Jeff Utecht On Raising Children With Healthy Social Media & Digital Media Habits

An Interview With Maria Angelova

Create a plan as a family that is agreed upon by the entire family unit. This could be time spent on devices while at home. It could be an agreement on what social network the family is going to use and who has access to those social networks. A digital family plan is different from “rules” as we all need a plan to make sure we have healthy social media and digital media habits. By creating a plan as a family, we hold each other accountable. No phones at the table means everyone, not just children. When kids know you are in it with them, they are more intentional in their use and create healthy family dynamics when we’re all in it together and parents lead by example.

Young people today are growing up in an era where screen time is a given from a very young age. Unfortunately, studies show that large amounts of screen time can be damaging, and social media can be even worse. Our children are facing enormous challenges before their brains and bodies have had a chance to develop fully. Social media can potentially keep kids from developing social cues and lead to increased mental health challenges, bullying, and much more. So what can parents do to create healthier habits around social media? How can kids be taught to use social media in a healthy way that causes as little damage as possible? In this interview series, we are talking to authors, and mental health professionals, about Raising Children With Healthy Social Media and Digital Media Habits. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jeff Utecht.

Jeff Utecht began his career in the classroom and now works with educators, community members, and parents in understanding the digital age we are raising and educating our children in. Jeff is an international educational speaker and consultant supporting the greater education sector on preparing children today for their future, not our past. You can catch Jeff on his weekly podcast Shifting Schools.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I have been in education for over 20 years now. I began my career as a classroom teacher then moving into administrative positions before starting my consulting firm in 2012. I work mainly with school districts and parent organizations in understanding children today, the social pressure that both parents and children feel to be connected and how we can support a media first generation within our wider communities.

Can you share the most interesting story that has happened since you started your career?

The COVID19 pandemic is the fourth time in my career I have supported schools and districts in preparing for and launching emergency remote learning. I taught in Saudi Arabia in 2002, where due to terrorism in the country, I supported our school in going virtual to graduate seniors on time even though school was closed for weeks. We then moved to Shanghai, China where SARS threatened to shut schools in 2005/6. I supported my school there in planning to move learning online though fortunately we did not need to implement our plan. The next emergency remote learning was when I taught in Thailand. Due to extreme flooding and political unrest in the country, we moved to learning virtually for roughly a week. So when the COVID19 pandemic hit the United States and schools closed, I had some experience that enabled me to help and support hundreds of school districts and multiple associations across the nation. We focused on how to pivot to remote teaching and learning while supporting children and parents at home in setting up structures for success.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Yes, right now my team and I are focused on supporting parent communities in understanding the media first generation. Our focus needs to shift from being scared about social media in teens’ lives today to one of acceptance. Once we accept that this is the world we live in, the world they are growing up in, then we can focus on information literacy and setting up routines and structures in order to support them with the technology they are surrounded by. This of course plays into the support and consulting I do within education as well. With the release of ChatGPT and Generative AI making its way into our lives and education, I spend my time supporting educators around the use of these new tools, focusing back on the idea of information literacy skills for students.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

Yes, one of the best pieces of research I have seen on this generation is called It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd (danah boyd does not use capitalizations with her name). In her research, danah focused on how technology and social media are impacting our childrens’ lives. Her research still holds true today and is the book/research I recommend all educators and parents read.

Fantastic. Let’s now turn to the main part of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about why you are an authority on how to help children develop healthy social media habits?

My background is in education and I hold a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on technology. I have been supporting school districts and parent communities over the past 12 years in using technology to benefit students both in and out of the classroom. Social Media has been a focus for the past seven years. I have held numerous parenting sessions as well as helped school districts create social media policies and curriculum to support the teaching of students in creating healthy habits around social media.

From your experience or research, can you help articulate some of the downsides of children having access to social media? Is there an amount of time, or certain content, that is just too much?

I get asked often about how much time children should be allowed on social media and screens in general. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends no screen time at all for children until 18 to 24 months and children ages 2 to 5 should get an hour or less of screen time per day. Which are all great recommendations for parents. The issue becomes after age 5 there really isn’t any recommendations other than parents should talk to their child about the time they spend on devices and on social media. This leaves parents with little to no guidance on just how much time, or how often or where their children should be spending their time.

Of course, like most things in life, balance is what is needed. Parents inherently understand this. We make kids eat their vegetables even though they don’t want to at a young age. As they grow they understand that part of being healthy is having a well rounded healthy diet. We need to start doing the same with our screen diet. Setting limits starting at a very young age helps children in understanding what a healthy dose of screen time is. One of the issues we see is parents trying to put these structures around screen time and social media use in place too late in a child’s life. If a child at age 6 is allowed to play on their tablet for two hours while the parents have a nice dinner in a restaurant, then by the time the child is 13 and gets their own cell phone and social media accounts, the unhealthy habits around devices, screens and social media have been set. Many times parents then find themselves trying to set new, healthy habits with pre-teens and teens who seem defiant when really what they are battling is the changing of a habit that was established earlier in life. Research tells us changing a habit is much harder than creating a habit. One of the best plans parents can put in place is to set time limits at a very young age and stick with them. A timer and an agreement can be a parent’s best friend.

As for any certain content, this varies parent to parent and is up to parents to decide what is best for their child. Most parents use the same standard for social media as they do for movies and games. Just like with movies and games, parents will have to explain and have a conversation around why they can’t engage with that social media content or at what age they feel that content is acceptable. The key is to be having these conversations and being aware of exactly what and where your child is engaging online.

Is there a positive side too? Can children gain and grow from social media?

This is such a great question and the answer is yes. The Pew Research Center in August of 2022 conducted research by asking teens about social media and their habits. 32% of teens said that there was a positive side to social media. Of that 32%, 46% said it was the connections and socialization within social media that had the most positive impact on their lives.

This follows other research that has been done including that by danah boyd in her research: It’s Completed: The Network Lives of Teens. She found that children’s lives are very scheduled, if not over scheduled. This leaves very little or no free time to hang out with friends at parks, at the mall, or on the playground. All places where traditionally kids have hung out with friends just two generations ago. Today, even if teens wanted to hang out at a park with each other, they can’t because their schedules do not allow it. However, they need connections to their peers and increasingly they are finding that in their devices through social media. In many children’s lives, it is the only place they can “hang out” with their friends. This is where they share, where they have inside jokes, where they get to try on different personas. This is their playground, their mall or park. All the conversations we used to have wherever we hung out are still happening. They are just happening within social media platforms.

When I am speaking to parents and children or a group of students in a school, I always ask them if they could choose to hang out with their friends in-person versus online, what would they choose. Overwhelmingly every time the answer is in-person. Children today want to connect with each other, with their friends in person. The issue is not that they want to connect through social media, it’s that in many cases, it is the only place they have to connect.

A large part of what plays into this is the social pressure on parents today to have their child involved in afterschool activities, sports, playing an instrument, etc. The more activities children are in, the less “free time” they have to just hang out with their friends. We all understand that these social interactions are critical in their development of self as a teen. There is also social pressure on parents today to not allow your child to be alone, or be unsupervised with other children. In two generations we have gone from children being “latchkey kids,” coming home to an empty home while both parents were at work, to one where children aren’t allowed to have play dates with other children unless it’s scheduled and everyone has a cell phone, with all parents on standby.

Social media is an accepted part of life today. We know that along with all of the good comes a lot of challenges. From your experience or research, what five steps can we take to raise children with healthy social media and digital media habits?

When working with parents and parent groups I like to break this down using the acronym PARENT.

P — Plan
Create a plan as a family that is agreed upon by the entire family unit. This could be time spent on devices while at home. It could be an agreement on what social network the family is going to use and who has access to those social networks. A digital family plan is different from “rules” as we all need a plan to make sure we have healthy social media and digital media habits. By creating a plan as a family, we hold each other accountable. No phones at the table means everyone, not just children. When kids know you are in it with them, they are more intentional in their use and create healthy family dynamics when we’re all in it together and parents lead by example.

A — Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)
When a child is given a device, I recommend it comes with an acceptable use policy. Common Sense Media has great free resources around this for children of all ages. Helping children understand that with each device they get, there are policies in place to keep them and their device safe. Parents can think of this as “the rules”. The acceptable use policy should include things like how much time they are allowed on the device, what the device’s primary use should be, what apps can or should be downloaded with or without parent permission. The AUP is going to be unique to each family. As children get older they get more of a say in what should be in the AUP. But always remember parents, you have the ultimate say in what the consequences are for breaking the AUP. Once agreed upon, then both the parents and the children (and any other persons providing care or guidance) sign the AUP and it’s a document that gets reviewed and updated as needed. This is a great habit to start forming in children as they age. They will be required to sign an AUP for their school device and as they enter the workforce, they will have to sign an AUP for any device given to them by their place of work. Not only is this great for parent/child relationships, but it’s an understanding they will need as they age and join the workforce, so building a helpful life skill too.

R — Responsibility

Having constant conversations with your child about their responsibility with all things networked is key. From understanding passwords, to understanding what you post on social media and how that impacts others is the responsibility of the user of the account. To quote Uncle Ben from Spiderman “With great power comes great responsibility.” As a parent you have a responsibility to keep your child safe, therefore as part of the AUP the parent/adult guardian has the right to know what social networks their child has and should be able to ask questions about those social networks at any time. With pre-teens, I recommend sitting down once a week and scrolling through the child’s social media together. Have a conversation about what you see, what they see, what is being said. Of course as they grow into teenagers, their privacy becomes more important, however as pre-teens we want to be in the social networks with them. We also want them to critically think about even the ads they are seeing in their social media platforms. Have a conversation about what those ads mean and why they might be seeing those ads. Our goal is not to be judgmental, but to take this opportunity to have conversation about social media, the different accounts and what the child is viewing.

E — Entertainment

There are two sides to the Internet and to social media. There is the entertainment side and there is the creative side. If children love making YouTube videos and TikTok videos that’s not a bad thing. That is a creative endeavor that requires thought, planning, script writing in some cases, and so much more! If your child is into the creative side of social media, we need to find ways to support that creative spirit. The other side of course is the entertainment side. Although endless scrolling through TikTok videos can be fun, in the end it’s entertainment. It’s this side of social media we want to limit the amount of time children view social media. 10 minutes to browse YouTube a day, or 5 minutes a day to watch TikTok videos is time a parent can set. This goes as well with playing video games. Most games are entertainment time and the parents should set limits around the amount of time a child can be in “entertainment mode” within all digital devices. The younger children are when they get used to these time restrictions the easier and faster we build good digital habits around our devices. A great question that every parent/guardian can ask themselves is: “What skills do I see being developed here?” If you can’t find a skill then that might be an app or website you want to limit.

N — Night Time Charging

One key area that I believe should be included in every AUP and planning with devices and children is the idea that devices should not be charged in the child’s bedroom. There is no need for a child to have access to their device while they are sleeping and the beeping and vibrations that it makes from notifications is enough to disrupt deep sleep processes in the brain (this goes for adults too). Create a “charging center” in a common area of the house where every night all devices get plugged in. You can find some pretty cool ones on Pinterest that parents have made with their children. This does a couple of things. 1) It’s easy for a parent to see that all devices are there. 2) We make sure devices are charged for the next day 3) We help children understand that sleep is more important than being connected. Parents….this might be a good thing for you as well to try (you can grab yourself a very inexpensive alarm clock, it doesn’t have to be your phone).

T — Teamwork

Creating a plan and culture that all parents/guardians of the child understand and commit to also supports the child and their social media and digital habits. Adults in the child’s life must work as a team to create a common and cohesive plan to handle social media and digital media habits. Creating an AUP that all adults sign and agree to follow, goes a long way from keeping children playing one adult against another. “I’m sorry I would really like to give you 5 more minutes on YouTube, but the AUP that we all signed states 10 minutes a day”. It’s not my rule or their rule, it’s the AUP we all said we would follow. Working together as a team raising children is the best support we can give children today as they navigate this unique childhood experience that many of us did not have.

How do you effectively respond to the constant refrain of “but all my friends do this!”?

Such a great question and one I get asked a lot. The response I got as a teenager- “Well if they jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” -does not work with this generation. There are a couple of ways parents can handle this and it will depend on the situation and the family norms and culture. One response might be to have the child make an argument for why doing this thing is good for them and good for the community. After all, social networks are made up of communities and we want to make sure that the stuff we create is adding value to the community. So a question like “What value does this add to the community?” might give the child pause and start a conversation with them on what is the true value in creating the content in the first place. Another approach might be to ask “why are they doing this?” and remember “because it’s fun” is a legitimate response for a teenager. The next question then might be “could someone get hurt either emotionally or physically by seeing this content?” In the end what we want to do is try and understand the importance of “all my friends do this” and engage in a conversation. Also know it’s OK if your response as a parent is “I’m not comfortable with this and I need some time to learn more about it.” Then go learn about the new social media platform or the latest trend sweeping social media and come back with more questions and support for or against your child taking part in it.

What are the best resources you would suggest to a parent or educator who would like to learn more about this?

One of my go to places is Common Sense Media. They have great resources for parents with templates around creating digital media and social media plans and AUPs.

For educators, we have over 60 free guides at ShiftingSchools.com with many of them focusing on social media and media literacy skills. Four media literacy routines for the year is one of our most popular free downloads.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

My favorite quote is “Education is not the preparation for life; it’s life itself” by John Dewey.

I love learning and love instilling that passion in others regardless of age. It’s such an exciting time to be alive and such an exciting time to be able to learn anything you want the moment you want to know it. You don’t have to have all the answers but you have to be willing to go out and find the answers to the questions you have, the knowledge you seek.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

One movement I would start would be that every school and every student not only had access to Wikipedia but had assignments around making it better. Wikipedia is such an amazing resource for all of us today and is the largest global body of knowledge humans have ever created. I want students to understand the power they have in making the world a better place, how you can join communities around topics in Wikipedia and how, when you edit a Wikipedia page, you make it better not just for you but for humanity. Your impact is endless.

What is the best way our readers can continue to follow your work online?

For parents and parent organizations you can check out my speaking topics on Digital Parenting and Social Media on my website here.

For educators and schools they can find out more about my speaking topics here. Also check out the free resources, courses and podcast we have at shiftingschools.com

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

About The Interviewer: Maria Angelova, MBA is a disruptor, author, motivational speaker, body-mind expert, Pilates teacher and founder and CEO of Rebellious Intl. As a disruptor, Maria is on a mission to change the face of the wellness industry by shifting the self-care mindset for consumers and providers alike. As a mind-body coach, Maria’s superpower is alignment which helps clients create a strong body and a calm mind so they can live a life of freedom, happiness and fulfillment. Prior to founding Rebellious Intl, Maria was a Finance Director and a professional with 17+ years of progressive corporate experience in the Telecommunications, Finance, and Insurance industries. Born in Bulgaria, Maria moved to the United States in 1992. She graduated summa cum laude from both Georgia State University (MBA, Finance) and the University of Georgia (BBA, Finance). Maria’s favorite job is being a mom. Maria enjoys learning, coaching, creating authentic connections, working out, Latin dancing, traveling, and spending time with her tribe. To contact Maria, email her at angelova@rebellious-intl.com. To schedule a free consultation, click here.