Reclaiming Our Digital Lives

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:13] Welcome, everyone. This is the Digital Kindness Podcast, Episode one, Reclaiming our digital lives. [00:00:20] My name is Andrew Marcinic and I will be your host for each of these podcasts in future episodes. [00:00:28] I'm excited to be here. This is my first podcast. I've never jumped into this arena before, but have listened to many of them. So I'm not pretending to think that I can just jump into this forum and do really well. I know there's going to take. It's going to take some time and some learning along the way, but this has been a project of mine, a passion project of mine for the majority of my career in both supporting educational technology initiatives, but then also having many moments of pause and reflection throughout my career around screens and how they were impacting our kids both in school and at home. [00:01:13] So that's kind of where this is going to start and, you know, we'll see where it goes. I'm going to start by kind of introducing what this podcast will be about and then the hope is that in future episodes we'll have some guests and I'm excited to see where this all goes. Like I said, this is the very first episode, first podcast I have ever authored. I've been on them before, but I've never authored them. So whether you're a parent, an educator, or someone who's just really starting to question their relationship with digital devices, I think this podcast is for you. This podcast isn't about banning technology. It's not about burying our heads in the sand and just saying, well, they're kids. This is their TV or this is their phone. You know, this is what they, this is what they're going to do. This is one of those things where I think we have to take a more intentional and serious look at how these devices both inside and outside of the classroom are impacting our kids emotions, their feelings, and really start to interrogate some of our choices as school leaders, as parents, when kids should have access to a device, when they shouldn't. [00:02:28] But I think the part I really want to make sure I get across is that when I say you're questioning the relationship with your digital devices, I'm not meaning put them in a box and shut them away. [00:02:43] And then magically, when kids are 16 or 18 or whenever you decide to give your kid a phone, that they're just gonna take it out of the box and be able to thrive with this device. [00:02:57] This is really about education. It's about education of how we're going to, you know, not just ban the device. Because the device is gonna be there. It's going to get more sticky as far as what the device can do and where it can go. Artificial intelligence is here, and we have a lot of things happening all at once. [00:03:20] So with that said, I hope each month to bring you conversations, reflections, stories, case studies centered on the concept of digital kindness. This is something I've explored in depth in my book, Teaching Digital Kindness. I will also plug my book as much as I can. It was just actually translated into Italian. So that was also very exciting to see this book not just impacting American classrooms, but Italian classrooms and Italian students and kids as well. [00:03:52] But here in this podcast, we're going to go, you know, a little bit beyond what's in the book. [00:03:57] We'll be looking at, you know, digital trends that are happening. Like I mentioned, AI, reflect on how technology is shaping our lives and our children's lives, and most importantly, explore how we can reclaim our time and really the human connection in a world that is always plugged in, you know, and this first episode is just me, just us. Here we are having a conversation. But, you know, like I said, in future episodes, you know, I hope to get some really cool guests, educators, researchers, have some kids on here to talk about it from their perspective, which I think is really important. I've always been a big advocate of student voice and student agency in this space. And what I see happening now is I feel like the adults made some big mistakes, made some wrong choices about devices access when they should be accessing them. And I'm not just talking about parents. I'm talking about parents. I'm talking about school leaders. For a while, we rushed to bring devices into the classroom. [00:05:00] I was part of many of these initiatives where we need to get devices in the hands of every kid. We need to get an iPad in the hand of every kid. Screens, screens, screens. This is how kids are going to learn in, you know, 2010 and beyond. [00:05:14] And what we found is that this isn't. This wasn't the best choice and we're learning now. And I've gone back and I've reflected a lot on presentations I've given on, you know, statements I've made around these topics. But my. I think the difference here is that I'm more focused on the learning that can happen about the technology as opposed to just trying to push the technology away and what I'll say right out of the gate, you know, Jonathan Haidt's Anxious Generation is a book that was widely read, including myself, and I really liked the book. I liked a lot of what Jonathan says, and I agree with what Jonathan says in most of his, in most of the books. But I think one of the big misses is the education part. I feel like, if you're asking me, does a middle school student need to have a smartphone on their person every day in the school? Absolutely not. They don't. You know, I always used to say, you know, what's, what function is that phone serving that student? You know, do they, are they. Do they need to be all on call? Do they have, you know, is their agent calling them? Like, who, who. What is that function for? What is the function of that? And so when you look at it, the function is a distraction. It's a wondering for that kid. It's wondering what's, what's going to be on that phone? What's. What's the next notification that's going to. Going to pop up. [00:06:48] So that's just where I think we're going to kind of diverge from, from anxious generation. Not to say that the ancient generation and the writings of it is wrong, but it is a little bit, in a sense, reacting to a lot of wrong choices that were made and trying to unpack those decisions and make better choices for our kids and support our kids as we go forward. And I'm, I'm a part of that. I want to be a part of that, and I want to help educate our parents, our school leaders on these, on these topics. [00:07:30] I want to transition to more of a personal story. [00:07:35] And this is. My daughter was born. My daughter Clara was born December 12, 2023. [00:07:44] And what I've noticed since she was born is that she is constantly looking and obsessed with my phone, my phone and my wife's phone. And over the past several months, again, she just turned one. So over the past few months, I've noticed how she will react when she sees my phone. And she'll hold it and she'll just move her hand up and down it, and she'll love the lights and the colors and the movement of it and that she can, she can move her hand and make something move. [00:08:26] So even at the very, very early age, a child is into this device. And, you know, there's a lot of intentionality in the device. There's a lot of research, there's a lot of human psychology that is, that is done when thinking about these devices. It's not like they just put out a phone. [00:08:47] You know, in 2007, when Steve Jobs released the iPhone, you know, I, his purpose was not to get people Addicted. But it became that way. It became the way in which, you know, we now are all part of it. [00:09:05] And I think this is important because this is something that I look at and I have to become very cognizant of. [00:09:13] You know, I don't want my daughter to have a phone until she's at least 16, but I want her to not just, not just because it's an age check mark. [00:09:24] I want her to be able to understand its power. I want her to be able to understand the dangers of it. I wanted to educate her on using it effectively and using it purposefully and intentionally. [00:09:39] So I just don't want her to just have it because she graduated to it. She's 16. Yeah. She gets a phone. All other friends are getting a phone. You know, I'm not going to be, you know, it's, it's. I think there's a lot of. And I'm just gonna, you know, name it because it's a, it's a thing. There's a lot of parent peer pressure around giving your kids phones. I think there's the, there's the peer pressure from the kids themselves. Well, all the other kids have them and I'm not gonna have friends and I'm not gonna be able to connect with them and yada, yada, yada. And that's, that's one. There's the parent to parent peer pressure about, oh, well, you know, our kids are best friends. I'm giving my daughter a phone, you know, can she have a phone? So they can, they can text each other. So that's another type of peer pressure, parent to parent. And I think a lot of these parents don't realize what they're actually doing. [00:10:29] But one of the analogies I make both in the book and a lot of times when I talk about this is at 16, we don't just hand kids car keys and say, hey, congratulations, you're 16. You got a license? No, no, we, we make sure they have to go through road tests and they have to go through written tests and they have to take courses and they have to. Then once they get their permit, they can only drive with an adult. You know, so there are a lot of, a lot of provisions that go into place. [00:10:58] And you know, I asked the question is like, okay, we provide all this education for driver's education because to give a kid just a car and have them go out on the road is, would be highly irresponsible. But yet we give our kids a smartphone that can possess just as much danger to their Mental. Mental wellbeing. And we do that sometimes without blinking and without really thinking about the connection there. And. And so that's another piece of this where, you know, I connect with the Jonathan Haidt's work in Anxious Generation. And again, I'm not in disagreement with it. I just am really focused on the education of it and wanting both kids and adults to have intentional conversations about technology and really educate kids on it. [00:11:49] So with that said, you know, I think about it. When I say reclaiming our digital lives, it doesn't just mean going off the grid. It doesn't mean not using your technology anymore. [00:12:05] You know, I think it means kind of stepping back and asking, is this tool actually serving me or am I serving it? And that's a really good question. [00:12:16] I think a lot of us also is. You know, in my book, I talk about our shift, kind of a shifting from just digital citizenship, wanting to, you know, produce good shit, good citizens out there, to really kind of focusing on digital kindness. I think there's the way in which technology has changed and social media has changed since I started using it. And I'll say, you know, in the book, I talk a lot about my kind of origin story with Twitter and blogging and really putting myself out there, using these tools to connect and share and learn in really a multitude of ways. And how a couple instances, you know, specifically I note the 2016 US presidential election and the 2020 global pandemic, two monumental shifts in how we acted and connected on these technology devices and social media tools. And so that's going to be another piece of not just how we are maintaining a relationship with these tools, but how are we actually when we're in them, when we're on them, how are we acting? How do we feel when we're there? I talked about this specifically where I would. During the 2016 presidential election, I spent a lot of time angry on Facebook in comments, yelling at people, trying to convince them that my side was better and saying really nasty things. And I also noticed that when I was doing this, it was. I was getting really angry, and it was almost like I was being sucked in by that anger. We then eventually found out that this was the case, that Facebook was deliberately doing this to their algorithms, trying to turn up the heat, if you will, in these spaces to get people to connect more and drive more ad revenue, you know, and I stepped back from all this and I had a lot of reflection about it because it really, really bothered me, you know, and it's. [00:14:22] It's something that still bothers me. And so it's like, are we giving into these machines or are we just cogs for ad revenue for Meta Corporation? You know, the other part that I'm really going to talk about too is I think kind of that connection between home and school. You know, whether you're leading a classroom or a household, you know, these moments matter. You know, our job isn't to eliminate digital digital devices. [00:14:53] We really want to equip young people with the habits and self awareness to use them thoughtfully, you know. And I think this starts with modeling it. You know, like I said earlier, I, I see my daughter and I see the way she looks at me when I have my device and she wants it, she wants to be a part of it. And so my wife and I have made intentional choices and deliberate choices to put the phones away when we're around her and really focus on her. And I agree this is, this can be very challenging because many of us are connected to work through our phones. And you may push back on this and say, hey, I need to be connected to work all day, every day. And I get that. But you know, one thing we'll talk about is how we manage our own as adults and as someone as, as, as leaders of schools or as parents, how our kids are modeling and looking up to us, we're using technology and how that's impacting them wanting it. You know, so you know, I've given myself some challenges. I schedule time to not be online, you know, dinner time is a non negotiable, like phones do not come to the dinner table. Right. You know, I, and I protect this time, you know, like I'm protect, like it's like it's a meeting, you know, when my wife and I sit down to watch tv, try, we're watching a new show, you know, try and put our phones away. You know, we don't need this idea of watching a show and then looking at Amazon or you know, scrolling through Instagram, you know, giving us kind of tech free time throughout the day. We spend most of our time on technology through work, you know, and so this is our kind of time away from it. [00:16:37] You know, we live in North Andover, Massachusetts and so it's also now getting to be spring, like after a long, long winter. And it's easy to get sucked into this when you live in the winter and you know, being outside, going for a walk, experiencing nature, leaving the phones behind, keeping an apple watch on just in case we need to call or an emergency happen. So there are ways in which you can Kind of balance technology use in your day to day. And this is really what I'm trying to get at and what I've always really preached, whether I was launching a one to one initiative in a school where we're using technology every day and encouraging teachers to balance it, realizing that technology does not need to be the end all, be all within your classroom. And so, you know, that's, that's really where I want to get at. And I want to, as we go on in future episodes, I want really people to understand and to see examples of this in practice. Again, I don't have all the answers. There are a lot of great examples out there and I'm going to encourage folks to, to reach out for, to, you know, to recommend really great examples that are out there of this. I mean, I wish I, I wish I had them all, I wish I could know them all, but I don't. So, you know, that's where I want to see how we can all do this together and, and be a place where I can curate and highlight these, these examples, you know, so, but you know, I don't want to drone on here. This is a solo episode and there will be lots of future episodes where we can talk about a lot of different things. [00:18:15] So one podcast I've listened to for several years now, it's, it's Offline with Jon Favreau, who is a part of, you know, the Crooked Media, a crooked, crooked media company. [00:18:32] And they host, you know, Pod Save America. And I really like John's work and reference it in teaching digital kindness with this offline blog, Sorry, Offline podcast. And what I like about it is he says at the end of every episode, you know, what do you do to get offline? You know, and he asks all his guests that question. And I like the format and I like the reflective end of the conclusion to the show. So, you know, as we wrap up this first episode, you know, I want to leave you with a question that I'll be asking at the end of every show, but I'd love to hear your responses and your feedback on this. What strategies do you use to step away from the digital world? Do you have a calendar where you schedule no time for technology? Do you have rules or norms that you've created in your household of when technology needs to be put away? You know, and, and just think about it, write it down, journal about it, talk to your students about it. Maybe have this as a, as a reflection question or an exit ticket in your classroom every day, every week, maybe every month just to get kids thinking about it. You know, one thing, try one thing this week to reclaim a little time and attention for yourself. You know, it starts with how we treat ourselves and our attention. Kindness, really? Again, kindness starts with how we treat ourselves and our attention in a hyper connected world. Think about it in that regard. But I'm very excited to get this podcast launched. I hope you'll subscribe and download each episode and I'm hoping to launch our schedule of guests coming soon. So again, thank you so much for listening to this. I know this was a little kind of droning on, just, you know, me and you in your car or wherever you are listening to this, this podcast. But thank you for listening to the Digital Kindness Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, consider subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. You can learn more about the ideas of this podcast by checking out my book, Teaching Digital Kindness, or by following [email protected] which is our new website where we have a lot of resources and you can always find me on substack@AndrewMarcinic substack.com thank you again and I look forward to talking to you soon.