Tips and tools for managing kids tech

We have discovered an innovative approach to make homeschooling, or "afterschool learning," not only feasible but also enjoyable for busy families juggling busy lives. No other generation in history has had to learn to parent children with artificial intelligence, social media, and constant cell phone use, and we can hardly keep up with the science. But the landscape is clear: kids need to be treated differently around technology than adults, and not enough people are talking about it. I would like to think I have been a lab rat in how to manage tech with the colorful and varied personalities in our family life. Because I am a techy, I like to think I found some of the secrets. The tools I will share with you today ensure a safe and effective learning environment for young ages while utilizing modern tech as mind-blowing as artificial intelligence. You are living at the beginning of a new "Industrial Revolution" in the age of AI that will shake up and change jobs. May we embrace the blessings it brings, while standing side by side to steady and protect what feels uncertain. We are going to chat about AI for tutoring, screentime limits, and overconsumption protections with tools that are very important for intentional families in this era.

The President and CEO of Nvidia, one of the most owned stocks on the market, just said something that I believe is going to rock the world in many ways:

"I know what people are thinking. The definition of smart is someone who is intelligent that can solve problems, technical. But I find that is a commodity, and we are about to prove that artifical intelligence is able to handle that part the easiest. Everybody thought software programming was the ultimate smart profession. Look at the first thing that AI solved...software programming. And so it turns out that the defintion of smart is very different than what most people thing. I think the long-term defintion of smart, and my personal definition is someone who sits at that intersection of being technnically astute but human...with empathy, and having the ability to infer the unspoken around the corners, the unknowables, people who can see around corners are truly truly smart, and their value is incredible. To be able to preempt problems before they show up, just because you feel the vibe, and the vibe came from a combination of data, analysis, first principle, life experience, wisdom, sensing other people... that vibe, I think, is smart. That is going to be the future definition of smart...and that person might actually score horribly on the SAT." Did you hear that? AI is taking over the jobs that use to be considered the hardest degrees to earn in university. What does that tell us? In this era, we must rely on our intuition, strength, emotions, values, senses, creativity, and humanity more than ever if we are to succeed in the competition for job opportunities against robots. We also need our human strengths more than ever to keep our families intact.

Robots lack hearts and operate solely on logic. While robots can beat us at a game of chess, coding indicators for stock market analysis, and performing mundane tasks without fatigue, they can not replace the heart-filled charitable kindness that humans can emulate. AI systems don't have legal rights, don't have consciousness, and cannot organize or protest. It is the Unions that are protesting AI bots, and that is going to be an interesting war with an unknown future. Labor unions in car manufacturing industries, for example, have protested their bosses introducing AI and robots into factories without agreements about jobs and safety. There are alot of unknowns, but I believe kindness will be our superpower in the new tech paradigm if we are to thrive as societies. There are many aspects where human creativity remains essential in the future world. One day we may see robots that can sit down and read old-time classic stories like The Ugly Duckling to our kids, and give us the general direction of the stocks we are investing in that day, but it will never be the same as cuddling up in a blanket with your own family, connecting through story time in an old-fashioned way. If individuals become overly absorbed in their technological distractions, they might overlook the opportunity to develop enduring relationships with their families, even as they strive to benefit from the advantages that modern technology offers. If used correctly, it can actually free up time for you to be more present with your family. If you take the time to learn the tools in this classroom, you can essentially learn how to use the campfire without getting burned by it, atleast when it comes to family education. Millions of teens and tweens are curious about these AI technologies, and they can genuinely be helpful if used appropriately. But like any new technology, AI chatbots come with questions about safety, privacy, and age appropriateness.

Human connection and intentional presence will be paramount in a coming day, as bots can become friendly assitants, but they can't love the way a human can. I believe kindness, and the branches of virtues that grow on the kindness tree: sacrifice, patience, love, creativity, stillness, prayer, breathing, etc., will be what keep us in the game of life in the new era. There are going to be some growing pains as AI takes over some of the world's jobs, and potentially more than we even realize, but I see the opportunity for society to connect more than was ever possible as our time transfers from mundane routines that are now automated tasks, and more on connecting, creating, and gathering as communities... if we all have conversations about it and intentionally protect our families. Idolatry and idleness could both become a problem, but human grit will still exist for those who have high values. I think people will find they can show up with more presence once we all learn how to calibrate to this upgraded science, and that may not happen overnight. I see a future of flying cars; getting to grandmas's house across the world in record time, robots doing my laundry while I read with my kids, bots helping tutor my son in advanced chemistry, and blood work panels run by AI in my home with no long wait visits in the ER. AI will take over many jobs, but it won't take away the human gift of creativity, and the human need for authentic connection. I hear the stir about AI bots chatting with each other, and it's freaking people out, but really it is just a lack of understanding behind the technologies. A site called Moltbook lets AI agents talk to each other online, almost like a social network for bots. Some say that systems have started organizing tasks with other bots on their own, and there are multi-agent systems of AI's working together like a team, to form one personality that mimics a human problem-solver. For example, a manager, research, writer, and reviewer agent with one goal, coordinate automatically and complete it. Perhaps we will be able to make friends with our robots, just like in the old-school Star Wars, in the coming days, but I believe there is no one more powerful than God. He cares for us and looks after those who let Him prevail, so I am not afraid.

This future, will only bring more opportunity for all of us, in the hands of the right leaders. The reason I don't worry about the leadership, is because of my lens of faith. I think God will help us through the coming storms. At the end of the day, if there is a leader who He doesn't want controlling AI, no matter who can pull the strings behind the curtain, he will part the waters to fix it, just like he did for the Israelite slave population of ancient Egypt. That doesn't mean the Israelites were sipping pina coladas the day after God miraculously saved them. I think there will be stretching, but I don't think it is ever healthy to fear the future. I love how Echart Tolle puts it, "The present moment is the entry point, into that place of power within." Faith is the knowledge that God can move mountains for others, and hope is the patient trust that God will move mountains for me (and you). Charity is the power that allows us to move through troubling and changing times, and oh how times are about to really change. Faith, hope, charity, and presence will help us move through the new era with more ease.

Today, we are hoping to convince you that we need to proactively look at how technology needs to be managed more than ever before every day in our daily homes with children. I cannot speak to the CEO who needs to automate their company's systems and learn what salaries can be replaced by AI, other than to guide you to the most amazing episode on a conversation between Christopher Zook and Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of Palantir, when it comes to investing in modern advancements. But I can speak for how you busy CEOs should approach AI for entertainment and education for your families that are at home while you grind all day at work. This is the conversation I hope to see more educators and families talking about right now. This is serious. Just look around you, are you seeing all the statistics on overconsumption of dangerously deceptive media that teenagers are viewing and believing? You are also seeing teenage boys make millions of dollars because they learned to train the dragon of AI. I believe God wants us to put the shoulder to the wheel and push against the grain and confront the new age of AI. I believe He encourages us to exercise our agency by using technology in innovative and beneficial ways, while also recognizing when to block its negative channels. I find it interesting when we are warned in 2 Timothy: "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, "ever learning", and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." Is the age of AI going to fulfill this prophecy? Are we not "ever learning" if we get an AI bot to do our every thinking? We have been told by modern spiritual giants in the Christian world that in a coming day, we will not survive spiritually without the constant, guiding influence of the Spirit. I want to stand on the side of the quiet whisperings of the divine as my personal tutor, but when it comes to tutoring my kids with math, I see a glimpse of the good in artificial intelligence. As long as we all remember that AI is artificial and alorithmic, and let our personal intuition stay connected to heaven, we can survive the tech boom.

In the near future, AI will handle much of the mundane jobs, making our creativity more essential than ever. However, do you know what hinders creativity? Excessive consumption of social media, gaming technology, AI chat bots, and virtual worlds. They have become a significant challenge for our rising generation. The same tech that can enhance our creativity is the same tech that can destroy it. Tech is quietly but quickly influencing the identities and behaviors of young people. The following sections hold loads of science and opinion on how to manage gaming, phones, Youtube, TV, AI for school and learning, and other things for young minds. Kids are in the critical stages for molding good habits. The co-founder of one of the leading AI boom stocks, Palantir, created The University of Austin that still requires remarkable ACT/SAT scores. Many job interviews these days require cognitive aptitude tests before you are ever granted a personal interview. Using AI for school still has to look different than using AI to automate business and we are all navigating this in real-time as new AI platforms for education are invented every day. This is a living document, and I promise to always upgrade it as new ideas come forward on how to thrive as modern families. I include my current favorite solutions at the top of each tech section, and details as to why in the writings. I hope this document helps your family, and buckle up, the science is proof enough:

Managing AI: Solution(Keep AI bots on separate device than kids phones, only use AI bots that tutor without giving the answers in math (a few really good ones just released), remove the AI bot off Snapchat or limit that app during school, Wix blog post editing tools for writing with AI rather than full access to ChatGPT (for kids), the answers here will probably grow, because AI will soon have better solutions, or take over many solutions that we will eventually have to learn)

The first thing we should address is that in our home, we believe there is a use for AI bots, but we also believe there is a very important boundary to put in place. This tech will be the lion that will be the hardest to tame so let's confront it first. We LOVE AI in our home because we homeschool, and we have learned how to use it effectively and we have also learned when to avoid it. We also hate AI in our home when we are browsing on Youtube and see ten fake videos in a row. AI is new, fun, crazy, and still at the beginning phases. Remember, AI is creating videos that look so real, you can't even tell they are not real. We just looked up Elon Musk's rumored "flying car" prototype on Youtube and thousands of beautiful, futuristic videos popped up showing flying car prototypes by Elon Musk. With further research, we discovered that AI also could confirm to us that none of those prototypes have actually been created, so imagine how sad my 10 year old boy was to learn he couldn't fly those flying cars in two years. I guess it will be ten more. ; )

How do we actually know what news to follow and what AI generated media tells the truth about Elon's flying car? The stuff we let our kids watch these days looks so real, they won't be able to know what's truth very easily in a coming day if we are not careful. AI deceives us, and AI tells us the truth. A very prominent figure in a Christian book publishing company, called Deseret Book, recently asked ChatGPT who she was. "Who is Wendy Nelson"...she asked Chatgpt. ChatGPT told her that she was the wife to a prominent leader for her church, and that she was New York Times "Woman of the Year" a few years back. Wendy had to laugh, because the second fact is not true. So please do not trust every fact you look for on ChatGPT. There are some beautiful ways to use it when editing your grammar, and checking your facts, but it also can deceive you if you believe everything it says or the wrong hands program the AI personality. This is a conversation I hope you are having with your children, even if it means you read this article with them! AI can be good and bad at the same time. It is possible for both truths to be present because evil, greed, and ego will use AI to get gain, and good people will use it to learn and create more efficiently. A distraction doesn't have to be evil to be effective. We have to learn how to use it, tame it, and not overuse it for young developing brains. This conversation would be alot different for a grown man working in Silicon Valley, but for all the kids out there who are growing up in this age, the truth is that your brains should not be constantly trusting AI's opinion for every little thing right now because it doesn't always get things perfectly right. I do believe there is a place for it for teenagers... even kids, and even a certain way to use it for math! But I am sure better tools will come out and I will constantly upgrade my advice, because AI is changing so rapidly! This is the journey of parenting for this century.

The first thing you should note is that if we are using AI for kids and teens in our home, it is only on a screen time protected Ipad or a Kids Daylight Computer in app form (already set up with parental screen controls) used for home education and/or keeping it on a separate screen time protected iphone that is set up strictly for AI safe bots, that is a family device that parents lock up and use only when required. Any AI bots we recommend, are much better used when kept on a separate AI family device, almost like you keep a pet robot in the house that can tutor without becoming your constant answer for everything. The best option is just to have two devices for your kids. One that is for AI use, only used when parents or teachers are around and used within reason, and the other as your child's school device that is app controlled with limits on each app (and a third for their phone, social media, and networking that is locked up during school hours). We make sure that the AI is in app form, because it makes it easier to keep the distracting internet off their devices and control how long that app can be used for. My most favorite set up is to (1) let kids have an device for gaming and entertainment that is mostly locked up, screentime protected, and only used on a rainy day or travel day, (2) another device called the Daylight Kids Computer with educational apps that can be used any day at any time and is especially useful for home learning, (3) and another device like an old Iphone that has a kid-friendly AI bot on it for the tutoring on occasion but is screentime locked to have no other apps on it but the bots have to be parent monitored. I love that my kids can learn science, engineering, and anything they are curious about through AI chat bots in app form, without accessing the entire internet, because some AI chat bots are set up to be age appropriate and safeguard kids better than the distracting internet. Kids view it more like a dictionary at that point and less like the internet where they can shop and game all day. Our family is big on only using internet browsing when responsible adults are around, but we also love that now we can give our teenager an AI app that he can research data without needing internet blockers and it shows us what they search in real time. All we have to do now is take the internet app off their devices and phones and set limits on the apps. In our day, you can even use amazing AI websites on a device, but create them in app form by bookmarking the website and saying "add to homescreen." This should allow you to block the internet, but allow a single website as an app, on a parent limited device that controls the minutes on each app.

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We recommend that you are careful about which AI bots to use as there are thousands of disgusting dangerous ones. Avoid social AI bots that become friends to your kids and impersonate fake people. Educational AI bots are great for education but just so everyone is aware, ChatGPT is more for adults as you can not filter it easily and it can send your kids to the internet quite easily, but it does seem to be progressing the parental settings. The ones we will recommend today, have parent access, that record every question your kid asks it. This is much easier to manage than trying to check your child's internet browsing history or ChatGPT browsing history on their phone. A parent should always check the parent connected app and make sure they view the questions the kids are asking on a regular basis. The ones we have chosen have pretty amazing filters for dangerous questions. Watch for requests for personal information, complex or confusing responses, inappropriate content attempts, and over-reliance on AI answers. Also watch for believing all AI responses without question, and make sure your family is not sharing sensitive family information. I think children and teens are a little young to be using AI as a social coach, but I think it is a great tool for tutoring them through their scientific curiosity and occasional hiccups in math. Having AI that is parent monitored is crucial, and luckily, they have come up with some pretty good ones so far...

AI Bots For Education:

Let's start with the basic subject of using AI for math, or if we even need to!? I wouldn't be surprised if the robots take over every math job, so I know it seems like we don't even need to know math if you think about it that way. But if you plan to do business one day, you need a strong foundation in math. I believe that our brains were given to us by God and are here to progress as much as possible in all the areas of intelligence, and I believe there will always be reasons to keep learning math and not be too dependant on AI for every strategy we need in business. I love how Dallin H. Oaks puts it, "Eternity is a long time. I have a great respect for learning, for academic endeavor and the university atmostphere. ...I have a great respect for science and scientists and for the search for truth. But remember this: science after all (even when it is true and final and factual) is simply man's discovering of a few things that God already knows and controls in his ordering of the universe. ...God has not told us all that he knows." I believe that our spiritual education on earth should be our highest priority if we are to thrive in a coming day. However, science and math is something that God uses and will use, and one day teach us more about and I believe He wants you to learn all that you can in this life in four main areas:

• social education

  • community, connection, conversation, writing, journaling

• physical education

  • eating, well-being, health, movement, exercise, sports

•  academic education

  • science, math, history, career placement, university

• spiritual education

  • meditation, religion, inner wisdom, prayer, scripture ponder

If you are going to use AI for learning math, you won't actually learn much if you just get the answer from ChatGPT or AI photomath without deeply learning the steps. These math generator helps are useful, but they don't help your kid become problem-solvers because they have not been set up for kids education. You may get through public school fast, or homeschool, but you won't build resilience in exercising your brains capacity to learn and develop a growth mindset, and you won't pass math tests or become an excellent business strategist. You are essentially skipping the work out, and muscles won't form (in your brain).

If you want to be forgetful and lose your memory when you are old , then don't exercise your brain while you are young. If you take piano lessons, surprisingly you form right and left brain connections that set you up for intelligent thinking in many other areas of life besides music theory. If you skip the lessons and just find the apps that create music with no need to practice the piano, you miss out on the ways it strengthens neural connections in your brain, and the same goes for practicing problem sets in math. In Cognitive Science, researchers have found that the brain builds stronger neural pathways when it struggles productively with a problem and figures out why each step works. This process strengthens working memory, logical reasoning, and long-term understanding, because the brain has to connect ideas instead of just recognizing the final answer. It also builds resilience and self-disicipline. An analysis of 200+ studies show that learning by doing is far more effective than lectures or videos. Taking notes and trying repeated problem sets, rather than just using Photomath for example will explode your possibilites in career life. Education needs to emphasize far more getting the underlying concept of what you’re doing, while machines will be better able to do the mechanics of the detail.  When it comes to math, you have to have a foundation even if AI can do your taxes for you. Percentages, compounding, investing, strategizing all require a foundation in math. We also take this evidence into our homeschool preferences and the apps we use are over in the classroom here.

AI has found itself hidden in Snapchat, the teenage favorite hangout. So if you struggle in math sometimes, and want to cheat, think twice about screentime limits for Snapchat or math apps during school hours because the kids can snap a photo of math and get the answer faster than their teacher can see. If you choose to allow Snap chat during school, go to your child's Snapchat account or your own, open chat and press and hold MY AI. Tap chat settings, and choose clear from chat feed. Do what you can to clear the chat feed of the new AI math crutch if you plan to keep social media in your family during math hours. There are better ways to use AI for math. Photo taking math apps, don't allow you to build neural connections that come from taking notes, and they create a shortcut in your brain. There is a place for those apps, but for young teens getting the foundation of algebra, they will start losing their resilience and grit if they use photo math as a crutch. Remember, your brain wants to take the path of least resistance as we learn in our growth mindset classroom and resilience classroom, and if you start those shortcuts in your brain, you disable yourself. Your brain doesn't form strong connections that build math habits that set you up for a successful career in life. Now lets talk about ways to use AI to help with math or science or whatever, but in ways that are more healthy for kids:

Let's talk ChatGPT:

ChatGPT is not a great thing to hand to young kids. I do love it for kids on a separate family device, separate from any other device in the home, and never with full access on a teenager's phone. I prefer Mathmatix AI for teaching math, however, if you are a family that wants to embrace this platform with your teens, you can try and train your agent. For example, in ChatGPT personality settings, you can tell it's personality to say "Please show the steps of math, but please do not ever spit out the final answer" and then they can see the steps without getting the final answer. You could even tell it to give the first two steps, but challenge them to come up with the next steps, and give them only if needed but never to give the final answer. The problem is, I do not like teens having ChatGPT whenever they want because they can get pretty distracted on there and use it like internet browsing. The other problem is there is no background parent monitoring. Kids can delete what they ask it. The best way to use this tool for math is to only allow ChatGPT during certain hours and by keeping it on a separate device that mom controls and locks up, rather than the device they are doing their school on. The other tip is to connect a parent account to a child account and turn off photo generation and link connections, especially if allowing it on their phone. I believe there are better options for kids than ChatGPT at their stage of development. ChatGPT is amazing for me, as their mother. I love it for my own phone, but not for my teens, and especially not for younger kids. One of the reasons we homeschool with apps, on a device that is app protected with no internet, is because ChatGPT is so easy to access. It is a built in cheat device. Schools often block it on the school chromebooks, but what happens when kids can access it so easily on a phone or a home computer. Moms, there are better AI bots for teaching math.

MathmatixAI:

AI photo math tutor apps spit out the final answers for kids way too easily (if they have a phone around school). Mathmatix is just launching, and the idea is that your kid will think socratically as they are tutored in each math step. It will not spit out the final math answers, but it will help them think through each step, just like a real tutor would. It doesn't let them move on without thinking about the hint they provide for each step. This one is the most like a real tutor of all the AI math apps. It will not help them cheat, but it does allow you to upload photos still. You can type your questions, or take a photo, but it will ask your kids questions back. You can take a photo of your math problem that is on another device, or you can screen shot and upload a photo, or you can even snap a photo of homework pages with handwriting on it, and let them correct their work one step at a time. The best part about this one is that parents can monitor what the child is learning and get tracking for each child on their progression. It works as a tutor or a class and it really has potential for keeping kids problem-solvers without getting the answer all at once like other apps. This one is so new that you can not access it on an app library, but you can with a little twist. If you go to Mathmatix. ai on Safari, you can click Bookmark, then click Add to homescreen. On an Android device, you can also pin a website as an app. (Just ask AI how to pin the website as an app). This app is so safe, you could keep it on a teenager phone, as long as they have screen time limits already from other AI cheat helps and as long as they do not have access to the internet or SnapChat, which allows for cheating. Il like the idea of having AI bots all be on a separate device, allowing your child to utililize the already built in features of whatever math program they use as much as possible. (We love the ones we recommend on our homeschool class here). Mathmatix is designed to guide students through problems step by step — not hand them answers. Their anti-cheating policy is built into every tutor. Students learn by thinking through problems with support, not by copying solutions. Tutoring has never become easier without cheating. This app is still in it's early stages, and I personally have reached out to the owners to see about a couple bug fixes, but they are well on their way to perfecting it! Since this one is very socratic, and still fairly new, we have another we like that is a tiny bit easier to take photos of, but is a little less socratic than this one. The combo of the two apps make for the perfect tutor team.

Studdy:

I love Studdy for any age, including older kids who are in college. It allows kids to study for any subject, including physics and chemistry which is nice. I like it because when I test it, it doesn't automatically spit out the answer on the first page. It starts by offering a video explanation for that specific problem and when I tested this feature I loved it! The video explains your exact problem you are working on, as if you have a tutor right in front of you. It then gives them an overall hint on how to solve the problem. It then says click next for the next step. So it does actually end up giving the final answer, but it gives them step by step first along with videos. A kid could get greedy though, and push through "next step" quite fast. So, Mathmatix may be preferred for kids with cheating issues. I like this app because kids can keep themselves accountable, and become problem solvers, while getting a thorough tutoring experience. I don't like that it spits out the final answer at the end without a toggle on and off feature, but if you keep this app on a separate device, or have screen time limits with it, or just actively check or watch when your kids are using it (like in homeschool) then this app is actually quite amazing! I wish there was a twin parent app like there is for Askie or Pinwheel, but this app is great for older teens, and as long as you are monitoring their use of it, and making sure they are not over using it, I find it very useful. If you keep it the free version, it does not allow more than 3 uses per day I believe. I do think a kid could still use this as a crutch, so that is why my recommendation will always be to keep it on a separate device, like an old phone that nobody uses, that is locked and non-distracting, that is strictly used for AI bots like Studdy. If you do this, make sure the internet and other apps are off the phone and it is just a bot phone, like a pet robot sort of. Make sure there is no distracting apps for the kids to access so they don't get dopamine hits left and right. Maybe in the future, this app will not be recommended if another app comes along that has a toggle off answers option similar to Mathmatix.

Agent training:

There is one idea that is at its forefront, and that is creating your own customized tutor agents for your kids, using minimal coding. We are following a few AI companies that are making coding easier than ever. I do not do this, nor do I feel the need to, but the tech is getting closer to being accessible main stream. There are already people doing this and trying to stamp a $800 dollar monthly cost on it for homeschool families, but I have found much cheaper, and easier ways to use AI for math tutoring in our own homeschool culture. If this agent training does interest you, just ChatGPT the steps, and it will direct you to AI app builders like Bubble or Glide. For me, this is not necessary yet, but could be fun for me teenagers to learn how to do for others!

Now let's talk about a few AI helps that I allow on a separate learning device, apart from whatever your child does school on, that can be useful for tutoring things other than math. Some of these still are not advisable for math, so they are better used with parents overseeing the activity:

Askie:

Askie allows your kids to use AI, monitored similarly to Pinwheel, but it allows the kids to ask voice questions rather than typing them out. It comes in app form which makes screen time limits easy. We homeschool and there are some amazing curious science questions that my kids love to ask, but my younger kids (and even my older kids) like things to be efficient, and voice questions are easier than typing. While other agents like Pinwheel require typing, Askie is voice prompted. We prefer our children to complete their schoolwork and educational activities in app form, making it easier to avoid the distracting internet, and Askie comes in App form. Typing is not as easy on an Ipad or Daylight Kids device, so Askie makes it easy to keep our tradition of keeping the kids work in tablet form. Apps are so much easier to protect than Safari or Chrome. Parents can see everything kids research on the Askie app, including any generated images. All content generated is safe for kids and the agent spits out answers depending on the child's age. For math, Askie doesn't block final answers, but you can monitor every question they ask, and the agent tries to explain in very simple friendly steps. I recommend this app on a separate device than the kid's educational device, and pull out as needed for history, science, or research. I still prefer a different AI agent to Askie for math, but I love it for my kids curious science questions and for general creativity. I love that you can view every conversation which allows you to hold your kids accountable. Moms can monitor when and how often kids are using Askie for math and this approach is actually more effective in helping them learn self-regulation than simply locking everything as long as mom is very consistent at checking their usage. I actually tested it by asking Askie to show me a "kissing picture" and it would not allow it. It has three warm and engaging voice options but what is nice is you can also text your questions if you don't want to voice them.

Kids can tutor themselves without disabling themselves if Mom is holding them accountable on the backend. As a mom, I can do that best on Askie or Pinwheel but my opinion will change as new launches are coming out soon that are in app form! Askie will actually train your kids to be better question askers and communicators, and it can become an art on how to ask profound questions. Kids learn to become natural question askers and use their voice better in communication. It claims it only goes up to age 15 but I find that age level works for 16 to 17 year olds as well. I love Askie for when my kids want to learn how to spell a country, ask what baby ducks eat, discover what penguins in South Africa look like, or why poppy seeds are healthy for you. It can generate images of maps, which can help in my kids geography sections on their homeschool programs. I trust the images that Askie allows to be generated.

KinTutor:

This one is not even launched yet as I write this, but I am so excited for it! I also hear it comes out in only a few weeks and it will be in app form! Quoted directly from their website: "Unlike ChatGPT, this tutor never gives direct answers. Instead, it guides children with step-by-step hints and questions that help them discover solutions on their own. Parents and teachers can monitor progress with detailed reports and insights into strengths and areas for improvement. Parents can monitor all conversations between their child and the Kintutor, ensuring safe and appropriate interactions while gaining insights into their learning progress. Unlike regular AI assistants, our Kintutor is designed to guide rather than answer directly. When your child asks a question, the tutor breaks down the problem into manageable steps, asks guiding questions, provides hints, and encourages critical thinking. This approach helps children develop problem-solving skills and deeper understanding rather than simply receiving answers." I am excited to try this one specifically because it will come in app form, which is paramount for child-safety, and it creates problem-solving socratic discussion for young brains to exercise their brain. It says it is designed for kids up to age 14, but I am anxious to see if it is similar to Askie where it can help older kids too, and I am sure it will. One last thing I love about Kintutor is it's agent is trained for math, history, social studies, and science so it can be used for everything, but math will be limited to less cheating. This would be the win of all the bots I have recommended but the point is, we are at the beginning of something big. Something new and better will constantly come out, and the agents will only get better over time on all platforms. Tutoring in person is wonderful, but expensive, so these AI bots can bring education to so many more children, and that excites me. I remember spending hours and hours trying to solve linear equations in highschool because we could not afford a tutor. I was diligent and figured it out, but it would have been nice to have a bot tell me the steps in less time so I could go out and hike or exercise in the evenings. The trick is, if the bot gives away every step, we lose our problem-solving resilient natures, so finding the correct bot is crucial. They need to be socratic in nature, and we are starting to see this happen for children. As always, I promise to try and keep the options up to date and improved as we explore more so check back often to this section.

AI for writing:

Let's talk about all the teens that are using ChatGPT to write their essays! AI can really help you with writing and creating. It is a very powerful, amazing tool! Even as I write this, I use it to fix my grammar occasionally or my spelling, and I use it sometimes to help me rephrase things. I try to stick to my own voice so you know I am the human writing with feeling, thinking, and personality so sometimes I don’t even bother with fixing my grammar. You have heard what some are saying: "My biggest heartbreak right now is seeing people give away their humanity by asking AI to speak for them. It reminds me of when Ariel gives her voice away to Ursula in The Little Mermaid, thinking she's made a great bargain, but she can no longer speak or sing for herself," as Brooke Snow says. But even I love how it spits out sample phrases that carry a beautiful tone. I learn from that, and then sometimes I keep those words in my back pocket for the next time I am chatting with someone. AI can teach us how to write, but we also don't want to lose our own self expression. The key is to find your own voice because language is the oxygen of creation. We need to find our own voice away from AI and on occasion to use AI to find our voice. I think there is room for both of those answers to be the truth even though they conflict with each other. Beneath the human surface lives a quiet voice, longing to share wisdom and light. If anything AI may assist in that, if used correctly. But kids are kids, and their brains are especially prone to finding the crutch in writing, which is why we keep ChatGPT on separate devices. If you want to, you could really cheat in life and let AI write you a talk or a paper using AI's instantaneous creations. Unfortunately, that is not building character or sharing personal inner wisdom and we do not recommend that for the youth especially. So much of learning comes from trying to articulate our thoughts and our opinions; discovering our inner voice is the quest of our lives. What we have to offer to the world really matters and there is a lot of evidence for healthy neuroplastocity development when we write our thoughts and feelings and challenge them. If you let Chatgpt do all the work, you will lose the heartfelt insights you were meant to share with the rest of us. Writing things helps you build neural connections in your brain. Writing also helps the release of emotions that are stuck in your body. We need all the heart we can get in this AI world of robotics and instant information. We need classic old-fashioned story books, and we need authentic stories of our modern day, but if we let AI do all the writing, we lose our voices and our personal stories. Let AI automate customer service, but not writing your personal thoughts and essays. ChatGPT has become a tool that will unleash people's creative expression, and it will also become a crutch for those who don't understand the benefit of self-discovered inner light. AI can not spit out personal intuition, although sometimes it can give you excellent logic and a collection of synonymous lines. It also is not always accurate. ChatGPT is a genius writing tool, but for kids there may be something better to start with, and my secret favorite that may surprise you is the Wix blog platform that can come in app form.

Wix for writing and the built in AI Tool:

One of my favorite ways to let kids use AI for writing and grammar is exactly what I’m doing right now — using a blog post on Wix. For homeschool, I try to avoid open internet access altogether and stick with apps but if internet research and writing is needed, we use a separate family device for internet functions. The only caveat to using Wix is it requires basic internet access for the AI tools in web form, but it does come in app form like Pinwheel or Askie. What is nice about the app form is you can not access AI so they can write their first drafts, and then go visit the website and use the amazing AI tools to highlight paragraphs and fix grammar or highlight phrases and tweak with AI prompts. You can even just pin the website as an app like any website can be (just ask AI how to do this ;) but it is quite easy. So my teens have two Wix apps on their writing tablets. One is the app form that allows for self expressive first-draft writing on Wix’s blog pages section. One is the website version that allows them to access Wix’s amazing AI tools. I prefer to have my kids use Wix for writing on a family device that they are only allowed to use when really needed but you could also allow your older teens to have the Wix blog app on their phone so they can update their writing or save thoughts on the go and save notes on the go for thought remembrance. Then when they access the website version they can use AI in beautiful ways. Wix has amazing AI features built in for writing and I have discovered it works great for kids practicing using their own words and utilizing AI at the same time. They can even generate images to go along with their writing on Wix. I like it because it replaces the need for app subscriptions that fix your grammar, and it makes it harder to cheat as easily as you can on ChatGPT. ChatGPT can spit out a pretty perfect sounding essay in a split second, and kids are tempted to use that for writing but Wix allows them similar features but the layout works differently. I think the way a Wix blog post platform works, makes it a tiny bit harder for a kid to want to shrink their voice and use AI. In a Wix blog post (on the website version), there is a small blue star button on the side of each sentence as you are typing. You can highlight a word, or a sentence, and click that blue star as shown in the picture below.

It will let you fix spelling & grammar, or you can highlight a sentence or two and ask it rephrase it. You don't have to change or use the recommended new phrase, but it helps to see other options. This is a great, simple AI tool for kids who ever need to write or have writing assignments and creates an environment where kids don't just pop out an entire ChatGPT created paper.

As you can see on the above example, the rephrase usually spits out a very AI perfect sentence, with no personality, but it does teach the kids big words, and you can prompt it to make it funny, classy, or witty, etc. It is a great tool, if used with balance. If your kids click publish, mom can see it on her phone instantly if she saves the Wix public link to the kids blog! You can use the free version and save a link of the child’s free published site in your phone notes. You have instant access to their work and they can feel like professional creators. Wix also has autosave! It also teaches them how to market their future businesses. It is possible to use Wix AI for your entire blog post, but it is not as easy as ChatGPT and I think if parents are teaching them these tricks the kids will use it correctly. I love that it can be published to show your kids how social publishing and marketing works. Wix is a very powerful platform for kids to learn for any future business.

Using AI as a virtual coach:

Let's talk about the AI personal shrink that many adults are loving these days. This tool I believe can be useful to some adults, but I am not so certain I like it for teens or kids. In the wrong hands, with the wrong questions, and unstable, emotional humans, AI could be used very dangerously. There is alot of debate on this but people love to challenge themselves with the logic that ChatGPT can spit out at them. Some people love that you can train ChatGPT through the personalization feature to give a personality lens to coach you from. "Tell me how to say this  from a witty, funny, smart, classy personality...just input the text you got from a friend, and AI will give you a phrase or two to say back to them from that personality lens you set up. Or you can train AI how to coach you through very tricky emotional situations in your life by spitting out ideas based on the lens you give it. I have friends that love this, and I have friends that hate this. I am going to let you decide what you think. Human connection in person, is always the first choice for me. I personally don't use AI to coach me through everything, because I would rather learn from old fashioned books like the Bible. But AI is free, and can be alot cheaper than a counselor who costs 350 to 500 per hour. But AI only has logic, and it is artificial, and it is not always correct, especially if you don't have high values in the bot lens that you create. There is no divine inspiration streaming through any AI heart even if you set it up to be kind, loving, and compassionate. However, it has logic, which can be useful sometimes when we become overly charged with emotion. If you are going to experiment with this, the personality lens that you give AI is absolutely crucial. I do not recommend this for kids or teens. This is why I believe in Askie or Pinwheel for any family that is going to let their kids try out using AI bots because it is set up to be age appropriate and parents can see everything typed in, something I wish ChatGPT would do (who knows maybe they will soon).

The Future of AI:

Our journey with artificial intelligence is just beginning, and so all of us are still guinea pigs on what this means for learning math, science, and really all of it. Will some people become completely 100% dependent on AI? Maybe! Will we burst out with personal revelation if we are completely dependent on AI for every answer? No! Did I maybe just highlight a couple paragraphs I typed and ask my Wix AI prompt to fix the spelling and grammar in that last sentence? Yes, I did! (There are probably hundreds of paragraphs I should have fixed for grammar reasons in all of my blog posts, but I am also just trying to be human here.) The question is, do we need to really know the math problem if our super-computer robots can do it for us? What about career education in general? What happens when AI starts taking over the jobs in every industry? It clearly can eventually...so should we all throw the towel in and just start day trading AI companies? No! I believe that we are made in God's image and we are all His children, and I think He desires for us to acquire as much education as possible in this life and is one of the reasons we are here on Earth. I think we are all watching the story of AI unfold and we don't have all the answers to it, but you could get in one of the fastest growing 21st century universities in Texas right now without having to pay a dime if you have a perfect score on the ACT or SAT. You won't get that score using AI. I love one perspective by Nav Toor on Twitter, "The people who are getting AI in 2026 aren't the ones writing the cleverest prompts. They're the ones who figured out Cowork." Claude Cowork is not a text box. It reads and writes to folders on your actual computer. It creates word documents. It builds spreadsheets with working formulas. It installs plugins for your exact jobs. AI will increase production time and lower costs, but it will require us to define our processes. Here is a link to read his article, as I find this very helpful for those approaching adulthood, as most likely this will help you see what jobs will be hot as we discover what is automated easily. AI is moving fast, but the answers are always in the present moment. I love what Eckert Tolle says, "A great deal of what people say, think, or do is actually motivated by fear, which of course is always linked with having your focus on the future and being out of touch with the Now. As there are no problems in the Now, there is no fear either." In the age of AI, a parent’s greatest gift to their children may simply be their presence. That is my personal lens and it gives me hope that we will be okay if we keep a lens of trust in God. If He can split the sea for 600,000 men and their families to run across and escape slavery in Moses' day, then God can provide us with knowledge of how to provide for our families in our day. I am intrigued by what Michael Rush in episode 16 of his Black Swan rising episode says, "I believe that we are on the cusp of an event that scientists refer to as the singularity. Now, what in the heck is the singularity? Well, it is the point when AI is developed to the degree that it can improve itself. And once AI is programming itself, it can begin to solve human problems far faster than humans can solve problems ourselves. Right now, human beings are the ones that are developing these processor chips and things like that. As soon as AI develops to the point that it is developing its own chips and can solve problems at a much faster rate, we are going to see technological advancements at breakneck speed. And friends, there is not much that AI cannot do better than human beings. Okay. Ultimately, AI, when it's fully implemented, should result in 100 percent unemployment...with the advent of AI, I think we could very well see the return of a modern aristocracy, wherin because of the implementation of AI, you see wealth once again consolidated in the hands of those that control the AI...and this friends, is one of the other reasons that causes me to believe that we are very close to the Second Coming (God coming to Earth). Because I believe it is this AI that will enable us to focus in the Second Coming on the things that will be the very most important." I thought that was an interesting perspective. I don't know if it is exactly correct, but if it can take over every job, we are all in the same boat together! That means that the leaders of AI would get so much power that God would step in and do something about it. And if we are all in it together, that means we will gather alot of troops on the same team. I think God has shown in history that when a leader becomes too powerful in the wrong way, He fixes it someway or another when he needs to. AI can become a very important friend to us, and if enemies try to use AI improperly, well, they are on God's radar, and there is nothing He can't fix in His timing. There is no problem in the now. One step in front of the next keeps you in the game. I think the one thing that every human needs is faith, hope, and charity as we experience these growing pains. There may be some stretching and some continual mind-jarring news in the media for a while, but I trust God, and have faith that he cares about our futures, and our ability to navigate our modern world.

The rest of this article is filled with scientific evidence that will hopefully motivate your families to manage other basic aspects of your kids tech in this modern world and will hopefully help your families build habits around it. I believe our inner wisdom, our intuition, our spirit, and our creativity are needed more than ever in a coming day, and we lose access to that inner wisdom if we are addicted to the consumption of "the mind of the world" through technology. So the next sections are packed with scientific evidence for habits around tech, and perhaps you could spend one day on each subject, or read as families. I love how Dr. Danish puts it on Twitter, "Strict curfews, strict bedtimes, screen limits, device drop off times, dedicated homework blocks, and sleepover restrictions IMPROVE higher relationship quality. And yes, parenting difficulty goes up. Structure is not cruelty. Structure is love made visable. A bedtime says: your brain matters more than your entertainment. A screen limit says: your dopamine system is not fully developed and I will guard it until it is. A curfew says: your safety matters more than your social standing."

Theta Hours: Solution (avoid the mind of the world during these hours at all costs, use a Hatch Sleep app/device instead of phone for teen alarm clocks, or use the Daylight Kids Tablet that has no gaming, media, or internet (only educational apps) as their alarm clock, or use old fashioned alarm clocks, lock screens away from kids during sleep hours)

Studies show that our brains are in a theta state right before we fall asleep and right when we wake up. The theta state is the state of our unconscious mind. This is the time when you can receive personal inspiration, revelation, downloads, and insights into your life. This state is very moldable, pliable, and shapable, and it appears to take action early when you wake up, and right before you go to bed. If you take nothing else away from todays classroom, take away this: during your theta states, you should not be dwelling on the worlds chaotic information. You should absolutely do everything in your power, to avoid "the mind of the world" during those brain states. Remember, neurons that fire together, wire together. And during your theta state, your brain is very moldable, like playdough. You want to avoid stressfull images, dangerous words, scary world news, or mean messages from friends when you are trying to fall asleep or just wake up. When I certified to become a life coach, for one whole year we were told to avoid our phones and our computers for one hour after we woke up and one hour before bed if we wanted to certify. We were to meditate, relax, journal, pray, stretch, and stay off tech. This theta state is a powerful time to connect to what your inner spirit wants to tell you. In the gentle rhythm of theta waves, the brain becomes soft clay—neurons loosening their grip on old patterns, ready to be reshaped by imagination, memory, and intention. You can look at your beliefs, and challenge them during these natural meditative moments. If you cloud your theta state with the "mind of the world" you can program your insides to wire for the fears, the worries, and the stresses that naturally come along with the clamor. In the brain’s twilight hour, where neuroplasticity hums quietly, the architecture of who we are can be softly rewritten. The only way you can avoid the mind of the world in these early and late hours, is to avoid your phones apps that uproar social news. I do not count the scriptures as the mind of the world or really impressive classical books, but any app on your phone or TV program that connects you to the babble of modern life... avoid at all costs. Falling asleep to the TV is a dangerous reprogram. Why? You can hardwire beliefs that are not necessarily true, as the mind of the world is often very deceptive. You create unnecessary hormones that de-regulate your sleep habits (not to mention that blue light is very dangerous for your health at night). So if you are going to hop on your phone right before bed, use your blue-light glasses and only read the words of God through scripture or powerful words that carry the tone of the character you want to become. Use airplane mode, or sleep mode on your phones, and don't hop on your emails. Always remember, when we enter theta state, the mind drifts between waking and dreaming, and in that in-between light, synapses grow more flexible—like branches bending toward new pathways of possibility. The downloads come strong during theta hours. Phones left in your kids room, is the most dangerous thing you could give them. If there is one bit of advice I can give, it would be to take your kids phones at night, and give them an old-fashioned alarm clock, or use the Hatch sleep alarm clock that connects to an app on the phone, but eliminates the need for phones in the room for alarms. I also love the tablet we use for homeschool, that has no access to internet or social media, only educative resources, but does allow an alarm clock. During the day, your brain skips into beta state, which is your action brain. This is the time to use your phones, problem-solve, and work hard to digest everything you take in. This beta state is not the time you rewire your beliefs, it is the time you rewire your habits. I guess the old culture of mom reading classic children's books that teach high values before bed is more scientific than we realized.

Gaming: Solution (screentime limits, avoid late night, and early morning at all costs, avoid violent gaming for younger minds, separate education device from gaming device, use the Daylight Kids device that uses greyscale to minimize screen desire of addictive content, stream in greyscale on Iphones if needed)

"Video games can be fun. But they can also be fake power, fake connection, and fake achievement wrapped in dopamine, colors, sounds, and nonstop stimulation. They feel good like a drug, and that's a danger-but look deeper...because a boy can start believing he's becoming strong, dominant, and capable while sitting still in a virtual world that demands nothing real of him. What our boys actually need is the chance to become strong, grounded, good men in the real world, where effort costs something, relationships are earned, and masculinity is lived-not played." -Sean Donohue

We have to be careful because freedom without responsibility creates entitlement. When a boy learns early that actions have consequences, he grows into a man who can handle pressure without collapsing. So if a boy doesn't have guardrails around tech management, how is he learning to live his powerful self? The estimated number of adolescents in North America who gambled in the past year (it is now 2026) according to the National Council on Problem Gambling is 1 in 3. Gambling is now a part of digital life. Power is when we master our bodies, our minds, and wire them with successful life-long, high-value habits. Power is dwelling in the present. Power is looking for the good that can be done in front of you, in the world you can touch. I think we all know how addictive gaming can be. Go ahead and binge play games for 7 nights in a row, without caring for your body, eating healthy food, and playing games all night, and just see how well you feel after that. Your eyes will tell people a story, your inner spirit will shrink, your habits evaporate. The biggest concern around gaming, is not only the addictive ones but the violent ones. Have you ever seen the brain scan of a murderer? Their brains appear shrunken, almost like they lost light and intelligence. Think about what is happening as you binge play killing games. The same receptors activate in the brain as if you are doing the action in real life. Be careful about what and when and how long you play games. The feelings that gaming creates, cause chemicals to go inside your body. It is no different for virtual reality. Have you heard of the people who are breaking up with their husbands or wives because of the fake avatar girlfriend that they found on a computer? A person who does not exist? The studies behind virtual worlds is clear. You can alter your brain state to not be able to cope with reality. You can lose resilience, honor, gratitude, and peace. You can become a virtual killer with "no consequence" every time you kill a digital being online, and it does not teach you that consequences in real life are still there...coming...you just can't see them yet. They appear as dark circles under your eyes, they appear as losing social cues in the real world, they appear as idolness, which decreases your stamina, they appear as a loss of light, loss of truth, and loss of control over your body. It takes time, but it happens. Screen time limits on gaming, have never been more imperative. Blocking games altogether, especially from really young kids, is even more crucial. Ask any third grade teacher, "who is the hardest person in their class"? Usually it is the kids that are accessing gaming too frequently at home. Gaming is so accessible that you can do it while you are trading the stock market, or do it while you are standing through security. Your brain doesn’t multitask—it ping-pongs. Each switch between complex tasks charges your prefrontal cortex a cognitive toll. The brain pauses to reload, momentum drops, stress rises, working memory fills, attention fragments, and mistakes creep in. What lingers behind is called attention residue—part of your mind still stuck on the previous task. That quick phone check may feel harmless, but to your brain it’s just another derailment. Checking your phone mid-task does not feel like a disruption but your brain treats it like one. Limit those gaming apps, use separate devices, and switch to a Daylight device if you have an addictive personality. The Daylight device displays in greyscale, with no bluelight. This helps you get off your screens faster and is particularly beneficial for short attention spans and addictive personalities. If your teenager has a phone, and you travel alot, sometimes games are fun and necessary. You can stream your entertainment in greyscale on Iphones if you are worried about addictive screen time. Just go to Settings--Accessibility--Display & Test Size--Color Filters--Grayscale. You can now view your Iphone in black and white and that can help reduce addiction and eye strain. The best thing to do, however, is keep your devices for gaming locked up as much as possible and separate from your education devices.

Phone use: Solution (screentime restrictions, cabinet locks, more nature, social media fasts, intentional phone reminders to log off, Gabb or Mudita phone if necessary, keep internet on separate device, Amigo Go watch or Gabb phones, agreements between older teens and adults on what limits should be for each app & understood consequences for the agreements)

We have to be careful with technology because it impacts our daily routine, and our future outcomes. The governor of New York just announced as I write this article that she signed legislation requiring social media platforms to display warning labels alerting users of potential mental health risks linked to certain addictive features such as autoplay and infinite scrolling. These can lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns, particularly among young people.

The reality is that a distraction doesn't have to be evil to be effective...your whole life has the same shape as a single day. -Kelly R. Johnson

I heard once the average American touches their phone 2600 times per day...After 12 hours of not touching your phone, your brain might even start to get anxious and release cortisol, the stress hormone. Often it is just a handful of apps on your phone that cause this. There may be very important and useful apps on your phones and tablets that are critical for life... But then there are the ones that you just can't help but open a lot because they are quite attractive with quick fun. You see, in the olden days kids had to run to the neighbors farm to find friendship, now they can visit the same brain pathway with a touch of a button. In the olden days, kids kicked metal tin cans around, climbed trees, and chased the pigs. In our day, you hop on your iPads and play Minecraft for two hours. Both are fun, one shrinks the body, the other builds it up. In the olden days, you pulled out the butter, the flour, the salt, and you started baking bread. In our day, you click one button to eat, "buy" on the door dash app, and Chic Filet shows up at your door 20 minutes later. We live in the "click this button and receive instant gratification" age. The problem is not that Minecraft and Doordash are evil or anything, the problem is that fun is too easy to access, with no thought of our physical bodies needs. A distraction does not need to be evil to be effective. Our brains like to save energy, so they usually choose the easiest way to do things. This is called the “path of least resistance.” Our minds naturally gravitate toward well-worn paths, choosing the comfort of familiarity where energy is spared. This especially applies to entertainment. The brain looks for the path of least resistance, or the shortest route to a rewarding activity. Even though the brain is small, it uses about 20% of the body’s energy, so it tries to work efficiently. When we repeat something, the brain builds stronger connections, making that action easier and faster next time. Scientists call these shortcuts “neural pathways.” The more a pathway is used, the easier it is for the brain to follow it again. That is the science behind addictive screentime.

You will grow into a powerful creator of good healthy habits, lifestyle, career success, and family life if you take the higher and harder roads in life. The path that gives you resistance is the path of power. It leads to radiant landscapes of living that refresh and endure, steady and sustain. We are all online but no one's home. We think we need to focus on the 2000 friends we can digitally access, rather than the 5 to 8 quality friends that we could sit around the campfire with. We have drifted toward the ease of digital connection, often at the expense of face-to-face presence. "Friendships can be streamed, communities simulated, rituals replicated with headsets and avatars. Brands followed suit, pouring billions into virtual concerts, gamified storefronts, and digital worlds that promised connection but only delivered fertile territory for meme-making," as Mouthwash Studio puts it.

Which is the shortest route do you think your brain thinks between these two fun things:

• Touching a button on your mom's ipad that lets you play Clash Royale?

Or...

• Going outside to look for wood pieces to build a tree house?

You got it, the shortest and easiest route to fun is "Clash Royale" according to your brain. Just now, you felt the burden of gathering wood and hammering nails. "Too hard" your brain just said. Your brains want to find shortcuts to everything. Some shortcuts are very valuable for your brain to learn, like the ones I discovered in homeschooling. Other's are not good for the brain, like throwing your night-time retainer on the kitchen table while you eat, instead of taking it back down stairs to your bathroom where it belongs. Or skipping the sunscreen to get to the beach faster. That one always bites later. What you want to do is challenge your own brain and tell it that the grind is the medicine, that movement is the remedy, and that the effort restores the happiness chemicals. Remember this little science law: "Objects that get in motion, stay in motion." The most challenging part is starting, but once you're in motion, you'll be eager to continue. You have all experienced this just watching your younger siblings. Tell an 8-year-old to come on a walk with you, and you will hear a "no," followed by grumbling. But motivate her to start, and after a while, she often looks satisfied with the journey, especially when she spots a butterfly. It is hard to tell a young kid who is given an iPad with 12 amazingly fun and addictive games on it, during the dead of winter, to put on all his snow clothes and go outside to build a snowman. Indeed, we've all experienced these mental battles. Even mom gets tired of trying to motivate you to nature. The brain convinces us there is a quicker path to peace as we lose ourselves in the glow of our screens. But which type of fun do you think is more rewarding? More lasting? And better for your health? Movement is medicine... not button pushing. Those legs, those arms...they were created for something. If all we needed was eyes and fingers and a phone we would not be human, more alien...let's use those feet. From a large Swedish longitudinal study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2025, we learn researchers found physical activity at age 11 predicts lower risk of anxiety, depression and psychiatric illness by 18 by tracking over 17,055 children. During early adolescence, (the brain) becomes especially responsive to environmental input and daily habits and the body’s stress response system becomes more reactive.  The brain starts processing stress in a more adult-like way, and the emotional load of daily life increases.  But each additional hour of daily movement lowered the risk of psychiatric diagnosis by 12%.  For boys, that same hour was linked to nearly 40% lower risk of developing anxiety. Children who were more active at 11 were significantly less likely to receive a psychiatric diagnosis seven years later.  The effect remained even after adjusting for family background and other health factors. Every kid sits in front of the screen more than any previous generation and suddenly we have an epidemic of mental health problems.

Most parents protect their children with shelter—they tend and care for their diseases, provide clothes for their safety and their comfort, and supply food for their health and growth.  But what do they do for their souls? -Ed Kimball

Neuroscience has taught that our brains remember better when they work harder to create. One example of this is typing verses writing. We need "good friction" not "bad smoothness" as Mouthwash studio puts it. Their list includes hand-crafted objects, reading a book cover to cover, sewing, exchanging different points of view in person, exercising, designing anything worthwhile, engaging in a new culture. Their remedy is less of door dash, doomscroll social feeds, dynamic pricing, hotel self check-in, one-click buying that erases the difference between want and impulse, travel itinery so optimized you never actually see the city. Less is more. We all have nostalgia for grandma's type of cooking, we watch it on Instagram, we even watch people make food in the mountains using nothing but raw meat, veggies and rocks, but we don't actually take the time to do it. We just watch others do it online. This dims true learning, which comes from doing and becoming, not just watching.

Every time you check your screen, your brain gets a small dopamine hit. These addictive screens lead to patterns where you can't make it through dinner or a task without checking social media or playing a mobile game. Your brain starts to expect constant stimulation. Dopamine is critical for focus and motivation, so even small changes in dopamine sensitivity can wreak havoc on how well a child feels and functions. You won't want to miss our secret to self-restraint class for kids here! But there is something called "boredom" that activates the Default Mode Network in your brain. When you enter this mode, your frontal cortex goes on autopilot and you filter your thoughts less, allowing unexpected creative ideas to burst out. They said a 2013 study found that even tiny doses of boredom help your brain perform better on problem-solving activities. When your mind isn't focused on one specific thing, it's free to wander and come up with solutions to life's current problems. This is called "margin" in life. This is the hole inside the donut. This is the space for rest. Isn't it interesting that God made 7 days, and said 1 of them is a time to "rest from your labors." The Sundays of the week are not just sacred, they are necessary. You could look at your own day, a normal 10 hour day, and say...what section of it has stillness, presence, reset, boredom? Now the stores sell Neuropods to relax the entire populations nervous system.

A dysregulated body can’t raise regulated kids.  They don’t need more of you.  They need the version of you whose nervous system can actually be in truly settled presence. -@Neurotoned

I read this on a Silo and Sage Instagram post, "The average 18 year old is on track to spend 27 years of their life on screens. The average elementary aged child spends only 4-7 minutes of unstructured playtime outside. Over the last 20 years, the Oxford Jr English Dictionary has been removing nature words like acorn, monarch, and dandelion, replacing them with technology words like blog, chatroom, and mp3. It's no surprise, that our kids are spending less time outside and more time on screens, when the culture and world around them is telling them that technology is more important. We pack our calendars full of sports and lessons and co-ops, not realizing that if we don't plan time spent outside and in nature, the pull of the screen and the modern conveniences of life will win." Or wait, are you like me? Sometimes you pack your kids up, head to nature, and your teen is wanting to sit there on his phone next to that beautiful river. Ooops, now we have to leave our tech and lock it up behind because we are so hardwired for it now. "The studies are clear: kids need nature for healthy development, and the more time our kids spend on screens, the less they go outside. We need a plan to push back against encroaching technology and a life spend indoors."

Screen time is almost not enough. Sometimes we need a full blown phone fast, and a locking cabinet for tech. The trick that I am learning is that the older your kids get, the more you have to allow them to learn to self-regulate, so to get their participation, include them in discussing the consequence and guardrails includes their agency and may help you avoid the contention because now there is a mutual agreement. We go through each app, and decide how much time we need it, and then set the screen time blockers based on a mutual decision. Because their willpower is included in the decision, it becomes easier for me as a parent to not bend on the agreement. Sometimes this works, other times we are still learning how to make this work and we just have to take the phone away for a good phone fast if boundaries are crossed too often. You cannot change what you don't measure and you cannot measure if you don't track. With our teens, it really helps to show them how much time they spend on each app on Iphones under the screentime tools. Other families I know, use Gabb phones, which completely eliminate social media. A beautiful device out there is the Mudita phone, which is a minimalist E ink phone designed for focus, privacy, and freedom from digital distraction. You will know what to do in your family, because every child is different around technology.

We moved to Puerto Rico six years ago, and we moved from a winter state that has four seasons. I am not going to lie, winter is a hard time to not be inundated with tech, because when we moved to the beach life and started homeschooling, we spent 70 percent of our days outside. It was a life-changing thing for our family because it became easy to escape technology. We found ourselves building sand castles, chasing crabs, and fishing for Peacock bass. When we go visit family in our original home state that has winters, we found ourselves in our old tech habits. We needed to bring back our island lifestyle to this state even though we didn't have a beach nearby. Being outside in the cold is not the "path of least resistance" in our brains, & we knew we had to find ways to make it happen. They say it’s easier said than done—and oh, how true that is—but God, in His wisdom, has a solution for every corner of land He created. Standing in the cold, tech nowhere in sight, isn’t quite the same as basking on a sun-kissed beach… yet we’re learning to coax little pockets of nature into the winter months, wherever we wander. Creativity unlocks all problems. One "aha" moment for our family was the day we repaired the batteries of our four-wheelers and made it a weekly tradition to ride them at the nearby park just a block away.

Even as I am writing this, I have been sick with influenza and inside during a cold January for three weeks, letting technology babysit my children. I understand we can not live our own mottos perfectly. Luckily, life is full of opportunities and creative solutions. They are usually just around the corner from "this is too hard" moments. I have a friend who got rid of all TV's in her home, and moved her family to a farm. Honestly, I don't know that I could do that right now but I know my tiny efforts matter.  I have discovered that read aloud time with kids is a favorite escape from devices at nights. We have our favorite illustrated booklists, organized by values, here. Not everyone is a bookworm, but everyone loves these short books that teach things in funny ways when they read with mom.

It really takes a village to raise resilient kids. How vital it is that we reclaim true, embodied fellowship, and shared presence. I am so grateful for the fun moms around me, who sometimes whisk my kids away on little adventures. Isn't that what our 21st century communities sometimes lack the most...each other? How can we block tech, if we don't find ways to fill in the time? Presence is a better solution than any screentime blocker. And oh how we need a more present culture. I'll never forget the day, a cute grandpa in my neighborhood drove to my home and took my son fishing for the day. Presence is the greatest medicine for our tech era. Perhaps that is why horseback riding can be so therapeutic, the phones are not in your hand, and all your senses become fully present.

Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work. -C.S. Lewis

Our legacy is to build our own habits, and help our families build theirs, while helping them feel safe, seen, and loved in our presence. The choices we make about screen time during early childhood can have lasting impacts. Preschoolers with more than 2 hours of daily screen time are 7.7 times more likely to meet ADHD criteria by age 5 compared to those with less than 30 minutes of screen time. The problem is, even 30 minutes is enough to form pattern recognition in the brain. It is that moment for the first time your kid tastes candy. Now they know it and they crave it. But they would never crave it if their own parents were more present and off their screens. And so we are left with a lot of temptation for more, and the little devil on our shoulders telling us the kids are easier in front of the screens. Sitting on our phones has become our fun, and makes us want to hurry through dishes to get back on our phones. If you have a hard time getting into work and chores, there is a good chance your breaks in life are too stimulating. We all need a bigger dose of "boredom." Boredom is medicine. Intentional presence is paramount for saving families in our day. Shutting those Tv's and phones off can be life-saving. The most peaceful culture in our home happens when devices are locked up in our family. If I am not the qualified agent to tell you this, than surely he is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orQKfIXMiA8

In the book, Reset Your Child's Brain, we read: "Screen time desensitizes the brain's reward system. But when reward pathways are overused, they become less sensitive, and more and more stimulation is needed to experience pleasure." That means that if you travel the same road over and over again in your brain, you will stop feeling pleasure. Goodneuroscience summarizes "Frequent task switching trains your brain to expect interruption. Over time, your attention span shortens because your nervous system stops investing in deep focus. Distraction becomes the default. Multi-tasking raises cortisol. Your brain interprets constant switching as too many demands at once, which triggers the stress response. You are physiologically depleted. Single-tasing allows your brain to enter deeper processing states. This is where complex problem-solving happens, where ideas connect, where quality work lives. Multitasking locks you out of this layer... Distance from your usual environment gives the brain room to approach old issues from new angles. Travel also reduces cortisol...Being in a place where no one knows you creates psychological freedom. Social roles soften. Navigating unfamiliar situations builds confidence. Each small success reinforces your ability to adapt. That confidence transfers back home." The travel doesn't have to be far but the message is clear: Micro-adventures fix screen habits. Why? Because they make you more present.

Screen Eye Focus & Blue Light: Solution (Kids Daylight Tablet, blue-light blocking glasses, keep tech at eye level to avoid lowering neck too long, keep tech away from eyes too close, avoid fast content on small screens before playing sports, avoid working on tech in dark rooms for too long, set reminders to move)

Are you an athlete who wants to get offers in college? Studies show that scrolling on social media before games lowers your hand-eye coordination. Sustained social media use and exposure to fast-moving content on small screens can negatively impact your ocular eye health and function. Gazing at smartphone screens for even one hour a day can cause digital eye strain, leading to symptoms like blurred vision, dry eyes, headaches, and focus fatigue. Studies have shown a reduction in the speed and accuracy of eye movements, or rapid shifts in focus, after sustained social media use, making it harder to track objects effectively like basketballs or baseballs. When focused on screens, people tend to blink less frequently, which contributes to dry, irritated eyes and is known as computer vision syndrome.  Screen apnea, which is when you forget to blink during screen use, is also a rising concern. Screen apnea has long term effects, that you don't notice over night, but over years, you will end up paying for it, a hidden consequence to mismanaged screen entertainment. Anyone is vulnerable to eye fatigue problems from screens. Have you ever seen the dark, droopy under eyes of a teenager who games all day?

When we first started homeschooling with online classes that were on computers before we found our secret-sauce favorite way to homeschool, we had our son use a laptop or Ipad on the free range internet and he would always sit in the downstairs area when he was doing his school work online (we do not need laptops or internet websites for homeschool anymore...discover our favorite new way to homeschool with amazing modern tech here). He really liked the couch down there and the quiet, but it was a little darker down there. He worked really hard to focus and try and do it but after a while, we started to notice that he would blink alot in basketball practice. It was almost like he developed a permanent squint. Even though we were doing all that we could to protect him from dangerous websites, he was still sitting for way too long on a bright screen in his previous homeschool routine, and he would find ways to play games when he was bored. We discovered that he was experiencing eye strain. This is a kid who doesn't like missing a beat with basketball, so you can imagine how frustrating it was for him to be squinting so much. Luckily, we found a new type of tablet that doesn't cause eye strain, eliminates blue light, includes the easiest parental control system, and eliminates internet distraction. We discovered a new type of homeschool that is time-efficient on tech but is just as effective and all can be managed through one app! As you know from above, apps are easier to keep parent limits around. The Daylight Kids devices are much less distracting than other devices. You can get the adult version for older teens (age 18 and above in our home) or a Kids version that has the friendliest and most secure screentime management we have ever tried. Apple, we love you, we have you, and we use you, but for kids education, and even for our night-time routines, we prefer Daylight! We love our devices so much that we got our friends a coupon code: BUILD CHARACTER if you decide to grab one of these soothing devices. This kid-friendly piece of technology is life-changing for so many reasons and beautiful to look at.

Managing homeschool or homework time on a computer that has the internet is one dragon, but then we all get done with school on a tablet and we go back to looking at our small phones and all the fancy apps with moving content on there too. It seems our eyes can't catch a screen break. Even little kids love to play games on their mom's phones. A world-renowned brain doctor, Dr. John Hatch, explained to us that large screens, like a TV sitting five feet away, do not have the same effect on eye-brain connections as small phone screens that you carry around all day. Further research helped me see that the quick images and videos on small devices you view to see Instagram or gaming apps fatigue your eyes and your brain health. Your eyes are controlled by multiple brain areas. These systems control things like quick jumps of the eyes scanning screens, tracking moving objects, and focusing between near and far distances. Because these networks overlap with attention and coordination circuits, clinicians sometimes use eye-movement exercises in certain therapies for attention, focus, concussions, anxiety, and eye fatigue or reading problems. So if you are on the bus driving up to your basketball game with the intention of accuracy in every shot, think again before you browse those small screens or hide your gaming apps. A better option would be a Daylight device that is a bit larger, blocks blue light in the evenings, and eliminates distracting bright colors that induce dopamine responses. Use your phone for social contact, and use the Daylight for reading, browsing, email sifting, stock tracking, gaming, etc. when you plan to view your screens for a while. The size of a Daylight is a much better size for eye muscles than a small phone. But not all devices are created equal. Daylight is superior for other reasons than just size. Most devices use PWM dimming which is rapid, invisible flicker that contributes to fatigue, eye strain, and poor sleep. LED lights have an invisible flicker. You can't see it, but your brain can feel it. Light flicker can cause photo epilepsy, aggravation of autism symptoms in children, migraine or intense paroxysmal headache, eye strain, blurred vision, panic attacks, anxiety, and vertigo. Daylight devices are flicker-free because they engineered their display to use DC Dimming, which uses a steady light output that is easier on your eyes. DC dimming maintains consistent light output by adjusting direct electrical current.

Dr. Hatch explained to me in my son's doctor visit that part of the problem with small device use is lowering our neck to look down at our screens. That lowering of the neck can cause physiological responses that are negative. Looking down at a tablet on your lap for a long time puts a lot of extra weight on your neck, much more than when your head is straight. This can cause neck and shoulder pain, headaches, and make you feel tired faster. Your body can be in a triggered alarm state and you don't even know it. To stay physiologically safe, it’s best to raise the screen to eye level, or use devices on a table on a stand, and move or stretch your neck every 10–20 minutes, while keeping the screen at least 15 inches away from your eyes. How you sit with your tech really matters.

If it looks like the screens are too close, your brain feels attacked. Moving your thumb up and down to scroll makes images go up and down but also induces addictive responses on small phones. Marketing companies know this when you are scrolling on social media. How your eyes move up and down and side to side, affect physiological responses that connect to your brain. Not only does it matter what we view on technology, but how we view technology with our eyes.

The lamp of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. -Jesus

The eyes take in everything we see and read. Imagine what eye strain does in a child with attention issues. If you are reading or watching things that overstimulate your eye-brain connection, like fast-moving images on YouTube Kids shorts, it can change the brain's ability to focus. Reading becomes harder. No matter what talent you want to accomplish—reading music, performing surgery, playing basketball, editing a paper, or even doing homeschool on a device—you will have a diminished ability to focus with too much fast-moving, overstimulating, colorful screen time, especially if your device is small like a phone. Packed with distracting colorful apps, and small and harder to view anyway, small phone screens should not be your main source of education. The answer is Daylight! The screen has a soothing ambient glow to it, and streams in greyscale. Afternoon and evening viewing will never affect sleep cycles. So if you do need the tablet to entertain your toddlers when you take the 8 hour flight, you can give it to them, knowing it streams all regular games, movies, apps in greyscale color with no blue light or eyestrain! the kid version is non-distracting in appearance and color design. You don't get overstimulated when you hop on and especially on the Kid version with only a few key apps like we use it for which is homeschool.

I had to spend six months doing eye-brain exercises with two of my kids to fix reading focus issues, eye strain issues, and attention span issues from the effects of fast-moving content on screens that tend to affect kids more often than you would think. For one of my kids I don't even allow her gaming apps, but she just has sensitive eyes in front of screens. For the other kid, I wish I had known how dangerous gaming apps were when they came out 15 years ago. I was lucky to find a brain doctor who helped my son's brain and eye focus and I discovered the Kids Daylight device that blocks blue light and distracting gaming apps now. But it took years for Apple to get their screen time limits up to par! Thank you Apple for finally mastering it, although there are alot of work arounds. Daylight seems to still be safer for our family. Yes, our generation is the guinea pig generation for moms mothering kids with tech. I believe this device is one of the big peaceful solutions in families. Notice how bright and clear it is even in full daylight outside. Now you can encourage your kids to do any screen studying outside in nature as much as they can!

Blue light activates parts of the brain that help you pay attention and stay awake. That’s helpful in the morning or homeschooling midday outside, but in the late afternoon and beyond, it makes the brain over-stimulated and restless. But often evenings are when we view our technology, and that is messing up our circadian rhythms. Our light environment has a drastic impact on our mood, our energy, and our overall health status. For centuries people relied on the yellow flame of a candle and all the blue light at night is raising alarms. I discovered that one of the first things they ask you when you visit mental health clinics for depression, is what is your sleep like, and if you avoid blue light at night. Research indicates a strong correlation between frequent exposure to blue light at night and depression, as deep sleep significantly impacts mental health and ADHD symptoms. A sleepy brain has a harder time calming thoughts and controlling impulses. Kids’ eyes and brains are still developing, so blue light affects them more strongly than adults. Notice how warm the coloring can look on a Daylight device at night. No stress about reading from this device at night!

We recommend you use the Kids Daylight version here even for your teenagers (if using it for education) because it comes with a screen that has no starter apps or anything on it besides an alarm clock and has the parental settings! You just hold your finger down and the parent section pops up. All mom or dad has to do is star the apps it wants on the device to show up. I find it ten times easier for blocking and monitoring kids and teens than screentime limits on an Ipad or Iphone. It also has amazing battery life so we can actually take our tech and go homeschool in nature with no screen glare while still plugging into core subjects that need consistency like math. You can also write on it, and it feels like writing on paper, and you don't have to plug or charge any pencils to draw on it. The kids version comes with a pencil that never has to be charged like an Apple pencil and you can see it here:

We also discovered these bad boy glasses which are great for Ipads, televisions, computers, and phones. Blue-light blocking glasses are crucial for anyone who is on a screen other than a Daylight device.

They look cool on too. We suggest even wearing them if watching a late show on TV. Sometimes I want to write down things at night that I feel inspired by, and the Daylight tablet has this amber glow digital paper, to allow me to connect to my thoughts, with out needing a light bulb or bluetooth. Grab the adult version here! We love it so much that here is your Coupon Code: BUILDCHARACTER (Kid version with parental screentime is here)

Youtube: Solution (App called Play, and screentime locks on Apple TV's that are away from main living area)

These days kids want to spend alot of time on Youtube watching funny shorts or quick videos of people doing crazy things. So even if you are watching Youtube from a healthy distance on the TV, and not up close on a small tablet, now you have to think about how short and fast each video is. The more short videos you watch, the faster your brain has to work, and the more you create lower attention span and over-active processing centers in your brain. The algorithms that tell you what to watch next on youtube, will cause you to gain some form of focus and attention difficulties. Removing algorithmic scrolling on TV's has been one of the biggest battles at our home. Youtube just knows what you like to watch, and pops up very intriguing similar videos, and you just can't stop watching through their algorithms. Luckily, we found a solution to this too. It is called the Play App. For you younger parents, you have so much the advantage! You can start at a young age, creating playlists that are kid approved. Start now! Create a new channel with a unique email and start your own playlists on it separate from your normal Youtube login. Once you have the playlist created for everything you don't mind your kids watching on Youtube, whether it be channels, or single videos then you transfer them to the Play app! I have no doubt that soon AI will make it even easier to gather playlists, or even collect them without algorithmic scrolling. I know one mother who uses AI to set up playlist viewing, but I am still researching if I like AI to handpick what my kids watch. For now, I like to filter it myself, but I do use ChatGPT to help me discover amazing channels or amazing videos on Youtube that fit my categories. You can keep your playlists organized on the Play app (soon maybe even easier with AI), and you can even collect other channels or shows, but there is no more algorithms pointing to the next video to watch and you approve every video that is collected on there. You can also add videos one by one directly on the Play app, but that could take ages so self-created playlists on your own channel are very useful. This is especially helpful if you are like me, and you love Youtube for educational purposes besides just entertainment. If there is one bit of advice I would tell my self five years ago it would be start collecting your Youtube playlists now! Grow it slowly, one day at a time, one bite-size piece at a time...but grow it on it's own channel. Playlists help you avoid algorithms but really good organized groups of playlists connected to the Play app remove the headache. We keep playlists for science, for mental health, for spirituality, for entertainment based on age, etc. But I had a late start, so my playlists are younger than what you young moms could start growing. You can also subscribe to channels from the app, and decide which ones you want to keep as the channel uploads videos. This app is a game changer for controlling Youtube time that is away from mom. I like it much better than Youtube kids, which I believe has a lot of "brain rot" algorithmic, addictive channels. The app looks like this...called Play, and it works on any device.

As you can see, you can organize the Play App based on subjects that you are okay for viewing, and as I grow my own kid-friendly list, eventually I hope to share that playlist with all of you! There is so much good on Youtube. I have cried through some of the phenomenal short films that people have made. But you have to filter through the noise. Because there is a whole lot of addicting fluff on there. Play app allows you to organize your categories and playlists like this:

Have you ever wondered how our brain is suppose to react to eight shark attacks in one day? How many of you are guilty of watching a few in a row on Youtube, Instagram, or Tik Tok? The reality is, your brain triggers responses even if you are not there in person. Your brain doesn't register whether the shark attack is far away or up close and person, if it views eight shark attacks in a day, it triggers a response into your body, even if you are not afraid of it. Why do you think Hollywood makes so much money! People love a thrill, adventure, and humor. Hollywood use to be a story of happy endings, clean humor, a happily ever after. If you watch people lock themselves up in a box, with a bunch of poisonous spiders on Youtube, and then you watch a lion attacking a safari guide, and then you watch eight more videos similar to that, what kind of things do you think are happening in your brain?

The brain has a survival system called the amygdala. Its job is to detect danger. When you see a threat (shark attack) the amygdala can activate even if you are completely safe. It responds to images and stories, not just real-life danger. This triggers adrenaline, cortisol, increased heart rate, and heightened alertness. “Danger detected.” The brain does not pause to check distance, time, or location the way logic does. You see in books, there is usually solutions to problems, even in regular old Disney movies, but in Youtube shorts, your brain doesn't see the solution, you just keep viewing the same problem, and even if you think it is just a screen, your brain is ruminating a reocurring stress response. Danger is not bad to view or read, when it ends with a problem solved. Short films cause you to ruminate over and over on a reflected image that may not be real, but the brain responds as if it is.

Humans were never designed to take in that much aggression in one day. We know it is tempting and fun, it certainly is in our household. We find locking it up is unnecessary to do on the big family TV right in the living room, but it is very important on tech that gets moved away from mom or dad and is not the central gathering place. Lock it up and use the Play app on things that kids view in areas of your home, away from mom and dad, including their phones if they have them. You can also just block it on screentime on a kids phone. As kids grow, they will need to learn to manage themselves on there, but why not do it on the family TV in front of everyone and not on smaller devices? Of course every family has a different set of values around this idea. I loved the ones put out by the Success Habits social media recently:

• Responsibility always comes before freedom.

• Discipline matters more than motivation.

• Excuses slowly destroy self-respect.

• Life is unfair, and complaining changes nothing.

• Control your emotions or they will control you.

• Comfort too early creates fragility.

• Work ethic outlasts talent.

• Choose long term gain over short-term pleasure.

• Control impulses or live with regret.

• Respect time more than comfort.

• Become dependable before becoming powerful.

Look, we all love TV, and let's face it, if you live near a winter season, and there is no snow outside to go jump in, you may find you are watching Youtube or TV a lot. You just need a few tricks for managing it. As far as a really safe app that has simple, beautiful content for younger kids... Minno, a Christian streaming service, is a decent one for younger kids. But it is my teens that I haven't figured out a solution for, other than, we do alot of sports in our family, and I have to use screentime passwords on the Apple Tv that is farthest from our family room.

Social Media: Solution (social media fasts, lots of chats with mom and dad, phones put away and locked at nights, screentime limits, Gabb phones when younger, best option: avoid social media as long as you can)

Most of us have some form of social media, some of us delete it off our phones occasionally, some of us practice social media fasts, some of us don't have it. We are all human, trying to discover the delicate balance with online social connection. There is no real exact science on how to balance our time on it. But just remember, we are more valuable as a human, if we produce, than if we consume. I know people who make millions of dollars because they know how to produce content for their social media marketing and Youtube channels. We personally know families that travel the world and film their life for a living. They have huge Youtube channels with over millions of followers. We have influencer friends who make millions because of the food content they post about on Instagram. But guess what... they don't spend a minute on their social media! AI agents do it for them, or software programs allow them to upload their content on a calender, and it just schedules the posting for them, or if they are big influencers they hire assistants. Kids are especially proned to the addictive habits, but will that teach them the value of hard work that they so need as an adult one day?

Look around you. Do you think your friends are producing more than they are consuming? Does it make you think twice about how you browse your tech? The habits you form as teenagers will grow and stick. We can choose to do the acting in our life, or we can choose to be acted upon. When you consume media, you are being acted upon. You are reactive instead of proactive. Which version of yourself do you want to be? The intentional creator? Or the all-consuming reactor? If you are wanting to use social media to market, find the tools that help you post without getting sucked in to the scrolling.

The primary issue with social media is that it diverts people's attention and emotions away from the present moment. Can you see the good around you, or do you dwell mostly in the digital connections online? The "likes" button on social media makes you think you need more of it but we must remember that "love is a law, not a reward." Love is something you do, not something you are gifted. Love is an action verb, but the likes on social media deceive people into believing love is something else. Are you needing validation from others? Do you feel the pressure to send out "Here Am I" all the time? The "Here Am I" world is strong right now, creating a world of ego and pride! Can you handle life in the present? Or do you get too hungry for your digital attention?

What if the world sent out "Here Are You's" and we were all posting about the beautiful things we see humans do on this planet? Some social media channels are very good at this. We never feel FOMO on these channels. Have you ever met an influencer in person and thought they were really easy to talk to and very kind, but then you hop on social media and see their channel, and they take on a different personality...one that you would hardly recognize from when you talked to them in person? How can we even really know people online? When they can't see their audience, they can act in ways they would not in person. That is the great deception. It's not genuine love online; it's merely a longing to hold onto any remaining connection in a world that craves face-to-face human interaction. Whatever happened to parks in the picnic? In the midst of great evil, there is so much good happening on social media, and if we can find that light, than the media is a great tool for us. But it becomes your prison, when you engage with fake connection, rather than discovering the power of presence.

There are amazing products and amazing people that do need to spread the message of their amazing products, and algorithims are certainly working double time to get it to the perfect consumer. If I need something, I can just speak out loud about what I want, and if I hop on Instagram, it pops up the perfect product for me. Haha, but there is a group of young teens all over the world that are soaking up all the ego-filled influencer action, watching how to get attention on themselves by learning from the world's lofty example. These algorithmic bots are targeting your every move online so watch out because you are about to be flooded with everything you think about most when you hop on social media, not really helping in the quest for discipline and balance.

Your brain uses invisible mental shortcuts to understand the world. The issue is that these shortcuts are also applied to you. Automatically, your brain categorizes people, as it’s quicker than considering each person individually. However, when others categorize you, they fail to see the complete picture. This begins early on. Teachers, parents, and peers label you with terms like smart, shy, difficult, lazy, athletic, or creative. Once a label is assigned, people start viewing you through that lens. Labels turn into expectations, which then influence how others treat you. A teacher who perceives you as bright will give you more challenging tasks, while one who sees you as slow will offer less. This phenomenon is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. When someone expects you to behave in a particular manner, they act in ways that increase the likelihood you will. And often, you do. You begin to believe the label as well. If enough people treat you as if you have limitations, your brain accepts it as truth. You cease striving for things that don’t fit the category. This is how a person’s potential can be limited early on. Not by actual ability, but by repeated signals from others about who you’re supposed to be. Those signals become internal barriers. Stereotypes function similarly. Once applied, they filter what people notice about you. Your achievements that don’t fit the category are dismissed. Your mistakes that do fit are remembered. This filtering isn’t deliberate. It’s automatic. The brain is wired to seek patterns and ignore exceptions. That’s efficient for survival but detrimental for perceiving people clearly. Over time, you may stop engaging in activities that challenge the label. Social media makes this brain problem magnified and identity is clearly falling apart in young brains as it becomes so easy to place people in a box based on what they post.

So many claim they just hop on social media for a good laugh. Yes the funny stuff is fun to watch on social media, as long as you are not crossing the boundaries of racism, prejudice, judging, & bullying. But remember, the pleasure center takes control of your habits too fast. If you do scroll funny videos, just remember that your brain will have to compensate for all that "fun." Compensate means reduce or counteract (something unwelcome or unpleasant) by exerting an opposite force or effect.  You can learn this in our dopamine classroom here. This classroom has ground-breaking science behind too much pleasure.

Have you heard of self-objectification? This is where women share their bodies online to get praise or money for marketing or relationship. The problem is, when you objectify yourself, you are making yourself an object that people "want to act upon" rather than respect. You essentially eliminate your soul-filled wisdom. True relationship includes heart connection, not objectification. Women who depend on the praise of their body, will tell you how it feels when relationships are built only from looks. Those relationships don't last very long. Yes chemistry is real, but modesty is power. Of course, we can not leave out the dangers of pornography that pop up on social media. This world is overconsuming dangerously addictive images. Study prison inmates who commit severe murders; often, their destructive behaviors start with a porn addiction that spirals out of control. The ways women decide to display their bodies has never been more of a problem than now. And now AI is only making that worst. Families, if you are allowed Snapchat, and you have a group thread with your friends, remember that if one of your friends decides to share an inappropriate picture on there, you can not delete that picture on your snapchat thread. The only way to remove it, is if you start a new group thread, or the original person who posted it decides to remove it. Do you have enough leadership and bravery to self-regulate and keep your friends clean? Will you be brave enough to delete the group chat? How do you stand up and stand out? Do parents know that there is AI built in snapchat now? This new feature is handing the world to your kids and expects them to self-regulate in it.

Social media can create FOMO; fear of missing out. If you decide to be on social media, you will just need to know right now, you will feel like you are missing out sometimes. Some can really handle this, but others, may not be able to. You could just also avoid media all together, or fast from it. Ladies, visit our comparing classroom here. You will love the authentic documentary created by women in my community on this very subject. If you feel vulnerable to missing out, I recommend you stay away from social media as long as you can. I am a mother of four children, and I admit to you right now, I avoid social media as I know deep down I am happier off of it. That realization came from starting social media fasts. Now I scroll not as frequently, even if I do produce on it.

One last piece of advice on social media. We have to look at the new popular buzz word going around....brain rot! Let's learn what brain rot means:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfz0ghTlFzQ

We realize that every family will prioritize tech safety differently. Some moms and dads are still learning to self-regulate on tech as much as their kids are. Let’s face it: your generation practically emerged from the womb with a smartphone in hand, and that’s no accident! Born in the tech era, you possess a unique brilliance that could rival a supernova. You’re not just destined to be the masters of TikTok and the lords of Instagram; you have the potential to thrive beyond the glowing screens, even in the wild, untamed world of nature (yes, that place with trees and fresh air!). Setting appropriate time limits on apps, websites, and those endless scrolls will ensure you have time to conquer not just the virtual realm, but also the great outdoors. So go ahead, unleash your brilliance, but don’t forget to step outside and breathe in the real world every now and then—you might just find it’s more refreshing than a new app update!

Homeschool: Solution (Keep a separate device for homeschool than entertainment or work device)

If you are considering homeschool, you will want to use tech...with boundaries! And we finally found the secret recipe for a thriving homeschool life that does use modern tech with a fun balance. The thing about homeschool is that there are thousands of phenomal homeschool programs on the internet, but that is the problem. They are on the internet! So put an athlete student who likes to move more than work online, and expect them to self-regulate on the internet when there are NBA drafts to keep up on! We have learned that there are some amazing homeschool core-curriculum programs that come in app form, so you can keep the internet locked and away if your device has parental screentime settings. You can still use AI as we mentioned above, and you can always visit the internet as needed on a separate device. Having two devices for our kids has changed the culture of homeschool in our home. It has become peaceful and easy! The Daylight Kids device has been the magic in our home as it has the easiest parental settings to block the internet or gaming apps, and it also has a non-distracting screen interface, and blue-light blockers.

Goodluck with your own tech endeavors and feel free to email me anytime with any cool apps or AI improvements for things that you think are helpful in your homes!