Speaker 1: Pushkin. Do you remember when you got your first cell phone.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: It was the late nineties and I was a grad
Speaker 1: student back in Boston. All my friends were starting to
Speaker 1: get mobile phones, so I wanted one too. I remember
Speaker 1: sitting outside in Harvard Square and finally unboxing my new Nokia,
Speaker 1: and it felt really cool, futuristic. Even I could call
Speaker 1: my mom while walking to work, and I could text
Speaker 1: my friends. That new Nokia made it easy to travel
Speaker 1: and to find people while you were out in the world.
Speaker 1: Granted it didn't have email, or maps, or music, or
Speaker 1: a camera or even a calculator, I think, but it
Speaker 1: was still a game changer even today. I remember that
Speaker 1: first ring tone very fondly. But if I were to
Speaker 1: show one of my Yale students that Noki today, they'd
Speaker 1: probably be very confused. It's easy to forget just how
Speaker 1: much and how quickly mobile phones have transformed and how
Speaker 1: they've transformed us. Today's young people can't comprehend what life
Speaker 1: was like without infinite access to information and more streaming
Speaker 1: content than anyone could possibly consume. So for this final
Speaker 1: episode in our series on Happier Parenting, we're going to
Speaker 1: turn to how this massive technological shift has affected our
Speaker 1: children and what caregivers can do to offer guidance and
Speaker 1: support amidst this avalanche of information overload. And for this episode,
Speaker 1: I knew there was one expert I had to speak with.
Speaker 2: In twenty ten, kids mostly have flip phones, we call
Speaker 2: them millennials, But by twenty fifteen kids have smartphones with
Speaker 2: social media. They can be on for ten fifteen hours
Speaker 2: a day, and we call them gen z.
Speaker 1: Social psychologist Jonathan Heite is a world renowned expert in
Speaker 1: how technology and especially social media is impacting children. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, he published a number one New York
Speaker 1: Times Best say, The Anxious Generation, how the great rewiring
Speaker 1: of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. His thesis,
Speaker 1: the rapid evolution in how kids interact with technology has
Speaker 1: contributed to the alarming rise in mental illness among young people.
Speaker 2: Teen mental health was actually pretty stable from the late
Speaker 2: nineties through twenty ten, even twenty eleven. It's really no
Speaker 2: sign up or down. You know, it moves around, but
Speaker 2: there's no trend, And then all of a sudden twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, it's as though someone flipped on a light switch. Somewhere,
Speaker 2: and girls all around the Western world, especially in the
Speaker 2: English speaking countries, began cutting themselves. They were more anxious.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't just self report, it wasn't just oh,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm so open and honest because we can
Speaker 2: talk about it now on social media. It was also
Speaker 2: hospitalizations for self harm, and it was suicide. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't just America. Very similar patterns in Canada, Australia, UK,
Speaker 2: New Zealand, Scandinavia, Europe overall, although not in every country
Speaker 2: in Europe. So something big was happening. And then Gene
Speaker 2: Twankie was the first to stick her neck out and
Speaker 2: she wrote an article The Atlantic gave it the title
Speaker 2: have Smartphones destroyed a generation? And she had like three
Speaker 2: years of solid data showing things going up, and I
Speaker 2: thought at the time, just three years, like this could
Speaker 2: turn around next year. And she was so roundly attacked
Speaker 2: by other psychologists who said, it's just correlation, it's just
Speaker 2: a trend, and nothing's happening. So she really took a
Speaker 2: lot of flack, but she was right. She was absolutely right,
Speaker 2: and it's gotten worse and worse and worse since then.
Speaker 2: This is not caused by Covid. Everything I say in
Speaker 2: the Anxious Generation, everything Gene was talking about, it was
Speaker 2: all there. By twenty nineteen, Covid made it a little worse.
Speaker 2: But we're kind of just returning to the trend line.
Speaker 1: What were some of the other cultural changes that were
Speaker 1: happening and how childhood played out around that time.
Speaker 2: So my story in the book is that this is
Speaker 2: a tragedy in two acts. In Act one, we lose
Speaker 2: the play based childhood. Kids who grew up in the
Speaker 2: eighties still played outside, they still went out on supervised
Speaker 2: they rode their bicycles. So in the nineties is when
Speaker 2: we lose the play based childhood. That's the first act
Speaker 2: of the tragedy. And in Act two, twenty ten to
Speaker 2: twenty fifth, we get the phone based childhood. So in
Speaker 2: my previous book, The Coddling of the American Mind, we
Speaker 2: went deep into play and the importance of play. And
Speaker 2: we're mammals, and anybody who knows any mammals knows that
Speaker 2: they play when they're young. If you've ever had a
Speaker 2: puppy or a kitten, they want to play, play, play, play, play,
Speaker 2: I mean, and they have to. It's a biological imperative.
Speaker 2: Their genes don't tell the brain how to grow. It
Speaker 2: just kind of starts things rolling and then the neurons
Speaker 2: have to wire up. But with feedback from the environment.
Speaker 2: That's why kids will do something over and over and
Speaker 2: over again, and so it's crucial that they play. They
Speaker 2: have a lot of independent play, and we took that away.
Speaker 2: We took that away in the nineties, completely insane.
Speaker 1: And this is a change that was not necessarily caused
Speaker 1: by the tech companies per se. This was a change
Speaker 1: that was caused by parents. When did adults start over
Speaker 1: parenting and what happened?
Speaker 2: So I have done this demonstration all over the country
Speaker 2: and around Europe. I simply asked the audience at what
Speaker 2: age were you let out? At what age could you
Speaker 2: go out on your bicycle, walk to a friend's house,
Speaker 2: go to a store, no adult with you, and certainly
Speaker 2: all over a mind America. The answer was six to eight,
Speaker 2: around first grade, second grade. Certainly by third grade everyone
Speaker 2: was out. Now. I grew up during the Great crime Wave.
Speaker 2: I mean there was a lot of crime in the
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties, but we all went out and played
Speaker 2: gen X and the older millennials, they were all out
Speaker 2: age six to eight. But then you look at gen z.
Speaker 2: If you were born in nineteen ninety five and you
Speaker 2: grew up mostly in the early two thousands, everyone says
Speaker 2: ten to twelve, it's three or four years later. So
Speaker 2: why did this happen? There were some horrible abductions that
Speaker 2: were widely publicized. I'm sitting here in Greenwich Village, New York,
Speaker 2: about four blocks south of me, is where Aton Pates
Speaker 2: was abducted six years old, wanted to walk to the
Speaker 2: bus stop by himself. Never came back. This was nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine, I think. But it wasn't that one that
Speaker 2: did it, because there wasn't cable TV very much then.
Speaker 2: It was really the abduction of Adam Walsh and Florida,
Speaker 2: another six year old abducted from in front of a
Speaker 2: store his father created I think America's most wanted and
Speaker 2: he put out the idea that you must never take
Speaker 2: your eyes off your child or he will be abducted.
Speaker 2: It's because of him we get the milk cartons. You know,
Speaker 2: I grew up with kids staring back at you on
Speaker 2: the milk cart missing. Now almost all the missing kids
Speaker 2: were abducted by the non custodial parent or some other
Speaker 2: family member. There is hardly any kidnapping or abduction in
Speaker 2: this country, but we freaked out about it, and we
Speaker 2: began locking our kids up, or at least not letting
Speaker 2: them out to have independent It used to be you
Speaker 2: could kind of count on all the adults your kids
Speaker 2: out riding his bicycle. You know, I knew, like if
Speaker 2: I wiped out on my bicycle was actually hurt. You know,
Speaker 2: my friend could just like go knock on a door
Speaker 2: and they call my mom and she'd come pick me up.
Speaker 2: But I don't think people think that. How they think
Speaker 2: they have to be there all the time for their kid.
Speaker 2: So for a lot of reasons, we stopp trusting our neighbors,
Speaker 2: especially in the nineties. But we said, no, no, it's
Speaker 2: too dangerous to go outside. You'll be abducted. You know.
Speaker 2: Sit here, Oh look, we have a new computer. Oh look,
Speaker 2: it connects to the internet. And the kids loved it,
Speaker 2: and the parents loved it because the kids are safe
Speaker 2: sitting in their room on a computer all day, talking
Speaker 2: with strangers, perfectly safe. So that's what we did, and
Speaker 2: mental health didn't change. Actually, the millennials who grew up
Speaker 2: that way are fine. So we thought this was all okay.
Speaker 2: What we didn't realize was that the early Internet, where
Speaker 2: you sit at your parents' computer for a couple hours
Speaker 2: a day, I mean, you can't take the computer to class,
Speaker 2: you can't take it into the bathroom. A couple hours
Speaker 2: a day you're online. It was decentralized. There was no Facebook,
Speaker 2: there was no one company controlling things. That actually was
Speaker 2: pretty marvelous and fun. And the millennials look back on
Speaker 2: that fondly. We didn't realize that in the two thousands
Speaker 2: things really changed. So early Facebook and my Space and
Speaker 2: friends or those were not bad. They were ways to
Speaker 2: connect with people.
Speaker 3: That was all it was.
Speaker 1: And honestly, you couldn't be on friends dirt that long
Speaker 1: as a child of the nineties, I know, like you
Speaker 1: could hop on it for a second, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be pinging in your pocket and stealing your attention.
Speaker 3: And so on. That's right.
Speaker 2: So to be doing that quasi social thing for a
Speaker 2: couple hours a day is fine. You know, a little
Speaker 2: bit of television is fine. The transition happens when you
Speaker 2: get the iPhone. That's two thousand and seven. But at
Speaker 2: first it's just a digital Swiss army knife. There's no
Speaker 2: push notification, there's no app store, there's no social media,
Speaker 2: and kids don't have it until twenty ten. Eleven is
Speaker 2: when kids start getting it. In twenty ten, you get
Speaker 2: the first friend facing camera, and you get the creation
Speaker 2: of Instagram, and now you get increasingly kids have high
Speaker 2: speed Internet. Because you remember when you had to pay
Speaker 2: for your text like what a couple cents every text?
Speaker 2: So you wouldn't send thousands of texts a day, You
Speaker 2: couldn't spend sixteen hours a day on. But between twenty
Speaker 2: ten and twenty fifteen, I call it the great rewiring
Speaker 2: of childhood. Half of our kids, beginning in the late
Speaker 2: twenty tens, half of American teenagers say that they are
Speaker 2: online almost constantly. If you're waiting for the elevator, the
Speaker 2: phone comes out. If you're in the elevator, the phone
Speaker 2: comes out. If you're online anywhere, the phone comes out.
Speaker 2: If you're sitting at lunch there's a loll in the conversation,
Speaker 2: the phone comes out. If you're sitting on the toilet,
Speaker 2: the phone comes out. The phone is always with you.
Speaker 2: It takes up every spare moment because the amount they
Speaker 2: have to process, the amount of stuff coming in the
Speaker 2: videos they have to watch to keep up. It fills
Speaker 2: up every moment.
Speaker 1: And you've talked in your book about these four specific
Speaker 1: harms that this phone based childhood came with. Let's kind
Speaker 1: of walk through them. The first is one that you
Speaker 1: talk about in terms of the social deprivation that comes
Speaker 1: from me in a phone based childhood. In some ways
Speaker 1: this is ironic, right, because our phones are supposed to
Speaker 1: be connecting us. You could imagine our phones kind of
Speaker 1: increase connection. But what do the data really show here?
Speaker 2: There's the American Time Youth Survey, so we track what
Speaker 2: people do at minute by minute and for all ages
Speaker 2: down to I think fifteen, And what the data clearly
Speaker 2: show is that when you look at the fifteen to
Speaker 2: twenty four age group, but when they aggregate, how much
Speaker 2: time do you spend with friends each day outside of
Speaker 2: school and work? So this is not school or work,
Speaker 2: just hanging out with friends getting together. How much time?
Speaker 2: And it used to be more than two hours a
Speaker 2: day for the young people, and then like thirty forty
Speaker 2: minutes for everybody who's older. All the older groups, they
Speaker 2: have jobs, they have families, they're not hanging out with
Speaker 2: their friends, and it's dropping a little bit in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands, and that's you know, the Internet, and
Speaker 2: you begin to get multiplayer video games. But it plunges
Speaker 2: after about twenty twelve because once everyone gets their iPhone,
Speaker 2: now everything moves online and now you can just as
Speaker 2: well go home and lie on your side for three
Speaker 2: hours and do this scrolling and this wiping, the texting
Speaker 2: and things like that. So a plummet's down almost to
Speaker 2: where the adults are by twenty nineteen. Of course they're
Speaker 2: connecting with hundreds of people. But if you're connecting with
Speaker 2: hundreds of people, then you have no real time for
Speaker 2: close friends. That's when we see the breakout of loneliness
Speaker 2: boys and girls. They become so lonely once they get
Speaker 2: on their phones.
Speaker 1: And why is this sort of in real life social connection,
Speaker 1: or at least in real time social connection, so much
Speaker 1: more important than the connection is happening online, especially for
Speaker 1: growing kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, here I would return to our status's evolved organisms.
Speaker 2: You know, if you go back to child development and infancy,
Speaker 2: one of the most important things that infants are doing
Speaker 2: socially is eye contact and then synchrony, and that takes
Speaker 2: a long time. And it's really pleasurable for the kid
Speaker 2: and for the parent. So there's all this programming for
Speaker 2: face to face synchronous communication, and so you know, a
Speaker 2: zoom call is we're doing right now. This is you know,
Speaker 2: at least as good as an old telephone call when
Speaker 2: you and I were young. It's better in some ways.
Speaker 2: The synchronous art is okay, there are the uses for that,
Speaker 2: but the asynchronous stuff has very little value. Like someone
Speaker 2: posts something and then you like it or you comment
Speaker 2: on it. It doesn't bring you together. It encourages everyone
Speaker 2: to display. It turns kids into brand managers. And if
Speaker 2: you're constantly trying to manage your brand, you're not connecting,
Speaker 2: You're not really bonding with other kids. I just saw
Speaker 2: a video in which teenager was saying, you know, I
Speaker 2: sit down to watch a TV program and before I
Speaker 2: know it, I'm doing things on my phone. Like the multitasking.
Speaker 2: It just takes away from everything. There's an amazing phrase
Speaker 2: from Sherry Turkle at MIT. She says, because of our phones,
Speaker 2: because of our technology, we are forever elsewhere. We're never
Speaker 2: fully present with the people that we're with. But we
Speaker 2: evolved for these intense small group communities. So this is
Speaker 2: a gigantic experiment we've performed on kids in theory back
Speaker 2: in two thousand and seven. In theory it might have worked,
Speaker 2: but now it's clear it backfired catastrophically, and we have
Speaker 2: a generation around the world that has poor social skills,
Speaker 2: difficulty making eye contact, higher levels of anxiety, poor sexual development,
Speaker 2: cognitive development test scores are going down around the world.
Speaker 2: People call me alarmist, but if there is really something
Speaker 2: going wrong, then it's right to raise the alarm.
Speaker 1: I love the Shelley Trickle quote. And that gets to
Speaker 1: maybe a second harm that we know comes from a
Speaker 1: phone based childhood, which is this idea of attention fragmentation.
Speaker 1: How do phones mess with our attention? And why is
Speaker 1: it so bad when it's happening at the kind of
Speaker 1: ages we're seeing it.
Speaker 2: One of the most sort of subtle and advanced cognitive
Speaker 2: abilities that humans have. It's called executive function, and toddlers
Speaker 2: don't have much of it. But we learn how to
Speaker 2: stay focused on a task. We think, Okay, I have
Speaker 2: a goal. What do I need to do to execute
Speaker 2: the goal? Your brain has to have sustained attention on
Speaker 2: that over time as you are pursuing the goal. And
Speaker 2: if you can do that, then you will be successful
Speaker 2: in life. You will be able to pursue goals. But
Speaker 2: what if you have a goal and then you start
Speaker 2: pursuing it, but oh, look at that, Well what's that?
Speaker 2: Oh this is fun? Oh let's do that, and you
Speaker 2: never get to your goal. This is what's happening. I
Speaker 2: was just listened to a podcast. So Scott Galloway and
Speaker 2: Richard Reeves are two people who've been writing about boys.
Speaker 2: I think the problem for boys here with attention fragmentation
Speaker 2: is even more serious. For girls girls anxiety depression, they
Speaker 2: have huge increase. That's sort of the focused social media
Speaker 2: anxiety depression. But I think attention fragmentation at behavioral addiction
Speaker 2: is really more central for the boys. Boys are more
Speaker 2: attracted to video games, which gives you quick dopamine. But
Speaker 2: when you get lots of quick dopamine, that means that
Speaker 2: your brain, which has adapted to the high levels now
Speaker 2: is craving it and everything is boring. And so if
Speaker 2: you're a boy and you've been on video games since
Speaker 2: you were four or five, those neurons seeking.
Speaker 1: Each other out.
Speaker 2: They didn't wire up properly and it's very hard for
Speaker 2: you to make a goal and then pursue it over
Speaker 2: the course of ten minutes or an hour. So the
Speaker 2: cognitive fragmentation, even though I didn't focus on in the book,
Speaker 2: I'm now seeing, my God, this is possibly worse than
Speaker 2: the mental health. I mean, if you have a whole
Speaker 2: generation that can't pay attention for sustained periods. And again
Speaker 2: they're exceptions, but I think we can say half of
Speaker 2: the generation, half say they're online almost constantly. So if
Speaker 2: half of humanity can't pay attention, this boats really badly
Speaker 2: for the future of innovation, work, marriage, everything that we
Speaker 2: expect people to be able to do.
Speaker 1: It kind of connects with the social deprivation in a
Speaker 1: really interesting way, right, because obviously social connection has some friction.
Speaker 1: There are some boring downtimes with people in real life.
Speaker 2: And you have to work it through, you have to
Speaker 2: stick with it.
Speaker 1: It can be annoying to push through the awkwardness of
Speaker 1: in person interactions, especially when you've got a fire hose
Speaker 1: of information and excitement waiting for you in your pocket.
Speaker 1: So how do you get a kid to put down
Speaker 1: this mesmerizing tool and notice what's going on in the
Speaker 1: real world? After the break, we'll dive into other ways
Speaker 1: a phone based childhood may be reshaping our kids development,
Speaker 1: and here are some effective strategies for making it better.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back. Psychologies. Jonathan Heights's
Speaker 1: book The Anxious Generation argues that the rise of smartphones,
Speaker 1: social media, and overparenting has triggered a cataclysmic shift in
Speaker 1: how young people experience childhood and a corresponding surge in
Speaker 1: mental illness. Before the break, we covered two of the
Speaker 1: four ways a phone based childhood has negatively affected our kids.
Speaker 1: Is deprived them socially and fragmented their attention. So what's
Speaker 1: harm Number three? More screen time means less shut eye.
Speaker 2: So sleep. There was a drop in the nineties minute
Speaker 2: levels off. I don't know if that was the early Internet.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that was, but it levels off
Speaker 2: in the two thousands, then it drops again after like
Speaker 2: twenty twelve or so. Certainly this correlational research showing that
Speaker 2: people are heavy users have more sleep problems, especially when
Speaker 2: they use social media or browsing the internet. Those are
Speaker 2: the two that are especially correlated with poor sleep. If
Speaker 2: you're doing that just before bedtime, I'm in a big
Speaker 2: debate with some other researchers to say it's just correlational,
Speaker 2: there's no evidence of causality. But you know, if you
Speaker 2: have a technology that is causing on average, let's say
Speaker 2: something like half an hour less slip, certainly for heavy users,
Speaker 2: and teenagers already aren't getting of sleep, So if we
Speaker 2: make it worse by half an hour, you know that's
Speaker 2: another ram cycle. You're going to have kids being more irritable,
Speaker 2: it'll be harder for them to focus, more anxious, and
Speaker 2: then that you get a vicious cycle, because then that
Speaker 2: pushes you into more anxiety and depression. Now you're doing
Speaker 2: badly in your classes, and you were having conflicts with
Speaker 2: your friends, and you mul this over at night, you
Speaker 2: can't sleep, so to stop your racing thoughts, you watch TikTok.
Speaker 2: So you get this vicious cycle. And there's just no
Speaker 2: dispute among the scientific community that adolescence needs sleep for
Speaker 2: brain development. And if you're depriving a whole planet full
Speaker 2: of teenagers of sleep, this has to have a variety
Speaker 2: of physical, cognitive, and emotional consequences.
Speaker 1: Which I think gets to the fourth phone based harm,
Speaker 1: which is that kids wind up showing these addictive behaviors
Speaker 1: when it comes to their phone. I think you had
Speaker 1: a story about your own daughter with Candy Crush, if
Speaker 1: you want to share.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh my god, it was. This was I guess
Speaker 2: twenty seventeens before I was working on on this and
Speaker 2: my family we took a winter break trip to this
Speaker 2: lovely farm, Liberty Hill Farm in Vermont, and my daughter
Speaker 2: was in the next room at breakfast time and she
Speaker 2: called out to me, and this is an exact quote, Daddy,
Speaker 2: can you take the iPad away from me? I'm trying
Speaker 2: to take my eyes off it, but I can't. And
Speaker 2: she's about six years old. There these games are designed
Speaker 2: explicitly to retain their users. It's a very competitive environment.
Speaker 2: Most of these apps, once for kids, have an advertising
Speaker 2: base model, and so the more you keep them on,
Speaker 2: the better for the company. And you know, again, I'm
Speaker 2: in this debate with the skeptics who say, well, it's
Speaker 2: not true addiction, we shouldn't call it addiction. Well, gambling
Speaker 2: is an addiction as long as you have compulsive use,
Speaker 2: often against your better judgment. It sometimes causes you to lie.
Speaker 2: And if slot machine gambling can be addictive, well, so
Speaker 2: much of the iPhone was literally modeled after slot machines. Literally,
Speaker 2: I mean like the thing where you know, you pull
Speaker 2: down kind of bounces, that was really modeled after the
Speaker 2: slot machine. I mean, we have age limits all over
Speaker 2: our sisciety for four reasons. If something is about graphic
Speaker 2: sex or violence, if it's addictive, or if there's physical
Speaker 2: or psychological harm. Those four reasons we put age limits
Speaker 2: on unless it's online. And then we say whatever, companies,
Speaker 2: go for it. You can do whatever you want to
Speaker 2: a child as long as the child's old enough to lie.
Speaker 2: If the child's old enough to say she's thirteen or eighteen,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter, and we can't sue them. They can show
Speaker 2: whatever they want to our kids.
Speaker 3: Tough luck.
Speaker 2: But you know what, wait, can I turn this around.
Speaker 2: I'm always looking for criticisms. I want to know what
Speaker 2: I missed because there are some psychologists whore skeptical. First,
Speaker 2: tell me what you think of the general argument that
Speaker 2: it was the technology that phones the social media.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. I mean, I think you cannot explain
Speaker 1: the hockey stick curve as you've called it without turning
Speaker 1: to that. But the question is, like, are there other
Speaker 1: factors going on as well? But I think the timing
Speaker 1: of it just looks like it absolutely has to be
Speaker 1: social media. I talk a lot about social media in
Speaker 1: my course, right Instagram, TikTok. Think what's fascinating about TikTok
Speaker 1: in particular, we talked a little bit before about addiction,
Speaker 1: is that this is the first social media tool where
Speaker 1: I've seen students articulate the fact that they feel addicted.
Speaker 1: I mean, your daughter had this, maybe for candy crush.
Speaker 1: The games might look different, right, but I'd never heard
Speaker 1: college students talk about how Facebook felt so addictive, even
Speaker 1: Instagram Snapchat a little. But with TikTok, they talk about
Speaker 1: this all the time. Oh my god, So to my students,
Speaker 1: that's right. So let me make a major point here.
Speaker 1: We all agree social media is not monolithic. There are
Speaker 1: different kinds of social media, different effects Instagram. The main
Speaker 1: harm that I see is that Instagram causes chronic social comparison,
Speaker 1: especially for girls, especially about face and bought. The correlational
Speaker 1: studies clearly show girls and Instagram depression anxiety. That's a
Speaker 1: much tighter correlation than anything else. I would urge everybody
Speaker 1: don't let your daughters, or don't let anybody go on
Speaker 1: Instagram until they're an adult. Snapchat, I don't think causes
Speaker 1: depression anxiety. Snapchat connects you to strangers who are trying
Speaker 1: to extort you, sell you drugs, and even sell you guns.
Speaker 1: Many horrible, horrible things happen to kids on there. Snapchat,
Speaker 1: we know from memos that have come out as the
Speaker 1: States are suing them. Snapchat gets ten thousand reports of
Speaker 1: sextortion from American kids each month. Wow, every month, ten thousand,
Speaker 1: and that's just the ones that are reported to them.
Speaker 1: How the great majority are not reported to them. So
Speaker 1: you invent an app that has disappearing pictures students feel
Speaker 1: safe for young people feel safe for sending a nude
Speaker 1: of themselves. It turns out it's not a beautiful young
Speaker 1: woman wanting to flirt with you. It's a sextortion ring
Speaker 1: lookated somewhere in West Africa. And now if you don't
Speaker 1: pay them right away, they will send your photo out
Speaker 1: to everyone in your contacts, and a lot of boys
Speaker 1: kill themselves. That's not mistaken correlation for causation. Their parents
Speaker 1: are not wrong that Snapchat is what killed their kid.
Speaker 1: So again, you got Instagram, depression anxiety and girls Snapchat
Speaker 1: dangerous activities, interacting with strangers that ruins your life, even
Speaker 1: if it's fun most of the time. And then we
Speaker 1: got TikTok. And what I'm coming to see is that
Speaker 1: TikTok is so bad for you attention and so addictive.
Speaker 1: I think nobody should use it. Certainly, no one under
Speaker 1: eighteen should use it. Yeah, but it doesn't just waste
Speaker 1: your time. It changes your brain because now you need
Speaker 1: that quick stimulation. So now let's get to some solutions.
Speaker 1: If you're a parent who's worried about the phone based childhood,
Speaker 1: what can you do to fix things?
Speaker 2: So the first thing is to realize that you're not alone.
Speaker 2: If you feel like you're alone, then it's going to
Speaker 2: be very hard to solve this because you'll think, what
Speaker 2: do I do. You know, everyone else is giving their
Speaker 2: kid the phone. My daughter comes home, you know, from
Speaker 2: fifth grade, and she says, Mom, everyone else has a smartphone.
Speaker 2: I'm the only one who doesn't have one. I'm being
Speaker 2: left out. And so that's why we keep giving our
Speaker 2: kids phones and social media at a younger and younger age,
Speaker 2: because it's a collective action problem and we are not
Speaker 2: able to solve it. So it goes down younger and
Speaker 2: younger ages. And so the solution to a collective action
Speaker 2: problem is collective action. We got trapped into this by
Speaker 2: the companies, but if we act together, we can get
Speaker 2: out of it. With four simple norms here they are
Speaker 2: no smartphone till age fourteen or high school really in America.
Speaker 2: Give them a flip phone or a phone watch. They
Speaker 2: can call in text if you're sending them out into
Speaker 2: the world, but don't give them the entire Internet and
Speaker 2: all the strangers and all the apps and all the addiction.
Speaker 2: Don't do that until high school minimum. Second, no social
Speaker 2: media until sixteen. They know exactly how to get your
Speaker 2: kid's brain before the prefrontal cortex is developed, so don't
Speaker 2: let them have your kid until at least sixteen. The
Speaker 2: third is phone free schools, and this is just a must.
Speaker 2: If your child is able to have their phone on them,
Speaker 2: in their pocket or even their backpack, but especially pocket
Speaker 2: during the day, it's very likely your child is not
Speaker 2: being educated as well as they should. And this, I
Speaker 2: think is one of the reasons that test scores were
Speaker 2: going up for forty years until twenty twelve, and they've
Speaker 2: been going down, not just in America but around the
Speaker 2: world test scores going down. Kids can't pay attention to
Speaker 2: class so much else is going on in their pocket.
Speaker 2: And then the final norm is far more independence, free play,
Speaker 2: and responsibility in the real world. We have to get
Speaker 2: back to the understanding that our children are young mammals
Speaker 2: who need to develop by engaging with the environment without supervision.
Speaker 2: Now you know two, three, four years old, Yeah, you
Speaker 2: need to supervise them because they'll do all kinds of
Speaker 2: stupid things. But around the world, one thing I learn
Speaker 2: from cultural psychology seven or eight is called the age
Speaker 2: of social sense. That's the age in which many societies
Speaker 2: give their kids like here, take the sheep down to
Speaker 2: the river, let them drink and bring them back. You
Speaker 2: can begin being responsible. So I think we need a
Speaker 2: sort of a norm by age eight your kids should
Speaker 2: have some kind of independence, maybe not wandering around town alone,
Speaker 2: but like out playing with some friends without a parent
Speaker 2: watching them. Because when the parents are watching what a
Speaker 2: kids learn. They learn how to appeal to the adult
Speaker 2: to punish the other kid, which is a skill for authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: Whereas if kids have no rule maker above them, they
Speaker 2: have to work out the conflicts they have to negotiate.
Speaker 2: They have to adjudicate, they have to forgive, and those
Speaker 2: are skills of democracy. So we have to give kids
Speaker 2: back a childhood worth having. Those four norms. Parents can
Speaker 2: roll back the vone based childhood.
Speaker 1: It would be easier if some hero could jump into
Speaker 1: a Dolorean, travel back to the late nineties and stop
Speaker 1: social media from devolving into a polarized miss and maybe
Speaker 1: prevent tech designers from adding those front facing cameras. Sadly,
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen, but that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: society is simply forced to accept the great rewiring. There's
Speaker 1: still a lot parents can do to make things better.
Speaker 1: To recap here are Jonathan's four suggestions. Delay smartphones until
Speaker 1: at least age fourteen, hold off on social media until sixteen,
Speaker 1: advocate for phone free schools, and give kids more freedom
Speaker 1: and independence in the real world. But these solutions require widespread,
Speaker 1: coordinated action, which means you might be asking what can
Speaker 1: I do as a parent right now to support my
Speaker 1: child in the face of such potentially harmful technology. After
Speaker 1: the break, we'll speak to an expert who's thought carefully
Speaker 1: about essential conversations you can have with your kids to
Speaker 1: help them navigate the modern digital landscape. We'll hear how
Speaker 1: parents can support kids' technology use while protecting their mental
Speaker 1: health and fostering a sense of safety. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: will be right back. If you've ever wondered whether it's
Speaker 1: developmentally appropriate for your toddler to watch Coco Melon, or say,
Speaker 1: for your team to play Call of Duty, you might
Speaker 1: be familiar with the work of our next.
Speaker 3: Expert, someone names Jill Murphy. And I am the Chief
Speaker 3: Content Officer at Common Sense Media, which really just means
Speaker 3: I oversee all of our ratings and reviews.
Speaker 1: Common Sense Media is an awesome nonprofit advocacy organization known
Speaker 1: for their reviews of children's entertainment and TV shows. These days,
Speaker 1: the organization also offers research backed guides for digital parenting.
Speaker 1: These new guides have become essential resources for parents navigating
Speaker 1: day to day technology questions for kids of all ages.
Speaker 3: When you think about younger children, so maybe you're distracted
Speaker 3: by something, you hand over the phone and with the
Speaker 3: lunch videos, and I think that right there, that handover
Speaker 3: moment is at first introduction to you know, I just
Speaker 3: need to distract my kids so I can get this
Speaker 3: other thing done. But what it's become is a distraction
Speaker 3: in their life, and we are just all distracted all
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: Jill believes the most important thing parents can do to
Speaker 1: protect their kids is to have honest conversations about technology,
Speaker 1: and Jill says it's best to start those conversations earlier
Speaker 1: than you think, even with a baby or toddler who's
Speaker 1: curious about what you're looking at on your screen.
Speaker 3: Narrate what you're doing. Actually let your kid know what
Speaker 3: you're doing within this tiny screen so they have a
Speaker 3: sense of what's going on because they have no idea.
Speaker 1: As children get older, Jill recommends creating a family media agreement.
Speaker 1: Common Sense offers templates for these contracts on their website,
Speaker 1: but the key is to simply start a dialogue. Whether
Speaker 1: it's written down or not, it's.
Speaker 3: Really a conversation. When you hear the title, it sounds
Speaker 3: a little idealistic, but I think what they can be
Speaker 3: used for is really anything. Whether it's a kid is
Speaker 3: ready to start going on YouTube, but I want to
Speaker 3: say some boundaries and guidelines. It just guides you through
Speaker 3: a conversation around how you can start laying out what
Speaker 3: is and isn't okay. And then with older kids it
Speaker 3: might be they're getting a phone, what's okay for them
Speaker 3: to do? What isn't okay for them to do. It's
Speaker 3: a little bit of a negotiation, a little bit of
Speaker 3: a contract where they may say, and this is for
Speaker 3: my own life, I want to have social media. Is
Speaker 3: it okay if I go on maybe just for thirty minutes?
Speaker 3: And then we say you can have this app, but
Speaker 3: we're not going to get you on this app yet.
Speaker 3: And so it's just a discussion around where your rules
Speaker 3: are and holds everybody to a set of shared principles.
Speaker 3: The challenge with that is it needs to be revisited often.
Speaker 3: And I can speak from experience where we did it
Speaker 3: when my older daughter got a thund My kids are
Speaker 3: fifteen and twelve. Two girls live.
Speaker 4: In the dream in the night now, all at the
Speaker 4: same time we did it when my older daughter got
Speaker 4: a phone, and it was probably a good year before
Speaker 4: we really revisited it.
Speaker 3: Is something that we need to encourage families to revisit
Speaker 3: quite regularly, almost like your quarterly goals, like what is
Speaker 3: it and what needs to be adjusted? And then the
Speaker 3: run chanelle of why is something getting adjusted? You know,
Speaker 3: the underlying factor here is their development, What are they
Speaker 3: ready for We use their age as a guide, but
Speaker 3: it's not always a one size fits all.
Speaker 1: And so what wound up in your family media agreement?
Speaker 1: Like what were some of the things that you have
Speaker 1: to negotiate with your kids to that?
Speaker 3: Definitely social media. My older daughter got a phone when
Speaker 3: she is going into middle school. Biggest regret of my life,
Speaker 3: and my husband is always kind of like, shouldn't you
Speaker 3: have known better? Sure, I should have known better. For
Speaker 3: lots of reasons, we let her get a phone that
Speaker 3: we were not letting her get on social media, so
Speaker 3: that was the stop gap. It's just too much access.
Speaker 3: And then that was really the big like aha moment
Speaker 3: for me. I'd say about six to eight months in.
Speaker 3: It's a computer, She's just online and she has access
Speaker 3: to literally anything, even if it's a news story around
Speaker 3: school shooting, Like do I want her really seeing that
Speaker 3: right now without conversation from els? Does she need notifications
Speaker 3: coming up in her day around what's going run in
Speaker 3: the world. And parental controls was something that happened a
Speaker 3: little bit later. I've always been a little like around
Speaker 3: parental controls because it's it's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: false promise. And there's a ton of videos online about
Speaker 3: how to get around literally any any of the parental
Speaker 3: controls that are out there, there is a hack to
Speaker 3: get around them. More recently, we had started using a
Speaker 3: parental control to just completely shut down the phone and
Speaker 3: to just go to a dumb phone at certain times
Speaker 3: of the day except for texting, Like she could text
Speaker 3: on her phone, she could call on her phone, but
Speaker 3: otherwise everything was turned off. So it's like during the
Speaker 3: school day at night. And when I first started doing it,
Speaker 3: my daughter was like what the heck, Like, why would
Speaker 3: you do that? But after a couple of weeks of
Speaker 3: doing this consistently, she started asking me to turn it
Speaker 3: off at night. She was like, can you just turn
Speaker 3: this off? Don't forget to turn it off, Like she
Speaker 3: knows that it's not something that she can easily do
Speaker 3: on her own, which is obviously the goal that I mean,
Speaker 3: they'll struggle with that, and it just allows her to
Speaker 3: focus in another place, in this case, on her sleep.
Speaker 3: But even during the school day or like her homework time,
Speaker 3: she knows like, Okay, it's going to go off between
Speaker 3: three and six. So I just feel like it's really
Speaker 3: helped her take back some of her time. There's something
Speaker 3: about it that's provided her a little bit of like okay, good,
Speaker 3: like a little relief from feeling like she has to
Speaker 3: be on. And I think that because we've discussed it
Speaker 3: so much, I love that she's kind of taken this
Speaker 3: approach of like, Okay, I need it off, but I
Speaker 3: might not have the self control at fifteen to do
Speaker 3: it and stick with it.
Speaker 1: And you've talked about some of these essential conversations, some
Speaker 1: of these elements that you might want to get in there,
Speaker 1: and I know one of the big ones is this
Speaker 1: idea of a digital footprint. What are the conversations that
Speaker 1: you need to have about a child's digital footprint.
Speaker 3: I think kids are very quick to be like less
Speaker 3: concerned about that sort of thing until probably high school
Speaker 3: and they're thinking about college or jobs, really having them
Speaker 3: understand the trail that they're leaving behind, that it's all findable,
Speaker 3: the way that other kids are getting screenshot and screen
Speaker 3: grab conversations and use that information or share it, whether
Speaker 3: it's in a gossipy way or a dangerous way. And
Speaker 3: then in addition to that, of course images that they're sharing,
Speaker 3: personal information that they may be sharing, who they're actually
Speaker 3: sharing it with and when they or not they know
Speaker 3: that person. And the trick with that is when is
Speaker 3: it okay to have that conversation. I think that that
Speaker 3: Twain set is very quick to say, no, it's a kid,
Speaker 3: I'm talking to this kid. They friended me on my
Speaker 3: blocks or they friended me on discord. They're less inclined
Speaker 3: to be skeptical that who they're talking to may actually
Speaker 3: be somebody that is not what they say say. They
Speaker 3: are so starting to lay all that groundwork, I think
Speaker 3: early and often without a fearful approach, but just as
Speaker 3: an awareness, just like don't cross the street until the
Speaker 3: button says walk, and even when it does say walk,
Speaker 3: look to your left to make sure no one's taking
Speaker 3: a right turn, and make sure you have eye contact
Speaker 3: with the drivers. And you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: elements to consider before you go ahead and cross the street.
Speaker 3: And I think we need to be thinking about that
Speaker 3: multi pronged approach in conversation.
Speaker 1: We're doing this kind of boundary setting with our kids
Speaker 1: anyway and other domains where they need to be safe
Speaker 1: across the street. We kind of need to get to
Speaker 1: them how to cross the digital street as yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: One of the things common says has noted that you
Speaker 1: need to get across the digital street are conversations about
Speaker 1: reality versus perception. And I think this specifically comes up
Speaker 1: when it comes to social media.
Speaker 3: What do you mean by that, Well, I mean there's
Speaker 3: this idea of perfection, right, and then it's talked a
Speaker 3: lot about now with Instagram in particular, but what people
Speaker 3: are putting out versus what's really going on, and that
Speaker 3: comes down to, you know, embedded products in a video
Speaker 3: that I kid not watch something and think that, oh,
Speaker 3: just this girl that I watch and I love her,
Speaker 3: and she's buying this product and she loves it, and
Speaker 3: I want to have that product too, and explaining to
Speaker 3: her what product placement is like and that she's paid
Speaker 3: for this video and that isn't actually just her saying that,
Speaker 3: and that's not necessarily her real life. She's not necessarily
Speaker 3: getting ready in the morning and looking like that and
Speaker 3: going somewhere. And then there's just this front that kids
Speaker 3: are putting out there, teens are putting out there, and
Speaker 3: we know that adults are putting out there as well.
Speaker 3: Perfect house, perfect, whole video, perfect dorm room, perfect, whatever
Speaker 3: it might be, and just projecting an image that doesn't
Speaker 3: really portray real life, and it sets up a false aspiration.
Speaker 3: And I think as adults, we also know once you're
Speaker 3: in that vacuum, it's really hard to break out. And
Speaker 3: I'm a fully developed adult, and so when our kids
Speaker 3: kids aren't even developed in a place where they can
Speaker 3: make that distinction between reality and fiction, we're just putting
Speaker 3: them in front of so much information at one time.
Speaker 3: How do they parse it and how does it help
Speaker 3: shape their reality.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of parents out there wondering
Speaker 1: what they need to be paying attention to to figure
Speaker 1: out if their teen or their child might be struggled
Speaker 1: with technology. What things do you suggest that parents look
Speaker 1: out for.
Speaker 3: There is this slow drip of content and what kids
Speaker 3: are being exposed to, and again, how that's kind of
Speaker 3: shaping their reality and their self identity and self worth.
Speaker 3: And if they feel that they can't measure up to
Speaker 3: what they're watching or compete with it or compared to it.
Speaker 3: And if you are predisposed, which I think is an
Speaker 3: important element for parents to consider, is depression in my family,
Speaker 3: is anxiety in my family? Have we dealt with other
Speaker 3: mental illness in the family? That's an important factor to
Speaker 3: take into consideration. My daughter is anxious, Do I really
Speaker 3: want her to be put into a scenario where that
Speaker 3: might be like heightened in some way? Do I want
Speaker 3: to put her in a situation where it's heightened but
Speaker 3: she's got the tools and knows how to calm herself.
Speaker 3: Some of it's preparation, but I think some of it
Speaker 3: is about you really have to have this knowledge of
Speaker 3: your kid and what they how they interact and feel
Speaker 3: and function in the world.
Speaker 1: And it seems like some of it is also including
Speaker 1: your children in these conversations. One of the things that
Speaker 1: comes since media recommends even in the case some of
Speaker 1: these mental health concerns, is not for parents to be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm worried about anxiety provoking informations all just ban phones
Speaker 1: or like put parental controls in. It really is about
Speaker 1: empowering your kids to notice when they're going through that
Speaker 1: stuff and to have conversations about what they can do
Speaker 1: to do better.
Speaker 3: Right, And I think we're having those conversations at ages
Speaker 3: that we probably wouldn't expect to have them. And I
Speaker 3: think a lot of parents are still feeling like I
Speaker 3: don't need to worry about that until they're in high school,
Speaker 3: no take an action. So what you're going to say
Speaker 3: to your six or seven year old compared to what
Speaker 3: you're going to say to your sixteen or seventeen year old,
Speaker 3: it's going to be very different. But the subject of
Speaker 3: mental health can be talked about at any age, at
Speaker 3: any point. And you know, for your younger kids, it's
Speaker 3: if you see that they might be acting out after
Speaker 3: they have played a game, you know they have a
Speaker 3: stronger reaction of playing that kind of game than they
Speaker 3: do to just a board game. Those are the kinds
Speaker 3: of things that you want to just keep an eye
Speaker 3: on and not just wait and watch, but maybe after
Speaker 3: once or twice, say what is it about this game?
Speaker 3: Or can I play this game with you? Or can
Speaker 3: I watch you play this game? You don't always have
Speaker 3: to jump in with all the answers, which I have
Speaker 3: to remind myself all the time. It's about kind of
Speaker 3: observing and letting them process and letting them articulate that
Speaker 3: to you what's going on, and then kind of layering in,
Speaker 3: like I see that you're angry about this game, what
Speaker 3: is it about it? It's really getting you? Maybe that's
Speaker 3: when you might make decisions to Okay, he's really reacting
Speaker 3: running strongly to this.
Speaker 1: I might need to learnit.
Speaker 3: How much time they're spending on a particular game if
Speaker 3: they can't start to manage it a little bit or
Speaker 3: balance it. And I think that parenting, we're doing that
Speaker 3: with lots of stuff. Yeah, they can play that friend. Okay,
Speaker 3: that friend's starting to be not the best friend. Maybe
Speaker 3: we should pull that. Maybe we'll make a play yet
Speaker 3: with this other friend. She's only eating fast food. We
Speaker 3: need to balance that out with maybe some vegetables. We're
Speaker 3: doing it all the time. It's the same when it
Speaker 3: comes to digital media. It's just we don't have the insight.
Speaker 3: It takes more work because again, they're behind this screen.
Speaker 3: So that is one element that I think when we
Speaker 3: decide to get phones and tablets, putting them in a
Speaker 3: common area, making sure that we can see over their
Speaker 3: shoulder what they're doing on the screen. We all have
Speaker 3: to be a little bit more mindful when we hand
Speaker 3: those devices over, whether it's theirs to own or just
Speaker 3: to borrow ours for the moment, about what's going on
Speaker 3: before during afterwards. There's a lot of considerations to think
Speaker 3: about when we're making these decisions about what our kids'
Speaker 3: mental well being is going to look like, and there's
Speaker 3: so many outlying factors that we cannot control, but being
Speaker 3: present and being available for them to come back to
Speaker 3: and share some of that information is really essential as well.
Speaker 1: All this goes to say, if you want your kids
Speaker 1: to be safe online, you need to talk to them
Speaker 1: about new media and technology, and you need to start
Speaker 1: earlier than you think. Consider making an official family media
Speaker 1: agreement that can help foster the sort of dialogue you
Speaker 1: need to return to regularly. Pay attention to how your
Speaker 1: child reacts to different technologies, but don't just assume you
Speaker 1: know how it's affecting them. Ask questions, listen closely, and
Speaker 1: then adjust your approach as needed. None of these strategies
Speaker 1: will fully roll back the phone based childhood that Jonathan
Speaker 1: Hite talked about earlier, but if you can help your
Speaker 1: child think critically about digital technology, you're well on your
Speaker 1: way to fostering a bit more flourishing and happiness. Finally,
Speaker 1: give yourself some self compassion as a parent helping to
Speaker 1: raise the next generation in these changing technological times. Plus,
Speaker 1: if you want more strategies, there's still time to check
Speaker 1: out my free online course The Science of Well Being
Speaker 1: for parents. To learn more, just head to doctor Laurisanto's
Speaker 1: dot com slash parents. That's Dr Laisanto's dot com slash parents.
Speaker 1: That concludes our series on Happier parenting, But dot to
Speaker 1: worry is The Happiness Lab will be back soon. We'll
Speaker 1: be shifting gears with a new series exploring creative coping
Speaker 1: strategies for handling life's current baels. Think job loss, illnesses,
Speaker 1: heartbreak tragedies. When times get really hard, we need creative
Speaker 1: ways to cope, so we'll be looking at the weird
Speaker 1: and wonderful ways people find relief and the science behind
Speaker 1: why these strategies work. So be sure to come back
Speaker 1: soon for the next episode of The Happiness Lab with
Speaker 1: me Doctor Lauri Santo's