Why Parents Need to Understand Technology

Sarah: You almost have to be an IT manager to manage a modern home these days. And a lot of people really just don’t understand how to go…

(Music)

Bill: …be here in studio with you today. I got to know you through Family Tech. I was actually on your podcast back in 2021 or 2022.

Sarah: Sounds about right, yeah.

Bill: And so thank you for doing this with me today.

Sarah: For sure.

Bill: I wanna start by getting into your background. Give people a sense of what you were doing in IT before you got into all the work you’re doing today.

Sarah: Yeah, so my whole career was spent as an IT manager. I usually worked with what’s called managed services providers. So I was the IT department for lots of small to medium sized businesses, where my whole company was the IT department for most small businesses, as you can imagine, can’t afford a full time IT staff. And so they hire these types of companies. And so I did that for the majority of my career, around 24 years in IT. And that kind of, during the course of that, all my friends would ask me, “Hey, Sarah, you know a lot about technology. “Like what’s this or what do I do here?” And things like that. And so I finally was like, “All right, I’m starting a blog. “You guys can just go there.” And it has all the same questions that I’m answering every day. And you can just look at it there.

Bill: So part of it was managing the demand for information. It reminds me, like when I was a teenager, my dad was learning how to use a computer. And I got so exhausted with the same questions over and over again, I started writing memos and putting them on the wall in front of his desk.

Sarah: That’s the original Family Tech blog. So when I started it, it was called Tech for Mommies. It was supposed to be a play on the whole dummies thing. There was all those books, like, “Whatever for Dummies” and “Whatever for Dummies.” So that’s what it was supposed to be, but nobody got it. And so I switched it to Tech for Moms, which was a little shorter, but then I got annoyed that people kept saying, “Oh, well, I’m not a mom, but,” or whatever. And so I pivoted to just Family Tech, I think back in 2009. So it’s been a while.

Bill: So it’s been that many years. Oh yeah. So what year was this when you started?

Sarah: When I started, I started blogging in 2006. That’s 20 years. I know. No, the 90s were yesterday. So I had refused to believe 2006 was 20 years ago, but yeah.

Bill: That’s fantastic. So you were keeping up with demand, friends asking you questions. Was there any, like, pivotal moment where you said, “I have to do this.” Was there any, like, experience or moment where you said, “You know what, this is something I’ve got to put my heart into.”

Sarah: Yeah, so it’s been a big shift in Family Tech, basically, because I used to manage small businesses and they’d have these networks and I have to build firewalls and maintain that network. And I noticed that homes were becoming just as complicated as a corporate IT network. And that shift, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, “you almost have to be an IT manager “to manage a modern home these days.” And a lot of people really just don’t understand how to go about that. And so I thought it’s a real need for people to understand how to manage their home, basically, like an IT manager.

Bill: So as a parent, I hear you say that. And despite what I do for a living, it feels a little bit overwhelming.

Sarah: 100%.

Bill: And I know for Heidi, for my wife, she absolutely feels this heaviness of, “Do I really have to be an expert on all these things?” What do you say to a mom who’s asking that question?

Sarah: Yeah, so that’s kind of what I’ve built my platform on is I want to take people from tech chaos to tech confidence. I want everybody to really just have that, oh, I totally can understand this, I’ve got this, because I feel like it’s not that complicated. Granted, it’s coming from a place where I know a lot about technology. But really, I see that in my DMs all the time, people are like, “Oh, thank you for not scaring me “or making me feel like I’m behind, “where I can look at your content and say, “Oh, yeah, that’s not that hard, I can do that.” And that’s really my passion is making sure people can look at what they need to do and go like, “Oh, yeah, I got that.”

Bill: I think that’s actually one of the things, when I invited you to come and join the team here at Troomi and Lead Customer Experience for us, that was one of the things that I loved was that you’re positive. And it’s this helping parents feel empowered, not scared. And so I’ve always appreciated that about you. In everything that you’re seeing with families, over the last 20 years.

(Laughing)

Sarah: That doesn’t exist, it was five years ago.

Bill: What has been most concerning or most surprising to you?

Sarah: Yeah, I would say that the most concerning thing is people feeling like they can’t do it.

Bill: Okay.

Sarah: And so, because I hear that all the time, “Oh, I’m not into technology, I don’t understand technology.” And I just wanna, don’t think like that, you can do this. And you can’t be in a position to say that anymore. Your kids are gonna know more than you most of the time. And so you wanna get to a spot where you know more than them. So that’s kind of the big concern where people see this is a really hard thing and they don’t wanna learn about it. And so they basically, it’s kind of stunted growth for their kids because they just wanna put it all away, ban it all, make sure they can’t get to any of it. But that’s not teaching the kids how to use it in a healthy way. I see that all the time, “Oh, I’m not gonna give my kid a phone until they’re 18.” And I’m like, it’s a little late. You want to teach them while you still have basically control over it.

Bill: And frankly, I’m not convinced that in those situations where people say, “Not until you’re leaving home, there’s a burner and a backpack somewhere.”

Sarah: 100%, yes. If you think your kid is not actually on a device, you are misled.

Bill: Yeah, and I mean, that’s been our philosophy is, yes, kids need an age-appropriate way to start into phones. But they’re gonna need phones. It is for all the positives, they need that communication. Frankly, as a parent, I need them to have that connectivity. It makes my life easier too, but with guardrails.

Sarah: Yeah, well, and you see that kind of in the bands of phones in schools, which I actually support bans of phones in schools because I think they don’t need the distraction and all of that. But the biggest pushback is actually from parents who, I wanna be able to get ahold of my kid during school and things like that. So I can totally see that dichotomy of where you’re like, I need to get ahold of them, and I also need them to be safe.

Bill: I hope that’s changing. Yeah. I mean, this is a rabbit hole. For sure. That we’ll avoid, but I hope that’s changing because I’ve read that research as well over the last few years. And I mean, it was an alarming rate of parents that were saying, no, I want my kid to have a phone in school. Now that the research is so clear about the declines in academic performance, I’m 100% on board with phones out of schools. And I hope everyone is kind of coming along. I think it is better.

Sarah: Yeah, no, I agree.

Bill: In fact, I’ve heard from, I have a 17-year-old daughter, she’s a senior in high school, and she’s remarked, the hallways are louder.

Sarah: Yeah.

Bill: You know, that kids are being kids again, not just being on screens between classes. Right. Which I think is great.

Sarah: I have actually seen some of that research that has shown that the lunch rooms are louder and people are talking more to each other, and I think that’s great.

Bill: Fantastic. In all the work that you do, I don’t know that I’ve ever asked you this. Do you do any one-on-one kind of work with families? Like do families say, hey, we need Sarah. And obviously you’ve got all the resources that you’ve created. Do families ever hire you out as a coach?

Sarah: I get the request a lot, but I really don’t have time to help people one-on-one. And I feel bad about that because they really do want help and support, but I just don’t have the bandwidth in my personal life to offer that.

Bill: The reason I wondered is I’d love to know if you have any specific experiences you’ve had with families, yeah, whether with a mom or a set of parents or experiences that kids have had where you’ve seen the family dynamics change as they’ve taken control and gotten on the other side of the chaos and the overwhelm.

Sarah: Yeah, I will say less on a one-on-one basis, but I do get direct messages all the time of parents saying, ah, I feel so much better about the technology in my home because of this post or that post. And so I see that more on a individual basis where they’re like, oh, thank you so much. I understand it now. And that really makes me happy.

Bill: Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah. Let’s talk more about this idea of time limits.

Sarah: Okay.

Bill: So this is one of those things. So you can do that at a device level. We do that at Troomi, obviously. With phones, parents can say kids can have access to X, Y, and Z during this time every day up to a certain number of minutes per day. However you wanna manage that.

Sarah: For sure.

Bill: What about when you’re not on the phone and you’ve got this whole multitude of screens in a home and I think of my own personal experience. I’m gonna be raw and vulnerable here.

Sarah: Great, love that.

Bill: Let’s go back. It was probably 20, or 2021.

Sarah: Okay.

Bill: And we wanted to address, we wanted to create another layer of safety. And so we said, we’re gonna do this through a router.

Sarah: Right.

Bill: And we bought a router that was specialized for this purpose and after 45 minutes, keeping in mind that I do technology for a living.

Sarah: Right.

Bill: After 45 minutes, I didn’t have it working.

Sarah: Yeah.

Bill: And I finally said, I’m done. Right. And I turned to my wife and I said, if you wanna deal with it, have at it. But I’m done.

Sarah: Yeah.

Bill: And that thing ended up, and I think that particular company’s out of business.

Sarah: Got it.

Bill: But it’s that feeling of this is so difficult.

Sarah: Yeah.

Bill: What advice would you have had for me had I talked to you back then?

Sarah: Well, I mean, I’m a little bit too helpful to people I know and friends. So I would personally just be like, let me come over and I’ll just do it for you. But I would say maybe purchase a different one that’s a little more user friendly because almost every modern router out there has these built-in controls, but some of them are harder to figure out than others. The one I use is actually super complicated. I think you would need an IT degree to just get it set up properly. But there are some out there that are super user friendly. And so maybe you’re just not matched with the one that’s going to work right for you.

Bill: Okay.

Sarah: And so that’s one thing I always talk about with technology too. I’m an Android, you’re an Apple. I totally understand that. And when people ask me for recommendations, there are times when I will recommend like an Apple device because I’m like, okay, I know you don’t want to really figure out how to customize it and things like that. So I would actually recommend an Apple for you. And that’s what I love about technology is that you can find the thing that fits you and that is going to work for your needs.

Bill: Any particular, like very practical recommendations on how to start that process? If someone’s got a router down in their basement, sure. It probably has these capabilities built in.

Sarah: Guarantee it does.

Bill: Where do they start?

Sarah: Most of the time on the router itself has like a little login information. And so just log in and start clicking around and seeing what you can see. Usually it’ll be under parental controls or time limits and things like that. And just dig around. If you don’t want to go quite there, just go look at the model of your router and do a Google search parental controls for Linksys router or NetGear router or whatever you’ve got. And then it should give you a whole tutorial. If you’re looking for the golden router just for you, what I would do is, routers with the best parental controls and then look at their like user interfaces on their website. They’re like, okay, yeah, that one resonates with me. I can see that I can figure that one out and go with that.

Bill: I chuckled, as you said, just go in and start clicking around. I introduced Heidi to the app that accompanies our router recently. And there were two or three nights of me saying, I can’t use my computer.

(Both Laughing)

Sarah: The whole internet went to bed.

Bill: And Heidi’s saying, I’ll figure it out. I thought it was the other Mac. Anyway.

Sarah: She’s shutting you down. That was really your hint to like come to bed.

Bill: Yeah, yes, yeah. I want to come back to this idea of just saying no to everything forever and ever. Sure. And I remember early on in my experience in this kid-safe space, I remember talking to a parent who was almost with, almost bragging about their kid was not gonna have a phone until they were 18.

Sarah: Right.

Bill: And they were talking about a teenage boy. And I was into safe tech at the time.

Sarah: Yeah.

Bill: And I just, I remember looking at them and saying, hey, I understand where you’re coming from, but I can just about guarantee that when this young guy leaves home, he’ll be addicted to pornography in two weeks.

Sarah: Yeah, 100%.

Bill: If he’s not learned how to do anything with discipline and developing that ability to understand what he wants, impulses, he’ll have had none of those experiences.

Sarah: Correct.

Bill: So on the spectrum of lock everything down forever and ever versus obviously be intentional, be age appropriate and develop habits, consistent habits. Where’s the advice that you give parents?

Sarah: Yeah, and actually I just had this conversation. I was at an influencer event down in Provo and I was talking to a person that I had just met there and they’re like, oh yeah, my kid’s 12 years old or whatever and I was like, oh, it’s getting time. And they’re like, oh yeah, no, we’re not gonna do phones until they’re like 16 years old. And I’m like, you know, it’s a little late. And he’s like, really? Like, what do you mean? And I basically said, you want to be able to teach them how to use it. You want them to have those mistakes and experiences when you have oversight. And so you can redirect them into good paths and healthy habits on technology while you still have that control. Because when they’re 18, they’ve got the control. They can do everything that they wanted to do and they don’t have any of the like parent behind the wheel saying, hey, you’re going down a wrong path. And I really compare it to when you are teaching a kid how to drive, which is my least favorite parenting thing in the entire world. I’m a very like anxious person in a car. And so being in the passenger seat while my 15 year old is driving really puts me through the ringer. But that’s important to be sitting there while they’re learning how to drive so that you can be like, no, you’re turning too quickly, you’re doing this, you’re doing that. You don’t just say, hey, here’s the keys to the car when they turn 16 and expect them to know how to drive. So I really compare it to the same kind of thing.

Bill: I think you’re spot on. We’ve got to give kids that opportunity to learn. And that’s not a, hey, here’s all the stuff, figure it out, good luck. Let them learn with us as mentors being very involved.

Sarah: Very.

Bill: And we don’t just abrogate that responsibility to a parental control or to a router or whatever it is. One of the things I’ve heard you talk about before is having multi layers of defense. Tell us about that idea.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s one of my favorite things to talk about. So usually, if you’ve got something you wanna protect, in your house, you might put that in a safe. Okay, well, somebody could crack the safe and get to the thing. So you put the safe in your locked garage. Okay, well, somebody can break into the garage and then break into the safe and get to the thing. Now we put it in the locked car, in the locked garage, in the locked safe. And now you’ve got a few hops to get to that thing. And it’s the same way with stuff you don’t want them to get to on the internet. So you wanna have multiple layers of control. And so you’re gonna have something on the app level. Make sure whatever you wanna set inside the app itself is what you want, time limits, whatever. Then you’re going to set the controls on the device level. So whether that’s Google Family Link for an Android device, whether that’s buying a Troomi phone, whether that is screen time for Apple devices, you wanna set the built-in controls for the phone. Okay, now the next layer is going to be your wifi at home, which we’ve already kind of discussed. So you can set time limits and filters on that wifi. And then of course, because kids are really smart and they’re going to hop off the wifi if they want to continue doing whatever they’re doing. So you also wanna set controls on the cellular network as well. So those are kind of the layers of control where if they’re going to get past this, then this one’s gonna catch them and then same and same.

Bill: How do you do it on the cellular network?

Sarah: So built-in controls like Verizon has family controls where you can set like data limits so they can’t get to any data after a certain amount. You can set filters so they can’t get to specific websites or apps when they’re on the cellular network. You can control contacts through that. Anything you can set within like, so I’ve got Verizon and they have like their own parental controls.

Bill: When I was getting into this space, so go back to 2018 and my biggest concern as a parent was social media. Sure. And for me, that’s where so many of the problems start, whether it’s exposure to inappropriate content that escalates and escalates and escalates, or frankly, I’ve done so much research on the mental health side of social media and excessive screen time in general. Today, I know parents everywhere who are listening are also thinking about AI.

Sarah: Yes.

Bill: And some of the obvious dangers we see with deep fakes and inappropriate images being made to just, hey, what if my child is using this to get around doing their schoolwork? Whatever those questions are. What are you hearing from parents about their top concerns with AI and what are your thoughts?

Sarah: So I mean, I kind of put it in separate categories of AI. There’s generative AI, which is going to be the deep fakes and maybe some homework lessons and things like that. And then there’s the AI companions. So I think I hear a lot more about concern with kids developing a relationship with AI instead of the generative stuff. The generative stuff is concerning as well when we talk about deep fakes. So my kid, they created inappropriate content with my kid’s face or things like that. And so that is a big concern.

Bill: Or my kid is creating inappropriate…

(Laughing)

Bill: Heaven forbid.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah, it could go either way. But yeah, so there are, I would just be really vigilant about the kind of AI that they are interacting with and then going from there. So if it’s generative AI, we talk about consent and whatnot that even though this isn’t the actual person doing this, it looks like the person. And so that can be very damaging. And then with the homework, you’re really not learning anything if you’re just having AI do everything for you. And there are guardrails that you can put, like so ChatGPT actually just announced some teen settings that you can do with ChatGPT where it’s in this like homework mode and you can’t access it during certain hours of the day and things like that. So making sure you understand what kind of guardrails there are in the AI platform that your kid is using.

Bill: What do you think the implications are? Okay, and this is philosophical. And it’s one of my, it’s one of the things I get worked up about. What are the implications for the human experience?

Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think that portion really goes to those developed relationships with AI where, Claude can become your best friend because he’s so helpful. And they’re so like most AI platforms are kind of that echo chamber that you crave where like, oh my gosh, you’re the most brilliant person in the world. And you’re like, yes, I am the most brilliant person in the world. Like every idea that I feed into an AI platform, they’re like, oh, that’s amazing. That’s so great. And you’ve like, you get this false sense of ego because, and then you develop that relationship because it’s always so nice to you and it’s telling you exactly what you wanna hear. And so really making sure the prompts that you’re putting in AI say, you can disagree with me that this is a bad idea and kind of teaching kids how to really use it to help them because I believe that it is a helpful tool but you don’t want it to cross that line into doing everything for you and developing a relationship.

Bill: And that’s the thing. Like I worry about the implications for creativity, for critical thinking. If I don’t ever have to solve a problem myself, I don’t learn how to solve problems. If I get a writing prompt from ChatGPT for everything I need to write, all of a sudden I can’t even start. And that’s terrifying to me.

Sarah: It is.

Bill: And certainly the companion stuff is dangerous and we’ve seen dangerous stories in the news of some tragic experiences. But on just a day to day seemingly innocuous level, I worry about, especially for kids who have grown up with all this stuff, never not had the internet or now AI, are we robbing them of something? And maybe that’s a rabbit hole and that’s a whole other episode, I don’t know.

Sarah: We’ll do a follow up episode all about AI. But yeah, no, I totally see that. And I think when you make sure that you help them understand, and that’s the problem is because a lot of parents don’t understand how to use AI properly, I feel. Where a lot of times when I’m like workshopping a new podcast episode or a new video, I will tell Claude, because that’s my AI of choice, I would tell Claude, interview me about this topic. And so then it’s asking me questions and I’m really thinking about the answer and going through that and then we can draft something together.

Bill: Yeah, see, I think that’s great. But I want my kids to have the, learn how to do it the hard way first. I laughed the other day, I was in our bedroom and I could hear my 10-year-old in the kitchen, I knew he was out there doing homework. And I heard, “Hey Siri, what is in this equation?”

Sarah: Oh no.

Bill: And I’m like, “Oh boy, here we go.” So I put on my serious face to go help my son understand. You can’t have him, you can’t have Siri do your homework. And much to my relief, he had done the homework Just checking. Siri, if the answers were correct.

Sarah: I love that. Well, it’s not as one of the guardrails for ChatGPT, you can turn on this like homework mode where it’s not just giving you the answer, but it’s helping you get to that answer. And I think that’s important to, for them to understand that distinction.

Bill: Absolutely. All right, I wanna wrap with our fast five. I always ask every guest five questions. And don’t think about them, just go.

Sarah: Okay, we’re going.

Bill: So the first one, what do you personally like to do when you’re not on screens?

Sarah: So we love board games in our house. We have a whole closet full of board games. My kids play card games and my husband plays card games with his friends every night. So we just really love board games. And I know it’s really screen related, but we also play video games together as a family, but it is a screen. So I don’t know if that really counts.

Bill: Tell me a favorite childhood memory.

Sarah: So I’m the youngest of four and kind of a daddy’s girl. And I rode on my dad’s shoulders, like probably from age three to age maybe six. And that’s just some of my favorite experiences is being with my family, riding on my dad’s shoulders, whether it was a Disneyland or just at the beach or anything like that. Like I was always found up on my dad’s shoulders and that’s a comfort.

Bill: That’s fantastic. Yeah. Tell me what is one experience that every kid should have before they turn 18?

Sarah: I think every kid should work retail or restaurant before they turn 18, because you get to see that other side when you’re an adult and you’re treating people at a retail establishment or a restaurant or a fast food place without respect, you’ve never been on that side of the counter. And I think every teen should at least have the experience to be on the other side of the counter.

Bill: In my teenage years, I was a shoe salesman.

Sarah: Nice.

Bill: For four years. Every Friday night and Saturday, I sold shoes.

Sarah: I was close, I was at Nordstrom. So they do have shoes there, but I was not in the shoe department.

Bill: Okay, serious one. When you think about protecting childhood, what does that mean to you?

Sarah: I think a lot of people feel like that means, like give them the childhood I had in the 80s or 90s or even the 70s, but I really don’t feel like that’s fair to what this generation has and can offer. I think that protecting childhood really means giving them the tools to explore their passions and their creativity. And whether that’s on technology, great. Whether that’s giving them a piano or whatever, giving them those tools to explore that, their passions and their creativity.

Bill: Right on. Last one. What’s one thing that every family can do this week to help their kids thrive beyond the screen?

Sarah: Give the internet a bedtime. Whether that’s through your wifi router, through the apps on the controls directly on the phone, just put the internet to bed for the whole family.

Bill: Love it. Sarah, thanks so much for joining me. Where can people find you and benefit from all the great work that you’ve been doing?

Sarah: So I have my own podcast, which is called Oh My Tech. Little play on “oh my heck.”

Bill: Brilliant, by the way. I love it.

Sarah: I love it too. So the Oh My Tech podcast available on all the platforms and then just on my social media. I’m family tech everywhere you look.

Bill: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me and Sarah Kimmel today. You know, raising kids in today’s digital world isn’t always easy, but it is the most important work that we can do. Until next time, keep helping your kids thrive beyond the screen.