Faith Filled Family Magazine November 2016 | Page 24

How Can Families
Have a Healthy
Relationship With
Technology?
Interview with Matt McKee
BY CLIVE MCLAREN

I

would like you to meet Matt
McKee, he is an ordained
minister; an itinerant communicator speaking to
churches, Youth conferences
and business communities. He
is also a writer, entrepreneur,
funding consultant to Christian
businesses and a Panel member of ‘Circle with Disney’, helping develop and sell smart technology that monitors how much
time family members spend on
the Internet using Facebook,
smart phones, chat rooms and
games etc. He has recently returned from Europe speaking in
Madrid, Berlin and Paris about
the Circle app.
He has written a book called ‘Parent chat’, which highlights how

we as parents struggle with our
children’s obsession with smart
devices, chat rooms, and computer games. He explains very
simply that we need to look firstly at our own use of this technology, asking the questions, ‘Are
we ourselves addicted to online
shopping, answering texts, playing and online games? For if we
as parents do not know how to
find a healthy balance of how
much we use this technology
and what we look at, then how
can we expect our children to
practice such self-discipline for
themselves?
He then shares how we can set a
good example, and then through
proactive conversations with our
children, help them to limit the