Technology has more benefits than we can possibly list. As Christians, however, we have to look at its negative effects, especially on children. The data is as convincing as it is alarming. Technology is directly responsible for increased teenage anxiety and depression, exposure to pornography, sex trafficking and online predators, screen addiction, and more. What if parents had a framework for safely navigating these dangers, one that combines a research-based approach with enduring Biblical principles? Join us to discover how to parent in the digital age.
Hi, friend. This is Janet Parshall. Thank you so much for downloading this broadcast, and I truly hope you hear something that encourages, edify, equips, enlightens, and then gently but forcibly gets you out there into the marketplace of ideas. But before you listen and before you go, let me just tell you a little something about this month's truth tool. It's called living in the Days of Deception, and it's written by pastor Jack Hibbs. You know, Jesus warned that deception would grow worse as we grow nearer to the end times, saying, take heed that no one deceives you. And distinguishing truth from error has become an increasingly challenging task even in the church. Why I love this book is that Pastor Hibbs does a wonderful job of teaching us how to discern what is true from what's false, and also, at the same time, teaches us how to stand firm for our faith. That's really what in the market with Janet Parshall is all about being a good discerner, being a good Berean, measuring all things with the straight stick of truth. So I want to encourage you, if you can, please financially support this program and get a copy of living in the Days of Deception. It's yours for a gift of any amount by calling 877 Janet 58. That's 877. Janet 58. Or you can give online at in the market with Janet parshall.org in the market with Janet parshall.org. Scroll to the bottom of the page. There's the cover of the book. Click on through. Make your donation. And my way of saying thank you for supporting the program is to send you a copy of living in the Days of Deception, My truth tool for the month of November. By the way, you might want to consider becoming a partial partner. Those are people who give every single month at a level of their own choosing. You always get the truth tool, but in addition to that, you get a weekly newsletter that includes some writing by me and an audio piece that only my partial partners receive. All of that information, again, can be translated to you if you want to financially support in the market. With Janet Parshall. 877 Janet 58 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market with Janet parshall.org. Thanks so much for letting me take a moment. And now please enjoy the broadcast.
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
Americans worshiping government over God.
Extremely rare safety move by a.
Major 17 years. The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated. This is not.
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall. I'm so glad we're going to spend the hour together. You know, very often on Fridays, Craig and I will talk about tech. We have a lot of conversations about tech, and maybe it's because so often Craig is writing briefs to the United States Supreme Court that have something to do with tech, for example, the big push by the porn industry now to get porn into the hands of kindergartners. Yeah, you heard me right now. Now they're not going to wander on down to the adult bookstore. So exactly how would that porn get into the hands of a preschool child or an early lead child through their devices? And that's just one of the aspects of tech. We talk a lot about artificial intelligence. In fact, we've talked about whether or not it's right or wrong for a pastor to completely lean on AI, to write their passages, their their sermons on Sunday morning. Where is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the middle of that? What about tech taking away jobs rather than simplifying our life? It's going to take bread off the table. What about the fact that, in fact, it's about programmers? And what happens when the programmer programs a machine that outdistances the man? And then there are even clarion calls now for a new religion to worship. AI. I cannot make this stuff up. So I think mom and Dad, it's a wake up call. Technology is not going away. It is here to stay. Welcome to the 21st century. Just walk around your house sometime and see how many computers are in your house, and how many times your child has got a tablet in their hand. Mhm. Yeah. So how early should they be on that device and what sort of controls should be on that device. And then the schools encourage our kids to be on these devices. So somewhere along the line, there's that Nehemiah moment. Do you remember what Nehemiah was doing? He was up on the wall repairing it, and he said, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, what are you supposed to do? You were to fight for your families. There's a trumpet blaring on this technology. Listen, it isn't a matter of us going back into the caves and hiding out. As Christians and followers of Christ. It's about being wise as a serpent. The technology is not going anywhere. So how do we parent in a digital age? That is our conversation this hour and I couldn't be more excited to be having it. David Tucker is our guest and our teacher. He's an author, speaker, husband, father of three. He lives in Cleveland, Tennessee. Throughout his career, he served as both a pastor and a technology exec. When an interesting amalgamation that is. Of those two things, it is exactly this the intersection of his faith and his passion to see families wisely use tech that led to his founding of something called digital Parenting.com digital Parenting.com that, by the way, is a group that partners with churches around the globe to equip parents to successfully managed the technology surrounding their families. Can I get an amen? How many of you don't want that kind of help? So David has written one book called The Digital Parenting Guidebook Seven Essential Steps for Building the Tech Savvy Christian Family. And then he has a companion book that goes along with it. It's called Digital Parenting Fundamentals. It's a ten week companion course to the Digital Parenting Guidebook, and this can be set up as a small group. So if you wanted to do this as your Sunday School class or as a small group, you could do that as well. Or husband and wife are on the kitchen table. Wouldn't be bad either. So roll up your sleeves. Pull out that thinking cap. It's getting dusty at your nightstand. And let's learn to think critically, biblically and technically technologically this hour as well. David. The warmest of welcomes. I'm so glad you're here, and I want to start with a wake up call, because if this hasn't affected one's life, then it's a story that's over there and you don't understand that the wolf is not only outside the city gates. He's not only outside your front door, he's sitting around your kitchen table. So we have to bring some of this home. And you start out by talking about the sense of urgency here, and you tell some sad tales of children who end up losing their lives because of technology. And bless you. You don't blame the parents at all. You're talking about the fact that this is how this insidious stuff works its way in through tech. So give my friends listening all across the country, David, a little bit of a wake up call about how tech, if we're not careful, if we are not watchmen on the wall for our families, that this can take our children's lives literally as well as figuratively.
Absolutely. Well, I think there's a few things I just want parents to be aware of with this. As you mentioned, there's stories of of children who were gone far too soon. And parents, I think for the most part, we believe we've always got more time to address these dangers that are popping up in society. Oh, we'll talk about it tomorrow. We'll talk about it next week. But I'm reminded of stories like Braden Marcus. It's one of the ones we cover in the digital parenting guidebook, where from the moment he got online on a Sunday morning to finish some homework until he took his life. That period was only 28 minutes. And what happened in the midst of that was that someone who was scamming him, who pretended to be a young girl his age and asked him for some inappropriate pictures and and actually, finally, Braden relented and sent those. And then that person tried to scam him financially out of money. This is something we call sextortion, and the entire process from beginning to end was 28 minutes. And I'm sure his parents wish that they would have had more time to have those conversations before this, because one conversation could have changed the outcome of that story. But there's even another one this week that's so sad. We had a story. Going back to what you talked about with I. There's a platform called character I, and they have the ability to have conversations with characters that aren't real. And we actually have a young man who took his life this week because in essence, he he had fallen in love with this AI character and spent so much of his time on it, and just the crushing realization that this would never be real for him. Something that, you know, someone his age was just not able to fully comprehend, ended up leading to this 14 year old taking his life. And so, parents, I just want to start off by saying there's not always more time. A lot of these things are things we need to push into, and the encouragement I want to give with that is those of us that have kids. It's not a surprise to God, and he's called each of us to be parents in 2024, and he will give us what we need to succeed in the task that he's given us.
Amen. But being, you know, redeeming the times, as the Bible says, we have to know that tech is a part of parenting right now, like it or not. And I think for, you know, get to realize, David, that there's a whole group of parents for whom computers were guys who wore pocket protectors and had punch cards. And that's about, you know, in my lifetime, you know, now you laugh and we say, in fact, I was watching a movie with my husband the other night and went, oh, look, a rotary phone. I mean, there was a time and a place where we didn't know what it was like not to have a cell phone. So this technology for a whole generation of parents is was birthed in their lifetime. But the babies that are being born now are being raised in a tech world, and so this is a part of the world they live in. Mom and dad have to get up to speed on this. It seems to me just understanding how the tech works before they become tech savvy. Am I right or wrong on that?
You're absolutely right. But I want to encourage parents with this. This doesn't require that you become a tech.
Expert overnight, but it does mean you need to be familiar with what your children are involved with online. And you shouldn't let your kids into a space until you do understand that.
Amen. Oh, there's going to be so much to talk about. I can tell you already, David. We're going to run out of time before I run out of questions. I want to thank you again for the resources. The Digital Parenting Guidebook, seven Essential Steps for Building the Tech savvy Christian Family. We're going to get into that this hour, trust me. But also there's a companion resource book called Digital Parenting Fundamentals. It is a ten week companion course to the book as well. David Tucker, our guest. Much more right after this. Discernment is so crucial in an age rife with error. So can we learn what is truth and what isn't? That's why I've chosen living in the Days of Deception as this month's truth tool. Learn to recognize deception and how to respond to misconceptions and untruths. As for your copy of living in the Days of Deception, when you give a gift of any amount to in the market, call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market with Janet parshall.org. We get to spend the hour with David Tucker, who has written a tremendous book that will really help parents parent in the technology in the technology age. The book is called the Digital Parenting Guidebook Seven Essential Steps for Building the Tech Savvy Christian Family. As a result of this, he's founded something called digital Parenting.com Digital Parenting.com. He also has a companion workbook that goes along with it called Digital Parenting Fundamentals. It's a ten week companion course that goes to the book as well. So let's start out. And I loved what you said just before the break, David, you said that mom and dad don't have to be tech savvy because that'll pull them back rather than pull them into the role and the responsibility they have to play as they parent in this tech age. So talk to me about technology. You know, one would have to say, I think fairly that technology is value neutral. It's what gets done with the technology. So flesh that out a little bit for me.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was I'm getting ready to leave tomorrow to go meet with some friends that live on the other side of the world. And I get to stay in contact with them on a near weekly basis because of the benefits that I get from technology. And for those of us that take a step back just a couple of decades, thinking about being able to have pretty much real time video chats with people anywhere in the world, thinking of how that aids doctors, and even providing care to people in remote villages, or education to people on the other side of the world from some of the best universities. These things are all possible because of technology. But every single day I read stories of evil that has brought upon families by technology. And kind of the biblical analogy I give is the same tools that built the Tabernacle, were the same tools that built the golden calf. And so technology for us works in pretty much the same way. We need to understand that it's a tool. And so we have to teach our kids how to deal with this tool in a biblical way. And there is a massive amount of biblical guidance that still is completely applicable to the technological age. I think sometimes we just assume that because tech is new, that that the Bible is not going to talk about it, but there's so much there. And as parents, we need to look at this concept of teaching our kids how to deal with technology less as trying to teach them how to click some buttons and more about discipleship, because ultimately that's what it is.
Yeah. Excellent point. So let me dive in now. And there's so much more that you said as a background to this and you call it the foundation, and I'm so glad you did. That's the first part of the book. You divide the book up, by the way, into three segments the Foundation, the seven Essential steps of digital parenting, and then getting answers. So I want to look at some of these seven essential steps, because some of them seem commonsensical on one level, but they seem to be threatening to the parent on the other. So, for example, the first one is regulating screen time. Now, listen, I, you know, I birthed four kids, I got six grandbabies. I understand that very often, especially when the grandbabies were young, it was a form of babysitting. You could put them in front of their tablet and they would be quiet for a while because they were absolutely, utterly mesmerized. That should have been our first clue that this held their attention that long. But reality is that you're having to limit screen time. The problem is you make that choice. You're going to raise the volume in your house because you're going to get some pushback. How does one do that effectively as a parent? I mean, you hardly have to explain why the need to regulate time, but do and then tell me what happens when you have a non-cooperative child who's created neural pathways that have created a kind of addiction to this stuff?
Yeah, absolutely. So to start off with, I just wanted to give parents just an understanding of the data that we have now. You know, we can see here that even in the first year of life, decisions that you make with screen time are going to have an impact on your child. We can see here that increased screen time in early childhood was negatively associated with poor performance on developmental screeners by the time the child reached age two. So age 2 to 3, we start to see a difference there. And so this was part of what led to even the American Academy of Pediatrics to say, hey, families need to have a family media plan where they start to put limits in place. We now have even more data talking about increased screen time being connected to ADHD, for example. This is coming out of the work of Doctor Michael Manus at the Cleveland Clinic. So if kids are five or younger and they have two or more hours of screen time, they are eight times more likely to be diagnosed with focus related conditions. And so part of what I want to also connect to that is helping parents understand a it makes every challenge online worse. So the more time your child is online, the more time they're exposed to predators, the more possibility they have to come across inappropriate content, so on and so forth. But the other side of this that I think parents miss, is this is the beginning of a spiritual battle for your child in the sense of if your child can't sit down and focus for more than a few minutes at a time because they have been in front of a screen so much, how are they going to be able to dive into God's Word? How are they going to be able to spend extended time in prayer? How are they going to be able to really exist in Christian community and interact face to face with human beings? This is something that I believe is is intentional. To help make it more difficult for our kids to enter into a fulfilling relationship with Christ. And so as we look at this, it's going to cause, as you mentioned, there's going to be some road bumps, there's going to be the volume is going to be raised in your home if you adjust. But there's a few things, a few tips for parents that I think are essential to getting this right. And one of them is, and this is always a hard one, model the behavior you want to see in your kids. So for parents who and again, I'm one of them, I obviously own a business. I have a lot of contacts and a lot of different places I want to stay in contact with, but if I'm constantly on my phone, then I shouldn't be surprised when my kids get to the age that they have a phone that they want to constantly be on their phone. So first and foremost, let's approach this as a whole family and not just say, hey kids, you have to do one thing and the adults are going to do something else. Now that's fine to tell your kids that, hey, there's sometimes adults are going to need to be on devices because of some commitments, but you need to model as much as you can. And the other thing I would say is, is plan ahead for this to be a little bit bumpy and create opportunities for you to have activities you've planned together as a family so your kids aren't just sitting around going, well, now what do I do? Or now what are we going to do? And that might mean taking a weekend as a family, going somewhere without devices, coming back. If your kids are younger, maybe you even just give them a list of things that they can do that you have, all the stuff you need for in the house that they can dive and push into. So there's a lot of opportunities to make this less bumpy simply by planning ahead.
Yeah, I love that. And now talk to me about the kinds of protections I should put on my device if I'm going to limit screen time when they're there and I'm not over their shoulder the entire time, and they're working within the restricted limits. What about safeguards? I hear the music playing, and I know there's a long answer to that. So, David, if you don't mind, let me take the answer on the other side. Can I just go back and underscore something you said? So if our friends missed it, they'll get it again. You know, it's one thing to talk about how it changes the neural pathways. It's another to talk about how it's going to impact their learning, their behavior, the ADHD uptick as a result of this, the physiology. I'm not out playing basketball. I'm sitting in front of my screen. But you really touched a nerve when you talked about how this stunts our spiritual development. In his book, The Second Coming of the church, George Barna said, grown ups are having a hard time sitting through a sermon because they're on a page for 30s. They're on the remote control for 15 seconds and they can't hear someone just talk to them about the word anymore. And so we see pastors reducing their sermon to 15, 20 minutes because that's the extension attention span. What is that doing to our kids as well? Back after this. Break, we're visiting with David Tucker, who is the founder of digital Parenting.com Digital Parenting.com they partner with churches around the globe to equip parents to successfully manage the technology surrounding their families. He's also produced some excellent resources for us as moms and dads. The Digital Parenting Guidebook is number one, seven essential steps for building the tech savvy Christian family. And then he has a ten week companion course called Digital Parenting Fundamentals. It's the small group edition, which means, again, you can use it as your midweek Bible study, your Sunday school class, your home group, even as a husband and wife around the kitchen table. So the question I asked before the break, because we were talking about limiting screen time. And I really liked what you said about modeling the behavior, about planning ahead, because when you take him away, there's going to be a pushback, right? And we've seen that with all of our children. So if you've got something planned, you're going to dial down the resentment and you're going to make the non-screen time even more attractive to your kids. But you also talk about software limits where necessary. Now you've programmed this kind of stuff, David, this is your wheelhouse. You've also we can also go to digital Parenting.com to get some more help on this. But talk to me about software, because some parents probably don't have a clue where to start with stuff like that. And why is it necessary and are they effective?
Yeah, it's a great question. And so the answer I'll say to begin with is, you know, tools are an important part of digital parenting. But but they can't be your only strategy. And so I'm going to answer the question in just a second. But I also want to remind parents that at some point, too, you've got to prepare your kid for being with another kid who's going to have a device that has absolutely no restrictions on it whatsoever, having them make that right decision for themselves, That's what you're trying to disciple them into doing. But the great thing is, is software can help. And so we don't have to always shoulder all of that burden. So most people that have phones or tablets, let's say, for example, your kid might have an Android phone, they might have an iPhone, they might have an iPad, for example. Most of those devices have different types of software limits built in. So you can go in and say something like, you know what, I want my kid to have, you know, the ability to have one hour total on this device and then after that, disable most all apps, except maybe, maybe a few that you want to still give them access to. So that's a way you can use software limits to make it easier. Now, in addition, there are some devices that you can actually put in your home that give you the ability to to truly turn off the internet after a period of time for specific users, but yet still allow the parents in the home, for example, to be able to use the internet when they need it. So there's some great devices that have have come out and we've got different groups like bark, for example. They have a bark home device that enables you to go in and configure that. You also have most routers these days that you buy. So that Wi-Fi router in your home that gives you Wi-Fi, you know, you have the ability to enter parental controls on some of those. There's a few of those we recommend. There's more information on that at Digital Parenting.com. But just having having an understanding of what's supported on those devices can give parents a bit of a boost when they're implementing these screen time limits in their home.
Yeah. Amen. Thank you for that. So let's go to why we need to have some of these software protections in place. And that is this idea of avoiding inappropriate content. And I love the way you defined it David. Inappropriate content, any digital content that goes against God's standards, that's straight to the point and universally understood, I think by a whole lot of people. So now talk to me about how we do that, because I'm going to say, I think for a whole lot of moms and dads, they're not even cognizant of what their child is being exposed to that. At first blush, some of this stuff looks good. You know, I would not if my babies were younger right now. I would absolutely prohibit them from being on TikTok. Number one, I'm not a fan of the communist regime, and I'm not interested in having that kind of data being sent overseas to use for whatever nefarious purposes they want. But how does a parent understand what a child is going to be exposed to? Because you referenced that going over to a friend's house and they've got no protections, so they might be exposed at that place, but they're not going to be exposed at our place. In other words, this looks like a jungle. How do I begin to navigate this?
Yeah, I think the first rule for parents here is be restrictive until you have confidence in something. And this is not just that's not just a digital rule, that's you might not have your kid go over to other kids homes or go over to other homes to spend the night if that other kid has a device with unrestricted access, if the parents have no interest in providing controls. And so I know some parents think that's overstepping, but if you look at the number of kids that are exposed to pornography, and just as a note here, right. Average age, depending on which study you look at, is between 8 and 9 of first exposure to pornography.
So this is.
Happening far before most parents are having the discussion with their kids. And so what I say here is we only allow our kids to work in environments that that we trust can be safe, and we can provide some level of protection. And even with the best software, with the best tool out there, they're still going to be the possibility your kid's going to run across something, either on purpose or by accident. And what we need to do as parents is we need to discuss with them about these types of content. That's super important. And I know it's a very awkward conversation, but it's one of those that's important because if our kids have no context for understanding that type of content, if they run across it, it can create feelings and emotions in them that might cause them to feel shame, or they might want to push into that content even more and not come to you about it. So it's very, very important that we have the conversation with them early, helping to define for them what I mentioned there, which is, like you said, what is inappropriate content, any content, any digital content that goes against God's standards.
Can I go back to what you said before because it's a stunner, and maybe I'm just fortunate because I watched my husband do these battles here in Washington, DC. But to understand that the multi-billion dollar porn industry now is targeting children. Not that's not an overexaggeration. They literally are fighting before the United States Supreme Court to be able to get the right to be able to market porn to kids. Why? Because you have to create addicts, right? And the sooner you introduce them, the more they're going to use their product, the more they're going to be hooked for the rest of their life. Ta da! Now we've created the addict that we want to be able to take care of. You talk about pornography, but there's a linkage here because I think a lot of parents don't understand. This is a portal also for sex trafficking. So you're hearing this in the background. David, let me come back and ask you to explain this to moms and dads as well, that somehow that isn't just a gateway for a broken communication like the 14 year old who just took his life. But it's also an entrance into a whole dark world of sex trafficking as well. Talk about that, because maybe that'll help mom and dads understand why you can't put this off. This is something you need to do today. David Tucker is with us. He's written the book, the Digital Parenting Guidebook. He's also the founder of Digital Parenting.com fabulous resources for parents. Now back after this. Jesus told us to go into the world and not run away from it. And he didn't say it would be easy. In the market with Janet Parshall is a program designed to come alongside and walk with you into the marketplace of ideas. Partial partners are those friends who support our program on a regular monthly basis. They know the mandate of influencing and occupying until he comes. So why don't you become part of the inner circle of support? Call 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market with Janet Dot org. Having a fabulous and important conversation with David Tucker. He's an author, speaker, husband, father of three, all homeschooled by the way. They live in Cleveland, Tennessee, and throughout his career, David has served as a pastor and technology executive. It is that intersection of his faith and his passion to see families wisely use technology that led him to found digital Parenting.com, digital Parenting.com and by the way, digital Parenting.com partners with churches around the world to help parents do exactly what we're talking about successfully manage the technology surrounding their families. So I want to put before you two books. One is called the Digital Parenting Guidebook. In it, our seven essential steps for building the tech savvy Christian family. Heads up I'm not going to get to all seven. We've gone through one and a half. That's okay. If I've got you thinking about tech now, then I've done my job. Now it's up to you to get the book to clock in to digital parenting.com and to get more information. Also, he's got a companion ten week course called Digital Parenting Fundamentals. It's a companion book to the book, The Digital Parenting Guide, which is absolutely fabulous. You can understand David understands the tech, but his love for the Lord supersedes, and he's really helping us understand, hey, we've been called for such a time as this tech is a part, how then shall we live? To quote Doctor Francis Schaeffer. So we've gone through the idea of managing screen time. Now we're talking about what is inappropriate content. And as you said so perfectly before, and I love the the definition of this, it's really anything that doesn't honor the Lord. That's a broad brush, but it really puts it into context how much we have to be watching. So we were talking about the portals for entry of exposure to our kids, by the way. And it's one thing to say, well, I think my teenager might be into porn, but I cannot underscore enough now that they're talking about children as early as elementary school, and they're trying to come up with cartoon characters now that are introducing kids to pornography. So you have to understand, this is not a safe zone by any stretch of the imagination. But there's also a linkage here. It isn't just, oh, be careful, little eyes. What you see, like we used to sing in Sunday school, David. It's also a portal, a way of recruiting, if you will, for sex trafficking. Talk about this.
Yeah. So one of the things, one of the statistics I share in the book, and this actually comes from the United Nations Crime Prevention Agency, is that 40% of sex trafficking victims are recruited online. And so in moments when we have young people going on, whether it's through social media, whether it's maybe they find some some kind of dark corner of the internet that's even darker than what we would see on social media to interact with people. But just in, again, in a sense of trying to find community. You have young people, a lot of whom are going there because they don't have as many connections in the real world. And as they push into that online world before they even realize it, they're in a very dangerous space and they're being connected with dangerous people. And it's crazy to think if we go back again ten, 15 years, that our children could be having direct, unmonitored Conversations with sex traffickers or with terrorists, even, because there's plenty of examples of that happening, too, online. And as parents, we sometimes just think, oh, they're talking with their friends or oh, they're, you know, yeah, they've just got their community on there. But again, if we don't know who they're talking to, we don't know the risks that they're facing. And we need to understand that when we look at some of those areas of the internet, it's ripe with people who are going to the areas where there are very few parental controls. And sometimes that's, you know, the new hot app or the new hot platform to be on. There's very little parental controls. And then all of a sudden, as you see young people flood to that, you also see an equal number of predators flooding to those platforms as well.
Yeah, exactly. And I want to point out for the record that this really is step number four, which is defending against predators. There is a linkage here that I want to point that out. So we talked about pornography. We talked about human trafficking. We talk about sexting. There are a lot of people don't even know what that is.
Yeah. So if you go.
Back and think.
For example, about, you know, the the whole true love waits generation that I grew up in, where it was just this talking about waiting until marriage and and what's funny is, you know, so many of the times during that generation we were taught about, hey, you know, you, you don't want to have a teen pregnancy or you don't want to get a sexually transmitted disease. And and in some ways, because we weren't truly teaching exactly what the Bible said there, because we were just saying, hey, watch out for these dangers. It's like now today's teens have created this whole way to have sexual relationships without any of those risks. And we need to look back to God's Word and say, listen, there is a call for us to have purity here, and this goes against it. But what we're seeing is that a part of relationships for teens, even in some cases preteens, is that they are sharing semi-nude or fully nude pictures of themselves with with this person they're talking to online. And the reality of it is there's many legal risks that happen with this, because technically, at that point they're creating child pornography. But on top of that, there are significant emotional risks that happen with this because far more times than not, these images get shared beyond just the individual that you're sharing it with. And because of that, there's many cases where there have been suicides because, you know, a young girl or a young boy gets to school and realizes that their picture that they thought was private has now been sent to hundreds of people in their school, and they're having to deal with the reality of that. And this isn't just something that happens in other places. I know of multiple cases that happened, you know, in the county that I live in where the police had to get involved because there were legal ramifications to this going on. And so this is something this is another area where we have to have conversations with our children about what they can and can't share online, and again, align that to what it says in God's Word.
Yeah.
Amen to that. It's the point of vulnerability. And I think a lot of grown ups, a lot of moms and dads don't even understand that. Talk to me because you understand software. You know, we act like so much of this stuff is free. It's not free. Information is worth something to somebody. So talk to me about the fact also that very often, even if it isn't a sexual predator, or if it isn't a terrorist, it's somebody culling information from an early Elderly l ed student about their life, their data, and then that can be used by other people for targeted sales or information. I mean, in other words, your privacy has just been sold. You just don't know. It hasn't been taken from you yet. So talk to me about that.
Absolutely. This is one of the eye opening experiences for parents that work through the seven essential steps of digital parenting. When they sit down and talk with their kids and help them understand the amount of data that's being collected about their behaviors, and also how the internet really works. You know, if you can ask your kid, well.
How do.
These YouTubers, for example, how how do they make money and your kids get views? They get views. Okay, well, how does that generate money? And eventually you can help them understand that there are this advertising is actually driving all the revenue that these YouTubers are making. And so, you know, that shirt they're wearing, that energy drink they're drinking, that, you know, person that's that's a guest on their, their channel, all of that stuff that's driven by money, like they're being paid to do that. And so helping them open their eyes and see that every time they're online, they're being marketed to. And one of the powerful things you can do with your kids, if you have if you have Google accounts, for example, there's a site called Google Takeout where you can go and download all the data that Google has on your account, and you can just show your children, hey, look at this. Look at the amount of location data. Look at the amount of data on email, the amount of data on photos, all these things that have been added up in my life. And you can help them see that everywhere you go, somebody is taking a fingerprint of what you're doing so they can sell you things. And if you open your kids eyes to that, they're going to be less susceptible to just falling into this trap than the average teen is. Who just who just doesn't see the world that way?
Yeah, 100%.
And that's a wake up call for moms and dads, because I don't think a lot of parents even understand that their data is being taken all the time. They there's a whole. And you know how this works, David. There's a whole methodology behind getting you to stay at a page, to get you to a page, to keep you at the page so they can repeat again and again and again this idea of culling information from you and again, maybe it's because I'm in Washington DC, but it all isn't domestic, by the way. It becomes international as well. And it's bought and sold. And so, you know, if you don't want to give out a lot of your personal information and you think you have a choice in it, that's great. You know, I take you to a doctor's office, oh, you have HIPAA rights, right? We're going to protect your rights as a patient, and you give all your rights away the minute you get on some of these devices. So I think that's a wake up call as well. There's something else nefarious and it's not as self identifiable yet. I think it's equally as problematic. So if we look at this from God's perspective, David, he designs us for community. One of the things that I'm not wild about with the technology is it creates a false sense of community. You talked about the influencers before. Let me linger there for a minute. You talk about creating an artificial world. It's driving up narcissistic, self-aggrandizing thinking. And in fact, the term influencer is self subscribed. I'm an influencer because I have so many fill in the blank followers. Well, when was that election held? When were you running for office and when did we decide that you're an influencer? Because you can tell me how you can put your makeup on. I don't understand that. How do we teach our children that their value and their worth isn't by how many clicks or likes they have, and that they haven't arrived when they're, quote, an influencer? And what does it do when your relationship is with an unseen crowd at the other end of your electronic device, and that violates the idea of developing real community?
Yeah, I think one of the things here that's so important, and I know that parents are going to push back on this, but I want you to understand this. The number one thing you can do for your kids in this space is delay social media until it is developmentally, developmentally appropriate for your child. And I'm going to tell you, for most kids, that's going to be around the age 16 or later, it's not going to be in that younger age group. One of the things we see here, and this is a quote that actually comes from Jonathan Hite, from his popular book that came out over the last year called The Anxious Generation. Is that the great irony of social media is the more you immerse yourself in it, the more lonely and depressed you become. So if we can teach our children to be able to build quality, face to face relationships. If we can teach them to not try to build community online, especially not until they get to the age where they can see it for what it is. The problem is, especially what we're seeing with pre-teen girls the age 10 to 14, being the most vulnerable age is that there's an inability to truly see social media for what it is. Everyone gets fully immersed in this world, and things like likes and comments can can radically change someone's mental health. And that's something we deal with in step three. Safeguarding mental health and the seven essential steps of digital parenting. And so I would just encourage parents understand the risks of what you're getting into with social media. You might know that pornography is bad. You might know that you need to limit screen time, but you might not see any problem with letting your child on social media. But the most startling research that I reviewed as a part of writing this book was what I came across in terms of mental health and social media.
Yeah. Talk to me about that. In fact, you have one section of the book on mental health. There's the music when we come back. Talk to me about something that the Wall Street Journal reported, because I think, again, you this is the invisible enemy. You cannot see what it's systematically doing to your child's mental health. And I think it's important we flesh that out just a little bit. David Tucker is with us. Digital Parenting.com. We're going to get that on our website. By the way, that should be underneath David's bio, digital Parenting.com and his resources, the book, the Digital Parenting Guidebook Seven Essential Steps for Building the Tech Savvy Christian Family, and the companion book Digital Parenting Fundamentals, which is a ten week companion course that goes along with the book as well. Really important stuff here for Mom and Dad. Back after this with David Tucker. Such important information with David Tucker. He's the founder of digital Parenting.com Digital parenting.com. They help parents literally around the globe to negotiate these tech waters in which we find ourselves today. He's written the book also, the digital parenting guidebook Seven Essential Steps for Building the Tech Savvy Christian Family. And then he's got a companion guidebook that's a ten week course called Digital Parenting Fundamentals. Absolutely fabulous resources here, all from a biblical perspective. And I don't know about you, but that's the kind of stuff I want when I'm raising my kids. I want not just the facts, but I want them to be Christ centered facts as well. So we were talking about mental health, David. And I think this is so crucial because this is the kind of internal damage that Mom and dad might not readily identify. You talk about this. In fact, you referenced back a Wall Street Journal report talking about details about Instagram and its potential harm to users. Talk to me about this.
Yeah, absolutely. So back in 2021, The Wall Street Journal released an article here that they had worked on for a little while that gives statistics like 32% of teen girls. That said, when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. And also, teens blame Instagram for increases in rates of anxiety and depression, among whom it also says among teens who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of U.S. users traced their desire to kill themselves to Instagram. So when you look at all of that, you might think, well, those are bad statistics. But the truth was, those were statistics that came out of a study from Facebook again, which is now meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram. And they held on to this data. And this was actually information that was leaked to the Wall Street Journal. And so even while they were doing this, they were working on a version of Instagram called Instagram Kids, which would have enabled preteens to have an account on the platform. So this just helps you understand. One of the key principles that I talk to parents about is you can never trust that tech companies have your kids best interest at heart.
Well, how can they? Their desire is money and they want customers, so it doesn't make any difference. But meta is just unconscionable, you know. Now, we know because of lawsuits, a series of interactions between the federal government and meta and meta doing exactly what the federal government asked them to do. So these problematic social platforms. I you know, I have very strong feelings about that. These are monopolies. There's antitrust violations here. And I want to get rid of section 230, because I think they should be allowed to be sued, especially when we're talking about porn companies trying to market to kids that are in early lead. But I'll get off my soapbox. Why does social media affect us?
I think there's a lot of reasons, and this is something that's important for parents to understand, because a lot of parents and this happens every time I do an event, I'll have a parent or in some cases even a grandparent, come up and say, well, can you believe kids these days they're following, you know, they're they're just falling for social media. They'll do anything it says on there. And what I want to remind parents of is if we were in the current generation, if we had the same tools, we'd be in the same boat. This is just the tools that this generation didn't create. My generation has created them and we've put them into their hands. And so I think it's important for parents to understand that there's a few things driving this. One of them is the concept of social comparison. So when they're looking online, they're seeing other kids that are showing the highlights of their life, and they're believing that everybody else's life is better than their own. Also, they're looking at likes as basically a value of themselves that every day their friends get a chance to vote on on who they are as a person. And so these likes can be very personal. And if your best friend doesn't like one of your posts, this becomes something that can be crushing. Also, the whole concept of fear of missing out. There's this desire to need to be always connected, to be needing to respond immediately. And if they see something that's happened on social media that they weren't a part of, then, then they feel this sense of loss. And also just this, you know, the whole concept of body image. It factors into this as well, especially for girls. And now we have this whole concept of filters that try to make everyone else look better online. And this can give a distorted view of body image for those that are using them. So there's so many different factors and these are just a few. But social media has the ability to to really warp our perception of reality by making it seem like this social media world is more important than the real world that we live in.
You know.
We have a generation now that's in crisis, David. We have upticks now on mental health problems in particularly that demographic, the teenage years. Yeah, I'm wondering and it's probably not rocket science, that there has to be a linkage between the uptick in diagnoses for mental health questions and the use of social media based on what you just talked about, this idea of image, I'm fear of missing out how many likes my value, my integrity, my significance is predicated on the thumbs up or the views that I have. All of that is going to lead to depression and anxiety. And you also point out in the book opens the door for self-harm as well. Correct?
Absolutely. And we're seeing that number radically increase. If we look at pre-teen girls that really focusing on that 10 to 14 age range in early teens, They. When we look at between and again, I'm going to be pulling some of these numbers out here because I just think they're so startling for parents to hear is when we look at between 2009 and 2018, we saw that number increase one self-harm increase 189% among that 10 to 14 year old girls. And so we know that during this time. This is also when teens got, you know, phones in their hands and social media became platforms that they wanted to be on. It wasn't just kind of a fringe thing. It was the main kind of part of mainstream culture. And this is the time we saw that rapid increase. And so if we look at, you know, whether it's doctor Jean Twitty's book generation, where she says every indicator of mental health and psychological well-being has become more negative among teens and young adults since 2012, or whether we look at some of the statistics from Doctor Jonathan Hyde's book, The Anxious Generation that just came out. All of this is pointing to the fact that it's not that social media is everything that's causing this, but it definitely seems to be the largest factor that's contributing to what we're seeing.
Mhm.
Age When should a child have a social media account?
So one of the things I tell parents, I mean, you can even look at what the Surgeon General of the United States said. He said it would be better for parents.
If their kids.
Waited until.
16 or later to get on social media. Right now, we're also seeing laws come in place. Australia is going to have required age verification, and they're going to have a minimum age for social media. Utah was about to have a law to go into place to limit kids under 16 from being able to be on social media. That actually was in the federal court system that actually got got struck down, at least for the moment. So there's a lot of there's a lot of legal work that's going on right now to try to help create a new reality for this, where we're trying to keep, especially those younger age, the 10 to 14 off of social media. But right now, I would tell parents, wait as long as you can delay and developmentally appropriate social media.
Yeah, that makes.
Just perfect sense. You also say for our action plan, we should create a family social media plan, and also we should discuss social media and its dangers for families with kids seven and up. And this is again where digital parenting.com comes into play. So many excellent resources there. You're thinking, how in the world do I start this conversation? That's exactly why David Tucker founded Digital Parenting.com. They're all about resources, getting tools in your hand to do the job that called that you've been called to do in looking well to the ways of your household. I love that verse out of scripture. This is part of looking, well, understanding. The tech is here to stay. Daddy, how do you teach them? How do you protect them? How do you guide them as they work through this technology? There's so much more David in the book. I hope people will get excited now and they'll pick it up and read it for themselves. The digital Parenting guidebook seven Essential Steps for Building the Tech Savvy Christian Family. And again, the companion book Digital Parenting Fundamentals as well. Most important of all, don't forget his website, digital Parenting.com. David, thank you for an excellent conversation and a clear warning. See you next time, friends.