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Discover how to navigate the complexities of modern parenting as we wrap up our enlightening series with Chris McKenna from Protect Young Eyes. Chris joins us to equip parents with the tools needed to create tech-savvy homes in a digital world that’s evolving at lightning speed. We promise that by the end of this episode, you'll have a clearer understanding of the potential dangers lurking in popular social media platforms and games like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Roblox, and Fortnite. With firsthand insights gained from creating child-aged accounts, we spotlight the kind of content your kids might encounter online, urging you to be vigilant in assessing its suitability. Through a biblical perspective, we explore how these digital environments should reflect values of holiness, excellence, and praiseworthiness.

We also tackle the pressing issue of children's digital footprints and privacy in our hyper-connected age. Consider the hidden risks of sharing personal details online, such as birthdays and school uniforms, akin to revealing a child's baby book to complete strangers. We discuss the dangers of identity theft and the misuse of images through deepfakes, emphasizing the need for parental caution in the digital realm. To support you in safeguarding your children, we introduce valuable resources from Protect Young Eyes, including our guides and "The Download" newsletter, offering the latest updates on digital safety and emerging tech. Our mission is to empower you with practical, faith-centered guidance to protect your family in an ever-changing online landscape.
 

Transcript:

Mrs. Erin Kay: Welcome to our final episode with Protect Young Eyes, where we're talking all about creating tech-ready homes and practical tips to help equip our parents in this digital age, this ever-evolving digital age. And so this is the conclusion of this series with Chris McKenna with Protect Young Eyes. So welcome back, Chris, for our final episode. 

Mr. Chris McKenna: Thanks Erin, here we go!

Mrs. Erin Kay: Here we go.  Okay, so just to wrap this up, we put a lot of ground in the other episodes, so I want to encourage everybody, if you haven't listened to episodes the one through four, to go back, get that framework and then listen to this one. So what do parents need to know about some of these social apps like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and Roblox? What do they need to know?

Mr. Chris McKenna: Well, I think they need to know that, in order for them to know what they need to know, they need to all go create an account of their own and pretend like they're a kid. Create an account with a kid's age and go see what you see. You can't possibly, we call that... that's our seven day rule, that whatever app your kid wants, I don't care what Disney princess is on it you go and download the app and use it for seven straight days as if you were a child, whatever age your kid is, put it in and then, at the end of seven days, you know, think about the ads, think about the content, think about the algorithm, like interactions, like actually use it. Don't just download it. You have to use it solid for seven days and then ask yourself at the end of seven days is that what you want your kid to experience? And I think you'll learn some things. I think what you would learn if you're a parent who creates a TikTok account fresh is what you would see in the posts we talked about in the previous episode. The question of is it sinful to give your kids social media.

I show screenshots of brand new accounts that were created, because the illustration that I use is you know, imagine the Hebrews stumbling upon I'm talking about, like the Hebrews in, you know, in the old Testament talking to Moses and saying, hey Moses, you know, we need some guidance on what to do with technology and our kids and imagine them stumbling upon a stone tablet in the desert that was miraculously playing videos and it had pictures on it from TikTok. And what I did was I I made a brand new, like fresh, 13 year old account and I just took a screenshot of what was there. And here's some stuffed SpongeBob tipped over next to a Captain Morgan's bottle because he was drunk. Here's another dude in the middle flashing a hundred dollar bills, flipping me off. And then the third video was some guy dropping a bunch of horrible language drinking some lemonade. All kinds of just explicit racial language. Those were the first three videos that I was served in a 13-year-old TikTok account without anything... I hadn't fed the algorithm anything. It knew nothing about me other than the fact that I was a boy and I was 13 and that was it. And I did the same thing with Instagram right and I was 13 and that was it. And I did the same thing with Instagram, right and again I opened up an Instagram account and I just pretended like I was a curious 13 year old boy and I just typed in the word "girl" in explore, which is the search feature. I just typed in the word
"girl" and I'm telling you, Erin, I, this is a blog written for adults. I had to blur the content that I was shown.  It knew I was a 13 year old.

I not only had to blur it, I had to put little circles over body parts in this blog post to make sure I wasn't going to get banned on a screenshot that I took from Instagram from a brand new, 13 year old account, right? So these are the things. I want parents to go and use it and experience it. I just read this morning right, that's social media. You mentioned Roblox.

I read this morning from a school resource officer, one of the more popular school resource officers in the country. His name is Officer Gomez. He's out in Idaho, he does a ton of internet safety work, so he's the police officer that's been assigned to a public school district and he deals with all issues, right, not just technology, but all the issues that might come up at a school. And he said the two apps that cause the largest number of 911 calls from young kids are Roblox and Fortnite.

Mrs. Erin Kay: Wow.

Mr. Chris McKenna: Because when parents take those away, it causes such neurological distress in kids. In other words, they're so addicted to both of those that they call 911 in distress.

Mrs. Erin Kay: Wow, wow.

Mr. Chris McKenna: That should tell us something about what's going on inside of those games to hook the amazing brains of these young kids, right? So to me those are just signals, right.  I just go, "Okay, those are signals that I should pay attention to and before I drop my amazing human inside of one of these places, I better know it, I better live in it, I better experience it."

One of these places? I better know it, I better live in it, I better experience it. I better ask myself can they handle everything that I just did? And when I want them to, are they going to be a better version of themselves? Right, when I put them inside of this digital space? Those are just some of those big questions, which goes back to the big questions that we dropped in the previous episode. While we're making these decisions, right, ask ourselves, through a biblical worldview, questions around holiness and excellence and goodness and praiseworthy, and all the things that you know St. Paul puts out for us in Philippians 4:8 as a filter for decision-making. What do we put in front of our senses? He gave us a filter, and I just think we need to use it more often. 

Mrs. Erin Kay:  Yeah, absolutely. I love that, going in there as our child, as the age and gender of our child, to experience what these things are going to serve back to us. You know, instead of being so trusting that, oh, they have the same moral compass as we do, the same value systems as we do. So that's really, that's really, really helpful. But as we wrap up this series, I do want to ask another question about social media and parents. When we are posting things on our personal pages and we feel like it's safe to share, we're excited to share. We want to share about our children. So what are some guardrails that you would provide to parents about sharing the lives of their children on social media, on their personal social media?

Mr. Chris McKenna: Well, I go back to the first part of the Tech Ready Home framework, which is model the right behaviors, and we say things like this to kids. Well, kids, you know what a digital footprint is. You know why would you send that text if you wouldn't print it off? Why would you share that photo if you wouldn't hand it around, you know, at school, in physical format? I think we, as parents, need to ask those exact same questions and model the right behaviors. Honestly, I think we should ask permission of our kids before we post anything of them online. I think our children should have a say.   Because, again, you know I like to make things analog that are digital, because it helps, it makes sense.

If you're an oldest child listening to this and you're somewhere between ages 35 and 50, like I am you're probably the only one in your family that has a baby book, because none of your other siblings got one. Right. You were the only one who did. Now imagine your parents back in the 90s. Imagine them looking up all the kids they graduated from high school with, and they're like you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to photocopy my kid's baby book and I'm going to send it to all of these people that I graduated from high school with. I haven't talked to someone for like 15 years. I saw one of them at a reunion, but I'm going to give all of them a copy of my kid's baby book. You think they'll like that. You think my kids will like that. Do you think in 15 years, when my kid discovers that their baby book is out there permanently for everybody to see, are they going to love that idea?

I know it's a bit of a hyperbole, but that's kind of what we do. We've created a digital footprint for our kids. They have no say in, they have to inherit this. They are just handed reams of digital data that's been shared about them without any of their permission and now they just have to kind of live with it. And so I want us to be careful.

We share a ton of information, private information, about our kids. I mean the most obvious one kind of cliche, because it gets talked about a lot, but I know it still gets violated is every time you take a picture of your kid going to school at a school that has a uniform, you've just shared a ton of information about your kid. They know where you live, they know where they go to school. They know schedules. I mean, you just shared a ton about your child all because they have a school uniform on. I just I think we need to be so careful about these kinds of things.

There's only two pieces of information that are needed to steal anybody's identity birthday and last four of your social. How many of us post our birthdays of our kids out online? We've already given away 50% of someone stealing their identity, so I don't share my birthday. Nobody knows how old I am online because I don't share it with anyone and I'm trying to still be 39, but that's another story. But we need to be more careful, especially with deepfakes.

People can go back and listen to episode three, where you talked about emerging, especially with deep fakes. People can go back and listen to episode three, where you talked about emerging issues with deep fakes, where photos of our kids can be turned to anything. You know I have youth groups in large schools and places that call me now and ask should they even have social media accounts with kids' pictures on them? Right, should they all be private? What should they do? And you know I have some counsel and things I share about that, but I think the same applies, you know, to families. We need to be very careful with what we share, especially in the age of deep fakes. 

Mrs. Erin Kay: Wow, thank you so much for sharing. In this digital age, it's ever evolving, so if parents want to continue to engage with, Protect Young Eyes and stay on the bleeding edge, so to speak, of these trends and how to protect their children, how can they access you?

Mr. Chris McKenna: Yeah, like a lot of organizations, we're very active through our website. Our website, though, unlike other digital safety places, we have guides and free information. You want to protect your iPad. You want to protect your tablet, your Chromebook, your PlayStation. All of that is there and accessible, but you said something that I haven't shared in the previous episodes that prompted me to share this.

We have about a once a month newsletter that we ship out, called The Download. If people go to our website, you'll be prompted to subscribe to this, but this is where we share what's new. Now, all of that eventually makes its way into social media and makes its way into our website, but some people just want to read sort of a you know right there in their inbox. We put a ton of time into what we call The Download. About once a month shares where we're speaking, what we're doing legislatively, policy changes, things in Capitol Hill, emerging technologies, what's happening. That's where we tend to share that the fastest. So those are the you know kind of the typical spaces, but anybody can just start at our website and go from there. 

Mrs. Erin Kay: Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us and sharing your wisdom and knowledge and, again, from a biblical worldview, it's invaluable. All right, everyone. Thank you for being with us on this series. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me. You can go to protectyoungeyes.com and we are happy to help you on this path. We are partnering together with you. Thanks again, Chris.

Mr. Chris McKenna: Thanks, Erin.