← This Is So Awkward
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- [00:01]
A
Kara. At Great Wolf Lodge, there's adventure for the whole family. I'm excited to check out the lodge in the Poconos, which is close to me. And with 23 lodges across the country, there's probably one near all of you too. You and your pack can splash away in the indoor water park where it's always a toasty 84 degrees. There's a wave pool, a lazy river and a bottle. Bunch of massive water slides, including ones your family can enjoy all together.
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B
They even have adventure packed attractions from Magi Quest, a live action game that kids can play throughout the lodge, to the Northern Lights Arcade. And there's also a bunch of great dining options and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties, all under one roof. So bring your pack together at a lodge near you. Learn more@greatwolf.com that's G-R-E-A-T W O L F.com and strengthen the pack.
- [01:02]
C
From the 70s through 2012, we actually made progress educating kids better. It reversed after 2012. I mean, if we didn't have televisions in our bedrooms in the 70s, can you imagine going into school where they say you can take your tv, you can take your guitar, you can take your walkie talkies, your FM radio, take everything, put it on your desk, play with it all day. I mean, it's insane.
- [01:31]
B
Well, hi, Jonathan. Hi, Katherine. We're so happy to have you here.
- [01:36]
C
We're so happy to talk about puberty. Let's go.
- [01:39]
D
Thanks for having it.
- [01:41]
A
Says no one ever except us, apparently.
- [01:46]
B
Yes, our world of four. So. So let's start here with just a little bit of praise over the work you've done since the Anxious Generation has come out. It is really nothing short of incredible. Vanessa and I, obviously, we podcast, we write a lot of books, we also speak at a tremendous number of schools. And there are so many school policies that have shifted as a result of the work that has flow flowed. Following the books that both of you have put into the world. We're going to get into your new book in a moment, which is the tween version of the Anxious Generation, the amazing generation. But let's start with a little bit of framing before we get into that conversation. And I want to start with you, Jonathan, and talk a little bit about school policies, because no phones in schools, which is the sort of basic distillation of the school policies. They're, they're great, but parents tell us that they feel adrift, that they are trying to figure out 3pm to 8am and so we'd like to flip the script a little bit and, and ask you to jump in with some thoughts and advice around how parents might be able to handle the after school to before school swath as opposed to how schools are handling the during school swath.
- [03:18]
C
Sure. So we have to understand that most kids, not all, but most kids, were in a sea of screens giving them quick dopamine all day long. They're on their phones on the way to school, they're on their phones in school, in between phone sessions, scrolling sessions, they have their Chromebooks or tablets. Their level of alteration of dopamine circuits was profound. It makes it very hard for them to pay attention. And so kids would come home from school and it would often seem impossible to get them off their phones because their brains needed it. Everything off the phone is just so boring, painfully boring. And so we've all been struggling with this around the world. That's actually why the movements moved so quickly, because everyone is struggling with the same thing. So I do want to actually start with the phone free schools, because the idea is this is by far the easiest lever to give kids six or seven hours off of their screens. And the finding is not that when they get out, they're now so addicted they have to make up for it. It's actually that they actually are beginning to learn how to go without the phone for minutes at a time. Their dopamine systems are recovering a bit. Now what do you do? The rest is it tie that side of school. Well, by far the easiest thing if your kids are in elementary school is delay. And so the four norms of the anxious generation are about that. No smartphone before high school, no social media before 16 phone free schools and give your kids a lot more independence, free play and responsibility in the real world. So if you can hold off before now, everyone would say, well, you know, my kids say she's the only one, she's the only one in her fifth grade class who doesn't have a phone. Well, that's not going to be true anymore. So many people are doing it now. You really can wait until high school. That's by far the easiest. But if you've already given your kid a phone and a smartphone, smartphone, this is all about smartphones, basic phones, flip phones, those are, there are issues there, but those are manageable. But if you've already given it, then I think the trick is to set boundaries on time and place. So of course everyone knows, never ever at the dinner table, even if you have to look up something to settle a discussion, never Ever overnight, like say, all screens out of the bedroom before 10. The policy I wish I had followed when my kids were young was no screens in the bedroom ever. When I was a kid. I think I'm the oldest one here. When I was a kid in the 70s, it was like, who would ever let their kid have a television in the bedroom? That's insane. They'd watch it all the time. So nobody had a television in their bedroom. And now we have like everything with you all the time, even in the bathroom.
- [05:41]
A
Jonathan, you are the, you are the oldest one. I'm not by much. I'm taking it, but I'm just, I'm just going. So. Okay. So I think that's a, that's a helpful sort of like platform. I live in New York. My kids have a bell to bell phone ban. I think it's working beautifully. Of course, my kid had a lunch detention for a week for violating it. Standard operating procedure. And you know, my kids are 15 to 23. Car's kids are 22 and 20. And we are of the generation who had given our kids devices, smartphones, so on and so forth. And many of our listeners are those folks. So, Katherine, I want to talk a little bit about the sort of analog, the black and white, the either or as you all frame it in the Amazing Generation, the rebellion versus the evil wizards. I want to think about for those of us raising tweens and teens and young adults where analog, black and white, either or binary doesn't work so well. Right. Where we have to live with a lot of nuance, a lot of flexibility. All of those things talk us through the framing behind the Amazing Generation and larger. You know, you wrote this amazing book about how to break up with your phone, which I so love that it's sort of like we're actually all in phone situationships. Like it's, it's not broken up. We're still sort of engaged with each other, but nothing's really all that clear. Let's explore the sort of the binary versus, like what life is like on the ground with tweens and teens and young adults.
- [07:19]
D
Sure. Well, a couple of thoughts on that. I think that there's not necessarily a binary like you're saying, and John was just alluding to about phones or no phones. We're really talking about smartphones and we're talking about social media and then spending too much time on video games. So I think it's important for parents to recognize that there's a lot of gray area and options between no phone and A smartphone. So as John was saying, there are issues with flip phones and basic phones, but they're far better than smartphones. So I think what we're really ultimately arguing is that we should help our kids have more friendship and have more freedom and have more fun, real versions of those things which we can talk more about because that's all developmentally appropriate for them. What we're really trying to avoid is having fake versions of those things on a smartphone. So I'd say to any parent listening that if your kid doesn't have a smartphone already, but they're starting to do more stuff out of the house, it's really a good idea to give them a basic flip phone, either a family phone that's loaned out and then returned, or give them one of these smartphone alternatives. I also would say it's really, really, really important to do what John was alluding to when speaking about the fourth norm of the anxious generation, which is to give kids more opportunities for real life interactions with their friends. Because that is the, that's the flip side of that. If you're not going to let them be on social media all the time, well, they're on social media because they want to spend time with their friends. And oftentimes that feels like the only option. We as parents need to say, okay, we're not going to give you access to social media for all of these reasons, but we want to help you spend more time with your friends. So let's brainstorm together as a family and actually create more opportunities for you guys to hang out. In terms of the framing of the amazing generation, we really wanted to highlight the positive side of this. We didn't want to be too, you know, older people finger wagging at young readers and telling being yet more adults in their lives, telling them that they can't do something. We really wanted to open their eyes as to the manipulative forces that are working against all of us. Not, not just kids, but adults as well, and then also offer them a positive vision for what life can be like if you prioritize real life experiences. So that's how the book is framed. And we highlighted a number of what we call young rebels, which are young people. And there are a growing number of them who are deciding for themselves that they don't want their lives to be controlled by tech companies. And we included those stories so that again, it wasn't just coming from us, but so that younger readers could see role models in the generation just above theirs of young people who either got smartphones on social media or spent a lot of time gaming and now have regrets that they want to share with kids younger than them or young people who have decided and already are living this life where they really do prioritize real, real life experiences to really give a positive message to the youngest generation.
- [10:06]
B
You definitely don't come off as old people in the book. I can promise you that. For those who have not yet read it, it is three books within a book. There's a book, there's a graphic novel, There are pull out sort of these, these spotlights on these incredible kids. It's a very young framing. I found my brain being exercised as I was reading it, so. So you definitely don' half as old. But I. But I want to tie together something you just said, Katherine and Jonathan, something you said earlier about it being about phones and smartphones. And I want to ask about screens in general. I mean, Vanessa and I have been in this space for a long time, as have you. We've watched our kids go through this, as have you, albeit at different ages and stages. One of the things that I have been stunned by, both as a pediatrician and as a parent, is those dopamine hits are not entirely connected to phones and social media. They are happening all day long in school on laptops. And my kids, who Vanessa, you know, has shared are both in college, would come home throughout high school and they would sit down at the dinner table where we've never allowed phones. I'm with you right there, John. But they would report the number of things that kids were doing in classrooms. And they weren't narcing. They were just trying to figure out how those kids were getting educated or engaged while gambling real money, while shopping, while watching movies, playing video games. I mean, poor teachers. When Vanessa and I go around and speak to educators, the phones are part of what they're contending with in terms of social connection, for sure, huge component. But the laptops play no small role. So can you guys talk about that a little bit in the framing of how you approach your argument about sort of how people can better reconnect?
- [12:25]
C
Sure, yeah. So I'll start. When I was writing the Anxious Generation, I was too conservative. That is, I had my critics on my shoulder. I've been engaged in debate with other researchers for about seven years now where they say there's no evidence of harm, it's just correlations. And so in the book, I focused on the central battleground, which is mental health. Is social media bad for mental health? And as I make the case, there's all kinds of different studies. There's experimental studies, correlational studies, longitudinal studies. So I think I did a very solid job on social media, smartphones, mental health, especially for girls.
- [12:59]
A
We're going to circle back on that, Jonathan, but keep going because we're going to revisit that. Yeah, okay.
- [13:05]
C
And I mentioned attention, fragmentation and addiction. And I have one line about school, laptops. Because while I was writing, again, I was being very careful. I didn't have the research at that time to be able to say, you know what, we should get all the laptops out of school. I didn't want to say something. I didn't know what I was talking about. Boy, do I wish I'd been able to say it. Because you're right, this is a complete disaster for education. Just to give you the scale of it. For 50 years, test scores went up in this country very slowly. But from the 70s through 2012, we actually made progress educating kids better. It reversed after 2012. It wasn't Covid. Covid accelerated, but it began after 2012, certainly by 2015. And we don't know whether it's that kids suddenly had phones in their pockets for were distracting or they Suddenly, by around 2015, they got laptops and iPads on their desks. But all the things you said, I mean, if we didn't have televisions in our bedrooms in the 70s, can you imagine going into school where they say, you can take your tv, you can take your guitar, you can take your walkie talkies, your FM radio, take everything, put it on your desk, play with it all day. I mean, it's insane that we do this.
- [14:10]
B
And it's not their fault. And I think that's the most important thing that I know we all agree on. But I want the listeners to be able to appreciate based upon where their brains are in development, it is not their fault that they're making those choices.
- [14:25]
A
But let me ask you, you've had such an impact on schools in terms of smartphones and bell to bell ban. What is the pathway in terms of devices? Like I hear from schools, we talk to schools. My own kids, school. They're trying to pull back on tech use. The dreaded blue book exam book has reappeared. It makes me nauseous, just like seeing a used version of it. I want to vomit into my shoes. But it's, you know, schools are doing these things. But Cara and I often wonder aloud, why aren't we using these technologies that can block everything? Not the ones that sophisticated teenagers can easily get around. But there are Technologies that really can jam up access to any of these kinds of sites. What are you hearing from policymakers, educators and the like?
- [15:17]
C
Yeah, so my team at the Anxious Generation, my team, our strategy was let's go for the quick win that is completely nonpartisan, everyone's in favor of it, which, let's get the phones out of school super easy. There's no cost, there's almost no downside. Because we knew that to get laptops and Chromebooks out would be really, really hard because the tech companies lobbied. Sometimes they got laws passed mandating that everything has to be done and all tests have to be. So these things are so deeply entrenched. When the book came out, the main argument I got was, eh, too late. Like, this is the way. This is the technology. The kids are gonna be using it. Like, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. So our strategy was, no, let's win decisively on phone free schools. And then people see like, whoa. Actually, the kids are kind of coming alive again. And the universal thing we hear is that lunchrooms and hallways are loud with laughter and people, we haven't heard that in 10 years, 15 years. So it was a spectacular victory. And now people have the confidence to say, okay, well, they're still doing some of this stuff on the laptops now. Let's go for that. And so, and there's a new book out by Jared, Jared Cooney Horvath. But I believe that the issue in 2026 for schools is going to be getting them out. In fact, let me put a call out right here if you have any capacity to press an elementary school to get rid of all desktop technology, all nothing on the desk. Get rid of it all. Please do so. We need to start getting computers out of classrooms by September so that we can then get legislation. We can get changes that a year from September the whole country can go laptop and Chromebook free.
- [16:55]
B
We'll be right back, but first, a word from our sponsors.
- [16:59]
D
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- [19:46]
D
Well, I know John has thoughts about this as well, but I would say I don't think it's as easy as that because kids do get around these things. There's also issues with schools using YouTube as an educational device and then that opens up a whole thing. But also these things have never been proven to actually be helpful for kids education. So I would really encourage us to take a broader step back and not try to adapt these technologies or try to block things. But really whole scale ask like why do we have these in the classroom, what are they possibly doing? I mean, when I was in school we had a computer lab. So I would say if there is a situation in which it's helpful to have access to some kind of computer, I don't think that there's like for example, I used to teach math to middle schoolers and I had my kids go to a computer lab and they played a game that helped them just get quick math facts. It was using actually dopamine kind of reinforcement for a good purpose. But it was in a computer lab and it was very defined and that was not with access to the Internet. So I kind of bristle against the idea that we should just be doing a whack a mole game of trying to block things. I think we need to think about this in a broader sense. I was also going to add that I think that the overarching issue here is that we as adults and Kara, this goes back to something you were saying about this not being kids fault. We have the responsibility to protect our children's brains. And as all of us on this call know, the kids that we're talking about are in a very critical period of brain development. And you have very, very powerful companies that are trying to control their brains and shape their brains in ways that help the tech companies, not our children. And so I think that needs to be something we keep in mind when we talk about technology and education or just our kids access to tech in general. And then just one thought that I kind of was thinking about. In fact, I was thinking about this last week when preparing for a different talk I was giving. But in terms of the question of whether to allow these devices in schools to begin with, I haven't heard talked about as much is this aspect of just protecting our kids in general. Because if you think about school policies, you never would allow adult strangers to wander through a school in the middle of the day and just like interact with students. You would never allow a lot of these companies, their business models are modeled after slot machines and they're also acting like tobacco companies in the sense of trying to hook kids young, keep them for life. You would never allow a cigarette company to be handing out cigarettes at school. So why, why are we as parents and educators and as a community and a society so allowing these technologies in classrooms that actually threaten our children's safety.
- [22:07]
C
So Kara has spoken several times about in praise of gray zones and nuance. I'm a social scientist and normally I would say bravo, yes, everything's complicated. But in this case, when there are Gray zones and nuance. Then you have the constant battle between kid and child. But mom, but this is different, or this app is different. And we need this, we need that. You have the constant struggle that we're all in. And the big thing that I think I contributed in the anxious generation as a social psychologist was to say these are all a bunch of collective action traps and each family is trying to get out of them alone. And so we're all in the same fight. We all feel we're losing, we all feel overwhelmed. The only way out was with simple rules. Simple, clear rules. That's what people understand. If they think everyone's doing it, then they do it. Here's a simple clear rule. Distraction machines should never be on kids. Desks don't bother with blockers, don't bother with controls. They sort of work. But you're just back in the struggle forever. Let's do what the tech barons do. Let's give our kids the kind of education that they do. A lot of them send their kids to the Waldorf School specifically because there is no device, there is no technology in the classroom. They have a computer room. So on this case, in the question of computers in the classroom. No, just get them out. Get them out in elementary school. Absolutely. High school, maybe you could make a case. But what I think a lot of listeners don't understand is that we college professors are doing it. We college professors, we have discovered that our 20 year old students and my 29 year old MBA students cannot learn if there's a computer on their desk. They're day trading, they're checking text, they're online shopping. None of us can do it.
- [23:39]
A
So let's dig into this a little bit because one of the questions I wanted to ask you, and this is a broader question about, I mean, Jonathan, I love that you are like, let's all do it. And then there's clear yes or no.
- [23:52]
C
Clear.
- [23:52]
A
God bless you. I mean, I have four children and if that worked, you can come parent my children and hang out with them and just be like, this is it. Sometimes that works. And sometimes there's constantly negotiation even with the clearest, straightest, most obvious things, like you're being manipulated. This is bad for your development. You can't learn because some of the things they grasp and they're like, oh, yes, short term outcome. I get why this is important. I am motivated and I am convinced. And then there's other stuff where they're like, that's irrelevant to me. That's five years down the road. That's 10 years down the road. So I still argue for nuance for gray zone. However, I think getting these computers out, I mean, listen, we have a health and sex ed curriculum. It is not asynchronous. It is not student by student. It is projected on a smart board or by the classroom teacher at the front of the room. It is interactive. There are videos. It makes it feel, you know, current and relatable for the kids. However, the younger kids, we have very little tech for our elementary school age curriculum because we are in conversation with all these educators who are saying, no, here's what I want to dig in a little bit with our relationship to tech in general, with the use of laptops, our kids are going to enter a world, a professional world, right? Which is awash with technology. I mean, look at how we're just recording this podcast right now. It's. It's amazing. Cara and I work across country all day, every day, and we're able to do that thanks to tech. So I'm curious about the on ramping to tech, the preparation for things like college, for professional life. You know, it's not a light switch that goes on and off. They have to be prepared as we are in helping them be independent beings in the world on their own and developing relationships with other people. Right. There's all these ways we help kids on ramp into what will eventually become their adult reality. How does that work in. In the framework you guys have have set up here?
- [26:03]
D
I mean, if I can jump in for a second. I think we overestimate how difficult it is to use technology. If anyone would like an example of this, I encourage you to just Google chimpanzee and Instagram and you will see literally a chimpanzee.
- [26:17]
A
Oh, Catherine, you have so much faith in me and Cara. The number of things that go back and forth between us, which is like, I can't figure out how to do
- [26:25]
D
this, but do you honestly think if you had had access to a laptop in high school, that would have felt? I mean, what did we do to get on this? I know that I had to switch over to Chrome instead of Firefox as my browser. I guess my point is technology companies are making their products ever easier to use. And for any skills that might be technology specific, like coding, AI is doing that now. I just think that we need to teach students and children to be humans first. And John and I are not saying in either of our, in the amazing generation or in our work, there's no place for technology at all in a children's life or in the world in general. We're saying use technology as a tool. Don't allow technology to use you. But I do want to push back on this idea that if we don't give kids access to laptops in the classroom, or if we don't allow them access to smartphones at an early age or social media, they'll never be able to navigate the modern world. I think that's even more important to keep in mind as AI begins to infiltrate the classroom and there's all this pressure from the tech giants to get AI into literally kindergarten classrooms. As adults, we need to say no. We need to teach kids to think and be humans first.
- [27:29]
A
And I really recommend Catherine. We had on Rebecca Winthrop from Brookings, and they just did a study about AI and education, and she was the lead researcher. But it's a whole team who came up with guidelines around AI and education and about what are the risks at HA in having AI and what is it doing to kids ability, essentially critical thinking, and they're really encouraging that.
- [27:54]
C
So if I can add on to Katherine and go much further. Our kids are up to their eyeballs in technology. Many from the age of two, by the time they reach, let's say, 21 and go out into the job market, most of it have been diminished. Literally, the majority of our kids have been diminished in executive function, ability to pay attention. This is true of my own kids, too. I didn't let them on social media, but they watched way too much on their computers. I wish I had controlled that more. So the majority of our kids are being diminished. They are less capable than they would have been. As Catherine said, the technology is so easy to use. So let me put it to you. If you're an employer, who would you rather hire at the age of 21, from fresh out of college, a kid who had no technology ever, like Amish style, no technology until they were 18. And then. So they have fully functioning executive function. They can pay attention. They read books, they can read whole books, they can read multiple books. And then they learned the technology when they were 18. Took them a couple weeks to do Instagram. They learned all this stuff when they're 18. Would you rather hire that person or the typical American kid who's been on since she was 2, there was an iPad in her stroller. She's been scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. She can't pay attention. She can't read a book. She has not read any books. I submit to you that if you want to prepare your child for success in the Digital age. Keep them the hell away from these addictive technologies until they're through puberty.
- [29:10]
A
I wasn't sure if that was a rhetorical question, a leading question, or if you were going to answer it yourself. Luckily, you took the drama, you took the drama away. And I now feel. I now feel confident in what was the outcome.
- [29:25]
B
I'm so happy you did the sitting in their strollers. Scrolling image planting. Because my pediatrician self, when I was seeing patients in the office, my biggest pet peeve, this was sort of early days when I was first in practice, my biggest pet peeve was kids sitting in a stroller, right. And just like kicking back and eating the Cheerios.
- [29:50]
A
You mean full stop, just like being in a stroller.
- [29:53]
B
Well, there was an age after which, and I did this little informal study in my practice and there was an age after which kids were motivated to stop wanting to run and explore the world because they were being sort of just driven around and they literally had their feet up on the bar and they were chilling out and the world was delivered to them. And it so bothered me, I will say that when my kids could walk. My poor kids. John, we're going to talk about the gray zone and how pediatricians usually actually don't live in the gray zone. My kids were out of strollers by the time they were 17 or 18 months and exploring the world, hands on, because I was watching and seeing what happened to kids who were just passengers. And now all these years later, you put devices in front of them. I don't care what the device is. And to me, it's devastating.
- [30:50]
D
Right.
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B
I watch them, they're very good at swiping, starting, you know, at months old, and talk about kicking back and putting their feet up and just being sort of passively pushed through the world. I think it begins there. So I like that you planted that seed.
- [31:07]
A
Can I just interject for those of us who raise children in New York City and not in Los Angeles, very
- [31:13]
B
fair what you're about to say.
- [31:14]
A
It is very different raising kids in a car city than in New York City where you are. Sure. Schlepping little people across like. So for those of you who are like, oh my God, I let my kids ride in the stroller until they were three. I'm with you. I see you. I was that person. I had four children who were grabbing onto all the parts of the stroller
- [31:36]
B
and you are leading me to exactly where I was going to land, which is. That was how I saw the world. I was taking the data. I had And I was doing just like in Covid, you constantly heard, we're doing the best we can with the information we have. We all, when we put on our parenting hat, do the best we can with the information we have. And so when I was a very young pediatrician, I was judgy. I was. I cringe when I think about that version of myself now. But now when I look back, like, it's exactly to your point, Vanessa. Everyone's circumstances are different. And that reaction I had then has been modulated now, because even though it makes me sad that the kids can't run free and explore, it's not mine to judge. And I guess the point I'm trying to make is going back to this window of the gray zone. What Vanessa and I have learned over the years is that when we deliver our data and advice with anything other than zero judgment, zero shame, it doesn't land. You guys are delivering a message. You're delivering it. You've both delivered it to the adults. You're now delivering it directly to the kids. What's the most effective way to deliver a message? To embolden and empower people rather than to have people go, well, I can't do that, and therefore, I. I'm out. Right?
- [33:08]
C
I think it's very, very important to be extremely judgmental here, but not of the parents of the tech companies that caused this deliberately. We're seeing all the. All the testimony in the trials in Los Angeles. A giant industrial crime has been committed. I'm doing the calculations now, but I believe more people have been harmed by smartphones and social media than by all industrial accidents in history combined, because it is literally most people in terms of young people. So we need to be very judgy about what happened to us and who did it. And we do that in the Amazing Generation. And once you do that move now it's clear. We, the authors and you the parents and you the kids, we're all on the same side. We're not judging you. We're trying to say, look, look what happened. Look what they did to all of us and not just the kids. They did it to us adults as well. So I am in praise of judgment first, because now it's much easier to talk with the kids and the parents about, okay, now what do we do, team? I'll give Katherine's best line just in case she doesn't give it, which is she says, with the Amazing Generation, when the kids read that for the first time, the parents and the kids are on the same team.
- [34:14]
D
Oh, and that. Thanks, John. But that actually is a line that we got from the reviews that people have put on Amazon of parents saying for the first time, we feel like we're on the same side as our kids, which is amazing and wonderful and was our dream. But it's so great to hear it happening. But, Kara, to answer your question, how do you communicate this message? You know, it's something we thought a lot about with the Amazing Generation. Because you don't want to have. I mean, obviously we have very strong feelings, as you can tell. No, me especially.
- [34:41]
A
I'm shocked.
- [34:42]
C
Both of us.
- [34:43]
D
I just didn't quite drop the microphone. Yeah, I like bumps that spiked it up so John could like smack down, you know. See, we obviously have very strong feelings about this, but it doesn't work to just finger wag and lecture kids. And so when we were writing the Amazing Generation, the question is, okay, well, what is the message we want to give kids? And I think the reason it's resonating so much with kids and with families is that we are telling the truth. We're telling the truth that these companies are trying to control and manipulate and addict all of us, including parents. And in many cases, they've succeeded. And we're also telling the truth. And this goes back to something else we were talking about in terms of how do you convince people that it's actually really lame to spend all of your free time and your entire teenage, all your teenage years on a screen? It's not a matter of not doing that because of all the adult reasons we can talk about, you know, why it will damage your attention span, all that stuff. Kids might not care as you're talking about, about the long term consequences of their everyday behaviors, but it's just pathetic to, like, spend all your time watching Instagram reels, watching other people's lives, watching other people's lives. Like, that is not having a life. I did research for my book the Power of Fun, about fun. And I asked adults from around the world, tell me some of your most fun experiences. I have thousands of these stories. None of them involved watching a video online. They were all about real life experiences with other people. And so that's something we really wanted to incorporate into the Amazing Generation was the idea that it's actually just kind of not cool essentially to spend all your time on these apps. And we got young people, as we were saying, like stories from young people just older than ourselves, our target readers, to share that so that our readers would see from their own role models. You know, we kind of think about it as a Seventeen magazine effect. If people are old enough to have read Seventeen magazine like you wanted to be, you know, it was like 13 year olds reading Seventeen magazine because you're looking up to the older kids. So we wanted to really highlight these stories of slightly older kids who say, this is lame. Like I wish I hadn't done it. I don't want you to do it. Go out there and have a real life. And that, I think, is how you convince younger kids and people in general to want to change and not to, you know, not to follow the path.
- [36:52]
B
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C
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C
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D
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C
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- [39:00]
A
shippingterms subject to change let's dig into one particular example of that, which I think you guys do a really effective job in an amazing generation around apps. Good apps, bad apps, and kind of what makes them good and bad, what makes them concerning dangerous, unhealthy, lame as you. I really. I like that you're bringing back lame. I'm going to start. I'm going to start. It was a huge part of my vocabulary in the 90s, and I17 magazine, I'm inspired to bring it back. So let's use that as sort of a microcosm for how you guys dig into some aspects of tech, educate kids in the amazing generation in a way that kids understand about what's harmful, what's bad about it, what's getting in the way of regular life, what makes an app good? What makes an app bad? I mean, when I think about the subway surfers and the clash royale and the like, all of the gambling training grounds, my kids have been on all those apps. I mean, it's like, I shudder to think, the loot boxes, the amount of money accidentally spent on my credit card by my children as they were buying skins. I mean, it goes on and on. So break it down for us so that parents listening can then turn around. You know, obviously use this book, but also use your language on how to frame what makes something good, good or bad from the perspective of apps.
- [40:29]
D
Sure. I think that what you're asking about can be boiled down to part of what we call the rebels code in the book. So we wanted to encapsulate the philosophy that we saw and see these young rebels, these young people who are standing up against big tech and making different choices. We wanted to communicate or distill their philosophy down. And we did so with two key phrases that I recommend parents, actually all of us, adopt for ourselves. One is to use technology as a tool. Don't let it use you. And the other is to fill your life with real friendship, real freedom, and real fun. And I know we talked a bit about that second one earlier in this podcast, but what you're asking about really relates to the first principle there. Use tech as a tool. Don't let it use you. So what's a good app? What's a bad app? A good app is a tap that you can use as a tool. A bad app is an app that uses you as a tool that, if to put it a different way, is to design to addict you. Any app that is addictive by design is an app that you should be very careful about and ideally avoid. No one is ever addicted to their calendar app or to Uber or to.
- [41:30]
A
You clearly don't know Cara very well if you think no one is addicted to their calendar app. I mean, don't get me started. But yes, fair point. For the majority of the, of the population, that is the, that is the case. Right?
- [41:41]
D
Yeah. So that's one of our primary messages to kids is that it's not that all screen time or all apps are bad. With the caveat being that both of us do not think that kids should have access to social media app pretty much like really kind of ever and smartphones until at least high school, if not beyond. But in terms of apps like that is the main lens through which we suggest that young people and people of all ages evaluate these apps.
- [42:03]
A
And Jonathan, can you talk about the self reflection involved? Like, because essentially what you're encouraging these kids to do through the rebels, through the older voices in the book is to help them build a sense of relationship to large corporations. What do they want from me? What are they trying to get for me? That they things produced by large corporations? Am I in control or am I a passive recipient? Am I being manipulated? And in all things with our kids, we are trying to build the skill of self reflection in everything they do and everywhere they go. So help us with some, some framing, some language that is relatable to young people. Right. We're all on board. We're all like, yes, get outside all of that stuff. Wonderful. Help us with some relatable language that can be, can be used with young people there.
- [42:54]
C
Sure. Well, first I just want to add on a couple of principles to what Catherine said. One is if an app allows you to talk with strangers, you should not let your kid do it. And that means no Snapchat, no Roblox. Most of these things, this is look young, you know, sex predators are not at the playground anymore. That's too dangerous. They all moved on to the video games and Instagram and Snapchat, which connects you to strangers through the quick add feature.
- [43:18]
A
And I just want to add a point here. Please, Vanessa, know that most sex predators are actually known by the children that they are grooming, that they assault, that they abuse. So stranger does not equal sex predator. Typically in real life, sex predators and sometimes online are people known to the child themselves. So the sort of stranger danger is an outdated but.
- [43:44]
D
Yes, but it's not. I would say stranger danger is not outdated when it comes to online online.
- [43:47]
C
Yeah, well, that's right. I mean Snapchat was getting 10,000 reports of sextortion from its own users in 2022. Not a year, a month, every month. So the numbers of kids who are getting sextortion is in the millions worldwide. So it's horribly common in both places. And then also, if anything has gambling, as Anna Lemke, the addiction specialist says, anything, any addiction that your kid develops sets the brain up to be more addictable to everything else. And this is especially a problem for our boys. It's horrific that gambling is now everywhere. It's in everything. I have no words to describe how bad this is coming on of everything else that's been so bad. So Kara, to your question about self reflection. You know, yes, we want our kids to be self regulating and when they're late in puberty, they're beginning to develop that ability much better than before. Obviously some kids can do it even when they're young, but I think putting them up against a company that has spent so much money to hire the top psychologists in the world to manipulate and program them is just not a fair fight. And that's why I think delay is really the way.
- [44:48]
A
So the question is really about everything in this age is about building kids capacity for thinking about their approach to things. Did it work, did it not work? If it didn't work, what new strategies, what new resources, what new folks are they going to call on to do better, to do differently? So I'll give you a perfect example. My 20 year old in college who, you know, grew up no devices in the room. Once kids get to college, their devices are literally 4 centimeters from their heads, right? Partially because their rooms are about 8ft wide. So he was talking about he was having trouble falling asleep at night. So we walk through his sleep hygiene and his routine and I just was sitting listening, right? I was literally a sort of recipient of his self reflection. And he said, you know, I say I'm going to go to bed at 11, but then I spent an hour scrolling through my phone and then I don't go to bed until 12. So you know what? I'm going to delete tech talk and I'm going to see how that affects, right? I just sat there, I didn't say anything. He was exercising the skill of self reflection that we had worked on over many years about tech, but about a million other things. So I guess I'm wondering, as we think about how to be in conversation with kids, as we think about how to build their capacity, their self reliance, their independence, their sense of agency, how does that fit into the conversations around tech? I get the no Manipulation like don't let yourself be used by these folks. But the deeper level thinking, I'd love to hear more about that.
- [46:27]
C
I'll start with the course that I teach at nyu. I teach a flourishing class. And so I work with about 35 undergraduates. They're usually about 19 years old. And 100% of them, as soon as they open their eyes, they check their phone for incoming messages. And I ask them to go through their evening routine. And 100% of them, last thing they do is the same thing. And I asked them if they think that's good. And most of them say no. They realize it's bad. And this is something you find over and over again with Gen Z. They actually know that this is bad for them. You don't have to persuade them, you don't have to convince them that this is bad. They just don't know what to do about it. And because everyone else is doing the same thing. So there's not really any social pressure. In fact, there's social pressure against changing. So I think that it's great to foster skills of self reflection, but I think the most important skill in terms of having success is environment modification. And so, as Angela Duckworth says, she has this amazing graduation speech, I think Colby or Bates, where she says the most important decision you make in your life may well be where you put your phone at night. Because if you put it in another room and you're able to get a good night's sleep and you're able to exert that kind of self control by removing the temptation, you'll be much more successful than if you have the phone near you, in which case you're likely to succumb to temptation and you're going to throw much of your life away. So that's the skill that I try to cultivate in my class. In the process, yes, some self reflection comes out. I require them to write integration papers. But this core skill is understanding the way your environment affects you, the way the technological environment affects you, and then changing the environment, such as deleting TikTok from your phone. I tell one of the most effective techniques, delete it from your phone. You can still check it on your computer if you need to, but just don't have it with you all the time. That, I think is the most important.
- [48:11]
B
You're preaching to the choir about getting these devices out of the room. We are big fans and learning that sort of how to limit. Katherine, can you, as you chime in, can you add an answer to this last question? As the clock ticks down for us, there's really clear data that the reason why when kids turn 12, they no longer hear their parents in the same way, they no longer value their parents insights in the same way, is that when you look at their brains in PET scanners, their brains light up starting around age 12 or 13, when their peers are in their space and in their ear and in their line of sight, and not when their parents are. In fact, there was a fabulous study looking at mother's voice and literally the neurons that fired in response to a mother's voice stopped firing when kids turned 12, which is of course our lived experience. Katherine, it's okay. You have an 11 year old. It's gonna be okay.
- [49:18]
D
Okay.
- [49:18]
B
I'm feeling great right now.
- [49:20]
D
Thanks for that study.
- [49:21]
B
But the reason I ask with this data is that isn't it true that some of this is exactly what you said, Jonathan, which is the peer influence of what to do and how can we harness. Can we land on. How can we harness that peer influence for good? Because we as parents should not stop parenting, we should not stop setting limits, we should not stop keeping our kids safe and healthy. But we know we have to harness peer influence too. Which it sounds like is exactly what is happening in that course at nyu. And I'm wondering, Catherine, if we can land there, how the Amazing Generation might be able to help us do that.
- [49:59]
D
Sure. Yeah. I'm happy to weigh in on both of those about the self reflection question. And that I think that is the goal of the Amazing Generation is to create a trusted voice that is not a parent. And we have heard from a lot of parents that what they've done with the book is not to give it to the kid and say, you have to read this, but just to literally leave it out where the kid finds it and that they find their kids reading it. It's designed to be very colorful, very engaging, very easy to just flip through and become absorbed by something in the book. So I think that that would answer the question of how to engage kids without their mother's voice being part of it.
- [50:30]
A
Oh my God.
- [50:30]
D
But John and I deliberately wrote ourselves out of the book for that reason. And one iteration we had an introduction to ourselves and we're like, kids don't care. So I would say that's important. It's another reason why both of us are really landing hard on the idea this has to be a collective solution to a collective action problem, because parents need to agree collectively to not give their kids access to these things. So that our kids have peer support. In terms of the self reflection question, I would say that that's something that is definitely part of the Amazing Generation. I think that you need to have this self reflection before you have the buy in to some of the changes that John was just mentioning that I of course totally agree with. And I would say that it is very impressive to hear and observe how self reflective kids can be at a very young age. So just to give you one example, we talk a lot about in the Amazing Generation, getting in touch with what you actually love doing and thinking about the opportunity cost of spending so much time on screens. If you spend five hours a day on YouTube and social media, which is about the average American teenager's use, if not more, that's two and a half full months a year. If you didn't sleep, it's a whole summer break. If you did nothing but scroll and watch stuff. And when we talk to even young kids about that and say, well, what else could you do at that time that prompts reflection? So just to end on one concrete example, I have a friend whose son used to play a lot of Fortnite and he read the Amazing Generation and we ask a lot of kind of reflective questions to kids. A lot of kind of go out and observe the world and see what you think. Like that kind of thought provoking question. And he came back to his parents and he said, you know, I really like Fortnite, but I've thought about it, he's in fifth grade and he said it's not really a hobby. I actually don't think this is making me a more interesting person. You know, it's enjoyable but it's not really doing much for me. I'm sure he didn't use exactly his words, but he literally did write this out for me. So I have like a testimonial from him and he said, I'd really love your help, mom and dad, helping me develop some more hobbies that are not screen based. That would add more to my life. That's a fifth grader. Okay, so I think that to your point, yes, there is a huge need for self reflection. And one of our goals in the Amazing Generation is to offer opportunities for self reflection through prompts and then also to provide a resource that parents can give to their tweens and their children as they stop listening to their parents voices.
- [52:35]
A
Katherine, I love that wrap up. John, you're going to have to come back and talk about puberty. You're going to have to talk about the correlation versus causation argument around social media and mental health. So the invitation is open. We could have talked for another several hours. You guys are awesome. Thank you. Thank you for sparking this debate, making it rich and exciting and dramatic, dare I say, in this latest iteration in the amazing generation. And thanks for joining us.
- [53:10]
D
Thank you so much.
- [53:10]
C
Our pleasure. Thanks for tolerating my outbursts and over enthusiasm.
- [53:14]
B
We're used to teenagers. John,
- [53:19]
A
thank you so much for listening. You can email us with questions, feedback or episode requests@podcastawkward.com if you want to
- [53:29]
B
learn more about what we do to make this whole stage of life less awkward for everyone involved. Our parent membership, our school health ed curriculum, our keynote talks and more are
- [53:42]
A
all@lessawkward.com and if you want products that make puberty so much more comfortable, visit myumla.com.
- [53:58]
B
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