Dr. Jessica Peck: We would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, preborn. When a mother meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their heartbeat, it's a divine connection and the majority of the time she will choose life. But they can't do it without our help. Preborn needs us, the pro life community, to come alongside them. One ultrasound is just $28. To donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword BABY or visit preborn.com/AFR hello
: and welcome to the Dr. Nurse Mama show prescribing hope for healthy families here on American Family Radio. Here's your host, professor, pediatric nurse practitioner and mom of four, Dr. Jessica Peck.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, hey there friends, and welcome to another fry. Yay. We are at Friday. We've made it through another week, friends, and whether you are done with spring break, you're starting spring break or you don't have a spring break welcome, welcome. And I cannot believe how fast we are going, going through this year. We are already almost, we're more than halfway through March and we are getting very close to April, which is share a thon. And I love Sharathon. It's once of, two times in the year when American family radio comes to you and asks for listener support. And we are so grateful for your support and we're really grateful for the testimonies and stories and the ways that AFR has changed your life. And so we are collecting some listeners stories for Sharathon coming up in April. And if the Lord has used American family radio in your life from this program, any program that you listen to in any way, have we been there for you at just the right time, giving you just the right thought? Please share your story. All you have to do is call this number. We have a listener storyline. You can Reach it at 877-876-8893. That's 877-876-8893. And just share a minute or two of your story and you may hear yourself during shareathon.
We tend to prefer electronic communication over face to face interaction
Well, it is Friday and we will be talking about this week's healthy habit. If you've been following along every week on Friday, we're introducing 52 habits for healthy families. Now, we started off in January. We spent four weeks covering the core spiritual disciplines for every healthy family. And then we spent seven, six weeks talking about family rhythms, things that should be rhythms in your life, like your morning routine and your evening routine. And we are going to start now, today, spending four weeks talking about some specific communication skills that will help with your family, that will Help your family health. And I'm excited to talk about this because communication is changing so rapidly. Communication norms are changing rapidly. You know, we used to call for each other. If you imagine Little House on the Prairie days, like ringing the dinner bell to come in, and then, you know, we've got people who are living in the same house, we get maybe an intercom system. Did anybody grow up in the 80s and your friend had the intercom system and you thought like, oh, wow, so this is my rich friend's family. The house, you know, that we're going to because they have an intercom. But then we didn't need intercoms because we just text each other when we're in the next room, hey, where are you? What are you doing? And literally they're 10ft away. We tend to prefer electronic communication over face to face interaction. And I'm telling you that Gen Alpha, Gen Z, these are young adults and teenagers and, and school, age kids. They are missing that face to face interaction. They're craving it. They want face to face interaction and they're looking for any place that they can get it. One of the most beautiful things that I've seen come out of this is increased conversation between young people and their grandparents. We see this in all things that are grandma's house. Decor right now is off the charts. Like decorating slow and curating things that have meaning and making your house look like grandma's house. It's grand millennial or grandma chic, Coastal grandma dressing like a grandma. Kids have an affinity for things that are vintage, things that are nostalgic, and so take advantage of that. And because we're living in a world that has quietly trained us not to listen with our faces, for most of human history, listening happened. Our whole presence that includes eye contact, body language, facial expression, emotional attention, mirroring each other's emotions. If you're surprised, I'm surprised. If you're sad, I'm sad. And when someone spoke your face told them, you matter to me. You are important. The eyes are the window to the soul. We would see this, but something has shifted very fundamentally in about the last 15 years. Today, our faces are not facing the people in front of us. They are pointed to the screens in our hands. Our screens get more FaceTime from us. Why do you think it's called FaceTime? It is taking our time and our faces than the real people in our lives. We glance down at our phones and conversations. We check notifications at the dinner table. We scroll while our kids are talking to us. This Is a whole social media trend of, mom, mom, mom, are you listening? And, and we say, yeah, I'm listening. And maybe we can parrot back everything they said. But the bottom line is our kids are not saying, you are not listening as much as they're saying. I don't feel heard. I don't feel like you're listening to me. And slowly and subtly, we are losing something that is profoundly human. The ability to listen with our faces. And the statistics about this are pretty shocking. Americans check their phones an average of 200 times a day. 200 times a day. You pick up your phone and you think, no way, that can't be me. Yes, my friend, that is you. That is me. About once every five minutes. We've trained ourselves to make it a habit. The average American. I'm not talking about kids here, okay? I'm talking about grown people. They spend about five hours a day on their phone. And this, this is a challenge for every generation. Globally, people check their smartphones about every 10 minutes. And here in America, we like to do things bigger and better and faster. And so we're about half of that. In other words, many of us are reaching for our phone hundreds of times a day without even realizing it. And this shift is affecting families at every stage of development. Infants are being fed while caregivers scroll. Toddlers sit in grocery carts with screens that are inches from their faces. School age children are encountering the entire Internet before their brains are even ready to process it. Teens are facing, are forming their identities, looking at their curated online lives. And adults are just as guilty. I've talked about this before, if you've heard me say it. There's even a common word that we're using in scientific measures, and it's called phubbing. P H u b b I n g. Put take the word phone, take the word snubbing, smash them together, and you have fubbing. Fubbing is when you snub someone socially by looking at your phone instead of paying attention to them. If you have a phone, you're guilty of this. Every person on the face of the planet who has a phone has done this at one time or another. But here's the good news. Healthy habits can be reclaimed. And so we're talking today about small practices that can restore connection in your family. And that habit today is listening with your face. And the Bible speaks to this long before smartphones even exist, existed. And we're going to meditate today on James 1:19. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to Anger. We've got to be quick to hear and listen with our face. Listening has always been a spiritual discipline. But today we're going to explore how just something simple as putting down your phone and giving someone your face can transform the relationships in your home.
Technology companies are competing to capture and monetize your attention
So we often talk about technology changing what we do, but the deeper change is really in how we do it. Attention is one of the most powerful gifts that you can give another human being. It tells them, you matter to me. You are seen, you are important. Your words are worth my time. But you know what is increasingly one of the rarest resources and the most precious gifts in modern life is our attention. It's not because we care less about people. It's because the modern world is designed to to smash your attention into hundreds of tiny little pieces that are fragmented and shattered all over your life. Let's talk about something called the attention economy. Have you heard this phrase? Many of the technologies that we use daily were intentionally designed to capture and hold our focus. You've heard that scripture, take every thought captive. Well, the Internet, our smartphone, has taken this concept and run with it in the opposite direction that we should be running. Every notification, every vibration, every banner, every red dot. These things are all engineered to do one thing. Interrupt your attention, pull it back to the device. It is making you addicted. It's the attention economy. And in this economy, your attention is a product that is being sold and bought. Technology companies are competing right now, as we speak, there are people engaged in this work. How do we keep you scrolling, tapping, refreshing, checking. And they have become incredibly good at IT studies. Again, estimate we're checking our phone 200 times a day. We are doing this. We are falling prey to the attention economy. So it basically, if you're looking for a definition of what this is, attention economy, it's a system where companies are competing to capture and monetize your attention. It's not just a psychological concept, it's not just a real relational construct. It is a multi trillion dollar economic resource. And the basic formula is very simple. Capture their attention, extract data from it, turn that data to advertise to them, and then profit. So the longer you stay on a platform, the more data it collects about you, the more precisely it can target ads to you, the more specifically it can generate discontent, and then sell you a solution for a problem you didn't even know you had and the company makes more money. But here's the eye opening part. The most powerful technology companies in the world are not selling the apps or the social networks. They are Selling slices of your attention to the highest bidder. When you scroll a feed, when you watch a short video, when you tap a notification, your attention in that moment is being measured, analyzed, auctioned in real time to advertisers. Former insiders from big tech companies have explained that the goal of the platform is not to inform you, not to entertain you, but to maximize your time on the platform. Every second you stay online increases that platform's value. And that's why many features are intentionally designed to keep you engaged. That's why there's an infinite scroll, there's never an end of the feed. There's no natural stopping point. These push notifications trigger curiosity or urgency. Like, you gotta look at this right now. Autoplay videos, remove the decision. Do I watch something? Do I not watch something that's making a decision for you? That's the algorithm. It learns exactly what is going to hold your interest. And I've heard a, former design ethicist, ah, at a big tech company call this an attention extraction machine. And so entire industries depend on keeping you distracted, on monetizing your attention. And that result is profound. And we cannot estimate the impact it has on our families. Because whereas humans, we once lived in a world where attention was directed by relationships and responsibilities and where we were physically it's intent, it's now increasingly impacted by the algorithm. And so now we see family conversations that are interrupted. We can't focus on anything. We need constant mental stimuli stimulation and constant distraction. And our relational presence is just constantly divided attention. So one researcher summarized it this way. If you're not paying for the product, here's a news flash. You are the product. And then the attention economy. What's being sold is not the phone in your hand. It's not the platform, it's not wherever you're engaging. It's the focus of your mind. It's the minutes of your life that companies are trying to take and sell. They are selling minutes of your life. They're selling your attention. Now this should raise a very important question for families and people of faith. If attention is one of the most valuable things that we possess, then how are we, how is it impacting us that profound change is happening socially? Just a certain, generation ago, certain signals were widely understood. If someone was speaking to you here in American culture, the respectful thing is to look them in the eye, shake their hand. Eye contact communicates presence and interest and care. And today we see all kinds of things. The midphone conversation, check, you're in talking to somebody and all of A sudden, for no reason, they pull their phone out of their pocket or their purse and they say, sorry, just one second. And they keep scrolling. You see phones at the dinner table. You see phones seeing a screen, looking at a screen while someone is sharing something really personal. And you just, you're trying to spill your guts to them, and they're just like, yeah, yeah, huh? Uh-huh. Or you fill every moment of waiting. You're standing in line, you're at a stoplight. Yep, I'm talking to you. You're on. And you're driving, and you're looking at your phone, justifying it because you're waiting at a stoplight and you can't sit at a stoplight for 30 seconds. I know we're all guilty of that at one time. Another, if we're driving, if you're sitting in a waiting room. And that means what we used to do was small talk with strangers, look around at your surroundings, pray, reflect, or daydream. We're watching life through a camera instead of experiencing it. We are looking at second screen behavior where we have the multiple screens that we're looking at. Maybe there's a show playing on the TV and one on the phone in our hand while we're messaging people. These digital interruptions are happening during work, during learning. Parents are multitasking with screens during child interaction. None of these behaviors feel shocking anymore because we've collectively adjusted our expectations. But just imagine if someone from the 1980s walked into a restaurant today and saw all these people sitting, sitting on their phones. It would be unsettling. When we come back, I'll tell you how it's impacting child development and changing childhood fundamentally. We'll be back in just a minute after this break. Abortion moves fast, and right now in our communities, women are being pressured to make irreversible decisions. In moments of fear and panic, they're told to act quickly or risk losing support. And many feel they have no other option. But because of you, they do. At preborn network clinics, a woman receives what the abortion industry will never offer. Compassion without pressure, clarity about the life growing inside her, and real support to welcome her baby and the hope of the gospel. She's given a free ultrasound and space to breathe. And more than 80% of the time, when a mother sees her baby on a preborn ultrasound, she chooses life. This March, preborn is believing to save 6,800 babies. But it will take 124 partners saying yes every day. I'm asking you to pause your busy day for just a moment and become a. yes. Right now. 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Hard Fought Hallelujah by Brandon Lake : there's times when my hands go up freely Times that it calls there's days when a praise comes out easy Days when it takes all the strength I got I'll bring my hard fought heartfelt been through hell Hallelujah. And I'll bring my storms to myself Story to tell. Hallelujah.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back, friends. That is hard fought Hallelujah by Brandon Lake. And we are feeling that these days. We are fighting against technology with all of our being. And we feel that. I feel that on a gut level that hard fought hallelujah here. And that's what we're talking about in this, on this fry. Yay. We're talking about healthy habits. And this week's healthy habit is listening with our face. We're talking about how fundamentally changed our world is where we're looking at screens all the time. Now. This is not meant to be a guilt trip. This is not a judgment here. As I'm looking here, I've got two computers open. I've got my phone here. I have a screen on our radio thing. We've got cameras, we've got, my producer has a computer. We have screens everywhere. That is a reality of life. So I am not shaming that. I'm just saying, what can we do? Where are the screens necessary? And where do we need to put up healthy boundaries? And because this shift didn't happen all at once, this shift has happened gradually to change cultural norms through thousands of small adjustments in what we consider now normal behavior. The great news about this is that it makes listening with your face so powerful because all of a sudden we have something that's very countercultural. It's normal to have your phone on you all the time. It's normal to check your phone while you're talking with somebody. It's normal to have multiple screens open. If you take that away just for a short period of time, just for a relational interaction, just for a conversation with your spouse, with your children, that is going to get some attention because that is not normal. And I think that younger generations are doing this so much better than older generations are. Actually, just last night, my daughter had gone on a walk with the dogs and some, extended family and I saw that she left her phone at home and she was very intentional about that. We think we can't leave our phone at home. It. There's actually a term for that called nomophobia. No, mobile phone phobia. I am fear. I am fearful of being without my phone. You know that feeling you drive away and then all of a sudden you're like, wait, where's my phone? Or where's my phone? And you start patting your pockets and looking frantically through your bag and you will turn around to go and get it. We are, we have a pacifier. Basically as adults, we use a phone as a pacifier and so we can use it as a tool, but when we start to use it as self soothing, that's when we've got a problem. Because our brains and bodies feel the difference in that we don't even recognize this as a distraction, as unhealthy. But here's the truth. Human beings are wired for face to face communication. Communication. Our brains are processing enormous amounts of emotional information through facial expressions. This is one of the reasons why masking could be so detrimental to children who couldn't interpret facial expressions. Because you can see subtle changes in the eyes, little squints that happen, or shifts in tone, or micro expressions around your mouth, just that little tug or pull of your lip, your posture, your body language. And we know from science that the majority of communication is non verbal. And when someone listens with their face, they're doing far more than hearing words. They're communicating to you. I am engaged. I care about you. I'm tracking what you're saying. Your emotions matter to me. And when your attention disappears, that emotional feedback disappears too. It just instantly severs the connection. The emotional connection between you and that conversation becomes transactional. What do you need for me? What can I do for you to meet your need in this moment instead of relational? And so this hidden cost that we're experiencing is micro disconnections. There's not one dramatic moment where, okay, technology all of a sudden on July 11, 2017, that is where our connection was severed. No, it happens in these micro moments over time, these thousands and thousands of tiny interruptions. You making it normal in your family while you're having a conversation. Just glance at a notification. Quick mid scroll while you're having a talk, A phone lifted up when your kid's telling you a story. Each one of these things seems so small. But together they are creating what researchers are calling micro disconnections. These brief moments where someone feels less seen or heard. And over time Those moments become that mount. The Moho Hill becomes a mountain. And it's not because we love our families less. It's not because we're intending to, to distance them. It's because we are training our attention elsewhere.
This is reshaping childhood development. This is changing social norms
So here is a thought provoking question for all of us. When the people we love most speak to us, what do they see on our faces? Do they even see our faces at all? Do they see curiosity or interest or warmth? Or do they just see the glow of a screen reflected in our eyes? Because expressing love, expressing care, requires turning our face towards the person who's speaking. Let me walk you through how this is changing fundamentally, social norms from birth and onward. Let's talk about infancy, because it's not just a cultural issue. This is reshaping childhood development. I will tell you. I was doing a developmental exam on, a toddler who should know her shapes. And I was drawing a triangle, a circle. She couldn't name any of her shapes. Now this was probably about 15 years ago, so you can see the difference in cultural shape. But I drew a square and she got a big smile on her face and she said tv. And she knew what that was. This is changing social norms. And from the earliest months of life, children are supposed to learn about the world through our faces. Newborns can see about 8 to 12 inches when they're born, so that is fitting in the crook of your elbow looking at them, having those facial interactions. And newborns will mimic them. They know inherently when you're smiling, they're smiling. When you're upset, they're upset. And they teach babies how to have safety and emotion and connection. And babies are relying on that face to face interaction to regulate their own emotions, to have attachment, to learn how to speak.
Nearly 70% of moms regularly scroll their phones while they're feeding their babies
Yet here's something that's really, really, really sad. Really Sad. nearly 70% of moms report that they regularly scroll their phones while they're feeding their babies. I know this is not to shame anybody, not to guilt trip anybody. I am one of those ones who is struggling not to pick up my phone 200 times a day. Okay, I'm a regular person right there with you. But when I think about not having a phone, I'm very grateful that I didn't because I think I would do things like count my baby's freckles and, you know, just try to engage with them, interaction, pray with them, sing over them. And it's such a powerful pull in our hand. It's such a powerful, powerful thing because it's constantly giving us little Micro hits of dopamine. And it's so it feels better to do that than to look at our baby's face. And that is just a sad reality of that. When a caregiver's eyes are on a screen, we're just missing, we're missing moments again. That's where they're, these companies are trying to buy your minutes and sell them to the highest bidder. And toddlers now we see screens everywhere and grocery carts and strollers and restaurants. It really breaks my heart to see this because kids aren't learning how to interact. And yes, kids are going to be impatient and kids are going to have bad manners that need to be corrected. But I see a lot of parents who are really, really happy with how pacified their kids are. You know, out in a stroller, it's like they start to have any little bit of a meltdown and I just see this frantic dive for where's the device? Get the device on, put the device on. And as soon as the device goes on, they're sued. And that is something that's just becoming culturally normal. It's not Interact Interactive Human engagement. School age children can have all of this screen time that exposes them to things they don't need to. And teenagers are having more memories. They will die with more memories of other people's lives than their own. But it's not just kids, it's adults too. We are physically present and relationally absent. And that is something that's there. So all of us, I've been saying our phones are like our pacifiers, but this is a term that we're starting to use to call it what it is. It's called digital soothing. It's soothing ourselves with technology, devices. And that is a very quiet cultural shift that is happening everywhere. And you see it, you see any uncomfortable emotion, whether it's a toddler having a meltdown or whether it's an adult just being bored waiting in line. Any uncomfortable emotion, we go straight to our device to soothe that because we're going to start getting regular hits of dopamine that are going to make us feel good. Every engagement we have, every button that we tap, every interaction that somebody says, that is back to us. Screens calm us quickly. It works as an instant regulator because it is designed, designed by world class psychologists to trigger your brain's dopamine system. That is the same reward pathway that's involved in excitement and novelty and anticipation. This used to be things that we would wait for that would be really not an everyday experience. But now we're used to it. We want fast paced visuals, we want bright colors and sound effects. And we are, not just distracting our children. We're not just entertaining them them. We are flooding their brain with dopamine that replaces whatever emotion they were feeling without teaching them how to deal with that emotion in a healthy way. Now, these toddlers, these screenagers as they are called, will grow up to be adults who do the same thing. And many adults, we have adopted that behavior on ourselves. And children are learning. I don't have to handle my emotions. My screen does that for me. I just numb out and start to scrol. We are not born knowing how to regulate our emotions, what to do when we're frustrated, when we're bored, when we're disappointing, when we're waiting. This is why toddlers hit each other and throw things and say, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. Some people have trouble getting past that stage or like to revisit that stage. But those skills are going to develop slowly through practice and the presence of attentive caregivers. And when you experience that difficult emotion, a child walks them through that. Oh, oh, you are feeling afraid, you're feeling frustrated. Here's what I can do. Here's. Well, let's calm down, let's take a step back, let's try again. Then that teaches them, hey, I can move through hard emotions and I can come through the other side. It's emotional resilience. And when screens replace that process, when they become the default soothing tool, we're not practicing that skill. So instead of learning, okay, I can tolerate this, I can get through it, I can be tough. They think I need a screen to make this feeling go away. And we see there's no frustration tolerance. I know for a fact that teachers are seeing this in the classroom for sure. There is no tolerance for frustration. There's very little impulse control. And kids are having trouble emotionally regulating because we have rewired their brains to respond to that digital interaction. And that matters a lot because we need to reframe that in our family. Families, the. The goal is not never using screens or making screens the enemy. We all have to use screens at some time. The goal is to avoid making it the first and automatic response to every difficult moment and to give our kids that the gift of our face and to help work through that person to person. That's really important. And so even saying something in your family, hey, let's handle this together before we reach for our screen screen, like having some, some boundaries around that will be really, really helpful.
Put your phone face down when someone starts talking to you
And one of the things that we can do is putting the screens down ourselves, giving the gift of our face. So at a minimum, if you are talking with your children, if you are talking with your spouse, at a very minimum, put your phone face down when someone starts talking to you. And you know what? Be bold about it. Be exaggerative about it. Don't do it subtly. Be intentional. Let them see you. Okay, you're initiating a conversation with me. Hold on, let me put my phone face down. Now even better, put your phone out of arm's reach and walk away from it and say, hold on, this sounds, important. I've started doing this even if I'm driving down the road and my kids start telling me something and I realize, oh, we're getting into a big conversation here. If it's safe, I will pull over into a parking lot and say, hold on, hold that thought. I need to give you my face for this conversation. I need you to have my whole face face so that I can see your face and we can talk about this. It is such a powerful gesture of making people feel so important. Can you imagine, like, I didn't bring my phone. I just want to spend time with you. You're important to me. Let me put away my distractions so that I can listen with my face. It is modeling intentional presence. It's not being showy, it's not being braggadocious. It's modeling something that is radically countercultural. And we'll talk this summer more about creating some tech free spaces and tech free zones. But for right now, just think about listening with your face. Because listening reflects the heart of God. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. That's from Psalm 34:15. God listens with his attention fully toward us, and Scripture reminds us again. James 1:19. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Imagine what could change in our homes if you just reclaim this one simple practice. Imagine a child telling you your story. How many of you have experienced this as parents where your kids are doing something and they say, look, mama, look, look, look. Watch me, watch me, watch me. And heaven forbid you avert your eyes for a single moment. Moment. I have been there, let me tell you. I have watched so and judged so many flips, so many jumps into the pool. Like, I think, oh, my goodness, I can't look anymore. But they are craving the gift of your face. And in an age where everything is replaceable by technology, the one thing it Cannot replace is the gift of listening with your face. Imagine a child telling a story and seeing their parent put their phone down and get down on their level and give them a gift of their face. Imagine a spouse sharing something meaningful and you saying, let me put my phone away so you have my full attention. You're important to me. Imagine a dinner table where everyone's faces are turned toward each other again and there's not kids sitting at the end of the table, isolated in their digital silo. Sometimes the most powerful habit is not complicated. It's simply the this. Put the phone down, look up and listen with your face. And when we're on our phone list, there's so many better things because listen, you don't need a new organization system. You don't need a redecoration for your house. You don't need a new diet. You need to put your phone down. Spend less time on your phone and spend time pouring into your families. Don't auction off the minutes of your life for the highest bidder on a platform who are trying to buy and sell and commodify your attention. It is much more precious to your family. You will invest in something that moth and, and rust cannot destroy. That will be treasures in heaven. Listen with your face. Listen with your face and listen. We'll be right back after this break with some Homefront headlines related to this. I hope you have an good Friday. We'll see you right back on the other side of this break with more on healthy habits and home front headlines.
: The AFR app is a powerful tool, but it does have limitations. You can't use it to change the oil in your vehicle or get rid of carpet stains. It won't walk the dog, won't pick up the dry clean or take the kids to practice. But while you're doing those things, you can listen to your favorite AFR content through the app on your phone, smart device or Roku. Just go to your app store or visit afr.net Listen to AFR wherever you go with the AFR app.
Holy Forever by Chris Tomlin: Your name is the highest, your name is the greatest Your name stands above them all. And the angels cry holy. All creation cries holy. You are lifted high. Holy, holy forever.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back, friends. That is Holy Forever by Chris Tomlin. Don't you just love that song? Listen. Worship music is one of the most underutilized discipleship tools that we have in our home. And we've been talking about that in the first month of this year. We talked about core spiritual disciplines, and I was actually just recently with a group of children's and family ministers and talk to them about how we constantly have something playing on the screen that's kind of a cultural norm. What if you constantly had worship music playing in your home, in your car, and used it as a discipleship? You can curate playlists. We have access to some of the best music that has ever existed. You can curate playlists to help your family. Maybe your family's feeling defeated. Create yourself a victory playlist. Maybe your family's a. In a. A downstage. Well, get a happy playlist that you can play and play songs that give you messages like that. In a world where we constantly are told doom and gloom and you need to buy this and you should be discontent with that. It's great to have a counterbalanced with messages like holy forever. I appreciate that so much.
Experts warn that AI is being used in ways that facilitate exploitation of children
Listen, I'm going to talk to you about some homefront headlines that I'm following so many it's hard to keep up with. But I'm going to tell you about some of the things, things that are rising to the top for me. Listen, this year you're going to hear me talk a lot about AI. I've been talking about artificial intelligence. I will continue to talk about it. It is here. It is now. It is something that parents really need to be aware of because AI is not neutral. AI is absolutely shaping your child's worldview. It encourages novelty and experimentation which many times can lead to explicit, age inappropriate content for your kids. But with Auto Scroll Autoplay, any platform that you're using is going to suggest for you this is shaping your family's worldview. And I do want to give you a little heads up that some of the things I'll be talking about in these headlines are tough. This is tough stuff. So if you have little ears around maybe and guide them to something else. Listen to this. m. Bookmark to listen to this later. Don't miss it. But I just want to give you a moment to adjust your listening audience if you need to, because these are things that we need to know about. First article I'm going to tell you about is actually from the national center on Sexual Exploitation, who's really been talking about, ways that our kids are being abused through AI. And although there are some benefits to AI, it is wildly experimental and advocates and researchers are warning that AI is being used in ways that facilitate exploitation, especially of children. Now, how is this happening? This is primarily happening. You've heard me talk about this before if you listen in. But this is happening. Through, through nudifying apps and deep fakes. This is continuing to happen. I will continue to raise your awareness about this. And it is very, very disturbing in many ways. So deep fakes, of course are images or videos that are digitally altered to look real, but they really aren't. AI only needs about 3 second of a voice to mimic an entire vocabulary. So it's very easy to have a, an image, a video of your child and make that completely into something that it is not. And so AI is generating fake explicit images, and particularly of children. These nudifying apps is AI technology that digitally removes clothing from photos. And there are chatbots that are being used for, for grooming children, for explicit conversations and to elicit images from them. And we see a lot of AI generated images of children that are circulating online. These tools can produce massive amounts of explicit content instantly. So no longer do we have to have casting and video and production. This is instant element at an unbelievable scale. If I tried to explain to you how much content, it's more than our brains can, can even, understand and we need to know about this because AI is, it's happening very fast and so there is, there is some danger there. So I want you to make sure that you are talking to your kids about deep fakes because kids see deep fakes as very harmless and something that is increasingly common that they use as a means of digital communication. And they think they're funny, but it's hard for kids to know where that line is. I also want you to be very, very careful about the images that you share of your children online, because there are people that go and take public images and modify them. And AI is really changing this landscape faster than we realize. And so for most families, the concern is that it's easier and easier and easier to, to exploit and abuse kids. And we see that there are risks. Children are encountering risks even if they're never intentionally seeking them out. AI is seeking them out and predators have more tools than ever before. So don't panic, don't panic. You just need to pray and prepare. So some of those things. Again, talk early about this. Teach your kids, do not share personal photos online. Never, ever, ever send an image to a stranger. And tell me if anything uncomfortable or unusual happens online, tell me immediately, because what happens a lot of times is that predators will appear to be, they will use AI to appear to be a very attractive peer. That, and it seems very harmless. If I'm 12 and I'm talking to another 12 year old that doesn't Seem scary to me. You don't seem like a predator to me. Just seem like, hey, you made me feel cool because you look very attractive and you look very rich and. And, yeah, I'll start telling you some of my secrets and tell you some of the insecurities I have, and then all of a sudden, you're going to use those to blackmail me. And good kids can make poor choices. Good kids make poor choices. It doesn't mean they're a bad kid. We need to teach kids about AI manipulation. And it's getting harder and harder to tell what is AI and what is not. My kids used to be really good about telling me that's AI, but one of my kids who was in college the other day told me, mom, it's so hard to tell. It's getting really hard to tell. And I'm having to figure out a lot of workarounds to figure out what's real and what is not and just convince them. You know, tell them that AI creates convincing content that is fake. So as a family, it's really important for you to go back to what are sources that you trust. Where do you get your information from? Where do you trust? What do you know that's a real person giving you real information that is really trustworthy? Know what apps your kids are using. Keep devices in shared family spaces. If there's a computer, keep it out in the open where everybody can see it. Don't allow phones in your bedroom, but really engage in what your kids are interacting with online. That is really important. Every human being is created with dignity and should never be treated as digital content and have their image or their video manipulated or altered without their consent. That is not appropriate and not okay.
Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow testified before Congress about child exploitation
And in the that same vein, story number two is Tim Tebow. Many of you know him as a famous football player. He's also a very powerful advocate against child exploitation. And just recently, he testified to Congress about this very issue about child exploitation. Now, why would a former NFL quarterback and philanthropist testify, testify before Senate, on this issue? It's because he sees it. He knows that it's happening. He has the resources and his foundation to know this. And so he testified in the Senate committee urging lawmakers to pass something called the Renewed Hope act of 2026. This is a bipartisan bill that is aimed at fighting child exploitation. Now, here's the other challenge that happens with AI is that when it happens, there is often no legal recourse because there aren't laws saying that this is a crime, crime, or this is wrong to do. And kids are just left there blindsided. And it happened. And he shared a very emotional testimony about the global crisis of child sexual abuse, material and human trafficking. If you missed his testimony, I would encourage you to go and listen to what he said. And one alarming statistic that he highlighted, that was highlighted during the hearing is that more than 57,000 unidentified child victims appear in international databases of abuse images. Meaning law enforcement has evidence that this child was abused, but they do not know who the child is. So those images are just sitting there in a warehouse waiting for someone to make an outcry, waiting for someone to make a disclosure because they don't know who, who, where they, who they are. So this proposed legislation would help expand victim identification team and equip investigators with better training and improve coordination to locate and and rescue exploited children. Now this is not just happening in distant places. This matters for your family today because so much exploitation is happening online. Kids are being targeted through gaming platforms, through social media, through messaging apps, through live streams. And predators are increasingly relying on AI to groom and manipulate victims. So imagine, imagine there is. Now, you, know we talk about AI. The AI that most people are using now is generative AI, meaning I put in a prompt and it gives me something back. I say create this character, this avatar. Well, agenetic AI is self generating. So predators can create several different profiles of what is going to most likely groom you into an abusive situation. And they, they just automatically enact that profile that the child seems to be responding to on the algorithm. This is scary stuff. And we, we know that children are being abused without anyone yet knowing who they are. Many times kids don't have the vocabulary to disclose what happened to them in their abuse. And we see that this is happening in everyday families. So what can you do about this? You play a crucial role in prevention. We can't panic, panic. We're going to pray and prepare. So again, I've said it before. Create open communication. Tell your kids over and over, you can always tell me anything. You can always tell me anything. I might feel angry, I might feel upset, but we will get through it together. And I love you can always tell me anything and talk to them about what grooming looks like. That if somebody is giving you something that seems too good to be true, if they're gifting you things through a gaming platform, sending you some sort of currency, it may not even be real money. It may be other tokens or incentives on that platform. If they're sending you something, I want to Know about that. If anybody ever asks you can you keep a secret, you say, no, I cannot. I am not allowed to keep secrets from my parents. Just say that right away. I'm telling you that will scare predators off in a hurry because they know that is someone who has a good relationship with their parents and is likely to tell them, them. Teach your kids that secrets are not okay. There's a difference between keeping a secret and keeping something sensitive. There are some things that are sensitive that are confidential. Like, like you know, conversation around your private parts and, and those kinds of things, they can be confidential. We don't talk about them to everybody. But secrets are not kept. There's not something secret. It's confident it's sensitive or confidential. I also encourage you to delay social media as long as you can. The later that kids enter social media media, the better prepared they will be to handle the risk. So I know when I go and speak with parents all over the country, inevitably, inevitably after I speak, there's going to be at least one mom that is waiting in a line to talk to me who comes up to me with tears in her eyes who is saying I'm trying to hold the line. I'm trying to be that parent. But my kid is just convincing me that I am ruining their social life, that they're the only one and hides. Just love to hug those mamas and just say hold the line, hold the line. Don't be afraid to be that parent. Now you can't have rigid rules without relationship. You've got to continue engaging them, give them something more compelling than that. Social media make your in person relationship so amazing that they would not trade, trade that for anything happening online. But don't be afraid to be that parent and to be different. Research shows that even if, if parents, if families are really quirky and they do something that's completely different but they are solid in their identity together, those kids are going to do just fine, emotionally. Get engaged in your kids online spaces. Know which apps they're using. Know who they're interacting with. Make sure that their privacy settings are active. Talk to them about what privacy settings are. Sometimes they don't even understand what that is.
Talk to your kids regularly about viral challenges
Now the last story I want to tell you about is another threat that's a social media trend. It's called the Benadryl Challenge. It's been around for a little while, but this challenge encourages teens to take large doses of Benadryl or diphenhydramine is the technical name for it. It's an active ingredient in allergy medicine. And the reason is to induce hallucinations. But this is so, so dangerous. And I am seeing this in clinical practice. You're talking about seizures and heart rhythm disturbances, stroke, heart attack, death. And several teenagers have been hospitalized and some have died. This is really important because teenagers are craving peer approval. Risk taking is natural. It's wired in their brain. We need to direct that in a positive place. But also, viral attention is something that is very commodifiable. So what can you do? Talk to your kids regularly about viral challenges. Don't go to them with fear or lecture and say, oh, my goodness, I heard about this Benadryl challenge. You better not be doing that. You better not be listening to that. Say, what viral challenges are you seeing? Seeing? Cultivate curiosity as much as you can. Ask your kids what viral challenges they're seeing and talk about some. Just because it's viral doesn't mean it is safe. And teach them digital discernment. Who created this content? What are they trying to gain? What could go wrong? Ask them questions so that they can come to the conclusion on their own. And realize how to enact discernment online rather than just telling them it's wrong, wrong or it's dangerous. Listen, it is a dangerous world out there. But God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and a, sound mind. And I pray that as you're navigating this crazy, crazy world that is AI and technology, I pray fervently that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you, be gracious to you and give you peace, even in the algorithm. Listen, I'll see you back here next time. We'd like to thank our sponsors, including PreBorn. PreBorn has rescued over 400,000 babies from abortion. And every day their network clinics rescue 200 babies lives. Will you join PreBorn in loving and supporting young moms in crisis? Save a life today. Go to preborn.com/AFR the views and
Jeff Chamblee: opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
Dr. Jessica Peck: We would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, preborn. When a mother meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their heartbeat, it's a divine connection and the majority of the time she will choose life. But they can't do it without our help. Preborn needs us, the pro life community, to come alongside them. One ultrasound is just $28. To donate, dial pound 250 and say the keyword BABY or visit preborn.com/AFR hello
: and welcome to the Dr. Nurse Mama show prescribing hope for healthy families here on American Family Radio. Here's your host, professor, pediatric nurse practitioner and mom of four, Dr. Jessica Peck.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Well, hey there friends, and welcome to another fry. Yay. We are at Friday. We've made it through another week, friends, and whether you are done with spring break, you're starting spring break or you don't have a spring break welcome, welcome. And I cannot believe how fast we are going, going through this year. We are already almost, we're more than halfway through March and we are getting very close to April, which is share a thon. And I love Sharathon. It's once of, two times in the year when American family radio comes to you and asks for listener support. And we are so grateful for your support and we're really grateful for the testimonies and stories and the ways that AFR has changed your life. And so we are collecting some listeners stories for Sharathon coming up in April. And if the Lord has used American family radio in your life from this program, any program that you listen to in any way, have we been there for you at just the right time, giving you just the right thought? Please share your story. All you have to do is call this number. We have a listener storyline. You can Reach it at 877-876-8893. That's 877-876-8893. And just share a minute or two of your story and you may hear yourself during shareathon.
We tend to prefer electronic communication over face to face interaction
Well, it is Friday and we will be talking about this week's healthy habit. If you've been following along every week on Friday, we're introducing 52 habits for healthy families. Now, we started off in January. We spent four weeks covering the core spiritual disciplines for every healthy family. And then we spent seven, six weeks talking about family rhythms, things that should be rhythms in your life, like your morning routine and your evening routine. And we are going to start now, today, spending four weeks talking about some specific communication skills that will help with your family, that will Help your family health. And I'm excited to talk about this because communication is changing so rapidly. Communication norms are changing rapidly. You know, we used to call for each other. If you imagine Little House on the Prairie days, like ringing the dinner bell to come in, and then, you know, we've got people who are living in the same house, we get maybe an intercom system. Did anybody grow up in the 80s and your friend had the intercom system and you thought like, oh, wow, so this is my rich friend's family. The house, you know, that we're going to because they have an intercom. But then we didn't need intercoms because we just text each other when we're in the next room, hey, where are you? What are you doing? And literally they're 10ft away. We tend to prefer electronic communication over face to face interaction. And I'm telling you that Gen Alpha, Gen Z, these are young adults and teenagers and, and school, age kids. They are missing that face to face interaction. They're craving it. They want face to face interaction and they're looking for any place that they can get it. One of the most beautiful things that I've seen come out of this is increased conversation between young people and their grandparents. We see this in all things that are grandma's house. Decor right now is off the charts. Like decorating slow and curating things that have meaning and making your house look like grandma's house. It's grand millennial or grandma chic, Coastal grandma dressing like a grandma. Kids have an affinity for things that are vintage, things that are nostalgic, and so take advantage of that. And because we're living in a world that has quietly trained us not to listen with our faces, for most of human history, listening happened. Our whole presence that includes eye contact, body language, facial expression, emotional attention, mirroring each other's emotions. If you're surprised, I'm surprised. If you're sad, I'm sad. And when someone spoke your face told them, you matter to me. You are important. The eyes are the window to the soul. We would see this, but something has shifted very fundamentally in about the last 15 years. Today, our faces are not facing the people in front of us. They are pointed to the screens in our hands. Our screens get more FaceTime from us. Why do you think it's called FaceTime? It is taking our time and our faces than the real people in our lives. We glance down at our phones and conversations. We check notifications at the dinner table. We scroll while our kids are talking to us. This Is a whole social media trend of, mom, mom, mom, are you listening? And, and we say, yeah, I'm listening. And maybe we can parrot back everything they said. But the bottom line is our kids are not saying, you are not listening as much as they're saying. I don't feel heard. I don't feel like you're listening to me. And slowly and subtly, we are losing something that is profoundly human. The ability to listen with our faces. And the statistics about this are pretty shocking. Americans check their phones an average of 200 times a day. 200 times a day. You pick up your phone and you think, no way, that can't be me. Yes, my friend, that is you. That is me. About once every five minutes. We've trained ourselves to make it a habit. The average American. I'm not talking about kids here, okay? I'm talking about grown people. They spend about five hours a day on their phone. And this, this is a challenge for every generation. Globally, people check their smartphones about every 10 minutes. And here in America, we like to do things bigger and better and faster. And so we're about half of that. In other words, many of us are reaching for our phone hundreds of times a day without even realizing it. And this shift is affecting families at every stage of development. Infants are being fed while caregivers scroll. Toddlers sit in grocery carts with screens that are inches from their faces. School age children are encountering the entire Internet before their brains are even ready to process it. Teens are facing, are forming their identities, looking at their curated online lives. And adults are just as guilty. I've talked about this before, if you've heard me say it. There's even a common word that we're using in scientific measures, and it's called phubbing. P H u b b I n g. Put take the word phone, take the word snubbing, smash them together, and you have fubbing. Fubbing is when you snub someone socially by looking at your phone instead of paying attention to them. If you have a phone, you're guilty of this. Every person on the face of the planet who has a phone has done this at one time or another. But here's the good news. Healthy habits can be reclaimed. And so we're talking today about small practices that can restore connection in your family. And that habit today is listening with your face. And the Bible speaks to this long before smartphones even exist, existed. And we're going to meditate today on James 1:19. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to Anger. We've got to be quick to hear and listen with our face. Listening has always been a spiritual discipline. But today we're going to explore how just something simple as putting down your phone and giving someone your face can transform the relationships in your home.
Technology companies are competing to capture and monetize your attention
So we often talk about technology changing what we do, but the deeper change is really in how we do it. Attention is one of the most powerful gifts that you can give another human being. It tells them, you matter to me. You are seen, you are important. Your words are worth my time. But you know what is increasingly one of the rarest resources and the most precious gifts in modern life is our attention. It's not because we care less about people. It's because the modern world is designed to to smash your attention into hundreds of tiny little pieces that are fragmented and shattered all over your life. Let's talk about something called the attention economy. Have you heard this phrase? Many of the technologies that we use daily were intentionally designed to capture and hold our focus. You've heard that scripture, take every thought captive. Well, the Internet, our smartphone, has taken this concept and run with it in the opposite direction that we should be running. Every notification, every vibration, every banner, every red dot. These things are all engineered to do one thing. Interrupt your attention, pull it back to the device. It is making you addicted. It's the attention economy. And in this economy, your attention is a product that is being sold and bought. Technology companies are competing right now, as we speak, there are people engaged in this work. How do we keep you scrolling, tapping, refreshing, checking. And they have become incredibly good at IT studies. Again, estimate we're checking our phone 200 times a day. We are doing this. We are falling prey to the attention economy. So it basically, if you're looking for a definition of what this is, attention economy, it's a system where companies are competing to capture and monetize your attention. It's not just a psychological concept, it's not just a real relational construct. It is a multi trillion dollar economic resource. And the basic formula is very simple. Capture their attention, extract data from it, turn that data to advertise to them, and then profit. So the longer you stay on a platform, the more data it collects about you, the more precisely it can target ads to you, the more specifically it can generate discontent, and then sell you a solution for a problem you didn't even know you had and the company makes more money. But here's the eye opening part. The most powerful technology companies in the world are not selling the apps or the social networks. They are Selling slices of your attention to the highest bidder. When you scroll a feed, when you watch a short video, when you tap a notification, your attention in that moment is being measured, analyzed, auctioned in real time to advertisers. Former insiders from big tech companies have explained that the goal of the platform is not to inform you, not to entertain you, but to maximize your time on the platform. Every second you stay online increases that platform's value. And that's why many features are intentionally designed to keep you engaged. That's why there's an infinite scroll, there's never an end of the feed. There's no natural stopping point. These push notifications trigger curiosity or urgency. Like, you gotta look at this right now. Autoplay videos, remove the decision. Do I watch something? Do I not watch something that's making a decision for you? That's the algorithm. It learns exactly what is going to hold your interest. And I've heard a, former design ethicist, ah, at a big tech company call this an attention extraction machine. And so entire industries depend on keeping you distracted, on monetizing your attention. And that result is profound. And we cannot estimate the impact it has on our families. Because whereas humans, we once lived in a world where attention was directed by relationships and responsibilities and where we were physically it's intent, it's now increasingly impacted by the algorithm. And so now we see family conversations that are interrupted. We can't focus on anything. We need constant mental stimuli stimulation and constant distraction. And our relational presence is just constantly divided attention. So one researcher summarized it this way. If you're not paying for the product, here's a news flash. You are the product. And then the attention economy. What's being sold is not the phone in your hand. It's not the platform, it's not wherever you're engaging. It's the focus of your mind. It's the minutes of your life that companies are trying to take and sell. They are selling minutes of your life. They're selling your attention. Now this should raise a very important question for families and people of faith. If attention is one of the most valuable things that we possess, then how are we, how is it impacting us that profound change is happening socially? Just a certain, generation ago, certain signals were widely understood. If someone was speaking to you here in American culture, the respectful thing is to look them in the eye, shake their hand. Eye contact communicates presence and interest and care. And today we see all kinds of things. The midphone conversation, check, you're in talking to somebody and all of A sudden, for no reason, they pull their phone out of their pocket or their purse and they say, sorry, just one second. And they keep scrolling. You see phones at the dinner table. You see phones seeing a screen, looking at a screen while someone is sharing something really personal. And you just, you're trying to spill your guts to them, and they're just like, yeah, yeah, huh? Uh-huh. Or you fill every moment of waiting. You're standing in line, you're at a stoplight. Yep, I'm talking to you. You're on. And you're driving, and you're looking at your phone, justifying it because you're waiting at a stoplight and you can't sit at a stoplight for 30 seconds. I know we're all guilty of that at one time. Another, if we're driving, if you're sitting in a waiting room. And that means what we used to do was small talk with strangers, look around at your surroundings, pray, reflect, or daydream. We're watching life through a camera instead of experiencing it. We are looking at second screen behavior where we have the multiple screens that we're looking at. Maybe there's a show playing on the TV and one on the phone in our hand while we're messaging people. These digital interruptions are happening during work, during learning. Parents are multitasking with screens during child interaction. None of these behaviors feel shocking anymore because we've collectively adjusted our expectations. But just imagine if someone from the 1980s walked into a restaurant today and saw all these people sitting, sitting on their phones. It would be unsettling. When we come back, I'll tell you how it's impacting child development and changing childhood fundamentally. We'll be back in just a minute after this break. Abortion moves fast, and right now in our communities, women are being pressured to make irreversible decisions. In moments of fear and panic, they're told to act quickly or risk losing support. And many feel they have no other option. But because of you, they do. At preborn network clinics, a woman receives what the abortion industry will never offer. Compassion without pressure, clarity about the life growing inside her, and real support to welcome her baby and the hope of the gospel. She's given a free ultrasound and space to breathe. And more than 80% of the time, when a mother sees her baby on a preborn ultrasound, she chooses life. This March, preborn is believing to save 6,800 babies. But it will take 124 partners saying yes every day. I'm asking you to pause your busy day for just a moment and become a. yes. Right now. 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Hard Fought Hallelujah by Brandon Lake : there's times when my hands go up freely Times that it calls there's days when a praise comes out easy Days when it takes all the strength I got I'll bring my hard fought heartfelt been through hell Hallelujah. And I'll bring my storms to myself Story to tell. Hallelujah.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back, friends. That is hard fought Hallelujah by Brandon Lake. And we are feeling that these days. We are fighting against technology with all of our being. And we feel that. I feel that on a gut level that hard fought hallelujah here. And that's what we're talking about in this, on this fry. Yay. We're talking about healthy habits. And this week's healthy habit is listening with our face. We're talking about how fundamentally changed our world is where we're looking at screens all the time. Now. This is not meant to be a guilt trip. This is not a judgment here. As I'm looking here, I've got two computers open. I've got my phone here. I have a screen on our radio thing. We've got cameras, we've got, my producer has a computer. We have screens everywhere. That is a reality of life. So I am not shaming that. I'm just saying, what can we do? Where are the screens necessary? And where do we need to put up healthy boundaries? And because this shift didn't happen all at once, this shift has happened gradually to change cultural norms through thousands of small adjustments in what we consider now normal behavior. The great news about this is that it makes listening with your face so powerful because all of a sudden we have something that's very countercultural. It's normal to have your phone on you all the time. It's normal to check your phone while you're talking with somebody. It's normal to have multiple screens open. If you take that away just for a short period of time, just for a relational interaction, just for a conversation with your spouse, with your children, that is going to get some attention because that is not normal. And I think that younger generations are doing this so much better than older generations are. Actually, just last night, my daughter had gone on a walk with the dogs and some, extended family and I saw that she left her phone at home and she was very intentional about that. We think we can't leave our phone at home. It. There's actually a term for that called nomophobia. No, mobile phone phobia. I am fear. I am fearful of being without my phone. You know that feeling you drive away and then all of a sudden you're like, wait, where's my phone? Or where's my phone? And you start patting your pockets and looking frantically through your bag and you will turn around to go and get it. We are, we have a pacifier. Basically as adults, we use a phone as a pacifier and so we can use it as a tool, but when we start to use it as self soothing, that's when we've got a problem. Because our brains and bodies feel the difference in that we don't even recognize this as a distraction, as unhealthy. But here's the truth. Human beings are wired for face to face communication. Communication. Our brains are processing enormous amounts of emotional information through facial expressions. This is one of the reasons why masking could be so detrimental to children who couldn't interpret facial expressions. Because you can see subtle changes in the eyes, little squints that happen, or shifts in tone, or micro expressions around your mouth, just that little tug or pull of your lip, your posture, your body language. And we know from science that the majority of communication is non verbal. And when someone listens with their face, they're doing far more than hearing words. They're communicating to you. I am engaged. I care about you. I'm tracking what you're saying. Your emotions matter to me. And when your attention disappears, that emotional feedback disappears too. It just instantly severs the connection. The emotional connection between you and that conversation becomes transactional. What do you need for me? What can I do for you to meet your need in this moment instead of relational? And so this hidden cost that we're experiencing is micro disconnections. There's not one dramatic moment where, okay, technology all of a sudden on July 11, 2017, that is where our connection was severed. No, it happens in these micro moments over time, these thousands and thousands of tiny interruptions. You making it normal in your family while you're having a conversation. Just glance at a notification. Quick mid scroll while you're having a talk, A phone lifted up when your kid's telling you a story. Each one of these things seems so small. But together they are creating what researchers are calling micro disconnections. These brief moments where someone feels less seen or heard. And over time Those moments become that mount. The Moho Hill becomes a mountain. And it's not because we love our families less. It's not because we're intending to, to distance them. It's because we are training our attention elsewhere.
This is reshaping childhood development. This is changing social norms
So here is a thought provoking question for all of us. When the people we love most speak to us, what do they see on our faces? Do they even see our faces at all? Do they see curiosity or interest or warmth? Or do they just see the glow of a screen reflected in our eyes? Because expressing love, expressing care, requires turning our face towards the person who's speaking. Let me walk you through how this is changing fundamentally, social norms from birth and onward. Let's talk about infancy, because it's not just a cultural issue. This is reshaping childhood development. I will tell you. I was doing a developmental exam on, a toddler who should know her shapes. And I was drawing a triangle, a circle. She couldn't name any of her shapes. Now this was probably about 15 years ago, so you can see the difference in cultural shape. But I drew a square and she got a big smile on her face and she said tv. And she knew what that was. This is changing social norms. And from the earliest months of life, children are supposed to learn about the world through our faces. Newborns can see about 8 to 12 inches when they're born, so that is fitting in the crook of your elbow looking at them, having those facial interactions. And newborns will mimic them. They know inherently when you're smiling, they're smiling. When you're upset, they're upset. And they teach babies how to have safety and emotion and connection. And babies are relying on that face to face interaction to regulate their own emotions, to have attachment, to learn how to speak.
Nearly 70% of moms regularly scroll their phones while they're feeding their babies
Yet here's something that's really, really, really sad. Really Sad. nearly 70% of moms report that they regularly scroll their phones while they're feeding their babies. I know this is not to shame anybody, not to guilt trip anybody. I am one of those ones who is struggling not to pick up my phone 200 times a day. Okay, I'm a regular person right there with you. But when I think about not having a phone, I'm very grateful that I didn't because I think I would do things like count my baby's freckles and, you know, just try to engage with them, interaction, pray with them, sing over them. And it's such a powerful pull in our hand. It's such a powerful, powerful thing because it's constantly giving us little Micro hits of dopamine. And it's so it feels better to do that than to look at our baby's face. And that is just a sad reality of that. When a caregiver's eyes are on a screen, we're just missing, we're missing moments again. That's where they're, these companies are trying to buy your minutes and sell them to the highest bidder. And toddlers now we see screens everywhere and grocery carts and strollers and restaurants. It really breaks my heart to see this because kids aren't learning how to interact. And yes, kids are going to be impatient and kids are going to have bad manners that need to be corrected. But I see a lot of parents who are really, really happy with how pacified their kids are. You know, out in a stroller, it's like they start to have any little bit of a meltdown and I just see this frantic dive for where's the device? Get the device on, put the device on. And as soon as the device goes on, they're sued. And that is something that's just becoming culturally normal. It's not Interact Interactive Human engagement. School age children can have all of this screen time that exposes them to things they don't need to. And teenagers are having more memories. They will die with more memories of other people's lives than their own. But it's not just kids, it's adults too. We are physically present and relationally absent. And that is something that's there. So all of us, I've been saying our phones are like our pacifiers, but this is a term that we're starting to use to call it what it is. It's called digital soothing. It's soothing ourselves with technology, devices. And that is a very quiet cultural shift that is happening everywhere. And you see it, you see any uncomfortable emotion, whether it's a toddler having a meltdown or whether it's an adult just being bored waiting in line. Any uncomfortable emotion, we go straight to our device to soothe that because we're going to start getting regular hits of dopamine that are going to make us feel good. Every engagement we have, every button that we tap, every interaction that somebody says, that is back to us. Screens calm us quickly. It works as an instant regulator because it is designed, designed by world class psychologists to trigger your brain's dopamine system. That is the same reward pathway that's involved in excitement and novelty and anticipation. This used to be things that we would wait for that would be really not an everyday experience. But now we're used to it. We want fast paced visuals, we want bright colors and sound effects. And we are, not just distracting our children. We're not just entertaining them them. We are flooding their brain with dopamine that replaces whatever emotion they were feeling without teaching them how to deal with that emotion in a healthy way. Now, these toddlers, these screenagers as they are called, will grow up to be adults who do the same thing. And many adults, we have adopted that behavior on ourselves. And children are learning. I don't have to handle my emotions. My screen does that for me. I just numb out and start to scrol. We are not born knowing how to regulate our emotions, what to do when we're frustrated, when we're bored, when we're disappointing, when we're waiting. This is why toddlers hit each other and throw things and say, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. Some people have trouble getting past that stage or like to revisit that stage. But those skills are going to develop slowly through practice and the presence of attentive caregivers. And when you experience that difficult emotion, a child walks them through that. Oh, oh, you are feeling afraid, you're feeling frustrated. Here's what I can do. Here's. Well, let's calm down, let's take a step back, let's try again. Then that teaches them, hey, I can move through hard emotions and I can come through the other side. It's emotional resilience. And when screens replace that process, when they become the default soothing tool, we're not practicing that skill. So instead of learning, okay, I can tolerate this, I can get through it, I can be tough. They think I need a screen to make this feeling go away. And we see there's no frustration tolerance. I know for a fact that teachers are seeing this in the classroom for sure. There is no tolerance for frustration. There's very little impulse control. And kids are having trouble emotionally regulating because we have rewired their brains to respond to that digital interaction. And that matters a lot because we need to reframe that in our family. Families, the. The goal is not never using screens or making screens the enemy. We all have to use screens at some time. The goal is to avoid making it the first and automatic response to every difficult moment and to give our kids that the gift of our face and to help work through that person to person. That's really important. And so even saying something in your family, hey, let's handle this together before we reach for our screen screen, like having some, some boundaries around that will be really, really helpful.
Put your phone face down when someone starts talking to you
And one of the things that we can do is putting the screens down ourselves, giving the gift of our face. So at a minimum, if you are talking with your children, if you are talking with your spouse, at a very minimum, put your phone face down when someone starts talking to you. And you know what? Be bold about it. Be exaggerative about it. Don't do it subtly. Be intentional. Let them see you. Okay, you're initiating a conversation with me. Hold on, let me put my phone face down. Now even better, put your phone out of arm's reach and walk away from it and say, hold on, this sounds, important. I've started doing this even if I'm driving down the road and my kids start telling me something and I realize, oh, we're getting into a big conversation here. If it's safe, I will pull over into a parking lot and say, hold on, hold that thought. I need to give you my face for this conversation. I need you to have my whole face face so that I can see your face and we can talk about this. It is such a powerful gesture of making people feel so important. Can you imagine, like, I didn't bring my phone. I just want to spend time with you. You're important to me. Let me put away my distractions so that I can listen with my face. It is modeling intentional presence. It's not being showy, it's not being braggadocious. It's modeling something that is radically countercultural. And we'll talk this summer more about creating some tech free spaces and tech free zones. But for right now, just think about listening with your face. Because listening reflects the heart of God. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. That's from Psalm 34:15. God listens with his attention fully toward us, and Scripture reminds us again. James 1:19. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Imagine what could change in our homes if you just reclaim this one simple practice. Imagine a child telling you your story. How many of you have experienced this as parents where your kids are doing something and they say, look, mama, look, look, look. Watch me, watch me, watch me. And heaven forbid you avert your eyes for a single moment. Moment. I have been there, let me tell you. I have watched so and judged so many flips, so many jumps into the pool. Like, I think, oh, my goodness, I can't look anymore. But they are craving the gift of your face. And in an age where everything is replaceable by technology, the one thing it Cannot replace is the gift of listening with your face. Imagine a child telling a story and seeing their parent put their phone down and get down on their level and give them a gift of their face. Imagine a spouse sharing something meaningful and you saying, let me put my phone away so you have my full attention. You're important to me. Imagine a dinner table where everyone's faces are turned toward each other again and there's not kids sitting at the end of the table, isolated in their digital silo. Sometimes the most powerful habit is not complicated. It's simply the this. Put the phone down, look up and listen with your face. And when we're on our phone list, there's so many better things because listen, you don't need a new organization system. You don't need a redecoration for your house. You don't need a new diet. You need to put your phone down. Spend less time on your phone and spend time pouring into your families. Don't auction off the minutes of your life for the highest bidder on a platform who are trying to buy and sell and commodify your attention. It is much more precious to your family. You will invest in something that moth and, and rust cannot destroy. That will be treasures in heaven. Listen with your face. Listen with your face and listen. We'll be right back after this break with some Homefront headlines related to this. I hope you have an good Friday. We'll see you right back on the other side of this break with more on healthy habits and home front headlines.
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Holy Forever by Chris Tomlin: Your name is the highest, your name is the greatest Your name stands above them all. And the angels cry holy. All creation cries holy. You are lifted high. Holy, holy forever.
Dr. Jessica Peck: Welcome back, friends. That is Holy Forever by Chris Tomlin. Don't you just love that song? Listen. Worship music is one of the most underutilized discipleship tools that we have in our home. And we've been talking about that in the first month of this year. We talked about core spiritual disciplines, and I was actually just recently with a group of children's and family ministers and talk to them about how we constantly have something playing on the screen that's kind of a cultural norm. What if you constantly had worship music playing in your home, in your car, and used it as a discipleship? You can curate playlists. We have access to some of the best music that has ever existed. You can curate playlists to help your family. Maybe your family's feeling defeated. Create yourself a victory playlist. Maybe your family's a. In a. A downstage. Well, get a happy playlist that you can play and play songs that give you messages like that. In a world where we constantly are told doom and gloom and you need to buy this and you should be discontent with that. It's great to have a counterbalanced with messages like holy forever. I appreciate that so much.
Experts warn that AI is being used in ways that facilitate exploitation of children
Listen, I'm going to talk to you about some homefront headlines that I'm following so many it's hard to keep up with. But I'm going to tell you about some of the things, things that are rising to the top for me. Listen, this year you're going to hear me talk a lot about AI. I've been talking about artificial intelligence. I will continue to talk about it. It is here. It is now. It is something that parents really need to be aware of because AI is not neutral. AI is absolutely shaping your child's worldview. It encourages novelty and experimentation which many times can lead to explicit, age inappropriate content for your kids. But with Auto Scroll Autoplay, any platform that you're using is going to suggest for you this is shaping your family's worldview. And I do want to give you a little heads up that some of the things I'll be talking about in these headlines are tough. This is tough stuff. So if you have little ears around maybe and guide them to something else. Listen to this. m. Bookmark to listen to this later. Don't miss it. But I just want to give you a moment to adjust your listening audience if you need to, because these are things that we need to know about. First article I'm going to tell you about is actually from the national center on Sexual Exploitation, who's really been talking about, ways that our kids are being abused through AI. And although there are some benefits to AI, it is wildly experimental and advocates and researchers are warning that AI is being used in ways that facilitate exploitation, especially of children. Now, how is this happening? This is primarily happening. You've heard me talk about this before if you listen in. But this is happening. Through, through nudifying apps and deep fakes. This is continuing to happen. I will continue to raise your awareness about this. And it is very, very disturbing in many ways. So deep fakes, of course are images or videos that are digitally altered to look real, but they really aren't. AI only needs about 3 second of a voice to mimic an entire vocabulary. So it's very easy to have a, an image, a video of your child and make that completely into something that it is not. And so AI is generating fake explicit images, and particularly of children. These nudifying apps is AI technology that digitally removes clothing from photos. And there are chatbots that are being used for, for grooming children, for explicit conversations and to elicit images from them. And we see a lot of AI generated images of children that are circulating online. These tools can produce massive amounts of explicit content instantly. So no longer do we have to have casting and video and production. This is instant element at an unbelievable scale. If I tried to explain to you how much content, it's more than our brains can, can even, understand and we need to know about this because AI is, it's happening very fast and so there is, there is some danger there. So I want you to make sure that you are talking to your kids about deep fakes because kids see deep fakes as very harmless and something that is increasingly common that they use as a means of digital communication. And they think they're funny, but it's hard for kids to know where that line is. I also want you to be very, very careful about the images that you share of your children online, because there are people that go and take public images and modify them. And AI is really changing this landscape faster than we realize. And so for most families, the concern is that it's easier and easier and easier to, to exploit and abuse kids. And we see that there are risks. Children are encountering risks even if they're never intentionally seeking them out. AI is seeking them out and predators have more tools than ever before. So don't panic, don't panic. You just need to pray and prepare. So some of those things. Again, talk early about this. Teach your kids, do not share personal photos online. Never, ever, ever send an image to a stranger. And tell me if anything uncomfortable or unusual happens online, tell me immediately, because what happens a lot of times is that predators will appear to be, they will use AI to appear to be a very attractive peer. That, and it seems very harmless. If I'm 12 and I'm talking to another 12 year old that doesn't Seem scary to me. You don't seem like a predator to me. Just seem like, hey, you made me feel cool because you look very attractive and you look very rich and. And, yeah, I'll start telling you some of my secrets and tell you some of the insecurities I have, and then all of a sudden, you're going to use those to blackmail me. And good kids can make poor choices. Good kids make poor choices. It doesn't mean they're a bad kid. We need to teach kids about AI manipulation. And it's getting harder and harder to tell what is AI and what is not. My kids used to be really good about telling me that's AI, but one of my kids who was in college the other day told me, mom, it's so hard to tell. It's getting really hard to tell. And I'm having to figure out a lot of workarounds to figure out what's real and what is not and just convince them. You know, tell them that AI creates convincing content that is fake. So as a family, it's really important for you to go back to what are sources that you trust. Where do you get your information from? Where do you trust? What do you know that's a real person giving you real information that is really trustworthy? Know what apps your kids are using. Keep devices in shared family spaces. If there's a computer, keep it out in the open where everybody can see it. Don't allow phones in your bedroom, but really engage in what your kids are interacting with online. That is really important. Every human being is created with dignity and should never be treated as digital content and have their image or their video manipulated or altered without their consent. That is not appropriate and not okay.
Former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow testified before Congress about child exploitation
And in the that same vein, story number two is Tim Tebow. Many of you know him as a famous football player. He's also a very powerful advocate against child exploitation. And just recently, he testified to Congress about this very issue about child exploitation. Now, why would a former NFL quarterback and philanthropist testify, testify before Senate, on this issue? It's because he sees it. He knows that it's happening. He has the resources and his foundation to know this. And so he testified in the Senate committee urging lawmakers to pass something called the Renewed Hope act of 2026. This is a bipartisan bill that is aimed at fighting child exploitation. Now, here's the other challenge that happens with AI is that when it happens, there is often no legal recourse because there aren't laws saying that this is a crime, crime, or this is wrong to do. And kids are just left there blindsided. And it happened. And he shared a very emotional testimony about the global crisis of child sexual abuse, material and human trafficking. If you missed his testimony, I would encourage you to go and listen to what he said. And one alarming statistic that he highlighted, that was highlighted during the hearing is that more than 57,000 unidentified child victims appear in international databases of abuse images. Meaning law enforcement has evidence that this child was abused, but they do not know who the child is. So those images are just sitting there in a warehouse waiting for someone to make an outcry, waiting for someone to make a disclosure because they don't know who, who, where they, who they are. So this proposed legislation would help expand victim identification team and equip investigators with better training and improve coordination to locate and and rescue exploited children. Now this is not just happening in distant places. This matters for your family today because so much exploitation is happening online. Kids are being targeted through gaming platforms, through social media, through messaging apps, through live streams. And predators are increasingly relying on AI to groom and manipulate victims. So imagine, imagine there is. Now, you, know we talk about AI. The AI that most people are using now is generative AI, meaning I put in a prompt and it gives me something back. I say create this character, this avatar. Well, agenetic AI is self generating. So predators can create several different profiles of what is going to most likely groom you into an abusive situation. And they, they just automatically enact that profile that the child seems to be responding to on the algorithm. This is scary stuff. And we, we know that children are being abused without anyone yet knowing who they are. Many times kids don't have the vocabulary to disclose what happened to them in their abuse. And we see that this is happening in everyday families. So what can you do about this? You play a crucial role in prevention. We can't panic, panic. We're going to pray and prepare. So again, I've said it before. Create open communication. Tell your kids over and over, you can always tell me anything. You can always tell me anything. I might feel angry, I might feel upset, but we will get through it together. And I love you can always tell me anything and talk to them about what grooming looks like. That if somebody is giving you something that seems too good to be true, if they're gifting you things through a gaming platform, sending you some sort of currency, it may not even be real money. It may be other tokens or incentives on that platform. If they're sending you something, I want to Know about that. If anybody ever asks you can you keep a secret, you say, no, I cannot. I am not allowed to keep secrets from my parents. Just say that right away. I'm telling you that will scare predators off in a hurry because they know that is someone who has a good relationship with their parents and is likely to tell them, them. Teach your kids that secrets are not okay. There's a difference between keeping a secret and keeping something sensitive. There are some things that are sensitive that are confidential. Like, like you know, conversation around your private parts and, and those kinds of things, they can be confidential. We don't talk about them to everybody. But secrets are not kept. There's not something secret. It's confident it's sensitive or confidential. I also encourage you to delay social media as long as you can. The later that kids enter social media media, the better prepared they will be to handle the risk. So I know when I go and speak with parents all over the country, inevitably, inevitably after I speak, there's going to be at least one mom that is waiting in a line to talk to me who comes up to me with tears in her eyes who is saying I'm trying to hold the line. I'm trying to be that parent. But my kid is just convincing me that I am ruining their social life, that they're the only one and hides. Just love to hug those mamas and just say hold the line, hold the line. Don't be afraid to be that parent. Now you can't have rigid rules without relationship. You've got to continue engaging them, give them something more compelling than that. Social media make your in person relationship so amazing that they would not trade, trade that for anything happening online. But don't be afraid to be that parent and to be different. Research shows that even if, if parents, if families are really quirky and they do something that's completely different but they are solid in their identity together, those kids are going to do just fine, emotionally. Get engaged in your kids online spaces. Know which apps they're using. Know who they're interacting with. Make sure that their privacy settings are active. Talk to them about what privacy settings are. Sometimes they don't even understand what that is.
Talk to your kids regularly about viral challenges
Now the last story I want to tell you about is another threat that's a social media trend. It's called the Benadryl Challenge. It's been around for a little while, but this challenge encourages teens to take large doses of Benadryl or diphenhydramine is the technical name for it. It's an active ingredient in allergy medicine. And the reason is to induce hallucinations. But this is so, so dangerous. And I am seeing this in clinical practice. You're talking about seizures and heart rhythm disturbances, stroke, heart attack, death. And several teenagers have been hospitalized and some have died. This is really important because teenagers are craving peer approval. Risk taking is natural. It's wired in their brain. We need to direct that in a positive place. But also, viral attention is something that is very commodifiable. So what can you do? Talk to your kids regularly about viral challenges. Don't go to them with fear or lecture and say, oh, my goodness, I heard about this Benadryl challenge. You better not be doing that. You better not be listening to that. Say, what viral challenges are you seeing? Seeing? Cultivate curiosity as much as you can. Ask your kids what viral challenges they're seeing and talk about some. Just because it's viral doesn't mean it is safe. And teach them digital discernment. Who created this content? What are they trying to gain? What could go wrong? Ask them questions so that they can come to the conclusion on their own. And realize how to enact discernment online rather than just telling them it's wrong, wrong or it's dangerous. Listen, it is a dangerous world out there. But God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power and a, sound mind. And I pray that as you're navigating this crazy, crazy world that is AI and technology, I pray fervently that the Lord will bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you, be gracious to you and give you peace, even in the algorithm. Listen, I'll see you back here next time. We'd like to thank our sponsors, including PreBorn. PreBorn has rescued over 400,000 babies from abortion. And every day their network clinics rescue 200 babies lives. Will you join PreBorn in loving and supporting young moms in crisis? Save a life today. Go to preborn.com/AFR the views and
Jeff Chamblee: opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family association or American Family Radio.
It's Ask Dr. Nurse Mama Friday! Jessica talks about this week's healthy habit of listening with your face. She also talks about this week's Homefront Headlines.
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