Francie Black: 00:00:00.571
Keep the communication open with your kids. Don’t let them think that you’re trying to spy on them, that you are trying to gotcha. Let them know the internet is changing and strategies change regularly. Let them know that the pitfalls of it. Let them know how it affects you. A lot of kids I know don’t even want their stuff posted by their parents online. So start young, have conversations, and then implement the tools in a non-restrictive way that doesn’t push them away from you.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:39.933
Hello, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe. Welcome to the Demme Learning Show. I am so delighted today to welcome Francie Black, to have a conversation about keeping your kids safe online. This is something that parents have asked and asked for, for so long, and I feel like it was a divine appointment to find Francie in a booth behind me at one of the first homeschool conferences I attended this year. So we waited a long time to bring this conversation to you. And, Francie, I’m going to let you introduce yourself.

Francie Black: 00:01:10.317
All right. Thank you. Well, pleasure to be here and thank you so much for having me. And, Gretchen, it’s been great to meet you and your family and just lovely, lovely folks. And of course, your mission with Demme is wonderful. So thanks for having me. Gosh, a little bit of background on myself. I’ve been in the tech circles for a long time. I don’t know. I guess I just sort of gravitated even to the point of where in my middle school, I literally set up the computer lab for my middle school, so a few years ago. But in my career, I’ve managed a lot of software development for large corporations.

Francie Black: 00:01:46.965
Then I went on the consulting side of that and helped early stage startups. So I’ve kind of had a very deep engagement with technology for a very long time. When I went out independent, left corporate America after having kids and moving due to my husband’s work, I went out on my own doing tech consulting. And one of the gigs, I’ll call it that I picked up was doing tech segments for the local ABC affiliate. So I was on ABC, WLOS News for, gosh, I think five and a half, six years doing a weekly tech time segment that aired across the region.

Francie Black: 00:02:31.046
And then I also syndicated those out across the country to a bunch of other TV stations as well. So that stopped with COVID. So I don’t do that now. And then just a side thing that was sort of generated from my own kids. I have four children. And we’re in Western North Carolina and there was not a lot of tech being offered to students in Western North Carolina. This is about 9 or 10 years ago. And so my son and I started what we call Home Hacker Camp in our basement of our house. And then it grew significantly, quickly got into schools, and we had a lot of summer camps and kids were coming.

Francie Black: 00:03:14.216
A lot of homeschool kids were coming to these classes or to these camps. And then we converted them to full semester classes quite a few years ago. So we’ve been teaching robotics and programming at these classes for many years. And it’s been a lot of fun. Fast forward, my son that I started with in this area, he was mechanically inclined. I was more software inclined. And fast forward now, he is now, I hope I don’t sound bragging, but it’s kind of cool. But he did sign with SpaceX coming out of college and he is literally working on the Starship rocket that’s going to Mars. So he’s [crosstalk].

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:46.467
That’s amazing.

Francie Black: 00:03:49.380
But anyhow, but we’re very ingrained in tech in our household. I think it’s super important. You can’t get away from it. I think it’s really important skills to learn and to manage. And and, of course, as parents, we all have these questions that we’re posing today about, “How do I keep my kids safe online? What do I do? What are my options?” so.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:09.184
Francie, one of the things that you said yesterday when we had our preparatory conversation that has just resonated with me so much is, “What do you do when your husband has a different point of view about tech?” Because we had this conversation at dinner last night because I was so fascinated by it, so.

Francie Black: 00:04:30.916
Wow, that’s a loaded question. [laughter] It’s a real challenge and it’s a real dance. We are both very, very technically inclined. He is not in the field but has had an extreme– he’s an extremist in it to the point– I don’t know if you know what Bitcoin is–

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:51.819
Yes.

Francie Black: 00:04:52.740
–but my husband years ago knew– but he’s very, very on the edge of things technology-wise. Watches sort of these sort of extreme trends. But anyhow, all that to say is he was mining Bitcoin in our basement for years as well. So just to give you an idea. So my point in saying that is that he’s just so, so tech-forward on things. And I’m very tech more from a practical, more now kind of age. And so what do you do when your kids are online a lot? And as mom, I didn’t actually want that even as tech oriented as I am. But he’s like, I don’t care. And so there is no perfect answer. There is no perfect solution, but it is hard. It’s a hard challenge. So what we did is we kind of had to compromise, and I can’t say it was easy. Basically, in that particular scenario, I had to listen to what his concerns were and his reasonings, and I gave my concerns and my reasonings, and we came up with a balance. So what we did for a long time was that they couldn’t be online during the week, but then on the weekends, they could be on. Now, the problem with that, looking back on it, is that they binged a lot. Because we restricted them during the week, it became sort of a binge activity on the weekends for countless hours. So there’s a little bit of a cause and effect that goes on there, and that’s actually, when we get into the whole sort of parental things, I think that if you do completely restrict children and then they have an option to do it, there is sort of this ricochet and, in our case, what I call binge, and it’s a real thing. So if you keep them off, you restrict them, you don’t let them do it, then there is this very extreme can-be, this very extreme reaction on the other side.

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:59.563
I remember well, years ago, I had a friend whose son– she held close very carefully their exposure to technology. And he’s in his late 30s now, so this was 18, 20 years ago. And he went off to college and got so enamored with the internet world that he forgot to go to class and got the privilege of repeating his freshman year of college, which was an expensive [experience?] too. You’ve got to create some balance there, so.

Francie Black: 00:07:36.084
Exactly. And so, I mean, that’s definitely what I would say. I don’t recommend doing– this is me and it’s different for every family, but I don’t recommend doing a complete shutoff. And I personally have found, in our scenario– and every child is different and every family is different, so you have to do what works for you and your family. But I think, based on my experience, that if you do these sort of– I don’t call them extreme, but if or drastic, but if you block it too much– I think it’s better to teach and educate them to manage it wisely than it is to do just complete [inaudible] shutoff. Because it’s not going to go away. You’re not keeping them from something that’s going to disappear. It’s just going to keep going. And so I think educating them early and starting early is super– I mean, it’s one of my key points is to, whatever you do– and we’ll talk about some options. We’re going to look at some tools here, but is to start early in the process when they’re young. The sooner you do it, the better off you are.

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:39.710
I think it’s also really important to foster communication around it is to not make it a secret, not make it something that your kids don’t want to talk to you about.

Francie Black: 00:08:52.232
Correct. You are exactly correct. So you start early so it becomes part of the standard household rule– or I don’t want to call it rule, the standard household– how you guys operate, your lifestyle. It’s part of your lifestyle. But there is a very open communication and that it is not a, “Gotcha,” or, “I’m spying on you,” or, I don’t trust you.” Stay away from all those kind of conversations and make it a dialogue about what’s happening online and why. And I even talk about like, make it a game at dinner. We’ll talk about some of these things like, “What’s the latest gimmick that’s trying to get you to suck into social media? Is it streaks? Is it points?” I laugh, my husband, he does Duolingo. Oh my gosh. It a phenomenal tool, okay, but it’s so gamified. And he’s trying to get these streaks and so forth. And I’m like, he doesn’t even see this. I’m like, “Can you give me a–?”

Gretchen Roe: 00:10:01.992
It’s right there.

Francie Black: 00:10:03.236
Yeah. But it’s gamified, which is good for learning, I guess. But I’ve said, “So give me a couple of sentences that you can do as a result?” And to him, I don’t even think it’s the learning. It’s this connection to this game and these points. And so social media and things like that do that same gaming– kind of there’s this whole gaming technique to suck you in and to get you to be on their app so that they can learn more about you. And that’s a whole nother– that’s a whole nother conversation.

Gretchen Roe: 00:10:34.556
So I have a 25-year-old who still is here at home. Well, he was gone for a couple of years and has moved back home. But he has no social media on his devices whatsoever, and he’s an IT professional. And he’s like, “No, you don’t understand. I don’t want these people to know about me.”

Francie Black: 00:10:55.912
Well, that is so true. And when I do these presentations at conventions and so forth, one of the big things I talk about is not only sharing stuff about you, but as parents, we’re sharing stuff about our children starting at young ages, what their skills are, how well they did in school, how they’re number one on the dance team, or the sporting event, in elementary school. And then what happens when they change, their body changes, their voice changes, they no longer pursue that, and this has been public to the world that they were number 1, and now they’re maybe they’re number 5 or number 10, or maybe they’re not even ranking in that sport or activity anymore. And how does this play out? Because the internet doesn’t forget. So there’s a whole psychological experience that’s going on for the parent, but also for the child. And what you were touching on is now the internet, people, but also the app companies, they have your data. They know when your birthdays are. They know how old your children are. They know how many children you’ve had. They know where you live, they know where you vacation. And I get a lot of people that say, “Well, it doesn’t really matter for advertising.” But they’re creating a whole entire social persona about you.

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:16.588
So that leads me to a question, Francine. Do you engage in social media?

Francie Black: 00:12:24.827
Very little.

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:26.361
Interesting.

Francie Black: 00:12:27.817
To a detriment business wise. I mean, I hate to admit it, if you look at Home Hacker Camp on Facebook, I probably have 5 posts, maybe 10. It’s terrible. And I’m the worst. I’m kind of like the hairdresser that doesn’t manage their own hair. But then from a personal side, I post very little about my family and my kids. On a very rare occasion, most of mine– I have three in college. I have one that’s out of college. So mine are a little bit older now. And when my son graduated from college and got this really cool job, I was pretty proud of that. And it’s such a unique thing, that I shared that. But I probably hadn’t shared anything about him in years. And same thing with my other kids. You will not find hardly anything about my kids online. And when I did TV, I would often test tools like we’re going to talk about today. I test tools, but I never used my children’s name. I always used mock names for my children. They all had code names that I would use. So even on some of these tools that I would demo on TV, I didn’t want people to know my children’s names, how old they were, anything like that. So I keep it pretty close.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:38.499
Give us some insight into why you would do that?

Francie Black: 00:13:41.852
I don’t want people to know about– I don’t want to be profiled online. I don’t want to be– from a personal perspective. Business, maybe not. I don’t care quite so much about. That, I don’t mind being profiled as much for business. But personal, they’re creating a whole network about you. And think about AI and where that’s going. We’re getting onto a whole nother set of topic here, which we can talk about. But down to your voice, down to your body, down to what you do. How is that going to be implemented in AI? Can somebody create an AI clone of you online and mimic you? And so they can use anything against you. They can pull sentences from here and sentences here and make a movie about you that just is completely not true. So I’m very cautious about it. And I’d rather be on the cautious side than on the error side. Other people feel completely opposite. I talk to my friends all the time. The post regularly, they’re like, “I have family that’s all across the country. This is how I share with them.” And it’s how they stay connected. So for all the pros and all the good, there’s so much phenomenal access that social media does for us, but there is a whole host of pretty scary stuff that goes on. And I would encourage as viewers and listeners to this to check out– it’s free, you can watch it on Netflix. I think there’s even a free copy online called The Social Dilemma. The Social Dilemma. It’s a documentary, and it’s about the startup of Facebook and other social media sites and their early executive staff. And that they’ve left because of their own moral dilemma with what’s happening behind the scenes with your social data. I mean, to social statuses–

Gretchen Roe: 00:15:39.945
Really, I find it so fascinating when I read about the Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world who don’t allow their kids to be online. And that to me is really very interesting. So we had lots of questions about keeping your kids safe and you had some wonderful things that you were going to share. So do you want to go ahead and do that?

Francie Black: 00:16:02.072
Yeah, I’d be happy to do that. And I think what I’ll do is start off with some tools. There was a lot of questions about what’s software that’s easy to filter content, suggestions for online safety. I think there was some. What are the easy tools and resources that I can use to monitor what my kids are viewing online? What are the best protective apps? So those are all sort of similar questions worded a little bit differently. And so I thought I’d go over some slides actually that I have that I’ve presented at some of the homeschool conferences. So I’m going to bring that up.

Francie Black: 00:16:31.518
First of all, there’re so many tools, it’s impossible to cover them all, and it’s impossible to know them all. And technology kind of leapfrogs itself. So a tool will be in its infancy and not be very good. And then years later, it can be developed and it’s really great. And the one that was number one is now number five. And so it sort of leapfrogs. So it’s constantly changing and it’s very hard to know every feature of every product and new ones come in and some disappear.

Francie Black: 00:16:56.481
But I’m going to highlight a few tools that I’ve tested and that I actually used on my own children and that have sort of lasted. I’m going to give you some pros and cons. Now one of the things in all of these questions that related to tools like how to effectively manage multiple devices, there is no perfect solution. And the solution that’s going to work for you and your family may be different than somebody else. And there is no catch-all solution. And every solution has their pros and every solution has their cons. Different ages, I think different tools apply for different ages. And then your own.This question didn’t come through, but I get this a lot about what age do you recommend children to have a phone? And we can talk about that as well in a couple of minutes, but.

Francie Black: 00:17:46.614
So some of the things that you need to consider when you are looking for a tool to help keep your kids safe online is you need to consider not only their age, but where do you need it? So a cellular device is different than your gaming devices at home, okay? So there’s a lot of apps and tools that you can use on your mobile device, okay. But that does not cover gaming devices or desktop computers at home. And so there’s certain tools that will do that, but there’s other tools that will do mobile only, okay? So you kind of need to think about are you looking for mobile only? Are you looking for an in-home device for devices that stay on your home network? And we’re going to look at a couple of options for those, okay? So one that’s been around for a long time, and I use this with my children, and I am not promoting any of these. I don’t get paid by any of these companies, but they’ve maintained their ratings. They still exist, and they’re consistently being updated, okay? It doesn’t mean that there’s not something that will come out later that’s better or they may drop off too, so.

Francie Black: 00:19:00.709
But anyhow, Norton Family Parental Controls. Now most people are familiar with Norton due to virus protection, right? So they have a whole suite of parental control apps. They have a dashboard. Early on when this was monitored, it only did mobile devices. They have since expanded it to Windows operating system as well, so Windows desktops, but not Mac desktops. Got it. Yeah. So it doesn’t cover any gaming devices, Mac operating system, Chromebooks, Kindles, but Windows operating system is now supported. And, again, these supported devices change all the time. I updated this a couple of months ago, so I don’t think it’s changed in the last couple of months, but. And this will monitor any of those devices when you are on your home Wi-Fi, if you’re on a guest Wi-Fi, or if you’re using cellular data. That’s sort of a distinction between Wi-Fi and cellular. That’s becoming less of a distinction now because some would only work on Wi-Fi and some would only work on cellular data. So those are two different things. Okay? They transmit data differently. And so most of them are doing both of those now, but that used to be a little bit more of a distinction. Okay? And then, in this case, for Norton, it’s internet traffic only. Okay? So it has to be transmitted over the internet in order for it to track that data. In other words, if you’re doing something local or if you have the downloaded local app, it’s not looking at local app traffic. Okay? So it’s only looking at data that transmits over the internet, okay, so whether it be Wi-Fi transmission or cellular. Okay? All right. So those are just things to think about because if you’re doing something on a home device or desktop machine or a Mac, this probably is not the tool for you. But you can see what– for those that it does work for, you can see what apps are downloaded. You can get alerts on it. You can check out videos, including little snippets of what they’ve seen online. You can see your child’s search terms, which is really important. And you can even do things like a remote lock on device. Now, it does lack some specific controls about time spent on specific apps. And then not all– not all apps are supported, okay, and no social and no SMS, which is messaging. Okay? So it’s a great tool. It’s got a great dashboard. But again, it’s set of what it does, but it does allow you to get an overview of what’s happening on your child’s device.

Francie Black: 00:21:44.871
And I’m going to talk about some other options as well that do cover some of these things that this one doesn’t. Just to give you an idea of pricing – pricing changes frequently – but just to, again, give you a ballpark, right now, this is at 49.99 per year. Okay? That’s for the first year. Its normal price is $99 a year, so. And you can–

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:05.680
So a parent could go Google that and get some information. And now, I know that my bank offers me a discount on Norton products. So it would be worth, as a parent, to explore that a little bit as well.

Francie Black: 00:22:21.467
That’s great. I had no idea. That’s an excellent tip. Okay? So 49.99. That’s a great tip. Now, what this doesn’t do is it does not track any devices on your home network, okay, other than a Windows desktop that you have the software installed on. So an alternative to that is something called Circle Home Plus. And I actually have mine here, okay, because I also use this as well. Okay? And the difference in this is there’s a hardware and a software solution, where the Norton is strictly a software solution. This has an option for a hardware device that you put on your router. And what this does is any data that’s transmitted through that router, which could be a PS2, any gaming device, anything that you have on your network– in your home network that goes to the internet, you can track it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:19.088
Interesting.

Francie Black: 00:23:19.731
Okay? So [crosstalk]–

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:22.425
If you have kids who are big gamers, this is to your advantage then.

Francie Black: 00:23:25.709
Correct. That is correct. Okay. So it’s a hardware and a software solution. There’s different configurations, but at most, it does both mobile but then also any device on your network that’s not mobile, okay, so gaming devices and so forth. Now, the caveat with this particular product– and it’s award-winning product. It had a much better interface than Norton had. Norton has improved theirs recently. The downside of this particular product now is that they have been bought by a company called Aurora. And Aurora is a startup out of Boston. I know very little about them, but they’re changing sort of the feel of the company. So I don’t know a whole lot about them. I actually had somebody in an audience one time when I was giving this presentation and she said that her husband worked there or had worked there or applied for a job there and said she wasn’t so comfortable with that particular organization. But remember, all of these organizations are dealing with a lot of very personal data because– so you have to keep that in mind. But so their structure is a little bit different. Aurora purchased them about a year ago, so I’m a little less familiar with what they’ve done since Aurora. But my research has kind of showed me that they are sort of shifting their approach a little bit. But it is, to date, still the most comprehensive product that I have found that’s easy to use.

Francie Black: 00:25:03.761
Now, what neither one of those products do is they do not monitor the content of your cellular data. And there are several products that do. And so in this case, this is an app that you put on your mobile devices, iOS and Android. And it says not– I have not Chromebooks there. I feel like I checked that today, updated. I feel like Chrome might be supported, but I might be confusing it with another one. But anyhow, content of cellular data. So here you’re getting things like you can blacklist words, you can set alarms for certain keywords. Several people asked about bullying and pornography and sexting, all of those things, you can set alarms and notifications and it can check the content of all of these Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, Telegram, Skype, Snapchat, it emails. So it can scan that data and give you an alert as a parent.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:16.248
So it’s sort of data mining the information that’s coming in maybe to your children’s devices and then providing you feedback with what kind of information is coming in.

Francie Black: 00:26:26.371
Yes. And actually it’s giving you alarms on it and saying, “Hey, watch out. This is”– Yes. So back on Norton, I’m going to read this. I don’t know how many people out there have Google phones versus iOS phones. But you have to remember that Google, great company. But when a product is free, that’s how Google grew so rapidly is that they offered so many services for free. We all love Gmail. I have Gmail. All of your emails are scanned. Again, they’re creating this profile about you. So it’s not free. You are the product. So the more they know about you, the more money they make off of you. You are the product. That’s what they do. So keep that in mind when you choose tools. Again, some people don’t care, others might.

Francie Black: 00:27:11.589
But Norton, this is the question, why doesn’t Norton scan the content of text messages and give me those alerts? Okay, so this is directly from their website. I clipped this a couple of months ago, says, “Due to policy changes by Google, the text message monitoring feature, and the feature that enables parents to block children from making and receiving phone calls during no screen times are currently disabled. This affects two of the core features of Norton Family in Android. Children will now be able to receive and make calls to anyone they choose during time curfew and instant lock periods. Due due to the recent policy changes by Google, Norton Family is not permitted to restrict calls to only those listed on your emergency contact list.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:12.227
Interesting.

Francie Black: 00:28:14.350
So that’s an awful lot of control by Google restricting this particular– not just this company, but other companies as well, which is why some of them don’t do it. But SMS – which is texting – supervision is not. So texting supervision is not available at this time. So you cannot monitor or view the messages that your child exchanges with their friends, so yes. So this is a Google thing. So they’re not allowing access to certain data. Well, then how in the world does mSpy get it? How do they do that monitoring? So what I–

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:51.197
You’re reading my mind. [laughter]

Francie Black: 00:28:57.314
And I haven’t researched this, but this is just from– and I don’t use mSpy. I have tested mSpy, but it was a while ago. But I think what mSpy does– and I’m not 100% sure on this, so don’t quote me. But I think what they do is they create a backup of your phone data. And then, they scan the backup of the phone data to provide you that– those alerts and notifications as opposed to it just being a monitoring something on the device. It’s taking the data that’s been backed up, scanning that, and then giving you the alerts. So for instance–

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:30.923
Does that mean it’s not as real time?

Francie Black: 00:29:34.910
I think–

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:35.176
There would be a lag there, then.

Francie Black: 00:29:37.952
Don’t quote me on that’s how they do that. That’s what I think that they do. And I don’t think there’s much of a lag, maybe initially and I’m not 100% sure on that at this point in time, but that’s– there may be some other technology that they’re using that I’m not familiar with or that’s changed over time. But on iOS, if you have an iOS device, meaning an iPhone– iOS is Apple’s mobile operating system. So iOS means an Apple phone or iPad. You don’t actually have to install any software on that. If I’m a parent, I log into my mSpy dashboard. And then, if my daughter– I’ll say Sally Sue. My daughter has an iPhone. She has an iCloud account. Then, when I set up my mSpy account dashboard, I put in her iCloud information. And that’s how it gets monitored– is through iCloud. And it’s pretty quick and pretty instantaneous. So I don’t even have to install, technically, an app on her phone. I can do that through my dashboard. All the other ones require that you install an app or software onto that device. So on iOS, you do not have to install an app on the phone. I think on Android you do. I’m more Apple-oriented. But on iOS, you don’t. You just have the iCloud account. So now, this one is very extensive because it has access to so much more data. So you can blacklist words, you can set alarms. And a question that somebody asked, which I’m glad you did– somebody had asked about, “Can it monitor Discord?” So a lot of the other apps cannot monitor RC Discord. But the way that mSpy works with its iCloud data, you can actually monitor Discord.

Gretchen Roe: 00:31:42.730
You may be actually giving parents some ideas of what kind of phone they need to purchase for [laughter] their kids if they haven’t yet done that, so.

Francie Black: 00:31:52.264
Well, we can talk about that. I’m not saying Google’s bad. There’s a lot of great things about Google. And I use a lot of Google products, and they all help our businesses. So I don’t want to bash on it. You just have to decide what’s right for you, okay? And you have to think about, there’s certain times where it might be right, and there’s certain times where it might not be right. So if you don’t want them to know everywhere you browse, then you might want to use a privacy browser. And that’s a whole another conversation. And privacy email unit scans, Yahoo, all of these companies scan your email, okay? They’re getting more data about you. It’s not free, okay? They’re selling you, they’re selling your data. But if you want a different tool, like for mail, I recommend Proton Mail. For browsing, I recommend Brave browsing, okay? So those are things– services that don’t– they block a lot of the trackers, basically, okay? And then there’s the more standard things like location and history, app usage time, browser history. Now this one actually has a really crazy thing that you can even do screen recorders. You can actually record the other screen. And it’s pretty crazy. It’s stealth as well, okay? So it can hide its icon on a user’s phone. So it’s a pretty– the only thing I don’t like about it is its name, okay? And I don’t think it was originally designed to be a parent control app. I don’t know that for sure. But based on the name, I think it was designed for other purposes. But the vertical application that they market is for parental controls. But I don’t want my kid to think I’m spying on them. Spying is not the message you want to send to your child.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:38.649
That, Brook, is an important question: how do we have these conversations with our children so that they understand that our goal is to keep them safe, not that we’re suspicious of them doing something wrong?

Francie Black: 00:33:51.705
I think it’s a lot of conversation and a lot of sharing and a lot of discussion. Telling your children that you trust them and that you’re not spying on them, despite the name of the app, is that you’re concerned about their safety because things are changing so rapidly. And you could– I don’t have– I didn’t pull in stats for this, but there’s all kinds of stats that show predators and– predators pull in people– skilled predators pull in children and people, even adults, very, very slowly. They gain your trust, they connect with your conversations, they read your social media. So if you like mint chip ice cream, it could be, hey, my favorite ice cream is mint chip. Oh my gosh, that’s mine too. And I love furry brown poodles. Oh my gosh, I have a furry brown poodle. And so they create these false connections, but they’ve learned about this about you on social media because you posted it or your family posted it that you got a brand new Labradoodle. And so now these connection– they can see all this information online, and now they can connect with you or your kids. And you think it’s innocent and coincidental and fun, but it slowly builds a relationship that gets pulled a little closer, a little closer, a little closer. And it’s almost imperceptible. So this could be people doing this, or it could be tech companies doing this. So there’s different types of predators. Most people think when you say predator, you’re thinking a person, but app companies are pulling this data as well for their purposes. And sometimes it’s advertising and sometimes it’s not. But our focus, again, back on our children and how to keep them safe is having that conversation, letting them know. I mean, there’s a lot of tricky people out there. And there’s a lot of mind games. So there’s two things Using tech is so important. And again, I don’t say exclude it. It’s nearly impossible to exclude. There’s negative effects for completely excluding it. But you want to train your kids. And so I was talking, having a conversation with my daughter about Snapchat. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of streaks.

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:25.878
Yes.

Francie Black: 00:36:27.126
Okay. So in Snapchat, you have streaks, and you get points. And there’s scoring. And my kids, we’d be driving to– my kids went to a small private school. They did not go to– they were not homeschooled. So I would be driving them to school, and they would be snapping on the way. Stop doing that. And they were building their streaks, okay? So in talking to my daughter about this, she said that kids at school would comment about, “Oh, your streak is not very high.” It made her very self-conscious. My streak is not high. Does this mean I don’t have good friends? Am I an outcast? Your self-esteem starts getting questioned because you don’t have a streak score or you have a low streak score. And there’s all these psychological games that are being played on young people. It happens to older people, too, okay, but younger ones are more susceptible, more impressionable. So my personal suggestion is as you have those conversations with your kid, discuss what they’re doing. Recognize what these streaks are doing, okay? I mean, it’s gamification. There’s literally a physical internal response that happens that makes you want to– that draws you in and keep you online, okay? So social and gaming are the two most detrimental activities that can happen online. I’m not saying don’t do them, but I’m saying manage them. And educate your kids. Have those discussions. Let them recognize. Say, “Okay. When you do a streak, why is that important to you? What do your friends say about it?” And again, not quite so bluntly but in a more warming and welcoming discussion, but teach them to recognize the effects that it’s having on them. My daughter is in graduate school. And she’s in medical school. And so she would say that the students that are studying that are doing social while they’re studying do more poorly than people that don’t. She cuts off her social, okay, for studying. So she cuts it off completely. I think once in a while, she’ll turn it back on. If she’s in between semesters or has a break, she might turn it on for a little while. But she says when she needs the focus and the distraction, she said she noticed a trend that those that struggled the most in her program were the people that did a lot of social, okay. Okay. So I’m not saying that’s an absolute. I’m just saying that was her observation from her perspective, okay?

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:15.271
But what a great dialogue you were able to create with her that she was able to make that observation on her own as a young adult instead of you having to draw that conclusion for her. That’s a difference, so.

Francie Black: 00:39:31.495
I appreciate that. And I think that’s something we want to teach our kids to do is to recognize that and to share that. It’s like let them figure it out, but guide them. Give them the guardrails and insight. But then have them say– what’d you see today? I did a really dumb trap. I won’t go into it now because we have some more important content to cover. But I fell into a really– I know this stuff. And I fell into– I was such a sucker. It was a brand that I buy from on a semi-regular basis. And it was a completely false ad. And I had to call my credit card company and cancel it. I felt completely suckered to it. And so I use that as dinner conversation. I go, “You will not believe the dumb thing I did today. I’m a sucker. I–”

Gretchen Roe: 00:40:15.195
Here’s somebody who lives in breeze tech and you got suckered in.

Francie Black: 00:40:19.270
I did. And I know better. I totally know. As soon as I hit click, I knew better. And I was just like, “Gosh, why did I do that?” All right, let’s keep going on a couple more tools unless you have another question.

Gretchen Roe: 00:40:31.003
Nope.

Francie Black: 00:40:32.307
So this one was a popular one, SaferKid app. I only bring it up because it did get a lot of press for a long time, but I’ve kind of tracked it for a while. This has not been updated in over a year. If an app has not been updated in the last three to six months, it’s probably not being well supported. So I think that while this was a very good app during its heyday, I would say it’s probably– my impression is that it’s on its decline. So that’s the only reason I bring that up. So this is one that is becoming very popular or is very popular, it’s called Bark. Much like MSPY is that it does track the content of your cellular data. It’s got a very friendly, simple user interface. You do get alerts based on texts, predator kind of comments. So it’s scanning it. You can look at videos and see that it has sexual content or body. So it actually monitors and scans messages, posts, comments, replies, web searches, photos and videos, mail, and specific apps. And it does monitor discord as well. And then you can do sort of this more standard things like screen time limits and blocking websites and apps and tracking locations as well. So this is a very, very popular one. The interesting thing about Bark as well is that it also has its own phone. So it has its app product. Okay? And it also has its own phone as well. So you can buy a Bark phone. Now, I have not tested the bark phone, but anything that requires an app to be installed on your child’s mobile device is the child in most cases can figure out how to delete it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:42:26.028
Our kids learn faster than we do, don’t they?

Francie Black: 00:42:28.892
They do sometimes. They do. So those are things to watch out for. But in the Bark phone, you can’t delete it. And it can do a few– or deeper things because it’s part of its operating system. Okay? So if you’re looking for a phone solution, maybe you want your child to be able to have a phone at a younger age because they travel or maybe they do, I don’t know, horse shows and they’re traveling the front, whatever it is. So you want them to have some connection, but you maybe want to limit it. So a Bark phone is an option for that. And it does have pretty good reviews. Okay. All right. So this is very, very popular and it is very detailed service. They have on their website– I pulled this straight off of their site, which is Bark versus SaferKid. I don’t know if this is so relevant now because SaferKid is, I think, sort of– in my opinion, is sort of coming down a little bit. So Bark might be the better option. I would go for bark over SaferKid at this point. Okay, now, there’s another newer product out that’s called Canopy. And it is also getting some good reviews. I don’t know who backs Canopy. Kind of like that Aurora. I know Aurora for sure is a startup company. And I know Canopy is a startup, but I don’t know who backs it. In other words, I don’t know the motives, but– or their corporate profile, I should say. Motives maybe is not the right word to use. But what this does is it has a different technology, kind of approaches it differently. So rather than blocking sites and you having to go in and block sites or broad categories of sites, it actually scans images and filters any images so they can’t come through. So somebody asked about pornography. So this one would be a good one to block against pornography. Covenant Eyes is one that I have looked at a long time ago, and it focuses on pornography. So if you’re looking specifically for that, that one is.

Gretchen Roe: 00:44:34.525
I have seen them in the homeschool space a number of years at homeschool conferences. So that might be something that would be a resource for parents to explore in more depth.

Francie Black: 00:44:44.863
Yeah. And so I think their focus is pornography. So if you think that’s an issue in your household, then that might be one to explore specifically for that. So this prevents images with full or partial nudity from being sent or received by a child. And a parent if something is detected, it actually asks for the parent review, and you can say yes or no. It’s supported on a wide variety of platforms, depending on what so for Mac, Mac operating system. So that macOS is desktop where iOS is the mobile, and then Windows, Chrome and Android. So it’s a wide variety of platforms.

Francie Black: 00:45:25.421
If you have a mixture in your house, that might be a good. And their kind of approach is that other tools are too restrictive. And so they kind of do this sort of video and image filtering as opposed to as much as opposed to blocking. So they kind of look at it from a different perspective. So maybe if you have older kids, this might feel less restrictive and give you– but still block anything that is questionable. So that might be a good option if you have older teens in the house. So this is their claim. I clipped this off their website, but canopy is the only digital parenting app that detects and blocks pornography on every single website on the internet. That’s a pretty strong statement. Okay, now I haven’t tested every single to see if that statement is absolutely true, but that’s that’s what they claim. So if that is an issue and you have a teen, this is probably where I would go. It alerts parents immediately when it detects sexting, which is sort of asking for partial pictures of your body. And then they use it sort of as bribery to show more. And then they say, “Well, I know who your mom is or your dad is. If you don’t do more, I’m going to tell your parents you were doing this.” And so it’s this whole bribery mechanism. And so you want to be very, very careful about that. And so this focuses on that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:48.571
And I know as parents, we want to protect our children from these kinds of things, but if our children aren’t aware that people use those kinds of tools to extort information and money and things from them, it’s better to have those conversations, those hard conversations at your kitchen table than find out later that you should have had those hard conversations.

Francie Black: 00:47:11.074
That’s excellent. Yes, that’s exactly right. So just a couple other things. I’m going to just point out there are a bunch of free tools on iOS that you can use. They don’t do the text monitoring or the content of Discord and so forth. But you can see what apps they’re using. You can do a lot of blocking. So there’s a lot that you can do free directly within the operating system. iOS is pretty, pretty extensive, but it does lack the content. And of course, this is only mobile, so this isn’t doing any other device on your network. So just a few tips there. And then on Google, their equivalent is called Google Family Link. Now, Google Family Link does require that your child has a Gmail account, and you have to be 13 years old. But remember what I said about Google. It’s privacy privacy is your concern. Again, some people don’t care about privacy. I do. But maybe your kid’s not going to get a lot of mail. I don’t know. They don’t really communicate so much through e-mail. They really communicate through Discord and these other apps more than they do through messaging or through mail. But it is Google and they do track a lot. So just be very aware of that. All right, parents, what can we do?

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:36.306
I think I made reference when you showed me this picture earlier that this looks like a couple that we saw across a restaurant from us on Sunday evening. So I think it does make a difference. We’ve got a model for our children, how we want them to respond.

Francie Black: 00:48:52.374
Exactly. So this particular child is young, but the point here in this child being so young is look what the parents are doing. And we’re all guilty of it. I know I’m guilty of it. My work depends on my mobile device, and we all get text and messaged all day long. But if you start like this, it’s going to be a tough road. They are going to completely learn from your behavior. You’re going to all three be sitting at the table with your mobile devices, and there’s going to be no conversation. So model the behavior, put your phone away. When you’re with the kids, don’t be checking your phone the whole time. When you’re having a conversation with your kid, look them in the eye, put your phone down, let them know that they are more important than your phone. Have that one-on-one, have those discussions, put the phones away, put it in another room. Those are non-tangible things that mean a ton. You can’t put a value on that. Just put it away. And I tell myself this, my daughter’s home from college. We go and do something. I put my phone away. And I practice these things. And I have to force it sometimes because I get messaged all day long, okay? As do you and most of us. So be careful where your priority is. Do you text your kids? I do this sometimes while we’re in the house.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:23.181
I have been known to text people saying dinner is ready because I don’t want to go all over the place and find them all.

Francie Black: 00:50:31.805
So it’s our new intercom systems. We used to have intercoms, but at least they heard your voice on an intercom.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:39.662
Well, when I was growing up, we had a dog. We could hand him a note and he’d go– we could tell him who to take it to and he would go do that.

Francie Black: 00:50:51.145
But don’t have your phone in the bedroom at night. Teach your kids. That’s a huge thing is not to let your children have their phones in their room at night. Parents model that. And I had somebody ask me one time, “What if I get an emergency call?” I said, turn the ringer on, put it in the hallway or in the kitchen or someplace where you could still hear it. But let your, you know, put the family phones in a pile, not in the rooms. I forget the number. There’s a study that shows how many times a kid checks their phone in the middle of the night and it’s destroying their sleep, messes with their education, their self-esteem, they’re checking to see what their friends are doing. If they’re at a party, who’s with who? The fear of missing out. We didn’t even talk. I skipped all of that. What are the effects of too much screen time? I have lots of slides on that that I didn’t go into. But that constant checking, there is a psychological wear down on children with that. So set downtime, monitor their social accounts, do what I said, be friends with them on Facebook, wherever you can connect with them. Instagram, I don’t even– I don’t have Instagram, I don’t have TikTok. Your question back to what do I do? I’m terrible. I don’t do TikTok. I don’t do Instagram. I have a Facebook, but I don’t really use it very, very little. Have conversations with your kids. Teach them to recognize questionable behavior. Make games out of it, what did anybody do anything today online that was weird? Or what did you learn or streaks or gimmicks in terms of clicking on things? Teach them not to send skim photos. Tell them how predators sort of lure you in. And if you watch the social dilemma, which I mentioned, they talk a lot about that. So that’s a really–

Gretchen Roe: 00:52:42.679
I’m sure that gets included in our show notes then as well.

Francie Black: 00:52:46.635
Yeah, that’s an excellent, excellent resource. Do set time limits. I suggest not cutting them off completely for the reasons I previously mentioned. Tell them about chatting in rooms with strangers. Let them know that strangers are finding you online. They learn about you online. And so how do they know something about you? It’s because they’ve seen it posted online somewhere else. It’s not a coincidence. Don’t trust that person. These are all tricks to lure you in. No phone in room at night, not no private social accounts, parent device access and don’t share personal info. That is a key for so many things. Parents and kids.

Gretchen Roe: 00:53:27.870
Well, Francie, I believe we’re almost at the top of the hour. So what would be the best three pieces of advice you could offer to parents trying to manage? This is like trying to eat an elephant and you have a tiny little spoon. So what are the things that parents need to think about most earnestly stepping away from the conversation we’ve had here?

Francie Black: 00:53:50.298
Whatever tools or techniques you implement, start young. That’s number one. Start young so it’s become part of your family routine, your family dynamic. Number two, keep the communication open with your kids. Don’t let them think that you’re trying to spy on them, that you are trying to gotcha. Let them know the internet is changing and strategies change regularly. Let them know that the pitfalls of it. Let them know how it affects you. A lot of kids I know don’t even want their stuff posted by their parents online. So start young, have conversations, and then implement the tools in a non-restrictive way that doesn’t push them away from you. Those are my three summary points that I would take away. And different tools work for different people, different ages. You may shift over time. Think about where your priority is and do limit what they do and limit social and gaming the most.

Gretchen Roe: 00:54:52.469
I think one of the things that you said in our conversation yesterday or maybe just before we went on the air was to create an environment where trust is created, not taken away. So set it up in such a way that your children understand that you’re trusting them and your efforts are in order to keep them safe.

Francie Black: 00:55:16.720
It is. And one of the things that I do with my kids is I let them feel like they’re teaching me and they like that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:25.037
It’s great.

Francie Black: 00:55:26.080
Yeah. And it’s true, they do. My kids teach me all the time, especially like that example that I gave about streaks with– and how it made–

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:38.187
Got you. Yes.

Francie Black: 00:55:39.622
And how it made them feel. And I was like, “Wow.” I mean, I knew a lot of that, but we probed a lot deeper than that. I scratched the surface on our discussion. But we probed a lot deeper. But I had her educating me on how it made her feel. And so she was,”teaching me,” and it made me appreciate her. So it was a two-way. It wasn’t a parent down. It was I was lifting her up and making her feel like she was helping me. And so, that’s a common approach that I use. Actually, I did a lot with teaching as well.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:15.924
So in the last couple of minutes, tell us a little bit more about Home Hacker Camp. What are the kinds of things that parents would be able to find available from you? And do you have a slide to support that, or do we just talk now?

Francie Black: 00:56:28.848
Yeah, well, let’s see, I think I brought up a little video I have. We do our classes online via Zoom, or we do pre-recorded online robotics and programming. So it allows kids to learn tech, to understand tech. How to understand how devices are built. All of these devices are just computerized devices. And we use the robots to teach them how electronic devices are made, really. So we’re working with hardware, we’re working with software, and we do it through the robots because they’re fun. I’ll show this video, I’ll play it. But every student builds their own robot. It’s theirs to keep. It’s very hands on. It becomes very personal. They love that. They learn about all the hardware components that make up the robots. And then we go into coding. So we do a little bit of character coding for fun. And then we go into programming our robot to do challenges. So here’s the challenge is to go straight, pop the balloon and then stop before they hit the wall. And then, they have lots of troubleshooting, lots of developing critical thinking skills, lots of reworking, lots of problem solving. We’re always working with hardware and software. Here, this challenge was to code it to turn. That corner totally missed, got to go back and rework it. Again, we don’t always give the solution. You got to figure it out. We give a lesson, and then you have to work on that. And then we bring in special speakers. This was a really cool speaker. But I’ll tell you my son this year, the one that’s at SpaceX, he’s going to be the speaker this year and he’s working on the project going to Mars. And so he’s going to be zooming into our classes to do that presentation. But this is obviously an in-person class, which we do those live in Asheville, North Carolina. But we do them online via Zoom and we do them online pre-recorded so that you can do it at your own pace. So those are the options for most homeschoolers.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:23.639
Well, I want to thank you so much. The information you have shared today has just been phenomenal. And I know the parents who have attended have gotten an enormous amount from the conversation that we’ve had. I will make sure that the resources that you have outlined are also outlined in our show notes so parents can go and find those things. And then I just want to say thank you for this time and spending an hour with us so that we could learn more. And I think probably the most valuable takeaway for me is the fact that you need to start young and keep that conversation going all the time.

Francie Black: 00:59:02.962
Yeah, we do. And it changes, the conversation changes, so engage. Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:59:07.388
It does. I want to thank you so much for joining us today. All of you who are here, I hope you found our session valuable. Francie has so much information. It’s hard to parse because there is so much and it changes so quickly. But I think she’s provided you with some very valuable resources. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thank you for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. And we’ll look forward to having you join us again soon. Take care, everyone.

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