~139~“Stop Sextortion Before It Happens – The Ultimate Teen‑Safety Solution” Derek & Jeff Cyberdive

#DigitalParenting, #AquaOnePhone, #ParentalControl, #SextortionPrevention, #TransparencyTech, #RealTimeMonitoring, #TeenSafety, #CyberDive, #OnlinePrivacyMyth, #InclusiveTech

In this power‑packed episode, host Cheryl sits down with Jeff and Derek, the co‑founders of Cyber Dive, to reveal a groundbreaking solution that flips the script on teen‑phone parenting. Instead of the old “ban‑or‑monitor” approach, their AquaOne smartphone gives families real‑time transparency while preserving trust—no surveillance, shame, or secret‑keeping.

We unpack:

• The historic “fear cycle” that has followed every new teen obsession—from penny dreadfuls to TikTok.
• How AquaOne’s “Instant Replay” and sextortion‑blocking AI stop the most dangerous threats before they happen.
• Real‑world stories of parents catching risky chats on Roblox, having productive conversations, and even discovering hidden passions (ballet, football, Egypt‑obsession).
• Why privacy is an illusion and how embracing transparency actually strengthens family bonds.
• Practical tips for when and how to give your teen a phone—from age‑3 experiments to the teen years—plus guidance for neuro‑divergent families.

If you’re a parent of a teenager who’s tired of “secret‑keeping,” “over‑monitoring,” and the endless “what‑if” nightmare, this episode gives you a clear, actionable path forward—plus a 30‑day risk‑free trial of the AquaOne phone.

Listen now and discover how you can replace fear with confidence, secrecy with open dialogue, and “what‑ifs” with real solutions.

Core Features & How They Solve Specific Problems

Derek and Jeff.wav
Generated using Transcript LOL
=========================================

Speaker 1
00:00 - 00:40
Welcome to another episode of Parenting Teens Advice Redefined for Today's World, where we have these real raw, honest conversations on how to not just raise kids, but raise humans into this world. And today I am joined by two leaders who are reshaping how families navigate the digital world. Jeff and Derek are the co-founders of Cyber Dive, a company building a technology that doesn't aim to control teens, but to strengthen the connection between parents and their kids in a world where screens often pull them apart. Jeff brings years of senior leadership from global finance, pairing strategy with a mission to protect what matters most.

Speaker 1
00:40 - 01:12
Derek draws from an experience as a U.S. Army captain and digital threat analyst, taking the precision and clarity of that work and applying it to create tools that actually support real conversations at home. Together they created the AquaOne smartphone and an ecosystem designed to eliminate the fear cycle so many parents get caught in and instead give families a way to stay connected without surveillance, shame, or struggle. Welcome Derek and Jeff. I'm so glad to have you here.

Speaker 1
01:12 - 01:16
Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. That was very eloquent by the way. It was beautiful.

Speaker 1
01:16 - 01:21
Did you like that? It was impressive. It was very remarkable. Like it was engaging and it was really good.

Speaker 1
01:21 - 01:26
Well it kept you engaged, that's the important thing. And we know the story very well. Yeah, that's true. I hope so.

Speaker 1
01:27 - 01:45
And this, listen, we, I want, you know, that's my version of it, but there's no better energy than your version of your story. So, and any question or any conversation, I'm going to let you guys decide who talks when I'm not going to point a finger at who needs to answer anything. So tell us though, tell us what is your mission? What is your why?

Speaker 1
01:45 - 02:01
What is the whole point of this ACWA? I think we can sum that up very simply. Our whole why here is to make human life better. I mean, that is sort of the ethos of the company and why we do what we do every single day.

Speaker 1
02:01 - 02:51
We understand that families, children, parents are facing serious problems with what's going on with social media and the online world and that ecosystem, and we wanted to create Products that were reliable and as dependable as electricity. be able to turn bridges, or excuse me, be able to turn walls sideways and turn those into bridges where parents were finally able to get access to what their kids are doing because we know parents really do have a fundamental right to understand what is being fed, what their kids are ingesting every single day. So for us, it really sort of goes back to making human life better and making a difference while we're all living on this spinning rock called Earth.

Speaker 1
02:52 - 03:21
Hmm. You know, I, when I think about your, and I've done a number of episodes on cyber protection and how we can, you know, navigate and monitor and, and, uh, you know, apps to, to control what our kids are doing on the phones. And I think this is just, and no slam to any of that. I think everybody trying to help in this system is, is helpful, but this is revolutionary because this is, we're not now trying to put a bandaid on yesterday's problem.

Speaker 1
03:21 - 03:43
We're not trying to back paddle all the safety. I think your product is revolutionary because we are now, you have now solved a problem for today. You're not trying to fix yesterday. So before I keep going, explain the product, like tell people, because there's no way I can tell people the way you can, what this product is and what it does before we get into talking more about it.

Speaker 1
03:43 - 04:01
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think a lot of things that parents don't really realize is there's this cycle of fear that's been happening for the past hundred years or more. In the late 1800s, parents were afraid of their kids reading too much. They thought that their kids reading Penny Dreadfuls were causing them to become delinquent.

Speaker 1
04:02 - 04:14
It happened with comic books. It happened with movies and jazz music, violent video games, video games in general, Dungeons and Dragons. And now we're at a point where it's happening with the internet and social media. Parents everywhere are afraid.

Speaker 1
04:14 - 04:25
And the response to that has always been the same. Let's try to restrict it. Let's try to ban it. Let's try to come up with a rating system to determine which one's bad and which one's okay and what age level is appropriate.

Speaker 1
04:26 - 04:36
And it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked for our parents or our grandparents or great grandparents. And it's not working for families today. It's not working for kids today, especially.

Speaker 1
04:36 - 05:03
So we realized that when we started our company, when we created our product, we weren't going to follow that same approach. We were going to do something radically different. And our radically different approach is centered on the foundation of transparency. So when a child has an aqua one phone parents are able to see anything that is showing up on that screen 24 7 365 No matter if it's in tiktok, no matter if it's in snapchat No matter if it's an encrypted app parents are able to see it

Speaker 1
05:03 - 05:28
in real time and go back in history and view everything But not just that we also recognize the fact that there are risks for kids these days risks that didn't exist when they were listening to music on their walkman One of the main risks that we focus on is something called sextortion. Sextortion happens when kids connect with someone in whatever means they can on the internet. A lot of times it happens chatting in a game like Roblox.

Speaker 1
05:28 - 05:45
And then that person they connect with convinces that child to send a nude photo. And they hold that photo for ransom for the kid. You want the child to pay money. somewhere internationally so that it's not leaked out to their school, to their friends, to their family.

Speaker 1
05:46 - 06:14
And unfortunately, we've seen a lot of cases in the last few years where kids end up committing suicide. They're too afraid to tell their parents. And so we realized we wanted to do something to stop that from taking place with our phones. So we have a model that's running on the phone that in real time, if any of the cameras front or back camera is trying to be used to take a nude photo, it prevents that photo from being taken, immediately locks the phone and sends an alert to the

Speaker 1
06:14 - 06:38
parent. Because we realize that if we can stop it at the most crucial moment of taking and sending the photo, sextortion can't happen. And to go one step further, We also pair that with another feature, it's called Instant Replay. And what that does is every single thing that that child does on their phone, the Apple one, that is sent to the parent dashboard all in real time.

Speaker 1
06:39 - 07:07
Most importantly, it doesn't even matter if it's encrypted. So if it's on WhatsApp, if it's something that's disappearing on Snapchat, all of that goes to the parent dashboard. So for us, We didn't really want to build a product that sort of falls in the line with like nailing jello to a wall. You have to build something that is absolutely incredible because we also knew if we were going to rely on social media companies to change things, it was going to be Christmas Eve for a very long time.

Speaker 1
07:08 - 07:28
It was never going to happen. So we understand there's a hero and a villain in a story and we take pride in being the hero. I couldn't agree more. And when I think about when I think about the fear of tech as a parent, that whole fear of tech and like, what are you trying to dissolve first?

Speaker 1
07:28 - 07:47
I mean, besides, you know, that the nude photo, like, what do you what problem are you solving? What are you eliminating for fear right there? Like, as opposed to try to backpedal on these apps and monitor, like, what fear have you eliminated right there and then right off the top? The first and foremost fear that we want to eliminate is the fear of secrecy.

Speaker 1
07:47 - 08:16
Because we know that the harm and the shame can only grow in that space, that dark space of secrecy. My kids have had phones from a very young age, our phones specifically, and it is a completely different experience than any other parents I've talked to. We have a lot of customers who ended up buying our phone because they tried an iPhone first, or they tried getting a different phone. They tried installing different parental control apps and realized that it was a losing game.

Speaker 1
08:16 - 08:35
Their kids figure out ways around it. And they realized that trying to prevent their kids from doing the things that they wanted Just created more secrets it created an environment where their kids would figure out ways around it they use a friends device they find a way to do it because kids are really really smart. and they will figure out a way around it.

Speaker 1
08:35 - 08:58
So what we did is we took an approach of transparency. We aren't trying to advise parents on here's the right apps for your children, here's the right types of content they should see or not see. We believe that you get to make that determination for your family, but no matter what decision you make, you should have absolute transparency of what's going on. And for us, we understand the genie's out of the bottle.

Speaker 1
08:58 - 09:12
Phones are not going away. And there have been a lot of solutions out there that were sort of predicated on the thought process of blocking everything. Stop them from having phones. Stop them from seeing this.

Speaker 1
09:12 - 09:39
We think there's a generation of parents who also have grown up on social media who understand there's also a great side to social media. There are so many incredible things that a child can learn from places around the world. That's political movements, things of genocide, learning just how to bake a pie, how to hit a fastball. These are great things that sort of this generation is able to learn so much faster.

Speaker 1
09:39 - 10:08
Than past generations because they can pick up that information so quickly, but there's been sort of this fear marketing block block block Don't let them have it and as derek indicated earlier We've seen that before rap music Certain comic books dungeons and dragons I'll give you the best one. Elvis shaking his hips. I mean, like, I mean, that's sort of like the level that it goes to.

Speaker 1
10:08 - 10:45
So we really sort of stand on that foundation of parents want to understand and have conversations that are often very comfortable. But are also sometimes not comfortable and it's okay to have those conversations because it is a tough world that kids are living in now and parents have to navigate that and that's very difficult but we wanted to create a product that sort of bridge that gap and stop this idea of living like in a like morally inverted universe where privacy. And as Derek will tell you, privacy does not exist, I might add.

Speaker 1
10:45 - 11:08
Privacy is one of the things that we get asked about a lot, I think. And I have a unique experience. When I was in the army, I was doing a lot of work, something that they call open source intelligence now. And specifically, we were looking at how ISIS would spread their propaganda and recruit people using social media and using the Internet, using things like WhatsApp and Telegram.

Speaker 1
11:09 - 11:28
And through that experience, I learned a lot about the types of things and the types of information that you can find about people on the Internet. And we like to say that we believe in privacy. We love the fact that Apple markets themselves. The iPhone is the most secure and private smartphone.

Speaker 1
11:28 - 11:39
But the fact of the matter is that you probably still like using Uber Eats or DoorDash to order your food. There is information about you out there. People can figure out where you live. They can figure out your habits.

Speaker 1
11:40 - 11:59
They can figure out a lot of things about you because we love the benefits of living in a connected world. We say that we like privacy. We say that we believe in it, but we don't actually take actions to support that. And we need to admit to ourselves that this belief, this illusion we have of privacy really is just an illusion.

Speaker 1
12:00 - 12:22
Yeah, listen, I just finished a legal issue where I had to do a docusign, online docusign through my lawyer. And somebody, now you know this term better than I do, spoofed my email. And all of a sudden, I'm getting responses from 7,000 people in my email as saying, oh, hey, I couldn't open your DocuSign. It's like, oh my fricking God.

Speaker 1
12:22 - 12:34
So this came through a lawyer's office. You're right. You feel like that is probably the safest place where something's coming from? Nope, it's not.

Speaker 1
12:34 - 13:02
And, you know, I go back to, I did an episode on, you know, video games and blocking our kids and my kids were young, never let them play Vice City on video games that I'm dating myself, never. And I was so proud. And after I released the episode, my son and all of his cousins started messaging me saying, do you actually think he didn't come to our place and play? So there's no getting around it.

Speaker 1
13:02 - 13:21
Like there's just no getting around it. So, and that's what I mean by, you know, this is revolutionary because things are here and we need to, we need to look at it dead on, not back paddle and start, Oh, we got to cover this up. And then we got to look after this up and Oh, this one came up. Like, I think this solves the problem, which is fantastic.

Speaker 1
13:21 - 13:45
And another thing that I really, kids aren't going to see things that they shouldn't see. And then I feel like it causes them shame because they shouldn't see it. And then they can't talk to their parents about it because they feel so much shame about whatever it is. So your phone, I think completely solves that problem.

Speaker 1
13:45 - 14:00
Correct? Well, so I actually want to ask you a question. How, how would you say we define the boundaries between what kids should and should not see? Well, what I'm thinking is right now is pornography.

Speaker 1
14:01 - 14:24
That's right. The kid's Googling and wondering, and they don't have these conversations at home, or they do, but they're still wondering. And they don't want to ask the question, so they start Googling. And then if it's not coming through the parent block, whatever they're using to band-aid the issue, now the kid sees something that now they perceive as what it should be.

Speaker 1
14:25 - 15:05
What not normal life is um and say in sex in the sex issues and and now they feel shame because now I can't ask this Whereas if it pops and that's one thing I think like I think there's many different issues where I think kids shouldn't shouldn't see but I think that's something that when they're getting the wrong perception of what it is. I'm not saying kids should be blocked from sex ed, but I think when, when kids are young and looking at pornography there, they've got a whole different view about what it should look like, what they should look like in these, in these situations. So that would be, it's a good point.

Speaker 1
15:05 - 15:50
You bring that up. But I think one of the fundamental issues sort of with the stances, If kids are looking up pornography and they're thinking this is the way things should be, the problem that sort of exists is they are also seeing that all over social media because a lot of the things on TikTok and Instagram are not pornography, but they're highly suggestive and very explicit. So it's almost if I speak to a lot of parents and we do that a lot where they say, I don't want my child to see pornography, but, they're over here on this platform looking at these sort of videos going through that are almost like a millimeter away

Speaker 1
15:50 - 16:46
from And the problem that I think that we see is that Kids on average are spending hours sometimes watching scrolling and Sort of being lobotomized with this is what you're supposed to look like this is how you're supposed to act Girls are supposed to be choked and hit Conversely boys guess what you're supposed to do you're supposed to choke and hit them because they find that sexually exciting And when you're getting those themes just constantly going over and over again I would almost argue from my point of view that pornography is Not as bad as what they're being fed every single second because pornography is sort of like hey I want to take a look at this event Whereas when they revert back to what they're looking on social media, it's actually a behavioral change. This is how you should act.

Speaker 1
16:46 - 16:56
This is what you have to do. And again, from our point of view, we don't major in things we're minor at. We do not wear halos here. We cannot solve every single problem.

Speaker 1
16:56 - 17:21
We certainly have views about certain things, but what we do know is we build great product that addresses the issue, that stops the screaming pain that parents are going to have. But I think when you start to look at things at the root level, it's like, which chapter are we going to look at first? Is it what's happening on this platform and how they're being lobotomized? Because those platforms really are now the puppet master in those kids' lives.

Speaker 1
17:21 - 17:39
It's not us anymore. Very hard for us to be able to do that but I think that sort of there is this dichotomy of like. We don't want them to do this but wait a minute they still get it over here in a very. A very suggestive way.

Speaker 1
17:39 - 18:10
So where do we sort of draw the line in that? Yeah, and I think at the end of the day what we do know is That kids are going to be exposed to things that we as parents might not necessarily want them to I know you talked before about your experience with vice city That was an era where it was so common for parents to really They just didn't want their kids to be exposed to the violence that was in video games like that. We thought that if they were exposed to violence in those video games, that it could lead to them being violent themselves.

Speaker 1
18:11 - 18:48
And there's studies that have shown that this worst fear that we have about, you know, kids becoming violent from video games, specifically school shooters, they actually played less violent video games on average than the rest of their counterpart peers. So this thought that we had of a connection between what kids are exposed to in a controlled environment, like a video game, leading to our worst possible outcome is not true. And we, unfortunately, as parents, have applied that same logic for a really long time. So when it comes to our products, we know that we can't stop kids from being exposed to things that are going to make us scared as parents.

Speaker 1
18:48 - 19:21
But what we can do Is be there when they do get exposed to hit exposed to it so that we can help shape what that experience is like help shape So that it doesn't turn into their entire view of what reality is That's a really good point. So I want to know then what conversation between the parents and I'm going to say teens, cause that's who we work with. Does this phone make possible that wasn't happening before? What conversations are parents having with their kids because of this phone, because of Aqua compared to they have an iPhone?

Speaker 1
19:22 - 19:32
Every conversation. There's so many. I have a specific example. So, uh, I have three kids who love to play Roblox.

Speaker 1
19:34 - 20:13
And it's very important for us, because of the risk of things like sextortion, that they don't become friends with and chat with strangers, especially direct message chat with strangers. I'm a pretty technically adept person, so I've gone to as far as I can go in Roblox parental control features, and they are imperfect, just like the control features in any platform are imperfect. So there was one day that my fiance and I, we were upstairs and we overheard two of our kids downstairs and one of them whispered to the other and said, Oh, tell them that I'm not actually your like blood sister. Tell them I'm your step sister.

Speaker 1
20:15 - 20:30
And that sounded a little suspicious to us. So just like our therapist trained us to do, we took some deep breaths before we went and like confronted the situation. But when we talked to them, we asked them, you know, were you chatting with someone on Roblox? And they both said, no.

Speaker 1
20:30 - 21:00
As kids usually do now at this point. If we didn't have our aqua one phone and we didn't have the ability to go back and see everything that would be the end of the conversation because we had a suspicion they denied it. And so we either have to try to prove to them that our accusation is correct, or they just continue to stonewall and deny it. Now, I'm not going to get into the psychological mechanics of why kids lie, all of those things.

Speaker 1
21:00 - 21:16
It's a normal thing that kids do. We all did it when we were kids. However, the conversation is different now because instead of just trying to accuse them based on our suspicion, we were able to go back and see the screen for screen replay of exactly how it happened. We were able to sit next to them and show them what happened.

Speaker 1
21:16 - 21:56
And instead of having a conversation about why it's so bad to lie, we were able to have a conversation about Whether or not they could actually prove and verify that this isn't some forty five year old man. Yes it's much more productive of a conversation and it never would have happened if it wasn't for our product and on the other side of that which i think is really interesting. Will our product it allows parents again to see everything so you finally have an ability to have more meaningful conversations than just how was your day. We all know that is the the blanket statement we all make because we're programmed to say that And we know the response is just good great.

Speaker 1
21:56 - 22:05
I mean, it's just sort of like hi How are you when we say that on the phone? We really aren't saying to the person tell me how you are. Yeah, you know It's just like hi. How are you?

Speaker 1
22:05 - 22:32
Let's move on. You know, but some people take it as oh, how am I? Let me tell you like and they give you the life story and so forth And i think for us there is an ability for parents to see things that are just i open it and it's not just always negative things but if you have a child that is in ballet and you notice that she is watching youtube videos of football.

Speaker 1
22:32 - 23:07
That gives you an indicator, hey, maybe she likes this. It gives the parent the ability to know if a child likes a certain music star. That parent can take action and then buy tickets to go with their child to a concert if they like looking at Egypt. A parent can go on amazon and buy a book about egypt and about the now good So there are these like Parents have this ability now to really integrate down sort of at a granular level and sort of curate How they're going to parent because they can see

Speaker 1
23:08 - 23:22
my child loves mcdonald's. Well, guess what? I'm going to order tonight on doordash mcdonald's and samia, we believe that is a better way to parent than just the general How is your day? Because you're not going to get it out of them.

Speaker 1
23:22 - 23:33
They're not just they're just not going to do it. And they never have done it. And I love that. I love what you talked about, actually, the lying thing, because now.

Speaker 1
23:33 - 24:01
Now, we're not even now, we're not even testing them now and even instead of saying, oh, were you doing this in order for them to lie back to us? Well, now we have the phone. I can see that you were really interested in talking to this guy on roadblocks and eliminate that whole opportunity to lie. Because now we're training our kids to know they know they're going to see everything like so they're not in defense mode.

Speaker 1
24:01 - 24:26
Right, I feel like that sometimes and and i'm not you know i'm not questioning how you talk to your kids or ask them about what i'm what i'm saying is sometimes when we're parenting teens I feel like we need to kind of change our approach because so many parents Like just dive in for the lie. Did you when they when they know the like why ask a kid? Did they do something?

Speaker 1
24:26 - 24:36
Well, you know full well, I've got the evidence right here. My mom said to me one day, do you smoke? She had the cigarettes behind her back. I said, yeah.

Speaker 1
24:37 - 25:05
She said, fuck, I don't know what to do with that. But it was just lucky. But I mean, she, you know, it's sometimes I feel like when we're coming at things a little differently with our teenagers in the sense that You know, I already know I already know so i'm not even gonna i'm not gonna give you the opportunity to lie because i've got it which which is such a promo for your phone because now the kids are like Even if they've done it once now, they're like, oh, okay.

Speaker 1
25:05 - 25:25
Well, there's just no point in in that opportunity and I think this brings out such Great conversation. So I want to say so first of all age wise the phone What age are we given our kids? whatever age you as a parent feel comfortable giving your child a phone. The youngest in my family was three years old.

Speaker 1
25:26 - 25:47
Okay. A lot of parents are choosing to give their children phones when they feel like they've aged out of a tablet. You know, we just talked to a mom the other day, actually, her daughter is 11 and she was telling us, you know, my daughter has had an iPad for a really long time. She's been asking for a phone for years and I keep trying to show her how everything she really wants to do she can do on her iPad.

Speaker 1
25:49 - 26:12
That doesn't sound like a very great situation. You're continuing to try to convince your daughter to not want something that she has wanted for so many years. Rather than fighting that battle, get a phone that they can still do everything they want to do with, everything that they can still do on their tablet. It's not going to feel like a kid's phone because it's a new Google Pixel 9.

Speaker 1
26:13 - 26:39
It is a fancier phone than most of their friends and peers are going to have. that you as a mom or a dad or a step parent or a guardian are going to be able to see every single thing that they do. So not even if they stray, not even if they see something that's going to be an uncomfortable conversation, but when you know exactly when it happens and how it happened. And I think also, it's not like a, like a monolith idea.

Speaker 1
26:41 - 26:53
We often get that question. When should parents give a phone to their kids? It is so individualized. It is so individualized, depending on the parent's work schedule.

Speaker 1
26:54 - 27:29
We have a parent who is in South Carolina and a customer and she cuts meat overnight at the grocery store. That is her job. She's in the grocery store cutting meat and she has three kids at home, if I recall it correctly. And they're young kids, but she wants to know what the single mom she wants to know what those kids are doing at night all throughout the night and I think that this sort of like We we use this as a society really?

Speaker 1
27:30 - 27:51
like to get Answers where we don't have to think and what I mean by that is Do not buy a phone for your kid until they're 14 And that's sort of like absolves the parent from having to like critically think about anything. They're just like, I'm going to revert back. Oh, 14 years old. That's it.

Speaker 1
27:51 - 28:05
That's it. That's like my blanket way of sort of doing parenting. But that one size fit all mentality that doesn't really work. I mean, that might work for one family, but for a separate family, that might not work at all.

Speaker 1
28:06 - 28:17
And I think that that is the key component that we like to regulate as a society like that. Here it is age bracket, age bracket. Here's when you can smoke. Here's when you can drink.

Speaker 1
28:17 - 28:33
Here's when you can drive a car. Here's when you go from fifth grade. You know, we're sort of used to that sort of that that thinking, but For phones, it's such a different world now. I mean you're able to transfer money you're able to do Location track.

Speaker 1
28:33 - 29:10
I mean you're able to do things that are so useful and again, I I think there is a a segment of society that is so fear-based on what's happening on social media and with um with phones, but I would also argue a lot of those people who sort of perpetuate that stance, also use them too. You know, so it's sort of like, you gotta, you sort of have to pick how you're going to do it, right? And it's funny because until I had a conversation with youse, you've got youse.

Speaker 1
29:10 - 29:16
Who says youse? No, I like youse. Yeah, youse. English teacher, no.

Speaker 1
29:18 - 29:47
But I would say, okay, kids don't, you don't get a phone until they're, you know, not going to be under your roof or at school. Then they get a phone, but it's only for texting, for emergency purposes. And then I would say social media, 16 or older, because I figure we have 16 years to build some values into their system so they know what moral compass they have. But now I'm talking to you guys, I'm going, okay, this makes sense to me.

Speaker 1
29:47 - 30:31
Now I need to backtrack because if they have this, if they have your technology, it makes so much sense to me because now we are able to have It kind of bridges that gap in in like oh all my friends have this and i'm and i'm looking at their phone anyway And well if they have your technology, I know exactly what my kids are looking at and it doesn't matter what age and I love that I I and I think that's great because again one of my daughters at some point I remember she had said to me, I'm seeing something on social media about a genocide of some people in Africa. And I want to help with that.

Speaker 1
30:31 - 30:38
Mm-hmm. That's a beautiful thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah And if she didn't have the phone she wouldn't have seen it.

Speaker 1
30:38 - 31:15
She would have never known that and so I think parents are sometimes so reluctant to sort of allow Parent allow their kids to experience social media because believe me it's scary. I mean, yeah, believe me we see some some scary shit and that just is part of it and But there's also a good side. Again, when you can have someone see a group of people who are suffering in a country and have empathy and say, hey, can I find a charity to give money to help them? That only increases the intellect of your child.

Speaker 1
31:16 - 31:43
You're actually getting them to sort of critically think outside of the three blocks they live in within their community. They start to understand, Oh, wait a minute. I do have a great because I can order pizza. I have running water I have some communities Don't have and I think there's sort of a way that this generation who's growing up on social media Is I believe better than us?

Speaker 1
31:43 - 32:17
Yeah, and I really don't and I I also there's a saying that we have in the military no plan survives first contact And the idea of that is we can try to prepare as much as we want for every scenario we can read all of the things we can watch all the things take all of the classes but everything changes once you're actually in the middle of the experience and I think at the end of the day. Most parents would agree that we don't want our kids to be convinced that the internet is evil. We don't want our kids to learn that social media is only bad.

Speaker 1
32:18 - 32:33
I think most parents realize that the internet does have good things. Social media does have good things. What we want is our kids to learn how to use it effectively and safely. And so the idea is that we can try to send them to all of these classes.

Speaker 1
32:33 - 32:48
We can try to read them all of these books. We can try to have all of these conversations and that's all great. But if you're trying to teach a child to ride a bike, you're not going to give them a book on how to ride a bike. You're going to teach them how to ride a bike by riding a bike.

Speaker 1
32:49 - 33:03
And it's the same thing with social media, the same thing with the internet. So when it comes down to when to give it to your child, when are you ready to teach them how to ride the bike? That's so good. And, you know, I'm going to put my neurodivergent hat on here because that's what I do.

Speaker 1
33:03 - 33:50
And that's what I've done for 25 years. And our kids who have a diagnosis socially, cognitively, are three and four years behind. So we have a 16-year-old and we think they can have 16-year-old responsibilities and 16-year-old freedoms, but really a kid with autism or ADHD could easily be really 12. But they see they are 16, chronologically, they see their 16-year-old friends, but you can't trust them with a phone because What why are you laughing because when you made a certain hand movement it did the like, uh automatic gesture thumbs up like thing Yeah, it popped up like

Speaker 1
33:50 - 34:48
a little thumbs up like yeah I better set up my hands because I don't know It was funny So I'm thinking with your phone though like how amazing that is for kids to feel inclusive and In their age, you know, they just want to be so many kids You know want to be and i'm saying this because this is what they say. I just want to be normal. I just want to be normal but mom's like I I can't trust him with the phone I know he is 16, but he does things 12 year olds would do and I can't but your phone solves the problem Like I love that talk about inclusivity Yeah, you know,

Speaker 1
34:48 - 35:08
I actually One of my kids has a neurodivergent diagnosis. We're a blended family. It's been a really interesting experience for me because my three kids use their phones in completely different ways. One of my kids, he loves to create things.

Speaker 1
35:09 - 35:30
One of my kids loves to be social. Then one, frankly, he just really likes to talk to his dad. And I'm his stepdad, but I love the fact that he can text and call his biological dad whenever he wants. And he'll do it for random things any time of the day.

Speaker 1
35:31 - 35:57
The fact that he can do that, I don't need to make a determination that he's old enough to do that when he's 14 or 16, or he shouldn't be able to do that now, or the risks that he can download other apps. No, because he can have that experience and he can feel more normal. And frankly, he is, he is his own version of normal and he should be able to have that experience. You know, I was saying that was interesting to just listen to Derek right there.

Speaker 1
35:57 - 36:27
Is that. We often have some of our employees Talk to um specifically like my children and their friends and those are and those are ages between like let's say like 15 and like 18 years old The thing that was so interesting when we practice those little seminars is we go in there with the mindset of Tell us about bullying Yeah. How much bullying is affecting you?

Speaker 1
36:27 - 36:55
Tell us about bullying. You know, we sort of like get like, that's sort of like our like North star that we hang on because I think we hear that so much and like, and their responses to that are like, who cares about bullying? Like that's nothing even that we even think about, you know? And it's sort of, and I know, and when we heard those responses, it's sort of like, reminds me like, We're also adults Who are often off target?

Speaker 1
36:55 - 37:16
Like just just so off target just I mean i'm just reminded I will always remember the you know, and I believe it was tipper gore trying, you know to get curse words out of rap music You know, that was like such a big thing. We are not going to have curse words. And it goes back to Elvis's hips. You know, sort of that same concept.

Speaker 1
37:16 - 37:35
And I often think that for us as a company, we don't try to make any determinations. We can't do that. We are we are not able to do that. But I think what product wise what we do and it allows parents to really see this is what my kids are concerned about.

Speaker 1
37:36 - 37:58
This is what's on their sort of mosaic of things that are issues. Yes, parents and governments are talking about this and that, but I've often found that when. You have older generations dictating what is good for a younger generation. That older generation, they're already past.

Speaker 1
37:58 - 38:08
It's beyond them. We're part of that older generation. I mean, I'm poking at myself, too. I mean, I'm self-deprecating to myself as well.

Speaker 1
38:08 - 38:24
I don't know it all as well. But I just think that, again, kids are smarter today than we were. They know so much more about the world. They know so much more about so many different factors.

Speaker 1
38:24 - 38:37
Yes, there is a lot of terrible stuff online. Again, as you said earlier, Derek was in the army. He was in military intelligence. He saw some incredibly sort of nefarious things.

Speaker 1
38:38 - 39:03
And we know that kids see nefarious things every day. Sometimes it's just someone sending something in a group text. That that kid wasn't even looking for, but here's a video of someone putting explosives in a dog's mouth. You know, that's sort of, I would say, those thematics that kids are seeing all the time and we see as adults.

Speaker 1
39:03 - 39:18
I mean, If you want to see it, anything, you know, you can look it up right now and you can find it and find it anything. Yeah. I mean, that thing pops in your head now before that wasn't feasible, right? You popped in your head and you were like, would I go grab an encyclopedia?

Speaker 1
39:18 - 39:42
I mean, it just exists, but that does exist now. And I think it takes a different set of parenting skills in order to navigate that. And I think we put so much blame on the kids. You know them ban this ban that and I often like to say hey parents listen We also have to adapt to that as well.

Speaker 1
39:43 - 40:00
Like it's not it's not just them We have to be a little bit better in doing this and I think our phone sort of Bridges the gap between that too and allows that Perfect synergy there. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so okay So let's start with the beginning. Hey guys, I need your phone.

Speaker 1
40:00 - 40:09
What do I do? Go to our website, cyberdive.co, C-Y-B-E-R-D-I-V-E.co. You'll see a big button there. Click it, find out everything.

Speaker 1
40:09 - 40:17
It's really easy. Okay, so the phone arrives at my house, and now I'm gonna hand it to my kid. What am I saying? So you take it out of the box.

Speaker 1
40:17 - 40:26
There's actually instructions in the box for both you and your child. We've designed everything from the moment you get it to be a transparent conversation. There is no secrecy. There is no hiding.

Speaker 1
40:26 - 40:39
You set it up together. It's essentially turning it on, clicking three things, and then you're able to see everything that happens and they're able to use the phone just like any of their friends would. That's wild. I love it.

Speaker 1
40:40 - 40:47
I love it. It's so good. And then the parent gets to see everything. I mean, this new journey starts.

Speaker 1
40:47 - 41:03
And I think what we have found is that young kids, they just want to be online. They just want to experience this thing because guess what they have seen their whole lives? Their parents doing this. Damn right.

Speaker 1
41:04 - 41:23
Their parents sitting there driving, eating, brushing their teeth, doing everything while doing this. So this thing has got to be amazing, right? Like this thing, whatever, whatever this thing is doing, it's got to be the most incredible thing in the world. And so when young kids get that, they want to be online.

Speaker 1
41:23 - 41:36
They want to have conversations. And I think that's sort of a critical piece that has been missed that we've really tried to address. Yeah, this is so relevant. It's I'm so glad we had this conversation.

Speaker 1
41:36 - 41:54
I mean, this has just changed my brain and, and the way I would even be talking the rest of my podcast episodes about phones, like this is going to come up for sure. I, is there anything I didn't ask that you wanted to say? Cause I don't want to miss that. I don't think so.

Speaker 1
41:55 - 42:13
I think you covered everything. I think you covered everything. And I think again, from our point of view, it's a different way of thinking what we've built. It's a, it's a, it's a more radical approach, but that radical approach is something that parents are attracted to and should be attracted to.

Speaker 1
42:13 - 42:29
We don't believe in this fear idea. I want to say one more thing. I know a lot of parents are really scared to take the step of giving their child the phone because they feel like there's no turning back. Even if you don't buy our phone at the end of the day, you're still their parent, and you can always take it away.

Speaker 1
42:29 - 42:37
But I will say about our phone, we give you 30 days. So you can buy it. It shows up at your house. You can give it to your child.

Speaker 1
42:37 - 42:49
And if you realize, for whatever reason, that this feels like disaster for you, you can get your money back. No questions asked. To date, that has not happened a single time. How long has this phone been out?

Speaker 1
42:49 - 42:55
A little bit over a year? Over a year. Wow. It took us a lot of years to build it.

Speaker 1
42:55 - 43:10
It was very tough. It was a very circuitous, complex, and complicated avenue to do what we've done. But again, we knew we wanted to deliver something that was different. Different is really good, just like your hair.

Speaker 1
43:13 - 43:27
Actually, all of our hair, yeah. We all have different hair. I think it goes back to something that we talked about earlier. We sort of subjugated this word called normal.

Speaker 1
43:27 - 43:42
to me, there really isn't a normal, you know, like I'm certainly a very weird dude. And me too. And Derek is a weird dude too. I'm not a weird dude, but you're not right.

Speaker 1
43:42 - 44:14
You know, if, if everyone was like the same and sort of like, we all got the same like unicorn points, It's not great. We all want to be amazing, and I think that, again, with the phone, you get to do something that's different, and parents who want to be different wear their home, wear their superstar. And ahead of the game, like instead of trying to, like you said, I've said this so many times. Yeah, you know what?

Speaker 1
44:14 - 44:27
You gave them a phone and you screwed up. And now you gotta say, listen, sorry, I'm still the parent. I get to make these decisions and they're not gonna like it, but I'm sorry. I shouldn't have given you this kind of freedom.

Speaker 1
44:27 - 44:32
This eliminates that. But I just, I love this. This is amazing. You're my heroes.

Speaker 1
44:33 - 44:42
You're my heroes. I love this. You have a great personality. You're great at conversation.

Speaker 1
44:42 - 44:50
Yeah, this is great. You know what? It's easy when you have someone on the other side of the screen with the same mission. Like you just want to help.

Speaker 1
44:51 - 45:05
You just want to help. And I just think that, you know, We just can't parent the way we used to be parented. And we, we can't parent the way, like I can't parent the way I parent. Like so many things I've learned and it just comes in.

Speaker 1
45:05 - 45:12
And this is what I mean by backpedaling. You are getting ahead of the curve. And I love that. I think it's amazing.

Speaker 1
45:12 - 45:23
I'm going to put all of this in the show notes. I can't thank you enough for joining me today. And thank you for listening. Listen, parents, you got to share this because you either know a teen, love a teen, maybe like a teen, teach a teen, doesn't matter.

Speaker 1
45:24 - 45:32
Get this stuff out there because we need to be ahead of the curve. And this is revolutionary. I love it. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 1
45:32 - 45:44
Parenting Teens Advice Redefined. We will see you next time. Thank you for listening to another episode. I hope you loved this one as much as I did.

Speaker 1
45:44 - 46:19
And I just wanted to share something with you because, you know, parenting teens is not just about managing these challenges that we talk about on all the episodes. It's also about evolving alongside them. And I'm Cheryl and not only the host of this podcast, but I'm also the creator of Insight to Impact, coaching and consulting. And I help you moms of teens reconnect with your true selves so you can lead with purpose, you can parent with clarity, you can create stronger, more meaningful relationships with your kids.

Speaker 1
46:20 - 46:29
Because here's the truth. The transformation starts with you. Together, we will break free from the stress and overwhelm. We will rediscover your power.

Speaker 1
46:29 - 46:48
We will create the life and the family dynamic you always dreamed of. If you're ready to start this journey, let's do it. you might just not recognize your life in the next 90 days. It all starts with a call, there's no pitch, there's no pressure, just a call to see if I can help.

Speaker 1
46:49 - 47:11
We'll talk about your goals, we'll talk about what's making you feel stuck and what might be getting in your way and everything you need to connect with me is in the show notes. Again, I'm Cheryl. Thank you so much for joining me here on Parenting Teens, advice redefined for today's complex world and the creator of Insight to Impact Coaching and Consulting. Have a great day.