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START HERE: Building Tech Trust

Is your child trustworthy with tech?

I’m not asking “Is your kid a ‘good’ kid?”, because saying your child isn’t ready for the weight of tech isn’t about being good or bad, it’s about being physically, emotionally, and spiritually prepared.
My 3 year old is immature in all three areas, but she’s an amazing kid. For a 3 year old.

Similarly, I’ve taught some incredible middle school students—who did their work and were great friends—that I would never trust with a lighter. I’m 100% sure some of them would start a fire if I left them alone for more than five minutes.

It’s the same idea with tech. Your child is wonderful. This tech is fun and amazing. But are the two a good fit, in this season, based on what you’ve seen and know so far?
Answering that is simple, but not easy:
Check for trustworthiness in the little things (Luke 16:10)
Build trust in little steps

In today’s conversation we’ll talk about how to assess, and build, tech trust with your child.

 


 

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Transcription:

Purposely. Your life. God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland, and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. Today we are building on last week’s episode where we talked about how do we know if tech is healthy? When we’re adopting new technology, how do we know if it’s even a good decision?

Just on the face of it being technology in the season of life for our kids… we walk through that. If you have not listened, Please go back and listen to that cuz this conversation is about how do we build tech trust? And we’re coming at that from two sides. First, just we’ve now assured ourselves this tech is good, but is it good for our child?

Is our child ready for it? And then if our child was ready for it, or if they’ve proven they’re not ready for it? What can we do to build tech trust rather than just hold it over their heads and go, no, you haven’t impressed me enough. Hopefully a shorter bit of a conversation this week, but I guess more, hopefully it’ll be an encouraging bit.

It’s something that will empower you and equip you to have those conversations, to get those tech wins with your children, recognizing these aren’t battles you’re trying to win over your children, but you’re actually fighting for them. And so this is an opportunity for you to prove that, for you to intervene if it’s not healthy, and for you to give access to loving and intentional good gifts that just happen to be digital in this case to your children, and see that as a win as well.

Because it’s not about necessarily making them happy and that it’s about loving them well, where they’re at, and making sure we’re being intentional, that when our kids ask us for something, that we’re indeed giving them something good, and their level of trustworthiness is now up to par with this thing we are offering them. So, that’s today’s conversation. I hope it will be encouraging and helpful to you. And with no further ado, let’s get this conversation started.

Welcome to the Gospel Tech Podcast, a resource for parents who feel overwhelmed and outpaced as they raise healthy youth in a tech world as an educator, parent and tech user, I want to equip parents with the tools, resources, and confidence they need to raise kids who love God and use tech. Thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible. Thank you to everyone who listens, who likes, who shares. Thank you for leaving a rating and a review. That is amazing, and that helps people find us. We are a nonprofit, a 501C-3 here inthe United states. And so, we are both donors supported. That’s how this job works.

It’s how I get to go and do many of these talks, is I get to tell them, Hey here’s our cost for doing a, the workshop. But we are supported by amazing people and we wanna make sure that we can do this. That’s the main thing is reaching families. That’s because you guys let Anna and I do that, so thank you. And listening and sharing this podcast gets this content out to more people so that when I can’t travel to where someone lives sometimes because some of you’re listening from other continents. That’s awesome. And that’s because other people listened. They shared it. They liked, they rated, they reviewed. That meant that then, When people went and looked for gospel focused tech content, our resource popped up. So, thanks for that. Today we are talking about how can we build tech trust? Again, we last week talked about how do we even assess tech, whether it’s worth, there’s some tech that’s not even worth trusting to anybody.

We wanna know, is it safe? Is it a good fit for our family? Guidelines and expectations and does it line up with our child’s purpose and goals. That was last week’s podcast. Please go check that one out. If you have not yet, that’s episode 156, but today we’re talking about All right. I am aware. The tech itself is fine. Is my kid ready for it? The verse for this conversation comes outta Luke 16:10, 1 who is faithful and very little, is faithful and much, and one who is dishonest and very little is also dishonest in much. Just a little bit greater context on this one, cause I, I get nervous when I just use a single verse that sometimes people will take it the wrong way. So, to be very clear, Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. He just, this is actually the parable of the Dishonest manager and it’s a little convoluted, but basically there’s a man who’s rich. He’s gonna fire his manager. The manager goes, man, I’m gonna be out on the street. He pulls a bunch of people in and he cuts all their debts by half, and forgives these people a lot of money. And at the end it’s the master doesn’t commend his dishonesty, but commends his shrewdness in going, oh, you knew you were gonna be out on the streets and you just made a bunch of friends, right?

I appreciate your shrewdness in making allies since I’m not one of them. And then Jesus goes on to say this, Faithfulness thing matters, right? Let’s use the line before us so that when all else fails, they may receive you into eternal dwellings. He’s talking about using your unrighteous wealth for righteous gain. Then says, if you’re faithful with little, you’ll be faithful with much. If you haven’t been faithful with unrighteous wealth, who can trust you with true wealth? And then he ends in verse 13, with no one can serve two masters. Either he will hate one or the love the other, devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and man, God and money, God and influence, God and the ability to get what you want on your terms. That is the crux of this. So, I say that to you because what we are not talking about, Is how to win a tech fight or how to fix our kids. What we are talking about is how do we assess trustworthiness build trustworthiness.

So, first assess trustworthiness. What I’m trying to say is that there’s technology that might be safe, but it might be too heavy for this time. In the biblical example, we’re saying, all right, in earthly things, you need to prove trustworthy so that you can trust, be trustworthy with kingdom things, right? We need to be faithful with the little daily details, which is why you’re doing this. You’re trying to be faithful as a parent because you’re showing God that your heart has changed. You’re not just running your own life. You’re not serving just money and opportunity. You are serving. God. And the same thing then needs to go for our children.

There are some things for children that are of greater weight. So, I would say a smartphone is gonna be different than a dumb phone. In fact, I’d say a smartphone is gonna be different from almost every other piece of technology because of the way it’s designed. Is an app delivery system. And most of those apps are drool tech. And most of that drool tech is meant for distraction and consumption. It has goals beyond tool tech. So, a smartphone has a lot more weight and trustworthiness then something maybe more innocuous, like a console game that doesn’t connect to the internet. Or a dumb phone or a show that’s designed specifically for kids. And you just have to figure out like how much and how often is our child able to do it? So, there is a weight to trust. In the same way there’s a different amount of trust to let your child go take out the garbage versus drive the family car. There’s a weight. Basically, the weight comes with how much damage can be done, how quickly? With a car, a lot. With a garbage bag, not a ton, right?

With a children’s television show; not a ton. With a smartphone lots, very quickly, right? So, we want to weigh that appropriately. First question then is how do we know if our child’s faithful? We take it straight from Luke 16:10, and we look at the little things. These are just things of the world, things that we are given as common grades. How does your child do? I’m just gonna list a few with family time. How do they do with relationships? How do they do with their pursuit of their faith? With the content they enjoy and celebrate and laugh at and want to watch? With their schoolwork and their AC academics, their study and their opportunities to do? Their friendships? The people that they engage, their peers, their classmates, their personal growth. This can be physical growth. This could be emotional intelligent growth. This could be their passion and like hobbies and interests. How did they handle their money? Which is the specific example given from Jesus. Are they tithing off whatever they off their allowance, off whatever they have? Are they used to giving the Lord their first fruits? How about their time? Do they understand the concept that there is no free time as a Christian? There’s simply discretionary time. It’s all cost the Lord the same amount, and we don’t get to control how much of it we get.

And finally, their focus. Are they able to give something, their intent and their focus? Give it their heart, and transition that heart when it’s important? When priorities shift, when someone walks in the room, can they turn away from the screen, basically, right? When a need pops up, can they set down their interest for the interest of others? This is what Jesus tells us to do… to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as our self. And that is boiled down basically all the law and the prophets. That’s what it all comes down to is these two commandments. And then the third he adds later, is to make disciples. Which is to help other people trust and follow Jesus, which is to do those two things.

Those are our, kind of the 10 that I put together. I don’t want you to run through like a giant sheet of those 10 with like check marks on a gradient scale. I’m simply at saying pick three. What three of those are your kids Absolutely proving their faithfulness in? With family time and relationships and faith and content and academics. If we just looked at the top five. What three of those are your kids really proving faith in? And you’re like, man, son, or daughter of mine, you are really doing great with investing in your siblings. You play with them without us like having to somehow trick you into doing it. You answer their questions.

We understand that older siblings can be tough to address or that younger siblings. They can be annoying. Let’s be serious older siblings in the world. We understand that I’m a middle child, so I get both ends. It also just made me a people pleaser. That’s the story for another day. But that idea that like we can see from our family time, oh you’re doing these relationships well, that’s awesome. There’s always that great dating advice that when you go and date ladies, when you date someone you’re to look at how that young man treats his mom. Men, you’re to look at how that young lady treats her father, and that we can learn something about that relationship, right? That probably is going to be pertinent for our relationship.

I love that when talking about our own children, that we can look at their family time and their relationships for how that relationship extends to other areas. So, we just pick three. and we just look at like, all right, family time. When it comes to family dinner or relationships with their siblings or playing games together like a shared day, or talking and asking questions, being vulnerable. How’s that going? Because if you get a child with a high-powered digital device, use a smartphone, for example, and they’re not open to relationship, and they’re not open to sharing and feedback, and they’re not open to instruction, and they’re not open like just as a family, that can lead to some pretty dangerous spots.

It can lead to your child feeling like they’re spied on because you are gonna immediately start being suspicious of them, right? Because there isn’t that level of trust built relationally. So, that’s one that I put an emphasis next to, and I would encourage you to look at and say, all right, if family time, if family relationships aren’t solid, Is the smartphone going to benefit that? Or is a smartphone us capitulating in some way to try to make them happy? And now we’ve just thrown off this power dynamic where now the kid is running the show because we’re worried, they’re gonna get mad at us. And if they get mad at us we’re concerned about driving them away. So, we have to give them this thing. And that just officially became a hostage situation, right?

You are now dealing with a terrorist who’s said they’re gonna blow up your family. And they like make everything just a absolute living nightmare unless you give them this thing they demand. That should be an asterisk number one, like concern. If that’s the situation you’re seeing with whatever the tech might be, that man, something is off here. This isn’t worthy of this level of tech trust. We need to find a way to deescalate the situation, to find a healthy way to meet what that child needs. Maybe they want relationship, maybe they want entertainment, maybe they want connection. We can meet those needs in healthy and wholesome ways, but we’re not yet ready on a trust level for this child to get a high-powered device that’s going to allow them all sorts of independence at the speed of high speed internet. And we’re not going to be a part of being able to support them in that. So, we love them. We’re not going to allow that to happen, right? Like our child asking if they can drive the car blindfolded, like no. We’re not gonna let, we’re not gonna let that happen. Like we’re, we need someone else. We need eyes on the situation here.

So, family time relationships would again just be, I guess with the siblings and the parents in that one. But this goes to the outside of like, how are they dealing with their sports relationships, with their church relationships. Not even necessarily with their closest friends, but simple things like Matthew 5:37 says, our yes needs to be yes. Is your child and their relationships, even if those are school commitments, are they saying yes and keeping it? Are they showing up for the play they committed to, even when it’s inconvenient? I love that one outta Psalm 15:4, that the one who keeps his word, or her word in this case, even when it hurts, you said yes before you knew what you were giving up. You keep your Yes. You said, yeah. To go to that movie you said, yeah. To hang out with that friend and then this other really cool thing showed up with that other person you like more, but you keep your Yes. That is showing you a sign of a young person who understands some of the fruit of the spirit, who is having the Lord move in their heart. That stuff doesn’t happen by accident. And therefore there’s a level of trust that can be built there, of yeah, I can send this kid into a digital space and know that their yes with me is still a yes when they go in that space. That’d work. With the content, there’s a biblical standard. We talked about this last week, but Philippians 4:8, this idea that does your child celebrate what is true and honorable and just and pure? Are they celebrating and investing in, and just reveling in what’s lovely and commendable and excellent? It’s worthy of praise… or are the artists they like and the people they fall in, the music they enjoy.

Like many of us, when we are in middle school, we had a really dark edge. That when we go back and listen to it now or watch it now or ingest it now, it makes us sad. There’s certainly nostalgia, right? I might listen to some machine head or something. But it’s not something I celebrate. It’s not something I show to my kids because I go, man, this was part of 15-year-old Nathan, and I have nostalgia for those friends and those times and the memories. But when I listen to it with my adult brain, with my changed heart in Christ, like it’s not great. It’s not something that I love and that I want for other people.

And that’s what we’re looking at here for content, are we having, or excuse me, yeah. I guess with relationships and responsibilities and content mashed together, but in content specifically is what are we celebrating? What are we enjoying? And that would show us our trustworthiness if our child is gravitating to stuff that just isn’t something we would celebrate, then maybe we limit the amount of trustworthiness and the access they can get to that content, without conversation and supervision. Academics would just be what it is. Are they showing up for school? Are they doing those things? The reason we care about academics isn’t cuz school’s magical and makes people perfect, but because it’s a commitment. If we as a family have agreed to homeschool, have agreed to public school, or agreed to private school. Like this is a commitment we’ve said is gonna happen. We believe that, I would say as an educator, I can tell you that even in a non-Christian setting or even an anti-Christian setting, that honest education, like learning information about the world, real science, not propaganda, not information we’re presenting, sans a bunch of other information so that you have to think one way, but actual questions that are coming into actual inquiry is powerful. And it’s amazing and it starts to make us go, yeah, but what about? And you ask, yeah, what about enough? And you start to get to like this is huge. Like this stuff is massive. From language to arts, to history, to science and mathematics honest inquiry leads us back to God. That is a cool spot to be. If our child isn’t investing in that, maybe their interest is in another passion they have, and school’s really hard, but they’re passionate about something else they’re investing in. And we’d call that academic, right? For my nephew who’s gonna be an incredible welder, right? Incredible God gifted welder, the man’s brain thinks and works in ways that mine doesn’t. And if I needed a ship put back together or a car to run again, like, I would give it to this young man. You would not wanna give it to me. It would turn out very poorly. So I’m okay with thinking beyond the academic setting we might think of, a school where you sit down in a desk and read a book. but we are talking about building our minds and asking big questions, and that’s what we’re talking about with the academic side.

Finally, I just wanted to put out friendships, and that’s the plain learning, listening, practicing. All the things that friendships are good for, which is developing us into the people God’s designed us to be. How’s your child doing on that? So, I could go through all 10. I won’t but what I wanted to just emphasize out of these is there’s a way to assess out of those 10. I’ll put ’em in the notes so you can run through ’em again, you don’t have to skip back, but family time, relationships, faith, content, academics. And the second five are friendships, growth, money, time, and focus. I want you to pick three that they’re doing great, and three that you’re like, Hey, these are probably the most concerning in that in that section.

You might have more you’d add but out of those we can say my child is faithful in these things. Really quick. Like when I first said it, you were like, oh no, like this is super concerning with my child. That is not a spot to go win or to hold over their head. That’s a spot to go into your child’s life, and say, all right, what’s happening here? Is this cuz you just don’t have the information and training? Or is it because something else is off and you’re, you’re off kilter, right? You’re not in a healthy spot with your relationships. You’re not in a healthy spot with your emotional wellbeing. What can I do as a parent to support you with that?

Which leads us then to, all right, we can assess those little things, faithfulness with things like money, which was brought up in the actual verse of child of mind, how do you spend your money? Do you find your joy in that? Are you finding your purpose in being an influencer and being important? People’s opinions, right? That would be concerning if I’m now giving you this device, cuz that can lead to a lot of anxiety and fear. Then we have the second part of, okay, how do I build it for my child? Either isn’t ready or they were ready. We’ve now made mistakes that lost them trust. How do I know if they’re ever ready in the future?

So, let’s talk that out. Let’s begin at the top. How do we build tech trust? And the first thing we have to start with is relationship. When we talk about building tech trust, you have to, at the end of the day, trust your child, believing that they’re going to do what they do in front of you when they’re not in front of you. It requires that you have tech conversations on the regular. You need a family tech framework. You need consistency in your modeling of healthy tech use, and you need to basically build rapport and respect with your child. Be a parent to them. That means have boundaries that are loving but have boundaries. And that means asking for forgiveness when you make a mistake. And it means spending time with and around your child. Not just quality time, meaning not just that one really cool vacation you take each year, but building consistent time to be a part of their life and go what, where they go. Be interested in what they’re interested in, even from a young age, right?

5, 6, 7-year-olds have interests and we can feed those. Absolutely get them into a wide array of opportunities, but be, excuse me, have them be a part of the conversation to know what is motivating you as a good father, as a good mother who wants to give them good things, that you’re simply modeling what God does for us on the regular basis.

That’s gonna build relationship. The reason that I, I emphasize that, first and foremost on how we build tech trust, is no amount of vigilance or hedge building or digital protection is gonna stop our children from making mistakes they want to make. What it requires is heart change, and it works for our children the same way it works for us. Yet that’s relational. We don’t follow the law of God because you know the justice of God leads us to repentance. No, it’s the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. Yes, there is justice. Yes, there is judgment. Yes there is right and wrong, and while we were yet sinner, Christ died for us. And God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. All of these pieces reminding us that it’s not because we’ve earned God’s love. Our children don’t earn ours. It’s a relationship. We pursue our children despite who they are as humans. Not because we’re overly impressed. So, a wonderful way to do that Family tech framework. If you go episode 149 out of this podcast, we talk about that.

If you go to gospeltechworkshop.com, you can check that out. It’s relational, it’s intentional. It’s not about you winning or making a contract. There’s some conversation involved that’s contractual ish, but that’s not the point. The point is, I love you child. We need to talk about this. I need to work on this as a parent. Very few of us have this down pat, and if you do, there’s a lot of opportunity out there to go help people. So, please take that in humility, not in self-righteousness, cuz that’s great. I’m glad you’re healthy. That’s amazing.

The second thing we do then is we’re gonna build that hedge which is, Putting a layer of protection between our devices and our personal devices, like smartphones and our home network. Again, episode 149 covers that. But the idea that I want to emphasize here when we’re talking about building tech trust, is to recognize that when our child makes a mistake, even on purpose, that’s not a reflection of you as a parent or as them as a person. Because making a mistake does not make us a mistake. So, absolutely we intervene. And we do that, yes, we lovingly remove stuff that causes sin as Matthew 5:28-30 tells us. So, if our late-night internet use is causing problems, it goes away and it’s replaced by a different habit, different boundaries, different loving safeguards. Maybe going to bed early and waking earlier and using internet only at a certain time in the middle of the day. Like whatever that looks like, yes, we replace bad stuff with stuff that points us back towards God. In my life, as I’ve shared multiple times, that was video games. It’s not that games were bad, is that my heart was bad in video games, where one of the things distracting me.

They were not feeding the fire in the right way. Instead, I was watching this get more and more out of control. It went away. What did I get instead? I started serving in Young Life, which is the reason I do this job at all now. And then I got board games and I got into cycling and I have more now than when I gamed 11 years ago. I have way more, my life is fuller. That’s not because I’m doing awesome. It’s cuz God is really good and he’s faithful. So, we need to remember that as we talk about trust, it’s not, my kid broke their promise. Or my kid looked at the stuff on purpose, therefore, I’m going to teach them a lesson by removing things they care about, because once they’ve suffered enough, then they’ll know that was a bad choice. Instead, we are gonna say no. What you did in that action was show me you’re not ready for this. So, I’m not holding this back cause I’m mad at you. I’m holding this back cuz I love you and this would be really bad for you right now. You don’t have the, whatever, emotional maturity, the ability to say no. The heart that thrives and revels in good things. Like you’re just in a spot where you. A longer, wider, taller hedge. It’s easier to make good decisions in this situation. Without a smartphone, it’s a lot easier to make good life choices. With a dumb phone, it’s a lot easier to make good life choices, right?

So, trust is coming off a relationship and it’s coming off a hedge. This idea that I know the amount of freedom I’ve given you is worth trusting you with. And when it’s not, then I extend that hedge a little bit, in love, not because you are a mistake, not to be mean and quote unquote teach you a lesson, but to faithfully show my child, your child, what it looks like to love you, choosing the highest good for you, even when it isn’t fun. So, when we’ve done that, how does it look to actually build up trust then in this way? We have our relationship, which means a framework. We have our hedge, which is episode 149. I would give an example here of just, so sorry… put my thoughts in. After the relationship and the hedge, it comes with small steps. I love this from Chris McKenna, protect Young Eyes. I’m gonna use his specific example for smartphones, cuz I think it is poignant and I think that’s where most parents reach a pinch point for trying to scale up. And the idea would be, so my child has shown they’re not faithful in those little things yet. How do we get them there? We don’t just throw them in hot knowing they can’t handle this level of trust. So, we give them the steps they can handle. We let them use a public device first. This would be something like a shared tablet or a shared public computer in a public space, and it has the accountability software on there. Something like Covenant Eyes or bark, and they’re using it and they’re proving that’s going well. And they go, mom and dad, I wanna be on the social media app, which is what most kids mean when they say they want a smartphone. So, now they are using mom or dad’s social media app. They’re great. You can use my Instagram. You can use my Facebook account. You can communicate with your friends, you can message ’em. You can set up your hangouts. You can laugh at memes, but it’s coming onto my device. You get to use my device, you get it from me, you walk away, right? That’s a level of trust, and you are giving them your device. There is trust involved there.

They’re gonna have the login probably to that device. There’s trust involved there. Again, your device should also have all the accountability on it, because we’re not above accountability, just cuz we’re old. So, accountability just means that there’s always a second set of eyes seeing what we see, which is great. That’s both true and productive. Then the next step would be something like, get a dumb phone. Great. You get some independence. You get to see what this is like. This thing isn’t magical. It can’t make you happy. Let’s watch your friends as they use these devices. How are they doing it? I love talking to middle school kids about this cuz they can spot when their friends are healthy and unhealthy. And some of these kids are like, yeah, I wanna be connected, but I don’t want that. Awesome because it’s that, that very realization that child had, that’s gonna drive the next part of this market. We don’t all need smartphones. In fact, very few of us need these things, but we are getting a lot of value out of them in certain ways, and that’s what we wanna maximize and our kids see it.

The final piece would be, all right, you are faithful in this list that we’ve got. These three things you’re doing really well. You’re showing us that you can handle this son or daughter. Now you’ve shown that you can handle the public device and mom and dad’s phone, right? You have the humility, the kindness, the trustworthiness, the relationships. You’ve got these things down. You’ve got the dumb phone. You can handle that, and you still have the desire for a smartphone. Great. We’re gonna have accountability on that device because we love you, and because anonymity online is one of the great lies that you can just do what you want, and it has no impact.

It’s not true on a very real spiritual level. It’s not true. So why should we allow the physical reality to somehow mask that somehow you can, we can just get off scot free, making mistakes that hurt and damage our hearts and the hearts of others. So, smartphone, it’s gonna have accountability on it. And now you have this trust. And when that trust hypothetically would be breached, we reextend that hedge and go, great. Smartphones aren’t a good choice for us right now. Let’s go back to a dumb phone. Let’s go to mom and dad’s phone. Let’s go to the last thing that worked and was safe and healthy, and let’s figure out where these problems are coming from, right? Because we’re not saying, child, you’ve made a mistake. Now you are a mistake. We’re saying, child, my job is to raise you up in the way you should go. And that’s gonna look like getting some reps at this. And that’s gonna look like us being intentional, but we’re not gonna give you more opportunity for rapid mistakes.

Alright, let’s conclude with that idea. So, building tech trust. First, we remember that being faithful in the little things shows that we can be faithful with much, right? We come out of Luke 16:10 for that. So, we have that list of 10 in the show notes. You can run through. but this is coming from relationship. This isn’t just a math problem to figure out if our child is or isn’t in a spot. This is a conversation between parents or conversation between grandparents. It’s a conversation between the adults and the young person involved here. Talking about here’s our expectations and how we walk through what healthy tech is going to look like for you, because we love you and care about you. Not because we’re trying to control your fun and your life. We want to give you good things. We wanna make sure this is good. We’re assessing the tech and the child. We’re gonna build that hedge, making good decisions, easy to make, bad decisions, hard to make. And finally, we’re gonna practice using tech. We’re gonna have it be public and then mom and dad’s phone, and then a dumb phone and a smartphone. For example, or with video games, maybe we’re gonna start with really old devices and simple devices, right? Original Nintendo and Super Nintendo, or really, arcade games where you can’t keep playing them forever. We have to leave that space. And then eventually maybe introducing games in our lives. Social media, again, a public format, a shared format, and then an independent format. But all of this with accountability involved, because at the end of the day, we are building tech trust. And when we give that device to our child, we have given it to them, which means we trust them, which mom and dad, grandma and papa means that we don’t go reading through their diary. We don’t go flipping through everything like they’ve done something wrong. We’re just assuming they’re making mistakes because we’ve built that trust up. Yes, there’s accountability.

Covenant Eyes, and Bark, the two I suggest. Covenant Eyes is image-based. It’s great for catching things like pornography. Bark is amazing for conversations and bullying and strangers and searches. things that talk about self-harm and depression and drugs and alcohol and those things. And those two then give you a foundation point. You’ll have something pop up and instead of going, aha, I was waiting for this, you’d go, oh, son or daughter, man I love you. What’s going on here? Let’s start this conversation because maybe this is the main issue, but maybe this is just a symptom of something else that’s happening, and that’s what I care about.

I don’t care about you just never making a digital mistake. Care about you being well and whole in Christ. Let’s have this conversation. So, I hope that this conversation has helped you. I thought it was gonna be shorter. Sorry everyone. Got excited. But I hope this was encouraging for how we can build tech trust and go about it once it’s been breached.

It can be, I covered it quickly, but I know it can be really hard on his parents as we see kids that just didn’t want these hurts for them, at the very least, but some of them, we just never saw it coming. And now it’s a thing. And we feel bad. And they feel bad. And we just, we either don’t trust ’em at all anymore. We don’t know how to trust. And my hope in this conversation is that you know where to start. That you can begin that conversation in talking to your young person about their tech about where they’re trustworthy and whether they’re not, and recognize, Not being faithful in little things doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.

It means you’re not ready for bigger things. It means you gotta mature and grow. And until that happens, there’s some things that simply can’t happen, because mistakes can be made too fast. Especially in when we’re talking digital world or driving vehicles, , all of those things. So, I hope that was encouraging to you. I did want to use this opportunity to say, So next week we’re gonna talk video games, and then the following Saturday, I’m releasing a little four-part miniseries that Mike and I created. We’ve talked what the tech before, but it’s just gonna be a little video game focused miniseries. I’m really excited for it. Mike is pumped for it. And if you’ve never listened to one of the Mike episodes or what the tech, Justin and I have done a couple as well. We’re just gonna nerd out on video games, give this a shot. So, join us for that. It’ll be on a Saturday. Would love your thoughts and feedback on it. We at least had a lot of fun doing it. So, it’s not this coming Tuesday. It’s the Saturday after that. So, two weeks basically away from now. With that being said, I hope that you will share this with someone if you found this conversation about building tech trust, encouraging. I hope that you’ll like it, comment, and rate this resource so that more people can find it, and that you’ll join us next week as we continue this conversation about how we can love God and use tech.

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