A

Foreign.

B

Welcome to the East Merchants Podcast with Kags and Kyle, where we discuss kids, technology, and growing up in today's world. I'm Michelle Cagliano, AKA cags.

A

I'm Kyle Gordon, AKA Kyle. And welcome to our first episode where we will be discussing the New York Times bestseller the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. The subtitle is how the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Before we begin, Kags, I have a question for you.

B

Go for it.

A

When you were a kid, what was you and your friends favorite thing to do when you were bored?

B

So my friends and I would always play board games. So anytime we were bored, we would pull out Monopoly life. I mean, you name it, we played Clue. Every single board game there was. We would play for hours and hours.

A

What was your favorite board game?

B

I love Monopoly because I'm very competitive and I want to win and I love money.

A

Must have a lot of mental stamina for that many games of Monopoly.

B

We did. We just played board games for hours. What about you? What did you guys do when you were bored?

A

My brother and I were big sports people, and we lived in a neighborhood with a. With a bunch of other kids our age. So it was always. Baseball was the big thing. It was like the movie the Sandlot. Yeah, like that. In the early 2000s. That was. That was. That was my childhood. We were on the baseball field or we were riding bikes, and if it was raining, we were inside playing. So. Holes in Sheetrock. Broken picture frames were very normal, Right?

B

Oh, there's a difference between girls and boys.

A

You know what, That's a great, Excellent, excellent point. Totally. So before we get into it anymore, let's introduce ourselves a little bit. So, Kags, tell us a little bit about yourself, Kags.

B

I'm a second grade teacher in East Merchants Elementary School. Our lovely library, our stage that we're at right now, I've been married to my wonderful husband Mike for 26 years, believe it or not. We have three beautiful children, ages 28, 25, and 13. So it's a big age gap there, but same baby daddy. And this is my first podcast. So new at this, but, you know, and you know, I've been through with my children, all the stages of, you know, screen time, social media. So my daughter, when screens first came out, you know, when the iPhones first came out, she was introduced to that. And now my son, where now we're getting all this data and, you know, it's like rethinking the whole screen time and all of that and just parenting differently with all three of my children. What about you? Tell us a little bit about you.

A

So I'm a middle school teacher, so I deal with older 12 and 13, which the response when I tell people that is usually, ugh, really? But I love them. This is my 11th year teaching, my 10th year at EASA Riches, and I've been married for eight years. My wife and I just had our first baby in January or last January. She's almost a year old now. So he's crawling around. He's cruising on the furniture. The baby proofing is in full swing. Coffee tables, no more. Just a mat on the floor. Yeah, every. Every cabinet is locked. The whole.

B

Getting into it.

A

The swing of it. Yeah. So I remember, even on this topic, I got my first cell phone. I would say in middle school, there's a flip phone, classic LG flip phone. Got a camera on the front, though. So that was. That was a big deal. That was a big deal. And my first iPhone in the. In. I think it was my sophomore year of college, first smartphone. So I, like, remember growing up without a phone at all and then starting to get one, and then sort of like after, like we quote, unquote, growing up in college, having a smartphone and seeing the results of that and then even like my. Some of my younger cousins and friends just a couple years younger than me is a big difference in high school, middle school, friendships, things like that. Just in a couple years.

B

I know it's. It's a very big difference. To see how my daughters grew up with technology and now how my son is growing up, it's completely different. And it's a lot more scary now than. Than it was then. Even though the repercussions of when my daughter first got her. Her cell phone is much worse. I feel like. Yeah, so far. I mean.

A

Yeah, yeah. No, that. It makes. It makes a lot of sense. We didn't even. That's. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We got a lot to.

B

We'll get there. We'll get there. So how do we get here?

A

How do we get here?

B

How did get here? On this.

A

On a podcast. Beautiful stage after a long day of work, right? You know, just taking care of kids all day, you know, just raising the next generation. How do we get here, Michelle?

B

So our district chose the. The Anxious Generation as our district read. So every year we pick a book and we read it together as colleagues and we discuss and we try and grow as professionals and educators. And this was our book this year. And after Reading the book, I mean, I was very inspired, and I was very moved by what I read and the data and what happened after that.

A

So apparently I didn't even know this until our curriculum coordinator told me this, but I actually suggested the Anxious Generation in a survey that I didn't even know. I was like, oh, wow, they picked this book. That's great. I just read this book. It was amazing. And then Emily's like, yeah, I think that you suggested it in the survey. But I was a fan of Jonathan Haidt for a while. I read some of his other books, listened to podcasts he was on. I feel like he has such an interesting way of looking at the world. And this book, I felt like, was one of those. It was like the perfect. The perfect person to write the perfect book at the perfect time. That makes sense.

B

I agree.

A

So I was really interested in it, excited. We were going to do it. And then, yeah, we were sent an email that, hey, there's going to be this, like, book talk with teachers and administrators from other districts. I had no idea that you were interested. And, yeah, we both showed up there and we went and it was kind of like. It was. It was really interesting. It was a great. It was. It was a really great discussion with teachers from really. Mostly administrators, but teachers from all over Long Island, Nassau, and Suffolk.

B

And we're all in the same boat, right? So we're all struggling with our kids and our students with anxiety, depression, and just too much screen time. So we're trying to battle that and

A

even to do in schools of, what do we do? Kids have phones, like, they're not going away. What do we do that's best for schools? That's best for kids in general.

B

And then our wonderful superintendent, Mr. Dean Middleman, suggested, you know, let's take it a step further. We've done book talks. We, you know, we had some presentations within. In a house with our colleagues. But, like, let's bring it out to the world, right? Because other people, other educators, other districts, I'm sure they're wondering the same thing. How can we help our kids?

A

Yeah, absolutely.

B

And even as parents, you know, like, the book, I feel like, was very geared toward parenting, but, you know, we're seeing it in education, too. So.

A

Yeah. And, like, we. We're in a situation where we are parents and teachers, and I guess, yeah, we're. We're teaching different grades than our kids are.

B

Right.

A

Right now.

B

Yeah.

A

Is that grammatical? I don't know if that makes sense, but, yeah, it's. It applies on multiple Levels, you know, as, as a parents, like, for me, at least, planning of, like, all right, I got 10 years or nine years until, you know, like that the conversation of when is it going to, when are we going to what? Also is the world's gonna be in eight or ten years. But. And then what can we do with the students we have in our classrooms right now? You know, and when parents reach out and say, you know, I don't, I don't know what to do, they don't. This is the only thing they want to do is be on the phone or the tablet and, and just seeing

B

the attention span of children, like these days, you know, their attention span is literally a minute and 30 seconds, because that's how long a reel is.

A

Yeah.

B

And, you know, after that they get bored and they, they start, you know, wandering. So. So how can we battle that in our classrooms and help them?

A

Yeah, absolutely. So let's get into the book. Yeah. So in this first episode, we have, we're gonna talk in general terms. What is the book about? What's kind of the central premise? So what is the anxious generation about, Michelle?

B

So Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and professor at nyu, and he's known for digging deep into the cultural and psychological forces shaping our society. In his book, he identifies what he calls as the great rewiring, which is a cultural shift where childhood moved from play based to phone based.

A

And he identifies around 2012 is this year where smartphones kind of become like, if you're getting a phone, you're getting a smartphone. They're like, flip phones are kind of on the way out. And a smartphone is different because you have access to the Internet, you have all these apps that the tech companies are trying to gain your attention and gain the amount of time you spend on that app. And he said kids were spending less time outside with their friends face to face, more time scrolling on Instagram or TikTok or Snapchat or whatever the case may be alone in their rooms. And then we have a lot of mental health data, specifically from that time period to show for it.

B

Yeah. And I have a few just, you know, some data points that I'd like to share. I'm sure you seen it in the book, but these are some things that, like, really stood out to me. So teen anxiety diagnosis rates went up from 6% in 2010 to over 18% in 2022. I mean, that's huge. I know. You know, my family struggles with anxiety, and it makes me wonder.

A

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

B

What part, you know, Smartphones played in that rising teen depression. So in 2010, the teen depression rate was about 8% and it's over 20% now. Which.

A

Yeah, one every five kids. That's like, you know, a quarter. Not a quarter. But if you had 20 kids in your classroom. Right. Four of them.

B

Four of them.

A

That's a lot for.

B

Diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Right.

A

That's a lot for a small class.

B

Yeah, I mean, I see it. I see it in my class. I see it in every grade, you know, every cohort that comes through. I feel like it's getting worse and worse. So, yeah, we're trying to battle that and just daily screen time increase. So kids would spend three hours online, typically in about 2010, and now they're up to seven hours. Picture seven hours of your day is online.

A

If you're sleeping for six hours, you got 18 left, you're in school for seven. Right.

B

And the other time is just you're

A

basically on screen the rest of the time. Yeah. That's scary.

B

I mean, it takes a toll.

A

That's scary. So like, even like going through this data, like, what. When you read the book and you're going through all these charts that he lays out in the first chapter of thing, Depression, anxiety, self har. What's like. Like, what's your reaction?

B

So when I was reading the first part of the book with all the data, I felt extreme guilt. I was like, what did I do to my children? How did I allow them to have these devices? And look at, like, you know, I just, I look at my daughter and things she struggles with and my middle daughter and my son and. And I felt extreme guilt as a parent. Like, I failed as a parent. Like, what am I going to do? I have to fix this, you know. What about you? How did you feel?

A

Obviously different, right? I've. I didn't have, when I read this, didn't have any children, but even my more so was like, wow. Yep, I see that. Yep, I can see that. You know, it's almost like where you have your own, like anecdotal evidence, if you want to call it that, or your own stories of like this friend or this family member or just like what you see in general.

B

Yeah.

A

And then you see like, oh, across the rest of the country in different age group, or not the age groups, but in different places and in different schools. It's like the same things happening, like what you're seeing. This is not just my cousin, my friends, you know, my friend's brother, sister who experienced this. It's like, no, it's like, it almost like, is that confirmation of, okay, this is happening, you know, across the board?

B

Yeah, totally. And you know, just in, in having these book talks and talking to people and, and reflecting, like, this book is not really to make you feel that way. Right. And this podcast is not to make you feel guilty or anxious or depressed or like a failure. You know, we're here to like, help. Right. To help parents and educators know what to do to just to turn this little. The trend around.

A

It's a conversation, you know, to know that like, you're not the only one going through it, which I'm sure most people realize. Like, this is, this is like the issue of parenting at this time, but that, you know, there's. We can have conversations about it. And if you feel unsure about the way that you're doing it or the way your kids are reacting to certain things, like, you're not alone. Like, everyone's going through like, is this the right thing? Am I doing it the right way? And most of us is, I don't know. Or sometimes yes, sometimes no, or not at all.

B

And that's, you know. Yeah. It takes a village too. Right. So we're a little village here, but we're hoping to spread this knowledge to other. That's right, other villages.

A

So getting back to kind of like the premise of the book, it's like he has these talks about the four foundational harms and the four new norms.

B

Yep.

A

And the foundational harms is this shift from play based childhood to phone based childhood.

B

Yeah.

A

Or screen based childhood. Right. It's like it brings up these four things which are sleep deprivation. It's kind of an obvious thing. Right. If you're seven or more hours and that if seven is average, then you have kids who are 10, 11, 12. Right. So that's, that's pretty obvious. Which also affects your emotions, affects your attention, everything else.

B

Brain development.

A

You have social deprivation, meaning less time, face to face, learning social skills, learning social cues, attention, fragmentation. As you know, the average. The real, you know, the average real

B

is how long, 30 seconds.

A

Yep. And then, but then come to class and read a book for 20 minutes straight.

B

Do it. Yeah, yeah.

A

And then lastly, addiction. Right. In extreme cases, whether it's social media addiction or video game addiction.

B

Yeah.

A

It's, it's, it's not uncommon to see that, you know, especially younger and younger. You know, it's, it's rare. It's rare in any other time in history.

B

Gratification, the likes, the notifications, the rewards,

A

all of that and any other time, like where we're talking about the word addiction with kids younger than 18 or 16 at the youngest, you know, and now you're talking about 10. Yeah, 10. Even younger. Even younger, possibly. But then he also suggests that if we make these changes that he calls the four new norms, we can sort of reverse this or help kids adapt better than they've been adapting.

B

Yeah. And some of these new norms include no smartphones before high school. Right. So give your kid a flip phone. Let them, you know, if they need to get in touch with you, they get in touch with you. There's no need for all the smartphone technology and the apps and all that. No social media before 16 or older. Which is hard because. Yeah, yeah, it's hard because there's that fomo, you know, so the kids, you know, all their friends have it. It's hard to not give in to that. Right. But.

A

Oh, yeah, that's the thing.

B

If you get enough people, you know, you never know.

A

If none of your friends have a smartphone until 16, then there is no FOMO because you're all in the same boat.

B

Totally. No phones in school, which is a new law that's been adopted by New York State. We already have done that here. So we were a little ahead of the curve in East Merchants, which was great. So that's not something they have to get used to. But I see with my son, his school didn't have that rule, and now they do. And I could see his grades are a little better. He's paying more attention because he has to.

A

Oh, yeah. But I'm sure those schools are also facing a difficult adjustment.

B

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, giving kids more independence, more free play, more responsibility in the real world, that's.

A

That's the goal, right?

B

Yeah, that is the goal.

A

So the, the thing we're gonna kind of like, I guess, focus on or not focus on. But like our last main point here, like the first section of the book, before he goes into, you know, he lays out all the data. This is what's wrong. But then before he gets into the. Even the smartphone thing talks about, like, what do kids need in childhood? Right. To become a successful adult or even just like learn the skills you need to be a successful human. Like, what do kids need? And he says four things. Free play, social learning, attunement, agency. So free play he describes as child directed. So children are choosing unstructured in person play that happens without constant adult supervision. It includes exploring, negotiating rules, resolving conflicts, inventing games, taking small risks. And again, all without adults supervision or intervention. Just letting the kids play how they see fit.

B

Right. Which is hard because a lot of parents want to step in and guide and help them play and help them make up games and rules and all that. The second one is attunement. So that's responsive. Real time connection with chill between children and caregivers. I like to think about it like you're in tune with your kid. Right. Like you're, you're sharing emotions, you, you're sharing, you know, facial expressions. Your child, you know, if they come in and say, oh, I got this on my test, you know, 100 on my test, they want to see your reaction. You staring at a phone, right?

A

Yeah, definitely.

B

Yeah.

A

And then social learning. So the, like, it is, you know, kind of self. Self explanatory here. You're learning through social interactions.

B

Yeah.

A

But face to face social interactions, you know, in a similar way to attunement, you're seeing what other people do. You're seeing their reaction, you're learning from them. Like, who are you following? Are you following the people who, the kid who's the most popular. Are you following what the most people are doing and making that decision? When do I follow the crowd? Because the crowd is mostly doing the right thing. Or when do I follow the person who's going against the crowd and those decisions being made.

B

Yep. And then lastly, agency. So we want our children to be able to make choices, solve problems and affect outcomes. Affect outcomes. Right. So they do this through real life challenges and they're not going to grow without making mistakes. Mistakes help us grow. Right. Growth, mindset. So we want our kids to productively struggle and have a hard time and get through it without us constantly feeding them.

A

Yeah. And then they get that gratification of, wow, I did it myself, I figured it out or I was able to accomplish this.

B

Absolutely.

A

So, yeah. So even when we look at these four things, like what's the one that almost like sticks out to you?

B

So I think of attunement. Right. So I think of like sometimes I'll watch TV shows or I'll think about, you know, certain situations where a child will come in and a parent's just on their phone, you know, and not paying attention or, you know, you don't want that time that you have together to be. You're looking at your phone and they're. You just see their face drop because you're not into what they're saying.

A

Yeah.

B

You know, breaks my heart.

A

Yeah. And I'm in that phase Right now, like, my little guy, he's like. Everything he's doing, he wants your reaction, right? He's doing something, and then he looks the same, right?

B

Daddy watching?

A

Is dad watching? Is. You know, it's like that. That. It's like every 30 seconds or every minute he turned around, he's like, is anybody here watching me? Are you seeing what I'm doing?

B

Yeah.

A

And I think that even gets more so as they get a little bit older into the toddler years. You know, I remember even, you know, we were watching some home videos recently that my parents had dug up, which are actually, you know, let's. Let's clip that, actually. But, you know, the amount of times it's like, dad, watch this. Mom, watch this. Dad, watch this.

B

Oh, in the pool. Did you see that? Watch this. Watch this.

A

Absolutely. Yeah. Like, when I look at these, I think of free play in the sense of, you know, like, even thinking about it. You want to be a responsive parent, right? You want to be, like, involved. The same thing. Attunement. You want to always be watching. But, like, what's that balance of, like, all right, I'm watching. They. They know that I care about them. They know that mom and dad are here, and we love them, but we got to kind of, like, lengthen the leash a little bit, you know, and be like, all right, if they're outside, like, I can. They can just play. I don't have to direct their play. I don't have to show them a game. Like I said, you know, I think of the amount of times that my friends and I. It's like, we're playing outside. We're playing a game. Right. We're playing, like, wiffle ball. So there are, like, kind of set rules. Yeah, but, you know, there's, like, trees in the middle of the yard or the fences here. So it's like, yeah, was that fair or foul? We have to argue. And at some point, somebody has to. Without an adult to say, I'm gonna give up my side because. Or else the game's gonna stop.

B

Absolutely.

A

You know, and you have to be able to, like, settle disagreements. That's part of free playing is you're settling disagreements without an authority, an adult saying, this is the rule. You get this. You get this. You know, you kind of figure. Figure that out totally, but.

B

And then even, like, dinner time, like, you know, dinner time should be a time where you're not on your phone. You're. You're looking at each other's emotions. You're sharing memories and things. You Know, what did you do during the day?

A

Oh, yeah.

B

So you know that that also goes along with attunement.

A

Yeah. So let's wrap up.

B

All right.

A

I think we have this.

B

Sounds good.

A

Nice. Nice little conversation just to get it started. Just the first one. The first one. So just a quick couple key takeaways here. So main point of the book, there's been this great rewiring of childhood from play based to phone based, caused by the advent of the smartphone, the advent of something called safetyism in parenting, which we'll talk about next episode or the following, which. Yeah. Has created this rewiring.

B

Yep. Children also, you know, to reiterate, need four things to develop properly. Free play, social learning, attunement and agency. And I do have a story to share next time, so remind me.

A

I will remind you. And the last thing is that, you know, children are, you know, gain the skills they need to be successful, successful adults when they have a wide range of opportunities in those different areas. Right. Free playing, wide range of opportunities, attunement, wide range. Not just their parents, but their friends, their relatives, you know, like all those things and that, you know, that's what they need. So to leave off or to kind of our last. We'll do like a sort of a challenge for our listeners. And I say plural, hopefully there's more than one, but kind of a challenge going forward. So the last new norm, right, that Jonathan Haidt suggests is to give kids more independence, more free play and more responsibility in the real world. So what can we do realistically? And this is again for our audience, this is what we want you to be thinking about, talking about with your friends, reflecting on what are things that we can do as adults realistically to give kids more opportunities in these areas. So if you're a parent in your home, if you're a teacher in your classroom, if you're an aunt or uncle, when you're babysitting or watching your kids, what can we do to give kids more meaningful experiences in these areas?

B

Yeah, and I mean just me as a parent or an educator, I'm thinking of like my students when they come in from recess, there's always an issue, right? So they're always this says so and so did this, so and so did that. So I've been trying to just step back and let them kind of talk it out, let them figure it out, let them use their. And I'm just there watching, not stepping in until I feel like it's necessary if it is. But they're doing better you know, and giving them that space and time to talk and work it out will help them. So next time, stay tuned. We will be discussing diving deeper into the anxious generation and talking about some more topics. Some heavy topics.

A

Some heavy topics, but good topics. Continuing the conversation.

B

Right.

A

Yeah.

B

So that we can make some changes for the future.

A

Absolutely. We did it. Michelle. End of the first episode. Just want to say a quick thank you to our producer, Chris, who has been our guiding light, if you will, during this episode, manning the soundboard, the camera, giving us all of our cues. We want to say thank you to Peter Burns, who is the tech wizard. Anything that you need, Actually, not even tech. Anything that you need. Peter. Peter will get the job done.

B

He will get it done. And then.

A

Oh, go ahead.

B

Mr. Middleman, our superintendent, of course, who really was, you know, it was his idea. This was all his idea. So whether it's a failure or it's great, it's all his idea. And Emily Icke, who we could not have done this without. We love her so much, and she's. She got us our tea.

A

She got us our tea. Wouldn't have been a true podcast episode without the tea. So thank you and tune in again next time.