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Is Your Child’s Brain Overstimulated? What Addiction Medicine Tells Us with Dr. Steven Klein (#255)
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Hi everyone. Welcome to the Screen Strong Families podcast bringing you the best solutions for parents who are serious about eliminating screen conflicts in their homes. This is Mandy Hammond and I'm your host for today's episode. Thank you for joining us today we're going to talk about brain health and addiction and the impact of this crisis, chronic overstimulation that we are all experiencing so much with technology, but especially our kids. And so we talk a lot on this podcast about developing brains. And so this is just a very, very important conversation that matters right now for our families. If you're raising kids in this hyper stimulating digital culture, this is going to be your episode. So you're going to love our guest today. So I want to introduce you to Dr. Steven Klein who works with Karen Treatment Centers and is an expertise in this area. We're going to learn so much from him today. So I'm going to start off by just reading his bio because it just feels like the best way to really get, you know, have you get to know him because it's going to be a great conversation today. So Dr. Steven Klein is a physician scientist specializing in addiction medicine whose work bridges genetics, neuroscience and recovery science to redefine how we understand and treat such substance abuse or substance use disorders at care and treatment centers. He leads efforts to help young adults overcome reward system overload by restoring healthy brain regulation and resilience. Dr. Klein is dedicating, dedicated to advancing innovative evidence based approaches to support recovery for teens, young adults and individuals facing relapse challenges. So this is just so timely today. Welcome Dr. Klein, to the podcast.
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Thank you so much for having me. Mandy.
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Yes, we are so grateful that you're here. Well, let's just jump right in here and I would love, I always start off, you know, my interviews when I interview people, just letting you kind of share a little bit about yourself and what got you started in this field. Anything that you'd like our audience to know about you?
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Yeah, absolutely. So besides the bio that you just read, there's a few things. I held both doctorates in medicine, so an MD as well as a PhD in human genetics and I'm triple board certified in pediatrics, genetics and addiction medicine. But probably more important than any of those titles or training, I'm a person in long term recovery. So I struggled myself with, with alcohol abuse and also drug use really, which started in my teens, which is what really drives me to treat teens, to talk to young adults, to work with young people and really help them to establish a degree of autonomy and Self, self regulation and self discovery that sometimes manifests as using drugs or alcohol, but can also manifest in a number of different ways. I think about some of the things that are really kind of facing young people these days. And, and when you guys reached out about your podcast, I think we think about a lot of the same things, which is what are the systems that young people are up against and what are ways that they can navigate those systems effectively and still maintain some degree of mental health and self regulation?
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Oh my gosh, yes, this is great. I started off as a mom with a screen story. That's what got me into this business of teaching and educating others, because I've got my own story. And so I think that's so powerful when you have your own story to back up everything that you are teaching these young people. So let's get started in talking about the brain. Okay, so we talk a lot about the brain around here, but let's talk about brain health and addiction, that type of thing. So from a medical perspective, how do you define brain health?
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Sure. So I think about brain health as kind of the, the balance of different regions of the brain and really the signaling so that it's attuned to what's actually going on in the environment that the individual is in. So from that, I mean that, you know, the number one thing that we do as a human species is seeking pleasure. So actually our pleasure center is central to our existence as a species. I always tell people in my lectures on addiction that the two things you must do as a human are seek pleasure and stay alive. And for me, addiction is when those things start to come into conflict. So my desire to seek pleasure comes into direct conflict with my ability to stay alive through the abnormal use of drugs or alcohol or really any substance. And, you know, I think about that as far as brain health, where the regions of the brain that are seeking pleasure are aligned with someone's values, those values being how they're balanced and how they navigate the world so that nothing that's happening to them as far as the things that they encounter on a day to day and, and the things that they're dealing with in their, in their lives throw them into dysregulation. So when I think about brain health, I think about overall the ability of the brain to regulate and to navigate the environment that it's in.
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B
Okay, so that's a fabulous definition. So how are, how similar are behavioral addictions? Okay. Like with screens or gaming, how similar are they to substance abuse?
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Sure, they're almost exactly the Same thing. So going back to the brain regions, there's a very well defined addictive circuit which starts in the ventral tegmental area, which then sends dopaminergic signals to the nucleus accumbens, which is our reward center. We then kind of process information at a higher level in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, and all of those are activated in process addictions, behavioral addictions, and substance addictions. Regarding the DSM 5 criteria. So the DSM 5 is just the. The book that we use as medical professionals to diagnose mental health disorders. The only behavioral addiction or process that's identified is gambling disorder. But we talk a lot in the field of addiction medicine about other types of process addictions, namely to screens to other types of behaviors, such as sexual behaviors. Really, anything, in my opinion, that you can get addicted to because of a pleasure or reward response is the same exact pathway and therefore the same exact treatments and the same exact warning signs are present.
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Really? What do you think parents are missing about this? Like, I mean, I know this because I talk about brain science things all the time, but how. Why do you think a parent is not getting the fact that it's the same thing that's happening if you were to give your child, you know, cocaine or heroin?
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Sure. So I think it's tough. I think it's hard as parents to look at screen time of our children. And I said as parents, I'm not a parent, just full disclosure, I'm working on it, but not yet a parent. And, you know, I think as individuals, to look at screen time critically of our children, we have to look at screen time critically in ourselves. And I think that's something that's really hard. I think, you know, stigma is something that we talk a lot about in drug and alcohol addiction. And I think, you know, the real truth is if you scratch stigma, which is just kind of the idea that something is taboo or hard to talk about, you. You find fear. And I think for a lot of parents likely to look at their children's screen time critically would make them look at their screen time critically and potentially bring up a fear that, you know, this is something that they may be engaging in in an unhealthy way. And I think, like, like most things, we have to start from, from truth. And if we're going to be making recommendations, we also have to be able to. To walk the walk and be able to say, you know, my relationship to my device or to my screen or to my social media accounts is maybe not the Most healthy. And therefore I'm going to do the work on myself before I make recommendations to other people, including my children.
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Yeah, no, that's so true. That's so true. So what about. This is something I might be jumping to a little bit, but I'm interested to hear your definition of this, of neural pruning. What's happening in the teenage years to the brain with pruning that happens.
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I love pruning. I'm so amazed that you asked that question. So in my background as a geneticist and a neuroscientist, I talk a lot about pruning because it's. It's overall to kind of lay the groundwork. Pruning is this idea that we're born in kind of an early life. Life just have billions and billions and billions of neurons. Many, many, many more than we ever need. And I think the best. The best way to describe pruning is actually through something that most parents have experienced, which is the way that babies babble. So babies start acquiring language by babbling and really testing out their vocal cords, their responses and things like that, until their babble hits something, which is normally the, the. The sounds of mama or dada. And of course, when people are around them, that elicits an amazing response. So that response is normally excitement. And then the child is actually going to respond to that excitement. And the babbling regions that made the noises, mama or dada, are actually going to be reinforced. So those are going to get stronger and say, the babbling regions that make lala or FA don't get as reinforced. So pruning is the process by which lala and fa FA get snipped away the same way that you would prune weeds in a garden. And the mama and dada regions get reinforced. This happens all the time. So as we make these connections, we kind of start out as this little ball of play DOH in our brains. And as we navigate the world, we're responding to stimuli and reward and things that feel good and things that don't feel good. You know, soiling your diaper as a baby doesn't feel good, so you cry. Being changed and being fed does feel good. So you may go to sleep. And those things in turn form behavioral patterns and neural networks. So pruning is just this idea that we kind of clip away things that we're not using, or at least things that don't elicit as much of a response from our. From our surroundings, from our parents, from our environment, from our own nervous systems.
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Yeah. So how do you think screens like, now let's introduce a iPad to a, you know, one or two year old. What's happening then in the brain when it comes to pruning?
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Yeah, so we now know that screen time and especially, you know, gaming on screens and things like that are, are designed and potentially so, you know, addictive and so pervasive in our society because they elicit a dopamine response. So if you, again using the same analogy, if you are constantly getting positive feedback from this screen that basically is feeding these dopamine hits, you're going to reinforce those things so they're going to become part of just the neural network of rewards. So that every time a screen lights up, every time you have that, you know, beautiful kind of light coming to your eyes, or that you, you know, press a button and you get that feedback, those things are going to be reinforced. And they may be reinforced to more of a degree than the things around us, like, you know, conversation or the things around us that don't elicit as much as a dopamine response. So we, we run the risk, especially in young, young, young children of kind of altering that pruning towards things that are more dopamine heavy, more dopamine centric, more dopamine responsive.
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Yeah. Oh my goodness. Okay, so, and then we always talk about to parents with the neural pruning. Once you get to that, you know, 14, 15, 16, that's when society is saying, hey, it's great, hand your kid social media now. So then that can start to wire towards that, right?
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Sure.
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That's starting to wire then towards that addiction. So what is overstimulation addiction?
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So I tend to think about overstimulation in a really nice analogy that I think about often, which is this, we'll come back to this a few times, I'm sure. But this idea that if you're raised on a battlefield, it gets really hard to hear the tinkering of bells. So I use that as an analogy to say if you're used to really big dopamine signals that are just constantly flooding your dopamine system, it becomes really, really hard to hear more nuanced forms of dopamine. So for example, we use this in drug addiction a lot. If you're used to feeling good, feeling high, feeling a response from something like crack cocaine or methamphetamines, it becomes really hard to recognize the happiness or the amount of dopamine that comes from sharing a conversation with a friend, the sun on your face, your favorite song. These things become disproportionate so basically, the. The analogy is that you're so used to hearing bombs go off that you turn down the volume and then you can hear bells. I think the same thing is analogous with screen time. If you're used to these really, really big dopamine signals, these really, really big flares of response and reward, it becomes harder to just feel normal and feel happy in a system of normal dopamine stimuli. And now that phones and screens are so pervasive, it's almost like if I'm not feeling good about something, if I'm feeling like a bad feeling that I need to respond or to protect myself from, I can always go to my screen to fix that.
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B
Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yes. That is absolutely right. So what are you seeing in your patients? Tell us a little bit about what you do at the treatment center when it comes to even screen addiction.
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A
Sure. So, full disclosure, we are a treatment center that focuses on drug and alcohol use disorders. We don't yet have a pathway where we admit people for screen use disorders, largely because they're hard to diagnose. That being said, I would say especially working in the. In the young adult population, almost all of my patients who are young adults are struggling with some form of kind of screen regulation. And I think that comes in a few different flavors. There's the. There's the really kind of people who are really struggling with their relationships to video games and their gaming. There are people who struggle with their relationship with social media. There are people who struggle just kind of like with their friend groups and cyberbullying and things like that. And there's also this just degree of feeling disconnected when they're at a place like Karen. What we do is we focus on the substance use disorder first, but we also don't treat anything in a vacuum. And we're actually very tightly regulated when it comes to screen time, phone time. We really want the patients, especially the young adult patients, to feel some degree of disconnection. I think that's important to be disconnected from. From the systems where their addiction was thriving. A lot of that can, you know, exist through friend groups. Why I love working with young adults is that one, their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed. So they have very low impulse control. So we try to really kind of instill that. But also, more than any other time in life, their identity is really dictated by their peer group. So I think a detachment from that and early recovery is really helpful, healthy. So that was a lot of words to say at Karen. You know, we really focus on detachment and, and limiting screen time as much as we can.
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B
Do you think this is coming though, in our future? I know even in China there are different. I think it's China that has these facilities for screen addiction. Do you think this is going to become more and more common in the U.S. i hope.
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I, I don't hope that it comes more and more common, but I hope that we start to recognize it more.
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Yes.
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You know, I think this is one of those things where at Karen, we're just starting to treat and enroll patients in a gambling disorder track. And I think that's something that will quickly expand as we really get the understanding that addiction is addiction, what you're addicted to is in fact just a symptom of that process. So I think screens completely are going to be on the horizon. I think sexual behavior in adults or even in young people is definitely on the horizon. Gambling is a big one. Pornography, which is related to screen time is one. I think this is an evolving field and one of my real passions is destigmatizing all of these things is that addiction is a biologic process. It's not any type of moral failing. And therefore these patients who are struggling need help and are owed a medical approach to what's troubling them.
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B
Yeah, and that was gonna be our next thing I was gonna say is this isn't really about, it's not always about morality or willpower. Right. It's about the wiring of the brain 100% like this. I, you know, we talk to parents who will come to us say, oh my gosh, I, I just found out that my 13 year old's been looking to pornography, you know, at pornography for the last year. And what am I gonna do? And my kid is this terrible child and what did I do wrong? You know, it's not really a, about that always though, right? I mean, it's, it's about how their brain just got wired, getting exposed.
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Yeah. And you know, I think that's that you, you hit the point right on the head, which is when we blame people, patients, parents for these outcomes, we're really doing a disservice, which is, you know, the war on drugs, a great analogy and very synonymous to this. Nancy Reagan just said, just, just say no, these people who are doing drugs just to go out there, tell their drug dealers no, and the war on drugs will be successful. And it was an abysmal failure. It's the same thing with parents. You know, I'm a systems person. I think a lot about Systems in biology and also in society. For a 13 year old to be, you know, looking at pornography, it's not just the parents and the child, it's the system, it's the, it's the society. It's the fact that, you know, pornography was so available that were hypersexualized that we are now exposed to things that are hypersexualizing. Even youngsters. And you know, I think about parents and children as being actors in that system and as medical professionals and as mental health providers, we really have to help people navigate that. You know, there is a line that I think gets crossed and when these things become problematic to either the parents or the child, being, being sure that there's help available and that that help is efficacious is really one of the things that guides me.
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B
Yes. Wow. I love that you're doing this work and it just inspires me because I just, I love young people so much as I think they need help and it wasn't their fault that they got addicted. Why is moderation so difficult? Screenstrong we talk a lot about that. Moderation is a myth because parents kind of fall under the myth of thinking, well, we just, it's all about balance, right? I mean, we just need to balance it. And a zinger that heard Melanie say, she said it to me when I was first on this journey is, well, you would never give your child just a little bit of heroin each day to teach them how to use it better. And I know as a parent personally, I was like, oh yeah, you're right. Like this is harming my child. I need to be the parent and take it away. So why is moderation so difficult for overstimulating activities?
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It's hard because they're so pervasive. I mean, I think, you know, it's, it's challenging. I also think like, it's important that we have of, you know, a line I, I like that, you know, analogy. You wouldn't just give your child a little bit of, of heroin, but also, you know, we have to remember that there are some things that are part of, are part of society and are part of, you know, a child's life and, and the idea that we will raise children kind of devoid of screens or, or devoid of, you know, computer time and things like that, I think is probably leaving reality and that it's not feasible. It also potentially has potentially negative consequences. I think the idea of moderation being difficult is that, you know, now phones have almost become an extension of the person themselves. And I think Children and young people are learning phone behavior and phone etiquette from their parents, who themselves, myself included, were never taught phone etiquette. I think phones and social media are this really big kind of unregulated social experiment, and we're only scratching the surface of how damaging and it could potentially be. So we don't have great moderation techniques because we were never taught them. And therefore we're kind of trying to understand this. This. This train that's out of the station in reverse. I think the best thing that parents can do is be honest about their own kind of screen time and. And therefore also, you know, lean on their doctors, lean on the, you know, the American association of Pediatrics, lean on the pediatricians in the community to really establish, like, what has the data shown us and. And where can we. Where can we make efforts and where can we make changes and making little amounts of kind of moderation and. Or, you know, harder. Harder and faster rules, and also realizing that there will be a line when things are crossed and if a child is really struggling with signs of true, you know, like, functional compromise because of screening or gaming or. Or social media that, you know, there. There's an emergency kind of break that's pulled and that more resources are brought onto the table.
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B
Yep. And just to be clear, too, just so I. Anybody listening? I want to clarify what I was just saying, too, is that Screenstrong, we're not against screens, all screens, but toxic screens, which we call social media, video games, pornography, you know, which Screenstrong. We say that this is not necessary for childhood. You know, it's not a need that a child has to have, but instead, let's give them a childhood, you know, so. I love that. I love everything you just said. This is just such a great podcast. Sorry, I'm over here going, this is amazing. I'm taking notes. So what are some warning signs or symptoms of screen addiction? If you were to call it screen addiction, just like you do with your substance, you know, when you're talking to substance abuse or substance addiction, what would parents be looking for?
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Yeah, so I think it's good now to kind of transition into thinking about, like, when. When did something become addiction? When is something, like, really a problem? When do you kind of maybe have to call in, you know, reinforcements, phone a friend, you know, really just kind of like, what are the warning signs? I think about myself and my approach to being a diagnostician. The DSM 5 again, to go back to the kind of central literature, there's criteria for substance use disorder, so we can kind of go through these and see how they're applicable to screen time. So the first one is the substance or in this case the screen is used in a larger amount over larger amounts over longer period of time than intended. So this is the type of thing where, you know, if the, the child is on the, on the screen toxic screen time or even, you know, mixed screen time for six, seven, eight hours a day. There's really great literature out there in the realm of pediatrics. There's, there seems to be a direct correlation to any screen time over two hours a day is potentially being pathologic. So that, that, that may be a place to start. So just the amount of time total, the, the second part of this would be a persistent desire to control the use and being unable to. So I would say at that point, you know, really trying to put in ground rules, trying to lay, you know, the, the American association of Pediatrics lays out screen free zones and screen free times. So thinking about bedrooms and dining room tables as being screen free and then maybe the hour before bed, if, you know, you're trying to put those, those guardrails up and really meeting a lot of friction, it may raise a red flag. The other thing would be, you know, really big cravings. So this idea that when the screen or the substance is not there, that the child perseverates on it, that, you know, there's, there's this idea that I'm constantly looking for it and then the next big chunk, I won't go through these one by one because we'll, it'll take up too much time, but is really how it impacts people's functionality. So use results in failures to meet obligations at school or amongst friends, causes interpersonal problems and you know, things that the child used to like to do for fun are being given up for the sake of screen time. So I think those are like really big camps. So I think about, you know, the ability, the desire to change, but the inability to do so as being like the first big camp. And then the impeding on functionality so that the idea that the child is not doing things that they used to either enjoy doing or should be doing in school because of the screen time. I would say those would be areas of concern for me.
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B
Okay, that was, that was very helpful. So what about healing the brain then? Is there hope? I mean, I was kind of telling you this off of the microphone earlier, before we started recording. I run into a lot of family, run into a lot of families at our workshops that feel hopeless because they already made all the. What they would say, you know, the mistakes. And maybe their child is 17, 18, 21, 25, 30, you know, living in their basement still or whatever it is, has not launched. And they're so, so frustrated because they're going. I know they're addicted to their video game or whatever, but what do we do? Is there hope as a child grows into adulthood to get help for this and to reverse this addiction?
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Absolutely. First of all, you know, what you just said, like, really touches my. My heartstrings, because I don't think there's been a parent in any generation, in any point in time in. In the history of humanity and that didn't feel like they were making mistakes. I think that's just a part of parenthood and that. That is just something that we all deal with. I think that parents of children who are affected either with substance use disorders or process disorders own that even more. And that can sometimes even be reinforced by. By society. And, you know, as a physician, I would say there is always hope. It's why I get out of bed in the morning. It's why I show up every day to Karen. It's why I continue to treat people. The brain is amazing. Just like what you were saying about pruning earlier and all of these processes that are going on. I mean, the prefrontal cortex doesn't even fully develop until 25. That's how kind of late stage we're talking about. That's how, like, ongoing neural processes are. And that's where I think sometimes, you know, a place like Karen and this type of intensive treatment that we do, it is hard to rewire the brain and to allow the brain health to be restored. It's certainly not impossible. And, you know, I think sometimes family systems are hard. And we often say that addiction, screen addiction included, is a family disease. And sometimes taking children out of that system can be one of the most therapeutic parts of it. So I think, you know, if parents are struggling with, you know, what are older children, later adolescents, or even early 20s, you know, really reaching out for. For help in the systems that. Are there places like Karen, residential treatment facilities? I would say at that point, you know, you said, like, kind of failure to launch. It's something that at Karen. Karen and our Florida campus, we do a lot with a program called Renaissance, which is. Which is really aimed at those, like, life skills and people who need to develop them. I think the brain can be reprogrammed. I think it needs to be done really thoughtfully, and I think it needs to be done with the help of professionals. And at that level, I think, you know, that's why people like us exist and why places like this exist.
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B
And for those parents that have, you know, those preteens or even a 13, 14 year old, I mean, I would have to think it's easier is the word, but easier to rewire the brain the younger that a child is.
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A
Yeah, I don't know. I think you're in, you're in conflicting neurobiologic pathways. So in a younger child you may have more neuroplasticity, so you may be able to intervene sooner. And in, in an older child, in your 20s, you actually have more self control. So I would say, you know, no matter where you are, no matter who you are, no matter where you're listening in from, if there's, if you're identifying that there's a problem, talking about it early, talking about it with medical professionals and, and, and supportive social networks and then formulating a plan and really, really working on, you know, your own parts is essential. I think no matter where you start, there's hope and no matter where you start, there's going to be trials and tribulations, but also amazing successes along the way.
- [29:28]
B
Yes, I agree. I always try to encourage parents that no matter where you're at in this journey, you can start somewhere. Like you can start today. You can remove the screens from the bedroom, or you can remove them from dinner time or those type of small things. At first it's totally doable. So what are some doable steps that families can take that you would say if you had some families in front of you right now, as we're kind of wrapping this up, what would you say to families or some doable steps that they can do to prevent this?
- [29:54]
A
You absolutely hit on some of them. So I would say from the data standpoint, like the two that really jump out at me are screen free environments and screen free times like very concrete. No phones at the dinner table, no phones in the bedroom, or no phones in the bed. I think that we must, when we're talking about brain health, I mean half of the brain's existence is in sleep and screen time can be so detrimental to sleep. Sleep is so important for young developing brains. So I mean, I think really thinking about protection of bedrooms and beds, especially from, from screens is really, really an impressive place to start. And then I think something that often gets overlooked is modeling good screen behavior yourself. You know, it's, it's really hard with all of us with demanding schedules and Demanding needs in our work lives while balancing that and multitasking. You know, I think a screens is being something that really feeds something that's cornerstone to addiction, which is disconnection. So I think if, if you're going to encourage screens to be absent, the flip side of that coin is encourage really engaging present moment experiences with the children. Make dinner time a place where you go around and share or talk about current events or talk about what's going on in their lives or your life. And that will really kind of draw them out of some of those internalization symptoms that can happen with engagement in screens. And then, you know, I think sometimes the being stern in these regards and, and holding boundaries is, is really important. Going back to the prefrontal cortex, children really have little ability, especially before the age of 25, to like put the brakes on. So if their brain says I want to look at my screen, they're going to like, there's almost nothing that's going to stop them. So sometimes like that physical detachment, you know, that taking the screen away or putting all the screens in a drawer, having something where it's like a concerted family effort, I think is an amazing approach.
- [32:06]
B
Okay, so here's one last question that just popped in my head is how long does it take for the brain to rewire like a habit? So if like we have a 30 day reset that currently we're offering to our listeners through January. Okay. And it just, it walks parents through what to do instead. Because we always say it's not about restriction so much as it's about replacement. Okay, so you're replacing screen time with like you said, connection and all that. Is there a certain like scientific number of days or weeks that it takes for the brain to reform, you know, start to rewire?
- [32:38]
A
No. Short answer is no. It depends on age, it depends on amount of kind of screen use up to that point. And it also depends on what you just beautifully said environment when the replacement is happening. All of these things can change trajectory of kind of brain rewiring. And you know, I wouldn't, I talk to a lot of my, my, the parents of my patients about this. It's less so about the destination and it's more so about the journey. I think about brain kind of remodulation and neurotherapies and neurorestorative care as kind of this idea that we're teaching our young people to be more present, more deliberate and more connected. That's a tall order. And that's not something that's going to happen in 30 days, 60 days. I can't say. For me, it's a lifetime. I mean, as a person who struggles with my own, you know, addictive tendencies, both behavioral and, and substance, although substance, not for many years now. You know, it's something that I have to constantly work on. And I think the best thing that we can do for our young people is destigmatize the fact that they're struggling and then also provide pathways where they can ask for and seek and then receive help. And, you know, I think that's the path then, and that's the gift that keeps giving. Because when autonomy is established and children transition from the home to, to college or to working or living independently, you know, that that type of neural pathway where they can look outside themselves for help with something that they're struggling with is something that I think just continues to pay dividends.
- [34:21]
B
Yes. Oh, wow. So, so good. I want to have you back on here. You've been wonderful today. I would just want to reinforce too, the hope that as parents, as caregivers, as teachers, if we've got kids in our lives at all, protecting their brain is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. And I think Screenstrong does that well with our education. I just finished today recording a webinar for middle schoolers with our middle school presentation. And I just, I love talking to the kids and empowering them that, hey, you do have autonomy and you do get to choose what activities, you know, that are going to build your brain. And I think it's really important that we're teaching our kids and educating them of what this can do to their brain, just like we had to do. You know, I'm a 90s kid, so I was part of the just say no era. I remember that. Or DARE and all of that. You know, but just like us teaching our kids about harmful substances, we've got to teach them about what the potential, you know, screens can also do to their brain. So thank you so much for being here today. Is there anything else that you wanted to share that we didn't, you know, chat about or anything you'd want to say to parents as we close?
- [35:23]
A
I think my, you know, my number one message is one of hope you're not alone. There is, there are professionals who are focused on this. There are people who are thinking about you and your children and their development and doing that from a data driven, evidence based perspective and, you know, leaning on your local pediatrician, your community. This is something that I think as a society we can and will make changes to and I'm hopeful for the future as we navigate it responsibly.
- [35:53]
B
Yes. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing and helping these young people.
- [35:56]
A
My pleasure.
- [35:57]
B
Thank you all for listening today and thank you Dr. Klein for sharing such valuable education with our listeners. I know I learned a lot. I hope you took some notes or are thinking about somebody you could share this podcast with. If you're interested in further education on brain science, you can find our kids Brains and School Screens curriculum for parents and students and families on our website screenstrong.org and we'd love to see you over. We have an online forum called Screenstrong Connect. If you have not found us there yet, it's off of social media. It's very simple to join by going to our website screenstrong.org and joining us over there, meeting like minded families and getting that support that you need. So please subscribe to this podcast and like I said, share this episode with somebody you'd like to learn all about this. Thank you so much for listening today. So remember, we've got your back and we're here to help you remove the screen conflicts from your home. So until next time, stand up for your kids, stand out from the crowd and stay strong.