001good evening Benish unified my name is Stephanie Rice and I am director of Education Services and I have the pleasure this evening to introduce Julie pamer and Janine Wakefield they're here from Tina Steam and Tina steam has been working with uh bay area or East Bay Area Schools for 29 years so it's my pleasure to say welcome and thank you as a district employee and a parent of a teen myself so thank you thank you Stephanie as Stephanie said my name is Julie and tonight we are going to be talking about kids in their screens um we're going to be talking about internet cell phones and um social media so first of all I want to know we kind of Ed this in December intentionally is there anybody here who is planning to get their
002one of their kids a um a cell phone for Christmas no no no well now you're really not yeah you're definitely not wna true yeah you don't want them to find out well if you are you are definitely in the right place so as um Stephanie said I'm with Tina Steam and I'm going to tell you a little bit about who we are just so you have an idea of where we're coming from so for 29 years we've been working with schools in the East Bay and we go into schools and talk to kids about all the challenges that they're facing that might be bullying peer pressure vaping substance abuse um and definitely mental health it's a very interactive presentation so we really learn a lot from the students and we want to share that
003with parents and we not only work closely with the students but we also work really closely with teachers and counselors and and administrators and um and then all our research and speaking to 20,000 students a year we really learn a lot and we want to share that with parents because parenting is really hard so so we're we're so glad you're here tonight um this is my family uh we went to New York it was a hard hard time to getting a picture from this decade because my kids are a little bit older but that's my husband John my son Bryce is 23 he's up in Sacramento and my daughter Allison is 19 and she's going to DBC now tonight with me is my good friend and parent education speaker Janine Janine you want to tell
004them a little bit about yourself absolutely um I'm Janine and this is my family I have a son Chandler who's 26 who just got married in May and then my daughter on the far left is Lexi and she's actually one of our teen esteem speakers so um and my husband Brent so um they're 26 and 24 so I kind of got into the um when the iPhones were coming out they were about in junior high so um I've kind of been through it all as well and also um my dog Levi he has his own Instagram account so um this is is Levi he's got one eye um and and he doesn't have a lot of followers so I don't think he has too much fomo but um I don't have to monitor him too
005much because I he doesn't really have a phone so but anyway that's kind of you can shows you a lot of people have social media accounts so tonight we're going to be talking about smartphones and social media and and uh the effects it has on kids so um it's good to have these conversations before your kids have phones however we know we don't live in a perfect world so if your kids already have phones you're in the right place it's never too late um just we need to be aware of the dangers and potential problems that can come with our kids regarding social media apps and cell phones so um we're going to talk about the effects of the usage and then at the end we're going to give you some tips to help you
006navigate it and um we don't want you to freak out we just want you to just learn kind of what we've learned and then um we're going to give you um information because that's power right so don't run out before the good part does that sound good to y'all okay perfect all right so our kids um our kids are what we call digital natives this generation of the younger children so um these children most of them have not known life before social media and if they did they were very young so they pretty much kind of remember growing up with smartphones my kids didn't really have them but they did have iPods and PS PlayStation and all that kind of of Step so but they are really the first generation that can be active and
007available almost 24 hours a day because their phones are there and we have technology so um these digital platforms are pretty much woven into their lives and so they are they tend to be particularly impatient because they're used to technology just being there and bringing them you know fulfilling their desires from an early age So speaking of that we kind of have a funny Comcast video that shows you what we're talking about hi could I have a medium latte please sure excuse me yeah where's my latte although she is not a teenager you get the point right we're just used to you know oh shoot I forgot to mobile order it and I got there where is it all the door Dash orders have gone in front of mine but um anyway so um speaking
008of I'm sure yall remember Kmart do you remember the store Kmart Okay so my kids remember Kmart because it was around but has anyone ever heard of the word layaway are you too young to know what layaway is you know what layway is okay so I remember when I was a kid I'm like oh I want this bike you know your mom could go and put $20 down and the store would hold it for you and you you kind of pay slowly and when it's paid off you get your bike right so our parents were used to you know we had to wait for things well the kids today you know they're getting things right away so um these kids um they pretty much we're the first generation to raise these kids right so we're
009we're kind of like new at all this so like I said my kids were 9 and 11 when the iPhone came out so they didn't really um have them we waited till high school so they were I think in Sixth and eth or something like that but this is the phone we got them this lovely flip phone so that was um we they thought we were the worst parents ever because this is we got right we got them these phones and we're like well if you need us to pick you up from Sports you call us right um I don't even think there was like texting cap capability and if there was they had to push the you know eight times to get the word high out so anyway but in reality you know our
010kids and even our teens they really don't have the capability to manage these screens I mean sure we can hand them the phone and say you know hey can you fix this for me because they're real you know techsavvy but as far as um having the capability and the brain capacity uh we it's not like you would hand your kid your 16-year-old your keys to the Ferrari right and say drive safe you know be good because they we just wouldn't do that right so just as parents we decide um are is my kid old enough is my kid mature enough to drive and we teach them how to drive safely that's what we want to do right we want to help them manage their devices safely and just be good with their time so um
011so we just wanted to ask you do you think social media is good or do you think it's bad or do you think it's so so like what are your thoughts on that in general in general okay bad okay anyone else have another thought right right bad bad okay so yeah right right so you talk to kids every day what are the kids in the classes saying most of them they tell us well it's good it's bad so they recognize the negative aspects right for sure okay so as parents what do you use social media for or you on social media not really okay right yes right right okay right um it's great to stay in contact with relatives you can do research on it right you Google something and sometimes you get Wikipedia um
012you can go on YouTube and do howto videos right I my oil got changed the other day and my light was on and YouTube I had to watch a video and 25 steps later I finally got the thing to turn off um I'm a real estate agent um so I use it to promote my business so I'm constantly you know trying to post on Instagram and Facebook different either my listings or different Market stats and things like that so um and also we can use it for online shopping right I mean we've got Amazon you've got door Dash you can look up a restaurant you know hours reservations all that good stuff so um you know when Facebook came out it was all they wanted it there was a lot of really good things right
013there was relatives that found each other there was organ donors connected we personally Julie and I personally know someone who their son got an organ transplant through a Facebook this family on the East Coast knew that their child needed a liver and and whatnot so it's um it's it could be really good um so do you guys does the word 411 sound familiar to you remember what 411 was information we don't do that anymore right we used to call I remember one time I actually got a local person and she told me the restaurant I wanted the number for it was good I'm like wow you're not like in New York or India or something so you know we had to call 411 then we had to call the restaurant to ask them their hours
014well now you know this information stage our kids you know they can look on there oh Taco Bell they're open till midnight I have 20 minutes to get through the drivethru or I can call door Dash and will be to my house in a half an hour right so it's not all bad but you know there are some great things about it but we just want to you know know what are kids using social media for so there was a study um from Forbes that talked about what teens use social media for so 97% used it for shopping inspiration 65% used it for entertaining content and 60% use it for current events I love that because both of my kids actually use the inter use um social media for their news to get all of
015their news mostly YouTube and it's really interesting because the popular influencers are really funny they're hilarious but they definitely have their own Spin and so I I um it's a great conversation starter just ask your kids where do you get your news and who are you following and try not to you know sometimes you might freak out a little bit when you hear what some of these people are saying but it's a great conversation starter and I made the mistake but thankfully I was able to recover um we want to make sure that we're not too judgy other because we're trying to let them get them to let us into their world and we don't want him to put the wall right back up so I just encourage factchecking when when my son shares his
016favorite his favorite influencers with me um one thing about the media if your kids have um how many have cell phones how many of your kids have smartphones okay if your kids have a smartphone and they have access to the internet when something really bad happens in the media if there's a a shooting or something really upsetting it's very likely that your kids have heard about it so we we might hope that they haven't but really you need to find out you need to subtly ask them so you can find out because that's something that we want to process with them um one of the uh Especial negative aspects unlike the news the graphic content on social media often is not censored so it's just something we want to be aware of we want to
017know what our kids are being exposed to and we want to be able to walk through it with them and help them to process it we actually have some really good information on our website um that shows uh age appropriate ways to have conversations like that with your kids it's very helpful I suggest I highly suggest that um and as Janine said we the the reason we're talking about the good side of social media we don't want to scare anybody we're not here to say social media is all terrible um it's here to stay and there are some good things about it but we definitely want parents to be fully aware of of some of the negative things so we uh cannot talk about social media without talking about mental health um we were in
018a ninth grade health EG class probably a month and a half ago and we asked students what do you think is contributing to the Health crisis for young people every single student that responded said social media that social media was a contributing factor now the Surgeon General the US Surgeon General said that when he talk hears when he um hears from teens the three main things he hears of them talk about regarding social media number one it makes them feel worse about themselves number two it makes them feel worse about their their friendships and number three they can't get off it and we'll talk about more about that in a minute um the suicide rate Among Us middle school students doubled from 2007 to 2014 does anybody know what happened in 2007 that is the
019year that yes yes uh Apple launched the iPhone the Android was released Facebook and Twitter Twitter went Global and Google introduced YouTube it has literally been called the year that we reinvented everything girls have been especially hard hit um with social media up until about 2009 the number of girls who were admitted to the hospital for nonfatal self harm remained fairly stable in 2009 it skyrocketed look at these numbers does anybody know what happened in 2009 social media for everybody social media on our smartphones and just widely available becoming widely available and widely accepted compared to 2001 to 2009 that time frame us suicide rates are up 70% in girls aged 15 to 19 and uh 151% in girls aged 10 to4 14 I hate talking about this but we have to be real we
020have to be aware of this social media has been as I said especially hard on our girls with all the filters and the unrealistic Beauty expectations especially our young girls one more the University of Michigan uh one of their studies showed that after Rising since the early 1990s adolescent self-esteem life satisfaction and happiness plunged in 2012 and in 2012 that's when smartphone ownership was at 50% and it's of course climbed steadily ever since then that same study also found that adolescent psychological well-being decreased the more hours per week they spent on screens including uh and and they're talking about internet social media texting gaming and video chats I'm definitely not trying to simplify mental health and I'm not trying to simplify suicide there's a lot of things that go into it but when you look
021at this stats the timelines the studies there's study after study after study there is no denying that this has a a a significant impact on our students um Janine do you want to talk a little bit about cyber bullying yeah sure so um cyber bullying and trolls on social media so that's another thing that's really affecting um the mental health so nearly half of the US teens have said that they've experienced some form of cyber bullying so there's 32% have been called an offensive name 22% have had false rumors spread about them and 177% have received explicit images that they didn't ask for um so that's pretty alarming and what's happening now is that social media has created a normalization and a desensitization right so if especially with regards to racist or sexually offensive comments
022and it's easy not to think twice when everybody else is doing it and you're behind a screen not saying it to someone's face so um you know they're trolling remarks are pretty normal in our society and I really feel like some adults can be terrible examples I turned off my next door because I just couldn't stand it I mean I just couldn't believe the pettiness of adults just attacking one another on there and you know when that first came out I thought it was going to be a lot nicer because they're neighbors right I didn't think they would do that I know and and uh next door kind of says like what area you're in but um I remember over covid listening to someone complaining that there was kids playing out the park and I
023was like well they're playing out in the park you know it it was just crazy but anyway um and then another concern we have is interacting with strangers and um I think somebody over here you mentioned the chat rooms right private chat rooms and things that or somebody said something about chat rooms maybe it wasn't you sorry you're looking at me like what um but K uh teens they're interacting with people that they don't know whether it's video games um tick tock Facebook um Instagram and Instagram they the um profiles are a lot I mean there's a tiny little picture at least on Facebook like you can kind of like see whether or not they said like where they're from but some of these other ones you know there's people requesting you and they've got
024like a you know a name that you know John loves dogs or whatever and you you don't know is this John Smith the neighbor down the street or is this some guy in New York so um there's people that will do weird friend requests or write weird messages is I get some from army Colonels from the East Coast looking for friendship and the same exact you know boiler plate you're like okay what is this but um anyway and then something we're also seeing a lot of is they send these random text messages that sound like it's wrong number who this or whatever that's called when they're really just fishing for a comment so I actually had it happen where I got a text about a cake order and you know I'm picking it up at
0253:00 and here I am innocent writing back oh my gosh I'm sorry this is the wrong number you know and thinking this poor grandma was missing out on her mom's birthday cake come to find out three four texts later this guy's inviting me to come to LA to hang out with him and I was like okay sorry delete um you know block the number but um I think you have a funny story too about that right I do I do I've definitely have has anybody else had that happen the random text thing it's it's unbelievable it's unbeliev they know what they're doing they know how to trick you um when I first started at Tina steam I've been with Tina Steam for 11 and a half years I'm actually on staff and I had to
026write an article on Instagram so I thought well I want to see the real experience that kids have on Instagram so I set up an account and I called myself Bieber fan um I'm not but yes and um and I took for my profile picture it was my dog and then I just typed I love my dog I set my phone down I kind of forgot about it within an hour I would somebody was contacting me trying to get me to send pictures of myself and and they know how to do it they made it sound like it was a contest and and whoever sends me the most awesome pictures I'll I'll share it with all my three million followers or something like that so they know what they're doing they know how to trick
027people it's that's that's the scary part um uh so one of the things that we that aren't a lot of fun to talk about but we have to along those lines um pornography and sending nudes um so pornography depending on the study you look at the average age um kids are exposed to it are between 8 and 12 um I hear people say you know what I looked at porn when I was a kid my brother looked at porn when he was a kid it is not a big deal they're just curious It's like a write a passage please understand it is considerably different than what it was in the past they do not have to go looking for it it comes looking for them this is a multi-billion dollar industry and they're looking for
028customers for life and our kids are easy targets they're curious they're hormonal and if we give it to them they have a cell phone they have access to it 247 so when they see a photo that they like that's gives them a surge of dopamine and then photo after photo after photo their their brain builds up a tolerance and they need more and more it's a legitimate addiction and we hear about it regularly and when we when we were young keep in mind we did not have an infinite number of photos in the palm of our hand that we could access anytime we wanted unlimited now Middle School and High School teachers literally want us to talk about pornography when we're in the classroom because they're seeing what it they're seeing kids that can't set
029it down and they're seeing the desensi desensitization that's happening seeing how kids behave and how they're they're talking and behaving towards one another it shocks me every time I see a middle school or high school student comment on our evaluation after a presentation about how glad they are that we covered pornography and one student just just the other day actually said I'm so glad you talked about po pornon because it has become a nightmare for me so regarding this as parents we have to have open communication we have to make sure our kids know first of all let me know if you see anything weird let me know if you see anything that's disturbing or upsetting um if you keep saying you you know you might have to repeat it because if they're younger kids
030you don't want to say you know let me know if you see any naked people on your phone but um if you keep saying it they will they will pick up on it I had it happened with my son um so he he understood what I meant um one of the many reasons we need to be really open about this first of all because of the addiction um there are resources and we have that on the slide that uh we point kids towards uh we don't shame them because we know we know how easy it is to fall into this um we just warn them against it and let them know if they are struggling there are resources available one of the many reasons we have to talk about things like this and keep that
031communication open with our kids is because of catfishing and this has become a serious problem uh on a couple of different levels we were at a school just this fall a couple months ago and we were talking about the um the um potential downsides of sending um sending nudes the potential risks of sending nudes obviously they often get shared we have to talk about that with students because it often starts in about seventh grade after class one of the kids came up to us and told us that there we eventually found out there were a group of boys that were sending that were catfishing pretending they were a young lady sending nude photos getting the boys to send them a nude photo and then what do you think they did with the photos they sent
032them all over the school they sent them all over the school so it's horrible but at least we were able to find out and and take it to the administrator and they were able to put a stop to it but worse yet there are extortionists that will do the exact same thing and they'll hack into the kids phone there was there's a gentleman from Michigan a father who's trying to raise awareness because he lost his son the um someone hacked into his phone they catfished him got a nude photo hacked into his phone showed him I have access to all of your contacts if you don't send me $10,000 I'm going to share this photo with all of your contexts well who's in the context Mom Dad Grandma Grandpa and and um and the young
033man took his life so this is not something we want our kids to ever go through Alone um we want to obviously we hope that they never do it at all and we have to have those conversations but we need to make sure that we're a safe place for them and then if anything like that does happen we have to recognize that there are people who are really good at tricking people if you've ever been catfished I mean I used to literally teach a cat teach a class to seniors on catfishing and I got catfished it's really easy they know what they're doing I mean I gave out my password I told them my dog's name my mother's made a name I told them everything and then about an hour later I thought oh my
034gosh I can't believe it so if it's going to happen to adults we know it's going to happen with kids they're going to be able to trick our kids um the other thing we to talk about I I think does anybody know a kid that's addicted to their screen does anybody know a kid that's not addicted to their screen right so big Tech I'm telling you they are in it for the money we have one of our advisers works for the teen Safety Division of um an app that probably we all have on our phone he asked me not to say it but um he is he only lets his kids have their phone 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night um and he doesn't even like that but he's he's settled
035on that and he's a lot nicer than a lot of the or a lot easier than a lot of the big Tech um Executives that we read about many of them don't let their kids have a phone at all or and certainly not social media so just like with porn it's it's addicting every like we get every heart every new follower and what's worse we're seeing kids adults do it too but kids especially they're they're thinking that that has something to do with their value and their worth how many likes they get how many followers they have as I said they're in it for the money and they want people on their app as often as possible and as long as possible so this is intentional this is intentional we just recently watched social dilemma
036just the other day we re we rewatched it it's a movie that came out a couple years ago still very very relevant and they said there's entire teams of Engineers trying trying to use your psychology against you they track what you look at and how long you look at it they measure what kinds of videos you like and what types of emotions trigger you what gets you to stay on what gets you to click out and they work really hard to get us to do what they want there's a lot of money involved so again it's a legitimate addiction I'm kind of preaching to the choir um what does that look like for anybody who whose kids do not have phones yet uh what happens when you take the phone away from a kid who's
037yeah it's just through the roof through the roof um they're willing to destroy relationships that basically do anything to get another hit just like if they were vaping um one of the things we talk about with kids in school when we're in classroom is when you come home from a bad day we we acknowledge we get them to acknowledge social media what's their objective and they realize they just want to make money then we talk about well what what about this other group what about our parents our teachers our coaches what do they want and the kids acknowledge that they they want what's best for us they love us they care for us they want us to succeed then we say well you come home from a bad day and what's the first thing that
038you do do you go talk to those people that care about you and want you to succeed or do you go curl up with your cell phone and how many of us do the same thing I'll come home from a bad day and I I'm the first one to go oh maybe this will make me feel better Happy videos yes you know what for real yeah actually actually those do make me feel better so so it's just so isolating one other um negative thing that I want to draw to your attention a lot of um influencers are advocating for and using drugs on social media and our kids are watching these guys our kids are watching these people we have a student speaker who conquered his drug addiction he was he was addicted to Xanax
039and several other things for several years for a few years he went to rehab and he's been able to conquer it and he told us every single drug deal was through snapchat are you guys familiar with Snapchat yeah what do you think might be a reason another reason why parents might not want Snapchat for their kids do you know know about it do you know what do you have you ever been in Snapchat so it's Bas it's kind of made to send pictures to each other so if you ever see your kids doing this and on the phone they're probably sending SnapChat photos as soon as you open that photo it disappears so they can text through it right so if you're going to go through their screen and cross check their text you're not
040going to see what happens in Snapchat you can call people on it and the other thing about it too is that it doesn't show up in your phone log so if you're ever like trying to figure out if your kid's like on the phone at night if they're calling through their apps that's not going to show up you won't know that they had a 50 minute call from 1: to 2 you know am. or whatnot so yeah that's the thing with Snapchat um yeah and there's a news feed on Snapchat kind of on the first page and it does have a lot of I think our other speaker Wendy showed like it's two clicks away from just kind of some dark stuff it's sort of like that whole algorithm too so it's like if you
041watch a you know something on Snapchat of you know kids doing drugs that's that whole feed is going to be on there so there's like this feed of like you know whatever videos that may interest you and then there's the I'm going to send John a picture of whatever and I mean yeah yeah that actually used to be um the main thing that was so startling with Snapchat you can send a picture and then it disappears well kids have figured out that all you have to do is take a screenshot so that picture that picture never goes away and it tells you it you've taking a screen now it tells you yeah yeah yeah did not used to so things are getting better um but now you might be thinking you know what do I
042have to do to get off the grid for myself I absolutely get it I mean I serious it's like can I live somewhere in the sieras and just take my family and go hide but we hate even camping much less living off the land so that's definitely not going to happen for us but Janine now we've talked about a lot of kind of bummer things to do with phones and social media can you help us what what are some things we can do as parents okay so let's lighten it up first of all this is a friend of ours um daughter really really really wanted Snapchat so she thought she was going to convince her parents by putting these signs all over she did not so anyway coming if it hasn't happened coming soon to
043a home near you but um in reality so um how can we help our kids um navigate the digital world safely so first of all if your kids don't have a phone yet don't be in a hurry um you can find allies too find other like-minded parents um get your PTA to promote there's something called wait till a.org and that is just an organization Discussion Group where they're trying to get parents to wait till their kids are in eth grade to get them a phone um if you have to get them a phone you can get them one of these I showed out this little flip phone some of you may have missed it but Julie googled this and you can still get this through Walmart on Cricut Wireless so inexpensive you know you can
044get them a phone to call people if they need to be safe um and then just try to make your house the hangout right if if kids are at your house give them some food that always helps um know your kids friends know your kids you know who your kids friends parents are and just have people that kind of can be on the same page as you so that's one idea um and if they do have a smartphone and you're thinking oh my goodness I need to dial back then have a conversation with them and just say hey look you can blame it on Julie and I and say hey we went to this talk and we need to kind of set up some guidelines right so um remember if you talk to them before
045you get them a phone this is going to be the most leverage you're going to have with them um but ask them you know if I get you a phone we're going to have some guidelines and I want you to agree to them and if you don't then maybe we need to wait so um we also have this great contract on our website so you guys have permission right now if you want to scan that QR code you may take your phones out um but that if you scan that it's going to take you right to our contract and that is is an editable um version so you can make it fit what your family wants to do um I would actually take it one step further I think that as parents you know with
046your kids come up with some consequences like here's the contract but this is what we're going to do if you violate the contract and maybe have them put some skin in the game and have them come up with okay what do you think if you you know change your password how long should you not have have your phone like work it out with them so um but there's some things you want to reiterate right you want them don't add people you don't know right don't send inappropriate photos you know that seems like a no-brainer to us but maybe they won't think about it sometimes it's a slow fate it may start with let me see in a tank top okay now let me see in your whatever you know um and then just remind them
047a deleted photo does not go away it could end up on a server somewhere it could end up in the hands of other people um don't give out your address and personal information um disable your geotagging so that someone can't find you and block people that are bullying you or if there's a bully on your you know if you can't handle it come talk to me right so we want to remind them that having social media is a huge responsibility and it's difficult even for us adults sometimes so you know let's work on it together to set some guidelines um and remind them you're going to make mistakes and it's okay you may lose your phone for a while you know you will get it back and then we're going to try again later so
048um you know like I said if you if you need to dial it back then just say hey I am not trying to have a power trip over you I just want you to be safe you know we wouldn't let them go out and play in a dangerous neighborhood so we want them to grow into successful adults but they need our help um and then um remember too that the phone and internet and remind them it's very addictive Ing and we know that addictions can lead to other addictions so we we just want to help them with that um and I think Julie you're going to talk about some parental controls yes definitely and and our adviser um who works for the the big tech company um the unnamed big tech company um that is
049his main concern is addiction and he said I just tell my kids if you're addicted to one thing you're much more likely to become addicted to something else and I just want you to be a successful adult because they're not learn they're learning to get that gratification instantly they're not learning to cope in a healthy way and it it's just can lead to so many other issues so as Janine said our contract you can edit it um based on what your uh what you want for your family um and the kids age too um we want to make sure we're setting clear rules and guidelines and as Janine mentioned we want to include consequences what I do with my kids whether it's this or or any freedom that I'm starting to let them have um
050when you start to let the Reigns out just let them know you know what you're going to make mistakes and that's okay it's not the end of the world there will be consequences but this is something we're just trying to work out this is really hard it's hard for adults it's it's really hard for kids um before and one thing we all need to remember you know even this is really hard to remember even as a parent but their cell phone their smartphone is not a right it is a privilege they they we do not they are not entitled to a cell phone to a smartphone um one thing we do want to be aware of if our kids are and their friends are on smartphones if you're going to take it away um that's
051really closely tied to all their friends so you really want to think about it before you take it away for an extended period of time um if they if that's if they're at that age where they're they're um they're already kind of in it um we want to be strong and stick with the plan if they know that there's wiggle room they're going to take it if both parents are not on the same page if there's two parents involved they're going to pick up on it and they're going to take advantage of it on this just like they do with everything else um 100% transparency they should know that this is what you expect from them that you're going to know their passwords um is there anybody does anybody remember their Apple ID any of
052you you know your Apple ID who do you ask I ask my kids I mean most of us they remember it because it's really important to them so we need to write it down put it somewhere we're not going to forget where we put it but the Apple ID should be something that our kids do not know they should not have access to that um now some parents won't allow their kids to have any passwords we want we want them to know that we expect to know their passwords and that they should not be changing them um without telling us but um they some parents have made the decision that I know your password you're not going to know any password you anything you want to do on that phone you have to come to
053me and that's age appropriate just depends on the age of the kids um that you should let them know that you're going to spot check it I'm not going to read every single text between you and your BFF but I am going to spot check it just to make sure there's nothing nothing concerning that I I need to be aware of 100% trans transparency means no deleting no erasing your browser history no using Incognito um no clicking out of the screen when I walk in that drives me crazy if you're doing that you're hiding something and and if you're going to be hiding things from me then this is not going to be a healthy thing for you to be able to do another thing we highly discourage phones in the room at night um
054hopefully you're not already not already in that place if you are then you may want to tell them you know what I'm seeing you're not getting a lot of sleep you're not getting enough sleep and I'm going to monitor your phone and make sure that you are getting eight solid hours where you're not using your phone um that's a great way to kind of back out of that if you've already gotten it but our saying at Tina steam nothing good happens after midnight especially not with our kids in a cell phone so we suggest that you have the charging station be in the parents room and let the kid let the kids know it's going to be already free to go in the morning and the one of the first things they'll say is well
055how am I going to get up buy them an alarm clock you can buy them an alarm clock I think they have those at Walmart too they do they do okay and then permission to download apps you definitely want to make sure of that and you should again should be the only one that has the password for that and take advantage of parental controls on your phone the things are so much better than what they were so please take advantage of that check out your parental controls if you're not sure how to do something a quick goog a quick search on a search engine Google or whatever will give you great instructions there's videos on it it's very simple um you can limit how much time they spend overall how much time they spend during
056the week you can limit how much time they spend on each app if you if you're concerned about a particular app that is a great a great way to limit that now all these things I'm telling you they will find ways around it um one of the things that we have found that's really helpful if you go to monitor uh see how your efficiency is on your battery as you can see it says what time the um smartphone was being used and it shows you how much each app was being used super helpful super helpful so if they found a way to download an app that you did not approve it will show up here trick don't tell your kids that I told you Janine is gonna talk about H screen P zones yeah so
057um as a family come up with screen-free zones in your house um where you want your kids to put their phones away is it during car rides meal times at restaurants and um just make sure that you are um going by your same rules right so um you if you're at dinner try not to be on your phone right um I've I think you should teach your kids about the Do Not Disturb that's a kind of a newer thing on the Apple devices but turn on do not disturb then you're apps aren't coming through and distracting you you can do it while you're at school there's there's reading Focus there's the sleep thing is great too my thing at 10:45 plays the little go to sleep song and then all my notifications are off and
058until that turns back on like it will not say I missed 10 text until 7:30 a.m. when it comes back on so there won't be that distraction um and they can turn off app notifications altogether I think that actually was in the social media or the social dilemma movie some of the executives were saying like they turn them off because you get so distracted when you see oh my gosh there's 25 Facebook notifications that I miss so um you know kind of show them there's different ways to help them not be so disted ract it mhm definitely yeah and um we highly encourage monitoring apps these are a couple of them um that our staff excuse me that our staff have used has anybody used a monitoring app that they really like you have what
059do you mind if I ask custodio I've heard of that I've heard of that so that works well is it pretty pretty user friendly oh good to hear good to hear okay anybody else we've heard great things about both of these and I have heard about cudio yeah yeah so another thing that you can do to monitor is be on your kids social media account um I do I would discourage you from commenting because you don't want to embarrass them and plus you'll just send them off if I I remember I'm I'm thinking I'm such a good parent I'm on my kids Instagram account and then I realized they're not using it very much does anybody know what a finsta is Fina Fina is your Instagram account that only your friend see so if you
060have their password and you're monitoring then you'll be able to you'll be able to see that you'll be aware of it um can they still work around all of this whether we have are you finding that your kids are finding ways around it yes they do they can get Spotify yeah yeah yeah how did you find out oh okay okay okay so yeah they can they can find ways around this um so that's why we want to monitor it we want to do the best that we can we want to keep open communication but again if they are deceiving us they need to know we expect 100% transparency if you're deceiving me then you're going to lose privileges then you're not adult enough to um to use to use something so powerful um one of
061the things that we do in our house we would if you can come to me with a reasonable um discussion and with reasonable talking points I will consider your request if you come at me yelling and screaming and fighting and being unreasonable then I am not even going to consider your request so they have to be adult enough to talk about it and if you're adult enough to talk about it if they're going to be like that then you can you can have a conversation with them and say you know what you're hiding this from me what would you do if you were a parent um and more on that later actually go ahead Janine I actually got in trouble commenting on my 26-year-old son's Facebook account so I was trying Facebook account well he
062has a business he had taken a picture of something and I was and he said Mom I don't want people to know that my I'm a you know I'm a very young business owner I don't want people to know that my mom thinks that my stuff is great I'm like okay then but then I didn't want to delete it because the the owner that he he does Cabinetry but she had commented so I'm like okay we're just going to leave that alone but yeah so teaching moments right so we want to teach our kids self-control and this is important because um we we can't assume that they're going to figure this out on their own right so um are they adhering to the limits we set and um maybe we I don't want to say
063bribe them because that's not a good word but there was a cookie jar there but um if they want to earn cell phone time then maybe they can read for an hour or go outside and play for an hour or do something else so um and you can also encourage them to take a social media break there's a lot of people doing it and I know I've done it before and it was actually kind of freeing so yeah we're hearing a lot of kids doing that so that tells you how much pressure is on them with social media right so and just always remember to um emphasize why you're doing this it's because you care about them you care about their mental health and you want them to become successful adult so do you have
064any ideas does anyone have any ideas of what how they've helped their kids Monitor and have self-control on their phone teaching [Music] self-control yeah right yeah yeah exactly I went to a movie recently and um my child had the phone out and I was like I remember the Cinemark app used to have a thing where you got like rewards if you put your phone on some type of silent mode but it's like unfortunately these buzzes like you said like you cannot even be gone for two hours in a movie without going on there so they really really need our help right so um another thing we want did anyone else have ideas sorry I didn't okay right oh that's great yeah I did that with my son actually I I found out really quickly I
065had to require that he had his homework done before he could have his phone but then he was rushing through his homework and it was a mess it was a crumpled up scribbled mess that you could never even read so I actually had to uh I said you know what I've tried to work with you it it was this was over some time and I said you're not going to have any technology no screens during the week only on the weekends and then what do you think he did Friday at 3 o'clock until Sunday night he would try to be on it just continually without sleeping or anything so there was just no you really have to you really have to work at it you really have to have to work at it you do
066and also if they have an apple there's some crossover right so if you're on an apple computer doing your homework your texts are coming through on your computer so um you know kind of double having to kind of watch that but also um we want to model um healthy usage right so adhere to your own rules um you know be aware of how much time as a parent you're spending on your phone right so are we showing our kids that we can't put our phones down um and I know for me because of being in real estate um my B I don't have normal business hours right so there are times when I may get a call during dinner so I try to be very cognizant that okay if if my escrow isn't falling apart
067I'm not going to take the call but if I really need to take it I'm going to explain to my kids hey I need to step away like because they don't you know you may be taking a work call it could be your boss and you really need to take that call um but let them know you're important to me but I need to to answer this call so um yeah so we want to um here's a ther IST was working with younger kids and these are some of the things that their kids were saying right so these kids are seeing that their parents are so busy on their phone they felt like they weren't important so that's really heartbreaking to see that and um I've seen that I've you know at been out places
068and I've seen you know a mom in the park buried in a phone and the kids you know falling off the swing crying and it's like hello you know we've all we're all guilty of it but you know don't let your kids think that your phone is more important than them so that's super important and then um just find ways to connect with your kids and enter their world right so ask them what they're into like Julie said who's your favorite YouTuber you know what what reels are you watching watch some with them laugh with them um you know play video games with them you know learn how to play fortnite what or whatnot um be aware of their demeanor also because sometimes they may be on their phone and you notice that all of
069a sudden their attitude just gets real Sour go talk to them what happened is there anything you want to talk about because they could be getting bullied and and the more you get these healthy conversations the more they're going to trust you and they're going to want to come to you so we want to make a relationship with our kids so that they will seek our guidance right so just um enter their world be be with them and you know just continue to let them know I am just trying to help you be a successful adult yeah one of the things that I love um to do with my son because as they get older it can be a little bit more challenging you know when they're little you're down on the floor playing trucks
070or or My Little Pony or whatever but as they get older that can be a little bit more challenging so my son and I um watch his favorite YouTube comedian and he still he's 23 years old we'll curl up on the couch I hope he's not going to hear this we'll curl up on the couch and watch his favorite comedian and it's so it's it's really fun and also when they were younger when they were spending that screen time like that with me then I didn't count it against their against their um time against their time limit but um did you have anything else to add to that okay so um again we don't want to discourage parents we don't want to um frighten you we we just want you to know how we know
071how hard it is we know how difficult it's going to be in trying to help your kids navigate this world and so for that the reason we want you to know is uh all the negative aspects is because it's going to be really hard um but I do want to encourage you um it's just like eating healthy or doing their chores you know they're not going to like it if we let them they would stay up all night eating Lucky Charms so so they definitely need it and keep in mind that things are better and they're getting better and better um the apps are getting better we're holding social or big Tech accountable um I encourage you to contact your state representative if you see anything that's bothering you because they are it's it's starting
072to happen big Tech is paying attention um I it seems like they're never going to listen it seems like they're never going to be on the same page as you but trust me they definitely will I remember my son telling me I will never put screen limits on for my kids I will never do that you are the worst parent ever I'm going to be so much better parent than you and it didn't even bother me because I'm like oh my gosh so just last week I asked my son if you were a parent what would you do to help your kids navigate through social media and he said first thing he said no Tik Tok anybody's kids on Tik Tok Tik Tok a couple things about Tik Tok first of all it the algorithms
073are so effective it can get if they start um down a dark Road it can get super dark really fast whether it's self harm or or um anything like that in addition to that my son said I can't set it down I had to delete it I can if I'm on Instagram I can set it down when I need to and it does the same thing but with Tik Tok it's so addicting I can't set it down he also said and this is so interesting because he doesn't know that this is what we Advocate we Advocate no social media until 8 or nth grade he said I would never let my kids have social media until they're in high school and um he also said that he would um he would get them a flip
074phone so that he could go pick them up or um so kids are starting to realize when they first got the phones they weren't really when they you know our brand new digital natives um they didn't know but they're starting to see and they're starting to see and then he said I remember when we got phones because before that we used to play outside that was super sad um I asked my 19-year-old daughter the same question really interesting first thing she said and they don't even live together so they weren't talking about this first thing she said no Tik Tock second thing she said no social media until High School I asked her why and she said because they're not mature enough to handle it and because of all the brainwashing and then um I
075thought she was done then she said oh wait a minute also they need permission to download apps which is hilarious because I required they found a way around it and I found out from that battery trick I told you U but I I required permission for downloading apps so my friend who was super super strict with her 18-year-old there was so many fights over um his his smartphone and the restrictions that she put on it and she said don't worry when you're 18 you I'll take all the restrictions off so she did it kind of gradually he was 18 she took off all restrictions within 3 days he came back to her and asked her to put the limits back on yeah I don't know what happened but he asked for the limits and the
076explicit content to be blocked so I I don't know I don't know what happened but definitely um they do you know they do come around they do come around it just and um you're probably tired of hearing that when you have an Elementary schooler or a middle schooler but it does happen and you might not think so it might not seem like it they might not act like it but as parents trust me we are the most influential voice in their life we talk to 20,000 students in the bay in the East Bay every year and their parents have a lot more influence than what they realize so I want to encourage you with that um some action steps that you can take enter their world for 30 minutes this week um set up some
077guidelines together uh one of the things we advocate for take your kid on a date we call it a no agend non-agenda time so don't talk about grades don't talk about anything just just to spend time with them and have it be with no phones if it won't ruin the whole thing if it's going to ruin the whole thing then then it's kind of pointless but um and as I said contact your state representative anything that's bothering you because they do listen my son actually now works for um the state legislature and and they have people that listen they pay attention to every phone call that comes in um I have some resources for you and I can if anybody wants these slides please go ahead and feel free to email me um we have
078a lot of information on our website we have videos on technology we have videos on cyber bullying um there's a couple of books that are great if you want to learn more about what technology does with our our teens brain if you want to know if an app is appropriate for your child Common Sense Media is amazing very detailed very thorough also Google or any other search engine if you want to know how to find out if your kid is getting around one of your one of your safeguards um that's an awesome go-to and as Janine and I said just last week we rewatched the social dilemma I encourage you when it first came out my daughter was in Middle School and she came home and said I want to watch this with you and
079she actually we watched it twice she wanted to see it twice kids do not like being duped they don't like being manipulated when they see this they're going to see what's happening and it's it's very eye openening so I highly encourage that um Janine do you have anything else any of you seen that movie or heard of it yeah it's a documentary in it and the people that are in it are their pinis Google Facebook they're all Executives and they you know basically it's almost almost like The Hunger Games like behind the scen the Wizard of Oz what they're doing so it's very very eye openening and yeah and I would say watch it with your child because it's they're going to get it yeah it's fantastic so does anybody have any questions or comments
080or anything that you want to share with other parents that's working for you we do yeah right yeah we can definitely send some information we have um speakers for both usually it's typically in seventh grade and ninth grade um people who are way younger and cooler than me so that's why ours doing we only get to talk to parents okay yeah and it's overwhelming as a parent yeah yeah yeah that's great advice that's great advice things change I mean before Tik Tok it was Vine and I remember my daughter would talk about oh I Justin blah blah blah and I thought Justin was a kid from school he was some bind famous person like they get so into these people that have become famous online that it's like they talk about them like they're personal
081friends with them it's yeah it's really crazy so if you don't know what apps your kids are on I would definitely at least try to get that conversation going like what apps are you on so that you're kind of aware of you know and figure out what what are the you know concerns about each one yeah on that one of the things that we talk to kids about um think about your favorite influencer now what if you listen to them and they they say smoking weed is awesome and you take their advice and you end up getting getting in trouble and getting caught and getting getting suspended are you going to call Jason or whoever it is and and say Hey you know I I listen to your advice I I started smoking weed and
082I got kicked out at school do you think he's going to Care do you think he's going to be there for you who's the one that's going to be there for you your parents your teachers your administrators your counselers those are the people that really care about you so we have to remind them of that because they get so wrapped up in it that's a great Point did you have com that's honestly what I get a lot of already that is absolutely true that is absolutely true and it's going to be different for every parent and every kid but that's why we went through so many of the negative things so you realize how important it is and how important it is for you to stick to your guns and to um to adhere to
083whatever your guidelines are um time restriction is the best is the most important thing that we're seeing for kids that age they're just just I mean remember in Co you know we we had all our guidelines and everything and then all of a sudden Co it's like okay you can spend 15 hours a day but that's it you know I mean all the rules seem to go out the window um for everybody and and it can feel like that especially with your seventh and eth graders and your high school students um so really there's no magic bullet there's no magic answer you have to just stick to it and um I really like the suggestion that we had um from the one parent regarding the sleeping I'm seeing you're not getting enough sleep I'm going
084to monitor it if you can't do it it's just because I care about you and make sure they know that it's because you care about them it's not because you want to have power over them um but I see you're not getting enough sleep I'm going to monitor it and if you're on your phone at night um then we're going to have to take it in our room um if they're not on it then at night then it's not an issue so yeah I think to answer your question it it is a little bit of an awkward conversation but um that's why we're were saying like if you need to just go to them and say hey I just went to this great talk and you know I I think that we need to set
085up some guidelines and in the end it's really hard I'm a people pleas or right so I want my kids to like me but in the end I'm the parent you're the child I'm paying the bill you know I've said to my kids before like when you want to take over this you know $50 a month for your phone then you can do whatever you want but under my roof you know just see if I mean I wouldn't chop it and take it all away you know like maybe gradually just kind of sit down with them and come up with some guidelines that can at least exactly right it's yes it is a privilege not a right yeah absolutely anything else yeah thank you for coming thank you so Julie and Janine thank you so
086much teen esteem thank you for partnering with us I also want to thank the parents that were present here tonight and gave us some feedback and parents that are online thank you too for partnering I also would like to thank Mark Nelson principal of bishan middle school for being here um it takes a village to support our kiddos and also Dr Damon Wright superintendent thank you everybody have a nice evening thank you