Larry: Welcome to Doing Tech Right. Those of you who have been to our podcast before might notice we’re missing a word, we are renaming it from, Are We Doing Tech Right? To Doing Tech Right. And the reason we’re renaming it is to be a little more prescriptive.
It’s less about questioning what industry is doing, but giving all of us industry, but also consumers, parents, teens, kids, educators, some advice on how to do tech, right? I can’t think of anybody better to give advice then to parents and educators than Kerry Gallagher, who is our director of education and also a practitioner of education.
She, the assistant principal at a school in in Massachusetts. Kerry, it’s great to have you back on now Doing Tech Right.
Kerry: Oh, thanks Larry. I really enjoy talking to you about these topics and it very much connects to, as you mentioned, my work day to day in school with, middle school and high school age teens, but also in my house with middle school and high school age teens.
So I think both of those perspectives. Bring value and experience and they’re so different from each other. And yet a really important part of our teens day is their interaction with their parents and their interaction with their teachers. And so I’m glad that we can bring it all together
Larry: And I’m really glad you, that you’re here and we’ve written some.
Guides on this very question of that first device at first phone, typically, sometimes at first tablet, and let’s talk about that. In fact let’s include tablets in this conversation because for very young children, I think you would agree that a tablet may be more appropriate than a phone.
Certainly you don’t necessarily need a connected phone for young children. So starting with very little kids, what about that first device that they’re gonna get their hands on to presumably, potentially at least access the internet, if not just apps designed, especially for children.
Kerry: Yeah, there are some great tablets out there that are specifically designed for children, or it might be a tablet that’s designed for parents, but it has an operating system that allows parents to supervise it.
And so, it can be set for users of a certain age group and then parents have their own passcode to go in and adjust the settings as their child gets older. How do you know when it’s the right time? I think. I think it’s when your child starts to show interest in your device and you want them to have a more age appropriate experience on a screen that meets their needs and helps them learn at the stage where they are.
So if I can add.
Larry: If I could add as a grandparent of a, now 18 months old. Yeah. My granddaughter would be sitting on my lap and the first thing she would do is to grab my watch, actually to touch my watch on my wrist and start scrolling. I mean, she expressed interest in devices when she was less than a year old.
We’re not about to give her a tablet quite yet, so I’m glad you put and in there. Yeah, I think it’s a combination of them expressing interest and also the parents or the guardians feeling comfortable. And in, in my case, of the grandparent, I am of course deferring to my daughter and her husbands to the parents who are making the rules, not me.
I just follow their rules. But the bottom line is. That a child becomes ready when they’re ready and they may or may not be ready when they start to express interest.
Kerry: If we make it taboo at any point in their development. Then it creates a sensibility in the child that’s an adult thing that I want, right? No matter whether we are very young children or elementary age children. Or middle school or high school, the each age group is looking to be regarded as more mature than they are.
So I know that my nieces who are in first grade regard my teenagers, her, their cousins, as like that’s the big goal. I would love to be like a teenager and my teenagers at home regard. The adults that they see as people who have this freedom that they don’t have. So we wanna avoid making the tablet or the device taboo, but we want them to interact with it in a way that’s age appropriate.
It doesn’t mean that they should have their own device when they’re 18 months, but we should be supervising their interaction with those devices at 18 months. And then once they get into, toddlerhood and preschool age, there are potential devices out there that or even just apps on our devices Yeah.
That are designed for that age group. And that’s a family decision. Like you mentioned. It needs to be something that parents are comfortable with, but it really isn’t about the device, it’s about the structures and parameters and behaviors that the parents craft around it. Right. Yeah. So how are your children able to use it?
Only with your supervision and only for a limited time, or are they having full access all the time? And it really is truly their device that they own. And that’s the dynamic that parents need to consider as well.
Larry: It’s not uncommon for kids to be asking for a phone when parents may not feel ready to give them a phone. And it certainly, whether or not it’s appropriate to give them a phone, it’s appropriate to start thinking about it at that point. So if a child comes to you, a parent, and says, I want a phone, what should you be thinking about before you say yes?
Kerry: Yeah, great question. The biggest thing is that every child is different, and that is true even within the same family. I have this conversation several times a week in my personal life, but also in my professional life with the parents of the students we serve at my school, and then in my personal life with the parents of, my children’s friends.
And what I’ve learned is that. The dynamic in each family is different, and that depends a great deal on how many hours a day the family is able to spend together. Whether or not there’s a parent who’s able to be home and can communicate with the child because they’re physically present as compared to.
Whether the parents are outside the home working for longer hours, and so the communication is that a phone may make possible is really necessary. Also, I. Your own child’s ability to maintain their focus and concentration may play a role in your decision. No child at the ages of 10, 11, 12, or even 13 is great at self-management of attention.
Developmentally, they’re not there but some are better than others, and we wanna make sure that if we’re giving them a phone, they’re also able to notice the world around them while they’re attending to the phone. For safety purposes, for instance. Yeah. If your child is walking to and from school to their local elementary school or middle school, we don’t want them walking down the street with while they’re looking at a phone that’s dangerous because they can’t tear their attention away from the phone.
Larry: But. In terms of the type of device and what you do, what you can do with a device. As there are many different types of devices ranging from feature phones to locked down smartphones like Bark, which is an Android phone that is very restricted to regular.
iPhones and Android phones, which indeed have the ability to be locked down if the parent chooses. The operating systems have a lot of controls over time and apps and other things. So where do you think you should start in terms of finding and picking a device to give to your child?
Kerry: I. Yeah, that’s a really good question and I am such a fan at all those different, of all those different phases of devices that you gave as examples that are available, what’s the reason that your child potentially needs a device? Because they don’t need all of the features at once. Right away. They don’t need necessarily, the ability to write email, the ability to get on social media.
The ability to watch YouTube, the ability to do research. They don’t need those in their first iteration of the phone. They might need the ability to text you and text their friends. They might need the ability to learn how to set alarms or set a to-do list for themselves because those are great strategies that technology makes possible for us.
You can do a lot of those. Things on just a smartwatch that’s designed for children. You can, so maybe that’s the first device for your child is a smartwatch that is specifically designed for children. And then the next step up is a phone. Like, for instance the phone you described that.
Is again, the operating system is designed for children and designed for parent oversight. Yeah. And then you move into the smartphones that you and I use as adults. Larry, I really love the model of parenting where there’s a gradual step up in access to features and functionality. I. Because it allows children to master one functionality at a time rather than giving them a responsibility that they’re not ready for developmentally to try to be able to handle all of those features at once.
While they’re also just kind of growing up and learning how to navigate life they’re learning a lot really fast at this age.
Larry: And of course, not all families can afford a smartphone. There’s always that, what’s called a feature phone, which is the kind of phones we use back in the nineties that are just phones.
You can make calls on them, you can text on them. But they’re really designed to call in an emergency or answer the phone if mom or dad calls. And I know it’s not uncommon for families to give those to their kids as a first device. And of course, the other advantage of these feature phones, they’re very inexpensive. So you can buy them, I think for as little as $30 or something. And then of course, later, you’re absolutely right you might wanna get them either a bark phone or something like that, or a standard Android. And it’s not uncommon, of course, for people to hand down their Apple phone or their Android phone to their kids.
But people should know that these phones can be configured. So that they’re safe for a child, you can put all sorts of controls on them, including limiting the types of apps that they can download.
Kerry: The other common approach that I hear that parents do, and one that I did myself is I bequeathed an older phone to my children first, but I didn’t put it on our cell phone plan.
So it was just a phone that had access to wifi and only when they were home. So that was a nice step up kind of entry level approach for me to get a sense of what their habits might be while they were in the home with me on our wifi in a more sort of supervised environment before we gave them access to our.
Our phone plan, and therefore they had access to the internet even when they were not in our home and not in my presence. So that’s another option. That’s good
Larry: idea. And I imagine many families have hand me down phones that they, if they upgrade let’s talk about that conversation.
And when I was a kid, that conversation had something to do with the birds and the bees, so to speak. Today it’s really about. Many things, but including that phone. What would you tell, or maybe we can even talk about what you did tell your children you’re now teenagers when you finally gave them access to a smartphone with internet connectivity and I presume Yeah.
Cellular internet connectivity.
Kerry: Yeah. You and I, much like you and I have had this conversation many times, I would advocate for it to not be one big conversation, but a series of small ones. And the metaphor that I often use when I’m talking with parents about this is. That we talk about our children, or I talk to my children about sleep and nutrition all the time.
So if one of my children comes home and says they have a headache, I’m like, well, how much water have you had to drink? How did you sleep last night? What have you eaten today to help them understand that those patterns have an impact on how they feel and how productive they are, and. Their mood and all of those and their ability to concentrate and all those things.
If they haven’t had enough sleep, they haven’t had enough water and they haven’t eaten enough, of course you have a headache of four. Of course you feel run down. Let’s do something to move you in the right direction. Right now. I can help you find a healthy snack. Maybe you can lay down for a few minutes and we’ll put a bottle of water next to you.
In the same way, we want to constantly be having the conversation with our children about, for instance, if before they have their own device on the family television, they’re streaming, their favorite sort of YouTube channel, watching their favorite influencer play Minecraft. I. Are they able to tear themselves away from that in order to do like chores when you ask them to?
Or do they get kind of moody when that happens? Help them observe that shift in their motivation and their emotions when it’s happening on a shared device like the family television. So that. When it is time to talk about them owning their own device that they can carry around in their hand. You can say, we talked about how your moods shift when you use the family TV to play video games or watch YouTube.
I want you to notice how your moods might shift when and as a result we move toward a good resolution. And I feel like you’ve grown in that area and you’ve improved. If we start to see similar shifts in your phone use, what approach are we going to make together? So do some proactive conversation that happens over and allow them to be a part of the forward planning for when.
They make mistakes or when they kind of get caught up in, in a cycle that isn’t super healthy so that you can refer back to that. Plan that you made together?
Larry: Well it’s funny, this is a longer conversation than we have time for, but it reminds me of the fact that as you think about being safe and appropriate with any aspect of life, the lessons you learn apply to other aspects of life.
So right now we’re talking about phones or maybe earlier talking about television. Later we’re gonna try, talk about driving. We’re gonna talking about alcohol. We may be talking about drugs. All of these things are interrelated. It has to do with making good decisions and being aware of how things impact, you, cause and effect.
And so I think it’s a very smart approach to start helping your children understand that their behavior their actions have impact on other aspects of their lives. They need to think about what’s appropriate, what isn’t.
Kerry: Yeah. Something else in, in the midst of these conversations that, as you were talking, I was thinking about is.
We don’t need to give the impression to our kids that we do all of this perfectly. Like I sometimes also get caught up in tech things because there’s a particular news story that has really engaged me and I end up kind of binge listening to podcasts about that and, watching for news updates on it or.
There’s something big going on at work that I’m really concerned about and engaged with, and therefore I’m checking emails at a time of night that I really shouldn’t be and I should be engaging with my family. And I think our being open with our children about those moments of struggle that we’re having helps them understand that.
It’s okay to have those moments, but it’s also important when you have those moments to be able to be honest with yourself that it’s happening. Yeah. And not try to make it seem like, no, I’m perfect. This isn’t actually a mistake. Right? Like, similarly, sometimes, I don’t eat enough during the day and then I have a headache.
Sometimes I overeat on a meal ’cause it’s so delicious. But then I feel terrible after, like those are all very normal human things. It’s not about asking our kids to be perfect, it’s about asking them to be honest with themselves when they make mistakes so that they can be more aware in the future.
Larry: No I’m really glad you brought that up.
’cause I think putting thought into whatever it is you’re doing, whether it’s eating or drinking water or using your phone, has an impact on proper usage. And you’re right, there are times when either we thoughtlessly tend to abuse or overuse some things. And there are times when we deliberately choose to.
I mean, there are times when I’ve sat down to a delicious meal and knew that I would feel crappy afterwards, but it was just so good. I, and I just decided I’m gonna do it this one time. Then hopefully moderated the next day or two. Yeah. And I think the same could be true, with technology.
The other issue of course is the child’s responsibility with this device, this object, it costs money. It can break, you can lose it, it could be stolen. What about those issues? How do you talk about just taking good care of this p fairly expensive piece of property? If we’re talking about a smartphone.
Kerry: Yeah, I mean, the first advice would be on all of these devices that you buy the insurance that’s offered. Yeah, it’ll pay off. For and for yourself too. Like we all drop things and things happen. I, what I do and others can choose to do this. I tell my children exactly how much their device is costing me.
I call, I tell them, if we do, if we try, there have been times where we’ve paid for it out outright and I’ve just like made that big payment and there have been times when we’ve chosen the payment plan. Either way, I let them know, here’s what it adds up to. This is what it costs. I purchased the insurance.
In addition, if something happens to it, this will be the cost to replace it. This will be the amount of time it will take. Like you will have to bear some responsibility in that replacement. I. And so they know what’s at stake. It’s important to, to build into our students’ understanding of the world, the value of things.
So I, I don’t hesitate to tell my children exactly what things cost. And then also like we were being preventative and proactive with our approaches related to their emotions and their attention and their safety. We want to make a proactive plan with how they’re gonna keep it safe. So yeah, what’s the case that we’re going to choose together?
Where will they keep it when it’s in their backpack? Which pocket will they use to keep it in? If they’re about to do, what activities do they engage in? What sports do they play? Where do, what do they do with their friends, depending on what those activities are and. Physically what they’re doing?
Should their phone be in their pocket or should it be set aside somewhere that’s more safe? You know
Larry: When I started writing about internet safety, which goes back to the nineties, I used to tell people, keep the computer an essential part of the home. Don’t let the kids have the computer in the bedroom.
Now that advice is so. Ridiculous today because not only do can kids take their phone to their bedroom or any part of the house, they can take them with them when they’re away from home. So how do we get the kids to act responsibly with these devices when we know they’re gonna be using them when mom and dad aren’t around?
Kerry: I mean, the truth is that we can’t guarantee that our kids are going to act responsibly a hundred percent of the time, whether it involves technology or not.
Larry: You’ve already admitted that you don’t act responsibly Hundred percent of the time. I don. Right? Not all the time. As if I, yeah,
Kerry: right. Not all the time.
So I think the best that we can do is let them know clearly what our expectations are. And clearly what the consequences will be. And then if they go outside of those expectations, we follow through with the consequences that were promised. That’s, I mean, that’s parenting 1 0 1. Right? That’s what works.
And that means that they will not be happy likely if you’ve chosen the right consequences. It’s not something they’re gonna be a big fan of, and they will have to sort of. Feel the sort of pain of that accountability measure that you’ve put in place. Hopefully learn from it and move on. But if we’re surprising them with coming down hard on something that we didn’t set the expectations for ahead of time, that’s an, that’s going to be a more challenging conversation.
Yeah. So. Part of that conversation before you give them the phone is, here are my expectations. If these aren’t met, here are the consequences. Some of the expectations that I’ve put in place are like, I will always know your passcode to your phone. Not because I’m gonna snoop, but because there might be a situation in which I need it to either keep you safe, to help you with something.
Or there, or in any event to secure the phone, right? Because it is my financial investment. And so there might be some reasons that I need it that relate to that. I also have shifted the rules based on my children’s needs. So there have been times where they’ve been allowed to take them to their bedrooms even at night when they go to sleep.
And there have been times where they have not based on. A pattern of un, an unhealthy pattern that I see evolve over time and I’m like, you know what? I really need think you need to be kicked back into a healthy pattern. So we’re gonna shift this rule for now. Yeah. And of course they wanna know exactly for how long, and I’m like, until I start seeing some healthy patterns that I’ll let you know when that happens.
Larry: A big question that some parents struggle in is, should. The kids be required to allow the parent to track them through the phone. As there’s the Find My and Google Maps has a procedure where you could track people.
I personally think that there’s, it’s okay to know where your kids are, but I understand some parents, they’re very privacy conscious, not only for themselves, but for their children as well. I’m curious what your thoughts on that.
Kerry: I mean, I can tell you what we do. And it works very well for us.
I, my children can track me and I can track them locations. I don’t feel as though there is anywhere that I would be that my children shouldn’t know or be aware of. And I feel the same way about them. And my my partner, my husband feels the same way. So all four of us can track each other at all times.
I find it to be immensely helpful. For lots of reasons and lots of scenarios and, it just also ensures that sometimes I have to be at work for really long hours, for instance, and I know the family schedule is gonna be pretty complicated and there’s lots of carpools involved in getting my children where they need to go there.
It’s easy for me to track their location and make sure that they got there, and that way I’m not texting everybody and distracting them from what they’re, it’s
Larry: reassuring. And by the way, my family. Not only do my wife and I track each other or have the ability to track each other, I don’t look at it all the time, but so do our adult kids because we want the reassurance to know that everybody’s okay.
And also my kids travel a lot. I travel a lot, and it’s kind of fun to see where they are. So I’m all for that. But of course, I, and I’m sure you agree that everybody should be aware that they’re being tracked and Yes, not just surreptitiously do it because unfortunately, it’s possible to do that as well.
Kerry: Yeah, I mean, transparency is always best if there’s, if I feel like when it comes to technology use, in order for us to effectively help our kids develop healthy habits, we need to be transparent about which of our habits. Are healthy in which of our habits are unhealthy, and therefore ask them to be transparent in return.
Larry: Yeah. And that gets into other issues. You already talked about mistakes there also, kids are gonna, you are gonna test a boundary. They’re gonna do things that you might not approve of. They may go look at a content that’s inappropriate for their age. They, they may engage in some, I’m hoping they’re not bullying other kids, but they may engage in some behavior that is not as pro-social as you as a parent might approve of.
So I’m curious your thoughts. I know how I, I dealt with that when my kids were young, but I’m curious your thoughts, for example I don’t, you’ve got daughters, I don’t know if it’s come up, but if you find them going to websites that you don’t approve of,
Kerry: how do
Larry: you respond to that?
Kerry: They don’t even really have to look for it just on the streaming services that we subscribe to.
Sometimes the content that’s just kind of built into those platforms is, a little more risque or a little more violent than what I would have preferred for them to be viewing at their ages as they’ve grown up. And so it’s. As a parent, it’s impossible to control all of that. There, there will be something that they see that I wasn’t ready for them to see at some point.
And so my practice has been when I have found that to just be like, Hey, I noticed on your profile that you were watching this. Like what did you think? Like what did, when you saw it, what, first of all, why did you choose to watch it and what did you think when you watched it and. At first, it may be kind of an awkward conversation, but one of the sayings that I like to use when I work with parents is that it’s only weird if you make it weird.
If you make what our generation considers uncomfortable conversations, things that you just normally talk about in your family, it’s no longer an uncomfortable conversation. It’s also really normal for adolescents and teens to explore content that wasn’t meant for them. Yeah. That is a little more mature than than they are. That’s a normal part of their development. Helping them process it is beneficial because without your helpful modeling of how to process it, they’re going to be trying to figure out how to process it all on their own with their less mature brain.
Larry: And also, at that age it’s certainly not inappropriate to use a filter if you’re concerned about your child stumbling into or finding material that you consider to be very disturbing. We always say to, to filter their. Appropriate for younger children, but as children get into their teens, especially if they get into their older teens, you obviously need to wean them off of them because at some point you’re not gonna have any control.
You may not even have any influence. So you, the purpose is to teach them to be healthy adults as well as safe and healthy children.
Kerry: Yeah, and I agree. I think filters are the right decision for households with younger children, both on their devices and on the home network. And that filter between our children’s ears is developed because we have conversations with them about challenging topics that are sometimes awkward and tough.
That’s when we’re helping to calibrate that filter with them.
Larry: That’s right. And again, as he pointed out, it’s not gonna be perfect. There’ll be contradictions, but, more or less, most of the time the kids will do pretty well. I mean, we worry a lot and every generation worries, right? Every gen. My, my parents had a good reason to worry about me as I went off to Berkeley and with all the protests and the access to drugs and, all the things that were changing in the culture at the time.
And they were petrified. And I think for the most part, my generation came out. Okay. Your generation had some issues and I’m sure your parents had plenty of reason to worry. But I’m pretty sure you came out pretty well as well. So there is a certain degree to which I think we can take a deep breath and realize that the kids are probably gonna be all right.
Despite some of the books and headlines that we see. I.
Kerry: I can say as someone who just right before we hopped into this recording was teaching a high school class, a US History course, they’re finalizing their final projects and the work that they’re doing is phenomenal. And so I can say with confidence, not only will they be okay, they are okay as long as we demonstrate to them that we care about them and that we’re along for the ride and that we got their backs.
Larry: That’s
Kerry: really the key.
Larry: These are kids that have access to the internet. They’re kids that have access to generative ai, which a lot of people are afraid of. And those tools or devices have not, have, not given them irreparable harm at least as far as the experience that you’re reporting on.
Kerry: Yeah. And I think as long as we’re staying vigilant and those concerns are normal and healthy, let’s continue to talk about them and let’s take care of our kids together.
Larry: Well, on that note, Kerry, I wanna thank you very much for helping to launch the new season of doing Tech right, and I’m sure we’re gonna have you back a lot because you’re a great sage of many aspects of parenthood and education, and I always appreciate your wisdom on these issues.
Kerry: Thanks for the conversation, the shared stories and the great ideas tonight.
Larry: Take care.