How to Build a Healthier Relationship with Technology with Dawn Wible

by on April 24, 2026

We’ve all been there. When quickly a “just checking something” moment turns into 20 minutes lost scrolling. How hard it is to stay present with the people right in front of us. And how confusing it can be to guide our kids through a world we didn’t grow up in.

In this episode, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen sit down with Dawn Wible, founder of Talk More. Tech Less., to name what many of us are wrestling with. Technology isn’t just a tool; it’s shaping our attention, our relationships, and even our capacity for connection.

You’ll also hear about how to approach some of the harder truths many families are facing today, including online exploitation risks, and why open, shame-free conversations at home matter more than ever.

If you’ve ever felt the pull of your phone, the frustration of setting boundaries, or the ache of disconnection with your loved ones, you’re not alone. 

We invite you to listen to the full episode to hear practical insights for you and your family. And be sure to check the show notes for resources from Talk More. Tech Less., including their free guides to help you take small, meaningful steps toward healthier tech use.

About Our Guest:

Dawn Wible is the founder of Talk More. Tech Less., a digital wellness and safety organization. Dawn is an online safety advocate and certified digital wellness educator. For over a decade, she has trained communities, organizations, schools, and families on safer tech use. Dawn serve as co-chair of the Online Harms Prevention group with FairPlay, a global workgroup of child online safety practitioners as well as survivor parents who have lost their kids to online harms.  She was honored to see online safety legislation that she supported signed into law at the White House last year. 

Dawn and her husband Matt, the founder of an outdoor mentorship organization for young men, have been working with youth for 25 years. Together they are walking this road alongside all parents dealing with technology in the home, modeling openness and safer habits as they raise their three boys.

Listener Resources from Talk More. Tech Less.:

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, click here.  If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at cclayton@theallendercenter.org 

 

Episode Transcript:

Rachael: Good people with good bodies. Today on the podcast, we’re going to be talking some about our relationship with technology and its impact on our relationships. And this is something Dan and I talk about frequently, especially when we’re reflecting on our own propensity to turn to our phones for some dopamine hits, but also watching the various teens in our lives’ brains actually be shaped differently by their relationship with technology. So we are so honored and thrilled today to have Dawn Wibel with us as our guest. So welcome, Dawn, and then I’ll give some more bio info for you, but so glad to have you.

Dawn: Thank you so much. What an honor to be on the Allender Podcast. Thank you for having me.

Rachael: Dawn is the founder of Talk More Tech Less, a digital wellness and safety organization. She’s an online safety advocate and certified digital wellness educator. And for over a decade, she has trained communities, organizations, schools, and families on safer tech use. Dawn, I love that you serve as the co-chair of Online Harms Prevention Group with FairPlay, a global work group of child online safety practitioners, as well as survivor parents who have lost their kids to online harms. I know you’ve been involved with legislation that’s been signed into law at the White House, and you’ve been present at some of the trial against Meta and Google. And I think for so many of our listeners who are wrestling with like, yeah, how do we navigate this world we live in where it doesn’t feel possible to be without technology, but we also know it’s shaping us, it’s shaping our kids, it’s shaping our communities in ways that don’t always feel good, honoring, or healthy. So welcome and thank you. And I will be taking copious notes today for my own personal life, as well as hoping this is beneficial to everyone.

Dawn: Thank you, Rachael.

Dan: Dawn, again, you are an amazing human being and what you have chosen as part of your calling and engagement just feels like the point of the spear. Truly, you are a digital warrior, but in that there are costs and demands. Today on the walk that Becky and I took, she didn’t know about this particular podcast. And she started talking about, a couple decades ago, a moment in which she was entering into a sphere where there was a person basically taking tickets who didn’t look up at her, literally took the ticket, but kept focused on the phone. And she was saying, it was so disturbing that it still resonates for her, the absence of a face. So as we’re talking, at one point I’m like, I’ve never heard that story. I mean, what was the … We talked a bit and then I said, “Why’s that story coming up now?”

Dawn: Right.

Dan: And she looked at me and she said, “I feel like I’m losing your eyes.” I’m like, “This morning you mean? Or like the last week?” And she was like, “I don’t know. Since your surgery, it feels like more and more. When you’re particularly tired, you no longer have the same gaze.” I’d love for you to respond to that, Dawn.

Dawn: Yes. Well, eye contact reduction is actually connected to screen time use. And over time, society has reduced our eye contact by 30%. I know the statistic’s higher now. That was the last time I looked since smartphones were introduced. And so we even know that even with our pets, engaging with our pets, our other humans, just that eye contact, how important that is for attunement, for connection, and it is being lost. So Becky was spot on with that moment. Wow. What an important thing to say to your partner. In some of our trainings, we talk about how we have the permission to ask our loved ones to set the phones down when we have an important thing to say. There’s lots of times we’re connecting over funny videos or pictures we took at an event. We like to do a slideshow with my family after we get back from a vacation. We’ll screen share on the TV and show each other, kind of have that time with each other. But being able to ask your partners, being able to ask your important in those important moments of connection, can you put your phone down for a minute? I want to talk with you. And being able to make that eye contact and pass the empathy actually reduces our loneliness. So it’s an important aspect of connection and community. I love that.

Dan: I know there’s no way to talk about a singular cause, but as we look at what we know to be a much more cruelly polarized, hate-filled, judgment-based, other focused, contempt toward different people in different groups, when we lack the capacity truly to look in one another’s eyes, when we don’t have face-to-face communion, it’s, as you have put it so well, it will create not only division, but even more absorption in the material that provides us with this dopamine rush, as you said, Rachael. We do know without question that people are looking at their phones somewhere up to over a hundred times a day, and that each particular look at every time your phone dings and you look at it, you are getting a dopamine rush. Again, maybe not so close to the word rush, but it may not be noticeable, but you are in an arousal process. So I’m just curious, as we begin this conversation with you, how are you helping people address the issue of addiction, the loss of face, the loss of relationship, and yet there are companies and there are individuals who are collectively making massive amounts of money by this addictive process. So we’re up against systems and particular powers, I would even go closer to the word principalities that are working to keep us focused away from the face and onto the screen.

Dawn: That’s exactly right. And I think originally, Johan Hari, I heard it from Brené Brown, quoted that the opposite of addiction is connection. And we just got back from the social media trials where the verdict was that these companies, the design, business design was to addict minors, was to have addictive practices, which we know, but to be able to see the internal documents from Meta, from YouTube and Google, Snapchat and TikTok ended up settling because my opinion is they didn’t want to have to be proven that they are very, very, very addictive. But these are all platforms we use. They’re platforms we interface with, many of us interface with a lot. And so to be able to understand that that connection is the antithesis of the addiction is so important for us to have that in front of us and to remember that these are tools and to remember to practice healthy habits that we do talk about, talk about in trained schools and communities and families on healthy and safer habits when it comes to engaging with our technology. And Dan, it’s interesting that you started with that story about eye contact because the origin story of Talk More Tech Less and how I got started was working with junior high and high school students. My husband’s a mentor for boys, getting them outdoors, hunting, fishing, hiking, all of that. And we started to see over the years as smartphones became more and more prevalent in teenagers’ lives, we started to see less eye contact, actual signs of withdrawal with the students when they were at summer camps. And so that was where we got started. And some of them said we’re on our phones late at night and we built this detox box that we put our phones in that they put phones in. We still have it today where you can use it in your home, having a home for your phone because another of the latest statistics that we know is that our phones are nearby us 22 hours a day. There’s 24 hours a day in the day and they’re nearby us. So having a home for your phone, having a place to set it when you’re engaging with others, when you’re having mealtimes, when you’re for students and children, we talk about charging your phone at night, having it in that box or having a place where it’s not another part of us. It’s not an extension of our body parts at the end of our hand or in our pocket or in our purse nearby us. So that’s an important step. But I do trainings in schools, I do trainings in communities, speaking. And then what has really evolved more recently is the advocacy that I’ve been a part of with survivor parents that have encountered and doing online harm prevention work. So that’s been kind of the evolution of Talk More Tech Less over the years.

Rachael: I’m listening to you. So many stories are coming to mind in my own life, in the life of my kids. And I feel like this is a place I actually feel a lot of powerlessness and hopelessness. And I’m sure I’m not the only parent that feels that. I feel that, here’s an example. I got off Instagram, I got off social media for Lent because I felt like I was, especially in our current culture of just a lot of violence and chaos and despair really of just a lot of our systems feeling close to collapse and just the polarization and just looking back on the past, I would say even five years and how the landscape of social media has shifted and how you’re kind of like meant to… it went from like, here’s this sunset I saw to like, here’s my advocacy in these stories, in these little blips. And so I got off and ultimately I did find I was on my phone so much less. And a big reason why I did it is because my three and a half year old was saying too often, “Mom, put your phone down, mom, put your phone down.” And I knew I was reaching for it like almost an anxiety like, if I don’t know what’s going on twenty four seven, I’m going to miss something and I can’t keep us safe. But I also knew there was like some very, felt like addictive, like almost like some part of me is missing and I need to be attached to it. So I did find that I was on my phone so much less until I started like all of a sudden now I’m just playing all the New York Times games. I wasn’t doing them at all and now I’m like, oh, but these are good for my brain and I need to do these daily, keep my brain smart. So I just am aware. And then I will just share this. We just got back from a spring break trip and we took all the teens fishing and I want to be really honoring to them because they did an amazing job, but watching them negotiate something as meditative and patient and watchful and present as fishing with their phones and their pockets was like, it could have been like a sitcom because it was like they were missing, the bobbers were going under because they’re like looking at their phone and then they’re getting frustrated because they’re so dedicated. They spent hours out there wanting to catch a fish, but watching them in that almost subconscious way negotiate, how do I be in this moment and be aware of the world around me when there’s such a pull? So those were just some of the stories that came to mind. And those aren’t even … I also hold stories of walking with families who have like had kids get exploited online or face bullying. So I guess part of me is like, what do you say to the parents who are coming to you saying, “I feel my own powerlessness about this thing and I absolutely feel the powerlessness that my kids know how to navigate their phones and this tech world better than I do. And so all the parental parameters we’ve put up, they almost in my body feel like they’re meaningless because there’s ways they get around this that I don’t even know. So that feeling of like, how do I keep my kids safe? So I love your idea and I’ve heard it before of like a home for the phone where it’s like they go, you’re not on it late at night staying up till one in the morning brain rotting. But yeah, I’m sure you encounter this sense of powerlessness and despair a lot.

Dawn: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

Rachael: So where do we start? Where do we start when it just feels like this is so overwhelming? 

Dawn: Right. Well, the first thing I always say is you’re not alone. We’re all dealing with it collectively. I’m a mom of three teenage boys right now. My youngest just turned 13, so I moved out of the baby stage and then my oldest, my middle is 17 and my oldest is 19. So he’s about to be 20 and moving on into his own things and making his own decisions. But knowing the science of how all of this works and the business design and then also practicing it in my home, it was pretty unnerving because I want to not fight my hypervigilance and set up good boundaries, but also my kids know all the stories. We talk about all the things, especially my teenage boys, because they are the ages of being targeted for sextortion. It’s age 14 through 17, it’s actually lower, 12 through 17 now. And so being able to have those open conversations, delaying social media for sure until mid-high school, if possible, some choose later. I do recommend high school because then you can walk through some of those later years, junior and senior year with some of the things they may encounter. But props to the ones that don’t want it. There’s a lot of high schoolers that don’t want it, college kids that are not engaging in social media, they’re just choosing not to. You didn’t see that 10 years ago, everybody was on it. So there are these movements and really our trainings are for the no-tech family all the way up to the high-tech family and somewhere in between with low-tech families. We engage with it, but we definitely delay until later, no phones in the bedrooms or places with closed doors like bathrooms, that way that they’re not exposed to the entire world and the isolation and privacy of their home. So there’s some of these points that you can help support families, but they’re not alone in that feeling. That’s why we have the social media trial. That’s why the four areas that we really target are education, because I do believe education is prevention, being able to say the things, being able to open their awareness and be that safe place for connection, and then legislation, litigation, and collective action, having those communities come around and say this. Parents are saying this isn’t okay. We’re not able to keep up with the screen time settings. We’re not able to keep up with how quickly this is advancing. And so having those collective voices and collective action is important. And Jonathan Haidt has been a big part of that with The Anxious Generation and being able to have parents not feel so alone, not feel gaslit by the industry that this is all on them and this is all their fault. We want to squelch that parent blame and that parent shame because it is a societal shift that has happened. It is an industry issue. So we are responsible for some things, no doubt. Setting up boundaries, setting up filters and monitors in our home, delaying phones and social media, those are choices we can make, but it doesn’t mean our kids aren’t going to be exposed to it. It doesn’t mean our grandkids and their friends aren’t going to be having these conversations, even if they don’t have access to a phone. So it is a society issue and it does take all of us coming together with that collective action.

Dan: Well, and the sense of rage that I’ve encountered with my grandsons, 17, 15. Easter, when they came in for a whole family celebration, I said to both of them, “Hand me your phones.” And they are what I would call respectful, but notice how I said that, respectful of their grandfather. They know their grandfather’s a little odd. So there’s a playfulness and at times it can be a little uncomfortable for the parents to see grandson and grandfather interact. But when I asked for the phones, it was like disrespectful, adamant like, “No.” And I’m like, “Well, you’re coming into my home, you’re coming into my domain, you’re covering into my … ” And I said the phrase, “My sovereign realm, and you’re going to give me your phones or you’re not coming in. ” And both of them had the look like, “Fine, I’ll stay in the car.” And now the parents, my daughter who at one level deeply appreciates that I’m going to take the phones away, also doesn’t want to create calamitous interaction. So as you’re helping parents, grandparents engage this, there really is rage. There really is a sense not just of, “Oh, come on, let me keep my phone.” It’s more like, you are asking me to give up my drugs. And I cannot make it without at least having in my pocket the presence of the opiates I need. So when we really talk about this as an addictive process, I have feared that many people hear this as metaphor, and maybe there is a metaphorical element, but I think we are talking significant potential conflict the moment we begin to alter the structure of how we engage the phone, let alone media.

Dawn: Right. And isn’t there so much grief on your end, Dan, attached to that? I mean, just that it’s heartbreaking to have that moment where it almost brings up rage in me to hear that because in your defense, as a grandparent, you want to be able to engage and connect and attune and have those moments with them where you’re passing empathy between each other and that’s just been stolen. It’s been robbed for our young kids and there’s a lot of grief attached to that. And then I also think that we can also feel empowered knowing that this isn’t about me, this isn’t about my relationship with my kid in that moment. This is about the design. This is about the brain hacking that is happening with my grandkid. And I can have a little bit of detachment from that in that moment and say, what can we do here? What kind of methods can we put into place? One of the first times we actually had that interaction, I had that interaction was my mom at a holiday event had a big basket. This was before we ever made the detox box. And she had us all during dinner, she asked everybody to put it in a basket and everybody put their phones up and we all had this interaction that was early 2000s. We weren’t even to the place where we were now, but to have a kid give up their phone, give up what they’re attached to, that is going to cause that aggression to shoot in gaming. We see it a lot, that aggression and rage when they have to turn off in the middle of around before their friends are attached to it, they’re not going to win that round. They’re very angry about it. And a lot of the parents I work with that have had some of the extreme situations happen have had those moments of rage with their kids too. So I think it’s hard to see that, but it’s also important for us to understand what’s happening in their minds and think creatively about how we can engage them better. I actually do an example in my elementary training where I have … Well, we have just kind of this engagement with the students and they’ll come up and one of them will pretend to be the grandparent and one of them, it pretends to be their … And they’re all their age, so it’s funny for them. Molly is Tristan’s grandma today. So let’s watch this interaction. And we do just ethical, just kind of etiquette stuff with them, phone etiquette, your grandmother, this is her favorite grandmother. She loves being at her grandmother’s house. Do you think grandmother felt cared about? Do you think grandmother knew that she was excited to see her? Well, we just have these moments of letting them see how empathy is passed, how that connection is made. And it really stems from, we want to engage this place of… we don’t want to leave that moment feeling more lonely because we are the most lonely society and these kids that are growing up right now, it’s going to increase. And so for us to counter that with real connection and real engagement is important for them to understand those skills.

Dan: I love that. I love that. Again, the bottom line is somehow offering Trinitarian relational connection as the basis of not just disruption of an addiction in this case, technology, but even more so the creation of the connection of empathy as the basis is such a rich, rich premise to begin with.

Rachael: Well, I’m just making lots of connections too, even just in my own parenting with my stepsons of where I’m interpreting their avoidance or their certain attitudes or things as something that there might be space for more curiosity around what’s happening in their brain and body when they’re asked to put their phone down or they’re asked to make eye contact or they’re asked where they’re not able to communicate in real time things they might actually be feeling and then it gets interpreted as like, you don’t want to be around us or you’re not happy or just different things. But I did wonder if we could go back to, you used the word sexploitation and I know what that is and I’ve talked with my kids about that, but I don’t actually know how well known that term is and what is happening and what, especially for boys, what’s at risk. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit more around like, what is that? Why would the ages 12 to 17 be targeted? And because like what I’ve said to my kids is if anyone ever threatens you in this way or you get caught up in something where you thought you were talking to another kid and you share things or do things and that’s being held against you, you can always talk to us. Also, don’t do that, but like, here’s what it is, here’s how they target, here’s what’s happening. But I’m wondering if you could share a bit more about that process and what people could just be mindful of.

Dawn: Yes, absolutely. And Rachael, you’re right when you said you can… I hope you don’t do this, but you can always come to me if this happens. That’s enormous for that connection and being that safe place for them. There is a parent in our group that said to me, “Dawn, if you can tell every parent that the most important thing their kids need to know is that no matter what, they won’t be in trouble if they tell you what is happening in their lives. That’s all I wish that he would’ve done is been able to come to me.” Unfortunately, religious communities, religious boys are more of a target because we know the reality around shame and sexuality and sexual abuse. And so teenagers, sextortion is extortion using sexual images, videos, and they, a lot of times on the criminal side, they will pose on social media as a young lady and start to form an attachment with how grooming works with the young boys and they’ll ask for, they’ll send an image, “I sent you an image, now send me one.” It’s not really them, it’s someone pretending to be that young lady. And the moment they send an image or video, the sex tortioness will turn on them and start to extort them for other images, more money. They’ll target them and say, if you don’t send me this money in this amount of time and they’re just bombing their phone with constant threats and messages. I’m going to send this to everyone in your youth group. I know your youth pastor’s name. I know your mom’s contacts. I’m going to send these images out. And you can imagine a kid in a youth group that has already grown up with the context of purity, culture, or shame around that topic, the fact that they would never want that, your darkest moment exploited out there, put on your social media page. And unfortunately, some of them have been driven to take their own lives. And what’s even more harming is that there are training videos on how to sextort kids that are circulating on the websites are not being required to be taken down. So more people are getting trained on how to make money off kids by extorting them. And so the awareness to get that out is so important for families to understand. One, this happens. Teenage boys see a pretty girl, they might want to send them a picture, let them know they can come to you, let them know they can talk to you about it and think back about when you were that age and what temptation was in front of you? Well, it wasn’t exploited in front of the whole wide world. That dark moment, that vulnerable moment you had wasn’t exploited in front of the whole world. So you put yourself in that place. And the National Center on Missing and Exploited Children has put a video out that is a really intense six moments of what it would feel like to be sextorted. And it gives parents, it gives advocates kind of that awareness, just the general public, that awareness of what those intense feelings of harm would feel like and what they would cause. And so that’s essentially, there’s all different forms. Now with AI, they don’t even have to send a picture. They can use their face and generate an image and extort them that way. So for them to know, I can come, I can say this, I can report it on the platform, I can report it to law enforcement, they can track down who this is, And I can be supported and not alone. Some of the kids will give up their phone happily once they realize someone’s going to help me in this because they felt so alone in it. So taking away that isolation and that shame and letting the light shine into that moment is the most powerful thing we can do against this, evil.

Dan: Yeah, it’s deeply in one sense. I’m so grateful that you’ve named it as a form of sexual abuse. It really is a brilliant form of grooming and to do so without actually having to be physically present and in a way at which our laws are not catching up to being able to address this in the same language as sexual abuse. It’s again, where we come back to say, I’m so grateful for you. You are in the middle of a raging storm and the fires are literally all around you. But in that, you are bringing the goodness of God into the land of living to be able to bring these conversations. How do you keep your heart hopeful?

Dawn: Thank you, Dan, for asking that because you know when you’re close to the suffering that it’s interesting to see what advocacy and suffering intersecting looks like. Having that trauma-informed training is so helpful, has taught me to learn to care for myself. I do work alongside Lovely Village, which is a community for survivors of sexual trauma. And we have a support group every week that has tended to my heart. My story intersects with this, and I’ve done story work through SODA and other groups that have been such a part of the Allender Center. I’m so thankful for that because we know … I actually wrote down a quote that you said before, Dan, and it was, you might not remember that you said this, but you said it on one of your podcasts, Healing to Leave. Healing doesn’t just end with you. When you start to get healing, you actually disrupt the unwell systems, and healing and training are bound together. And the only reason that I can stay in this work why I care so deeply about it is because I have encountered what that looks like for myself. I knew those early signs of grooming, those early signs of attachment that I needed and that I could see because of that intersect. And so being able to participate with the incredible groups that I’m a part of and see that other people are doing this important work as well has been really helped me care for myself and others in this.

Dan: Well, and you have named, because you know it only too well, that you live in the middle of trauma. And the idea that you have been face-to-face, heart to heart with parents who have lost a child to suicide, largely due to the manipulative cruelty of grooming and setting that child up for a violence that they have felt that there are no doorways to be able to return from. I think in that sense of not merely being the courtroom, which gosh, we admire you for, but as well, being face-to-face with people who have more than the struggle of adolescent boys who don’t want to give their phones up, but literally who have lost the souls and the bodies of their children. And I think that is where I think a lot of parents are going to hear this and go, well, yeah, I’m concerned with my kids, but I’m not that concerned in terms of that they’ll get out of this. Yet the research with regard to folks who are in their 30s and 40s who have grown up with regard to this technology, we’re not seeing a significant shift of being able to kind of move away. Would that be true?

Dawn: Absolutely. Right. And when the internet started, it was the information age, right? We could Google, we could find out information. It was monetized and shifted and transitioned into the attention economy and social media really hacked our attention through all of that and the negative bias algorithms and everything that pulls us in and actually divides us. Recently, Tristan Harris from the Center for Humane Technology said that social media hacked our attention and AI is hacking our attachment, and that is really where we’re headed. So it’s so true. And we see it through the chatbots. One of our survivor parents lost her child to being so attached to a chatbot that eventually called it home, called him home to her, said, “Come be with me. ” Showed him how to end his life, and he was having that very powerfully built algorithm attached to him and say all the things he needed to hear. And so I was really, really honored to be at the White House last year to see the Take It Down Act pass, which was the first federal legislation of its kind because it requires the platforms to take down AI generated content that is deep fakes, non-consensual sexual images, but even the AI generated ones, they have to take it down within 48 hours. And so that’s the first legislation of its kind that puts the burden where the burden should be, which is on the design of the platform. It’s on the platforms. And so I think that being able, a lot of people were talking about the Grok undressing women and children, and this was after the Take It Down Act. And we said, well, we could foresee where this was happening, where this was heading. And so to intersect, to be able to preemptively say, this is what we need right now to support families. This is what we need because you’re right, Dan, it’s not slowing down. It’s not going anywhere. It’s escalating. And so we need to have that perspective of how do we still innovate? How do we use these as tools, but we do it in a way that’s going to protect the minors that are on the products that are being designed and targeted. And so that’s why I say it’s collective action, it’s legislation, it’s education, it’s litigation, it’s taking all of those incredible, thoughtful organizations and people that are working together to support all of us, you, your grandkids, and I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for them.

Dan: Racheal, I have a direction, but I don’t want to precede you.

Rachael: I’m actually feeling like, all right, we’ve got some work to do in our home to get to a place that feels like we’re detoxing and we’re educating. And so I’m like, All right, Dawn, I’m going to reach out to you. Do you do personal consulting? Where can we sign up for classes? So I’m actually feeling the, I wasn’t even thinking about AI. So bringing that into the conversation, obviously I’m aware of AI and I think about it a lot, but it’s like in my head, it’s almost like, oh yeah, that’s tech. That’s actually tech. And I do know several people who use AI as a therapist and I’m like, you do know it’s just reiterating back to you.

Dan: What you want to hear.

Rachael: Anyhow. So Dan, go your direction.

Dan: In Genesis three, toward the end, God speaking to God says, essentially we need to have these Adam and Eve depart because if they eat of the fruit of the tree, they will become like us and the images, they will become eternal. And that’s for some people viewed as like God’s afraid of losing his power, but it’s mercy. These people are now internally dead and if their bodies last forever, they’re literally going to become something comparable to zombies. So the reality of we all at some level want to have the power of God. So what I have viewed technology to be is in so many ways, it’s omniscience, it’s omnipresence, it’s omnipotence. It provides you with, I can find out in a second or two, like when I did my doctorate, I would go into a room that was huge, that had a computer that you had to sign up for at my level at about two in the morning. My phone has more power than that computer at Michigan State in 1982. So omniscience, I can find out almost anything omnipotence, I can control my world in certain ways, omnipresence, I can be almost anywhere in the world in a clique. So when you’re engaging these realities, I just actually just want you to respond to what technology is providing us is the fantasy that we are like God.

Dawn: And the reminder to stay human is our place. And it is true. It’s the only way that we can hold on to what we… We weren’t created to be God. We were created to be human and to be connected to each other. And all of those things that are deeply rich, I’m just going back to that moment with your grandkids, Dan. Those moments that were created to be deeply rich will neurologically sink into their minds deeper than any amazing reel they’re going to scroll by. They don’t know it cognitively, but their bodies know it. Their bodies will remember that. And so being able to exchange that phone for what are you going to exchange it when you take it from them? Just get curious about that. What are these moments? Maybe it’s going to be a moment on the fishing, on the boat, fishing, all of those. And that’s really what started this again. I said, my husband, he’s a fly fisherman, so he was excited about me being on this Dan. And John Eldridge, who’s been such an important part of his work too, but just being able to offer that with those kids the week they went to camp with him, we used to put the phones up and it was so easy back in the day when we started. He started 17 years ago, his mentorship organization. And over the years it got harder and harder, but three days in, the kids were locked in and creating lifelong fishermen and lifelong connections. He’s marrying them. They’re having kids and families and marrying others. And being able to see those human moments that we have to be able to hold onto is, it’s important. And how do we continue to do that? But also we know AI’s not going anywhere. We just got done watching the AI doc at South by Southwest and they have the promise and the peril of AI. They create these images of both of those moments. And what can we do to hold onto the promise using it for medical innovation, the things that we need it for, don’t need it, but the things that we could use it for to support us, to support our humanity, and then holding on to our connections and our relationships.

Dan: Well, as we end, let’s just underscore. This is not going away and it will become, it’s already in some sense a plague and the plague is going to have, in some bizarre sense, advantages. So it will have a cultural, familial, individual benefit, but if we are not addressing the complications of the loss of the face, the loss of the eyes, the loss of empathy, and the dark movement to it gives me, in some sense, the illusion and fantasy that I am like God. So we cannot commend any person or organization more than yours. So we really hope that people will check in and begin to look at that simple phrase, Talk More Tech Less, but they’re going to need help. And we have seen already through your life and labor, this is really a gift you’re giving to anyone listening to this podcast. So we say again and again, thank you.

Dawn: Thank you so much, Dan. And I will send you the resources that we have. And I talked with Rachel some about that. We have a 30-day detox program guide. We have Online Harms one-pagers that talk about sextortion, talk about these dangerous algorithms just to support families and really help you navigate it well.