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Discover a new and hopeful path forward as you consider your family's approach to social media, screen time, and technology.
We've all heard the mind-boggling statistics about technology and social media use. The numbers don't lie; our obsession with smartphones and social media is slowly eroding the very essence of our homes and families. We see it. We feel it. We know it.
So what do we do about it?
Spoiler alert: Forget parental control apps, time limits, or reward charts. This revolutionary path takes us into the heart of the beast itself: the social media algorithm. Former social media influencer and trailblazer Erin Loechner has seen the perks and pitfalls of social media usage, and she knows how to hack the strategies of tech wizards and platform experts so you can borrow their billion-dollar playbook to engage your family in meaningful ways away from screens.
The Opt-Out Family is packed with eye-opening research and startling insights, as well as practical encouragement and creative ideas to transform your family's relationship with today's ever-evolving technology. As a result, you will:The Opt-Out Family unlocks a world where genuine connections flourish and technology takes a backseat. It's time to reclaim your home and build a tech-free family culture that's stronger than your Wi-Fi signal.
- Experience more quality time with your children that doesn't revolve around screens
- Create healthy habits as a family that will set your children up for success in the future
- Discover what your kids actually need from you, and learn how to delight and engage them better than a device can
- And, ultimately, establish true and lasting influence within your own four walls--and far beyond
Neurosurgeon and award-winning author Dr. W. Lee Warren, MD delivers daily prescriptions from neuroscience, faith, and common sense on how to lead a healthier, better, happier life. You can’t change your life until you change your mind, and Dr. Warren will teach you the art of self brain surgery to get it done. His new book, Hope Is the First Dose, is available everywhere books are sold.
Good morning, friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you, and I am excited and grateful
to be here with you for some self-brain surgery today.
It's Tuesday, and today is book release day for my new friend, Erin Lochner.
Erin is a former social media influencer. Her husband worked in tech,
and they realized as they started having children that something was amiss.
Erin had a million followers on social media.
Something was wrong. And what was wrong was that we were becoming increasingly
addicted to the devices in our hands.
She realized that the social media has kind of taken on its own life and life
was changing right in front of her eyes.
We've all heard the mind-boggling statistics about tech and social media use,
and the numbers are clear.
Our obsession with smartphones and social media is eroding the essence of our
homes and families. We're all concerned about it. We all see it.
We go out to restaurants and we see families that are not looking or talking
to each other. They're all just looking at their devices.
We've heard the statistics about kids and depression and anxiety,
and we've all seen the effects of being connected to these devices and to the internet all the time.
But Erin decided to do something about it, and her approach was pretty shocking. She just walked away.
She literally walked away from a career in social media with a million followers,
and her and her husband decided they were going to get rid of technology in their homes.
She has a beautiful new book that's coming out today, The Opt-Out Family,
and I'll let Erin tell her story and tell the incredible result of this movement
that she's now started that's taking the world by storm.
A lot of people are ready to walk away from the incredible addiction that the
social media algorithm has created.
And whether you are ready to completely get away from social media or you just
recognize that you need to try to bring some balance back into your life,
or you want to influence your children or your grandchildren or other people,
or you want to be more engaged with your family, Opt Out Family will help you.
They have an incredible website, a growing network of people all over the country
who are saying enough is enough.
The social media companies are using this device that's become an addiction
and it's changing our lives and our families negatively.
So if you're feeling some of that, the opt-out family will be helpful to you.
I'm going to let Erin tell her story. We had a great conversation.
See what you can learn from her. It might change your mind about the device
that always seems to be in your hand.
It might just change your life. Let's get after it.
Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.
You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a
place for the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together
with faith and everything starts to make
sense are you ready to change your life well this is
the place self-brain surgery school i'm dr lee warren and this is where we go
deep into how we're wired take control of our thinking and find real hope this
is where we learn to become healthier feel better and be happier this is where
we leave the past behind and transform our minds this is where we start today
are you ready this is your podcast.
This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.
Music.
Friend, we're back and I'm so excited to be bringing you a new friend for you
to meet today with a book that's coming out today, Erin Lochner.
Thank you for taking the time in the middle of your move to Montana to be with us today, Erin.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to chat about this.
Me too. It's exciting. Tell us your story. Give us a 30,000-foot view of the
really interesting story that you have and a brave moment when you decided to
walk away from a lot of it.
Of course. Yeah, thank you. Uh, I have three kids and we homeschool here in
the Midwest, but at the time, uh.
There was a time in which I was a social media influencer with a million followers
and I had a show on hgtv.com.
We filmed 24 episodes for two years, renovating our life here in the Midwest.
And so I was really an early accidental influencer.
I really fell into the world of social media by happenstance,
you know, that that's kind of, we were living in Los Angeles.
My husband was working for Apple's ad agency.
So of all people, we should probably have known what the algorithm was doing
before we knew it. And we didn't.
And so I became an influencer and was very successful at it.
And after the birth of my first daughter, who is gosh, almost 12 now.
So this was a, this was a while ago, I sort of started reassessing social media, the harms,
the benefits, looking at it from the lens of, you know, what this might be doing
to our brains, what this might be doing to our mental health,
our community or lack thereof.
And I really, I got very curious about what was happening. And by this time,
you know, there wasn't the research that there is now.
I am so grateful for the research that there is now that's kind of leading us
into a different direction.
But at the time it was just a gut feeling and I thought,
I don't know if I should be spending as much time here, uh, leading other people
in the sphere of social media.
And certainly after I had my daughter, it just became clear.
If I continue this path, I'm going to be parenting with my phone in my hand a lot more than I want to.
And so I just kind of started peeling back those layers, layers.
I walked away from platforms one at a time. And the last to go was Instagram
about four years ago. And I've been social media free since.
And it's a it's a beautiful life here on the other side. Wow.
So you decided to walk away and that led you to a different kind of life.
Explain that life to us now, what you what that looks like without the smartphone
in your hand all the time.
Yeah, I will. I will say it's very it's very interesting.
You would know this from working with the brain. But I found that so often when
we talk about this, we use a very fear-based approach, you know,
that technology's out to get us.
And we kind of demonize the practice of smartphones and all of this.
And I wanted to offer certainly myself, but also my family, a more hope-filled approach.
I wanted to know how, yes, we can say no to devices, but how can we say yes to something better?
What can we replace it with? What habits and rhythms will nourish us instead
of distract us from our lives?
And so, you know, what life looks
like now on the other side is we keep an open door policy in our home.
I always tell people I'm much better at answering the door than answering the phone.
So come on over, you know, a neighbor just stopped by. I can say I've got my little sign up.
And it's just, it's a, it's a low tech hangout. our kids friends can come over
anytime and we always have something engaging happening not in the way of cruise
director you know but for our kids we need to make sure that we're providing them with.
Roots experiences, roots deep down. We're encouraging conversations.
We're encouraging challenge. We're encouraging hard things.
That's what life for us looks like. It's a lot of eye contact.
It's a lot of laughter. It's a lot of fires and books and sensory experiences
rather than sort of the flattened reality that we get from the phones.
Wow. What have you seen in your kids' lives in response to that?
Compared to some of the peers that they engage with in their day-to-day lives?
You know, it's funny. My oldest is just at sort of that bifurcation that happens
when all of her friends get phones.
And she came home a couple weeks ago and said, Mom, I don't want a phone.
I will not ask you for it. That's not what I want, but I do want a friend.
Because she's seeing that her relationships and the people that she's closest
to are sort of succumbing to this kind of knee-jerk response to pick up their
phone when they're uncomfortable,
when they're bored, when they want distracted, when they want to be anywhere but there, right?
When there's sort of an ambiguity surrounding a situation, then they'll just pop up their phone.
Or if they want to be entertained for a moment, they'll pop out their phone.
And And, um, that's a hard life for our kids to live in.
I always remind parents that, you know, for as hard as this is to parent through,
it is so much harder to live through as a child, to live through this sort of
slow stripping away of your community as they age,
kind of out of the play zone and into the, the screen zone.
So I would say what, you know, what we've noticed and what our kids have noticed
in is less eye contact, less attention spans, less focus, less creativity, less risk-taking.
All of those pillars that are important for a child are sort of being slowly
stripped away and replaced.
Wow. The book is called The Opt-Out Family, Giving Your Kids What Technology
Can't. What led you to write the book?
You said it's one thing to make this personal decision.
It's another thing to sort of take up the cause of raising the banner of I'm
going to lead people into this new, brave new world that looks a lot like our
old world used to look like. What led to that? And tell us a little bit about the book.
Yeah. You know, I wanted to write the book for the parent that didn't want to tango with this at all.
You know, they, they wanted at the time of writing this, the narrative was very
much, well, you know, digital wellbeing balance, you know, let's navigate.
We, we kind of tiptoed around the, the conversation for a very long time,
specifically with our children.
Uh, we talk a lot about delaying technology, which is always a good,
a good idea, but I wanted to know, I wanted to be curious.
We say all the time that technology is our future, but I wanted to know,
is this the future that any of us want?
And if it's not, then what can we do about it now while our kids are still young
and while we're sort of raising the next generation?
And so the opt-out family is for the bold people that just are curious.
Can we do this another way entirely?
Can we have a low-tech house? Is this even possible?
And what I'm finding even through these conversations is the question used to be very much why?
Well, why would you? Why wouldn't you want to adapt to technology.
It's so convenient. There are so many wonderful features.
And now the question is just how I think we are so aware of the harms and we are so aware of, um.
How it's changing us as a society that now we just want to know,
how do we do it? And so that's what this book is for.
Wow. So talk a little bit about the research and what it is exactly that this,
you mentioned the algorithm a while ago, and you guys were connected in California,
your husband worked for Apple, like, you know, now what was happening.
So what is the algorithm?
It's not a conspiracy theory. What is the purpose behind companies giving us
these devices and what their intentions are for them? Yeah.
Well, the, the, the best definition of an algorithm that I received was from
a programmer in Silicon Valley.
And I remember being in a conference with him and asking him,
I don't understand what you're talking about with the algorithm.
Could you explain it to me in layman's terms?
And he said, uh, it's just a recipe. It's a series of steps, right?
It is just a going, uh, ingredients to lead you to a certain set of tasks or a certain goal in mind.
And I remember asking him, okay, well, what, what goal is that?
And he said, Aaron, that's the million dollar question. You know, whose goal is this?
And that is what I found in all of his research is the algorithm is always going
to lead us to a place that is separate from our goals because our goal,
I don't know any family's goal that is to spend more time disconnected,
or that is to spend more time consuming rather than creating,
or to spend more time living other people's memories instead of their own.
I don't know anyone who has that as a goal.
And, and yet that's the direction we're leaded.
You know, when we think about that analogy where there's a ladder on a house
and you're sort of, you're climbing the ladder and you have to ask yourself,
where is this ladder going?
Um, you want to look up and say, is this ladder leaning on a place where I want to be?
And that's the question we have to ask ourselves is this ladder that we're climbing
by participating in social media or participating in some of these algorithms,
is that leading us where we want to go?
Is that leading us to a place where we want our ladder to be leaning?
And I think for most of us, that answer is no.
Wow. I read a book recently by Abigail Schreier called Bad Therapy.
And she talks about this idea that smartphones and really a kind of a societal
focus on everybody having a diagnosis for everything that they feel has kind
of led us to this place where we're seeing more sort of narcissism and anxiety
and depression and suicide even.
And all these sort of mental health issues that are increasing at an alarming rate.
And her premise really is that it's largely driven because we're spending so
much time together but alone.
We can look at what entertains us. We can read something that interests us.
We can click on something and not be connected to anybody in the real world.
And that creates this need for self-satisfaction all the time that has detached
us from the concept of society.
So, I mean, maybe address that if you agree with that idea or what you think about it.
I do agree with that very much. So I interviewed so many kids and teens for this book.
I wanted to know, you know, it's, it's one thing to, as a parent,
you know, sit in a, in a different spot of the room than your children and,
and, and kind of conjure what you think they're going through.
It's a different thing to talk to them themselves.
And so overwhelmingly the experience of a child is that one of them even said,
you know, when I'm, when I'm in the lunch table,
when I'm, when I'm at lunch with my friends, there's kind of this unspoken rule
that if one person picks up their phone,
we all can, because that one person has now checked out and the dynamic has changed.
And so we will, we do, we just kind of hop on when we want to disengage for a minute.
And I think that, I think a lot of what that does in terms of replacing community
is, um, yes, I think there's a narcissistic thing to it, but I also think there it's a.
If that's, who's leading us, right.
We don't, we're, we're looking to Siri and we're looking to Alexa and we're
looking to Google. We are only as great as our strong leaders.
And that's who we have offered up our children to lead them,
right. To guide them. We are, ask Alexa.
That's, that's what we have given them. And so why wouldn't we be,
you know, raising narcissists when that's what we, that's the role that we've taught.
So I think it's ever important to just introduce to our children,
the idea of wonder and curiosity.
And can you wrestle sort of with that ambiguous nature of not knowing the answer to everything?
Can you sit with the questions a little bit longer so that you can sort of have
some deeper truths revealed rather than the quick knowledge and the quick,
um, just the quick hit of it all.
It's a, it's just a very inauthentic reality that we're offering them.
Wow. You use the sort of mnemonic that you built out of this opt-out word.
And let's kind of go through those. Like you say, offer, protect,
teach, offset, unite, and trust.
Let's kind of go through like what you're offering people.
If we're going to decide, hey, we're going to get off our dependency on screens,
we're going to raise kids that aren't so addicted to their smart phones.
Like what are we offering them in replacement for that? So let's break that
opt out idea out a little bit.
I love that. Yes. So one thing is just offering, uh, low tech replacements for
some of the, uh, screen-free swaps in the home, right?
Uh, so just making technology, not part of your daily rhythm of life.
And really the, the idea behind this is that the algorithm is technology is
not all bad, right? Otherwise we wouldn't be using it.
So we can learn a lot from these tech companies. We can learn.
Um, I wanted to know from a Minecraft craft designer, you know,
how can you introduce risk and challenge without demotivating a child?
I wanted to learn from TikTok. How do you create this inclusive,
fun experience that kids are so attracted to?
Uh, I, I wanted to know how do we, as parents engage the algorithm even better?
How do we steal some of these tricks of Silicon Valley and do them better?
And what I want to just say to all parents is we have the upper hand.
We can do this so much better because we're living alongside of our kids.
We know them better than anyone right now. And let's keep following that path.
So yes, offering those alternatives to technology.
Sensory experiences are a great place to start thinking of fire,
water, earth, air, soil, getting out into nature.
Those are really very engaging senses that our kids need from us.
And that truly, frankly, we as adults alternate ourselves.
Wow. What about protect and teach? Protect and teach.
I think one of the best ways to do that, I was speaking with a friend and she
was talking about the age old question, when is my child ready for a smartphone?
And we were sort of discussing the pros and cons.
And she said her new philosophy is that her child will not be ready for a device
until she's ready to see porn.
And that was a really harsh way to reframe that.
And yet she's right, because because of the lack of legislature involved in
all of these apps and platforms, that is kind of the truth. And so when I think
protection, I think there's a lot of room for digital literacy.
I think there's a lot of room for communicating what does happen on these phones.
I think we can certainly narrate what we do on our devices as parents,
but there's no replacement for just the protection involved in not handing them a device.
I think that is absolutely imperative that we don't let our kids go down this road alone.
Well, I think that's a really important point because the fact is parents,
especially grandparents,
if you're listening and you've got grandchildren, like when you allow a child
sort of unprotected access to a device, you really are allowing them to access
everything in the world that's designed to attract them.
And that doesn't always mean that they're going to find good things to look at.
So that's an incredibly important point. And I've never heard anybody say it that way.
It's just stunning to say when you're ready for your child to look at pornography,
that's when you give them a smartphone.
And we would all agree that's not a destination for any age.
And I would also add even protected devices.
You know, a lot of us have parental controls installed and a lot of us think
that we're doing everything that we can be doing.
And yet these platforms have the ability to change any terms and conditions
without your knowledge. And so parental controls, there, there is really,
truly no safe way to use social media.
I will just say that plainly, uh, and, and parental controls,
uh, can do a little, but the only parental control is to, is to parent your way through it.
So if you are handing over a device, you are kind of signing up for a lot of
hands-on work that you maybe wouldn't have, then you can sort of focus.
On some better things without kind of being your child's content moderator.
You can actually be their mentor if you're not handing them the device.
That's important too. I mean, we, we are supposed to be parents and grandparents
were supposed to be mentors and, and not friends necessarily.
Sometimes you can't be friends with your kids, but to guides,
trusted guides and companions in this and equipping them for life.
And, and you're right. You turn yourself into And to then somebody who's telling
them, no, you can't do that. No, it's time to put it away.
And you become almost an adversary in that.
And I've seen really in my own children, I've seen fatigue and stress in them
of trying to, how do we limit this? How do we turn it off?
How do we manage how many minutes they get to have?
And it becomes a real issue. So that's a really good point. You talk about the
difference between creativity and consumption.
I thought that was a really insightful idea. So talk about that for a moment. Yeah.
I mean, I, I, I've never loved the idea of consuming more than I'm creating.
I just think even from a global standpoint, it just doesn't sit well with me
to, to take more than you're giving.
And, and I think technology teaches us because we think that it's free, right?
We think that there's no cost involved that we can just consume, consume, consume.
And we're not able, I think of Luke when, when Jesus says, you know,
who would build the tower without counting the cost.
And there is a real cost involved when we are allowing the time and the energy
spent on these devices without sort of stepping away to let any of that process
and to create a new thought,
you know, to create a new pattern or a new habit or a new rhythm.
But instead we're just sort of in this loop of taking in all of these information
and maybe feeling as if we've learned something and maybe feeling as if we have
gained something on the other end.
But really, what do we have to show for it at the end of the day if we haven't
practiced any of it, if we haven't gone offline long enough to sit with it and
let it simmer and really let it marinate for a bit? Wow.
A lot of schools, you said, are talking now about the idea of banning phones or limiting phones.
How does the school system, there's a lot of educators that listen to this podcast,
How does the school system grapple with this problem,
really, of every child having the ability to check out of class and check into
YouTube all the time? How do schools deal with that, Erin?
Yeah, I am so grateful to the work of Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation.
I don't know if you're familiar. I'm sure you are. And his whole mission is
really for schools to be phone-free by, I think, 2025.
And that's a very bold goal. and yet so many of our schools have written policies
that no devices should be out in the classroom. And yet they are. And so.
And I think that this is probably one of those areas where we will look back
and say, why didn't we just, why didn't we get the phone lockers or why didn't
we, why didn't we just have them check them at the door?
And, um, it's a very layered conversation.
I interviewed a lot of teachers and administrators for this.
Um, and what I can say with utmost hope is that everyone was on the same page,
that these phones are a distraction and they are lessening the educational environment.
The only question is how to, what do we do about it? And so one thing that I
worked with for this book with our local administration was developing scripts
for parents to talk to their teachers about iPad use in the classroom.
You know, how much are we using? How good are the apps that we're using?
Talking and keeping those lines of communication very open to work alongside
of us, our school administration.
There are scripts to talk to principals about online communication so that parents
don't need another app to keep up with their kids' sporting events or keep up
with their extracurricular activities.
Everyone wants something better. I think we're all just in those stages of really
speaking around each other.
So if we can break down those barriers in communication, if we can rally together
as parents and as teachers and administrators,
I think we can really make a dent in creating a better future for our kids by
working together and knowing that the goal is not to make anyone's life more
complicated or anyone's life harder or take away some of these conveniences.
But the goal is to recognize that we have kids' lives at stake and we want to
show them something better.
I love that. There's some statistics that you quote in the book that I think
would be helpful just for people to hear.
I'm just going to read you a few of the ones that you mentioned.
Fifty-seven percent of U.S. parents with children age two or younger say their
children watch YouTube frequently.
Eighty percent of parents say their children five to 11 are using tablets,
and 63 percent are using smartphones. phones.
Children under the age of 14, on average, spend three hours and 18 minutes a
day on a device and engage with screens twice as long as they do in conversation
with their parents or families.
Ninety-seven percent of teens are online daily in the United States,
and 46 percent of them say they're online almost constantly.
And 56 percent of parents say they spend too much time on their smartphones,
and 68 percent say they're distracted by their phone while they're trying to
spend time with their children.
That sounds like an almost hopeless situation.
So, I mean, give us some hope in there. Like, what do you have to say about
those numbers, Erin? I think the hope is, I mean...
We know, we know now, right? We have the knowledge.
And, um, I think of in Deuteronomy, you know, it's, uh, you have circled the
mountain long enough now turn North.
I think that we have lived in this world long enough to see it.
We know it and we see it and we feel it. And I don't think there's any denying that anymore.
And now we just get to move forward in a better direction.
And I think the best hope that I can offer is the recognition that convenience does not mean easier.
It might in the short term.
But when I think of smartphone usage and when I think of certainly handing this
over to our kids, I think, yes, iPhones make it easier to deposit a check,
but they make it easier to spend a check.
They make it easier to furnish a home, but they make it easier to neglect a
home. They make it easier to send a discouraging text.
They make it easier to receive a discouraging text.
And so we have to kind of risk versus reward all of that.
And we not only do we have to, but we get to. We get to walk forward with the
knowledge of now what this is creating.
And we have a wonderful template to follow.
And that is just we can ask ourselves, what did we do in the 80s?
What did we do in the 70s? Right?
I was an 80s child. So it's not as if we're reinventing the wheel,
we're just going back a little bit and we're just asking ourselves,
is there a low tech way to do this that we might have forgotten about?
And the answer is other people, right? Like we have a community at our fingertips.
We have people all around us that have a wide range of experience.
And I think of what we're losing when we're not tapping into the wisdom of our
elders and into the people that live around us that can offer us accountability
and context for our situations.
That is the real cost is we are replacing the people in those shared experiences
for or whatever Silicon Valley wants us to know at any given moment. Wow.
I just read, I think it's important to put some life or death consequences on this.
I just read a story about a 10-year-old boy who committed suicide because he
was being bullied at school and digitally at home by the kids about his appearance.
They said he had big teeth, and they were making fun of his appearance,
something he can't change.
And when we were kids, we got bullied, but then we got to go home.
And the bullying didn't follow us home.
And now it's constant. It's ever-present. They can't get away from it.
So, I mean, maybe that's another thing we need to talk about here.
There's some real consequences to your children having access to everybody else
in the world, even when they're supposed to be in the safety of their home.
Yeah. You know, we would never think it's a good idea to bring,
you know, Times Square into our children's bedroom. and just even the stimulation
alone, but then whatever comes after that.
And, uh, I, I spoke with a mother who lost her son for well interviewing for
this book and she has become just the most wonderful advocate for,
uh, child safety online and,
brave, brave woman, but talked about, you know, it's, it's, um.
It's very hard, too, because the children that I think are very susceptible
to the bullying are the ones you never think it's going to be your kid,
you know, because we teach our child kindness and we teach them patience and
we teach them that it's OK to be different.
And we tell them all of these things that we want them to know.
And then they they use those things in the world that we've given them.
But if the world we are giving them is one in which any voice can access them
and any voice can argue with that and any voice can butt up against that and
any voice can replace your influence as the number one influence in their child's life,
then we can't expect that it couldn't happen to our child. It can happen to any child.
That's right. And it's important to know that. And I'm glad that you brought
it up because it's one of the things we don't like to talk about,
but it's a very real reality.
That's right. Well, give us a little picture of what an opt-out family looks like.
So somebody that's listening to this, it sounds kind of intriguing and maybe
the Lord is kind of calling them to this may be something they need to explore.
And I think that should be all of us, frankly.
What does an opt-out family look like in 2024?
Well, one thing is you have to start with the parents. We have to go first.
And so one thing that I encourage, we have a video on how to do this on our
site if anybody's curious, But I encourage all parents to depersonalize their phone.
And what I mean by that is change your lock screen and your wallpaper to just a black square, right?
Take away the cute family photos, take away the encouraging Bible verses,
whatever is on your lock screen and wallpaper, replace it with black.
Because what it does is it sends a signal to your brain that this is a phone, not your phone.
And that makes a huge difference because you're removing, you're depersonalizing
your experience with that device and you're, you're just making it a thing that
sits on the counter that you need when you have to make a call.
And so that's where I would start. I would start, um, with that step.
I would also start by turning parental controls on, but not on your kid.
I mean, hopefully your kid doesn't have a device yet, but if they do,
um, certainly on their device, but also on yours. I have parental controls turned
on to mine, so I can't access internet.
I can't, I don't have a camera. I don't have a calendar. I don't have email.
There's nothing on there that will appeal to me.
Um, it is just to make calls. And so in that way, it can kind of become a shared family phone.
There's, you know, my daughter can call grandma if she needs to,
it's a landline, you know?
So I would start with parents going first.
That's what it could look like is if, if we aren't sort of, you know,
listening to the siren song of our own device, our kids don't really see that
modeled. And so why would they also?
So I think there's that aspect. I think the other things we can do are just
looking, pausing for a minute and look at the world from a child's eyes.
You know, all the things that we think are dated, you know, I think the record
player, I think of CD players even.
I remember the weekend that we introduced our children to our old CD collection
that we had as kids and they were fascinated.
And, you know, we think in our minds that like, why would we do it this way
when we have Spotify? Right.
And yet those are really delightful sensory experiences for our children.
And I think we just write them off in the name of progress and yet everything
fun comes back around again.
And so I would say we're in a really unique opportunity to reintroduce some
of those things to our kids.
We took our kid to an antique store and had them ask us questions about.
What do you think this object did? What do you think this was used for?
What do you think the purpose of this was?
Everyone was stumped by a butter churner. And yet it was such a fun thing to think about.
There were things that I didn't even know what they did. And I thought,
well, that makes a lot of sense.
And I liked the idea of working with your hands a little more and moving a little slowly.
And so I think that's the heart of it.
I think, you know, when we think of technology and even Meta's motto as move
fast and break things, right? That's all over Silicon Valley.
I think a low-tech opt-out family can do the opposite. I think we can move slow and mend things.
And I think we can have the courage to see where technology is headed and we
can just pause and look around and ask, is that where we want to go to?
And if not, we can opt out in all of those micro decisions, you know,
facial recognition at summer camp, or, you know, signing the social media waiver
for the splash pad, or, you know, all of the things that,
that we think are just givens in the world that we live in, we can stop and
ask ourselves, what if there was another way to do this?
And then we can help our kids figure it out for the betterment of all of us. Yeah.
I love that. And so, you know, So if you're listening to this and you're saying,
gosh, this sounds like something I need to investigate, I would highly encourage
you to read Aaron's book, The Opt-Out Family.
It's a tremendous book. All kinds of research and neuroscience and really practical
things about what you can do with your family.
And some things will disturb you a little bit and make you sort of feel,
gosh, I need to examine my own behavior, not just my grandkids and my kids.
And I think it's very helpful.
The book comes out June 11th? June 11th, yeah.
Is that right? Okay. I think we're going to release this episode probably the
same day, just to give you some additional people finding out about the book that day.
But we've got a gift from the publisher. We have three copies of the book to give away to listeners.
So if you are interested in Aaron's book and you'd like to receive a free copy,
please send me an email, lee at drleewarren.com.
We're talking about technology, and I'm telling you to email me. It's okay.
Send me an email, lee at drleewarren.com, and give me your name,
your mailing address, and your zip code. And we're going to,
48 hours after the episode comes out, we're going to choose three listeners
to receive a copy of this important book.
I love the cover. The cover design, whoever did that, really brilliant.
It's got all these silhouettes of children, and they're looking at devices.
They're carrying phones.
And there's this one kid that's looking up like at the sun without,
and he's a different color.
It's just, it's beautiful, beautiful representation of what you're offering people.
Thank you. I designed it. I'm really pleased to say thank you.
That's very good encouragement.
Wonderful job. And I think you're doing great work. I think you're doing the
Lord's work, Erin. And we're praying for you and the success of this book.
And appreciate your time today.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Thank you. God bless you. You too.
What a great talk with Aaron Lochner. The Opt-Out Family is a compelling book.
It'll change your mind in some ways, whether you're ready to step away from
social media altogether, or you just recognize that you need some balance.
This book goes deep into what the algorithm is, what these companies are doing.
And the comment that she made about when do you think your little girl should have a phone?
And the answer was, as soon as you're ready for her to be exposed to pornography.
That was stunning to me because it's true. Like once you have a device in a
child's hand, you don't really have the control that you think you have.
So I think as parents, as grandparents, as people who are interested in the
well-being of our society, of our families, of our relationships,
this is something serious to think about.
And so the opt-out family, I think, will open your eyes a little bit,
give you some new things to ponder, and maybe help you change your mind so you can change your life.
And the good news is, my friend, you can start today.
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