
"The Future of Humanity Depends on People Who Can Sit There for the Long Haul" - Listen to my Morning Monologue: I’m sharing my take on pressing issues, enlightening research on human behavior, answering questions I get by email, and my favorite, most instructive interactions with callers. Everything you’ll hear is designed to help you become a better spouse, parent, family member, co-worker, friend, and human being. It’s the free therapy you need! Got a dilemma? Call 1-800-DR-LAURA / 1-800-375-2872 or make an appointment at DrLaura.com - Listen to The Dr. Laura Program daily on SiriusXM Triumph 123.
Loading summary
Walmart Pharmacy Announcer
Look, if you've got prescriptions, the Walmart app is your place to manage them. Transfer your scripts, refill them and have them delivered straight to you. Migraines, managed allergies, alleviated dermatology, derma delivered ding dong. Is that your pizza? Nope. Walmart pharmacy delivery with a refill. Switch to Walmart and manage your prescriptions in the app. The Walmart you thought you knew is now new delivery. Not available for all prescriptions. Exclusions.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Apply thy ticket, Lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card.
Walmart Pharmacy Announcer
They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs?
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times. With the Times.
Blue Buffalo Dog Food Advertiser
You're playing the lute.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?
Apartments.com Announcer
Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Thank you for listening to my morning monologue brought to you by Golden Crest Metals. Helping everyday investors protect what they've worked so hard to build by adding gold and silver to retirement portfolios. Learn more@goldencrestmetals.com protect remember, you can hear my radio program daily on SiriusXM triumph and connect with me 24 7@drlaura.com yesterday I explained what kind of a show this is and finally we had people realizing they do need to talk. But there's a bit of ennui, a bit of procrastination, a bit of avoidance, a bit of scariness, a bit of discomfort. I understand all those feelings, but I am here to help you. Otherwise I'll put my head down on the table and snooze. God knows I didn't get enough sleep last night. This change in the time, it's an hour and you go full. I don't understand why it has any impact whatsoever, but it is so 3 o' clock in the morning. I thought I'm just not going to get any sleep tonight. Took Bear out of his crate, went outside so he could pee in poob and brought him in, threw him on the bed with Lily and I looked at them and I said, let's all go to sleep. And they did. I didn't have to give them treats and say good dogs. They went out. Next thing I know it's 7 o' clock and I woke up finally. I haven't slept till 7 o' clock since I was 11. Anyway, my number 1-800-375-2872. I want to discuss something with you. Have you noticed that when you sit down to read an article in a magazine or start reading a book that you last about two pages and can't do it anymore. You just can't. And it's not that you're tired or something else has to be done right at that moment. It's that you've been spending too much time with short video. Notice, when you go on things like YouTube, there are shorts and there are longs. The longs are minutes. They're not half hours, three quarter hours. An hour. That's rare. It's a class you take somewhere. You and your kids are spending so much time with brief staccato input that it's actually physically changing your brain, which is especially bad if you're a developing human being, also known as a child and an adolescent. This is all documented, but I'm not here to give you a science argument. I'm here to warn you that the future of humanity really depends on people who can sit there for the long haul. I'm taking Bear to a puppy class because he's going to be a very huge dog and a working dog. I didn't anticipate that when I. He was just so cute and small and so I realized that I'm going to have to put in extra special effort because his brain is going to require a certain amount of activity of a certain kind in order for him to be mentally satisfied. You folks are training your kids to not be able to focus, not be able to concentrate. Then you wonder why they're not doing well in school. Hi, I'm chef Franklin Becker. You know the jingle now discover the facts about Ozempic, a GLP1. There's only one FDA approved Ozempic made by Novo Nordisk. Learn about the real thing.
Walmart Pharmacy Announcer
Talk to your healthcare professional today. Call 1-833-OZEMPIC or visit ozempic.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about Ozempic.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Semaglutide injection.
Walmart Pharmacy Announcer
0.5 milligrams, 1 milligram and 2 milligrams.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Oh, oh, oh. Ozempic.
Blue Buffalo Dog Food Advertiser
My dog Max loves chewing on my favorite pair of shoes almost as much as he loves his Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Dry dog food. Seriously, he never leaves a crumb. And I love it too, because it's made with high quality protein, antioxidant packed fruits and nutrient rich veggies. Blue Buffalo foods are made with the superior ingredients your dog needs to thrive. Can your dog food say that? Visit feedbluefood.com to learn more.
Walmart Pharmacy Announcer
Look, if you've got prescriptions, the Walmart app is your place to manage them. Transfer your scripts, refill them and have them delivered straight to you. Migraines, Managed allergies, Alle Dermatology Derma delivered Ding dong. Is that your pizza? Nope. Walmart Pharmacy delivery with a refill. Switch to Walmart and manage your prescriptions in the app. The Walmart you thought you knew is now new delivery. Not available for all prescriptions. Exclusions apply.
Apartments.com Announcer
Ever walk past a place for rent and wish you could just take a peek inside? Maybe even explore the layout? Envision the natural light streaming through the windows or plan where your vinyl record collection would go. At apartments.com you can. With tools like their 3D virtual tours, you can see the exact unit you could be living in. Really envision yourself in your new home. With apartments.com, the place to find a
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
place to realize the future America needs. We understand what's needed from us to face each threat head on. We've earned our place in the fight for our nation's future. We are Marines. We were made for this. It's because you're training them to disintegrate their brains with small staccato pieces of information so they can't sit and read a book anymore. College freshmen today can hardly sit and read a book. You think that's a good thing for society? That we have generations of human beings who have no attentiveness to a project, to a problem? I use YouTube for information. If I can't do something with my car, I go on YouTube. How do you do this? Out comes the answer. With some video. I find it very helpful that way. And I do a lot of leather working now. And, you know, I'm not apprenticing with anyone except I'm apprenticing with a lot of people on YouTube, basically. And I look at the letters because sometimes the comments after the whole video, and I usually have to watch them two, maybe three times in order to remember all the parts. That's another thing. If you spend too much time with short things that you're paying attention to, you have very little retention. Kids who use AI to write things, they don't even remember what they wrote. It's getting very bad out there. But anyway, so I'm looking at the comments and one of the comments I commented to, even though that was a year ago, I think they still get in their mailboxes. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, I could believe it. Basically it said, interesting, but way too complicated. And I thought, yes, it's an advanced technique and it uses computers and lasers I was trying to do the project without laser cutting and I can't. It's too delicate. The leather is too thick to cut out tiny precision points. So I'm going to give up that project because getting a laser is very expensive. And then you have the learning curve and just to make a couple of things, I decided, nah, I'm not going to do that. So I answered this guy and I said, not quite sure your intention in writing this. Does it mean that the only thing a leather worker tutorial should be on is something not beyond your intelligence or your abilities, your patience? We're supposed to skew it to you. I mean, are we kidding here? Yes. It's complicated. You either take it on as a challenge, which I tried and failed, you take it on as a challenge, or you do something else. But it's like going into a Maserati store and saying, these are too expensive. Yeah, they're expensive. So if you don't have the money, go somewhere else. I mean, everybody wants things tailored to themselves, quick. Tailored to me. I don't want to have to think. I don't have to work at it. I don't want to have to develop anything. I don't want to have to study. I don't want to have to grow. So that's part of the mentality. I fight here. Stop your kids being on social. Stop your kids from just sitting there scrolling. Stop it. You're ruining their brains. Find out. Tell them when they read a whole book, they will have earned an hour. Scrolling. But you need to see them reading. So they need to sit in the kitchen in the living room and read. And then you can ask some questions. How about that? How about they earn wasting their brain? 1-800-375-2872. If you like this podcast, be sure to rate it on Apple podcasts or your favorite place to listen to my podcast. Of course, I'd love if you gave me five stars. And be sure to share this podcast with a friend on Facebook or your preferred social media platform.
Walmart Pharmacy Announcer
Look, if you've got prescriptions, the Walmart app is your place to manage them. Transfer your scripts, refill them and have them delivered straight to you. Migraines, managed. Allergies alleviated. Dermatology, Derma delivered. Ding dong. Is that your pizza? Nope. Walmart pharmacy delivery with a refill. Switch to Walmart and manage your prescriptions in the app. The Walmart you thought you knew is now new delivery not available for all prescriptions. Exclusions apply.
Host: Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Date: March 11, 2026
In this episode, Dr. Laura examines the pressing issue of declining attention spans in both children and adults, drawing a direct line from digital habits (especially short-form video consumption) to an erosion of focus, perseverance, and learning capacity. She warns that society’s growing preference for quick, easily-digestible content is having detrimental effects on the brain—especially in developing children—and urges parents to intervene by setting firm boundaries around screen time and promoting reading and deep focus tasks. Dr. Laura also shares personal anecdotes about her own experiences with learning and persistence, tying these to wider cultural and developmental concerns.
Observation: Dr. Laura opens by describing her own struggles with sleep and then pivots quickly to today's theme: an inability to focus for extended periods—illustrated by people reading only a few pages of a book before losing interest.
Cause: She links this directly to the overconsumption of short, rapid-fire content on platforms like YouTube (shorts), noting how this "brief staccato input" is "physically changing your brain," especially dangerous for children and adolescents.
Warning for Parents: Dr. Laura presses parents to recognize how they are "training [their] kids to not be able to focus... Then you wonder why they're not doing well in school."
Personal Story: She shares an anecdote about bringing her dog Bear to puppy classes, relating Bear’s mental needs to children's cognitive development. The message: deliberate, focused training and tasks are necessary for well-rounded growth in both animals and children.
Consuming vs. Creating: While Dr. Laura acknowledges the value of using YouTube for practical tasks (learning car repairs, leatherworking tips), she notes a worrying trend: overreliance on shortcuts leads to poor retention.
Comment Culture: Using an example from leatherworking forums, she critiques the expectation that all instruction or content be easy and tailored for instant gratification.
Dr. Laura’s central message is clear and urgent: The future of humanity depends on cultivating long-form attention and perseverance—qualities endangered by the prevalence of quick, dopamine-driven digital content. Parents are encouraged to take charge by setting firm boundaries and rewarding old-fashioned focus and challenge, ultimately helping the next generation become capable, resilient, and thoughtful people.