Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Jones.
Hi Emily, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My husband Dave and I are the parents of 5 children, currently ages 12 to 21. Many years ago, our oldest child started asking for his phone. My husband works in the technology sector, and we were both well-educated (even back then) as to the well-documented negative impact of some elements of technology on young people. We SO wanted to start our children off with a phone on the right foot. So, like any self-respecting 21st-century mother, I started to google.
A bit of online research left me frustrated… everything online related to kids and tech terrified me. There was so much fear projected, and so little hope. “Let you kids dip one toe into the internet and they are doomed to a wasted life, addiction, or victimization by predators and bullies.” It also felt like the concept of teaching our children to be powerful, influential people for GOOD with these technologies was largely an afterthought in favor of more hysterical doomsday messages. It felt lopsided- like something BIG was missing from the conversation.
I KNEW that technology had good things to offer. That is a blessing. I also knew of the power and strength of teenagers. I believed them to be powerful people, severely underestimated in their capacities to choose well. I also believed that many were being granted powerful technologies too young, and before receiving adequate training.
One day, I heard something said in a speech by David A. Bednar that hit me like a ton of bricks. He said that the “understanding you and I have been blessed to receive… simply cannot be given to another person. The tuition of diligence and learning by faith must be paid to obtain and personally “own” such knowledge. Only in this way can what is known in the mind be transformed into what is felt in the heart.” (David A. Bednar)
This idea floored me. And I began to realize that, with so much focus on filters and monitoring (which are all important by the way)… very little was being said about our children putting some work in to gain wisdom for themselves… down in their OWN hearts. The reality is that kids must eventually WANT to be wise because they are personally convinced that it will bring them happiness. This wisdom must be “owned” by the child, independent of any other person.
This concept, that a child must “pay the tuition” for their wisdom, got the wheels turning in my head. What if we could provide something that would help our kids gain their wisdom? What if our children were required to study and learn how to use technology well in the same way that we require them to take driver’s ed before they can drive a car?
I began work on a sort of “driver’s ed” for the smartphone; which required training for our kids before they got their phone. Its impact on our family has been life-changing. Our oldest son was the guinea pig. (Poor child.) And he started out completely annoyed that he was the only kid on the planet whose parents were weird enough to have him do some study before owning a phone. But I will never forget the day that I overheard one of his buddies asking him why he never got his phone out when he was hanging with friends. He said nonchalantly, “Livin’ in real life is better.”
And that’s when I realized that he owned that perspective. It wasn’t “because mom and dad make me do this,”… it was his. And that’s when we knew that this approach was the real deal. Thanks to my husband’s technical expertise, that humble little PDF course led to the founding of our online company, Family Tech University, where parents all over the world now access the Internal Filter® Workshop course as a tool to train their children.
We now have launched 3 of our 5 children into adulthood. And I am more convinced than ever that we MUST parent technology with the long view in mind: granting technologies in measured, conservative ways with powerful and thorough training that opens the way for our children to OWN their wisdom, developing a powerful “internal filter” that is (in the end) their best and only protection against the darker sides of technology.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has not been smooth! One of the great challenges was getting the technology to provide the kind of powerful, interactive experience that we envisioned for the kids who experience it. The Internal Filter® Workshop isn’t just some little 40-minute class that kids passively consume. It is a full-fledged, life-changing experience. Kids navigate through 8 modules of curated content: powerful videos, articles, teen-friendly research studies, and practical activities that are all designed to help the child develop their own opinions and goals. These “owned opinions” become the foundation for a solid internal filter.
The modules cover all of the topics that parents consider most crucial, including social media, the dangers of online pornography, phone etiquette, online safety, online kindness, developing life vision, and finding balance and stillness in our harried digital world. The child records their opinions and thoughts about what they are learning in a special online journal, the entries of which (they know) will be emailed to the parent.
The Workshop sends automated progress reports to the parent, which include their child’s journal entries along with the crucial parent-child “chats” that are supposed to happen with each module. This kind of interactive program was extremely challenging to put together from a technical standpoint, on the “mom and pop” budget that we started with. I feel like my husband was blessed with an extraordinary level of programming brilliance to make it happen, and that we were led to other people with technical expertise at crucial times. We would anguish over various technical roadblocks, and work and work, and a solution would finally present itself. It was a step-by-step, sometimes grueling process.
This interactive aspect of the program has been crucial to its success: I cannot describe to you the flood of feedback that we have received from parents– about how this Workshop became the catalyst for critical discussions with their child and set the stage for a family culture of talking about important, sometimes hard things— normalizing that approach in the home. It is SO gratifying to hear about. It is meant to exist and meant to help families everywhere.
The second major challenge has been to find ways to break through the largely negative messages aimed at parents about kids and tech and provide them with the tools to parent tech intentionally, rather than in fear-based ways. Fear-based parenting is never a happy place to be. The dangers and challenges are very real, but parents need to know that there is HOPE- most assuredly! And that even when they feel like they have made errors in their tech parenting, or feel that their child is beyond help with their current habits, it is never too late. These kids are meant to harness these technologies for good.
Thanks – So what else should our readers know about Family Tech University?
Reiterating some of the information from past fields, these are some things that set us apart:
We provide training for the young person. This is unique, as most information and help is directed at parents. Most parents recognize that there is a whole host of things that they need to teach their kids about wise technology use, but they don’t know where to start. And they also struggle to figure out how to do so without descending into lecture mode. We provide organized, thorough training for kids on all of the things that parents are most worried about. The child reads the content. Watches the videos. Digests them in their online journal. Practices certain healthy tech habits… all of this is designed to generate personal opinions in the teen! The wisdom that they own! That kind of internal wisdom is what drives decision-making with technology when no one is around and no one is watching. They carry their strongest protection with them wherever they go. This is unique to our training– I know of nothing else like it.
We are also unique in that we evangelize a position that does not demonize technology. Technology is a megaphone for the user– nothing more. It is a tool that amplifies the intent of the person who is using it. It can be used for tremendous good or great evil. Therefore REAL protection of our children involves training them with self-control and the desire to use tech for good – to avoid the parts that will harm their future hopes and dreams and to use it to make life better for themselves and others. Make no mistake about it… We are exceptionally conservative in how we teach parents to SLOWLY grant powerful technologies to their children, by their readiness. But we are loud proponents of the innate strength and capacity of young people. They are the most severely underestimated population on the planet (in our opinion), and have limitless potential for wielding these technologies for good.
Another unique element of our message is the emphasis on balanced living. Our own family is obsessed with active outdoor play. We advocate for providing rich recreational experiences (outdoors, games, puzzles, building toys, fun) that can crowd out overbearing technology use and lead to connection with real life and real people. Sometimes it’s more powerful to provide enticing alternatives to tech, rather than ranting and railing against and restricting technology use.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
I have been inspired by these books:
The Self-Driven Child by Stixrud and Johnson
Digital For Good by Richard Culatta
Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday
iGen by Twenge.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://familytechuniversity.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/familytechuniversity/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FamilyTechUniversity
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/familytechuniversity/
Image Credits
Bodie Brower and Sarah Grace Allred
