Lita Schmitt is a retired corporate intranet, training, and documentation professional, getting her start when PCs replaced terminals at work and hard drives were optional. In this episode we interview Lita and her daughter Katie about how they learned about technology in their home.

• What tech was like when Lita started teaching it to her kids.
• Babysitting devices & gaming systems.
• How Lita introduced tech to her kids.
• Katie got her first laptop at 3. Used it for Freddie Fish, PuttPutt Saves the Zoo. Disk install. Stand-alone use – no connectivity.
• Katie’s friends’ thoughts on her not having a phone: Are your parents strict? Mom is a prude. (Mom always said to blame her.) Not “cool” kid. Lots of shit for not having it.
• How KATIE viewed the Internet: A blank space. Ask a question and answers come back. You had a purpose. A homework assignment to get info or music. No awareness of Search History, and later what the “cloud” was and what would be stored there.
• When friends started having home systems crash with viruses from their kids using their systems. Internet was disabled on the kids’ systems.
• What was happening in friends’ homes?
• How to help when kids cross the line
• What they would do differently.

Thanks to our mission partner:

Buoyancy Digital is proud to be the inaugural Mission Partner for the Cybertraps Podcast series. A digital advertising consultancy with an ethos, Buoyancy was founded by Scott Rabinowitz, who has been in digital media since 1997 and has overseen $300 million in youth safety compliant ad buys across all digital platforms. For IAB, Google and Bing accredited brand and audience safe advertising sales solutions, media buying and organizational training for media publishers, let’s chat.