Debating screen use for your kids? Today we're avigating the subject of technology use in families with expert Dr. Gwyneth Jackaway. No matter what age your kids are, this conversation is full of tips and a few perspective shifts too (of course).
Check out Dr. Gwyneth Jackaway's work with Carrots&Cake here.
If you feel inspired please consider sharing this episode with a friend, writing a 5⭐️ review or becoming a Raising Wild Hearts Member here!
Debating screen use for your kids? Today we're avigating the subject of technology use in families with expert Dr. Gwyneth Jackaway. No matter what age your kids are, this conversation is full of tips and a few perspective shifts too (of course).
Check out Dr. Gwyneth Jackaway's work with Carrots&Cake here.
If you feel inspired please consider sharing this episode with a friend, writing a 5⭐️ review or becoming a Raising Wild Hearts Member here!
Let's bring some intentionality to where we're putting our attention, because there's only 24 hours in a day and, if you think about it, where you put your attention over and, over and over again, that becomes your life. Whatever you're paying attention to on a regular basis, that dominates the majority of your daily consciousness, unless there's some big emergency that breaks through that. So we're all in a kind of meditation on whatever it is we're thinking about all day.
Speaker 2:Welcome, revolutionary Mama, to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. I'm Ryan Watkin, educator, mom of three, revel at heart and passionate soul, on a mission to empower and inspire you.
Speaker 2:Here we'll explore psychology, spirituality, parenthood and the intersection where they all come together. We'll discover how challenges can be fertile soil for growth and that even in the messy middle of motherhood, we can find magic in the mundane. Join me on my own personal journey as I talk to experts and share resources on education, creativity, self-care, family, culture and more. I believe we can change the world by starting at home, in our own minds and hearts, and that when we do, we'll be passing down the most important legacy there is Healing, and so it is. Hey friends, welcome back to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. So today I am joined by Gwyneth Jackaway. This conversation flipped some of my preconceived notions on their head, and I always love conversations that do that. I really, really appreciate it. I was the mom, and I mentioned this in the episode. I was the mom who, when I was pregnant, I was like no TV for my child. My children will never watch TV and let me tell you, that's shifted quite a bit. My kids watch TV. We have an iPad for family use. So I'm not anti-technology, I'm not absolutely zero technology, but I thought that I would be. Also, something that I think about frequently my oldest is about to turn nine is cell phones. You know a lot of nine year olds have cell phones currently nine year olds, 10 year olds getting up there and I've had conversations with multiple people lately on this, on this podcast and off, about what age is the right age for a cell phone and why do our kids need them, and internet safety, and you know different things like that, and so I'm really on this quest to figure out what's that balance look like for our family. I'm certainly not going to go by cultures guidelines, as you very well know, by listening to this podcast for any number of episodes that I'm not going to follow along with the culture and I don't need to be so married to my anti-culture or rebellious nature that I completely shut it out. It's also just not, you know, realistic. So this conversation was very eye-opening for me. I am going to introduce our guest.
Speaker 2:For over 25 years, dr Jack away was a member of the faculty at Fordham University in the Department of Communication and Media Studies. Her research and teaching has long focused on the ways in which technological innovation and communication impacts our relationships with ourselves, each other and our understanding of the world around us. As a longtime mindfulness and meditation practitioner, she is especially interested in the ways in which the rapidly changing digital environment is transforming our experience of being human. After leaving the college classroom to make a bigger difference, gwyneth earned a certification as a mindfulness meditation instructor through Tibet House and NYC and as a digital wellness educator through the Digital Wellness Institute. She is thrilled to bring together her two passions mindfulness and media to offer students, teachers and parents simple behavioral strategies for practicing intentional attention in the midst of digital distraction. So she tells us a little bit about a company that she's consulting for called Carrots and Cake, which I thought was a very interesting concept and again open my eyes to hey, there are tools out there that are making digital wellness available to us and to educators and to our kids.
Speaker 2:Even so, yeah, I hope you guys enjoy this conversation. Check out the links in the show notes. One of them will be to be a founding member of the Raising Wild Hearts membership and then the other is so you can check out Dr Jacque's work. She's doing awesome work in the world, just like everybody who I bring on this podcast. These conversations are amazing and insightful and I hope that they're impactful for you. Reach out with any questions. Hello at RaisingWildHeartsPodcastcom, and let's dive into today's episode, dr Gwyneth Jacque, welcome to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. Thank, you.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure to be here. I'm so happy that you're here and I'm really excited to talk to you both. You mentioned that you're a mother and that your child is grown, and I think that's always great perspective. A lot of the people who listen to this podcast have little kids, like me, so I'm excited to talk about that. I'm excited to talk about, like, the tech age and kind of where we're going as a society, where we've been. Maybe you can give us some tips as parents. I know you've got amazing work that you're doing on many fronts, so, yeah, I'm really excited to dive in. And the first question I really have for you is I saw the phrase digital wellness in your work and I'm curious what is digital wellness?
Speaker 1:If you had asked me that 10 years ago I would not have known, because it's a new field and I'm very grateful to have found my way to it. So digital wellness fits under the larger project of wellness which, as I'm sure you're well aware, has become quite a focus in, certainly in the United States, over recent years. I think the best way to explain digital wellness is to first think about what do we tend to mean when we talk about wellness. So there's a growing understanding that. So, first of all, the mind and body are not separate. It's one whole system. So we have folk in the United States We've tended to focus more on physical wellness first and it's relatively newer that we're starting to pay some attention to the importance of mental wellness.
Speaker 1:So we know we need to have enough sleep and the right diet and exercise and stay hydrated and all of those physical things. And we're starting to recognize the importance of talking about mental well-being, and various kinds of tools have come into common discourse, like meditation and learning to take deep breaths and learning to talk about our feelings. So digital wellness fits under that whole heading, saying, in addition to taking care of those various aspects of our physical lives and our mental well-being. We need to pay attention to our digital lives because we spend a lot of time in these digital spaces, and that's true for both adults and kids.
Speaker 1:And if you pay any attention to your own screen time, I get those sobering notifications from my iPhone once a week telling me about my screen time for the week.
Speaker 1:And even though this is my field and I know about the brain science and I know the downsides of spending too much time on screens, I'm usually disappointed with my own number and most people aren't spending a lot of time thinking about some of the mental and physical implications of our digital lives and our social implications, behavioral implications.
Speaker 1:The average teen is spending at least eight hours a day on their phones, which is kind of sobering because if they're sleeping around that much and they're in school that much, that basically means that when they're not in class and they're awake, they're on their phones and often, depending on the rules in the school, they're on their phones in class too. So and I know that you're a parent of smaller children and I'm an educational consultant for a company, carrots and Cake and I'll be telling you some more about that, and they focus on digital well-being for little kids, and it's an aspect of all of our lives, and anything that we spend that much time doing can impact our well-being, and so digital wellness is about fostering healthy habits with our tech use.
Speaker 2:Right. So what are some of the downsides of too much or perhaps unhealthy habits such as? What I thought of immediately is like the person who and I've been here, this is without judgment who immediately looks at the phone in the morning or is on the phone till 11, 12 at night, and then they're not sleeping as good. So what are some other downsides of that and how can we foster healthier habits surrounding tech?
Speaker 1:Great question. So I'll give you a two-fold answer, for adults and kids. But I really believe that one of the best ways we can help our kids develop healthy screen habits is to first look in the mirror Because, as you know, as any parent knows, you know, kids see what you do and what you say and what you do. If there's a big gap between them, then if you're saying, put down your phone and you're always on yours, yeah Right. So let's start with the adult brain and I mentioned brain issues because that is quite relevant when we get to the developing brain but let's just start with adults. So I just started in 6M BCE. I apologize, that's okay. The reason Alexa just spoke to me and I don't know why.
Speaker 2:I'm just speaking of technology.
Speaker 1:Right, that was a little odd. I apologize. I know you can edit this out, I'm just going to plug that device.
Speaker 2:All right, Alexa, you sit in the corner now.
Speaker 1:That was weird. I have no idea what that was. I didn't understand what she said. All right, let's start. Okay, in order to understand the importance of tech balance, it's necessary to learn a little bit about brain science and I won't get too technical.
Speaker 1:But we have neurotransmitters like serotonin. A lot of people heard about serotonin because it's associated with some antidepressants, right, so you know. So if your serotonin levels are low, sometimes you have a lower mood affect. Oxytocin is another neurotransmitter. Nursing mothers are full of oxytocin.
Speaker 1:It's that feeling when you hold a little one puppies falling in love, it's that sort of it's a marvelous high that our brains produce. And there's dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that is very associated with excessive or out-of-balance screen time. So dopamine is the chemical that helps us have motivation, that primes us to get up, get going, you know, for our ancestors and help them find food, find mates, find shelter. That still helps us do all those things. It's that I got to get up and get something done feeling, and that can feel good. And it's linked to adrenaline.
Speaker 1:And when people are feeling good online, like you know, when you first start hunting for airplane tickets or something or you're, you know you're searching for that perfect pair of boots and it's just the first few minutes, so you haven't been doing it for three hours. You know, and you just oh, wow, you know and you're finding things and it feels good. You can see their look on people's faces, like when they're playing in the slot machines and Atlantic City or Las Vegas. You can see it on the faces of people playing video games when they're super engaged. It's like this hyper focus and that's there for a reason. It motivates us to go get the thing we're looking for. But you know, outside of the digital world in general, you get the thing you're looking for and then you can stop the looking.
Speaker 1:But with the online environment has a lot of cues to have you keep going. So, for example, on social media, you know we are social creatures and something that we're motivated by is being liked and getting positive reinforcement from our social circles. So if you post a picture and you get a lot of likes, that feels good and then you want to go back for more. And these sites don't have a bottom. Have you ever noticed? Have you ever gone to the bottom of TikTok or Instagram? No, it doesn't end right and so it's the bottomless bowl. It's the endless scroll and like and, as is the case with anything, that when we're seeking and it feels really good, you know, like the first bite of cake or the first kiss, it's like whoa.
Speaker 1:And then we keep going back for more and, you know, after a while it doesn't feel as great, like, oh, I only got 100 likes. Like, last time I got 300 likes, right. And then it's that's called the dopamine feedback loop. So you keep going back, looking for that same initial rush and this is also what's at the root of chemical addictions. Like the first high, nothing compares to the first high because your brain has never experienced it before, right. And then after a while, like, oh, now I want something stronger, I want, you know, a more exciting kind of feedback. So dopamine feedback loops can encourage unbalanced use, right.
Speaker 1:And then we have things like automatic, like auto play on YouTube, or you get these notifications because you liked this video, now we're going to give you this video. Or because you liked this pair of boots, you might like this other pair of boots. Because the platforms the way the platforms are set up for their economic model is they want to keep you coming back again and again. Also, they're tracking your online behavior. So the longer you stay on, the more information they get about you Like. Oh, you like those boots. Well, maybe you're also going to like this jacket that goes with the boots. And you know, the more time you spend going to different websites, they learn who you are. And, oh, you like this podcast, you might like this other podcast. So there's an economic incentive to promote engagement and that feeds right into some weaknesses of our own cognitive structures.
Speaker 1:Right, that was a long answer and I'm not done so you, and that was really more explaining the some of the neuroscience of habitual behavior. And then you asked what are some of the downsides? Well, some of the downsides after spending a lot of time scrolling, maybe you've noticed, often you don't feel so great. It's kind of like an overwhelm of stimulus and it feels funny first, and then there's a kind of drop off, but we keep scrolling because we're looking for something that will make us feel, you know, more elevated. And, of course, if you have a news addiction, which is my little guilty habit, you know you're getting flooded with a lot of negative news. But what happened today and what did this politician say, and what's going on in Washington or whatever, and if that's linked to our natural need to monitor our environment. Our ancestors had to monitor their environment for danger. Now we monitor our environment online and that can take you down a very dark spiral, depending on what news sources you consume.
Speaker 2:Sure, and you know. So here's what came up for me a lot and this is beautiful and I want to dive more into, if you have more thoughts on the, you know, the negative parts and how we're going to bring it back up everybody.
Speaker 1:What comes up for? Yeah, I want to get to the kids, but for sure.
Speaker 2:Yes, let's get to the kids. But I want to put a pin in this for parents too, because I think that the neuroscience that you explained is really, really important, because when we understand what it's doing to us, like when we become aware, then we don't have to be slaves of it. You know, I heard somebody say the other day if you're not paying for the product, you are the product. That's right. Yes, so if you think about social media like that, it kind of gives a little bit more of a grounded perspective of like okay, I know I'm sitting here scrolling, what am I looking for? Maybe I just want to do it for five minutes. Maybe I look up and it's 20 minutes and I go, oh gosh, that felt like crap, but I think that awareness piece is so important.
Speaker 2:And then two if you're a creator and I believe that we are all creators it has this tendency social media, the internet to take our creative, innate ability and start to put a label on it or a hierarchy on it. And I think when we can create just to create, we can create from our passion and our fuel, without the outcome, without the praise or even the negativity. Then there's this more like neutral place that we can create from, so let's dive into. If you'd like to add anything more on the adult brain and the downsides, that's great, but let's talk about now its effect on kids, because if it's doing that to parents, what the heck is it doing to our kids?
Speaker 1:Great. Well, and the way I want to answer is to bridge from parents to kids. So if the parents are hooked, which really so many of us are, then where's your attention? You're looking at your phone and it's mommy, mommy, but hold on a second. So even before they have devices the littlest ones, where they don't probably have their own iPad or iPhone yet so there's a couple of things there, observing that this is normal behavior and kids want to imitate what adults do, so we're teaching through modeling that this is normal. Ok, that's what people do.
Speaker 1:They're also lacking our attention and so, part of to continue, the answer of what is digital wellness, I like to talk about intentional attention. It rhymes, so it's a little easier to remember, right? So let's bring some intentionality to where we're putting our attention, because there's only 24 hours in a day and, if you think about it, where you put your attention over and over and over again, that becomes your life. Whatever you're paying attention to on a regular basis, that dominates the majority of your daily consciousness, unless there's some big emergency that breaks through that. So we're all in a kind of meditation on whatever it is we're thinking about all day. So, by being on your screen all the time you're not present with your kids and it's such a cliche, but it goes by so fast when you've got little ones. Sometimes you feel like, oh, this is a long haul.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was, when my son was young, and I would hear older parents say that and what are you talking about? These days feel endless. And then suddenly they walk out the door to college, right? And then you're probably not going to say, wow, I wish I'd spent more time on my phone Once they're gone, you know, I mean it's, it's so precious, so that's, and there's and there's more to be said about that. But I'd like to introduce a concept that I learned in my digital wellness training, which is called fubbing, which is a combination of the word phone and snub, right? So if you snub somebody, you're not paying attention to them, right? So if you're with your phone and somebody is trying to talk to you, whether it's your kid or your partner or your friends, that's kind of rude.
Speaker 2:Well, and then all the people back are like fub you. Like if you look at a restaurant and you look at a family group, sometimes one person starts fubbing and then everybody else, like you know. So it sets the tone, sets the pace Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. And so now let's talk and I have more to say about that in terms of things families can do, but I want to do this in a way that's got some structure and order. So let's think about kids. So the ability to self regulate, which involves self discipline, the ability to stop doing something, some self control, emotional self regulation that's all governed by the prefrontal cortex, which is the front of the brain, and that develops last. It developed less evolutionarily. It's what differentiates us from a lot of the other animals on the planet. We have a big prefrontal cortex, but it also develops slowly in humans. So it's not until we are in our mid 20s that that's fully developed.
Speaker 1:And most people don't really know that. The insurance companies have known it for a long time because, as you may know, or as you may recall, you can't rent a car. Even though you can get a driver's license at 16, you can't rent a car. They've been on to this for years because who has the most car accidents is young people and it's because of risk taking. I mean, they're less experienced drivers, but they've just taken drivers ahead. So you know like they should be really up on all the rules, but their prefrontal cortices are not fully developed, so they're more likely to engage in risky behavior to impress their friends or whatever reason.
Speaker 1:So to say, to a small child, we'll just put the phone down. It sounds so simple, but it's. You're competing against Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Madison Avenue, all of whom can afford very skilled neuroscientists and tech designers and create ad content and other kind of content that is absolutely engaged to hold all of us enthralled. So I think it's important for parents to understand it's not your fault, it's not your kid's fault, and we've had what? 10 years of experience with this. So none of us had these devices as children, so we didn't watch our parents create some structure and boundaries. So we're all learning. So the first thing I recommend is to give ourselves some grace and understand that this is a huge, huge problem.
Speaker 1:And finally, the Surgeon General. As you may know, this past year the Surgeon General issued a major report and warning about the serious mental health crisis facing young people and directly implicated social media companies and tech design, and there's, I think, 41 states just sued Metta and maybe TikTok for the practices that are harming our kids. What happens to those lawsuits remains to be seen, but we are in a major I would say international, global crisis over this. We're doing an experiment on our own brains and we're studying it in real time. We're figuring it out in real time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's. My question, then is like so rental car companies know this, government agencies know this. Now there's beautiful professionals like you who are educating. So if we're getting wise to this as a culture, why are we not catching up? Why are parents still choosing to give their kids iPads? Why are we still choosing to purchase phones for our 10-year-olds? Why are we allowing it? Why are educators allowed to have kids take out their phone in school for an activity Like? What needs to change around this? And is it all or nothing? Is there a healthy boundary, like? Is there an answer? Just tell us the answer to life right now, if you could in 30 seconds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in 30 seconds, right. So there's no one size fits all solution here and I'm going to try to answer your questions in some kind of order. So why do people give their kids phones? Let's start there. We are very social creatures and social pressure plays a big role in human behavior. So if everybody else in the school has got phones, your kid may come home. And your kid is likely to come home and say, well, lucy has one and Bobby has one, and what begins to happen is their whole social life is take a place there, which of course is also true for adults who are engaged online. So to take a hard stance and say, no, I mean you've got to withstand all the pushback and the challenges, and maybe at 10, it's manageable, but as they get into their early to mid teens it is harder. I have heard of communities and certain kind of private schools where they have a school policy, and when it's a whole community, it's easier to enforce any kind of social code, especially if it's a social code that differs significantly from the rest of the larger society.
Speaker 1:I live in New York City and for urban parents, giving your kid a phone can be an essential piece of safety. So my son was traveling in New York City some ways at 11, which may sound sort of startling to people who don't know New York City, but we don't have cars and if your school doesn't have buses, kids, this is what kids do. They take the subway to school, and I remember the first time I went into the subway station and he had a phone and I was texting him right before, and that was back when we didn't have Wi-Fi in the subways, so there was like a half an hour where we weren't in touch and he had to text me as soon as he came up above ground. And clearly we've all heard various kinds of news stories where people can track missing people through their phones, and so there are some safety benefits. Now, of course, you can get phones that you can modify, and that is linked in some ways to what I want to tell you about the Carrots and Cake app. There's ways to have some of those safety features, but to limit what a child's phone or iPad can do.
Speaker 1:You also asked me you know, is there some blanket law? So we have a free market economy. China has very strict rules and you know, regardless of what else you might think about their economy and their political structure. When you don't have a free market economy or freedom of speech as priorities, you can set a federal standard and that's the end of that. We don't have that kind of system. So, and you know, then you would ask a question well, who would set the standard? And would that be something we would vote on? How would that work? And then, of course, all these big companies will push back and say no, you know, we have a free market. It's up to you. I think you know.
Speaker 1:I think where we're headed is going to echo the cigarette industry. I think where we are now is where we were like in the 1960s and 70s, where people were starting to figure out that smoking is not good for you, right. And at first the tobacco companies were very resistant and claimed that there wasn't enough data, and eventually there was enough data, and so now they have to label their products as fatal and people keep smoking, and that's, you know, freedom of choice, and those are things that we also care about in the United States. So, and then you know there are parents, there are some parents who say I don't think this is a problem and I'm happy to give my kids this stuff and don't tell me how to raise my kid Right? So yeah, so that's all complicated.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love this cigarette metaphor you've got going on, because I, you know, I think we all get a big kick out of like looking back with these, like ads, of like doctor recommended, with these people holding cigarettes, and I, what if in 20, 30, 50 years, we're going like that about cell phones? Wouldn't that be interesting? You know, that's my, my, what I'm envisioning, which is kind of I get a kick out of that a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that what will eventually happen is that taking out your phone at a restaurant or in a meeting will one day be like lighting up a cigarette, Right? Sure, yeah, In those circumstances, which is now never done. If you watch old movies, everybody's smoking everywhere. Yeah, and now we don't see that. So I think that's probably where we're headed In terms of in terms of the schools. You know, that really varies by district. It varies between public and private. We don't have a federally managed education system. Really, it's more like we have 50 different education systems and tons of fighting about what ought to happen in our schools. So you know that would put this on the list, yeah put it on the list.
Speaker 2:So what I always come back to, and like a theme across the line, whatever we're talking about in this podcast is that it starts at home. I firmly believe that. I think, you know, when we as parents can take this accountability for the choices that we make for ourselves and our kids, I think that this, you know, ripple effect can happen. I was having a conversation with a family friend in the neighborhood and we were talking about, you know, our two of our girls are the same age and I was like, what are you going to do when the cell phone thing comes up? And we went back and forth and she said, well, here's what I think. And I said, here's what I think.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same conversation. We were having a respectful dialogue about, you know, our feelings and our thoughts, and I thought, oh, that's interesting. And she thought, oh, that's interesting too. And but we get to make these decisions, these conscious, aware decisions, for our own families. So I think so much of it comes down to that education learning about the neuroscience of it, learning what it does to our families, learning what it does to our brains, learning that our kids need to borrow our prefrontal cortex for 20 plus years, and if we all just knew that, if that became commonplace information, I think there'd be some different decisions happening currently. What do you think?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's exactly why I'm a digital wellness educator. If you haven't watched the social dilemma, which was a documentary that came out a few years ago when we were all in lockdown, that film, which is already out of date, does a great job of explaining some of the neuroscience, but in a really engaging way. So I see you nodding. Maybe you've seen it already, but I have any of your listeners haven't seen it. It's easy to find on Netflix. The social dilemma was created by some people who used to work in Silicon Valley, and I think this is their now attempt to let the rest of the world know what they've been up to, and a lot of those folks, I think, feel very badly about what they were participant in. And, interestingly, a lot of the people who work at these companies don't let their kids use the very products that they produce, so that says a lot. So I can hear that you're asking about things that we can do at home, and so I agree. It does start at home and, ultimately, digital parenting, which is a term that I like to use. Right, we're parenting in the digital age, so digital parenting, like all aspects of parenting, is ultimately a reflection of our own values. So just like we're going to teach our kids about religion or what it means to be a good person, or our sense of self discipline or priorities. Is it important to go to college or whatever it is that you're teaching your kids now how to be online, how to relate to these devices, what role they should or can plan or lies on a positive note and the dangers. That's all just part of the job now, and so it's a lot, because the digital wellness education is not being provided yet to parents in a mainstream way, which is why I'm here. I think eventually it will start to be in the schools. I hope that's part of work that I'm involved with.
Speaker 1:But on an individual family to family level, it starts with the parent or parents deciding well, what are my priorities here, what kind of values do I want to pass on, what am I modeling and then what do I want to teach? Because you know what. These devices are not going away, so you could take a no tech policy for a while, but eventually they're going to leave, grow up and leave your house, so you know, and if they've grown up in a completely tech free zone, there may be some benefits to that, and there's also drawbacks, because they're missing out on kid culture, they're missing out on the social connection and they're missing out on there's a lot of great learning that can go on, which is I want to tell you about carrots and cake, but if you created a whole tech free zone in your house, then they'll leave home at 18 with no skills. Thank you in dealing with this realm.
Speaker 1:And so I used to be a college professor and I taught at a Catholic school, and many of these students grew up in fairly strict Catholic families and they would get to college in New York City and you can imagine many of them did not yet have the practice of moderation or thinking about keeping their life in balance. It's nice to go out on a Friday night, but get some sleep. Don't overdo whatever your recreational activities are. So I believe it's our responsibility to raise digitally aware young adults, because that's what we're doing. We're raising future adults. So, just like they need to learn to save money and do their homework, they need to develop some healthy habits around technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I was that mom when I was pregnant with my first out of three children that I was like no TV, we're just like. I mean, I thought we were gonna be like screen-free, like utopia.
Speaker 2:And it took me not very long to discover that the TV was a tool. It was a tool for transitions, it was a tool for learning, it was a tool for entertainment. We wanna be entertained. We like art. Many of the things we can consume on the TV or even on our phones could be considered art. Right, the music, it provides so much opportunity.
Speaker 2:So I thought I would be totally screen-free and I love that. The point you brought up. I guess it doesn't have to be all or nothing. There can be boundaries surrounding it. This friend that I was saying that we spoke about it the other day she's like well, if you don't ever let your kids have phones, then what? And I always have this like stance of like no social media, no cell phones ever, and I know that that's not realistic and that's part of the reason that I loved that. I love that we're having this conversation too, because this is part of my education, and so this is a good part, I think, to get into what is carrots and cake and how can it help us as educators and maybe as parents also.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's definitely meant to help parents.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I am a parent educator for a company called Carrots and Cake and I love talking about the name because I think it's very creative, it's cute. It was founded by a couple who have young kids and they had their experience with their children of, during COVID, handing them pads and then watching the various kinds of challenges and particularly, I guess, tantrums when it was time to put the pads down, and also feeling some concern about what content they were spending their time on. So the name Carrots and Cake comes from the age old parenting advice eat your vegetables before you have dessert. So the carrots part refers to learning and then the cake refers to play or fun. Of course, you can learn while you're having fun, but there's all these learning apps out there. So Carrots and Cake is designed to help parents deal with screen time challenges, and they like to say screen time, not scream time. So when you try to take the pad away, sometimes there's tantrums, right. So the name is also about the order in which kids use things on the app, because that matters, right. If you gave a child a plate with broccoli and cake, it's gonna be a rare kid that just voluntarily eats the broccoli first. So handing a pad to a kid that's got Duolingo or PBS, sesame Street Learning kind of app and TikTok or YouTube, most kids are gonna just naturally and that's true for a lot of us it's kind of more fun to go to the fun stuff, right? So children and with their underdeveloped prefrontal courtesies, they're not gonna volunteer at most kids. You may have a few unusual kids out there who say I wanna learn Latin, but most of them human nature we go to the thing that's fun.
Speaker 1:So Carrots and Cake allows parents to choose ahead of time learning apps that you can download just from the app store and we make recommendations based on the age of the child and whatever interests they have. So you choose some learning apps and then you predetermine which cake apps they get to have. So maybe it's Roblox or some game they like to play. That you decide ahead of time is permissible. And when you hand them your device because, as you know, it can be helpful if you need to make dinner or you're out on airplane or you're in a restaurant and you want your child to stay focusing and engaged but you don't wanna have all that mom guilt you can hand it to them and know that it's pre-curated, and they will first do some learning and you set how much time they have to do that and then it will unlock their access to the cake, and then that's also predetermined how much time, and they get some countdown warnings which, as you know, with little ones can make a difference, and then it will shut off and it ends, unlike most of our lives online which, as we talked about, don't you know, and TV shows come to an end, books come to an end, movies come to an end, and that's good practice, like things end and then you do another thing.
Speaker 1:So, and this also trains delayed gratification, and there's all kinds of research to show that kids who can develop delayed gratification have much higher chances of success in the rest of the world, because we don't usually always get power-ups and likes and new lives in the real Unfortunately, unfortunately, right. So and sometimes you have to work for a long time before you get gratification. So, and this also promotes balance rather than a no-tech policy, which I understand can be attractive for certain reasons, but then the drawback is the kids don't get the practice, and there's tremendous learning opportunities online. It's not, you know, what matters, it's not just how much time you spend online. It's what you're doing there.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, just like not all books are wonderful for you, there's a lot of garbage in print and some things that are really probably shouldn't be read by children. Books aren't inherently better than screens. They're just delivery mechanisms for all kinds of things, including learning, uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Wow, cool. So this is opening my eyes. It's definitely making my wheels turn and I'm really, really happy that I have this information, honestly, because our oldest is about to be nine and she, you know, is starting to be more independent. She's starting to want to be going like deeper diving on certain topics and you know, we home educate, and so there's this thing of like how do we teach them to be self-directed learners? Like you know, I'm bored or I don't have anything to do right now. What do I go do?
Speaker 2:So we've been exploring, like utilizing like an iPad type thing for education and then for fun too. You know, because that's I guess you get to a certain age and it's like, like your point of, like 18, they go out of the house, they have no tech experience at all. I don't think that's necessarily realistic, even though I said like never gonna happen, I, you know I'm to the point where I can consider it for sure. So thank you for sharing that. That's amazing. That's going to be a great resource for educators and parents that listen to this. I will put the link to Carrots and Cake the website in the show notes. And then did you mention that you have a promo code too for my listeners?
Speaker 1:Yes. So, first of all, if you go to CarrotsandCakecom so it's all those words written out CarrotsandAndCakecom you can read about all this, learn more, there's articles and some videos, and there's a free download for a 60 day trial, and they should use the word wild hearts. So, and then there's pretty clear instructions about how to set it all up, based on the age of your child, and if you have any questions, the tech people will be happy to answer them. And I just want to also say that our users report that kids using CarrotsandCake has tripled their use of learning apps and cut their overall screen time in half. So, and with fewer tantrums and just more ease in the family, okay, all right.
Speaker 2:So the numbers are real. I like that there's some data to back it up too, because so how long has CarrotsandCake been in existence, how long has it been? So it's a relatively.
Speaker 1:yeah, it's a relatively new company and they're finally we're getting a lot of press attention now and you know there's a growing awareness of this problem. So we're in the right space at the right time.
Speaker 2:For sure it's a needed service and I think you know, even to just help educate parents. I'm so grateful for that. Okay, so, before we start to wrap up, I'm curious and I just you know, I just want to go in the weeds a little bit Like let's just talk briefly about censorship and how that relates to what our kids are having access to educationally, and like is this related to a digital wellness conversation or no? Like.
Speaker 1:What a great question. You're one of the first, you're the first person that I've spoken to on a podcast who's asked me about that, and thank you. So, as you know, I was a college professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University and one of my passions is the topic of freedom of expression and the First Amendment in the United States and our complex relationship with the idea of freedom of expression, because, you know, the founding fathers had this idea and back then there was only the printing press and you know, information didn't flow as fast and most people couldn't read anyway and it was just a whole different time. I wonder a lot if I could invite Thomas Jefferson back and say is this what you had in mind? You know, right, right, because it was. He was the one who was, especially he and James Madison. So that's a huge topic and I would say that the way I want to answer it is what we take in mentally, cognitively the information, the ideas, the visual stimulus, the auditory stimulus, if you can think about that as like brain food. So what we put in our mouths and what we, you know what we take in nutritionally, shapes who we are, and that's certainly true for what we read and what we listen to and what we watch.
Speaker 1:I feel that we are fortunate to live in a country where we don't have government censorship. However, that means that there's all kinds of stuff online and print and television that certainly might not be appropriate for children and, frankly, it may not be so good for all of us, right? So watching nonstop footage of war zone activity, even though it's an important way to realize the horrors of war and, can you know, shape public opinion, it's not good for the psyche to witness all that violence, even for an adult brain. Yeah, so because we don't have federal censorship laws, which I think is a good thing, and because you know, the companies are in business to disseminate information and we have a very divided country right now, even if we somehow all decided we should have some censorship, whose standards would apply, right, we have a wide range of religious and political perspectives, and that's the problem with federal censorship the companies don't want to get involved in it unless they get a lot of pushback from advertisers. So I think that it's not so much about other people doing the censoring as families making healthy choices for their own kids, and different families have different perspectives on what they want their kids to learn about, be exposed to, and that's really.
Speaker 1:You know that's a topic for an entire other hour, but I do. You know, given that there's a lot of people who are not allowed to do that and, you know, given what's happening at this moment in the world and whenever you air this, this will probably still be relevant. There's a lot of darkness in the world. There's a lot of hard stuff going on out there. I make careful choices in my own day about how much news I consume when it's really scary or really upsetting or really horrifying, because otherwise there goes my day and I get lost into a lot of my own reaction. So I'm not going to be making reactions to what I'm seeing. So you know, I decide I'm only going to consume news a few times a day. I'm not a politician, I'm not a journalist. I don't need to have hourly updates, even though I sort of want to.
Speaker 1:I would say be mindful of what news you watch around your kids. For older kids, there's a lot of news on TikTok and it's unfiltered footage, but it's quite startling what's on there If you haven't been on TikTok and look. I mean there's just people are posting to TikTok and people are in war zones and there's a lot of scary stuff on there. And of course there's, you know, there's all kinds of sexual imagery online and you know, and adults should have the right to express themselves and seek out that content and that the Supreme Court made a long time ago. So we live in a complex world and there are many different kind of parents who have different ideas, you know. And then there's violent video games, which many people are comfortable with their kids playing and other people aren't.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, I think it's all like. You know. I love how you described it as food for your brain, or you know, it could be like twizzlers for your brain or like broccoli for your brain, or whatever.
Speaker 1:Carrots and cakes. There we go.
Speaker 2:And I like how you brought it back to home and the culture and the family values that we hold as an individual household. I personally, for my children and for myself, I'm, you know, teaching them to be critical thinkers. So to questioning information, and you know, the past few years it's felt tricky because there are things that the social media sites are censoring, even though we don't have federal censorship laws, and that feels a little like no matter what side of the coin it's on, it feels a little icky. I think everybody should have the right to question, I think there should be a right to have conversation and I think to to bring it full circle is that it starts in our local communities. It starts by talking to our neighbors and being compassionate and getting a different viewpoint.
Speaker 2:We don't all think the same way. We didn't all have the same experiences growing up. So when we can start those conversations, like really close to home, in our own homes and then in our communities, I think that's the call to action for the parents listening. You know, for me it certainly is. So, yeah, thank you so much for being here, thank you for the work you're doing. I'm really excited to share this promo code with my listeners as we wrap up. Now I'm going to ask you the questions that I ask everybody at the end of the interview. Okay, and the first one is if you could teach a class to an elementary age population tomorrow, what would you teach these elementary kids?
Speaker 1:So are we talking K through five.
Speaker 2:Yeah K through five.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because you know K is really different than five.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can go right in the middle like, let's say, a group of second graders, if you want, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, um, it's such a great question. I think that I would talk to them about two things Attention, so the power of attention. Where do we put our attention? It matters, and I might even do a little meditation with them to help them even feel like what is attention? It's a word that we use a lot. We say kids get told all the time pay attention, what is that? So it's like you know, shining like a spotlight in your brain at something and focusing on it. Yeah, so I would introduce them to that and I would.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you're talking to a group of second graders, they're not going to have their own phones, but they see older people around them with the phones, and I might open a conversation with them about how do they feel about other people's phone years and ask them about if they've been given access to an iPad, which they probably have, or they've played with their parents' phone. Do they like it? Do they not like it? I would open a conversation, more than having an agenda at that stage, because I think it's really important to just start talking to kids About what are we doing with our attention with these devices, and I would maybe give a little bit of media history, because I'm trained as a media historian and of course, children have no idea that these things are new. This is just the world that they were born into. So I might say did you know that once upon a time nobody had these things? What differences would make to have them?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then talk about how we spend our time matters and where we put our attention matters, and I would say that technology is a tool, just like a knife. You can make dinner with it, you can pick your fingernails with it. You can hurt somebody with it. These are tools and how we choose to use them is up to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, love that. Thank you. What's bringing you joy today?
Speaker 1:Well, talking to you. Certainly it's very meaningful for me to do this kind of work. I left the college classroom because I wanted to bring what I was doing on a more theoretical, academic level into the real world to help people's lives. So, and the one last thing that I want to add, because you were talking about asking what can change at home, a simple thing that families can do is say no phones at the table, and that means no parent phones at the table either, and it's set up. Make sure that you set aside time to do things as a family that don't involve screens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, love that. What, if anything, are you reading? I see a lot of books behind you. Which one of them do you have open, if any?
Speaker 1:Well, those I'm not reading right now. Okay, I do a bunch of reading right now on attention, and so I have it just down. Just think it's called stolen focus. I would highly recommend the books stolen focus. It's not full of a lot of academic jargon, so I think thinking about attention is what it's all about. I love that.
Speaker 2:Thank you for putting that into those words too, because I you know we talk a lot like the mindfulness, like and meditation. Those are buzzwords right now. But think, just breaking it down to like focus for kids too. Breaking it down to the most simplest words the most simple words, it helps. So thank you as a parent and as an educator, because I'm going to pass that along. And then the last question I have is who or what have you learned the most from?
Speaker 1:Wow, my son I mean the instant reaction that I'm having is my son. I have one. I'm single mom. I'm so grateful to that. I got to be a mom and he pushes me to be a better human and humbles me and I feel so grateful to have this journey with him and I learn from him every day.
Speaker 2:Yes, they do that, Don't they? Yeah, thank you so much again for being here and for sharing your wisdom. I know this is going to touch so many minds and hearts. I'm so glad.
Speaker 1:All right, it's been a pleasure, thank you, thank you, thank you.