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Hello everybody and welcome to another great episode of my EdTech Life.
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So thank you for that and believing in our mission, in what we are doing, connecting one show at a time and, ladies and gentlemen, today I am excited to welcome to the show a very special guest, theodora Popkovich, who is joining us today and we're going to be talking about digital wellness and we're going to be learning a little bit about the work that she's doing through LineWise and, obviously, talking about some hot topics that are out there right now, such as digital wellness, obviously, student health, screen time and, of course, talking a little bit about AI, chatbots and the implications of AI in the education space or, obviously, in the youth space as well.
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So, teodora, I would love to welcome you to the show.
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How are you doing today?
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So, teodora, I would love to welcome you to the show.
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How are you doing today?
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I'm doing great.
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Thank you so much.
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I've really been looking forward to our conversation and just really getting to dig into these topics.
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I spend most of my days thinking and dreaming about these issues and I know that all of our viewers and listeners are as well.
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So, yeah, so really appreciate being here with you today.
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Excellent.
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Well, teodora, before we dive in, for all our audience members that are listening to us and are just getting to know who you are today and may not be too familiar with your work, trust me, after today, you're definitely going to have a lot more followers on your social media and so on, so I'm really excited about that.
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But can you please give us a little brief introduction and what your context is within the digital wellness space?
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years and the training after that, thinking about youth psychology, adult psychology, issues like anxiety and depression in particular, and kind of working towards really figuring out new and novel ways of helping people deal with these issues, and a lot of my influences come from areas like cognitive behavioral therapy, things like positive psychology as well.
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It's a really, I would say, big fuel that adds sort of to the fire of the work that I've done over the past couple of decades when it comes to helping people deal with some of these issues that really we all have to deal with on a daily basis.
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This work, in a sort of roundabout way, led me to becoming increasingly interested in children and technology.
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I've always been interested in technology.
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Children I've always been interested in technology children I've always been interested in children's development as well and sort of the different factors that influence their development, of course, the role of the parent in that role in the community, and then, sort of around 2015 or 16, that role that technology was increasingly starting to play there as well.
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At the time I was living and working in Singapore.
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Being a Southeast Asian country, you know a lot of interest in technology, very kind of future focused thinking, a lot of investment in making sure that young people are equipped to handle technology in the best way possible.
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So I was starting to notice that children were increasingly using technology, especially young children, and especially in the kinds of settings where you maybe wouldn't typically see them using technology prior to that period.
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So riding the bus, they would typically be sort of daydreaming, looking out the window.
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Now they had a device in front of them.
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Waiting in a queue at the airport, they had a device in front of them Having dinner with their family, they had a device in front of them.
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So the key question for me at that point was is this good or bad?
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Maybe it's neither, but what kind of impact is it going to have on that parent-child relationship if you essentially sort of insert this filter, if you will, and, in a sense, this disruptor?
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And so that really got me started on this journey.
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So it's almost been a decade at this point.
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I've worked across different continents, different countries.
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I've worked with different populations, so with schools, with parents, with children.
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I've presented at a lot of different conferences.
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The most recent one was South by Southwest Education, which I'm sure some of our again viewers and listeners have attended it in the past.
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It's an incredible place, an incredible gathering of people, and I really appreciated that opportunity to be there and to really talk about the imperative of parental engagement when it comes to children's online safety and I know that's something that we're going to dive a little bit deeper into, but that's really where my passion lies how to protect children while really educating and engaging the whole community around them.
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And that is something that is truly needed.
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These conversations are definitely something that has been on the up and up, especially with most recently, you know, and especially you know, I would say, even before COVID, but maybe not as much as after COVID with the screen time.
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And then now, obviously, as technology advances and the use of artificial intelligence and, of course, the use of chatbots and so on, there tends to be more screen time and so on.
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But before we dive into that a little bit more, I want to ask you you know about your role as director of well-being at LineWise, so tell me a little bit about what LineWise is and, of course, your experience with LineWise.
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What is it that you're exactly trying to do?
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I know you told us a little bit about that passion and that mission of bringing these talks to parents and so on, but tell us a little bit more about the work through LineWise.
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Sure.
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So one of the things that sort of excites me most about being part of this organization it's now nearly been four years that I've been a part of LineWise is that the fact that someone like me, with the kind of background that I have and the kind of passion and passions that I have, has a role to play in an organization like that, which is incredibly unique among other organizations that are sort of in this children's online safety space.
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So we are a global leader in this space and children's online safety and digital well-being.
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We help our partner schools, we partner up with our school districts in the US, around the world as well, to really make sure that we keep children's academic success and their safety and their well-being all of these really sort of key factors when it comes to children's development that we keep it front and center as we support schools in this mission to make sure that, even as children are utilizing their laptops and iPads and you know different types of tools, you know AI that they're having to utilize these days in order to succeed in the academic setting but also, one day, succeed sort of, you know, in the workplace.
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We don't quite know what that's going to look like, but we know that they're going to need the sort of set of skills we want to make sure that they can utilize these technologies and spend their time in these virtual spaces, but really ensure that they're safe while they're doing that.
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And so we do this in a number of different ways.
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We have an online safety and digital wellbeing framework that we use in order to really help our partner districts sort of figure out where they're at in the present moment in terms of sort of fulfilling this mission and then also really help them identify what some of those gaps are.
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And so we think about this through sort of three different pillars, if you will.
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The first and foremost and basic one is really all around prevention.
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So, to begin with, how can we predict, sort of prevent rather, some of the key issues that children might encounter?
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And this is where things like your sort of basic internet filter will fit in.
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We then move into thinking about okay, we know that we can't prevent these 100%, certain things will sort of come through.
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So, in that case, how can we actually detect these issues as early as we possibly can?
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And then, how can we also intervene as quickly as we can to make sure that children aren't engaging in harmful behaviors or, you know, being exposed to sort of harmful things on the internet.
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Make sure that we're mindful of their well-being.
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And then, ultimately, the third pillar, which is one that I'm particularly excited about and where I mostly fit in terms of my role as a director of well-being, is how do we really engage and educate the whole community again around that child and around the experiences that they're having online and around the fact that they have to use these technologies.
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We really can't fight against that.
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I'm not sure we ever could, but we certainly can't right now.
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So we know that's a must, but how can we make sure that the teachers are mindful and aware of what's going on?
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How do we make sure that the parents, that the families, the caregivers, are aware of what is going on with their kids online, make sure that they're aware of some of the key online safety risks, but then also make sure that we really empower them as much as possible, and so this is where, for example, our parent education piece comes in.
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We have a community offering that I'm very excited about.
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Some of what I do there is do live sessions with parents, educating them again around the many risks that children can encounter online, but also being very mindful of the benefits, and for me, always the kind of foremost mission or goal is to really leave the parent feeling empowered, leave them feeling confident, because that is one of the key, if not the key issue that I see nowadays and when it comes in general to parenting in the age of technology, is parents really don't feel confident to do this and so then they often just kind of tune out because it's really overwhelming and it can be incredibly scary.
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I know a lot of different places will try and utilize that fear in order to sort of get them to act and intervene.
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My approach I think our approach, is a little bit different.
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We really want to stay very focused on education, enablement, empowerment, all of the E's to really make sure that parents are aware and that they know exactly what they need to do in order to really make sure that parents are aware and that they know exactly what they need to do in order to really equip themselves and then ultimately equip their children as well.
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Yes, you know that to me right now, with what you said to me, really sets you apart from a lot of other different platforms that I have grown to know through my job and going through conferences and so on, and of course, there's many different tools that many districts use.
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But what you're saying is speaking my language in the sense that I have always been a huge proponent that we need to include the parents as much as possible.
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When we talk about learning communities, usually it's like well, you know, let's say, the service center or central office, then you've got teachers and students, but then the parents, you know they fall by the wayside.
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But I love how you are very parent focused as well in what you're describing and many of the talks that I have with parents usually on a monthly basis when we'll do our webinar Wednesdays a lot of the things that I cover with them are, you know, digital, cybersecurity, digital, you know, citizenship, things of that sort, and of course, these conversations come up and you described what happens with parents.
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Very often is that kind of analysis, paralysis, where it's there's too much information for them to really dissect through and then they just, like you said, they just get paralyzed and then they don't do anything, and then, of course, that has a trickle down effect If there is something going on with their child, they may not be able to act on it as quickly as possible.
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So I want to applaud you and, of course, the work that LineWise is doing, because I think that at least in this time, right now, these are some of the conversations that really need to be had and we need to include parents in these conversations as much as possible.
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So, going into what digital wellness is like and of course I am not an expert in this field because, like I mentioned, when I do talk to parents, it's obviously that digital citizenship, you know, protecting them from cyberbullying, you know maybe a lot of dangerous trends that are out there and so on but can you just kind of open up and go in a little deeper as far as what digital wellness is?
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A good definition for our audience members so they can understand?
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Sure.
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So I sort of developed a well, what I think is a relatively simple way of thinking about it and hopefully our listeners and viewers will think of it that way as well that orient us towards both ourselves and other sort of users of the internet, of internet, these various internet spaces, virtual digital spaces that we frequent in order to think about what it means to be digitally well.
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So the way I think about that is that being digitally well means that we're using technology in a mindful, intentional, humane kind of way so that it doesn't cause sort of a detrimental effect to our own well-being or to the well-being of other people.
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So that's a very kind of high level sort of idea.
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We can then dig deeper down and look at okay, what does that mean for us?
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How can we interact with these technologies in that mindful and intentional way so that it doesn't sort of cause issues for our own mood and our own well-being, our perception of ourselves and the world?
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I think that's one of the ways in which the digital world impacts us the most.
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It changes how we see ourselves and how we see other people, and then inevitably kind of changes how we show up in the world as a result of that.
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So there is that relationship that we sort of have with ourselves via these digital spaces, digital platforms, the content that we create, that we sort of have with ourselves via these digital spaces, digital platforms, the content that we create, that we consume.
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But then also, how can we think about that in an outward way, when we think about how do our actions in these spaces and on these devices and on these platforms, how do they impact other people as well?
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And if we look at some of the trends over maybe the past 10 or 15 years, as we've sort of shifted from social media and maybe some of those more socially quote unquote oriented platforms to these more AI powered platforms, I think there's been an interesting kind of shift and change there.
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When it comes to social media, I think we do need to think a little bit more about how we show up for other people and how what we do in those spaces influences others.
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One of the problems that we see now, especially with young people using AI, is that you kind of create this vacuum in which all that exists is you and this sort of synthetic life form, if that's what we want to call it, and that's when I think we're really called to consider how our use of these platform uses, how they sort of influence us so that's kind of how I think about digital, really called to consider how our use of these platform uses, how they sort of influence us.
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So that's kind of how I think about digital well-being.
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And then, of course, within that fits, you know, as you mentioned, digital citizenship what it means to be a responsible, a healthy, a compassionate digital citizen, and I know a lot of individuals and organizations and schools are really doing a great job of prioritizing that.
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We certainly think of that as being really important as well at Lion Wise, I certainly do as an individual as well, and that's where we can think about things like online bullying, for example.
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Right, that's one of the biggest ones.
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So when it comes to bullying and when I'm talking to parents about that, I'll talk to them a lot about that issue of how we show up for other people and the conversations that they can have with their kids about that and the conversations they can have, for example, around the tone that we use when we communicate with others.
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We know that the tone that we use online is not quite the same as the tone that we use offline, and we know that some of the words that we use and the ways in which we express ourselves online are quite different than what they are offline.
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And that's because offline you have that immediacy of the other human being there and the things that you're saying potentially hurting them or harming them or upsetting them, making them sad, making them happy, right, we have that immediate sense of reaction.
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We don't have that in these virtual spaces and it's very easy for us to sort of hide.
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So that's just one sort of little touch point when you're diving a little bit deeper into that definition of digital wellness, of what it means to be digitally well, and then we can look at so many different elements.
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We can talk about screen time.
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Screen time is another really big topic that I sort of coach and educate and train around a lot.
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How can we think about screen time?
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What is too much, what is just much, what is just enough, what is too little?
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Maybe because that could be a possibility as well how can we combine both the question around quality and around quantity?
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How do we manage our children's access depending on their biological age, their maturity level, their personality and characteristics, their temperament?
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How do we do that when they're five as compared to when they're 10 and when they're 16, 17 and 18?
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And how do we do that on social media versus how do we do that on texting platforms versus now, how do we do that with AI bots and all of these different AI powered platforms?
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So all of these different things play a big role in there.
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A couple of the other more sort of higher level things that I also always keep an eye out on are things like legislation, governance.
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So what is happening in that area, whether it's in the US, whether it's internationally as well?
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So, going all the way from those highest levels around, how are these different bases regulated?
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All the way to how are the tech companies themselves thinking about this?
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What types of elements of design are they implementing?
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What are the types of behaviors that they're trying to get out of us?
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How are they trying to get us to engage with these platforms?
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These platforms aren't entirely neutral.
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Yes, we often talk about them as tools, and it varies a lot depending on how you want to use it.
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So you have some sense of agency, certainly in terms of how you use it a lot depending on how you want to use it.
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So you have some sense of agency, certainly in terms of how you use it and also kind of how you curate your experiences on these platforms, but there are certain greater sort of powers there that are also influencing how we behave, how much time we spend on these platforms, what type of information and content do we see, and those things can have a really profound impact on us as well.
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So, going from those higher levels all the way down to that individual parent or child or you or me who are utilizing these platforms and who are creating content or consuming content there, I think every one of these levels is incredibly important.
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When it comes to digital wellness, I think we all have a part to play there, especially again going back to the child who's really sitting at the center of all of it and who didn't really ask.
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Well, they asked to have that iPhone, but they didn't really ask, in a fundamental way, for their world to look the way it does.
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You know, we created this world for them and just kind of dumped this onto them.
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So I think we have that huge responsibility to then equip them also in the best way possible and try to keep them safe and well.
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You know as much as we can.
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Exactly, yes, exactly and yes to all of that.
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There's so many great things that you shared there that are just really set off, like myself, as far as you know some of the challenges that you spoke of.
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And, of course, you've got the screen time.
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Not only is there screen time at school, and we, of course there's always been several articles.
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Oh well, the screen time at school it's like productive screen time as opposed to just kind of like brain rot screen time at home and the difference and how to engage there and then trying to find balances and so on.
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So that's one thing that you know we have heard a lot about and I'm glad that you discussed that, because within your answer, I mean you discussed a lot of the challenges that parents face.
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And in talking to parents, you know number one, like we talked a little bit about earlier, there's like so much information out there that parents just kind of get paralyzed and don't know where to start, where to begin.
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So I love the fact that the work that you're doing through AlignWise helps educate the parents.
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Also, you know very important, like talking about the screen time and the way that you show up for people and talking about tone, which is very interesting because that kind of set a little thing off in me when, I guess, getting deeper into tech, I am from the era where I was in middle school and maybe I'm really aging myself here, guys but we had beepers, you know, or pagers, they would call them, and it was just like your parent would dial a code or just say, hey, call home, or something like that, and it was very limited.
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So started with that in junior high.
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But then, you know, when you move on to texting, I was always terrible at I would put tone into every message and I'd be like, well, are they mad at me?
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Why are they mad at me, when it was just a simple answer?
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And so a lot of times, you know, even when you're receiving a message or with the way that you interact with people, we have a tendency to do those things.
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And then, obviously, how is it that you mean that message?
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How are you trying to speak to that person which talks about the digital citizenship and you know, talking about digital or the bullying, cyber bullying as well how are we showing up and answering our friends or answering our colleagues, answering our peers and, of course, those dangers?
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So much to unpack there, which kind of leads me to my next question, because I know you hit on a lot of those things which are some of the challenges that parents are facing.
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But what I see and I don't know if you've experienced it, maybe you have but in my area, in my neck of the woods, you know, usually I can't go to a grocery store or you know supermarket or just a shop where there isn't a young little maybe two-year-old, three-year-old in a stroller, little maybe two-year-old, three-year-old in a stroller, and they've got the cell phone and or they've got the iPad and they are just scrolling away, watching everything, and it just seems like it's kind of like here, just kind of keep you busy so you don't cry while mom and pop do what we need to do and so on.
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And to me I'm like at such an early age it is scary to think how addicted they can become.
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Like you mentioned, what is the purpose of this application as garnering that interaction from even a two-year-old?
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What are they trying, the challenges there?
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So I want to ask you a little bit about that.
00:22:43.671 --> 00:22:58.417
How can a parent find that balance, as far as you know hey, let me limit the screen time or have a talk with them, but also putting their own guardrails in place.
00:22:58.417 --> 00:23:01.045
What would be some of the suggestions that you have?
00:23:01.045 --> 00:23:05.012
You know, along with that with you know, kind of within that question.
00:23:06.099 --> 00:23:11.162
Yeah, sure, there's so many different angles to that and so many different different layers.
00:23:11.162 --> 00:23:13.126
I think we could talk for hours about this.
00:23:13.126 --> 00:23:39.009
As I mentioned before, you know, one of the things that kind of triggered me and kind of to think about all of this and led me down this path was those observations like the one that you just mentioned, where there is that very young child kind of attached I use some of that kind of the sort of psycholingo there but attached essentially to a device, and at a very young age we don't quite think about it as sort of addiction, it's really more just a normalization.
00:23:39.009 --> 00:23:42.589
Again, the child is too young to really understand what's going on.
00:23:42.589 --> 00:23:49.490
They pick up habits very quickly, their brain develops incredibly quickly and kind of create those patterns super fast.
00:23:49.490 --> 00:23:56.513
And so, if you know, you do that one time whenever you walk into the grocery store, you give your child a device and then do it a second time.
00:23:56.513 --> 00:23:59.630
By the third time they're probably going to be expecting it right.
00:23:59.630 --> 00:24:08.390
And that comes from the huge area in psychology, you know, and there's behaviorism, a lot of research done and that shows how quickly we build habits and how difficult it is for us to break them.
00:24:08.390 --> 00:24:23.905
So that's one of the main reasons that I always share with parents when it comes to again being mindful and intentional about the time at which, and the reasons because of which, we give especially our very young children devices, especially when they're pre-verbal.
00:24:23.905 --> 00:24:38.111
We, nor they, don't have that ability to really talk through what is going on and why it's happening and the reasons for why it's starting or ending, and it just it causes a lot, of, a lot of friction, let alone then, as you know, as our children get older.
00:24:38.111 --> 00:24:46.186
The benefit, though, is that we can at least have those conversations with them and explain things and make sure that they understand rationally why we're making the decisions that we are.
00:24:46.488 --> 00:25:00.409
When they're very young, they become very used to kind of living in that virtual space, as opposed to the real world of the grocery store with the fruits and the vegetables and the other people who are there and the different types of lighting, and is it light outside?
00:25:00.409 --> 00:25:01.392
Is it dark outside?
00:25:01.392 --> 00:25:17.779
The child isn't quite aware of their surroundings at that point, and they're very much immersed, sort of, in that virtual world, and one of the things that worries me about that is that it's setting up young people quite nicely for the AI bots and the VR and all of these different things that are already here.
00:25:17.779 --> 00:25:21.276
They're only going to become more present as they get older.
00:25:21.276 --> 00:25:41.114
Not being inside a car, not being inside a restaurant, but always being in a virtual space instead, makes it very easy for them to pick up those VR goggles or whatever the wearable is going to be down the line and just enter that virtual space.
00:25:41.114 --> 00:25:49.093
It's a space that they're very comfortable with, and we see that reflected now in how children communicate, how they express the very deep thoughts and feelings.
00:25:49.093 --> 00:26:05.830
They're much more comfortable doing that in a digital setting as compared to, you know, those of us who had the pagers and the beepers and the old Nokia's in the late 90s playing snake on them, like I did where we have a reference point for what it was like to interact and to communicate in person.
00:26:05.830 --> 00:26:19.048
So that's one of the sort of key elements of creating that balance is trying to think about how much, and time is not the best way to look at it, but certainly the younger a child is, I think the more effective way it is to think about it.
00:26:19.108 --> 00:26:22.676
How much time is my child spending in virtual spaces?
00:26:22.676 --> 00:26:26.092
And yes, watching Peppa Pig counts as a virtual space.
00:26:26.092 --> 00:26:27.997
Right, as soon as they're on that device.
00:26:27.997 --> 00:26:30.128
They can't be in two places at the same time.
00:26:30.128 --> 00:26:40.799
They're in a virtual space, and how much time are they sort of spending offline with you, with their caregiver, with their siblings if they have any, with other kids, with other adults, with strangers out on the street?
00:26:40.799 --> 00:26:43.692
Right, they take the village, and I think that's an important saying.
00:26:43.692 --> 00:26:45.016
That's always going to be true.
00:26:45.016 --> 00:27:09.075
We want to make sure that we expose children to those real life situations, because even as this world becomes increasingly tech saturated I think because of AI, in a very kind of weird, maybe unexpected, way, we are going to need to learn how to be more human if we're going to want to control these platforms and these tools and really make sure that we're on top.
00:27:09.075 --> 00:27:14.914
I think it's becoming more important than ever, really, if we're sort of going to kind of take control of the situation.
00:27:14.914 --> 00:27:18.095
So that's one of the most basic ways of thinking about it.
00:27:18.404 --> 00:27:25.951
Another approach that we have and this comes from my work at LineWise this is our kind of foundational approach to online safety management.
00:27:25.951 --> 00:27:28.894
We call it the ABC of online safety management.
00:27:28.894 --> 00:27:37.647
I mentioned a couple of these elements already, but the A there stands for access.
00:27:37.647 --> 00:27:38.732
How do we manage our children's access to technology?
00:27:38.732 --> 00:27:41.224
Again, this is going to look different when they're two as compared to when they're seven and when they're 15 and so on.
00:27:41.224 --> 00:27:43.932
But how do we do that in an age-appropriate way?
00:27:43.932 --> 00:27:47.567
And I would say age-appropriate is one of the key phrases that I use.
00:27:47.567 --> 00:27:57.494
That, I think, is one of the most important ones when we're trying to decide what types of interactions our children should have with technology and with other users on the internet.
00:27:57.494 --> 00:27:59.613
So how are we managing that access?
00:27:59.744 --> 00:28:01.613
And the second one, the B, is the boundaries.
00:28:01.613 --> 00:28:16.958
So they're in these virtual spaces, they're interacting with them in age-appropriate ways, but now we want to create boundaries so we don't just want to say spend any old time that you want, do anything that you want, visit any platform you want, consume any kind of content you want or share any kind of content.
00:28:16.958 --> 00:28:32.253
We want to create some of those healthy boundaries and using family agreement or a tech agreement I know a lot of people recommend that it's a really nice way of doing that and it can be a very simple approach and you can make it as complicated as you like and it's important to just stay very agile there.
00:28:32.253 --> 00:28:37.407
So we don't want to have the same kind of tech agreement when our child is two as when they're eight.
00:28:37.407 --> 00:28:49.751
Right, it needs to grow, it needs to change as our child is changing and kind of as they're proving to us that they're more capable of being independent and having more agency while they're online, and so we really want to support them through that.
00:28:49.971 --> 00:28:54.161
And then the final piece, the C, is really something that we can start doing with kids.
00:28:54.161 --> 00:29:06.557
You know, as early as possible, even kind of before they become verbal, is to have conversations with them, to really talk to them about all of these things and not only ask questions around how was soccer practice?
00:29:06.557 --> 00:29:08.167
Or how was the sleepover?
00:29:08.167 --> 00:29:09.290
How was that math test?
00:29:09.290 --> 00:29:12.938
But you know, did anything dramatic happen on Snapchat today?
00:29:12.938 --> 00:29:14.873
And what was the funniest meme you saw?
00:29:14.873 --> 00:29:18.596
And what was the silliest TikTok that you saw today?
00:29:18.596 --> 00:29:28.834
And you know, there are lots of different ways that we can incorporate these elements of their digital life into the conversations that we have and also, by the way, talk about our own struggles.
00:29:28.984 --> 00:29:32.692
That's, I think, one of the key things that I and a lot of other people in this space recommend.
00:29:32.692 --> 00:29:39.671
We are all struggling with this, for every parent who says my child's on their device too much.
00:29:39.671 --> 00:29:47.557
There's a child who says the same thing about the parent, right, and as adults, we're not fully aware of that, which is completely understandable, right?
00:29:47.557 --> 00:29:57.055
We're not, as human beings, as self-aware as we'd like to be, so really think of this as partnering up with your child, as something that is a shared struggle.
00:29:57.154 --> 00:30:07.940
We're all trying to find what it means to be tech balanced, and how much Instagram is too much, and what are all the things I do and don't want to use chat, gbd for, and just so many other things.
00:30:07.940 --> 00:30:09.445
We're all trying to negotiate this.
00:30:09.445 --> 00:30:25.835
So I think that's a really strong, powerful point of compassion where we can come together with our kids, make sure that they understand that we're also struggling, but use things like the family contract or built together screen time routine so that we can really help each other and kind of hold each other accountable.
00:30:25.835 --> 00:30:37.785
A really fun thing to do if you have a teenager, if you're bold enough, is to ask them to set a boundary or two on your own use of tech, and you might find surprising things coming out from that.
00:30:37.785 --> 00:30:50.280
I think it will help parents to become more aware of their own technology use as well and keep that in mind as they try to negotiate this whole question around screen time and what's too much tech and what's too little.
00:30:50.280 --> 00:30:52.333
And you know how do we do this in a healthy way?
00:31:29.714 --> 00:31:29.975
I love that.
00:31:29.975 --> 00:31:49.470
I mean, that is so practical and just so easy to follow and I think, like for all our listeners and this is something that's going to be great like for me to share also, even with the parents in my district, too as well, it's when we do have these conversations, to be able to share that clip, because that's really going to help them out, because I think one of the biggest things again going back to the conversations that we have it's always the conversation piece how do I bring this up?
00:31:49.470 --> 00:31:52.117
I don't feel comfortable with this, and so on.
00:31:52.117 --> 00:32:20.459
So I really love that you gave you know, just some practical advice as far as building that partnership, and I think that's something that is very important so that the child understands that it's not just something that is imposed on them, but that it's a struggle that is, like you said, a common struggle, and we're both going to be doing this and going back to the parent side is, yes, you lose yourself in those things and maybe you try and justify and say, well, this is different, this is work related.
00:32:20.459 --> 00:32:36.504
This is something that I have to use and do all the time, as opposed to, maybe, what they're doing, which is just, you know, being online and just being, you know, on social media, but at the same time, you know, even for the parent, there is a need for that digital wellness component too as well.
00:32:36.565 --> 00:32:41.504
And then, like you mentioned, having that family time and being able to have those conversations.
00:32:41.504 --> 00:32:44.859
So I want to ask you you know, kind of talking a little bit more about that.
00:32:44.859 --> 00:32:59.681
As far as the conversation piece, I know when I share with parents, I'll have some wonderful resources, either in English or Spanish or whatever language they needed translated, and I'll pick, like just some small little articles that they feel comfortable with, just a couple of tips.
00:32:59.681 --> 00:33:16.096
But in your experience that you've had, you know, many years and what you've done through LineWise, what are some ways that parents can also bring this topic up to be able to speak with their child and talk to them about that digital wellness piece?
00:33:16.096 --> 00:33:21.980
Because let's just assume, you know, not many parents talk to the students at a, you know, very young age.
00:33:21.980 --> 00:33:32.986
So let's say, now they've got a middle school student and now they're seeing that there's a change in attitude or a change in behavior, what is a great way for a parent to start that conversation?
00:33:33.767 --> 00:33:58.063
Yeah, one of the sort of easiest things that I recommend to parents who attend our educational webinars is use this webinar, the fact that you attended an educational session like this, or if you read an article or you see a video or you know whatever it is, you read a book use that as a starting point, especially if you've never ever kind of brought this up to your child or inside the home.
00:33:58.063 --> 00:34:01.338
Your child might think like, why are you suddenly interested in this?
00:34:01.338 --> 00:34:02.161
Why do you care?
00:34:02.161 --> 00:34:05.748
And they might also kind of not be crazy about that idea because they'll figure.
00:34:05.748 --> 00:34:10.347
Well, I could get away with things so far because mom or dad or whoever you know didn't know what was going on.
00:34:10.347 --> 00:34:22.784
Now they're kind of getting a sense of you know what's going on here, but use something like that as kind of an awareness piece, also to share the fact that you weren't really aware of all of the intricacies of what's going on.
00:34:22.784 --> 00:34:35.838
I spoke to a parent a couple of days ago who said they didn't know what Gemini was until relatively recently, because they don't have any need for it they don't spend a lot of time on social media and they just didn't know.
00:34:35.838 --> 00:34:38.005
And then suddenly this thing came up, or an article or an alert or something like that.
00:34:38.005 --> 00:34:51.246
That was talking about Gemini and they were like it blew my mind because I had no idea that it even existed, let alone that my kids might potentially be using it.