My tech-related goals for 2025

6 things I'm working toward this year

Hello, friends, and welcome to 2025! I’ve missed chatting with you here!

John went back to work yesterday and I’ve worked here and there this week, but the Christmas tree is still up, the kids are still home from school, and my parents are here visiting. Even though the calendar has flipped to a new year, we’re still in the post-holiday haze. And I’m not mad about it :)

But one thing I am clear on are my goals for this year. I am unabashedly a lover of goals: I’ve yet to find a better tool to make progress on the things that really matter to me, and uncovering and sharing my goals with likeminded communities over the last decade has led to so many of the things I treasure today. My life is richer, more joyful, and more purposeful because of the goals that have shaped it, and that goodness overflows to the people I love.

That’s certainly true when it comes to tech-related goals: I know any effort I put in to modeling healthy tech habits and a flourishing life in the real world will be the floor my kids rise from.

So! After thought, prayer, and conversation with John, I’d love to share with you my six tech-related goals for 2025 — some big, some tiny. And, of course, I’m hoping you’ll share yours with me in the comments!

1. Better understand our school-issued Chrome book.

June was issued a personal Chrome book in kindergarten by our county school district. She uses it most days at school, and brings it home each night to charge. (She does not use it at home, except to show us a project a few times a year. Shep uses a Chrome book at school, but does not bring it home.)

3.5 years in I have mostly relied on her good instincts (and conversations we’ve had at home) to avoid the pitfalls that come with a personal device, but this year, I’d like to learn more about what dangers are possible — and what we can do to protect against them. I’m chagrined to admit I know almost nothing about what protections the school or district has put in place on their network and devices to protect kids from harmful content, or what additional protections we might add at home. I want to remedy that.

2. Encourage June to bike to a friend’s home.

June has a good friend in our neighborhood who lives about one mile from our home. She’ll be nine next week, and in step with our desire to continually increase her “freedom in the real world” (a la Jon Haidt), I’d love to see her bike to that friend’s home independently sometime this year — maybe this summer. It would be a physical task (there are several hills between our homes) as well as a mental and emotional one (she’d need to navigate on her own, and put her accumulated traffic safety skills to the test). Without a smart device or tracker on her person, it would be a test of nerves for John and me, too.

I imagine the idea might make her nervous; I also think accomplishing it would be a great confidence boost. Of course, we’ll suggest but not insist on this, so if she doesn’t feel ready, that’s totally fine. We shall see!

3. Work toward a district-wide bell-to-bell school phone ban.

Late last year I connected with an informal (but influential!) parent group working toward a district-wide bell-to-bell phone ban in our school system. This is, unsurprisingly, an important cause to me, and I want to do everything I can to help further it. I don’t know exactly what this looks like, but based on conversations so far it might involve emailing or meeting with my school board representatives, talking with parents and PTA members at our elementary school, or even talking to news outlets (yikes!). Given the incredible momentum ignited by The Anxious Generation last year, I’m hopeful we’ll see real change in our own backyard in 2025.

4. Achieve active Wait Until 8th pledges in both our children’s grades.

I’m sure most of you are familiar with it, but in case you’re not: Wait Until 8th is a nationwide movement of more than 90,000 families who’ve committed to waiting until after eighth grade to give their kids a smart phone. Once ten families in your child’s school and grade have pledged to delay, the families who’ve opted in are notified that the pledge is active and receive each other’s contact info. (A powerful defense against claims of “but I’m the only one!”)

This one is obviously a bit out of my control, but I’d like to do my part by emailing the parents of both June’s and Shep’s classmates to share our convictions and invite them to sign on. I’ll be sending that email soon and will share both exactly what I send and the reaction I get here! :)

5. Practice the piano a few times a week.

In the interest of balancing my own creation vs. consumption scale, I’d like to continue practicing piano a few days each week. As we’ve listened to June play and helped her with pieces here and there, John and I have both rediscovered a love of the keys. This is not surprising: after laboring over screens and work-for-pay during the day, the analog act of creating beauty from nothing but our hearts and minds is potent to these two grown-ups! It’s brought us real joy. I’m aiming for 20 minutes four times a week, just like my daughter.

6. Clean out my phone screenshots day by day.

A few years ago I embarked on an expansive photo clean-up, and it was a grand success: I established a back-up system for my phone photos, I organized all of my existing digital photos by year, month, and event, and I cleared off my phone photo library entirely.

That was in 2020, and while the back-up system is still in place (praise), I have not kept up with organizing my photos in the years since, nor with clearing off my phone.

For this goal, I’d like to focus on just the screenshots. I know there are gems in there — recipes, playlists, book recommendations! — and I’d like to move them somewhere they’ll be useful to me. So, each day of the year, I’ll sort through and take action on just that day’s screenshots from every year that has some. For example, on January 1, I might view and take action on screenshots from January 1 of 2020, 2021, and 2024.¹ Just two days in, it’s already been a productive delight.

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Goals, by their nature, call attention to something we want to change, something that’s not as it should be. This can feel uncomfortable, but it’s a tension we can embrace. When perfection is not the expectation or goal, it becomes okay to admit that there are things we’d like to change about how we move through the world, and how we engage with technology. This is so freeing!

Bonus: research shows that when we set specific aims for ourselves, we’re more likely to achieve them. Success goes up when we write them down and share them, too. So, would you consider sharing with the group in the comments? One person’s willingness to share emboldens others. I can’t wait to hear what you’re focusing on!

P.S. You may recall that we started 2024 by talking about goals, too. I committed to completing 1,000 hours of deep work and not starting a TV show after 11pm, and many of you shared your goals, as well! In the name of accountability, a brief report: though I didn’t hit 1,000 hours, I logged more than 350 over 12 months and cultivated habits of focused presence that I’ll gratefully carry into a new year. And we were wildly successful with our TV cut-off time! :)

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1. This is super easy to do on an iPhone: just search “January 1 screenshots” and they’ll pop up from every year!