Put The Phones Away with Jonathan Haidt

Summary

Episode Summary: "Put The Phones Away with Jonathan Haidt"

Podcast: IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson
Episode: Put The Phones Away with Jonathan Haidt
Release Date: June 25, 2025

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Introduction

In this thought-provoking episode of IMO, Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson delve into the pressing issue of technology’s impact on children. Joined by esteemed social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the trio explores the correlation between screen time, social media use, and the rising rates of anxiety and depression among young people.

The Changing Landscape of Parenting and Technology

Michelle Obama opens the discussion by sharing personal anecdotes about her daughters and their relationship with social media:

Michelle Obama [00:07]: "I never let her on social media. She's 15. She wants Snapchat. All her friends are on it. I have not let her have it."

She highlights a common pattern among families where early access to platforms like Instagram leads to noticeable changes in children's behavior and mental health.

Guest Introduction: Jonathan Haidt

The hosts introduce Jonathan Haidt, a renowned social psychologist from New York University Stern School of Business, who authored the book "Anxious: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness." His expertise provides a foundational understanding of the episode's central themes.

Craig Robinson [08:11]: "John Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University Stern School of Business... In his most recent release, Anxious, he brings to light the great rewiring of childhood in which play-based childhood has been replaced by phone-based childhood."

Main Discussion Points

1. Parenting Styles: Overparenting vs. Free-Range Parenting

Michelle and Craig discuss the evolution of parenting styles, contrasting the free-range approach of their parents with the more involved parenting seen today. They argue that overparenting has inadvertently led to increased screen dependency among children.

Craig Robinson [05:35]: "Free range parenting was essentially how everybody our generation was raised... So, everybody knows a family that has a daughter who got on social media and became depressed, anxious, self-conscious."

2. Social Media and Mental Health

The conversation shifts to the tangible effects of social media on young minds. Michelle shares her observations and data supporting the link between excessive screen time and mental health issues.

Michelle Obama [19:07]: "Girls who are using social media three, four, five hours a day are two to three times as depressed as the girls who are using it one hour or less."

She emphasizes the urgency of addressing this issue to safeguard the next generation's well-being and the future of democratic discourse.

3. Dopamine and Screen Addiction

Jonathan Haidt elaborates on the role of dopamine in screen addiction, explaining how technology companies exploit this neurotransmitter to keep children engaged.

Michelle Obama [24:03]: "Dopamine is the exact neurotransmitter that is involved in all addictions. And when you take the drug away, you feel terrible, and then you just need the drug back to feel normal."

Haidt introduces key principles from his book aimed at mitigating this addiction:

• No Smartphone Before High School: Encourage the use of basic phones instead of smartphones for younger children.
• No Social Media Before 16: Advocate for delaying social media access until mid-teens.
• Phone-Free Schools: Recommend eliminating phones in educational settings to enhance focus and interaction.
• Enhanced Independence and Free Play: Promote outdoor activities and unsupervised play to foster resilience and social skills.

Listener Question: Addressing Screen Addiction

Josie from Santa Cruz poses a heartfelt question about managing her daughters' screen and social media use, expressing concerns over addiction and its impact on family relationships.

Josie [20:43]: "What do we do about our kids? Addictions to screens and social media. I want nothing more than for my daughters to be resilient and self-assured people all on their own."

Expert Advice and Solutions

Michelle Obama and Jonathan Haidt provide actionable strategies to help Josie and other parents facing similar challenges:

1. Cold Turkey Approach: Gradually removing screens to reset dopamine sensitivity.

   Michelle Obama [24:03]: "Just go cold turkey. It just takes a week or two for the brain to get back to normal."

2. Enhancing Real-World Interactions: Facilitating in-person friendships and activities to replace screen time.

   Michelle Obama [24:03]: "Find some fun, real-world, analog friendship, the easier it is to wean them off the screens."

3. Story Time vs. Fragmented Screen Time: Encouraging shared storytelling experiences over isolated, short-form content consumption.

   Michelle Obama [24:03]: "Watch a 90-minute movie with your kid or siblings together. That's great."

4. Collective Action: Building a community of like-minded parents to support each other in enforcing boundaries.

   Michelle Obama [57:31]: "If you step up now, if you talk to other parents, you're gonna find allies."

Overcoming Parental Challenges

Craig Robinson emphasizes the emotional difficulty of implementing these changes but underscores their necessity for children's long-term well-being.

Craig Robinson [49:15]: "You've got to take the substance from the addict. And it's not gonna be fun."

Michelle reassures parents by sharing success stories and the potential for positive transformation when boundaries are effectively set.

Michelle Obama [53:16]: "When they get off social media, they get the most spectacular results... they just become more confident because you can't do anything in this life if you don't have your attention."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a call to action for parents to collaborate and prioritize their children's holistic development over digital engagement. Michelle directs listeners to resources like letgrow.org and anxiousgeneration.com for further support and information.

Michelle Obama [57:31]: "It isn't just about taking away the technology. It's about restoring a play-based, exciting, amazing, fun, adventure-filled, risk-filled childhood."

Notable Quotes

• Michelle Obama [00:07]: "I never let her on social media... they're anxious and they're comparing themselves and they're focused on their skin and their hair and their bodies."
• John Haidt [24:03]: "Dopamine is the exact neurotransmitter that is involved in all addictions."
• Michelle Obama [57:31]: "It's about restoring a fun, exciting childhood... So if you keep your eye on childhood, not just on the screens, then I think it's easier to see what you need to do."

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This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of the challenges posed by modern technology on youth, providing both expert insights and practical solutions for parents striving to foster healthier, more resilient children in a digital age.

Transcript

[Michelle Obama]

My daughter was described by her third grade teacher as a giant ball of sunshine. And she still is.

[Craig Robinson]

I love that.

[Michelle Obama]

And I never let her on social media. She's 15. She wants Snapchat. All her friends are on it. I have not let her have it. But I hear so many stories from parents whose daughters were also giant balls of sunshine. And then they got Instagram in 5th, 6th, 7th grade, and then they stopped being giant balls of sunshine. And they're anxious and they're comparing themselves and they're focused on their skin and their hair and their bodies. So I think a lot of parents can recognize this, even if it's not in every single family. It's in something like every third family. So everybody knows a family that has a daughter, especially, who got on social media and became depressed, anxious, self conscious.

[Craig Robinson]

This episode of IMO is brought to you by Progressively Insurance and Pine Sol. Hi, Craig Robinson. How are you?

[John Haidt]

I'm terrific. How are you?

[Craig Robinson]

Good. You're looking pretty even.

[John Haidt]

That's because I'm wearing makeup.

[Craig Robinson]

Let's see. I think it's good now. You know, lights, camera, action. You know, you need to have be blended just like the rest of us.

[John Haidt]

I am very self conscious. I mean, I've worn makeup before, you know. Have you?

[Craig Robinson]

Tell me more about that. On what occasion?

[John Haidt]

I'm a commentator for espn.

[Craig Robinson]

Oh, that's right. That's right.

[John Haidt]

But that you're not on. On the screen very much so. It's very light and I do it. I did it myself, so I just.

[Unknown]

Like, powdered it up.

[John Haidt]

Yeah.

[Craig Robinson]

They let you do your own makeup?

[John Haidt]

They do all. You'd be surprised how many sports analysts do their own makeup on the road.

[Craig Robinson]

You should have told me. I could have helped you out.

[John Haidt]

Well, Kelly took me to the Mac store and we matched up some.

[Craig Robinson]

I wish I had been there for that trip. Wow.

[John Haidt]

Yeah.

[Craig Robinson]

My big brother at the Mac store.

[John Haidt]

It was tough.

[Unknown]

Tough.

[John Haidt]

Anyway.

[Craig Robinson]

What? You're looking good.

[John Haidt]

I feel good. I feel good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're back in la.

[Craig Robinson]

Yes. Yeah. It's always good to be in la in this beautiful Airbnb.

[John Haidt]

Yeah.

[Craig Robinson]

Are you staying at airbnb again?

[John Haidt]

I am. I am staying at the same one. Yeah.

[Unknown]

So we. We.

[John Haidt]

We got some stuff to talk about.

[Michelle Obama]

We do.

[Craig Robinson]

We do.

[John Haidt]

So, you know, we.

[Michelle Obama]

Our.

[John Haidt]

Our show today is going to be about technology and kids and technology and the. This is a really interesting one because when we were setting up the show, our producers were asking us about our relationship with technology, and for us, it.

[Craig Robinson]

Was like growing up when growing up, right.

[Unknown]

That was don't watch too much tv.

[John Haidt]

It'Ll rot your mind out. Right.

[Craig Robinson]

When there were only like seven channels.

[John Haidt]

I know, I know. And I think back to the rule that mom had for us was we could each watch one hour of TV a night. You remember that?

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, I sort of do. But I think I was usually doing homework. I mean, you were the one that would get through your homework and get your hour in. I never really focused on that hour. Cause I was really trying to get my homework done.

[John Haidt]

You were trying to get your homework done. But I remember colluding in making sure that our hours didn't overlap so that we could really get two hours in.

[Craig Robinson]

That sounds like some strategy you'd be putting out there.

[John Haidt]

I believe you don't remember that because.

[Unknown]

It was a real thing.

[John Haidt]

But what I wanted to point out was we were so busy, like you with homework, me with homework in sports or whatever, that there were many nights we couldn't use that hour.

[Craig Robinson]

That's right. That's right. Even our parents, who were not college educated, working class folks, they understood that we didn't need to be in front of a screen for the limited time that we could have. You didn't have 24 hour television on at all. You didn't have all day. Kid tv, Right? Kid TV happened on Saturday morning.

[John Haidt]

Yes.

[Craig Robinson]

You woke up early to get the first cartoon, which was at 6am and you could maybe watch cartoons until 11:30. 11 and then we were outside.

[John Haidt]

But in between that I have to throw in there. You had to get the chores done, the Saturday chores done for sure. You had to either get your chores done before the cartoons came on or before you went outside after they were off.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, yeah. Well, now they call it. How we were raised is now titled free range parenting. You know, like it's some, you know.

[Unknown]

Animalistic out in the Sahara.

[Craig Robinson]

I mean. And so free range parenting was essentially how everybody our generation was raised. You know, your parents really didn't know that much about what you were doing and didn't feel like it was their obligation or duty to know everything that you were doing. You know, so the independence started with parents just. Our parents loved us and were involved, engaged. My mother was on the pta. But the notion that our parents thought that they were responsible for us getting our homework done or even us getting up in the morning or getting us to school or getting us to our activities, that was not something that our parents generation believed in.

[John Haidt]

Right.

[Craig Robinson]

So I guess as a result, most of our generation, we were free Range, you know, and during those times, we were just out and about, playing on.

[John Haidt]

Our own, figuring it out. Figuring it out, learning about the world, how to deal with friends and people who weren't friends. And as a matter of fact, do you remember when I used to go to the park and stay all day? Mom would say, you have to come back and check in. That was our version of the cell phone.

[Craig Robinson]

Right, right. She just wanted to know you were alive.

[John Haidt]

She just wanted to know everything was okay. And I remember playing in a basketball game at the park and the game's over, I race back home and I scream up to mom on the back porch. I'm back.

[Unknown]

She's like, okay.

[John Haidt]

And then I run back to get in the next game.

[Craig Robinson]

But that was how we were all raised. And I think that that set us up for owning our own lives in a way that I think some kids today don't, perhaps because parents, we've over parented. And I think some parents are denying their kids that opportunity to experience the success and confidence of doing some things on their own because we're just protecting them too much.

[John Haidt]

We're protecting them from everything. And I see it in coaching now.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, we may have overdone it. We may be a little too coddling. And so therefore, when it comes to social media, we don't know how to say no. But these are some of the things we'll talk about. I certainly understand, you know, how challenging it can be. I mean, when I was raising the girls in the White House, I mean, we had to think really long and hard about their access to social media. They were coming up right at the sort of beginning of Snapchat and Instagram. So it wasn't. They didn't really feel the kind of pressure that probably you as the father of younger kids are experiencing today. And it was still unknown territory. So I think a lot of parents are struggling with this. We're struggling with how do we not over parent, how much do we parent, how much free ranging do we do? And then how does that affect how we manage our kids? Social media? And we've got a great expert on board.

[John Haidt]

Well, yes. So fortunately we have somebody who knows this more than we do. So our guest today is John Haidt, and I have been excited about this ever since we booked him. So I would like to read part of his bio because he begged me not to read the entire thing because it is fascinating and I wanted to.

[Unknown]

Read every bit of it.

[John Haidt]

But John Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University Stern School of Business. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. And I'm not going to hold that against him because I'm a Princeton guy in 1992 and taught for 16 years in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia. In his most recent release, the Anxious how the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, he brings to light the great rewiring of childhood in which play based childhood has been replaced by phone based childhood. With that, please welcome John Height. John, welcome.

[Craig Robinson]

John, thank you so much for being here.

[John Haidt]

Thanks.

[Michelle Obama]

Super pleasure.

[John Haidt]

Yeah, good to see you.

[Craig Robinson]

Thank you. Welcome. Welcome to the table. We've got an expert that actually knows something and not just in this area, but you're a parent too, grappling with this issue.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. My daughter is 15, my son is 18.

[Craig Robinson]

You're in the thick of it.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. That's right. But it sounds like you guys basically already covered it over parenting and the.

[John Haidt]

Technology, like you got it.

[Michelle Obama]

Okay, we can go deeper, but those are the two main ingredients.

[John Haidt]

Let's just start by telling us why you wrote your latest book.

[Michelle Obama]

So my main line of research is on democracy, what social media is doing to liberal democracy. Democracy is a conversation. But what happens when that conversation moves onto Twitter? There's growing evidence that something about social media and all the time the kids are spending on phones, there's a lot more evidence now linking that to mental illness, especially anxiety and depression. So I ended up, even though I was going to write a book on democracy, I ended up just focusing on this because nothing could be more important than this. If we don't get this solved, there's no point in working on democracy. We've got to have a strong next generation to handle this American experiment.

[Craig Robinson]

You say something very clearly that I didn't realize and wondered about when I was parenting when this, you know, this, this technology came to be. Is, is this harming our children? Because I can say honestly that the, that, that we weren't sure because there was the push between, okay, this is something that's out there. You, it's giving our kids access to limited amounts of information. They're linking up this all, you know, it's being marketed to us as a very good thing. But I can say now that that was the question among my group of parents is like, is this okay, how much is too much? And now we have, can we say a definitive answer. I mean, can we say that now? Because that's the question that people have.

[Michelle Obama]

Well, I'll say definitive and I'll defend it. I think it's really important to trace out how this all started. Cause as you said, you know, parents, they were giving their kids the device, or maybe you weren't giving it, but your kid, like, you know, so many of my family videos when my son was one or two end with iPhone. IPhone. Like they desperately wanted it. And you give it to them and they're happy and they're quiet and you can do your work. A lot of people say, oh, this is just like the moral panic over television. Oh, we'll get used like. No, this is actually really different from television. And the other piece is that you guys were talking about just how much fun you had outside and how important that was. Well, outside has gotten a lot less fun for our kids. Cause there aren't any other kids out there. And we just don't have that expectation anymore.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, well, it's also, you know, it changes the expectation for parenting. And there is a level of sort of chaos and uncertainty and, you know, not pleasantness when it comes to managing your kids and having a household. And a lot of parents want none of it now.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right.

[Craig Robinson]

It's almost like, okay, I want, now I want my child to be absolutely silent. And it's perhaps easier to hand a kid a phone so that they are absolutely quiet and there is absolutely no fighting. Right?

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. That's right. And in the long run, that's gonna block their development, as you were just saying. It's gonna be. There's gonna be conflicts, but that's actually nutritious.

[Craig Robinson]

That's right.

[John Haidt]

John, can you elaborate on the four pillars that you lay out in your book for our listeners? And we're gonna get to our question. But there's so many questions we have of you and really appreciate your time.

[Unknown]

But can you elaborate a little bit.

[John Haidt]

On those four pillars?

[Michelle Obama]

So let me just first say I can summarize the book with a single sentence, which is that we have overprotected our children in the real world and we have under protected them. Online phones are experience blockers. So we interfered with their development, their social development, intellectual development, sexual development, all of those things. So we've got to stop. And the reason why it's so hard for us is that any parent who says, no, you're not doing this, I'm not giving you a phone, we all get the same thing. But Mom, I'm the only one. Everyone's making fun of me. I don't know. And it breaks our heart. And then usually we give in. We say okay, but there'll be all kinds of restrictions, but then it's impossible to enforce.

[Unknown]

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[Michelle Obama]

So the key here is collective action. That is we have to do things together, we have to make it a norm and then we're not each alone to enforce it. So here are the four norms. No smartphone before high school. Just give them a flip phone or a basic phone. No social media before 16. Social media is just wildly inappropriate for minors, for children. Phone free schools. We couldn't bring our television set into school, that would be madness. But yet we let kids bring in this multi entertainment computer. And the fourth is far more independence, free play and responsibility. In the real world, it's not just about taking away the screens, it's about restoring a fun, exciting childhood. Typically the kids raise each other in the sense of there's a kid community, there's a kid group of mixed ages as you guys had. And you learned so much from your older sibling and you learned, you didn't learn so much from her directly when she was little, but you learned how to take care of her. Well, you learned how to take care of her, you learned how to look out for her, you learned responsibility when you were three. What did you do when you were three?

[Craig Robinson]

I was so smart.

[John Haidt]

We were joking before we got on. She took over when she was 4.

[Unknown]

Took over the whole family.

[Craig Robinson]

But John, I mean you set it out so clearly, so simply in such a. It is so utterly doable. That's why I love your book and I love the way you just sort of make it plain to parents because to many people this feels like an impossible task. And the four things you lay out are completely within our control. One other thing that I want you to point out before we get to the caller question is the impact of social media on our kids mental health. I mean, because again it's something that I don't think a lot of parents are making that link and I wanna be real clear here, that there is a real correlation between our children's depression, higher rates of depression and anxiety. You talk about that, John, can you say a little more about that?

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. Well, I'll start with just the intuitive and I'll give you the data. The intuitive is things like this so my daughter was described by her third grade teacher as a giant ball of sunshine. And she still is. I love that. And I never let her on social media. She's 15, she wants Snapchat, all her friends are on it. I have not let her have it. But I hear so many stories from parents whose daughters were also giant balls of sunshine. And then they got Instagram in 5th, 6th, 7th grade and then they stopped being giant balls of sunshine. And they're anxious and they're comparing themselves and they're focused on their skin and their hair and their bodies. So I think a lot of parents can recognize this even if it's not in every single family, it's in something like every third family. So everybody knows a family that has a daughter especially who got on social media and became depressed, anxious self consciousness. When you look at how much social media time kids spend for boys, the correlation is there, but it's very small. For girls, it's much bigger. So the girls who are using social media three, four, five hours a day are two to three times as depressed as the girls who are using it one hour or less. So we have correlational evidence. There's experiments about getting kids off. They get benefits if they stay off for at least a week or two. So I think the evidence is increasingly strong. Again, there is a debate, there are psychologists who disagree with me, but I think because we all see it, the parents see it, the teachers see it, the psychotherapists see it, the coaches see it, everyone sees something has gone terribly wrong.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[John Haidt]

Well, we are going to keep talking about this, but we want to get to our listener question, which is from Josie in Santa Cruz. And Natalie, we are ready for our question.

[Craig Robinson]

Let's do it.

[Josie]

Hi, Michelle and Craig. My name is Josie and I live in Santa Cruz, California. I am a parent to two wonderful girls, ages 5 and 11. With the younger one, I'm having a hard time setting boundaries around screen time. My husband and I both work full time and we tend to hand her an iPad whenever we need a moment to ourselves. She's now clearly hooked on it and moody when we take it away. Also, because we don't live in a bubble, it feels difficult to keep her away from screens in general when the other kids she knows are just as into the screen as she is. Of course, I have a similar problem with my 11 year old and social media. Some of her friends have their own accounts already. I haven't given into her demands to have her own yet, but it's becoming harder and harder to put it off. And it's really starting to consume our relationship. My question is simple and I think it's one a lot of parents can relate to. What do we do about our kids? Addictions to screens and social media. I want nothing more than for my daughters to be resilient and self assured people all on their own. But in the modern world, where screens are ubiquitous and social interactions happen mostly online, it really feels like a monumental task to make that happen. What can I do to set up my daughters to have healthy relationships outside of screens and social media, with their friends, and most importantly, with themselves? Thanks for your help, Josie.

[Michelle Obama]

Okay, so that is the perfect question because in the anxious generation, I especially focused on teenagers because that's where the data is best. I didn't talk as much about younger kids, but I keep getting this question because parents with younger kids are exactly like your listener. And so here's a few things I can share. Just from what I heard in her question, I think there's three principles I want to put on the table. Dopamine, friends and stories. Let's keep those three things in mind. So dopamine is this really important neurotransmitter. It's a chemical in the brain that's related to reward and motivation. When something feels good, the dopamine comes out and that feels great. But it's not like that feels great, you're done, it's that feels great, let's do it again, let's do it again. And we've all seen this with kids. Again, again, again. And so you want your kids to have slow dopamine. You want your kids to struggle at something, work at something. They train to do a layup and then they do it and then they get the dopamine. That is great. What the tech companies did is they figured out a way to hack the system. They figured out, hey, let's give the kids some dopamine without having them do anything, just swipe or touch or whatever. No skills learned. So quick dopamine is really bad for your kids. You want to keep them away from quick dopamine. Now, like with junk food, if you let them play video games for an hour a week, that's totally fine. But when your kids are playing video games or other screen, other dopamine, quick things like that, two or three hours a day, now you're changing their brains. The dopamine circuits are responding, getting less sensitive to dopamine, so they need more. And I know this is relevant to your listener because she said that the Daughter gets moody when you take it away.

[Craig Robinson]

It sounds like an addict.

[Michelle Obama]

Exactly. Exactly. It is, because dopamine is the exact neurotransmitter that is involved in all addictions. And when you take the drug away, you feel terrible, and then you just need the drug back to feel normal. So that's the bad news. That's the bad news to your listener is that, in a sense, your kid is an addict. But here's the good news. Just as the brain adapts, after a week or two, it adapts and gets addicted. You go cold turkey. It just takes a week or two for the brain to get back to normal. So that's the first. Let's keep that in mind. Now, that's still hard advice because we all face this like the kid freaks out. But you know what? A lot of parenting is like this, where you have to go through the hard period. So I'll just share the story of how my wife and I, when we had our first. Our first child, our son, at about four or five months, we decided to Ferberize him. I know this is a. You know, people debate about this same thing. And how long did it take before your daughters got it?

[Craig Robinson]

Well, I didn't want to do it.

[Michelle Obama]

Right. Barack did it.

[Craig Robinson]

Barack did it. And I don't know that I could have done it because I wasn't sure about it. The notion that you just let the little person that you love the most cry and cry and cry. I couldn't even. And maybe it was something about estrogen and my response to the crying. So we set it up where Barack took the night shift. I went to bed, which was helpful because it got me some sleep. I would have to cover my ears so that I couldn't literally hear the crying. And it took no longer than a week. And it was really after the first two nights that, you know, because we started early, how old, what month? It was when we weaned her off of breastfeeding, which was four months, five months. So it was very early. So she learned quickly. The sooner this is the point to Josie, the sooner that you start sort of removing the symptom, the quicker you start to implement the action, the more responsive the child is. Sooner.

[Michelle Obama]

Your family story is exactly my family's story. We read this book by Ferber about sleep training. I forget the title, but the key idea was so simple. The key idea is all mammals sleep, all mammals dream. All mammals wake up briefly and go back to sleep. Wake up briefly. So we all do this, and the infant has to learn, like Oh, I wake up, I can go back to sleep. I don't need the breast, I don't need to be rocked and held like you wake up, you go to sleep. Back to Josie's question. So yes, she's moody when you take it away. And if you were to go cold turkey, it's going to be hard for a little while now you want to give her lots of other fun things to do. And that brings us to the second thing I said. So I said dopamine and then friends and then stories. So the devices are more engaging than anything in the real world. They're more engaging even than your friends in the short run. But in the long run, you have a lot more fun out with an afternoon with your friends than you do an afternoon on TikTok. And so we have to not just be taking away the screens from our kids, we have to be giving them back a fun and exciting child. And so I'd say to Josie, find someone, find some other, some girl who your daughter knows and talk to their parents. This year, now that everyone's talking about the book, everyone's talking about this, you will find some other parents who agree with you and form a pact where you're going to say, you know what, we're going to try to get our daughters together in fairly unsupervised, like you drop them off, you know, I'll be there, but we'll let them play, you know, at 7, they don't need constant supervision. So the more you can give them, give them fun, real world, analog friendship, the easier it is to wean them off the screens. That's the second principle. And then the third is stories. Because I'm not saying. Some people interpret me to be saying, oh, you know, screens are the devil, never let them watch screens. And in the book I didn't say a lot to counter that view, but now I'd like to, which is what I'm coming to see in thinking about this and dealing with my own kids is this insight, which is that humans are storytelling animals. That's who we are. Every culture, we tell stories, we raise our kids on stories. We have myths, we have religion. So stories are good. And a TV screen is a pretty good way to present stories. And so if you. So the, so here's the best thing you could do. Watch a 90 minute movie with your kid or siblings together. So watching a long story in a social setting on a TV set, that's great. I'm not saying five hours a day, but you know, even an hour or two a day is probably fine. Not for two three year olds, but you know, by seven, eight fine. Here's what's really bad. Not a TV screen, but a touchscreen device which is not just entertainment, it's training your child because they touch, they get a reward, they get the dope, they touch, they get a reward and before you know it, they're addicted. So touchscreen device is much worse than a tv. Watching it alone is much worse than watching it with a friend. And watching short stuff and moving around a lot is fragmenting your attention, whereas watching a movie is teaching you to pay attention to a story for 90 minutes. So what I would say is don't think about screen time, think about story time and fragmenting time. How much story time should your kids have? I don't know the answer, but you know, I mean an hour a day should be fine watching movies. So story time is generally a good thing. Just don't go too far. How much fragmenting time should how much time on TikTok should they have? I think zero. I think zero is a pretty good number for fragmenting time.

[Unknown]

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[Craig Robinson]

You know, you talk about dopamine for kids. You know, as you, as I hear Josie's question, I hear the question, the parenting question, the new parenting trap, which is parents suffer from this dopamine thing too when it comes to parenting because we want instant reward response from our children. We don't wanna wait, we don't wanna do the longer haul thing. You know, a lot of times we have to ask ourselves, are we doing this for our kids or are we doing this for us because we have the screen too and we're being trained on that instant gratification that, you know, maybe the 90 minute story is a problem for us because we can't sit still.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right.

[Craig Robinson]

The bottom line is that we've gotta get tougher, we've gotta get more resilient for our kids. Because I know time and time again that a lot of parents do what's easy for them, you know, and not necessarily what's best for the kid. The intent is there, the love is there. But I think we've gotten really confused, that we're kind of hooked on instant gratification. You know, we want silence, we want everybody.

[Michelle Obama]

Harmony.

[Josie]

Harmony.

[Craig Robinson]

Instant harmony. Craig, what would you say?

[John Haidt]

No. I was just thinking about how our parents parented and what my mom would say about saying no is that it's not just saying no. It's holding your no accountable. It is explaining why you're saying no. And it's outlasting your kids. And that is what I see that parents aren't doing today. And I wanted to get your take on that. And maybe there's a way we can help Josie, because you have to be able to outlast a, whatever year old as an adult. That's how I look at it. I am not gonna let a 2 year old or a 6 month old or a 15 year old outlast me on something that I know is right.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. There's so much in what you both just said. So I'll start with this idea of outlasting. So the key idea I want to put on the table here is called antifragility. We treat our kids as if they're fragile and we don't want any harm to come to them. We don't realize or we forget, which our parents knew, is that our kids are antifragile, which means they actually need to fall down sometimes. So they learn how to not fall down. They need to be in fights. They learn how to get, you know, how to deal with it. They need to be excluded sometimes. They learn how to deal with exclusion. We can't be jumping in all the time. You want to frustrate your kids every day. Because learning to deal with frustration is how you create an adult that other people are gonna wanna hire or marry.

[Craig Robinson]

Well, this is, we talk about this all the time. So the one thing I would say to Josie, you know, understand that your children are not your friends. You love them deeply. And if you do it right, if you set some boundaries now, give them a lot of no's with a lot of love and a lot of encouragement. But if you set really clear boundaries that you believe in and you stick to all the time, all the time. Kids are just, they, they are waiting for you.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. They need structure. They respond to it.

[Craig Robinson]

And they're waiting for you to go back on your word. They're waiting to see how long it will take. How many times can I outlast you? Because as I say, they got time on their hands. Kids don't have jobs, they have no responsibility, they're not paying bills. All they have time for is to outlast you, to wear you down. To wear you down.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. That's well put. That's really well put. The way you described it makes me think of Dr. Becky Kennedy. Talks a lot about this, about your job as a parent. Your job is to set the boundaries and choose what's safe and what's proper for their development. Their job is to experience negative emotions and learn how to deal with it. They can't have everything they want. And she uses the analogy of, in some ways you're the pilot of an airplane. The pilot is not our friend. The pilot is not there to make us feel good. If I'm flying to LA and there's terrible weather in LA and the pilot says, oh, I'm sorry, we're gonna have to reroute to Salt Lake, Mary's like, no, no, I need to get to la. And the pilot was like, oh yeah, I don't want to let you down. Okay, we'll go to la. No, no, no. You know, and so if you get, if the pilot gets new information that's relevant to the safety of the passengers, it is obligatory for the pilot to take that into account and do what's in the interest of the passengers in terms of their safety. So similarly, we all gave our kids, most of us gave our kids screens way too early. The touchscreens we didn't know. And now we have new information and it's like, you know, you know, a storm system over la, we can't land there. And so I would say to Josie, I know it's really painful, it's difficult to take the iPad away, but you can do it. You can say, I've got new information and I love you too much to let you have this thing, change your brain. I can also say I'm now working with a lot of Gen Z. So there's so many wonderful things about Gen Z. They see the problem, they understand what's happening to them. A lot of them want to fix it, they want to address. A lot of them are writing about it. You will often find members of Gen Z who say in their 20s. Talk to the ones in their 20s and they will often say, I'm so glad my parents didn't give me a phone or social media until later. What you'll never Hear is a 23 year old gen Z saying, I wish my parents had given me a smartphone in social media in middle school. So it's hard now, but stick it out and find a couple of other families. It'll be so much easier because your kids are terrified of being the only ones.

[Craig Robinson]

Now, Craig, you as a coach, you've also seen this. And some parents will be able to see themselves.

[John Haidt]

I would echo everything you said and then layer on top your theory of antifragility and sports was always the place where you sort of had some.

[Unknown]

Where.

[John Haidt]

You learned how to deal with adversity.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right, Toughening.

[John Haidt]

And I am just amazed at the number of parents who are trying to shield their children from that adversity. And those are the biggest lessons that I think you learn in sports. And this new wave of children, they don't understand really what team is because they're all independent contractors puppeted by their parents.

[Michelle Obama]

Right. Oh, no.

[John Haidt]

So that's what I'm seeing as a coach and it just, it worries me and it makes me think, how can we encourage parents to set these boundaries and these nos and sometimes overknow it, but understand we're doing this the right way and not turn them into these swooping in helicopter parents? I've got four kids, two older, two who are still 15 and 13 and 32 and 28, and I've tried to parent them the same ways. Right, right. There's, there's hard parenting and then there's an explanation for why we're doing it the way we're doing it. And. But to get back to this, to this screen time stuff.

[Unknown]

The 32 and 28 year olds, they didn't, to your.

[John Haidt]

Point, they didn't have the smartphones yet.

[Michelle Obama]

Right. They didn't go through puberty with him.

[John Haidt]

They didn't go through puberty with them.

[Unknown]

So it was really easy to say.

[John Haidt]

Okay, no phones until you got to high school, no social media stuff until you got to 16. It was really easy because there were more people like that with us. So.

[Unknown]

But it would have been easy for.

[John Haidt]

The way we were raised.

[Unknown]

It would have been easy to say.

[John Haidt]

It anyway because with our younger kids, I have seen exactly what you said and I've seen it through my own eyes. Because when people send me a TikTok and I look at that and I'm cracking up, I flip to the next one and I know better. I know better.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right.

[Unknown]

And I'm cracking up again and I flip to the next one and then I realize my 15 and 13 year.

[John Haidt]

Old, they don't have the willpower.

[Unknown]

They have less willpower than I do.

[John Haidt]

So we have gotten to the point where it's One hour of social media.

[Unknown]

Or one hour of Instagram.

[John Haidt]

That's all they have is Instagram every day.

[Michelle Obama]

So that's seven days a week.

[John Haidt]

One hour a day.

[Michelle Obama]

Seven days a week.

[John Haidt]

No, on the weekend we're so busy, we can say you can spend as much time as you want, knowing they don't have any time to spend on it. So it's a little trickeration there where we're making them feel like, oh man, we can't wait till the weekend comes.

[Unknown]

But when they're.

[John Haidt]

When I'm thinking about what you were saying about the dopamine, the friends and the stories. The friends part for us is we've got a good group of close friends who are operating the same way.

[Michelle Obama]

Right. Do the kids hang out with each other in person?

[Unknown]

They hang out in person.

[Michelle Obama]

Fantastic.

[John Haidt]

And they play games together online.

[Michelle Obama]

Oh, online. Can you.

[Unknown]

But they still get together in person.

[John Haidt]

I mean, you know, we're sports family, so we got running around physical outside.

[Unknown]

And in the wintertime it's a little hard.

[John Haidt]

So I wanted to hear more about what we can tell Josie on how to get back to where she should be.

[Unknown]

Because I am well aware of what.

[John Haidt]

You'Re talking about and it's hard.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah. So, okay, so I'll share a few ideas and I'll share my own experience and my own mistakes. So when I started this whole project, I was focused on social media as the bad thing. And I was in a debate with other researchers who were saying, well, total screen time doesn't correlate as much. And so I thought, well, okay, maybe it's not the phone, maybe it's just social media. So I did a really good job keeping my kids off social media until they were 16. But I didn't pay enough attention to the computer and the fact. And of course also during COVID they both were on their computer all day long. What were they doing? They were watching the Office and other shows on Netflix over and over and over again. They spent, I mean, you know, thousands of hours they spent just watching stuff when we thought they were in school. And so what I wish I had done. And here's a policy I would recommend to everybody with younger kids and even to Josie, even though you've already given them an iPad. I think the policy should be no screens in the bedroom ever. You start off with that policy when they're young.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah.

[Michelle Obama]

You make a. Now you can still have a screen in your bedroom because don't worry, your kids will point it out, but they're not really copying you. They want to do what other kids are doing. So if you have a policy, no screens in the bedroom ever, which is what a lot of us had when we were kids, you couldn't have a television in your bedroom. That'd be crazy. Now, at a certain point, maybe middle school, you're going to have to relent and say, okay, you can take your laptop into your bedroom, or you can take the family laptop into your bedroom to do home. So you might relent, but establish the principle early that screens don't belong in bedrooms. Bedrooms are a place to sleep. There are places to do hobbies or whatever else you do. My daughter has a sewing machine in her bedroom, so I wish I'd done that. And Josie can still do that. So you can certainly put restrictions on. And that's where and what some people who study this, the really terrible things, the talking with sextortionists with people are blackmailing you with people who are after sex or money. That especially happens overnight when kids are in bed with a phone under the blanket, and for hours and hours, they're missing out on sleep. So no screens in the bedroom ever. You can start with have that policy. The other thing is beware of the seven day a week thing, because an hour a day, seven days a week, that is enough to get the brain kind of adapted to it and the habit. And so I can't prove this yet, but I think a wiser policy is to have some just on weekends. You know, I didn't let my son play any video games when he was in sixth grade, any online video games. And he does kind of resent me for that because that's where all the boys were. Now 10, 15% of those boys got addicted. Their brains are changed. They might be diminished for life. So, you know, I'm not. I don't think I necessarily made the wrong decision, but what I could have done is to say to my son, you can play Fortnite for one hour a day on Saturday and one hour a day on Sunday. Then at least he could talk with other boys about the game he could have. So I would just say beware of anything that's every day. If you have clear boundaries, there's a lot less fighting. Whereas if it's in every day, there's. There's more risk of addiction.

[Unknown]

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[John Haidt]

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[John Haidt]

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[Craig Robinson]

The real you know, the unavoidable aspect to all of this, unfortunately for Josie, is that there will be parental pain.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah.

[Craig Robinson]

You know, and I just think that, you know, why I spend so much time talking about that is that I think that in addition to social media, the tech industry, the way people's minds work, that we have to become a little more resilient as parents.

[Michelle Obama]

We have to become tougher.

[Craig Robinson]

We have to become tougher for the sake of our kids. And I just don't think that there's any way around making this easy for parents. And I think that that's what we.

[Michelle Obama]

Parenting is never easy.

[Craig Robinson]

It's not supposed to be. And it's not fun. All of it is going to be really, really hard and not physically hard. It's going to be emotionally one of the toughest things you do. Because the little child that you brought into this world that you will love beyond anything you can imagine.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right.

[Craig Robinson]

You will be disappointing them and scaring them and making them hurt and arguing with them, doing all the things that you don't wanna do with your best friends. But in the end, as parents, we are responsible for securing the safety and the health of the children we bring into this world. And that means once we know that something isn't good for them, you know, and now what you're saying, we know, even though there are arguments, we are getting the data and we are seeing it with our own eyes and our own homes, that this generation of children, they are more depressed, they are struggling with anxiety, the higher rates of suicide. I mean, if these weren't real statistics, we wouldn't be talking about this.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right.

[Craig Robinson]

But there is a connection. We do know that now. We didn't know that, you know, one generation ago, but we have the data now. And so that means that we've got to do the hard thing. We've got to take the substance from the addict.

[Michelle Obama]

Yeah, that's right.

[Craig Robinson]

And it's not gonna be fun.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. But what I can promise parents is that it's gonna be easier going forward than it was a year or two ago. Because the danger began to be coming into fruit Few around 2019. And Jean Twanke, who really first diagnosed this in her book iGen 2017, she and I were saying, by 2019, what kids really need is a lot less time on screens, a lot more time outdoors playing. And then Covid comes in and what do they get? In New York City, they locked the playground. It was horrible. All, you know, all kids could do was sit and rot on their screens all day. So we were confused for a number of years. And during that time, a lot of resignation set in in parents. People saying, what are you gonna do? The genie's out of the bottle, the toothpaste is out of the tube, the trains left the station. The technology's here to stay. People felt powerless. And Josie and Josie conveyed that too. We all feel powerless when we try to do it alone. What I can promise you, Josie, what I can promise all the parents out there, is if you step up now, if you talk to other parents, you're gonna find allies. If you talk to your kids, teachers, you're gonna find allies. Talk to the principal. You're gonna find allies. If you initiate something, you're gonna find people are ready to stand up, and it doesn't matter if they're on the left or the right. We're all united by being parents. We're all united by being human beings. And as you were saying, we see what it's doing to us, we have problems with it, and so, of course, it's wreaking havoc on our kids development.

[John Haidt]

John, before we sort of sum up for Josie's sort of next steps for her in the realm of making the changes that you talked about, sort of the. Not seven days a week, have you seen or is there any data or have you seen anecdotally where you've seen results in teenagers where they've been able to turn it around?

[Michelle Obama]

Oh, yes.

[John Haidt]

So there's hope.

[Michelle Obama]

Oh, yes. Oh, my goodness, I'm so glad you you ask this question, because sometimes I go on about the mental illness, and it all seems so depressing and so terrible. And parents with younger kids love my book. Okay, we're on this. We're doing this and that. Parents with teenagers who already have a phone, they're like, oh, my God, what have we done? So let me give everybody some hope here. I teach. I'm a professor at New York University. I teach a course in the business school called Flourishing for the undergraduates and a version called Work Wisdom and Happiness for the MBA students who are older. And what I find over and over again with the undergraduates is first, as I said, they're not in denial. They know there are problems. They want to grow. They want mentorship, they want to be successful. And so once you get them on board on the project and you lay out, you know, the course is designed around three goals. We're going to try to make you stronger, smarter, and more sociable. And stronger means emotionally stronger.

[John Haidt]

Okay?

[Michelle Obama]

And yes, they want to do that. And then we go through some of the foundations, like, okay, let's look at the foundations of flourishing. Are you getting enough sleep? And a third of them are not. And so, okay, you guys, you need to work on your sleep first. You know, if you're getting six hours or less and you're feeling tired during the day, you got to start there. And there's a national epidemic of sleeplessness, which causes loss of learning, mental health problems. So it's okay. You start working on your sleep. How many of you are spending more than two hours a day on social media? And that'll be like, you know, a quarter or a Third of them. But my students who are hooked on social media, some in every class, there's always one kid who's spending six hours a day on TikTok. Six hours a day just on TikTok. And when they, and they're 19 years old when they, for their project, they say, okay, I'm going to quit or I'm going to reduce it to, you know, even just one hour, they get the most spectacular results. And what always happens is they report all these other benefits that they didn't even expect. You know, like, I do my homework. Like, I used to think I had no time for homework, but I get my homework done and I have three hours left in the evening, so I go out with a friend. Oh, good, you're going out with a friend. That's great. And. And they, they just become more confident because you can't do anything in this life if you don't have your attention.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah.

[Michelle Obama]

And these are business students. They want to be successful. So it starts with regain control of your tension. And if you do that, you can then go on and do great things. So I want to reassure everybody out there that while it's going to be tough for Gen Z overall, because we deprive them of a lot of these growth experiences we're talking about, but any single one of them who commits to regaining their attention, cultivating healthy habits, they're going to get amazing results. The brain isn't really done sort of like locking down into its adult form until around age 25 is when the prefrontal cortex finishes. So if you have a late teenager or kid in early 20s, they can really turn their lives around. I mean, look, we can all turn. Humans are amazing. You can turn your life around at 30 or 42, but it's gonna be a lot easier if you do it while you're still below 25.

[John Haidt]

Yeah. Well, that's great. That's good. Good. Well, thanks for that because we needed that. But we've covered a whole lot of really neat stuff here for Josie and I wanna make sure that I don't leave anything out. I think the most important thing for Josie that I heard was you can't be afraid to say no. And you can't be afraid to start over and say, okay, this is how we're gonna operate.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right.

[John Haidt]

That's one thing. And the no screens in the bedroom, that's easy.

[Unknown]

You can definitely do that. But it's a revelation to a lot.

[John Haidt]

Of people because that's something a lot of us have given in on also.

[Craig Robinson]

John, a point that you made is that some adults don't do it because they have TVs in their bedrooms. Right. And this is another thing. Yeah. No, life isn't fair.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. I'm an adult.

[Unknown]

I can do things.

[Michelle Obama]

Look, if I drive a car, you don't.

[Craig Robinson]

Right. Or even if, even if mom's on the phone. Right. Because mom hasn't broken her addiction. You can say, yes, I'm doing it, but you have a different set of rules and the whole fairness. Life isn't fair. And that's another lesson for kids to learn.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right.

[Craig Robinson]

Unfairness and how to deal with that. And mom got to do something that I couldn't do, or older sister got to do it. I think it's okay for kids to have a different set of rules than their parents, especially if their parents can't break their own addiction.

[John Haidt]

Yeah. Yeah, agreed. Agreed.

[Michelle Obama]

And then just one more thing to add for Josie just to really emphasize at the end here is it isn't just about taking away the technology. It's about restoring a play based, exciting, amazing, fun, adventure filled, risk filled childhood. So when you look at it that way, the deal is, yeah, I'm taking this away from you and it's gonna hurt for a couple weeks, but you're gonna have a lot more fun in your childhood. And I've already talked with three of your friends, parents, and we're gonna give you a better childhood. So, yeah, if you keep your eye on childhood, not just on the screens, then I think it's easier to see what you need to do and what.

[Craig Robinson]

Childhood should look like, which is a lot of one on one play in real life.

[Michelle Obama]

What you guys think? I listened to prepare for this. I listened to a podcast discussion you guys did. Sounds like you guys just had a lot of fun together.

[Craig Robinson]

Well, it was.

[Michelle Obama]

You were each other's playmates, right?

[Craig Robinson]

It was the way you grew up. I mean, you were raised that way. You know, we played a lot and we played unsupervised and we had to make stuff up and we had to, you know, we had to play with broken toys and learn how to fix them or how to make games with kids in the neighborhood. You know, the playgroup model is. Is a good one. That's how I survived the majority of my parenting. We developed great groups of friends with kids in the same age. And a lot of times all we had to do was put them in the basement.

[Michelle Obama]

That's right. That's fine. They'll find a way to Entertain themselves. So just two sources of information for all of your listeners. One is Please go to letgrow.org it's an organization I co founded with Lenore Skenazy, the woman who invented the term term free range kids that you were talking about. So letgrow.org has all kinds of advice for families and schools and how to give your kid this fun, exciting childhood. The other is the website for for my book, but really it's become the website for the movement. If you go to anxiousgeneration.com excellent. Anxiousgeneration.com in the upper right corner, there's a box that says take action. And then there's a line for parents, a line for educators, a line for legislators. We have all kinds of tools to help you act collectively, because that's what this is all about. It's hard to act, Josie. It's hard to act if you're totally alone. I get that. We all are facing that. But if we can do collective action, then we can escape from this together.

[Craig Robinson]

Yeah, that's great. Great. Thank you, John.

[John Haidt]

Really appreciate you being here. And there's probably more we could talk about, so.

[Craig Robinson]

Well, maybe we'll get you back handy.

[John Haidt]

In a healthy way.

[Michelle Obama]

Happy to come back. We'll do it. Yeah. Let's do an update on parenting and coaching and see how it all worked out.

[Craig Robinson]

Some progress. Well, thanks again.

[Michelle Obama]

Great advice, Michelle. Thank you.

[Unknown]

Thank you.

[Damona Hoffman]

Are you single and ready to mingle? Do you need to DTR with your fwb? Whatever you're looking for, I can help you find it. I'm Damona Hoffman, host of the Dates and Mates podcast. I'm also the official love expert of the Drew Barrymore show and Excess Daily with Mario Lopez. So join me each week as I cover topics from dating with anxiety to Google sleuthing, to couples communication with guests like Dr. Drew Pinsky, Laverne Cox, and Rachel Lindsay. That's Dates and Mates with me, Damona Hoffman. Listen to season 12 wherever you get your podcasts.

[Anna Sale]

Hey, IMO listeners. I'm Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex and Money, Slate's award winning podcast about the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation. Like imo, we talk about the things we're all trying to figure out, from fielding listener calls about why you're not having sex, to what it means to be a man, to how an eating disorder can turn into an obsession with money. And as your host, I'm still learning things too, like how to navigate working with a spouse. I've been married for almost 10 years, but when my husband and I try to do work projects together, our different styles of working can cause some conflict. So I asked Mrs. Obama if she could offer some advice.

[Craig Robinson]

Hey Anna, I feel your pain. It's not easy to work with your spouse. One thing I want you to remember is to just keep your eye on the bigger picture. Don't get bogged down in minor details of how your processes work. If you stay on the same broader mission, the process of getting there will matter less.

[Anna Sale]

To hear more real, honest conversations about relationships and family loss and change and making our way through, listen to death, sex, and money. Wherever you find podcasts.