← Parenting in a Tech World
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- [00:00]
A
2025 was a year where kids in tech collided in new ways. From viral numbers that had classrooms and in n outs buzzing, to governments stepping in with landmark online safety laws, we saw how digital life shaped young people for better and worse. So today we'll rewind the biggest shifts in slang, safety policy and pure Internet culture. We'll talk about what that looks like in your kid's world and how you can make sense of it alongside them.
- [00:37]
B
Okay, so it's hard to believe another year has come and gone. You know, not just personally, but everything that happened in 2025 is. It's crazy to think that we're about to kick off into 2026. So some big things happened, especially, you know, in the world of policy or digital safety movements. You know, we have Australia Social Media Age ban, the Kids Online Safety act came back into play. So just a couple of things to think about and I don't know if you have any immediate thoughts on those that you wanna share.
- [01:13]
A
You don't know if I have thoughts? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, it's wild. It's wild that an entire country and continent has now banned social media for children under 16. That is amazing. I didn't think that that would happen so soon. And it did. And it did. Thanks to Jonathan Haidt's book the Anxious Generation and the movement that has followed. I'm so grateful that the government of Australia has leaned on data, has not been influenced by big tech lobbyists and has done the right thing for its children. And I firmly believe that we are going to see that country, those children's rates of mental health issues, et cetera, decline because of that. Now that's the hopeful outlook. Right. Obviously there's issues with will the platforms actually comply in a meaningful and effective way and will children find and utilize workarounds? So I think that the ban, I think it was 49 million Australian dollars. These platforms will be fined if found to have, you know, not complied with it.
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B
Wow.
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A
That's not, that's not nothing.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Even for them. So there's an incentive to comply. You know, we asked in the Facebook group, Parenting in a tech world that has over 600,000 parents in it, you know, to our Australian friends, what's it like? You know, what was it like to have a 14 year old wake up one morning and all of a sudden they can't use Snapchat? Right. Did that actually happen? So it's really encouraging, it's really exciting and we're all watching it. Right. The whole world is watching Australia to see how this plays out.
- [03:03]
B
I love it. You kind of started to touch on this. But, like, how. How might these laws change the way that families are navigating apps, social media, and how. How are they gonna navigate that together?
- [03:15]
A
I mean, honestly, it's like a lifeline for parents because currently, at least in the United States, parents feel like they're the only ones that are holding firm. Right. Every kid is like, but I'm the only kid. And now parents in Australia can say, well, you're not. You're not the only one. And this is a law. This isn't just me being your parent and doing what's best for you. This is a law.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so I think it's. It's wind in their sails, and that's what we need. Parenting is already so freaking hard. Add tech, social media, addictive algorithms. You add all of that in and it's just too much. We need help. We need help from our government, we need help from the social media platforms. And so this is. This is really exciting.
- [04:03]
B
I love it. On the opposite side of that, do you think it's. And the answer can be no. Are there any unintended consequences when tech companies become sort of age gatekeepers?
- [04:15]
A
Of course there are. You know, I don't know what they all might be yet because I'm still in the, like, excited camp. Right. But it was interesting. You know, the social media platforms were asked what they thought about this, and TikTok in particular. I forget who their representative was that gave this quote, but they said, you know, this could push children, you know, into dark corners of the Internet that aren't regulated by this law, because it's not a law against the entire Internet. It's a law against social media companies. And while I don't. I don't generally, like, agree with TikTok on a lot of things, they weren't wrong about that.
- [04:50]
B
Right.
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A
So, you know, what's not covered under this law or banned under this law is Roblox and other places where we know children are as well as predators. So nothing is going to be foolproof, but it's important. And then on the flip side, when these platforms have a responsibility to figure out a child's age and then take action because of it, you know, what sort of data are they accessing? Are they being responsible with it? Speaking of Roblox, what happened this year, they. Oh, my gosh, they are under so much fire right now. Bad PR year for them. But they, because of that, have rolled out facial recognition initiatives to help Identify how old a child is and to put them into more age appropriate experiences. What I liked about that development is that they said they're going to use that likeness image to identify the child's age and then delete it if they're deleting it right away and like clearing, clearing the servers. Good. But I can see how that, that, you know, people pii could be used in the wrong way and, or to target children with even more ads and, and to keep them in the app, you know, longer. And it's just, we are so new to this, right? We are so early. So we're all watching.
- [06:10]
B
Yeah, I love it. All right, a bit lighter topic now. Looking back on 2025, one of those things being slang and different trends that kids latch onto, probably the most popular and I'm sure anyone listening or watching already knows what I'm gonna say. But it's six, seven.
- [06:29]
A
Oh my gosh, Sam. Oh my gosh. I don't know if you've seen any of the videos, particularly of in n out restaurants. You know, they call tickets and like they get to number six, seven. Everybody's like, whoa, you know, it's a confetti gun machine. Like it's a whole thing. I think I even read recently where they like stopped calling out that number.
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B
They're taking it off. It's not an option to be ticket number 67 or 67 anymore at an in and out because kids were just going too crazy.
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A
That's so sad.
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B
So that's, you know, that's one thing that everyone saw a lot of in 2025. Another thing that's interesting is kind of that algo speak that kids are using to get around the moderation that different apps have. So which I.
- [07:22]
A
Sorry to interrupt. I just did that on the way to studio. I was in traffic. And so if you're, if you watch that video of me in the car and it's wiggly, like not my fault, but. And by the way, I was wearing a seatbelt too. You just couldn't see it. So don't me about that. But I was talking about suicide and I know that if I talk about suicide on the platforms, they might throttle back my content. So it's not shown to as many people. So I just had to reference it as the thing that children are dying by, you know. But speaking of algo speak, children might use the word sewer and then side or sewer slide or. Yeah, there's so many ways that children, you know, use slang, use emojis, like segs, like letter S. And then eggs like you would scramble in a pan to talk about sex. I mean, it's. You gotta hand it to them, they're very creative.
- [08:18]
B
Yeah. I mean, the list goes on. We update our slang and emoji guides non stop because they're constantly coming up with new and different things to say. Why do some of these trends catch on and spread so quickly? Like six, seven, I feel like happened and like, overnight it didn't. Like, it just blew up and it has not stopped.
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A
Yeah, it was insane. Well, I mean, back in our day, you know, things got popular because of television.
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B
Yeah, like the television, right, those old things.
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A
The playground, cable, Nickelodeon, mtv.
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B
Yeah.
- [08:59]
A
Celebrities, Tiger Beat magazine. I don't know. But now a lot of children either have older siblings, ride a school bus, or do after school activities with other kids that have connected tech, or they themselves have connected tech. And so trends are super present and pervasive. You know, it's wild to think about the fact that, like, before social media and the Internet, let's just call out the country Germany, like, they would be wearing fashion and, like, listening to David Hasselhoff, like, if you like, a little bit later than America did. Right. Because it had to take time to travel there. But. But now, whether you're a German teenager, a Japanese teenager, American teenager, you're all on the same TikTok, seeing the same viral videos in a way. And so it spreads. Anything spreads quickly and universally. Just what's faster than Wildfire? I don't know, but like that.
- [10:03]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that parents obviously want to learn these slang terms and what these emojis mean, to decode them just strictly to understand what they mean. But do you think that there's a world where parents learning them almost helps them connect with their kids too?
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A
It helps them connect. It also helps them stop, as our colleague and friend Whit says. He said in Slack the other day, like, the best way to get my kids to stop saying it is for me to start saying it.
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B
Genius.
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A
Yeah. I mean, and the amount of adults that dressed up as 6, 7 for Halloween like, had to immediately make a cringe. Yeah. In fact, I was gonna dress up as that, and then I was like, too many people are doing that.
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B
Too trendy.
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A
No, just gonna be. Gonna be good old Garth from what's that movie. Thank you, Wayne's World. I almost said Dumb and Dumber. I'm confusing what I want to be next year. I don't know if I want to be orange tuxedo or blue tuxedo, but definitely Going to be one of those from Dumb and Dumber. Love it. I can't wait. The whole cane thing and everything.
- [11:11]
B
Anyway, be on the lookout for that next year bolo. All right. In similar vein, moving on to more like emojis specifically, you know, they get repurposed in shorthand communication. But so, like, you were saying, like s. And then the egg emoji segs is there. I mean, we have a list of emojis in their meanings. Can any of them mean anything harmful? And do you have any, like, examples or how they might be harmful?
- [11:54]
A
Yeah, I mean, the plug emoji, until I learned what it meant, I was like, what's so bad about this other than, like, you like electricity or, like, be careful when you're playing with electricity or don't let kids near outlets. Right, right. Like, I don't know. Yeah.
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B
As a kid, like, don't put the fork in there. Right.
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A
Yes.
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B
That was it.
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A
Definitely don't do that. But to learn that a plug meant, like a hookup for drugs, all of a sudden I was like, whoa, whoa. And then to see and recognize how many times it was, you know, referenced in rap or hip hop or Internet culture of like, you know, and you're just like, man, there's so much that can go by parents without them knowing it. You're closer to the guides now. Is there anything that stands out to you? Because it's been a minute since I've. I've looked at them because honestly, it's like, it's kind of heavy for me.
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B
Yeah.
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A
I published a lot of the ones that we surfaced in my book that launched in March of this year, and I had to. I just had to, like, take a break. In fact, like, I had to step away from my Instagram. I am spending less time on my phone and social media this year for my own personal mental health.
- [13:16]
B
Yes.
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A
And I. I let the bark algorithm do that work for me now.
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B
I love that. I think, you know, one that kind of caught me off guard and I guess maybe it shouldn't have or. I don't know. But the orange and black squares referring to pornhub.
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A
Yes.
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B
Yes, I had. No. And I don't think any parent would have ever figured that out or had any clue what that might have meant. No.
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A
You're like, oh, my kid's excited about Halloween. Cool. Yeah.
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B
Like, it's, It's. What's interesting is that it can be the simplest of things, you know, like, some of them, it's like the corn emoji for porn, which, by the way,
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A
why would you make that association?
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B
Right.
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A
You. You wouldn't.
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B
Right.
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A
Until you know. And then you can't unsee it.
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B
Yeah. And then you're like, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
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A
Right?
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B
Or, you know, like there's just some. That one we often talk about is the little noodle emoji. Yelp sending nudes.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Like once you understand, you're like, duh. But if you're not thinking about it, I mean, you would have no idea. And you just, you know, it doesn't. It seems so. I think because emojis by nature are cute and fun little things, we just assume that that's all that they are.
- [14:31]
A
Oh, man, I'm so glad that you pointed that out because it goes to show you that just because it's animated and vibrant in color and cutesy does not mean it's safe. I can't tell you how many parents actually, I can tell you because you're there with us right there in the front lines have been like, you know, I just thought my kid was watching a cartoon, but it turns out Superman and Wonder Woman were simulating sex. Or like, hello, Roblox. Right. It's animated, but it's not all appropriate. Right. So.
- [14:59]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, we were talking about that, something about that today, I think with the Sora and Disney announcement.
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A
Oh, sorry. I'll stay close to the mic. Oh my gosh. Yeah, okay. Okay. So I love Disney. I love ChatGPT. I use it all the time. Right. But what the actual face palm. Are they thinking like, like what? Yeah, what? And the character, like it's, it's like characters that are Targeted kids. Kids 3 to 10 years old.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Like they look up to these characters, these Marvel characters, you know, Zootopia, like Zootopia 2 is now the latest, greatest thing in the theaters right now. And it's like they're. Are they really trying to get kids to go to SORA to interact with these characters and create short form video content? Is that what we're doing? Yeah, it seems like what we're doing
- [16:01]
B
and then share it wherever with whoever. Yeah, I mean, speechless, like hello.
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A
Do we not know? I don't think everybody knows that. OpenAI is. Is currently facing multiple lawsuits because their algorithm didn't help to stop suicides. Right. Children were conversing with AI like a companion. And we're. We're encouraged to go ahead and leave the planet.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Like it's not safe yet. Let's not encourage kids to go there.
- [16:37]
B
Right. And I think, you know, what kids often don't understand or realize is that they feel like they can't talk to their parents or their friends about things. So they are unfortunately resorting to having these conversations with literal robots and chatgpt whatever AI platform you're using. And, and because the AI is so human, like, I mean, it really does feel like, I think on the episode with Joshua and Brock of Parent Protect, he was actually saying, like he started calling the AI like by a name. And he was like, whoa, like I need to step back. Like, this is a thing, it is an it, it's not a person. But you get so comfortable talking to it. And you know, I mean, even like my own personal use, I'm teaching it things about myself for it to help me make decisions. And I'm like, wait, should I be
- [17:29]
A
telling it all of these things?
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B
So if me as a 32 year old is doing that, imagine what kids are telling all of these platforms.
- [17:37]
A
So I want to, I want to zoom in on something called sycophony. I think I can never say it right, which is not good because I speak publicly for a living, but I actually have it up right now in my browser because I wanted to talk about it. And yeah, AI sycophony, I want to say sync like a. Anyway, AI cacophony is when LLMs, large language models, excessively agree with, flatter or mirror a user's beliefs, even when incorrect, often due to training methods that favor preferred responses. And so this has a lot of risks. It can reinforce false beliefs, it can harm users that are in distress, and it reduces AI's reliability for important tasks like medicine or science. So, you know, researchers are working on mitigation, but it's a significant challenge for developing trustworthy AI. And so when you're encountering something as a child that excessively agrees with you and flatters you, you're going to be drawn to it. And so we need to be educating our children. Like, obviously you don't have to use the word sacophony because I can't even say it half the time. But like, let them know that it's not all real, right?
- [19:02]
B
Yeah, I just pulled that up while you were talking about it and I was reading, of course, the AI results that were capturing and telling me all crazy, reinforcing delusion, contextualizing bad behavior. Like the example is it's totally fine that you lied to your partner. Like, just, that's crazy. I hadn't, hadn't heard of that before.
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A
Although we're gonna pronounce this, I'VE gotta literally have a pronunciation up. Here we go. Put it by the mic. Sycophancy. Sycophancy. Okay, to the again. Sycophancy. Sycophancy. Whatever. Can we get an easier word to say than that, Honestly? Okay, next. Sorry.
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B
No, you're good.
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A
Sycophancy.
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B
Anything else on the topic of AI that we didn't hit that we should hit as kind of like a recap of 2025, but also things to. To be mindful of as it continues. It's only going to get more powerful.
- [20:08]
A
I love technology. I wouldn't have the career or the life that I have without it. But I have never been more convinced that it is not what children need to be utilizing as much as they are than today. The amount of endorphin and dopamine spikes that they are getting from things that aren't real is. It's scary and it's sad because it's stealing their joy from human interaction, from their pets, from their toys, from nature. And we have got to protect childhood. We have the rest of our lives to be tethered to these things for whatever we want to do, personal or professional. But like birth to age 16, such a small window and critical window of time. Let's dial it back, please. Like, please. I don't know what, like, what else do I need to say? Right. So, yeah, less is more. Less is more.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You've got 17 to like a hundred. Yeah. To be in front of a screen, plenty of time.
- [21:20]
B
I mean, even right now, to your point, I want to be more mindful of the time I'm spending on my devices. And every Sunday when I get the screen time report, I'm like, yeah, that's too much.
- [21:32]
A
No, I mean, there's no windows in the studio right now. And I get it. Cause we need to control light and sound. But I can't wait to get outside. I'm like, I need fresh air. Oh, my gosh. I don't know. I see the world in a different way now. I can't go back. And I'm hoping. I'm hoping that this next generation of children will be healthier than. Than the ones, you know, my son's age and Mike, your son's age and yeah, it's just really sad. It's really sad what has happened to kids. And it's not their fault. And so we have to be. Be better for them. And so I'm so grateful to work, you know, for Bark Technologies. That is one of. Honestly, one of the only companies on. On the planet that is actually prioritizing safer tech for kids. Cause it's not about no tech for kids. Right. Tech is a tool, but let's just do it in a better, smarter, safer way. And it's not that hard. It's not a crazy concept. It just makes a lot of sense.
- [22:33]
B
Yeah. As we think about 2025 and looking ahead to 2026, I think I'll bring it back to what we started with. This social media age ban in Australia is kind of like, I think it's gonna kick things into high gear. I think Jonathan Haidt and the anxious generation really, really got people to open their eyes and start paying attention. And it really has become more of a movement now. So as we're thinking about 2026, if you could, you know, take 2026 before it exists, put it in a box and put the prettiest bow on it, what would it look like as far as kids and technology and being online?
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A
Ooh, I love that question. Great question. Do you do this for a living?
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B
Came straight out of nowhere. So I'm proud of myself too.
- [23:20]
A
It would be every school in the nation is phone free, bell to bell. It would be passage of meaningful Kids Online Safety act that included Sammy's Law. It would be more and more teenagers leading by example and showing like, you know, it's not. It's not cool to be on Snapchat. And actually that's happening.
- [23:49]
B
Yes.
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A
It has decreased in popularity. So just having those, those older teenagers that have lived through some of that awful stuff help influence their younger brothers and sisters to be like, this isn't the way to go, bro. Like, let's get outside. Let's interact in real life. Let's build our emotional resilience. Love it.
- [24:08]
B
Yeah. Cool.
- [24:09]
A
Oh, well. And so sorry. Let's add this in too. It would be that parents opt for the bark phone and the bark watch over an iPhone or an Apple watch. Like just a no brainer.
- [24:24]
B
No brainer.
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A
Your kids first tech should be safer tech. And Apple is not safe for your kids.
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B
Yeah. You only get one choice and one chance to do it for the first time. And it should be with us. Yeah.
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A
Like save Apple for later. Apple's great. I love Apple. I have Apple stuff.
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B
Right.
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A
It's not for kids.
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B
Mic drop.