The Great Tech Reset: Author Arlene Pellicane on Reclaiming Family Connection in a Digital Age

Author Arlene Pellicane | The Christian Post file photo
In a world where screens are shaping how families live, learn, and connect, parents are asking an important question. How do we help our children develop healthy relationships with technology without losing sight of what matters most?

In her latest book, The Great Tech Reset, author and popular podcaster Arlene Pellicane offers practical, Biblically grounded strategies to help parents create healthier digital habits, strengthen family connections, and cultivate a deeper faith in the midst of a tech-saturated culture.

I recently sat down with the highly personable Pellicane to discuss how families can take a thoughtful, intentional approach to technology and make room for what matters most.

This is a simple question that I think has far reaching ramifications. How does a phone, and particularly social media, amplify anxiety in kids and teens?

If you have a child who is not anxious at all, like a very carefree, happy, go lucky child, and you hand them social media, after about an hour of scrolling, they're going to see suicide content and body disorder things, go prank your school content, and transgender things. They're shown totally different things than what adults are shown. First of all, we need to recognize that maybe we go on social media and we think, oh, what they are looking at isn't too bad. What would they be looking at? First of all, think of what a teenager is being served. And then obviously, for teenagers, what are you trying to do when you're trying to belong in the group?

You're literally wired to blend in when you're in middle school. You don't want to stand out and be different. If everybody is saying a certain belief, even though you don't believe it, you want to conform because you don't want to be different. It's this amazing conformity machine that maybe mom and dad have been trying to set, or have you say, "Please, thank you. Go to church, memorize a scripture each week." They've been trying to do that actively for years. But within a few days of scrolling on social media and every 10 seconds, you get a picture of, "Hey, this is what you should be conforming to. This is what you should look like. This is what you should believe. This is what's popular." And you're scrolling through that and you think you're being judged. You're literally getting likes or not likes.

So you realize, "Oh, in order to get likes, I have to act like this." It's very different from when we were growing up. All these things still existed, right? The popular kids and the music you weren't supposed to listen to and the pictures and magazines you weren't supposed to look at. All that stuff existed, but it was not in your pocket and you weren't looking through it when you got home. You got a break. But when kids have social media, then they can leave the school, but that bully is still with them. Those thoughts are still with them. They're still performing. There's no break. There's a brand to curate. There's a person to pretend to be. How can you develop an identity for yourself, be made in God's image, and for all those talents to come out when you are just constantly scrolling passively and trying to fit in?

Many parents feel overwhelmed trying to set technology boundaries. Where should families begin when they want to create healthier digital habits?

You're going to assess where you are, because for one family, that might be let's get a family mealtime with no screens. Let's get that back. And that could be the win, that we start connecting at the dinner table. This means Mom's not looking through social media. Dad's not checking his texts all the time. The kids aren't scrolling on their phones or Netflix is on in the background. So you get back to, hey, we're talking again. We're laughing again. Let's shoot for five meals a week where we're sitting down almost once a day together without screens, and we're enjoying each other again. Now, this may be really rough at first. Everyone might just stare at each other blankly not knowing what to do. And just realize that with any change you make, it's going to be awkward at first, and that's okay. Just keep doing it over and over and over, and you'll get better at it. Those are decisions you can make that will profoundly improve the quality of your life and the way your kids grow up.

What you just described sounds awesome and fantastic, but the reality is when you try to establish boundaries with your kids, you're going to get some tension and some blowback. So, how can parents establish healthy technology boundaries without constant conflict with their kids?

We need to recognize that maybe we're going to have one big conflict, right? So let's pretend you are not allowed to have this video game. You've played it. We see that it makes you very angry. It's very addictive. And so we're going to say you are not allowed to play this video game at home. No kid is going to be like, "Oh, thank you. I'm going to be all healthy now, my brain's going to get back to normal, and I won't have these angry outbursts." I get it, that's not going to happen. You're going to have this huge blowout fight. But what happens after that child really does start experiencing life without that video game, they really are set free from that addictive power of that many hours a day that they have to play.

And now, instead, they go back to soccer, to woodworking, to mechanics, to 3D printing a Nerf gun, whatever it is, reading, art, cars, skateboarding, whatever, right? You have that one huge fight, but then as the days and months roll on, you're like, "Wow, my house is a lot more peaceful than it used to be," versus, "I'm going to avoid that big fight, because that's just going to be ugly.” And instead, every day, we're just going to have this micro battle basically until you graduate from this game. I think we have to be realistic to understand we are going to have conflict, and we have to choose. Do we want to do the hard thing now, which is have the conflict, take the thing away, or delay the thing. It’s really a matter of do you want hard now, and easy later, or we can do the easy now and just say, "Hey, you know what? There's nothing to do about this. I can't do anything about this." I think having the big fight is worth it in the long run.

Earlier in our conversation you reference artificial intelligence which seems to be growing at an unhealthy pace. How has the rise of artificial intelligence changed the conversation around technology and parenting? What should parents be thinking about when it comes to AI and their children?

It's a great question. For you as a parent, you should take a piece of paper and write, what I want AI to do. Draw a line. What I want AI not to do, draw a line, and then think of how old your children are. And I think what you will find is for adults, AI could be really helpful for productivity, but for kids, it's like, wait a minute, these are things that humans should be doing. Realize that for kids, when they talk to Siri or they talk to Alexa, it's so personable that it's hard for them to conceptualize that it is not a person. It is an it. That is a thing. With younger kids, just remember, the smarter the toy, the dumber the child.

And by that, I mean the toy does all the smart things. All the kid does is press the buttons. And with AI, that's just going to be hyper scaled. You will think your child is so smart because they press this button and AI came up with this great answer. You don't want that. You want the dumb toy and the smart child. You want the piece of paper and the pencil and the very smart child creating things. Get skeptical about what AI can really teach my children that their own creativity development couldn't, and a human couldn't help them. And then really realize it is a danger.

Final question for you. If a family wanted to start a “tech reset” today, what is one practical step they could take this week?

I would assess where you are as a family and then come up with one step. So for instance, write “casual”, “at risk”, and “addicted”. In other words, a casual use of technology. Oh yeah, they pick it up once in a while, but put it down. It's really not affecting our lives at all. It's casual. At risk is, oh, they ask for that a lot. I'm always saying you have to wait for the weekend, or not yet. Maybe next year. So, they're at risk. They really are interested. Addicted is, of course, wow, you used to play soccer. You used to play with your friends. Now you sit in your room all day. You get that. That's going to keep changing. Some days you will be like, "Oh, so-and-so's got a great new app." But then two months later, it’s like, "Whoa, how'd you get so addicted?"

So, you're constantly assessing this. And then remember, technology is always going to pull them down that continuum, casual to at risk. At risk to addicted. And then you as a parent are the one to ask yourself, how can we reintroduce a more casual relationship? Think of what did my kid used to like before they got this device? Okay, let's go fishing again. Let's go biking. Let's go rowing. And in the book, The Great Tech Reset, you will find a list of over 40 activities that you can start with, many of them being free. So, it is rekindling that real life activity, whether it's reading, being with people, girls who love babysitting little babies, whatever it is that you're going through, you need to do that again and put something healthy in its place.

Assess where you are, put something healthy in, get the phones out of the bedrooms, get them off the dinner tables, and start eating together. Start there, get all those things in, and then just keep building from there. The Great Tech Reset book is free, believe it or not, absolutely free. You can just get this physical book and it will be mailed to your house for free from Summit Ministries. That's going to get you started in a great way.

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