← Good Inside with Dr. Becky
Good Inside with Dr. Becky
Screens without Shame: Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price
00:47:37
Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price join Dr. Becky to talk kids and tech: why phones are “slot machines in our pockets,” why screen struggles aren’t a willpower problem, and the small shifts that help kids (and adults) get their attention back, build more independence, and find more real-world fun.
Loading summary
Transcript103 lines
- [00:00]
A
One thing I see over and over with parents is just how much we're carrying the data backs this up. Most parents spend nearly every waking hour focused on someone else. So if you feel exhausted, stretched thin, or like your brain never really shuts off, that makes complete sense. I've seen how powerful it can be when families have more support. When parents have trusted caregivers, the mental load lightens and they're actually able to be more present. Not because they're doing more, but because they're not doing it all alone. Care.com makes it easier to find trusted background checked caregivers, whether that's support for a newborn before or after school, help or even care for an aging parent. You can search by experience, read reviews and find support in a way that feels safer and more intentional than social media or word of mouth alone. And do you know that you can find activities, camps and daycare on care.com too? For a limited time you can use the code Good35 to save 35% on a Care.com Premium membership. Because when you have support, you can show up as your best self for the people who need you. Screens, phones, kids. Okay, look, I know what you're thinking. What can I possibly hear that I don't already know? And Maybe you're thinking, Dr. Becky, if you say one thing that makes me feel guilty about these topics, I mean, I am just trying to survive. Parenting is so hard. I hear you and I hear that thought also knowing I'm about to dive into a conversation about these topics. But here's the other thing. I'm hardly ever talking to a parent when screens and phones aren't on their mind. On some level they know I feel like it's affecting my kids behavior and our connection. It affects my own mood. I just feel so stuck. It feels like so much of my life is on the phone. And so here's the framing of what I wanna talk about today. And I promise you, no judgment, no shame, no morality. And let me start by taking myself off a phone pedestal. I'm on my phone too much. I sometimes give my kids too much time on their iPads. I end up yelling in random moments, everyone off their screens just because I feel guilty. So I am right there with you. What I have done is brought here two incredible minds about this topic. Jonathan Haidt and Katherine Price. You probably know Jonathan from his book the Anxious Generation, which I don't know, took the world by storm. What you might not know is Jonathan teamed up with Katherine Price who wrote how to Break up with Your phone. And they created a book for kids. It's called the Amazing generation, your guide to fun and freedom in a screen filled world. And it came out on December 30, 2020. And what I have in store for you is something amazing, a real conversation where you're also gonna hear about the struggles we all have in our home in a very honest way. No pedestal here. And you're going to leave feeling more empowered, more equipped to make maybe one or two small shifts and you're gonna have a way to get your kid involved in the process. So you're on the same team. I'm Dr. Becky and this is good inside. We'll be back right after this and you do not want to miss this episode. All right, John, the Anxious Generation has been out in the world a little bit now, and I feel like parents know the headline, which is also just a testament to the power of your message and the way you tell the story and how much it resonates with people. Just incredible. A couple questions following up. Kind of the Anxious generation. Since publishing the book, what is something you've learned or see differently or maybe want to put a magnifying glass on because you realized it was even more important than you realized?
- [03:54]
B
Yeah. So I'll say one good one bad. The good one. The good thing I've realized is that the world already saw the problems, wanted to do something, but didn't know what to do. And this especially was clear with mothers. What amazed me was the degree to which mothers around the world, as soon as they got the book, they jumped into action. They, you know, in the book we call for collective action, but the mothers, you know, I mean, dads read it, said, yeah, I agree with this, but they didn't do not like to do something. The mothers, I mean, it was instant. Like in Brazil, mothers got together. They worked with a female legislator that got legislation introduced to van phones in schools. They got it through the legislature in 10 months. So that was the thing I didn't expect was the speed with which people would take action around the world. With Australia last week, they raised the age to 16. So that's the good thing, which makes me really optimistic that we actually can change this. We can get our kids back from the technology. The bad thing that I've realized is that the problems I described in the Anxious Generation, I really understated it. That is, I focused on mental illness and I think I got that right. Like the levels are horrible and they're rising. But I didn't fully appreciate the degree to which it's changed the human ability to pay attention, to read a book, to focus, to accomplish anything over a period of time. This, I think, ultimately might be the biggest damage that has happened. And so we have to look much more broadly when we look at the effects of this on our kids.
- [05:32]
A
Could you ground that in a story in a moment just to like, bring that to life?
- [05:38]
B
So my students, I teach a course at NYU and so I have. My undergrad class is 3019 year olds, roughly. And about a quarter of them spend four hours a day on social media or more. And the degree to which it prevents them from living, it's like it's all they do other than class is watch short videos. And when over the course of the semester, the assignment is you have to pick something to change about yourself that will make you happier in the long run. And those that are on heavy social media say, you have to work on this. There's no point in you doing anything else unless you work on this. And when they do, they get their lives back. They say, oh, I have so much time to do my homework now. So I'm not stressed about it anymore. And I have so much time that now I go out with my friends. Like, you come to New York City, you're in college in New York City and all you do is scroll through TikTok like, no, they're getting out there, they're going to Broadway plays, they're exploring parks. So it's amazing to see the way they come alive when they get their attention back.
- [06:44]
A
Yeah, I have a follow up to that because one of the things I've been talking to parents a lot about and it has to do with how you start your day, but that's just one manifestation of it. I feel strongly that if you have young kids and look, nothing has to be rigid, but if every Saturday and Sunday they have X number of hours of time on the iPad as the start of their day. The idea that starting your day with what I call no effort, high dopamine, and the idea that later they're gonna do a puzzle or listen to you when you wanna leave the house, or be able to manage frustration with their sibling, which requires a lot of effort and basically no dopamine. Cause the best you get is being like, well, I guess I'm not gonna get the blue cup like you, right? I keep saying to parents, we've been talking about this a lot in our membership, like, I have a million psychological interventions, but let's put them all on the shelf. Let's Just look at the rhythm of how you're spending time. And it's been a really powerful shift, or at least something to add on. And I think that's kind of in line with what you're saying. If you're spending four hours on social media, forget time. But also how an assignment from your class is going to feel like they can't swipe you away. They can't be like, Dr. Hate. Nope, nope. Next one. I don't know if they try. Do you want to get that in class? They're like, no, I don't want the next professor. And you're like, I'm not swipeable. I'm here. This is a class.
- [08:06]
B
You paid money for this.
- [08:08]
A
But is that in line with kind of also just the attention, the tolerance of frustration?
- [08:13]
B
Yes, because the other thing that I do with the entire class on day one is I asked them to fill out. What are the five first things you do when you wake up in the morning? At what point do you go to the bathroom, drink water, get out of bed, pick up your phone and scroll? And almost everybody, the first thing they do is look at notifications and catch up. Then I say, now count down at the end of the day from 5 down to 100 as you close your eyes. And again, the last thing they do, most of them is, is check their phone. And what do they do in between? Mostly check their phone. So when I put it to them that way, and I say, okay, you've got to carve out a time for yourself to recharge. And so, yeah, so like, so how do you end your day to get a good night's sleep, but you're not stressed? And how do you begin your day to develop focus so that you can do the things that you choose to do? Because what they're doing is they're handing over the decisions about their consciousness to these algorithms. And the algorithms are gonna control them from the moment they open their eyes, the moment they close their eyes.
- [09:14]
A
So just to mirror some of that back, one of the things that sounds like that's become even clearer to you since the book is, yes, anxiety, things like that. But focus, ability to take on hard things, how people are even spending their time, and then what comes into their life because they're spending on their time? Those are even bigger umbrellas for the impact around phones than maybe even you realize when you wrote the book. Is that right? That's right.
- [09:36]
B
That's right.
- [09:38]
A
Okay, Katherine, speaking about focus, time, attention. I know you've spoken about how attention Is like, our most precious resource. Right. And that in some ways, this isn't just some small topic. Like, there's an existential nature to giving our attention away or to not having control over it. Can you just talk about attention and how phone use relates to that?
- [10:03]
C
Sure. So my previous book, or one of my previous books was called how to break up with your phone, which is for adults. And so, just to piggyback on what you were just saying, I hear from adults all the time about how fragmented their attention feels. Also how useful it is to get your phone out of the bedroom and get a standalone alarm clock, because the reason people check their phone first thing in the morning is they're silencing the alarm.
- [10:22]
A
Yeah.
- [10:22]
C
And when you silence the alarm, you touch the alarm, and if the alarm's the phone and it has all these notifications, well, now you just allowed someone else to take over your day 100%. So. But in terms of the idea of our attention being our most valuable resource, that was my biggest personal takeaway from my previous work, which is the idea that ultimately, we only remember what we pay attention to because we only experience what we pay attention to. And one of my biggest personal takeaways that I try to remind myself of as much as I can is that our lives are what we pay attention to. And so every time I or any one of us is making a decision in the moment about what to pay attention to, we're making this much broader decision about how we want to live our lives.
- [11:00]
A
Yeah.
- [11:00]
C
But the good news there, because that sounds very heavy, is that we do have the ability to decide what to pay attention to. So if you have that realization and you say, you know what? I don't want to spend all my attention on my phone. I don't want to allow my attention to be fragmented and lose my ability to focus. You, actually, we as adults and then doing this for our kids, we have the ability to take that control there. And it's actually very inspirational to hear from people who started trying to build up their attention span and how quickly it comes back.
- [11:25]
A
Oh, I love anything around hope, but is this. I do. I'm a sucker for hope.
- [11:30]
C
What can I say?
- [11:32]
A
Is this more of a systems issue than a willpower issue? Because one of the things I say to parents a lot, they're like, my kid takes their iPad when it's not iPad time. My first question, they always expect me to come down on the kid, and I'm like, where's the iPad when it's not on iPad time? They're like, it's on the kitchen counter. And I was like, look, I'm just gonna speak for myself. When my phone is on the kitchen counter and I'm an adult and I tell myself, don't take my phone, don't take my phone. I'm successful 0.1% of the time. I mean, I joke, my phone has to be behind two closed doors. I've tried one, it's just not enough for me. It has to be two. It's my bedroom door and my bathroom door, literally. And so when I think about a five year old, who sees the most enticing, dopamine filled, low effort, easy, you know, pleasure device, I feel like it's asking a kid a lot, which makes me think, is this willpower? Are there system changes adults and kids need in your environment to help get your attention back?
- [12:29]
C
Yeah, it'd be ridiculous to try to, to talk about this in terms of willpower. The people who are in charge of designing the most problematic apps and devices hire thousands of engineers whose job it is to hack our brains and to get us hooked on their devices in the same way that slot machines are designed to hijack our time. And when I say in the same way, I mean literally, they studied slot machines. It's worth noting that slot machines are considered to be so addictive that states don't allow people under 18 to play them.
- [12:59]
B
Yes.
- [12:59]
C
And these tech companies hire people who copied those techniques, put all of these dopamine triggers into their apps that are the same dopamine triggers, bright colors, variable rewards, sounds, all these things. They're in slot machines and they are in smartphones. In fact, many experts refer to smartphones as slot machines. We keep in our pockets. So if you're not going to expect an adult to be able to resist with willpower the call of a slot machine, it's absolutely ridiculous to think that our kids would be able to. To resist a device in an app that's been deliberately designed to addict them. Yeah, I know. John has thoughts on this too.
- [13:31]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, if I could add in, because this is the central challenge that my students wrestle with. How do you change your habitual behavior? And the underlying psychology that they find helpful is that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. And the metaphor that I developed in my first book, the Happiness Hypothesis, which was about ancient wisdom, what were the ancients right about? Almost everything when it comes to psychology, is that if you think of your mind as being like a small rider on top of a very large elephant, the elephant is very smart. The elephant is all of the intuitive process. These, the emotions, the automatic things that our brains do because our brains are very, very smart. The rider is the thing that is our conscious reasoning. And if you close your eyes and you're thinking like, that's the rider. That little thing that's like got the language and that little thing says, I'm only going to have one piece of chocolate here. I'm speaking very, very personally. I realize I, you know, yeah, as soon as I take a piece of chocolate, I'm going to go through the whole bag. It's very hard for me to stop myself.
- [14:30]
A
You are not alone.
- [14:32]
C
We see you.
- [14:33]
B
So the rider is like what we're aware of, but the thing is the rider is not in control of the elephant. In fact, the rider evolved language, evolved to make us more effective at manipulating others, at dealing with our environment. Which is why you would say, you know, if you're gonna go for the second piece or if you're gonna go for the iPad, Your reasoning isn't saying, no, don't do it. Your reasoning saying, well, just this once, I was good yesterday. Oh I deserve this, you know. So the reasoning is in service of the elephant. And what this means is if you wanna change your behavior, your habitual patterns, you must change the elephant. You have to change the habitual. And that takes time, it takes a few weeks. So you gotta develop habits and patterns and, and over time that will train the elephant. But if you put it all on willpower and I tell my students you are not allowed to do that, that is a guaranteed fail in this course. If you say, well, I'm going to be nicer to people and I'm just going to do it by being nicer to people. Like, no, that's not going to work. You have to have a system.
- [15:31]
A
Well, I think I just, I love this because it takes away so much of the shame and self blame, which ironically I tell parents all the time. Like the, the best way to let yourself off the hook for change is to blame and shame yourself. Like because it freezes your body. It's a freeze response from an animal defense state. When you blame and shame yourself, you're frozen. You can't change when you're frozen. So people somehow got this idea that any type of more compassionate understanding, the phone thing, it's just, it's not a willpower thing. It's actually designed to make me feel like it's never been enough and like it's the answer to all my problems forever. So if I Tell myself, this is my problem. I should be stronger. That's the best way to make sure you never change. It's, like, so ironic because when people hear, oh, so it's not really my fault. First of all, that doesn't mean it's not your responsibility. It could still be our responsibility to think of a new system, but the system has to change. And I tell parents because parents tell me a lot. My kids gonna have to learn how to deal with this at some point at age. Right?
- [16:33]
C
But I say smoking and everything else.
- [16:36]
A
Or I think it's someone who wants to stop drinking.
- [16:39]
C
Yeah.
- [16:39]
A
A friend who wants to stop drinking. We are never like, hey, meet me at the. You're gonna have to figure this out. Like, it's a. What? Like, you can't put someone into the fire and expect them not to have to deal with the fire. They need a period where their urges are developing, their brains are developing, and where they've seen that they can develop a life outside of a phone to be able to, over time, make better decisions.
- [17:00]
C
Another analogy I hear people sometimes make is like, well, kids need to learn how to swim, so you shouldn't keep them out of pools. Right? And I'm like, okay, can we just talk about that for a second? What if that pool was filled with pedophiles, you know, and there's someone in the corner who's like, how do we get there? Sorry, really quick. It gets dark really fast. I'm super fun at holiday parties, but, you know when there's someone in the corner who's, like, teaching people how to harm themselves, Right? And then you've got a violent movie. It's a pool party with this violent, like, beheading. You would never let your kids learn. That's not where you learn to swim. Don't learn to swim in that pool.
- [17:33]
A
Right. So, yeah, I like the swimming metaphor, too. And just to extend it without pedophiles, just because my metaphor doesn't exist, most people want their kids to be able to swim in an ocean.
- [17:43]
C
Yeah.
- [17:43]
A
And nobody starts by teaching your kid how to swim in an ocean. People start in a training pool, but no one says, that's so insane. They have to learn how to swim in an ocean. Like, the only way you can make better choices in more complicated environments is you actually have environments that help you learn skills. So we start in a training pool, we move to a deeper pool. Eventually we go to an ocean. Right? And I think it's the same thing. There's a period of time where kids have to Be in a training pool. Like we have to help set up their environment to learn.
- [18:13]
C
Yeah. I'd also say though, to flip that a little bit is that we want kids to be able to swim in the ocean of real life.
- [18:19]
A
Exactly.
- [18:20]
C
And that's what's not happening.
- [18:21]
A
That's exactly.
- [18:21]
C
So when we talk about like, where are you teaching your kids to swim? Where is that kiddie pool? It should be learning how to have conversations with people. It should be learning how to staying your attention. Right. So. Yeah. And John, I know you've got a lot to say about that. Yeah.
- [18:34]
B
Just because I was, you know, I love metaphors, I think in metaphors. And something was bothering me about the swimming metaphor. I think I got it. Swimming really is something that everyone has to do and has to learn to do. And when you swim, it doesn't damage you, it doesn't damage your brain. Okay. But what we're talking about here is much more like drinking. Okay. Does everyone have to learn how to drink? Maybe, I mean, in some religions, maybe not. But in general you're gonna be exposed to alcohol. But if we start our kids when they're two on alcohol, while the brain is developing very rapidly, you're not preparing them to be better drinkers, they're not gonna be more effective drinkers. Cause they started at age 2. The brain is wiring up very, very quickly based on input from the outside. And that is happening especially prenatally. So that's why mothers have to be very careful about alcohol. So prenatally and in the first year or two, very, very rapid. And then at puberty, very, very rapid. And so the idea that, oh well, you know, they're going to be on social media when they're grown ups. So let's, let's put them on at age 11 or 12, which is what we do. Most kids are getting actually TikTok is usually before age 10, Instagram, Snapchat or 10, 11. We're saying, how about if before you start puberty we're going to rewire everything so that you're not out playing with. You just, you're just doing this all day long. You're getting freaked out by people. So this is rewiring your brain. So this is not swimming, this is drinking hard alcohol when you're young. Don't do it.
- [20:01]
C
Yeah.
- [20:01]
B
You know, and that's what we advocate for is wait till 16 for social media.
- [20:04]
A
There's really.
- [20:05]
B
They don't, kids don't need it, it hurts them. Yeah.
- [20:08]
A
We're talking about kids and phones and I Think an element of the conversation that I love that you guys always bring to it, and it's something I think about a lot too, is our kids. Relationships with phones and devices is also really impacted by our relationship with phones and devices and what we're doing in the home and what we're modeling in the home. And. And so I'm just curious from your perspective, how has that impacted family life, us being on our phones?
- [20:33]
B
Yeah. Well, let's start with what we know about what these devices have done to all of us. I was just talking with a marriage therapist the other day and you can guess what she said. Couples are not having much sex, or at least they're having a lot less. Everyone's exhausted. You get into bed and your spouse is already scrolling and so then you scroll and then you both just kind of get. You fall asleep. So the phone is an experience blocker and a relationship blocker. The phone connects you to thousands of people, including pedophiles sometimes. Let's keep that in play here. But the thing is, as it connects you to all those people far away, it necessarily disconnects you from the people physically around you. Necessarily. That has to be the case. So just what it's doing to marriages is terrible. Okay, now that's two adults. Now you've got this infant who's first struggling just to do the eye contact thing, struggling just to get the reciprocity going in those first weeks and months. You have to be there for that. You have to be totally attentive. And if they see the back of the phone a lot and if they make a little bit or when they start smiling, nothing comes back that's really bad for their development. So because these devices are relationship blockers and presence blockers, they're terrible, especially in early childhood. So.
- [21:51]
A
Yeah.
- [21:52]
B
And then it just goes on from there.
- [21:54]
C
Yeah, I would add to that because then some people may be like, oh my God, wait, what did I. What have I done? It's really important to not have self blame and shame in this conversation, just as you're saying, Becky, because then you end up paralyzed. There's no reason for that. And I say that to adults I work with with their own phone relationships. The best time to change, maybe it was a while ago, but it's right now. Like you have to start now.
- [22:13]
A
Always now.
- [22:13]
C
Yeah. And to John's point, I actually had that experience with my own daughter where I was holding her when she was a baby and I realized that I was looking at my phone instead of her. And that actually inspired how to break up with your phone. Because babies can only focus about 10 to 12 inches in front of their face. But that was the impact of not responding to your kid's face was shown in this experiment called the still face experiment, a very well known experiment that's been replicated numerous times. And basically the idea was having a parent interact with their baby normally for a couple minutes and then go totally still faced with no reaction for a couple minutes. And then they monitor what happens to the babies. They get incredibly distressed, their cortisol levels spike. I bring that up though, because one thing that Trenock says at the end of this clip that I'm referring to, he says, the good news is that if you reestablish that connection, you can undo some of that. So I would say to anyone listening, this is just a wake up call for us and we should just listen to it. But starting today, right now, you can start to model habits yourself that will really bring you closer to your children, to your partner. You know, we can open up a conversation so there's no reason to feel bad about what's happened in the past. But let's talk about how we can move forward.
- [23:27]
A
As parents, we think a lot about the small things that add up over time. And nutrition is definitely one of them. Especially if you've ever wondered, are they actually getting what they need? That's why I'm really excited about Smarty Pants vitamins. Smarty Pants is the number one kids gummy multi, delivering 33% more nutrients than the second leading product and supporting kids brain health every day. And honestly, the fact that kids love the taste that matters. It turns what can feel like a daily negotiation or maybe a covert operation trying to hide the healthy stuff in a smoothie into something easy. There are plenty of things to negotiate about. Vitamins don't need to be one of them. With Smarty Pants, you can feel confident about what you're giving your kids because they're made with 16 essential nutrients that support health. Choose Smarty Pants Vitamins, the smart choice for kids. Shop on Amazon or at Target or Walmart today. I do think any type of learning around parenting is the most vulnerable thing we do. Because as soon as we learn a new idea that makes you say, oh, I didn't know that or I hadn't thought about that before. I think most parents go right to, I fucked up my kid, that's it. Like, I messed up my kid forever and right. And so even being open to a new idea, every parent knows, like, oh, I'm, I'M kind of bringing myself to the edge of the worst parent thought ever. Right? Which is I messed everything up. I'm a failure. And what you're saying is so true. But learning is so important. It's just been that parenting has been one last area where we've made it seem like we shouldn't learn. Oh, you have everything you need, you have instinct. And so it's a new thing in our generation to be like, we can learn in parenting, but to watch for that shame. I think that's exactly right. And I think just specifically with what you're saying, I know the experience. I'm sure you guys do too. Unless your marriages are, you know, just 100% perfect. Tell me your secrets after is I know the feeling of trying to talk to my husband when he's on his phone and I know what that feels like. And I'm a fairly well psychologically resourced 40 something year old. I will say okay. And I do think, you know one of the things I think that kids are always asking their environment, even though they never ask it. And I honestly think adults are too. Am I real? I really think that's what a baby's question is. They don't know. They don't know, am I real? And I think when I think about the tronic experiment from all my learnings, the reason you want responsiveness, I'm gonna tear up. Is cause it's a way of saying you're real. You did this thing and you see a reaction. You are a real person here and at every age that matters. Which also means that any age that a parent's listening to this repair is where everything's at. You can say to your kid, I was listening to this podcast. I was thinking beyond my phone being annoying because I know I'm on it a lot. I think it gets in the way of us being closer. And I know other people do that. And that happens to me. I just want to name that and own that. And I'm going to try to do a better job. And if I don't, call me out, give me a review. Hey, you're doing the phone thing again. And if we enlist our kids to even help us and we look at the feedback as helping us align with our values rather than our kids telling us we're a bad mom or dad, that system can move things really quickly.
- [26:52]
C
Yeah, I would even take that a step further. I mean, I see that all the time, or I always am encouraging parents who are concerned about their own phone habits or their kids. It's like, okay, let's turn the mirror on ourselves and ask our kids, hey, how do you feel when I'm around my. I'm using my phone in front of you? And I ask kids that when I give talks.
- [27:07]
A
Yeah.
- [27:07]
C
I say, have you ever felt ignored because your parent was on their phone? All the hands go up. But the way I think we can approach that as adults to again, like, not just start beating ourselves up about it is say exactly what you're saying. Talk to your kids about, hey, I noticed that this might be having an effect on you. Totally blame us. Say that you listen to this podcast and say, how do you feel when I'm on my phone? Is there anything I can do? And can you call me out on it? My husband and I actually did something where we came up with a code word for our daughter. Because I also know in a lot of marriages this can be a fraught conversation. Right. Where it's like everyone gets super defensive, which thankfully was not our situation. But we were like, let's come up with a code word that our daughter can say when she feels like one of us has been on the phone. And I think she chose, for some reason, asparagus.
- [27:47]
A
It's usually a food. Banana. Yeah.
- [27:50]
C
You know, and then it's like kind of like a gentle, gentle reminder that. Oh, right, I meant so it doesn't feel confrontational or like an attack. But anyway, I think if you can bring a bit of playfulness and a bit of, honestly, vulnerability to the situation, it helps you connect with your kids and it helps us all get on the same side. It's not an us versus them thing. It's us versus companies that are trying to addict our children and hack our brains.
- [28:12]
A
Yeah.
- [28:12]
B
Just like to add on, I was thinking, thinking about what you said about, you know, do, am I real? Do I exist? That's very powerful. I'd like to suggest a slightly different word. I. I think what they're asking themselves, what we're all asking ourselves, is, do I matter? And so it's, it's similar. It's like, am I real to this person? Am I a person of worth? Am I? And the reason that what lit up for me when you said that was that the saddest graph in the anxious generation is the one about a survey question given to a lot of high school seniors since the 1970s. My life often feels useless. Do you agree or disagree with that? On a five point scale? And what we see is that in the 90s, when they first added that question, it was about 17% or so said yes, agree or strongly disagree. And then that's Gen X. And then as the millennials go through, it goes down a little bit, maybe down to 14%. And then all of a sudden, in 2012, 2013, when Gen Z enters the data set, this is born 1996, and later it doubles. It goes up very, very quickly. And this is before COVID So something happens so that our young people born after 1995, 96, they just feel that their lives are useless. They don't matter. And of course, because if all you're doing five hours a day is the average amount of time, that's the average that kids spend on social media. And that's mostly scrolling, it's mostly short videos. So. And if that's what you do all day long, you go to classes and you scroll, your life is useless, you're not doing anything. And so anything we can do to convey to our kids, you matter, you matter to me, you matter because you're doing these things that help out our family. You're doing these errands for us later when you're a little older. So, yeah, we have a mattering crisis.
- [29:59]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:00]
C
And one of these ways to show your kids that they matter is to be present with them. And so there's just some easy changes that everyone can make. Even starting to help with that. One is to get the phone away from mealtimes, say, all right, we're going to be present with each other. This is a time when we can spend time together and I want to be present with you. And so we're going to keep our phones away. You can have a family charging station for devices that's not in anyone's bedroom, really important. And you can have conversations with your kids about this, ask them to call you out on it. So I just think there's a lot of little things, little tweaks, getting alarm clocks so that people are actually not having their days hijacked. But there's a lot of little changes we can make starting now that can make really big differences in our relationships with the other people who matter the most to us.
- [30:42]
A
I love those concrete suggestions. They're so manageable. And I want to bridge the gap a little bit between any parent being like, yes, I want to do that. And I think the thing that can stop parents, right? And just to, like, bust a couple of them. So number one, like, oh, it's kind of too late. Like, I'll do that for my next kid, or I'll tell my sister to do that, but my kid already has the device in their room, or we already have a different charging system. And I think I hear a lot from parents, like, I don't want. I can't change my mind, or I don't want to go back on something I said. And I just think this perspective is important, that the only thing we promise our kids, I think, is that we're going to always do the best we can with the resources we have available in the name of protecting them long term. So much of being a good parent is making decisions that your kid doesn't like short term because you think it's good for them long term. And if you think about that as your job, well, as you get more information, oh, I listen to this podcast, you might quote, change your decision on the surface, but that's a very surface level. Look, what you're actually doing is being remarkably consistent because you're saying, I'm still making the best decision I could with the resources I have. Right. And so I do think it's helpful to compare it to a pilot where when you get on a flight in New York and you're going to la, even for something very important, I'm going to this meeting. I have a wedding. On some level, your ticket is promised to get to la, but if your pilot says, hey, I got new information, you know, I think we're gonna crash, whatever it is, right? I got new information. There's some bad lights going off, and they say, we're gonna have to land in Kansas. And then you say, but you promised la. And your pilot's like, you know what? You're right, I did. Forget it, forget it, forget it. You're right. Let's go. You freak out as a passenger, and in some ways, even to the pilot changes the landing spot, they actually are being remarkably consistent in their job, which is to keep passengers safe with the information they have. And so I think when parents look at it that way, they don't think of it as changing their mind. They actually think about it as doing their job consistently. It's just that the application looks different. And so I just really want to make sure parents listening hear that, because it affirms a change in decision, while it also affirms remaining remarkably consistent to what your job is in the house.
- [33:01]
B
And I really want to underline the power of that metaphor I first heard when you and I started working together in 2024. I first heard it and. And I was kind of kicking myself because it was like, if only I'd known that two Years, two or three years earlier. Because. Also emphasizing Catherine's point about having empathy for how hard it is to be a parent. I, you know, I've been studying. So, like, I did a good job keeping my kids away from social media. That's what I was studying. Like, I said, no, you're not having. I did a good job of that. Where I fell down was the kids had had their computers and often their phones in their bedrooms. And you know, during COVID Sure. But even. But you know, after Covid, like, you know, my wife urged me, like, you know, make, you know, make them get it all out. We got. But I wasn't firm with my son who was already a junior in high school and senior, you know, and, and he, you know, and he argued back and I gave in.
- [33:53]
A
Yeah.
- [33:53]
B
And so I just want to first of all, empathize. Like, you know, we're not sitting up here like we're the experts, the pedestal.
- [34:00]
C
Yeah. Excited. We can like get on the floor.
- [34:02]
B
So it's hard. We're just acknowledged. It's hard. But I really would like again, if I had heard you, if I had heard that metaphor a few years ago, I would have been able to stick to it. So I really want everybody watching to really take that seriously.
- [34:15]
C
Yeah. And I also have been very grateful to you, Dr. Becky, for some of the scripts that you give parents. I quote them in my own talks. But since we're here with you, can I ask, like, can you remind us of how you phrase it? Cause you literally have phrasing parents can use when kids come back to you.
- [34:27]
A
Yeah. So I think the first thing that I don't always articulate, but matters so much. Cause I asked this in a live event we did in our membership. When you're about to deliver a decision to your kid that you kind of know they're going to push back about, what percent conviction do you have in your own decision? Guess what the ranges were that people shared? 0 to 30.
- [34:46]
B
0 to 30.
- [34:48]
A
And I was like, you know what? Forget any script because if you're going into telling your kid that you're no longer gonna let them charge the phone in their room. And you say it like this, which is what it sounds like with 30% conviction. Hey, there's no more phone in your room. Okay. Don't you think it would be a good idea? Like, I picture my kid being like, are you asking me to do your job? Like, I'm a 16 year old boy.
- [35:12]
C
I'm not the pilot. Being like, we're maybe not gonna Go to Los Angeles. I don't know. What do you guys think?
- [35:18]
A
Yeah. Who thinks an emergency landing is a good idea? What? Right. If a hundred. And. And that's why the first work. And I think this matters so much. It's not just clinical psychology jargon. You have to look in the mirror and say it over and over until you can look in the mirror and be like, I believe myself. And. And the best part of being a parent, I mean this. I don't need my kids permission to do anything I think is best. It's actually, like, empowering when you realize that. It's scary, but I'm like, I'm not five anymore. It's kind of powerful. So you have to find that appropriate. We always say it. Good insight. It's authority without aggression. It's authority without aggression. Then I can say to my kid, and this is something I also went over recently. How many of you have started a sentence like this with your kid? I want to tell you about a decision I've made. Everyone's like, can I say that? Yes, you can. There are certain times you don't need to. But I want to tell you about a decision I've made. I've been learning about the impact, and this is just one example of having your phone in the room at night. And I know you've had that from the start, so trust me, changing that. I'm not expecting it to be smooth sailing on your end, but I've learned how that can affect your sleep and other things. And I want to tell you about a decision I've made that starting tonight, your phone will no longer charge in your room. Now, to clarify, I don't expect you to say thank you. I actually expect you to give me a hard time for at least 18 days about it. And even though I've changed my mind in the past, I won't this time. And if it matters, I know that my job is making decisions that I believe are good for you. Even if you're not happy with me, that's actually how much I love you. And this is just gonna be one of those decisions. And I know we'll get through it. Now, I think people think when I say these things to my kids, on some level, they're like sturdy leadership. That was it. Mom. No, no. The way you get rewarded for making your best decisions as a parent is whining and, like, random words that come out. I hate you. You're the.
- [37:07]
C
Okay.
- [37:07]
A
You know, but just like a CEO gets when they make a hard decision. But if you have the conviction and yes, you have some starter language just to like get in there. And if you anticipate your kid's pushback, you can say this weird thing at the end, like kind of. That all went according to plan. Even my kid's argument, I predicted the whole thing, which doesn't make it easy. But to me, with parenting, often the best we get is bringing impossible to difficult. Impossible never gets to easy. It just doesn't. And if you know that it's manageable.
- [37:40]
B
Although I think if you give your kids the amazing generation, it will get a lot easier.
- [37:44]
A
So tell me about that.
- [37:45]
B
Yeah, yeah. So as soon as the anxious generation came out, parents and mothers in particular began asking us, is there something I can share with my child? And I'd say, well, I have a video you could show them. But there was nothing written. And so we had the idea to create a children's version of the book and we looked into hiring a person who could write for children. And Catherine and I had already been working together a little bit. We'd been talking about issues about fun and play. And she heard that we were doing this and she volunteered for it. And my team, we talked with her about it and she had all these great ideas for how to make it not just rewritten for kids. This is a totally new book. It has a graphic novel. It tells sort of the story in a graphic novel. It tells the story in the main text. There's all kinds of call out boxes and a lot of testimonials from rebels, we call them from young people who have said, no, this has taken my childhood. So the idea is if kids see a vision of childhood that is enticing. This isn't just, I'm taking away the thing that's at the center of your life. This is, do you want to have the kind of childhood that your parents and your grandparents had? You've heard us talk about it. You've seen movies that took place in the 80s and 90s. You see that kids used to be out on bicycles. Do you want that or do you want to just scroll like your older siblings or your older cousins? And they say they want this. So, Katherine, tell the good people more about this book.
- [39:07]
C
Well, thank you, Jonathan. No, we really wanted to make something that would take the core messages of the anxious generation and the takeaways from that, which are the four norms that John writes about, which the idea that we should delay our kids access to smartphones and social media till at least 14 for smartphones, if not later and at least 16 for social media. We need to get phones out of schools, which is happening at an amazing rate. And we also need to help our kids have more independence and free play and responsibility in the real world. So we wanted to take those four norms and translate them into a form that would make kids excited about adopting those for themselves. And the way you do that is not to lecture at kids, it's to get them excited. So the subtitle of the book is your guide to fun and freedom in a screen filled world. And what we realized is that it makes sense that kids are clamoring for phones and social media because right now their impression is that you get more fun and freedom and friendship is what we call it in the book on a screen. That's what the social media companies have told us. But in reality, as we all know and parents know, because we have experience, lived experience, the best stuff happens in the real world. Real friendship and real freedom and real fun. And so the point of this book is to get kids excited about living that kind of life. And we actually discovered that there is this growing youth rebellion of young people who are standing up and saying, I don't want to, I don't want to give my life over to a technology company. Some of them are in our Target readership, which is roughly 9 to 12. It's applicable whether or not your kid already has a smartphone or social media. But we're trying to intervene early. But we also know of a lot of young people who are older than that, in their teens, early 20s, who also are trying to turn things around. And so we tried to give lots of examples that would inspire kids to join this rebellion. And we have what we call the rebels code, which is very simple. It's to use technology as a tool. Don't let technology use you, because we're not Luddites. But we're saying there's good screens and bad screens and then also to fill your life with real friendship, freedom and fun. And what's been so cool so far? I've given some talks with early readers. Like at my daughter's school, I just spoke to 100 fourth and fifth graders last week and the kids are so excited about becoming rebels, they don't want their lives to be taken over by tech companies. And I have some thank you notes that just really show this, where kids say, I used to think I wanted to get TikTok and Instagram, and now I've decided I don't want to do that. I want to hold onto my freedom for a little Longer is what one of them says.
- [41:25]
A
Amazing. Well, I love this continued partnership around, like highlighting the issues in a really clear way. Painting a vision for a kid, it's not about taking away. It's actually about a different pathway to the things you actually want. And I'm always happy to show up and help parents create the containers to make that possible in a very practical way. So this is just amazing. So I want to end with a rapid, rapid fire because we don't have a lot of time. Okay. And you're people with big thoughts. I'm going to have to limit them to small, bite sized thoughts. Okay. Jonathan, if you had to draw one hard line, just one rule that you would tell every listener to really try to put in place, but only one. Where would you start?
- [42:02]
B
No screens in the bedroom, ever. If you start that early, then you can enforce it much more easily and that will cut off the worst things that happen, which is often. Screen overnight, talking with strangers.
- [42:14]
A
Great. Catherine. First change you'd recommend to someone who says, I'm on my phone too much.
- [42:20]
C
Get an alarm clock. I'm amazed by how many adults tell me that's a life changing decision. I'm like, why did I bother writing a book? I could have just bought you an alarm clock.
- [42:28]
A
Jonathan, you kind of answered this, but I want you to crystallize it. Of all the ideas you put into the world, what is the hardest one that you find to live by in your own life?
- [42:35]
B
Oh, the hardest one that I find to live by it would be to stop and smell the flowers. It would be to be more present. And I justify my, you know, I'm always thinking about work. I'm always. I justify saying, wow, but I'm on a mission to save childhood. So it's okay that I'm a workaholic. I've been trying since I heard a podcast from Ezra Klein on Shabbat and I read the book Herschel. Herschel. So I've been occasionally trying to, To. To honor Shabbat. And I really wish to God I had done that when my kids were little to just say, this is a time I don't work. We don't use our phones and we do things.
- [43:14]
A
It goes back to changing things from the level of goals to systems. Containers. That's what I think about containers. Like, if we have a container for something, it's much more likely to happen versus willpower.
- [43:22]
B
That's right.
- [43:22]
A
Right. All right, what about you? What's the hardest thing you've talked about? That's like, what's the thing that you've talked about that if people saw your real life they'd be like, yeah, this is hard.
- [43:30]
C
For me personally, I have trouble with email. You know, I'd never have had trouble with social media per se or but it was the news and email and so I got news apps off my phone. I try to keep email off my phone but it's really hard not to.
- [43:41]
A
Engage around phones, technology, social media, kids, parents. Jonathan, what's the area that you have the most hope around right now?
- [43:49]
B
Well, the most hope is to get all of this nonsense out of schools. Now that's going to include ed tech as well. It looks like putting a computer on kids desk was a terrible idea because they mostly just watch short videos, video games and porn. So I'm really excited that this whole movement is going to really help education now then it's a little harder to change things in the home because you don't have that centralized control. But I think as people are seeing how incredibly successful the phone free schools are, how we hear laughter in the hallways again, students are library book take, you know, taking out, it's going way, way up. So I think that's going to give a lot of parents, give us all evidence like yeah, you know, if we take these things away and we give them more experience like they flower.
- [44:34]
A
Great. What about you?
- [44:36]
C
I am very excited by how excited kids seem to be about becoming a rebel and living the messages of the amazing generation. It's so heartening because if we can get kids to decide for themselves that they don't want social media accounts and that they want to delay the age at which they get full on smartphones, we've won. We've reclaimed childhood.
- [44:56]
A
All right, last rapid fire question a little bit adjacent. But I like to ask everyone this years from now for you, when someone says what was your dad like? And someone and your kids say some simple sentence, how do you hope they finish that?
- [45:07]
B
Well, I know that they appreciate that I'm calm and I listen to them. I guess when they're adults. I hope they, they would appreciate that I was committed to a vision and I worked hard for it over many years.
- [45:25]
A
Yeah, great. Catherine, what about for you? What do you hope you're like when they're like oh my mom, she. How are they going to. How do you hope they finish this?
- [45:31]
C
I hope my daughter feels that I fully saw her for who she is.
- [45:37]
A
Beautiful. Yeah.
- [45:37]
C
And that she matters.
- [45:39]
A
Thank you. This is incredible. Your new book is incredible. The Amazing Generation. Thank you for all the very important, very impactful work you've done, and I love working alongside you, and I love just looking up at the work you've done and feeling so motivated about what can be possible from just a few minds. So thank you.
- [45:56]
B
Well, thank you. Thank you, Becky. It's been so helpful to have your consistent guidance on how to be firm as a parent, because it's something that we both have trouble with.
- [46:04]
A
Love working with you guys. All right, more soon. This is a conversation that's leaving me with so many thoughts, thoughts that I want to be honest with you, I haven't solved, but they're just living in my head, and I'm going to give myself a little permission to kind of let them simmer and figure out exactly what to do with them. In the meantime, I'll share them with you. Number one, I was just struck by the fact that me and Jonathan and Katherine, we all struggle with the stuff in our home. If you have some vision that the three of us have these perfectly balanced screen worlds, we do not. I think the best it gets as a parent is struggling with this. And so if you're struggling, you're doing the same thing I'm doing. Number two, there is something to saying, what is the one guideline I want to implement where I don't need my kids permission? It's one small shift. Is it how we start our day? Is it phones in the room? Is it no phones when you're sleeping? You know, the place that you feel strongly about and feels manageable as a first step. And so I think that's really powerful to think about. Number three, I keep thinking about this idea that I hear a lot about from parents. My kid's gonna have to learn how to deal with their phone. They're gonna have to figure it out. And I really love, especially the reframe John gave where if we think about that with drinking, a lot of our kids will drink alcohol. But that doesn't mean we say, my kid's gonna have to figure it out. So I'm opening up the liquor cabinet at age 3 or age 8 or even at age 14. There's something to development and time, and there's something to firm boundaries where kids do have to figure things out, but we also have to respect their development, how these products are designed, and we have to embody our appropriate parental authority in the name of protecting our kids before they're in a better developmental place to even be able to make good decisions. That's what I'll keep thinking about. Let's end the way we always do. Place your feet on the ground Place a hand on your heart. Put any shame or guilt on a shelf. And let's remind ourselves even as we struggle on the outside, we remain good inside. I'll see you soon.