386 | High-Def Parenting: Breaking Free from Digital Distractions (Darren Whitehead)
Episode Description
Parenting teenagers in a digital world feels impossible—especially when you're struggling with your own phone addiction. In this episode, Darren Whitehead (dad of 4 teenage girls) shares how he led his entire church through a 40-day digital fast and discovered the secret to high-definition parenting. You'll hear why smartphones make us feel god-like, how to have the phone conversation with your kids, and what a Havanese dog named Bruce taught him about presence.
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Darren Whitehead is the author of The Digital Fast and senior pastor of Journey Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He's a former youth pastor turned girl dad of four teenage daughters (ages 11, 14, 16, and 18). Darren has led thousands of people through digital detoxes and speaks regularly about technology, parenting, and spiritual formation. He and his wife live in Tennessee with their daughters and Bruce, their Havanese therapy dog.
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Smartphones simulate God's attributes (omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence) and we weren't built for limitless power
Collective action is more effective than individual willpower—do digital fasts as a community, not alone
No smartphones before high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools, and more unsupervised outdoor play
When you put your phone down, you experience parenting in "high definition"—fully present and aware of these fleeting moments
The most precious moments with your kids are being exchanged for infinitely trivial distractions
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Darren Whitehead [00:00:39] I remember I was doing a digital fast. I had got a couple of weeks in and my daughter said, come watch me on the trampoline. And I walked outside and it was like, all of my senses have reset. She's bouncing on the trample and she's squealing. And for whatever reason, I can hear her squeal in like 4D and it's the most beautiful sound ever. And I felt more present and I had this conscious thought. This is a better life. I am watching this precious creature that I would die for. And I am not trying to capture it and post it. I'm not distracted by a buzz in my pocket and wondering what just happened. I am looking at my daughter and this season of her life is fleeting and I wanna capture it and breathe it in and consume it as much as I possibly can. Parenting is breathtaking. And being away from your phone, you experience it in Hi-Def.
Jeff Zaugg [00:01:41] Welcome back to Dad Awesome, guys. Happy Father's Day. It's Father's day week. This is episode three hundred and eighty six. My name is Jeff Zaugg, and I'm just thrilled to cheer for you guys, to pray for you, to encourage you and to serve our broader Dad Awesome community with today's podcast conversation. Last week was also a special kind of launch lead up to Father's Day with Todd Harper talking about raising generous kids and just bringing to light how generosity ripples into all aspects of the dad life, of parenting, of families, and how it has this compounded nature. We live with the gift of generosity. Today though, with Darren Whitehead, we're gonna talk about the current moment in time, the digital world we live in from screens, smartphones, social media, AI, these glowing devices, and how God has a better plan for us as dads. We're drawn into spending just too much focus on this. Like really, it's intoxicating. Our screens and the information. This is really, really gonna be helpful for you guys. Darren Whitehead has four teenage daughters and he has run multiple years. This is four, five, six years of experiments church-wide and with his family and with this circle of friends that are powerful. And these could be tools that help to kind of chart a new trajectory for us as dads. So today's conversation will be massively helpful. Want a quick shout out a gift for you guys on Father's Day. We have a small slice, a sample chapter, actually it's like three chapters, of the Dad Awesome book. So we're releasing on episode 400 the Dad awesome book this fall. And so that's like 14 weeks from now. So it's coming, but there's a small slice we want to give you the PDF early. It's an unreleased rough draft. So don't, you know, the full book is going to have like 40 chapters and it's all around the DadAwesome framework, this six part framework, these six movements that we have just discovered. Of the Dad Awesome discoveries for the past seven and a half years. But I'm just thrilled to kind of give you a little sneak peek. If you go to dadawesome.org, our main website, dadawsome.org scroll down to like the third or fourth section of the homepage. And right there is the book. You can't miss it. Click and just add your email address and we'll send you that PDF. So happy Father's Day, praying for you. This is episode 386. With Darren Whitehead. Week. I've got Darren Whitehead joining me. Thank you for saying yes to having a Dad Awesome conversation. Mate, I am thrilled to be with you. I thought we'd start here with the theme of gladness and specifically, you're a girl dad. You've got teenagers. In fact, didn't you just, Did you launch your oldest daughter? Is she just finishing high school? Is that right?
Darren Whitehead [00:04:32] He is just finishing high school, mate. Yeah, yeah, I am particularly tender about all of this. This is my oldest daughter. And so the last several weeks have been chocked full of transitional moments. You know, she's 18. She's graduating from high school. Just went to a graduation 48 hours ago. We've had parties at our house. And I've been looking at slideshows of when she was young and crying myself to sleep
Jeff Zaugg [00:05:05] This is precious for me, like truly, when I get to have a conversation at one of those chapter change moments, because reflection is already bubbling up, right? So my question around gladness is, what are you glad that you did as a dad, if you go back 10 years ago, or go back five years, whatever chapter, what do you glad you prioritized or glad that did as dad that you could share with us that would be transferable?
Darren Whitehead [00:05:30] Well, I love that question. You know, I was a youth pastor for 10 years, and I thought, when I'm a parent of teenagers one day, I'm gonna be really good at this, because I'm good communicator to students, I make them laugh, I inspire them. The parents say to me, when I tell my kids something, they don't listen, but when they hear it from you, they seem to understand. And I thought, I'm gonna be great at this. And parenting teenage is really hot. It's funny because it turns out the difference between a teenage girl in public as she is holding things together and a teenage go in private in the safety of her own home turns That's a much wider ravine than I could have ever imagined. And so in 10 years of student ministry, I saw the carefully curated, holding it together and being cool in public. And when I became a dad, I got to see what's like when they're not in public and I, I'm very close to, I have three, three daughters, 11, 16 and 14. And then we have another 18-year-old. Young lady who's living with us. Her mother died last year and they're a very close family friend. And so I'm living with, my wife and I live with four teenage girls. There is always someone crying in my house. It is usually me. So I will tell you that I have been a student of girl dads. I've been a student of parenting. I've read whatever I can. I love talking about this. I really wanna get this right. None of my daughters are in complete adulthood with married and kids or anything like that. So my journey is not over. But with my 18 year old who has crossed the threshold of her life. Where her agency for decision making is about to change completely. She's gonna have more decision making power than she's ever had before. I am watching how she is beginning to navigate this new world and I'm really thankful for my wife's investment in her and I am very thankful for how we as parents have been able to stay very connected to her. The best bit of advice I think I've ever got for parenting is the importance of really keeping your heart connected to your child. And they have all navigated many different eras of life and highs and lows and rejection and hurt and success. And the highs have been higher than I could have imagined and the lows have been lower than I was expecting. Yeah. And... And all the while, I'm so thankful that my girls want to hang out with us, and I really cherish the time we get together. We're about to go on a family vacation that my goals want to go one. And I love the philosophy of raising your kids in such a way that when they no longer have to spend time with you, they want to. And You know, I, we are by no means hitting the childhood finish line, but things are looking good right now. We're very, we're very connected with each of our kids. Um, one of the things that I have done that I, that has turned out to be very important and something that we've really cherished is I've traveled a lot for, for my job and I've always taken one of my daughters with me. And it turns out that some of the most cherished moments that we have ever had are trapped in the middle of just mundane waiting at an airport or picking out a rental car or standing in line checking into a hotel or letting them choose which restaurant we eat at. And we've experienced all over the country and all over world, each of them have. And we have these memories that just... She and I have, we have insider jokes because we only saw that thing, you know. And I was determined, Jeff, that my kids, like my prayer was that my kids would love the church and not hate the church, you know, not see it as the thing that's dragging the attention and focus and energy away from their dad and from their mom and dad. And so I always was careful to frame from when they were very young, that they're a... Blessings of this job, and there are burdens with this job. It's both, right? And so anytime we got to do something special as a result of dad's job, I wanted to highlight that. You know, we wouldn't have got this if it wasn't for dad's jobs. So that the narrative is not just the weight and the burden of this, the price of this. I would say there's a price to this calling. And there's a privilege to this calling as well. And the price is high sometimes. You know, like there is a proximity to trauma that seems to never end. There are always people in pain in our sort of direct network because cancer diagnosis and car wrecks and children that die and all of the things, divorce, affairs, the whole thing. We're the ones that hear about that, and so it seems like the world is always in madness in some degree, and that's the price of this job. It's also a real privilege that people reach out to you and ask them to walk with them through the most difficult times of their lives. I sincerely want my daughters to feel, we get to do some cool things sometimes, and that's because of dad's job, and then he's not around sometimes. After we do a bunch of Christmas Eve services, dad's a corpse and we can't even talk to him, you know? And they just know like, this is part of it. It's blessing, privilege, it's blessing and burden.
Jeff Zaugg [00:12:31] The chasm you described between public, what you experienced from teenagers in their public sliver of Wednesday nights or whenever you gathered to what's actually true on the home front, that's become like, I love how clear you describe that. And on the Homefront, you mentioned your tears. And I'm in that phase, entering with an almost 12 year old in these moments of like, I'm struggling to be a calm presence. So, what have you found besides, I know you added a dog, Bruce, you added a dog. Yes. Which, what kind of dog is Bruce?
Darren Whitehead [00:13:11] Bruce is a Havanese dog.
Jeff Zaugg [00:13:13] Yes.
Darren Whitehead [00:13:14] And the way that we got this dog is, we have, you may or not be familiar with the work of Sissy Goff. I am familiar, yeah.
Jeff Zaugg [00:13:22] I am familiar, yes, oh yes, such a fan.
Darren Whitehead [00:13:24] So we adore Sissy and we've had the privilege of having her in our lives and she's in our daughter's life. And she's the Obi-Wan Kenobi of teenage girls. And one day my oldest daughter, Sydney, was saying, you know, Sissy has this dog who sits in every appointment. And this dog was a girl, she had a dog named Lucy forever and then that dog died and she now has a dog name. Named Patches. And this dog was just this calming presence. That's it. Yes. It's like this dog that is just sitting there with her mouth on the couch, just looking at them and blinking and looking at them and blinking. It's just the sweetest thing. This breed of dog, they look like live teddy bears, honestly. Just cuddle up. And so I texted Sissy one day and I just said, Sissy, where did you get that dog? And she sent me the breeder and we bought a...
Jeff Zaugg [00:14:23] Sibling to her dog and was this during a moment of like the emotions are just rolling like I don't know what to do I need it wasn't one of those moments. You needed a calming presence to be the calming or
Darren Whitehead [00:14:37] It was honestly, it was the beginning of Sydney's senior year where I was so emotional about this final last of all these things, it's almost like make a wish foundation but no one's dying. It's like, whatever you want, I'm going to do for you, you know? It's amazing. So she's like we should get a dog and I'm like yeah, we should a dog. And so me and Sid together went and drove across the country and picked up this dog and it was so. Like it was such a cool memory, it was great. I love it.
Jeff Zaugg [00:15:07] Bruce has been a real blessing in our home. We said goodbye to a dog a year ago, 14, almost 15 years old, Boomer. We named him Boomer because of the Australian male kangaroo, the Boomer, so we got a little connection there and he was the same. Like, I actually have been thinking about that recently and it would be a good year or two of prayer for my wife's heart to turn to get another dog. But we'll see, we'll say the girls are asking.
Darren Whitehead [00:15:33] So I got the dog on the last day of my 49th year. Yes. So like the last night of my 40s. And it was the first dog I've ever owned. I've never owned a dog. OK, yeah, yeah. And it turns out I'm a dog person. Like, I love this dog, dude. Like, it's the least complicated relationship in my life. I come home, I walk in, he's so happy to see me.
Jeff Zaugg [00:16:02] Well, actually there's a parallel there. I was gonna ask you if there was any dog lessons from Bruce, your dog, that could be fatherhood tips or fatherhood guidance for us. And one is that glad to see, I know that that's a peril we can take from dogs, get it right. Do I light up when I see? And I do, I do. But I don't always feel it, right? So I'd love to hear one, is any dog lessons from Bruce for us as dads? And the second is just anything else besides getting a dog that helps you in these, just would help us who are feeling like, man, I'm finding myself getting sharp with my girls in this moment versus being the calming presence.
Darren Whitehead [00:16:46] Lessons from Bruce, man, that's a cool question. I'd love to create my top five lessons from Bruce at some point. Some of the things that I love about Bruce so much is transition moments. So when you're walking into a room, he's just so delighted to see you, his tag is black. Sometimes he just starts running around in circles. He's so excited. I think the other thing is they nickname Havanese and several other breeds, Velcro dogs. Because they just want to be with you all the time. Close. So whatever room I'm in, he just wants to be next to me. And if I'm laying down, if I take a nap, he's gonna take a naps next to if I watching TV, he's sitting down next to just, he just never tires of my presence. And there's something that's really beautiful about the ministry of presence, being together, being, you know, alongside of one another, We're together. A lot.
Jeff Zaugg [00:17:48] It's really actually very lovely. That's amazing. And it also, it takes me right into, I wanted to ask you about these, there's a temptation for us to add something that fights directly against presence. And it's a God-like temptation, is the way you framed it in your book. And you talked about these things that are true about God that like we're tempted to go after. So omniscience, omnipresence, omnibotance, these things are so true about the smartphone. It actually makes us a little bit like God. So as just a springboard into your book, The Digital Fast, we have to talk about this. And we'll thread back through, who knows, maybe some of the Bruce advice for dads, but give us your. I would just love to hear, like, where did that come from and what does that stir up right now when you're thinking about helping us dads?
Darren Whitehead [00:18:41] Yeah, well, what's really interesting about the adoption of technology is that so often we don't completely understand what the unintended consequences of technology adoption is going to be. So we could have never have known in 2007 when the iPhone was invented, when it was a universally positive device, you know, there was no front-facing camera, there There was no social media, there was no notifications. You know, so many of the things that have become destructive. It didn't have any of those things. But the device through updates has morphed into something that we used to have control of and now it tends to control us, you know. But it gets back to this, this human appetite to want to be like God. And it comes all the way back to the garden. Where the serpent is tempting Eve and saying, you know, you can be like God and what is God like? Well, God is limitless. And so He is omnipresent. He is omniscient and He is Omnipotent. And it's what's so interesting is that these smartphones simulate these three things. So they are all knowing because you no longer have to ask yourself, who was in that movie? You just Google it. Look it up. Who sang that song? Where is someone now? Whatever, you've got Google and then you've go what is essentially Google on crack, which is ChatGPT. It's really a search engine that is way, way beyond search engines now, using AI. And then in addition to things you can look up, you just know. Millions of small details, we live lives where we skim the world and we know a little about a lot instead of a lot about a little. And so we read the news and we knew about natural disasters and we known about human trafficking and we knows about mass murders and we now about gun violence and we, we know about all these things that we don't have any agency to control or influence at all. It's just cluttering knowledge. And it turns out we were not built for unlimited knowledge. So how's it working for you? Do you find yourself more exhausted, more fatigued, less ability to be able to concentrate than ever before? Yeah, this is all the unintended consequences of having so much content. Skimming the surface of content, right? We were not built to be limitless. And the same is true about omnipresence. You know, social media causes you, used to be that you lived in a town and you would have a collection of relationships that were proportioned to your proximity. You have neighbors, you have family, you have some friends, you know. And then you move to another city and you build new relationships based on new proximity. And you're no longer managing the former relationships. Social media causes the different seasons of our lives to accumulate. So now we find ourselves trying to manage hundreds or thousands of relationships. So you didn't reach out on my birthday or just doom-scrolling and you're seeing that someone just broke up with their boyfriend and then someone went on a vacation and you are not physically in any of these places, but you are consuming it through a degree of simulated omnipresence. Turns out we weren't built for this and that imposes a weight upon the way that we experience the world that we were never meant to experience. And then the other is omnipotence. And that is the power that we possess with these devices now. We can control items like magic, you know, it's like you just touch things and you can see someone on the other side of the world or we've just got this power at our disposal. All three of these dynamics were designed for God and God alone. The creator, not the created. And when the created tries to be the creator, it turns out that it doesn't go very well. And so we have a mental health crisis. We have lower self-esteem. We have higher degrees of loneliness. And we have teenagers who have never been worse in terms of mental health. Our technology, our comfort, our wealth, the advancements in medicine are all the best that have ever been. And mental health is worse than it's ever been. So how do you conclude that, well, we were not meant to live like God?
Jeff Zaugg [00:24:07] There's one thing to study, make a whole bunch of discoveries and export it. There's another to run a large scale experiment. Bias towards action is always my preference. I'm like, let's take action. Let's try stuff. Let's see what works. You tried a church wide. Let's take 40 days. This was, how many years ago was the first round?
Darren Whitehead [00:24:27] This one was three years ago.
Jeff Zaugg [00:24:30] Okay, can you just describe what you guys did as a church to combat this?
Darren Whitehead [00:24:33] And I was, dude, I was super insecure about doing this. I mean, I've never heard of a church wanting to do a church-wide digital fast. And, uh, and I thought people are going to be annoyed or angry or like, Hey, bro, stay in your lane and teach the Bible. You know what I mean? Like, get out of my biz. And, um, so we, we, kind of, uh felt our way through this first The first one we did was a 30-day digital detox where I just tried to guide our church through detaching from devices and then allow that to discover, like discover what you notice now when you're no longer staring at a screen all the time. The next phase of that was then experience of the delight. Because all of the dopamine receptors in your brain start to reset after a couple of weeks. And instead of being inundated with dopamine, which causes your brain to be flooded with dopamine and instead of it producing joy and pleasure, you just feel foggy and overwhelmed, right? When you reset the dopamine, and it takes about 14 days to do that, you actually start to experience what dopamine was meant to do. You like have these surges of joy. Like your brain goes back to the way God intended, you know, and then the last movement of it was to determine, wanted to determine what do you want your new digital habits to be after you do this. And the metaphor we used was a... Marie Kondo has this whole philosophy about cleaning out your closet, simplifying your life. And you ask an item of clothing, does this spark joy? Joy, yes. And if it doesn't spark joy, you throw it away. And if does, you keep it. So I want people to Marie Kando their digital life, the apps on their phone, and just go, does having Instagram back on my phone spark joy. Just having TikTok. Spark joy? Does having Facebook spark joy in my life? Or is it better for my phone to be a utility device instead of a distraction device? And interestingly, could never have known this when we began, we had about 50% of people who took social media off their phone for this experiment and never put it back on. And it's not that they never went on to social media, they just didn't have it on their phones. Because if you have it on your phone, it's almost irresistible in all of the gaps in your life, the discretionary moments, the time you pull up at the lights, you just want to grab your phone and just start like scrolling and not being present, but seeing what everyone else is doing. And when you don't have that, when you have access to that, it is really quite easy to not do it.
Jeff Zaugg [00:27:39] I've been asking the question, does the glow or the shine make my eyes shine? So throughout all history, right? Until like 70 years ago with television, it was the moon, the stars, the sunrise, sunset, fireflies, luminescence, and the candle or a fire pit, Those things do make my eye shine, those things. But this right here. Doesn't actually, when I'm done, my eyes are not shiny. They're dulled, right? It's the opposite. So you did this experiment. It obviously worked because here we are, years later, hundreds, thousands, lots of churches are doing the experiment. And you can take on the challenge on your own as a family or as a church community. What are some of the, like, you're talking to dads here, like what are the... The response is the impact that would make a dad say, hey, I'm curious. I wanna think about this.
Darren Whitehead [00:28:35] Oh, it's been, there's so many things that I learned that were not intuitive to me. So it turns out that doing it as a community is so much easier than doing it on your own, right? So social scientists call the smartphone problem, the social media problem, they call a collective action problem. And what that means is that we are all doing something collectively that is destructive. But none of us want to step back from it because we're going to get FOMO, right? We're going get left out. So your kids, if they're saying Instagram makes me sad, you say, why don't you delete it? They're like, I can't, all my friends are on it. So that's a collective action problem. The way to address collective action problems is with collective action. So the church is an ideal space because it's an intersection of communities from all walks of life and age groups and everything, ages and stages and everything. And you say, let's all do this together. So if you're a parent and you're bothered by how much your kid is on their smartphone, chances are you have that same problem. Chances are they're seeing you do it and they're mimicking what you do. And that might be true for so many of us, right? So then what you do is you say, we're all gonna do something together. Young and old, teenagers, parents, grandparents, your neighbors, the kids that play hockey with, everyone, we're gonna do this together, right. And my kids were not thrilled about me talking about this early on. They were like, this is gonna be. Social suicide at school, you know, like, so many of their friends come to our church and all of that. And so they started out with great resistance and several days into it, they were like, this is actually pretty great. Because their friends are all doing it as well. So, so it makes it easier, you know, so you're providing leadership as a parent. So many of us parents have this low grade sense of guilt. That we're staring at our phones more than we should be staring at kids' eyes, you know? We know it's true, yes. I had a pretty definitive moment with my daughters. I take my daughters on one-on-one dates fairly regularly, like a lot of dads do. And I had week where I had an opening where I was able to take each of them on a one-one-one dinner date and they could choose where we were gonna go. And I was feeling quietly confident about my dad game. And I thought, I'm gonna ask for a report card. I'm going to say, what's dad doing great that he needs to do more of? And what's Dad doing terrible that he needs to less of? And I asked each of them that same question. They all said something different about what I was doing well. I was driving them to school in the mornings and that season of our lives. They liked that. They liked I'm a morning person. I'm fun. I make them laugh. They like when I trip and hurt myself. Can you do that more? You know, it was sort of like the things that they enjoy about our interactions and completely uncolluted with one another. They said exactly the same thing. I wish you were not always on your phone. And those words haunted me. Like parenting holds up a mirror, right? We know that it does. But with all three of them saying that, it's like, I can't explain my way out of this as though it's not true. And the thought of exchanging the most precious moments. That I'm ever gonna have with these kids. You know, if you've ever seen the graph of the time that you spend with your kid and then like how it just gets less and less and the, you know, the lion's share of it is, you know is up to the age of 18. And to think that I am exchanging the infinitely valuable with the infinitely trivial. I just felt a lot of shame. Seem to possess the ongoing willpower all the time to resist and so I need to build practices into my life so that I can be the person I want to be.
Jeff Zaugg [00:33:11] That's it, I've never made a significant change without building, inviting some friends or let's do it as a family. Like without the collective, I don't actually change for the better. I don't finish the book, I don do this or that without like recruiting people in. You happen to do it at a very large scale. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to jump to a quote, I can't recall what section of the book it was in but out of the movie Shawshank Redemption. And you said, or you pulled the quote saying, hey, we're gonna, really it comes down to a choice, get busy living or get busy dying. And Dad Awesome started from, well, several kind of promises from God's word, but Deuteronomy 30, 19. I've set before you life or death, blessings or curses. Choose life so that you and your kids may live. The get busy, living, Right now, right now, whatever chapter the dad's listening, right now they work out while they're washing dishes, whatever, they get busy living. The work that you're doing with the digital fast and with giving tools for collective action, like I want this for myself, for my community, and for my daughters, all spheres. What would you add around get busy, living?
Darren Whitehead [00:34:24] Yeah, well, the enemy playbook is in John Tan Tan. He comes to steal, kill and destroy. And Jesus says that I may, I have come that you may have life and life to the full. So right in that, John Tan tan is the very idea you're talking about. There's death and there's life. You know, I think that we may have never seen a tool in history. That is more a tool of stealing, killing, and destroying than the smartphone. Now there is a capacity to do good. There's a capacity for positivity, but the capacity for evil is a million X. It's capacity for good. So, um, It's some of the research I got to I got to interview Jonathan Haidt several months ago. He wrote the book The Anxious Generation. He's really the, you know, he's the he's the the Obi-Wan Kenobi of smartphones and the impact on on society at large. And it was it was really amazing to hear the research that has now come into full view. There wasn't always research on this. We just adopted this technology, we gave it to our kids, and now we're seeing the impact of this. The most destructive age and stage of life with a smartphone is a teenage girl going through puberty. And there are only two times that the brain is completely rewired in the human experience. One is in utero, And then the second is in puberty. So somewhere around 12, 13, 14, whatever, their brains are completely rewiring. There is this surge of all this new hormones that are shooting through their body. And if you're doing that simultaneously with comparing yourself to the superficiality of AI bodies and sexuality on online content, it is very, very dangerous and very, very destructive. So, I contrast by far this idea when I talk to my girls about it and we've had many arguments over the years about what I will allow and won't allow them to do, but what I want to say to them is, is my darling, I've done a lot of research on this. What would you do if you were me? It. I know that you are going to be sadder, not happier. More prone to depression and insecurity and all kinds of other mental health ailments as a result of more consumption of this digital device. My job is to protect you. My job to provide for you. What would you do if you were me? And we've had. Hard conversations over the years because I'm stricter than most about this, but I will tell you that there is a rising coalition. You and your parenting is going to benefit from the previous five to 10 years that have gone before you. Because you know what I did? When my girls were old enough to go on a sleepover or play school sports, I found an old iPhone in a junk drawer and I fired it up and I gave it to them. And now no intentional parent is wanting to do that. The first phone that you should get, if you need to give your kid a phone, it's not a smartphone. Yeah. Give your kid, a dumb phone, a flip phone, a phone that you can make calls. Communication, communication.
Jeff Zaugg [00:38:31] Let's go super practical for a moment for me. My oldest is turning 12 this year. What would you, what's your guidance for the next, call it five, eight years of just from what you know today, not perfect advice, but what would you tell me as far as it's a dumb phone first, whenever you have to, which it's not yet for us, it's we're pushing it further and further. Let's push it further. Walkie talkies, walkie talkie, give me some practical advice.
Darren Whitehead [00:38:56] Jonathan Haidt's research would say, and he has four collective action items as a result of his research. The first one, and what's helpful about this is whether you agree with it or not, it's at least clear and you can react to it. No smartphones before high school. So if you need to give your kid a phone, give them a dumb phone, there's actually a lot of options now. That look like a smartphone and they're not a smartphone. It's just in terms of like helping kids not be embarrassed or whatever, you know? You don't need every kid to do what you're doing, right? You don't need every family. You just need a segment of families to do it. Yeah, more than just us. So what you guys can say is, I'm the only one that doesn't have an iPhone, and you're like, no, that's actually not true. I know four other families in your class and they don't have iPhones. And so you don't need everyone to get movement, to get a revolution started, you just need a few, right? So it's usually around the age of 14. Don't give your kids a smartphone before the age of 14, and there's a lot of, there's a phone called the Wyze phone that looks a little bit like that. There's a whole collection of other phones that are just options that look like a smartphone, but they're not a smartphone. The second thing is no social media before 16. Social media is very destructive. You need to hold that back as far as you possibly can.
Jeff Zaugg [00:40:33] And are you saying yes for your 16-year-old social media?
Darren Whitehead [00:40:36] So my 16-year-old does not yet have social. And she wants it. Yeah, right. And this is an ongoing conversation. And she is 16 and a half, so I'm still holding this back. Hold the line, hold the line.
Jeff Zaugg [00:40:51] Anything else practical from that research?
Darren Whitehead [00:40:56] So the third thing is that phone free schools, get phones out of schools, and there is a movement that is happening right now. My kids' schools have no phones. The fourth thing is more unsupervised outside play. So get your kids outside, get them interacting with other kids. If there's conflict, let them resolve the conflict themselves without a parent coming in and saying, now what did you say and all of that. Let them role play, let them learn to develop inner personal skills, get them outside. So that's the four things.
Jeff Zaugg [00:41:28] Darren, as we land today's conversation, just a lot of gratitude. Thank you for taking this time. Thank you, for being a spark that now us dads listening can for our own families, for our circle of friends, and then we could bring to, I mean, at the church level, at the community level, at neighborhood level. So I want to say thank you. Around delight though, just to close that part of these four movements of delight, I know is more possible when we're not. Staring at a screen, but also just broadly, dads who delight in our kids, delight in the good gifts, are thankful. Anything, just last words around delight that you'd want to share with us, dads?
Darren Whitehead [00:42:05] Yeah. So what comes to mind is don't carry your phone around with you when you're at your house, right? When you get home, put it somewhere, put in a drawer, whatever, right. I remember I was doing a digital fast. I had got a couple of weeks in and my daughter said, come watch me on the trampoline. And I walked outside and it was like all my senses had reset. And I was aware that I could feel the grass under my feet. I could smell the air. I could look at the sky. I could fill the breeze. And then my daughter was bouncing. She was about 13. She's bouncing on the trampoline and she's squealing. And for whatever reason, I can hear her squeal in like 4D and it's the most beautiful sound ever. And I felt more present and I had this conscious thought. This is a better life. I am watching this precious creature that I would die for. And I am not trying to capture it and post it. I'm not distracted by a buzz in my pocket and wondering what just happened. I am looking at my daughter and this season of her life is fleeting. And I want to capture and breathe it in and consume it as much as I possibly can. Parenting is... Breathtaking and being away from your phone you experience it in high-def.
Jeff Zaugg [00:43:36] Would you say a short prayer over all of us dads that we'd experienced that deeper joy that maybe we haven't in the past?
Darren Whitehead [00:43:42] I'd love to. Let's pray. God, I pray for every person, every dad who is listening to this right now, jogging on a treadmill, doing yard work, driving in a vehicle, wherever they are. I pray that you would give them this fresh, insatiable vision to be so present with their young boys and young girls. The precious, precious gift of being a father. We just say thank you We don't want to skim it. We don't want to miss it. We want to be fully alive, fully present, fully able to be able to take in every gift, every blessing that You have given us through these children. And I'm asking God that You would cause us to be fully aware of inviting that and wanting to experience that. I pray blessings over the relationships of dads and kids. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Jeff Zaugg [00:44:45] Thank you so much for joining us for episode 386. Today's podcast conversation, the episode page is at dadawesome.org slash podcast. And you just look for episode three 86 and we've got the links, the key action steps. And we always, we pray God, we wanna have a bias towards action, not just intent at dad awesome, but action. And sometimes just skimming through and looking at the show notes, the episode, page will remind, and you can just pray as you skim. Holy Spirit, guide me to what's my next steps as I prayerfully pursue the hearts of my kids. So that's there for you. Also, just want to say thank you. On Father's Day weekend, want to thank you to our community. Seven and a half years, Dad Awesome, we have seen God do more than we could have ever imagined. Here we are approaching 400 episodes of the podcast. We've had the joy of hosting two summit gatherings of other fatherhood ministries. We've hosted. 30 Fathers for the Fatherless activation events. These events, over a thousand men. We celebrated last August, this is just kind of year in review quickly, last August we celebrated over a million dollars fundraised for our partner organizations who directly serve kids that don't have a dad. I mean, there's just, it goes on and on, just saying, look what God's done and how thankful we are. But there's a team, we've got about 40 families that have surrounded this ministry and have committed to giving monthly or giving kind of a committed gift yearly to support the financial side. The generosity of these 40 families has fueled seven and a half years of me being, I've been four years now full-time after this mission. But just want to encourage you to pray about, on Father's Day, if you guys would pray about making a commitment to be a part of our support team, we're trying to add about. 20 additional families who would give monthly. Man, that could be $9 or $900 a month. Either one is so helpful. So go to dadawesome.org slash give if you are interested in prayerfully giving to support the finances, the generosity movement that fuels this mission. So guys, happy Father's Day, praying for you, cheering for you. Have a great week.
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"I wish you were not always on your phone." - What all three of his daughters said when he asked for a dad report card
"The thought of exchanging the most precious moments that I'm ever gonna have with these kids... with the infinitely trivial. I just felt a lot of shame." - Darren reflecting on phone addiction vs. parenting
"This is a better life. I am watching this precious creature that I would die for. And I am not trying to capture it and post it." - His revelation moment watching his daughter on the trampoline during a digital fast
"We were not meant to live like God. When the created tries to be the creator, it turns out that it doesn't go very well." - On why smartphones (omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence) are destructive
"Parenting is breathtaking and being away from your phone, you experience it in high def." - His closing thought on presence vs. digital distraction
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