I thought my 5 year old was watching a harmless YouTube video for kids. What he was really watching absolutely horrified me.

A chilly afternoon rain pattered on the windows. There’d be no playing outside for my two elementary-schoolers during their little brother’s nap. My to-do list was a mile long, the afternoon desperately short, so I did what any tired mama would do (no judgement here!), I let the kids have some screen time. 

The 8 year old opened up her tiny laptop and loaded Minecraft or Stardew Valley, and the kindergartener plugged an archaic iPad mini into the wall socket. 

Note my emphasis on archaic. The iPad barely functioned, unable to do much of anything beyond Minecraft and YouTube Kids.

I thought everything was fine. I thought everyone was safe.

I was wrong.

So, so, very wrong.

Ten or twenty minutes in, I looked up from my own work and saw my kindergartner staring intently at the screen. 

He was fixated, unblinking, unmoving. No YouTube video of Matchbox Car racing or Surprise Egg opening had ever entranced a five-year-old so much. 

My Mama-Heart felt a warning—I needed to check this out. Now. 

The warning I felt went way beyond Mother’s Intuition. I’m convinced the Holy Spirit was whispering in my ear, nudging me away from my work to attend to my primary responsibility, which is the precious little person who has been entrusted to me to raise.

My son had moved from a cozy chair near my desk to a chair on the far side of the room, and when I got up to ask how he was doing, he pulled the screen against his chest.

As if I wouldn’t think that was strange.

Thankfully, I’m stronger than a five year old, so I pried the iPad away and saw—

Happy Wheels. 

He was watching a gameplay video of Happy Wheels. 

Have you heard of this game? Thanks to having teens, I had, and I knew exactly what the game contained. You can check it out if you’re curious, or just take my word for it when I say that a five-year-old should not be watching gameplay videos of Happy Wheels (hint: there’s nothing “happy” about it). Which leads to a discussion of …

How the Pandemic Has Harmed Our Kids

My kids, your kids, all our kids. 

Post- (mid?)-pandemic studies are trickling in, showing what will undoubtedly be confirmed in countries around the world: This past year has really, really sucked for our kids.

And the harm goes far beyond low test scores and a largely wasted year of school.

Many of us pre-pandemic had at least some sort of limits on our children’s screen time. Maybe it was a “no screens after dinner” rule, or the APA’s recommendation of a two-hour daily screen media cap.

But there was something about every single school going online that pushed many of us away from healthy boundaries to watching helplessly as our kids spent dozens of hours per week online. 

This is assuming we were even around to watch. In many homes, mine included, our older teens were left with their screen and their willpower in the hopes that the need to “do school” would outweigh the anxiety, boredom, and limitless distractions online. 

Younger kids were no better off. In many homes, while a parent tried (futilely) to navigate a packed schedule of zoom calls, they struggled to oversee a child’s school time. 

And after school hours, when kids might have been at a soccer game, track practice, an after-school club, they were all now online. Kids’ social life, academic life, every piece of a child or teen’s existence took place inside a 15-inch box.

Nobody fits in a 15-inch box.

All the while, the internet is fast becoming one of the scariest places on earth, especially for kids and their parents.

Did you know that even as a new social platform is in development, before it has even been released, the porn industry is already planning ways to infiltrate and saturate it? (Notice that article is from 2010! This is not a new phenomenon!)

If our kids can somehow stay clear of the porn, the predators will come to them. In the documentary Childhood 2.0 we see that predators are trolling every network, searching for kids, day and night.

The people at Bark set up a fake account of a young girl, and less than two minutes after her account went live, she was solicited. 

Two minutes.

She received dozens of messages, including explicit content, in the first five. 

In our helicopter world we’re worried about letting our kids play at the park with the merry-go-round, terrified to let them walk to the corner store, and will face legal charges if we leave them waiting in a parked car while we run into the gas station to pay. 

And yet we’re tucking our kids into bed with a tiny box of porn.

We’re whipping the front door open and flipping on a neon sign that flashes, “Cute pre-teen kid, first door on the right! Come on in!” 

It’s time for us parents to wake up. 

It's time for us to slam the door on predators and to protect our kids. 

Not just protect them physically—from hot cars and dangerous playground equipment—but emotionally and spiritually. 

We’re protecting them from potential traffickers, from bullies, and from industries that don’t care how young their users are, corporations that value only the clicks, that want our kids coming back, always, forever. Obese or anorexic, victim or offender, depressed, anxious, addicted, succeeding in school or on the brink of failing out, these industries DO NOT CARE. They want our children—the most important parts of them: their hearts and their minds—for as long as they’re alive. 

And if our kids die, these industries still don’t care, because tragic, horrifying stories drive traffic most of all.

We’re the first generation of parents to face this challenge—digital kids. What do we do?

How do we protect our kids online?

Where do we even begin?

The good news is (yes, there’s good news), starting is as easy as putting down our own devices and talking with our kids. 

3-step plan to take control of the digital world for any child.

1. Talk. 

Ask your kiddos what they’re doing online. Many (perhaps even most) parents do this. According to Pew Research, upwards of 90% of parents have talked about online dos and don’ts, so there is a better than good chance you already have this step down.

But… (you knew a but was coming)

But our strategy can’t end with talk. 

Do you remember being eight? If you’re in your 30s, 40s, older, you were eight solidly pre-internet. What did you and your friends do in the back of the classroom, giggles and whispers, dictionary in hand? I know what my friends did. We looked up “sex” and “poop” and anything else that sounded funny in the dictionary.

The world is very, very different now. Now the dictionary is a Google search bar, and kids have access to the entire world. At any time. Anywhere. Not all of that world is appropriate for an eight-year-old. In my opinion, a good bit of that world isn’t appropriate for a 40 year old either. Which leads to...

2. Research and start using parental control software. 

You truly don’t need to be an internet expert to put these tools into use, but you do need a basic understanding of how your devices and network work. Unless you’re a tech-lover, this is a hassle. It’s time consuming. 

It’s also part of being a parent—as much a part of being a parent as putting covers on power outlets and gates at stairways. If you had time to research car seats, high chairs, crib safety, you have time to do this. 

It sucks. I get it. I like tech and found it a headache. Here, borrow my straw. 

Now suck it up and do it.

3. Practice Adulting

In case you need reminding (I do, more often than I’d like to admit): We’re the parent. Our kids are the kids. Whether they’re three or thirteen, our job as parents is to love our kids. 

Part of loving is understanding. 

Understand their world. Understand how the internet has changed since we were young. I mean, when I was young, the internet made that high-pitched squeal through the phone lines. A lot has changed. An immense amount has changed from the time my oldest was born in 2000 to now. Check out the apps kids are using. Create accounts, watch YouTube on autoplay for a few hours (if you can stand it) and ask yourself, “What is my child learning about herself and the world through these videos? Who or what is really driving the “up next” selection on autoplay? Who do I want influencing, controlling, raising my child?

Understand the power of habit chains, the addictive and impersonal nature of devices. Read Breaking the Trance. Watch The Creepy Line, The Social Dilemma, and Childhood 2.0. (Affiliate links below.)

But don’t stop there.

Part of loving is protecting.

Protecting entails doing.

Very little of parenting—the right way—is convenient. 

Are you convinced of the need? The vital responsibility? If so, subscribe right now, because in the coming weeks, I’m going to give you an insider’s guide to internet safety. 

I’ll share what we did, where it failed, and what we tried later. I’ll tell you what worked, what didn’t work and so much more. 

I’ll be releasing posts about our favorite internet safety tools, tips on how to use them.

I’ll be sharing the ONE most insane, terrifying, life-changing parenting decision I’ve ever made … and how it all turned out.

So stay tuned.

Grace and peace,
Rebecca