Hello Reader,

Join us as we share our December Dashes with you! These quick tips will help keep your kids safer during this holiday season.

✅ Dash of Information

Are you giving access to a digital device as a gift this holiday season? If so, listen up!

BEFORE you wrap those devices, plan. time to set them up! That goes for smart watches, smartphones, gaming consoles, tablets and TV’s, and even safer phone options like the Bark phone, Bark watch, Gabb phone, Gabb watch, or the Pinwheel products.

You’ll need to set up parental controls in the settings and test them. And we recommend turning off apps in the safer phones–apps often allow backdoors to the internet that cannot be filtered.

✅ Dash of Motivation

By choosing to set up safety option, you're actively choosing protection over peril.

Giving kids access to unfiltered internet can lead to predatory grooming, accidental viewing of explicit, violent pornography, relentless cyberbullying, and the development of addictive habits centered around apps and endless scrolling.

Your child’s brain needs time to mature, and you need time to teach essential digital defense skills. While there’s no perfect protection, you can still have a powerful influence by ensuring their first steps into the digital world are safe, supervised, and aligned with your family’s values.

Do not simply hand over the device and let your kid set it up.

✅ Dash & Do

Give ACCESS instead of OWNERSHIP. There’s a different psychology when you are using someone else’s device–you kinda have to follow their rules. When you own something, you might think you can make up all the rules. Your kids need to be clear that they can use YOUR device using YOUR rules.

Set up tech devices 1-2 weeks beforehand. The single most important action you can take right now is to unbox and set up any new tech gift—whether it’s a watch, phone, gaming console, or Smart TV—at least a week or two before your child opens it with eager anticipation.

• Do not wait until the night before! Setting up a new device and all its associated parental controls can be a frustrating and time-consuming experience, often taking several hours to get right.
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• You may need a call to tech support–so do that when a rep is available–before the last minute rush! You'll need to configure safety settings on both the device and possibly your home router. Do this in "daily doses" over the next two weeks.
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• Make sure the focus is on the joy of the gift, not the panic of wrestling with settings while your kids wait impatiently.
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• Read additional tips on how to prepare a new tech device in our article 7 Essential Rules for New Tech to Safeguard Your Child.

Along with giving access to a fun device, give the gift of a safer digital experience this holiday season.

Warmly,

Kristen

P.S. Passing on the tech gifts? That’s great! Here are some ideas for screen-free gifts and alternative gifts that provide the same things smartphones do without the dangers.

What I’ve been up to...

Epoch Times TV interview. I flew down to San Francisco to tape an interview with Jan Jekielek, the senior editor of The Epoch Times, for his show, American Thought Leaders, that reaches millions of viewers. I was thrilled to be invited to talk about the huge scope of the problems of porn exposure on kids and the unique and bestselling tools I’ve created for parents to make starting protective conversations easier and more comfortable.

It won’t air for a few months–I’ll let you know when it’s available to watch!

Girls Guide manuscript to the printer! This past week I finally tied up all of the loose threads with my book designer for my GOOD PICTURES BAD PICTURES GUIDE FOR GIRLS and sent the layout files off to my printer! Yay! I’ve been working on this book project for two years and this baby needed to be birthed!

Help your kids learn to reject pornography! Our Good Pictures Bad Pictures books can give you the words, stories, and confidence to begin.