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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:50]
B
Well hello everyone. Come on in to the webinar. It's me, Julie Bogart and Ash Brandon and we are here to celebrate the brand new book by Ash that I love. So much power on managing screen time for the benefit of the whole family, which to me is what makes this work particularly interesting to us. This webinar is also going to be shared on the Brave Writer podcast. So wherever you're listening or tuning in from, we are so glad to have you with us. Hello Ash, say hello.
- [01:24]
C
Hi everyone. Hi Julie. I'm so glad to be here.
- [01:28]
B
I'm so glad to have you. Tell everyone just a little bit about you, your situation, where you work, where you live, your family. Yes.
- [01:35]
C
So my name's Ash Brandon. I use they them pronouns online. I am known as the gamer educator. My day job is that I am a middle school what we call teacher librarian, which is the name for librarians where I work. So I have, I've this is my 15th year in education and I've taught many, many things. But my fourth year as a librarian, which I feel like a great fit in many ways. And since 2021 I have been running my Instagram account helping families manage technology for the benefit of their whole families. I say that I take my knowledge of technology and like classroom management and pedagogy and kind of combine it all together to hopefully help families. So I've been doing that for a while and thankfully have gotten to spend years seeing and working alongside Julie, which has been such a treat and such a journey to be on together.
- [02:30]
B
It really has been. It was one of my followers who first told me about your account and the comment was I really think your philosophy aligns with Ash's. And sure enough, within minutes of scrolling I was like, Ash, absolutely. The way that I would sum up your approach to tech. Tell me if I have this right. You treat tech from a morally neutral place and you see it as a Resource that we would manage the same way we manage any other resource in our children's lives. Have I got that right? Is that pretty close to it?
- [03:04]
C
I think that is great. I should steal it as my elevator pitch. So fan's great.
- [03:09]
B
Well, that's what I loved about power on. Here's the word that really sticks out to me. It's in the subtitle and it's the word benefit. I think today's culture seems to see screen time as a guilty pleasure that we permit in tiny doses. But if we were really morally superior, we wouldn't even permit it at all. We'd be able to exist without these screens. And the idea that screens could benefit the family almost sounds like heresy in the modern culture. Can you talk a little bit about what you meant when you said that there was a way to use screens that actually brings a benefit to families?
- [03:48]
C
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I think if we aren't thinking about using it from a place of benefit, then I think we're setting ourselves up for some failure. And I feel like we're kind of missing the point entirely to a degree, because on the one hand, and I start the book this way, talking about the kind of purpose of leisure, on the one hand, we should be able to do something like screen time because we enjoy it, because it's a leisure activity. And that should be worthy on its own merits. And because of what you said, the very common rhetoric that circles around fear and feeling like we need to minimize or abstain from technology or minimize it for our kids, then we aren't really allowing ourselves to even think about the benefit. Because if we do think about the benefit, the only people we're generally thinking about are our kids, for good reason, obviously. But then we're thinking about, like, well, could it be of potential benefit to my kids? So that means I have to find, you know, the most rigorous academic app or what have you. And what we're missing is that many, many times screens are benefiting the adults or other members of a family. And that isn't something to feel guilty about. Often it's due to necessity or systemic inequity, things that are not really within our control. So if that's the reality that we're in, then if we are going to utilize screens out of necessity or because we want to, then it should be benefiting everyone in the family. And if it is benefiting us, then it is often also benefiting our kids. Right. If it's standing in for a playground down the block that I don't have. And it's allowing me to wrap up some emails and make dinner and then we can all sit down together and have more quality time. That is benefiting my family and it is benefiting my kids. But that's a little different than we've often approached it. And I think that approach just doesn't feel very actionable to families. And thinking about the benefit to everyone I think is more realistic for many.
- [05:54]
B
I really saw this in action over the weekend. I was with my family and I have four grandkids that were with me on this vacation. And we were at dinner one night and for some reason the waitstaff took our order, but we didn't get our food for an hour and a half. So picture having two three year olds, a five year old and a baby in addition to all these adults. And one of the little three year olds had been asleep when we pulled up. So when he woke up, he was very disoriented and very hungry. So no food is coming. We're in these uncomfortable, like benches, not even in chairs. He keeps crying. They keep trading him back and forth, mom to dad, mom to dad, mom to dad. And after about 50 minutes of this, they finally pulled out their phone and put on some little PBS show. And his tears ended, he calmed down, everybody relaxed, the food finally came, he ate, we went home. And I thought, this is what Ash is talking about. Is that a good example?
- [06:57]
C
I think that's a fantastic example. And like, oh my gosh, that just makes me so stressed even hearing it. Yes, I think that's a perfect example. And you know, sometimes we'll hear people saying like, oh yeah, kids are on tablets at dinner. They should be learning to just sit and be at restaurants. And we often forget that, you know, we're seeing one small moment of a family's day and everybody deserves a break. And sometimes that might be kind of the first break that might be available to not only that child, but also the family. And many caregivers end up in this position where they can't really win, right? Like they can pass back and forth an upset child and everyone is getting more dysregulated. The kid, them, probably everyone else in the restaurant, right? And then, no, nobody's winning from that. Right? So if people are like, oh, but you shouldn't use a screen, it's like, okay, there's no moral superiority to like, everyone having a bad time because we chose not to use pbs. Yes.
- [08:01]
B
And I, when I think back to my options when I had kids, I didn't have that phone option. So what I would do is I would take that child out of the restaurant and walk the streets. So now I'm removed from being a part of the family experience to try and handle a child that's disrupting the entire room. And I think we sometimes forget that one of the benefits of all of these technological options today is we're enabling people actually to sort of stay in the same room sometimes.
- [08:33]
C
Right.
- [08:33]
B
Like, you want your kids to be where you are while you're making dinner, but you can't supervise them as well. So when I was raising kids, dinnertime preparation was when they watched tv. And that was a joy to me because they were all where I didn't have to worry that anybody was harming themselves. They were all where I could see them, but I was getting what I needed to get done, finished. It feels like the introduction of phones and gaming consoles are where we really changed our thoughts about screens. Now, to be fair, when I was a kid, I was told I was going to go blind sitting too close to a television. We were told our brains were being rotted. And of course, my entire generation is obsessed with Netflix and HBO Max now. So I don't know how that all worked out, but do you think that's been a transition? We've expanded the number of ways screens can be in our lives. And so every generation looks back to their childhood as somehow idyllic, and the current generation is being corrupted. How do you respond to that?
- [09:36]
C
You know, I think you're so right in that, you know, things change and things stay the same. Like, we're always gonna find ways to kind of look in the rearview mirror and see some things as ideal, like, are better than. And the big overarching, like, trends, they kind of tend to be the same. Like, I've saved in my phone forever this editorial from 1920 about the RAD, like, the advent of the radio. And it was an opinion against it. And one of the quotes was, never again will people succumb to the vice of thinking. Meaning, like, the radio is just going to think for you and no one will think ever again. And it's like you could sub in any other tech for that, right? And it would sound pretty current. And in the book, in the research chapter, I included this one study from the 70s that I was reading, which I don't normally read anything that outdated, but it was about the effect of, like, short, paced shot lengths, like, how long an image is on camera, which we hear a lot about. Like, we hear like, oh, show your Kids slow media and pace is so important. And that study as well as others have found that it didn't actually make a difference. But there were all of these things talking about like this dangerous, fast paced kids television. And I thought, what are they talking about? You know, it sounded like someone was talking about cocomelon. And then I kept reading and they were talking about something. Sesame street.
- [11:03]
B
Oh, wow.
- [11:05]
C
Which had just debuted not long before. And I thought, well, you know what? Yeah, those interstitials, they're like under 30 seconds long. They do have a lot. They have music, they have animation, they have a lot of sound and a lot of light. And if you were to just put Those on like YouTube shorts, I'm sure people would say the same thing. Now, like, it just doesn't really change. And at the same time, you know, I'm a child of the 80s and 90s. People will say like, oh, give your kid a 90s summer. And I'm like, my parents are both homes in the summer. But Even then my 90s summer was like hours of television. I wasn't out always exploring or playing with friends. Sometimes I was. But it was also like a lot of time at the computer or in front of the tv. Right. It's not like those things have not still been part of our lives.
- [11:53]
B
No, some of my best memories are related to television. You know, really sitting and watching from sunup to sundown, the Olympics or there was a series back when I was a kid called that's Entertainment, which was all old movies. And of course this was not Netflix. So if it was on at 2pm and you weren't there, you missed it. So I remember like scheduling my life around this television show because there were so many Judy Garland and Fred Astaire movies that I wanted to see. And my mom let me, you know, I was laying on the couch in a hot summer in California watching television. I talk to me though then about what are reasonable limits? One of the questions that everybody asks, and I'm sure you've been asked it a thousand times, is there a right amount? Is there an amount that's too much? I saw that you had some research in here, and I think it's the same research I looked at for my book where actually kids who were doing no gaming versus kids who were doing some had a worse outcome emotionally and socially. Can you talk about what are the benefits of some gaming, some screen time and how do you determine when it's too much?
- [13:05]
C
Yeah, so sometimes when we try to talk about the benefits, this is one of the reasons that I find talking about the data can get really tricky because if I start talking about a study that found, for example, there's some that talk about hand, eye coordination or response time, the problem with that is that very quickly the response is, but they could do that a different way, right? And so that goes to the place of, like, we're not actually talking about data. Actually, what we're talking about is the validity of leisure and activities, which is kind of what we talked about earlier. But to your point, when talking about, like, the benefit, that's why I tried to really reframe about what we even talk about when we talk about benefit. Because if the use of a screen is maybe not academically benefiting my child, or, you know, they're not gonna somehow become a surgeon because they're playing something very like, intricate on a video game console, but if it is giving them a break, giving me a break, and serving our family in another way, like, that is still a benefit. So when we're looking at things like amount of time, it is very easy to get so myopically focused on the exact amount of minutes. And in the middle part of my book, I have a section called the screen time ABCs, which are sort of the big things to be considering with screens. And also often the pain points that are often at play, even if we don't realize it. And the A in ABC stands for access. And that's kind of what we're talking about, like, under what conditions kids have screens, if it's like a reward or if it's routine, but also just how much time they're on a device. The AAP used to give recommendations, and they actually don't anymore. Now they really talk about making a family media plan that works for your family. I think that's really great, and people will still ask, okay, but how much time? So you brought up a study, and there's been several that looked at the really potentially negative outcomes related to mental health outcomes and suicide ideation. And what's really interesting is that you're right. The groups who tend to perform the worst worst or have the worst mental health outcomes are either extreme users who are playing or using screens for four or more hours per day, or they are the never users. And that's so interesting is that depending on which study you look at, one of them will be the worst and the other will be the next worst. But the ones who tend to perform the best are those who have moderate access. And in almost all the research that I looked at in this book that was consistently true is that it's when we're looking at the deleterious potential outcomes, we are really looking at these more extreme cases. And that's really important because often what's happening there is that it's not even necessarily a causal thing. It's not even necessarily, oh, it's because they're on a screen for four hours a day. Often it's because there are other unmet psychological needs, right? So if someone is lonely, if someone is isolated, if they don't have another way of feeling connected, and the only way they can know to achieve that is trying to play games online. But that doesn't feel good. So they have to do it more and more and more and more. That's more about the relationship they have with the thing and what they might be missing as opposed to the technology itself causing it. And I know this is not necessarily the answer people want to hear because they want, like, just give me a number. But one of the things I talk about is, you know, part of figuring out access is figuring out what is going to work for all of you and also what you might need in a given scenario. There might be times of life where you need more time. You have a new baby, you have a family who's ill, and there might be times where it's just not as feasible during the school year, for example. And so when we can consider what the needs are, that often really helps us figure out some of those other moving pieces. If I know my need is I have a meeting, I need an hour, then that also might tell me, okay, I'm not going to say yes to them playing a multiplayer game for an hour because I can't leave my meeting and go deal with them squabbling. But maybe in that case, I say yes to a movie because I know then it'll be more reliable and quiet and I can get what I need and they can have their needs met too. So kind of recentering what we mean by the benefit, but also how we kind of decide how we're going to guide that decision by focusing on what the need might be.
- [17:41]
B
I think that's really helpful. I think one of the questions that parents have that's implicit then in the amount of time is that sometimes they're watching the behavior of the child and they're assuming that a child who has a negative response, it is caused by too much screen time. One of the things that I discovered, I have five kids and we joke about how we made a new computer plan every year or Even every six months, because the needs change, right? Like, initially I thought, oh, a half hour per kid was plenty. And they're like, we can't get anything done on our game in a half hour. So then we ended up with two hour turns. Well, how do you decide who goes first? Then we created the clipboard, hung it on the wall, and they're waking up at midnight to be the first one downstairs to sign up before they got up at 7. Right. It was like, you just start to see, like, the psychology of children. And one of the things that I think creates that desperation is if there's a limited number of devices, like, if there's just one and there are five kids, it's hard. Right. The second thing is a feeling that there's scarcity. If it feels like you're tightly controlling how much time when a kid is on it and you ask them to get off, they're upset, right? They're like, my one chance for the whole week is getting ruined by the toddler who's yelling at me.
- [19:02]
C
Right.
- [19:03]
B
So can you talk to us about the reactivity of kids on games? When they get. They can't beat the level and they get frustrated and they start yelling, does that mean they shouldn't be on the computer? What do we do?
- [19:17]
C
Yeah. And one of the things I come back to again and again that helps me a lot is when I'm thinking about a problem, a pain point that feels like it's related to a specific medium. Right. Like it's related to a screen. It helps me to take that medium out of it and to think instead of like, okay, so how would I describe this problem without just talking about the technology piece? And I know to many they would think like, but the technology is why it's happening. And that's where I come in and reframe and say, well, actually, like, we don't actually know that that might be why it's happening. What might just be happening is a feeling, right? It's a feeling and a reaction. So how would we handle this if it were a feeling or reaction to something else? And that doesn't mean that it's not important that it's related to a screen, but sometimes it helps us think about how we might be consistent with our own parenting and how we might handle it. So, you know, if my kid is working really hard in a video game, like you said, and they're really close to the end, and then their timer goes off and they're out of time, and that was like their only chance today. To try to beat this boss. And now they're throwing the controller and yelling and stomping around, right? If I think about, okay, how would I react if this were them playing a board game and they're out of time and we have to go out the door and they just lost on like the last turn, right? Would I feel differently about that than I do about it being on a screen? And oftentimes the answer may be yes. And that doesn't mean that those experiences are literally the same. But in terms of how we might come to our child, I think it can really help. Because if I'm coming from a place of just validation or understanding, that's probably also going to help me a ton. And it might also help me understand, like, where did we go off the rails? Right? Like, if I am able to even kind of keep an ear out on them and I hear that as they're playing, you know, they're getting louder or they're moving or they're yelling or I notice these like, signs that might tell me, oh, okay, they're like getting more and more dysregulated. One of the things I talk about in the book is like, how do we become more proactive to build some of that in to help them notice that about themselves? Because that's what's really key, is that our kids are going to enter into a tech driven world, whether we like it or not, in ways that we can't fully imagine. And we want to make sure that they know themselves well enough to know how they can thrive in those environments. And that comes from some of that messiness of figuring out, hey, like, what helps you in these moments. And so sometimes that takes us having the capacity to step in and try some things out. And I go into that a lot in the book with things we can try, whether it's access and trying, you know, different amounts or scheduling our day differently or ways of thinking about behavior. But being able to view it with neutrality allows us to then view that difficult behavior as data more than thinking of it as good or bad, necessarily.
- [22:40]
B
Yeah. Because one of the things that I noticed with my kids is I could watch them build frustration working on their lacrosse game, right? Like, that's physical, that's outside, that's active. And they're at their practice and they're not successfully scoring and they're not playing correctly, they build up frustration. But I would never blame the game. I would end up blaming the fact that this is hard. And so we would talk about what does it feel like to Practice. What does it feel like to repeatedly fail at the thing that you think you're doing? Well? Well, that was what was happening in the games. But here's what I think might be interesting to hear you comment on. So much of what's happening between a screen and a kid is private. The parent is not watching. Like I'm at the lacrosse practice, I see everything occurring. The child gets frustrated. I'm like, hey buddy, come here, have a snack, let's talk, cool down, go back and try. How come parents don't do that with games? And what can they do to with this online life? Become more a part of it so that it doesn't feel like so scary because you see this kid erupting, you're like, is he being bullied in the chat? Is he just failing at a level? You know, is something happening that. Did an ad pop up for porn? Like we're asking those questions, right?
- [23:54]
C
Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Well, and that brings up so many good points because on the one hand I'm talking and we're both talking about like, how families are often using these things to fill in needs for themselves. And so I'm not always able to then be paying particularly good attention because I need it. Right. And so then I don't want to be dividing myself even further. I mentioned in the book, particularly when we're doing things like maybe setting games or consoles up for kids, I mentioned that. One of the reasons I think that's so helpful and important is that it gives you just the tiniest bit of insight into how the game's even played. It doesn't mean you have to play it, but like you might just have the slightest idea of like, okay, this game does involve other people, or it doesn't, or it's turn taking or it's all at once, or it's time based or level based. Just some amount of insight so that then you at least have some working knowledge. Also, if you're the first person to kind of lay eyes on it, then you can make any changes that you might want to. Things like settings or privacy or safety. That's also a benefit to having kids play on screens in shared environments. Whether that's, you know, sitting at the table where maybe you can kind of peek over their shoulder or at least have an ear on them or on the TV as opposed to handheld. But like you said, it's not always possible. So even just approaching with curiosity, I think can go such a long way because like you said, we might be seeing them on the lacrosse field and There are also times, like, literally, my child is at soccer practice right now, and when they come home, I'm going to ask, how was soccer practice?
- [25:36]
B
Right.
- [25:36]
C
Like, I'm going to ask. Because I care about them. I don't care about soccer. Like, I just. I am not a soccer person. I know nothing about soccer. It is not my thing. But I care about my kid, and therefore I care about my kid's interest. And so even if I'm not there seeing it, I still want to know. And I don't have to know all the idiosyncrasies of every game. But if I am seeing, oh, my gosh, something really good or bad happened, if I'm just approaching it with, like, I want to know more, tell me about that. Right. That says so much to my kid about us wanting to connect. And it can also. And I know you've experienced this, it can also tell you so much about your kid and give you really big insights into what kind of things might motivate them or frustrate them or what they might be working on. And then we can help them see parallels to other parts of their lives, which I think can be really, really powerful.
- [26:32]
B
You know, that made me think about something that my oldest son Noah, told me. When they show frustration and you say, okay, that's it. You can't play that game. What they're learning is how to suppress their frustration and to hide it from you. And then it comes out later against another kid for the towel in the bathroom, and you don't even know that. It's like this whole thing is cooking inside because they're so afraid, if they look unhappy on the computer, you're going to curtail their time. So one of the dangers of assigning blame to the screen instead of helping your child regulate is now they're going to drive all those feelings underground and actually, actually not learn regulation. I love when you say in the book that you can ask the child to pause, come eat a snack and tell them, promise them you get to go back. But we're going to calm down first. We're going to talk about it, brainstorm ways you can beat that level. And even if you don't know the game, they know the brainstorm. They will happily tell you and then let them go back and play more regulated. But when we just start from the premise that the dysregulation means we got to stop it, we're actually not teaching them how to deal with frustration.
- [27:46]
C
Yes. I was doing another interview once with another creator, and we were Talking about this. And she mentioned that no one is meant to be regulated all of the time. And I was sort of like, oh, my God. Like, I had to sort of sit with that for a long time because I realized that in my own parenting, in my teaching, in my own regulation of myself, I realized that, oh, yeah, I am totally guilty of that. Of, like, of course I said. And of course we are, right? Because we sense something coming up. We're like, oh, gotta get rid of that. We're trying to play whack a mole with the dysregulation. But like you said, if what we want is kids who are not necessarily fully regulated every moment of their lives because we know it's impossible, what we really want is kids who are figuring out what works for them. And that doesn't mean that the difficult behaviors that might come up during screens, that doesn't mean we allow them, all right? It doesn't mean we're like, oh, no, it's fine, because I don't want them to suppress that emotion, right? But it means that we don't necessarily go immediately to that place of blaming the technology. It feels good, I will say, like, it feels good to be able to kind of offload that blame away from ourselves or our child and put it somewhere else. But it doesn't help us, right? It doesn't help us tomorrow. It doesn't help our kids the next time they play this game. It just kind of puts all the blame on this amorphous thing, but doesn't help with the skill. And I noticed one comment came in that used a word that I use in the book, which is notice. And I love the word notice because. And I talk about this with the behaviors. Notice is such a neutral but helpful word, right? Like, I can use the word notice to just sort of label objectively what's happening, right? Like, I do this a lot in my household. I notice, right? Like, your voice is louder. I notice your body's moving. Just as a way of helping them learn the skill of noticing for themselves, like, what are we noticing? And then what does that maybe mean? And that doesn't mean we're saying, like, oh, you're yelling. Therefore, we have to turn the game off. It's just getting in the practice of noticing and then using that information, and that's a very different thing that really promotes more of that potential connection so that if something really potentially unsafe or bad or upsetting happens, that we're hopefully also laying that foundation so that they can come to us. They don't Think that our first reaction is like, the problem is the game, right? The problem is whatever you're playing it on and blaming that as opposed to figuring out what unfortunate thing might be going on and seeing through the medium.
- [30:35]
B
If you're like me, you probably want to harness that back to school energy that you see in your kids when you kick off in the fall. That's when I would pick a big project to tackle with them because they still had a lot of energy. We've got classes like world building, which really appeals to gamers. Writing the short story, essay prep, dynamic thinking, middle school writing projects, Brave Writer 101, our main course when you're just getting started with us, Story switcheroo for your little kids and even something like script writing for those kids who want to write the next best Netflix show. Check us out. I think you'll find that these classes pay dividends all year. Once your kids experience being read and valued for their self expression, they'll want to see if they can have that effect on you. We see ourselves as a great antidote to the rise of ChatGPT. Check the show notes for a link and we hope to see you in an online class with Brave Writer. Let's take a hard case. Someone just posted a comment. I'm going to read it and then let's have you do your magic.
- [31:49]
C
Great, I'll try
- [31:51]
B
Ash. All right. I have four kids, 13, 10 and twin 7 year olds. One of my twins is very screen sensitive. To give an example, he gets an hour of Minecraft and he's playing with my husband and me. It's time to get off. But he says he needs to finish something. I give him five more minutes. Time is up. He fights me again. I explain that I'll have to take the iPad away. Now I take the iPad and then full on meltdown. The next hour and a half is screaming, throwing things, hitting, crying, name calling, help. How does she handle this?
- [32:22]
C
Okay, well, first of all, I cannot imagine having, well, four children of any age.
- [32:28]
B
But,
- [32:30]
C
but, but, oh my gosh. Wow. Well, you're in it, so, okay, a lot here and I am so glad that this got brought up. So one of the things I talk about is when we're talking about benefit, right? We want screen time to benefit the whole family. And when we're talking about access, like amount of time, if we're looking at, okay, they're playing an hour of Minecraft and then we're getting an hour and a half meltdown. Well, if I am receiving an hour of time Right. To do what I might need to do, but it's costing me an hour and a half. That is not a good investment. Right.
- [33:08]
B
It's not a good exchange.
- [33:10]
C
Right. That's not a good exchange rate. And so that is one of the ways when people are saying, like, well, what's a good amount of time? It's like, well, you know, if I'm in. If I'm getting an hour and I'm investing an hour and a half, that is not benefiting us all, right? Especially if I have other kids in this household, right? So that might be a time where I'm like, all right, this is maybe not working for all of us. And of course, then the question is like, okay, but what do we do about it? So the C and ABCs of screen time stands for content. And I talk about a lot of different things related to content. You know, whether educational content is better and delivery of content, et cetera. However, one of the things that can be really helpful to know, and I go over this in the book, is understanding some of the basic differences in how certain games are structured, because there can be really big differences. You know, if I am playing Mario Kart, there's a very obvious, concrete beginning, end, right? It's time. It's a level. It's very obvious. But when I have something like Minecraft, Minecraft is what we call a sandbox, meaning that it's just an open sandbox. It's an open world of exploration. And for some kids, that can be extremely motivating because they can be creative and they can feel really in control, and no one is telling them they're doing anything wrong because there's no rules. That's really freeing and powerful for a lot of kids. Gives them a real sense of autonomy and can be really, really difficult to stop because you can get really, really focused. And it's hard to stop when you're in the middle of something. So that's another instance where I think, okay, so if I took the screen out, what is happening? It is hard to stop in the middle of something. So that's the skill. I want my child to be able to stop in the middle of something that is fun. That is a hard skill. So then I can look at, okay, what do I do with some other area of their lives that is helpful when that happens, right? If they are literally in a sandbox and we have to leave in five minutes, what do I do? What is helpful then? Is there a way I can bring that strategy over? And seeing those parallels, I will Give two quick, very specific strategies that are very, I've heard are very helpful in this case and I have used them myself. One is a question I got from being an educator and it is the question of how will you know when you're done? This is an executive functioning question, right? It has nothing to do with video games. I taught a lot in like a project based learning school and our units would take a month and I'd see kids for an hour, right? And so they would go weeks without being done. And so for certain students I'd have to say, okay, we have 15 minutes. Like, how will you know that you've reached a stopping point today? Right? What it might even be, what will be the last thing you do today? So some way of giving them like an off ramp, like get ourselves off of here so that I can see a closure, right. The other trick which I find really, really helpful is kind of almost the opposite, is to ask them, okay, what is the first thing you are going to do when you come back? Right. Whether it's tomorrow or in a week, what is it you want to keep doing? And I will write it on a sticky note and I will literally put it on the game console, like on the controller, on the tv, wherever they're going to find it. Because part of the difficulty in stopping, especially for kids who might be neurodivergent, is that they may truly have no idea what they were going to do when they come back the next day. And they may feel like, oh, as soon as I stop, I will lose all of this. I will lose the progress, I will lose the creativity. I will take 20 minutes to get back into it and then I'll have to stop again. And that is frustrating, right? I'd be frustrated if that were like my knitting project and I couldn't remember what I was doing. So writing down like, okay, tomorrow you're going to do whatever and it doesn't even have to make sense to you. We stick it on the console and then when they come back, it's like they hit pause and then they can just resume again. But again, that's a way of showing them, okay, if you are struggling to stop in the middle of something, here's a strategy you can try. I can write myself a note, I can remind myself what I'll do tomorrow and that will help whether it's Minecraft or a group project or I'm knitting a sweater or whatever it is, right? Whatever.
- [37:49]
B
The thing is, as you're talking, I'm also thinking that you could educate Kids on the type of game, just like you said, like before you get on, talk about, you know, this is different than Mario. There isn't an obvious stop. And you tend to enjoy this game for longer than we enjoy playing it with you. Let's decide in advance, like when you would be done and how much more time that would be. And then I'm really going to count on you to honor that because we want you to have that time every time. And so I'm gonna need you to honor that, like helping them actually imagine a positive outcome instead of it becoming this like power struggle. Like, I decided when you should be done, you weren't done. And I'm deciding more, you know, then. Then you end up in this big. I'm not saying it will be devoid of any conflict because now you're in a like power struggle habit. So it might take a little bit of time. But those two questions and that idea of even sort of setting it up with, we know why it's hard for you to get off and that's not your fault. This is the way the game is designed. So we want to have success with this. Could be helpful.
- [39:02]
C
Absolutely. And that's something that I talk about too. In like the content chapter is if we. And when we're talking about setting up structure for ourselves and our families. If I know, for example, my need is like, okay, well, I don't really care if they have screens in the morning, but my need is that we have to be out the door by 7:15, right? Or every throws off the whole morning. If my kids are asking for screens in the morning, then if I have some idea about the way that the content is easier or harder, then I can either let that inform my decision or bring them into the decision and say, okay, but here's the thing. We have to be in the car at 7:15. So like, what is something that would actually feel good to watch or play? And we can end it easily, right? Like again, my kids at soccer today. And that means that our afternoon is a very different flow where it's like, we can't be flexible. It's like, no, no, we have 20 minutes to eat dinner. Like, we do have to stop right away. And we've had the same conversations of like, do you want to play this if it means that it's hard to stop and we have to stop for you, or would you rather play something that's not easier to stop? And part of them being able to try that and it doesn't always go well, but part of Them is that is figuring it out for themselves and realizing like, oh, actually I don't like how that feels when I don't get to do what I want and then it ends anyway. And next time I'm going to try something differently. And sometimes in some age of kid and some situations, we have to make that decision for them and say, I'm sorry, I don't have the capacity to be running interference today. That's not an option today. We can try that tomorrow because we don't have soccer tomorrow. Right. And it's okay to lead with that too. We can decide what our non negotiables are and lead with it. And we can do all of that still from a place of neutrality. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Minecraft, just saying, hey, it doesn't fit our needs right now. That isn't something we can do right now. We can work toward that and we can try tomorrow.
- [41:00]
B
I wanted to add something just as I was listening to you. Most parents are focused on limits and most kids are focused on limits being gone. Right? Like when we're talking, this is just like an absolute foundational power struggle. I was asking my oldest son one time, you know, when you look back over your childhood, he's 38 now and we had computer games. Obviously the Internet didn't come in until like the mid-90s and so it was a little different than it is today. But I asked him, I said, think back, tell me like one of your favorite days from your childhood. And without hesitation, he said it was the day that when he and his brother woke up in the morning. And I said, you can play. They were playing this game called Bolo. You can play Bolo all day. There will be no limits. He looks back on that so fondly. He was like, we had the best time. You brought us snacks. We, we, yeah, apparently I was a good mom that day. You brought us snacks. Our computers were land. He was in the other room. We were bursting out laughing. It was like this land party in our little condominium. And the thing that made me so happy is that I knew to do it right. Because the thing is, we tend to think one day like that is enough. But Noah said what it did is it made him know that I understood him. So then when there were limits, he knew it wasn't because I hated the games. Like he needed me to love the games with him because he loved the games. And unfortunately for a lot of us, our kids are like suppressing their feelings because they're afraid if they look too happy. You're gonna take it away. So they need occasional reminders where the limits are less. And they can feel a little freedom to get tired of something, to do it so long that they need to get up and eat a snack. Right? Like just a little thing to. I don't know how you feel about that, but it was.
- [42:50]
C
I think it's a lovely story. And I'm also so curious about, like, what were you doing that day?
- [42:55]
B
Like, I had three other kids.
- [42:57]
A
Okay.
- [42:59]
B
I was like, probably working on phonics with Johanna. And, you know, I had a writing career. I was kicking off. So I think that day was just one of those days where I was like, you know what? They need a break from, like, home school. They love this. I'm just going to say yes. And they had been building up and doing it at night. And I just. For some reason, that day, it was the day. And I look at, like, unschooling philosophy where they talk about kids being self directed. And I think I was in that moment, I was really trying to value what they were interested in. And interestingly, you'll get a kick out of this, Ash. The very first day that I kind of took the curriculum out and decided to follow my son's interests, he got a pocket knife and he started whittling wood. And he was sitting on the front stoop of our house. And I felt this surge of absolute pride. Like, I have arrived. My child is doing like a hand project with wood and a knife. And then after an hour, I was like, why is that a skill I care about? That is like, weird old nostalgia supposed to be fitted for this world. And I think a pocket knife and a whittling project is cool. And it kind of reset me. I was like, there are these prestige subjects that we imbue with romance. Like, if your child. I had a child who was really into chess. Every day he wanted to spend hours working on chess. I never said no. There were no limits. Chess is a prestige subject. Right.
- [44:28]
C
And it's also idle and you're not moving and it's stationary. Right. But if that were chess on a computer, people would be like, oh, no, the eye strain. They should be outside. Yeah. It's so fascinating. And like, the activity that I have to, like, monitor the most for my kid is reading. My kid. I mean, knock on wood. I love that we're in an independent reading phase. We've been in this phase for years now. But, like, my kid will read all the time, would read all day long, would read instead of doing pretty much anything else. And I'm sure some people will be like, well, that's great. It's like, okay. And you can still get dysregulated when you read. Right? Like, like, your body can still need to move if you're reading all day. Right. Your mind can be overstimulated and your body can be understimulated just like when you're looking at a screen. So, like, I have to do a lot of saying, like, no, you cannot read at this meal. The book has to go away. No, we're not going to. We're going to take a break from reading. We're going to go outside. And I can still do it with neutrality. Right. I'm not, like, blaming the book. But you're not like, books are bad.
- [45:40]
B
Let's take book fast. Yeah, right. Exactly.
- [45:43]
C
Exactly. But it is so interesting to me how those things come up and, like, they do feel very different. Right. Like, people will make positive comments when they see my kid out reading that they probably wouldn't be making if they saw, like, sometimes my kid is reading,
- [45:58]
B
like, a Nintendo Switch.
- [45:59]
C
Right? Exactly. Or, like, sometimes they've read on my phone because we're in a city and you're not going to bring books with us. And I'll see some glances and be like, oh, I can tell that someone's trying to figure out, like, well, what are they doing on the phone? Because that makes all the difference of whether this is good or bad. And it just goes to show, we're very quick to, like, we're just trying to figure out, like, should I be okay with this? And it's a much broader conversation than that. And I wish it could be simpler. I wish you could always be black and white. And it's just. It isn't.
- [46:25]
B
It's not. And so please address. This is. I flagged it in. In your book. Please address YouTube and ads. 1 of my kids who's a huge gamer, he told me, mom, I used to be a huge fan of YouTube for Kids. Now I'm very concerned about it. The ads that pop up are so inappropriate. They can just be watching, you know, bluey episodes or whatever, and suddenly they're getting these ads for things that are very inappropriate for children. How do you manage that aspect of tech? Because I think that is also quite worrying for parents.
- [47:00]
C
Absolutely. So I have a whole chapter in this, in my book. It's chapter seven. It's really just devoted to a way of giving some strategies about safety without it being immediately outdated. Right. So I'm not going to say like, go to this menu and press this button because everything changes overnight, but instead like the things to be looking for. And one of them is about, you know, ads and App Store and those kind of access to ads. Because, yes, I want to also acknowledge that this level of labor in making these things safe so that we can get a break from systemic inequities that are not our fault. This is all like, none of it should be this way. Right. We should not be facing systemic inequities that often necessitate an over reliance on technology. And companies should not have been allowed to create technologies that are so liberal with their access to the user and come with all the guardrails off. Right. I don't like that in any way about our system. And while it is still our system, there are some basic ways of. For YouTube. Many people know that YouTube kids exist and many people are still very critical of YouTube Kids because it is still algorithmic, typically driven. It doesn't have ads, but a lot of the content is still inappropriate. All of that said, there is a setting you can do on YouTube kids. I have reels about this on my Instagram page. And that setting is called Approved Content Only. And when you do that, it's basically giving your kids almost like a playlist of things they can choose from. So it only shows your child what you have approved of. And that can be individual videos, but it can also also be whole channels. So if I know, like, okay, my kid can watch anything on the PBS Kids YouTube channel. Well, that's thousands of videos.
- [48:58]
B
Yeah.
- [48:58]
C
So, you know, I could approve Nat Geo Kids and PBS Kids and like one other thing.
- [49:04]
B
Right.
- [49:05]
C
And they would suddenly have. They would still feel like they have a ton of choice, because they do. But I would also know that they are only seeing those things. So if someone is interested in that, I have a highlight on my Instagram page called Content Limits and there's a reel in there. We'll show you how to do it. It's actually quite simple, but unfortunately not made super transparent to families. So that is one of those things where it's like, if we're willing to invest the 10, 30 minutes that it might take, it can pay off dividends because it will give our kids sort of a safe way to utilize that technology that can also still again benefit us. Unfortunately, ads are largely unregulated. And when it comes to things like apps in the App Store, many families and caregivers will say yes to apps that are free because they're free. So like of course we don't feel like, oh, I'm not shelling out money every time, but the money has to come from somewhere, right? Like they have to make money somehow. And it's either going to be in your data or your time or your attention. And so a lot of those end up becoming ad driven. So if instead we can approve of a couple things that we might buy or at the very least tell kids, like, I need to look at an app before I say yes to it, before I Download it, spend 5 minutes navigating it as a user. If you're getting constant pop up ads, then yeah, I'm probably going to say no to that. But yeah, when it comes to YouTube, YouTube Kids is the only way to navigate YouTube without ads. If you pay for YouTube Premium, I think you can get it without ads. But YouTube Kids does not show ads. And if you do YouTube Kids approved content only, only then no ads, no algorithm, because they won't get any suggested videos of any kind and they will only see what you have approved of. What I like about that too is that you can approve of things that are not technically YouTube Kids content.
- [51:01]
B
Oh, I was just gonna ask that. That's great.
- [51:03]
C
Yes. And I talk about this in the book. One of the really weird things that happens is that YouTube Kids will not allow any videos that have sponsored content. And people are gonna hear that and think, well, that's great. But what ends up happening is that a lot of creators are trying to make a living and they will accept ad dollars and therefore their videos cannot be shown to children. And then a lot of the people who are still accepting ad money will just sort of be sneaky about it and won't actually say that it's a sponsored video. So then it is still advertising and it's like more insidious. So I really like that I can share something from a creator that I know is fine, but is not technically like a marketed toward children. And my kids can still watch it that way.
- [51:47]
B
It is such a wild west out there. And it's changing all the time too. To be clear. Like each time you think you understand how some of these tech tools work, they upgrade the algorithm to meet their revenue goals. So that's happening a lot as well. Do you have anything to say about a daughter who has required online schoolwork? But every time the parent walks out of the room, she's on games. And I also, before we end, want to get your comments on the rise of AI in this moment as well. So those are the two things I'd love you to address, you know, just in the remaining 15 minutes.
- [52:26]
C
Just throw that in.
- [52:27]
B
Right. The fate of the world.
- [52:31]
C
Right.
- [52:31]
B
Could you tell us about that?
- [52:33]
C
Yeah. So with the kind of boundary pushing of online schoolwork. So in my school district, we, and many schools do this, that we have like a monitoring software that from like the teacher perspective, you can like see what all students are doing on their computers at any given time. And sometimes you can also limit it. Right. I can like block certain websites or something. Some school districts will also extend that software access to families at home. Like, the district my child attends is not where I work, and where my child attends, I do get access to that, which can be really helpful. So if they're on a school sanctioned or issued device, might be worth looking into that. That said, that also only goes so far because kids can find workarounds or even if you can see what they're doing again, you walk out of the room, suddenly they're not doing the thing anymore. So I think of this as, okay, if they were doing it on a piece of paper and instead they're sitting there staring into space, or they're doodling or they're doing something off task, okay, what would I do about that? And obviously, if they're playing games, it might again, be content. I don't want them to see. So when this comes up with teachers, one of the conversations we've had is, you know, sometimes I'll say to students, okay, well, if I can't see your screen through this software because you're trying to kind of keep that from me, that just means that you like me so much that you want to be right next to me all the time. And we just want to be BFFs. And that just means that you're going to be near me so that I can see what you're doing all the time. Right. And that's not necessarily fun, but if it's like a I can't turn around and suddenly everything's gone off the rails, then, okay, does that mean that we need to carve out 15 minutes where we're sitting next to each other and like in parallel and giving more of that monitoring so that it gets done? Maybe, maybe it might mean that we are finding some way of making it maybe feel more accessible. Like if we set a timer for 5 minutes, 10 minutes of uninterrupted work time, then we can find some way to take a break. Right. If it's playing one level of a game, that's a trick I learned from A fitness influencer who talked about pairing what he wanted with what he needed. And he would crumble Oreos into his plain Greek yogurt so that he was getting the protein but also the food he wanted. And sometimes it's finding ways of sprinkling that in. I think about myself when I have to clean the house. I don't just do it in silence. Right. I put in an airpod and I like half watch, Call the midwife or something. Right. And so I find ways of pairing what I want with what I need too. So it might be that. It might be, okay, you need someone to sit with you while we get used to this. It might be a combination of those things. And it may also be reaching out to the teacher and saying, can we do this on paper? Is there an analog equivalent? Is there something that is necessitating the use of technology about this?
- [55:34]
B
I was actually just going to say that I obviously don't know what kind of online work, but if it's writing or entering things, if doing it offline and then just having the entry period be shorter, instead of trying to sustain attention on a screen that is the source of pleasure, like that is for a child's maturity level. I think we often forget, you know, we think kids are trying to be sneaky because they're devious, when really they're just immature. They don't have these habits cultivated. Right. I mean, we can't even get adults to walk every day and they know it extends their life.
- [56:12]
C
Right, Right.
- [56:13]
B
So why are we expecting a child who is doing work they don't want to do to not like flip over? I mean, how many times have you been on your phone doing something important and then you quickly look at Instagram just for moment. If that's happening with adults, it's definitely happening with kids. I love your body doubling idea. I found that to be helpful. It is difficult if you have many kids in many tasks, but having a parallel person there for those homework moments sometimes is just the support they need. Okay, so let's tackle the AI dilemma today. And this is kind of an unhappy note really to go on, but today there was troubling news of a child who actually relied on ChatGPT as kind of a companion and in their depression found the information they needed to take their own life. Okay, so that's, that's an absolutely horrible use case. But we know that the function of ChatGPT, what makes it different than like Google search, because all that information is online. That's where it's being scraped from right? So kids, when you were growing up, you could find that information. You just go to Tumblr, you know, you go to Google, you go to Facebook. Right? Today it feels personal, feels like it's being delivered by someone with agency who is pretending to know you. So comment a little bit on the rise of AI and how we can both use it if we need to, but also be careful with it with our kids.
- [57:41]
C
Yeah, I would love to say that we can put the genie in the bottle and we absolutely cannot. And one of the things that I really dislike the most about AI in relation to kids is the way that especially like companies that, that work with schools and in some way market toward children or work with children, have been very quick to adopt AI because it's very easy to sell things like individualized lessons or tailor made practice questions that will address exactly what your child's deficits are. That's all AI, that is all LLM. And the thing I really feel umbrage about with that is that that means that they're also like learning from student information and from student input. So I have a series that I have done which I call like 1 minute or 90 second digital literacy lessons. And a lot of them have to do with AI and finding ways of talking about AI, almost like the way you would talk to like someone who's never used a search engine or like perhaps like your grandparents about like what Google is. You'd be shocked at how helpful that can be. My, we were sitting around and I, my kid asked me like an objective question and I gave the answer and almost immediately my kid was like, I don't know, I'm going to ask Alexa. And so I was like, okay, where is Alexa getting that information? Does Alexa know things? Does Alexa have information? And we just even that like, like, because yes, Alexa is AI, right? Kids don't necessarily think of it the same way, but even having those conversations of like, do computers know things? And again, this is not an old conversation. I remember being 10 in my 6th grade math class and I remember our teacher just begging the room and saying like, I don't care what the calculator says the answer is. You need to make sure your answer makes sense. Like the calculator is not smarter than you. And it's this, it's really a similar idea of thinking like, okay, I know that the computer seems smart or whatever, but like you are always more intelligent than the technology and having conversations around, you know, where is this information coming from? Is this a person? Does it have a personality? Why would it tell you this? One of the things that I found to be really helpful is what I called an AI audit, which is like, have your kid ask an LLM a question that they know really well. That is maybe, like, niche. Like, maybe it's like, how do I make a pot on a pottery wheel? Or how do I, you know, do a 360 on a snowboard? Right? Like. Or a really niche question about, like, a fandom they love or something, right. And ask it to ChatGPT or an LLM and then review the answer and see, like. Like, what did they get wrong? What did they get right? And then what can we glean from this? Like, what else does this mean? What is it reliable for? What is it unreliable for? At least it's a starting point because, like someone I noticed said earlier, it really is about digital literacy. We want kids to be digitally literate, and that means we do have to protect them from some things. And we also want to look for ways to help them grow skills that they may need as they get older.
- [61:12]
B
The skill of vetting is the skill, Huge, huge skill. That's the critical thinking skill, is vetting information, being able to differentiate what is real and what is not. And for most kids right now, it feels magical. Everybody who sees it for the first time, it's magical. The language is so kind of fluent, and it feels approachable and it's very friendly. And so we have to help kids during this period where it feels novel to recognize that it's actually pretty banal. The initial reaction is going to be marveling at it because it is kind of an amazing technology. The fact that it was even capable of being created is a pretty big achievement in human development for technology. Once you're over the awe, however, you have to be sure that what it's giving you, what it's serving you, is valid. It kind of reminds me of, like, being in awe of a roller coaster, but you still want to make sure, like, that all the belts buckled and that the coaster itself has been reviewed. Right. Like, we want to vet things that we trust our lives with. And AI is that kind of space.
- [62:22]
C
Yeah. Another example I remember, I think you and I have talked about before, is sit down with your Kid and ask ChatGPT A. A question that should be random. So this is at real. I've done before and where I show. Like, if you ask ChatGPT to give you a random number, it will not. Right. Like, if you say, give me a number between 1 and 107 times out of 10 it will give you the number 42, which is like, obviously a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy thing, because again, it isn't a calculator.
- [62:53]
B
It's not thinking right.
- [62:54]
C
It's not thinking right. And if you specify I want a random number, it only gave me like four different numbers every time and they always ended or had a certain digit in them. Even doing something like that with your kids, just looking at that critically and saying like, oh, that surprises me, or this doesn't or I think another thing to keep in mind is pay attention to how you might notice your child interacting with or using AI tools or how they might speak about them. Because already I feel like we see a really big difference in how adults think about interacting with AI versus kids. Like, kids, I think more like tweens and teens are increasingly using AI as a search engine. And that is something also even that conversation of, like, what's the difference between Googling an answer and asking ChatGPT, like, what happens? How are these different? Even using that as a way of talking about the purpose, right? Like, yes, I want to make sure roller coaster is safe and would I use a roller coaster to commute to work? Right? Like, you're going to have different purposes.
- [63:56]
B
Yes.
- [63:56]
C
What's an appropriate use case? And what are the times that. That really, I should be avoiding this? Or what are the signs that, like, actually this isn't reliable? Because as you said, yes, it's about source vetting and that literacy piece. I think the more ways that we can make it feel relevant to kids, like, if I talk to kids about, like, well, we have to make sure that your source is reliable in your research paper. I sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. But if it's like, hey, how do you know that, like, the thing you hear on TikTok is true? Right? Or how do I know what ChatGPT tells me is real? Those are actually showing up in not only our kids, like all of our lives, right? Like, it's showing up in all of our lives. So making it clear to them that, like, yes, these skills, they don't just live in academics, they don't just live at school, they do affect the rest of our lives, but give them ways of seeing that.
- [64:48]
B
That reminds me then a little bit of this last comment from one of our attendees. She said, as AI emerges with greater efficiency and power, how do we stay with noticing when we ourselves are often confused, spending time scrolling or being hooked by ads when our own attention is distracted? I think part of what we're dealing with, even in the control of our kids, is we feel a loss of control ourselves. So we're trying to protect them from the feeling of the wasteland of digital life for ourselves. Do you have any parting words for the adult? How can we approach screens with a healthy relationship for ourselves so that we model that, but also live it for our own benefit?
- [65:33]
C
I think one of the most powerful things that an adult in any capacity, any caregiving or leadership capacity, I think one of the most powerful things that we can do with kids is to admit we were wrong and admit we don't know something. And I also know how scary that feels, right? Like, because it feels like a loss of control. And we feel that if we admit that, that we've somehow failed our kids. But, like, think about being a kid, you know, when you knew. When adult didn't know something, right? Like, we understand that adults are not infallible, right? And being able to admit that and then take on the ownership of, I don't know, but I'm going to learn it or I made a mistake and here's what I'm going to do differently. It shows our kids that they are not the only ones that have skills that they need to work on and they're not the only ones that need to grow. I think the more ways we can find way of modeling that we script a lot when kids are babies. We know, oh, I have to say everything I do so that they'll learn how to talk. And then we kind of stop doing that. And I think especially with digital wellness and literacy, I have done that myself where I've said, you know, I am sad and I kind of just don't want to feel sad. So I'm gonna play some Zelda because I think it will distract me. And you know what? Like, distracting yourself with technology is not always the healthiest thing to do, right? But at least I will own it and say, hey, I'm gonna try this. And then after like 30 minutes, once I said, okay, I kind of got a break. I can tell I'm still sad. So I don't think that actually helped me. I think it just distracted me. So I'm going to turn this off and I think I'm going to go for a walk and let's go walk down to the park so that our kids are seeing that we're works in progress and we're trying these things and so that their skill is not hidden from them. Because otherwise what they see is they see an adult, like, magically, like, turn the TV off and go do bills. Right. Like, as if we're like programming. Right. So giving ways for them to see us find that balance. You know, I think I mentioned this in the book, but, like, when we're choosing rules for our kids, let them choose a rule for you. Like, let them choose something that would have to if it. Maybe it's a rule that needs to apply to everybody in the family, but give some of that to them in some way that you'd be okay with so that you're not the only one, they're not the only one that is, like, working on this, that you're in it together. And then if it's hard, it can be hard for both of you. Right? Like, we can talk about those things together. Then it's a shared experience. So more ways of connecting. I think that goes a long way.
- [68:21]
B
I really love that. I wanted to close with your very last paragraph because I think it's so good. Whatever plan you choose to put in place, trust that you have the tools and structure you need, not only to make screen time work, work for you, but to raise digitally literate kids who can thrive both on a screen and in the real world. And I think that's what I love about your work. You are really going to bat for both things being true and reconcilable, not that they live separate from each other. Ash, thank you so much for writing this book and for coming to this webinar and on this podcast.
- [68:58]
C
Oh, thank you so much, Julie. It was such an honor to be here. And thank you so much for having me. And thank you to everyone for attending.
- [69:05]
B
Well, make sure you buy their book at. I think we've put links in the comments, but we will also post them in the show notes. And Ash, thank you again and good luck to everyone as you head back out there into the digital spaces. I know you're all going to do a better job because Ash gave us so many great tools. Good night, everyone. Bye. Okay, that's another brave writer episode in the books. Thanks for joining Melissa and me today. We love it when you leave us reviews, when you send us comments via text message. We read them all. We also couldn't do this show without our fabulous production team at Nova or Jeannette hall, the brave writer team member who handles all those administrative details you know nothing about. In the meantime, we hope that you have a fantastic week. Keep going. Think well. We're rooting for you.