Parenting in a Tech World

If you've ever felt like you need permission to take away your child's iPad or delete Snapchat from your 12-year-old's phone, you're not alone, and that hesitation is one of the biggest reasons screen time limits fall apart at home. The good news: you have far more power here than you think.

Katherine Martinko, author of Childhood Unplugged and the upcoming Hold the Phone, spent over a decade as a digital media editor and has delivered more than 70 keynotes and workshops on kids and screens across North America.

She and Titania Jordan, Bark's Chief Parent Officer and bestselling author of two books on digital parenting, break down how to hold a limit in the middle of a meltdown, why you need to "fill the void" before you take devices away, and why she recommends waiting until 16 for a smartphone. You'll also hear the parent habit that quietly makes screen conflict worse, plus a realistic first step you can take this week, even if you feel like you've already lost control.

Key insight: If you change only one thing, keep phones out of your teen's bedroom. Even kids with excellent self-control can't resist a device beside the bed, and the lost sleep shows up in their focus at school.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Preorder Hold the Phone: How Parents Can Rescue Their Kids From Too Much Screen Time (out Nov. 24, 2026): https://info.bark.us/hold-the-phone
• Get Childhood Unplugged: Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance: https://info.bark.us/childhood-unplugged
• Subscribe to Katherine's Substack, The Analog Family: https://info.bark.us/km-substack
• Book Katherine to speak at your school or event: https://info.bark.us/katherine-martinko

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you're watching or listening. It only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Ready to set screen time limits that actually stick? Bark is an AI-powered online safety platform that monitors kids' devices and alerts parents to real threats, including cyberbullying, predators, self-harm, and sextortion, without reading every message. Learn more: https://www.bark.us/

Kids in foster care are among the most targeted groups for online predators and grooming, and taking their phones away often makes them less safe, not more. Adam Rodakowski is the Director of Foster Care at Greater Oregon Behavioral Health, where he leads a treatment foster care program serving 40 to 50 youth after nearly a decade in Oregon's child welfare system.

He shares the two warning signs that forced his team to act. One was a teen who kept showing up with brand-new phones within days of losing one. The other was a known adult trying to groom a young person with a history of being trafficked. You'll hear why restricting devices led to runaways and broken trust, how his program rolled out Bark Phones and smartwatches to every youth after checking with the Oregon Department of Justice, and how early alerts about bullying turned potential crises into calm conversations. You'll also walk away knowing how to scaffold your own child's tech access by rolling privileges up and down instead of confiscating devices.

Key insight: When a child keeps getting new phones and no one knows where they're coming from, someone is spending real money to reach that child without the guardian knowing, and that is a red flag no family should ignore.

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamrodakowski/

Learn more about our Bark Community Partners program: https://www.bark.us/learn/solutions/

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you watch or listen. It only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Learn more about the Bark Phone, built with safety monitoring and parental controls from the ground up: https://www.bark.us/bark-phone

Sleepover safety today means more than sleeping bags and flashlights. It means knowing what happens to unsupervised phones, cameras, and internet access once the lights go out at someone else's house.

Titania Jordan, Bark's Chief Parent Officer and bestselling author of two books on digital parenting, breaks down the framework she calls the “sleep under.”

You'll learn how to protect your home Wi-Fi with tools like the Bark Home, why a device basket at the door removes temptation instead of relying on willpower, and how features like the Bark Phone's camera lock and contact approval close off common risks at sleepovers. Titania also shares the family code word trick that lets any kid quietly ask to be picked up without embarrassment, and why calling it a night by 11pm might be the simplest safety upgrade of all.

Key insight: Disabling a Bark Phone's camera also blocks screenshots and screen recording, and it stops camera-dependent apps like Snapchat from working at all, turning a photo or video risk into a full stop instead of a partial fix.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you're watching or listening. It only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Learn more about the Bark Phone, built with parental controls like camera lock and contact approval, at https://www.bark.us/bark-phone

Discord is rated 17+ in the App Store, but kids can sign up at 13, a gap that leaves most parents feeling a step behind the moment their kid asks to join. This year Discord rolled out teen-by-default settings, a new age verification system, and a parental controls tool called Family Center, and today we break down what actually changed, what didn't, and the one gap no setting can fix.

You'll learn what "teen by default" actually restricts day to day, how Discord's age verification works (and why the global rollout was delayed), and exactly what Family Center shows a parent and what it deliberately doesn't. You'll also hear the honest recommendation on minimum age for a kid to be on Discord, and the specific setup every teen should have before they're allowed on it.

Key insight: Voice channels on Discord aren't recorded and leave no log, so no parental control tool, including Bark, can see what's said there. Experts describe a common pattern: a friendship starts in a game like Roblox or Fortnite, moves to Discord, escalates through DMs, then continues in voice calls, often paired with isolation language like "keep this between us."

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you’re watching or listening, it only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

See how Bark monitors platforms like Discord for red flags in text and shared content: https://www.bark.us

Standardized test scores among American kids have been dropping for years, and one neuroscientist says classroom technology is a direct cause, not a coincidence. Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath is a neuroscientist and educator who has studied learning at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Melbourne, and his latest book, "The Digital Delusion," has led him to testify before the U.S. Senate.

In this conversation, Jared breaks down what happens in a child's brain when they learn from a screen versus paper or discussion, and why he believes EdTech is fundamentally mismatched with how kids actually learn. You'll hear his response to critics who call the screens-to-scores link "just correlation," what he says is really driving the spike in classroom ADHD-like behavior, and the one move that actually gets a school board to listen. He also shares where technology does have a legitimate place in education, so this isn't a call to ban devices altogether.

Key insight: when kids are given free rein on YouTube, only 3% of their time goes to educational content. The other 97% is influencers, gaming videos, and content with zero learning value.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Buy The Digital Delusion: https://info.bark.us/digital-delusion
• Connect with Jared on LinkedIn: https://info.bark.us/jared-horvath-li
• Follow Jared on Instagram: https://info.bark.us/jared-horvath-ig
• Subscribe to Jared's Substack: https://info.bark.us/jared-horvath-substack
• The Learning Blueprint: https://info.bark.us/jared-horvath-blueprint

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you're watching or listening; it only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Curious what your kid is actually doing on their school-issued device? Bark can help you see the full picture: https://www.bark.us

Every month, 430 students at one Texas high school watched two of their own classmates lead an assembly on cyberbullying, online predators, and the gap between who teens are online and who they really are.

McKenzey Roach and Malayna Mitchell are graduating seniors who built and ran their school's monthly digital citizenship program, called CHAT, reaching every student at Lubbock-Cooper High School as part of a DECA project.

In this conversation, they walk through how a mandatory video segment nobody wanted to watch became something students actually engaged with, why they sent an anonymous survey to the entire school before choosing a single topic, and what it felt like to have their opinions on cyberbullying and online safety broadcast to freshmen and seniors alike. You'll hear their honest take on why the same post feels safe on Instagram but terrifying to say out loud, and what they'd tell an incoming freshman about building a social media presence without losing themselves in it.

Key insight: McKenzey and Malayna say the friendships that lasted through high school were the ones built face-to-face, not through a Snapchat quick add. Reach online and real connection, they agree, are not the same thing.



If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you’re watching or listening. It only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Learn how Bark helps families navigate cyberbullying, screen habits, and online safety conversations at home: https://www.bark.us

Cyberbullying, drug conversations, sextortion risk, and violent threats aren't just happening on your kid's phone, they're showing up on school-issued laptops too. New Bark for Schools data breaks down exactly how often, by category and by state.

Titania Jordan, Chief Parent Officer at Bark Technologies, shares data from Bark's work protecting students across more than 3,700 school districts nationwide since the program launched free in response to the Parkland shooting.

In this episode, you'll hear the real alert breakdown from school-issued devices: violence-related content topped the list at almost 40%, with drug-related conversations close behind at nearly 23% and medically concerning content at almost 12%. Titania also shares a state-specific finding from Georgia, where over half of all alerts were tied to a child being contacted by a predator.

You'll also learn about Bark's free Connected Communities program, which brings hands-on digital safety education directly to fourth and fifth graders, and TechSafeLearning.org, a resource founded in memory of Nate Bronstein that gives parents templates and guidance for opting their kids out of unsafe school tech.

Key insight: In Georgia, more than half of all school-device safety alerts Bark sent were for a child being contacted by a predator.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you’re watching or listening, it only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Learn more about how Bark protects kids on school-issued devices: https://www.bark.us/schools

Additional resources mentioned in this episode:

• https://info.bark.us/tech-safe-learning
• https://info.bark.us/cc

The teachers walking into classrooms right now grew up glued to screens too, and that's reshaping how teacher prep programs handle screen addiction, shortened attention spans, and phone distraction in the classroom.



Melanie Lay and Amy Hickman train future educators at Texas Tech University, and both also evaluate teacher preparation programs nationwide, Melanie through US PREP and Amy as a TPI-US inspector.

In this conversation, they break down what's actually being taught to future teachers about managing devices, social media, and mental health in the classroom, and what's still a gap. You'll hear why even 20-something teacher candidates get pulled off task by smartwatch notifications, why Texas now requires phones to stay in lockers during the school day, and what happens when a one-to-one device rollout has unintended consequences for kids' attention and eyesight.

Key insight: after a decade collecting data from 7.5 million families, Bark says pediatricians are now reaching out directly for guidance on what to tell parents about kids' screen time.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or leave a review wherever you're listening; it only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us easier.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Learn more about how Bark helps families navigate screen time and online safety: https://www.bark.us

Behind every Bark Phone, Watch, Home, or Sync that arrives on your doorstep, there's a team of real people, not robots, who packed it by hand. In this episode, you'll meet the humans responsible for making sure your child's safety device gets to your family the right way.

Shari manages Bark's distribution center in Utah, and Crystal is the operations support specialist who keeps daily operations running.

You'll hear what it was like to build the distribution center from an empty warehouse into a fully operational hub, including the mistakes, the surprises, and the moments that made the scale of the work suddenly feel real. Shari and Crystal share what they look for in the people who touch a Bark product before it reaches a family, and walk through what actually happens between the moment you place an order and the moment it lands on your porch.

Key insight: Every Bark product that ships to a family passes through the hands of real people who care about the mission, not an automated assembly line.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It only takes 30 seconds and helps other parents find us.

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Curious what's actually behind your child's safety setup? Learn more about Bark's family of products at https://www.bark.us.

Online predators are actively targeting your kids right now, and two Michigan men decided they couldn't wait for the system to act. Jake Hockey and C.J. of Pred Task Force built a team that runs undercover stings, with decoys posing as minors on dating apps, confronting suspects on camera, and calling law enforcement when the time is right.

Jake and C.J. are citizen investigators who have grown Pred Task Force from a local Michigan operation into a nationwide mission, with hundreds of thousands of followers watching their work unfold in real time. In four months of operation they caught dozens of offenders, and survived a loaded gun pulled on them during a confrontation.

They walk you through exactly how a sting works from setup to confrontation to law enforcement handoff. They also get honest about the dangers they face, the legal criticism their work has drawn from local prosecutors, and how they define their role when the system feels too slow. You'll hear what they've learned about how predators operate online and what parents consistently get wrong about where these conversations start.

Key insight: Predators aren't lurking on the dark web. They're finding kids on the same apps your teen uses every day, and early detection is the intervention that most victims never got.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review wherever you listen — and if you haven't subscribed yet, now is a great time. It helps other parents find us.

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

• Follow Pred Task Force on Instagram: https://info.bark.us/predtaskforce-ig
• Follow Pred Task Force on Facebook: https://info.bark.us/predtaskforce-fb
• Subscribe to the Pred Task Force YouTube channel: https://info.bark.us/predtaskforce-yt
• Support Jake and CJ by purchasing PTF merch: https://info.bark.us/predtaskforce-merch

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Bark monitors your child's devices and alerts you to contact with potential predators before a conversation escalates: https://www.bark.us