SHOW NOTES

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Elizabeth: You are listening to smart talks with the Elizabeth smart foundation.

I'm your host. Elizabeth smart, smart talks provide survivors and supporters with tools for healing, a sense of community and empowerment so we can all heal and move forward together.

Hello and welcome everyone back to Smart Talks. This is Elizabeth Smart . And I am very excited about our guest today. We have Clay Olson. I met Clay probably six years ago. And it was when he was at the beginning of Fight the New Drug.

And I remember being introduced to him and just thinking what he was doing was so amazing because so much of what I've worked in for the last decade and a half plus, there's a direct correlation between how pornography can very easily, not always, but very easily lead to abuse. And even in my own story, how pornography directly influenced me because my captors would look at it and they'd turn around and they'd want to reenact what they saw.

And that's actually how I first met Clay. But Clay is, this is like the very shortened and condensed version of his bio because he is an incredible, talented, brilliant, amazing person. But he is the Founder and CEO of Impact Suite, Fight the new Drug, Opal Design Group, Advent Creative and Timeline Films.

And actually today, even though, I don't know if I want to say I love talking about pornography, but I had a really good experience talking about that with Clay a few years ago, actually today's topic is a little bit different and I'm excited about it because I go out and do public presentations very often.

And without fail. I get asked, how do we protect our children? What do you teach your children? And quite honestly, I have been a parent for seven years. There are lots of other people out there who have been parents for 50 years, for 20 years. And so I don't honestly have all of the answers. And I can only say, what I know, which I'm still learning and what we're talking about today, I'm actually very grateful for, because I think it can help a lot of parents.

And it also gives me tools to then answer people's responses when they ask me how can they help their children? How can they protect their children? How can they talk with their children? So Clay, can you tell me about this app that you've developed that's called Raise?

[00:02:45] Clay: We are very excited and so much of my past and what I worked in years prior has culminated in this r esource that we now have called Raise and we're very excited to release it to the world at no cost, it's a free app to help parents navigate the challenges of today's digital landscape with their kids. And it's an app to really encourage and empower parents and educate parents on how to navigate this, because this is such a unique challenge to our day that our parents and their parents didn't have these challenges. So it's a unique time that there isn't a parental or generational script to rely upon. And so it's no wonder that a lot of parents just have some curiosities or concerns or anxieties around when to give their child a smartphone or how to protect the child against online predators or what to do about inappropriate content.

 We wanted to provide parents those answers in a very concise and convenient way that can age with them as their children grow up, that we can provide that support along the way. And along that journey,

[00:03:54] Elizabeth: I think that's so great because I remember when I first started speaking, and my dad actually would go out a lot with me and I could listen to what he had to say. I could listen to all these experts to what everyone else had to say. And then it was very easy for me to pick up on what it was. And initially it was pretty easy stuff. Things like, well, make sure your family computer is in the family room in a place where everyone can see it.

Make sure it's not in a private room, make sure their doors aren't closed. And now, fat lot of good that will do because everyone has a computer in the palm of their hands. And so this app that you're creating if a parent doesn't know anything about it, hears about it thinks this sounds great, I really need this. What is a parent going to see when they download this app and open it up?

[00:04:40] Clay: Yeah. Well, first of all, we want to make it personalized. So as they come in, they download the app. It's going to ask them to add their kids and it's not going to ask really personal information. They can use aliases if they want for their names and they, all they have to do is put it in their, the date, the month that they were born and the year, so that we can provide some guidance along the way as they age to 16 and and grow. We want to provide it in the timeframe of that transition or that maturing stage.

So we first ask them a few questions to get some answers so you can personalize the app for them. But once they're in, they're going to select a journey and that's going to be based on some preferences and some primary concerns that that parent will have. And so we have five primary journeys within the app.

And those journeys are a parent-child relationship. And even though that's not a technology specific journey it's core to your ability to influence the, that, that child. If you have that strong connection and relationship with child, your efforts within managing their screen time or protecting them in these areas are going to be much more well-received if we can strengthen that parent-child relationship.

Another journey is around cyber bullying. Another journey is around managing screen time. Another journey is around protecting your child against online predators. And another journey is around navigating inappropriate content o nline. So those are the five primary areas, and I'm sure as I read those off, a lot of parents were like, oh yeah, those are areas that I'm lost or I'm concerned. Or I have questions around. I don't know how to quite navigate that. When I get questions all the time from parents around, when should I give my child a smartphone or,

[00:06:15] Elizabeth: And have you come up with an answer to that? Cause I'd love to know that myself.

[00:06:19] Clay: Yeah. We do have an answer and it's probably not as definitive as you would like. Every parent would love to hear "by the age of 13, give your child a smartphone." And the reality is that every child is very different in their maturity level, in their environment, and what they have access to and their curiosities. And the truth of the matter is this smartphone's amazingly powerful and they are in large part just they have access to nearly all of human knowledge.

Right. And all the good and the bad. Parents really have to ask themselves when they hand over a smartphone, there's a lot of protections that they can engage with. But at what point are you comfortable with your child accessing social media? At what point are you comfortable with your child getting solicited for sexual images?

At what point are you comfortable with your child? Coming across inappropriate content, online pornography and other material. So. Obviously the answer to a lot of those questions are like, well, I'm not comfortable with those. And they have parents at the age of nine and 10 are handing over smartphones.

It's not a question of if, but when, and to what degree that that child will be exposed to those things. We caution parents to say, look ideally you would hold out longer than, we'd collectively, societaly kind of change that, that threshold to a later age, but you are more familiar with your child as they are engaging. There's a lot of new phones out that are more locked down with regard to social media, Trumie, Gab, Pinwheel and several others that that we would recommend first. My neighbor just the other day has a ten-year-old and he had an iPhone and she said, "is that unsafe for a child, a 11 year old to have an iPhone?"

And I said " why do you want the child to have an iPhone?" She said, "well, I need to be able to get ahold of him." I said, "okay, great. What else?" " I need to be able to know where he is" and I said, "Uhuh? What else?" And she said, "well, that's probably it. I just want to be able to connect with him and know where he is and an iPhone let's me track that."

And I said, "well, okay. There are a lot of other options that are going to be a lot more safe for your child than, than an iPhone and a lot cheaper than an iPhone." So again, we don't have a definitive age as to when your child should have a smartphone. It's more like what functionality does your child need?

And are there options that have that functionality at a more safe degree and safe level? We know parents that have 18 year olds that don't have smartphones with social media.

[00:08:39] Elizabeth: I feel like that would be the exception.

[00:08:42] Clay: That would be the exception. That's on the more, the extreme, and then we have, parents giving them to eight, nine-year-olds.

And so...

[00:08:49] Elizabeth: I mean, my seven year olds asked me, she has a friend who has one of those watches. A Gabb watch. And last year for Christmas, she was like, I want one, I want one. And I want one. And I ended up going to Costco and just get her like a little, Vtech watches that has no phone capability whatsoever anything.

And she accepted that last year, but I don't know how much longer she's going to accept that for.

[00:09:12] Clay: Yeah. And watches or a great replacement for a phone for a number of years, because you can control exactly what phone numbers can come in. So strange numbers, unsolicited numbers cannot come in. You can determine that as a parent what numbers will be allowed to be received. And they still have access to 9 1 1, if they get in trouble and then you can still track their location. And so all of those things that parents rely upon, it's like when they go to practice or when they're coming home from school, I just want to be able to connect with them.

And rightfully so, parents are concerned today more than ever. I remember growing up, we would just be roaming away with no access. The only access that my parents had to me as I was growing up was either a big, massive bell that my mom would ring in the neighborhood to say hey, come home or she would a whistle a unique whistle that would say that come home.

If I was in the r ange of that whistle, which oftentimes I wasn't, I was just gone into dirt hills and other places. And those days, sadly, are more limited for a lot of parents in America. A lot of parents are more concerned and they want to have a closer range access to their child. There's a lot of concerning things that have kind of developed over the years with regard to children's safety. And so I understand the concern and I share that concern with parents. However there are better ways to approach from getting that access and having that communication with your child , that don't then open them up to a lot of the dangers, that come with full, online access and smartphone access.

I know that there's a lot of pressure from our community and from other parents that, that are giving their children smartphones, they come home and say, "Hey, why are you the mean parent that hasn't gotten me what I want?" And I, and that's where we want to kind of start to change the societal norm, change the conversation within parents, much like we did with pornography, with changing the conversation among youth.

We want to change that among parents until we wake up to the realities of the challenges that we face online with our children and help navigate that in the healthy way. We are not anti-technology, quite the contrary. We love to know technology has provided so many benefits for us as a whole.

And it, it enhances learning experiences for our children and enhance our access to information and knowledge. And so it's so wonderful. Along with that, of course, as we know, there's been a lot of negatives. And most parents, that's the thing. Most parents are oblivious to those consequences or challenges.

So they, when they had their child a n iPhone, they're not thinking about those risks and in large part, due to the fact that they're unaware of those risks, that they're offering to their child at that time.

[00:11:47] Elizabeth: So in these five different journeys that you mentioned, can you walk me through, the child parental relationship. Could you walk me through that journey? Like when you say journey, is it like step one, spend 10 minutes one-on-one with your kid every day, check this box or what is it like?

[00:12:05] Clay: The journeys are set up to where we give bite-sized information on a daily basis. And they are roughly about a 10 day journey.

And so you can go at any pace you want, you can skip days or whatnot, or you could binge. But we provide it at a cadence that is a, roughly around 10 days. And you're gonna focus on that particular area for that duration of that journey. And it has videos, information that has been developed by a team of experts, professors, law enforcement and others that have come together to curate and cultivate this content and a wonderfully produced content. It also has challenges that we'll kind of pose to you and say, okay, for the next 24 hours, we want you to attempt or try this or think about some of you might be able to do in this.

 And that's the same structure for all of the different journeys. And so, depending upon what the parent is maybe concerned with, maybe there's an event that just occurred, maybe there's, they found that they're child has been accessing inappropriate content. And so they're going to be a little more dialed into that particular journey than others at this time.

And they have multiple children and multiple different needs for those children. So we want to be able to provide a lot of comprehensive resources for these zones. So this is more than just a blog post. We really dive deep to provide parents that knowledge and understanding to proceed with confidence and that's what we want to ultimately do.

So coming back to your question, H how does these journeys in that parent-child relationship? We again, with a number of experts in the field, we developed a cadence of understanding to understand the scope of the challenges that we face to understand hard, concrete solutions to proceed.

And even, by the time you conclude that particular journey, you will have action items that you will be engaging in, that you will be walking through. And all the while we allow the parents to be able to track on an individual child based to some, see the improvements over time, and set goals for you to engage with those children. And maybe set a goal to have that one-on-one time in that particular way, or set a goal to have this particular conversation. And you can track those improvements over time as well.

[00:14:03] Elizabeth: And is this something that when a parent goes through a journey once is it something that you encourage them to come back and go through again?

Is it fairly interactive or is it one and done or is it like a continuing education kind of piece?

[00:14:20] Clay: It can be either. So a parent can go through and once they finished all five journeys, they become Raise Certified, which is you can be a Raise Certified parent. And the more of those we have in our midst, the more we are linking arms together and saying, okay, this is how we're changing the societal norms around these conversations and we're more e quipped as parents to be able to navigate this whole collectively. And that actually stemmed from, I was invited to a dinner at a neighbor's house and they had ulterior motives. And I didn't know, as I showed up. They were asking me all sorts of questions and about their children and online access.

And at the end they said, okay, so will you join our, I can't remember the word they used, but club or, join, sign this agreement that you won't give your kids smartphones before this age because we're getting so much pressure from the neighborhood kids getting them, but we were trying to get, we're trying to recruit more parents onto our side so that we can collectively move forward in a more healthy direction.

And I was like, that's a brilliant, not necessarily that particular approach but rather this idea. Let's, let's all wake up together and let's get to a place where we can, not be our own enemies in the field making it harder for us to educate our children because other parents in our midst weren't as, as informed or aware, so it can be a certification and get to a place where you feel like you have the confidence and knowledge, but the reality is that this is going to ebb and flow for you. You're gonna get a lot of information, then you're not gonna retain it at all.

And you're also gonna come into different challenges at different times with different children. And so it's something that we encourage parents to come back to and engage within the journeys also within the community and support each other within the community. And parents can be supporting one another and providing ideas and encouragement there.

And and then we provide some education material based on the maturity stages of your children. We send out material and content that pulls you back into the journeys and also provide some new education corresponding to that maturity level of that child. So we're hitting it at multiple different levels.

I compare it sometimes to when my wife was pregnant, we signed up for a program that basically every week, I think that we got an email telling us, what stage or how big our child was in her stomach. And it was the size of a grape. And this is what was happening developmentally. And to learn more "click here."

So we want to do that along the journey of your children as they age and mature, we want to say, okay, your child is now facing these new challenges and you might want to have these conversations and implement this and take this survey to identify where their child is on this front and age with them.

So it can be done all at once. It can be iterative. We want to really meet the parent where they are and cultivate and support them along that path.

[00:17:07] Elizabeth: And going through this process, I'm really curious to know as a parent yourself, is there something that stood out more than others that you feel like will be really surprising to parents?

[00:17:20] Clay: There's a lot in here that many parents will be unaware of. And then part of that stems from my own past with creating Fight the New Drug over a decade ago. And speaking to hundreds of thousands of parents, much like you, Elizabeth, have spoken to so many people and you get questions and you get to answer a lot of questions are about your experience that you're, opening people's eyes to a reality that they are unaware of.

When we talk about the topic of pornography, most parents are completely oblivious to those realities. And so I wanted to bring that into this, but then expand it into other categories that were exciting for me to learn a little bit more as I worked with more professionals on that front. And so for me, I was shocked as I learned more about, and I feel like I'm fairly in the know, I feel like I'm fairly well-educated on these subjects.

 I didn't think that , I'd r un into too much that it wasn't aware of. But the reality is that particularly with online predators as I dug into that arena and realized the prevalence at which young people are being solicited by strangers and online, and the aggressive nature of how that happens and how, how rapidly that develops into very dangerous territory was shocking to me and concerning and it, our intention isn't to fearmonger the parent. Our intention isn't to just

[00:18:43] Elizabeth: Oh, I feel like I'm already there. I mean, personally.

[00:18:48] Clay: I guess our team's goal isn't simply to scare the parent and saying, yeah, these are the realities wake up. But rather to say, yes, these are the realities, but here's what we can do to protect. And there are a lot of things, like for instance, with online predators one of the primary things, and I'd actually be interested to hear your opinion on this Elizabeth because this is your area.

And when we talk about strangers online, and we are talking about online solicitation, we're not necessarily talking about all forms of predators and how they might seek children out, but primarily in an online environment, what we, what Jason Weiss, who I know, Jason is a detective in Oklahoma who spends his entire career catching these bad guys.

And he poses as a 14 year old girl in a lot of these communities and all of these apps. And he goes in and he, and within minutes, he is being solicited by dozens and dozens of men within a one to five mile radius in that area. And we've done this all over in rural Utah. We've done it in Oklahoma and other places where you just kind of think, well, that has to happen in the big city, but no it's happening here and it's happening really everywhere.

And, observing that with Jason and learning from him and asking him, "Jason what do you think we can parents can do to protect their children against these realities that most parents are oblivious to?" He went on to talk about the fact that we can put on filters, we can do this, we can do that.

And all of those are good. However, the number one thing a parent can do is teach the child these grooming tactics and we call them the seven red flags of online grooming. If we can teach the child to recognize these signs they will be their best personal filter. And yes, we can do a lot on our side and educate the child, but if they can recognize, oh my goodness, he's expressing some extreme forms of affection very early on, and we've not ever met in person. You know, this is the second time we've chatted in and he's telling me that he loves me. That's a red flag. Oh my goodness. He's, this individual is, 15 years older than me. That's a red flag. Oh my goodness. This person is telling me not to tell my parents about my communication, that sort of thing.

And the interesting thing about this is that we identify seven red flags and any one of those flags would be something to be concerned about. Two of those flags combined is almost a guarantee that you're dealing with a predator and you get three or four and it's, there's no question at all.

So, the child can recognize these signs. So we want to help the parents educate a child. It's not just the parents need to be educated. They need to help educate the children on these realities as they engage. So before they give them access to, to a smartphone as they get older even when that time does become appropriate, they need to have a level of awareness to child does because they're entering into an environment in which they will almost undoubtedly be solicited at some point in their life, whether they're by a stranger or by a peer. And if you combine peers and strangers, it's almost a hundred percent guarantee that they will be solicited, sexually solicited online b efore they graduated high school. And so it's not a question of if, but how many times and how often and to what degree.

So that was a shock to me, I guess the, just the prevalence of it. And so we wanted to give parents some action items on how to address that.

[00:22:07] Elizabeth: And those seven red flags are included in the Raise, like that would be part of your journey was to be learning about that and discussing that with your children.

[00:22:15] Clay: Correct. Yes. And a phase, two of Raise, which we're working on now is to actually develop a mini course for the youth themselves, and we'd have age specific, but we'd content for the youth so that they could almost take like a mini driver's ed prior to, getting access to the car. They be getting access , to a smart phone or being able to set up profiles online, that they would go through this to raise their awareness. Because most kids, they don't want to be manipulated. They don't want to be groomed. They don't want to be put into dangerous circumstances. If we can arm them prior to that, that we're going to have a lot more success and lower their likelihood of being groomed or being sexually solicited, or even worse being k idnapped and raped by those predators, as they asked to meet offline the likelihood dramatically decreases if they are aware of those signs so they can cut it off before it develops further, because they think that this person loves them.

They think that this person understands them better than their parents . And so they start to build this bond and that's what the real good groomers do that they build this bond. And they tell them how beautiful they are at a, at a time where they feel that their body's changing and they don't feel beautiful and they feel, they're very self-conscious about their body and they'd get all this affirmation and this praise and they say, wow, gosh, he gets me. And he loves me. And he understands things. And I'll trust him above my parents and they don't get it. And that's once you've crossed that line, you're in very dangerous territory.

[00:23:48] Elizabeth: Yeah. And where, and when, or is Raise available? So for parents listening to this podcast saying, this sounds great. This sounds amazing. Is it available right now or how soon will it be released?

[00:24:01] Clay: So, yes Raise is available now. It is free. It will always be free. We encourage you to access it and tell your friends about it. Tell other parents about it. We just want to get this into the hands of as many parents as possible.

And they can go to either joinraise.com for web experience, or they can go online to the app stores and look up Raise Parenting. And they will be able to download the app there and get that access.

[00:24:27] Elizabeth: I think that is honestly such a service that you are providing to parents because I know I get asked, like I said, at the beginning all the time and quite frankly, I'm not an expert.

I still feel like I'm still pretty new to the whole parenting game. Well, it's not really game, lifestyle, life choice, consequences. Um, but I don't have all the answers. And so honestly, I'm very grateful that you have worked so hard to help develop this and bring this and to allow it to be utilized for free. So I think that's a really great tool and I encourage everyone who listens to this to make sure you go to the app store, go type in Raise, Raise Parenting, r A I S E parenting.

And download it onto your phone and start your journeys today because I couldn't agree more with everything that Clay says. It's true. You can put so many safety measures and devices, block sites, firewalls, you can do so much to try to protect your children, but the truth is you will never be able to protect them completely.

It's like my parents, they thought that they protected us so perfectly. We lived in a really nice neighborhood. We lived in a really nice house. All of our doors and windows had locks on and we had a security system and even still, and my bedroom was not on the ground floor.

It was very high off the ground. Like even a regular ladder would have a hard time reaching my windows. And even still, I was kidnapped. So that's a very extreme example, but it is true, the best thing you can do is make sure that your children are educated, that they are with knowledge and information so that when this happens, they have, they already know this is not normal.

This is a red flag. This is not okay. And they have the tools to deal with it and can report it or can come back to you or they can immediately get off that website. Hopefully delete it, never go back on it ever again. But they at least can recognize what's going on. Hopefully remove themselves out of the path of danger.

So Clay, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy life and chatting with me today and thank you for all the work that you've done on Raise. And thank you, thank you to everyone for listening today for joining this episode of Smart Talks, and I hope to catch you again next time, next week. See you soon.