Scott Schimmel (00:02.946)
Hey, welcome to another episode of the U School Podcast. We're talking about tech healthy parenting. And for good reason, we are parenting in a new age. There's no handbook. Our parents didn't have to do this. And we're finding out through research that we're actually harming our kids. Whoops. And that's no laughing matter, of course. But what we're trying to do is figure out how do we respond? And it's, think what I'm watching in listening to from other parents.
Tyler Allred (00:15.035)
and we'll find them through research.
Scott Schimmel (00:31.638)
is because of this research, because of books like The Anxious Generation, because of new initiatives like what we're doing here, parents are having a big reaction and locking things down. There's almost every day there's a new school district that announces they're going device free. And I think there's obviously is a great piece of that. And we need to be wiser and have better guardrails. We are the adults for our kids. But, you know, little baby with a bathwater dynamic.
Sometimes so what we want to do is engage in really practical conversations in these episodes What and and we've been receiving from parents like you questions problems real -life headaches that they're trying to Struggle to figure out what to do with and we're gonna apply not just what we've been learning from Digesting the research and if you want to know a research couple of guys you're looking at them
We're dads and researchers. Is that okay to say? We're researchers. And our orientation is to do all the deep dive on the research and translate it so that you who don't have as much time as we do, aren't wired like us nerds, we can give it to you in a summarized way that you can apply quickly with your kids. So we have a survey and parents have been sending in their concerns and helping us understand what your needs are and what your challenges are. And we have specific questions.
Tyler Allred (01:44.883)
to the study of the environmental issues.
Scott Schimmel (01:59.382)
Today is a question came in from a parent that says this, I've noticed that my kids say some horrible things to their friends online over text messaging and messaging and games. They're sometimes mean, immature and hurt their friends. How can I learn? How can I help them learn to be a better friend? So that's where my preamble comes in because I think it's interesting if we throw out the baby with the bathwater, our kids are going to have less time to interact. think
Technology can be a tremendous opportunity to train our kids how to be good humans and how to have emotional maturity, emotional intelligence, how to build healthy friendships. Because at end of the day, when they're adults, they're going to be in an online digital world. So we want to train them and prepare them for that. Guard wheels are important. Screen time limitations, restrictions are fantastic for a time, but ultimately we want to give them more and more freedom.
that is hopefully matched by responsibility and wise thinking. So here, that's the scenario, Tyler. I don't know if you've had experience like this. If you ever seen your kids say or do think that was not cool.
Tyler Allred (03:04.095)
Yes.
Tyler Allred (03:09.235)
Yeah. Well, one, just as you were talking about us being research nerds, the data that I've seen, basically the way that our social media and online interactions are set up, the sort of people that thrive the most in that kind of anonymous interaction are actual sociopaths. that's what actually we are being pulled toward because what happens when you're even in a text message, but certainly on something like X or
or Instagram, you're able to comment basically anonymously and it brings out the trolling tendencies that we have. We might say something way more sarcastic or mean -spirited than we ever would in real life. And the kind of people that actually thrive on that are actual sociopaths. it's a good reminder for me to not give into those tendencies as much as possible.
Scott Schimmel (03:39.661)
Yeah.
Tyler Allred (04:06.879)
For our kids, they're still learning. They're just jumping into that. And there is this sense, the younger generation, they tend to see their lives online as a simple extension of their real life. And I think us as parents, one of our jobs is to help them separate those. There's some great aspects to being online, but we also want to raise them up to be able to approach that in a mature way to say, actually, my life online is not my real life, even when I'm...
Scott Schimmel (04:20.216)
Mm.
Interesting. Yeah.
Tyler Allred (04:35.433)
connecting with my actual friends. So my oldest daughter has a friend group. Most of them have been friends almost their whole life. She's been in the same school district for the last seven years. And so in real life, she has this friend group and they have a great time together. And in the last couple of years, they've gotten more online. And so now they have several group messages that they're a part of. we have noticed...
There's been several instances where something was said in a group message that was taken the wrong way. It was overly sarcastic or making fun of someone else. And, there, there's been a few different moments of kind of intense rifts where, some of the girls in this text message stopped talking to each other for a while. There was even one moment last year where my daughter responded to something in a group message that hurt.
Scott Schimmel (05:25.378)
Yeah.
Tyler Allred (05:33.425)
one of her best friends in a way that actually we found this out like a week later, it almost effectively ended the relationship. Like it felt like, so my daughter's best friend felt like, shoot, she doesn't like me anymore. I thought we were good friends, but she said that thing. And, meanwhile, like my girl sitting here, I didn't even mean that. I didn't even know what I said. And like, she wasn't even thinking about it. And so that was a moment we brought them back together and said, look,
Scott Schimmel (05:50.178)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler Allred (06:03.453)
what you say online, one, you pay attention to what you're saying and to realize there's no inflection online. You don't, where in real life I could say something to you, you and I joke all the time and we're very sarcastic. But if we said the exact same thing in a text message, it might come off harsher than it actually does in real life. so, yeah, it was a moment where we realized, we need to prepare them for this. And as much as possible, get them back in
Scott Schimmel (06:19.97)
Yeah.
Tyler Allred (06:32.84)
having real FaceTime. FaceTime is so much better than text message and all of that. Yeah.
Scott Schimmel (06:38.19)
Absolutely. And it's what you're reminding me of is why it's important as we're allowing our kids more freedom online to monitor that for a while. And I don't know what the right amount of time is. It depends on the kid. But to be able to view their texting and their messaging and to be pretty deliberate to debrief with your kid, hey, I noticed this. Tell me more about that. We have maybe the opposite situation.
Similar but opposite, we have a kid that will say things through messaging on a game to friends that will notice or kids' messengers, because we get that on our phones as well. And when we see it, it's just like, my gosh, I can't believe you said that. And honestly, my first thought is, God, their parents are seeing that. So there are just these instantaneous layers that I'm carrying of like, those parents think that my kid is a bad kid, which means we're bad parents.
And so my reaction and my wife, our reaction can often be big. And what I've actually been learning recently is to take a minute before, you know, come here right now, because I just have to check, this is okay. It's going to be all right. If my parents were monitoring the things I said out loud down the street to kids when I was that age, Lord help me help them. But the fact is we are monitoring and it is a
It's an opportunity to do a couple things, you know, help me understand what happened. I will often hear, well, she hurt my feelings, so I hurt her back. And then that's a great opportunity to say things like, for our family, that's not how we treat people. And so we have this refrain, in our family, that's not how we treat people. That's just a part of the script that we've learned. I've heard it come out my mouth. I've heard it come out my wife's mouth. So both mom and dad are saying, in our family, that's not how we treat people.
We treat people and then we'll fill in the blank. Kindness, with respect. When you said this, that's not respectful. So we'll just point it out to them and then invite them to make a different response, particularly repair. I like, and this is what I think what you're talking about with X and kind of the blasting sociopaths online. There's really never repercussions, rarely. Are there actual moments where people come together and repair the damage that's been done? I want my kids to learn that because that's how life works better.
Scott Schimmel (09:04.394)
and we want them to learn how to have social skills so they can have healthy relationships and friendships and a community. And that's a key part of living well. So this now becomes, and this text kind of circle back around, this is a fantastic opportunity to train your kids how to do that and how to model it for them. I've been deliberate to tell my kids stories about when I hurt my friends feelings. I did it this week.
I said a sarcastic comment. know you're shocked to hear that Tyler. I said a sarcastic comment to a friend in a message and he left me a message saying, hey, when you said that, it actually stung.
So number one, I repaired, I owned it, I understood it, apologized to him, and then we're good, I think. And then I shared that with my two younger kids, with my daughters. I just said, I did something this week and I realized I don't wanna be like that, because in our family, that's not how we treat people. So back to that question, monitor. And if they're 22 and you're still reading their texts, that's weird. But if you're 12, nine,
Tyler Allred (09:55.241)
That's good.
Scott Schimmel (10:11.886)
14 by all means, because I think we are there to guide them into our values and how we see the world and we need to teach them. How else will they learn? They're not taking that class in school. They're not learning that from Disney Plus or on Snapchat. They're not learning it probably from each other. We have the opportunity to teach them.
Tyler Allred (10:35.519)
Yeah, I think the principle I keep coming back to is to view our role as parents with our kids online is like what we do in our society with a learner's permit before they get the keys of the car to start driving. We actually know as a society, kids need six months to a year where the parent is right there with them telling them everything to do so that they're safe on the road. And in that same way, of course, yeah, a 12 -year -old, 13 -year -old
Scott Schimmel (10:54.925)
Yeah.
Tyler Allred (11:04.415)
I think up to 16, they're still in the learner's permit phase of learning how to manage their lives in the digital world. Certainly if they're 22 and beyond, that gets a little unhealthy. that's really helpful. I think what I noticed, even what you said of finding a personal story where you are sharing vulnerably with your kids, yeah, I just did this this week and I tried to do the same thing where I attach what I'm telling them to something that I just experienced.
And I think what's even more helpful, it's not even just that their dad also goes through those same things, but you're also saying, hey, and you know what? I reached out and I reconciled and it didn't kill me. Like it actually, like the, the, what you envision, this is going to be the worst possible thing to admit my mistake. Actually it was perfectly fine. And now the friendship is mended. So telling them, telling them those stories are so valuable.
Scott Schimmel (11:44.45)
Yeah. Right.
Scott Schimmel (12:02.37)
And that's why in the Tech Healthy Parenting course we put together, which we want you to do, we will help you think through for your family these kinds of principles so that you can communicate them to your kid. We don't just think that knowing the research and having bigger boundaries and barriers for our kids is enough. And sometimes that might actually be a disservice to the development.
So we wanna give you the tools you need to have those conversations with your kids so that you can lead them to make healthy choices, build healthy relationships, and participate in this digital world. It's $49 to go through that course. And we've summarized all the best, most relevant data, give it to you in bite -sized videos, and give you exercises to use with your kids. And there's videos in there of us two guys explaining to your kids, so we're the bad guys.
telling your kids the potential harms of social media to their brains being rewired, to addiction cycles, to dopamine deficits, to distraction in your academic focus. Like we have short videos in there that you can show to your kids so that they can understand the harms for themselves. We want you to have that so that you can lead your kids to be healthy, tech healthy in the future. So check that out, show notes, techhealthyparenting .com. Sign up today.
Take your kids through it. This is the time for you to guide your kids for what they need.
