A (2:03)

You know, for me, it was during the time of the Atlanta child abductions. And so that was on the news all the time. And then that's when it started, the whole stranger danger thing. It started about child abductions. And so, I mean, that was, you know, as a kid, little kid, that was, that was scary. So unfortunately, you guys, this discussion leads to our topic today, which is what is doom Scrolling, which is more current version of that, except it's going on 24 hours a day. What is it?

C (2:34)

Doom scrolling is basically where you get into a cycle of looking up, kind of looking through negative stories, sensationally doom and gloom type stuff. It can be on social media, you could just be going to a website, it could be on YouTube or whatever. And it's just going through one story after another that have a negative bent on it. Like whether it's financial crisis or a war or something just kind of horrific happening. Whether it's a school shooting or a crime or a murder, you know, that kind of thing you're just scrolling through. There is also kind of a different side of doom scrolling and that can be just the fact that you're going through one social media reel after another and just losing yourself in mindless trouble for hours and hours, filling your mind with and just a bunch of negative, you know.

B (3:33)

And a lot of people do it. Yeah, I mean it's not. We think of this as parents, we're talking as dads right now. Like, oh, do our kids do this? Well, they do, but pretty much every generation does. The stats bear it out. 46% of millennials doom scroll, 53% of Gen Z doom scrolls Gen Alpha. We don't necessarily have the data on that yet, but you can assume it'd be higher. It's going up with each generation. And there's a Payless power survey done that showed that women tend to down doom scroll more than men. So it's, it's really a problem across all generations. Both sex, it's, it's something that hits a lot of people well.

C (4:06)

And that's. And, and not only are they doing it more, they tend to be. Women tend to be impacted more emotionally by it. Because a lot of the people that you see as victims of these crimes are people that are more vulnerable, like women and children. And that tends to hit home for them a little bit more. It makes them feel a little bit more susceptible to violence or anything else.

A (4:29)

Wow. Well, this leads us to our big question of the week. Which are your kids doom scrolling and what is it doing to them?

C (4:37)

Yeah, yeah. So there's a pay less power study that Bobby had mentioned and a couple things that it mentioned about it. Number one, the lowest salary earners tend to do more doom scrolling. Higher salaries tend to do less doom scrolling. Which, okay, you could look at that and kind of go, okay, age. Like if, if, if younger people are doing more of it, then they're probably earning less than the older People, of course you could look at it kind of as all right, are, but also are people who are doing it, are they wasting more time than other people who could be, who are, you know, are higher income earners, are they spending more time in more productive things, are they sharpening their skills, are they focused on what they' doing and therefore they're being rewarded whereas other people are kind of wasting time. The study also indicated that doom scrollers are four times more likely to miss a deadline meeting or opportunity to doom scrolling distractions. And Americans also spend 3.5 hours doom scrolling during the work week. So you could have very much this situation where you've got workers who are, who are wasting time and therefore they're not getting promoted, they're not getting higher salaries. So it could be either way, maybe a mixture of both.

B (6:06)

Yeah, I think the time of the day matters. So that same study said that 55% of people are doom scrolling before bed. So that's kind of a vague term. Does it mean in bed five minutes before you sleep or does that mean for like two hours before you go to bed? Kind of vague. But we know that this is a problem because doom scrolling by its very nature just goes on and on and on. And so if you're doing this before bed, it's going to start impacting your sleep, which is going to impact your health, it's going to, to impact your focus. It's just a big problem to be doing it at night. It's one of the reasons why with our oldest daughter, she has a dumb phone. She doesn't have like a crazy smartphone with social media and all that yet. But even with the dumb phone, we don't allow her to use it after a certain hour of the night because even if she's just texting friends or whatever, like that's impacting your night. So I think it's a really good strategy to put that phone in a curfew, put it to bed so you're not tempted to doom scroll before you go to sleep. There's been all sorts of studies done over the number of times people touch their phone throughout the day. And you'd be embarrassed if you knew your number. It's like up to 200 times they're scrolling and checking notifications and, and emails and texts and all that stuff during the day. 200 times a day, 200 times in it. And how many hours are you awake? I mean, do the math. You're doing this every couple of minutes, you're picking that thing up.

C (7:18)

So I think Mine's higher. And I, I'm, I'm embarrassed to say that, but I'm like, I don't, yeah, I don't want to know the number.

B (7:25)

Yeah, well, and the reason that people do it is because they think they're going to be missing out on stuff. Which makes sense. But when, when you're not touching the phone, when you're not check brain starts releasing cortisol and you're not getting that, that hit of information that your brain is wanting, you're not getting that dopamine, you're not getting that like reward for the stimulation that your brain's looking for. And so that drives you to just do it more and more. And so if you get into this doom scrolling pattern, good luck finding the bottom. You're just going to keep going and going.

A (7:52)

Yeah. And it's, and it's a big deal. According to the study, non doom scrollers, 19% are more likely to be satisfied with their lives. 37% are more likely to be satisfied with their sleep quality, to your point. And 45% are more likely to be satisfied with their mental health. 45%. This is a big deal. So let's talk about some of the mental health effects.

C (8:19)

Well, I think number one, it's gotta be pessimism. You know, you can't fill your mind with all these negative stories, all these terrible things that are happening without it impacting your overall outlook on life. And that's gotta have an impact just on, you know, there is something to the power of positive thinking. I'm not saying that like I'm not subscribing to kind of the ridiculous idea of you put something out in the universe and you're gonna get it. Like I kind of think that that's ridiculous. Like you can't control it that way. But there is something to this kind of thinking, having a positive and optimistic view of what the future will look like, that you start to I think, see things. Your gratitude level, I think you anticipate good things. I don't know if you've ever read the book Unbroken or maybe seen the movie, but it's the story of the life of Louis Zamperini, which his life could have been like 10 movies. The amount of different things he did just in terms of Olympic glory, to fighting in World War II, but he was aboard a plane in World War II that got shot down in the Pacific Ocean. And there were three guys who survived and he was one of them. And one of the guys immediately said we're going to die. Out here and he get and Zamperini is like, we're not gonna, we're not dying, we're not gonna die. And so did the other guy. We're not gonna die. Out of the three men, one guy died and it was the guy who said we're gonna die. So there is I think some self fulfilling prophecy at times with the kind of the pessimism that we have. And doom scrolling is going to lead right to that.

A (10:03)

Well, you know, we have a whole episode about the algorithms and what they feed us. And if you're feeding, if you're looking at negative things you're going to get more negative things and it is generally going to be a doom scroll for sure.

B (10:17)

Well this makes sense. I think about it in just real life terms. If you get 99 compliments today and you get one guy telling you off at the grocery store, what's going to be in your mind when you go to sleep tonight? Probably not the 99 compliments. Probably the one guy that was cursing you out at the store because you have this negativity bias in your head like that's what implants. And so think about it in doom scrolling terms. Like if you are scrolling through, you probably saw 80% great stuff but it's the 20% that you saw that your brain hangs onto. And that's just one of the dangers, mental health dangers of doom scrolling. Another one is anxiety. I mean that is a number one problem for a lot of people who are in that gen Z bracket, that gen alpha bracket. You're already perceiving bad news as a threat. And so when you're just feeding your mind more and more and more of it, what's it going to produce? Anxiety. And that's a natural consequence. So want to limit anxiety, you got to limit the doom scrolling.

C (11:09)

Well and a lot of in these situations you have a lot of people who doom scrolling kind of, they have anxiety and doom scrolling kind of gives them a break from it. Like in a weird way it's just kind of like I've got all these responsibilities and I've got this anxiety but I'm going to lose myself for a little bit in all these other things. But you come back and you have the same anxiety except now you've procrastinated so you probably have a little bit more. And now you've added onto it all of this other stuff. So it compiles on top of itself.

B (11:43)

Yeah, well I found this interesting study at 2022, the Journal of Medical Internet Research say that nine times fast. They shared a report on mental health during the COVID 19 pandemic, and it revealed how the daily news cycle negatively impacted the public's anxiety levels, which obviously makes sense. They said that daily bad news intake, or what we're calling doom scrolling, contributes over time to hopelessness and general worry. So obviously not good stuff. So one way to fight anxiety is pretty simple. Just encourage your kids to stop the doom scrolling. If you've seen them doing it or that they've come to you and said, I can't stop doing this, encourage them. This is not good for you. We need to put some limits on what's happening here. Cut that down as much as possible. Twenge research says that teens on their phone for five or more hours a day are 71% more likely to have at least one risk factor for suicide. So get the phones out of their hands, get the doom scrolling done with.

A (12:42)

Wow. And we watched this happen during COVID We had, you know, three kids at home during. During this time. And my daughter, especially my oldest one, she just. She just would get so upset and she would come flying down the stairs telling us all these things, you know, especially in the beginning, you know, dad, you know, if you use the remote control too much, you're going to give the dog covet. I mean, it was just. And she was, you know, she was just going so nuts.

C (13:06)

That wasn't the way.

A (13:07)

Wait, that wasn't a thing. And so, but she would come down, she would be so upset about it. And I only did this twice to turn. Learn the lesson. I go, han, you can't get your nudes from tick tock. Right? Which, which is so ironic because. Which. Where was I going to point her to get the real news, right? And so it was one of those things where it was. And it just quicker bits. And I watched it. I watched it elevating her anxiety like maybe nothing else. And the ironic part, and bj, you've already said this. We do it a lot of escapism, right? We're going to escape from what's going on. And there is such a mental health effect on that. Endless scrolling tricks us into thinking that we have escaped our problems. Right now we're looking at someone else's. But like you said, it adds to it. The CDC says at 50, this killed me. 56% of high school students have reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless. Doom scrolling may or may not be one of the causes of it, but it certainly isn't. Wait, I don't want to admit that. 56% of high school students have reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless. That's heartbreaking.

C (14:18)

So it's similar to the statistics of the people who are doing it. I mean they're, they're right in line with one another.

B (14:25)

So both of you said something earlier in the recording that caught my attention. You said when we came home from school, the cartoons weren't on. It was special coverage, breaking news. So, and so, you know, got shot. This, you know, shuttle blew up or whatever. There was a big news event. And so we need to actually go wall to wall coverage on the news. Wall to wall coverage is the cell phone, like for your children. That is the special circumstance that you had as kids. But the special circumstance is every day, on every topic, all hours of the day. So doom scrolling is getting those like, wow, I can't believe this horrible thing happened constantly on your phone. There's no escaping it. Like it's there. So even if the kids, you're like, oh, my son's playing, you know, on TikTok or he's looking at reels on Instagram or they're just playing the game or whatever. Like, like that feeling you had as kids that I had when I was growing up of this breaking news, big event is happening minute by minute right in front of them. That can't possibly be good for their developing mind.

A (15:25)

No. And it's going all the time. And we're the first dads in history. This had to stop and go, what do we do with. I mean, you think about this. We're the first dads. Their kids have this in their pocket. I mean, I was just at a hotel the other day and they have this gigantic screens, gigantic television that had running news with very, very violent things going on. It's like during breakfast and I'm watching these little kids and they're, they're tuned in, but they seem desensitized to it. But they're watching and they're listening. And I pulled a what, Whatever the male Karen is Carl. I pulled a, I pulled Kevin. It's. Kevin marched in there and went, you got to come turn this off. And then the guy like kind of announced to a lot of people that it was on me that it was you. But it's this thing of there's. They're going through it and it's, they're getting desensitized and they've got to think, wow, the world is really, really, really, really scary.

C (16:17)

It's. And it's worse, it's even worse than that because we all have Our running video cameras all the time. So we're catching horrific stuff on video where it used to be that it was just reported. I mean, the Reagan shooting was a shock to the fact that it was on camera. That's why they kept running it. The Challenger disaster was a shock that it was on camera. Columbine, they side of it going, you

B (16:43)

know, after the fact.

C (16:44)

Yeah. Nine, 11, you know, they've got, you know, they've got cameras on now. It's just people are running cameras all the time. So you're just, you're seeing the. It's not like, hey, this happened inside the school or this. It's like people are videoing that the violent act happening and like there are plenty of people that go looking for that kind of stuff.

A (17:05)

Security cameras everywhere.

C (17:06)

Yeah.

A (17:06)

So we're catching everything and then we're presenting everything. And our kids have these devices that they're scrolling through and we don't think anything about it. All the kids have phone. It's just something. I'm not trying to induce guilt, but for all of us as dads, we've got to go, okay, this is a big deal. It doesn't matter if every kid's got one. Like, we've got to think this through and help our kids think it through.

B (17:25)

And doom scrolling does shape the way you look at the world. I was a television News reporter for 13 years, so I spent a lot of time in newsrooms. I know exactly how the news is reported. I know exactly how they've picked stories that go to the top of the newscast. I've been a part of a lot of those things because that was the assignment for the day. I will never forget going into a morning meeting one day. Day and overnight there had been a dad who just did this horrible thing. He had, you know, hurt this child. He threw him out of the car or whatever. And the only thing that was important in the meeting was how are we going to cover this better than the station across the town. And it just hurt me to think of that. I'm like, there's a child who's, you know, been harmed and that was the only thing that mattered. It if you were to think, oh man, like this is the worst possible thing and then assume that that happened all the time. Well, one, you'd be wrong. This was an outlier. It was one dad who did one evil thing. But when you're doom scrolling and then you get one story of the dad who did the evil thing and then the next story is another person did an evil Thing. And then the next story is, oh, this horrible tsunami killed all these people in this town. And then, oh, there was this, you know, you can see where I'm going with this. On and on and on. Like the worst outlier is the next in a string of outliers. But after a while, those outliers kind of shape your world and where you think, think everything is dark, everything is awful. That's what contributes to that hopelessness we were talking about.

A (18:45)

Well, we've definitely made this a doom episode. So, you know, but it's, it's important. But what do we do about it? What can we do about his dads? Dads are listening, going, okay, I get it, guys, this, this is a big deal. What do we do? We got to stop the cycle. How do we do this? We got to talk to our kids about doom scrolling and ask him, have you heard of this? What do you think about it? What are you seeing? We've got to talk to our kids about it.

C (19:10)

Are your friends doing it?

A (19:12)

Are your friends doing it?

C (19:13)

You're doing it.

A (19:13)

Yeah, yeah. And you've said that before. Some of the best ways to get our kids to talk to us about themselves is asking about their friends. Hey, your kids watching this? Because they probably just like that. Those children sitting in that hotel lobby didn't think anything about it. That's all they've seen. Maybe our kids are not thinking a thing about it. This is just life in front of me.

C (19:31)

And they're by the way, when they answer, when they answer about their friends, they're testing to see. Sometimes they're testing to see how you're going to react to it before they tell you what they are. I mean it is a very easy way to kind of be like, yeah, my friend Bill does this. And if you react like, I can't believe Bill does that. And they'd be like. And they'd be like, do you do it? No. But like if it's. Oh, wow.

A (19:55)

Huh. I love.

C (19:56)

What do you think about that? And you know, do you do it? Yeah, kind of, you know, like you can make it okay.

A (20:01)

Compassion, empathy and understanding are going to come after me. It's kind of like I've got this friend.

C (20:06)

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, go crap on Bill. Yeah, exactly.

B (20:10)

I think another thing that we can do if our kids are doom scrolling or if they just have friends you were talking about who are stuck in that doom scrolling is just to talk to them about the good things that are going on in their life. Let's dwell on That I did a news segment like I mentioned for years where we were doing positive stories. But you know, sometimes it can be hard to dwell on the good stuff because I do the segment. It would be the last thing at five o' clock and then. All right, thanks Bobby. Coming up at six. He's dead. She got shot. That's on fire. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, like there's, there's going to be more bad news coming. But you can choose to dwell on the good stuff. I actually wrote a book in 2017 about it. Finding Joy beyond the Headlines was the name of the book. And it was all about finding the good in the world because it does exist. You sometimes have to wade through stuff to get to it. But I promise you there is good stuff going on in your backyard, with your friends, at your kids school, in your community. You just have to dwell on that. And slowly that doom scrolling stuff will fade a little bit. That's one way that we can teach kids to kind of, you know, just push it off.

A (21:14)

Yeah. And we can find it on the phone too. And we can use that for, I mean there, I'm telling you, people are funny. If social media is taught it's anything, just like people can capture all the bad stuff, they're capturing some funny stuff. I'm not gonna kid you. There's some funny. Let's be real.

C (21:28)

And I think a lot of that is like even more popular. I mean, I look at, you know, stuff that I think it was a guy named Hartman used to do on the road. And you know, Steve Hartman he'd find on the road. I mean, you know, Bob, Bobby, you used to do it. I mean, Bobby won six Emmys.

B (21:45)

Okay, all right. So one of, one of the highlights of my TV career was I bumped Steve Hartman one day, which was great. We had a story that we did here and they're like, Steve wants to come down and do the same interview. And they're like, ah, never mind. It was good enough. So they just put it on the CBS Evening News, that story that night. And it was a little boy who had really not spoken much at all in his life. He wasn't really audible. And one day he just, just belted out the pledge of allegiance in class unannounced. And his dad was a military veteran. And so they captured it and it was like the coolest little thing. No one had any idea he knew the words to it. And it was just this uplifting, beautiful thing. And I'm like, that's the sort of Stuff that we can tell our kids, we can share that with our kids. It doesn't have to be all the doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. That's not excusing it. Of course it happens. But you get to choose, and your kids get to choose what they focus their attention on.

A (22:34)

On.

B (22:34)

And that's the message we should give them.

C (22:36)

Well, you gotta have balance with it. And, you know, not that we ignore the bad things that happen, but, you know, you gotta balance it with all of that, the very least. I think one of the things that our kids really need these days is optimism. You know, with such a loss of hope, you know, if we're talking about 50% of kids are feeling down and feeling a loss of hope of things, we gotta cultivate optimism in our kids. And the, the I. My father in law. My father in law would have a saying. He would be like, something's good's gonna. And he would just say it out of nowhere.

B (23:07)

I like it.

C (23:08)

Like, we'd be driving along and all, and it'd be quiet, and all of a sudden he's like, something good is going to happen. And, you know, like, thanks, Tom.

A (23:16)

Let's spread that around the country. Something good's going to happen.

B (23:18)

That's fantastic.

C (23:20)

So, but I did, you know, as I was researching this, I came across a study and, you know, we'll put it in the show notes too, but it was, it was during COVID and it said that optimism creates a protective barrier for our mental health. Health optimism. So with such a mental health crisis and a constant state of anxiety and all these things, one of the things that is going to be a primary, is going to be a primary thing for your kids in order to combat all that stuff is optimism. So we need to cultivate it, and

A (23:51)

I hope we're cultivating it here, too. I mean, I think we want to put it out there. Here's the reality. What do we do with it? But I hope that's what this podcast has been about too, is to say, hey, this is a tough world their kids are living in. Boy, it's a challenge. But at the same time, there's so much hope. And when dads, when we get this right, we. There's a lot of optimism there for us and our kids. So we hope that's the case.

B (24:12)

I. I picture, you know, those, like, old cartoons or like these old movies where, like, the train's going down the wrong track. At the last moment, they hit the little lever that switches the track and they go the other direction. Like, we can Be that for our kids. Like you're this doom scrolling will lead your kids down the wrong track. So be the catalyst that moves them into something better. I think that should be, you know, challenge for me in my home and every day.

A (24:33)

That's good. Well, that leads us to our pro move of the week, which is this is have your kids tell you something good. Find a positive or funny story to share with your kids every day. If your kids are teenagers, ask them to find a good story and share it with you. That could be a fun thing to do at dinner. Everybody bring a fun story. Bring something positive. We get to lead the way. I like it for this one to start off so heavy. I think we've landed on a good place and you know, doing the right thing is. It's not as difficult sometimes as it seems. Thanks you guys.

B (25:01)

Absolutely.

A (25:01)

This was good. Hey, and if you're just listening, we want you to know that we're on YouTube. We want to thank you for caring. We want to thank you for following this podcast and it helps us get it to other dads when you subscribe. So please do that today. Also subscribe on YouTube. But as always, we want to thank you for listening. We know you and your kids will

C (25:20)

be glad that you did. Thanks again for listening to the all pro dad podcast. Behind every episode is our amazing team producer, Haley Mwat, audio and video editor Buck Buchanan, and production coordinator Corey Wolfe. Allprodad is the fatherhood program of the non profit Family first along with our motherhood program imom. We exist to help you love your family well. So remember, if you have more questions than answers, then you're probably in the right place. See you next time.