Parenting in a Tech World

Every month, 430 students at one Texas high school watched two of their own classmates lead an assembly on cyberbullying, online predators, and the gap between who teens are online and who they really are.

McKenzey Roach and Malayna Mitchell are graduating seniors who built and ran their school's monthly digital citizenship program, called CHAT, reaching every student at Lubbock-Cooper High School as part of a DECA project.

In this conversation, they walk through how a mandatory video segment nobody wanted to watch became something students actually engaged with, why they sent an anonymous survey to the entire school before choosing a single topic, and what it felt like to have their opinions on cyberbullying and online safety broadcast to freshmen and seniors alike. You'll hear their honest take on why the same post feels safe on Instagram but terrifying to say out loud, and what they'd tell an incoming freshman about building a social media presence without losing themselves in it.

Key insight: McKenzey and Malayna say the friendships that lasted through high school were the ones built face-to-face, not through a Snapchat quick add. Reach online and real connection, they agree, are not the same thing.

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Learn how Bark helps families navigate cyberbullying, screen habits, and online safety conversations at home: https://www.bark.us

Cyberbullying, drug conversations, sextortion risk, and violent threats aren't just happening on your kid's phone, they're showing up on school-issued laptops too. New Bark for Schools data breaks down exactly how often, by category and by state.

Titania Jordan, Chief Parent Officer at Bark Technologies, shares data from Bark's work protecting students across more than 3,700 school districts nationwide since the program launched free in response to the Parkland shooting.

In this episode, you'll hear the real alert breakdown from school-issued devices: violence-related content topped the list at almost 40%, with drug-related conversations close behind at nearly 23% and medically concerning content at almost 12%. Titania also shares a state-specific finding from Georgia, where over half of all alerts were tied to a child being contacted by a predator.

You'll also learn about Bark's free Connected Communities program, which brings hands-on digital safety education directly to fourth and fifth graders, and TechSafeLearning.org, a resource founded in memory of Nate Bronstein that gives parents templates and guidance for opting their kids out of unsafe school tech.

Key insight: In Georgia, more than half of all school-device safety alerts Bark sent were for a child being contacted by a predator.

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Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Learn more about how Bark protects kids on school-issued devices: https://www.bark.us/schools

Additional resources mentioned in this episode:
https://info.bark.us/tech-safe-learning
https://info.bark.us/cc

The teachers walking into classrooms right now grew up glued to screens too, and that's reshaping how teacher prep programs handle screen addiction, shortened attention spans, and phone distraction in the classroom.

Melanie Lay and Amy Hickman train future educators at Texas Tech University, and both also evaluate teacher preparation programs nationwide, Melanie through US PREP and Amy as a TPI-US inspector.

In this conversation, they break down what's actually being taught to future teachers about managing devices, social media, and mental health in the classroom, and what's still a gap. You'll hear why even 20-something teacher candidates get pulled off task by smartwatch notifications, why Texas now requires phones to stay in lockers during the school day, and what happens when a one-to-one device rollout has unintended consequences for kids' attention and eyesight.

Key insight: after a decade collecting data from 7.5 million families, Bark says pediatricians are now reaching out directly for guidance on what to tell parents about kids' screen time.

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Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Learn more about how Bark helps families navigate screen time and online safety: https://www.bark.us

Behind every Bark Phone, Watch, Home, or Sync that arrives on your doorstep, there's a team of real people, not robots, who packed it by hand. In this episode, you'll meet the humans responsible for making sure your child's safety device gets to your family the right way.

Shari manages Bark's distribution center in Utah, and Crystal is the operations support specialist who keeps daily operations running.

You'll hear what it was like to build the distribution center from an empty warehouse into a fully operational hub, including the mistakes, the surprises, and the moments that made the scale of the work suddenly feel real. Shari and Crystal share what they look for in the people who touch a Bark product before it reaches a family, and walk through what actually happens between the moment you place an order and the moment it lands on your porch.

Key insight: Every Bark product that ships to a family passes through the hands of real people who care about the mission, not an automated assembly line.

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Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Curious what's actually behind your child's safety setup? Learn more about Bark's family of products at https://www.bark.us.

Online predators are actively targeting your kids right now, and two Michigan men decided they couldn't wait for the system to act. Jake Hockey and C.J. of Pred Task Force built a team that runs undercover stings, with decoys posing as minors on dating apps, confronting suspects on camera, and calling law enforcement when the time is right.

Jake and C.J. are citizen investigators who have grown Pred Task Force from a local Michigan operation into a nationwide mission, with hundreds of thousands of followers watching their work unfold in real time. In four months of operation they caught dozens of offenders, and survived a loaded gun pulled on them during a confrontation.

They walk you through exactly how a sting works from setup to confrontation to law enforcement handoff. They also get honest about the dangers they face, the legal criticism their work has drawn from local prosecutors, and how they define their role when the system feels too slow. You'll hear what they've learned about how predators operate online and what parents consistently get wrong about where these conversations start.

Key insight: Predators aren't lurking on the dark web. They're finding kids on the same apps your teen uses every day, and early detection is the intervention that most victims never got.
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Resources and links mentioned in this episode:
Follow Pred Task Force on Instagram: https://info.bark.us/predtaskforce-ig
Follow Pred Task Force on Facebook: https://info.bark.us/predtaskforce-fb
Subscribe to the Pred Task Force YouTube channel: https://info.bark.us/predtaskforce-yt
Support Jake and CJ by purchasing PTF merch: https://info.bark.us/predtaskforce-merch

Join the conversation in our Parenting in a Tech World Facebook community: https://info.bark.us/join-pitw

Bark monitors your child's devices and alerts you to contact with potential predators before a conversation escalates: https://www.bark.us