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MOMS OFF MUTE

Family Online Safety Institute (fosi.org)

MOMS OFF MUTE is a podcast about Raising Digital Kids. Real Conversations with and for Modern Parents. Hosted by Mom Jordan Bivings Glover from the Family Online Safety Institute. Every season takes a fresh approach to the conversation.

  1. 6h ago

    AirTags in Your Kid’s Shoes, and the Case for Secret Independence with Leslie Pedder

    Send us Fan Mail Leslie came in having never considered it. She leaves mostly sold. Jordan plays digital parenting mentor this week on tracking the small humans in your life. Her oldest has AirTags in his shoes, and her reason isn’t the worst-case scenario most people assume. It’s the opposite. Tracking is how she gives her kids room to roam without hovering. Let them cross to the trampoline. Notice when the ice cream truck pulls them off it. Leslie lands on the episode's line: it’s a way to give a kid independence without letting them be fully independent. A baby step toward the park across the street, just as a plastic knife is a baby step into the kitchen. They also get into the summer camp drop-off that started it all, where Jordan handed over a three-year-old runner to counselors she had never met, and the evening the AirTag said he was still at camp an hour after she’d picked him up. Plus: how much of this is really about the kid you have, why some neighborhoods still run on streetlight rules, and the honest feeling underneath all of it. Leslie is at technology overload and bracing for one more device to learn. Jordan’s closing advice: find your digital parenting community in the wild. Find a mentor, find a firewall, find all of it. And the season question continues, with the entire Miseducation of Lauryn Hill entered into evidence and Leslie making a late case for a Teena Marie track with a double clap. What’s your greatest song of all time? Tell us on TikTok or wherever you listen to our podcast. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org/parenting. This is Moms Off Mute. New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, YouTube, and TikTok. Support the show Moms Off Mute is produced by the Family Online Safety Institute. Learn more at fosi.org/parenting. Follow Moms Off Mute on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.

  2. Oct 14

    Smart Glasses, Consent, and Singing Disney to Avoid Going Viral with Leslie Pedder and Deja Fowler

    Send us Fan Mail Jordan has a bone to pick with consent, and she brought backup. Producer Leslie Pedder and FOSI’s Deja Fowler join for a three-way conversation about camera glasses and what happens when recording stops being something you can see. Jordan’s core worry is simple: her kids are at the park, and she has no way of knowing who is recording them. Leslie, who wears glasses to actually see, calls it CCTV on your face. Deja points out the obvious problem with the recording indicator light: by the time you notice it blinking, you’re already on camera. They get into the murky legal line around filming in public, the way women are already being recorded and humiliated online without consent, and the workaround going around right now: sing a Disney song, because copyright enforcement moves faster than any protection you have as a person. Then the conversation turns to kids. Jordan makes the case that consent starts far earlier than most parents think. Her daughter smacked the camera away before she could talk. That’s consent too. Leslie closes with something a lot of parents will recognize: she loves technology, it scares her, and she’s starting to feel aged out of it before her daughter even turns two. Consent, consent, consent. If you have camera glasses, tell us how you’re using them. We want to hear about the good uses too. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org/parenting. This is Moms Off Mute. New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Support the show Moms Off Mute is produced by the Family Online Safety Institute. Learn more at fosi.org/parenting. Follow Moms Off Mute on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.

  3. Oct 7

    Why Are Parents AI-Editing Their Kids' Baby Photos? with Guest Jana Folmert

    Send us Fan Mail Some parents are uploading their entire photo libraries into AI, morphing the images, deleting the originals, and posting the results. Not lighting adjustments. Full reconstruction, from newborn photos to graduation pictures, to the point where you can't tell what the kid actually looks like. Jordan and Jana get into why that matters more than it might seem. Jordan, the Firewall, returns to the line she's held all season: AI is a tool, not a toy. It isn't there to think for you, replace you, or reconfigure you. She also connects it to body image, and what it teaches a kid when the version of them you keep is the edited one. Jana, the Mentor, starts without judgment and lands somewhere harder. Overwrite the originals and you're building fake memories of your own child. Then she flags the part most parents miss entirely: upload your photo library and those images become part of the database. It's in the fine print, and your kid's face could end up somewhere you never agreed to. Plus Jordan's comparison is worth sitting with. If you wouldn't hand your DNA to a genetic testing company, why would you upload your child's entire visual history? Her closing point: kids are citizens. They have a right to their original photos. And the season question rolls on, with listener picks from Sam Cooke to Marvin Gaye to Louis Armstrong, plus a Mariah Carey case Jordan is prepared to defend. What's your greatest song of all time? Tell us in the comments. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org/parenting. This is Moms Off Mute. New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Support the show Moms Off Mute is produced by the Family Online Safety Institute. Learn more at fosi.org/parenting. Follow Moms Off Mute on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.

  4. Sep 30

    The 9-Year-Old Who Built an AI Agent to Outsmart Her Parental Controls with guest Jana Folmert

    Send us Fan Mail A parent posted on Social Media asking for help: her nine-year-old had built an AI agent to bypass the family's parental controls, and she only just found out. Jordan and Jana take the story apart from both sides of the archetype divide. Jana, the Mentor, starts with curiosity. Find out how she did it, because assigning an agent access to every program is genuinely impressive. Then work backward through the security gaps, change the passwords, and have the conversation about why the boundary exists. Taking the devices away is the last resort, not the first. Jordan, the Firewall, lands on the difference between a tool and a toy. A nine-year-old who can build an agent is brilliant and should be encouraged, but agents are powerful, and most kids that age can't yet tell the two apart. Her take: teach the concept, save the tool for later. Jana also shares what works in her house with a 16-year-old. She holds the AI subscriptions and shares them with her son, so she can see what he's using and what he's asking. Her view is that the ship has sailed on saying no outright. Plus Jordan's closing nugget: if your kid knows how to do something you don't, ask them to teach you. You have a teacher in the house. Take advantage of it, then politely ask them to turn it off. And the question of the season continues. Jordan finally reveals her greatest song of all time, Jana adds a backup pick, and the listener submissions are rolling in. What's yours? Tell us in the comments. We're building the playlist. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org/parenting. This is Moms Off Mute. New episodes every Wednesday. Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Support the show Moms Off Mute is produced by the Family Online Safety Institute. Learn more at fosi.org/parenting. Follow Moms Off Mute on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.

  5. Sep 23

    We're Back! The Greatest Song of All Time and Saving the Room Parent with Jana Folmert

    Send us Fan Mail Moms Off Mute is back from summer break, and Season 3 kicks off with a thank you. The baby monitor episode has now reached nearly 5 million listens on TikTok, which is a lot more than the ten listeners Jordan was expecting. Jordan and returning guest Jana Folmert reflect on why that conversation struck such a nerve, and why the baby monitor is often a family's very first digital connection to their child. Then Jordan introduces the question of the season, one she wants you to take to the dinner table, the school pickup line, and the Thanksgiving table: what is the greatest song of all time? Jana's answer comes with a story about her dad's record collection. By the end of the season, FOSI will share a playlist of picks from more than 100 people, ages two to over 90. The real focus this season is the highly engaged parent. The room parent. The team captain. The one who always knows what color the kids are wearing on spirit day. Jordan shares a scene she witnessed at the gym: a mom running on the treadmill, working on her laptop, and taking a FaceTime from her kid because three other adults at home could not figure out how to approve a game download. The takeaway: one person should not have to do it all, and the digital village needs to be stacked too. Jana closes with practical advice for both sides of the household: how to teach kids to check with the other adults first, and why the less involved parent just needs one dinner table conversation to get up to speed on approvals and parental controls. Plus: FOSI Founder and CEO Stephen Balkam weighs in with his pick for the greatest song of all time. What is yours? Tell us in the comments. This is Moms Off Mute. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org. New episodes every Wednesday. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Support the show Moms Off Mute is produced by the Family Online Safety Institute. Learn more at fosi.org/parenting. Follow Moms Off Mute on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.

    We're Back! The Greatest Song of All Time and Saving the Room Parent with Jana Folmert
  6. Sep 16 ·  Bonus

    Best of Season 1, Clip 5 - The Three-Hour-a-Week Mom, the Sandwich Generation, and Making Peace with YouTube

    Send us Fan Mail A compilation of highlights from Jordan's earliest Moms Off Mute conversations. This one moves through several topics, so here is what to expect. Could you quantify the time you spend with your kids? Jordan heard a wildly successful CEO describe herself as a three-hour-a-week mom, and it stopped her in her tracks. Not with judgment, with genuine curiosity. She unpacks why she has never counted those hours herself, why she tracks screen time but not connection time, and how putting a number on it might either ease parent guilt or make it so much worse. Who actually sets the tone in your house. Jordan talks about being the blueprint in her household: the routines, the manners, the ground rules, the food. Her husband Evan travels for work, so she set the structure early, and he backed it. It works, but she is honest that it is a very particular kind of division of labor, and one that shows up in digital parenting too. The digital sandwich generation. You know the sandwich generation as caring for aging parents while raising kids. Jordan makes the case that there is a digital version of it: you are the tech support and the safety net for both a generation that finds it all new and exciting, and one that has never known anything else. And you are telling both of them to stop putting their business on the internet. A call to Jordan's mom. To test the theory, Jordan calls a boomer for reference: her own mother. They talk about Instagram and Facebook versus TikTok, and the story of Jordan's very first phone, which she only got because she was going abroad on a house building trip. Making peace with YouTube. Jordan explains how Miss Rachel arrived during a pregnancy, when she could no longer be the only entertainment, and why YouTube Kids became a tool she trusted. Plus the parental controls she thinks every parent should know about, and why the free version can still work if you set it up right. Homework this week: think back to when you first discovered YouTube, who showed it to you, and what role you want it to play in your family now. FOSI has a YouTube resource at fosi.org if you want to go deeper. https://fosi.org/program/the-fosi-guide-to-youtube/ This is Moms Off Mute. Listen to Season 2 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Support the show Moms Off Mute is produced by the Family Online Safety Institute. Learn more at fosi.org/parenting. Follow Moms Off Mute on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.

  7. Sep 9 ·  Bonus

    Best of Season 1, Clip 4 - Two Tablets, Solo Parenting, and What Family Movie Night Should Actually Look Like

    Send us Fan Mail Two kids, two tablets, one exhausted parent. Jordan's kids are 15 months apart, which means two different developmental stages and two different sets of interests. She explains why sitting between them, monitoring two screens, stopped making sense, and the turn-taking system that replaced it. No TVs in the bedrooms, one screen in the family room, and a simple question that settles every argument: who picked last time? Solo parenting, and why it deserves its own conversation. Jordan is married, and her husband travels for work most of the week, which means she is parenting solo most days. She talks honestly about a gap in how we discuss digital parenting: the advice usually assumes two adults splitting the load, or a single parent with a village nearby. Neither describes her house. If your support looks different from the default, this section is for you. When the digital community gets it right. Jordan makes the case that online parent communities are not all bad, sharing an example of parents helping each other find answers when the usual channels came up short. Her rule of thumb: use the community to get informed, then take it to the professional. Family screen time is not five people in headphones. After watching a scene in Apple TV's Platonic where a family solves a movie night argument by giving everyone their own device, Jordan pushes back. If the goal is time together, the time has to actually be together. Set times to be separate, set times to be shared, and know the difference. No judgment, no lectures. Just an honest look at what digital parenting actually looks like day to day. This is Moms Off Mute. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org/parenting Listen to Season 2 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Support the show Moms Off Mute is produced by the Family Online Safety Institute. Learn more at fosi.org/parenting. Follow Moms Off Mute on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.

  8. Sep 2

    The Digital Parenting Newlywed Game: Jordan and Evan Glover Answer for Each Other

    Send us Fan Mail For the Season 2 finale, Jordan brings on her most reluctant guest yet: her husband Evan Glover. Producer Leslie Pedder takes over as game host for a round of the Digital Parenting Newlywed Game, and the answers are honest, funny, and occasionally a little too honest. They cover the household tech rules (no screens during the week), what they are each too strict about, and the tech issue that comes up most at home. Spoiler: it involves Evan's phone, which is in his lap for most of this recording. The conversation gets real too. Jordan and Evan talk about the parenting conversations they had before kids, all of which were about the physical world, and none about the digital one. They reflect on how 90 minutes of A Bug's Life quietly became 90 minutes twice a day, and what they each want their kids to remember about how their family handled technology. Plus a speed round: who doom scrolls, who reads the privacy settings, who forgets the parental control password, and who genuinely has zero unread emails. That's a wrap on Season 2. Stay tuned for Season 3. This is Moms Off Mute. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org. Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Support the show Moms Off Mute is produced by the Family Online Safety Institute. Learn more at fosi.org/parenting. Follow Moms Off Mute on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional advice.

5
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

MOMS OFF MUTE is a podcast about Raising Digital Kids. Real Conversations with and for Modern Parents. Hosted by Mom Jordan Bivings Glover from the Family Online Safety Institute. Every season takes a fresh approach to the conversation.