Why We Need a Tech Reset w/ Arlene Pellicane | Ep. 60, Pt. 1

Episode 60: Summary & Transcript

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Episode Summary

Technology is reshaping childhood in ways many parents are only beginning to understand. In this first of a two-part series, Arlene Pellicane, author of The Great Tech Reset: Reclaiming Real Life for Christian Families, joins hosts Janel and Matt to break down the four major harms technology poses to children, the biblical principles that should guide family tech decisions, and why setting firm boundaries can actually unlock greater freedom for your kids. This is not a guilt trip — it is a call to awareness and intentional action.

Episode Transcript

Janel Greig (00:00):
Technology is everywhere. It entertains our kids, helps them learn, connects them with friends, and sometimes gives parents a much needed break. But many parents are starting to wonder, what is all this technology actually doing to our kids?

Today, we are kicking off a special series on raising kids in a technology saturated world. And joining us for the first two episodes is Arlene Pellicane, author of The Great Tech Reset: Reclaiming Real Life for Christian Families, which releases September 29th. In this first conversation today, we are going to look at the problem, how technology is shaping our kids’ attention, anxiety, relationships, and even how it’s affecting their experience of childhood itself.

But this isn’t about making parents feel guilty or convincing you to throw away every screen that’s in your household. It’s about understanding what’s happening so we can make wiser, more intentional choices for our families. Arlene, welcome to Upside Down Parenting.

Arlene Pellicane (01:03):
It’s so good to be with you, Janel. Thank you. You and Matt, it’s great to be with you.

Janel Greig (01:08):
Yeah, we’re excited to have you and excited for our audience to hear more about this topic and get their hands on your new book. But let’s start with the big picture. I’m curious if you can share with us and our audience, why did you write The Great Tech Reset and why do you think families need a reset right now?

Arlene Pellicane (01:25):
It’s kind of amazing how I felt like the Lord is the one, and it’s always this story that kind of puts the thought there and then brings the opportunity and all those things. And I can’t help but think like, wow, this is amazing at this time in history where we have as families understood, oh, this whole social media thing was not great for kids. That wasn’t great. This whole video gaming to connect boys, that’s not really working.

So we’re kind of at this point where we’re realizing this does not bode well if childhood is centered around screens. And so now the great tech reset, it’s a moment of hope, like an inflection point where we can say as families, wait a minute, I might not be the only weird family that says, no, we’re not going to play that video game. No, we’re not going to look at social media four hours a day.

(02:13):
There might be two, three, four, five other families. Now I’m a realist. I get it. Not everyone is going to say, oh great, let’s put away all the phones, let’s put away the video games. I get that. But what if this tech reset means it’s not just one person now, but it’s five people, then it’s 10 people. Then it’s wow, they’re in youth group and they’re talking to each other. They’re not just staring down at their phone.

So I think, this moment where we’re realizing, you see these phone free schools, you have the anxious generation, you have a lot of people now understanding and saying, okay, wait, we were duped once by social media. We are not going to be duped twice by having our child talk to an AI companion all day. So I think there’s that.

And I’ve heard from a lot of dads that are realizing, a lot of times it’s the moms that are all fired up about this, but dads are realizing, wait a minute, when I take out my sixth grade son to go do something, he doesn’t want to do anything with me.

(03:08):
He doesn’t want to shoot hoops. He doesn’t want to fish. My teenager doesn’t want me to teach him how to drive because they just want to be sitting in their room with this device. And I think dads are really waking up to say, wait a minute, what is going on? So I really do think we’re in this moment to realize we can do better with this. 69% of fourth graders are not reading at grade level, 70% of eighth graders are not reading at grade level.

We’re understanding this isn’t good academically. It’s not good socially. Obviously anxiety. There was an increase of 145% of teen girl depression since 2010 where all these things were adopted and 161% for boys. So it affects boys and girls. So I think we’re kind of ripe for a reset to say, you know what? Kind of like a, we’re not going to take it, kind of moment.

Janel Greig (03:58):
Yeah. I think that you’re on point. It’s the data is there now and we’re all realizing it. It’s such an interesting time. Matt’s in education and I’m in education and I think we’re seeing this swing, like you say, the cell phone free now, we’re moving to that for schools. But even the laptop use and the tech use, it’s like, okay, let’s dial back that and get back to actually writing with our hands. So great timing for the book.

And again, I just want to give you a shout out. I enjoyed it so much. I’m so excited for folks to get it in their hands. It’s not just another book. It actually is a resource for our parents and raising the rising generation. So thank you, Arlene.

Arlene Pellicane (04:35):
Thank you.

Dr. Matt Jones (04:36):
Well, not to put any pressure on you, Arlene, but after you write The Great Tech Reset for families, maybe you can write it for education. Okay?

Arlene Pellicane (04:44):
Oh yeah, that’d be a tough one. Maybe I’ll push that right back to you, Matt. You’ll know better about education than me.

Dr. Matt Jones (04:49):
Well, I will say though, it is interesting. I’ve always had a no tech policy in my classroom and I’ve been teaching for 20 years and I get tons less pushback, which I think is really exciting that students aren’t dropping my class or not taking the class because, well, he says we can’t have tech in there. And that’s been really encouraging.

And so maybe we’re even experiencing that as you pointed out to a degree, even in the hearts of the students because the educators are recognizing the importance of it. But in the great tech reset, you identify four major ways technology can negatively impact our kids, anxiety amplifier, bad babysitter, childhood killer, and dopamine dealer. Can you walk us through those four harms and what you are seeing technology do to kids today?

Arlene Pellicane (05:38):
I’m chuckling a little bit because I love acronyms.

Dr. Matt Jones (05:41):
I know. I picked up on that whenever I was looking at the chapters, I’m like, “Oh okay, this is good.”

Arlene Pellicane (05:45):
As I was going through these, I was like, “Wait a minute, they make A, B, C, D.” That’s right. It was perfect. Because what I want to do is when we hear phones are not good for kids, we kind of tune out like, “Yeah, we know that.” So I wanted to present the phone in a new way by talking about these A, B, C, D harms. And just stay with me and see if you think I’m crazy, like I’m over the top or if there might be kernels of truth in here.

A is anxiety amplifier. A lot of times we’ll give a kid a phone, social media, video game, et cetera, because we think, oh, we don’t want them to be anxious. They say they’re left out. Let’s give it to them. But what we tend to see is it doesn’t go away. Anxiety amplifies when you’re on social media.

(06:30):
Anxiety amplifies when you’re gaming many hours a day and the other parts of your life are falling apart. So it’s an anxiety amplifier. So let’s make sure we’re seeing that right. I have three kids, I have a college graduate, I have a college senior and a high school senior. And when they were little, if I would’ve left them with a babysitter and said, okay, goodnight, and then come back at 11 o’clock and think, wait a minute, they are still in their clothes. They have been eating chips all night and they’re watching a rated R movie. I would be like, this is a terrible babysitter and I need to fire you right away.

So the B is bad babysitter that, we think, oh, my child is safe because they’re just five feet away from me. But then you realize, oh my goodness, they’re teaching your child just to sit there, stock still, not exercise, to eat junk food all the time, to watch things that are wildly inappropriate for kids.

(07:21):
And we’re like, okay. We power it up and repeat the next day. And again, this is not about guilt. This is about like, okay, wait a minute, let me be realistic here and assess what’s going on. If you find you give the iPad and it’s an amazing babysitter, your child is coming out like, oh, they talk so much and they’re so grateful and they’re so patient. Awesome. But that’s usually not the case.

C is a childhood killer. You think of the kids, my cousin talked about how all the girls in elementary school, they’d ride their bikes in the cul-de-sac and hang out. And one day, one of the girls in elementary school got a tablet and they would go to her house, ring the doorbell like normal. Oh, I’m not going to play today. I don’t feel like it. And you know what’s going to happen.

(08:05):
Every day they’re going to come to the door and every day that girl’s going to decide, I want to be with this tablet because it’s so exciting and childhood now has closed. The whole idea of being in the afternoon and talking to your girlfriends and riding bikes, same thing with boys.

So realize that once that device is personal to that child, my tablet, my phone, you can say goodbye to childhood because, oh, you want to go make a mud pie? Let’s go look at caterpillars. Let’s grab ice cream with grandma and be like, I don’t want to do that. I’d much rather sit here with this amazing device. Because then that’s that D in A, B, C, D is it’s that dopamine dealer that it’s going to make your child feel so much pleasure, so much anticipation of what’s going to happen next? Can I get to the next level in that game?

(08:53):
I can’t wait to do it tomorrow. Or let me see, what am I missing on social media? I’ve got to catch up. That dopamine, that anticipation is greater than homework, reading their Bible, talking to their parents, sitting outside doing nothing, just letting your thoughts, sitting with a bicycle and just riding around the block and sitting on a porch, that’s gone because the dopamine there is so strong.

So we don’t want to hand our child a tablet, a personal tablet, a personal phone. We want to delay that as much as possible realizing, okay, if I give this to you, I’m giving you an anxiety amplifier, a bad babysitter, a childhood killer and a dopamine dealer. Have a nice life child. So wait a minute, I don’t want to give you that quite yet.

Dr. Matt Jones (09:39):
I just have to ask with the alliteration, were you ever tempted to just say childhood killer with a C? Just to be consistent.

Arlene Pellicane (09:49):
Oh, that’s hilarious. No, it did not even cross my mind. But you know what? Now that you said it, you’re right. Childhood like, you’re right. I should have thought of another C word with this.

Dr. Matt Jones (09:58):
Well, I wasn’t being critical.

Arlene Pellicane (09:58):
I love that though. That’s a good question.

Dr. Matt Jones (10:02):
I do love the childhood killer though because it’s accurate. You’re growing up too fast. We had a young child in our lives, his first word was iPad. He would look up at his grandpa and go, iPad, it was the cutest thing. And how do you say no to that?

Arlene Pellicane (10:16):
And then you’re like, what happened to mama?

Dr. Matt Jones (10:18):
That’s right.

Arlene Pellicane (10:18):
And dada.

Dr. Matt Jones (10:19):
And then you go, well, that’s a childhood killer. That’s why you can say no to the iPad now. Oh my goodness. All right, Janel, I’ve talked enough.

Janel Greig (10:26):
IPad. I appreciate it. Yeah. Arlene, let’s talk about the biblical worldview and how we look at it through that lens. The Bible obviously doesn’t talk about smartphones, social media, but definitely God has a lot to say about wisdom, our habits, and actually what shapes our hearts. What biblical principles should guide the way that Christian families think about technology?

Arlene Pellicane (10:50):
There’s so many, right? You just go through the proverbs and be like, whoa, if we are on social media or on YouTube, we’re going to break a lot of these wisdom sayings really fast. You think of Deuteronomy 6, that this is this adjunction to parents, to grandparents, to have your children, the most important task. It’s not the A, it’s not getting them into an Ivy League school. It’s not that they make a lot of money. It’s that they love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, and strength.

So how is this technology helping my child to love the Lord their God? And for most of us, it’s hindering it. It’s not helping it. And then you think, how are we to impress this on our children? It’s all those little moments of the day when we sit at home, when we walk on the road, when we lie down, when we get up. So that’s bedtime, that’s wake time, that’s the commute to school, that’s walking them to the driveway, to where you’re going next. So all those moments are those God-given moments.

We always say, oh, we don’t have enough time for things, but these are the God-given rhythms for us to be impressing faith, impressing this is how we live it with character, this is how we respond to neighbors. That’s what that’s there for. And technology, we all do it. We’re standing in line, we pull it out. We’re sitting on a bench waiting for someone, we pull it out. Where, anytime you have this moment of dead space, you pull out your phone.

(12:11):
It doesn’t matter what age you are. You could be a grandma, you could be in your 20s, whoever, you’re pulling out that phone. So it is shaping the way that we transmit faith, transmit information. And then there’s so many things.

Psalm 115 talks about the idols. Obviously technology, you just think like my word, it’s crazy how accurate this is. In Psalm 115, it’s talking about the idols made of silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but can’t speak eyes, but can’t see ears, but can’t hear, noses, but can’t smell, hands, but can’t touch, feet, but can’t walk. And you think of our technology and it sees you and it can speak to you.

(12:53):
And it’s listening to you, but it can’t do anything else. It is a false God that gives us the illusion, especially with AI, that we are in control, that we can figure this out, control our own destiny, get any information, knowledge that we want to. And then that Psalm continues to say, “Those who make them are like them, so is everyone who trusts in them.” And so we’re having an emptiness, a meaning crisis right now because we are trusting in these idols and we’re becoming like them, very shallow.

And you think of Galatians 6, “Don’t be mocked. God, you reap what you sow.” So if our kids are gossiping, watching pornography, sitting all day, kind of anxious, sad, that’s the adulthood that they’re going to reap. And so for us as parents, that’s when the protective mom, the protective dad’s got to come out and say, “Wait a minute, we need to be sowing some better seed here so when you’re an adult, you’re going to be much more ready for life.”

Dr. Matt Jones (13:58):
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I hope as parents are listening and as even I’m listening, I’m like, “Okay, is this thing right here, is this an idol in my life? And I might be part of the problem too as I’m listening.” So how important is it for parents to examine their own relationship with technology before setting boundaries for their kids?

Arlene Pellicane (14:20):
Okay, you’ve hit this right on the head map because it’s us. Why are we so slow to do something with our kids? It’s because if we do something with our kids, then we have to do something with us. It’s like, I don’t want to change any of my habits.

I mean, here I am, I write all these books, I try to be very conscious, but I am constantly checking my phone. Did I get a text? I love checking my email. Oh, does someone want me to speak to them? Let me check my email. It’s like, why are you checking this all day long? We all do it.

And so I think that first step of saying, wait a minute, let me look at me and if once in a while my child looks up and I’m on the phone, no big deal. You say, okay, child of mine, let me text so-and-so back and I’ll be right with you.

(15:01):
But if 80% of the time they look at you and you’re on the phone, you’re on a device, they’re getting that message like, oh, that’s where things are at, or I’m competing with that thing. Let me throw a fit so I can win against that thing. So much of it is we as parents, as moms and dads have to say, let me look at my technology use. A question I love to ask is just, if my child grew up to use technology just like me, would I be happy?

(15:33):
So if that strikes fear in your heart like, oh, good Lord, I hope they don’t use it like me, then that is a wonderful, just that prick to say of your conscious Lord, help me to get this right. They did this research at the University of Washington, professors Andrew Melkoff and Patricia Kool, and they looked at babies and babies even at 42 minutes old, if the mom stuck her tongue out, the baby stuck her tongue out.

(16:00):
So they’re imitating adults, they’re adult caregiver at 42 minutes old. The late Howard Hendricks said, “You cannot impart what you do not possess.” And so for us as parents, we’ve got to get this because our kids are literally. We can tell them all day long, we can read the great tech reset, be like, “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to take away the iPad. We’re going to wait on this.”

But if they look at you and you’re like, “Well, you watch Netflix till 2:00 AM every night, or you’re playing video games on times that are not the weekends, or you’re on social media constantly.” So we do have to check ourselves. It’s so true.

Dr. Matt Jones (16:38):
I am just curious what you think in terms of, do you think parents and the children should have different standards? Why or why not? So in other words, hey, if I’m going to put an hour limit on my kids from five to nine, am I going to have an hour limit? What do you think about that?

Arlene Pellicane (16:51):
That’s a great question. I think if you as a family are needing, if you really see my kids need intervention, we’ve got to do something, then I think you should put yourself under the same constraints and say, let’s do this together. I believe in you so much, child of mine, that I’m also going to watch YouTube for an hour or less every day. I think that is a powerful statement of we are a team, we’re going to lick this thing together and I’m going to be in pain just like you’re going to be in pain and we’re going to fight this addiction together. I think that’s fantastic.

Now, long-term, you are an adult and then maybe we’re talking about an eight-year-old or a 12-year-old or 16-year-old. So of course, as an adult, you have more rights than your child does to watch things. So I mean, your kid, you can’t be like, “Oh, you kid can only watch 20 minutes, so then I can only watch 20 minutes.” Maybe over a long term, this is going to be a little bit too much.

(17:48):
But I think during that tech reset time, I think that’s a great time we get on the same page. I think asking your children, “What do you think about…” If they’re little, then I think it’s more of a modeling thing. Sure. But if they’re teenagers, what do you think a healthy tech life would look like for me as your parent?

And talk about that and try to get closer to that because I’m at the cusp of an empty nest, and when you’re an empty nester, it’s between you and your spouse if you’re married, but if you want to stare at YouTube until your eyeballs fall out, that’s kind of on you.

But when you have children in your home and you have this limited time, I think it is wise to number your days and say, “You know what? I have 18 summers with this kid, and if this kid wants to spend time with me and wishes I watched YouTube less, doggone it, I’m going to do that.”

Dr. Matt Jones (18:36):
And that takes great humility to ask your kids, “Hey, what do you think about that?” That’s one of the things I do with my son or have done. He’s kind of moving up into older ages, is, “All right, how do you think we’re doing as a family? How do you think I’m doing with loving your mom?” So that he can process that in preparation for his own heart in hopes that he’ll shift his attitude about Valentine’s Day. Right now he calls Valentine’s Day Independence Day, which we’re grateful for that, but hopefully his attitude will shift on that one of these days.

Janel Greig (19:09):
That’s good. Arlene, can we talk a little bit about the boundaries, restrictions? But our culture often equates having more choices and viewer restrictions with freedom. You can do anything you want and that’s freedom. But you talk about specifically how boundaries actually bring freedom. What does it look like when that comes to technology and parenting? Yeah.

Arlene Pellicane (19:32):
I was just listening to a podcast with David Epstein. He’s a journalist and his book is Inside the Box and it’s about constraints. And he told the story of Dr. Seuss, the editor gave him a $50 bet, like, “I bet you can’t use 50 words or less in your kid’s book.” And that turned into green eggs and ham. So it was the power of the constraint that let him really fly and create. And so that’s what the concept of that book is.

We think that we want ultimate freedom, that that makes us really happy, productive, creative. But when that happens and there are no limitations, we tend to completely stress out. They did one thing where people were asked, “If you had a cancer diagnosis, would you want to have a choice of your care?” And 64% said yes. But then when they actually got a diagnosis, only 12% wanted this wide array of choices.

(20:28):
Most people wanted the doctor to tell me, “Please tell me what would be the best course of care and tell me what to do.” They did the same thing with movies, like sit down these people for entertainment, you have 12 choices in two hours. And they were stressed about, “What should I pick? And what if I pick the wrong thing? And what if I pick this?”

And then the other set, they just sat down for a two-hour movie and they talked to them afterwards and it’s like the people that just got one movie were much happier. They just watched the movie and enjoyed it versus the other people were waiting for all these choices. And so I think in technology today, we have bought this lie that like, “Oh, I have endless choices on Netflix, endless choices on YouTube. This is so great.” And we’ve realized this is not great.

(21:13):
This is like I spend half my time choosing what I’m going to watch, watch it for five minutes, say, “Well, this is boring. Let me go watch something else.” And so this grand idea of like, “Okay, child of mine, here’s the phone, here’s social media, here’s this, no limits because I’m kind of tired of fighting with you.” Our kids need the limit because it’s so difficult and it just makes you so unhappy to have so many choices all the time.

So maybe this looks like time, time limits. This also looks like limiting actually, if someone, for instance, let’s say smoking, so smoking, they didn’t know it was bad for you, and then you could say, “Well, smoking is social because they’re going to hang out with their other smoker friends and it’s a social thing.” It’s kind of like gaming. It’s like, “Okay, kids do this, so let them do it together so they can hang out together.” But then you realize, wait a minute, this thing inherently is not good for you.

(22:12):
So there’s some things that setting a time limit doesn’t really solve it. We wouldn’t say like, “Oh, you can go smoke for half an hour.” Now, smoking for half an hour is better than smoking for eight hours a day. So yes, the limit is better, but with technology it’s tricky because we could say, “Well, let me limit TikTok. Let me limit Snapchat. Let me limit this favorite video game.”

But it’s hard. You know that because the 30 minutes go by and that kid wants to be in there so bad. So at some points it may be like, “Hey, we need to just detox from that for 30 days and let’s talk about it after the 30 days.” And most likely your kid will begrudgingly say, “I was actually kind of happier when I wasn’t twitching because I needed that.”

Dr. Matt Jones (23:00):
Yeah. We’ve had to do that a couple times with our children and they got a break from a particular piece of technology and they reluctantly said, “Yeah, I’m glad,” or, “My habits are changing as a result of that break.” I am just curious, in terms of boundaries, excuse me, bring freedom. The reality is scripture indicates that truth sets free, and I’m just curious as kind of our last question in our two-part series here or three-part series, how have these boundaries set your family free?

Arlene Pellicane (23:32):
It’s so good. So our boundary, and we’ll talk about this more in the next podcast, is we were lazy parents. You’ll be surprised to hear that. We were like, “I do not want to monitor all these texts. I do not want a second job.” So we just said, “No video games, no social media, no personal device.” It was working really well in middle school. It was working well in high school, so we just pushed it out till your senior year in high school and then we’ll talk about it.

And by having that pretty firm boundary of we’re just going to change the environment, by doing that, it allowed so much freedom within this environment. Do whatever you want. If you want to watch YouTube on the family computer in the living room, you go at it. That’s fine. And for our kids, they used it. So we were definitely not anti-tech.

(24:22):
We’re 3D printing Nerf guns, we’re editing podcasts, we’re taking art lessons, we’re doing all these things. So it gave this creative freedom. It really did, to use it for the way that actually makes you feel good. My girls bake, they watch the things and they bake these amazing things. And so it gave freedom for expression, freedom from addiction.

A lot of our kids’ friends, you’re going to talk to my daughter Noelle later on, but a lot of her friends were really struggling with needing to be on social media for so many hours a day and just being exhausted from it and honestly looking at her and saying, “Wow, you’re really lucky that you don’t even have to do that.”

So there’s a true freedom from addiction and the spiritual freedom that comes from the ability to be quiet before God, to read a Bible, to want fellowship, not to be afraid, like, “I don’t want to go in a youth group. I’m scared. There are people there. They’ll talk to me.” There’s freedom in being able to like, I can walk into a room and I can introduce myself and I don’t need your social media handle before I make a conversation with you.

(25:28):
I can go straight up to you and say, What’s your name? What are you about? Tell me about yourself. There’s huge, you see spiritual freedom, social freedom, physical freedom to do your hobbies. They’re skiers, they’re rollerbladers, they ride horses, they do all sorts of stuff. There’s so much freedom when you’re not tied into, oh, what do you do? Video games and social media, and that’s all.

Dr. Matt Jones (25:50):
That’s great. Well, Arlene, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. If you, as a parent, recognize some of these patterns in your own family, don’t feel like you have to fix everything overnight. Awareness is the first step. And if you want to go deeper, you can actually pre-order a free copy of Arlene’s book, The Great Tech Reset, at techresetbook.com. That’s techreset.book.com. The book officially releases on September 29th, so be sure to pre-order your free copy today.

In the next episode, Arlene is back as we move from the problem to the reset, exploring practical ways to set healthier boundaries, reclaim real life connection, and help our kids flourish in a technology saturated world. Thank you, Arlene. We look forward to part two and part three. We’ll have a little surprise at the end. Woo-hoo. So we’re excited about that too. Thanks for our first time together, Arlene.

Arlene Pellicane (26:47):
Thanks so much.