This week we continue our conversation on making tech safe at home by asking the age old question: Which tech should my child use? We know what type of tech it is thanks to the first episode in this series, we also know if it’s healthy, and we’ve built hedges to keep it that way. Today we’ll go one step further and learn to assess the tech our children ask for so they’re both ready, and healthy, when new tech comes into your home.
Transcription:
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. Today we are continuing our series on the start here series, that condensed version of all the most important topics that Gospel Tech talks about when we talk about how do we use tech on purpose, not for purpose, when we talk about loving our kids intentionally, not trying to fix them because they’re not problems to fix, they’re people to love, and how do we connect the hope of the gospel? This idea that I am a new creation in Christ to the technology that we use every day, that’s what the start here series is for. We have talked so far about the two types of tech and how to know if it’s healthy, which was, sorry, 2007, episode 207. Wow, those were the words I was trying to say.
Last week we talked about how do we make safe boundaries. We talked about building a hedge around our families, our devices, and our networks. So those are two episodes that came before this one. And today, we’re talking about which tech should my child use, which I actually didn’t think I’d ever be able to answer this because that is a huge question, but I get it a lot. And so I started talking to parents and trying to gain clarification. What do you mean? What do you want from me with that question? And parents just want some kind of answer, just laptops, iPads, e-reader watches, Google glasses, VR headsets, gaming consoles, internet one-to-one devices. What does my child need? What should they have? What’s acceptable? And what’s too far for fun? I was like, well, that’s okay. So you just want me to have all the answers.
And then I realized, you know what, there is a way to break this down for as diverse as our families are, for as many directions as families are coming out with, I mean their personal family backgrounds, as well as meaning. Some people work in tech and have a high level of just tech saturation in their lives. And some families just don’t even know how to turn on the devices and they rely on their seven-year-olds to do that for them. So there’s that. But then there’s also this aspect of like, man, we have a wide age range. If you have three-year-olds in your house, that looks different than if you have a 23-year-old living at home. And then to just kind of the moral conscience piece. There’s some stuff that it’s not wrong. Maybe I wouldn’t use it, maybe you would, or vice versa. So how do we have it?
Well, there are steps. There’s really four. Today we’re going to talk about first, how do we know if it’s safe, the tech specifically? If your kid comes and goes, “Mom and dad, everyone in class has” insert the blank, this game, this app, this device, they really want it, let’s start with is it safe? Then we’ll look at does it fit our family expectations? Then we will talk about is it a good fit for your child right now? Is your child ready for this thing? And we’ll talk about, but basically they’re asking for an egg. And you love giving them eggs, like, oh, I love giving you good things that make you stronger and that support your body and your growth, but you got to make sure that it’s not going to be a scorpion. So we’ll address that. And then is it a good fit for your child in this season?
So it’s an egg, but sometimes it’s just bad season. And the metaphor kind breaks apart right there using the biblical context of the egg. But think about if you know your child’s about to run, I don’t know, a five or 10K, maybe an egg right at the start line isn’t the best. Be like, “Hey, you can have this just not yet. Maybe when you finish because it’s going to sit like a brick.” And that idea of there are seasons where tech is… Again, I said it was a weak metaphor as soon as it extended past the one point, but I tried. The idea though being tech is perfectly fine. It might even fit your family expectations. But for that child in this season, and specifically using the reset from episode 207, you can just tell this isn’t good for you right now. We’re just going to take a step away. No one’s fault, but I’m not going to keep giving you something that’s clearly causing problems. So that’s the big picture for today’s conversation talking about, what tech should my child use? With no further ado, let’s get this conversation started.
We are jumping right into number one, how do we know if it’s safe? Let’s look at what makes tech the safest. The most safe tech out of any kind of digital technology is going to be tool tech. It’s not going to have any web browser, it’s not going to have any app store, and it’s going to be accountable. So the best kind of top tier safety then, four out of four on that list for positivity would be something like a Gab… Excuse me. A Gab phone would be the best. A Gab phone is basically what I like to call a dumb phone. It does phone functions. It can even take pictures, but it can’t send or receive them. There’s no app store. There’s pre-approved contacts that you can text and call. You can call mom and dad, you can call these three friends, and it locks down.
No strangers can reach out to your kid, and there’s no way to circumvent the safety system because it’s hard baked into the device. So that’s awesome. That would be like, great. Your kid has sports or your kid goes to friend’s houses and you always want to let them have their way out, a smartphone like a Gab phone, which is really a dumb phone, is awesome.
The next tier would be like a Bark phone where it does have a browser, but only when your child has earned the right for it. I love the Bark phone personally for that first real smartphone at 15 where you can go, “Hey, you’ve been faithful and you’ve shown yourself as trustworthy in so many things. Here’s this phone. Let’s practice as slow as we can get. You’ve asked for it. I want to honor that and give you the digital trust you’re earning. I know you’re going to be an adult. And the internet’s a huge place. I want to be a part of it.” Bark comes with accountability baked in, that kind of…. It doesn’t kind of. It literally counteracts the freedom that you’re giving. So counteracts is the wrong word. Wow, sorry. It-
What would you say?
… supports and undergirds the freedom you’re giving. It doesn’t stop any of the freedom. They can go wherever they want within the boundaries. You said, “Hey, you get a web browser, here you go. You now have web browsing. You get TikTok? Great. Now you have TikTok. It’s full-fledged TikTok. And whatever happens on there, you’ll get notifications if it’s unsafe, if things are searched that might harm your child or others, those kinds of things. You’ll get the notifications, and then the opportunity to get the parenting win. That’s the Bark phone. The third one I do want to shout out actually was, a friend came to me, asked for some suggestions, gave it to his kids for Christmas and came back later and was like, “We love it,” the Yoto audio player. So Yoto is like… I’ve suggested before, just use Audible through an old Bluetooth speaker. And I use it for my phone, that’s still what I do with my kids, but he strongly recommends Yoto. I know there’s other devices out there, but I like it because it’s not internet connected.
You aren’t saying, “Siri, play us the story” and potentially getting something that goes sideways. You have a little disc, you plug it into the Yoto, and it plays. Now, some of you’re saying, “You’re passive in the process, Nathan. That is drool tech. That doesn’t pass all four,” I would say reading out loud is one of those things that breaks my definition of drool tech. Drool tech is something you’re passive in that does the work for you, and that it’s intended to keep you retained. It wants to take your time, focus and money. And what’s great about Yo Yoto is it’s not coming from an algorithm, so it’s not trying to distract you with it.
It’s a single disc. You put it in like a CD or like a cassette, but it’s basically an SD card that you put in, and it will play just this one story that came on this disc. There’s no visual for it. It’s not playing video with it. There’s no internet connection, and there’s no social interactions. And reading aloud, oral stories is the bedrock of learning and the human brain. It’s what humans have done for history and time out of mind, and it is so, so important for learning both the words but also the syntax, the way sentences work, for brain development and learning the ability to eventually read, which reading a fascinating book, thanks to my wife Anna. Being a reader, she gave me a book called Press and the Squid on how the brain learns to read, and basically there’s no gene for reading.
It’s purely something we’ve trained ourselves to do. This is a gene for smiling. It’s something that’s universal in all people, and laughter. There’s ways things coded into humans that react that way. There isn’t one for reading, and yet reading happens and it’s awesome. So oral stories are a major way of preparing a young mind for that. So all of that to say Yoto, even though it is an audio book, audio books count. They are a wonderful way for your child to enjoy a good story and to enter a beautiful world that represents some of God’s truth or literally God’s truth if it’s scripturally sound, and it’s an awesome option. I would do want to say that those are three solid, the Gab phone/Bark phone. I want to make sure I say them all right. The Yoto… And then actually I said Gab and Bark, but I would say something like Microsoft Word on a non-internet device is a great example, or a typewriter if you want, but the idea word process, you’re creating with it’s operating out of the creativity god’s given you, and there’s no distractions baked into it.
So those are like your, is it safe? Best of. So if you find something that kind of looks like those, great. The worst of would be a smartphone, unfettered smartphone at that. So there’s no accountability, there’s no parental instruction, there’s no hindrance to app stores or internet searches. It’s just go get them, tiger. That’s going to be the least safe kind of technology. It doesn’t mean no one… I would argue no one needs to be on a smartphone without accountability, even adults. Everyone should have someone else who sees what you see. And if you choose not to, just know that that’s a zero out of four on the safety range. Then we’d also go some games like Roblox. If it’s a hub game, meaning you go into a game and play other games, those are notoriously difficult to keep accountable. They have lots of content that can go sideways quick and interactions that are difficult to track and to top it off with Roblox, there’s micro transactions.
So now you have real world money tied in with your enjoyment. I don’t love it. It’s not safe. Although those two are different. It’s not safe as a standalone and because of that I don’t love it. Also, there’s a podcast episode of How I Built This. If you want to go listen to it’s from 2022, early ’22, or excuse me, mid 2022 with the co-founder of Roblox, and he effectively says, we make money off miners, and it’s ineffective to put up a bunch of safety measures, so we’re okay with it. And I’m summarizing what he says, but that is… If you listen to the entirety of the interview, listen to the very end when an 11-year-old says, I don’t feel safe on Roblox, and his response is, “We’re doing fine.” I’m like, Ooh, that’s rough. So I don’t love Roblox, and I don’t love it because of the safety pieces on that… If anything.
Anyway, all right, we could spend a whole episode on that probably, but that would be an example unsafe. Another would be a smart TV. Smart TVs are very difficult to keep accountable because they’re a portal to just a bunch of other internet stuff. They have web browsers, they have apps. They are difficult unless you’ve built a hedge around your family’s network, the smart TV goes through your wireless. The wireless is now beholden to your family’s expectations. That’s excellent. But if you’re not doing that, it becomes very unsafe. So when we talk, is our technology safe, it needs to be tool tech. That would be the safest. It’s okay to use drool tech, just know that it has to have other conversations, boundaries, hedges built in. Then we want it to have no app store, no browser, and accountability readily available, and that would be Gab, Yoto, Microsoft Word. All those are right there and the others are not.
So then we look at the second. All right, which text should my child use? Which text should they have? It needs to be safe, but it also needs to be appropriate for your family. I broke this down really into three areas. First, it needs to fit your family’s expectations for content. So what are they consuming and enjoying and celebrating with their time and focus? Then their time. How long does it take to enjoy? I just had a conversation. I had two talks this week, which were both awesome. They’re well attended. The people did an amazing job getting the word out. And specifically the evening talk at this church, actually both talks, mothers came up to me, wives, in this case, came up to me and said “My husband,” and they wanted to tell me about their husband’s gaming and the problems that was causing in their marriage.
And it was super interesting because it wasn’t the content. It was the time it was, “My husband can’t just play for an hour, and we just don’t have the time for that.” And this is something heavy on my heart. By the way, if you were like, “Hey, how do you fix it?” It’s a huge conversation I am praying into and working on, but at the end of the day, it’ll be the third point that I’ll bring up next. But in hearing that, I was like, my goodness, yeah, we need to know and model for our children, how long do we use this tech in a given time? How often do we use it? And really wrapping our brains around when is the appropriate time of day for this technology? Some tech, it’s just not good to use before you go to school in the morning. It’s not going to help you focus.
Owen had access to a game during school. He had a sub teacher for the first half of the year, and he’s like, “Oh yeah, if I finish my work I can play this game” in the middle of a class session, these little 40 minute chunks. And he’d finish in 20 minutes, and he’d play a game for 20 minutes during class and I was like, “Son, I love you. You’re clearly doing fine in class academically. No. Hard no. I will not allow your brain to think, hey, if I get through this academic piece, then I can go play a video game for the equal amount of time on a one-to-one ratio. You’re training the wrong things there. Now, you might choose to do that. It might be good motivation. It might help your child blow off steam. I was like, here’s what you can do.
You can play Khan Academy, which is a gamified math program, which is great, or you can read a book, and I will buy you a stack of them. But you can’t. You can’t watch other people play. You’re not going to be sitting on a laptop playing a video game three to four times. He told me how long he was playing during a day. I was like, Buddy, you’re clearing 90 minutes of gameplay a day at school. No. No, that’s not going to happen. Just for what you’re training your brain to do in terms of how it transitions between tasks, I need you to stay at the pace of learning for the whole time. I know that dad’s a curmudgeon and kind of the, I don’t know, I’m the hill troll of the tech world for my son, but that is important to me when we talk about time. And I had to have that conversation with him, this is why. So when you come home, you can actually play that exact same game, which he does at our home for a certain amount of time on certain days.
We made some boundaries around it. He’s held very well to those boundaries. He doesn’t fight, he doesn’t complain, he doesn’t throw a fit, and he doesn’t ask every single day, “Hey, can I do it now? Can I do it now? Can I do it now?” He holds to what we agreed on and it’s been great. We’ve done it for probably a month. Okay, fine. But that’s an appropriate time. That’s what we need to talk out with our kids. We need to know the content they can enjoy. And if you’re looking for standards on content, look up, Philippians 4:8. It’s been one that I reference a lot. It’s one that I very much… I appreciate just how clear it is. You can go to lots of spots in the Bible to get a standard, but Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure.” Stop right there. Kids says, “Can I listen to this? Can I play this? Can I use this?” Is it true, noble, right, and pure? Then it goes on to lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy.
That’s an awesome standard to have. And it’s an actual biblical standard, not just one We’re setting arbitrarily as parents because we do or don’t like something. It’s a standard for what we enjoy. It’s a standard for what our kids enjoy. And yes, we can consume some things outside of that, like, man, this is really hard or this person is really cynical. I’m going to read it, I’m going to watch it, I’m going to engage it, so I can process it and think about the claims and apply it to the hope that I have in Christ and really shine a light on it. Absolutely. But we’re talking, what are we celebrating? What are we ingesting that goes into our hearts and helps us produce fruit? That’s what we want to know. So we have our content, we have our time standards. The last one is priorities.
What’s most important for you? And this is where I said those two wives came up. I was like, this comes down to a priority conversation. As I think about nerd dads and how we process it, I just did that whole series on nerd dads, so this is top of mind for me, it comes down to, man, you can play games and be an awesome dad, husband, son of God leader, all those things and you can play games and completely forego what God has called you to do, heaven be. So think about your priorities. What is most important in your family and must get done. For yourself, reading the word, sleep, nutrition, relationships. For your kids, the same. And in our family, this looks like we prioritize time with our family. We make sure we know at the beginning of the week. Anna and I sit down on a Sunday and say, “What meals will we have together this week? How can we make sure they happen and protect them?”
Great. It’s not necessarily five meals, five dinners a week, but breakfast. We try to get five breakfasts in a week. So that’s a goal for us because I have a flexible schedule and I can make that happen, right? Some of us don’t. Do your best in terms of being just intentional. Hit the ones that you know can hit and make those ones happen. We also prioritize activities for our kids. Owen plays basketball. Henry started archery because we live in a town that has an awesome archery range, which is incredible. And then Hadley does specific play dates where she gets to hang out with certain people and hang out and play. We decided not to do organized sports for her yet, but that’s something. We do value our church. We attend on Sundays.
We go to community. We’re invested in that. We go to the things that would involve being invested either throughout the week, or engaging, sharing the gospel and helping people in our community because that’s part of what is important to us. That’s a priority. And if something comes up, it bumps other things that used to be important out of the way, right? Like, hey, we’re going to miss sports today because this other thing happened, and we need to go support and love people there. School is a priority. We get our sleep, we get our food, and we get our focus. The sleep piece is huge, and that probably should be a separate priority. Sleep is a priority for us. We say no to some stuff to make sure our kids get sleep. This has always been like we have that rhythm. Anna is like… God’s gift to her is sleep, which is amazing.
I joke that Anna’s part cat, but it’s for real. The lady knows how to sleep, and it shows up in the rest of her efficiency in life. I still need to learn that. When we were first married, she was going to bed at like 9:30, and I was like, what am I supposed to do with the next five hours of my day? I don’t go to bed at nine 30. I do now. I sleep like a rock, but neither here nor there with kids. We read the book Nurture Shock by Pope Bronson and Ashley Merriman. And in chapter two, they walk through what they call the lost hour. That kids on average are sleeping an hour less, not a huge surprise, but then they shared a couple studies where they talk about what a lost hour means. And within a week… They had two groups where sleep monitors. Within a week of getting an hour less sleep, the less sleep students performed two years worse academically on the same test as the one hour more.
They actually said it affects them in 15 minute increments, but they said an hour of sleep is the same as two years of academic loss. So a fourth grader will operate like a second grader at the end of a week if they’ve been losing an hour of sleep consistently each night. That’s nuts, the difference between… I normally get eight and a half, and now I get seven and a half. Is that kind of academic loss? So that’s huge. School’s a priority for us both. Yes, we were teachers, but we have seen that God uses the education of the mind, and again, this book that I’m reading showing how the brain actually changes as we learn, making us not move beyond God, but able to understand more of God’s goodness.
Can someone with no education understand and love God? Yeah. And if we have the opportunity, let’s use it to see how much God has wired us for learning and for creating and for exploring the beautiful world he’s put us in. It needs to be appropriate for your family’s content. The tech that you get needs to be appropriate for your family’s content, time, and your priorities. And you do need to talk out priorities. That’s the first bump in the road when it comes to, man, I really want to play games. If you gave me a 25th hour in my day, I still wouldn’t be able to play games with it. It’s not a high enough priority because of what it does in the rest of my life. I know that for myself. You need to know that for yourself for whatever activity it is. All right, then third is your child ready?
Are they faithful in the little things? Right? Those who are faithful in little be faithful with much. I take the R of the reset from this. Again, episode 207 if you want to hear more about the reset, but relationships is the first part. Then responsibilities is the second. Relationships. Look at your child and say, all right, they want this game, this app, this smartphone, this piece of digital freedom. How do they handle their relationships in our family? So mom, dad, siblings, both, when they use tech, does it impede some of this? Or just in life, before they ever have the tech, are they open in communication? Are they responsive and obedient When they’re directed to do something? Do they handle their siblings with humility and with care and with empathy? Not are they perfect, but can they see the value there? Because again, they’re going to enter the internet. And no one’s better online than they are in person. That doesn’t happen. So we want to make sure that they’re showing in real life that they hold some relational responsibilities. Their friends would be the next relationship. How do they handle conflict?
How do they handle kids that are just bad influences or that they’re a bad influence on? Are they open about that? Do they recognize that it’s happening? What do they give their heart and their mind to when they’re hanging out with people? Because that’s going to happen in the digital space. That’s why they want to be there. The third would be classmates. That’s the microcosm for developing minds of society. These are people you don’t get to pick. And some of them are nice and some of them aren’t. How do you process that? Because people only get meaner and more diverse as they go onto the internet. They don’t know who you are, and frankly, most of them don’t care.
So how are you processing those relationships? The hard and the good parts of them? That’d be the first part on, is your child ready? Are they faithful in little things? The second would be the responsibilities. How are they doing with their family responsibilities, family meals, family conversations? Are they open and honest and sharing, or is it always a locked vault and you’re having to just pry information out of them and it never goes well? That’s concerning, if they’re not an open sharing person. If they have something happen to them online or they go and do something online and you never find out, and they can’t self-report and they can’t converse about it if you do find out, that’s going to be concerning. The rapport there maybe isn’t up to the level that it needs to be, and the trust level isn’t high enough to allow them into a digital space where mistakes happen faster, and they often are much more grievous than they are in real life. You can just make a lot of mistakes very quickly, so we want to be intentional and deliberate.
Oh, and by the way, the presence of bad actors on the internet is much more likely than in your living room. So the second then would be how are they doing with their schoolwork? That’s a commitment to developing their future in their mind. Are they committed there to their faith? Are they making intentional steps even as young as eight? Are you taking time to read? Do you journal? Have your kid write two or three sentences about what’s happening in their heart and taking opportunities to pray. Are we seeing that grow? Because there’s a lot of conversation on the internet about spirituality and souls and our spirit and our purpose. And then finally, commitments, sports, hanging out with other friends, whatever the commitments are. Are they able to keep their yes yes and their no no. We want to make sure that in their responsibilities and their relationships, that they’re healthful already before we send them in the digital space.
That also gives us kind of that groundwork, what would you say the litmus for, the concussion protocol, if you will, for when they go into the digital space, something happens, and we can watch those healthy things then start to wobble a little and that we go, “Hey, is something happening on the internet that I need to know about what’s going on?” Fourth and finally, “Is it a good fit for your child?” comes down to does it produce good fruit. When you watch your child use this technology, this is, of course, after you’ve given it to them, but is it producing good fruit? Let’s be active. Giving them a smartphone, giving them a game, giving them a device or a particular app doesn’t mean you are now beholden to give that to them forever.
You just gave it to them. And if you watch it produce more love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control, let’s go. Give it to them. That’s amazing. I would actually argue, if you find any tech that makes your child more patient, more joyful, and more self-controlled, amazing. Let’s do that. If however, any of those are impacted or… That’s Galatians 5:22. If you get the Galatians 5:19 through 21 where it’s like envy and lust and fits of rage and comparison and jealousy and dissension, if that stuff starts to percolate, we then have a conversation and go, “Hey, I don’t know if this is just a I missed something about the tech and there’s something wrong with it, or if this is just a tech and new combo that’s bad for right now, but we need to talk.”
And maybe you try it on a smaller scale or less often or with more supervision, or maybe you just go, “Hey, we’re going to remove it and replace it. It’s not working well.” This is something I’ve had to do. Anna and I, we allowed one of our children to save up money and buy something. And we very quickly, within three days, we were like, we made a mistake. That’s rough. And it was as bad as you would think. You let your child buy something that this child wanted, and they saved up and they earned and they bought it. And then mom and dad step in three days later and go, “Listen, I know we said yes. Here’s what we’re seeing. Are you seeing that?” “Yeah.” “What do you think about it?” “It’s fine.” “Okay, well, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s not fine.” So we’re going to buy it back. And in our case, we ended up… We bought it back, and then spent our money to buy something else.
And it was bad enough and it happened quick enough that we’re like, the fruit is wrong. This is not good. Again, we knew that because we knew our child. We had an open relationship. We talked about it beforehand. Were there tears? Absolutely. Is it still something that periodically comes up? Yeah, it comes up occasionally, but we got burned. Ann and I learned pretty quick like, oh man, we need to be really deliberate. And we’ve said no to some other stuff preemptively because we’re like, it’s too close. I just don’t think it’s going to be a good fit. Is it a no forever? No. The reason I’m not naming the product, by the way, is this not even worth planting the seed because it’s so specific to this one child. The other two were fine, but this one kid couldn’t handle it. And it couldn’t be like, well, the other two will just use it and this kid will be fine. Nope, not that’s not the way it’s going to work in our house. It will become a daily fight and it will plant a bunch of bad seeds.
So we wanted to clear the air, get rid of it, acknowledge we made a mistake, repent to our child that we had said yes and had to make it a no. And that’s something you can do as well. That fourth, is this tech a good fit for our family piece is, does it produce good fruit? And if it does, amazing. And if it doesn’t, address that directly, say, “Hey, I noticed when you use this, this bad thing happens. Can we talk it out?” Again, that’s part of a reset as well, to acknowledge that your child is a person you love and that when problems show up, you love them enough to address those problems and not ignore it, and not just try to rip it away and be like, now be fixed.
Because again, the problem isn’t the fruit that we were seeing. The problem is what’s causing the fruit. What’s happened in your heart and mind that this thing is too much? Because we know it’s not morally wrong, and we see other people using it fine. What’s going on? And in this case, it’s how our child is wired, and we get to know lovingly apply that in the future. So should your child use this tech, there’s four things you need to look at. And as far as I can tell, works in just about every tech environment, which is super exciting. Praise the Lord that this resource is a thing because… I would love to take credit for it, but when I first was asked parents by parents to answer this question, it just felt overwhelming or it felt like I was being asked to prescribe very specific tech. Instead, we have four categories we go through.
Is it safe? Is it tool tech? Is there a browser? Is it accountable? And are there apps? Is it appropriate for our family? We need a standard for our content, our time and our priorities. Does it fit my child’s stage of life that they’re at? Will this be a good fit for my child right now? In this case, we talked about look at… What are they faithful in? Are they faithful in little things, relationships, and responsibilities is what I pointed out. And then finally, is it a good fit for your child specifically in this season of life? All those other things are awesome. And then when you give it to them, what fruit comes out. Some of it might just be change the boundaries up. Some of it is, “Nope, we’ve got to remove and replace with something better.” So my hope in sharing this with you is twofold.
One, it’ll empower you to talk about tech, communicate the gospel, and connect the hope of the gospel to your daily tech life. I want to see parents empowered to go and parent the way they want to, the way you want to well, in a tech world. You don’t have to be afraid of it. And when there is fear, I want you to be able to put your finger on it and go, “Oh, I’m scared of this because it’s causing real harm.” Or I’ve seen it cause harm, or the potential is too great to cause harm, and now you’re making… That’s an educated decision instead of just a knee jerk, “I don’t like it. Get off my lawn.” I want you to be empowered to make that informed decision. You are modeling for your children what it looks like to follow Jesus and to trust God even with the tech we use.
And then two, I want you to be able to raise your children up in the way they should go so that they can begin to model healthy tech for themselves. And I guess there is a third. I want you to share this with other people. I want this conversation to be ubiquitous, that I don’t have to say the words, that there is no Start Here series because everyone knows it. And I’ll go talk about something else and serve wherever the Lord leads. But this is something I want shared, and I want to empower parents. So if it’s helpful, please share it. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me, [email protected], or you can reach out to me directly, [email protected]. You can find us on social media, on Instagram and Facebook @lovegodusetech. And you can join us next week as we continue this conversation about how we can love God and use tech.
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