Jordan starts off by sharing an exciting community update: she was awarded a grant to place screen-free activity stations in town from the Morton Community Foundation. Jordan is preparing to celebrate National Children’s Book Week and Screen-Free Week on May 9th by organizing a local outdoor event in Morton. Helen is excited for summer after accepting a teaching position at the local community college. She will be working with high school students in the TRIO Upward Bound program. We then discuss ancestry, preserving memories and documenting the important (and the everyday) moments in our lives. We ponder what we hope to pass down to our future generations. Helen shares ideas from Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know and Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, two novels that explore how we document the present moment and question what happens to that documentation in the future. Helen also brings pieces of her dissertation into the discussion, including the history of the personal camera and how documenting famiy life has changed over time. Jordan then divulges the total number of photos and videos currently on her phone…it’s a lot. We try to reckon with how to preserve memories while also being present in the moment. We end by putting a request out for Joey Fatone to join our podcast.

Find Helen on Substack at ⁠⁠⁠Resonances⁠⁠⁠.

Join Jordan in ⁠⁠reConnect Morton⁠⁠⁠⁠ through Four Norms.

This week we are excited to a share a conversation with an expert in elementary school teaching: Mrs. Deb Gangstad aka Jordan’s first grade teacher at College Wood Elementary. With all of the changes that have happened (and are happening) to education, it is important to share the stories of educators who have been in the field for many years and can share their wisdom, expertise, and insights. For 28 years, Deb Gangstad was an elementary school teacher in the Carmel Clay school district in Carmel, Indiana. She shares with us how education policies may change over the years, but it is important to follow what you know is best for students and learning. We talk about how the introduction of comuters and devices into education have greatly impacted things like handwriting and developing social skills. Deb shares how her journey to education began at around age 5 when her dad (Eric Clark, also a teacher) would bring home pieces of broken chalk from his classroom. We talk about the value of play, the need for recess, and the importance of knowing what students’ needs are. We discuss the difficulties of parenting (and grandparenting) in this tech-filled world. We close with memories of a first grade end-of-the-year play Jordan still thinks about!

Find Helen on Substack at ⁠⁠Resonances⁠⁠.

Join Jordan in ⁠reConnect Morton⁠⁠⁠ through Four Norms.

We spend our episode focused on a recently published article by Natasha Singer in the New York Times, “Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones.” Before diving in, we recap our recent spring break and Easter travel adventures. And it turns out Helen’s daughter is no fan of the Easter Bunny. The article features a public middle school principal in Kansas, Mrs. Inge Esping, and her decision to eliminate her school’s 1:1 student Chromebook program this school year. We talk through the challenges teachers who have spent years using certain tech platforms to build their class materials may face and what it really looks like to renorm technology use in the classroom. We talk through ways districts can be more tech-intentional by sharing a resource developed by ScreenStrong: “Seven Core Values for Using Technology in the Classroom.” One thing Helen loved from the article was how reducing tech in the classroom led to students finding “old school” ways of being ornery, like sticking paper darts in the ceiling! We end the episode with Jordan sharing a 3rd grade, hand-written essay she recently discovered about her vision for Americas’s future.

Find Helen on Substack at ⁠Resonances⁠.

Join Jordan in reConnect Morton⁠⁠ through Four Norms ⁠.

Follow along with the episode by reading the NYT article on Chromebook remorse, reviewing the ScreenStrong Seven Core Values document and the Granville County Public Schools playbook, checking out the Phone Free Schools Report, catching up with our local news on tech use in a nearby school, and fact-checking Jordan on students' off-task behavior statistics :)

And then once you've done all that...give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Who doesn't love homework!?

We first catch up on our latest life happenings, including (but not limited to): an E.R. visit, book clubs, and trying to remember to promote our own various spaces on the internet: Substack, YouTube, and Four Norms. Then we dive into the results of the bellwether social media trial in Los Angeles that just concluded on March 24 and the implications for the future. The jury found that Meta and YouTube intentionally built addictive platforms, which caused harm to the plaintiff, K.G.M., and they awarded her several million dollars in damages. Jordan mainly followed along the trial with the coverage thanks to the Scrolling2Death podcast and Instagram account. We discuss the questions the jury had to answer and how the public can now view evidence online for themselves. Jordan talks about her emotional reactions to hearing the verdict and thinking of the many families that have lost children over the years due to social media harms. We recap some of the points Emily Cherkin made in Episode 31 about the differences between ed tech and tech ed and the importance of media literacy. Helen then gives us a lesson on em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens after Jordan shares a recent AI cheating mishap.

Find Helen on Substack at Resonances.

Join Jordan on Four Norms through reConnect Morton.

And why don’t you support Millennial Mom Thoughts on YouTube, too!

Follow up with the episode by reading the internal documents, learning more about the families impacted, and listening to an analysis of the verdict.

Helen made a rule that when you have your own podcast and it’s your birthday, you get to celebrate with an episode being asked a variety of questions. And because we are rule-followers (usually…see: Scattergories), we are sharing the second Millennial Mom Thoughts birthday tradition episode. Before we got into Helen’s thoughtful questions, Jordan insisted on a sharing a recent not-so-neighborly post-it incident involving anonymous mail and her precious dog. Then, we celebrate Jordan’s upcoming 40th birthday with 40ish questions in 40ish minutes! Get ready to learn a whole bunch of random (see also: interesting?) facts about Jordan. Want to know what Jordan’s favorite pasta is? Do you think you can guess what her favorite episodes of The Office are? How about her favorite concert? Helen attempts to ask a series of questions in a quick, Scattergories-style, but Jordan essentially says, it’s my party and I’ll disregard your rules if I want to. This should surprise nobody. Sit back and enjoy getting to know a little more about Jordan thanks to Helen’s expertly-created list of fun, silly, and thoughtful questions. And make sure to check out our Instagram account to view a few pictures described in the episode!

This week we share an interview with Jill Anderson, a mom, an educator, the founder of Mindful Tech Lessons, and, to many in her community, “the book lady.” Jill is a veteran K–6 teacher, and when she is not in the classroom with her third graders, she is often leading workshops that help parents and educators navigate the digital world with young people. Jill tells us about her journey through teaching and theater towards a degree in Educational Psychology and into her advocacy for healthy habits around technology. She shares stories about noticing the subtle messaging of social media and video games embedded in early literacy activities, and she details ways she has made her classroom almost entirely screen free. Jordan shares her admiration for the book boxes Jill has placed around her community and the ways this initiative has inspired her own project. We conclude our conversation by hearing more about a recent article picked up by the New York Times featuring Jill and her empowering work.

Learn more and connect with Jill at MindfulTechLessons.com

We reflect on our last episode with Emily Cherkin, and Jordan shares her not-so-conspiracy theory about why there was low engagement on the posts we shared on social media. Helen details her new video essay adventure: GenAI on GenAI. Listeners can find this on her Substack, Resonances. Helen aims to answer the question: What does it mean to be a teacher in a world with generative AI? Naturally, that conversation leads to aging and mustaches. Jordan shares about an upcoming early birthday celebration with friends, and Helen describes what a float bath is and how relaxing it is – Jordan, however, is still not convinced this is a good idea. We talk about Jordan’s recent decision to delete all photos of her kids off social media and the plan to no longer share their pictures. We talk through the factors that lead to this choice and how online spaces like social media are no longer what they once were. Jordan then shares how Meta patented an AI tool that allows social media accounts to continue posting posthumously. Helen discusses her latest class activity for her students with six scenarios to discuss ethical decision making in education. She modeled one of the scenarios after Jordan’s decision to opt out her son from the iPad at school. We end with Jordan talking through her current project of applying for a community grant to place screen-free activity bins in businesses with waiting areas around town where families bring their kids. And make sure to listen to the end to hear about how someone once left a lunchbox full of yogurt on Helen’s porch.

We are thrilled to share our conversation with Emily Cherkin, a.k.a. The Screentime Consultant. Emily shares her journey from being a middle school educator to now a fierce advocate for families and schools to be more tech-intentional. Emily started to notice a shift in education when, as a teacher, she was expected to use an online portal to communicate with students more than having in-person discussions. After her then kindergartener came home with a note asking for him to learn “ctrl+alt+delete” on the keyboard to take standardized testing, she turned into an accidental activist. Jordan shares her struggles with getting people involved locally, and Emily talks through the challenges she has faced in her own advocacy work. Emily describes what being tech-intentional means (spoiler alert: it doesn’t mean being anti-tech) as well as explaining the difference between ed tech and tech ed. Emily talks about how schools should be evaluating the potential use of any ed tech platforms by asking these four questions: Is it safe? Is it effective? Is it legal? Is it better? We talk about how the tide is turning as many states across the country are implementing bell-to-bell smartphone policies. Helen and Emily discuss their current experiences with teaching in higher ed and how to have discussions with future educators about the impact of technology on the profession. We talk about how we have to protect childhood and how these discussions are not anti-tech but pro-childhood and pro-learning.

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Visit thescreentimeconsultant.com to access the UnPlug EdTech Toolkit and connect with Emily.

Subscribe to Emily’s newsletter at substack.com/@emilycherkin.

Sign up for Emily’s free webinar on March 9, 2026: It’s time to talk about EdTech.

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Emily Cherkin, M.Ed., The Screentime Consultant, is leading the fight for a Tech-Intentional™ childhood. Emily works with schools, families, policymakers, and advocacy organizations to ensure the future of education prioritizes skills, safety, and relationships over screens, EdTech, and A.I. Emily is an author, speaker, consultant, and associate professor of public policy at the University of Washington. She is also co-chair of FairPlay’s Screens in Schools Action Network and the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against one of the largest EdTech companies in the world. Emily is also the creator of the UnPlug EdTech Toolkit.