Speaker 1: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Kylie Cast. I'm Kylie Griswold,
Managing editor at The Federalist. Please like and subscribe wherever
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can do so at radio at the Federalist dot com.
I would love to hear from you today. I am
delighted to welcome to the Kylie Cast. Claire Morrell. Claire
is a Christian wife and mother of three. She is
a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and
she is the author of the book The Tech Exit,
which is a practical guide for freeing your family, your life,
and specifically your children, your household from smartphones. It's a
really hope filled book. It's a really practical book. Everybody
should read it. But today I'm so excited to chat
with Claire about it. Please welcome to the show, Claire Morrell. Claire,
thank you so much for joining me today on the
Kylie Cast. It is so great to have you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such a pleasure. Can you just start us
off by giving listeners a little bit of a background
for people who don't know you. Tell us who you are,
where you are, how you got to your current job,
and specifically how you got into the tech space.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So i live here in Washington, d C. On Capitol
Hill with my husband and earth three young kids. So
I'm married to a pastor. We have three small children
who are five and under. So that's kind of my
full time capacity as I'm a mom to those young children,
and my professional work. For the last several years, like
the last four and a half years in particular, I've
been at a think tank called the Ethics and Public
Policy Center. I'm a fellow there. Focused on technology and
human flourishing, but specifically how do we protect our kids
and raise this next generation to flourish in an increasingly
digital world and digital culture. So I've been very involved
in trying to help pass policy solutions to protect kids
from the harms of smartphones, social media, and online pornography.
And my kind of foray into the technology space was
I was working in the last Trump administration and I
ended my time at the Department of Justice working in
the Attorney General's office, and we were very focused on
the kind of threats and challenges from these big tech companies,
both related to censorship but also increasingly their role in
facilitating crimes against children, like human trafficking, child sexual exploitation
on their platforms. And so that was kind of my
real exposure and deep Die was into that. It was
at that time, and then when I left the administration,
when ended, I pivoted to this kind of policy research
role that I'm in now, and I've just gotten more
deep into the weeds on these threats to our kids
online and specifically work on what policy makers can do
at the state and federal level to support parents in
protecting their kids. And then I also just wrote a
book this past year called The Tech Exit, A Practical
Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, came out
in June, and that book is actually primarily geared towards
parents because in my professional work.
Speaker 2: I kept getting asked, Okay, but what do I do
as a parent?
Speaker 3: How do I keep my kids off of the phones?
And so I wanted to put out a very practical
resource for parents, and so my work really is meant
to both support policy makers but also parents who were
on the front lines trying to protect our children in
this very digital age.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I definitely want to dive into a lot
of the specifics of your book. I will say every
time I read your work, whether it's an article we
published at The Federalist or something that's published at EPPC,
or parts of your book, I always try to tuck
it away because you give such good, useful tools and
I'm not a parent yet, but I just want to
have you know this toolbox full, so that when I am,
I know all of this research that you've dived so
deeply into. So let's talk about your book. Can you
just lay out the premise of your book, which I
would have expected a book like that to be fairly fatalistic.
I mean, it's such a difficult topic and it's something
that's such a problem with I mean, there are screens
are just absolutely ubiquitous. You can't go anywhere without seeing
a toddler holding a smartphone. And your book is so hopeful.
So can you just kind of explain why your book
is hopeful and just kind of lay out the premise
of your book?
Speaker 2: Yes, I love talking about this.
Speaker 3: So the premise of my book was based on all
my research through the past five years on all these
kind of harms to kids online, was that a smartphone
free childhood was really necessary to protect our kids, a
smartphone social media free childhood. But parents would frequently push
back when I was giving that advice, to say, well,
that's just so difficult, Like every single kid in my
kids class has a smartphone already, and so they were
desperate for practical resources. So I kind of started servying
all these parenting tech books and I could really find
none both making the case for why a smartphone free
childhood was necessary, but.
Speaker 2: More importantly practically how to do it.
Speaker 3: And so I decided to write that book, which set
me off on this path of really interviewing dozens of
families who have successfully done this, who have navigated the
teen years, launched kids to college, raising them free of
smartphones and social media, because I wanted to prove to
myself that it was possible, so I could offer that
hope to readers. And so that is really the book
is the culmination of the practices and principles that I
found all these families had in common that I wanted
to break down in a very concrete way for readers
who are struggling. I wanted to reach parents right where
they're at, like if they're in the midst of screen
time battles with their kids, how to go through a
detox and then how to sustain that lifestyle over the
long term. So the message of the book is it's
never too late to reverse course, and that not only
is a smartphone for you childhood necessary for your kids,
but it is possible and it's the best possible gift
you could give your kids. Because all the families I
spoke to, their children are just flourishing, They're thriving. They
do not resent their parents. Like there's a lot of
common fears and myths and kind of misperceptions that raising
your kids three of smartphones is going to somehow you know,
kind of turn them into luddites, or they're going to
react and binge and go crazy. In college, and I
basically found all that was not true. But yeah, I
wanted to offer this message of hope to other parents
in a very like practical, step by step guide that
the average mom who's very busy and short on time
can pick up quickly, digest and kind of grab onto.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well, and I think that that one part
is such a key point about that it's never too
late to make these changes. That you know, if your
kid has had a smartphone for a little while, or
if you let the toddlers watch, you know, have too
much screen time or something, that it's impossible to take
the screen away. And so it's super cool to have
that encouragement of just like, nope, there are actionable steps
you can take, and here's what they are. So can
you explain because I do, I do see and hear
this a lot about why screen time limits and parental
controls don't actually work, Why that's not actually a fix
for our screen problem.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that's exactly where I start the book because
I think unfortunately that's kind of like the main strategy
that our culture has been employing, and that they have
been sold honestly by the tech companies saying, oh, just
put screen time limits prontal controls in place, and you
can mitigate any of the harms but still allow your
children to use our wonderful products. But the research just
convinced me increasingly that screen time limits are no match
for in addictive product design. That when this product is
inherently addictive in any amount, even a small or short
amount of time, it produces this compulsive effect on a
child's brain, where as soon as they log off, they
feel this constant craving to go back on, like the
time limit is literally never enough. And it is a
biological response because all the features of smartphones and social
media release this dopamine neurotransmitter in the brain that produces
this little burst of pleasure. But dopamine doesn't produce lasting
satisfaction or fulfillment. It just produces a craving to do
that behavior again. And so even if they're only on
for fifteen minutes, they're getting these constant dopamine hits every
time they see a new video.
Speaker 2: You know, it's.
Speaker 3: Infinite scroll the next video plays. They're just getting constant
dopamine hits. But then as soon as they log off,
their brain actually plunges into this dopamine deficit state. It
doesn't return to baseline, and so they have a constant craving.
It creates ative like response even because even in a
short amount of time, and cumulatively then if there's there's
at fifteen twenty minutes a day, over time, their brain
actually becomes desensitized to pleasures in the real world. So
going for a bike ride or taking a walk with
a family member doesn't actually produce the same pleasure that
it used to. Their brain is now habituated to this
artificially high level of dopamine. And so those kind of
reading all this brain science research and realizing because it's
an inherently addictive product.
Speaker 2: The screen time limits just don't work.
Speaker 3: And I think health sometimes analogies are helpful, Like cigarettes
are inherently addictive, and so parents are not saying, Okay,
you can just have one cigarette a day. We know
that they are addictive, and so it's really we have
to have. So I try to explain in the book,
we've treated screens more like sugar something you can enjoy
in moderation, when the effect on the brain is really
more like digital sentanel, like a highly addictive drug that's
just not safe in any amount for a developing brain.
And quickly on the printal control side, I mean they're
just printal controls are a myth. I mean the companies
are not trying to give parents real control although what
their kids are seeing or doing. So the best the
controls can kind of offer a parent is to set
certain privacy restrictions or to put certain time limits on.
But they have no insights into what isn't a child's feed,
what they're scrolling through, what direct messages they're getting, and
so they're really flying blind when it comes to kids'
social media experience or just other apps in the app store.
It's just it's impossible to effectively lock down a smartphone,
is basically the message I want parents to understand, because
there are just hundreds thousands of apps.
Speaker 2: Each app has its.
Speaker 3: Own portal to the Internet, and it's so difficult for
a parent to keep up with that and try to
effectively shut down all those loopholes, and so at the
end of the day, really it's the tech companies and
their algorithms that are controlling a child's online experience. They
don't want parents to be in the driver's seat, and
so none of these controls really actually effectively work.
Speaker 1: Right, Can you explain a little bit more of your
comment that you made about the portal to the Internet
and how exactly that works for parents who might not understand,
because you know, what would you say to a parent
who says, well, I know these four apps that are
on my kid's device, and you know, even if they
know every single Facebook friend or every single Snapchat friend,
how does this portal to the internet work? How my
parents not understand what their kids are actually consuming even
when they're on parent approved apps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the problem is every app has its own
in app browser, which is essentially like another separate web
browser that they can use to access the Internet, and
filters and like third party parntal controls do not work
well inside of apps or in in app browsers. And
so when a child like the parents like, oh, I
can tell that they're only in Snapchat, but the parents
can't actually see into what they're doing inside a Snapchat,
and that child could actually be getting to porn Hub.
A very graphic pornography website inside a snapchat and five clicks,
they're never actually leaving the app. The external filter can't
block it because it's inside this in app browser, and
the parent has no idea they because they're like, oh, well,
I have a porn filter setup on the web browser,
but it doesn't work on these in app browsers. And
so that's what I mean is that you could control
it hypothetically and say they only have these certain apps,
but if every app has its own portal to the Internet,
that's very difficult to lock down. They can still access
pretty much anything. And so I've heard so many parents say, well,
we're going to give them a smartphone, but they're not
going to have social media on it. Any child safety
expert will just tell you that's impossible or just isn't true,
because even if you block Instagram the app, they could
use any of the other apps that they have access
to to get to Instagram dot Com in like one
of these in app browsers and go behind your back
and make a secret account. It's just it's so so difficult.
So I just try to explain to parents you just
can't trust a smartphone. It is not effectively set up
for parents to really lock it down because of the
app system in all these in app browsers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense, and that's so alarming, like when
you use the Snapchat pornhub example, because it's not I mean,
that's a very real, very real possibility and a real problem.
I want to rewind a little bit to the dopamine
thing that you said, yeah, because if I'm not mistaken,
not only are kids getting dopamine hits from this stuff,
but they're also lacking other chemical receptors like that they're
not getting other things that you would get from normal
human interaction. I don't remember if you talk about this
in your book, but can you just explain a little
bit about that deficit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the problem is I think a lot of times
parents feel like, oh, well, I have to give them
this phone because they need to have friends and they
need to be connected, and this is how all the
kids are talking, and so I want them to be,
you know, on these apps, to be socially connected. But
it is like a complete oxymoron because what happens is
these kids are online and they're getting all these dopamine hits,
but they are lonelier and more isolated.
Speaker 2: Than ever.
Speaker 3: And part of that is they are not getting oxytocin
through the screen. So oxytos is another kind of neurotransmitter,
chemical hormone that helps us to bond with other humans,
and it's released through eye contact and physical touch, and
so it actually it's what creates these deeper bonds of
friendship and trust. It bonds parent, child, husband and wife,
and it bonds friends. And so when kids are in
this online world, they're in this oxytocin desert. They have
all these shallow connections which are very superficial based on
their likes or their followers, but they're not actually building
real deep friendships because they're not interacting in person. And
what that means is these kids actually feel really lonely.
So even though they're online all the time, they feel
lonely because they don't have any deep, real friendships. And so, yes,
so it's both that they're getting way too much dopamine
in the online world, but then they're also not getting
really critical things that we need that only come from
real life human interaction.
Speaker 1: And critical things that you need that you would get
if you would put down the phone, like building a
fort with a sibling or going on a walk with
a pair or whatever it might be, because that's actually
easy to get, but not if you're you're glued to
your device. So exactly, let's talk a little bit about
small screens versus big screens, how smartphones affect you versus
how television affects you, for instance, and kind of how
those are different, how they're the same, and what you
recommend for kids with both kinds of devices.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I try to distinguish in the book between
these screens because I often get asked, oh my goodness,
your book says the tech exit, like does that.
Speaker 2: Mean no TVs?
Speaker 3: And I'm like very clear in the book that this
is like no addictive interactive screens, which are namely smartphones, tablets,
video games, social media apps. But there are actually intentional
ways a family can use a television or even allow
children to use a family home computer to actually build
real tech skills, or for like the family to enjoy
some type of entertainment together on a television. So all
screens are not created equal. And I'm really taking issue
in the book with these addictive, extremely interactive and by
that I mean when you are on the screen, it
is giving you this instant feedback, and that is really
where a lot of these dopamine hits come from. Is
you're interacting with the screen. You're scrolling, you're pushing play
on a new video, you are engaging, you're sending messages,
you're getting messages, whereas a television you're just you're passively
a consumer of content. You're taking in content. And so
I try to explain in the book that these tech
exit families they had an intentional use of television and computers,
and then they had no use of these interactive, addictive screens.
So no smartphones, no tablets, no video games, but they
would enjoy like a family movie night on a Friday,
or a sporting event as a family on a Saturday.
And I always just say, like the bigger the screen,
the better because it creates a shared experience. And so
just like you're talking about that oxytostin, like we might
be watching a movie together and we're sitting on the
couch and we're like, you know, snuggling as family members,
or we're talking about it, Oh my goodness, like what
just happened to the movie. So there's enngagement and interaction,
whereas a lot of these individual screens just isolate family
members from each other, and they don't create that kind
of connection. So yeah, so passive versus interactive screens are
very different. And then computers can genuinely be used as
tools that kids can learn to code and develop all.
Speaker 2: Sorts of tech skills.
Speaker 3: And so I explain how families really try to allow
their children to develop true computer and tech skills on
a family home computer where they could easily see. You know,
it's a big enough screen, the parents can walk by,
they can see what's going on. There's that in person accountability,
not just reliance on software. And they are going on
that computer for a very intentional purpose. It's not to
surf the internet.
Speaker 2: It's not to just watch YouTube videos.
Speaker 3: It's to complete this homework assignment or this research project,
or I'm going to practice my computer science coding skills.
So I just I always try to debunk the myth
that like kids need smartphones to be prepared for this
digital age, that they need these tech skills when smartphone
just teaches kids how to scroll and swipe between apps.
And this one boy, who is a tech exit kid
basically grew up no smartphone, no social media, no video games,
but he practiced his computer science skills on his family's
computer every day and won a coding scholarship, so he
has like a long ride to college in computer science.
And he never had a smartphone. So I just think, yeah, yeah,
things are not the same.
Speaker 1: That kid is just the embodiment of the myth busting. Yeah,
that's that's amazing. Yeah, I mean, it's really quite alarming
to see. I was at a coffee shop recently and
this woman came in with her toddler could not have
been older than two, I mean, maybe wasn't even two,
and she was meeting a friend for coffee, and she
got up to get coffee and the toddler just sat
in the booth, and I was shocked. This kid was
navigating her mom's smartphone better than I can navigate my smartphone,
as somebody who works from it and you know, uses
it daily. And it was just it's shocking to watch
kids tech literacy. But it's not even really tech literacy.
It's just this interaction with with just a virtual world,
and it's so alarming. And I imagine that, you know,
even the passive interaction with a television where you're not
actually engaging with it, you're just consuming content that there's
also such a disparity between types of programming, right, Like
I always think of mister Rogers Neighborhood and how you know,
how intentionally slow that show is versus a lot of
the programs that kids watch today, where I mean, mister
Rogers would just turn on, you know, an egg timer
for a minute and be like this is how long
a minute is, and you just sit there look at
the screen for a minute and nothing happens because it's
just teaching you how long this unit of time is,
whereas these other shows are just constant. I mean, it's
there's no educational value whatsoever. It's just it's, I don't know,
just flash lights.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: Parents need to be very discerning because I say that too,
like all screen content is not created equal, and especially
some of these newer kids programs, there is a lot
of that dopamine effect. There was like a New York
Times article on Cocoa Melon this like it's just a
nursery rhyme show with like songs and nursery rhymes with
these kind of cartoon characters. But they were trying to
make it as addictive as possible because they would have
test kids watch cocomelon and then next to it have
a screen of like real life scenarios like a mom
cooking dinner, a dad washing dishes. And anytime the child
gazed away from cocomelon to the what they called the
real life a tron, they would mark down where in
the episode that was and go back and add more
flashing lights, more colors, like louder sounds to draw the
child back in. So there is I think we have
to be discerning, especially with some of these smart TVs
and these streaming services, there are these like social media
elements to it where they're trying to make it addictive.
They have the kind of auto play feature turned on
so that you're just tempted to keep watching the next episode.
And I will say, and in my book, I'm very
clear that these tech exit families really tried to not
make even TV a daily habit. They wanted their kids
to be doing creative things, playing outside, doing arts, crafts,
music like real life skills, and engagement in interaction with others,
and the TV was more of a like a sick
day or like a family movie night on Friday, Like
it was the exception, not the rule.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, and I think it used to be more
so that you know, the even streaming programs, you know,
it's there were so much of are you still watching?
Like you really had to commit were you going to
continue watching something? Versus the infinite scroll of a of
a smartphone or something. And I mean back in the day,
like to watch something when I was a child, like
between things you were going to watch, you had to
be kind rewind and then like move on to the
next thing. You know, there was no there was no
AutoPlay feature like.
Speaker 3: Everything natural end points, yes, and that is that very
less and less. Yeah, No, they don't want you to.
They wanted to be a frictionless experience. They don't want
there to be natural cut off or end points where
you would then naturally say, okay, I've been watching the TV.
Now I'm going to go do something else that program ended.
It just generates this kind of infinite feed of content
and an infiniteness of options. It's not even just watching
like the PBS station, which just has these like you know,
specific programs you could watch. Now, you know, Netflix offers
a child potentially the world of content like it has
just an infinite amount. And so I think that is
important that we realize that as parents there is a difference.
Speaker 1: Let's talk screens in schools a little bit, because I
I mean, it seems to me that it's kind of
a circular problem that like the ubiquity of devices sort
of fueled needing devices in schools because while everybody's already
using devices anyway, and that using devices in schools then
makes it more difficult to not be on your devices
when you're not in school. How do you think these
problems have caused each other or or yeah, what what
do you think was the cause and effect here? And
also what do we do about screens and schools?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think that the tech companies, you know, as their
products were coming to market, they saw this opportunity to say,
if we tell schools and educators that in order for
kids to be prepared for this now digital age, it's
digital future. Now we all have these computers, we all
have laptops, we all have cell phones, smartphones, then we
will be able to kind of have this new profit
market where and especially with schools, it's like they're if
they get these screens, then they're going to have to
be constantly replacing refurbishing them, Like this is like a
new product market for them, and they also recognized if
kids get used to using a Google Chromebook and they
just get used to the interface of a Google product,
they're going to be more likeli as an adult to
purchase Google products like this is the kids in school
are sadly very much a market for the tech companies.
And so it was back in like the two thousand
and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten ed tech
kind of became its own market where these tech companies
started pivoting to like, we need to push these kind
of tablets, chromebooks, laptops into schools, and they sold this
myth of like one to one laptop chat, like one
laptop per child was going to solve all of our
educational inequalities that actually the reason some kids were low
performers is just that they didn't have that access to
technology at home, and therefore the school should give it
to them. These internet connected devices. Well, the data has
shown it has just been the complete opposite, because starting
in twenty twelve, we have seen scores academic scores in
the United States for math, reading, and science decline, and
in twenty twenty two they reach their lowest level since
the nineteen seventies. Normally, literacy goes up every year, and
then twenty twelve came and it started going down. And
we're like, a very developed, advanced country, like this should
not be happening. And a lot of it can be
traced back to increasingly neuroscience studies are being done about
just measuring how kids read and how their brains perform
reading a text on paper versus a screen, and it
turns out kids do not comprehend the text they've read
as deeply if it's on a screen then on paper,
and they develop stronger reading circuits when they're reading books
on paper instead of on a screen. And it's because
something about the screen actually encourages the brain to kind
of gim and did not read this deeply or comprehend
us fully. And so unfortunately the medium becoming this constant
screen based learning where now all their like instruction, homework,
everything's happening through the screen, I think is really behind
a lot of these declines in the educational outcomes. And
so I'm just I'm hoping that the US will recognize
this and kind of change direction. Because other developed countries,
like the country of Sweden very developed, they were one
of the first to kind of buy into the ed
tech revolution, they went like totally textbook free all screens
in two thousand and nine, while just this past year
they reversed course and invested like a million dollars into
making sure every Swedish student has a paper textbook in
every subject, and they're pulling back the screens, and so
I think it's not too late to reverse course. And
I'm afraid like AI and the kind of push to
integrate AI tutors into education is going to only make
these problems worse because now instead of even skimming something
on a screen, the AI is just going to say, oh,
you don't need to read that, I can summarize it
for you.
Speaker 2: Like it's just gonna.
Speaker 3: Quick cut out all the skill development, like no critical
thinking problem solving.
Speaker 2: The AI is just going to do it for you.
Speaker 3: So I really hope that we kind of wake up
to the fact that the ed tech revolution has not
delivered before the AI revolution is kind of fully grafted
onto it. And my last point on screens and schools
is the positive development is all these schools are going
smartphone free. They're banning cell phones from bell to bell,
and it's having amazing effects. In fact, like it's improving
academic outcomes, and so I think it just kind of
shows like these screens, even the learning screens are very
distracting to kids. A lot of kids are actually accessing pornography,
video games, other websites during the school day and distracting
other students.
Speaker 2: By doing that.
Speaker 3: But then also the medium of learning is not as effective.
But getting the phones out of the schools is having
these tremendous benefits, and.
Speaker 2: So I think we just we need to say that
is such a huge win.
Speaker 3: But it's not just the phones, it's also these educational
screens that we also need to get out of the
classrooms in order to allow students to be undistracted and
to learn the way their brains are best designed to learn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely well, And I'm sure the covid era also
just took what was already on a really bad course
and made it exponentially worse by taking the ed tech
and then just instead of screens being used as a
tool in the classroom, now we take the living, breathing
teacher completely out of the equation and everything is virtual.
You're not even looking your teacher in the eye, which
is just I'm sure was devastating in ways it's hard
to even measure.
Speaker 3: No, you're right, COVID accelerated a lot of this. And
I've heard personally from parents that their school had actually
kind of resisted some of the ED screens and then
COVID came and they were kind of like, oh, the
school has to do this. And then she said the
problem was after COVID, they just never reversed course. These
screens then became entrenched, all the teachers had gotten used
to them, It just became the method of learning. And
so I think, unfortunately COVID really accelerated some of these
trends and just made them worse.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these school administrators need to
read the tech exit and know that it's not too late,
not too late.
Speaker 2: To reverse course.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, so much of this is just self
evident too, Like I think back even to college, when
you know, our brains are a lot more developed than
a lot of these children who are using chromebooks. But
I remember being in my classes and lectures, and you know,
taking notes on a laptop did not compare to taking
notes by hand because you just do not retain the
information at all, and you're memory so many steps past
that that where it's not even about taking notes, it's
just about consuming everything. And you know, even now, like
if I'm going to be reviewing a book or something
and somebody sends me a PDF, I'm like, ah, I
have to print all the pages because I cannot handle
reading it on a screen. It's just you cannot retain
the information the same. And it's just self evidently true
even if you don't read all of the literature on it.
Speaker 2: No, yes, thank you for saying that.
Speaker 3: And I just I want to encourage schools like you
can really be part of the solution, because I hear
so often from parents like they do a really good
job of living out this tech exit lifestyle, and then
they feel like these screens at school are forced upon them,
and then their kids are on screen during the day
way more than they want them to be. But on
the other side, like the schools can actually be part
of the solution in encouraging parents towards this low tech
culture if the school itself doesn't do screens and they
send this message to parents like we want to be
a low tech school and we're not doing cell phones
at school. We encourage you not to do cell phones
at home. So I've seen schools be a really positive
force for change in communities, like kind of led the
way and sent letters to parents and said, we want
to be a smartphone free community, like the school day
will be smartphone free, but even beyond that, we want,
you know, our families to be smartphone free. And so
I just hope more and more schools realize that they
have so much potential to support parents and do it's
best for our kids by being a force for change.
And so anyway, I just I offer lots of examples
of how schools can do that in my.
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Speaker 1: So a lot of the parents that you interviewed about
this and families who have done the tech exit, were
many of them in traditional schools? Like did they just
opt out of this screen learning or what did that
look like for them? Or were most of them out
of the traditional school setting anyway, or in schools that
didn't use screens.
Speaker 2: That's a good question, I think.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the families did have to
grapple with some school use of screens. I would say
a lot of them opted for like more private schooling,
like classical schools or low tech schools that had better policies.
Speaker 2: On it, I think. But then there were families that
were in the.
Speaker 3: Public school system and they just they kind of had
to deal with it, and they explained, you know, the
best thing to do really is have conversations with the
school administrator and with the teachers. And the Wall Street
Journal actually had a great article on some families who
have successfully kind of opted out of the school based screens,
and it was by they would just try to ask
for exemptions and exceptions for their kids, to say, can
my child complete the assignments by paper and pencil? Can
they read this in a physical book, And so I
always tell parents, like, the best starting place is just
having a conversation, trying to be collaborative with your student's
teacher and the school administrator and explaining, you know, this
research and what you've observed in your child and that
it's actually impeding their learning or distracting them, and that
you would like to try to find a better solution.
Because I think every parent that does that, like, you know,
eventually you can change the culture. When they're like, oh, Maygan,
there's ten parents in this class. They don't want that
at tech screens, Like then it doesn't make sense for
me as a teacher to even use it.
Speaker 2: Why don't we all just do pen and paper.
Speaker 3: So, so there was a mix of schooling arrangements at
families I interviewed in the book, And yes, some opted
out and chose low tech schools on purpose, Some chose
to homeschool to have more control over that. But then
other families just had to kind of navigate the public
school system and do the best they could to navigate
those dynamics.
Speaker 1: Yep, it's yeah, this squeaky wheel gets the grease. So
it's important to keep just saying the same thing over
and over, even feel like you're not getting there. This
is a total sidebar, but it's just such a good
illustration of this. I worked at a summer camp and
we would go to the same restaurant every Friday night
as a staff in. One of the counselors this restaurant
that we went to, he asked for chocolate milk and
they didn't have chocolate milk. And so every single Friday
night he would ask if they had chocolate milk, and
they always said no, no, no, and eventually they got
chocolate milk because they thought there was this demand that
all of these people were asking, and it was really
just this one guy who precreatedly asked. And so maybe
parents take that as a lesson, Maybe you can be
the change in your school just by repeatedly asking for
exemptions or for tech for low tech stuff.
Speaker 3: And absolutely, and I think a lot of times the
schools actually assume the parents want this, and it's true,
like a lot of parents think, like, my kid needs
this type of tech to be prepared for digital age,
and so every parent they hear from that says contrary
is just really helpful for the school to know.
Speaker 2: So yes, raise your voice as a parent, please yes.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's talk about tech that seems necessary and
what parents can do to mitigate this. So I'm thinking of,
you know, when a child starts driving and a parent
thinks my child needs a phone because they're now driving.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but can you still
buy dumb phones on a normal family plan? Like can
you walk into an horizon and say, we don't want
the smartphone, we want, you know, the Motorola flip phone.
Is that still possible? Is that what.
Speaker 2: Parents should do for safety and security for their child?
Speaker 1: Like, what's your solution for this?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: So I actually to have a whole chapter in the
book about this, of like how to adopt alternatives to
smartphones when your child gets to an age where they
genuinely need a communication tool. And so I really encourage
people to delay the age of fort cell phone as
long as possible. But yes, then when a child is driving,
moving around independently, it makes sense for them to have
some type of communication tool. But yeah, there are lots
of really good alternatives for parents that are actually even
better than like the dumb phone, flip phone, Motorola solution,
but they are actually phones that are designed to be
for kids with certain tools that they might need, but
with no access to an Internet browser, no social media,
no really addictive immersive apps, no games. It's just like
very tool based, so it mainly calls and texts, and
then they can sometimes access certain tools like a GPS
when they're driving, because I think some parents are like, oh,
I want them to be able to have directions. So
the pinwheel phone, the gab phone, the Bark phone, and
a lot of them. Yes, they can get They get
carried by all the major mobile carriers. You can keep
your phone plan and offer one of these alternatives. And
I all the parents I've spoken to have been a
lot more pleased with these options than even like the
Motorola flip phone, because Okay, what I think parents don't
realize is now, even like the dumb phones, the flip phones,
uh have an Internet browser or have a YouTube app
like a flip phone, so they actually have more Internet
connectivity than some of these phones that are designed to
be like a totally internet free, social media free phone
for children.
Speaker 2: So you just have to be careful. You could walk
into your horizon.
Speaker 3: But I've just seen more and more of the flip
phones actually integrating these features that a parent doesn't want,
and they actually make it really difficult to remove a
friend of mindset. He just like couldn't get this YouTube
app off the dumb flip phone.
Speaker 1: So that is so crazy. They're going to turn us
all into light eights. We're all gonna go full on
Swanson and just throw all of our devices in the track.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Granted, a flip phone is a lot clunkier to use,
and it's going to be harder to use the Internet
or text on and different things like that. But I
do think some of these phones, like I actually, as
an adult, gave up my smartphone for a phone called
the wys phone, which just doesn't have any Internet, email,
social media, but it has certain tools like I use
Venmo to pay people. It has Uber if I need
to travel and take an Uber, but it really is
just tool based apps. And so there's better alternatives even
for adults, and so I kind of list all those
options in my book. But yeah, I would recommend to
parents like the pinwheel Phone, the bark Phone, gab Phone,
ys Phone, light Phone. These are all companies like really
designed to provide a very safe and locked down alternative
to a smartphone.
Speaker 1: Okay, great. I don't know how much you've dived into
this in your research, but I'm curious your thoughts on
tracking apps like Life three sixty or Find my Friends.
Are they making parents and kids more neurotic? Like how
has this affected our culture broadly and our families specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm pretty like anti the tracking apps because I
just think generations grew up without them, and I think
are a lot more resilient because of it, And I
think it plays into a myth around kind of safetyism,
which is a reason that a lot of parents just
give the smartphone is they like, I need to be
able to track my kids. But as one mom in
the UK told me, she's like, honestly, she's like, you
don't need a smartphone for that. Okay, if you're really concerned,
get them one of these dumb phone alternatives and just
stick an air tag to the back of it. So
I'm like, Okay, true enough, So certainly you do not
need to get a smartphone if you really feel like
you need to track your child's location. But I do
think it's actually important that our children develop a sense
of independence in the real world, so that they learn
the skills for themselves to navigate it that they know
that they're not kind of constantly being monitored or surveilled
where they are, but they actually have to develop resiliency
and critical thinking and problem solving skills for themselves. And
I think we've kind of we've done the opposite of
as a culture. We've really clamped down on kids like
real world independence and freedom and given them kind of
unleashed access to the online world, which is far more
dangerous and harmful and deadly to them. I mean, more
children are dying from suicides from sextortion schemes and just
other online harms than they are dying from some accident
in the real world. So we really have to reverse
our thinking on this, and I think recognize that there
are critical life skills that kids get by actually taking
on a certain amount of risk again in an age
appropriate way in the real world, really does something for
their brains. It's like critical to their development. And so yeah,
I think, of course our job as parents to keep
our kids safe within reason, but I think we do,
especially as they get older, gradually need to let them
take on more responsibility and indians in the real world
where we're not constantly monitoring what they're doing, but we're
actually like empowering them, equipping them, and then trusting them
to make good decisions and to develop the skills that
they really need to be successful adults. And so I
think there's always good parental scaffolding where you're training them
towards this. You're not just like throwing them out there
with no training, but you're trying to gradually as you
train them, take those scaffolds off to let them kind
of stand on their own two feet.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I would just encourage parents to not kind of
give into the temptation to constantly track and monitor your kid,
especially as they get closer to adulthood, but allow them
more independence to take on real life risks and to
meet up with people in real life. Like I really
encourage them pursuing real life relationships and friendships and being
in their room scrolling online alone.
Speaker 2: Right right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you're right to be realistic about what the
risks actually are, which is that you are probably far
more likely to be groomed or extorted or you know,
traffic or something as something that starts as an online
relationship then as you know, a random act of you know,
child snatching or something in the real world that you
need to be monitoring them on your phone. And also
probably adults doom scrolling habits make this worse by thinking
that these real world crimes are way worse than they
are because we have way too much access to information
that's happening nowhere near us, and it probably makes these
problems seem a lot bigger. Yeah, because of our own
social media habits.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 3: And I think you know, as parents, of course, you
like you want to talk about these things with your
kids and help them like think through a plan, like okay,
you want to go see a movie with your friends?
All right, Like what's your plan? Okay, how are you
going to get there? How are you going to get home?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: Great, and like they have a plan and then they
go and run with it. But it's not this like
constant parental tracking. And so that's what I mean. Of course,
we want to train our kids to how to handle
the real world. We want to give them the skills
they need to navigate it, but then we actually have
to let them do it and even potentially fail to
like learn from those mistakes to be the kind of
constant helicopter that doesn't let them ever experience any kind
of adverse effects or any failure, because then they'll never
develop the resilience that they need to face life as
an adult, right, right.
Speaker 1: So this kind of veers into adults habits. Let's talk
about ELK screen habits. So how much of what you
talk about in the book and specifically how these things
apply to children, how much of that applies to adults,
Because of course, as adults, you know, our prefrontal cortex
is are actually formed, we do have more real world
experience to draw upon when we're encountering fake digital things.
Although AI is making so much of that even more
difficult to discern, even for people who can more easily
identify counterfeits and scammers. But there still seem to be
so many issues. And I saw a New York Times
article the other day that really was just shocking and
horrifying to me about adults who have relationships with AI chatbots.
There was one in the piece it said there was
some survey and it said one in five American adults
has had an intimate encounter with a chatbot. And I
was like, Oh is happening. The adults are not alright either, No,
So can you speak to that problem and how much
of this applies to adults?
Speaker 2: No, I think this is really important. Adults are not
immune from the.
Speaker 3: Addictive, engrossing effects of smartphones and social media and now
particularly AI chatbots. Like our brains are not immune. Now, granted,
it is much more detrimental to a child's brain who
is not fully developed, and especially children don't have a
fully formed prefrontal cortex. Their dopamine receptors also start multiplying
between ages ten to twelve to help them be more
wired for peer approval and social feedback, and so that
process of development is being hijacked by these things. So
there are certain particular harms to childhood. But adults are
not immune. And I think just studying like the effects
of just the smartphone use on adults and our diminished
attention spans and ability to focus the effects of like
our inability to read and comprehend as much or to
have as strong of memories for things like not to mention, Like,
adults are struggling with mental health issues as well, like
depression and anxiety and suicide often all kind of induced
by these apps and these phones. And also we are
seeing a loneliness epidemic even among adults where they're not
going out and meeting people in real life, they're just
scrolling online behind their smartphones and their screens. And so
I recently saw this like crazy statistic that basically said,
like I forget, I think forty It was forty percent
of men between eighteen to twenty five have never approached
like a woman in real life, Like they have not
asked a woman to go out on a date. They've
not gone out on a date. That's like forty percent
of eighteen to twenty five year old young men. And
so this has broader societal impacts, like what is the
future going to look like? We are a society, the
building blocks obviously they depend on marriage and family formation,
and it's so if people are not meeting in real
life and they're not getting married and they're not having kids,
that has like really large ramifications for just our civilizational stability,
Like our birth rate is just going to continue to plummet.
And so yeah, a doctor who's being interviewed recently said like,
we're raising this generation of a social, a sexual men,
and it's not just and then it's also women where
the technologies actually train us to be anti social and
we're not actually trying to meet and pursue people in
real life. We're just going to these online replacements, like unfortunately,
online pornography, social media, and now AI companions. I mean,
why go through the work of trying to develop a
real life relationship that has conflict and friction and you
have to try hard, and you have to dress up
and look nice and present yourself when you can just
go online and talk to a chatbot that will only
like affirm and validate all of your emotions and provide
this kind of frictionless experience. And so I'm really afraid
of the civilizational impacts we're going to see, the trends
we're already seeing from smartphones and social media, and the
kind of impact on marriage and fertility, and how AI
and AI companions are only going to accelerate these trends
in a really bad direction. And that article was horrifying
to read, absolutely awful. Are just like delusional, like in
the sense that they're like, he provides me like real
parenting advice and he's a better parent than I am,
is what this one woman said about her like AI husband,
And I was like, but that's not true because he
can't be the person with your daughter, Like it's literally
it's literally not a human you know, You're like, how
do we.
Speaker 2: Well of that to people?
Speaker 1: Right? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I mean the spiritual effects of this are also
just crazy, Like not only the spiritual effects to your
soul of being more concerned with a fake relationship than
with real relationships, but just if you're engrossed in your
phone and not able to see, you know, the gospel
opportunities around you, or the real potential for iron sharpening
iron of like talking to another human being and what
you know that what doors that could open because you're
actually tuned into the people around you that we are
supposed to love and care for. I mean, it's just
the effects are not just emotional and physical and mental
even they're also so spiritual. And I think that even
gets lost a lot in this conversation about about the
harms of tech, but it's so real.
Speaker 3: No, I appreciate you bringing up the spiritual component because
I actually think there's a weiry, kind of weird spiritual
worship of AI that it's like it's like this being.
And I think also people feel like if they have AI,
they are not going to be as dependent, like they
can actually transcend kind of all these human limitations, Like
we were built ys limited creatures made in God's image,
but we were built finite and we need to have
a relationship with an infinite God. And they are trying
to kind of transcend that and just say that I
actually do not need to be limited by this, and
I actually don't even need other people. I don't need
to be dependent on God. I don't need to be
dependent on others because I have this access to AI
and like that's all I need and I can even like,
I mean, some of the really kind of scary transhumanist
stuff in Silicon Valley is that people think that they're
going to like live on in the AI, that like
they will literally transcend themselves in like a bodily sense.
So there is a very scary spiritual element to it
that I don't think the average person is paying attention to,
but it's very much there even in the designers of
these technologies, Like they have this end goal of really
transcending themselves in a very kind of spiritual way, and
they think the AI is going to provide this kind
of awakening, this like new Era the Singularity, and yeah,
it's just it's very contrary to any kind of sense
of what real Christian religion looks like.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's such a clever lie from the enemy, who,
as a reminder, does seek to devour us. It's not
actually kind, but just I mean, because it is in
many ways a little g God. It does a poor
job of it, but it mimics so many aspects of God,
where it's relational and it seems to be all knowing,
and you know, it has all these aspects that can
trick you into thinking that it I mean, it scratches
the itch of a higher power. But it is not God,
and it is actually limited in ways that we don't know,
and it's not personal. It can't forgive your sins, it
can't give you an eternal life, and it purports you
to these things, but it can't. And so it's just
really important not to get sucked into that world because
it can be really, really dangerous. So okay, let's get
really practical. I would love to know, because we only
have a couple minutes left. I want to wrap up
on a positive practical note for people. So I would
love to know your own personal practices for your kids
and your family for unplugging and what that looks like
for you, and then also just encouragement for people who
feel like they are too many that well, we've got
several kids, they've all got phones, they've all been on
social media for years. What can they do? And what
are some practical steps you've already done in your family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So our family, as I mentioned, like, we have
three young children, so very practically, we initially had like
a smart TV when our youngest was growing up, and
I just recognized it was too tempting for me to
like want to put programs on for him. So we
actually got rid of our smart TV, and we've had
no tablets, nothing, no really access to screens in the
home for our kids. We now have a very old
school dumb TV, so it doesn't connect to the internet,
and we will occasionally, like use an HDMI chord to
put on a family movie on a Friday night or
let them watch via literally the rabbit years that we
have watched like a football game on Sunday afternoon with
their dad. So we are very limited on that and
we're very careful on the content. So our kids have
basically seen an extremely limited amount of things, mainly child
kind of directed nature documentaries that are literally just about animals,
and then some real life performance type musicals. So they've
seen the Sound of Music and Mary Poppins, and they
basically just think that that's the.
Speaker 2: Extent of entertainment available to them.
Speaker 3: And it's great because it's like real life people who
are actually acting and dancing. It's slow moving, it's not
too fast paced, so we've been really careful about that,
and again it's something they get to occasionally watch on
a Friday night or like a Saturday or Sunday afternoon,
so it's not a daily habit. And then we also
are just really careful with our own devices. So each
my husband and I each have a laptop and a phone.
Mine is not a smartphone, so it doesn't connect to
the internet. My husband does have a smartphone for his work,
but we keep those away from the children, password protected
so that there's no chance that they could ever accidentally
access them or access anything on it. And then we
try to have good practices with our own phones when
we're with our kids. Which is a big part of
actually why I gave up my smartphone is I felt
like as a mom, I was too tempted to be
on it when I was with my kids and be
like multitasking, and.
Speaker 2: I just realized it was distracting me from parenting.
Speaker 3: So I just I realized it for myself, I just
needed to like not have access. So that's why I
gave up my smartphone. But in general, we have like
a phone box that's like a charging station, and so
when we come home, we try to leave our phones there,
have a family meal at the table without the phones,
and then we can access them once the kids go
to bed. So they're just very cognizant of just trying
not to have phones be so present or be out
and about when we're with our kids. And when I
do have to coordinate things on my phone, like meeting
another mom for a playdate or making a quick phone
call to schedule a doctor's appointment, I always kind of
narrate what I'm doing to my kids so that they
understand I'm not just like on here getting lost in
my phone. I'm like, I'm texting so and so's mom
that we're coming to the park, or let me just
call the doctor really fast. So and I honestly try
to make more phone calls and texting, because then my
kids can actually hear and observe an adult conversation sure,
and understand what's going on. So those are just some
practices we've thought through intentionally, and we kind of try
to go phone free on Saturdays, and by that, I
just mean like we just try to be off our
phones the whole day and just kind of be present
with the kids and just keep them physically away from ourselves. Yeah,
so those are our main habits. And then for parents
that feel overwhelmed and they don't know where to start,
I really walk in through in the book just how
to do a digital detox and ideally for thirty days,
because this benefits anyone at any age, at any time.
There's a real science to the detox that our brains
actually need to kind of be reset and recalibrated, that
those artificially high dopamine levels that we're used to and
the brain kind of being in this constant dopamine deficit state,
the brain can actually return to homeostasis by just being
off the screens for this extended period of time. And
so I just encourage parants even if you think, oh.
Speaker 2: It's too late for us.
Speaker 3: That is basically where every parent was before they started
the detox. In fact, parents, you're like, I can't imagine
dealing with the child without the screen, and it's like, well,
of course, how could you, because they are in fact
experiencing an addictive biological response to the screen. But just
removing the screen it takes time, Like the first week
I will not lie is really hard, just like the
first week of starting a diet or making any kind
of change or breaking a bad habit is initially difficult.
You almost kind of go through a withdrawal. Then the
parents said once they pushed through and they got to
like two weeks, they just couldn't believe the benefits they
saw in their kids. And their kids actually kind of
stopped asking for the screens and we're just playing with
each other. Their creativity and their own imagination skills came back,
like kids can actually be self entertained. They are naturally
creative if we just let them do it. And so
a lot of the family said that they just they
really couldn't believe it. And then they got to thirty
days and they saw these results, and they were just like,
why would we go back to the screens, Like, let's
just keep going. And so even if you're hesitant or
skeptical about like doing a tech exit, over the long term,
I think anyone can commit to just trying something out
for thirty days, explaining to your kids what you're doing,
why you're doing this for them, and that you're going
to try this out as a family for thirty days.
It can be really really effective. And I think as
parents too, we shouldn't ever be afraid to just apologize
to our kids. It's not your fault, like you don't
have to feel guilty or blame yourself. We as parents
do the best we can with the information we have
at the time. But when we gain new knowledge and
new information that this thing that we've been giving to
our kids is actually harmful for them, it's really okay
to just say I'm sorry. We should not have given
you a smartphone. We didn't know, and we're your parents
and we want to do it's best for you. And
so this is going to be hard, it's not going
to be initially pleasant to kind of go through this detoks,
but I really need you to believe me and trust
me that you are going to be a better person
on the other side of this. Our family is going
to be stronger for having given these things up. And yeah,
and so I think it's really nevered too late to
reverse course. It doesn't mean it's always the easiest path. Initially,
I think the path of least resistance is just kind
of handing the kid the screen, but it is so
worth it in the long term for their well being
and flourishing, and it really does get easier as you
keep going. So I would just say you can read
the book about more details for the detoks, but just
know you're not alone. And so many families have walked
this road before with a lot of hesitation and uncertainty
about doing the detalks, and then ended the detalks and said, wow,
I just wish we had done that sooner.
Speaker 2: You know, why was I so afraid to do that?
Speaker 3: So yeah, that would be my encouragement is just try
it out yourself and see the results for yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so hopeful. Well, everybody should read The Tech
Exit and you can also find much more of Claire's
writing and podcasting and everything else online. Claire, thank you
so much for joining me to It was truly a
pleasure to talk to you about this and really pick
your brain and get some more tools.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so glad to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode
of The Kylie Cast. If you'd like more information about
Claire's book and other resources for screen detox in your life,
you can go check out her website at the techexit
dot com. There you'll find a lot of practical resources,
ideas for detox swaps so instead of screens you can
do this activity things like that, and a checklist for
doing the tech Exit yourself in your own home. You
can also find Claire on Instagram at the Tech Exit.
If you haven't done so already, please like and subscribe
wherever you get your podcasts. I will be right back
here next week with more so until then, just remember
the truth hurts, but it won't kill you.