Phones, Games & Phones, Oh My! Your Tech Questions Answered | Ep. 64

Episode 64: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this practical Q&A episode, the hosts are joined by Aaron Klemm, father of four and Director of Publishing at Summit Ministries, to tackle real questions from parents about raising kids in a technology-saturated world. From protecting young children from explicit content online to distinguishing healthy gaming from harmful habits, and even diving into discipline strategies that build long-term character, this conversation offers biblical wisdom for parents at every stage.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Matt Jones (00:00):
Throughout this special series on raising kids in a technology saturated world, we’ve talked about developing a worldview, a biblical worldview on technology, understanding how technology shapes our kids and is becoming more intentional about the role screens play in our homes.

Today, we’re answering some questions. Parents are actually asking about smartphones, social media, gaming, AI, online safety, and knowing when our kids are ready for more digital responsibility. And because parenting involves a whole lot more than technology, we’re going to have some fun and throw in a few questions that have absolutely had nothing to do with screens along the way.

And to help us do that is Aaron Klemm. You’ve heard from him before. He’s joined this conversation with us before. So Aaron has helped a ton behind the scenes with the podcast and many of our other parenting resources and initiatives. So welcome, Aaron. Thanks for being with us. Before we get into questions, Aaron, remind our listeners a little bit about your family, how many kids do you have, what ages, and fill us in on that.

Aaron Klemm (01:08):
Yeah, it’s so good to be with you guys and just I love talking about parenting, love talking about biblical worldview and trying to help parents as I am trying to figure out what this all means. How do we actually get the rubber to meet the road? I have four kids. It’s a busy household in the Klemm world. We have a five-year-old all the way down to a one week old right now. So we are having a lot of fun. They’re all boys and I’ve been around Summit for about 10 years. I’m the director of publishing and content there and just love talking about this stuff. It’s so great to be with you guys.

Dr. Matt Jones (01:46):
That’s awesome. And Janel, if you wouldn’t mind with the first question opening us up, but it is interesting just the age range of engagement we have. We have zero up until my oldest is married, so hopefully it’ll be really helpful to our listeners to have some insight from some folks in some different phases of parenting life. Janel?

Janel Greig (02:06):
Yeah, we’re covering it all. We’re covering the spectrum today, so it’s going to be great. One of the things that we’ve talked about before a little bit, but dig into a little bit here, one of the hardest realities of raising kids online and with our digital natives as we’re calling them in this tech saturated world is how easily they can encounter explicit content or dangerous content even when they’re not looking for it, even just doing schoolwork or watching creative shorts on YouTube. What do you guys think parents should be doing to protect their kids online and how should we respond if our kiddo is exposed to something inappropriate?

Dr. Matt Jones (02:49):
It’s a good question. Aaron, I’m curious how you handle that in terms of the young children that you have in your home.

Aaron Klemm (02:56):
Yeah. We don’t spend a lot of time on screens. They may make an appearance here right now a little bit more than usual as we have some adjustments with the toddlers and the newborn. But we watch movies together as a family from time to time. We watch pretty safe shows like Little House on Prairie. We’ll watch just an episode once a week or every couple weeks or something like that just to spend some time together as a family.

I think one of the things as we’re doing that and things come along is it can be easy with this kind of question to be like, “What are we against?” And we should do that and we’ll get to that. I think something that is important to remember is also how do we just talk about the things that do show up even when we’d rather not talk about them?

(03:45):
So that’s something I have spent a lot of time thinking about and try to embrace as much as we can. There are times we cover our kids’ eyes and we plug their ears or whatever. There are certainly those moments, divert their attention, those sorts of things when something comes along unexpectedly. But just as simple as ads during Little House on the Prairie, we can’t always predict the content that that’s going to put up.

And so a lot of times it’s just being honest or when we do cover their eyes, it’s, “Why did we do that?” Well, there are some things that aren’t good for us. And so we just talk at an age appropriate level. We try and talk about everything with our kids. They love to ask questions, they love to learn about the world, and so we tell them the truth about the world because I want them to understand reality as God has made it and not full of the distortions that man has brought into it while also acknowledging those.

(04:39):
So we just try and talk about everything. Sometimes there’s things that we say, “That’s bad, we should avoid it.” And sometimes we just process what it is that we saw and hey, that’s maybe not good. That’s not good for our eyes. That’s not the way God created us. Oh, well why isn’t it good? Well, God created us this way and this is what’s good and this is the way that we should treat other people or whatever the content brings up. But that’s the way that we bring it up.

I mean, obviously it’s just limiting the number of times we have to do that is important. So starting there, just, well, let’s just not bring other things into our home that we are in control of as little or let’s do that as little as possible. That’s where we start and then when we have to, we talk about it.

Dr. Matt Jones (05:20):
Yeah. And I think that’s a good point in terms of you’re going to come across inappropriate things whether it’s online or in life, especially if you’re engaging with people. And so we didn’t handle it much differently as an online exposure versus a personal interaction exposure. Hey, we got to talk about that.

Having said that with TV we always had that different channel button, boom, or the TV off button. And one of the things we tried to establish in our home was, hey, if it’s making you uncomfortable, you can say, turn it off. I remember my son, something came up on the screen and he goes, dad, can we turn the channel? And his sister scoffed and it was something that was inappropriate and she scoffed and I looked at him and at Hannah, I said, Hannah, we will never make one of our members of the family feel bad if they are uncomfortable with something on our screen.

(06:14):
And so I said it with a little bit more stern voice because we need to establish, hey, there are some things that make us uncomfortable and that may vary from family member to family member, but let’s talk about it. Let’s try to uphold that standard. And if you and Hannah and I, my oldest and I want to go and go back and look at it because it wasn’t, depending on how I would handle it or how it would affect me, we could possibly go back.

But recognize also different family members are affected by different things to engender that conversation is extremely important. So that’s one thing. And the other thing too that hit me whenever this question was asked was I’ve heard so much about algorithms.

(06:54):
If there’s something that’s coming up that makes us uncomfortable, it makes me step back and say, okay, what have I or my wife been watching that made this a possibility? So sometimes they’re not connected, but other times I have to be self-evaluative and say, wait a minute, did something I’ve looked at, could have that been a cause of something that’s come up inappropriate? So those are a couple things that we’ve been thinking about. How about you, Janel?

Janel Greig (07:20):
That’s a great point. I think both of you had great thoughts on that. I don’t love the term inoculate, but it is kind of that idea with what you’re talking about, Erin, and you’re processing with your kids, but inoculating our kids so that they’re aware of what might be out there. This is what you might be exposed to.

And of course, age appropriate, I’m not going to say something inappropriate to a four-year-old, but if we’re talking with 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, this is why we want to be cautious. This is what’s out there. This is why we’re doing what we’re doing. I think one of my boys especially, they’re both very sensitive, like what you’re saying, Matt, to visual or wanting to protect their eyes, which I’m so grateful for, but one is much more sensitive and he encountered something once, again, not looking for it, but he came to us and we had a conversation about it.

(08:10):
We talked about what, maybe, other filters we can put on his devices, but also that’s an opportunity for him to come to us in a safe place. And I think that’s something we have to remember as parents that we want our kids to feel safe to come to us, not the shame. If they do encounter something, it’s not necessarily their fault, but be able to talk through that and pray through that and point back to, what does God’s word say about this? Why are we protecting? Why are there boundaries? So that conversation, that processing are all such important steps.

Dr. Matt Jones (08:42):
Well, and I find processing with even gaming is a big deal. And I’m just curious, what were you guys’ expectations or family engagement with video games growing up?

Janel Greig (08:58):
Man, probably different too generationally, right, Aaron? A little bit.

Aaron Klemm (09:03):
Yeah. I grew up around video games a lot with friends and peers who were playing video games a lot, but I never had a gaming system. And although I grew up on the kind of early end of the technology boom, if you will, but people were getting phones, but people were getting dumb phones and things like that, and it wasn’t quite as pervasive as it is now. But gaming was very popular and very, very pervasive. And most of my friends were, I would say, fairly responsible with their gaming or at least their family rules.

But I always felt on the outside related to that. That was a difficult thing for me. I was always like, “Mom, why can’t we do this and why can’t we do that?” It’s just a PlayStation and I just want to play MLB the show or whatever baseball game. It wasn’t even like, I want to play some violent game or something. But as I’ve just grown, I’ve also been like, “But I’m also not that interested in it now.”

Do I like to play a game with a friend or something in college and then after? Sure. It’s a fun kind of thing to do from time to time. But yeah, it was interesting just that. I imagine threads of that are a lot of the ways that teens feel now when you’re withholding technology because I just felt those little pieces of being outside the in.

Dr. Matt Jones (10:27):
Well, and you as parents just need to know that if you’re listening, Aaron turned out really good without a life of video games as a child.

Aaron Klemm (10:36):
Yes, yes. Much to my teenage thoughts on that.

Dr. Matt Jones (10:40):
We just want to acknowledge that. Yeah, I love it. Janel, did you do many video games?

Janel Greig (10:46):
No, similar to Aaron. We grew up without video games. We didn’t have a TV. I’m going to be the odd man here. I was in middle school. But I will say it’s interesting because Christian maybe sounds more like you, Matt, he grew up absorbed in the video game culture.

So that’s something as we got married and he brought his, I won’t even say the right gaming console, so I’m not going to try, I’ll get in trouble if I say the wrong one, but brought it in. And so our boys, our kids have been exposed to games with limits of course, and restrictions. So it is something in our house that we do, but minimal. What about you, Matt? What did that look like growing up for you?

Dr. Matt Jones (11:22):
Yeah, my dad would actually write reviews on technology and he would get this technology for free as long as he wrote a review on it. And so my dad was kind of on the front end on some of it, not necessarily a lot of the gaming stuff, but he had some of that. And so we looked at it as a tool for fellowship, but we had limits with it.

So I’m just curious, so I’ve had the Atari and then the TRS 80. Well, that might’ve been first, TRS 80 and then the Atari and then the Nintendo, and then the Super list goes on. So we have a PS4 now that I play with my kids and I’m very good at Mario Kart, in fact.

Janel Greig (12:08):
Hey. I feel like we need a challenge on that. That’s my favorite.

Dr. Matt Jones (12:12):
Yeah, I still play that with students. So I’m curious, especially for parents, and I actually had a parent when I was at Summit this summer, ask me about this. What do you guys do with the conflict when it comes to video games? Turning it off, that’s enough. How can parents tell the difference between a healthy enjoyment of video games and gaming that is beginning to have too much influence on their child?

Janel Greig (12:36):
I think one of the things we watch for, and it’s more our boys than our girl really that’s the looking at that. It’s, how are they doing in school? What are the relationships looking like? Are they spending too much time? Are they tired at night? Are they staying? It’s all those basic signs that you’re looking for. Are they able to turn it off?

We do a limited amount of screen time a day for our kids still, and they sometimes ask to go over if it’s a weekend, three-day weekend like we’ve had or in the summer, but there’s certain expectations they have to meet in the household in order to earn that. And so if those things are starting to fall by the wayside, that would be a red flag for us. What about you, Aaron?

Aaron Klemm (13:17):
Yeah, I think we don’t have games, so it’s not something that I, but I think a lot about what do I want to do because I want to, my wife, Nadine, and I talk all the time about just what is it going to look like so that we’re not caught off guard, something comes into our lives that we didn’t think about, talk about, things that we unexpectedly are on the same page or different pages or whatever. And so we’ve talked a lot about gaming.

I think some of the best advice for introducing gaming, if you want that to be, is just having some basic parameters around where it’s taking place and who it’s taking place with. And so there’s an author that would talk about it’s got to be in a public space, so it’s not in the basement, it’s in the living room where it’s next to the kitchen and everybody can see it and it’s always with someone.

And so you’re never playing one-on-one, you’re never playing online with just people out in the world. You’re playing with your neighbor or your cousin or your brother or your friend and just bringing people into it so that it’s facilitating a relationship and not getting in the way of relationships. So I don’t know if we’ll bring games into the home or not.

(14:33):
Some of that’s going to be dependent on interests and what have you, and the technology world as it goes on. But if we do, I think those are some of the things that are really, really important to hold onto and can be a lot of fun. As you guys were just saying, playing Mario Kart with a friend can be a ton of fun.

Dr. Matt Jones (14:51):
Especially if there’s four players.

Janel Greig (14:53):
Yes. Yeah. That is so awesome.

Dr. Matt Jones (14:55):
Anyway…

Janel Greig (14:57):
Do you win, Matt?

Dr. Matt Jones (15:00):
My win percentage has gone down the older I’ve gotten. Yes, it’s horrible. The reaction time is just not what it used to be. However, my son and I played, we had 10 races and I did beat him this weekend. So normally he beats me, but yeah, I would just add, as you guys have said, but a couple more things.

Model the time limit. If you’re a parent that does do video games, man, don’t tell your kid you can only be on there an hour a day and you’re on there four to six. I mean, you need to model it if you’re going to choose to have that in your home. A few warning signs for us were if they start imitating or acting what they see, that usually means they’re spending too much time. If they’re complaining about being bored, that’s usually an indicator that they’re spending too much time.

(15:51):
And then is there a lack of satisfaction in other areas? Is there a lack of satisfaction of just sitting and talking? Is there a lack of satisfaction to be able to sit through a movie and at the end of the movie, us being able to talk? What was this about? What was the message being conveyed there?

And if it’s really negatively affecting their ability to converse and look you in the eye, I say we’ve got not only bigger problems, but there’s probably too much gaming going on for you and your family. So those are a couple things, but we really did. We found it as a source of fellowship and most of the time healthy competition.

Aaron Klemm (16:32):
Most of the time he says.

Dr. Matt Jones (16:33):
Most of the time. There’s this football game called Tech Mobile, and on Christmas Eve, we would divvy up teams and that was our thing. We would play all night long on Christmas Eve, and it was just me and the brothers. Sometimes there were some teams in Tech Mobile that were better than others, and it created some conflict at times, but then it’s an opportunity to deal with conflict resolution.

Janel Greig (16:57):
It’s true. It’s true. Anyway, that’s good. And grit, right? Grit and character development. Speaking of character development, discipline, let’s talk discipline. I think it’s such a common question, especially I think if I remember back to being a new parent, a brand new parent, what are we going to do? Are we supposed to spank? Are we not supposed to spank? Are we supposed to give timeouts? What does that look like?

So I’m curious, and this will be super interesting, I think, with the different seasons of parenting we’re all in too, and with kids with very different personalities, but how have you guys approached discipline in your own parenting? What are things that worked well? What advice would you give to parents out there? I think in all the seasons, new parents, parents maybe in the middle of it, and how do they balance love, grace, consequences?

Dr. Matt Jones (17:44):
Do you want to go first, Aaron? I feel like I should go last.

Janel Greig (17:47):
Go last. Start at the young end.

Aaron Klemm (17:49):
I want to change the information or maybe go first so I don’t sound silly when I say things at the end that you guys have learned through your years of wisdom. Gosh, I don’t know. I would say we’re very much in the trenches with this. I mean, we have two, three-year-olds and a five-year-old, and so this is as thick as it could be, and it’s all the head scratching, right? It’s like, why isn’t this working? What’s going on?

I think the number one thing that I’m trying to remember, so I’ll talk about this more in the lessons I’m learning more than exactly what to do, because I’m not the person to speak to what to do necessarily. I would say the lessons I’m learning have a lot more to do about me than they do about my kids.

(18:31):
And has a lot to do with, how can I be building relationship, connecting with them while developing their character, while teaching them right and wrong? There are necessities there, but that necessity should be for the sake of our relationship and their relationship with others and not at the cost of relationship.

And so if I’m going to discipline my kid, whether it’s spanking or a timeout or any number of things, what is the posture I’m entering that into? Is it out of frustration that I’m just losing my mind? I mean, that is happening almost all the time that I’m losing my mind. I’m just like, “This is ridiculous. We’ve talked about this so many times, and yet we’re doing it again. What’s going on?”

But more often than not, the frustration. So one great piece of advice I’ve been given is breath prayers, just like how in that moment can I just breathe through some prayer and just saying, “God, you need to enter this moment because I don’t know what to do.” And the moments that I’m successful enough to do that and by God’s grace alone are far more productive in my ability to have an actual conversation, get to the heart of, “What were you doing?”

(19:44):
“Would you like your brother to treat you that way? Why wouldn’t we want to do that? How can we treat them? Do you think that made them feel loved?” So I ask them a lot of questions, and a lot of times they say, “Yeah, that made them feel loved.” And you’re like, “I don’t think hitting them in the head with the bat made them feel loved.”

(20:01):
So they clearly don’t even get it sometimes, but I know I am in this for the long haul. My wife and I are telling each other that all the time. All the failures are not the end game. So I would love a little hope on that as from you guys a little further down the road where that comes from. But that’s a lot of the things I’m learning and just trying to work through is how am I entering into this? Because that seems to set the stage for any degree of success.

Dr. Matt Jones (20:27):
Well, you talk about hope, and I just want to say, if you lay the foundation early, you can have a lot of fun with your kids and adults, I don’t want to call them kids, but your adult descendants. It is more fun if you lay the foundation well. And this really deserves to be a much longer conversation, but a couple things I want to point out is just a reminder, the Lord disciplines those he loves.

(20:52):
It is actually an act of love to discipline. And for us to discipline well, I think we need to recognize there are different ways in which God disciplines us. At least that’s been true of my life. And so as a result, one of the principles my wife and I have tried to implement is, the discipline fits the crime or the consequence fits the crime. And so sometimes that takes a lot of different forms.

We did spank our children growing up, but that was usually after a very long conversation. In fact, one time the kids just said, “Hey, can I just get the spanking? I don’t want to talk about this. We’ve gone over this before.” And so we still didn’t bypass it, but they knew that conversation was before that particular consequence. And we put a definite limit on at what age we would stop that with our children.

(21:46):
But I would just say one of the things that Kat helped me really be creative with was the consequence fits the crime. And one of the things that we did with our kid was with Tyler, he had a difficulty at times articulating what happened and what he should have done.

And one of the greatest things Cat came up with was, “All right, Tyler, here’s what I want you to do. You’re having trouble telling us what happened. We want you to draw what happened and then draw what you should have done and then explain your drawing to us.” And that was monumental for him.

(22:22):
Because it helped him take time to process and then write it down and then express it in a way that he could communicate because he just loved art. So figuring out the discipline for the different children is consequential also. And my wife just does a great job reminding, “Hey, what is an appropriate consequence for what occurred?”

So there is hope, Aaron. Man, the more faithful you are on the front end, we have seen the better it is on the back end most of the time, especially working with college students. So Janel, did you have anything you wanted to throw in there too?

Janel Greig (23:02):
No, I would just echo the long-term vision. I think one of the pieces of advice we were given, and it was great, it might’ve even been in a Paul David Tripp parenting book that somebody gave us, but it’s not about that behavior. You’re not looking for that momentary behavior change, behavior correction, it’s that heart change. So having, like you’re saying, Aaron, the conversations, I want this to change over time. We want the long-term goal here.

So how can we use these opportunities, even though they’re not great when we’re in them, to set the boundaries and to disciple and not just discipline our kids? I think I would encourage all the parent listeners to go back and listen to the episode we did with Gary Chapman because Matt… Yeah, you pointed to this, Matt, but this was something for us. I mean, we have three kids, all very different, different love languages, different styles.

(23:53):
So even if it was the same, if it would’ve been the same situation that we were looking to discipline, the consequences could be very different. If you’ve got a kiddo that quality time and to put them in timeout is so severe for them. So I think that’s something, know the kids that God has given you, learn and it changes too. I think when our kids were too, discipline looked different for each of them, obviously, as we grew to know their personality. So those are just a few nuggets that have made a difference in our experiences of disciplining.

Dr. Matt Jones (24:26):
That’s great.

Aaron Klemm (24:27):
I want to just highlight, sorry, Matt, I just feel like there’s a thread here. I want to just point to, I love how a lot of what we’re saying… At Summit, we talk a lot about truth and people think of truth as propositional facts, and that’s absolutely the case. And yet in this discipline, I think there’s sort of this underlying, “I don’t know where to go with my discipline. How do I guide it?”

And God’s fabric of reality has given us a guiding tool of, there are ways that relationships work best. There are ways that behavior works best. Behavior isn’t the goal, but when we act certain ways, there are… And not just like I’m going to try and give a carrot, but that we want to work in ways, we want to live in ways that align with God’s reality and so with the way that he’s made things.

(25:17):
And so that’s when I’m asking questions, when I’m trying to have conversations with my kids, I heard it Matt, when you guys were talking about examples with your kids, I hear this echo of this is a true way to live in the world. This is the kind of way that we live that brings flourishing goodness.

And so out of the love that we have for them, this is part of why we discipline, isn’t just so we have more organized houses, we have better behaved kids, as you guys were saying, but it’s because we want them to live in a way that actually reflects reality and is going to give them the best chance of success and flourishing and love and deep relationships and all those things because of the lessons that they’ve learned about how the world truly works.

And so that’s just a multifaceted way to understand truth, and I hear that kind of echoing through there, but I don’t know if we want to get back to one more question on technology before we cut things off or?

Janel Greig (26:07):
Can I piggyback on that one just a little?

Aaron Klemm (26:10):
Yeah, of course. No, it’s fine.

Dr. Matt Jones (26:12):
Then I’ll piggyback and then you close. How’s that, Janel?

Janel Greig (26:14):
Let’s do it. Let’s do it.

Dr. Matt Jones (26:16):
Because I want to bring up the truth thing real quick.

Janel Greig (26:18):
Absolutely. I think, in thinking about the few questions that we’ve even covered, the topics today, and it’s that true story of reality that is in all of those. If it’s content that our kids are experiencing online, if it’s behavior related to gaming, if it’s our time and how our time is best well spent, if it’s content in games, all of those, the biblical worldview pulled into all of those, what God has designed, identity, who he has created us to be, what comes from that, that thread goes through all the topics, which of course, because the Lord created it all, he is in all of it.

It does take practice, I think, for some of us to see that and to build that into everything in our life. But once you see it and start to see it, it’s so evident that it’s there and we can equip our kids with that understanding too.

Dr. Matt Jones (27:11):
And we need to help them recognize truth. And thankfully, we’re not having to do that alone because we’ve got the Holy Spirit not only guiding us, but hopefully for the kids who have placed their faith in Christ, they’re responding to the spirit, and also those who don’t, that the spirit’s working there.

Because I do find it interesting. I love grace. I love mercy. I love forgiveness. I love these compassionate things that are extremely important, but it never says that grace sets you free. It says truth sets you free.

Janel Greig (27:39):
Yes.

Dr. Matt Jones (27:40):
And we want to expose our children to the truth, and hopefully they will, by the power of the Holy Spirit, respond to that truth and buy into it because there is so much freedom in truth that leads to flourishing.

And so part of that process, while grace and kindness and compassion and all those things are important when it comes to discipline, hopefully a goal, if not the goal, is to expose them to the truth so he can live within that reality so they can experience blessing and bless others. So anyway, it is fascinating to me that Jesus says truth is what sets you free. I had to capitalize on that, Janel.

Janel Greig (28:21):
That’s an amen. I’ll give you a big amen. Good. As much as we’d like to go on, we’ll save some of our other topics for another episode.

Dr. Matt Jones (28:31):
That way we get to have Aaron and his four children back on and their stories.

Janel Greig (28:33):
Absolutely. That sounds great. That’d be great. Well, hopefully today’s conversation gave you listeners some practical encouragement as you navigate not only tech that we touched on a little bit, but some of the other questions and challenges that come with raising kids.

If you do want to go deeper specifically with navigating technology in your family, be sure to order your free copy of Summit’s newest parenting resource, The Great Tech Reset: Reclaiming Life for Christian Families by our friend that we’ve had on recently, Arlene Pellicane. You can get your copy of that free book at techresetbook.com.

Dr. Matt Jones (29:12):
And that might be her copy too.

Janel Greig (29:15):
It might be. And be sure to join us for the next episode in our special series on raising kids in a technology saturated world. Thanks for listening to Upside Down Parenting. We’ll see you next time.