Communal Practices for a better relationship with your phone

We challenge the default tech story families inherit and ask what it would look like to actually lead the next generation’s relationship with phones. We introduce the Hang 10 Movement and lay out four community practices that help churches, schools, and homes work together with courage and clarity. 
• why technology becomes a pressure to conform and how Romans 12 reframes the fight 
• the “wave and rip current” problem and why parents and churches were not ready 
• the Hang 10 Movement and Justin Early’s vision of practices not rules 
• the three rings model of community, household, and personal habits 
• waiting until 10th grade for smartphones and social media plus safer alternatives 
• no phones in schools, Sunday school, and youth group due to attention and learning costs 
• handling important conversations face-to-face to reduce conflict and confusion 
• adopting shared community norms so families are not left guessing 
shoot us an email, podcast at WayneChristian.org. 
Share this podcast with another parent who needs to hear it because that will help get that started in your community of really setting these communal practices. 
And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss part two as we run through these practices on technology together!

Check out hangtenmovement.com

Send any questions you want answered to podcast@waynechristian.org

This podcast is presented by Wayne Christian School- A Christ-centered community school whose mission is to assist parents and churches in the education of their children from a biblical worldview to impact their world for Christ. You can learn more at waynechristian.org 

Transcript

Welcome And A Quick Tangent

Nate 0:07

Welcome to Equipped for Impact, the podcast designed to assist Christian parents, leaders, and educators to raise up the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ. We're your hosts. I'm Nate. And I'm Lewis. And we are glad you're here with us today, and we've got another great episode on tap, which I think all of them are great episodes, Lewis. Wouldn't you say? I don't think we've ever done a bad episode. We'd have Mmm. Yeah. I don't think we've done a bad episode. Maybe not a great episode. Maybe. And that's all, you know, in the eye or the ear. The ear of the beholder. Uh have we ever done an episode where we didn't mention breakfast for dinner? A few. I think early on. If you know, listeners, if you know, because you would know, send us an email and tell us if we don't mention breakfast for dinner, because I think that's very important.

Luis 0:58

I did a podcast recently with a friend of mine. Yeah. And he listens to our podcast and he brought that up. He he wanted to know like what I had against breakfast for dinner. And so I was able to articulate logically my defense with for why breakfast for dinner is not something that is normal.

Nate 1:20

I feel like that wasn't a fair fight though. Like, did he give you a rebuttal of why?

Luis 1:25

No, because I don't know that he is for or against it necessarily. He just kind of wanted to know like my rationale behind it. And and he and he and here's what I said. I said, I said, his name's Rick. I said, I said, Rick, I said, would you ever eat spaghetti for breakfast? And he was like, No. Have you seen Elf? No.

Nate 1:43

Really?

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Mm-mm.

Nate 1:45

Because he like puts like syrup and MMs and marshmallows all in a spaghetti. Oh, that's disgusting. It is disgusting.

Luis 1:51

But like, would you eat like normal spaghetti and meatballs with pasta sauce? Would you ever eat it for breakfast? No. No, I would not. So then why would you eat pancakes and syrup and waffles and crustos?

Nate 2:00

It's good. For dinner.

Luis 2:01

But so spaghetti.

Nate 2:02

Spaghetti's delicious. Yeah, but there's you're like garlic. Too early in the morning for garlic. Too late. Too late in the evening or afternoon for waffles. It's the same thing as like eating ice cream. Do you like fish? I do like fish. Would you eat fried fish for breakfast? Maybe. Really? Yeah. Baked fish? I don't know. See? There's different things. Europeans do, like, that was the thing. It took me when I lived in Germany, it took me a while to get used to like eating salami on bread for breakfast. Like that was a little weird. And it took me some time. But I I got used to it.

Luis 2:31

But Europeans are different, right? They are different.

Nate 2:33

They're unique. And so they do different things.

Luis 2:35

I bet in Italy they eat spaghetti for breakfast. They probably do.

The Hang 10 Movement Explained

Nate 2:38

You didn't come here for that. You came here to learn about parenting because we're here to equip you. And we've actually got something. It's a topic that we've talked about before, right, Lewis? And not breakfast for dinner. Yeah. But we have talked about that. We talked about a lot about technology. So, you know, where are we kind of taking it, uh, the conversation today with technology?

Luis 2:57

Yeah, so we're going to dive a little bit deeper and we're going to get very specific on a specific issue. And we want to introduce you to something that's come out recently that really has prompted this conversation, and it's called the Hang Tin Movement. Yeah.

Nate 3:14

Yeah. So if you've got kids or you work with kids, you lead a church, your youth group, whatever, you know, this is something that it's really important. And there's a lot of stuff coming out about technology and all of that stuff. So the Hang 10 movement really starts with this question, okay? What if we could actually change the next generation's relationship with technology? And and what if we stopped just reacting and started leading with some intentional practices in how we use technology?

Luis 3:48

Yeah. And one of the great things about this tool, this this movement, is that it asks the question that really makes sense, right? What if the church leads the way, right? What if the church leads with courage and conviction in this cultural movement where most people are just confused and and they're hoping for the best? And that's that's what we're hoping to talk about today.

Nate 4:12

That's right. And uh before we get into this, I want to shout out we actually a podcast listener shared this with us. So if you've got other resources along these lines or other parenting resources that you uh think we need to know about, shoot us an email, podcast at WayneChristian.org. We love hearing from our listeners. And we may just send you an Equip for Impact sticker because we still have some. We do. So we'll we'll send those to you if you shoot us an email. But let's get into this before we get into the 10 practices that they talk about at the Hang 10 movement.

Scripture And The Real Tech Problem

Nate 4:44

Let's kind of just name this problem. And really, you can go back to scripture where we always start these episodes. And in Romans 12, Paul makes very clear, he tells the the Romans, he tells us, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And and it's something that I really think is really important for us to use that as a base level, right? Yeah. Because it it's really tempting to just let culture press us into its mold, but but we as Christians are called to something different.

Luis 5:19

And you know, right now the pressure to conform is enormous, right? And technology is one of the primary vehicles of that conformity. We've talked about this before, that the research shows, right, that since kids have widespread acceptance of smartphones, right? So, like as the smartphones have come into the daily routine, anxiety, depression, social isolation, all of that has increased, right? And so the smartphone revolution has hit kids like like a wave. And when you're at the beach and a wave hits you and you're not ready, a lot of times it knocks you down, right? You're not ready for it, it knocks you down and it takes over.

Nate 6:00

And and that's speaking from experience from summer vacation.

Luis 6:03

I've been knocked down by a few waves in my life.

Nate 6:05

In your life, but not this year. No, not this year. Do you surf? Do I look like a surfer? You've got the body type of a surfer. I don't think so.

Luis 6:13

No, like I mean, you're slim and in shape. My hair's not long enough, that's for sure. Yeah, I guess you're right. I guess you're right. So and and and here's the thing, right? Is parents weren't ready for it, and the church wasn't ready for it.

Nate 6:26

Yeah, that's exactly right. And and it's not just those waves, we've talked about this before, but then you know, the the undercurrent too, right? The rip current, you don't even notice it's pulling you away. And so, you know, we as the church, we as Christian schools, we as Christian parents, you know, we we have this way to articulate discipleship and you know what we need to be doing specifically around spiritual practices, but we didn't make the connection to technology as well as we really should have. And so, you know, you've got Bible verses about the mind, but there's no kind of framework for how we deal with the new iPhone or new games that are made. And and that's what we try and give you here on this podcast is kind of frameworks to think through this. And that's really what this Hang 10 movement is trying to do with technology in general and and phones specifically.

Luis 7:18

Yeah. And so it was founded by Justin Early, right? He wrote this book called Habits of the Household. Some of you may know it, some of you may have read it, but him and his wife build this practical framework for Christian communities. Now, don't think of it as a list of rules, but but see it more as a vision. Think of it as like 10 practices that help us use technology for

Three Rings Community Home Self

Luis 7:44

good.

Nate 7:44

Yeah, and and so we're gonna walk through these. They're straight on their website. We'll put it a link in the show notes, but hangtinmovement.com. It's really easy. You can go there. And and this is really, they take the 10 practices and they divide it into three different categories. And and so there's there's community practices that if you can get other families or schools or churches kind of working together, there's household practices, and then there's individual purpose or personal practices that they we'll walk through together.

Luis 8:15

And think of it like three rings, right? So you've got this thing where you have the outside ring, that's the community. The community, yep. Then like that's that's your church, your school, your youth group. Then you have the second ring that's inside of that, which is your household, right? Yep, that's your family, that's your home. And then you've got that personal ring, you've got that inner ring, which is you as the in the individual. And the hang 10 movement says that you need all three of these working together.

Nate 8:44

Yep, that's exactly right. And it's like we talk about all the time, right? The the home, church, school kind of working together. You've got the community, the house, because if you've got dissonance between those rings where at school or church, you know, one thing's accepted and your family's trying to do something totally different, you're gonna not gonna have the same synergy. That's a buzzword, but you're not gonna have that same synergy there. And and so you really need to uh see that. And and it's not just individual commitments. Like you as a person, you're gonna be swimming against the stream of culture. And so the whole point is that, you know, we've got a family phone policy, you've got your way that you handle this with your family and your yourself as an individual, but you want to make sure that that this is all around everybody going working together kind of to to reinforce some of these practices together.

Luis 9:37

And, you know, really that's that's a very biblical idea, right? You've heard us talk about Deuteronomy 6 before, but Deuteronomy 6 doesn't tell you to disciple your children in your own little Bible, right? I mean your own little bubble. You should disciple them in the Bible. You should disciple them in the Bible, not in a bubble, right? This was for the whole community, right? The whole community was called to build a world where the next generation knew God. And so we need each other. We need the home, we need the church, we need the

Wait Until 10th Grade

Luis 10:03

school.

Nate 10:03

Yep. So let's go ahead and just run through these practices. The first four, we'll start in that outer ring. These are the things in community, churches, schools, youth groups. If you guys can commit to do these together. So, Lewis, what walk us through these?

Luis 10:17

Yeah, so the first one is wait until 10th grade for smartphones and social media. And this is this is the anchor practice, right? In fact, the whole movement gets his name from this, right? Hang 10 comes from the idea of wait until 10th grade, wait until they're 16. And they're not saying never give your kid a phone, they're not saying don't let them have these things, they're saying that 16 is the appropriate age, kind of like a driver's license, right? You don't give your 12-year-old the keys to your car and say, figure it out. And so why would you hand them unlimited access to the internet and social media and do the same?

Nate 10:56

Yeah, and and that's the thing important here is that it's uh smartphones, right? The there's a huge resurgence of people buying, they call them feature phones or commonly dumb phones, right? Yeah, give your kid a flip phone if they need to call you when practice is done and they need a ride to get picked up or something like that. But that's not giving your child unlimited access to the internet or anything like that. And and research really backs this up. We've talked about Jonathan Haidt before, but there's other data out there, and it consistently says that early smartphone access really changes the way your brain is wired, and particularly social media, you know, it correlates very strongly with higher levels of anxiety, depression, especially among teen girls. And so this is really a thing where we need to protect our children, don't give them social media access. And really, smartphones not necessary at that age.

Luis 11:52

And you know, you might be thinking, like, well, my kid needs a phone for safety, right? Yep. And so the Hangton movement, it it acknowledges that. You know, it says that there are basic phones, right? Flip phones, GPS-enabled watches. There are ways for you to stay connected with your child without giving them this pocket-sized portal to everything that the internet has to offer. They're not they're not promoting this idea of staying off the grid. They're just saying be intentional about how your children handle technology.

Phone Free Schools And Youth Group

Nate 12:22

Yep, yep, that's exactly right. And so this kind of rolls into number two, which is uh the practice two is no phones in schools or other teaching settings like Sunday school youth group, things like that. And I mean, this hits home for us because we're we're in a school ministry, right? Which is where we serve primarily, but we both serve in church too. And so this is a big thing. I mean, probably distraction is the biggest one, right? Yeah.

Luis 12:46

It's pretty significant, like it it goes deeper than just it being a distraction. Like when you have a phone that's present, even if it's just sitting on it on a desk, the research shows that the cognitive capacity drops, right? It's not just about whether the kids are actually looking at the phone, it's just the fact that that the phone is there, it's competing for their attention. And while we're trying to teach, while we're trying to share Jesus or the gospel, while we're trying to shape minds and souls, we're competing with a slot machine in their pocket.

Nate 13:18

Yeah, it's funny because that uh some of the researchers have actually there there's been reports that came out that actually people it was back with Facebook, they had like studies of how slot machines are addictive and they mimicked the technology of the variable rewards, is what it's called, with their notifications and and things like that to try and make them more addictive. And I mean, you think about it, it just I said it before, it rewires your brain, and you sit there and hey, the sermon's not interesting. Let me pull out my phone and see if I got any of those, you know, notifications or you know, the this, you know, whatever Sunday school class. What it's it's just I lose that attention, and so then I just gotta check my phone because I want that hit of dopamine, is really what it comes down to. Have you ever had the phantom vibrate?

Luis 14:09

Yes. Like where you like your Apple Watch or your phone vibrates, but it really doesn't?

Nate 14:14

Yes, that's exactly right. And that's that thing. That's that feeling of is it well nope, no, it's not it. And so whether it's worship, whether it's school, whatever it is, that's practice to no phones in those settings. Yeah.

Luis 14:27

You may be able to hear some background noise in the moment. There's somebody right outside of summer recording and we finally got rain.

Nate 14:35

And so now we've got to actually mow the grass.

Luis 14:38

So if you hear that, just ignore it. We're not being chased by a chainsaw. We are that would be cool, though. It would be like to record a podcast while you're being chased by a chainsaw. We'd be way more out of breath. But here's the next thing,

Make Hard Talks Face To Face

Luis 14:50

right? Encourage important conversations face to face. And so this one is counterculture to what our world is doing. Like it's pretty radical, right? So the Hang 10 movement says that important conversations should happen face to face, not in a DM, right? Not in an email, not in a text. If it matters, then it should happen face to face.

Nate 15:13

Yeah, that's right. And and they really do mean all of it, right? The the the encouragement, the hard conversations, you know, Matthew 18 talks about going to a person, and that's obviously before social media, but you know, it it's the thing of you got to go to the person. And and we've talked before about that. You know, it's if it's really important, pick up the phone, you know, if you can't do something face to face, you know, do a FaceTime call that it's face to face. But if you are in the same geographic region as the person, have those conversations face to face. It's gonna mean more, and there's gonna, you know, have less misunderstandings, more reconciliation, more genuine connection with people when you talk face to face.

Luis 15:58

And we've all seen it, right? Like we've seen the Facebook arguments, right? We've seen the angry emails, we've seen what a text thread can do when it comes to conflict. And sometimes it happens unintentionally, right? Like, have you ever read an email or a text message and read it with a tone? Like I actually learned this a few years ago. Proper text etiquette is if you end a text with a period, that means that you're actually angry. Who set that proper text etiquette? I don't remember. Somebody a lot cooler than me.

Nate 16:30

It's gotta be a Gen Z or that said that. And so know that when you're talking to your kids, yeah, but you don't have to text me with an exclamation point at the end of every contact.

Luis 16:38

You know, just I don't know. Apparently, the last text you sent you. No, no, I use periods because it's you know You're an adult. But you actually use no punctuation, no punctuation in the last text I sent you. So but apparently if you use punctuation, I guess it's it's you're you're you're more angry, right? But as as parents, as as school leaders, as youth pastors, as as church leadership, then we need to model this, right? We need to create a community where we walk across the hall instead of send that angry text message.

Nate 17:13

Yeah, that's

Set Clear Community Tech Norms

Nate 17:14

right. And so this last practice, practice number four, is it's a little broader, and I think that that's the whole point of it, right? The Hang 10 movement says that and this is the practice is you adopt communal aspirations. And so they say on their website, whether or not you adopt our specific practices, commit to some set of norms as a community, and and don't leave families in the dark. So you've got to make it clear this is what we are doing aspirationally as a community.

Luis 17:43

Yeah. And Jesus said it in Matthew 5, right? We are the salt of the earth, we are the light of the world, and a city that's on a hill cannot be hidden. And so the church is supposed to be a community of visible people living in a different way. Uh, you know, we we're called aliens, right? We are called aliens in this world. And so technology is one of the places we have the greatest opportunity to shine because the world has absolutely no idea what it's doing here.

Practical Ideas And Part Two

Nate 18:18

Yeah. And so that kind of wraps up our first circle, the community, communal practices. And so we're actually gonna make this a two-parter because we wanna we don't want to rush through these and you know, we're we're already sitting here almost at 20 minutes on this podcast. So so we want to give you some time to digest those and think about what does that look like for your community? Like the communities that you're in, you can even start these conversations with school leaders, right? Email your school principal or your head of school or go have a conversation with them face to face, like we just talked about. Set up a meeting, you know, things like that where you're really trying to be a catalyst. Um, and check out hangtinmovement.com. We're gonna put a link in the show notes as well.

Luis 19:05

Maybe something radical. Like, what if the next time you walk into church as a family, you all leave your phone in the car? That means you have to bring a paper Bible to church. Yep, I do. Or use the pew Bible. Oh, yep. And unless you've got really outdated pew Bibles. It's true. Our church has outdated Pew Bibles. We need to upgrade them. You need to upgrade them. So but but like what if you committed to that as a family, right? Like what if what if what if as a church, I mean, this this is gonna sound wild, but like our church youth group, we have you know the pockets on the wall for kids. So so we do that for our our teams. You put the phones in the pocket. You put the phones in the pockets so that you can go in. And it's just kind of become habit for for our kids. But what if like church sanctuaries had that and everybody had to put their phone in the pocket? Like, how many parents are gonna do that? You just redo the hymnal racks and put a lid on them and that locks.

Nate 19:56

Yeah, that's and then like the pastor has a button in the pulpit that he unlocks the phones at the end of the service. Yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, as we wrap up here, any last words just of encouragement to to families as we land this episode today, Lewis?

Encouragement And Share Subscribe

Luis 20:10

Well, parents, here's the really cool thing. Nate and I, we're not coming to you as experts or even in a condemning way. Like, I've been clear, like my children have phones and they've had them before they were 16. Now we made some very restrictive locks on their phone, but as I've kind of reflected on this and thought about this, like it's made me think like maybe there were some things I could have done differently. Maybe we should have waited until they're 16. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, this doesn't apply to me because you know, my kid already has a phone and they're eight. Um I actually heard of an eight-year-old that has a phone this past week. And so it's not uncommon, right? Um, and so don't feel like this doesn't apply to you. There are things we're gonna talk about in this podcast that you just heard and in future podcasts as we finish this list up that are going to help you. So don't feel defeated, be encouraged.

Nate 21:06

Yeah, that's exactly right. Uh so with that, everybody, thank you for joining us on Equipped for Impact. And if this episode encouraged you or challenged you or gave you something to think about, go ahead and share it with another parent who needs to hear it because that will help get that started in your community of really uh setting these communal practices. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss part two as we run through these practices on technology together. But until then, keep leading the next generation to stand firm in their faith and influence the world for Christ.