The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Raising Values: Kids in the Digital Age

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

https://www.facebook.com/RaisingValuesPodcast/www.pbnfamily.comhttps://www.instagram.com/raisingvaluespodcast/http://www.mofpodcast.com/www.prepperbroadcasting.comhttps://rumble.com/user/Mofpodcastwww.youtube.com/user/philrabWomen Who Prep Conference: Come See GillianSupport the showMerch at: https://southerngalscrafts.myshopify.com/Shop at Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ora9riPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mofpodcastGillian and Phil sit down to talk through how to handle protecting our kids in an increasingly interconnected world, where malicious influences and adult subjects are just a Google search away. The RV family also discusses cyber bullying, a worrying trend that is on the rise granting the bully anonymity and access to our children never before seen.Raising Values Podcast is live-streaming our podcast on YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Rumble. See the links above, join in the live chat, and see the faces behind the voices.family, traditional, values, christian, marriage, dating, relationship, children, growing up, peace, wisdom, self improvement, masculinity, feminity, masculine, feminine

Welcome to the Raising Values Podcast, where the traditional family talks. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram. You can support the Raising Values Podcast through Patreon. Phil and Gillian are behind the mic, and we hope you enjoy the show. Good morning and welcome back to Raising Values. I got to look five seconds before this started because I asked her who was going to introduce and she said it doesn't matter. But the problem is when one of us doesn't decide who's going to introduce, either neither of us does or we both try to.

It always happens though. Yeah. I i mean someone always will do it we have to make it used to get really nervous i used to get really nervous when we first started and i was like no you introduce i can't do it but anyway welcome back to raising values i'm gillian is that kind of the introduction we're doing I think we've made this awkward enough. Anyway, so today, well, do we have any business first before we get started? I have been harping, harping, harping on the Women Who Prep Conference. The 19th is the last day to get your ticket or tickets. You can get them in the link tree of Facebook and Instagram on Raising Values Podcast. Those are pages.

Use my affiliate link because you love me. Keep saying that. And the last day to purchase is the 19th. It's an online event, April 20th through the 23rd. You get an awesome, cool swag bag. I mean, swag box. If you go to Raising Values Instagram, you can see me unboxing the box and it's really cool. What's in the box?

I said that. And then you actually get access to all the content through July. The only other business I can think of other than Prepper Camp, September. We talk about that every show. YouTube very recently started their own podcast service.

I don't know why you would come on YouTube to listen to audio only when that's already on iTunes and Spotify and 10,000 other places. But I went ahead and imported our RSS feed for the audio-only shows onto YouTube Podcasts. So if that's a thing, it's there now. That's cool. But I feel like if you've been listening to audio podcasts, you've been listening to it on one of the platforms that's been around for like 10 years or at least five years,

not YouTube being Johnny-come-lately to the game. But I digress. It's there now. That's cool. But then again, so are all these streams. So you can watch us gesticulate and shoot each other come hither looks and all that. You and me, not me and Andrew. That'd be weird.

Ew. Anyway, Nina, I'm glad you got your box. I'm glad to know that you're going. That's really awesome because I know that that was something you wanted to do. Yeah, there was great stuff in the box. And it was kind of weird. And I even kind of stopped and paused on the unboxing video that I did when I got the little car clip from Refuge Medical, it was the seatbelt cutter and glass breaker. That was the thing you and I were talking about just the other day that you needed. That I needed in my car. And so, yeah, that was really awesome that we did that or that I got that.

So, yeah. Did it by chance come on a little key ring or something or a lanyard? Okay. Yeah. So, cool stuff. Anyway, so today's episode is Kids in the Digital Age. This one was actually recommended by my sister who has grandchildren.

Two are in their teens and the rest are littles. So they're like, I think, I think she's in second grade. She may be in third grade anyway, and younger. One of them just started walking. So, so kids in the digital age, and then she said bullying, like, but I guess maybe her grandkids are, know bullied at school maybe everyone has always been bullied i do feel like we've done a show like this before where we've talked about especially we just did the one with kids with cell phones um but kids in the digital age and then bullying and all that stuff and it's and it's like she said because i even texted her back i was like i feel like we've done a bullying episode before and she goes well bullying changes and you can never get enough

information about bullying with your kids so and it's true so and i feel like i decided to do that one and i feel like the last time we talked about yes yes so kyle wilson just said that he hopes i washed my cup because i'm guessing he was listening to the last step the matter of fact episode you and i did and yes it was thoroughly disinfected the next day but i still think about that from time to time when i when i look down into this cup but um i feel like the last time we kind of semi broached the subject, it was more from the perspective of like, we were worried about like, what's the, what's the non scary way to say like somebody predating on your children. Like that was our primary concern was that someone like an adult would have

access to your child because of social media and because of the, because of cell phone use and everything else. At the time, we weren't really discussing this as much in the because of cell phone use and everything else and at the time we weren't really discussing this as much in the vein of like another child your child's age bullying your child using those electronic means you know like a lot of a lot of our perspective at that in that episode was really more really more tailored around the fact that like there are adults in the world who want to hurt children and the ability to you know like if if somebody wants to physically harm my child right

now they have to get through that locked door past a very large angry father and an angry mother yes so like there's there's physical barriers in place but once you give them unrestricted social media use, all they have to do is find them on the internet. And that's terrifying. But I see this topic more in the guise of we're concerned about cyberbullying, which is a trend that I couldn't point to exactly when it first came onto people's radar, but it certainly seems to be escalating as children become more and more interconnected, and especially as that age at which they get interconnected goes younger. Yeah. And despite the fact that, like,

the parents of most of these children are of a generation where, like, they may not have grown up with social media, but they've had social media in their lives long enough that they shouldn't be completely ignorant to this. Right. Yet the parents still seem to have no understanding of or appreciation for the ability to, like, monitor what's going on with their children through these outlets. That they even can, that they even should. I mean, it's the Wild Wild West in some households.

Oh, absolutely. Wild Wild West in some households. Oh, absolutely. And then that's on top of the fact that even if you say cyberbullying is not a thing, which it is, even our generation is very familiar with the fact that there are things that are not age appropriate to children that are literally a Google search away. appropriate to children that are literally a Google search away. And only really within the last couple of years has there been an effort to, like at the state level, to mandate age verification on a lot of those things, to force these content providers to put those things that are of adult nature

behind a wall so that children cannot get access to them. But even then, that's on a state-by-state basis. And even then, quite frankly, there are internet sites that are hosted overseas that don't care at all what your state says. So it's still the wild, wild west. Yeah. And then what was really, what's been really eye-opening for me, so I am in charge of all of the student technology at school. So I manage all of their Chromebooks. I manage all of their Google, everything. I manage all of it.

And for a long time now, me and the guidance counselor and the principal, we've all been, well, especially this year, really trying to get some software to upload onto these computers so that we can creep on them, is what the kids said. You're creeping on me. This is creepy. Well, wait a second. Hang on. So we did. We ended up getting a software that monitors behind the scenes actively. Like during, I can like pull up their Chromebooks, any one of their student Chromebooks on my computer and see what they're doing, like live action.

I can close their tabs. I can chat with them and say, hey, you need to get back on task, or this is inappropriate. We're blocking this or whatever. And I get daily reports on all sorts of things. So this program actually monitors what they're writing about in Google Docs or in spreadsheets or anything like that. And there are words that are already, what's the word? Blacklisted, basically. Well, yeah, blacklisted for the software, but we can add more to it.

But what it's doing is it's looking through everything that these kids are doing, and it's saying different things. It's giving me a report on what songs they're listening to. Like, I get the title of the song. I get the lyrics of the song. I get flags when the the song. I get the lyrics of the song. I get flags when the lyrics are really bad words. And then the report. So I pulled the report when I came back from Costa Rica and I had five students that were flagged for the lyrics of the songs that they were listening to. And then it shows me the words that were flagged. And y'all, I blush easily, but I was blushing.

It was the stuff that they were listening to. I don't listen to that kind of music. And the fact that these kids, one, knew where to find the songs, which is easy to do on Spotify and all those different. YouTube. YouTube, all that stuff. But the fact that they knew those songs and when confronted, well, my mom and dad let me listen to those songs. What?

It was like, are you kidding me? Do you know what your child is listening to? So very pornographic, very vulgar, very, I mean, made me blush. Cardi B, Nicki Minaj music. Nas X. And then some, I don't know, because I don't listen to this music. But it was just awful. It was offensive.

It was just gross. So again, Ms. Rabelais had to have a conversation with middle schoolers about what's appropriate and what's not appropriate, and then put the fear of God in them of, I can't see, and so I turned my computer around, and I had the screen up where all of their screens were live on my computer and some of them like oh that's so cool and the other ones others were like that is so creepy that you can see this and so I started like shutting down their computers or

you know sending them messages like I can do this and I was like not only can I do that but your principal your guidance counselor and all of your teachers that use Chromebooks can do this in their classroom. So it started to make them more aware of what they're doing. So I'm hoping that we start to see a decline on this. However, what we were seeing that prompted us to get this stuff was bullying through Google Slides, prompted us to get this stuff was bullying through Google Slides, which is like PowerPoint, because they can share those things throughout the school. They can share those with each other. And so they were bullying each other through that. They were bullying each other on online games like Blucket, which some teachers use as like a vocabulary. It's like a testing website kind of thing, like a game show kind of thing.

But what they would do is you can enter your own name. And so they were entering names that were just not appropriate. So they were bullying through that kind of stuff. They were writing things in docs that were just unbelievable. It was unbelievable what they were writing about. And then it would be so silly to share that with teachers, which is really where the crackdown started. It was a shared document that I think this student probably meant well by it, but the content in the document was like, hold on, this is not appropriate. So I'm glad for that. I'm glad that at least now we can have some sort of safety measure to get in front of the bullying at schools. Now we're a young, not a young school,

we're not a young school,'m not a young school. We're not a young school. We are a small school. So it's going to be easier for me and the other teachers, principal, guidance counselor, administration to monitor this kind of stuff. But in a bigger school, that doesn't happen. The other thing that we added that's going to happen on Monday is it's a mental health part of this. Anyway, it's a mental health part of this software where there's going to be other keywords that they can monitor. And so, or if say, for instance, a child clicks on a banner or an ad on a website that they're looking at, and it's about suicide, or it's about this or that, we'll get a banner or an ad on a website that they're looking at and it's about suicide or it's about this or that, we'll get a flag or an alert that says, hey, this student did this, wrote this,

clicked this, whatever. Here's the last 15 minutes of their searches or whatever they did on their computer. You need to take a look at this. Maybe there needs to be an intervention. And I know that that's hard to think about. Our second through seventh graders are the ones that have Chromebooks. But suicide, and I know I probably can't say that on whatever you flagged on YouTube for saying that word, but it's one of the leading causes of death in children is that awful, nasty word. Self-harm. Self-harm, yeah. So I'm really glad for that. harm self-harm yeah so um so i'm really glad for that but that is just one aspect of where your child is being introduced to digital learning and digital anything in the digital age then you have

the cell phones then you have you know video games that you can access anyone in the world to play and that's something that we're going to talk about with Piper and what she does, because she does play, she has one game now that she plays, where she can, she has access, people have access to her from all over the world. And so we've set ground rules for that. It does sound Orwellian, you're right, but it's our children. And like I told my sixth graders the other day, you are not old enough to be carte blanche to the Internet. You are not old enough. Your brain is not developed. It is not safe for you to have people access you on the Internet.

I'm sorry. I'm getting on my high horse. Those kids are children. They're kids. They're children. They do not understand the things that are out there. And as a teacher and as a mom, it is important and my duty to protect them from the psychopaths that are on the internet. Take it back a couple of months ago, we were having trouble with kids

gaming on their Chromebooks. And so they would find all sorts of websites. And what I ended up telling them was, I can't keep up because every single day someone is creating a website. An adult is creating a website for children that you think is safe to play, but it's not. It's all adults. It's adults lying to you that they're children. You have, they have access to you. You have access to them. They're, when I pulled up some of the search histories and things like that, and I went to those websites that the kids were visiting, I was, it was, it was enough that I went to the principal's office and I said, this, okay, from my computer, this is what our children are looking

at. This is what our children have access to. And this is the person that has access to our kids right now. It was a live video that was going on, live video. And I said, this has to stop. This is not safe. Kids are so easily influenced. Again, their brains are so, they're not, your brain doesn't develop until you're 25 years old. These are second through seventh graders. So they're so easily influenced. They're so easily taken into different directions and peer pressured into different things. And I mean, remember when you were a kid, how just different things affected you, different things that people said affected you and different ways that people acted affected you. Now imagine that free range to the world to have access to your child. Wouldn't you want some sort of orwellian capability to control

and protect your children i think i would i obviously i would because i pushed to have the software for our kids and as a parent of a student at this school i would have i i probably would have been a little upset knowing that it took just now to get this. We've had Chromebooks since COVID. Why did it take five years to get something like this? And I think a lot of it, at least at my school, and I will say this, is because we are a small school. We handled COVID differently than the public schools did and things like that. So, but now, sorry, technology is just such a thing. It is everywhere. Kids have access to it all day, every day. And if you don't put a stop to some of the access points that kids have, I mean, you get what you get.

Can I get in? Yes, I'm sorry. I know. There was a Gillian rant. That never happens. Sorry. First of all, I did want to point out that Stuart got on to me, and now I have to pass it on to you about when we address a a listener's comment on the streams without telling

the audience that audio only what that comment was sorry but i couldn't get a word in no i got on my high horse i'm sorry now to to joe's point about this sounding orwellian i would simply put this in turn in the terms of like, you know, years and years and years ago, the bullying was largely happening either face to face where there was still some opportunity for an adult to intervene, or it may have been happening in notes that were getting passed, but it was still physical. The fact that this bullying has now come into a purely electronic realm where without some kind of specialized... Go ahead. You had 10 minutes. I get five.

I know. I'm sorry. The bullying has now taken on a form and is in a medium that is so fleeting and so easily destroyed after its impact or its use that I feel like something like what you're describing, this kind of software monitoring, it's required at this point. And that's purely because if not, then this happens in a vacuum where there is no guidance and there is no oversight. If not, then this happens in a vacuum where there is no guidance and there is no oversight. And as you've seen, when children be talking about that in public, period. Or B, that's way above my pay grade and my age. And she's not comfortable having those conversations. She's only somewhat comfortable having those conversations with you and I behind closed doors because she's been taught that those are private things. We don't talk about those. Sometimes not even just with just me, not you. And I've told her for years now because, you know, she's a young, she's a young lady. She's about to be 12. Things are starting to happen.

And I've told her, I'm like, I am always here if you have a question, but don't feel like you have to talk to dad if you'd rather talk to mom because of the two of us, only one of us has ever been an 11 year old girl. So only one of us can give you that experience. All I can do is be willing to listen and be like, wow, that sounds like something, but I've never been an 11 year old girl. You you know i know in 2024 that you have to say that like i've never been a little girl before but but i yeah but i digress like and i do agree with with the other thing joe is saying is that i don't think the problem is computers in the classroom because i don't see that as a problem necessarily but i do believe that this comes back to a severe lack of parenting.

Because again, like these children, I understand that kids are going to bully. Some kids will. But the search topics that they're looking for, the media that they're consuming, those are things that their parents have very obviously never told them are not okay. And the fact that you've had kids just flat out say, well, my parents let me listen to this. It's like, well, first of all, that sucks. Second of all, not on a school, not on school property. Yeah.

That's what I always harp. It's not your Chromebook. It is my Chromebook. But all I can tell you, you know, and this, this is going to sound like something I've said before. Like parents, you either take seriously the influences that you allow your child to be exposed to when they're young, or you're going to have to deal with the consequences of that lack of attention later in life. And so is your kid. You know, there's an old trope that if you do a bad enough job of raising your kids, you get to raise your grandkids too.

Which some people kind of get side-eyed about. But it's kind of the point of like, if you screw your kids up bad enough, they're not capable of being parents. And when they inevitably get pregnant, you wind up raising those kids too. Because mom or dad can't be a parent. Because you never taught them how to be a parent. You never parented them. Well, and back to Joe's comment, again, it said the problem is computers in the classrooms and a severe lack of parenting. I agree with both of those.

I am the STEM teacher and technology teacher. So what is crazy about my classroom, we only use those chromebooks when we have to do typing tests like i'm teaching my kids who are about to move to high school how to type like keyboarding okay um coding is you know that's all obviously a big thing they all need to learn how to code because that's the that's where job fields are going um And there's one more thing that we do, and I can't remember what it is now. Research, maybe? They don't do so much research in my classroom. I'm thinking like whole school.

Yeah. But yeah. So when I started this program on Thursday and Friday, I was going over it with my kids, especially my middle schoolers. They were very upset to hear that they could only access five websites in my class, just five. Because you can, a teacher with this program can say, you only have two tabs open, three tabs open, one tab open. And these are the only websites that you can visit during this time block, which is when you're in my STEM class. And so I will

most likely keep it at that to where they, if technology is the thing for that day, then those are the only websites that they can visit. I do agree that computers in the classrooms is, we are seeing the downfall of that. Is it maybe a more fair, specific comment to say unrestrained computer usage in the classroom is the problem? Because I feel like... Yes, that is a problem. But I feel like having computers, they're handwriting. They can't write.

They don't know how to spell. But you just said the computers were used for certain purposes. For my class. Okay. Then I'm going to repeat what I said. Okay. Unrestrained computer usage in the classroom, which means just having the computer to do random things, not specific tasks that require a computer. I guess I don't understand what you're trying to get at.

I'm saying that if they don't need to use a computer, they shouldn't be using it. Yes. But if they do need it, they should be using it. If they need it. Computers in the classroom says computers in the classroom for any purpose. But I think,

and Joe, if you're still watching, maybe clarify, I think he means there are schools where all they do is on computers. They type all their

research papers. They do, all of their notes is on a computer. Everything is on a computer. There's a problem with that. They don't know how. They're candy, yeah.

Yeah, their penmanship is awful. They don't know how to spell words. There is just such a lack. There's been such a downfall in the way that in communication, just basic communication, writing skills. So he's clarifying. Computers have destroyed penmanship, spelling, and grammar. That's what I'm trying to say. I'll agree with that.

Yes. I do kind of put, I don't know. I am of two minds of this because you and I grew up in a weird transitional time period where I don't feel like computers in the classroom were a thing really until probably college. Yeah. I mean, social media the classroom were a thing really until probably college. Yeah. I mean, social media didn't become a thing until college. So I feel like maybe that's something we should be returning to is the fact that like these kids have the age at which computers are put into their hands pushed back maybe to at least high school. Because on the one hand, I agree with everything Joe is saying and I hear what you're saying.

Because on the one hand, I agree with everything Joe is saying and I hear what you're saying. But on the flip side of things, I look at like my career post-college and I can tell you that like I could – I do 99% of my work on a computer. The forms, the documents, the things I type, it's all done on a computer. None of it's done handwriting anymore. It's too slow. And admittedly, if you're one of those people that has to do the two-finger pecking on your keyboard, you can probably write faster than you can type. But for me that can type 100-plus words a minute, I can type faster than I can write.

And then you talk about all the Excel work I do and everything else. I mean, that's all half financial math and half programming. But like, I don't know. I'm conflicted about this because on the one hand, you're right. There is that effect to push the computer usage down to that low of an age. But on the flip side of things, most of these careers, because you brought up coding, they're not going to do that with a pen and paper. They're going to have to learn how to do this on a computer. So it's give and take.

Yeah, well, and then that's why there's a technology class. But second graders with computers, to me, is idiocy. They're reading books. They're reading books on the computer, which, get it, people use a Kindle to read books and things like that. But where, obviously, the way that we were raised and the way that we did school when we were in elementary and middle school and even high school worked, it worked. And I don't know. I don't know. But I do get students that say, I don't want to use my Chromebook. I don't want to get on my Chromebook. I have students that say, my handwriting is so ugly. My handwriting is so ugly. I have students that say,

I don't know how to spell. I just don't know how to spell words. And in my head, I'm going, well, Hooked on Phonics worked for me, but you know. I just heard that in the commercial in my head. Right. Thank you for that. But they don't, I don't know. I'm not a lower elementary school teacher. I don't know how phonics are taught, if they're even taught anymore.

But spelling is atrocious. It is atrocious. And I'm so glad for teachers that have started counting off points for misspelled words. You have to. You know, where it to me, it's did we go wrong because COVID happened or did we go wrong? Because this is now the platform in which we teach our kids. So and this is what accepted. Well, and this is way more than just way more than just this one little topic.

But like, I believe that I believe that COVID accelerated a lot of things. Like there were trends I've seen in the workplace that like the push towards telework and remote work that was dramatically accelerated because of COVID. Because there was the push to have people no longer be in person and work from home became a really big thing. push to have people no longer be in person and work from home became a really big thing. Remote learning for young children became a thing all of a sudden, which was never done before. I don't think it was that successful personally, but I guess what I'm saying is like, I see, I see trends that COVID kind of like put a rocket up his butt and shoved it down the road. Yeah. That's what Joe just said. COVID accelerated the problem. Yeah. Like I think, and at the same time, because those trends have been

accelerated so severely, I feel as though things like computer usage would have slowly crept down through the ages. And there might've been a point at which people said, no, no, this isn't working so well, or, well, we need some monitoring monitoring software but because it was kind of shoved in so fast y'all are dealing with this on the back end now because it's four years later and we're still we're still figuring out the effects of everything that was done during covid everything that was mandated upon these kids during covid so i i don't know that i wouldn't say covid caused it but i agree with Joe. COVID accelerated it. COVID turned the dial on this move of pushing technology onto kids. It turned that dial up to 11 all of a sudden, instead of it being a nice slow progression.

And I think some of that may even be the reason that parents are so behind the eight ball. You know? Because like, you and I observe, we observed it last night as a matter of fact, families sitting down eating at our local taco shop, and the first thing they do is they sit down and they put the iPad down in front of the kid.

It drives me nuts to sit there and watch the screen just glowing in front of this like 3-4 year old's eyes. Because they never learn how to self-soothe. They never learn how to behave. They never learn how to sit still. They never learn how to interact with their parents because they're not interacting with their parents. They're just sitting there drooling down their shirt, staring at a screen. And I see those trends. I don't think COVID accelerated. I don't think COVID created any of those trends. I think COVID accelerated them because what happened during COVID was a lot

of parents were suddenly working at home and the kids were home too. And the parents could not work and take care of the kids. So they put them in front of the screen to hypnotize them for eight hours so they get some work done. And in some instances, that's fine. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. And sometimes just have to do what you have to do. And sometimes you have to do what you have to do. But my problem with that statement is way too many parents use that as a cop-out for 16 hours a day, put a screen in front of your kid. But what I was going to finish saying was it should have stopped. was, it should have stopped. That was a crutch that you could have used during COVID when you were home with the kids while you had to work and the kids didn't have school and things like that.

Some parents, especially I'm thinking like single parents or whatever, who still had to keep a roof over their kid's head and feed them, that was the option. That was the babysitter. That was the teacher. That was everything that they couldn't be in that moment. But as soon as time shifted and things started changing and going into a different direction, my opinion was when that should have been pulled back. But parents have gotten so lazy and used to it and rely on that little break that technology gives them that they continue it. And so kids, and like Joe said, lack in penmanship and grammar and things like that, but they're also losing the skill of talking to an adult, how to talk to adults, how to talk to their friends, what to say. Social skills.

Yeah, their social skills are so far underdeveloped, it's scary. It's like you're dealing – I deal with some middle schoolers that act like preschoolers and socially inept. They are socially inept. They don't know how to act. And the problem with it right now is my middle schoolers or just middle schoolers in general right now were the COVID kids that were kindergarten through fourth grade. And so they lost valuable time, valuable time with friends and learning those social skills and learning all of those things they didn't get it so and the longer they go the harder it's going to be to

teach them these things they were so secluded for so long and let's also lump into this not necessarily your middle schoolers but there have been very well documented trends that came out of COVID that masking toddlers has severely stunted their ability to recognize facial features and emotions. It severely stunted their early developmental speech patterns. Like, I don't know. I feel we could do a whole nother hour long episode about all the ways that I feel like our response to COVID screwed our kids up. Yeah. If we want to get nuked off the internet. But you know.

We need to get that doctor on when we do that episode. I've got his business card. I know. We need to do that. Andrew keeps texting me. When are you going to get the pediatrician on? I know. I need to.

But yeah. I hear what you're saying. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. I, in typical Phil fashion, am extraordinarily critical of parenting, and I'm very unforgiving of the excuse of they had to do what they had to do or they needed a break. Because, I'm sorry, I just, I don't buy that. Like, I tell Piper all the time, being dad doesn't come with breaks. Being dad is a 24-hour day, seven-day-a-week job. You are always dad.

It doesn't mean you have to be 100% all the time. But it does mean that, like, to me, the word break just doesn't calculate into my vocabulary. I guess what I'm not, break is not the word I'm trying to use. Think about the time when you were in that office and Piper was home. If did at any point, did, did you were just, were you ever just like, I'm on a conference call. I need you to be quiet right now. I need you to just be still, be quiet. And did it ever cross your mind? I'm just going to give you this tablet for just the 20 minutes that I'm on this call? Or did you think, I'm going to do this conference call and I'm going to referee her, teach her school while I'm doing this? Nine times out of ten?

I mean, honestly, I never gave her a screen to shut her up. I would tell her you have to be quiet. And yeah, that involves some fights between me and her at times. She and I, I don't know why, but she brought this up yesterday. She was watching something where apparently 18-year-olds are romanticizing the COVID years and wishing they could return to them because they were off of school. And it was just like early summer. It was like an extended summer break because they didn't have to go to school and they could they could just lounge around the house all day it was some well it set her it set her clean off because she remembers all of this and she was very emphatic about the fact

that like kofid was kofid sucked like i couldn't see my friends we couldn't go i couldn't go to school you know she remembers all that very negatively and she brought up having to work having to be having to do schoolwork from home and me suddenly becoming her teacher. So we talked about this literally just yesterday, I think. Yeah. But a lot of it was really the fact that she no longer had a separation between school and home. She was home, and she felt like home, she She's doing home stuff, not doing school stuff. And I am not, I don't, I think I'm capable of teaching children, but I'm not certainly not wired for it. And some of it was just me and her butting heads. She did not want to do the work. She was at home. She wanted to lay on the couch. She wanted to sleep in. She wanted to go play

outside. She wanted to do anything or do schoolwork at home. It was also hard for her to log on and see that half of her class wasn't there. But she had to be there. Yeah. Well, that also goes back to. Probably more than half. That also goes back to conversations that she and I have had about the fact that like the fact that all of your classmates are being whatever is not doesn't give you license to do so. Because we're your mom and dad and we don't think that's right but i digress so i don't know i i hear what you're saying the word break

the word i need a break has always just like twisted my stomach up because what what i'm hearing when a person says i need a break is i'm tired of being mom and dad. And my point of view is like, suck it up. Like, suck it up. You are mom forever. Is that what you think when I like take an extra long bath or need to go outside and read by myself or whatever? Because I need those breaks. I need those mental health breaks.

But is it that you need a break from being like wife and mom? Yeah. Oh. I need a break from being like wife and mom? Yeah. Oh, I need a break from people needing me. I need a break from people talking to me. I need a break from people touching me. I need a break. I just need that.

I need it to just be me. I mean, what did you think it was? I don't know. I don't see it that way. Well, that's the way it is well but to me that doesn't mean you stop being mom that you don't that doesn't mean you stop being mom and wife well i don't know i will never stop being mom and wife but i don't think it's fair to say that a parent who needs a break is a lazy parent or whatever because because parents need breaks i need parents don't need 16

hour long breaks okay you are being you're you're trying to you're trying to prove a point that's not even trying to be made i'm not trying to prove a point you and i are saying different things okay well i'm saying what i'm saying you You're saying that you occasionally need a temporary break to kind of like just have a moment to yourself. Yes. I am saying I am observing parents out there in the real world who they take what you're saying and then they push it to, well, I just need an afternoon. I just need a weekend. I just needed this. I just needed that.

And their excuse is I need a break to be a lazy crap parent because they don't want to deal with their kids. It's not, I need a moment. It's, I don't want to be here. Okay. And I don't want to deal with you ever. So what is it then that. They're saying the same thing. I get that.

I get the whole, the parents who are saying, I don't want to deal with you. I don't want to be with you, whatever, which is really what I'm saying. Well, what I'm saying is they're not saying, I don't want to deal with you. They're saying, I need a break. What they're, what they are intending though, or what their actions are showing is I don't want to be mom. It's easier to just give you a screen and shut you up so I can go have my, have my wine and hang out with my friends and go do whatever. It's easier to dump you off with grandma and grandpa so I can go have my wine and hang out with my friends and go do whatever. It's easier to dump you off with grandma and grandpa so I can go out partying at night. It's easier to do this.

It's more fun. But where do you draw the line as yourself, as Phil, of we're dropping Piper off at her grandparents for the weekend so that we can go have a break, just the two of us, and we're dropping Piper off at her grandparents for the weekend so that we can have a break, just the two of us. When it impacts her negatively. When it impacts her negatively. So it's okay to do it periodically. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it periodically. But to me, the ultimate signpost for what is, for me, the ultimate signpost of parenting is going to be if it harms your children.

If it harms your kid in any way, you're not doing parenting right. Because what I eventually gave myself grace on when Piper was young was- This is totally off subject, by the way, but- I cannot pour from an empty cup. I had to get out. I had to go drive. I had to go to the store. I had to do things by myself behind a locked door if I needed to so that I could refill my cup,

so that I could be present for my family. That was not me being lazy. That was not me being, I don't want to be mom right now. Although it was, I don't want to be mom. I don't want to be wife right now. I just need to be Gillian. That was not me trying to skirt out of my responsibilities as people with y'all or with my responsibilities in general. That was me knowing that if I don't do this, I'm going to break. And then that person that you get is going to be a lot worse

than had you just let me take a break. And if it was a 20 minute break or a four hour break, it needed to be what it needed to be. Do you think that may have been somewhat skewed by the fact that at that moment you were dealing with literally a mental health condition? I don't think it's skewed at all. I think people just need to take breaks. And it's okay for a mom or a dad to say, I need this time. I've got to do this by myself. I've got to be by myself.

There is actually, I'm not going to say this right, but it's like a condition that people get. And it is mental health. And it is mental health. It all is mental health. But the constant touching and the grabbing and the whatever. And then husband comes home and is all, you know, smoochy-moochy. And it's like, just stop touching me. I need people to stop touching me. What?

Read Joe's comment. She's on a small scale. He's on a large scale. Yes, I know. We're arguing about different things. But what I'm trying to do is get... I'm trying to get him to understand that parents who need to take breaks aren't lazy. Parents who need to give their child an iPad so that they can just have a moment.

They're not bad parents. I don't agree with shoving an iPad in front of your kid's face at the dinner table. I think... What if their parent needs a break right at that moment at the dinner table? You're being a jerk right now. Now I'm kind of being a little needly. But my point is, you're taking what I'm saying and you're conflating it to me. And parents are not allowed breaks ever.

That's kind of what you were saying. No, I'm saying I don't see. I don't see it that way. I don't believe that I take breaks. I feel like I'm always dad. I'm always husband. If my wife or daughter need me, I don't care how empty the cup is. I'm going to go get the reserve out and we're going to pour from it because my wife and daughter need me. I'll refill the cup later. I need a temporary break for my own mental health.

And what I'm calling out, which is parents that just do not want to deal with their kids, so they habitually, repetitively, continuously screen hypnotize them. That is not appropriate and there's no defense for it. And I don't, the reason I'm making this assessment is because you said sometimes parents need a break. What I'm saying is that parents who do this, that I think we both agree is inappropriate, say the same thing. They say, I just need a break. Okay. You're being literal with what people say. I got it. I'm being literal with what they say because that's what they say. They say the same thing you do, but it means something different when you do it for eight hours. Do you know how hard it is sometimes to podcast with your spouse?

Because she knows I take things literally, and yet she argues about them figuratively, and I'm a literal person. When people say things literally, they mean things literally. Sometimes you have to think figuratively. You have to think about the other side of the coin. Okay. But these people that I'm talking about, they say the same thing. They say, I need a break, just like you're throwing that out there. I need a break. But you need a break temporarily.

They need a break because they don't want to be parents. Joe is trying to get you off the subject. Look, Phil, new gun. COVID. He got on his own rant. Thank you, Joe. Anyway, so we totally got off of digital age, the kids in the digital age. But I think it all goes together.

Yeah. Definitely goes all together. And I do think the very core of it is mental health. I think we have to watch what we're doing, what our kids are doing in their digital age because of their mental health. Piper asked us a question last night at dinner. Will I ever have social media? So Piper doesn't have a cell phone yet that actually works, works like a cell phone. asked us a question last night at dinner. Will I ever have social media? So

Piper doesn't have a cell phone yet that actually works, works like a cell phone. But one day she will. And her question was, will I ever have social media? Did she ask about social media? Did she ask about TikTok specifically? Well, first she asked about social media, then she asked about TikTok.

And I'm sitting across the table from her and I'm cutting up whatever. And I look at her and goes, no, you will not. You will not have social media. And if you do download social media, we will know about it and there will be consequences. You will not have social media. And then Phil goes, when you're an adult. Well, okay. And then she said, I wish I could have TikTok. And I was like, absolutely not. Yeah, TikTok is digital brain cancer.

Remind me what the name of that show was that was on Netflix. It was the whole documentary about the algorithms and social media. It's killing me that I can't remember what it is. Social Agenda? Something. Anyway, she's going to look while I talk. I think that's what she's doing yes but um i explained to piper i'm like you know you have to understand that like social media is literally programmed and developed to be addictive it is social dilemma social dilemma the algorithms are programmed to put things in front of you that make you, that increase your screen time and usage of them.

They are, that is the literal, that is the literal definition of addictive. And they're designed to be this way. And they're designed to be this way for adults. So when you put it in the hands of, as you said, people don't, people's brains don't fully develop until they're 25. I take your word on that because you know more about young, you know, early development than I do. But when you put this in the hands of like five, six, seven, eight year olds, they don't have a freaking chance. This is like handing them smack and just letting them have a party. They don't have a prayer. So my point of view to my daughter is like your social media use will be, I mean, you know, you pointed out the other day, like we let her on YouTube, but even that is pretty tightly controlled.

And you and I are constantly like listening to and watching what she's watching. So if something inappropriate comes across the screen, usually she'll shut it off before we can even tell her anything. She knows that's not appropriate. we could even tell her anything. She knows that's not appropriate. But again, I feel like to Joe's point earlier about the lack of parenting, we take parenting deathly serious and we're very involved with our child and we're very involved with what she's consuming and what she's being exposed to. But my worry about social media, about handing a kid Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or anything else. Snapchat. Snapchat. Yes, there are the worries about bullying. There's the worries about what

they're going to be exposed to. But there's also the simple fact that these platforms are all designed from the ground up by very, very intelligent people to mine data from users and to literally meet the definition of being an addictive, basically an addictive substance or an addictive whatever. They're designed to addict you to staring at screens. They're designed, like, I forget exactly the name for it, but there's apparently a phenomenon within the mental health profession right now where people are addicted to social media where they will literally sit there and they'll just scroll through Instagram for literally like an hour and a half, two hours, miss appointments,

miss work. And it's not because like, it's not a conscious decision of, oh, I'm just going to miss work today. I want to scroll through Instagram. They are literally just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling and lose track of time. Or their alarm will go off and they'll silence and keep scrolling. Their brain is shutting out all these things because they need the next hit. They need to fix. It's the creepiest, most terrifying thing to pull back from and look at from my 30,000 feet. And then you want me to put this in the hands of my 11, 12 year old child. I would soon her put a brick of cocaine on the table and just let her learn the hard way. Then I'd let her have social media. That sounds really extreme, but it scares the hell out of me.

Yeah. It scares me that parents let their kids just play with the stuff willy-nilly. Did you know that our bodies are changing due to our phones? Yes. And that is also creepy. You know that the ligaments in the back of our necks are actually extending throughout our lives because we spend so much time doing this. But the bones at the base of our neck are becoming like spiked almost because we're constantly doing this instead of holding our necks up. And so our bones are evolving to accommodate for this. Isn't that terrifying? All because of cell phones.

I got a compliment the other day of how, like somebody asked me if I was prior service military because of my posture. The fact that I do stand so straight back. My neck is straight. My head is straight up in the air. And they were like, were you in the Army and the Marines? And I was like, yeah. And they were like, I can tell because of your posture. You know, most people, you know, they slouch the shoulders and they punch forward.

I'm a sloucher. Yeah, I'd have got beat over the head with a K-pot for doing that. Maybe you need to start beating me with whatever a K-pot is. Y'all heard it. I have permission. No, you don't. It's not spousal abuse if you're correcting posture.

No. No, I just... We got off subject again. Truthfully, all these things... I guess just to start wrapping some of this up with a bow, I don't know that I would totally sign off on the idea of not letting kids have exposure to computers until they're,

until like they're out of high school, they're 18 years old. Because even though I wasn't using computers, you know, regularly in the classroom when I was young, like my father, he ran a home business repairing personal computers. And I had my first computer when I was like six,

you know, so I've been playing with computers and typing and using mice and using windows. I mean, I think my first windows computer was probably like age nine. And I definitely think that I definitely credit some of that with the fact that, you know, in my career, like I've taken to certain computer programs very quickly and easily. Like I've been, I've been toying with Microsoft Excel since my late teens. Think about that. Most, most teenagers, even in like the financial and the business sectors where I'm at, most of them didn't really start learning Excel until they were out of college and they were at their workplace. By then I already had six, seven, eight years under my belt playing with it. So like on the one hand, I agree and

I'm very concerned about letting kids have unrestrained computer usage. I think it's dangerous for the kids. I think it invites cyber bullying because these kids can do this stuff in a vacuum with no oversight. I think it is destroying their ability to spell, their ability to write their grammar. Frankly, I think it might be impacting their speaking ability. Think about it like that. We communicate things via email or via chat. We're not speaking to each other. I mean, even to this day, like I I'm working on a couple of high level projects at work right now. And like, we have weekly, we have weekly virtual meetings because you can get so much done in an hour long conversation versus sending 50,000 emails back and forth. Like, I do think that I do think that these are all ultimately going to be deleterious for the kids.

I think that we as parents need to recognize that, like, the world you and I grew up in is gone. Yeah. But there were some things that we should probably hang on to from that time period. Like, progress for the sake of progress isn't a good thing if it ends up impacting the kids negatively. Mm-hmm. Any thoughts? No, I think I've gotten all my thoughts out for this episode.

Are we going to fight about needing breaks after this? No. I'm just going to keep going if I need to go. Whether you think I'm a lazy parent or not. As long as you don't do it for 12 hours straight. Why do you have to jab? Why do you have to jab? You jab.

No, we're not going to fight. She's a jabber. Anyway, well, I think we got all of the important announcements out of the way. Thanks for watching today and for bearing with us as we both had our own rants and then ranted with each other mom and daddy are fighting again mommy and daddy are fighting anyway i hope you'll have the

um a great rest of your weekend and your sunday and we will see you next week don't forget to buy your tickets for women who for women who prep are going to do an episode next week? Saturday we have plans. Sunday. Yeah, Sunday we can. Okay. We'll see you all in a week then. Okay.

Bye. Bye, everybody. Thank you.