MOMS OFF MUTE

Family Online Safety Institute (fosi.org)
  • 5.0 (9)
  • Kids & Family
  • Updated Weekly

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. 3d ago

    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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. Aug 26

    Sports Betting, Prediction Markets, and Letting Go with Amy and Nathan Bartko

    Send us Fan Mail Amy Bartko joins with her 19-year-old son Nathan, who just finished his first year of college, for a rare Moms Off Mute perspective: an actual young adult explaining how sports betting works among his friends. Last week Cindy and Jana started a conversation about betting apps and teens. This week Jordan hears from someone living it. Nathan talks about money lines, why betting makes the game more fun to watch, and the friends who think it's a way to make money. His honest take on that: the ones bragging about winning are never posting their losses. They also get into prediction markets, where you can bet on almost anything, and Jordan's very fair question about why insider information rules that govern Wall Street don't seem to apply here. Then Amy stays on for the parenting half. What happens when your kid turns 18 and can remove the parental controls himself? When did she stop reading the group chats? And why did her younger son get a device years earlier than her oldest did? Plus: the phone you pay for is still your phone (they will argue), the Sunday dinner rule, and a moment where Jordan asks about digital dating and Amy realizes she has never once thought about it. Homework this week: ask your college kid to call you. Nathan says they always have five minutes. This is Moms Off Mute. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org. 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.

  8. Aug 19

    Teen "Gambling" Apps, Password Rules, Class Parents and the Village That Remembers the Names with Cindy Smith and Jana Folmert

    Send us Fan Mail This week she is joined by returning guest Jana Folmert, who brought a friend: Cindy Smith, a mom of a 15- and 13-year-old who is not an expert, just figuring it out like everyone else. Cindy shares the rules that actually hold in her house: no face ID or thumbprint on the kids' phones, parents keep every password, and trust that gets extended as the years go by rather than handed over on day one. She also explains the conversation she has with her kids about why free apps are never really free. Then the conversation turns to something most parents haven't clocked yet: betting apps targeting teenagers, and the new prediction market apps built to sidestep gambling age restrictions entirely. Jana shares what she is seeing among her son's friends, and Cindy makes the case that gambling belongs on the same list as drugs and alcohol when it comes to conversations you cannot skip. Plus: Cindy took the quiz and got the Explorer, Jordan is a proud Firewall for now, and everyone agrees that the real parenting cheat code is having one friend who remembers all the kids' names. Homework this week: check in on the apps your teen has downloaded. Ask about the ones that look like games but aren't. This is Moms Off Mute. Want to find out your parenting archetype? Take the quiz at fosi.org. 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.

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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.

Information

  • Creator
    Family Online Safety Institute (fosi.org)
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 MOMS OFF MUTE
  • Show Website
    MOMS OFF MUTE