Elijah Newell
Strategic Organizational Communications
“What does it take to solve [the issue of giving children devices when they’re too young becoming common practice]? How can people take the reins of society and steer it away from the cliff that it is moving toward?… at no time recorded in any history book has there ever been a meaningful change wrought in society without someone speaking up and people who hear what that person has to say acting on what they heard. If we want something to change, then someone has to speak up.”
– Elijah Newell, A Future Brighter Than Screens, Pg. 3.
A serious issue is growing in our society. Children are being given smart devices at too early of an age, which research and studies show is extremely detrimental to their development. What makes the issue worse is that so many parents are giving their children smart devices that parents are feeling pressured to give their children smart devices to help them fit in, even when they don’t want to.
It’s an issue that needs to be resolved. I have seen how technology affects children in the world around me through personal experiences and through content on the internet. I have seen too much to ever feel comfortable giving my children smart technology before they’re old and prepared enough to receive them. For my senior project, I wanted to help solve this issue. I didn’t want to dictate how parents raise their children. Instead, I wanted to influence them through compelling evidence and arguments.
I didn’t want this influence to only occur among residents of Rexburg. I wanted to reach a much larger audience, preferably communities all over the country. I didn’t have the means of launching any large-scale advertising efforts, but BYU-Idaho was a golden opportunity for me to get my message out there. College students don’t stay in the city where they study. They go home for the holiday breaks and when they graduate. They’re temporary residents. That means that if they see something occur here in Rexburg, then the news of that occurrence would be heard all over the country when they move on. It was a word-of-mouth opportunity that could easily get my message across.
In order to take advantage of this opportunity, I created a campaign brand that was targeted towards reaching students of BYU-Idaho and to give them the means of conveniently learning about why it’s better for children to be raised tech-free. I also wanted them to have the means of sharing that information with those who might believe that there’s not much harm in giving a child a tablet. In other words, I wanted to build a communication vehicle, and to provide a way for that vehicle to carry my message to my target audience. After establishing my initiative, I created Tech-Free Child Rearing: A Future Brighter Than Screens.
Tech-Free Child Rearing is a community outreach campaign meant to influence future, expecting, and current parents to withhold smart devices from their children until they are older. The main element of this campaign is a 50+ page online publication that provides readers with evidence of the negative consequences of raising children with technology and what happens when parents raise children tech-free.
The main focus of the community outreach efforts was distributing the publication to the public. The way I chose to do this was to distribute it directly to people myself and to hand it off to organizations that would benefit from having it as an educational resource that they could continuously distribute to people as they saw fit.
I emailed several organizations before I finished writing, and several organizations expressed interest in having the publication. Most of these entities were within in BYU-Idaho, but there were a couple local organizations that expressed their interest. The following are each of the organizations that expressed interest in receiving the publication:
- BYU-Idaho Copyright Office
- Department of Elementary, Early, and Special Education
- Department of Psychology
- H.O.P.E. Council/Wellness Center
- Madison Cares
- Rexburg Free Clinic
These entities have a PDF file of the publication and the distribution rights as licensees to distribute it to whoever they want and however they want. This enables the publication’s distribution to continue long after I’ve graduated from BYU-Idaho, which means that the opportunity to reach communities throughout the country will continuously be taken advantage of for years to come.
As for my own efforts to distribute the publication, here’s what I did: I created a web page using Canva’s site builder, and then I put the publication on there as a flip book (readers will have the best experience viewing it from a computer). Then, I reserved a booth on campus and I made flyers with QR codes. I purchased several materials to make the table look visually appealing to students that passed by. When I had everything I needed, I set up my booth on campus and I talked to anyone who stopped by.
The booth was an enormous success. I managed to hand out 92 flyers at my booth. There were so many students who were super supportive of my message and wanted to share the publication with people they knew. I even had some conversations with people who were unsure where they stood concerning the subject in which I was able to persuade them that raising children without smart devices is the best way to raise kids. If nothing else that I did was successful, then that would have been the thing that made the campaign a success: I influenced at least one future parent to withhold smart devices from their children until they’re older.
The success doesn’t stop there. I also got Scroll to cover a story on my project. I sent a press release to them a couple weeks prior to my booth times, and a reporter reached out to me and she covered a story on my campaign.
The article covered what my project was all about and included some comments I made in an interview that the reporter conducted at my booth. She also included a link to my publication in her story. In the weeks following the posting of the article, I had a couple classmates from some of my classes bring the article up during class with me, acknowledging that they had seen it and read it. This was a huge win for me because not only were numerous students becoming aware of the campaign, but they had a way to access the publication.
During the Senior Showcase, I had the opportunity to continue to share my publication with students. I handed out more flyers there, and even attracted the attention of BYU-I’s radio station. A radio host reached out to me after the showcase and scheduled an interview with me a few days prior to the time of writing. The interview will be aired on the radio and an article will be posted about my campaign.
Ultimately, this project attracted a lot of attention. Why? Because not only did I create a communication vehicle (and I give a lot of credit to God for assisting me with that, because it was a lot of work to do in the space of one month and He helped me balance that and everything else that I was responsible for during the semester) that could conveniently deliver my message, but it touched on a subject that’s developing and that’s on people’s minds. People want to do something about this issue. When they see the publication I wrote, they see an opportunity to help resolve it. From this, I learned that the most effective communication campaigns touch on things that are on the target audience’s minds in a convenient way.
I hope that this publication continues to influence parents long after I’ve graduated. I know that if people stand up for what’s right, then change will happen. We’re living in a society that’s drifting to the edge of a cliff. As I stated in my publication, when this happens, we just need to put our foot down and speak up about the issue. We cannot allow ourselves to go off a cliff just because of peer pressure.
Please read my publication. After you read it, do your research to determine whether or not the facts I shared are true. I promise you that there is an issue in our society with how technology is affecting children, and I promise you that raising them without it in their developing years is what’s best for them.
After you’ve read the publication, share what you learned – and the publication – with those around you who would benefit from it. By spreading the word in normal and natural ways, we can help people to see what’s going on when children are raised with technology and to choose to raise them tech-free so that their children will have a future brighter than a screen.
The publication can be viewed at techfreechildrearing.my.canva.site. Share the link on social media and those you know. Contact the previously mentioned organizations or me at elijah.byui.alumni@gmail.com for a PDF file, and then request written permission from me to distribute it if you wish to do so.