If your child suddenly got all their screen time back…
What would they actually do with it?
That’s the question at the heart of this week’s podcast episode.
I sat down with Kai Tang, founder of the Light Phone, and John Stewart, founder of Living School, to talk about:
Why the real problem isn’t phones… it’s the business model behind them
How Kai went from building smartphones for Motorola, Nokia and BlackBerry to walking away from the attention economy and creating Light Phone — a “tool, not a toy” that’s designed to be used as little as possible
What John is seeing in the classroom: how phones are reshaping kids’ social lives, learning and independence
And why Living School is about to trial Light Phones as intentional learning tools on buses and expeditions, instead of portable slot machines in kids’ pockets.
We also dig into:
Australia’s upcoming under-16 social media ban
The uncomfortable but accurate analogy between smartphones and cigarettes
Why our kids don’t just need new rules — they need a change in environment and for us to model a different relationship with tech.
Underneath it all is this one big idea:
If we stop letting tech hijack our attention,
what kind of parents — and what kind of humans —
do we get to become instead?
If you’ve ever looked at your phone after scrolling Instagram for an hour and thought “Why did I just waste all that time?”, I think you’ll really get a lot from this episode.
And if it sparks something for you, I’d love to hear your thoughts or stories—just hit reply.
Big Hug
Rich
Click here to find out more about Light’s new Light Phone III being trialled at Living School.
