A

Foreign.

B

Welcome to another episode of the Thriving Kids podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Dave Anderson, clinical psychologist and vice president, public Engagement and Education at the Child Mind Institute. I am here with our guest this week, Dr. Candace Odgers of the University of California, Irvine. Welcome.

A

Thank you for having me.

B

I don't know if that's the only affiliation you would have listed. Are there other affiliations you would have listed?

A

You know, that's just fine. I'm proud to be an anteater here in Southern California.

B

Oh, my God. I didn't know that was the mascot.

A

You know, there's. Yeah, they voted on it in the 70s, and no one has had the courage to change it, so we're embracing it.

B

Yeah. No, this makes sense. This reminds me of the fact that every time. So my wife and I are alumni of Dartmouth, which is the big Green. Every time, like, Dartmouth has held probably, like, three different surveys over the last 20 years of students trying to get, like, a new mascot, and either Boaty McBoatface wins or some form of that, or Keggy the Keg, our unofficial mascot, and neither one ends up getting instituted officially by the college. So I'm glad. Anteaters. Like, that seems nice.

A

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a way for this generation to mess with the next one. You know, the student vote that.

B

Yes, that's great. I just also can't figure out how you make a really cool, like, intimidating mascot costume around that. But regardless, Dr. Otters, we did not bring you here to discuss college mascots. How about we just start off with kind of a little bit of a description of your work and the spaces you work in and kind of where your expertise is.

A

Yeah. So I've been studying adolescent mental health for a very long time, and I've had the pleasure since around 2008, of using smartphones and mobile phones to track momentarily on a daily level what young people are doing, how they're spending their time. And we really started doing that to try and understand, like, what are the daily and momentary predictors of mental health symptoms and sleep. And so it's been, like, a really interesting kind of experience to be on their phones during that time and kind of watch this entire uptick of social media and smartphones and understand the impacts it has.

B

And this is a really important point you make in describing your research. How frequently do you think when we are engaging in discussions around the topic of, say, phones, screens, social media, or are people referencing research that's actually been done on children in this age group

A

longitudinally yeah, so it is very rare. So if you look at all the meta analyses, you'll see that about 90% of the research is basically just kind of a cross sectional going in and asking people to remember how much time they spent online and how they've been feeling in the last little while. And then, you know, especially recently with the experimental work, you know, reducing social media use or asking people to reduce it, none of those studies have looked at adolescents. In fact, there's not one study to date that has tested this in under 16s yet. That's where we're going with all of our policy action.

B

Sway. I want to really underscore that for a second because that's a really important point. When you say to our lay audience, experimental studies, why is that important? Why is it important you use that word?

A

Yeah, it's important because a lot of the time we do see an association. So young people or people who spend more time online will have more difficulties. And you're a clinical psychologist, so when you're depressed, you spend more time in bed. But we don't necessarily blame the bed for the depression. Right. And so it's hard to figure out what comes first. And so if we want to talk about something causing something, and, you know, we're interested in that because we want to be able to shut things off or address things to help young people, then we need a different kind of design than just kind of asking people to remember what they did on these two things. So often we'll do longitudinal research where we follow people over time and try and control for things. Or the gold standard is experimental research where we randomly assign people to conditions and then try and change something about their experience, in this case online. So asking them to reduce or restrict their use.

B

And so you're absolutely right that, I mean that so much of the media narratives are centered on kids 16 or under. And I mean, this is the thing. If we don't have much research on that population, how can we be sure of anything?

A

Yeah, so we have, I mean, we have the correlation, the research, and we have some longitudinal research. We just don't have the experimental research. And this actually brings up, you know, an interesting point in the kind of policy debate is, you know, there's lots of reasons why people want to shut off social media and smartphones. And if we've done surveys of California adults and we find that it's like one of the only things that Republicans, Democrats and Independents agree on is they want, want social media out of children's lives, they want them Less time on smartphones, they want phones out of schools. And so the consensus among adults is really clear. And that's a value judgment and that's a normative judgment, and that's a whole conversation about what we want for our kids lives. But the interesting thing is over here, there's the evidence testing whether or not that's a major predictor of children's mental health problems or what happens when you take it away. So on the first point, is it a major predictor of children's mental health problems? Not really. In fact, most studies find kind of really tiny associations, can't figure out cause from effect, labeling it in many cases as the least influential factor in predicting adolescent mental health. So for me, the really interesting thing has been this big gap between what adults believe and want for their children and what we actually see in the data, which is not much so far. It's a really unsettled science.

B

And this is something that I think you are one of the absolute best messengers in the field on this particular thing around correlation not equaling causation. We are often shown this notion that we're in the midst of what we can agree on is a bad situation for youth mental health. We've got that. We also are likening a lot of the awareness of that as a society to the last decade and a half, the last two decades. And then we also think what is also going on in our society in the last two decades and a lot of people's first thought is smartphones. How do you take it deeper when people are trying to make that correlation equals causation argument. What do you say?

A

So I'm going to back up to the first point. And so like I said, I've been in this for a long time, 25 years, and it's always been the case that young people have struggled with mental health problems. So about one in five have experienced kind of an early onset difficulty. And you know, but that's really changed over time. And so when I first started in this field, it was really about high rates of violence and substance use. We were trying to prevent teen pregnancy. And all those things have plummeted. Right? And those are at historic lows. So on many markers of things that really matter, young people are doing quite well. And in fact, when we wait, I

B

want to, I want to go to that point because you and I both get this question everywhere. It's that some of that has been spun in a really negative way where we say like we're not congratulating ourself on Public health campaigns that have decreased teen pregnancy and substance use. But all of a sudden there's this narrative that like kids aren't experimenting in these really developmentally appropriate ways like they used to and that we're living in an autistic generation. How do you respond to that? When we should, we might be congratulating ourselves on these outcomes?

A

Well, yeah, I mean, and it's great because it's people our age and older that are basically arguing for like this return to our childhood was like the best thing ever. And adults do this all the time. But if you go back to our childhood, it was actually a pretty dangerous time. And it's things that we just talked about, kind of violence, substance use, those lead to horrible long term consequences, early death, all kinds of, all kinds of things. So it is the case that risk taking has gone down and we've actually taken away opportunities for young people to take, to take risks, you know, so that, that's fair. But at the same time, if you look at other kinds of markers. There was an article in Scientific American last week and you know, we see every gener actually get smarter. They're more empathetic it turns out. So any outcome you give me, except for we'll talk to in a bit anxiety and depression. Right now, I will, I will go back to us as children and show you data that the kids today are not only okay, they're better than us, they are better than us in so many ways. And there's lots of debates about whether we're in a youth mental health crisis, but it is clear we are in an adult one. Right. So rates of suicide, I mean if you want to talk about poor mental health, we should be talking about adults. And the most important predictor of kids mental health are the caregivers around them. Right. So that's a big missing part of this, this story. But you are right that depression, anxiety and suicide risk has been increasing since about 2008among young people.

B

So to say that like. So you know, obviously I think you make very good points about how not everything is worse, lots of things have gotten better and for good reason, not necessarily because we need to assign a negative interpretation to it. You're fighting against biases that we have to romanticize the past to believe that everything was better in certain childhood, you know, moments. And you know, I think that we see that a lot, you know, across the country, this sort of notion of like, you know, I know, I know we hear the phrase like return to a play based phone free childhood and like that Kind of thing which may never have existed.

A

Yeah, no, I think, I think that's, that's exactly it. Right. And so, you know, I think the other thing is that, you know, we're really primed. I mean, parenting is anxiety ridden, right? We're always second guessing our, our decisions and we're constantly like, as a parent, I'm constantly bombarded with these messages about how bad things are for this generation, you know, how worse off they are. And I see this day and day and know the data and I've been following young people on their phones and coach kids basketball and see it. And so I, you know, I, I have to work to kind of check my assumptions against real data and go, oh, okay. You know, they're actually pretty amazing. They're doing really well in all these metrics. And it's not to discount, you know, concerns about social media. I think the other thing that's coming into play is social media companies and tech companies are really easy to hate. Right. And have made all kinds of bad decisions. And so, you know, the point I always come to is like both things can be true. We need massive reform on all of these platforms for all of us and especially our kids. And you know, social media is not the major contributor to mental health problems for most kids today. And when we go down that route, it sucks all the air out of the room and we stop focusing on the things we can really do to support young people. And so.

B

Well, I think you make a good point because we're at the moment and you know, we're recording this in May and we're probably going to release this over the summer or something like that, but we're at a moment where I think a lot of the discussion, I've heard this a lot from our patients, our community at Child mind. Don't these cases in California prove the point? Like, can we equate a legal definition of harm to an individual to the greater case that folks are making? How do you respond to that? Because these are also cases in your home state or, you know. Yeah, where the anteaters live, Right?

A

Yeah, no, exactly. So and so civil case, you know, the evidence standard is a little bit different and juries are going to take their pound of flesh. Right. We want social media companies to pay for all kinds of things and we are going to see a lot of time spent in courtrooms, you know, making these types of claims. And you know, the, the issue that we talk about, which is kind of cause and evidence relates in some ways to that, but it's not, it's not a perfect correlation. So I think that the movement against technology companies and the, the desire to have some sort of accountability for them not coming into the public square and doing better on all kinds of fronts and our reckoning is here. And, and that is, that is true. I think that the point where, and people have said to me, okay, you know Candace, just, you know, who cares if it's not the biggest cause? You know, it's actually working like, you know, it is working to put children out front and center to make these companies accountable. Like what's the harm? Right? Like so that's the pushback that I get. So. Right.

B

And I mean you're not, you're not saying tech companies shouldn't be held accountable. In fact, you're very much on record saying that these two things can be true. There may need to be a reason why we examine these platforms and some harms associated with them and how the tech companies, you know, constructed these things. But at the same time. Okay, so now we go back to this because this, this I think is an incredibly important point for any of our listeners. So a couple of things to, to lead us through. You mentioned that anxiety, depression, suicide do not have great indicators at the moment. But importantly, if as you mentioned before, social media is one of the weakest factors, when you truly put a model together and take a look at this in the science, what are the big factors? What, what would you say are the drivers of those conclusions?

A

Yeah. So in our, in our research, we look day to day and we fig, we find out what young people report are the major stressors in their life and then what's the most predictive of their mental health symptoms. Right. And so what we find is family related conflict and stress to do well at school are the most frequent things that young people report and the most predictive of their mental health. Right. And that's not.

B

Wait, I just want us to say them again. Slowers, family related conflict and stress and

A

school conflict in the home and stress to perform well at school. So those are the big, those are the big stressors and stressors peer relationships which you can see how that can play online. But we, we see that, you know, this, this massive overlap between kind of offline risk and online risk there. So isolating things as a cause online is, is hard as, as well, you know, more broadly when we follow young people over time, parental and caregiver mental health is the biggest predictor of how young people where they end up. And a lot of that, you know, that's genes and that's environment. But, you know, it is concerning that adults today are not doing well, and that in the United States, since 1999, you know, we increase in suicide risk among adults. You know, in America, actually, the. The most stunning statistic that I've. That I've seen, people will often say, oh, between 2012, there's some magical thing about 2012 people believe happened.

B

I was just about to ask you this question because it's this question of, like, well, if things started to get worse, what are the drivers of it getting worse? And this is where the adult mental health conversation really becomes important.

A

Right. So people will point to this 2012 as. That's when smartphones release some sort of threshold or social media really came on board, and that's why things are going down. But if you actually look at mental health data among caregivers, what you find is between 2011 and 2020, one new paper in JAMA, the rate of deaths due to drug overdoses among parents more than doubled during this period. And these are deaths. Right. And we can see the same thing in hospital admissions. And these are extreme outcomes that are really the tip of iceberg in terms of thinking about a crisis among adults. So I would say that it's pretty clear that the adults in America right now are not okay and have been getting worse during that period. So while people say, you know what, what else could it have been other than Instagram? Right. Well, caregivers were struggling and parents were dying. Let's at least look at that as part of this holistic conversation.

B

Absolutely. I mean, you just mapped that there's three different causes there. Increasing suicide risk, drugs, and the fact that you hit the data in 2021 there in JAMA, which may, granted, it takes a while for a scholarly publication to come out that may not have even fully, you know, encapsulated the pandemic and these so many thousands of kids who lost a parent during the pandemic to Covid. So, yeah.

A

And if you back up more, we had a Great Recession in 2008, right. And there's clear data showing the impacts that that had, you know, across the distribution of families and especially for those who were struggling financially already that have not. Did not rebound after that.

B

Will you remind us that the adults been okay for quite some time, and then they're searching for reasons why their kids are not okay? And sometimes it can be incredibly hard to say, well, it might be because we're not okay, not because someone else is doing something to our kids. And the Factors that you just listed that. I mean, I, I always think of this as like, it's, it's, you know, researchers discovering the obvious. It's sort of like we, we sit there and we say, like, oh, what could be making, you know, drivers of kind of like youth mental health concerns? It's the same three things we focused on in treatment for three decades. Yes, your family, your friends, and your academic success. All of which, like, any time I give a substance abuse talk, I'll say to parents, if you are looking for something to prevent substance abuse for your kids, make it so that your kid doesn't feel alienated at home. Make it so they feel like they have some level of success and investment in school, and make it so they feel like they at least are successful in finding a friend or, you know, some peer who's supportive. Any one of those is knocked out of the equation and we got risk for all kinds of dissociation, numbness, and, you know, things like that.

A

And that's why it's so confusing for me as someone who spent a long time in this one kind of, you know, the stories that are being told about our young people that just don't match onto the data and then the solutions that we're all just running to, which is ban. Like, we know we can't ban our way out of a youth mental health crisis. Like, you don't make young people healthier by taking things away, right? You invest, you build, you invest in them and the adults around. Like, that is what we do and we know how to do. But the policy solution, this is so politically popular, right? And it is just, it is like satisfying some itch to like, you know, hold Big Tech to the fire and at the same time, you know, convince ourselves that we're saving our children at the same time when none of that might be happening. Because, you know, the bands and the age restricted bands, they actually don't hold companies accountable. They give them a pass. Right? We hold them accountable by saying, kids are on the platform, do better for all of us.

B

Right. Well, so the bans are a really interesting topic. So this came up because of a kind of notable, kind of, you know, societal zeitgeist beginning a couple years back in saying something about, you know, particular ages for kids with phones, phone presence in schools, you know, things like that. At the time or now, is there any evidence of the outcomes promised for a ban like this? I mean, I, I'm assuming that there, there must be some question about whether or not we know that it results in These things.

A

Yeah. So the school based bans are spreading and they're all over the place. And you know, my kids are, my middle schooler is in a school with a band and they spent millions of dollars on the yonder poaches and they've locked them all up. And there's going to be lots of studies that come out and there's going to be little positive negative effects in both directions and people are going to jump on those and declare victory. But I think, you know, what we're seeing so far, and there was a new study released this week, is that the effect effects on academic outcomes tend to be close to zero. The effects in this particular case, this was Hunt Alcott and I'll work were, you know, no effects on attendance. There was a, an increase actually in suspensions right away, which is also what a study in Florida found. Right.

B

Which makes sense, give a new rule. You're going to have to enforce that rule more and you're going to get more of a kind of law and order approach.

A

Yeah. And unfortunately in Florida the suspensions hit black and brown children the most, which is something else that we know for

B

from policies and happens with any rule in schools. Not just, you know, phones.

A

But yeah, so many of these things are predictable. And you know, we know from, you know, decades of research on implementation science, you know, a top down ban approach with this age group is exactly the wrong, you know, developmental fit. And that's the approach that's been taking in schools. And then we're seeing in Australia, you know, kind of the wheels come off as well as this as we get some early data in terms of whether or not that ban is working.

B

And, and this goes back again to research. Discovering the obvious is that like I try to go back. I remember there was a story that I was commenting on in my hometown paper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution at one point, early on in the bands, because there were some bands in public school districts in Georgia going back a couple of years. And they said, what do you expect to happen? I said I expect teenagers to find workarounds for any pouch or you know, anything else that you've got. And they said, are you already seeing this? And I said we're two months into the school year where these bans are starting to become like a national movement. I got kids who are giving in a decoy phone. I got kids who are using a phone together. I got kids who are just saying they don't have one. I got kids who figured out how to hack the pouch, how to hack the other stuff, they're teenagers. They're like hackers. They're going to break it the second there is something to break. And then the question is, what have we taught them? What have we made them ready for?

A

Because again, how complicit do parents become? So last night in carpool, the conversation was, there weren't enough calculators to go around in the math class for the test because all of the kids had put their calculators in the yonder pouches so that if they got inspected, they could feel it. So, so my suggestion started to come out as I have an old phone, like, we should do that instead, right? So now parents, I mean, in some ways it's bonding because now we're working together to, you know, against this kind of weird, weird policy. And I'm not saying people always jump on like, oh, you're saying kids should have their phones in school. And that's not at all what I'm saying. In fact, this was something that, you know, teachers had had the shoe rack at the back of the desk. Our phones were in backpacks. But, you know, the amount of money. So you're in New York, it was budgeted $29 million for the yonder pouches. And enforcement of this, like, is that where we want to spend our money on the pouches and chasing kids through the hallway and spending them?

B

Still don't have the consistency we need in literacy education. And kids are falling behind on that. I mean, like, I, I can. Like, my immediate thing is like, well, what policy might we suggest that might have an immediate effect on academic outcomes and that we know there's research behind it, see pockets of success everywhere. I mean, this, this goes back to, like, it, it. It relates to, you know, this is my, my area of clinical expertise is ADHD and behavior disorders. And what I always tell parents is like, there's a reason why all the science behind our interventions says that if you forbid your kid to do something that won't necessarily help them to confront the situation where that thing is in the future. Same way that, like, you know, when, when we talk about kids waking up at 16 and, and delaying, you know, I know there's a, you know, lots of discussion about, like, what age is appropriate for social media. I mean, my answer is, first of all, no one's executive functioning is prepared for social media and infinite scrolling. That's just what it is. And also, you don't wake up at 16 suddenly being able to drive. You don't wake up at 21 suddenly being able to Drink. You don't wake up at 18, suddenly understanding our political system. All of this requires some degree of knowledge and kind of no gain. So I want to go back to one thing we glossed over. You coach middle school basketball players.

A

So I coach my daughter's basketball team. So this is actually sad. This is the first year that I am no longer coaching because they have a, you know, not the parent coach.

B

Wait, wait, wait. Why. Why are you not giving yourself grace as a real coach? I mean, what kind of experience did you have coaching? You have to have a coaching resume.

A

So I play college basketball, and I actually, my coach was the coach of the national team, so I learned from one of the best people. But, you know, this is.

B

So you and Don Staley is what you're saying.

A

I mean, that would be my dream. I'm available, you know.

B

Right. You just join the staff. Like, you know, get. Get to know it. Like, you know, that'd be great. It'd be great. But. Okay, so. So you've moved away from this role because you have so much you need to do in the work we're discussing.

A

Well, they actually get. They get real coaches at this point. So this was community level basketball. And it was. I loved it. I loved it. It was so great. And the amount of, like, energy and spirit and fierceness that these young girls bring to the court and to life is. Is fun.

B

But to go to that age, I mean, you're in it right now. Your youngest is in this age. If it isn't, you know, let's say, let's talk about where, you know, these particular themes. If it isn't, you know, delaying giving a phone till a certain age, or delaying social media till a certain age, or banning phones in schools, what do we want to do for that age range? Like, what are the things we should be pivoting to?

A

Yeah, so I think, you know, the first thing is, like, we need to invest in the adults around young people as much as we invest in them. Right. And this is something that, you know, we see time and time again. And that means, you know, supports around parents from the very first, you know, parental leave. The ratio of counselors in middle schools right now is 500 to 1. So one counselor for every 500 students. I mean, that is not a sustainable model. Right. And so we need that.

B

We know that a hundred of those students are struggling, and nobody can carry that caseload if we're just going on a one in five statistics.

A

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we need to start investing in the spaces where Young people are, right? And so the kind of, you know, this constant search and these small effect sizes for, you know, negative effects, like that's such an opportunity cost. Instead, we should be building spaces in ways that we know support young people and their developmental needs. Whether that's sleep, whether that's education, right? Whether that's mental health. And there's so little investment right now in the digital mental health space of bringing those services to young people where they are. We know, we see it time and time again when young people are depressed, they're more likely to go online and ask for help. There's a whole conversation now, which is another podcast about conversational agents. They are going there to ask because they're not getting supports offline, right? So like, how. What are we thinking about when we invest in this? Are we thinking about investing in bands and, you know, pretending we're kicking kids off and restriction or we building things, you know, that. That are, you know, just better for them? And I think the other part of this is like, we also know, and David Yeager has a great new book on this, right? The science of motivating adolescents is like, this is a period of time where we need to set high expectations for them, right? And they will meet them. And they have all the ability in the world, they have these superpowers to meet those high expectations. If we build in the supports, right? And people are pretending that technology has created all of these new problems. And it has. But the things that young people need and the way that we can support them, you know, those remain the same. And so I think setting high expectations is not telling a generation that they are broken, that they are addicted, that their brains are damaged, especially when it's not true. And so stop gaslighting parents, you know, stop lying to kids, right? And let's start actually respecting them, engaging with them, and like supporting them in the things that they need to do. Hey, look, I'm sorry. That's what I think anyway.

B

I mean, I think that you also, even in the. I mean, I was just pausing and like, reflecting on just kind of like how many different ways we could support youth better. And it's like, you know, this, I think also gets to part of the, you know, commentary that I know you've. You've made many times just about how dangerous it could be to get distracted by a small factor governing kids wellness when there are so many more larger factors and places we can put our efforts.

A

Every conversation I am in about mental health is dominated by social media, right? And the mismatch between that in terms of the tiny effect sizes and you know, kind of what we should be talking about is just, it's so large and it's consuming so much political capital and money and energy and we're, you know, one of the things we're doing is we're just, we're selling a narrative to ourselves and to kids that just doesn't match the reality of the data. Or if you spend a lot of time with, in kids lives, either driving carpool or following them, you know, thousands of kids over time, like I do, it's, it's really puzzling and sad actually to see this disconnect of, of our generation. In fact, I've actually told my, my family that, you know, if I get to the point, if I wake up one day, you know, and I've aged to the point where I just start complaining about kids these days and, you know, this generation that they are to take a picture of Pac man and like flash it in front of me and Pac man, because when I was a kid, you know, the surgeon general issued a warning. Ministers came together to propose an age ban. They thought that this was going to rewire our attention span. Right. Burglaries in Massachusetts were blamed on PAC man of kids stealing quarters from the machines. Right. And so I'm not saying this whole thing is a moral panic, but it does give us pause that every generation does this. And because we know this, we should just slow down a little bit, you know.

B

Yeah.

A

And check our assumptions about it.

B

Now you're starting to sound a lot like our friend Yalda down at ucla.

A

Yeah.

B

In Los Angeles. Because I'm like, I mean, a lot of this is like. I, I still remember there was a talk that I did with this is Yalda Uls for everyone listening. You know. U h, L S is the last name. Like, you know, for this. I remember we, we were doing a talk together and she showed a couple slides and she loves doing this where it's kind of like, you know, technology from a historical perspective. And she asked people what are they talking about in this, about how it rents communities apart and it, you know, tears out the fabric of social society down and people losing the ability to connect with each other within communities. And people are like phones, social media, this kind of stuff. And she goes, that's the locomotive. And then the next one is telephones and that kind of thing. And I, I came up in Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. I mean, that's, that's what I remember was going to. Yeah.

A

Really bad. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, reading books, especially for young women, was, was blamed for all of the things. Right. And then the focus on young women is.

B

Oh, that was like, that was the one that hit hard for me as the father of a daughter. Woo. Okay. Yeah, okay, yeah, no, that, that one. So, okay, just one final question as we bring this home. So if I'm a listener on this and I'm kind of always trying to trace like, okay, what's our listener experience? Most of our listeners are listening just to the dulcet tones of our voices. They haven't seen us, us as animated as we are on video here. And they're sitting there saying like, okay, you know, Dr. Rogers has given me a lot of things that I can think about. Family, school, you know, supporting my kid. Not like, you know, going on a diatribe about the dangers of their phone while instead focusing on family stress and things like that. But if the parent then says, okay, I do have a high schooler, they do have a device, they're asking to go on social media. What does one of the preeminent researchers on social media say about how a parent should handle that if not listening to the zeitgeist?

A

Yeah, so I'll say a couple things and this is advice that I give myself and my husband, who is, is very anxious around all of this as well. So we have these conversations.

B

You know, I have even married to you, they're still, he's still not settled.

A

Okay, Right. So we have like, you know, a 12 and a 15 year old. And so the first, the first thing with any introduction of any new technology, when we gave it to them, we had a conversation which says, you know, if you encounter something on this that is scary or upsetting, we want you to come to us, we want to talk about it. We will never take your device away or shut it off if you do that. And this is something I learned from the kids in our study is that they hid so much from caregivers because they were afraid if they disclosed that something bad or troubling had happened online. And it does happen. Like you go into these group chats. You know, social media is now just TV for kids. All the action is in the group chat. So they should, you know, that's, that's where it's happening. They need to be able to disclose without fear of taking this away, because when you take it away, you take away their social connection and information and entertainment. Right. So that's, that's one of the big things. The other thing that you know, is helpful, but is hard is when you're thinking about what, how to support your child. Don't think of the phone first. Or if something happens and isn't going well, don't look to the phone first. Ask yourself, are they doing the things they need for this age, right, to, to be well? So are they getting enough sleep? Are they enjoying or doing well at school? Do they have friends? Right? Are they, do they have something after school or something they're engaged and they're passionate about? If those things are going well, then the conflict over the device isn't often worth it. And instead try a positive engagement where, you know, adults are really bad at this for the most part and young people can teach us a lot and they love that. That's a capacity building. It allows them to like, we respect them and recognize, you know, what they're doing. And they. And that can be kind of fun. Now, I don't want to say that this is all positive because it is also the case that one of the biggest things that we find is that young people who are struggling offline tend to struggle online and are exposed to more risk online, might be looking for things that are more upsetting. And so you know this about your young person. If they struggle going into a new setting, whether it's a sports team or school or peer group, they're going to need more support, scaffolding and supervision as they make a transition into this new, new space. And so that's going to be requires some extra attention.

B

Those were fantastic points. I have no doubt that we're going to get comments on where they can find a wellness checklist broader than this. And I think this is something we emphasize all the time too, where I'll pivot in presentations to kind of like, let's ask these questions. And all the drivers of a kid's wellness might be a part of that. But we're not going to first go for I gotta take your phone away. Which, you know, you likely are gonna have a number of teenagers across the country who, if their parents listen to this, will at least thank you for a little bit more of a broad perspective on some of these things. You know, even if a parent decides that they might need to set some sort of boundary, I mean.

A

Yeah, and when parents are making decisions about, you know, I'm not here to tell anyone like how much or what type of social media they should make. I just don't want them making decisions from a position where they're sitting scared. And they believe that the science says this because it does not. Right. And so you can make all kinds of decisions for how you want your child to spend their time or what you want them to access. But, you know, if, if this is the story you're being told, you know, it's, it's not consistent with what we see on the ground.

B

So. Okay, I just realized that I didn't ask one question that I really wanted to ask, so this is really the last, last question. No, I promise. It's. It's one of these that actually is thematically related to what we were just discussing. So it's cool. Where can parents go to find credible information? Like, yeah, what, what should they look for? Given that they're sitting here going, I don't know if I can read the JAMA papers they mentioned or like, this kind of stuff and really get into, like, Google Scholar. So, like, where do they find this stuff?

A

So there's a lot of people doing great translational work. So Janny Radesky has a new center for social media and mental health, and they have lots of great resources on there, including new guidelines for younger children around the American Academies of Health, getting, getting that data out. And so that's a great, great resource. There's a couple of books that have been written. So I, I mentioned David Yeager's book, which is really about how to motivate and support your, your young person. There's the Real Science of Screen Time by Pete Etchels. If you want to get more into the kind of, the details of, you know, what's happening with, with screens and how we're thinking about all of these, these kinds of issues. Common Sense Media does have some good resources, and Harvard Project Zero has, you know, curriculum that are out there for, for teachers. So there's, there's an increasing number of kind of good and vetted resources out there that really do center young people and what they need versus just scaring people and moving to a ban a restriction approach.

B

And by the time I'm thinking of all these as like, that was a great thing because now I can list all those things in the show notes of this episode for parents to look at. Not to mention, by the time we release this podcast episode, there should be a recording of the TED Talk you just gave in Vancouver.

A

There should be.

B

Yeah, I was gonna say right now there might be bootleg recordings online. Like, maybe someone's posted it.

A

But yeah, okay, there might be.

B

We can post that too, if anybody wants to hear you speak for. What was it? Do they give you like 12 minutes.

A

They give you 12 because they think adults attention spans are shrinking. It's all we can handle is 12 minutes. Wow. Actually, there's a new article that challenges this whole claim about attention and digital devices in nature this week. So maybe we can talk about that.

B

That's a really. And that's a really great thing. And for those of our listeners who don't know, that is a big journal, one of the most reputable journals. Like, if it's showing up in nature, that's a really good thing to go and look at. Also, that means we lost our audience about 27 minutes ago. So I just, I want to thank you for spending approximately 40 minutes with us here on the thriving Kids podcast. We so admire your work. It is so great to be able to kind of delve into these topics in a little bit more depth and we'll include all these things in the show notes. So thank you for being here.

A

Thanks for having me.