Front porches + Family rooms
Happy 2023! And on a personal note, happy t-minus 9 weeks until our oldest Boan turns 16. Which means lots of things. An unrestricted driver’s license. A school field trip to Washington DC without her parents. A first peek at college recruitment letters in our mailbox. And for our family, a key milestone in her digital journey: her first social media account.
{Gasp.} I know. We all thought the day would never come. {Wink.}
So. At the Boan house, we’ve shifted our mindset from protection to full-blown preparation for the changes ahead…and are leaning into the seven guideposts we want her to know as she enters the social media world.
Last month, we unpacked Guidepost #1: Our kids’ identity cannot be birthed in the social media world. And when they feel lost, it can't be found there either. It must be anchored outside the digital world—in a story that is ancient, beautiful and real.
When this foundation is secure, our next big challenge is to teach our kids to build upon it… to create social spaces that will support and hold them with care as they venture out to shine light in the world. We spend a ton of parenting energy helping them navigate friendships in the real world. But what does it look like to help them create social media spaces with that same intentionality?
I won't ever forget the time I asked Amy Crouch, daughter and co-author with Andy Crouch of My Techwise Life, what she thought about Finsta ("fake insta") accounts--you know, the ones kids create covertly, as a way to hide their digital lives from the world (and their parents). I expected to hear a detailed report of the horrors kids were facing in the Finsta world...but her response took me by surprise: "I actually wish more kids had Finstas and less kids had full-blown instas."
Wait...what?
Here's the thing: Amy was identifying the freedom that comes when you release the pressure to have one, perfectly curated Instagram feed. For the whole world to evaluate. A stream of posts where every. single. detail. matters.
It got me thinking: what if I ran with it? When my kids enter the social media world, what if I give them permission to create multiple spaces? What if I bless them to break down the standard "big feed" pressure, and help them reconstruct their digital spaces to serve different purposes?
For most of history, humans have constructed homes and buildings with rooms—to contain and support the social activities and functions that make up our lives. Dining rooms, bathrooms, bedrooms, mudrooms--they are built for specific activities and interactions that will happen there.
What would it look like to build our digital spaces like rooms in a house? To give our online interactions structure and purpose? Take a look.
Front Porch Purpose
Sometimes, you might want a feed with a big audience so you can share info quickly with a large number of people. Let's call this your "front porch." Front porches can be a fantastic place for short conversations, but just know that the bigger your audience gets, the greater pressure you will feel about what you post. So...you might find you don't want to post as often and your posts are mostly focused on aesthetic/appearance.
Family Room Purpose
If you are wanting a place where you can let down your guard, share more of your moments (the good, bad, and ugly), and feel less stress... create a "family room" account where you have strong limits around the number of people who you allow to follow you... and the level of trust you have with your tribe. You much not have as many likes or comments lighting up your notification bar...but the ones you have will be much more meaningful.
If you think about it, there is usually an inverse relationship between number of followers and number of posts. Think of it like a seesaw: when one goes up (thousands of followers)—the other goes down (a handful of perfectly curated posts). And inversely, with a small number of people in our digital family room, we might post more often and authentically.
But here is the rub: we live in a world where bigger is thought to be better. Both online and offline, the world is a stage and we love a large audience. Yet. Even Jesus—who used a growing platform to nourish 5,000 people—found a way to create a family room of 12 followers who he poured into deeply…intentionally. A roadmap to guide us—2,000 years later—in the social media world.
In a world of digital front porches, may we teach our kids to create and cultivate family rooms.
xo, kb
1 //
Grab your kids, watch the video, and brainstorm some practical ways to create family room accounts in the digital world. Need some ideas to get you started?
Start a weekly “3 things” text stream with your besties. These can be random tidbits, like product recommendations, or deeper updates, like prayer requests.
Use the “Close Friends” feature in Instagram to share your dailies with a small group of people you trust.
Try a parent/child daily text rhythm. Start your day by texting a prayer request or affirmation and end by texting a high/low from the day.
2 //
If you crave solid research about the impact of social media on Gen Z—especially on adolescents—check out this recent WSJ article unpacking the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Mr. Haidt imagines “literally launching our children into outer space” and letting their bodies grow there: “They would come out deformed and broken. Their limbs wouldn’t be right. You can’t physically grow up in outer space. Human bodies can’t do that.” Yet “we basically do that to them socially. We launched them into outer space around the year 2012,” he says, “and then we expect that they will grow up normally without having normal human experiences.” Adding it to my bucket list to ask Jonathan Haidt if this might be related to our need for Front Porches and Family Rooms. ;)
3 //
Loving Christianity Today’s news podcast, The Bulletin, and was grateful for the opportunity to join host Mike Cosper and editor in chief Russell Moore for Episode 005: Still Bowling Alone—where these guys unpack what to do about a disconnected society; and the impact this has on even one of life’s most simple pleasures: going out to dinner. At the end, I join to talk about smartphone introduction. SO grateful for the thoughtful work CT is doing to help Christians live out our faith in a confusing, rapidly changing world. Check it out!