00:02:49.340Absolutely. A hundred percent. My almost seven year old is a dream. I mean, he's just a delight. And I know I know that three and four suck and then it gets better.
00:02:58.760That's right. Right. Yeah. We don't have to pretend they don't suck. They do. They do.0.94
00:03:03.280You also have an Instagram page that I really like called The Smartphone Effect MD. And this I mean, this is clearly something that I think about literally every day.
00:03:15.880You know, what are screens doing to our kids? What is social media doing to our kids? There's a reason that the anxious generation has been on the bestseller list for a gazillion weeks now. I would love to hear a little bit of just no bullshit talk about what we're dealing with here.
00:03:34.360yeah so I mean the reason the whole reason I started the Instagram page and it basically
00:03:43.360became a passion project of mine and I've kind of poured all of my free time if there is such a
00:03:50.700thing into this is because I feel like I've organically come across these same trends that
00:03:58.200Jonathan Hyde is, you know, telling the world about in his book now. And we're just seeing
00:04:05.700that kids are struggling. And, you know, I'm not here to say that smartphones and social media are
00:04:14.340the only reason for that. I don't think that that's the only reason, obviously, but I think
00:04:19.660it's a huge reason for it. And I think that we're just, you know, I am seeing clinically and all
00:04:26.980these people are speaking out and saying you know the kids are not okay we're seeing more depression
00:04:32.660more anxiety more eating disorders self-harm most kids that come in about their mental health are
00:04:40.420telling me that they have suicidal thoughts like it's just it becomes so extreme in such a short
00:04:47.420amount of time even in the time that I've been practicing which you know including my med school
00:04:52.700in residency has been like 15 years it's it's just been such a marked change and i think this is
00:05:00.320at the core of a lot of it i do too i do too and you know i don't love the critics who say
00:05:08.520well the studies are flawed there's not exact correlation when literally everyone who spends0.99
00:05:18.320time with children is ready to say, shit, there's a problem. The kids are not OK. And so why don't we0.99
00:05:25.840have a conversation about it? Why don't we just talk about what's going on and what we could
00:05:30.180possibly do? Like, how how do we proceed? How do we have a smart conversation about this going
00:05:37.260forward instead of instead of making it screens or no screens or and just pitting women, mostly0.99
00:05:43.300mothers against each other let's just talk let's talk about what's going on and what what we're
00:05:50.320seeing and what possible fixes could be so everyone can figure it out for themselves
00:05:54.960yeah and i feel like it's really important to realize that i mean data always lags behind
00:06:02.280real life and what's actually going on right um and so there's i keep saying you yeah you keep
00:06:10.620hearing that argument of of well we just we don't know for sure and we need to teach them to use the
00:06:17.540screens responsibly and it's like but we have enough evidence to know I think for sure that
00:06:24.580it's not safe like we really have enough evidence to say that we need to be proceeding with caution
00:06:32.340and you know I wrote this in a post the other day I'm like if if someone said that data had come out
00:06:39.420that bananas cause cancer. You probably would not eat bananas or feed your kid bananas if there was
00:06:47.360decent evidence about that because you're erring on the side of caution. Like, why are we not doing
00:06:51.880that? A hundred percent. I mean, one article comes out saying that some pouch of applesauce
00:06:58.320has something weird in it and everyone freaks out and throws out all the applesauce. I think that
00:07:03.860with the phones, we kind of tread lightly around it and walk on eggshells because they're things
00:07:09.140that we have and we want and we don't want to give them up and that's fine though because we're
00:07:13.700adults with fully formed brains and we are now you know we can make decisions for ourselves but
00:07:20.960for our kids like we have to be their frontal lobe that is not fully developed and we have to
00:07:26.640make decisions that are going to benefit them in the long term not just the short term because
00:07:31.520they like how social media make them feel for this moment like that's not really what we should
00:07:36.900be thinking about, I don't think. Exactly. Exactly. And that's what I think we have to
00:07:41.320remember. We're the adults in the room. We get to we get to make decisions and sometimes they're
00:07:46.700hard decisions and sometimes they're maybe annoying decisions. But it's our job as the
00:07:52.360grownups. It just is. It really is. And again, I think right now it really is going to be every
00:08:00.620parent deciding for themselves how to how to navigate this, how to talk to their kids. We
00:08:06.320all know our own kids best like we know we know what they need um and so what I love I love the
00:08:13.620fact that you are giving tips but you're not preachy about it you're not judgy about it uh
00:08:20.740you're a doctor you're a doctor and you're like this is what I see and and this is this is what
00:08:25.680might be able to help you and I really like that yeah I think I think that's the only way to really
00:08:32.260get through to people I often think you know it you know this as well as anyone else like in social
00:08:37.400media I feel like if you came out with the most extreme views and this is how you have to do it
00:08:42.140I probably would have more of a following because that's what gets the you know the big lights and
00:08:47.480all the views but I I don't think that that's actually going to send the right message to
00:08:52.080people and like you say everybody knows their kid best um and it's just to me education is power
00:08:59.200And I think a lot of the parents who are wrapped up in, you know, feeling like they've lost their child to social media or video games or whatever, it's because they don't have that education yet.
00:09:13.540They haven't seen the information or the data.
00:09:16.680And so if you know what's going on, then you can make the best decision.
00:09:20.620But if you don't know what's going on, then you can't really.
00:09:24.420You can't. You're kind of flying blind.
00:09:25.800I loved a fact that you posted the other day that 24% of 5- to 7-year-olds own their own smartphone.
00:10:18.060You know, I've also said my kids definitely watch age inappropriate movies.
00:10:21.820um and i dare anyone to judge me dare you i'm like yeah so what they love jurassic park yeah
00:10:30.380it's so different though right like so it's so so different but i put that out there to know you
00:10:37.020know i'm not some like high on a pedestal mom that's anti-screen time we do call youtube poop
00:10:44.680tube in our house to identify it as something other than tv or movie content to just say hey
00:10:53.460i don't think all of this is good for you and if we're on youtube together which is the only time
00:10:58.620they're allowed to be on it let's talk about what's good and what's bad that's how i've started
00:11:02.860the conversation with my kids yeah for sure yeah youtube youtube is a slippery slope it's it's one
00:11:09.600of those ones that has good and has lots of bad. And I think YouTube is probably best used in
00:11:16.400common areas of the home with, you know, the parental controls. The YouTube parental controls
00:11:21.020are actually pretty decent. They're pretty decent. If you learn how to use them, though,
00:11:24.500YouTube doesn't make it easy. They don't make it easy to use them, I don't think. I don't think
00:11:28.360it's necessarily intuitive. And a lot of people just don't even know they exist. Again, there's
00:11:32.860a lot of resources that you can use but um yeah so but yeah but also some good some good right
00:11:40.420like we we are big fans of mark rober and the squirrel mazes uh he's a nasa scientist who
00:11:47.260builds cool shit for kids we we get his monthly build box and his his stuff is on youtube
00:11:52.380and so and you know what again common areas with a parent watching0.97
00:11:57.500but this huge difference between co-viewing and just leaving your kid in the basement by
00:12:04.260themselves for hours on end to watch whatever they get themselves into right like there's a
00:12:09.120huge difference huge difference now i want to do i want to i want to ask you all of my questions
00:12:15.460like i'm just i'm always dying to to get an expert on this microphone to be like yeah just fix
00:12:21.560everything from me and so i'm just going to start i'm just going to rapid fire ask you some things
00:12:27.340that i'm curious about so if you think your child is ready for a basic phone or watch which mine is
00:12:36.900not yet my seven-year-old but like like we saw from that statistic some kids already have them
00:12:43.700and the asking school is going to get more as he does more things independently what are your tips
00:12:49.040for for when you think kids are ready and once they're ready what do you give to them
00:12:54.060With the watches or the first device, I feel like have them on your child's person when they are out of the house, when they need them.
00:13:04.680And when they don't need them, take them off their bodies because that's going to cut off that rush or that dopamine that they get from them, right?
00:13:33.160And so when you say, okay, I think it's time that we get a simple device that we can keep in touch with each other, you also should start having those conversations around social media.
00:13:44.580Like, I think that the conversations around social media should start happening years before the child actually gets the phone.
00:13:52.960Yeah. And so then and then beyond that, after the safety, I think the real reason that parents want to give the phone is because they don't want their child to be left out.
00:14:02.520They don't want to be a social pariah. And so I try to say to parents, OK, then try to get creative first.
00:14:11.240Like before you give the smartphone, can you get creative if they want social media because they have a team that's on an Instagram page or there's an app for school or something?
00:14:22.960I'm pretty sure that you can get around that without them having their own device.
00:14:27.320They can use it on your device for periods of time.
00:14:30.380They can use it on the family desktop for periods of time.
00:14:33.860So you can get through a little bit more time that way, I think.
00:14:39.220And when we get back, I want to hear when you think that they're ready to move forward from that device.
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00:15:26.640Okay, and we are back. We are answering all of my burning questions about kids and devices and
00:15:33.420social media. And my next one is, when are kids ready to take the step up from, say, a flip phone
00:15:40.880smartwatch whatever we want to use to find them to track them uh to the smarter phone
00:15:48.620yeah so I tried to really hard with this and I know there's a lot of answers out there and I
00:15:55.060I've framed this really from like my clinical perspective and just sort of balancing harm
00:16:04.120and benefit. And so I've packaged it into these, I call it the four R's, just to try to make it0.94
00:16:11.700somewhat recitable for people. So the four R's are responsible, respectful, risk-aware,
00:16:22.060and resilient. So I'll go over all of those one by one. Yes, please do. Responsible is, okay,
00:16:29.000does your child put forth a good effort at school are they attending school do they do their homework
00:16:36.120and their chores without a huge fight you know could they stay on their own um at home for a
00:16:42.120few hours without you can they talk for themselves at the doctor's office or order their own food at
00:16:47.580the restaurant like things that i think are very basic if you're going to have a big responsibility
00:16:52.080responsibility like the whole internet in your pocket the whole internet in your pocket that's
00:16:57.020a big responsibility um okay and then number two respectful so do they respect your household
00:17:05.460boundaries now like do they sneak around already and break rules do they respect their friends and
00:17:12.940their teachers because if they're not respectful of their real life relationships now they're not
00:17:20.460going to be respectful online and they're much more likely to get into trouble online so that's
00:17:25.020respectful um risk aware so i think this is a big one your child should not have a smartphone in
00:17:33.840their pocket without understanding and really appreciating the risks online so have you sat
00:17:40.780down and talked to them about pornography because we know the average age that kids are seeing porn
00:17:46.880is 12 um have you talked about sextortion i mean this is on that we can talk more about this after
00:17:54.840But this is this is on the rise in terms of boys being targeted for money and sextorted for nude imagery and committing suicide over it.
00:18:06.280You know, have you talked to them about child sexual abuse material and how that stuff can be said?
00:18:13.180Like these are heavy, heavy topics and I don't think parents want to talk about it.
00:18:18.020And it sounds crazy to even talk about that with a 10 year old, but kids are getting on the Internet at 10 without knowing about any of this stuff.
00:18:27.620So I think kids need to be risk aware.
00:18:30.200They need to be able to tell you what it's about and really, truly have empathy for it and understand what the ramifications of that are.
00:18:38.780Yeah. And I think that that is fair, right?
00:18:40.600If it is on the Internet and it is available to them, then you were and if they're going to have access, you have to be talking about it.
00:18:55.440And I know that it's uncomfortable for us, but also they want to learn things and they want to learn things in an age appropriate way from you.
00:19:04.080We were driving to New York for a book event the other day, and I had the baby and my almost seven-year-old were driving through the Lincoln Tunnel.
00:19:14.620And my boy was like, so, President Lincoln, not the first president, but famous.
00:19:25.980And I was like, well, he was the president during the Civil War, and he helped to end slavery.
00:19:32.140And he's like, slavery. Yeah. Can you explain? And I'm like, OK, great. We're going to talk about slavery while we're driving through the Lincoln Tunnel. Now is the time for that. And we did. We had a very nuanced, age-appropriate conversation that was our starter conversation.0.60
00:19:48.480but I was really glad that we got to do that and then and then we get to our hotel in lower
00:19:55.360Manhattan which has a window in in the shower uh which is very exciting when there's a big window
00:20:01.760that you can look out of in the bathtub and we're looking at the world trade center of which he has
00:20:09.120looked up before there used to be two other world trade centers and now he wants to know where those
00:20:13.720went why there is the new one and then we had to talk about 9-11 so you know these things come up
00:20:19.260and i'm i don't brush them off i try to talk about them and i think that we should feel the same way
00:20:25.100if all of a sudden they have access to the internet then it's our turn it's our it's our
00:20:28.620duty to be having those conversations yeah because otherwise they're going to learn about it
00:20:33.240from tiktok and from tiktok buying because everything will be wrong because everyone i
00:20:41.260know that gets their information from tiktok these days is very intensely confused about the world
00:20:48.200well and that that is a good segue into my last r because i think that is so important
00:20:55.740when we're thinking about giving our kids social media is i say the word resilient because it
00:21:01.840starts with an r and it's the closest i could get but i'm thinking are they resilient in the sense
00:21:06.500that do they already have a sense of who they are as a human being in the real world? Because
00:21:13.800as soon as you go online, you are going to have billions of people trying to tell you who to be
00:21:20.100and who you are and what you should look like. And I think, you know, your kid should have a solid
00:21:25.800sense of confidence and, you know, a solid interest in other things and endeavors outside
00:21:35.720of the internet because I really think you can so so easily get lost in that big hole of
00:21:44.520the internet telling you how you should feel and what you think and so that's my last hour and I
00:21:51.420think that's probably the most important and I feel like that's the one that leads me to think
00:21:56.660you know a lot of people throughout the the ages right I don't like to say there's a specific age
00:22:01.500that kids are ready because truly there are some 13 year olds that probably will do just they will
00:22:08.120do just fine on social media um and there's some 25 year olds who should not be on social media
00:22:15.180and 45 year olds that should not be on social media so it's really knowing your kid and um not
00:22:21.800an age bracket i don't think which i love and i think that that is so true i you know we were
00:22:28.920recently hanging out with my friend's kids who are 13 and 11 and they were using their phones
00:22:37.740uh one of them was using them doing miraculous things for me on canva i mean she was just
00:22:43.840designing entire ad campaigns for me um and the other was teaching herself mandarin on duolingo
00:22:49.580oh my gosh right and i'm like fuck these kids are great but uh but also like they're super smart0.98
00:22:56.800responsible respectful kids and their parents knew that like they were ready and there there's0.98
00:23:03.880also tools on that phone for them to use and to improve their lives but i looked at them and i'm
00:23:08.540like yeah you guys are good i'm not worried about you it's knowing your kid like i i think that my
00:23:14.440seven-year-old you know he's the kind of kid who may be ready to have a phone if he wants one i
00:23:20.260mean he's like a knowledge freak he just wants to absorb literally all of the knowledge in the world
00:23:24.320yeah uh i recently got him a set of old book encyclopedias oh that's so cute those those
00:23:32.560things are hard to come by these days i thought that i would just be able to like go to a flea
00:23:36.360market and pick them up but they are going for cash money at um flea markets now like and on
00:23:42.500ebay because they're relics and also because people want their kids to get offline yeah um
00:23:47.900and so he's like devouring them right meanwhile you know my younger one i'm like i don't know
00:23:53.180if we should ever have you on social media yeah it's so true like kids are so different and
00:23:59.100i will say like there are even there's gonna always be kids who will be great and listen
00:24:07.060to boundaries and i think that that's also why when you think your kid is ready you have to
00:24:13.660pair that responsibility with boundaries right away because i think any kid even if they are
00:24:21.800ready any kid given unlimited access to the internet could get lost and could lose themselves
00:24:32.060and so it is a partnership there i think between the two any human i mean how many men have we
00:24:38.480seen go down a rabbit hole of being radicalized into you know the cults of angry men yes yes
00:25:58.600What it seems like is happening is when kids go online to supplement their real world relationship.
00:26:08.560So they're going to chat with their friend, connect, make plans to meet up, this kind of thing.
00:26:14.540this kind of connection um can be great it can be totally fine um provided that the time spent
00:26:23.000doing that is also not interfering with sleep and other responsibilities and things like that
00:26:30.480um where we seem to run into trouble is when kids are a spending two hours or more two or two to
00:26:42.920three hours or more is when you see the harms and the loneliness really seem to go up so there's a
00:26:48.920time component to this and there's also um when they're going online to seek connection and so
00:26:59.940you know this is where because because one of the arguments that you'll hear a lot is well social
00:27:05.200media is really great for um certain minorities that are going online to connect with other people
00:27:10.920that they they don't necessarily have around them and i i totally agree with that um i think it can
00:27:17.760be a really useful tool but if you're doing that to excess and you're therefore only interacting
00:27:26.440with people that you've met online that have the same views as you and you're spending several
00:27:34.560hours a day online doing that when you do that in a longer duration of time like over months
00:27:42.960years I think that that still leads to loneliness and it's ultimately because we're social beings
00:27:50.020and we need to be interacting with each other in real life it makes so much sense and you have
00:27:56.500really great tips too uh you know if your kid is a gamer or you know like me if your kid is a kid
00:28:04.040who really likes to look up information you recommend hey great but maybe counteract that
00:28:09.560with getting up and having some exercise with moving their bodies like what can that do to help
00:28:13.740kids yeah so one of the you know when I think about the harms of social media I think about
00:28:22.140it in those sort of two big windows of it's the time and it's the content so I think we've you
00:28:27.840know we touched on the content piece but the time piece is really important like if you're spending
00:28:35.060we know that kids are spending a median of like four and a half hours on social media alone
00:28:42.220that's what say they're spending nine hours a day on screens not including at school so
00:28:48.680significant periods of time if you're not taking breaks from that and moving your body I mean we
00:28:55.780know that physical activity is good for mental health we know that meditation is good for health
00:29:01.640mental health like all of these things that if you're just looking into a screen the whole time
00:29:07.460it's it's just not the recipe you need the whole recipe to be a happy healthy individual so it's
00:29:15.340really just about balance balance is the key that i say on a lot of my posts is is so necessary so
00:29:22.100necessary so necessary and i don't think we can say it enough balance balance balance right and
00:29:26.740you know we're we're about to start something on the podcast where my husband sweet sweet nick
00:29:32.160astor and i are going to read the anxious generation together uh and it's kind of the
00:29:37.660anxious generation book club and we're just going to dissect it chapter by chapter and talk about
00:29:43.780our reactions to it as parents who aren't there yet but we will be right like we're preparing
00:29:49.620in the same way that i'm trying to prepare for menopause and i'm like what can i do to stop it
00:29:54.900how can i make it not happen friends um but so i think that'll that'll be really really interesting
00:30:01.640because he and i are very different like he does not you know he doesn't get worked up about a lot
00:30:06.460of things he's like that's gonna be fine but then other things he's psycho about um it's very very
00:30:12.700funny to watch he's like no sugar at all um and then he's like they can watch all the tv they want
00:30:18.600And they're like, real? They could have some fucking lucky charms. I don't care.0.99
00:30:23.200I'd be interested to know what he thinks of social media then, because I often think of the comparison between sugar and social media, right?
00:30:31.920Like they're both addictive substances.
00:30:35.060And, you know, if you gave a child a bowl full of candy that they carried around with them 24-7,
00:30:41.860And, well, I think we all agree that they're going to get addicted and have physical and, you know, psychological problems from that.
00:30:49.520But if you parallel that to social media, that's what we're doing, but with a way more addictive substance.
00:31:00.360Well, I mean, that's part of the reason that I think it'll be interesting to do it with him, because he's very dismissive of social media because he's not on it.
00:31:06.540and so he's like whatever it's not that big a deal is usually his party line on this and so i want to
00:31:13.580see what yeah i want to see what he thinks and it'll be fun um be fun to do this little little
00:31:18.000book club together um well yeah right and it's really like i feel like everything that he talks
00:31:25.200about is mirroring what i keep seeing clinically like everything i everything he's i have yet to
00:31:32.060read I'm not fully through it yet but I've yet to read anything that I really disagree with so I
00:31:37.860think he's he's really on to something well and what do you what do you see clinically uh and
00:31:44.060you've been doing this for a long time now and like you said things have changed so fast that
00:31:49.740it's hard to get a grip on it what are you seeing from kids and teens yeah so and this is this is
00:31:55.980how i kind of just fell into this as i was you know over the years i've seen more kids coming
00:32:05.360in in general for mental health so kids make up many of my appointments um and what we're seeing
00:32:13.700so i don't it's it's maybe different in the states but in canada um because we have publicly funded
00:32:19.400health care we you know we don't have a lot of access to specialists and things like that so
00:32:23.420Family doctors do a lot of mental health treatment and diagnosis on our own, and we manage a lot of it.
00:32:31.280And so over the years, it's just been getting more complex where I'm seeing kids come in and they're an array of different things.
00:32:40.260They're more anxious. They're more depressed.
00:32:43.520They are not wanting to go to school or are not attending school.
00:32:49.120They have very poor motivation to get schoolwork done.
00:32:53.420Um, and, and, you know, so before I kind of figured out this connection, they would check
00:32:59.980the boxes for these different diagnoses and then, okay, let's start medication and let's