Resource Kit for Rancho Families

Hi everyone! Catherine Price here, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone, and advocate for screen/life balance.

Thanks so much for attending my talk!.

Here are some commonly requested resources, including information about smartphone alternatives, parental control settings, and app-blocking apps and devices. I’ve also included a set of family guidelines and resources and links to my talk about kids, smartphones and social media, as well as more information about why it’s so important to rethink our approach to kids and technology..

Feel free to share any and all of these resources with anyone you’d like.

Here’s a google doc I put together for parents of my daughter’s school with some family guidelines. You can also check out this post I wrote for Jon Haidt’s Substack newsletter, After Babel.

Smartphone Alternatives:

Deciding not to give your kids smartphones doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get them any phone; it just means not giving them a phone that comes with social media and unfettered access to the internet. Thankfully, there are a lot of great smartphone alternatives on the market.

Note: These are great options if your child is an independent walker and you want a way to communicate but you don’t want to get them a full-fledged smartphone.

Here’s a comprehensive guide that I put together that describes many of the features of these particular phones (I didn’t get to the Bark or the Garmin yet!)

3rd Party Tools & Solutions:

The Brick and Unpluq are cool gadgets that let you block all apps on your phone except for the ones you choose to allow — which is great if, say, you want your kid to only be able to use a phone to listen to podcasts or audio books, or if you want to take a break from your own phone for a while! (Note: the Brick does NOT work for iPads yet, unfortunately.)

There are also great app-blocking apps, including Freedom, ScreenZen, and Opal.

I reached out to a few of these companies and got discount codes, which you can find in this post (along with some additional information about these solutions). Bottom line: they’re all MUCH better than Apple’s Screen Time!

Parental Control Apps and Service Plans

You may also want to consider signing up for one of these “family protection plans,” offered by independent companies and as add-ons by cell/internet service providers, that have much more robust safety features and parental controls than the native parental control options on iPhones/Androids (more on which below). For example, you can set schedules for when certain apps are (and are not) available, or even set a schedule for times when internet access is available at your house.

Kids, Smartphones and Social Media: The Risks and the Solutions

The following is a talk I did for parents at my daughter’s school. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, referred to it as “the talk every parent should watch” and “the video you should share with the parents of your kids’ friends.” Please feel free to do so! (The more people hear its message, the better.)

Guides to Parental Controls:

If your child(ren) has access to any other internet-enabled device (like an iPad), I recommend taking the time to learn about and set up parental controls for individual apps and devices (which are annoying and often easy for kids to get around, but we have to try!).

These are a few that I found — if you know of more, please tell me about them using the contact form below. It takes a village!

Comprehensive guide to parental controls on a wide variety of devices <—- Start here!!!

Comcast Parental Control Guide for XFinity

Common Sense Media’s Parent Resource Page

Common Sense Media “Ultimate Guide to Fortnite”

Additional Resources:

Sean Parker (first president of Facebook) and Chamath Palihapitiya (former VP of user growth at Facebook) talking about the platforms they created (this is the source of the clips I played in the talk)

Dino Ambrosi TEDx talk, “The Battle for Your Time: Exposing the Costs of Social Media” (in which he estimates that the average 18-year-old is on track to spend 93 percent of their remaining leisure time on a screen

“Family Media Plan” interactive tool from the American Academy of Pediatrics (helps you create a family plan for screen time limits, boundaries, etc)

Op-Ed by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy about why he’s calling for a warning label to be put on social media (akin to cigarettes)

The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (book making the case that we should roll back the “phone-based” childhood and restore the “play-based” childhood) - I’ve started directly collaborating with his team and am helping them build out resources for parents and school administrators.

After Babel — Jon Haidt’s Substack newsletter, with lots of articles about the evidence behind the connection between social media and youth mental health. Also features posts by a young woman named Freya India, who writes compelling essays from her perspective as a member of Gen Z

ScreenStrong — great resource for parents whose kids are struggling with gaming (also has a great textbook about screen time and brain development)

Sign Up For My Newsletter

I write a Substack newsletter about screen/life balance, phones, fun, and trying to feel more alive. I have no idea why the sign-up form is so poorly formatted!

Questions? Comments? Requests? Additional Resources/Ideas?

Let me know!

(If you want to inquire about a speaking engagement — I love presenting to parents and students! — reach out to Jade Garnett at the Harry Walker agency, at jadeg@harrywalker.com)