Below you will find the gift of a book excerpt from The Opt-Out Family: How To Give Your Kids What Technology Can’t. The excerpt is the complete Chapter Four: Discovering What Delights Our Kids Most.

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A Note from Erin…

As a former influencer who walked away from a million fans to live a tech-free lifestyle – and am now raising my kids to do the same – I’ve seen the dangerous underbelly of technology. I know the algorithm firsthand, and I know where it leads. It’s no place we want our next generation to be.

So how do we guide our kids somewhere better? Here at The Opt-Out Family, we’re committed to equipping you with every tip, trick, tool, and resource you need to start liberating your family from tech’s most damaging influences. Along the way? You’ll learn how to reclaim a childhood for your kids, a home for your family, and a future that’s stronger and brighter than any Wi-Fi signal could offer.

The truth is: it’s not enough to simply say no to devices. We have to say yes to something better on the other side. 

Let’s do it together.

xo, 
Erin Loechner

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Chapter Four: Discovering What Delights Our Kids Most

From The Opt-Out Family: How To Give Your Kids What Technology Can’t

By Erin Loechner

If technology specializes in predictive personalization, let’s be parents who specialize in predictive humanization.

We are driving to a friend’s pool party when I ask Ken to stop the car. I have seen something on the side of the road, left abandoned next to a mounting trash heap. It is dirty. It is broken. It is the perfect birthday gift for our two-year-old.

“Can you load this into the trunk?” I ask him.

“An old kitchen sink?” he says. “We don’t have space for it.”

But he does it anyway, and that is how our daughter spends a summer splashing around in a custom (free) water table just her size, with a soap dispenser for bubbles, no less.

I am thinking of this story when I’m on the phone with Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting. He is calling from his farm in New England, and as he speaks, I catch his gentle humility betraying the internationally acclaimed and highly sought-after Waldorf educator that he is.

I have called him to ask about engaging our kids, about providing them with a low-tech experience and ensuring it doesn’t scar them, or at the very least cause them to lock us away in a nursing home far earlier than we’d like. We speak of his grown daughters, how they are opt-out kids, too, how they are thriving in this world despite—or because of—a childhood spent without screens. He walks me through the intentionally addictive nature of the video game Minecraft, which is often dubbed “digital heroin” after recent brain-imaging research shows how the game affects a brain’s frontal cortex—which controls executive functioning, including impulse control—in exactly the same way that cocaine does (Kardaras 2016). “If there is such a thing,” Kim jokes, “those [game] designers are going to have a very hard time at the pearly gates!”

He notes with compassion how difficult it is to parent today without the use of screens, but recognizes that it is far more difficult to parent with them. “A child in front of screens is receiving continuous dopamine, this pleasure and reward feedback cycle, and it’s constant, and [the child is] being trained to seek it out,” he says. “And if you tell that child, Okay, it’s time to clean up the table now because supper is being served, well, that’s not pleasurable and it’s not rewarding.”

Kim tells me that parents all around the world are discovering that when they lower interactions with screens, their children are much more flexible. “It doesn’t mean kids won’t still not want to do stuff, you know? But you can work through it. You don’t meet this snarling beast when you ask a child to do the simplest things.”

And then he tells me what he has recently learned by eavesdropping on a children’s marketing conference—one that packages delight and sells it in the form of cereal, cars, toys. He says that his interest was piqued by visiting one particular session, attended by several hundred people, titled “The Removal of Purchasing Friction.”

Kim says that this small segment of children’s marketing and advertising accounts for roughly a $16 billion industry. I am nodding along, thinking of the many ways technology has funneled money into the removal of any friction from our lives at all—one-click purchasing, infinite scroll, autoplay, personalized recommendations—that I almost miss what he says next.

“We know what this industry means by removal of,” he tells me. “But what do you think they mean by purchasing friction?”

“Choice,” is my guess.

“Parents,” is the answer.

In panels and forums and handouts, attendees were taught dozens of tricks for “removing purchasing friction, aka parents.” Over and over, the two terms were used interchangeably. It seems, to the world of tech-based advertising experts, we are not our child’s guide. We are not our child’s protector. We are not their confidante or companion or mentor.

We are, quite simply, in the way.

And the message, backed by $16 billion dollars, is this: Your parents can never delight you. But we can.

It’s like Magic

Ask any TikTok user what they love about the app and they’re bound to use the word new. “I can’t even tell you how many new things I learn about from here,” said one teen I talked to. “The people I follow on TikTok just get me. They’re sharing, like, all this stuff I never knew I needed to know, all these things I’m obsessed with now.”

I asked her to show me her feed. Upon opening the app, I was welcomed by a conglomeration of her entire personality: plant care, makeup tutorials, piercings, ’80s music covers. “I’m recently getting really into Bowie,” she tells me, shortly before I spot the iconic Labyrinth movie poster on her For You page.

If what our kids want is people who get them, TikTok is poised for gold.

TikTok’s feed is similar to other social-media apps, but the emphasis is on finding new ideas, products, and trends. It’s a discovery platform. As soon as you open the app, you’re not met with people you’re following, you’re met with people you’re not following yet.

TikTok features prominently its For You page, a curated blend of popular user-uploaded videos—looped videos, all less than a minute long. Total strangers dancing, goofing off, trying pranks, challenges, recipes. What you like, you get more of. And TikTok knows exactly what you like. “It’s crazy,” says a TikTok user. “I’ll get a craving for, like, cereal, and the very next video is this cool chick eating cereal. It’s like magic!”

It’s not. In addition to traditional metrics (people you follow, where you live, what your hobbies are) TikTok relies on biometrics to inform its algorithm (Wouters and Paterson 2021). While you’re watching TikTok, it’s watching you. Through the camera on your phone, TikTok can detect changes in your face as you react to each and every video you watch. What makes you smile? What makes you laugh? What raises your eyebrows? And for how long? TikTok studies that information to determine what you’ll like next—and better.

Then they use that information to display ads from its brand partners, who—primed with your most intimate data imaginable—can guide you down whatever path will guarantee them the most profit (Chiara 2023). Imagine: you’re a teenage girl watching a typical TikTok dance challenge. But through biometrics, the app registers that your eyes are distracted by the flat belly of one of the dancers, her toned thighs. In the next video, you’re zeroing in on someone’s triceps, and your heart beats faster. The next video? An influencer in an undisclosed ad for a three-day detox cleanse and workout ebook to guarantee “you’ll look amazing for your next TikTok.” Just $199.

Click. Add to cart.

You needn’t imagine. The technology is already here.

Aside from amassing biometrics to boost their bottom line, what else can TikTok—and their third-party trackers—do with that information? That’s often the primary concern cited by many lawmakers and political advocacy groups. Because TikTok, which boasts more than one billion monthly active users, is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, the FBI alleges the app poses national security risks (Treisman 2022). Under TikTok’s privacy policy, which enables the app to collect both “faceprints and voiceprints” from any user in the US (Huddleston Jr. 2022), the possibilities—and harms—are endless.

But for parents (ahem, purchasing friction), the concern hits closer to home. TikTok’s biometrics aren’t used just to sell your kids products.

In some cases, they’ll be used to sell your kids.

She Was Mortified

Ever seen a deepfake? A deepfake is a video that employs AI, or deep learning, to copy someone’s face, mimic their hand gestures, learn their movements, and borrow their voice to impersonate them in videos. If you’ve ever asked yourself why you just saw Biden sing “Baby Shark” or Tom Cruise selling toothpaste, you’ve seen a deepfake. For most users, deepfakes are harmless ways to channel their creativity and stretch the limits of what we can do with technology. But with the skyrocketing capabilities and widespread utilization of AI, they’re increasingly being deployed in cases of identity fraud, extortion, and disinformation campaigns.

And worse. According to research from the AI firm Sensity, a shocking 96 percent of deepfakes online are pornographic and used to target girls (Dickson 2020). One mother of a teen found that one of her teen’s TikTok videos had been deepfaked and shared on Pornhub. “She was mortified. She didn’t want to go back to school,” her mother said. “It’s not a lesson you should have to learn at seventeen.”

While several apps and software are readily available to make deepfakes easy for anyone to create, AI impersonators insist that the art hasn’t yet been perfected (Fisher 2022). “The most difficult thing is making it look alive,” says VFX specialist Chris Ume. “You can see it in the eyes when it’s not right” (Vincent 2021).

But don’t worry, TikTok has a fix for that. There’s the “pupil challenge,” which encourages users to upload zoomed-in videos of their eyes while they think of their crush (Pilkington 2022). “If your pupil dilates,” says one user, “it’s true love!” (Musiart 2021). And the “side eye challenge” (Smith 2021), where TikTok users watch in awe as their eyes change color. “To take part in the trend,” reports PopBuzz, “all you need to do is hold your camera as close to one of your eyes as possible and then look to the side on the beat of the music” (Smith 2021). And then, of course, 2020’s “eye color challenge,” where users “recorded their eyes while keeping the camera flash on and then used TikTok’s S5 filter to find out their ‘real’ eye color.”

If better data is what they want, better data is what they’ll get.

In fact, TikTok recently debuted a new feature called TikTok Now, introduced as a way to offer “deeper connection and entertainment in a fun format.” How? By inviting each user to “capture what you’re doing in the moment using your device’s front and back camera” (TikTok 2022).

Better data is exactly what TikTok wants.

His Favorite Memory

So how well do you know your kids? If a $50 billion algorithm can combine all of your child’s passions and interests—both conscious and subconscious—and spit out something engaging in just a few seconds, are we a match for that sort of machine?

Emphatically, resoundingly yes.

Successful algorithms rely on a strategy called predictive personalization. The program takes just a few pieces of data—location, age, interests—and uses that information to predict someone’s behavior, needs, or wants to “precisely tailor offers, products, and messages to each recipient across channels and touchpoints” (Likstrak, n.d.). This is why your Instagram ads are continually showing you products you didn’t even know existed but are exactly what you’ve been looking for (ahem, weighted blankets). This is why a teen who’s just getting into Bowie’s music will binge-watch Labyrinth tonight while her best friend pours herself another bowl of cereal.

If technology specializes in predictive personalization, let’s be parents who specialize in predictive humanization. Let’s protect our children from anyone—or any place—that seeks to manipulate their interests for profit or gain or worth. Let’s, instead, guide them to places that offer delight while asking nothing from them in return: a bed of pine needles, a crackling hearth, an old kitchen sink turned water table. Laps for reading, skies for gazing, hammocks for swaying and dreaming. Delight.

No matter what your family dynamic is right now, you have this very tool at your disposal. You, as a parent, have the potential to employ this strategy better than any AI machine-learning algorithm ever could. Why? Because TikTok can’t tell your daughter how she liked her strawberries cut when she was three. TikTok doesn’t have data for your son’s first words or his favorite memory or the name of the stuffed teddy that he slept with for eight years straight.

But you do, and it’s all you need to start. You have the data. It’s time to put it to work.

Study Your Child

Take some time this week to watch your child. What kinds of topics do they bring up naturally? How do they react to something their sibling said or did? What do you notice that makes them smile? Laugh? Are they particularly animated when they talk about someone they know? Do they stand up straighter when they perform a certain task or when they receive good news? How are they handling conflict? What do they do when they’re overwhelmed? Where do they retreat to, and what do they do next?

Pay special attention to micromovements, gut reactions, and “tells.” Does their smile reach all the way up to their eyes? Do they giggle when embarrassed? Shut down when frustrated?

The truth is, we often paint a picture of our child that’s static, finite. We remember them clearly at a certain age, maybe from a key vacation or a time we felt most connected. And with the distractions of daily life, we forget to recalibrate that picture. We fail to look at our child as they are today, and we revert to the image in our minds of who they once were.

So today, recalibrate. As you study your child, stay open minded and curious. Resist the temptation to step in with a solution or fix anything you’re witnessing. Just watch and learn. This isn’t about behavior management. It’s about data collection. Remember: the algorithm doesn’t process only desirable results. It processes every result. Think like a scientist and gather your data.

Practice Strewing

Once you’ve studied your child, themes are bound to arise. Your daughter lights up when she sees the neighborhood dog, and your son can’t stop talking about the martial-arts birthday party he went to last week. Your toddler is newly enamored of her older brother’s velcro sneakers.

Here is where your work begins. Ever heard of strewing? It’s a tried-and-true educational method rooted in the idea that a child cares more about an idea when they discover it independently or stumble upon it accidentally. It’s tremendously engaging and surprisingly hands off for the parent. In strewing, you simply lay out an assortment of things for a child to discover independently. Not too many, and not all at once, but enough for your child to notice within the home. Perhaps you borrow a Benji Blu-ray from the library and leave it on the coffee table. Maybe you pull out your husband’s old tae kwon do nunchucks from the attic and leave them on the kitchen counter. Can you find some Velcro in your old sewing kit for your toddler to enjoy?

Just as their eyes would light up on their TikTok discovery page, their natural curiosity will be piqued. From here, offer them the independence to explore, offering age-appropriate guidance along the way.

Invite a Deep Dive

As the newness of this discovery wears off, you’ll begin to understand a clearer picture of what your child’s interest is rooted in. Take your time to gather more information. Maybe Benji was a flop because your daughter didn’t actually light up over the neighborhood dog itself but over the fact that the neighborhood dog happened to be wearing a sweater, and how cute was that? And your son liked the ninja party because he wore a mask but couldn’t care less about nunchucks. Turns out your toddler ignored the velcro from your sewing kit but loved organizing your many colored threads. In the process of deep-diving, you’ll learn the nuances of his or her interest so you can begin the strewing process again with clearer, more targeted information—just like the algorithm does.

Establish Check-Ins

Once you’ve successfully landed on your child’s interest, help them solidify this interest as part of your family rhythm. You can take this any direction you’d like! It could be as simple as taking daily walks to visit her favorite sweatered dog, or as dedicated as teaching your daughter how to knit a new dog sweater for him for Christmas. Whatever you decide, help build momentum for your child’s interest by encouraging them toward a particular goal the whole family can help support.

Of course, interests come and go quickly in a child’s life, so feel free to leap around and delve into new ideas. No data will be lost, no experience will be wasted. Remember: think like a feed! Something new and exciting is just waiting to be discovered—for your child, for you, and for the whole family.

Ask Questions

A popular way TikTok creators elicit engagement is by posing a question that sparks instant curiosity. Did you know a banana could do this? How come no one told me I’m doing my mascara the wrong way? Employ the strategy with your child, inviting him or her into exploration with you.

Discovery is a two-way street, and our kids love to see us learning right alongside them. The next time you learn how to soothe a paper cut with lip balm or cut a watermelon with dental floss, call your child over to see. Once they witness you embracing a teachable spirit, they’re more likely to approach you with new things they’re learning, too. The result? A home that flows freely with ideas, inspiration, and shared experience.

Make a Prediction

By now, you’ll have mentally and informally gathered dozens—if not hundreds!—of data points between you and your child. It’s time to employ predictive personalization: if your child likes X, will she then like Y? While it sounds complex, I’m willing to bet you employ this strategy nearly every day. If my son likes tomatoes, will he eat this curry? If my teen likes hikes, should we all go backpacking this summer? If my baby isn’t sleeping well, should we try a sound machine? Blackout blinds? Earlier bedtime?

Here’s where you’re guaranteed to beat the algorithm. You’re using a foolproof strategy: an N of 1. An N of 1 trial is a case study done on a single patient to find subtle results that get lost when employed on a larger scale. “Many measurements from one person over a period of time rather than fewer measurements from a large pool of people lead to specialized optimization” (Schmoon, n.d.).

And that’s where you, the parent, can shine. You can specialize. You can optimize. You can look at every ounce of data and, you, the expert analyst, gets to decide what happens next.

Better Results Tomorrow

Your predictions aren’t going to be perfect. But the algorithm isn’t either. Maybe your teen wrinkles his nose at your attempt to recreate his favorite falafel order. Maybe your daughter hates the book you brought home from the library. Maybe your son is less than impressed with your magic trick. Don’t fret. That’s the point. You’ve created another data touchpoint, one of many you can use to build on in the future.

 

SELFIE: How well do you know your kids? Journal through your experience working through predictive humanization with your child. At the top of a blank sheet of paper, list each child in your family. Underneath each name, make a list of recent moments that brought them joy and laughter. What sparked the delight? How can you recreate a similar moment? What will you try next? Get as specific as possible Then give your favorite idea a go! Report back to your list often to discover trends or areas worth revisiting. It’s all data, and it all matters.

Remember: you don’t have to rely solely on the data collected between you and your child. Look around at the experiences of other families you know and respect. Research what’s happening in the lives of today’s younger generations. What patterns are arising? What are you noticing? Take a few moments to think about what you’re seeing and what it might mean for your family.