Opting Out of the Anxious Generation

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

parenting book, accidental influencer, social media impact, children's privacy, technology boundaries, family connection, digital detox, sensory elements, freedom for children, overprotection, contributors not consumers, family experiences, opt out family, parenting challenges, technology goals

SPEAKERS

Speaker 1, Erin Loechner, Terri Novacek

Terri Novacek 

Imagine your child choosing you over the phone, not because you told them to, not because they're afraid you will nag them or take it away, but because they choose you.

Erin Loechner 

So I want to say your book is, I mean, as a parent, as an educator, I just think this is like everybody should have a copy of this book. You know, back in the day in the 90s, when I was raising my kids, and that's when reading books about parenting became popular. This is what I feel like everybody really needs to read today. So I'm very excited to pick your brain a little bit. And I mean, maybe a place to start, unless you've got a better idea, but just what, what drove you to this?

Erin Loechner 

Yeah, of course, well, and thank you for saying that. It was a really fun book to write. You know, I am a writer first and foremost, and I feel like every writer always is gathering inspiration from their own life. And so I felt as if when I made that shift, I mean, the background is I was a very accidental influencer. I was an hgtv.com host back in 2010 and so this was kind of pre social media, right? There wasn't a boon of social media that exists anymore. And I remember my editor saying, we should really cross promote on Instagram, and we should get you, you know, coverage on Pinterest, and I became a very early influencer in those spaces. Without it never, ever crossed my mind that it would be what it has become today. And through that, even with that, I felt like, mercifully, my husband had worked at Apple's ad agency at cheyet day when we lived in Los Angeles, and so he knew how the sausage was made. He knew kind of where the algorithm was going, and so very early on, we made the decision to not share our children's faces and names online. We didn't share any identifiable features. We didn't share our location. You know, very boundaried, and still, you know, fast forward 10 years. I'm now a professional influencer with over a million followers, still, people were able to know far more about my life than what I actually shared you know willingly, and so I remember this thought of, where is this all going? Where is it all going to end? What do we as parents do with this information, knowing that social media has become such a centralized part of our children's lives, and at some point, I made the decision as a parent. Probably my first was, my kids are now 12, eight and four for context, but my first was still a toddler when I said, you know, I am never going to be okay recommending that she join social media. And so as a result, right? We as parents model the behavior we want to see. We go first. It didn't feel right to set that boundary of it's okay for me because it's my business, but it's not okay for you, right? Because who knows what you're going to want to do with it. I mean, maybe we homeschool, so maybe we're going to have a 12 year old entrepreneur that feels like it's necessary for her to promote on Instagram. And so I thought, Okay, well, if I want to create the future that I want to see both in my own family and in the world, what can I do with this information? And I just sought to try things a different way. I wanted to know, can I still be a successful writer? Can I have a career? Can I do things I'm passionate about without incorporating any part of social media at all. And it turned out I could, and this book was really the answer to that. And along the way, so many people ask, you know, why? Why are you so anti social media? Why are you against this platform or whatever? And now that the research is out. Everyone just wants to know how. And, you know, there's the why is no longer any part of the question. It is how. And so this book was a direct response to all of those people that wanted to know, how do you raise a family and not participate heavily in technology right now?

Speaker 1 

That's exactly what I mean. There's, there is so much out there now, which, you know, just like back in the day, with cigarettes, nobody, it didn't occur to anybody how dangerous they were. And then you fast forward and you realize it. And so now we're realizing, you know, what all this is doing to our brains and our kids. And what you offer in your book is not just why it's bad, but what I like is that you're not just saying don't do this or don't do that. It's do this instead. And you know that is we can all hear, don't do this. Don't do that forever and ever and ever. But do this instead is so great. Do you have a do this? Instead, thing that is a favorite,

Erin Loechner 

one of my personal favorite. And yes, I firmly believe that if we are going to say no to devices, we have to say yes to something better. And so one of my personal favorites, and this is, this is not everyone. A lot of people like this strewing factor, which is rooted in childhood development, and that's in the book. But my personal favorite is, rather than googling a response to something that your kid is curious about. You know, I feel like, as an education person, you will, you will really appreciate this. Our kids are curious, and we feel like it's almost our duty to kind of what the appetite of our of our child, and yet, a lot of times when we do that, when we jump into soon with a response or an answer to their question, we're we're really bypassing wonder and curiosity for them. We're bypassing, you know, their ability to make connections based on what they already know. We're bypassing that early foundation and critical thinking. And so what I love to do, instead of asking Siri, is I, you know, taught my kids ask someone I really idolize. So instead of hopping on to a robot to answer whatever the top Google image searches at the time, but I want to know, can you call someone that is an expert in their field? Can you call someone that you trust, that you admire, and ask them what they think about this, and really listen to the passion that they have for this subject, in their voice and in their veteran person, if not. But I know this has played out in our own life many times. The example I give in the book is that we were at the local pond, and my daughter had seen this wild animal that she had never, ever even know existed. And the way she was explaining it, she was like, it has scales and but also it's furry. And you know it's, she was probably three four at the time. It's swimming all over. And what could it be? And I'm like, I don't know. That doesn't sound real, that sounds imaginary. But you know what? I know who we can ask. And we went over to neighbor, Dave, who was a science teacher for years and years, but also has lived in this neighborhood for over 25 years, and knows this pond like the back of his hand. He fishes all the time. He's walking around all the time, and he said, Oh, I know what that is. That's, that's a muskrat. And those aren't scales. That's, you know, kind of the crab grass attaching to its tail and and look, it's building a nest. Do you want to see? And I think this is where the babies are living. And it just turned into this beautiful memory of a lovely summer afternoon, spring, really afternoon. And I remember reflecting on that and recognizing how quickly my mother in law, who is very involved in parenting, with us, and we love, love, love. She had asked, she had said, You know what? We should Google image it, and we should see what it is and what you saw and learn more about it. And I'm so thrilled that we took that beat to instead shift into Can we ask a real person that's knowledgeable, that knows about this and incense that passion and experience behind the answer, rather than just look to Google? So that's a very long winded of saying that is one of my very favorite things I like to do as a parent is just let my child sit for a minute and then find the proper source, rather than the fastest source for that information.

Terri Novacek 

Yeah, well, and as you're describing that, and I'm guilty of this all the time, I Google everything, and it gives me the instant information. And that's exactly what it gives me. Is just that information most of the time. What it's it's good for is maybe earning some points, you know, a trivia game. But like you're talking about just the whole experience and and those others skills and other knowledge that she learned during that time, the interaction with a local, with another, you know, another person hearing their perspective the conversation, asking the questions, just the inquiry process. Yeah, I like that. I love that you recognize that family needs are different. You know, instead of declaring this is what everybody should be doing.

Terri Novacek 

Can you explain a little bit more about that?

Erin Loechner 

Yeah. I mean, we define household as the people that are in your inner circle, the people that are closest to you, and that is going to involve, for some people, multi generational living. That is going to involve lots of different family dynamics and co parenting is something that has come up a lot in a lot of conversations with parents, it is a very sticky subject to navigate when you are talking about technology in specific, you know, one parent is very quick to adapt, the other parent not there's a bit of a power struggle with the phone, not phone, and so I do really want to be mindful of that, and I think that we do the best that we can. Don't know any parent that seeks to take the easy way out when they're working with their kids, and I really don't I think there are really unique situations that everyone has to navigate. I think everyone is fighting different battles. And so I like to when I talk about phones in general, and when it really when I talk about any sort of technology I like to kind of provide the litmus test of a new pet for a child, right? So if ever approach with the idea of, you know, when should your child have a smartphone? When are they ready for a smartphone? I like to kind of make, maybe take some of the judgment out of that question and just simply ask. Okay, well, let's, let's run a scenario where your 1112, 13 year old girl really wants a family pet, right? She wants a new dog, and you say yes to the new dog, and suddenly this new dog is making her anxious because it's going down roads in the neighborhood that that she doesn't want to go down, or, you know, her you know, her best friend can't come over because her best friend's allergic so it's making her lonely, or she's losing sleep because the dog is barking all night. I like to say, Okay, well, what would you do as a parent? Right? Because we all have different judgment calls. In that scenario, some parents would co parent, you know, co baby sit, pet sit, whenever that dog. Some parents would re home the dog altogether. Some parents would, you know, in the name of independence, and, you know, wing in a prayer, have the child figure it out on their own and and that is truly what this conversation is. You know how the stakes are much higher, because the difference is the dog is far different than Silicon Valley investing millions and billions of dollars behind this product, and yet, at the heart of it, you are simply asking, How involved are you willing to get? How where's the first order thinking, where's the second order thinking, how proactive Do you want to parent? How reactive Do you want to parent? Everybody has their sweet spot. Everybody has different skill sets and dynamics, and I think that's really important to consider when you're talking about this conversation.

Speaker 1 

Yeah, you know, you talk about Silicon Valley, and I do think even though it's becoming part of our regular conversations now about the impact of digital media, I don't think that it's as common of knowledge as it should be, as far as what's behind it, you know. And again, you talk about that in your book, like what the kids are getting out of this. And I think that's why some people are still not understanding why it should be feared, which I know is a really strong word, but I feel like it's an accurate word, because we have AI and algorithms knowing our kids better than we do. You know, the more they're connecting with that, that's the less they're connecting with us.

Erin Loechner 

Yes, you're exactly right, and it is something to be feared. And I always say this, you know, not in not to kind of bring darkness into the existing conversation, but really to bring light of the truth right, like this, I spoke with over 250 experts in and out of Silicon Valley. And it is very interesting to me, Terry, how quickly we as a society are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to these platforms and these app creators. And, you know, we talk about how we we're very quick to say, like, let's look at the positives, right? Let's look at the positives to some of these platforms, and look at all the good you can do. And I know this, I justified this for years before I made the decision to leave social media as an influencer and, you know, look at the opportunities that you've missed and all of this. And yet, every single insider that I spoke with in the tech world, that that had was in a position of power to create these products said, no, no, we're not neutral. You know what we say as as consumers, is tech is neutral. It's neither good nor bad. And yet, you know, talk to AI pioneer, the virtual reality King himself, janier, will say very quickly that social media is not skewed to the left or the right or the right, but it's skewed downward. Right? It is all a race to your time, your money, your attention, all of this. You know, Sean Parker says, God knows what it's doing to our children's brains. You know these people that are creating these platforms willingly admit we're not after you as a family. We're not, I mean, we're not after your goals. We're not aligned with your goals. We're aligned with power money. How do we create a business? Right? And there is no family that would be aligned with that if they knew what it cost. So I do speak very plainly about the fact that Silicon Valley's goals are not our goals, and we. Have to before we enter any tech space. Know that we have to have our eyes wide open. We have to recognize that would we start using some of these products? We're sort of hopping on to an assembly line where the end isn't revealed to us, but will be after the fact, right after we're now addicted and engaged and and kind of handing over the shaping of a soul to these products. It's really wild. It's an interesting disconnect that I've noticed in a lot of conversations is that we are quick to say it's neutral, and tech companies are quick to say, No, it's not right.

Speaker 1 

You talk about digital detox and connecting as a family on a daily basis, and then, like the idea of move slow and mend things. Can you tell me what you mean by that?

Erin Loechner 

Yeah, I mean, Facebook's famous motto is move fast and break things. Zuckerberg would talk about it a lot when he wanted his programmers and engineers to not fear failure. You know, just, just go, go get them and clean up the mess later, kind of thing. And yet that's no goal for a family. And so what I talk about a lot with moves slow and none things is just the idea that you have to kind of pause any any opt out family, regardless of where you land in terms of outcome, is given the agency and the opportunity to simply say, where is this heading? If technology is the future, is this the future that I want? And you have to ask yourself that you can ask yourself that, and you get to and you must. And so for me, move slow and mend things is simply working from that pain point of, where is our disconnect as a family unit. What is a barrier to that parent child connection? What is the barrier to barrier to that child to peer connection? You know, what feels broken, and how are we going to move forward and fix it? And truly, a lot of these are very minor course corrections. I think an example that I gave in the book was simply a mom that recognized her family. Felt like she was on a treadmill in terms of, you know, get breakfast, get them to school, do that. There's a podcast playing in the car at all times, all of it. And so she decided just to start walking her kids to school. It was maybe a mile, two miles, and she credits that one decision to building momentum for every decision that came after, which was simply more connection, a little bit different pace, a slower pace, a more human pace, rather than this, you know, quick what's next in the queue, kind of mentality, which I think, when everything is available to you via technology, it's very easy to adapt.

Erin Loechner 

Yeah, so you also make reference to make your home a place they'll miss if they're not there. And you know what you're talking about there to me that that is that connection, you know, if, if the parents are just the adults in the house that, you know, make sure you get up and go to school and, you know, do chores, if they even give you chores and get through your day, then there's, there isn't a whole lot of connection, and you will get more connection from the digital media. And so you talk about, I mean, that one thing, the walking the time. What are a couple other things that you feel are the easy things that somebody could shut off this podcast and implement today that would help make their home a place their child would miss when they're not there.

Erin Loechner 

Here's what I know from Instagram, from from high performing content on Instagram, and we all know this if we've scrolled for a minute in that platform, sensory elements are key to engaging the brain and the body. And so, you know, when I say sensory elements, there's, there are, you know, four or, let's talk early childhood, right? The Waldorf elements. So we're talking about earth, water, air, soil, wind and fire. You know, all of these, these elements found in nature. So easiest way is to take a nature walk, right? But if we're talking about bringing that indoors, you know, is there any way that you can light a candle for breakfast every morning? And I'm just, I'm going to draw from some of the things that we do in our house, you know, if, if our kids need a break, and again, we have, we have the younger set, 12 and under but a bubble bath, the beauty of taking bubbles outside and blowing them, the beauty of a bonfire. Just a simple, a simple sort of family rhythm that you can rely on that incorporates some of these elements. I remember when my daughter was young, I would take the coffee grounds, the coffee grounds from the coffee maker. And instead of just dumping them down that the sink or the trash can, I would give her, like, a pedicure, exfoliation on her toes, and it's right there, right? And she left it. And it was just a way to just, you know, get us both going in the morning. And it was, it was right there. So any of those sensory elements. Events, but we know that those duva, I mean, I don't know any you know marketer or stylist that wouldn't say, if you're trying to sell a book, you bring a cozy blanket, you put a fire on you have some candles burning, right? You're setting a scene. And while they would never encourage parents to be like a stylist in their home or to be a cruise director of any sort, these things don't take much. Go outside and fly a kite for a minute and just incorporate some of those natural elements in your family rhythm, and that will change everything.

Speaker 1 

So I'm realizing as we're talking that somebody could be listening and feeling like maybe this is coming from a place of over protecting kids, but I know, from what I read from you that that is the opposite of how you feel. And you know, I in the anxious generation. By Jonathan Haidt, he talks about safety ism and that was like, kind of the first phase of of what hurt us as far as raising our young and how we over protected our kids from the real world, and we under protect them from the digital world or virtual world. But going back to I know you don't come from a place of protecting your child in every way, because I also know that you are a big proponent of give them freedom. Tell me a little bit more about that in your experience. Yeah,

Erin Loechner 

well, and I love that you brought up Jonathan Haidt, because I credit his co founder, lenors ganasi of their program, let grow, who taught me everything I know about you know, freedom and childhood and how vastly important that is in her definition of anxiety, and I think this is brilliant, is what is anxiety, if not fear that you can't handle the world. And so when we're giving our children this idea that, Oh, you can't do this because a parent's not with you, or you can't do this because you're unsupervised, or you need a parent to kind of speak on your behalf, right, to everything from ordering, you know, dinner at a at a restaurant, to solving sibling quarrels, right? I mean, we have, since parenting became a verb, we are now stepping in in ways that are both, I wouldn't say, damaging to the child, but certainly damaging to the parent, right? A parent is exhausted at the end of the day by all of these different habits that we formed as ways to kind of infiltrate ourselves into the lives of a child. And so while I do believe in setting the scene for connection, I do not believe in over connection. I do believe quite a bit in in freedom and and Lenore has helped me see that so much. So I think a really easy step for parents is is doing the research and recognizing that a lot of times, you know, when we think that maybe a phone is going to make our kids more safe, well, what does the research actually say that say about that? Does the research bear that out? Or when thinking about sending your child to walk to and from school alone, or going to the neighborhood park, or any of those things. I remember having a very personal dilemma with my daughter and son and other actually, is all the kids were involved at this point, but my daughter had a neighborhood plant business where she toted plants in a red wagon, door to door to door, and that was her way of making summer money. And I think this began when she was nine or 10, and so, you know, in the early really, she started at eight, and that was when we supervised, kind of, we would go with her, and we had an infant at the time, so it would just be a family walk, and we would make it a thing. But I remember my husband thinking, how are we going to do this? And he had the thought to put so I had a phone and he had a phone and they could track each other's so he's like, Well, what if we put a phone in her backpack and then we'll be able to find her if anything goes awry. And I thought, I don't really like the message that sense to her. I don't really like the idea that she's unsafe if she's not a phone call away, because the truth is, we've walked this neighborhood hundreds of times as a family. She knows every safe house along the way. She can rely on her community. She can rely on all of you know. She knows the route. She knows the directions. Why don't we just try it? And instead of teaching her that her parents are here to forever protect her from the world, what if we teach her to protect herself? So what if we say, Okay, here's a here's a pocket knife, here's a map, here's, you know, some mangos and a bottle of water. And what if you just go at it? And she did, and she brought her little brother along, and made a wonderful day that we would probably have equated as just an everyday normal childhood when we were growing up. But for modern kids, felt very wild to her, right? I get to do this all by myself. This is crazy, and. What a blessing for her to see that she is capable and she has the capacity to do things independently that she wants to do, you know, and we could talk it through from start to finish. And I think that was a real gift for her. She certainly and now it's kind of like, yeah, you want to go to the go explore the world. The world is your oyster. So I feel like parents need that training as much as the child needs that training because it's really hard to let go. And we we need practice more than our kids. They're ready, but we have to say, No, I I know you're ready. Give me a minute to catch up and then walk them through these scenarios, and then you got to just kick them out the door. Give them a minute and let them go. Right?

Speaker 1 

Yeah, they're built for it. I mean, that's, that's how humans have been around as long as we've been, yeah, you talk about being contributors rather than consumers. What does that mean?

Erin Loechner 

Yeah, contributors and certainly creators. You know, I have never loved the idea that anything is available to us at all times. It just doesn't sit well with me. I don't think that it's a very humane existence, you know, when we have so much at our fingertips available. And you know, we talk about decision fatigue in grown ups, and we should also be talking about that with children. And so, you know, kind of our hard line is that if we are consuming more of anything than we are creating it. So if that means media or or food or experiences, any of that if, if we don't have that imbalance and in check, we're going to be living disproportionately. Disproportionate lives to the kind of memories we'd like to make. You know, I've heard it said that that this, this generation currently that we're raising, will have more memories of other people's experiences than their own, and that is very telling, I think, of how we have shaped and formed our days and our habits and our rhythms, and so for us, it's just, you know, if we want to settle in for a family movie once every few weeks, that's great, because I know that we've water colored and we've gardened and we've baked and we've done everything that we feel as if has sort of pushed us forward in terms of learning, in terms of education and goals, and whatever that means for us as individuals, right? Our kids all have very different goals. They have very different interests and passions, and so do we as

Erin Loechner 

parents? Yeah. As we wrap up, you have a website, right? Yeah? Why? As a parent, I want to turn there.

Erin Loechner 

It's just called opt out, family.com and really it's just a hub for all the research that you would ever need in terms of, you know, kids and smartphones, kids and iPads, Ed Tech, all of it. And really, we just wanted to create an easy space to have everything all in one place. So there are a lot of throughout the book. You know, there are a lot of prompts to consider there are a lot of downloads and resources and and really fantastic tools that we've created to just give that parent the ready made solution. Because I think as parents, we're really pressed for time, and so we want to be able to have everything all in one place, and we want to be able to start implementing this stuff right away, so that website has all of that right there. And honestly, if there's a resource that a parent really needs, I would love to hear because it's a service. There's no sales funnel, there's no marketing anything. It's just it's just there. It's there as kind of a supplement or a compliment to the book. But if there's something that a parent is struggling with in terms of implementing some of these ideas, I do want to hear it so we can create something for you too. So yeah, so hop on, opt out family.com, and then feel free to email if there's something missing.

Terri Novacek 

Let's make Aaron's suggestion our challenge for this episode, ask yourself, Where are we heading as a family? Or maybe you want to focus just on you or a significant other as a couple, what feels broken create an experience either within your family with your special someone or just yourself, that has meaning for you, not something you learned about on YouTube or social media, but something that you design from within after you engage in the experience. Don't share it on social media. Bask in the joy of how it made you feel on its own, rather than how many likes and comments it received, the more we rely on ourselves for our well being, the faster we will actually achieve it. Only by spending time discovering and developing ourselves without concern for likes and comments can we find ourselves in our element. I.

Terri Novacek 

I hope you found some value in today's episode. If so, please take a moment to leave a positive review on the podcast. Platform you use and share the episode on social media, if you visit the element is everything website, you'll find additional resources on today's topic. Invite friends and family to join our community of listeners as we ponder science perspectives and strategies around personal accountability, courageous learning and clear decision making for a sense of connection to ourselves, others and life you.