31:21):
five gigaherts is not five G cellularfive gigaherts. WiFi is basically the band
that your wireless signal transmits over insideyour home. So they're completely different things.
And I get a lot of questionsabout, like, oh, how
(31:41):
do I disable five G on myWiFi and I'm like, well, you
don't really even need to it's justthe band that it's communicating on. It
has nothing to do with the fifthgeneration of the cellular network. Fascinating.
I know that I'm and I usethis stuff and I do go to bed
with it, and I don't evenyou know, and I know there are
people who are very sensitive who've had, you know, health issues around this
(32:06):
this stuff. And again it's aboutminding how you're using all of this.
Right as you were talking about yourchallenge, I was thinking about, you
know, doing a detox. Iknow, I was listening I mentioned to
you when we first talked about.I was driving here in Ireland and I
(32:27):
was listening to a radio program andthey were all going on about how they're
doing a you know, a cellphone detox or technology detox, but they're
really talking about their cell phones andmobile phones and how they were like having
like complete conniption fits because they couldn'thandle lot, you know, like I
haven't touched it in an hour,and it's this this addiction to I have
(32:51):
to have this. Uh, Iguess it's again it's like the food thing
is to do a detox and todo as you say, the challenge,
but I can't imagine anybody being offof it. Well, I mean,
I know when my phone was broken, when I had destroyed it a year
(33:12):
ago, I was off of itfor twenty four hours to like cut a
new one, and it was like, because that's the only way I could
make a phone call making a phonecall any other way. Yeah, yeah,
they like, well our phones areand really technology is so integrated in
our daily lives that for me personally, like a detox is a very extreme
(33:36):
effort and one that I I'm notsaying I'm addicted to my technology. I
probably am, who knows, buta detox is too much for me,
Like I would not be able todo that. You know, I went
on a cruise with my family.I had to buy the internet plan.
I'm like, I do still havea full time job. I run a
(33:57):
tech support team, and so Ineed to be available to them to answer
questions and to give them help.You know, our our tech support is
open seven days a week. Soso there's not something that like I'm really
able to do to like leave behindmy technology for an extended period of time.
So I just don't think it's veryfeasible for a lot of people to
(34:20):
do a detox like that. WhatI do recommend is like detoxing on like
specific things like say you watch toomuch YouTube, Okay, I'm going to
not have YouTube for a week orInstagram or you know whatever it is that
you are spending too much time on. And that's something that I like with
(34:42):
my kids. You know, ifthey get grounded from something, say they
were watching too much YouTube and theydidn't get their homework done, well,
then they get grounded from YouTube.They don't get grounded from their entire phone,
because that's the way they're going tocommunicate with their friends, that's the
way they're going to like coordinate,this way they're going to do their homework,
you know. And so taking thephone, want to completely away isn't
necessarily going to be beneficial for anybody. But taking away the problem is where
(35:08):
you really want to like focus yourattention. That's that's absolutely great advice because
it is about the thing. Whatis the the thing that's really pulling you
away. It's not your work.You need your work, You need to
be in communication. But YouTube forme, it might be Twitter, you
know, it's just because it's sofast you could just you know, I'm
(35:30):
not even tweeting. I don't reallyI just like tom like a scroller right
to scroll through it. But it'svery easy to do. Classrooms and and
children with their phones. There arein my area, and when I'm back
(35:52):
in the States, they have totake and they go into the school when
they you know, little school,even the grammar school they're going in,
you have to put leave your phonein the bag at the door kind of
thing. I love that, sothat that kind of works. And yet
there are schools in my area thatwhere friends of mine work, family members
(36:16):
and work as features in that wherethe kids in middle school where they're allowed
to have their phones on them andthey will film the teacher or certain situations,
and therein lies a huge issue.Yeah. So that's one thing I
(36:37):
really would love to promote more isto eliminate phones in classrooms. And I'm
not saying they don't have to,like they can't bring their phone. It
can be in their backpack, youknow, but as long as it's not
out in the classroom. And Ithink because there's a lot of laws and
things that are being passed right nowin the States around social media and kids
(37:00):
and these laws, I just theydon't do anything. They're not beneficial,
they're not going to help really theproblem, and it's a lot of government
overreach, I feel. And ifthe government can just concentrate more on where
they do have jurisdiction, which wouldbe the public schools, and do something
(37:22):
like that where they're eliminating the phonesinside the classrooms, I think that's going
to go really far in helping thesituation because and I'm guilty of it,
and I didn't even realize, likeI'll text my daughter in the middle of
class, you know, and say, hey, you left your car lights
on, you know, so shecan go turn off her car. But
(37:44):
it's the distraction. There's a studylike any notification that they get in the
middle of class, it takes themabout ten to fifteen minutes to get back
into like the educational space. Andwhen you're in class for you know,
an hour, that's and they're probablygetting notifications constantly, they're not learning.
And I think that's the big problemthat I have with the phones in the
(38:07):
classrooms, is the distraction that itcauses. And it's not like I don't
want to take away their ability toreach their family in an emergency or anything
like that. So, like I'mokay with them bringing it and having it
on them, just not out inthe classroom. And I think that's like,
I think it's where government can reallystep in and make a difference and
(38:30):
make that kind of across the board. But the other the other part of
the phones in schools, dang it, And I just lost my train of
thought on that one. But butyeah, I really think that that's something
the government can help with. Well, as you say, the government,
it's amazing just how they don't dothe obvious, right, That's all.
(38:57):
That's all I have to say.It's just it just is like mind blowing
that that would be the obvious thing. Because they do have jurisdiction over that,
they can have a voice around that, and the parents are asking for
that at some level. You know, maybe some are louder than others.
Yet they're backdoring it by trying tocontrol other aspects that have really nothing to
(39:23):
do with the immediate necessary task ofhelping the family, helping the children to
stay focused, that's that word again, right on their work. And you
know after COVID and that these poorkids are struggling anyway. Yeah, I
(39:45):
remembered my train of thought when youwere talking about them recording their teachers.
That actually happened in my daughter's highschool, to want to say, it
was either last year or the yearbefore first day of school. There was
a tea pure and she was kindof spouting off political political things that she
(40:07):
probably shouldn't have been talking to thekids about because you know, she can
have her own views, but sheis right basically, like you know,
she was offending half the students andnot like you know and agreeing with the
other half, telling students that ifthey don't agree with her they can leave,
(40:27):
you know, and things like that, so like just really inappropriate things.
But so some students videoed her fromtheir phone and she ended up like
losing her job because that video wentcompletely viral. But then like the distraction
at the school, like our principalgot hundreds of thousands of phone calls from
(40:47):
parents across the country, both likefor and against this teacher, and like
we had to have like police presenceat the school and everything. That's so
exactly I could have just easily beenwell. And yet that's a situation where
the phones worked because right, honestly, you know, that person that teacher
(41:13):
so called might not ever be caughtright yeah. And it was a chemistry
class, like it wasn't even likea political class. It was because sometimes
political classes go that way. Andif there's a healthy, healthy debate,
that's great. But and that that'swhat should be as a debate, not
exact a schooling on how you shouldbe living your life and thinking correctly.
(41:37):
Amazing, And it was crazy.That was at my daughter's high school,
right right, just like and totallywent national attention and everything. It was
insane. Well, put you inthe limelight away, I know, right,
Paul in the tech expert. Yeah, yeah, they didn't ask my
opinion, but that's too funny.Oh wow, So I had another thought
(42:04):
around uh the oh golly, Ihad all these questions for you. Oh
apps. You talked about apps beforeand about and it kind of segueing into
what is what's the good thing?You know this the good thing about phones
(42:27):
are and and apps. You arequite versed in the you know, good
versus evil apps? Sure, andand of course you know managing it so
that our children get those on theirphone, the good ones and eradicate the
bad ones. Yeah, where doyou I know you have so many sources
that you've put on your website,but where's the where's a parent begin what
(42:52):
what do you do to get theright stuff on your kids' phones? Yeah,
that's a great question because there isso much to choose from and there
are good and bad. And wewere kind of talking about the government,
but uh, the US Attorney Generalor surgeon general, sorry, the US
Surgeon General released a health advisory aboutlike teens and social media and mental health.
(43:19):
And it's actually a really good advisory. I wasn't expecting to be because
like all the laws and everything thathave been coming out, I like am
totally against, but this was areally good advisory because it did talk about
the pros and cons of social mediause. Because there are pros. The
(43:42):
main pro is that, especially withlike marginalized communities, they're finding people that
are like them on social media andthey're able to connect and they're able to
kind of validate their own lives andtheir own experience through social media and have
that like you, validation boost becausethey can see other people. You know,
(44:06):
I live in rural Utah. There'snot a lot of diversity here,
so you know, I can seehow marginalized communities in rural Utah can find
that community on social media, andwhere the danger really lies is mainly the
time spent. So like limiting thattime so they're not on it all night
(44:29):
long. They are, you know, limiting to an hour a day or
something, because it's when they've spentover three hours a day is when it's
really starting to like deteriorate, deterioratetheir mental health. And so kind of
taking that and saying like almost allsocial media platforms can have good and can
(44:51):
have bad, but making sure thatyou are training the algorithm. And I
say this a lot like training thealgorithm to where it's okay to unfollow somebody
who makes you feel bad. Likeif you have a friend on Instagram and
every time you see their pictures youfeel bad about yourself, unfollow a mute
them, do those things. Oryou know, if you're looking through your
(45:14):
feed and it's all stuff like solet's go back to food and you're on
a diet and it's all these deliciouscookies and things, maybe like like tell
Instagram or TikTok or whatever that you'renot interested in seeing these cookie content anymore.
And then you can kind of trainthat algorithm to see just the things
(45:37):
that are positive and uplifting and makeyou feel good about yourself instead of the
things that are making you feel badabout yourself. That's great. I have
a question around why is it thatwhen you're talking about carpeting, just talking
about carpeting because you're having a carpetingdiscussion because you need carpeting, you like
(46:01):
carpeting, you use carpeting. Idon't know it shows up on your phone.
It shows up within two minutes andyou're like, wow, here it
is, I need carpeting, andyou go to a space or I you
know, I do. I havefriends to do that that don't even realize
that what's happened is that it completelypicked up on your conversation and shows up
(46:24):
on your phone. Right. Itgets you get pulled in if it's the
right carpeting right right, because theywant to sell you that carpeting. And
it's funny because as we go backto that privacy conversation, it is really
a testament that no, you don'thave privacy online, you don't have privacy
(46:45):
when you're out and about. Youknow, if you're acting a fool at
a restaurant, I guarantee somebody isgoing to be recording you and you are
going to be going viral for that, so like there is no privacy.
So when you are having like aconversation. I had a recent conversation with
my friend and we were talking aboutnail polish and I was saying, oh,
(47:07):
I love this like nail company,and then like as we're talking and
like, well, you're probably goingto start getting ads for it now anyway,
so here it is like and andshe did, like she's like,
yep, there there, I've gotit. Yeah, We're we're good.
And so there is an element oflistening for sure, but the the platforms
(47:32):
are just actually really really good inthe fact where if I am talking about
like I've done some research on carpetingbecause I'm looking for carpeting, right,
but then I am talking to you, you know, the next day about
carpeting, well, our phones arein proximity to each other at that point,
(47:55):
and my searches are basically going tolike, oh, hey, this
person knows this person and they weresearching for carpeting, so maybe this person
also wants to search for cars,so they're like communicating it basically. I
mean, like it's just like proximitywhere it's it knows your location, he
knows your friend's location, or youknow, maybe you're chatting through Messenger or
(48:17):
something like that, or you're texting, it knows that you know this person,
and this person's looking at this,and like, so maybe you also
want to look at this, solike so sometimes it seems like it's just
like that I was talking and that'show it came about. But a lot
of times it's really just that you'recommunicating with somebody else who was also like
(48:42):
cause you're talking about the carpeting withthat person, right, and they were
looking at carpeting, you know.So it kind of happens that way a
lot of times. But but thereis definitely they say that they're not listening,
but there's definitely an element of listeningas well. Yeah, well,
let's see what shows up on myphone. If I know you're gonna get
this Alcology texting you, I gotit. It's scarpeting and that's going to
(49:07):
be your feeds for the next Ohmy gosh, that's too funny. Well,
I I don't know if you haveany other thoughts that you think that
our listeners would like to know about, just surviving this technology jungle with I
mean, the big thing is tobe informed. So I always say that
(49:30):
if your child was diagnosed with adisease, and you would go online and
you would research everything you could aboutthat disease so you can keep them healthy,
you can keep them safe, andyou can keep like kind of a
level of normalcy for your child.And we're not doing that about technology.
(49:52):
And it can be just as dangerousas a disease. If you're handing over
a supercomputer to your child and youdon't understand the dangers and you don't understand
what you're allowing, then you knowit can get to that dangerous level.
So research what you can do tohelp protect your kid. You know,
parental controls for such and such.You know there are in app parental controls
(50:16):
like TikTok actually has the best inapp prontal controls of any social media platform,
which is shocking for most people tohear. I know, and the
whole thing with TikTok, I know, it's like, oh danger. I
have found there's lots of really greatresources and great info on that, and
I'm thinking, well, if thisis on there, I mean, the
(50:38):
stuff showing up on on Facebook andeven YouTube isn't even this good and it's
short, it's not this long,you know stuff. I don't know.
I mean, I'm for me.The jury's out on on TikTok. I'm
not I've never not like them,right, Yeah, No, I think
it's fine. I think they're Ithink the big thing that the government has
(51:01):
an issue with is who controls thatdata because it's the you know, basically
the China. With Facebook, theycan subpoena Facebook and get data for you
know, everybody in the United States, but they can't do that for TikTok,
and that's what I think scares themand like it doesn't allow them to
(51:22):
have access to that data. Sothat's the that's the big thing I think
that the government has a problem withwith regards to TikTok. But interesting,
very But back to like just researchand then communication with your child. I
really really love to have my kidspresent me with like so, say they
(51:45):
want an iPhone, they want tobe stepped up to the next level of
technology, they want Instagram, theywant like Snapchat. Okay, you give
me a presentation on what kind ofparental controls it has, what it can
do, what kind of content youcan come across, you know, like
you do the research and present thatto me, and then I obviously will
(52:06):
verify this research that they've done.Your kids have they have no no chance
in the sky, Like yeah,so no, that's wrong and that's wrong,
but good try. But just havingthat open communication about you know,
whether or not you're going to allowsomething and why you're going to not allow
(52:30):
it or why are you going toallow it, and what kind of parameters
are going to be put on placeif you allow it, and just you
know, not being sneaky about it. Like I have people who are like,
how do I install this print controlwithout my my kids knowing? And
I'm like, well, don't dothat because you want to, like,
say, you come across something soI'll get alerts on my phone about like
(52:52):
things that my child is you know, searching or whatever. Well, if
I'm getting these alerts sneakily, howam I going to talk to them about
it? You know, they're gonnahave to know that I've I've found out
somehow, and then that breaks thetrust, I think breaks the trust.
And then the next time it's abigger secret, it's a bigger thing.
It becomes because The whole idea ofbeing a child is to see how you
(53:17):
can outdo your parents, how youcan get beyond them, you know,
because they're they're expanding their wings.They have to do that with apps.
I have one more question than Iknow I'm left. Is there a timer?
(53:37):
Is there any kind of a timerbuilt into a phone, Let's say,
where your phone. Can the child'sphone just goes off it's been three
hours, You're done, or oreven with apps, maybe not the whole
phone, but just all the differentapps. Is there a way to control
that? Yeah? Absolutely with iOS. So Apple they have something called screen
(53:59):
time. It's built into the Appleoperating system, and you can set that
up. You do have to havean Apple phone to set that up for
your child's phone because Apple just doesn'tlike to play nice with other people and
so so that's the one limitation there. But yeah, you can set a
time limit for the entire device.You can set a bedtime for the device
(54:20):
so it just shuts down at acertain time every night. You can set
time limits for specific apps. Sothere's a lot of things that you can
do with that. Screen time.For Google for Android devices, it's called
Google Family Link and it's similar,but you just have to download the app
and then you set up their theirGoogle account with that and it's the same
thing. And with Google it's reallyfun because I can just like shut it
(54:44):
down at any time, like soI can just like pause the device and
then they have no access to thedevice. Yeah, like okay, hey,
you know what, it's dinner time. Pause. So it's really nice.
But there's a lot that you cando with time limits just built in.
You don't even have to buy anextra app or anything. That is
fantastic. So there's hope for thefuture. There is absolutely hope. Technology
(55:07):
is amazing. Well, two ofmy kids are very involved in it out
of my four kids, so I'mthey seem pretty together, so that's that's
a good thing. But Sarah,it has been an absolute joy having you
on the Family Balancing Act today.I am, I've learned a lot I
didn't and I went into this knowingI knew very little other than my own
(55:31):
experiences. That I learned so much. Thank you, thank you, thank
you so much. It was wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful having you. And
so where where are you? Youwere all over the place. So let's
let my listeners know where they can. Obviously you mentioned my podcast is Family
Tech Talk that's available on all podcastingplatforms, and then you can really find
(55:54):
me on any social platform just bysearching family tech. I have family Tech
handle on everything, So if youfind family tech that's me, and then
my website, you can either goto Sarah Kibell dot com or you can
go to familytech dot biz. Thatis fantastic. Well, thank you again,
and thank you so much to theFamily Balancing Act listeners, So take
(56:17):
a deep breath and know that you'renot alone here on the Family Balancing Act.
Thank you. Yeah, of coursevery This will be adjusted. Were really good
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