173: Navigating Media Choices with Neal Harmon of VidAngel

If your home is like mine, you’ve seen an uptick on the amount of time on screens and devices as we’ve all self-isolated.

Today I’m joined by Neal Harmon, co-founder of the streaming service VidAngel. We talk about the challenges and resources for parents navigating all of the media choices for our children.

Neal brings a lot of wisdom and some encouraging options to help our families.

If you find this podcast helpful, you can subscribe  and click here to find past topics and free resources. Feel free to share with others, as well! If you would like to help support Let’s Parent on Purpose, you can do so by becoming a patron.

I send a weekly email called “Things for Thursday” and it includes things I’ve found helpful related to parenting, marriage, and sometimes just things I find funny! You can sign up for “Things for Thursday” by joining my newsletter on my homepage.

Thank you for your continued support of this podcast. If you have a prayer request or if you have a topic suggestion or question, please contact me at my email.

Show Highlights

Neal Harmon is the CEO and co-founder of VidAngel, a streaming service that allows parents to skip objectionable content in entertainment using ground-breaking technology.

VidAngel has been highly-profiled for The Chosen, its original series about Jesus and the #1 crowdfunded media project in history, and its other incredible family-based content like Dry Bar Comedy. VidAngel recently made headlines by offering all of its streaming content free during the COVID-19 pandemic, provided people agree to social distancing of course.

Now that everything is being done at home during the lockdown, many parents are relaxing their policies on screentime. Regulate this by setting good expectations. Schedule your family’s media time for the week together. Before giving younger children devices, set up a contract with them, setting the parameters to using them to help them manage device fatigue. Making a pre-arranged agreement removes a lot of stress because you’ve talked about it in advance.

Having several children of different ages in the family can create difficulties when it comes to choosing what to watch together. What works for Neal’s family of nine children is scheduling two movie nights a week at their home, one where the group of older kids and group o younger kids get to choose what they want to watch separately, and one family night where they can find something to watch together.

Resources Mentioned

• Things for Thursday and free e-book: Text THINGS to 66866
• Website: VidAngel
• Show: Dry Bar Comedy
• Show: The Chosen
• Show: Some Good News
• Show: Never Failed
• Show: Hello Ninja
• Show: Spirit Riding Free