The Family Business with The Alessis: A Christian Parenting and Marriage Podcast · Steve and Mary Alessi | Pastors | Christian Parenting and Marriage Mentors

Smartphone or Smart Parent? How to Be Fully Present with Your Family (with guest Joey Odom)

·52 min·3 clips

Joey Odom says Jesus was talking about phones 2,000 years ago through the parable of the sower.

The episode begins with a familiar scene: phones at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and family dinners. Chris and Joey Odom use that image to talk about how strange the device has become in everyday life. The conversation opens with teasing and video chatter before settling into the main topic. Chris jokes with Joey about his hair and look, and the easy back-and-forth helps set a relaxed family tone. That looseness matters because the subject is serious. The phone is framed as something people keep reaching for even when it starts getting in the way of relationships. Joey says the problem is not just that phones are useful. It is that they have become a doorway to too many worlds at once. He argues that this is why the issue keeps showing up at dinner, in the car, and in the middle of ordinary routines. A key example comes from driving with a child in the back seat. A text arrives at a red light, the light changes, and the phone use keeps going until Instagram is open without much thought. That story lands because it feels automatic rather than dramatic. Joey connects that automatic quality to habit formation. He points to the way habits can be built so efficiently that the brain barely has to think. The same strength, he says, becomes a weakness when the habit is constant phone checking. The conversation also touches on the disappearance of landlines. They were phased out partly because people were tired of spam calls. Now the same pressure exists in a different form, with spam notifications and spam emails creating a nonstop stream of interruptions. Joey says people do not need to know everything about everybody all the time. That line gives the episode its moral center. The pace of modern life is presented as something worth questioning, not something to surrender to. At one point Joey asks whether this is the pace God built people to operate in. The question shifts the talk away from device management and toward formation. Chris agrees that the issue is not just health. It is spiritual. The phone is not only a tool. It shapes attention, anxiety, and the ability to be with the people right in front of you. The episode keeps returning to the idea that small environmental changes matter. If the room is set up for distraction, good intentions alone will not carry the day. That practical thread gives the conversation real traction. It is not abstract advice. It sounds like people working out a problem they actually live with. The tone stays warm and family-forward throughout. Even when the topic gets serious, the show keeps its conversational looseness and its willingness to laugh at itself. The close adds a practical invitation to download the Reclaim Well app, check out the box at goaro.com, and share, like, and subscribe. That ending fits the show’s style. It sounds like a family conversation that wants to help people make one small change at a time.

As heard by us

A practical, faith-shaped look at how phones can crowd out presence.

Phones at the family table are the hook, but the discussion widens into a plain warning about how attention slips away from the people already in the room.

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Why you'd press play

You want a family-centered reset for your phone habits.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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