S2 Episode 4: 7 Concerns About Teens & Phones, Unwrapped

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ways & Means – S2 Episode 4: "7 Concerns About Teens & Phones, Unwrapped"

Date: December 19, 2016
Host: Emily Hanford, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Featured Guest: Candace Odgers (Associate Director, Duke Center for Child and Family Policy)
Length: Approximately 18 minutes (excluding intro/outro)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the widespread concerns parents have about teenagers and their mobile phones. Through interviews, research insights, and real-life stories, it investigates whether those fears are justified, drawing on Candace Odgers’ research into adolescent development and technology use. The central thesis is: While anxieties abound, many common fears about teens and technology are overblown, though some concerns are very real.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mobile Phones as Social Lifelines

• The episode opens with a real-life story: Carol (a producer) and her teen son, Jackson, getting a new phone. Jackson stays connected with his best friend Omar through mobile apps, despite living in different states ([00:13]–[02:46]).
• Quote (Jackson): “Without a phone, I wouldn’t be able to keep in touch with my best friend.” ([00:46])
• Quote (Omar): “Snapchat, Instagram, messaging.” ([02:54])
• Insight: Modern friendships, especially across distances, are largely sustained via phones. Thirty years ago, this would have been almost impossible.

2. Parental Fears: Where Do They Come From?

• Candace Odgers’ research was initially aimed at using phones to study adolescent behavior in real time ([03:52]–[05:09]).
• Early in her study, sensational headlines about teen sexting forced researchers to re-examine ethics and privacy, highlighting societal trepidations ([04:52]).
• Quote (Candace): “We immediately stopped the study and figured out how to encrypt this information, how to get some stronger controls over this.” ([04:52])

3. The Seven Core Parental Concerns

Odgers and her team distilled parent worries into seven major areas and reviewed scientific evidence for each ([05:23]–[11:38]):

a) Stranger Danger

• Finding: Largely unfounded. Teens’ online social networks overwhelmingly mirror their offline ones ([07:14]).
• Quote (Candace): “When we start to look at who kids are interacting with, their online and their offline networks look very similar, in fact, almost identical.” ([07:14])

b) Cyberbullying

• Insight: Technology gives bullying new form, but the targets online are the same as offline ([07:29]–[08:13]).
• Quote (Candace): “The interventions that target bullying in general also tend to reduce cyberbullying.” ([08:13])

c) Social Skills & Isolation

• Finding: Time spent online doesn’t lead to isolation; those with better social skills use the internet more and develop better relationships ([09:07]–[09:45]).
• Quote (Candace): “Kids who are kind of socially skilled early on tend to have more online communication… that in turn predicts better quality relationships later on.” ([09:07])

d) Digital Divide with Parents

• Finding: Technology does not necessarily weaken parent-child relationships; it can even strengthen them (e.g., for children of divorced parents) ([10:21]–[11:02]).

e) Oversharing/Privacy

• Insight: The future impact of teens’ digital footprints is unknown, but tech use can fuel creativity and innovation ([11:07]–[11:38]).

4. Concerns That Are Justified

• Digital Multitasking: Leads to distraction and reduced performance, but little direct research on teens yet ([12:30]).
• Sexting: A significant percentage of teens share intimate images; this is a real risk parents should be aware of ([13:00]).
• Sleep Loss: The most well-supported concern is disrupted sleep, as most teens sleep with phones ([13:39]–[14:33]).
  • Quote (Candace): “After I wrote the section...I got all the devices out of every bedroom in my house.” ([13:39])
  • Quote (Candace): “About 25% of mobile phone owners sleep with their phone under their pillow. Not to miss a text or a message at night.” ([14:16])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On perennial parental worry:
  “Has there ever been a parent who didn’t worry about how their teens spent their free time?”
  — Emily Hanford ([16:04])
• On moral panics:
  “You saw it with comic books, you saw it with the radio, you saw it with the romance novel. Adults have a tendency to view things that kids are doing… as negative towards their development.”
  — Candace Odgers ([16:09])
• Jackson on friendship:
  “Can’t stay for life, I hope.” ([16:46])

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–02:46 – Jackson & Omar’s story; phones as a friendship lifeline
• 03:44–05:09 – Candace Odgers’ research origins; parent concerns
• 05:51–07:29 – Media sensationalism; parental fears about strangers and cyberbullying
• 09:07–09:45 – Do phones isolate teens?
• 13:39–14:33 – Candace discusses strong evidence for sleep disruption
• 16:04–16:40 – Comparing fears about phones to historical parental worries
• 16:46–17:02 – Jackson & Omar reflect on lasting friendship

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Most fears about phones and teens are exaggerated, especially stranger danger and social isolation.
• Cyberbullying remains a risk, but closely mirrors offline bullying; solutions from the real world apply online.
• Key justified concerns: Distraction and especially sleep loss—screen time at night is damaging to adolescent health.
• Mobile devices are powerful social connectors—they can enhance friendships, maintain family ties, and even foster creativity.
• **Moral panic is not new—**parents have always been anxious about new forms of youthful leisure, from comic books to phones.
• Practical advice: Remove phones from bedrooms to improve sleep; use media intentionally rather than reflexively.

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Closing Reflections

Candace Odgers emphasizes a balanced view: technology is neither a universal evil nor a cure-all. Responsible use and realistic expectations are key, and many “fears” are simply the latest version of age-old parental anxieties.

“This isn’t an entirely new world. This is a new tool that those same types of stories and things are playing out on.”
— Candace Odgers ([16:09])

Resources Mentioned

• Seven Fears and the Science of How Mobile Technologies May Be Influencing Adolescents in the Digital Age – Candace Odgers, Association for Psychological Science
• American Academy of Pediatrics – Media use guidelines for families (media-free time/locations, digital strategy planner)

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Summary prepared for listeners seeking in-depth understanding and practical insights from the episode.

Transcript

[Emily Hanford]

From Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, this is Ways and Means. We spotlight bright ideas for how to improve human society. I'm Emily Hanford.

[Candace Odgers]

Where are we going?

[Jackson Marcellus]

What?

[Candace Odgers]

Where are we going?

[Omar Mohammed]

No.

[Emily Hanford]

Stop trying to get a new phone. This is Carol. She's one of our producers. She's walking into a Verizon store in North Carolina with her son Jackson. They're getting Jackson a new phone for his 15th birthday. It's not his first phone, of course. It's practically impossible to be an American teenager today without a phone. Kids use their phones for everything, and it often stresses out parents like Carol, who worry their kids are spending too much time with their devices. But without a phone, Jackson wouldn't be able to keep in touch with his best friend.

[Omar Mohammed]

Hello? Yeah, I can hear you. My name is Omar. I live in Rockville, Maryland, and I'm 14.

[Emily Hanford]

Omar and Jackson met at summer camp. The year before middle school. Omar lived in North Carolina.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Back then, it was kind of like. It was spontaneous. We were just kind of like, yeah, yeah. It was like we would talk to each other at Cant, and then I would come over every once in a while. And then it was like every weekend I would come over or we would hang out some way. Then all of a sudden, we were best friends.

[Omar Mohammed]

Yeah, pretty much.

[Emily Hanford]

Omar was born in Egypt. Jackson was born in the United. There are other differences, too.

[Omar Mohammed]

Uh, size.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Size, obviously.

[Omar Mohammed]

Yeah, you're six. Like four. I'm five. Two and a half.

[Emily Hanford]

Their friendship just clicked, though, in that way that good friendships do. They both like paintball and pizza. They both hate to swim. And when they're together, things just seem more fun. Like the time one of their friends stepped on a beehive.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Then we just got straight chased by bees.

[Omar Mohammed]

No, no, I got chased by bees. You and everyone else ran away. I walked home.

[Emily Hanford]

They don't get a chance to spend much time together these days, though. Omar moved to Maryland when the boys were in seventh grade. Both say being long distance best friends was tough at first.

[Jackson Marcellus]

It was, like, really hard. But it was like I was really sad. And then the second year you moved away, it got better. Is it hard on you?

[Omar Mohammed]

Of course it was hard. I mean, it was definitely hard. It was one of the hardest things I probably had to do.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Were there times if you wondered that we could keep our friendship going?

[Omar Mohammed]

No.

[Jackson Marcellus]

No, not once.

[Omar Mohammed]

Not once.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Never even thought about it.

[Omar Mohammed]

Well, I thought about it when I was, like, first moving. Like, where I hadn't even moved yet.

[Jackson Marcellus]

At your going away party. I thought about it. But when you got there and we still talked, I dismissed any thoughts.

[Emily Hanford]

Thirty years ago, a friendship like this probably would have d Letters took too long, phone calls were too expensive. But their cell phones keep them connected.

[Omar Mohammed]

Snapchat, Instagram, messaging.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Yeah, like Instagram or just FaceTime even.

[Emily Hanford]

In fact, they recorded this interview from separate states using an app on their phones. 90% of adolescents in the US now either own or can access a mobile phone with the Internet and they do spend a lot of time on their phones. Teens are looking at screens about eight hours a day. TV screens, computers, game systems and cell phones are a major part of that. A quarter of teens say they are online almost constantly. Coming up on this episode of Ways and Means, we look at the role mobile devices play in the lives of teenagers. What are they doing on their phones? What are their parents worried about? And which of those concerns are justified?

[Candace Odgers]

I recently kind of told the story about my 5 year old asked for a cell phone and he wanted one so that his friends could text but he can't actually read yet.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Candace Odgers. She's the associate director of the Duke center for Child and Family Policy and that story about her son makes her chuckle. It shows just how early kids feel Peer pressure to get a phone Candice has been dealing with kids and phones for a while. Years ago she realized mobile phones could be a gold mine in terms of collecting data. For her research, she studies adolescent development and one of her ideas was to give teens mobile phones and then contact them throughout the day and ask them to report what they were doing and how they were thinking and feeling. She didn't want to study kids relationships to their phones. She wanted to use the phones as a tool to get honest, real time information about their lives. Most studies rely on kids to remember how they felt at a later date. But using the phones meant Candice and her colleagues could get information about what kids were thinking and feeling in the moment and hopefully gain powerful insights into young people's lives. They called their study My Life. They launched the study and then that

[Candace Odgers]

same week a study came out that said one in five adolescents have sent or shared a naked picture of themselves or someone else. So we had devices in the field. We immediately stopped the study and figured out how to encrypt this information, how to get some stronger controls over this.

[Emily Hanford]

They eventually started the study again once they established some additional strict guidelines about how the phones would be used. In the process, Candace talked to a lot of parents and she kept hearing the same worries about teens and technology worries like these.

[Candace Odgers]

How do I know who my kid is interacting with? How should I limit their exposure? Kids these days don't know how to interact anymore. They're kind of glued to their phone.

[Emily Hanford]

So in addition to using mobile technology as a tool to understand more about adolescent lives, Candace's team decided to take on another research focus too. Basically, they'd try to get to the bottom of the fears they were hearing about from parents. Is there something to be afraid of when it comes to teens and their phones? And if so, what?

[Candace Odgers]

Investigators in Alamance county have arrested half

[Emily Hanford]

a dozen students on charges of cyberbullying.

[Jackson Marcellus]

They're accused of using Facebook to bully three of their scores of students, some of them only in middle school, suspected of trading naked pictures on their phones using secret apps designed to hide it all from their parents and teachers.

[Emily Hanford]

Candice and her colleagues looked at media reports like these. And they also reviewed as much scientific data as they could find. Peer reviewed studies, parent surveys in depth, personal interviews, and case studies. They wanted to know what existing research says about how mobile technologies may be influencing adolescents defined as people aged 12 to 20. Based on that review, Candice and one of her graduate students published a paper detailing seven common fears parents have and whether those fears are justified. And just to be clear, we're focusing on mobile technologies here. Think the smartphone, not the Xbox. So let's look at what they uncovered. We'll start with one concern that's probably been around the longest, that an adolescent will meet a sexual predator online. In other words, good old fashioned stranger danger. For the most part, Candice says, you can lay that concern to rest.

[Candace Odgers]

This has evolved quite a bit. The idea of stranger danger online was something that we initially saw when people started to go online in chat rooms.

[Emily Hanford]

Chat rooms, they're not much of a thing anymore.

[Candace Odgers]

Technology's really evolved to. It's part of our everyday lives. And when we start to look at who kids are interacting with, their online and their offline networks look very similar, in fact, almost identical. And there's very few interactions that are really with strangers.

[Emily Hanford]

So adolescents are mostly communicating online with people they know. But that leads to another parent fear, cyberbullying. That's when people use technology as a tool to harass or shame others. Research shows more than 90% of parents worry about cyberbullying. The very week we were putting this show together, there was a horrible story in the national news about a teen suicide. In response to cyberbullying, Candace's analysis found that technology has given bullying a new form but by and large, young people who are victimized online are the same ones who are at risk of bullying in the real world. And so armed with this information, adults can, in the real world, keep an eye on the most vulnerable kids.

[Candace Odgers]

And the encouraging part about that is that the interventions that target bullying in general also tend to reduce cyberbullying. So it's really, you know, for a lot of this, the medium is a little bit different, but all of the things that we know about what are risks for kids, what interventions might work for kids, a lot of those lessons translate because kids aren't becoming a completely different person online. It's really just a medium through which they express their identities, through which they communicate with their friends. They kind of engage in the tasks of daily life.

[Emily Hanford]

A third parent fear, in addition to cyberbullying and stranger danger, is time. Specifically the amount of time adolescents spend online. If the average adolescent is spending an unprecedented amount of time on screens and, and mobile phones are a part of that, are they missing out on real life? And does this interfere with their ability to have meaningful in person relationships?

[Candace Odgers]

So the worry often is, and this is something Sherry Turkle, a wonderful professor at mit, has explored a lot. Are kids, you know, alone together? When you see a group of kids and they're all staring at their devices, are they being able to practice the kind of communication skills they need, develop the social skills they'll need later in life? And the immediate reaction from adults to see that is no, they're losing out on all these opportunities for positive social development. But when you look at the longitudinal research, what you find is that kids who are kind of socially skilled early on tend to have more online communication, higher frequency, and that in turn predicts better quality relationship later on.

[Emily Hanford]

Kanta says there's little evidence that time spent online will lead to social isolation. For the most part, research over the last decade has shown adolescents who are online a lot of have higher quality friendships and an increased feeling of belonging. There's even some evidence that spending time online can help teens who are shy build social skills. Starting today, there's going to be a one week ban on all cell phones, texting, IMing, video chatting, video gaming, anything on the Internet.

[Candace Odgers]

How am I supposed to do my

[Emily Hanford]

homework the way I did with a chisel on a piece of stone?

[Candace Odgers]

Phil can't unplug my phony bone.

[Emily Hanford]

I have a huge science paper due and we have a great set of encyclopedias somewhere. What do you think the public? This clip from the ABC show Modern Family brings us to Another Are mobile phones creating a digital divide with parents? Candice Odgers finds no. While technology use may take away from face to face time kids spend with their parents, it doesn't necessarily weaken parent child relationships. In some cases, it might even strengthen those relationships. Imagine a teen whose parents are divorced. He lives with his mom in one city while his dad lives in another. Technology can help keep the relationship relevant.

[Jackson Marcellus]

This is like my Instagram. This is like where I post my pictures and stuff about my life.

[Emily Hanford]

This is Jackson again. He's listing the places he shares his personal information on the Internet.

[Jackson Marcellus]

A lot of pictures of me with my friends or me playing basketball or baseball. And then this is like my story, which is stuff that happens on a daily basis. And then my Snapchat is like, it's really more. I send it out to just my friends. So like I have a Snapchat from George, snapped him back, got a Snapchat from Ella, and he sent a selfie back. And then boom.

[Emily Hanford]

That raises another question. Are teens like Jackson putting too much personal information out there for the world to see? Are they leaving a digital archive that could damage their lives in the future? Researchers don't really know the answers to those questions yet. More research will be needed as the current generation ages to know whether the online archiving of young people's experiences has a cost. But what the research does show is that teens use technology to do really creative things. This generation may be more creative and innovative than their parents, in part because of technology. So those are the things that parents worry about but maybe shouldn't. But Candice found there are a number of concerns parents have that are definitely justified. Multitasking for one teens and the rest of us can be easily distracted by all the content that's available to us online, splitting our focus, making it hard to concentrate on any one thing for very long. There's been a bunch of research on this in adults and college students. It shows that digital multitasking can lead to increased errors on tasks and poorer grades. It seems likely the same things would be happening to teens. But in fact, there hasn't been much research yet on teens and digital multitasking. There is data that shows the ease with which photos and videos can be created and shared is creating new risks. Estimates vary, but a significant percentage of adolescents participate in sharing naked photos and videos. In other words, sexting. As many as 30% of older teens do it, and some younger teens as well. It's happening and parents should be alert for it. Finally, 80% of teens who own mobile Phones report that when they go to bed they bring their phones with them. And the evidence from Candice Odgers review of the available data is clear. With their phones in the bedroom, adolescents do not get a good night's sleep.

[Candace Odgers]

Yeah, this is one of the areas. After I wrote the section, the review, I got all the devices out of every bedroom in my house. And so this is actually a place where we have some pretty compelling evidence from randomized controlled trials where you bring people into sleep lab and you get them to read information on paper versus on a screen. And we find just that changing of how you deliver the information. There's disruption in the circadian rhythm, there's disruption in sleep in terms of the amount of time in deep sleep. We know with kids there's some displacement of time sleeping. When you log the time they start sending the majority of their text messages, it's late at night. And then interestingly, in some follow up studies that have looked at kids having their phone in their bedroom, about 25% of mobile phone owners sleep with their phone under their pillow. Not to miss a text or a message at night.

[Emily Hanford]

That's right. One in four of us, all of us, not just teens, sleep with our phones under our pillows. Candice says the research is really clear. Phones should not be in the bedroom at all. And if your teen or your spouse or you say well the phone's my alarm clock, I have to have it in the bedroom, guess what? You can purchase an alarm clock. They still make them. Candice published a paper in an academic journal about what she learned when it comes to teens and digital devices. It's called Seven Fears and the Science of How Mobile Technologies May Be Influencing Adolescents in the Digital Age. She's also written several articles and op EDS about her findings. The gist of what she's written is don't worry so much about these technologies. There are some downsides, yes, but there are many upsides. Mobile technologies are likely a net benefit for kids today. Keeping long distance friendships alive. For example, as in the case of Jackson and Omar. For the most part when Candace hears from readers though, they're still mostly scared and worried about the role of mobile technology in kids lives.

[Candace Odgers]

This is a hard topic for people and when things go wrong in parenting and things go wrong in kids life, it's terrifying for parents. And technology might be in some cases a place to look for the source of the problem. And you know, we might want to take a moment and think about whether that's really the source.

[Emily Hanford]

Has there ever been a parent who didn't worry about how their teens spent their free time? Candice asks.

[Candace Odgers]

And you saw it with comic books, you saw it with the radio, you saw it with the romance novel. That adults have a tendency to view things that kids are doing or spending a lot of time on as negative towards their development. And I think the other thing not to forget is we know a tremendous amount of kids of what's good for kids, what leads to risky behavior, what leads to negative consequences. And it's not that those rules suddenly don't apply. This isn't an entirely new world. This is a new tool that those same types of stories and things are playing out on.

[Jackson Marcellus]

How long do you think that we will be friends?

[Emily Hanford]

This is Jackson and Omar again, our long distance best friends.

[Omar Mohammed]

Mm.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Can't stay for life, I hope.

[Omar Mohammed]

Yeah.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Hopefully if we're still friends now, there's nothing. There's nothing that can change it. Like.

[Omar Mohammed]

Yeah, true.

[Jackson Marcellus]

That's a wrap.

[Omar Mohammed]

Okay.

[Jackson Marcellus]

All right. I'll see you.

[Omar Mohammed]

All right. Later.

[Emily Hanford]

Ways and Means is produced by Carol Jackson, Allison Jones and Karen Kemp. Thanks to Jackson Marcellus and Omar Mohammed for giving us a peek at their friendship. Candice Odgers is the professor of public policy, psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and the associate director of the center for Child and Family Policy at Duke. The Seven fears paper we've been talking about was published by the association for Psychological Science. The link will be on our website, waysandmeanshow.org we'll also link to the latest recommendations for children's media use from the American Academy of Pediatrics for teens. The Academy suggests families designate media free times together, such as during dinner or while driving, as well as media free locations at home, such as bedrooms. The Academy of Pediatrics also offers an interactive planner to help families develop a digital strategy. Our assistant producer is Joel Luther. Kathryn Zhou creates our episode art. We get engineering help from Johnny Vincevans. Until next time, I'm Emily Hanford.

[Jackson Marcellus]

It's amazing how such a simple thing like a phone can become such a big problem. So many other things have come up with the kids. We've managed to solve them and here we are hung up on the phone.

[Candace Odgers]

Hung up.

[Jackson Marcellus]

Mike, I wasn't trying to be funny. I'm serious. There's got to be a solution to this. There must be some way to keep those kids from using that phone 24 hours a day.