Connection With Kids About Their Phones

So we raised three boys in a digital world. Talk about that time when you're standing there trying to get them off the couch. They'd been playing video games all day, it felt like to me.

As a mom, I'm thinking, what a waste of time. And I come in the room and I'm like, hey guys, it's time to shut down the game. No, it wasn't, hey guys. It was like, let me tell you something. I could hear it from the basement. It was probably more like, what a waste of time.

That's probably what it was. And I had some things that I wanted them to do. So as I'm going off on them, I notice that they all have their phones out and they're all looking at them and they're not looking at me at all. And I'm like, hey, are you guys listening to me? And then they all start to laugh.

And I'm like, what is so funny? And one of them says, oh, mom, we're just texting back and forth of how crazy you are. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our family life app. This is Family Life Today.

There was a time when we had a college student come home and then two boys were in high school and one of them says, oh, mom, we're just texting back and forth of how crazy you are. But that is what a lot of parents are facing. I mean, that's the world we live in.

And we've been living in it for quite a while. So, I mean, for parents, you know, we need to understand how do we parent a generation that literally lives with their screens right in front of them? I like that you said, how do we tame the beast? Well, it's almost like the phone or the screens in some ways can become this beast that we need to understand as parents.

How do we help navigate this world? So we've got in the studio in Orlando, Jonathan McKee, who spent your life devoted really to helping parents and kids understand how to navigate the screen, the beast. Right. Many of you know, Jonathan McKee's written over 25 books. There we go.

I heard 28 books and counting. Something like that. Yeah.

Amazon's got 28 of them. Let's put it that way. Wow.

That's impressive. And we've got a couple of them with us today and we're going to talk about Parenting Generations Screen, which is a book really that you've written for parents, right? To understand how to navigate this. And then just last year you wrote The Teen's Guide to Face-to-Face Connections in a Screen-to-Screen World. And this one's written more to the children, right? Yes, more to the young person.

Teenagers? Yeah. The Face-to-Face Connections book was actually written by you with your daughter. Yeah.

Which is pretty unique. A fun project with Alyssa and I, and she was right in the middle of that world, so we tackled that one together. It's fun. First book might even be the last I ever wrote with one of my kids, and it was a great experience. Well, you've got three kids, so you know exactly what we're talking about when we open this thing.

Oh, yeah. So I'd never heard the term Generation Screen. I've heard Generation X and Z. What's Generation Screen? Well, it's just a good summary because really when you look at the lines now, people will talk about millennials and this and that, but you've got Gen Y, you've got Gen Z.

And it's interesting. This is one of the fun things about bringing my daughter Alyssa into this project with me is she was born in 1995. Now, it doesn't sound very unique, but anybody who had a kid born around that time, what they do realize is that put her in high school smack dab in the middle of when everything changed. Because 2012 was right in the middle of her high school experience, and 2012 is a very unique year in technology, a very important year because 2012 is not only the year that Snapchat came out. It's not only the year that Instagram became a thing. It was the year that America crossed the 50% mark for smartphone ownership.

So what she noticed was for her, her junior year, she said there was this kind of this shift. We're sure we texted, but also now social media, which used to be this thing that was at home plugged into the wall, was now in our pockets. And so all of a sudden now people are snapping everything.

They're checking DMs instead of texts and everything. Screen time started to bump a little bit. People became a little more absorbed. And she says conversation as she knew it changed. So fascinating for her to see that.

And it's funny because I have another daughter two years younger than her. And for her, her whole high school experience was social media. For my son, who was older than Alyssa, it was all texting. But Alyssa right in the middle, and she saw the switch happen.

So fascinating to see as social media got into our back pocket, how that kind of changed communication as we know it. Let me ask you, why did she decide? Did you ask her to write this? Or did she have an experience with this that she thought this is important?

I want to have a voice in this world? The 23 other people asked to write it couldn't. And so I was like, Alyssa, can you okay, fine. No, no, no, she No, I was so excited because she has always been very conscious of FaceTime versus screen time.

She knows the difference. We definitely had some fun experiences. I'm going to just call them fun.

That's a good label for it right now. Over the years where maybe we as family members were too absorbed. And I'm gonna say we because me being too absorbed in the screen, she being too absorbed in the screen. And so we thought this will be really fun to dialogue, because we both kind of had the same opinion that screens aren't bad.

They're not evil. But sometimes screens just start to interfere with connection. You know, here's this invention that's supposed to help us connect better. And instead, it's interfering with connection. So we thought, let's talk about this.

Let's talk about the importance of these face to face connections. And this thing where, you know, it's okay to be looking at your screen, but when somebody else comes in our room, wouldn't it be cool if we just maybe put that thing in our pocket, and we both felt that way. And we had something to say about it.

So this is the book where we said it together. Yeah, it's interesting and showed me last week, a little cartoon of a guy who dies and goes to heaven, there's an angel there meeting him and the angel says, Man, you had an amazing life, but you missed it because you're always looking at your phone. But I mean, it is just what you're saying. I've been there. I mean, I have missed things right in front of me in my family room or in a meeting, you name it, where I am, I don't want to say addicted, but I'm like, I'm checking my phone, I'm responding to a text, I'm looking at a YouTube video. And life and people are right there in front of me. And you know, we're old enough to know life before that, and life with that in our kids, you know, they've never known anything different.

So talk about this. I mean, how many kids really do have a phone or a screen in their hand? If this is generation screen, it seems like everybody. When it gets to teenagers, the last numbers were actually over a year old right now. I mean, through COVID, it's funny how things have changed.

So it's gonna be interesting to see how these numbers switch. But as of just pre COVID, it was 89% of teenagers had a smartphone in their pocket. 97% of them were on social media in one way or another. And of course, screen time went up during COVID. So I mean, screen time, man, I mean, you start looking at the numbers of entertainment media time young people were soaking in the average is almost 10 hours a day of entertainment media that young people soak in, you know, per day. So I mean, that's a lot of time to be just listening to music, watching funny videos on YouTube, scrolling through social media to see how you measure up with everybody else. I mean, this is, there's a lot of this going on. This stirs me up heated about this, because what I think, and I know there's some great things about social media, we can use it for good things. But there's a part of me thinks we are giving our kids 10 hours a day where they're being discipled by the culture.

That's how I could look at it. And I love that you're here, Jonathan, because you can help us as parents not to freak out. And I like what you talk about, you talk about this in comparison to you don't just give your kids a cell phone. You talk about that in comparison to like, you just wouldn't hand your teenager the car keys. And that's exactly how I start the book parenting generation screen. I just I give that analogy of if your 10 year old came up to you and said, Hey, Dad, I'm going to go take the SUV, I'm going to go right around town, I'm going to meet some people I've never met before, let them in the car with me and go around and we're going to, you know, can I have the keys? Well, of course, you'd be like, No way. What are you crazy? And I say, Well, that's exactly what we do with the phone.

We hand them this device is very powerful device with no training for this at all. And we just say, Here you go. So you can go out and you could play whatever you want. You can talk with whoever you want.

You can be whoever you want. And it's just one of those things where when it comes to training our kids to operate a vehicle, we sit with them in a seat next to them by law. I know in California, I had to sit next to my kids for 50 hours.

I had to sign a piece of paper that I sat. So we'd be like, Okay, we're going to school that, you know, we started to clock those hours, you know, and we're like, Okay, be careful as you merge. Okay, watch out for that lady. This is California.

She has a gun. And so we're, you know, here's how to here's how to ride in the freeway. Here's, and there's so much coaching going on with the phone. We're just like, Here you go. Don't break it. Don't be stupid.

And even why do we give it to them? I've heard so many parents say, I couldn't take the pressure anymore. They are badgering me night and day.

And I finally gave in. Yeah, parents constantly will hear they can relate. They hear all my friends have a phone.

Now the thing is crazy is, we need to be compassionate to this. I was on a middle school campus just before COVID. And I was hanging out with these 11 through 14 year olds.

You know, this is sixth through eighth graders. I was in this classroom. And there was only like, oh, maybe 13 or 14 of them.

And I thought I'm gonna try something. So I went up and I wrote my phone number up on a whiteboard. And I said, Okay, everybody whip out your phones. And immediately if there was 14 kids in a room, 14 kids whipped out a smartphone 14. Now, statistically for that age, it's about like 60, high 60s, almost 70% that should own phones at age of the average age that someone gets a smartphone in America right now is about 10 years old. You know, by the time they get to high school, you're looking towards 90% but middle school is 60 to 70% have smartphones. I don't care what the numbers say 100% of these kids whipped out a phone.

And so I started using the phone to get to know these kids. I'm like, Okay, we're gonna play a game called speed text. Here we go. My numbers on the board, get it in your phone. They're like done.

We already have I mean, they had already by the time I wrote the last number, it was done. And I'm like, Okay, ready, I'm gonna name something and I want you to send it to me. First one to send it to me gets a point first one to 10 points gets the Starbucks card boom. And immediately I'm all like a selfie and your first and last name. And immediately kids are holding up their phones like boom, my phones blowing up with pictures of kids who just took these selfies in their first and last name. And by the way, anybody that works with young people is going, Jonathan, this is great. You're getting information on these kids.

So I started thinking, Okay, what can I learn? So I'm like, what's your favorite fast food, you know, boom, immediately to do it, I go, take a screenshot of the most recent song you played, boom, they're sending it to me. Take a screenshot of the most recent app you've been on.

Boom, I'm getting you know, name it. Fortnite, Instagram, tick tock, you know, so when it was done, here's these kids I was gonna be hanging out with for the year. All sudden, I now have these texts with these kids, I've got their first last name, face. And I'm looking at Oh, and they were on tick tock, and they're 11 years old. That means they lied about their age just to get on tick tock, because you have to be 13 to be on tick tock, you know, oh, and look, their song they were listening to was this song by Post Malone.

And I'm learning all this stuff about it's funny. In the youth ministry world, we used to say, if you want to get to know a kid go into their room. Now, if you want to get to know a kid, just look on their phone.

Because that is their world. Yeah. So talk about this, if it's gonna be 50 hours of driver's ed, classes, training, and 50 hours with your parents before you can get a license, what should parents do before giving their kids a cell phone? Well, it's funny. That's why I've written so many of these teens guidebooks and guys guidebooks, I wanted to give parents a tool they could use. And this book that my daughter and I wrote the teens guide to face to face connections in a screen to screen world.

This is just an example. This is a book that talks about the amount of time you're spending on your phone. And some of the important things like, hey, this is a great device to connect with people outside the room, when it doesn't interfere with our relationships with the people inside the room. It talks about predators, it talks about screen time talks about social media time. And how good for us just as parents to engage our kids in conversations about this stuff, and get them to start thinking about some of the stuff before they start navigating that world. We need to start having conversations with our kids about this. Walk us through how old our kids be before we give in to the cell phone, or maybe what you said, Davis, what are the steps that we should have already taken before they're mature enough, and we've equipped them enough to know how to handle a cell phone? Well, it's interesting, because of my parenting generation screen book, I'd say the question I'm asked more than anything else is what age I thought, Okay, I got to devote a chapter to this, because that is constantly they'll say, Okay, my 12 year old, every day, she comes home and says, Oh, my friends have smartphones.

And it doesn't work when you go, Well, actually, only 72% of 12 year olds, it doesn't work. So so you've got to kind of sit there and just Oh, really, and I talked about, you know, listening to that and being able to dialogue. But it's interesting when you start to see what the experts are saying. For example, I mean, like Jim Steyer, who's the, the CEO of common sense media, this is a guy who his whole world is studying the amount of time that young people spend on screens. And he's asked all the time, what age it is the question, what age should I get my kids a smartphone, you know, and he always has this answer, like, Well, it depends on the kid and how responsible they are.

And you know, all this different stuff. And they're kind of like, Okay, hey, Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim, you know, they're, they're lighting torches, what we need to know my kid is killing me here, you know, and finally, they're like, Jim, when did you let your kids right? Because he was a parent of teenagers. And he's like, 14, when they're in high school, he waited till they were 14.

It's funny, Bill Gates, same question guy who knows tech, you know, just just a little bit knows tech, you know, likes tech thinks it's a good thing. 14. When his kids are in high school, if people ask me, I'm a guy who studies this writes about this all the time. I always say, the summer before their freshman year of high school, and if they're ready, and if they're showing responsibility, then that should be a summer just bathed in conversation. That should be the summer that you're taking your kid out to breakfast every name it Tuesday morning, whatever, and going through, you know, the teen's guide to social media or whatever, you know, and taking them through and talking about this stuff, sitting in the passenger seat next to them, and saying, Hey, let's prepare for, you know, these decisions you're going to make about screen time and some of the big questions are you gonna have in your bedroom at night? How much time are you gonna spend on social media, this whole influencer thing, if you want to be an influencer, all these things, some people just heard that like, wait, you're gonna ask them if they can have the phone? Like, what are those conversations? Because I like that you talk about that, because you might already know the answer of you will not have your phone in your bedroom, but you still dialogue about it. Well, and that's funny, because I'll give you kind of a behind the scenes peek here, you know, in my parenting generation screen, whenever I write a book now, one of the things I do is I make a practice to get it out to as many of my readers before it's published, and I say mark it up feedback on here. So about 70 people got the book before it was printed. And I said feedback on here. And the one thing that they kept saying is, okay, you were sneaky here, because here's a book that we're obviously picking up that most parents are picking up to say, Okay, what rules should I have for my kids?

You know, what blocks can I put on this device? And I definitely go into, hey, should or should not your kid have the phone in the bedroom? How much time is too much time? Is social media harmful for my kids?

Should I allow it? If so, when? What age all those questions, they're answered in the book. And I'm not going to tell you any of them. No, but the thing they said was so surprising is, Jonathan, you don't just say, here's how to set the phone. Here's the theme of this book was so overwhelmingly, here's how to engage your kids in conversations about this.

And the reason why is simply this. Our kids are going to turn 18 someday, and they're going to be in a college dorm. They're going to be an army barracks are going to be somewhere away from the house. They're not going to call you up and be like, Dad, can I download the new HBO show? No, they're not going to ask you that question. They're going to make that decisions for themselves.

And the only question we should ask ourselves is, did we equip them for that day for that moment, making that decision. That's usually not through a rule. It's usually through the conversations we've had. And that's why the relationship is so important.

And if we have rules without a relationship, that's a guaranteed lead to rebellion. So when you talk, you talk about in your book connection before correction, how does a parent do that? Can I communicate with my son through texting? Yeah, no, see, I am not a phone hater. Yeah, you know, I actually like my phone, my phone got me to the studio today, you know, you know, it told me which direction to turn and all that does this nice female voice said turn left, turn right. And most of us men are used to a female voice telling us where to turn. So I mean, it was it was a good thing. But the whole point of the connection before correction is our tendency when it comes to a subject like this is when our kids are all on the couch texting each other, we want to show up in the room.

Just random example here. We wanted to start barking like this is ridiculous. What are you thinking, you know, and that's what we want to do. I've done that so many times where I just, I kind of overreact and I corrected there in a moment. And the whole principle of connection before correction is saying, this is one of these important subjects we need to talk about. And so what I did is early in that book parenting generation screen, I talked about this principle of connection before correction. And then in every single one of the points throughout the book, whether we're talking about should I have my phone in the bedroom? What age should I give my kid a phone? Should they be on social media?

And if so, how long per day? Every one of those issues. I talked about how do we connect with our kids on this? How do we talk with them about it? How do we listen to their opinion on it and hear their point of view? And then how do we most importantly, delay our response, not make a decision right there, but hit that pause button and kind of go, hmm, let's pray about this. Let's think about this. And then let's go back and we'll make a decision about what rule we're going to have. But we're not going to just immediately go, here's the rules sign here, but we're going to talk about it.

Listen to them. And that's that principle. I wish I would have done that more with my own kids. Yeah, that's really good.

Me too. I'm thinking of Deuteronomy six, six and seven. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you rise, that's exactly what you're talking about. It's an ongoing conversation with our kids. And isn't it funny that that passage doesn't talk about simply here's the rules that you're supposed to leave with your kids and those rules will raise your kids. No, they really paint this picture of this getting up in the morning, walking along the road, going to bed at night, these ongoing conversations. It's this discipleship.

It's this talking through this and that's what we need to do. And again, I'm not anti rule. We live in a world right now where 79% of young people bring their phone in their bedroom at night. This is a pet peeve of mine. The American Academy of Pediatrics has been for literally decades been saying no screens in the bedroom for decades. And now that phones are in kids' pockets, there's no exception. They're saying, hey, no smartphones in our kids' back pockets. But the thing that we have to consider here is that eight out of 10 parents aren't monitoring that. There's not parents outside kids' doors with a bucket saying please deposit the phone in the bucket.

This is not happening. So kids are bringing these devices in their bedrooms. And I'll tell you something, so many of my back table discussions where parents after a parent workshop come up to me and they're asking me questions, it's okay. So here's what my kid was doing all night on social media. Here's what my kid was doing all night gaming. Here's what my kid was doing all night.

And that word all night is always coming out. It's like, you know what? Here's one of those simple rules, those simple guidelines that would help so much. And instead of just throwing this on your kid, no phone in the bedroom because I said so, it's connecting with them and getting to the why. Because, you know, the first thing they're going to do is why, right? Get to the why. Get to that conversation. Talk with them about it.

We need to have that connection before the correction. I think there are maybe two extremes that we can run to as parents as we face something like the digital revolution and how we parent our kids in the midst of this. One extreme is to say, well, my kids aren't going to have a device until they're 35 years old, you know, and that doesn't work. The other extreme is to say, well, I guess there's nothing I can do. So here you go. And then just pray.

And that doesn't work either. What Jonathan McKee has been sharing with us is a practical way for us to maintain engagement and involvement around a real life tool that can be a great asset to our children, but can also be a portal for evil. Jonathan's written about this in a book called Parenting Generations Screen Guiding Your Kids to Be Wise in a Digital World. It's a book we're recommending to you. In fact, we want to make this book available to any of you who would like a copy. If you can help with a donation for the Ministry of Family Life today, we're happy to send you the book as our way of saying thank you for your support of our mission. Our goal here at Family Life is to effectively develop godly marriages and families to deal with these kinds of real life practical issues that all of us are facing and say, what does the Bible have to say about this?

How would God want us to function as parents in this area? You help make this mission possible every time you donate. In fact, you help us reach more people more often with your donations and we are grateful for your partnership with us. So when you make a donation today online at familylifetoday.com or when you call to donate, 1-800-FL-TODAY is the number, 1-800-358-6329. Ask for your copy of Jonathan McKee's book, Parenting Generations Screen. Again, we're happy to send it to you as a way of saying thank you for your partnership with us here in the Ministry of Family Life today. Now tomorrow, Dave and Ann Wilson are going to talk more with Jonathan McKee about some of the very real dangers that exist in the online world.

What is it that your kids are being exposed to that could be actually harmful, not just emotionally harmful or spiritually harmful, but physically harmful? We'll hear more about that tomorrow. Hope you can join us. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.