Ash Brandin Offers a New Perspective for Navigating Screen Time

Debbie:
Hey Ash, welcome to the podcast.

Ash Brandin:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Debbie:
I am happy to dive into your work. talking about a topic that is always interesting to my community. We’re gonna be talking about screen time. And you have a new book called Power On, Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family. So it was like you had me at hello, I love that idea. And I’d love if you could just as a way of introducing yourself, I already read your bio, but I’d love to know a little bit more about your why and what inspired you to reframe screen time and yeah, just do this work to support families’ relationships with screens.

Ash Brandin:
Yeah, you know, it was very organic in that I kind of ended up on social media, not like against my, not against my will or anything, but kind of like, it just felt like sort of an inevitability. I enjoyed being in sort of like in-person physical opportunities and spaces when I was really focused more on like gaming and education. And then as COVID continued, I realized that that wasn’t something that I was going to be able to do at that part of my life. And so that’s where I was sort of like, well, I guess I’ll kind of maybe I’ll dip my toe in. And at first I really didn’t think that my audience was going to be parents and caregivers. That was not at all where I thought this was gonna go. And at that time in 2021, who was a homeschooler was kind of very different. Many people were homeschoolers at that point in time, but my initial sort of whole like foothold into a space and community and Instagram was a homeschooling community because those are people who are occupying both educational spaces and home spaces and trying to flip-flop between them very seamlessly. And that was when I started to realize, what I thought might’ve been pain points that felt kind of unique to education because these are adults who are not the caregivers who are encountering some of these difficulties, I then realized, these are pain points for everyone. And so my audience is not educators. My audience is caregivers in any sense of the word who are working with kids and trying to navigate this constantly changing world. And so it just kind of happened organically around me. And yeah, now here we are.

Debbie:
And yeah, how do you feel about doing this work? you know, I always say, people ask me about the work that I do. I’m like, this was never on my bingo card, you know, of like career plans. Like I did many different things. Are you happy to find yourself in this space?

Ash Brandin:
You know, it’s funny, I mean, I’m an educator. My day job is, I’m an educator, that’s still my day job. And I believe that this is really good evidence that that is a really big part of who I am because I think a big part of why people are drawn to education is they want to help people but more, they want to empower people. And I think education is, or at least should be, empowering. And if we can empower someone by equipping them with skills or information that they didn’t have before, then we’re giving them, you know, we’re teaching them to fish, so to speak, we’re giving them a whole way of navigating the world or experiencing their world differently and hopefully better or feeling more in control. so to me, that feels very in line with who I am and what motivates me in the rest of my life, so it’s sort of an extension of that. And if I can be helping someone in this aspect of their lives or their parenting, then I’m thrilled for that. Yeah, absolutely.

Debbie:
That’s great. And do you have kind of a core philosophy? I’m thinking of Devorah Heitner, who we’ve had on the show. She’s a friend. We’ve talked a lot about screen time. And one of her core philosophies is mentorship over monitoring. And so I’m wondering, if you think about your big picture philosophy as an approach to screen time, what is that?

Ash Brandin:
I have three main tenants that I say drive my work and they are, screen time is a social equity or social inequity issue. The second is screens can be a part of our lives without being the center of our lives. And the third is that screen time should benefit whole families, which is sort of a riff off my subtitle of my book, Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family. I think that’s often missing in some of these conversations. So yeah, those three things are very vital to what I do.

Debbie:
Could you expand, especially on that first one of screen time being a social equity or inequity issue? What do you mean by that?

Ash Brandin:
Absolutely. So this actually drives like the kind of whole beginning of my book of really norming and kind of reframing the way that we approach these conversations. I think that we, when we’re approaching conversations in a more typical way around screens, as we see is really common in a lot of advice spaces and in media, it’s very, it’s, it sometimes is more fear driven, but it’s often very, frankly, think sort of abstinence driven, like just reduce, have less. And that is a very simple way of approaching it, which can feel easy. I mean, obviously easier said than done, but it can feel like, okay, just do less of it. But it is ignoring the barriers to that. And a lot of those barriers are built in systemic inequity. I know you’re not based in the US and I am, so I’m obviously speaking from that lens.

But especially in the US, although I’d be curious to hear what you see where you are, we have a lot of systemic inequity that has to get filled with something. And we have a lot of gaps in our society that have widened in recent years and recent decades. So when we look at not having paid parental leave, not having universal or affordable health care or having health care that is tied to employment, not having universal child care or affordable child care, not having free or affordable or accessible after school care, not having walkable neighborhoods, having car-centric neighborhoods, let alone things like disability, systemic racism, neurodivergence. All of those things are systemic inequities. None of those things are the fault of an individual. And yet a lot of the time, our advice is for the individual to just try harder. Like, well, I don’t know, give them another way of being occupied while you make dinner, which the implication there is try harder, right? Like don’t do something that’s easy for you. You need to somehow martyr yourself further. And I find that to be a very kind of flat argument. Like it flattens the conversation, but it also is, that’s not sustainable, right? That’s not sustainable for many families. And it is also overlooking the systemic inequities that are often fueling or leading to a need to rely on technology. I don’t think it’s good that we have these gaps, but something has to fill them. And so when we don’t have other ways of filling them, families are going to go to whatever they can. And so that ends up being screens. So if we really are feeling like, my gosh, there’s too much screens and too much technology.

We can’t blame the bandaid that it’s not doing a good enough job if we put a bandaid on like a wound that needs stitches, right? Like it’s not the bandaid’s fault. So if we’re really feeling that way, then we need to be targeting the barriers and the systemic inequities that are leading to this over-reliance in the first place. And obviously that’s a much harder conversation, much more nuanced, much less simple. But, you know, if fear were enough, we’d be done. If fear were all it took to make a family, make a change, we would not be in this place because people are not doing it because of ignorance. They’re doing it out of desperation in many cases.

Debbie:
I so appreciate that. And I think it speaks to the judgment that is connected with screen time. And also, I appreciate that inclusion of neurodivergence too. And I’m thinking of the work of Dr. Meryl Alper and what she writes about autistic kids and screen time that we to have a better understanding of how different marginalized communities are utilizing screen time and what’s behind that instead of again, like painting it with a broad brush. I wanted to ask you then you talked about fear and anxiety and you know, there’s obviously a lot, there’s a very popular book right now about screen time. That’s a really kind of, you know, going hard on the fear angle and this kind of moral panic. And I’m just wondering if you could kind of talk about your thoughts on that conversation and where do you stand on that?

Ash Brandin:
Well, you know, I mentioned a moment ago that I think that fear driven conversations, they’re, they’re simple, or at least they simplify the conversation, but they also, they take so much of nuance out of it by flattening the conversation. And I think there is an understandable desire fueling a lot of that rhetoric to kind of go back to this sort of bygone era. I sense a desire in that kind of rhetoric to get back to this, know, air quotes here, good old days. I think about a book like The Anxious Generation, which is obviously like has been very popular in the last 18 months.

And I don’t disagree with the desire that is fueling a lot of that book. I would love to have a world in which my child can be more independent. I would love for my child or kids in my school to not be doing 90 % of their work on Chromebooks because those Chromebooks are often simply substituting for the analog. They are not actually drastically augmenting or rethinking or redesigning the learning experience. They aren’t expanding on what a child is able to do. I would love that. saying, we just have to get rid of the Chromebook. What are you going to replace it with? Because there aren’t up-to-date textbooks anymore. They’ve been replaced with online intervention and instruction materials made by the same publishers as those textbooks.

Because they realize they can make a whole lot more money and have much lower costs if they’re doing everything online. We can’t unring the bell of technological ubiquity simply by saying, I don’t want this anymore. It’s so much more complicated than that. I would love to be able to just say, okay, kid, go outside, come in when dinner’s ready. But very few families, at least in America, have the level of privilege required to be able to do that.

Right? You need to be white in most cases. You need to live in a walkable neighborhood, which is not necessarily a suburban neighborhood. You need to have a child who is not disabled physically in most cases, who is probably neurotypical in most cases. And again, that’s just a lot more nuanced than like… kick your kid outside and don’t let them be on a phone. And we are raising future adults and we are raising future adults who are going to live in a technologically driven world that we cannot even imagine. And I understand that we want to protect them, but protecting a child, to go back to what I think of as the purpose of education, protecting them means empowering them. It means educating them. It doesn’t mean shielding them in perpetuity. Abstinence-only education does not tend to work very well. We have a pretty good body of evidence to show that. And I can educate my child about the dangers of something without actually giving them access to that thing. But if I’m simply saying like, yeah, I just want my kid to have a screen free life and a screen free childhood. OK, we can kick that can down the road, but not forever.

And eventually our kids are going to be in that world and we want them to be able to navigate it. And if we just kind of keep them away from it without thinking about the skills they need along the way, I worry that we are essentially passing the onus of that responsibility onto our future children. So then we have an 18 year old who moves into the dorm and their roommate has the PlayStation 8 or whatever is available. And suddenly, they are thrust into the most modern world with the most tempting technology with the regulatory skills of a toddler because they have not kind of been given that empowerment and education along the way. you know, I would love to have some of those similar outcomes. And I think the path there is not necessarily the same as others, you might say. I think putting that responsibility on individual caregivers is just perpetuating a lot of the problems that got us here.

Debbie:
So what does it practically look like for a family to view screens in their ecosystems, in their homes, neutrally, rather than through this kind of moral lens or this lens of good, bad, a hierarchy of screen time?

Ash Brandin:
Yeah, think when I when I talk about this aspect of moral neutrality, I think people mean that I am like absolving these like potential vices of any like I’m saying they’re all fine. And that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that it is a lot, in my opinion, it is a lot easier to have these sort of nuanced conversations and skill-driven conversations if I am focused on the skill that my child needs or the thing I would like my child to be able to do or navigate or think about as opposed to reacting out of fear. And I think the morality that gets attached to screens often puts us in that more reactive, fear-based place.

And I, at least for me personally, I don’t do my best anything. I don’t do my best parenting. I don’t do my best teaching. I don’t do my best like being in relationship with someone if I am reacting, right? I don’t, that’s not going to put me in a place where I’m making probably my best decisions. So if we think about something, like I don’t talk a ton about social media, but I know when we’re talking about sort of other books that have come out and and concerns of families, that’s definitely a big one. So if we think about social media, if we think like, I don’t want my kid on social media, they shouldn’t be on social media. I’m going to kind of keep them away from that. That again is simple, but eventually they are going to be exposed to it. And if instead I look at social media, not saying it’s fine, it’s great, but instead just instead of feeling fearful of it, instead thinking, okay, social media exists.

It is what it is. What are the skills that my child would need to be able to have access to social media? And I don’t think it’s easy to do that unless we have an aspect of moral neutrality. Because if our kid were on social media and we have that moral feeling, then we immediately are going, they’re doing that. I don’t want them to do that. That’s bad. It’s rewiring their brain. go to all these fear-based places. And then I also like kind of project that back onto myself. Like I am bad for letting that happen. I am failing them as a parent. And again, not gonna make my best decisions when I’m feeling ashamed of my parenting. So the moral neutrality allows me to step back and think about the skill. Okay, for my kid to be on social media, for my kid to chat online in the game, for my kid to have access to the app store and decide to spend their money on things. mean, insert whatever thing you’re concerned about here. What are the skills my child would need? And then how can I help reinforce or teach those skills in their life? Period. Not just in technology. If I want my child, for example, with social media, if I am worried that my child’s going to fall prey to a scam or AI content or, you know send someone private information.

Okay, so then how do I teach my child how to figure out if something is reliable or not? How do I teach my child to know what information is private and who I give private information to? And those are incredibly important skills. Those are life skills. And those apply to technology and in-person relationships and so many parts of our lives. And when I think of it that way, it can be a little easier to think about the ways that I can be talking about those skills throughout their lives and weaving that into my parenting, even if I’m not giving them access to the thing that I’m worried about, because eventually they will have access to that. And then I can think about, okay, how do I start naming how this would show up in social media or online gaming, et cetera, so that we can start like onboarding them for that inevitability. And I just think that’s lot easier to do when I’m coming from a place of taking the fear out of it, not because it’s something that I shouldn’t have fear for, but just to not let fear be in the driver’s seat, so to speak.

Debbie:
As we’re recording this, I think it was just last week that Australia, we won’t talk about social media, but it’s, you know, Australia passed the ban against social media for kids 16 and under, and it’s very extreme. And I’m just so curious to see how that plays out.

Ash Brandin:
Yeah, I made some content about it and I didn’t share it and I made it like months ago. So I need to go back and see if it’s actually like still relevant, but it’s so funny because one of the things I saw right away from a creator in Australia, which did not surprise me in the slightest is, if you look at what get got banned or has it has these restrictions on it, I think reflects some of the well-intentioned, but like reaction-driven urges that we see from governments, kind of from adults. know, adults see these things as very siloed. Like the social media part of the internet is over here and the information part is over here and the games are over here as if they’re all separate. But kids don’t see it that way. I think they see these things as a lot more dynamic. And for example, like they banned Pinterest because I think that that counts as a social media platform. At least I think I’m pretty sure. And actually in schools where I am, that’s like one of the quote unquote social media platforms that often gets like banned through firewalls is Pinterest, which has always been curious to me. But and you know, Snapchat and TikTok, these obvious big ones, but they didn’t ban Discord.

And I don’t have a feeling about that when we are the other, but a lot of people are concerned about Discord. Discord is chat rooms. Discord is just chat rooms for the modern era. And what I find really ironic and funny about that is that chat rooms are kind of the proto social media, right? Like they’re the first social media that many of us kind of had an exposure to because they were a way for us to engage in communities that could be largely anonymous, but also feel like a certain amount of connection and social clout. And it is funny to me, the things that like do fit that mold and don’t, and we can protect, can shield kids from certain things, but they, you know, it’s like, you, if you plug a leak, it’s going to go somewhere else, right? They’re going to find a way to engage with something else as a form of social media. So for many kids, their first exposure to social media is not TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, et cetera. Their first exposure to social media is YouTube, like YouTube comments, Roblox, Fortnite. And I’m not saying that to be more critical of those platforms, but a lot of those get used as social media. And so again, thinking about like more of the role those things are having in kids’ I think makes the conversation more nuanced, but also potentially like constructive than just banning it. And I do have to say in the US anyway, Roblox has been rolling out like more robust age verification tools that Australia is also using, which includes like facial scanning. And as soon as that came out with Roblox for like age verification, I saw a lot of people like really kind of freaked out about it. And I thought, well, what exactly did you think was going to happen? Like you want like, we’ve been calling for age verification and then people have been critical of that because they’ve said, well, people can just lie. So then they said, okay, we’ll make them scan IDs. And then people said, well, they’ll fake IDs. I’m like, okay, so what exactly do you want them to do? Like if you’re critical of the company because their age verification isn’t quote unquote good enough, then you’re forcing them to make something that is good enough. And now people are upset because they’re wanting to scan kids’ faces.

But it’s like, okay, what exactly, what else could they possibly do? And if what you really want is for them to just not give a kid ever a way of accessing it, I mean, that’s not going to happen from a company perspective, right? That’s something that an individual family would have decided to do. So it’s interesting to sort of see this whack-a-mole that is happening in real time in like a country-wide level.

Debbie:
Yeah, it does seem reactionary in many ways. Also, just a little side note, I haven’t been on Pinterest in forever and I can’t imagine a 14, 13 year old saying, I’m gonna go to Pinterest. Is anybody even, it just…?

Ash Brandin:
I don’t know. I have never enjoyed Pinterest. It has always frustrated me when it was very popular. I was like, I hate this platform. I do not like it. But of all the ones that seem, yeah, that’s one where I’m like, okay, I mean, I believe you, but it’s a funny one.

Debbie:
You. Question mark, yeah, okay. Okay, so I’m looking over my very, I have three pages of questions and I’m realizing there’s a lot we’re not gonna get to, but I do wanna make sure, no, I’m finding this so fascinating and maybe we’ll have to do a part two, but I would love if you could explain your ABCs of screen time that you presented in the book as a way that parents can kind of frame or think about screens in their family’s lives.

Ash Brandin:
Sorry, I’ll try to be more concise. Absolutely. So the middle section of my book is the ABCs of screen time and that stands for access, behavior, and content. And I say that these are three major things to consider when thinking about screen time for your child, but they’re also the sort of three major pain points that come up for families. And they are often like the sort of root underlying causes of a lot of the pain points. And if… people are listening to this, may think like, well, my pain point is behavior, right? Like it’s behavior, it’s always behavior, right? I tell them to stop playing, they don’t stop playing, that’s behavior. And a lot of that part of the book is me saying, actually, what you think of as a behavior issue, that might not actually be the underlying cause. Like the cause isn’t necessarily behavior, behavior itself is like rarely a cause, right? Because people are rarely just doing something for only the sake of doing it.

There’s often something else fueling it and that may be access, which could be time spent or how they are given access to screens, the predictability of that, et cetera. It could also be the content, which I don’t necessarily mean as like a, it fast-paced? Is it stimulating, but more in terms of… maybe the structure, maybe the overall way that they interact with the game. It also gets into kinds of game structures that can be more or less potentially problematic. And I also dig into like the big quote, air quote, educational content space because that isn’t always what we think it is with things like access, if for example, like I said, if a parent is thinking like, well, I tell my kid to stop and they don’t stop or I let them play and they get to play every day, but it’s always such a struggle to get them to stop. Well, that to me is not a behavior issue, that’s an access issue because that means that they are struggling to end something. And so again, the moral neutrality kind of allows me instead of saying, it’s the game’s fault, it’s the game’s fault. The game is doing this to them. When I think of it that way, there’s nothing I can do, right? All I can do is feel sort of like I have nothing, I can’t do anything. I’ve lost my agency. And also all I can do is like get rid of it. And that’s not always necessarily possible for some reasons we’ve talked about.

But if instead I zoom out and go, okay, it’s hard for them to stop. Well, I kind of took the tech out of it and it helped me see the skill. It’s hard for them to stop. Okay, that’s the problem. That is a skill issue that maybe I can help address in other ways, or I could think, okay, it’s hard for them to stop. What do I do in other parts of their lives when it’s hard for them to stop? What helps when they are in the middle of an art project? What happens when we are out at the playground or we’re in a museum and it’s super fun, we have to leave. What are the things I do that make it easier to stop? That’s also where I discuss the ways that a game might be structured and how that can also impact this. A lot of neurodivergent kids and lot of neurodivergent people enjoy games that are from the outside less structured, that are big, open-ended sandbox style games. This could be Minecraft, it could be Terraria, but it also could be games where there are just, you know, kind of big boundary rules, but they can kind of just explore and kind of be in control. And yeah, that is harder to stop than if I’m playing a game with really strict timed levels and it’s very clear when things end. And so if I’m thinking about that aspect of access, if my child is struggling to stop, then I can think about ways to help them stop doing something that’s open-ended, which I provide a lot of ideas for in the book and I can go into now if you’d like, but also it also empowers me to think about how I can make those things fit into our lives. So if my kid is trying to fit in video games before we leave for soccer practice and we have like 25 minutes and we have to be out the door at a certain time or the whole evening like goes to pieces, then I might not be saying yes to the open-ended game that takes them like 15 minutes to get into and now I have to extract them out of, right? Especially if I’m running around and filling lunch boxes and getting laundry started.

And that is again, a lot more empowering than going, it’s the game’s fault. It’s addicting them. It’s the game’s fault because then I can’t do anything about it. So being able to kind of get dig into that nuance and see how these things really can apply and realizing that when I look at it as sort of like data and information, then I can think about, okay, what can I do about it? And if there is nothing I can do about it. Okay, then I have to decide if that’s something I want to allow or not. But in the meantime, there are things I can try on the way there to help me figure out how can I make this work for us? And that’s, think, also very sustainable for our kids as they’re growing into adults and seeing how do I let this be part of my life?

Debbie:
Yeah. And you offer some really nice, there’s some charts. I love a good chart, but you have some charts in the book where you are, you know, talking about different games and the types of structures and how you might plan ahead for transitions based on the structures. It’s super helpful.

Ash Brandin:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, lot of those strategies didn’t really come from me playing video games. They came from just my classroom education work and being an educator. I used to work in a school that did a lot of like big, long project based assignments and I saw kids for 50 minutes a day. So, you know, they might be working on something for two weeks. And for many kids, especially neurodivergent kids, They kind of barely get in and remember what they’re doing and kind of get their feet under them. And then I’m like, okay, wrap it up, you know, and of course, it would be hard.

And so one of the strategies that I used a lot with that I now use in my own parenting is asking, okay, how will you know when you’re done? Or what is the last thing you’re going to do today? Like we have five minutes, we have 10 minutes, know, pick a number, but what’s the last thing you’re going to do? And it sort of just gives them like an off-ramp, a way of like seeing a way out. And the kind of opposite of that, which I can also can be very helpful for neurodivergent kids is thinking, okay, what’s the first thing you’re going to do tomorrow? When we come back to this, what’s the first thing you’re going to do? And when it comes to video games, I call this the sticky note trick. I will literally like write it on a sticky note and it doesn’t have to mean anything to you. Like when I do this with my kid, doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m like, okay, these words are meaningless to me, but they mean something to you. So I write it down, I stick it on the controller. I say, okay, tomorrow you’re coming back and you’re doing whatever it is I just wrote down.

And for many neurodivergent kids, know, they have this sort of helpless feeling of like, soon as I turn this off, I literally won’t remember. And then I’m going to come back tomorrow and I’m going to spend 20 minutes chasing my own brain, trying to figure out what I was doing. And then you’re going to tell me to stop. And of course that wouldn’t be fun. I wouldn’t want to do that. I hate that feeling. So it kind of lets them, I mean, for lack of a better term, it lets them kind of pause, right? It’s like pausing the game and then they can come back and pick up where they left off. And that’s a lot harder to think about strategizing around if I’m just saying it’s the game’s fault, screens are bad. Like it’s the fault of this amorphous technology. I’m not gonna think about how to problem solve if I’m going straight to that place.

Debbie:
I love that. That’s a strategy that we used quite a lot. And I just want to speak to that. You you said you write things down, you might not even know what it means. And I’m wondering for, you know, for parents who don’t want to get into the games themselves, like I live with, you know, my husband is a gamer and always has been, although I did only find that out once we moved in together and he showed up with this big console, I’m like, I’m sorry, this was not part of the what I learned when we were dating. Anyway, so there’s a lot of gaming that has happened in my house. But that’s not the case for every family. And so do you have a thoughts or advice for parents who want to, who aren’t really into gaming, and they want to respect their kids gaming and support it, they want to be engaged, but they don’t know how to stay engaged.

Ash Brandin:
Yeah, you know, I don’t like a lot of video games that I mean, I don’t like a lot of video games, period. I play video games, but, you know, video games, I mean, that’s thousands and thousands of different things. It’s like saying, do you like food? Right. It’s just so broad. So there are many video games that I don’t enjoy. I don’t like a lot of those big open games like Minecraft. They for me, I find them very overwhelming. I do not like them. But if a child enjoyed that thing, I’m going to ask them questions about it to learn more about it because I care about them. Right. So you don’t have to know all the language and the minutiae and the who is that and what is this. And I have a lot of students who have hobbies that I don’t have. They play sports. I’m not a big organized sports person. But if that were important to them, I would ask. And I would ask from a place of wanting to know more. And I don’t have to know the name of every player and I don’t have to know all the lingo. So ask open-ended questions like you’re trying to learn more about this person because that is what you’re trying to do. And if we show that kind of interest, then we’re also making it clear to our kids that we care about them and that they can share their wins with us. That they can tell us about the things that they are excited about.

And that is super important because if we want kids to come to us when something feels unsafe, they first have to be able to come to us when something feels safe. So if we want them to come to us when the friend uses a word they don’t know and seems like maybe it’s questionable in the group chat when they’re playing Fortnite, they first have to be able to come to us to celebrate their win in Fortnite and know that we’re not going to go, yeah, okay, great. but because… otherwise, they’re going to be fearful that we’re going to blame Fortnite when the friend said something, right? And it’s not Fortnite’s fault, right? We wouldn’t blame the landline phone if the kids said the bad word on the phone, right? We would instead talk about how to make different decisions, but being able to just have an interest in what they’re doing. And that might mean that you’re kind of maybe just casually looking while they’re playing, or you kind of have an ear out and then…

Once the games off or over dinner or in the car, just ask, what were you doing today? Did you were working on a bus? Did you beat them? Or, Hey, I noticed you kept trying that thing. You kept restarting. What ended up working? How did you decide to do that? The questions that just help us learn more about them, because probably you’ll have insight in those conversations and realize, wow, they’ve strategized. They problem-solved. They had a hypothesis. They did something systematic. And that is really helpful because then we can help them see that and see the skill transfer because then we’re also helping them realize they aren’t quote unquote only good at Minecraft. They are good at creative thinking. They’re good at problem solving. They’re good at strategy. Those are big overarching things that can go into other parts of their lives. And so we can help them bridge and see I thought I was only good at Minecraft. Actually, I’m good at spatial reasoning or whatever. And that is really empowering for them as well. So just asking and listening, even just listening to the things that they have to share, I think, goes a long way.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. I love that. I totally agree. I did that a lot with my with my kiddo. I did a lot of sitting next to on the couch and, you know, let me watch you do the play this level or whatever. And I know that meant a lot and created a lot of great opportunities for connection to

Ash Brandin:
Absolutely. And that’s not always possible because again, often we’re doing something else that needs to get done. But if it is, even if it’s just like one to two minutes, that can also really help with the wrapping up is if I spend one to two minutes coming over and just showing genuine interest in their world instead of being like, hurry up, come on, turn the thing off. If I come over and just curious and well, look at that. And, even say nothing and just watch, then it feels like we’re at least validating their interest in this thing, even if we don’t entirely understand it. And that can sometimes also make the transition easier.

Debbie:
All right, so I want to be mindful of the time, so let’s wrap this up. I do want to ask you, first of all, I just want to also say there’s so much in your book that we’re not getting to today. readers, it’s got a lot of ideas about how to kind of keep it neutral, how to lean into those interests. You have thoughts on using screen time as a reward, how to support without being the tech police. There’s a lot in here that we’re not going to get to today. you guys, if you’re navigating screens in your families, I highly recommend Ash’s book. If parents listening could kind of maybe think about one aspect of how they approach screens in their families, kind of leaving this listen, what would that be?

Ash Brandin:
I think what I would say is that I think for many families they probably feel like screens are the enemy and I think unfortunately what ends up happening sometimes is that really when we feel like screens are the problem we’re always arguing about this or it’s always a problem
something that can sometimes end up happening is that actually we’re not fighting screens, we’re fighting our child. And that feels so yucky. I know that is going to feel yucky to anybody listening to that and thinking, yeah, like we end up in this struggle about like turning it off or when they can do it or et cetera. And we want to be on the same team, right? We wanted to be us versus the problem, not us versus our kid with the problem in the middle, right? Like triangulating around screens or what have you. So when we view screens as like sort of the enemy, I think it ends up posing us against our kid because our kids aren’t going to view screens as the enemy. So now we’re arguing about whether or not they’re bad and triangulating that way. And instead recognizing, okay, is my goal to… what is my goal? And I think for many parents, our goal is probably to raise kids who can navigate all of the complexities of this world, technology or not. And if that’s the goal, which I think is a great goal and a very realistic one, then how can I be on the same team with my kid so that they can have that sort of realistic relationship with these things in their life?

And that probably looks different than maybe my platonic ideal, right? If maybe a screen-free childhood or minimizing it, but also making sure that we’re finding something that’s going to work for everybody. That’s going to allow me to still have my needs met, not feel like I have to martyr myself all the time is also going to allow my child some play, whether it’s in person or on a device and some leisure and feeling like their interests are not the problem, right? And that they can have those interests that can coexist in the rest of their lives. So I understand that urge to sort of come in and just want to take control. But a lot of the time, the way that we’re going to help our kids in the long run is by giving them enough agency to explore and try stuff out within safe boundaries. And so that’s what I try to really help families navigate is creating those safe boundaries so we’re still there if needed, but we’re also giving kids a safe place to explore within those boundaries so that over time we can kind of expand those boundaries, they have more skills and we’re preparing them for the adult world.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. I love that. Thank you. So, okay, listeners, the book again is called Power On, Managing Screen Time to Benefit the Whole Family. And Ash, is there a particular place that you would recommend listeners go to to connect with you?

Ash Brandin:
You can find me on Instagram at TheGamerEducator. I also have a substack that I just cross-post my content from Instagram to my substack. So if you would like those things delivered to your inbox so you can search your email to find them or just access them not on social media, you can do that there. And my book is available wherever you buy books. If you feel particularly one way or the other about the sound of my voice, I read the audiobook so that may draw you to it or repel you away from it depending on how you feel. And it’s also available in your local library. And if not, can request it.

Debbie:
Awesome. Thank you. Okay. Listeners, I will have links in the show notes pages. Ash, thank you so much for taking the time for walking us through this today. And maybe we will have you back for a follow-up because I feel like we could talk about a lot more. So thank you.

Ash Brandin:
Thank you. Absolutely, thank you.