1KHO 668: How Much Uninterrupted Time Can You Get With The People You Love | Ben Gillenwater, Family IT Guy

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Episode: 1KHO 668: How Much Uninterrupted Time Can You Get With The People You Love | Ben Gillenwater, Family IT Guy
Host: Ginny Yurich
Guest: Ben Gillenwater
Date: January 3, 2026

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Overview

This episode features a wide-ranging, practical, and sometimes sobering conversation between Ginny Yurich and Ben Gillenwater—known online as "Family IT Guy." The main theme centers on understanding how technology, especially rapid advances since 2012, has changed parenting, childhood, and family connections. Ben, a cybersecurity expert with over 30 years’ technology experience, details the risks—predominantly to children—of our ubiquitous digital world, offers data-driven insights, and shares practical strategies for reclaiming safe, meaningful time with loved ones. Throughout, the discussion maintains a focus on encouragement, empowerment, and practical guidance for families.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ben’s Background & Motivation

Timestamps: [01:15]–[08:41]

• Ben’s journey: Started in tech at age 14, worked up to chief technologist for a $10B division of Northrop Grumman, became an entrepreneur, then pivoted to “Family IT Guy” to help families navigate Internet safety.
• Personal touch: Despite being a tech expert, Ben shares mistakes he made with his own son and how that motivated his mission to make technology safety accessible to parents.
• “One of my specialties is translating complexity into normal language. I know how to talk about technology to people that are not technology experts.” (Ben, [08:36])

2. How the Digital Landscape Fundamentally Changed

Timestamps: [09:44]–[11:00]

• “Safety” wasn’t always attached to computers; the tipping point was when:
  • Computers became widely interconnected—beginning with BBS and AOL, escalating with the open Internet.
  • Personal mobile devices put unfiltered Internet access into kids’ pockets after 2012.
• “It’s the stranger danger thing, but now it’s anonymous and at scale.” (Ben, [10:30])

3. The Scale and Depth of the Online Threat

Timestamps: [11:25]–[15:17]

Child Exploitation

• 8 million children go missing worldwide annually. According to Shauna Hoffman (CEO, International Center for Missing & Exploited Children), nearly 100% of these cases now have an Internet component. ([12:11]–[13:24])
• The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline saw reported child sexual exploitation cases in the U.S. balloon from 187,000 in 2023 to 546,000 in 2024, with 100,000 involving AI-generated images, and a projected 1 million by end of 2025.
  • “I’m going to drop some stuff here at the top of the episode because it frames the way I think about this… and it might frame the way that everybody listening thinks about it, too. And it’s pretty heavy stuff.” (Ben, [12:11])

Youth Mental Health & Suicide

• Reliable global trend data shows alarming spikes in child/youth suicide beginning 2007–2019, highly correlated with smartphone and social media adoption—tripling in the 10–14, 15–19, and 20–24 age groups.
  • “It tripled. And when I graphed it out and that graph painted on my screen for the first time, changed my perspective a lot.” (Ben, [18:38])
• Suicide is now the #2 cause of death for children and young adults in the US, after car accidents.

Practical Note:

• Ben’s website, familyitguy.com, provides transparent charts mapping suicide rate increases to major technology and social platform rollouts.
  • “If you look at the graph… you notice those lines go up and up and up with the release of each of those platforms.” (Ginny, [21:01])

4. Pillars of Protection & Main Drivers of Online Danger

Timestamps: [24:35]–[29:25]

Three Pillars:

• Exploitation
• Suicide/Mental Health
• Harmful Content and Time Drain (Dynamics of how screens consume and even steal family time)

The Two Most Impactful Interventions:

1. Avoid Addictive Algorithms / Bottomless Feeds
   • Includes social media, endless-scroll platforms, and YouTube.
   • “If you avoid addictive algorithms, you avoid those charts, you avoid those suicide statistics.” (Ben, [25:44])
2. Avoid Anonymous Online Chat
   • Predators hunt for children via chat in social media and online games (Roblox, Fortnite, etc).
   • “They don’t go to the park in the van and risk getting caught anymore. They go on Roblox and they find kids that are vulnerable and they groom them.” (Ben, [27:20])

• Ben emphasizes that focusing on these two interventions can remove the majority of serious risk, and that ultimately building skills and open communication in children is more powerful than any set of technical rules.

5. Addiction & Behavioral Change in Kids

Timestamps: [30:12]–[34:21]

• Ben shares his own son’s story: Getting an iPad at age 5 led to noticeable behavioral changes (withdrawal from outdoor play, obsession, ruined sleep)—classic addiction-like symptoms.
  • “Dinner was an interruption from the iPad. He would want to go to bed later because of the iPad. These are behaviors that demonstrate addiction.” (Ben, [31:35])
• Acknowledges the challenge parents feel in “going against the grain,” especially when tech is normalized by schools, peers, and culture.

6. Modeling Healthy Tech Use: Tech-Free Tuesday & Beyond

Timestamps: [34:32]–[41:13]

• The importance of parents modeling device boundaries alongside children.
  • “We have to start with ourselves. Because it’s just as hard for us to put the devices down as it is for them.” (Ben, [34:55])
• Rationale for “Tech-Free Tuesday”:
  • Togetherness, stillness, and time “with nothing in between us.”
  • Even small changes (one tech-free meal a week) are powerful.
  • “How much uninterrupted time can I get with the people that I love? And I mean uninterrupted.” (Ben, [39:42])

7. Navigating Tech at Friends’ Homes & Community Standards

Timestamps: [42:01]–[43:19]

• Normalize conversations with other families about tech rules on playdates.
• Practical strategies: Suggest non-digital activities, pre-establish rules (e.g., “No first-person shooter games”), consider hosting more often for environment control.

8. Artificial Intelligence Risks for Kids

Timestamps: [43:19]–[48:25]

• “Never let a child use AI alone. Do not let your kids use AI alone. If they’re going to be exposed to it, do it with them—and I mean, 100% of the time.” (Ben, [43:49])
• AI mimics human behavior but cannot model truth, values, or ethics; may foster unhealthy attachments and facilitate new forms of harm.
• Data centers: AI systems require enormous energy and water resources; the data collected feeds into more effective (and lucrative) advertising.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Internet's transformation of risk:
  “It’s the stranger danger thing, but now it’s anonymous and at scale.” (Ben, [10:30])

• On the emotional burden of the work:
  “I hate this so much, and I wish that I didn’t have to say these things, but people need to know.” (Ben, [15:42])

• On smart devices as chemical addiction tools:
  “These are devices that are meant to be chemically attractive. And so it is a chemical addiction. So I addicted my kid. Like I gave him that.” (Ben, [31:44])

• On what matters most:
  “What I value most is, how much uninterrupted time can I get with the people that I love? And I mean uninterrupted. No dings, no buzzes, no nothing.” (Ben, [39:42])

• On AI and children:
  “Never let a child use AI alone. Do not let your kids use AI alone… These are systems that are meant to mimic human communication… not truth systems, not ethics systems, not your family’s values systems.” (Ben, [43:49])

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Useful Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:15] Ben’s IT background & why he shifted to family online safety
• [09:44] When and why “safety” attached to computers
• [12:11] Scope of child exploitation enabled by the Internet
• [16:45] Suicide statistics among children since the smartphone era
• [22:03] Ginny describes correlating suicide graphs with social media milestones
• [24:35] The three pillars: exploitation, suicide, and harmful content
• [25:12] Defining addictive algorithms and their impact
• [27:20] How predators operate in online games and chats
• [30:45] Ben’s personal story of realizing his child was addicted to the iPad
• [34:48] Discussion of Tech-Free Tuesday: the why and the how
• [39:42] The core question: “How much uninterrupted time can I get with the people that I love?”
• [43:19] Concerns and basics for AI and children
• [47:21] Technical explanation of data centers and AI resource consumption
• [49:21] Ben’s favorite outdoor childhood memory

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Resources & Calls to Action

• Ben’s website: familyitguy.com—Comprehensive guides, downloadable resources, a chatbot for parent Q&A, and a robust community forum.
• Ultimate iPhone Protection Guide, safety agreements, and conversation starters (free downloads on site)
• Stay informed about AI and technology trends via Ben’s articles and podcast.

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Closing

The episode delivers a persuasive, practical, and often moving call for parents to reclaim real-world connection, build tech resistance through modeling and skill-building, and embrace a more mindful approach to technology for the sake of children’s safety, mental health, and family bonds.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

To the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Yurch. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I with the coolest guy who has like this amazing setup. I've never seen anything like it. So all these cameras and teleprompters and he's an IT guy, so it makes sense. Ben Gillenwater, Welcome. Wait, did I say it right? Did I say it wrong?

[A]

Yes, you got it right. Ben Gillenwater.

[B]

Okay, I confused myself. Welcome. Okay. You are doing incredible things to help families keep their kids safe online and just help families in general. You have tons of tools. You have a community that people can use. And so we're talking about a lot of those things today. Just protecting kids from online dangers. You are a 30 year cybersecurity expert. And so what's interesting to me, Ben, is has this been going on for 30 years?

[A]

No, it's the Internet that really probably what we'll talk about a lot today. And a lot of the, you know, tied into like thousand hours outside, I think correlates back to when the Internet started to be in kids pockets, which was heavily started in like 2012.

[B]

Okay, so the Internet's in kids pockets in 2012, but prior to that you've got 30 years of experience working with technology.

[A]

That's right. I started in 95 when I was 14 years old.

[B]

All right, give us, give us all the backstory.

[A]

Oh, gosh, I'll give you the short version. Cause there's a lot there and I love nerd stuff. And so. Yeah, so currently. So right now I'm the family IT guy. I help parents and families stay safe on the Internet. I help parents keep their kids safe on the Internet. Going back to 95, when I was 14, I started working at a computer store. And I was technically a salesperson, but I worked there because I liked computers. And I was the worst salesperson in the whole company. We had a chain of stores and I was the worst person in the salesperson in the whole company because I just wanted to help people build their computers. And I never actually Upsold them on anything. But I used to go on the weekends for fun. My dad would take me to that same store so I could just study all the parts. And then the manager offered me a job. And then one of our customers hired me to help him with his IT business. And then I never stopped since. So I've been at it for over 30 years. I think that was like May of 95 is when I started at the computer store.

[B]

It is your 30 year anniversary this year?

[A]

Yeah, yep. And I got into then like helping companies put their computers together and put their networks together and helping, you know, small businesses when I was a teenager, like, you know, legal offices and things, you know, look, look after all their computers and all their files and stuff. And then eventually I worked for.

[B]

Let's have this teenager do it. That's the one. But you're the one who knows how to do it.

[A]

Yeah, they did it. There was nobody else to do it. So it's like either this kid or, you know, or no one. This random kid that doesn't know anything about business, but he knows how our computers work. So yeah, and so it was super, very quick education. And I ended up running a big data center for a defense contractor in la, this company called Northrop Grumman. And I helped run the data center that the, they built the F18 fighter jets at this facility that I worked at. And so the production line for the F18 fighter jet was in this million square foot building where you could start. On one end of the building was parts bins and on the other end of the building was jets that were minus the wings. And so the massive number of people that ran that facility, their computer systems relied on the data center that I helped operate. And so that's when I was 23 doing that. And then that defense contractor, Northrop Grumman, as it turns out, a quarter of their business. So they, they built aircraft carriers, you know, missiles, fighter jets, tanks. They mowed the lawn for the Air Force. Like they did anything that a government contract would be out for, they did. So they did $40 billion a year in business and as it turns out, 10 billion of that was in it. So they actually did it for the government. And I ended up becoming the chief technologist of their IT business when I was 27. And so at that time I was consulting with all of their, well, not all many of their customers, especially their biggest ones. I would get called in if they needed help. So hey, we can't figure out this thing, you know, the phone system for the state of Virginia isn't working, right? What should we do? You know, or like the. This computer system for the NSA isn't working, right? Can you go help them, you know, figure it out? Or like the county of San Diego is trying to figure out how to put together their network, you know, can you go advise them? And then along with it, of course, teams of other brilliant people. We had 10,000 people in this IT group, but I was the senior technologist. And then my career took me down. I became an entrepreneur. I've been an entrepreneur effectively since 2012. I'm a co founder in a gym franchise, have done a bunch of software companies and a bunch of tech startups. And in late 2023, early 2024, I started getting focused on this thing. A lot of people were asking me for help with their kids. You know, hey, Ben, we know that you know how to run data centers for the government and all this stuff, but, like, what do I do with my kid's iPhone and the iPad and the Chromebook at school? And then my kid is seven and they just saw porn because the school filter didn't work. And like, should I give my kid Instagram? And. And you know, I have Instagram and so should they have. You know, Instagram has parental controls. Should I use those? So I started focusing on this topic, and prior to that, I became a dad. And I found out that even though I'm a technology expert, you know, I made a bunch of mistakes with the technology that I gave my son. I gave him an iPad when he was five. I gave him YouTube. You know, I found out that was a mistake. I took YouTube off. We put on YouTube Kids found out that YouTube Kids wasn't any better. We took YouTube Kids off, eventually took away the iPad, but I made a bunch of mistakes. So if I, objectively speaking, am a technology expert and I struggle navigating technology with my own kid because I took the parental controls for granted. It's like, well, they're parental controls and the thing is called kids. And the iPad is made by Apple, and Apple is the most brilliant engineers that there are. And so their parental controls must be effective, right? No. And so I decided to actually stop everything. And now I do family IT guy full time, because this is so important. And the problem is. So we'll talk about this during our conversation today, but the problem is simultaneously very simple and very complicated. Very simple in that we all know, in our gut, we know as parents that our kids staring at their phone isn't good for them, right? It's complicated because everybody around them is doing it because we are doing it. Society, culture, school gives them a Chromebook. So it's not so simple as just like, well, don't do it. We're in this intermingled web, you know, and so. So that's kind of my, you know, here I am trying to help people grapple this and, and understand. One of my specialties is translating complexity into normal language. I know how to talk about technology to people that are not technology experts.

[B]

And this is what you need.

[A]

That's what I do. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, they need it. They desperately need it. This might be a silly question, but, you know, people talk about how screens changed. So I might have watched television in the 80s or the 90s and been far away from the screen. The screen was not as big, it wasn't as close to my face. The shows were slower. And then there were protective measures because you couldn't really come across inappropriate content unless you were maybe up really late. And if there's only one TV in the family room, you know, you're not watching it at 1am if you're 9. And also the, you know, the programming that would been inappropriate for kids would have been later in the, in the evening. And, you know, you could just maybe not have HBO or some sort of cable networks. You could choose to have that as a boundary in your home so, like, your kids have less chance of being exposed to things. So I never really thought about screens in terms of safety, I guess, until, you know, we're dealing with all of these phones. But as someone who's in it, this is my question. Like, at what point did the word safety attach to computers? Like, was it pretty early on where you're like, okay, we could be hacked, There could be, you know, scams that are going on and things like that. Or is that more of a recent.

[A]

Thing in the grand scheme? It's more recent. It started happening when computers became interconnected, Ah, prior to what we currently know as the Internet. We had. We could interconnect our computers via, remember, like, BBS systems, the bulletin boards, like AOL, like the original AOL or CompuServe, or these things where you would dial into a service and connect your computer into their computers.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then, of course, long story short, the Internet of just being this open thing that all computers can connect to. It's like, really this. The most simple analogy is it's the stranger danger thing, but now it's a. Now it's anonymous and it's at scale.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so with anything that's open and anonymous and at a global scale, which there's not many things that are like that other than the Internet.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It becomes. It presents a lot of power. And anything that's powerful can be used, of course. For good or for bad. We have a wealth of information. I heard. I was listening to a podcast last night with Jensen Wang, the CEO of Nvidia, and he was saying how we take for granted how wealthy we are with information.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Information used to not be accessible to everybody, and if you had access to information, you were. That was a wealthy thing. We all have a wealth of information. So that's a good. That's a positive power in many respects. The negative part is that in studying this topic of how do we keep kids safe online? I've come to a pretty stark realization that I really, really, really don't like, and that is that there are a lot more evil people and evil influences in this world than I would have ever imagined. And to the extent that we see it in some of our statistics now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'm gonna. I'm gonna drop some stuff here at the top of the episode because it frames the way that I think about this stuff, and it might frame the way that everybody listening thinks about it, too. And it's pretty heavy stuff. And then we can kind of talk about what to do. So I'm going to frame some problems on a global scale. Eight million children go missing every year.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And the CEO of the International center for Missing and Exploited Children, Shauna Hoffman, who's a really wonderful woman who I had on my podcast recently, she. She told me about that statistic, and It's. It's roughly 20,000 kids a day. What?

[B]

You can hardly wrap your head around that.

[A]

Oh, it's. It's unfathomable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But those are 20,000 individual children going missing, which is 20,000 individual or 40,000 individual parents.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That no longer have their child. And the reason I bring it up here, because Shauna told me that her understanding of this is that nearly 100% of those cases are enabled by the Internet.

[B]

So did she say that it was not a problem, like, 30, 40 years.

[A]

Ago, it was a problem, and then the problem exploded.

[B]

Yeah. So just at scale, it just gotten so much worse. Yeah.

[A]

And then if we. If we bring that into. So that. That. That problem is so big that it's unfathomable. So if we. If we. If we zoom in a little bit. The sister organization to Shawna's organization is called the national center for Missing and Exploited Children. It's a US Organization that's funded by Congress, and they run a tip line where if you are extorted online, you can call them for help and they'll help you. Like, if somebody's taking pictures of you and spreading around, they'll help you get your pictures taken down and stuff, and they'll help connect you with the FBI. And so they have. Their statistics indicate that they got 187,000 reports in 2023 of children being sexually exploited by adults on the Internet, which.

[B]

Is probably so low, though, because people don't even know to do that.

[A]

Right, that's exactly. That's how many were reported to a single tip line.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That people knew about. Wow. Nobody knows. Most people don't know about a cyber tip line from the national center of Missing and Exploited. Who knows about that? Right. Nobody knows about that.

[B]

And still there was 187,000 reports in 2023.

[A]

In 2023. Now, I like to look at changes over time. Right. 2024, 546,000 reports, 100,000 of which were AI generated images where the kid didn't even get trapped into sending a nude photo. Somebody made one using their face.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

And then extorted them with it.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

And then in 2025, by the time the year closes out at the end of this month, there will be about a million cases of children specifically being sexually exploited on the Internet by adults. Okay. So that's problem number one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Problem number two. I. I hate this so much, and I wish that I didn't have to say these things, but people need to know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Sorry. I get a little emotional talking about this.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

In preparing for my lectures, I've read a lot about anxiety and depression in children, and we see headlines about how these massive problems exist, and there's more than ever. Now, the thing is that there's not really good data around anxiety and depression. We don't have, like, common measurement methods with which to establish, like, a global database for, you know, what's the trend over time. What we do have where there is good data is death.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And one of the most severe outcomes of anxiety and depression is suicide.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The World Health Organization has been collecting death certificates and analyzing death certificates since 1951, as it turns out. And they have a database available on their website that anybody can go and use. I went on there and I said, okay, let me see if there have been changes over time. I looked at ages 0 to 39, and I filtered it down to the United States. And I looked all the way back to when their data started in 1951. And then at the time when I looked it up, it went to 2021. And I looked at what percentage of deaths that occurred were suicide for each year in those time frames. And there were three age groups that stood out that had massive changes in suicide rates between the years of 2007 and 2019.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

And just those age groups. Yes.

[B]

Like a massive change in just 12 years, but very short period of time.

[A]

Yes. The ages of 10 to 14, 15 to 19 and 20 to 24, because the WHO groups them into five year groupings. So if we take the ages 10 to 14 of those three groups, they all have pretty much similar patterns to what I'm about to tell you. Ages 10 to 14, 1%, roughly, of deaths were self inflicted in 1951, which even in itself, that's high, right? These are children.

[B]

I don't think so. Yeah, one out of a hundred. Yeah.

[A]

Like, wow. Like, oh my gosh. You know, and then in the 80s and 90s, it went up to like 5%. From 2007 to 2019, it tripled. And to the effect that on average those three age groups, it's up to 20%. And when I saw that and when I graphed it out and that graph painted on my screen for the first time changed my perspective a lot.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I used to give, I used to say in my lectures, like, you know, maybe try to like limit how much, how much screen time your kids have on social media. Maybe you should, you know, be moderate. And then I found out that not only is it 20% of deaths are self inflicted, but that actually means. Now, according to both the CDC and who, that suicide is the number two cause of death for children. First is automotive accidents. Second is suicide. Third is homicide for both boys and girls because they, they measure them separately, but they're both the same.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And so if my job as a dad, amongst other things, is I'm the head of security, and as parents, we all are head of security for our kids.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're meant to keep them safe so that they can stay alive, so that we can grow them, help them grow into healthy, happy, useful, loving, wonderful people. Okay, number one. So we top three causes of death, right? Number one, automotive accidents. So what do we do there? We hope to be able to afford good tires, good brakes, practice defensive driving, don't tailgate people, and in the process demonstrate to our kids how to be safe drivers so that when they get in the car at 15 or 16 or whatever that they can follow suit. Okay, so that's number one. Number two is suicide. And the suicide charts the growth. And this is on my website, by the way. If you go to familyitguy.com I have an article.

[B]

It is one of the most robust websites I've been to, actually. And the graphs are fantastic. You have a lot of articles on there. You have a lot of statistics and you have all the sources linked so people can click on the sources. But. But yeah, you have graphs that show the suicide vs total deaths by age. And you have. What's really remarkable is you plotted on there. So if this ends up someday, you plot it on there when the different social media sites occurred.

[A]

Yes. And you notice those lines go up and up and up with the release of each of those platforms.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so from a scientific methodology perspective, it's very important to separate causation from correlation.

[B]

Right.

[A]

What I'm describing is a correlation. I can't, realistically speaking, correlate a tripling of suicides in children pre Covid. Right. We're not talking about anything we hadn't. We haven't touched Covid yet. I'm talking until 2019. So specifically excluding Covid, a tripling in suicides amongst children that just so happens to coincide and continuously increase at an alarming rate when they started to carry social media in their pockets and in their backpacks and have it in their bedrooms at night.

[B]

Yeah. It's the iPhone that is sort of the. Like everything's the same. The graphs are fantastic. Like if you look at the graph. So I love how you did this along the bottom. You just have these different technological advances that happen. So it's like in 1997, here's the world Wide Web. The line is fairly flat. You know, I mean, there's like some small variations. You got Facebook, the line is still kind of flat. That's in 2005. You got the iPhone. That now is the lowest point. And it goes up from there.

[A]

Yeah. And to be fair, the iPhone and Android and their deployment of their app stores and their ecosystems occurred together.

[B]

Yeah. Right. So basically, because people say iPhone kind of ubiquitously, what I mean is smartphone.

[A]

That's right. Yeah. So not to like single out Apple and. Yeah. It's just.

[B]

Yeah, it's the smart. It's the.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And it's like if that's the interconnectedness, if you interconnect children to global scale adults in an anonymous system and it's in their pocket, apparently this is what happens.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's the problem as I see it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, with that in mind, there are things that we can do.

[B]

Well, let me throw another third one because I'm just spitballing from your website.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because these are really important things. So you're talking about exploitation, you're talking about suicide rates, but you're also talking about harmful content. That's another thing you talk about. You have these three pillars of protection. The strategy, people can find it@the familyitguy.com you'll find a lot there, actually. You have an ultimate iPhone protection guide. You've got all sorts of links to, like, different parental control tools. You've got downloadable resources like a family Internet safety agreement and online predator warning signs. Safe chat, communicate, conversation starters. There's a whole lot there. And you have your own podcast.

[A]

Yeah. And I have a chatbot on the website that's trained on all my work that will consult with you and in depth on all this stuff.

[B]

So. Interesting. Okay. Been doing it since you're 14 years old.

[A]

So.

[B]

So, I mean, those. The two things that you brought up are huge. Right. Those are huge issues. But also you talk about on your website harmful content. So what are you exposed to? And also you bring up on your website just time. You know how much of our time is being sucked away from these things? So it's. It's like the two things you brought up are so big, and then there's more.

[A]

There's more. And I bring those up first because there's a thousand things to think about.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But if you boil it down to two things, you'll knock out about 90% of the problem.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Those two things are addictive algorithms, AKA social media.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

AKA bottomless feeds. So an algorithm is a technical term. The least technical concept is to think about the thing that we all recognize. That is where you have your phone and you scroll and you scroll and you scroll and it never stops.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That is an addictive algorithm.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

In the interest of time, I won't get into the business models behind it. But if we. If you. Just to say quickly, if you look up the SEC reports of any of the major companies involved in this space of creating these algorithms, you can find out where they make their money and why they build what they build.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Very long story short. Facebook and Google, for example, are not social media and search and email companies. They are advertising companies.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So addictive algorithms, number one, if you avoid addictive algorithms, you avoid those charts, you avoid those suicide statistics.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If the correlation is correct. And I feel comfortable I think it is then all those icons in the graph on my website of Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat. And then now we have Sora, the new ChatGPT image generator and actually masquerading as an image generator, which is actually their own version of TikTok. Avoid those things and you avoid the suicide statistics. That's the first one. The second one is anonymous online chat. That is where predators hunt for children. Right. So addictive algorithms are the first problem. Anonymous online chat is the second problem. Anonymous online chat is the chat functions that we're all familiar with in all the major games. Any Internet connected game, Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft, Call of Duty, you know, pick your popular game because chat is amazing. Right. That's where you interact with the other players. That is also where predators hunt for children. I don't say that to be dramatic. I say that as a matter of fact, statistically, objectively, true state of the current world. They don't go to the park in the van and risk getting caught anymore. They go on Roblox and they find kids that are vulnerable and they groom them and they take advantage of them and they exploit them as the numbers demonstrate from that one single tip line. Yeah, so those, the two problems if you, if, if we just say, you know what, forget about everything else, I'm, we're all overwhelmed as parents. There's too much going on. All of a sudden now I got to be a tech expert to be a parent. It's never occurred before in human history. Raising a human now has a new category that did not exist before. Our genetics are not programmed to handle a global scale external threat that lives in our kids pocket. We don't know how to do that. And so it's very helpful to start at the top. And although there could be a thousand things, if you focus on those two things, addictive algorithms, AKA social media and anonymous online chat, you will remove the majority of the risk. And then like you mentioned, there's like content, inappropriate content, we thought there's still porn, there's still AI, there's all these other things. Yeah, you know, but this is where I think skills are more valuable than rules. And in avoiding the first two problems, the algorithms and the online chat, if you approach those problems, if you approach addressing those problems from a skills perspective of like hey kid, hey son, hey daughter, we've learned some new stuff and it turns out that these systems are dangerous and they don't match our family values. And so we're going to make some changes. Here's why we're making the changes. And let me actually show you some of the family IT guy videos for yourself. Because I actually have a lot of parents that tell me they show their kids my videos.

[B]

That's great.

[A]

Kids get it. Like young kids get my videos that I did not intend for. Kids. Yeah, like, like seven year olds watch my Roblox videos and I get all this feedback from parents of like, oh, they don't even want to play Roblox anymore.

[B]

Oh, it's great.

[A]

And so it's a skills building opportunity. And that is the real answer. They have to have the skills and so share with them the mistakes that have been made up until this point, the changes that need to be made as a result and why we're making those changes so that they can learn, so that when they're eventually on their own, they have the skills with which to navigate the whole thing, not just the two problems. It covers everything.

[B]

Can you talk about at the very beginning, you said you gave your son an iPad when he was five. And you said, then you did YouTube, then you did YouTube kids. Then you backed out of all of it. You said you realized it was a mistake. Now at 5, I guess in some ways, depending on when that was. YouTube has an addictive part to its algorithm, I think more so now than it maybe it did in the past. But obviously at 5, he's not dealing with the, what you were talking about, which is like the online chat communication. How did you know it was a mistake?

[A]

That's a great question. I, I knew it was a mistake because his behavior changed in fairly noticeable ways. Specifically, he was waking up earlier to go to the iPad. Oh, he would come home from school and go to the iPad, whereas prior. So one of his best friends lives across the street. If we go out of our front door, we can see his front door.

[B]

That's so fun.

[A]

Like that literally right there. It's amazing. It's like out of the movies. They just have the coolest setup and they go ride their bikes together, they play together, they have a big trampoline, they, you know, they run around in the field. Yeah, well, he didn't do that anymore. He'd come home and go to the iPad.

[B]

Wow. At five, he didn't.

[A]

At five.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Dinner was an interruption from the iPad. He would want to go to bed later because of the iPad.

[B]

Wow. It affects everything.

[A]

These are, yeah, exactly. These, these are behaviors. These are behaviors that, that are, that demonstrate addiction. And so I gave my kid like a digital form of drugs. Because the addiction mechanisms in these systems, I can tell you from experience and how these systems are designed because I know directly I've, my friends work at all these companies and I've, I've around this stuff all the time is they're designed to drip dopamine on a cycle. So, so the devices themselves and then all the software that runs on these devices are meant to be chemically attractive. And so it is a chemical addiction. So I addicted my kid. Like I gave him that. I didn't have to do that. And that is the thing that sticks out to me the most. And that's where I think there's so much we can relate to on a global scale as parents of how easy it is to take this stuff for granted.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And to think that like, well, everybody else is doing it. I want my kid to have tech. I want my kid to have access to these videos. The school gave it to them, which is kills me because my kids elementary school gave him a Chromebook and signed him up for a Google account with his full name and didn't even tell us.

[B]

Yikes.

[A]

Google is an advertising company.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Google is not a. Let me help your kid company. Yeah, Google is. We subsidize the technology that we build by selling ads and we build the tech as, as surveillance devices so that we can sell more ads. And so, yeah, so, so I, I, I gave my kid an addictive drug and then I was like, oh dang, that was a mistake. I took, and then we took it away and it was, you know, had to explain to him why and it was a skills opportunity, you know.

[B]

Yeah, sure.

[A]

Now he knows more than most because he goes to my lectures and like.

[B]

He could probably give it. That's how my kids say. They're like, I could get up and say all the things you say. They've heard it so many times.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I made a mistake. And, and you know what I love about being a dad is being vulnerable with my kid and telling him when I mess up and showing him that a. Everybody messes up. There's no such thing as not messing up. There's no such thing as not making any mistakes.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

I just made a mistake. Here's what it was and here's what I'm going to do about it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that's modeling. It's modeling so much for the kids. Can you talk about this? Tech Free Tuesday. So this is coming up a lot, you know, just taking time off of tech, having tech free spaces. I think it's actually quite intriguing why you say any day can work, but here's why you might consider Tuesday.

[A]

Yeah. First of all, just because it's fun to say, because Tech Free Tuesday is like more fun than like Tech Free Wednesday or something, you know?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But the principle behind it is exactly what you just said, which is that we must model the behavior that we want to see in our kids. We have to start with ourselves. And so one of the ways that we can model that behavior is by doing it all together. Because it's just as hard for us to put the devices down as it is for them. It's harder for kids, actually, because of their stage of brain development, but it's hard for everybody. And so we can do it together and demonstrate that there's value in stillness.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This stuff introduces chaos into the mind. It's true for all of us. That's why it has these effects, these negative effects. So there's value in stillness and there's value in being still together and having.

[B]

A.

[A]

Stimulus free experience.

[B]

Yeah, I like that wording.

[A]

You know, we can sit around the dinner table with nothing else going on. No noise, no inputs, no outside world, just us. And even if we're sitting there just staring at each other, and even if we're not in a good mood or whatever it is, that is one of the most valuable things that we have access to as humans is being around the people we love and having nothing else in the way. So one of the ways you can do that is by grappling with the difficulty of separating yourself first as a parent from your technology by putting it in another room when you get home from work on a Tech Free Tuesday. So the concept is that when parents get home from work, or if you work from home, and if you have a delineation in the end of your workday, you put your phones in a place where you are not. And when the kids come home from school, if they have phones or watches or whatever it might be, or tablets, they go in a place where you are not, which is key.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

These devices are so chemically attractive that the University of Texas did a study showing that students perform worse on their tests if the devices are in their backpacks versus in another room.

[B]

Unbelievable.

[A]

And so put them in a place where you are not.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then go be together as people without the technology. You must separate yourself from the technology and do it together. And then all the way until you wake up Wednesday morning, those things don't exist. And if you go like, well, I use my phone as My alarm. You can still do that. That's fine, whatever. You know, the point is. Or buy a physical alarm. Like Seiko makes little alarm clocks you can buy on Amazon.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The idea is, even if you say, okay, well, that feels like a really big thing to bite off, is a whole Tuesday afternoon or Tuesday evening. Then start smaller. Pick one meal a week. Make it the Tuesday dinner. Let's say, okay, for this hour period of time, we're going to put all the stuff in a different room. It depends on every family dynamic. Every family is different and what your kind of baseline is and where you're starting from. Change is one of the most difficult things a person can do. We, as humans are very afraid of change. We don't like change. Subconsciously, it's a source of fear.

[B]

And consciously.

[A]

And consciously, too. That's true. Right. Both. And so one of the ways to work with yourself is to make changes in small increments. And so, okay, so then start with an hour. If it's not the whole afternoon or the whole evening. You know, we do Sundays, so from Sunday morning when we wake up until Monday morning, the devices don't exist.

[B]

It's great.

[A]

And it is the best day of the week by far. Our kid says it, we say it. There's nothing in between us. You know, I have this, like, personal philosophy that, like, what I value most is, how much uninterrupted time can I get with the people that I love?

[B]

What a great question.

[A]

And I mean uninterrupted.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No dings, no buzzes, no nothing. How long of a thread can we get before the thread is broken by something else?

[B]

And that is historically normal. Right? Because I've heard people talk about how. And I remember this as a kid, it was like, you don't answer the. That if someone calls, especially when it started to be like, telemarketers, and someone calls that dinner, like, you don't answer it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That was like, the norm.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. You value the connection with your family more than you value the whims of somebody that you don't know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that is okay. That is good. That is strong.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and we have. The interconnected nature of these devices brings us all the emotions and opinions and chemicals and whatnot from all these other things that we don't know and that we've never met and strangers and this and that and business incentives and things. That's. Like, what's. We don't. We don't need that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's not good for us, you know, so how do we, how do we get to the point where, and this is very achievable by the way. It's difficult, but it's achievable. Where we control our tech.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It does not control us.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the screen time numbers on your screen, if you go look at your screen time, have your usage statistics that will tell you who's controlling who. The numbers will show you. You can look. That's the funny part is the actual, the tech that addicts you will also show you how addicted you are.

[B]

It's like gloating.

[A]

Yeah. And, and I don't say that, you know, it's, it's easy to feel judged or to feel shame when we talk about addiction. I'm using it in a very practical sense and I, I intend no judgment, I intend only. I, I intend to express that like I'm with, I'm right there with you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we all are. There's, there's, you know, 6 billion people are connected to the Internet. So this isn't a small problem. This is everybody.

[B]

Right. It's a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. So you just offer so much and I want to make sure that people know that they can go to your website, which is called familyit guide.com and find a lot of resources there, including the community. I wanted to wrap up with a couple topics. One, you talk about technology at friends homes and so that's a really good resource that's on your website familyitguy.com where and I feel like this needs to be normalized when you are having like interactions with other families. Our family has some technology guidelines. Can we chat about what you do with screen time during play dates, suggest or provide non digital entertainment options and pre establish expectations when you're over at Jake's today. Our family rule is no first person shooter games. That still applies and you say consider hosting more often. This provides more control over the environment. So it's really helpful like very practical things that people can find on your website because those are big situations, you know, where that didn't, similar to all the other things did not exist before. But I think it's good to be having those conversations. I just wanted to, if you could briefly, even though it is probably the biggest topic of our day and age, touch on AI.

[A]

I'll give you the briefest version that I can and I'll start right at the top with my very succinct and non nuanced advice. Never let a child use AI alone. Do not let your kids use AI Alone. If they're going to be exposed to it, do it with them. And I mean, 100% of the time.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

These are systems that are meant to mimic human communication. That is at their core, what they are and what they do. They are not truth systems. They are not ethics systems. They are not your family's values systems. What they are are systems that have helped kids hurt themselves and be fooled into thinking that they're in relationships with something that doesn't exist.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is psychologically deeply troubling. Be very skeptical. These AI systems as adults, we must approach them with maximum skepticism and with high, hopefully, doses of critical thinking, which, you know, critical thinking is not in large supply.

[B]

Right. I read a statistic that said 20% of high school students have chat relationships. One in five.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Do you think that the data centers. What's the deal with the data? With the data centers?

[A]

Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff with the data centers where people talk about, like, water consumption and stuff like that. Yeah, that's a real thing. And what's happening, why do they need them?

[B]

That's what I'm sort of confused about and can't really wrap my head around. Are they extrapolating out, like at some point they want to have every bit of our data, every bit of our movement, because they don't exist now and things seem like they're fine. So why do they need them?

[A]

Well, data is the most valuable thing that there is right now. And the more data that you have on somebody, the better that you can target advertising to them. And OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT, is an advertising company. They're going to turn on ads here shortly.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You know, Google is leading the way in AI so that they can sell more ads. Now, the way that the computers work, and I'll try to make this as brief as possible as well, because it's a deep one. But the way that the computers work that run these AI systems is different than the way that other computers work or have worked traditionally and all that to say that they, in order to do what they do, they need a lot of energy. A lot of. A lot of electricity.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When you consume a lot of electricity, what comes out? The other side is heat. And so data centers are heat exchangers. And so you have, you have electricity that comes in and you have heat that goes out. And in order to keep the temperatures managed, they use evaporative cooling systems. And that's where the water consumption comes into play. So they, they run water over these big radiator towers and then the water evaporates. And it often uses local freshwater sources in most places. You know that where we get our municipal water from.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And where I suggest people focus their energy when they think about this topic is on the supply side.

[B]

Yes. Right. If we just didn't use it.

[A]

Well, no, I mean, the supplier of the water. So the municipal water company supplier of.

[B]

The data, which is us.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like, it's like, could we walk it back? I guess that's what I've been thinking about, Ben. And I know we're wrapping it up, so maybe we'll come back to this topic another time. Like, let's have another one that's just about AI. But, yeah, obviously the water thing is a big deal. We're in Michigan and they're trying to put them in different places and people are really concerned. We have a lot of water in Michigan and. But I think, you know, it's like, you wonder if we walked it back, like, as a. This is what I think about, like, as a society. And I know you talk about on your website, like, wait till eight, where everyone takes a pledge and the kids don't get cell phones until they're in the eighth grade.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or longer, depending on, you know, what you decide in your community. But it's like, gosh, it's like, could we. If we just didn't use it. I know it's easier said than done. You're like, maybe they would need the data centers. It's kind of wild.

[A]

I mean, that's so. That's true on its face. But the practical matter is it's not going to happen. It's going to be used more and more and more. There's already a billion people that use ChatGPT.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And companies are using it. I get it. Okay. It's just kind of wild. All right, well, we're going to have to come back to that. But here's the thing. If you want to stay informed, you talk about it on your website. So you go to familyit guy.com you're going to find a lot of the things, and then you just know that that's a resource for you because you have things on there about AI and you've got all sorts of articles that are really, really helpful with the graphs and things. You talk about safety, AI considerations for parents and things to look out there. And I know that you just stay on top of the information. So it's super helpful to know people go to family IT guy.com to find all the information. Your own podcast and all of these different things that you're doing to help families stay safe and protect their kids from online dangers. Ben, we always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood? That was outside.

[A]

Oh, lovely. I'll just give you the first one that came into mind, which is riding a jet ski on the Mississippi River. When I was a kid, my grandparents had a place on the Mississippi river that we'd go to in the summertime and they had like the old school stand up jet skis. And as a kid, as a young kid, they would just say, here you go. And I would drive the tractor towing the jet ski, put it in the water and take it out and ride it around.

[B]

Oh, that's incredible. So much better than being on a chat room in Roblox. I love that.

[A]

Oh, yes, man.

[B]

The kids need that though. They gotta have freedom. They gotta be able to take some risks and they've got to be trusted. It makes a huge difference. Ben, thank you so much for what you're doing, for taking all of these things that you've learned since you were 14 years old and funneling that into a system that helps families in this day and age deal with things that people have never grappled with in the history of humanity. Thanks for being here.

[A]

Thank you, Jenny.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by Greenlight. Get this. Adults with financial literacy skills have 82% more wealth than those who don't. From swimming lessons to piano classes, us parents invest in so many things to enrich our kids lives. But are we investing in their future financial success? With Greenlight, you can teach your kids financial literacy skills like earning, saving and investing. And this investment costs less than that. After school treatment. Start prioritizing their financial education and future today with a risk free [e-mail] Spotify greenlight.com Spotify.