001his screens tweens and teens had a monitor mentor and be mindful I'm just a little bit about me I taught high school and junior high I became a guidance counselor and then became a school administrator and I spent around 21 years on a secondary campus and I'm currently raising four girls ages 11 11 12 and 13 so I feel like I'm right in the middle of what you're right in the middle of and together we're gonna find some answers so tonight's presentation is really about technology and devices but for me it's also about looking at your family and putting technology in a good place where you are leading technology as opposed to technology leading you so I will talk about devices and screen time impact and apps and ways to monitor and mentor but I
002really do focus mostly on the relationship between parents and child and then multiple children in the household having different plans based on how they're wired so last night I was in the Paradise Valley School District and at the end of my presentation a woman said well you've done a great job of completely horrifying me which landing page did you want to leave me on and I said well the eventual landing page that I'd love to leave you on tonight is feeling empowered and prepared instead of scared and horrified so I made a new slide and said okay my goal for parents is to again enable and empower you to really clarify your role as it relates to devices that you've probably already given so looking up here at restricter enabler and mentor those are typically
003the types of parents that I talk to on a daily basis I started doing this work in 2005 as an administrator I was writing thousands of referrals per year on students using devices in inappropriate and silly and explicit ways so I started talking to parents about what are you doing at home to help guide and support them so as I watched for 15 years I see these three types of parents there are parents that totally restrict everything and most students find a way around you I see parents that are like ah we had Atari you'll be fine and they enable everything and then I see parents that really step into the divine and knowing that we are a month and a half away from 2020 it is definitely time to step into the divine and
004work in tandem with your student so goals for your children I have identifying digital candy versus digital vegetables everything that goes on in Madison at school is digital vegetables technology is an advancing tool it's not going anywhere and it does amazing things for us you've probably learned about tonight using technology so we get on our kids about what I call digital candy all the time but we also need to be talking to them about the positive things around how they're using technology for good these are our leaders they're going to lead us into the future on the last part here goals for your children as well we want them to be literate in the use of media and technology we want you to also be literate in the technology use and media we also want
005children to be able to be self governed and dignified my goal for any eight through 15 year old is spending those seven years really getting them to the point where they don't really need you to intervene and take away devices and be monitoring and supervising as much as you're probably doing right now the goal is for them to take flight and to use technology for good I also want them to be the creator of a responsible digital footprint most of what our students are hearing right now about technology sounds something like this you're burning your brain out if you post something dumb or stupid you're probably not going to get into college and if you send them inappropriate photo you're definitely not ever gonna get a job and you're probably going to prison so that
006is what I hear from kids is negative negative negative and we live in a cancel culture we live in a culture where even schools sometimes look at a mistake make a suspension and don't offer a pathway back so we've learned some things along the way from doing that and I see school districts doing such a better job of thinking about a 10-day suspension for something that maybe could be a five day suspension or a three day suspension or finding some sort of restorative practice so that a mistake that was made at 12 doesn't become a lifelong sentence so know that we are working proactively on that front as well um tonight as I said is really much less about devices and so much more about you strengthening the relationship with your kids having empathy for
007them trying to understand that this new landscape of childhood has definitively changed due to the technology I won't read this slide at you but I was honored to be able to give the keynote this year at the back to school teacher rally and and there were about 800 employees here and one of the things that I really wanted to outline for them is the intersection of some things that have definitively changed one of them is the push for academic rigor another is restriction of recess and rough-and-tumble play and the other is about 10-12 years ago we told kids that everything was bullying and we did that because we are afraid and we're still sort of afraid we're living as parents in a culture where we have hunker down and we want to make sure that
008nobody's gonna hurt our babies and unfortunately some of the deficits that come from that are we're seeing lower coping skills lower resiliency and lower social competence because kids don't have agent see in their own conflict in their own life and the choices that we're making for them so I'll talk a little bit about each of those subjects tonight but I want to outline where we're at as parents um after 9/11 after Columbine after Kirkland after santa clarita every time we have a tragic incident that happens we all start filling our hearts again with this very thin veil of terror and what kids hear from us most often is the world is sort of unsafe whether you're telling an eight-year-old you can't go to the bathroom by yourself because somebody might kidnap you or you're telling
009a twelve-year-old no you can't go to the mall because Arizona is the number one state for human trafficking the messages that we're afraid about are being displaced on them when we tell kids that everything is bullying somebody kicked you under a table somebody pushed you into the locker somebody didn't invite you to your their birthday party what we've said to kids is go get an adult if you're on the playground and somebody calls you fat go tell the paraprofessional somebody kicks you under the table during class go tell your teacher and so the locus of control has become the adults so if you are really tired it's because we have done all of this heavy lifting for our kids so I want to encourage you if you have multiple children or you have a child
010that has some cousins that they play with and they fight with we know to be true that kids know how to have healthy conflicts and we know to be true based on what we see between siblings that they know absolutely how to handle their conflict at home we need to transfer those skills to the school level in an appropriate and safe way so what I'm asking you to think about as you head into 2020 is please let your child suffer please let them have appropriate conflict and please let them strategize with you what should I do next the school is there to definitively support you and Madison will absolutely guide you through that if you need it but many of the things that happen at school are typical daily conflict that is developmentally normal obviously
011if somebody is an imminent harm it's ongoing it's egregious it's just all the time absolutely you want your child to go find an adult but most middle school students most fourth through eighth grade students for sure are fully capable of turning to another human being and saying knock it off please stop I don't like when you said that you're my friend that really hurt my feelings but we tend to intervene whether we're educators or parents and we swoop in and they never have that practice of their own voice and that relates to devices in that if you've given your child a device you have given your child the opportunity to be hit with a lot of pain thread from other students and also to turn around and inflict pain on others and so dignity and
012the voice that they have in their use of their device is extremely important as well so having girls I have five sisters I have four daughters I have no sons they have no brothers so I am lived a long time and an estrogen Tydfil and I love it but part of what's going on with some of these apps that we've given our children access to is we've laid down a very strong runway for them to compare themselves to other people and it's not just girls but girls tend to take in images a little bit differently than boys do so prior to age two you've probably taken about 2,000 photos of your student and so by age 12 so many thousands of photos and the reason I'm pointing this out is often we're putting out our
013front stage we're not talking about our backstage so if I went to any of your platforms tonight I would probably see some beautiful families vacation homes golden scholars all sorts of great stuff going on what kids are watching is you every move and if everything you're posting is perfect then that is the bar that you've set and that is where they feel like I have to measure up to this family expectation but I also have to measure up to the restricted filtered photos and lives of my peers as well and it is an immense amount of pressure both academically as well as socially so those are some things to think about and to look out for as you're giving device use to your children so I had the opportunity to share this with the teachers
014as well the brains that are showing up in our classrooms have been rewired the brain at the top is a really healthy brain lots of blood flow cognition sustained memory the brain on the bottom you can see the neurons are starting to split apart the emotions are probably starting to dull we've been sitting for a long time playing for at night for nine hours and not taking a shower or going to the bathroom things like that so the top brain is using digital vegetables the bottom brain is probably using some digital candy for an extended period of time so when we talk about social emotional and physical health and wellness this is the impact on the developing brain and it is completely rewired how they behave how they show up at school what they expect
015from teachers what they want out of their lessons is fast moving and stimulating lesson plans and so I do a lot of faculty training on how does the video game industry actually get a few things right so I'll ask just a couple questions of you if you were to name two goals that the video game industry has for our families what would one or two of them be stay on a long time so sustained use and the other big huge win spend money right so my goal is to take this beautiful brain and shove it so far down into the brainstem into fight flight or freeze so when me and mom or dad walks in and time for dinner this brain is like no way Jose I don't want to give up get off so
016when you see behavior that frustrates you when you feel like you're nagging them all the time you have to be aware that this brain has been completely hijacked it is doused and cortisol it is doused and dopamine it is not your child's fault that they don't want to get off the game there's a huge social connection there's a neuro scientific component going on and so a my suggestion to you if you want them to get off the game is to give a little bit of lead time so that if dinner is at 6:00 you're telling them at 5:00 like dinner's at 6:00 and you're giving them some warning I would also suggest that you have them move their body and drink water after playing a game that will immediately dissipate the cortisol and the dopamine
017and you will get your kid back so some of these platforms that are digital candy have some redeeming qualities and I'll point those out but what we worry the most about is this untethered access and what it's doing not only to the body but also to the brain as well so for those of you that have not seen port Knight you might want to like hold on to your chairs it's very fast moving very stimulating but what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to just count to eight seconds and I want you to focus put aside for right now that it's a first-person shooter game I want you to look at how fast it moves how many people are in the scene and how many times the scene changes and I want
018you to imagine as you're counting to only eight seconds what a young boy or girl is doing for four hours and what impact that might have on their brain we should be all right here this is weird like is they getting attacked from the other side so that was a bad thing so I'm just gonna chill up here for a second the episod thing what the up is not so that was about 16 seconds to imagine being on that for an extended period of time each day so this world is pretty genius there's strategy there's competition there's collaboration I have a headset I get to be with my friends I get to be loud I can reset if I'm not doing well sometimes in the classroom or at home I don't get a second chance
019I don't get a do-over so video games have completely sucked in some of our kiddos because in a place in the classroom where I don't feel like I have a place I definitely have a place here and so some of our students are drifting to platforms like this because they finally have found a place that welcomes them so as you're processing this information just something to think about when I'm doing faculty trainings I talk about what does this game have that your students are after and what they call out is it has novelty it has relevance and it has competition and collaboration those are things that Madison teachers have been trained in those are things that are incorporating into their lesson plans so my expectation is not that teachers need to compete with video games
020but I do think the industry has some things right and I do think that kids will thrive if some of those things are incorporated on a daily basis questions so far okay you're not horrified yet okay we show as we look at other things hormones neurotransmitters we have some gains and then we have some losses so what they're gaining is dopamine and cortisol cortisol is the stress hormone dopamine is the feel-good hormone so those are huge gains there's a light side to cortisol and a dark side to cortisol we want our kids to have a little bit of good stress we don't want them to be completely incapacitated by stress other things that they're getting for from games and platforms oxytocin and serotonin so oxytocin is our bonding hormone there's a light side to right
021serotonin is the mood regulation hormone if our kids are up all night on videogames and devices serotonin levels are going to be pretty out of whack they're already pretty out of whack going through puberty in fifth through twelfth grade and so some of these things that you're seeing behaviorally make a lot of sense from a neuroscience perspective so um I have the privilege of partnering with ASU and we co-facilitate together and one of the people like who facilitate with shared some of his slides with me these are the American College Health Association statistics for the last ten years so when you are reading articles about electronic devices and anxiety and depression and suicide and self-harm and you are completely freaking out inside as we all should be I want you to look at these and
022recognize that this generation they really have D stigmatized mental health they are coming to us and droves and saying I'm listening to you when I don't feel okay I'm coming to get help for a title one population who may never have had services pre-k through 12 they're coming to the University and they're getting the help that they need and so as we look at our devices the only thing that are causing stress anxiety and depression in the world the answer is absolutely not but they are a piece of it and so as you look at some of these trends on stress and obviously thoughts of suicide nobody really wants to see that it's gone up a hundred percent but a lot of things in the world have changed in the last 10 years the landscape
023of childhood has changed in the last 10 years so as you're handing over devices we have to get really clear on how much do you want to know about what's on the device when you see something on the device that maybe distressful or suicidal where can you go to get the resources because some of them are limited in Maricopa County and so knowing upfront what you're looking for is really important and everything you want to know about your child is on their device there is no mystery to their life every school shooter that is decided to come and do something dangerous at school has posted for weeks and weeks and weeks the students that we have lost to suicide have shared messages with your children and other children for weeks and weeks and weeks so
024this is really no mystery to it but we have to dial in and really supervise and monitor what's going on so again American College Health Association stats so these are our pre-k through 12 students that are leaving us so this is a reflection of University I'll tell you we're seeing the same things on our campuses pre-k through 12 and so we have to get really clear about how to help them and when we say we're here for you we have to show what this generation has a very strong sense of justice and when we say things to them like you matter I love you they are looking at us like really I want you to prove it to me we're how can I feel supported by you so looking at this public health model approach
025to well-being and social emotional wellness I'd call your attention to most of our kids are doing really well some of our kids are moving from well-being into distress and back to well-being and then to distress you actually want your kid to have a little bit of distress where we don't want kids moving is from distress into crisis and where you will find out if they're in crisis is right here this will tell you everything you want to know about how that slide is going south and how quickly it's going south so a lot of parents will ask me well I feel like that's an invasion of their privacy so in this world and landscape it's my professional feeling after watching this for so long that our number one goal is for circuits and if there
026are harm to themselves or others then we have to be monitoring and supervising and err on the side of caution so I'll give you some tips on balancing privacy and safety and also what to tell your kids if somebody comes to them and says this is how I'm feeling and this is what I'm gonna do so these are typical of burning questions that most parents ask at the end of my presentation I'd invite you to ask me anything else and if I don't know the answer I will get you the answer is there anything right now that you're already thinking like this is something that I absolutely need to know before I leave tonight yes got it which is my next couple slides so thank you so much it's a good segue all right other
027questions that are popping up okay yes sure okay that's like every household in America idea right so I will do it right so I call that the dance and so I will give you I think a pretty solid strategy around that and and some things to think about as you're taking the device away what to replace it with because when we take it away we have to replace it with something to strengthen the relationship because we are dancing and in the middle of the dance we're losing their trust and the stakes are really high really high so thank you for those two questions and please go go ahead you're lying never stopped your line never stops if you want to be a good villager I had to make a very difficult phone call yesterday to
028a fellow fifth grade mom because her child disclosed to my child that she had been on an app that's chatroulette and that a man exposed himself to her and so for me I had a choice to say nothing because is it really my business or to protect a child and so I Katie feel very personally convicted that if this fellow mom gets mad at me which has often happened that I'm willing for somebody to be mad at me and feel like I judged their parenting I'm okay with that I can live with that I can sleep with that knowing that I may have saved a life so I'll give you some strategies on how to talk to fellow moms about that dad's do an amazing job there's this thing with dads where they call another
029dad and the other guy's like cool thanks thanks so much moms we are not nice we are not nice and we lose friendships lose friendships and so I'll give you some strategies and I call it the dumb girl approach on how to convey that message and then move on your merry way so that is an awesome question which I will also address so I operate on the rule of five so my target market is actually third through fifth grade students prior to getting access to social media so prior to getting access to social media or the Internet my goal or my magic wand dream would be that five years before your child is going to be exposed to anything on this slide that you have already had ongoing pervasive conversations about it so if you
030are sitting here with a 13 year old and you're like oops I haven't talked about any of this it's okay I'm gonna give you some places to go to have those courageous conversations but the reality is if you've given a device to a child and said good luck with four billion strangers and the world wide web they've already seen all this they've already been exposed to all of it it doesn't matter if you're a restricter Aiden's mom is super cool and they've seen it all at Aiden's house which you cannot control but everything that kids are exposed to is on the Internet and so if you haven't restricted and set settings and have a really good router that's filtering out some of the yuck chances are your kids have either talked about it done it
031or have been exposed to it and so we just need to be really clear about what we've given over and then in 2020 to do a better job of having some conversations with our kids so I'll talk some more about that as well so as you're sitting here thinking about what is my goal in 2020 I almost want you to raise your right hand and promise that's night you will not go home and take anything away you will not go home and take anything away until at least January 1 I want you to do nothing because you need to get super clear and consistent about what you mean by technology it's use its value and what your desired outcome it so I'll just share with you my desired outcome for my four girls is by
032age 15-16 that they are basically self-governing their device I'm still collecting it at night I'm still supervising and monitoring it but that I have given them guidance and support and they have taught me how to use this thing for good and that they are cultivating a digital presence that is gonna land them thousands of dollars in scholarship money that's going to land them a job that's going to land them an internship wherever they want to go your child needs to have a responsible digital presence if you want them to have futuristic opportunities so when I ask kids what is the value and function of your parents phones what do you think I hear from them Instagram okay YouTube what what do you think most kids say about their dad what kind of technology is their
033father using what was that most of them say I'm really tired of seeing my dad's head the top of his head doing work on his laptop most of the kids say about their moms like my mom is ridiculous she is always on Facebook she's always on Instagram and sometimes she's crushing candy so when I talk to kids at assemblies and then I say I'm gonna see your parents tonight is there anything you want me to tell your parents they say if they value their phone so much and they're asking me not to value mine that's unfair and if their desired outcome for me is to be a good digital citizen and to model good behavior then I expect the same from them and if we're really honest everywhere we go we're a head down everywhere
034we go restaurants airports and our cars in the parking lot sitting next to them on the couch right and so they're kind of tired of it and so for me I really want you to think about why are you giving the phone why are you giving access and what kind of content you want your child to consume because there's a difference between digital candy and digital vegetables there's a lot of stuff on YouTube that's digital vegetables there are many platforms that can be used for good I've trained students in junior high in high school how to use Instagram for a cause for a brand how to market themselves to get scholarships for athletics etc there are many different uses of these types of platforms so you had asked about how do I approach technology as
035a privilege not a right so if for Christmas I say it is Christmas and I'm so excited to give you this iPhone 11 XR with the three cameras good luck and then on December 26 he slugs his brother and you take it away and then on December 27th you're really tired and you give it back and then on January 7th when school resumes and they didn't do their math homework and you take it away that's the dance that we're all doing and in the middle of the dance they are staring at you and they are saying you are unfair I do not trust you and I'm gonna work all the way around you and you're not going to know anything I'm doing and I'm definitely not gonna come to you if I have a big
036huge safety issue so my advice and I will give this to the district to get to you um is having a family data contract you're sitting down with your child who is 10 11 12 13 on up maybe or younger and the whole family is saying what do we think is fair if your academics are sliding do you get technology use if you're a jerk to me or your teachers do you get technologies there are several non-negotiables that I would definitely say our deal breakers giving away private information sharing body parts sharing anything about your family that should not be out there anything that could put them in harm's way that is like a non-negotiable but part of students using these devices for good is giving them a say in how they get to use
037it and what happens when they make a mistake so this family data contract I'm going to tell you right now your kids are gonna break some of the rules for sure 100% our goal is to outline for them these are the reasonable boundaries and consequences around this I love you I'm here to protect you and when you make a mistake here's your pathway back and so that they feel like we're all in this together as opposed to us versus them because the us versus them is not working you're exhausted they are not you're furious they are not and they're starting to drift and things that are really putting them at risk any questions about family data contract so far so we're giving them dignity in the use of their device so I presented this platform
038at the start of the school year for all of the Madison district office employees teachers paraprofessionals kids express all of the people that were here and it's really where I've stood for the last 10 years is that kids need to know they're worthy they need to know they have dignity they also need to be socially confident dr. Baca works in a high school district with 25,000 teenagers when your kids leave Madison K through 8 I want them to go to large high schools and move in and out of different groups of kiddos with ease standing up for themselves and standing up for others that's a true social justice champion that's a school that is safe the only way they can do that is if they know they have dignity and they know that they're socially
039confident and that they have painful messy horrible things happen to them where they rise up and say this isn't ok with me the last piece we've already talked about being literate and how to use this technology and so the reason that I bring school safety and home safety and dignity is it is where these devices rest if you've given them dignity in the use of their device and they have people coming at them and challenging them what they look like what they wear their height their weight their race their sexuality which is happening to them every day all day mom on Monday I did three assemblies for 1200 kids at Mojave middle school in Scottsdale and I asked them what do you think the average number of times per day that you get made fun
040of is and I got 5 times 12 times and 40 times a day and I asked them to really pay attention to how are you taking care of that and most of them are like I'm not I'm just letting it sit right here because I really don't have the skills to say something back so I'd like to just share with you this short clip from dr. Bernie Brown she's a researcher out of UT Houston if you've never read her books or seen her you need to know her but I love her take on dignity but it really changed me it's the practice that came from the book and it is don't walk through the world looking for evidence that you don't belong because you will always find it yes don't walk through the world looking
041for evidence that you're not enough because you'll always find it are worth and are belonging are not negotiated with other people we carry those inside of our hearts and so for me I know who I am I'm clear about that and I'm not going to negotiate that with you I will negotiate a contract with you I won't negotiate maybe even a topic with you yeah but I'm not going to negotiate Who I am with you because then and this is I think the heart of the book then I may fit in for you but I no longer belong to myself and that is a betrayal I am not willing to do anymore I spent the first 30 years of my life doing that I'm not willing to betray myself anymore to fit in with you
042so the difference between Bernie and your kids is they don't know who they are yet they're still forming their identity and who they are and every day somebody is asking them to change who they are so they have a very short view of life and they have a very short view of I am negotiating Who I am with these people to fit in and devices help them feel unworthy and so we have to be there for them to support and guide them through the process with strategies that actually help when I talk to students about what actually helps the things that don't have are some of our one-liners that we say to them when they come to us like palm down you need to let it go I'm so tired of your drama I'm so
043tired of this device causing so much drama the word drama is like a soap opera when they come to you what they're coming to you with is their inner pain no matter how trivial you think it is it rests on dignity and so at the base of what they're going through in-person and online is one kid taking away and stripping them of their dignity or an adult with good intention or sometimes not with good intention taking their voice away and so when we talk to them about you need to be respectful and you need to respect your teachers and respect our home and your brothers and all these things they're staring at us like I don't respect you I don't respect him because he just took my dignity away and you're asking me to say
044sorry so I do a lot of training around the difference between dignity and respect and I'm teaching you this tonight because as they come to you with big things and little things and trivial things and things that are happening on these devices if you can listen and give them a chance to stand up for their dignity you're gonna have a really great productive kit if our go-to response is snapchat is stupid and you need to ignore your best friend they're gonna find a workaround around you and they will continue to just kind of find ways to depart from you because they don't feel like you understand so I'm going to close out the last couple of minutes that I have with you to show you some pretty graphic examples of what's going on online I
045chose rated G versions so as you look at these and maybe are a little bit taken aback imagine what I'm not showing you because there's a lot out there so human beings have two choices with pain we either transmitted on someone else or we transform it your child doesn't know how to transform pain yet they have a very underdeveloped brain so one of my neighbors came over with this screenshot and her daughter's name is Hayden she's in eighth grade she has thousands of friends she has a beautiful family she's a cheerleader and she said I have no idea what to do with this this is an anonymous Instagram post that says I hate Hayden so that's the name of the page stop telling me to take this down she's a B word and deserves to
046die and go to h-e-l-l-o she's the ugliest girl I've ever met and she will never have a boyfriend so and so even dropped her for sage sage is another girl ever hope she kills herself so this was made on a Saturday on Monday you can see the photo of who we think created the page getting everybody together to talk about it so this is not a school issue this is not a law enforcement issue there was no direct threat made to her life it's awful it's horrible yes it's bullying yes it's harassment but the police can't come out and touch this or they would be literally touching millions of these types of things so imagine being Hayden and if you didn't tell your parents or your parents had no idea and putting your head down
047on the pillow and trying to figure out at age 13 how the heck am I gonna go to school on Monday what am I gonna say I can't prove who did it I think I know but I don't know what to do so yes the school will help her yes we have counselors that can guide her through that but this is not a school disciplinary issue to legislate this is unfortunately a parenting issue so on the front of calling other people's parents if she had a relationship with this other person as a parent you could reach out to the other parents you can imagine if you start the conversation with so your kid that I would not do so I have this dumb girl approach to where I'm like hey I was checking Emma's phone
048and I saw something really weird and I was wondering if you could check Chloe's phone and just kind of can you like get back to me and let me know what you're seeing because this is what I'm seeing that sort of diffuses and it's like we're in this together my kid might have screwed up pretty sure yours did too can we work on this together as opposed to I cannot what Chloe did to my cat that's not gonna go well you're gonna lose it right right if you don't have a relationship with a parent sometimes you can call the school counselor or somebody at the school and say this is what's going on I know you're really busy but I'm wondering if you have any guidance or support that you could offer or any suggestions
049or strategies that might help my kiddo get through this so again this happens every day all day long this is a very typical example of what our children are going through and they need you to help them through it so on the front of calling other parents sexting cyber bullying alcohol drugs babes booty shots anything that you see in my personal and professional opinion that is a safety issue I have had hundreds of students send photos of themselves to their boyfriends or girlfriends and their genitalia has made it around the school in less than 20 seconds it is a real thing most of them don't know that it's a crime and so as we're looking at how they're conveying pain to each other I think it's really important to understand what they're after so at
050the top here I have the attachment cycle every device that's in your purse right now or in your pocket serves a need for you doesn't matter if you're thirty forty twelve eight we all want to be seen hurt and left what devices helped us do is to get seen heard and lived pretty quickly so when you see your child dear ailing when you see if something's going on I can't put my finger on it ask yourself what is he or she after am i seeing him am i hearing him am i loving him in the way he or she needs to receive it if you see them drifting to the device to get those needs met those needs are never going to be met in an authentic way like they are from you and so
051balancing device use I use the analogy this is skittles they need salmon this is a very inauthentic way that in 20 seconds I can post an outrageous photo and I can get seen heard and loved really quickly and so if you see or when I should say when you see your child saying things that are outrageous raw edgy explicit telling grandiose slides about your family and what a jerk you are seeing heard left right so behavior is a symptom of these unmet needs anything you're seeing that things are going south that's a kid I was saying to you I need you to see me I need you to I really need you to hear me and I definitely need to feel that I'm loved by you even if I screwed screwed up other examples of
052what goes on these are rated G many students have multiple accounts that you don't know about I would not spend your energy and time trying to track down every account of your child hat it will exhaust you what I would spend time doing is when you see photos like this whether it's your child a photo they've been exposed to a classmate that has spent the night at your house and eaten your Oreos I want you to look at these kids as all of these kids are ours all of these kids are doing things that we did too we experimented with drugs and alcohol we may have experimented with kissing these are all pretty typical things - the one on the left that all of us have done in the past this generation just has an
053opportunity to show 7,000 people what they're doing and they've had no training we have handed this stuff over with no training and so I feel really deeply that when you see things like this sex drugs and rock and roll still self still sells it keeps me a very current and very relevant in my social group the only thing I'm worried about in fifth through twelfth grade is being cool I want to be left I want to be hurt so there are many images out there like this I'd also like to call your attention to some pretty harmful images there are whole communities of self-harm this one happens to be about suicide anorexia and bulimia there are whole communities that welcome girls and boys in and say you should starve yourself you need to be thinner
054this is how you do it there are thousands of comments underneath here and they're going back and forth talking about how they're gonna do it so if you have a child that is already starting to trend towards feeling like their body isn't something that they enjoy I would be mindful and watchful of Instagram because it it is so image based also to note um people often ask me on the front of suicide and self-harm how do these kids know how to do this how on earth does a ten-year-old think about not wanting to be here tomorrow the leading cause of death in the state of Arizona is suicide aged 10 to 14 the leading cause of death aged 15 to 34 is also suicide so there are people kids adults that are teaching kids how
055to harm themselves and so knowing how to monitor and supervise and have big conversations around it at a young age is very crucial so I'm gonna end and then open for questions um I'm gonna give you some strategies if you don't have a good router you need to get money buy it for yourself for Christmas or Hanukkah so this is one of my favorites there are hundreds out there so this one's called ero and it is an Open DNS server so all of the information that comes into your home is filtered for explicit and vulgar content you can also remotely from the app that matches it look at what your child is doing or children are doing and you can assign them their own kind of account within the account and if you see they've
056been on something too long you can hit a button and then their Wi-Fi goes up so we use this in our house that at nine o'clock every night the Wi-Fi shuts down in zone one two and three there's no discussion all devices go on a central charging station and the Wi-Fi is turned off the reason that you have to collect devices is twofold your kids need good sleep eight to 12 hours secondly if you just turn off the Wi-Fi all I have to do is turn on my data and go around you you have to actually collect the device as well questions on routers so far okay central charging station all devices need to be collected everyone needs good sleep sleepovers nothing good happens at a sleepover with technology nothing I can tell you thousands
057of stories girls that were videotaped in showers somebody's saying so Sarah what do you think about Katie and hitting voice record and then sending it to Sarah while I'm at the sleepover nothing good happens so have a basket and when they come over say I'm gonna give you 30 minutes to be on your devices the rest of tonight you're actually going to be human it's gonna be so cool we're gonna be human together have a sleepover imagine that lastly and I have some Flyers here tonight one of the apps that I'd highly recommend you looking into is called bark so this is a conversation that popped up on bark so bark is an app that you think on any device of theirs and your device and every night you get a real-time update of anything
058you need to be worried about you if you want to know about profanity bullying predation explicit content suicidal tendencies anything that you want to know you will receive and you get to pick if you want to set it super tight you want to know everything or super loose because your kids 17 and he's a pretty good job so it allows you to see conversations that you probably need to know about the best part about it is it monitors snapchat and Instagram the second best part about it is underneath this conversation a drop box comes down and gives you three tips to think about before you completely freak out and they're written by psychiatrists and psychologists who give you very developmentally appropriate things to think about before you go up to your student and say what
059the heck is it so there are many ways for $7 a month and for a $300 router that you can begin to protect your kids so I'd highly advise if it's not bark there are plenty of other apps out there that do similar things this is the one I recommend most often because it does a hundred and fifty different platforms including video game platforms so a lot of things happen on video games as well as social media so I've set a whole lot in a very short amount of time so I will open for questions yes sure yeah yeah it's so hard um what I would say is every kid is wired differently so I have a set of twins one is gonna be a total nightmare online and one could care less and so
060even in the same household it may look different and so I think there's so much information coming at us as parents that if your gut is telling you that she's doing pretty well I would go with your gut but I would also think about having something like this where you're just choosing I just want to know if there's any distress and I just want to know if there's any predation so there's kind of a happy medium between safety and privacy and our real goal for me at least is can you be a decent human being are you moving forward socially and emotionally and doing pretty well and are you safe I mean really those are the three things that I'm looking for my goal again is by 1516 that they're starting to take flight but
061I'm still going to have something like this and I will tell you in the past year and a half I've changed my mind a little bit about 17 and 18 year olds when we take phones away we are taking away oxygen and a lifeline so if and when you take a phone away because somebody did something inappropriate wrong etc it's being a jerk to you we have to replace it with some sort of support because I have talked to many families who have lost their students to suicide who were dancing with the device back and forth and then after the student was no longer there they looked in it and they were like oh my gosh no wonder he was so angry he was depressed no wonder he was so upset this person was being
062horrible to him and because they were 17 or 18 the parents were like he should have been fine but he wasn't and there's some finality to junior and senior-year like oh my gosh I have to go out in the big world and be an adult and so I would still recommend having something to balance the safety piece now people that are tracking their kids across ASU campus that's not something I would totally subscribe to at some point they need to take place other questions yes yeah ah yeah and I wish I had a super great answer for you but what I have found is like K through six we do a pretty decent job of not allowing too much of that to happen and then seven through twelve it's what you're experiencing and so I
063would encourage you at the high school level especially to be talking to site Council and PTO and principals about what those stats say like the stats of anxiety depression and stress are directly correlated not causal but correlated to 17,000 notifications of I just got a B+ on this like the whole grade portal thing that was supposed to be a communication tool not a pawn in our parenting game so I I don't have a great answer for you because the state standards and the federal standards are telling our schools our kids need to learn how to use this and so their hands are sort of sired by the it C standards as well that this is an advancing tool my rub at the high school level especially is I sit in the back of classrooms and
064I watch kids do research and 20 of them are doing research and six of them are snapchatting and instagramming and so I do think it's very difficult to teach and it's very difficult as a student to to just be so stimulated all the time I think those statistics are a direct reflection of that yes mm-hmm that's great self-governance yeah it's hard work the whole thing all of this is exhausting right it's like a whole of their full-time job but if you would have heard me speak two years ago I would have had a whole chart of apps and what app you need to know about and all of that I got away from that because everyday and other apps coming out I would encourage you to really sit down with your child and have them
065teach you I learned everything I know from teenagers I sit down every month and say what's the new thing what are you doing they've taught me everything I know so if we're gonna bridge this gap of us versus them dial them into the family table and say I really want to understand this tell me more about what you're doing on snapchat I'd really like to understand and if you get a good answer let me know yes instead of going why do I need to be in there if all it is is garbage like 90% of yeah so so when and if he's using these platforms I would be on a weekly monthly basis really talking to him about show me the pros show me the cons and having him start to identify this makes me
066feel good being part of this makes me feel really cool and let me tell you why then you're right dad I really I don't want to follow that person anymore that's not making me my heart feel good they need our guidance to do that because as I said the only place I get relevance is being online 24/7 especially in boy and girl roles if I'm not online all the time then I'm losing position in the social group just like we did on the playground so their playground has become this I still think well I know you too so I know he's getting the goodness study means but kids that are only in children my recommendation would be find them an outside mentor outside of the family doing something that makes their post race so if
067they love airplanes find them I'm 20-something year old mentor to be that person for them what our boys and girls are desperately in need for is outside mentorship they need their family unit they need a mentorship family and they need a cultural family so most of them have two of those the middle mentorship piece is what he or she might need well I will go ahead it is a river yeah are they watching other people play yeah it's like man that's right so I'm gonna give you an analogy that a father and one of my audiences gave me he's like well I'm just going to defend them for a little bit because I want to improve my golf swing so I will watch strategy on how to do that so it is very similar as
068they're watching other people play so my advice for you on the front of YouTube is really get clear on consumption so are they consuming it to be strategic or they consuming it and going down the rabbit hole and depending on the kid and how they're wired some of them are really actually doing a decent job of getting the strategy and then applying it to the game so when I look at screen time as a whole what is the content what is the context and what kind of connection are they making because we as adults say oh my gosh you're burning your brain out you've had so much screen time you're gonna just turn into mush well actually no I'm not mom because I'm actually watching this makeup tutorial and I think I want to be
069an aesthetician and so I'd like to watch this content for 30 minutes what do you think and so I would not put yourself through the torture of trying to stand over watching him watch somebody else I just wouldn't do it I would you have to have a little bit of trust but I would also go into your YouTube settings and lock them down because you're four clicks away from pornography unfortunate yeah one more question yeah then you definitely need a really good router you definitely need a really good app to monitor and supervise but you also need to be aware of that as he makes fantastically horrible mistakes because those brains anybody with a DD ADHD OCD on the autism spectrum those brains approach technology in a different way and so already being aware of
070that you're ahead of the game and then the conversations that you're having have to be okay we've made a mistake I love you we can't do that again here's the pathway back here's what we're gonna do being aware of that he is adverse to risk taking I think is half the battle a lot of people just think all kids are going down the rabbit hole like I said one of mine is and one of mine will not so I really think your approach will dictate his next move if you hammer him every time he makes a mistake or goes down a rabbit hole with shame and isolation he will work all the way around you and then some if you approach them with like wow that was sort of a dumb move what do you
071think we can do next time he's gonna come to you and keep telling you the heavy-duty stuff we do a lot of shaming and a lot of isolating and that those are the two legs that addiction stands on addiction to technology addiction to substances addiction to all sorts of things so keeps shame and isolation out of your game so I will linger for private questions or additional questions and I just want to thank you so much for having me here tonight I'm around medicine a lot so if you need me I have a business Facebook page if you just put in Katie Macpherson I post on this subject every single day I do interviews with experts so if you're looking for additional information please look me up I also have these flyers for you if
072you want to grab one there's a discount code for 20% off for life or something so thank you so much for having me and I hope you have a safe safe night home [Applause] thank you [Music] [Applause]