Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago, I went to Boston to
Speaker 1: meet a doctor named Michael Rich. I was sitting in
Speaker 1: a large atrium inside Boston Children's Hospital with one of
Speaker 1: his patients, a fifteen year old called Jared and his
Speaker 1: mom Jen. I'm using only their first names for reasons
Speaker 1: that will become obvious. Good to see you, a guest.
Speaker 1: So are we all doing this? How are we doing this?
Speaker 1: You're the boss, one on one one. Mom there? Who
Speaker 1: do you want? It's up to you if you want
Speaker 1: to be there. That's completely for Michael Rich is a
Speaker 1: pediatrician who specializes in the way as online media can
Speaker 1: affect kids, and he's been seeing Jared because of his
Speaker 1: relationship with video games, especially multiplayer games like Minecraft and
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat. Where do you feel your gaming is getting
Speaker 1: in the way now? Is it getting in the way
Speaker 1: or do you think you've got it balanced and managed?
Speaker 1: I feel like I got it balanced, but not completely.
Speaker 1: There's define only still improvement, Like if it's staying up
Speaker 1: until a certain hour still playing games, it's definitely something
Speaker 1: to work upon. For a while, Jared was playing video
Speaker 1: games NonStop, but he was also suffering from anxiety and depression.
Speaker 1: When I was so addicted to the media, I had
Speaker 1: a hard time coming out of my room communicating with people.
Speaker 1: I would get consumed into the game and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: really have a sense of time, and I would sometimes
Speaker 1: be playing for hours without noticing it. Gaming started to
Speaker 1: eat up a bigger and bigger part of Jared's life,
Speaker 1: until it eventually threatened to spin out of control. That's
Speaker 1: when his family decided to get help. Hi. I'm brad
Speaker 1: Stone and I'm Pagatari, and this week on Decrypted, we're
Speaker 1: taking a look at a phenomenon widely called addiction to technology.
Speaker 1: But some kids, the Internet is a new kind of sanctuary,
Speaker 1: a place where they know their parents can't track them.
Speaker 1: But for others, screen time can become compulsive, even harmful,
Speaker 1: particularly if they're already prone to anxiety or mood disorders.
Speaker 1: Now some people are raising the alarm with the tech
Speaker 1: companies themselves, saying the industry needs to make sure it's
Speaker 1: most successful products aren't harming its most vulnerable users, and
Speaker 1: some companies might finally be paying attention to stay with us.
Speaker 1: I met Jen in the lobby of my hotel the
Speaker 1: day before Jared's appointment with Michael rich. Jen is lively,
Speaker 1: cracking jokes and laughing a lot. But I could feel
Speaker 1: the emotion as she started talking about her son. He's
Speaker 1: a great kid and he's loving. He's so sweet. He
Speaker 1: is very friendly. He shy. Jared is on the spectrum.
Speaker 1: He has Asperger's um. He's brillant. He's very smart, she said.
Speaker 1: Jared always loved playing with computers, and from a very
Speaker 1: young age he was really good at using them. You know,
Speaker 1: as he got older, if you didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do something, you would ask your four or five and
Speaker 1: six year old, you know, excuse me, can you show
Speaker 1: me how to fix this on the computer, And he'd
Speaker 1: come over and just, you know, tap away, and he'd
Speaker 1: fix it. Jared got his first tablet when he was
Speaker 1: ten years old, and a cell phone about two years later.
Speaker 1: He'd spend a lot of time playing video games like
Speaker 1: Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog with his little brother
Speaker 1: on the family we But in his preteen years, Jared's
Speaker 1: taste in games that started to change and he would
Speaker 1: spend more time playing on his own. I started getting
Speaker 1: more into fighting games, like certain games where there would
Speaker 1: be like you could play as a character and you
Speaker 1: would fight against a bunch of other people, not around
Speaker 1: the world, but you would fight against computers like um
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat. I started getting into that when I was
Speaker 1: somewhere around seventh grade. Jared would spend more and more
Speaker 1: time gaming, and his parents started to notice changes in
Speaker 1: Jared's behavior. If I would tell him to shut it off,
Speaker 1: he would become so angry, and that's not the kid
Speaker 1: he is. He would tantrum um and just get very
Speaker 1: bitter and very angry and lash out. The games were
Speaker 1: becoming all consuming, many of them, like a multiplayer game
Speaker 1: called Minecraft, a social there are other players all joining
Speaker 1: remotely from their own computers, and this became a way
Speaker 1: for Jared to connect with other people. And I think
Speaker 1: that's why Jared liked it so much. Because Jared has
Speaker 1: Asperger's and he has a UM he has social anxiety,
Speaker 1: but he also has a social deficit, so he felt
Speaker 1: more comfortable talking and communicating if the people weren't right
Speaker 1: there in front of him. And that's how he met
Speaker 1: a lot of the people that he would talk to
Speaker 1: and you know, would call his friends because they'd get
Speaker 1: on the computer every afternoon and night and morning and
Speaker 1: play and talk and talk and play and play and
Speaker 1: play and talk. But Jared's moods got worse as he
Speaker 1: went through middle school and he started spending even more
Speaker 1: time online. I noticed he would start staying in his
Speaker 1: room longer. Um. You know, if I would walk into
Speaker 1: his room, he shut the computer down, or UM he
Speaker 1: would switch screens. UM became very secretive. His parents didn't
Speaker 1: know it at the time, but Jared had started visiting
Speaker 1: porn sites, all easily available to him online. One night,
Speaker 1: things came to a head. So one night I went
Speaker 1: to check on the kids before I went to bed
Speaker 1: and make sure the TVs wore off whatever UM, and
Speaker 1: I noticed UM like a light underneath Jared's door, So
Speaker 1: I turned. I opened the door and Jared was not
Speaker 1: asleep and his tablet was on the bed. So I
Speaker 1: went over to grab the tablet and turn it off,
Speaker 1: and there was a porn video playing. So I grabbed
Speaker 1: the tablet and Jared immediately jumped up, and I grabbed
Speaker 1: the tablet and immediately ran into the kitchen and grabbed
Speaker 1: a hammer and shattered it. At first Jared, he immediately
Speaker 1: said that he has a problem, he can't help it.
Speaker 1: And my response to that was your problem is is
Speaker 1: that you got caught and that's the only problem you have.
Speaker 1: But that didn't solve Jared's problem. Even after the tablet
Speaker 1: was gone, he kept plowing hours into video games. He
Speaker 1: was still depressed, and one day Jen found a note
Speaker 1: Jared had scribbled on a napkin that revealed Jared was
Speaker 1: thinking about hurting himself. And then Jen got a call
Speaker 1: from Jared's school Jared had harmed himself in the school bathrooms.
Speaker 1: Jen started looking for help for Jared. He'd been seeing
Speaker 1: a therapist, but that therapist had told Jen the constant
Speaker 1: gaming was just a phase and hadn't taken it seriously.
Speaker 1: I didn't want my child to end up being, you know,
Speaker 1: um on a wall in a police department or a
Speaker 1: post office when he grew up. I didn't want him
Speaker 1: to be a statistic like that. She pulled him out
Speaker 1: of school and enrolled him in a day program for
Speaker 1: three weeks. It helped, but Jared's self esteem was still low.
Speaker 1: He was still grappling with his depression and still spent
Speaker 1: most of his time online. That's when a recommendation from
Speaker 1: a coworker put Jen in touch with a new doctor,
Speaker 1: Michael Rich. Dr Rich is energetic, with silver hair and
Speaker 1: a quick smile. He's a professa at Harvard Medical School
Speaker 1: and specializes in something he calls PAIEMU, problematic interactive media use.
Speaker 1: Fifteen years ago he found at the Center on Media
Speaker 1: and Child Health to study it, so he prefers not
Speaker 1: to describe it as an addiction. Dr Rich said, it's
Speaker 1: medically inaccurate, and more importantly for me as a pediatrician,
Speaker 1: is the stigma we attached to the word addict or addiction.
Speaker 1: We think of bums on skid row or junkies in
Speaker 1: a shooting gallery. We don't think about our ten year
Speaker 1: old who's flipping out because he has to stop playing
Speaker 1: Fortnite and go to bed. Dr Rich says he sees
Speaker 1: four main categories of harmful media use. There's gaming, which
Speaker 1: affects mostly boys, social media, which affects mostly girls, and
Speaker 1: then pawn and information binging. Right, that's where you might
Speaker 1: get lost watching one YouTube video after another. Porn and
Speaker 1: information binging affect boys and girls more or less equally.
Speaker 1: For many of Dr Rich's patients, things had to get
Speaker 1: really serious before their families decided to seek out medical help.
Speaker 1: But he said it's a slippery slope. Many children are
Speaker 1: being affected by their use of technology, just less severely.
Speaker 1: We are distracted all the time by that little buzz
Speaker 1: sometimes a fan on buzz in our pocket, right, and
Speaker 1: and so we behave with each other very differently than
Speaker 1: we used to. We can't get into an elevator without
Speaker 1: looking at our phone, or onto a bus or whatever.
Speaker 1: We don't look at each other. We don't talk to
Speaker 1: each other. People don't um observe personal space the same way.
Speaker 1: Six study from the organization Common Sense Media found that
Speaker 1: half of teenagers felt addicted to their devices and said
Speaker 1: they checked their devices at least once an hour. But
Speaker 1: because there's very little awareness of how serious this problem
Speaker 1: can get, some parents may not even notice it. They
Speaker 1: might chalk it up to something else, like bad behavior.
Speaker 1: I think that many, many kids are somewhere on a
Speaker 1: continuum of doing this instead of things that would probably
Speaker 1: be better for them, like taking a walk in the woods,
Speaker 1: or kicking a ball around the backyard, or beating up
Speaker 1: your little brother even you know, because at least that's
Speaker 1: a little social emotional growth. Dr Rich told me something
Speaker 1: else that's interesting. Tim affects some children more than others.
Speaker 1: We have yet to find a young person who does
Speaker 1: not have a known psychiatric or psychological dysfunction that may
Speaker 1: have never expressed itself until it got into the digital space.
Speaker 1: In other words, I am not convinced that these are
Speaker 1: standalone diagnoses, so the technology itself isn't causing the problem.
Speaker 1: The kids who are most negatively affected by technology are
Speaker 1: the ones who have an under lying condition that could
Speaker 1: be attention deficit disorder, anxiety depression. Dr Rich described them
Speaker 1: as mood disorders or relational problems. He said, sometimes children
Speaker 1: are drawn to online media because it's a coping mechanism
Speaker 1: for them. What we're seeing is that, for example, kids
Speaker 1: who have a problem with gaming often have problems with attention,
Speaker 1: and in a way, the computer video game is a
Speaker 1: much safer space than the chaos of real life because
Speaker 1: it gives you a very circumscribed universe with a set
Speaker 1: of clear rules that don't change. The classroom is chaos, right,
Speaker 1: someone's talking over here, there's a bird flying there, you know,
Speaker 1: the teachers of droning on at the blackboard. Someone threw
Speaker 1: a spitball and hitch in the back of the head.
Speaker 1: You know, all of that stuff is going on, and
Speaker 1: that's very hard to manage. So the computer or the
Speaker 1: video game, which is in fact a computer, is an
Speaker 1: environment in which they are masters. Sometimes, like in Jared's case,
Speaker 1: the child's condition may have already been diagnosed, but Dr
Speaker 1: Rich said that he also sees cases when nobody knew
Speaker 1: about the underlying condition until the child started over using technology.
Speaker 1: And once kids get in the habit of spending a
Speaker 1: lot of time online, it can be really difficult to
Speaker 1: stop playing or put the device down. That's because online
Speaker 1: media is interactive, which makes it different from other kinds
Speaker 1: of content. A video game that is violent is very
Speaker 1: different than a movie or a television show that is
Speaker 1: violent in that it asks, in fact demands, that the
Speaker 1: player do the violence as opposed to simply witness it.
Speaker 1: That it rewards doing violence better and it punishes doing
Speaker 1: violence less well, which is interesting because technology companies deliberately
Speaker 1: design their products this way. The kid gets involved in
Speaker 1: a situation where the game keeps sucking him back in.
Speaker 1: These games are very sophisticatedly designed to frustrate you just
Speaker 1: enough until you succeed and you get that little sport
Speaker 1: of dopamine, and I've succeeded, and your reward is to
Speaker 1: get to do it again, but a little bit harder,
Speaker 1: so you're frustrated again, and it draws you back in
Speaker 1: and constantly grabs you back in. Social media operates in
Speaker 1: a similar way that feeling of reward comes from seeing
Speaker 1: people liking and sharing your posts. Recently, we've started seeing
Speaker 1: the first signs of the public and people in the
Speaker 1: tech industry are feeling uneasy about this state of affairs.
Speaker 1: In January, to Apple shareholders, the investment firm Jana Partners
Speaker 1: and Coasters that's the pension fund for teachers in California,
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to Apple calling on the company to
Speaker 1: develop features that would help parents control how their children
Speaker 1: use Apple's devices. They also asked Apple to study the
Speaker 1: impact of their devices on children more carefully, and it
Speaker 1: seems like Apple might have started to listen. Back at
Speaker 1: the hospital, Jared has been visiting Dr Rich regularly for
Speaker 1: over a year. Jared's tall with big brown eyes, your
Speaker 1: regular teenager in a ball cap and check shirt. What
Speaker 1: can I help with I've actually been doing better with
Speaker 1: my medication. I'm taking it more often without um, mom
Speaker 1: or dad reminding me. Like for the past few weeks,
Speaker 1: I've been really really Rich has been treating Jared in
Speaker 1: part with medication to reduce his anxiety and improve his concentration,
Speaker 1: but he's also helping Jared develop better habits. How are
Speaker 1: you feeling about taking it? Because I know that you
Speaker 1: had sort of mixed feelings about I still don't like
Speaker 1: taking it, but it's just the fact out it's going
Speaker 1: to help me rom and you're noticing and helping you,
Speaker 1: because I'm noticing and helping you, but I want to
Speaker 1: make sure you do. I'm feeling less anxious over things,
Speaker 1: but I can definitely still tell that my depression will
Speaker 1: act up sometimes, but it's gonna take time for that
Speaker 1: to really adjust. So being responsible for taking his medicine
Speaker 1: is one of those good habits. Dr Rich is also
Speaker 1: helping Jared prioritize his time, so he does his homework
Speaker 1: first and plays video games later. The week when I
Speaker 1: was visiting, they were working on setting a regular bedtime.
Speaker 1: Sleep is the number one thing that suffers with the gaming.
Speaker 1: You know, UM, not just because you're staying up late
Speaker 1: to game, but you're also doing something that's really stimulating
Speaker 1: and arousing UM. And so even when you stop, it
Speaker 1: takes a while to wind down from that to to
Speaker 1: get to sleep. I've actually been going to bed earlier,
Speaker 1: but what I've been noticing is that I'm waking up later.
Speaker 1: That's because your body is saying, oh, I'm getting more sleep.
Speaker 1: I like this. We've talked a little bit about how
Speaker 1: you need more sleep as a teenager than you did
Speaker 1: as a little kid. But Jared isn't the only one
Speaker 1: who's learning to adjust. Halfway through, Dr Rich went and
Speaker 1: brought Jared's mom, Jen into the appointment room. So how
Speaker 1: do you think he's doing. I think he's doing good.
Speaker 1: It's still a work in progress, aren't we. I admit
Speaker 1: that myself. Yeah, he said that straight up front. He
Speaker 1: feels like it's improved, that he's got more work to do.
Speaker 1: Dr Rich often talks about the concept of digital parenting.
Speaker 1: He says it's important for parents to engage with what
Speaker 1: their kids are doing online, even though it can sometimes
Speaker 1: be overwhelming or scary for the parent. They feel that
Speaker 1: their kids are so much more facile with these devices
Speaker 1: and with these environments, um that they don't understand that
Speaker 1: they often check out of parenting in the digital space,
Speaker 1: and so the internet and interactive media runs the risk
Speaker 1: of becoming rock and roll in the sense of it's
Speaker 1: something mom and dad don't understand, it's something mom and
Speaker 1: dad hate. How cool is that he wants parents to
Speaker 1: learn how to participate in their children's online activity. What
Speaker 1: I do recommend they do is, instead of saying I
Speaker 1: hate that, turn it off or wag of finger, is
Speaker 1: to sit down and play the video game with their child,
Speaker 1: or go on social media with their child. Um And
Speaker 1: just as you wouldn't just toss the car keys at
Speaker 1: a twelve year old say have at it, or give
Speaker 1: a six year old power saw, we need to give
Speaker 1: them these tools when they are both in need of
Speaker 1: the tool and responsible enough to use it wisely. So, Peter,
Speaker 1: this seems like good advice. But as we said earlier,
Speaker 1: awareness among parents is pretty low. So how do we
Speaker 1: fix that. One thing Dr Rich is working on is
Speaker 1: something he calls anticipatory guidance. That means he wants to
Speaker 1: rain other doctors, other pediatricians about how they should be
Speaker 1: talking to the parents of their young patients about what
Speaker 1: to expect as their children grow up and start using technology. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm a I'm a parent of young kids, so
Speaker 1: how how might my kids doctor start talking to me differently?
Speaker 1: About their tech use. Okay, well, when your kids see
Speaker 1: their pediatrician for their annual check up, let's say, Um,
Speaker 1: your doctor might talk to you about things like vaccination, nutrition,
Speaker 1: you know how much weight your kids might gain. Right and,
Speaker 1: by the way, tech never comes up in that discussion, right,
Speaker 1: And and Dr Rich wants tech to become part of
Speaker 1: that discussion. He wants doctors to be kind of giving
Speaker 1: parents a heads up that you know, these are healthy habits,
Speaker 1: but this might be too much for your child who's
Speaker 1: only X number of years old. Um. And for and
Speaker 1: for parents to be aware of the fact that, yes,
Speaker 1: tech is having an impact on the way the child
Speaker 1: is developing. It's interesting as a parent, I mean, you're
Speaker 1: just you know, I kind of feel like I'm in
Speaker 1: the dark a little bit. Kids are drawn to the
Speaker 1: technology offer and instead of TV or like conventional toys. Um,
Speaker 1: some of the some of the games they play seem
Speaker 1: like they're pretty stimulating. But sometimes the hours they're spending
Speaker 1: staring into a screen can feel a little recome. And
Speaker 1: that's something that Apple, for example, has just decided it's
Speaker 1: going to take some action on to help parents limit
Speaker 1: the amount of time that their kids spend on their devices, right,
Speaker 1: they made They made some announcements at their recent developers conference. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: the main new feature that's going to come in the
Speaker 1: next version of the iPhone operating system that's iOS twelve.
Speaker 1: The main software it's called screen Time, and it will
Speaker 1: help people track how long they're spending on their own devices.
Speaker 1: Apples planning to break that out by apps, so you
Speaker 1: can see how much time you've spent on Facebook versus
Speaker 1: your emails, for example. Um. But then for parents, you'll
Speaker 1: also be able to see how much time your children
Speaker 1: are spending on their devices, and you'll be able to
Speaker 1: set time limits or even set kind of off off
Speaker 1: limits time when your kids can't use their devices at all.
Speaker 1: And what what does Dr Rich think about what Apple
Speaker 1: announced stuff? Well, actually I had a chance to ask
Speaker 1: him about that because I was with him in Boston
Speaker 1: when Apple made those announcements. Do you think the stuff
Speaker 1: Apple announced yesterday is going to be helpful? I think
Speaker 1: it's a move in the right direction. I think that
Speaker 1: what I'm hopeful of is that the tech companies and
Speaker 1: media makers will see the information we have on how
Speaker 1: we're changed by our media as something that will allow
Speaker 1: them to evolve their product to the next step where
Speaker 1: they're dealing with the second bottom line of of social
Speaker 1: and individual outcomes, not just profit, and to recognize and
Speaker 1: not deny that the media have an effect on us
Speaker 1: they do. I think this is going to require a
Speaker 1: major ce change in the way they do business, which
Speaker 1: has been very much proprietary and very much, you know,
Speaker 1: behind closed doors. But I think that there's a good
Speaker 1: possibility that that's the solution for this current suspicion and
Speaker 1: concerned about what these products are doing and how they
Speaker 1: are affecting kids in the way they grow up. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting that Apple is being responsive to the letters
Speaker 1: sent by shareholders and to what folks like Dr Rich
Speaker 1: are saying, Pa, do you think they're authentic and wanting
Speaker 1: to solve the problem or or do they just want
Speaker 1: to avoid getting blamed. I mean, it's interesting Apple has
Speaker 1: been ahead of the curve on some issues like privacy,
Speaker 1: for example. At the same time, I guess Apple must
Speaker 1: be sort of looking at the way the kind of
Speaker 1: press coverage that some of their big tech competitors are
Speaker 1: getting in in the press right now, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they're they're deciding this is an issue they want
Speaker 1: to get out in front of UM. It's interesting. Other
Speaker 1: other tech companies like Amazon, for example, have recently rolled
Speaker 1: out some kind of child friendly parent controls UM for
Speaker 1: their Echo devices, and it could be that Apple is
Speaker 1: kind of realizing they're going to have to follow suit.
Speaker 1: You know, Apple is so good at marking its devices
Speaker 1: and some of the big features of its devices. It
Speaker 1: will be interesting to see if they advertise some of
Speaker 1: these new tools to limit the use of their devices. UM.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll I guess we'll see. So what's next
Speaker 1: for Jared? Well, for now, Jared is still making regular
Speaker 1: visits to Dr Rich and with the school here ending soon,
Speaker 1: Jared's looking for a summer job. Jared and Dr Rich
Speaker 1: came up with the idea of becoming a camp counselor.
Speaker 1: That caused some anxiety for his mom. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing is I think it would be great if
Speaker 1: we could get him a job. Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 1: You think you could be a counselor that camp, the
Speaker 1: camp he was a c I ta, why not? He's
Speaker 1: going to be miserable. I don't want him going to no,
Speaker 1: hold going back, hold on, hold On. By the end
Speaker 1: of the session, Jen had agreed to let Jared apply
Speaker 1: for the camp counselor role, and because Jared's grades are improving,
Speaker 1: He's been chosen for a school trip to the Okay
Speaker 1: next year. So I'm excited. I'm I'm a little concerned
Speaker 1: because it's like the farthest I've been away from home. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be with family, so that's kind
Speaker 1: of scary for me. But I'm mentally preparing myself for it.
Speaker 1: And Michael Rich is working on getting the word out
Speaker 1: to more parents about how to raise kids in the
Speaker 1: digital age. I would um reassure parents that parenting is
Speaker 1: more of an art than a science, and that all
Speaker 1: the science we bring to bear on it just helps
Speaker 1: that art be better. So they shouldn't approach this as
Speaker 1: something that they feel they've failed because they've given their
Speaker 1: kids a smartphone or a Facebook account or something like this,
Speaker 1: but as something we can always be perfecting, even though
Speaker 1: we're imperfect at it. Yeah, and that's it for this
Speaker 1: week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to get in contact with Dr Rich, you can write
Speaker 1: to him at Ask the Media Attrition. The link is
Speaker 1: c m h dot TV. Forward slash of parents, forward Slash,
Speaker 1: ask the Mediatrician, and let us know what you thought
Speaker 1: of the show. You can email us at decrypted at
Speaker 1: bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter at pa Gadkari
Speaker 1: and I'm at brad Stone. If you have it already,
Speaker 1: please take a moment to rate and review our show.
Speaker 1: It really helps us find new listeners. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by TOFA forehead Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson, and
Speaker 1: edited by Anne vander May. A special thanks to Jen
Speaker 1: and Jared for telling us their story. Francesco Levi is
Speaker 1: head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.