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Hello and welcome to the Questions and Answers edition of Thriving Kids, a podcast from the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of children with mental health and learning disorders. I'm Dr. Dave Anderson, clinical psychologist and your host. Last week I was joined by Dr. Linda Charmaraman, a senior research scientist and expert on youth and social media and technology. We talked about how to move away from policing our kids technology use and toward promoting healthy, intentional interactions with with tech as they relate also to youth mental health. That conversation brought up some very specific, high stakes questions about phones, digital privacy, and the challenge of setting boundaries that actually stick. We'll be spending the next 25 minutes tackling those questions head on. Let's get into It Our first question on this week's Thriving Kids podcast Q and A episode on technology and youth mental Health comes from a concerned parent about a middle schooler. This question my 6th grader says she's the only person in her entire friend group without a smartphone. I wanted to wait until at least eighth grade, but I'm worried she's being left out of group chats and social plans. How do I know when a child is actually ready for a phone and when am I just caving to peer pressure? The great thing about starting with a question like this is it gets at the tension that so many parents are feeling right around those middle school ages when kids start to push for for getting their own phone. There's all kinds of delay initiatives. And even the wording in this parent's question around waiting until 8th grade is wording directly drawn from a wait until 8th delay initiative that we see in schools and communities across the country. At the same time, what the parent is feeling this pressure from is this notion that their kid is going to be left out socially if they don't have some access to technology. And this is a really hard and very fine line for parents to walk because delay campaigns do actually accomplish something in the sense that when we look at adolescents and we say look in our messaging to teenagers, we may be saying about a host of different things, whether it's alcohol or drugs, marijuana, sexual intercourse, technology. We may be saying to them, look, there are risks that come along with these particular things. I would prefer that you wait for as long as possible to engage in certain things. This might be related to romantic relationships or trying alcohol or being at parties where drugs and alcohol are present, or doing certain things on smartphones that parents are often concerned about, like social media or like interacting with AI chatbots. And so a parent may say, I want you to wait, you know, in doing these things. But oftentimes there are a couple of other points in that conversation which are that the second point is that parents kind of have to be realists. They have to say, look, as much as I would like you to delay these things because at the end of the day you, your brain, your identity and everything else is still under construction. At the same time, I understand you may come into contact with them. I want to be a realist about that. So, you know, the kind of flip side of the delay campaign is getting ready for these things, making sure that kids are armed with the information that they need about sex, consent and safety. Like in our episode with Dr. Angela Glimp from Peer Health Exchange. Or that kids are armed with the information they need about drugs and alcohol, like in an upcoming episode we'll have this year on the Thriving Kids podcast. Or like they're armed with the information they need around digital literacy. So at the end of the day, the delay campaigns are just one side of the coin. The other side has to be our understanding of the digital world. Our kids are getting into that by the time they reach adulthood, they will be using rideshare apps, delivery apps, they'll be texting, they'll be emailing, they will be contacting their friends by phone, they will be be engaging with sending different things back and forth, reading the news, perhaps watching things, all kinds of different functions associated with technology that are even separate from some of parents biggest concerns about risk areas. And we want to build that digital literacy. So the key in these discussions that I'll say to parents is I get why you're saying you want to delay. I hear you saying I want to be a realist with my kid and that I want to make sure that I say to them, I know you're going to encounter these things and I want to make sure you're ready for them. And the third point is always to say to your kid, and if you get into trouble, I want you to come to me. Even if you're worried that you might be punished, there might be a consequence, it'll always be less if you let me help you out of the trouble instead of getting into it and thinking you can somehow, you know, find your way out with what little life experience you have. So in this particular situation, I'd be searching for a way to bring this parent and this kid together in saying, I know you want this social contact with your friends. Let's talk about what our options are for how we might be able to give you that contact give you that connection in a way that feels to me like we're also avoiding some of the major risks that I was already concerned about and were the reasons why I was trying to wait till the end of middle school to give you these sorts of connections. And we can come up with creative solutions in there where perhaps parents and kids might not get everything they want, but can find some middle path that feels a little bit comfortable, that allows kids that social contact, but doesn't feel like you're opening up the Pandora's box of everything in the digital world. Our second technology and youth mental health question. We've been using a phonics app to help our daughter learn to read and it's working. Her progress is amazing, but the problem is that as soon as the lesson is over, she wants to stay on the iPad to watch videos or play games. How do we encourage the good screen time for learning without it leading to a massive battle the second the lesson ends? There's a couple things to unpack with this question. The first is this is probably a younger child, which oftentimes means that parents concern about the time they're spending on screens is heightened at times because the feeling is and what we know from the research is that the reason why we worried about excessive time spent on screens for younger children is a theory called displacement. It's the notion that the time spent on screens might be pushing out other really important developmental tasks that a kid needs to be engaging in. Whether it's learning social cues through face to face interactions and learning interactional skills, whether it's engaging with schoolwork, whether it is learning how to navigate real life play situations with peers or getting enough sleep. There's a host of developmental tasks for young kids that we want to make sure we're balancing screen time with. I think the other piece to unpack in this question, which I just love, it's kind of a side note is that, you know, reading instruction across this country is undergoing a huge overhaul or sorry. And what I would say is that when we look at this overhaul of reading instruction, what we're learning is that certain models that became very popular across the country in recent years actually did a disservice to kids in not teaching the most science informed phonics based instruction. So this is a parent who's actually taking the best of what science has to offer and trying to support their daughter who might be having difficulties learning how to read or who might really need this kind of extra support at home. We love the use of technology to fill in gaps in our kids learning. At the same time, I'm a little worried about some overcorrection for this younger child in this question because what we're often saying to parents of younger children is screens are a present part of our life. At these ages, it can be common to start talking to kids about how we might use technology for information, for relaxation, for entertainment, or for social connection. Lots of younger children are used to facetiming with grandma or their aunt or someone else in the family. They might be used to the use of screens for adult approved content, for entertainment for what we would consider to be reasonable periods of time. And that can differ at some level across households. And then at the same time, if a kid is really looking for more information, sometimes illustrating it through a screen can be really helpful. I'll give you an example of my 6 year old. Last night she was kind of worried about a play date. She's going on to a museum in our area with a friend tomorrow during a day off from school. And she was kind of saying no to it, even though she'd love to see this friend. And in general she's interested in the particular outing they might be going on. But her anxiety was kind of getting the best of her and she was kind of like not really wanting to go on this thing and thinking that maybe she was going to turn down the invitation. And I said can we just look at videos of the place you're going? And by looking at one YouTuber's four minute tour of the particular place we're going, she found three different cool things that she's interested in seeing there and how they do this cool scavenger hunt around the museum and suddenly she's ready to go. And that's the way we're using technology parent mediated to get kids information. So what I'd be searching for in working with this parent is to say first of all, bravo for helping your kid towards evidence based reading instruction. And then beyond that, let's talk about what your worries are about. This kind of idea of good screen time versus bad, because at the end of the day, giving your kid the message that they could learn phonics and then maybe do something else with a screen for a reasonable period of time as say, a reward for their investment in that academic activity would be perfectly reasonable for a kid this age. So what are we worried about in terms of the harms of this or why are we labeling that as bad? And I'd be looking at how to help that parent to feel comfortable with the amount of time, the activity, the content, and the level of parent mediation so that maybe we can communicate to a kid. Look, there are so many things you need to do in real life that are so important for your development and for your brain development, your development of different interpersonal skills. But I'm so impressed with how you're engaging with this extra support around phonics. And I also want to give you some time to entertain yourself or do some things that you find interesting, either as a reward or as another way of interacting with the digital world as we kind of build up those competencies over time. So our next question, our third question for this thriving kids podcast. Q and A. We have a strict no phones in the bedroom rule, but I just caught my teen hiding their phone under their pillow at 1am how do I enforce a digital curfew and rebuild that trust without turning our home into a high security prison? So for this question, I'm going to throw out a little bit of self disclosure. I grew up in the late 80s and throughout the 90s we had the wonder of evolving in the America Online era. The rise of instant messenger and the use of portable phones within the home. The notion that, you know, you had these landlines that were connected to the wall and then there were some phones that you could pick up and take anywhere in the house. I will disclose that there were a number of times during high school in which my parents, for one reason or another, because I was not good at covering my tracks, would realize that the portable phone had been out of its cradle at some point during the night and and found somewhere else. Now there are reasons why any parent who's listening might be screaming at me. That's not a parallel example, because that portable phone only gave you an opportunity maybe to call one friend or something like that and have a late night phone conversation. And a phone itself is a mini computer more powerful than the computing power of any human era come before us. That's now at 1am and I don't want to discount that perspective. What I want to say is that what I see in that question is a common thing that we as mental health professionals talk about in the world of technology and youth mental health. And that is that one of the strongest effects that we see in the research is how much technology affects everyone's sleep. And when I say everyone, what I mean is this isn't just teenagers. It isn't just teenagers with their developing brains and their evolving executive functions. It is adults as well. More often than not, when I get parents in the office, I'll have them reflect on their own boundaries around screenshots, how much screens play a role in their sleep rituals and how much screens might also be eroding their sleep as well. So at the end of the day, we are scared about the effect that screens might be having on our sleep. We know that's a powerful research result in this generation and that there are really valid reasons why many mental health professionals like myself will say, if I had a few rules around technology in this era, one rule would be no phones in the bedrooms and that that kills two birds with one stone. One is that it helps us with making sure that teenagers sleep, especially because school schedules are not often constructed exactly along their circadian rhythm and, you know, may make it so that they're getting less sleep already because school's kind of starting early for teenagers at a time when their circadian rhythms are shifting to go to sleep later and also want to get up later. This is something that we discussed in an earlier Thriving Kids podcast episode about sleep. But you know, when we look at these kinds of habits, the other thing that we is the kind of second bird we kill with that one stone by saying no phones in bedrooms is that a lot of the activities that kids engage with, that kids do with technology, especially in teenage years alone in their bedrooms might be the things that are perhaps raising parents concerns, like engaging in chats or like perusing social media and kind of infinite scrolling things they might do while they're alone that could get them in a rabbit hol online that could exacerbate pre existing vulnerabilities if they're already depressed and they're exposed to all kinds of online content that perhaps is exacerbating their depression or the online activities they're engaged in their bedroom are keeping them from engaging the real life activities that might actually improve their mood. We get concerned or let's say that a kid is struggling with body image and they're seeing a lot of things online that they're comparing themselves to. And for that reason they, the more time they're spending kind of alone in their room is making them feel worse. So that's why we hear this rule, a lot of kind of no phones in bedrooms alone or no phones in bedrooms at night. What I'll go back to with this parent is that so much of adolescence is a process of the fact that your teen is going to push boundaries. They are sometimes going to break rules. You're going to find that they have taken the phone out of its charging cradle and before we go to draconian measures, which I like to think could be a last resort, like, if we really find that a teenager is not able to regulate themselves around these devices, many parents do say, look, I'm not trying to punish you. I don't want this to feel like it's draconian. But at the same time, I am going to need to lock devices away when we're charging them at night. And that just helps all of us to just kind of let go. If this parent does not want to go that particular direction, I think it becomes a recentering conversation with that teenager about the reasons why we're asking for them to respect the sleep that they need, the levels of wellness that we're trying to promote for them, the boundaries that we're trying to set, even as we know that their friends might not have the same boundaries. And then also looking for those moments when we can be a little more forgiving, is it on the weekends when we can let you have a little bit more time to connect with your friends or to play these particular games, but really, on school nights, we're gonna try our best to maintain some sort of boundary around this particular thing. But it's navigating this over time because, you know, a parent in this situation may want to give their teen a consequence. They may say, look, this means that you've lost access to this device for a certain period of time, or you've lost this particular privilege with your friends, or I've docked you a little bit of allowance. But that punishment merely conveys that a boundary's been crossed. The learning is what happens in that space between parent and teen where we say, I want to understand kind of what made you go this direction. I want to help you understand where my perspective is. And I'd like us to continue to navigate this social contract together where you feel like you should be independent enough to manage this. But at the same time, we're not ready to do that just yet. And let's try to think about how we can make this not punishment focused, but more about you gaining the adult skills that maintain your wellness as much as we can. Our fourth question for this podcast Q and A episode on technology. Always so many rich topics in here. We've always, always had an agreement that my daughter's phone is always open to inspection. But as she's gotten older, I feel like a spy whenever I look at her phone. Where is the line between protecting my child from the dangers of the Internet and invading her basic right to privacy? This is A fantastic question, because what has happened for a lot of parents in this generation is the fact that we probably would all, well, not all, but, you know, many of us, if we were asked the question, does your teenager deserve some level of privacy and independence in their life, in their social life, you know, some things that they might be able to keep secret from parents, and that that's kind of a healthy boundary. Many parents would answer, yes, and we would say that's also healthy for development. The difficulty with phones is that so many parents are worried about the idea that what's on the phone could live forever. It's that, you know, if they post something or send something, or, you know, send a picture or make a very rude comment, or, you know, a host of other activities, parents are worried. Like, these are not just things where we can say they deserve to have privacy and boundaries. These are things that we worry could then really affect their standing with their friends, perhaps, you know, kind of crossover boundaries into discipline in school, or could affect their future in the sense that they provide a record of mistakes that we might have made that could become public at various points. And a lot of these fears are what we hear from parents when they say, I really want to monitor everything that my kid says. And I'll say that there's a lot of reason to think about this on a case by case basis. But if we look at what the kind of aggregate is and what we end up consulting to parents is that we say, look, when your kid first gets a phone, it makes sense to really ask them to help you understand each app that they're using on the phone, each way of connecting with friends, the games they're playing, all of the activities they might be doing in that phone so that you can understand their digital world. And at some level with teenagers, this is so helpful when you're just curious and you want to understand what matters to them. And that feels really validating as well, because it doesn't feel like you're just an adult who's minimizing the importance of the things that they might be doing in the digital world, even when you don't understand them. So the first step is that curiosity and that understanding. Then the next step is conveying a message to youth that there is an aspect of this that involves us understanding this world together, then you giving them a certain amount of independence and over time shaping this up to a point where they would have full independence in managing their devices and their behavior in the digital world. So much of that is about proving that you are Behaving in that world in line with your family's values, behaving in that world in ways that are acceptable and in line with school disciplinary policies and in line with the kinds of person that you want to be in the ways that you want to interact with your friends. So frequently what I'd be asking a parent is outside of just the anxiety of worrying that there's something on the phone. Give me examples of how your kid is communicating. Have we then messaged that back to your kid about how you're seeing them do things explicitly, you know, with their phone or on devices that show that they're ready for a certain level of independence? How do we make sure that they are seeing the same signs or, you know, guideposts on this journey where we're saying, I see you building these competencies. This gives me more and more of a sense of confidence and that you can be given a bit more independence on this. And, you know, I want to make sure we're both kind of speaking the same language on that at the same time. There can be mistakes, you know, and if that happens, I want you to come to me. And as I said earlier in this episode, we always want a message. If there are mistakes, come to me. Even if there might be consequences, you know, they're always going to be less if I can help you with a problem, rather than you maybe solving it by yourself in a way that doesn't necessarily help you. And sometimes I'll also make the comparison in these examples to driving, in that when parents are teaching their teen to drive, by no means do parents really feel like their teens are ready to drive a car. There is a reason why rental car companies feel very nervous about renting to anyone under age 25 and without fully developed mature adult brain functioning. And the reason for this is that there are major risks associated with this as you're learning this process. When we teach kids to drive, we set up guideposts for them that say, I want to make sure that you've built up these competencies. We've figured out a way as a society to say, we're going to also make sure there's some regulation to ensure that you're building up these competencies. Now, we might have that same regulation in the digital world, but parents can still say to their kids, here are the guideposts for me. Here's how I can be more and more confident that I can kind of release you into the wild and try my best to let go of my own anxiety and believe that I can give you your privacy, knowing that you're going to behave in line with the person you are, your character, our family values, and what I've seen thus far on screens. Question number five of this podcast. Q AND A. If my child makes a major mistake online, like sending an inappropriate photo or posting something hurtful, what should my first move be? How can I make sure I'm the safe harbor they come to for help while still holding them accountable for their choices? So this goes exactly the talking point that I've referenced in two previous questions of a parent who wants to say, I want to be your safe harbor. But also, there may still be accountability for your choices. But by approaching me when you get into trouble, you know that accountability, that consequence, I can try my best to make it so that I stay regulated and perhaps don't give the most draconian consequence in those situations. That is the message, because kids are going to make mistakes. The reality is the online world is fraught with all kinds of situations they have not encountered before, moments where they might trust someone or think that this is a person that they know or, you know, send something that they think the other person might find funny or where they're not understanding the difference between their intent and their impact. And at some level, we have to understand that kids will likely make some mistakes online. We can map some of those risks with them. We can emphasize the need for privacy, talking to people that, you know, we can emphasize grandma's rule that if we read anything that you've written in texts, comments, DMs, or anything like that, we want to make it something that your grandma could read and, you know, at worst give a little bit of chuckle at its inappropriateness, but otherwise be pretty much okay with. We can give kids all those rules, but at the end of the day, this goes back to what I've outlined in previous questions. They are going to need to build their digital literacy. They're going to need to build their digital competency. And we need to make sure that as we're communicating with them about this, we say, I know mistakes are going to happen. That's why I want to do my best to understand the digital world you're in, help you anticipate the mistakes that you could make and critically think through those. And then in the event that some of these things are happening, you know, I'd love to help you think through them. I'd love to be that sounding board for you. And if you get into too much trouble, you know, I want you to know that I'm still here for you. I don't want you to think there's no way out or there's no alternative or, you know, I can't be a support, even if it involves something that is against the rules. And that's a, It's a major point that I'm so glad that parent brought up our sixth question for this Q and A. I caught myself telling my son to get off his iPad while I was literally scrolling through my own phone. How can I possibly model healthy tech use when my own work and social life are so tied to my devices? This is, I swear I was living this last night. I was thinking about this as I'm telling my children to stop watching a television episode and make sure they start their showers, you know, after dinner. While doing this, while not looking at them and keeping my computer on the kitchen table and working through different emails, we see this. And this is where I love this parent's question because, you know, I want to take a little bit of a bemused look, a bemused look at our own hypocrisy as parents. We might be telling them, no, you can't have devices. And meanwhile our device is face up right next to us. This is where I think it's really helpful as an exercise as any parent to try to go through a day and visualize just how many devices you have. There may be a lot things that you speak to in the kitchen, computers, tablets, phones, watches you wear, rings you wear, all kinds of stuff, all kinds of information. Just think about how many devices you interact with over the course of the day and which ones might be helping your family to have extra information. A certain, you know, amount of entertainment, you know, a certain amount of stress relief or relaxation or moments of connection and things that might be actually going the other direction, things that might be decreasing your connection, making it so that you're less present with each other, making it so that in fact you're getting into areas that you might be concerned about. And as you map those, what is fantastic is you get a better picture of the landscape of all these different moments when perhaps you can reduce the hypocrisy or model the kinds of tech free zones that you'd like to, to be able to model for your kids, to show that even though you need these devices for work in your personal life, you can make conscious choices about when you want to be screen free and when you want to be, you know, engaging with screens for a conscious purpose. And what I want to, you know, kind of make sure that parents think about too, is that once you look at the landscape, you know you're gaining insight. But you don't have to build Rome in a day. You can do small experiments with certain times of the day, certain devices, certain ways you feel that devices are decreasing presence, and look at which ones give you the biggest bang for your buck. You don't have to overhaul your entire life. We as therapists are always thinking like, once we map a bunch of concerns with somebody, are we pushing them to a level of change that like any human would be incapable of in any given week? And then we want to kind of swing back toward what can we do incrementally? How can we make small changes that over time build larger and larger sustainable habits that we can kind of keep in place for the future? That's the essence of behavior change. Not just, you know, I noticed all these problems. We're going to change them all by tomorrow. And now our family life is going to be totally different. That's unrealistic and honestly, putting too much pressure on parents who already pulled in a million directions. Our second to last question on this thriving kids podcast Q and A episode is the second the screens go away. My kids claim they have nothing else to do. They've forgotten how to just play or be bored. How do we help kids rediscover hobbies that don't require a battery or a wi fi connection? This question relates to a popular concept we see often in this kind of, you know, online media discussions in the parentisphere around youth mental health and technology where we discuss the concepts of friction and frictionless existence, the notion of boredom, and also the kind of usually concepts like grit and resilience. It's this notion. I spoke about it actually in a recent podcast episode with Dr. Dylan Gee, where we're talking about the fact that a moderate amount of stress can be really helpful in building resilience and grit for kids. A moderate amount of boredom can be really helpful in facilitating creativity. A moderate amount of friction can be helpful in getting problem solving abilities more developed. So in that sense, we don't want kids to live a frictionless existence. We don't want everything to be at their beck and call. We don't want them to have technology solving all of their problems and making sure that at no moment are they not entertained. So as we think about that, you know, the answer to this parent's question is inherent in the asking of the question. It is that we want to help kids play or be bored or understand what to do with that. And so all too often what it is is just us saying to a parent, explicitly say that to your kids. There are going to be moments in the day when I am going to declare this to be a screen free zone. You know, this could be the middle of the day during any summer vacation day. It could be the middle of the day on weekends. It could be particular times in evenings when you want to spend family time together. It could be family meals. Screen free zones can take almost any form, but you can declare that and then you can say, look, I'll be in this with you for a moment. Like, what do we want to play? What do we want to be bored with? What do we want to do with our boredom? Do we just want to, like, I don't know, go to a place, like, outside and then see what strikes our fancy and what, like, piques our interest? Let's kind of experiment with this and think about how we tinker with our lives. Because at the end of the day, you know, it's weird, but people prior to, I don't know, 1990 seemed to be able to get on and find fulfillment in a wide range of activities that did not involve screens the way they do today. So let's think about this. And I'm okay with a little bit of moderate friction. I'm okay with a little bit of kids complaining. So much of this is also coaching parents through what we call an extinction burst. It's the idea that when kids are kind of taken away from their preferred activities, frequently their behavior gets worse before it gets better. And it may get a lot more annoying or a lot more loud before it gets better. And if we can just kind of, you know, get through that particular moment without changing the situation to accommodate them, we can often see the reward of watching our kids do something with this unplanned time or watching what kind of creative solutions they come up with for boredom. And the more and more times they're presented with that, the more and more you will see problem solving, creativity. The more and more you will see some grit and resilience. And you can be right there, you know, catching them, being good and telling them that you're proud of them for that. Our final question for our thriving kids podcast Q and A episode here on technology and youth mental health. What is the single most important digital house rule that every family should have? First, let me just say, in our previous seven questions, I think there were a lot of digital house rules that, you know, families might be able to implement. I will not necessarily say, and I know this is very therapisty of me, but I will not necessarily say that there is a one size fits all, single digital house rule that works for every single family. We don't want to be that presumptuous. As psychologists, what I'll go back to is some of the science that I've highlighted throughout these answers. The notion that it is really, really important for parents to think about screens in context developmentally, and to be thinking, what are the important developmental tasks that my child needs to be able to accomplish? Investing in their schoolwork, being able to have time for their homework, face to face, family time, face to face, friend time, healthy perhaps, and age appropriate interactions digitally with friends, getting enough sleep, making sure they move their body, paying attention to diet and hydration, making sure that they have social relationships and maybe at least one extracurricular or passion that they're exploring. And as we check off all of those things, we kind of put screens in context of all of these key important developmental tasks for kids. And then as we get to these digital house rules, it's paying attention to the biggest risks and the biggest rewards. So I've referenced this idea that, you know, no phones in bedrooms or no screens in bedrooms alone can be a really effective rule for many families in decreasing some of the risky behaviors that could happen when kids are alone with screens and exposed to content or activities that parents wouldn't approve of. It highlights the kind of impact on sleep for younger kids. One research result I've not highlighted is that I really focus with parents as they begin to navigate online spaces in ensuring that younger kids are not having free and unfettered access to Internet searches, do not have access to chat rooms that might contain people that they don't know, and make sure that also we are kind of moderating, even when a kid is looking at a tablet, what kind of content they're being exposed to to ensure that it's something that won't disturb them or won't cause, you know, at the very least, you know, nightmares, things like that. Beyond this, I'll just say I would love for people to frame digital house rules not so much as boundaries, but also as a competency focused kind of framework where we say in this house, like, these are like, I'm thinking of like kitschy signs that you would get for an Airbnb or something like that, or a house that says like some kind of funny joke, but it might be like in this house, and then you've got a few boards below it and it says like, we are critical thinkers, we consciously engage with screens. We think about when our screen free zones are. We prioritize face to face interaction. We cultivate boredom and creativity and problem solving. You know, it's those kind of competencies where if we can approach things from what we want to create for ourselves and where our values are, it becomes a lot easier to think and how can I use screens to support that, to give me information, to educate me for entertainment, for relaxation, for connection? And if it's not supporting that, how do I make sure that I critically think about how I'm engaging in these particular things? So I know that many listeners are going to say that was kind of a cop out on like telling me one thing that I could do from this episode. But I'll also say, you know, we will include in the show notes other resources that could give you that single digital house rule, like the websites of the American Academy of Pediatrics, our friends who help to kind of sift through a lot of different aspects of the research on screen time for parents, as well as our friends at Children and Screens and also our friends at Common Sense Media. And we will also link to our childmind.org technology and mental Health hub on our website, which has all kinds of resources. With that. For any more tools and support, you can visit childmind.org home to our family Resource Center. There you can find expert guidance for supporting children with mental health, behavior or learning disorders. You can also find videos that we've created with our partners, such as how do I promote my child's Healthy use of technology? Again, developed by experts here at the Child Mind Institute, all of these resources sit alongside resources on everything from social media safety to managing screen time to all kinds of of 21st century challenges that parents and caregivers face. Thanks so much for listening to the Thriving Kids Podcast and see you next time.
Episode: Q&A: Your Questions About Healthy Technology Use, Answered
Host: Dr. Dave Anderson, Child Mind Institute
Date: March 19, 2026
This episode of Thriving Kids is a special Q&A session where clinical psychologist Dr. Dave Anderson addresses parents’ most pressing questions on setting healthy boundaries with technology for children and adolescents. With warmth, realism, and evidence-based strategies, Dr. Anderson explores phone readiness, digital house rules, modeling healthy tech habits, cultivating offline interests, privacy, and more.
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[23:48] – [32:20]
[32:21] – [36:11]
[36:12] – [41:34]
[41:35] – [47:19]
[47:20] – [53:55]
On Parenting Technology Use:
On Privacy:
On Setting Rules:
Dr. Anderson speaks with empathy, humility, and relatability. He mixes evidence-based advice with personal anecdotes and recognizes parents’ challenges without judgment. His signature style is practical, validating, and always grounded in science and developmental perspective.
There is no magic rule for healthy tech use, but by prioritizing open dialogue, developmental tasks, family values, and incremental habit changes, families can balance the risks and rewards of youth technology. Tools like structured boundaries, screen-free zones, and honest conversations—modeled by parents themselves—help kids become competent, responsible, and resilient tech users.