Hi everyone,
On this day in 1814, the British set fire to Washington, DC, including the Presidential Mansion. And so today we honor First Lady Dolley Madison, who instructed staff to rescue the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington from the burning building, even though it meant breaking the frame. Well done, Dolley.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Tech Month 4/Helpful Tools for Kids and Teens
We’ve arrived at the part of this conversation where I usually get the most questions. How do we govern technology in relation to our kids?
First off, let me say that this area of parenting is downright exhausting sometimes. Trying to reach a healthy level of interaction between your kids and devices in your house requires a certain amount of vigilance. So the longer you can wait to introduce more technology into your kid’s life, the better. Hold off even if it makes you the uncool, downer parents. It will be beneficial.
In our home, a person does not get his or her own phone until he or she is a licensed driver. At that point, we understand that the kids will be off on their own a good bit more and perhaps in need of contacting us.
This is not a neat solution all the time, however, because sometimes the kids actually require a phone before they’re driving. For example, my daughter babysits sometimes even though she doesn’t drive yet. So we either need to make sure she has the “home phone,” (the phone that she shares with her brother for now), or the parents of the kids being watched leave one of their phones. We’ve migrated pretty quickly to a place where no one has a landline anymore, so getting help in an emergency requires a cell phone.
Schools increasingly require contact through apps or websites. Even some of our homeschool co-ops, usually populated by proud Luddites, especially when it comes to their children, required some level of interaction online.
We’re not opposed to that. Our kids, and we ourselves, benefit greatly from the online world. It’s just that these beneficial applications of the online world can so quickly snowball into ones that are not beneficial — ones that are, in fact, harmful.
I’m going to get to the tools we use by breaking this down into two categories: device-centric solutions and location-centric solutions.
Device-Centric solutions
For content monitoring on devices, as well as blocking, we use Covenant Eyes on all devices, both for adults and children. This one is most likely already familiar to you, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it. I do want to add that their tech help people are really helpful if you’re struggling with operations at all. They have helped me a ton in the past.
Screen Time is installed on all our kids’ phones. They have a parent app that resides on my phone and a kids’ app that goes on the kids’ phones. This sets limits, blocks apps, enables different schedules, etc. It’s a sort of Freedom for kids — except Mom or Dad sets the limits (so I guess you could make the argument that it is not freedom at all, haha). Once we take this off the kids’ phones when they’re ready, we give them access to our Freedom account.
I have heard good things about Bark, though I haven’t used it myself. I also have had people recommend Qustodio. These are both worth looking into.
Location-Centric solutions
This category is about your home — the Wi-Fi connection you have. You probably have smart devices in your home that are not smartphones or tablets: a TV, a laptop, etc.
The Circle device from Disney allows you to control the Wi-Fi access to any device using your connection. For example, I’m able to keep YouTube off of our shared home computer so people don’t waste their entire day watching stupid things on YouTube (not that this would ever happen). If someone has a legitimate reason or request to watch something, I can quickly open the app on my phone and change the settings. (Circle/Aura also has a service that you can use on devices themselves — we haven’t tried this option, but maybe you want to look into it.)
It’s worth looking into your actual Wi-Fi app to see if there are any parental controls native there. We have AT&T for our home internet service, and the Smart Home Manager app gives some options for parental controls. Maybe yours does, too. I have noticed companies getting more savvy about these things recently.
Lastly, the simplest location-based control is…where are your devices located? Do your screens face out into the room to allow for healthy community accountability? Do you have a “not-in-your-room” policy? And if there’s a device that is unable to be governed electronically, maybe it stays with Mom and Dad all the time.
We used to own an older Chromebook that didn’t accept some of the solutions I mentioned above. Whenever we left the house without the kids, that computer came along with us. Sometimes the simplest solution is just removing the device.
No Perfect Solution
Finally, we have to remember that there’s no perfect solution here. The best defense in the area of online interaction and our kids is a good offense: Do you talk with them about online safety and self-control? Do they trust you on matters like this?
We’ve tried to be as open as possible with our kids about our own struggles in these areas. They know the pitfalls because they know we, their parents, have fallen into them from time to time. We are their nearest and best examples of the dangers they can avoid.
We’ve also taken time to watch, read, and discuss the growing body of research on the effects of social media and online interaction on the life of the individual, society, and the church. The Tech-Wise Family from Andy Crouch is a great book to start you off in this arena.
I’d love to hear from people in the comments — what questions do you have? What solutions have you found?
For the Anglophiles
I enjoyed this look at holloways, a term I admit I had never digested as a noun (rather than a surname) before. These are footpaths that, due to centuries of foot traffic, have sunken into tunnels. There’s even a list of a few holloways you might seek out to travel next time you’re in England. There are also gorgeous pictures, like this one:
Reads & Listens of the Week
Here’s a little portrait of the private lending libraries popping up around the country. I have at least one friend who has one. “The women who steward private lending libraries seek to rescue, preserve, and share good, true, and beautiful books so that they can live in the minds and hearts of children and their families.”
I enjoyed this interview on The Cartographers about Beauty being an Antidote to the Culture Wars.
The Inklings Variety Hour did a portrait of The Shire.
Here’s a fascinating piece on Why Bill Watterson Vanished. In this long-form piece, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes discusses his sudden departure from producing the beloved comic strip.
For good measure, here’s the last one:
All things great are wound up with all things little. ― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables