Kristi McVee (00:01.304)
Hello and welcome back to the Conversations with Kristi podcast and I am with the wonderful Jocelyn Brewer. Jocelyn, I was just explaining how I had this massive list of people I wanted to talk to this year on my podcast and you were on it, you're up the top of it. So it had taken me, you know, I gave this list to my assistant who's new for me and he made it all happen. And so thank you so much for, you know, first of all, for agreeing to come on the podcast, but also just for
being such a beautiful energy in regards to what you do. And I'll let you explain what you do, but I've been following you for a little while now because I actually love how you do your job. Explain a little bit about you and just what your position is in like social media. That's how I found you.
Jocelyn (00:43.389)
Thank you.
Jocelyn (00:52.605)
Absolutely, sure. So I'm a psychologist these days, but if you met me 20 years ago, I was a high school teacher. I taught social sciences. So I was one of these kids who did an arts degree, not really knowing where that was going to go. And I ended up doing teaching and then realizing teaching rainforest to year eight probably wasn't going to be my life's passion. So I got into a school counselor retraining program. And as a part of that, I was doing my fourth year.
Kristi McVee (01:13.919)
you
Jocelyn (01:21.341)
On this thesis and I had to write something and I was like, what should I do? And the principal at the school I was at at the time said, you should work out what's going on with boys in video games. So I then kind of got to thinking about myself and my own use of technology, which at that time was MySpace and you know, having a new email account. I've had a Gmail account for 20 years. I've this year been on the Facebook for 20 years as well.
Kristi McVee (01:39.787)
Kristi McVee (01:47.95)
Mm.
Jocelyn (01:48.337)
So I was really examining that and was like a dog with a bone. And here we are all these years later where, yeah, the conversations are still so much the same, but in a very different landscape. The underlying psychological principles that we need to keep banging on about are still the ones that I wrote blogs about 10 years ago. So.
Kristi McVee (02:10.776)
Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that's that was the birth of digital nutrition, I guess in the end, because you have and I love that you've been doing this for such a long time, because when you were going into, you know, really deep diving into this work, I was just becoming a mom, I was just starting to became a police officer. So possibly there's some like
Jocelyn (02:15.461)
Yes. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (02:34.088)
definitely a crossover between what I saw in the police and what you have seen and what you've observed and probably what you've been discussing for a long time.
Jocelyn (02:41.551)
Yeah, and what I noticed and thinking about coming on today was thinking about the difference, I guess, where I positioned my work was really from that digital well-being not online safety perspective. Because at the time, you know, I wasn't trying to be a cyber cop. I was very clearly there's enough work around there and that's very different to my perspective. Well, not actually different to my perspective, but different to the kind of piece that I was speaking to around healthy digital habits.
Kristi McVee (03:08.717)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (03:09.213)
And now, and over the course of time, I guess what I've realised is that all of these things are so incredibly intertwined. They're actually not separate fields. At the time, I think there was maybe some different approaches to it, but now it's really, really integrated. And it's not just for young people, it's actually for parents and for the boomers. Like, you know, it's my mum and dad that need something really special.
Kristi McVee (03:29.699)
Yeah.
So true.
Jocelyn (03:33.913)
And digital nutrition was really kind of gives you a sense of the positive framing that I have. I'm very much about, you know, appropriate levels of participation so we can build the skills. Don't learn to swim just by watching Ian Thorpe back in my day going up and down the pool. You know, you actually got into the pool and did many, many hours of chasing that black line to be a good swimmer.
Kristi McVee (03:44.802)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (03:50.712)
Correct.
Kristi McVee (03:56.352)
Yeah, just so true. In fact, I know from my experiences in policing, but also my experiences since leaving the police, you can't police your way out of this scenario. Like you can't police your way out of, know, having kids who are struggling with online safety or with, you know, bullying or with whatever's sextortion, whatever the issue that is coming up, you can't police your way out of it. It comes from conversations and prevention education so that people can navigate it better. And I think that's where you come from.
Jocelyn (04:25.159)
Yeah, Absolutely. And I guess the bigger conversation even these days is like, yes, it's about prevention for the victims, but it's also stopping the perpetration, which we're seeing at such high levels and is becoming so normalized, you know, as this information rolls out that there's this great awakening that I think is really impacting a lot of people very, very deeply as we kind of scroll through cat videos and then get shown all of these
Kristi McVee (04:38.467)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (04:55.099)
you know, really intense things at so many levels across so many parts of the world.
Kristi McVee (05:00.074)
Yeah, well, I'd imagine in your career of this space, you know, that's a lot of observations you've made probably. And you said very early in, you know, when you were explaining that you started off 20 years ago, and it's still the similar conversation, same things, just different context now and different obviously, risk factors, because we've got so many other things happening in the world that are affecting our kids and our and us.
Jocelyn (05:26.769)
Yeah, the amplification I think is really important. But I mean, ultimately, I say my target client is that group of parents who are really hard to reach, who don't come to parent teacher interviews, who aren't, you know, willing to show up at, you know, the PNC and those sorts of things, because they've got their own stuff going on. And it's usually multi layered. It's not necessarily even based on socioeconomic status, though that plays a really big factor there as well.
Kristi McVee (05:46.371)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (05:55.186)
but they're the people that we really need to reach. And often the way that we attempt these interventions and even some of the books in the Four New Norms that are suggested in those really big books don't suit, you know, brown boys in the, know, teenage boys in the Western suburbs of Sydney where I live.
Kristi McVee (05:58.905)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (06:16.012)
Yeah, right. What do you think? Well, what do you think does reach those sorts of people who because I mean, I've been a presenter. Yeah, I know, because I'm thinking you're she's found that she's found the answer because I you know, I have been doing this work for 16 years and I have you know, even as a police officer, you know, there's a lot of parents who are disengaged from these topics because it is overwhelming and
Jocelyn (06:22.427)
I would love to know it.
Kristi McVee (06:43.086)
maybe they don't see it as an issue or like I'm still struggling to work out because
I come from, yes, obviously online safety and cyber safety and health and nutrition is all part of parenting, right? In today's society. I mean, we're the first generation of parents or nearly the second generation of parents who are dealing with this issue. We didn't know what we didn't know when we started. And here we are 20 years on, you know, as you said, the book face has been around for 20 years and it's been a big issue. Like it's become bigger than Ben Hur.
And because we don't actually have much control over what we're seeing. We don't have control over what is being placed in front of our kids either. Like it's literally a nonstop buffet of things that we don't, we shouldn't be seeing mostly.
Jocelyn (07:30.91)
Absolutely. Yeah, I call it the unending sushi train. It just goes around and around the bottomless thing. you know, it's not even as healthy as the sushi train, let's face it. It is a lot of highly processed junk food, especially now in the age of AI slop and brain rot, literally the opposite of nutrition and the things that we need, but also the psychological impacts of seeing some of the things that
you know, it just simply can't be unseen and little brains can really latch onto. I think in terms of parent engagement, it's systemic. This is about social change. This is about the fact that we're in a cost of breathing crisis, right? Forget the cost of living. I think it's the cost of breathing for many Australians. I feel like that there's so much pull on people who haven't been able to do their own work and their own healing. I'm going to say that broadly.
Kristi McVee (08:17.549)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (08:28.704)
I agree.
Jocelyn (08:29.501)
In terms of young people have such literacy around mental health. They can talk about their feelings. They can talk about and spot, you know, that person's trauma bonding and you know, all of these things. But my generation, so I'm a, I like to call myself an elder millennial, but I'm on the cusp really of of Generation X. Many of us really never had that literacy and we certainly aren't getting the the interventions. We're not getting the healing and the help and the therapy.
in order then to be able to cope with this job of parenting. So I think there's these really interesting systemic things that are happening that are so multifaceted no one policy or no one education program is going to really fix. And to reach everyone. mean there's a question of reach. There's also a question of humans really only react when the proverbial has hit the fan.
Kristi McVee (09:16.204)
No, and reach everyone.
Jocelyn (09:27.107)
We are very, very good at saying, not my kid, and you know, like, kid wouldn't do that, and my kid wouldn't bully, and you know, like living in a world where we just hope and pray, rather than actually kind of engaging with the fact that it very well could be your kid. Not because you're a bad parent, but because of a whole range of other factors that, you know, lead to certain types of social behaviors, right?
Kristi McVee (09:27.205)
I know.
Kristi McVee (09:37.688)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (09:44.162)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (09:53.475)
Well, it's not just, know, like that whole not my kid thing or, you know, my kid wouldn't do that thing. I was never that parent because I was a police officer and I saw kids of all types of families, you know, the best families or the ones that were struggling or the ones that, you know, like they had, they did talk to their kids, still bullying other kids or still being a victim of sex extortion, still, you know,
Jocelyn (10:02.215)
Whoosh.
Kristi McVee (10:18.328)
harming other kids. You know, I saw all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life. And it wasn't a fact that they did anything wrong. It's just out we do not control out kids, right? And all we can do is help them critically think through every part of like, why we do things and talk them through it, not in the moment, sometimes when they're having a tantrum, but you know, come back and like, let's have a conversation. But
Jocelyn (10:39.889)
Yeah, yeah.
Kristi McVee (10:44.128)
I never was that parent because I'd be like, I'd look at my daughter and go, what did you do? Or what was your involvement? Because the one thing that I learned from policing, but also I think maybe my parents is that, you know, we're all capable of a lot of things. just, the circumstances might not be the reason.
And the one thing that I have constantly reminded myself is that we are not behavior. So your child's behavior and who your child is are two separate things. They are not their behavior and we are not our behavior. If that's the case, then I'm a really horrible person because I can be really grumpy to my family, right? But I am not my behavior. My behavior is separate to me.
Jocelyn (11:15.101)
Absolutely.
Kristi McVee (11:27.05)
And so the thing is, this that if we look at our children as two separate things, behavior and the child, the child is amazing. They've got potential. They've got all of this stuff. They have moments. Their behavior is a moment. And so I think that's why we struggle sometimes to pull apart that, well, our child is capable of that because the behavior isn't.
Jocelyn (11:45.47)
Absolutely, and I think the other piece to that is it's the moment and it's the very specific context in that moment. It's like how many other kids were watching that you became a bystander, not an upstander. Was it that the teacher that you don't trust was the person who was available to talk to rather than your favorite teacher who wasn't there that you would have had more trust to act differently?
So there's almost these micro moments within that and realizing that kids are making, we're all making lots of very quick decisions based on the data available to us, but also the data in our kind of little memory banks or actually quite massive memory banks that we make these split decisions. But the thing is kids don't have the benefit of, you know I talk about adults having like these sort of like floodlights and we can see into the future, we can see the connections, we can see what's gonna happen.
Kristi McVee (12:09.154)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (12:19.138)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (12:25.731)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (12:37.147)
And kids have these like little matches that they're saying, I understand how the world works now, you know, classic teenage behavior. I know relationships. I know how to be good at this, that and the other, because they have a bigger sense than maybe than when they were 10. So think contextually, you know, we need to understand the ways that humans operate very, very differently based on ultimately our need to belong and be liked and not be ostracized. And that's happening for all of us all the time.
Kristi McVee (12:41.314)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (12:50.475)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (13:01.688)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (13:06.498)
Yeah, and a lot of kids are running from that pure fact is they just want to belong and fit in. And your child who is sweet and kind and calm and even my child, like my child has done things where I've gone, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?
Were you thinking? And when we come down to it, it was literally I just wanted to belong. I just wanted to fit in. I wasn't thinking at the time. and again, behavior person, not that she was not that person. And it's funny because we talk about I had a little five year old tell me the other day. It was so funny because I've got a new puppy, right? And the puppy was being biting things and chewing things. And I said, the puppy's being naughty. And she said, there's no naughty.
naughty kids, just kids who are learning. And I was like, oh, I love that saying like, and literally what and my daughter has said that to me as well. She's like, I'm just still learning mom, like, because I used to say it to her when she was little. And even though she's nearly 18, she's like, I'm still learning. And do you know, I remember being I think 2021, talking to a 35 year old guy who was trying to tell me that, you know, I needed to do something with my
money or investments. was like, yeah, I know what I'm doing, mate. Like you need to back off. And, and it's so funny. I look back and I'm like in my forties now and I think, gosh, I had so much, you know, like I thought I knew what the world was all about and I thought I knew everything and it doesn't matter how old you get. There's always someone who's got more experience, right? And that's how our kids are too. So.
Jocelyn (14:40.733)
And I love that question, what were you thinking? Because the reality in that moment is they weren't. They were not using a prefrontal cortex, like stop and think and you know, what implications is that gonna have? They were just in like, survival, get me out of here or keep me in here with as little impact as possible. So it's a really good question that we could just simply reframe to how would you think about this differently? And at what point?
Kristi McVee (14:46.678)
No.
Kristi McVee (15:00.951)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (15:08.305)
You know, almost like if you had a remote control and you could pause and like reroute what you did, how would you do it differently next time? Cause there's always probably going to be a next time. Like that's the reality is those situations keep showing up for us online or offline.
Kristi McVee (15:19.214)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (15:23.438)
For sure. I think that's when I have had parents way before I was even doing this work or talking to parents about online safety and you know, child sexual abuse online. I used to get friends message me and like, you know, my child has been sending nudes, right? And they would be like, what do I do? Like they'd be freaking out and stuff. I'd be like,
Well, first of all, you need to stay calm. And I knew this from policing, right? It's not their fault. Again, that need to connect, right? But then I would say something along, I would always say to them, you know, maybe you need to sit with them and ask them what were they searching for in that moment? What feeling were they needing to because it's really not about
the fact that they were thinking like you said, they were seeking connections, seeking a feeling. They were trying to connect with whoever it is they sent it to. They wanted to feel a certain feeling. And when you can connect back the behavior with the feeling, when they feel that feeling the next time, they might choose differently. And I guess, you know, with your experience in that 20 years, has anything changed really in that sense?
Jocelyn (16:33.701)
Look, I think kids have a very good sense of being able to give you the right answers, especially around, know, should you share a password or what should you do if somebody asks you for a nude, right? They know the right response in that moment. And this is again, many of us in certain moments we forget because we're in a, you know, an amygdala hijack. We're not necessarily using that prefrontal cortex. We're not necessarily thinking, you know, what would that
Kristi McVee (16:47.427)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (17:03.239)
presenter who came in and told us about that thing in year eight do, right? It all goes out the window. And again, it's about that safety sort of situation. So I don't think a lot has changed around that. Kids are really good at doing the yap about what they should do. But in that moment, I don't think we're seeing a reduction in some of the kind of things that principal and things like that are dealing with.
Kristi McVee (17:25.966)
No, it's the same.
Jocelyn (17:28.893)
Even, you know, and I know it's early days and I know I shouldn't call it a ban, but even with the social media under 16s ban, we're not really seeing anything different. Kids are bouncing around from so many different platforms. Whether they've bumped off one and come into another or they still got one, you know, I don't think that's making a lot of difference. And it's certainly not doing the heavy lifting of teaching when is a good time to put your phone down and go to sleep.
Kristi McVee (17:37.986)
No.
Kristi McVee (17:42.955)
No, they're not.
Kristi McVee (17:56.835)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (17:57.382)
When is a good time to block someone? How do you, you know, use the tools available to you on all of the platforms to actually build in a little bit of friction around how easy it is to use. So yeah, I certainly have no, you know, high expectations that there's going to be.
Kristi McVee (18:08.174)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (18:13.554)
No, and I didn't either. Like when I was first asked for comment, our local ABC radio called me for comment on it when it was first introduced. And I was like, well, it's not this generation who's going to benefit. And I've said that over and over and over again, because we know with any new legislation and law and from my experience in the police, it's not really actually the benefit in the moment. It happens 10 or 20 years down the track when the culture changes and, you know,
We saw that with smoking until vaping came along. We saw that with seat belts. We saw that with drink driving. It takes a whole generation for it to change, for that perception to shift, for that culture to shift. And that's what I said. And I've said it and said it and said it on TV, on radio, everywhere. It's not this generation who's going to benefit. It's the next generation because parents will start feeling more confident, putting in more, hopefully putting in more groundwork.
because it is groundwork and it's constant. It's not something that you can just set and forget or think that that's gonna fix it.
Jocelyn (19:15.409)
Yeah. And I'm just not sure that that's even the case, right? Because I don't think that parents will do the groundwork to then teach kids when they turn the magical number of 16 how to use that space properly because we ourselves haven't had those lessons. That's why I talk about digital orphans, not digital natives. We go on, they're digital natives, they know what they're doing. No, they don't actually, because the skills that we're talking about, whether it's safety or the wellbeing aspects,
Kristi McVee (19:31.041)
No.
Kristi McVee (19:37.132)
No they don't.
Jocelyn (19:44.262)
They are skills of maturity. They are skills that can be modeled in many different contexts. It's not whether or not you can prompt code Chat GPT to give you a really good output or whether you're really excellent at using the edits app to make it, you know, brilliant, real, it gets lots of engagement. It's the those deeper social, emotional, soft skills, all those different kinds of things that we still have a role in teaching.
And again, I don't think our generation and you know, the millennial generation of parents necessarily have the time, the energy or even the sense that it's going to become a problem. It's that slippery slope, right? Like one minute they're just having fun playing, you know, reading eggs or doing reading eggs on an iPad. The next minute, you know, you're having these huge school refusal moments. So,
Kristi McVee (20:20.673)
social.
Jocelyn (20:37.469)
there's still so much kind of groundwork to do that a piece of legislation as it stands absolutely is never going to do. Our hope was and our hope I guess still remains that the digital duty of care section of the legislation which was kicked out is then going to be introduced and that's the kind of I think the the part where it's a bit more juicy. The legislation as it stands I keep saying is
Kristi McVee (20:43.606)
No, I agree.
Jocelyn (21:04.583)
kind of like banning under 16s from driving 10 different cars, rather than saying every single car on the road should have seat belts and these safety features for everyone who drives to be a safe driver. And so the digital duty of care is the part that says you must have these features on your tech platform in order for it to be available in an Australian market. So like there was...
Kristi McVee (21:09.428)
Yes.
Kristi McVee (21:17.954)
Right, yep.
Kristi McVee (21:27.426)
Yeah, I mean, I think they're trying to push it that way, but there's so many things against it. you know, the tech companies, Big Tech have so much money to fight anything that we throw at them. But I have noticed, and I don't know about you, but it seems like what we have done here and is now sort of catching in other countries. So therefore, eventually Big Tech is going to be pushed into having to put in those frameworks, right? Because
Jocelyn (21:33.691)
Big tech. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (21:54.163)
eventually it's going to be well no one's coming onto your platforms. I mean I wouldn't be using social media unless if I didn't have to for my for my reach for my purpose you know like personally I don't know if you've heard of it you probably have because you probably know more about this stuff than I but I've got a brick and I'm using a brick in my for myself to like to give myself time out to give myself because I have and I bet you any parent who's listening or any person who's listening we all have
Jocelyn (22:01.585)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jocelyn (22:10.801)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Kristi McVee (22:24.48)
some form of addiction to our devices. And so I still want my phone to work as a phone. So I've got the brick and it's set for after hours as soon as know, certain time, I don't have access to social media anymore. I don't have access to anything like that anymore. And so for me, I think that was what I needed. My daughter, for instance, she went on a camp at 15 where they didn't have their phones for a week and they weren't allowed to use them for a week since going on that camp. I mean, she has her moments in her scroll.
Jocelyn (22:24.989)
Absolutely.
Kristi McVee (22:53.73)
moments. But since have going on that camp, she actually, when she spends time with friends or her boyfriend, you can you can barely speak to her because she's not got a phone on it. She puts it down and she goes and like puts it on Do not disturb. She drives it with Do not disturb on it. Like, she's got all these things set up. So because I think, I don't know, I hope that all the conversations we had over the years about, you know, the importance of sleep and the importance of like,
Choosing who you engage with and you know fact-checking the information that's coming through if you don't like something making sure you unfollow it or you if you are you know if it doesn't like it, know report it, you know being part of the Not letting it consume you so that you're consuming it
Jocelyn (23:37.98)
Yeah, absolutely. It's a much more active way of using your feet because there are tools already on most platforms that we don't use effectively. If we started using those tools effectively, we'd actually have a lot more control. you know, like in this lifetime, I'm not trying to take on big tech. There's some excellent people doing that. And I will leave that to those good people. For me, it's about how can we as consumers
Be more aware of the impacts on this. you know, it's the ex-U9 commerce teacher in me, the first lesson in commerce, we probably all had it, you know, back in the eighties was caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. So if we are aware and you know, kind of critical consumers, when we're stepping into a product that literally we are called the users, then we can start to actually adapt that more for our own benefit. Like I spent a
Kristi McVee (24:18.155)
No.
Jocelyn (24:33.373)
Not a lot of time, but certainly love to put the click on the not interested button on a particular app when I'm served particular ads for, you know, perimenopause or all these things that it's guessing that I want. I'm just like, actually that's like, I've heard a lot of that. I'm exhausted.
Kristi McVee (24:46.434)
have stopped, I've totally like, it's totally not, I haven't tracked that one yet. I click not interested on certain apps and I never like certain things. So for instance, anything that involves children. So although that is my space and some, I get fed content creators with children in them and I refuse to like any of their content, but you know what I should be doing? Not interested. I didn't even think to do that.
Jocelyn (25:13.5)
not interesting.
Kristi McVee (25:15.118)
I just will refuse my, and it's because I don't believe that we should be sharing our, even my child's not on any of my public stuff. And if she's shared on my private stuff, it's like, is it okay if I share this photo with my 300 friends?
Jocelyn (25:30.245)
Yeah, yeah. I'm very similar. So, you know, my daughter pops up maybe here and there with permission and not as much lately, certainly when when she was first born, I wrote a blog about why we're not sharing her. She was just too cute. And then I shared her for a bit privately and she popped up, you know, here and there. And like you, I use an app called Freedom to really kind of put some boundaries around when I use technology.
Kristi McVee (25:48.707)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (25:57.551)
I'm a headless.
Jocelyn (25:57.98)
So that I just don't, and it's similar to a brick. You just don't actually have to tap it on and off like in the same way it's on your phone. And it goes across laptops and stuff as well, but they're really great. I'm not paid by them or anything like that, whatever, but they've got a really great podcast as well. And some really great blogs about this whole kind of productivity, information overload, all those sorts of things. Really great quality stuff that sits behind it, but.
Kristi McVee (26:03.982)
huh, huh.
Kristi McVee (26:09.002)
No, no, no.
Kristi McVee (26:16.397)
Okay.
Kristi McVee (26:23.917)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (26:27.995)
Yeah, and he's got lots of time left.
Kristi McVee (26:28.174)
I mean, there's people out there that study this stuff. They studied literally what's going on. And we know that these platforms are engaging people who are addiction experts that are trying to keep us addicted, right? And we're handing a device to our kids and saying, here, just use this. I know I trust you. And I don't even trust me. So why would I?
Jocelyn (26:41.693)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (26:53.021)
No, my reframe on the trust thing is we do trust our kids, right? We trust our kids to be the best person possible, but I don't trust my kid's nine year old brain against a tech giant that's invested billions in making sure she keeps scrolling. She's not on social media. So like we might look at my Instagram feed together.
Kristi McVee (27:09.132)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (27:15.505)
And she will ask to look at particular creators that we sort of have vetted together and we'll like spot the paid ads. Like, you know, we'll be watching and we're like, what do you think this is an ad for? That kind of thing, so side-by-side conversations. But yeah, absolutely. mean, BJ Fogg is a really famous example. He's got a kind of lab at Stanford University that many of the key people, Tristan Harris from the Center for Humane Technology, Nia Ail, who's, you know.
Kristi McVee (27:21.762)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jocelyn (27:43.056)
I wrote a book called Hooked and then Indistractable. We're both people who went there. So we know that there's a huge investment in working out how do we keep you on these platforms so that you don't get bored. And part of that and part of what I teach young people and teachers and parents is like how to spot the pervasive and persuasive design and question, are we actually okay with paying attention? Like we are paying with our attention. What deserves our time and attention?
Kristi McVee (28:08.526)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (28:11.111)
When you ask a teenager, what does TikTok pay you to put your attention in their platform? They're like, what, what are you talking about? And I'm like, well, if you ain't got a job in the mall, wouldn't you expect to be paid for your time? So you are giving them your time and your attention, what's that worth? And when we start actually applying some capitalist principles to that and kind of hacking that back, they're suddenly like, wait, what?
Kristi McVee (28:24.759)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (28:32.152)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (28:39.301)
I'm getting ripped off here. that gives them new way to rethink that time ultimately, you know, why are we investing in education and all of that sort of stuff so we can trade our time for money in a capitalist economy. So like, let's have a think about that where we're actually giving it away for free. Kids then get a little bit pissed off about that. Sometimes adults really find that a helpful reframe because, you know,
Kristi McVee (28:39.478)
Yeah, yeah, I could be getting paid.
Jocelyn (29:05.879)
start of the year we're all still banging on about news resolutions and how we wish we could read more books. Well we can but we have to displace technology from where it's taken over to begin with and hack that back and make those conscious choices.
Kristi McVee (29:20.672)
Yeah, I think what I like about the digital nutrition and what you talk about is the fact that, and I agree with you, like a ban is not going to fix a problem. We still need to have conversations because it didn't cover every platform. It just covered 10 or so. And so our kids are still going online and playing, you know, multiplayer online games. They're still on certain device, like certain, I mean, I know my friend's 14 year old daughter, they just got
When the age verification come up, they just got the oldest looking kid to go and put their face in and they all got to keep their, you know, like kids are smart.
Jocelyn (29:57.116)
Yeah, we knew age verification technology wasn't there yet. This is why it was abandoned in the UK a couple of years ago, because we know it's not there. And we know there's so many workarounds when, you know, unless you're going to bring in and force people to use a digital ID, which obviously there's a whole band of people and a group of people who are taking a Supreme Court or High Court challenge. then, you know, ultimately the anti digital ID people have just got some young people as props.
Kristi McVee (30:16.269)
Yes.
Jocelyn (30:25.821)
to support that challenge. You know, that wasn't going to work from that perspective. So I would just love like, if we could do one thing, I would just love to normalize waiting until you're 13 to get on those platforms. That would have been really good because that was already there. It's just that no one was holding firm on that boundary. And I think, you know, having we still are right, but having that space where
Kristi McVee (30:32.354)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (30:44.13)
Yeah.
Yeah, and still, we're still up.
Jocelyn (30:52.977)
And we know that some of the platforms, Instagram teen accounts, while not perfect was launched before any of this happened. So there are ways to put kids into kind of safer, but not safe, right? Mitigated spaces with more control, with more parental tools. you know, making, getting the word out around that was really, really difficult, I think, because every time, and you know, again, I'm not a tech apologist, but.
trying to have any good news or share some of the things that platforms are doing usually, you know, is a very small voice compared to obviously some of the big issues.
Kristi McVee (31:29.11)
Everyone. Yeah, I know. And look, my daughter was and she speaks, she's, I've shared her speaking about the fact that I kept her on social media until just before 13. The only reason and here's the thing, like, I love kids because they're so ingenious. Like, if there's a problem, if there's something they want, they're going to find a way around it. And do you know if we put that kind of
Jocelyn (31:45.18)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (31:54.339)
you know, concentration and brain power and thought and process into more things. Our kids could create anything, right? I think we don't, we do not give them enough credit for how amazingly problem solving they can be. And so, but yeah, so she...
managed to get onto, so how she did it is hilarious because I didn't put two and two together for three months, but she wasn't allowed on social media to 13. was a, like, that was our discussion. We'd had those conversations for years. And then about the four months or five months before she got turned 13, she managed to download TikTok onto her phone that she had, which was an old phone I had. was locked down with all the controls that I could put on it.
And the only reason was because during a very short period, I had taken it off for something because I needed to do something else. And so she had downloaded it and then deleted it. And then once it's downloaded on a device, right, it's just a quick down re download. So what she was doing was going to school, downloading it, using it and deleting it before coming home. And
Mum the detective thought she knew all about what she was doing online until about three months later, I just happened to look at her screen time. And then in Apple, you can see which of the apps that they're using, right? And I was like, hey, which I could have exploded, blown up, you know, you don't deserve this. I could have been but in the end, I just went right.
Jocelyn (33:16.346)
a
Kristi McVee (33:28.642)
let's have a conversation about this. I said, you when you turn 13, you only get one social media app, which one would you choose anyway? And we were so close to 13. And so I ended up making her do a project on it and telling me what was the pros and cons and what are some of the risks and how would she use it safely? And like she did this whole project, had to stand and present it to me and my husband. We discussed the rules of like use and you know, never had a problem. And then she wasn't allowed another app.
until she turned 14. So it was kind of like, because she had to have training wheels on, right? And I had, was allowed to have the passwords. I was allowed to look at her messages. was allowed, well, back then, I think we blocked all the messages. It all all changed since, you know, she was that young.
Jocelyn (33:58.279)
beautiful.
Jocelyn (34:10.353)
Yeah, yeah. And this is one of the problems, right? Is it changes all the time. So I never try and explain to people how to do anything because then they move an icon around. You don't know how to use it.
Kristi McVee (34:19.822)
I know. And they change the rules and you're like, um, well that worked last week.
Jocelyn (34:25.041)
Yeah, yeah. But that's an epic story because I think, you know, if she was a male and she was doing something in business like that, we'd call her an entrepreneur, right? Like that kind of thinking of how can we disrupt things? How can I follow the rules but break the rules? How can I actually get my needs met? And if we sit down and we say to kids, what did you need in that moment? She needed to belong again, right? We come back to this sense of belonging.
Kristi McVee (34:37.122)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (34:52.857)
And I agree that it sucks that that's the way that kids find belonging these days, but there's a whole bunch of other stuff that we've done that has ruined their sense of belonging and that's taken that away. And some of that is like not being able to go to the park and hang out and take some mitigated risks and all of those sorts of things. the way that, and this is the part I guess where I do agree with Jonathan Haidt that we have made our physical world seem unsafe and the online world seem safe when it was at...
you know, conversion of those things that, you know, kids actually need to roam more. Boys especially need that embodiment. But we're in society, we're in my local community, can teenage boys go and hang out without being called gangs or loitering or all of the things that come with that. So we're in a bit of a pickle around that because we want people not to be on screens, but, and especially in Sydney with that.
Kristi McVee (35:41.438)
true. Yeah.
Jocelyn (35:50.654)
high level of development that we're doing, we're literally going to build boxes for people to live in and not incorporate green spaces, community spaces, any of that in the huge development that's going to happen.
Kristi McVee (36:06.542)
And you're right, right? Like our kids can't go and play down the park without everyone going, the kids were playing up. I mean, look, don't get me wrong. Kids can be a bit destructive and they can get into, but in my generation, if an adult saw the kids mucking up, they would yell at you and tell you to cut it out and you'd all go.
And then your parent would find out because they would tell your parent and you'd be in trouble when you got home for like, you know, pulling something down or doing something. Today, kids aren't connected. I mean, I come from the 80s as well. And I have been known to yell at kids in parks and say, if you're going to play, play properly. Don't you know, whatever. I saw someone I saw a kid throwing rocks into the car park once and I.
Jocelyn (36:45.649)
Yeah, I'm that person.
Kristi McVee (36:51.308)
and I was on the other side of the park and I came across and I yelled at the kids and I was like, cut that out. And I mean, like that's just my policing background or just me in general. But, you a lot of people will ignore that then get on Facebook and like, you know, go, there's kids throwing rocks. Well, you know what, we're all gonna, you know, kids are kids a lot of the time. They don't think the whole concept is necessary.
Jocelyn (37:09.883)
Yeah, and kids aren't designed to be in cafes. That's the other thing, you know, that kind of drives me crazy. Back in our day, which I like to say quite a bit, you know, going to the nice Chinese restaurant at the local was what you did like twice a year for birthdays. It wasn't like you're always in a cafe, you're always at a restaurant. And so I think, you know, the idea that we want to go to cafes, we want to do these things, but kids are not actually designed for that. And they interrupt our nice
Kristi McVee (37:29.548)
Yeah, so true.
Jocelyn (37:38.942)
you know, and our expectations of behavior, it's just not fair. So, you know, there's, there's these mismatches, I think, with how things have shifted and changed. And that's where devices are really handy to shut your kids up in a restaurant. So we kind of can't have our, you know, screens and scroll them too, you know, we have to kind of make some clear choices around what is about our convenience and our need for rest versus what is like then leading to some.
problematic habits. think to this generation, like my kid will tell me there's no more like do as I say not do as I do. My kid will say that you're on your phone. How come you can do that? I have that. And I would have got a backhander for saying half the things that my kid says to me probably but you know there's that difference in whether it's respect or whether it's actually better connection you know I don't think backhanders absolutely right like
Kristi McVee (38:15.202)
Yeah exactly yeah mine did too.
Kristi McVee (38:32.844)
I think our kids feel safer. Like our kids feel safer. Like I couldn't talk and I had a conversation with with I can't think of his name right now. It's an amazing conversations a couple of weeks before this podcast. And he was explaining how you know, he didn't feel like he had a voice at the table, even though they sat around a dinner table and had dinner every night.
he could not talk about anything because they sat in silence and they ate and that's all they did, right? Whereas our kids, we actually talked to them, we explained things to them and share things with them. So, and we give them a voice and there's nothing wrong with that at all. However, I think sometimes for our strong opinionated kids, they're like, well, excuse me, pop calling, get all black. And you know, and when they throw it at you, go, yes, you kind of go, oh, okay, yeah, you're 100 % right.
Jocelyn (39:18.3)
Totally.
Jocelyn (39:24.785)
Yeah. And our defensiveness is to go, you won't speak to me like that. And remember our modeling too, like I have to catch myself because a lot of what I do came directly from, you know, that side of the family, which happens to have a lot of policing in it, actually. That very strong. Yeah. Well, there's, know, an ex New South Wales commissioner of police in my family. you know, there's, yeah, there's that kind of
Kristi McVee (39:25.218)
can I?
Kristi McVee (39:40.622)
I had to add a lot of placing.
Jocelyn (39:54.714)
way that we parent often is modeled on how we were parented. yet we're desperate to do things different to that because we know
Kristi McVee (40:03.672)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (40:15.17)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (40:30.35)
And showing them how to do it first. so true. you know, like, I think my experience is that we expect so much for kids under 10, 8, under 8, but we expect so little from kids over 10. Like, we, teenagers are like, we don't expect the same level, but we expect our little kids to have regulated, not tucking tantrums, not being, you know, all they're doing is seeking connection. But then they get to a certain age.
group and then we're like, you guys go like hands off and we expect so little from them. And that's that that in my experience in the policing game had causes so many problems. And I've said this time and time again on podcasts on my podcast is our job as parents is to help our kids become really good adults. And if we're hands off the whole time, and I mean, don't get me wrong, most of our parents were like, see you at dinnertime.
don't, you know, don't call me unless you've got a problem. Basically, like that's how I was brought up like see it dark, when the lights come on, you should be in the door. And so I could have been running a drug ring, like I could have been running any kind of massive schemes or whatever. Most of the time, I was just running around with my friends in the in the playground, right. But the thing is, this that our, our parenting hasn't enabled us to be able to like already know how to do that. So then we have to do the work first.
Kristi McVee (42:14.253)
Yes.
Kristi McVee (42:23.34)
says you're not recording.
Kristi McVee (42:35.426)
That's like, I know.
Kristi McVee (42:41.806)
I wonder why it does that? That's really random. I saw mine.
Kristi McVee (42:55.278)
I'll just sit here and wait. That's cool. No, you're fine.
Jocelyn (48:41.472)
Hi, sorry. I just didn't want to close it while the other one was still going and I had to clear a cache and it said not to clear the cache while it was still uploading. So hopefully it's sorted. So sorry. I don't know why it does that because I have literally checked it with my IT person so many times. It just breaks out.
Kristi McVee (49:01.591)
It's a random thing because I work with Mac as well and so it's not something that I've ever seen happen.
Jocelyn (49:05.588)
Hmm. Yeah. My computer just doesn't like it. it's saying, yeah. Okay. That should be fine. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (49:10.06)
Kristi McVee (49:15.182)
Fingers crossed. Does it have a little purple thing up the top and it says it's uploading? Okay, cool. It should be fine then. I was just gonna wrap it up anyway, but I think we were talking about, just before we stopped, we were talking about something, but now it's gone. But what I was gonna say is we'll edit it all out. Yeah.
Jocelyn (49:20.052)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jocelyn (49:35.05)
Parents, yeah, sorry. about parents and the differences in parenting and regulation of parents?
Kristi McVee (49:40.927)
Yeah, yeah. that if we don't regulate, because we were never taught to regulate, plus, our parents didn't regulate, they just shut us down. So when any of our kids show any large emotions or are upset, we don't know actually how to cope because we weren't allowed to be upset. Like I literally had this issue with my child her whole life. I've had to deal with it. I've gone and got help. I've seen a psychologist.
I've sat with it, I've like gone, it's, you know, and one of the things that helped me with my daughter when she was having big feelings was, you know, like, it's okay. Like, it's okay. Like, feelings are okay. All feelings are okay. What we do with the feelings is what makes the difference. Like, again, that.
it's feelings aren't the problem. It's what we do when we can feel big feelings if we're angry and we take it out on others and we're rude and we're, you know, make it about someone else when really it's about us. there was a saying that I heard years ago, and I said it to my husband, because we've been together since we were 15 years old. So we've had to learn all of these mechanisms coping, you know, and I said to him,
I'm responsible for my feelings and you're responsible for yours. You can't make me happy, I can't make you happy, we have to make ourselves happy and then try and be happy together. And I used to say that to my daughter when she was like eight or seven or eight or like you're responsible for your feelings and because I was like trying to teach her social emotional
regulation, I was trying to help her with her friendship group because you know, she'd come home and she goes such and such and did this and I'm like, that's okay. Well, they're allowed to feel their feelings and you're allowed to feel your feelings and you're not responsible for their feelings. And years got like a few years later, she I have might have said something along the lines of is you know, you're making me really upset right now. And she said, Well, I'm not responsible for your feelings and you're not responsible. Like you need to be responsible for yourself. And I was like, like when they throw back at you, know,
Jocelyn (51:34.56)
Exactly.
Kristi McVee (51:35.756)
But I think that's really important is that when our kids feel big feelings is that we don't take that as a criticism of ourselves.
Jocelyn (51:43.402)
Absolutely, absolutely. And that it's not a failure that your kid never feels. I talk about feelings being like going on a bear hunt. You can't go over it, you can't go under it, you've got to go through it, right? The more you process feelings and you feel that feeling appropriately in the moment, the more you will learn that most feelings actually only last about 90 seconds if you do the.
Kristi McVee (51:57.046)
Yeah, totally.
Kristi McVee (52:10.115)
for
Jocelyn (52:10.721)
kind of adaptive responses, you have a big feeling if you do the kind of right adaptive things with it and not necessarily beat it, it kind of dissipates. And you can get better at doing that almost to the degree that you can be pathological if you're too good at doing it, that you're not feeling it. But I think a lot of people put their feelings on the shelf and they say, I'll come back and I'll feel that later or deal with that later. And I've just got to, I mean,
I think the boomer and post-war generation was pick up your socks and get on with it. There was no time to like chat about, you know, all of this kind of stuff. But we, and I facilitate climate cafes, which is all about sitting with feelings when it comes to stuff around the climate crisis and the poly crisis and just sort of sitting in yarning circles to talk about this stuff.
Kristi McVee (52:59.458)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (53:00.136)
And it's so powerful when you get a group of people sitting and talking about their feelings and feeling their feelings in the moment. The first time I did one, I just cried my way through 90 minutes of it. After I felt so good though, and I felt so much clearer because I'd actually named and tamed some of the things that I was feeling about the state of the world. And, you know, I run these online with another project that I have called MetaWell. We actually have listening circles to talk about our anxieties to do with tech.
Kristi McVee (53:20.014)
Yeah, that's so powerful.
Jocelyn (53:29.512)
and everything that comes up through this whiplash that we're going through.
Kristi McVee (53:34.828)
Wow, that a big, big right now with everything being in the media, everything happening.
Jocelyn (53:36.96)
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, these kinds of, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say in a very roundabout way is all of these things are connected. There's not a real online and offline world anymore. We are so immersed and we, know, the question about what makes us human is a really important one. It's been part of my tagline for, you know, 10 years is
staying human in a digital world and obviously now an AI world that a lot of the offline psychology work, the somatic work, the breathing work for, you know, CBT, all of that stuff is really, really important as a basis then for looking at our online behaviors. It's not separate to, it's just a different, you know, layering system.
Kristi McVee (54:22.83)
Yeah, so in saying that, like I was going to say, you know, with regards to your psychology work, you you started off teaching, you became a counselor, psychologist, and you focused on digital nutrition, right? Because it's just become this thing where we can't do this, we can't be online so...
I call it zombified, right? You become zombified because you disassociate, you're pulling back because it's so overwhelming. And we then expect our kids to be able to cope and handle all of that. Like we can't cope and handle all of that. what is your recommendations? Like what is like one of the most powerful things that you think an adult can do for themselves, but also help teach their children in this space?
Jocelyn (55:10.016)
Yeah. So to really think intentionally about a deliberate digital diet and thinking about what is actually in that diet from what platforms you use, what devices you use, when and where and why you use them. Yesterday in Sydney, crappy rainy day, we had a lot of screen time. It was some really good quality, you know, playing video games together screen time. So I have a course called
co-design your tech use agreement, which is all about how to really design that digital diet and agree on what bits for where. So it shows parents how to have explicit conversations about that. And I think that's the best thing anyone can do, whether that's an agreement with yourself, an agreement with your partner before you have kids, you're in retirement, whenever to really have clear conversations and commitments to...
what we're doing and and you know I'll say to my husband when he's been on his phone, honey what's what's the best you know thing that you've seen what's going on on your phone today and he'll tell me about some you know random film thing he's watching and I go okay cool like let's bring it back into the room. Gone are the days that we sat around on Thursday night and watched East Street and had one hour together in a week where you know we had to wait for a show. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (56:23.117)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (56:28.054)
Ha ha ha!
Kristi McVee (56:33.654)
Yeah. I mean, our family still sits down to the dinner table almost every night with the TV. It can be on because it's usually around the news time and I've got my elderly father living with us, so he needs to see the news because that's what we grew up. But it's on mute with subtitles. And so we're still engaged and now and again, someone will look across and go, did you say that or something and all start a conversation. But we still sit at the dinner table most nights with no
Jocelyn (56:48.468)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (57:03.628)
tech nearby. And it's so funny because I don't know about you, but your parents would be like, don't watch any more TV, you get square eyes. And now it's like, get off your device and watch some TV. Because literally, we want them to be on a bigger screen so that they're not, you know, looking like this.
Jocelyn (57:18.812)
That's right. the eye health is still a really big thing because the displacement of natural light is what's creating the myopia.
Kristi McVee (57:24.013)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (57:28.238)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've got a whole new thing. I actually saw it was quite tragic. I actually saw a little girl who obviously the parents were very busy working in a both parents were working in the business together and they obviously couldn't didn't have childcare. So the child children were in the waiting room with phones and this little girl had severe eye.
problems because, she had the device and I don't know if it was from the device or because, but the device was up at her nose and I was thinking, wow, like she's going to have some issues and we don't, I don't know the full story. But the other thing that my family still do is we have, we watch eight out of 10 cats do countdown and it's a ABC show. Like I never thought I would be the ABC slash SBS watcher of the family, but now I am. mean,
Jocelyn (58:17.182)
Yes.
Kristi McVee (58:19.856)
my 40s. It's the you know, and so we watch that as a family and you know, do the tree do some of the numbers and my husband seems to think it's going to make us all smarter. So, so we do still watch a lot of TV together.
Jocelyn (58:30.463)
Yeah, we love. Yeah, Guy Mont's spelling bee is a favorite in our house. And my nine year old said, when, when am I grown up enough to watch Friends? When I'm grown up enough, can we watch Friends together? And I was like, hell yeah, because I never watched it. I totally missed Friends, The Simpsons, Seinfeld. I never watched any of those shows. So I'm like, bring it on.
Kristi McVee (58:36.729)
yeah, I like that one.
Kristi McVee (58:47.169)
of the new
Kristi McVee (58:53.134)
My daughter has seen Friends, she's got ADHD and so she's had a few hyper fixations. Friends was a hyper fixation for a few years. So I think she watched Friends from start to finish three, four, five times over, like before she moved on to the next show. And so it used to be quite fun, but you realize when you watch some of these shows back, go, whoa, those jokes were really out of taste.
Jocelyn (59:16.286)
Yeah, she asked me about Seinfeld and I was like, yeah, maybe not Seinfeld.
Kristi McVee (59:20.49)
Not yet, not yet. Yeah, I will. How do people find you because I I find your content really helpful. I find it really like like I said at the very beginning, I love your energy. I love the way that you present this to parents like because there's so much shame and blame. And we don't want I don't I don't think shame, shaming or blaming anyone gets anyone anywhere. So I think yeah, how do the people find you?
Jocelyn (59:38.143)
Mmm.
Jocelyn (59:45.952)
Yeah, it doesn't. Like psychologically, it doesn't because what it does is put you into fear. So if anything, I think some of my presentations are like comedy because I do throw in those nostalgia references about, know, remember the taste of water from the hose. So, you know, because when we're laughing and because when we're disinhibited and we feel that those kinds of feelings, we're much more open to learning.
Kristi McVee (01:00:02.081)
I do. Like plastic. I like that.
Jocelyn (01:00:12.864)
No one actually learns when they're in a, my gosh, I'm in trouble kind of state. So.
Kristi McVee (01:00:13.155)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (01:00:16.792)
Fear state, yeah. You wouldn't think I would be able to make people laugh about child sexual abuse, but usually I'm making a joke about myself and then like something I did stupid when I was in the police and I get a laugh out of that as well, so yeah.
Jocelyn (01:00:26.943)
Yeah, right. And that ability to have the light in the dark, think is really, really important that being able to find joy and find glimmers amongst all of this that we're going through is really, really important because it's actually what's going to get us through, not the exhaustion and overwhelm. So to find me, it's really simple. Digital nutrition, have, you know,
Kristi McVee (01:00:45.27)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (01:00:53.32)
manage to still be at the top of the SEO if you type digital nutrition into your favorite internet browser or just Jocelyn Brewer because again, I have quite an unusual name and you'll find me that way and I'm obviously on all the platforms. Ironically.
Kristi McVee (01:00:58.188)
Yay.
Yeah. It's a it's a love hate relationship with them, right? Because we know that we need to be on there for to get to the people who need us. But also, it's, it's a hate relationship, because you know that they use it against us. So it's like, we're just trying to do it like me get the brick out, you've got that freedom out or what?
Jocelyn (01:01:28.34)
Yep. Yep.
Kristi McVee (01:01:29.134)
So yeah, I think it's just about trying to find what works for you, your family and your life.
Jocelyn (01:01:34.73)
Absolutely, we're all different, all 8.1 billion of us.
Kristi McVee (01:01:38.863)
Goodness, is that how many years around now? Wow. Well, thank you so much for having a chat. I really appreciate it. Like I said, you've been on the top of my list for a long time. So thank you. And I hope that we can keep, I mean, I know I've shared some of your content on my page and I hope that people will have a check you out and check out your, what was it called? It was make your own, co-designer. Co-designer.
Jocelyn (01:02:00.32)
Co-design your tech use agreement. Yeah, yeah, it's a mouthful. I need a sexier title, but it does what it says on the packet, right? You co-design a tech use agreement for your family.
Kristi McVee (01:02:11.052)
Yeah, and it's really important. think having those, I had a tech agreement with my daughter and it made me look at my usage as well. Like when we sit down and we critically think through these things and we find some guidelines, you know, people don't think boundaries is a bad thing, but I actually feel like boundaries, means everyone knows what the, like where to stick by. It's putting a fence around it.
Jocelyn (01:02:36.649)
What a consistency and clarity and that's what kids actually really like. Kids don't mind rules. They play a lot of video games that have a lot of really clear rules. What they don't like is injustice, unfairness and somebody else getting like different rules to them. So within my tech use agreement, there is like kind of like umbrella agreements for the whole family. So all principles that everyone's going to abide to. But then within that, different kids have different interests. So
We then tailor that to ages and stages and what those interests are. And unironically, I now have a feature within it where there's a GPT that I'm building specifically for this, where you'll fill out the key details of how your family uses tech use and it will spit out a broad framework for how to do it. So I am, if you can't beat them, join them. I'm using Chat GPT
Kristi McVee (01:03:16.045)
yeah.
Kristi McVee (01:03:27.214)
Yes.
Jocelyn (01:03:30.802)
as well as all the other tools. So this is a new feature within the kind of newest update of the agreement where, you know you tell it and it's going to give you use all those principles and give it give you kind of a broad brushstrokes of what that should look
Kristi McVee (01:03:46.37)
And I think most parents just want to, they don't want to have to think through these things and go and research it all. So people like you and I, we've done it all. We know what we're talking about. So having these tools at the fingertips, putting some answers into a, like someone asking you questions and filling out answers, simple.
Jocelyn (01:04:03.594)
That's all right. There's some people who want the nitty gritty, but most people want a really quick solution and a done for them solution. And even though that kind of breaks my heart, because if we're not willing to invest in, you know, these conversations, we can't be expecting the outcomes. I totally get it. But, you know, time is short and life is too short to, to get to do too much parent and education, right? We're back to that kind of thing where it's like, show me how to make my education sexy.
Kristi McVee (01:04:12.012)
Uh-huh.
Kristi McVee (01:04:18.402)
Yes.
Kristi McVee (01:04:30.318)
I don't think that's true. I know that I don't think you can I think you just got to do it and I think you just got to realize how important it is when you see the outcome that you don't want then you've got to create the outcome you do want and it's through being invested. So well thank you so much for a great chat and yeah I will put everything in the show notes and please everyone listening if you get a chance go and check out Digital Nutrition it's an amazing platform and just
Jocelyn (01:04:37.577)
Yeah.
Jocelyn (01:04:42.464)
Absolutely.
Jocelyn (01:04:46.812)
Absolutely, yeah. Thank you.
Jocelyn (01:04:57.739)
Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks so much.
Kristi McVee (01:05:00.298)
So much good stuff. Thanks.
