Managing kids screen time

If you feel stressed about how much your kids are glued to their iPad, phone or tv screen then you’re not alone! Host Amelia Phillips chats to social researcher David Gillespie about whether or not too much screen time is damaging for our kids, recognising signs of screen addiction and the best ways to manage your kids screen time if they are having too much of it. 

Below is an unedited transcript of the podcast episode:

Last year we moved into a furnished rental that came with a fully set up Mario Brothers Mario Cart CDs, were in there ready to go. So Tim and I thought, What fun, you know, I remember loving Mario on my game boy, when I was a kid. So what began as this fun family game time on an occasional Sunday has now become a constant source of stress and negotiation.

We’ve had to set up super strict weekend only rules, and even then it can cause drama and tears. Locke, my seven year old is just obsessed. So much so that he would rather turn down a play date than miss his scheduled game time. It’s funny though, my six year old daughter, Charlotte, she wouldn’t care less.

So how’s this going to be when Lockey learns that there are more games out there, that one day he’ll have a phone with games and social media on it? When I think about screens, social media, gaming, and my kids, it really worries me.

This is healthy her with Amelia Phis. As moms, we are the gatekeepers of screen time, but how do we know what’s best for our kids? It can be a source of stress for us. Moms trying to navigate this, so I wanna understand what the risks of too much screen time are, what the ideal management of screens are, because sometimes maybe they can be helpful.

And also how to lead by example. David Gillespie is a former lawyer turned bestselling author who has published the book, Teen Brain, Looking at the addictive impact of technology on our children. Thanks so much for joining me today, David. Pleasure. Now, as a mom, managing screen time has already become a source of stress and worry for me, and my kids are seven and under, so I imagine I’m not alone in feeling this way, and other moms are just as worried as me.

Yeah, look, um, Tim Brain’s been out for a little while now, and, uh, the feedback on it has been very significant. Uh, in the book I talk about some of the very significant tr increases in trends in relation to gaming, social media, uh, and the consequence, uh, flow ons from those, which are things like, uh, addiction, uh, ultimately anxiety and depression in the teenage years.

And the, the trends in all of those things are very significant, but you still wouldn’t believe it until you saw. The feedback you get from readers, uh, which is almost every single mother , that, that attends one of my talks that, that sits in an audience, has a story like yours or worse, uh, where they’re dealing every day.

With keeping kids away from something that’s clearly addictive. Now, they don’t need, uh, medical definitions of addiction, uh, to understand that they just see how their kids behave. Uh, if it wasn’t addictive, it’d be easy to take it away. Uh, and it’s never easy to take it away. Yeah. I was fascinated to read a 2015 poll by the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne that identified children’s excessive screen time as the number one concern for parents like overtaking traditional.

Like obesity or not getting enough physical activity, like, it really surprised me that it was the number one. It’s because of the effect it has on the kids. It, it, it affects their behavior. It affects. Preparedness to help around the house, to interact with their siblings and their parents, uh, to be involved in life at all.

They’d always rather be doing something on their screen, and that’s in assured them behaving like addicts. And no one wants a bunch of addicts as kids. Well, I mean, the tagline for your book is why screens are making your teenager depressed, anxious, and prone to lifelong addictive illness, and how to stop it now.

Oh my goodness, David, that’s pretty alarming. Like can you tell us what is it about screens that leads to depression, anxiety, and addiction. So it’s not the screens themselves, A computer screen can have anything on it, but just like a television screen can have anything on it. It’s a very, very small subset of applications which are written explicitly to manipulate the reward system in.

Uh, this is not me making stuff up. The, the people who write this code are in the industry called Dopamine Hackers, and the reason they’re called dopamine hackers is because dopamine is the brain neurochemical that is being used. To manipulate behavior. It’s the way our reward system works. And this software is designed to use it to hook people on these, these things.

Now, sometimes it’s games. Games is, are designed more for boys than for girls. Uh, they manipulate a part of the boys reward system, which is rewarded by, um, uh, I guess, um, near death experience. , um, hard, hard to do in real life, but, but easy to simulate in a. And so, uh, boys respond very well to that. Uh, social media type applications are, are designed to manipulate girls, uh, manipulating something called the oxytocin response, uh, where girls react to increased social feedback.

So every time they get a, like they get a spike in the same way the boy gets the same spike every time they kill somebody in a game. Now those things are done very much on purpose, and the reason they’re done on purpose is because they cost billions of dollars to make these these pieces of software, and then they give them away for free, which is an anti idiotic business model unless you’ve got some way of getting people to keep using it.

Instead of the competition, which is also free. Uh, so the one that has the best, most addictive product is the one that wins. I’ve heard you refer to these pathways as danger porn. Yes. And approval porn. Yes. Do you wanna elaborate on that? I think that’s actually a really great analogy for us mums, cuz I think we can probably relate to both of them.

Well, uh, porn is just a, a shorthand way of saying stimula. Just like the classic porn, sexual porn is a simulation of sex. It’s a simulation, which is good enough for our reward pathways. It’s enough to stimulate the dopamine response to make us want to keep hitting back at that same thing again. Uh, so I coined the term danger porn to describe gambling and gaming, both of which have a lot of similarities, both of which are designed.

To excite danger signals in boys, uh, which they find addictive, uh, for very good evolutionary reasons. And approval porn is designed for girls because girls are more responsive to social feedback, which is, uh, when. They do something that others approve of, and those others show them that they approve of it.

They get that feedback, which is just as good a hit as for the boys. Now that approval porn is very explicitly designed to manipulate that system. It’s very hard in real life to get the kind of levels of approval that you would find addictive. Um, without a game, in order to do it, you would have to go out socially, uh, do things that your friends approved of and have them show them that, to show you that they approved of them.

Now doing that at a rate of hundreds an hour, impossible. Doing it in software. Very, very easy. Same thing for boys. You would have to go out and kill hundreds of your friends every hour, uh, to get the same effect as the games can simulate. So are you saying that because of this kind of rapid reward feedback loop that happens online, that is what triggers.

The addictive behavior because the teens are always, they need more of a hit the next time, cuz they’re now used to getting it at such high doses. It feeds that addictive loop. Yes. So how you turn rewarding to addiction. Is you have more dopamine. Dopamine is the bit of the reward system that makes us chase reward.

It’s, it makes us sharp, it makes us edgy, it makes us anxious, um, until we get the reward. So it makes us do that. Every squared of dopamine makes us do that. Now, there are a couple of ways to increase the amount of dopamine that we get, have the reward more often. The trouble is that in real life rewards are not that frequent.

Um, you don’t have sex a hundred times an hour. You don’t play games a hundred times. You don’t kill your friends a hundred times an hour. You don’t get approval a hundred times an hour. It’s very, very hard to get it at a frequent high enough frequency that you turn reward into addiction. The other way, of course, to spike dopamine is to artificially do it with chemicals, which is what drugs do.

So things, uh, like speed, ecstasy, uh, caffeine, sugar, alcohol, or artificially elevate dopamine using a chemical mechanism. These things, the things we’re talking about, the apps, Do it with frequency, which is hit that dopamine button hundreds of times an hour, and you get the same result. I would argue though that some screen time can be helpful.

I mean, particularly in this post covid world where a lot of. Interactions have been happening online or you’ve got, you know, educational activities, um, or even camaraderie from interacting with each other. I mean, are you completely against sort of screen time or do you feel that there are some helpful elements?

I know it’s also reduced some of the other issues that worried parents around teenage pregnancy, drug use, violent behavior, et c. Okay, so taking that last bit first and then we’ll come back to jet screen time in general, uh, in relation to addictive behavior, if you look at the statistics over the last 20 years of addictive behavior, um, so before screens, so before the apple iPad, which was probably the first major use of screens came out in 2011.

Uh, before that, Uh, people had to do dangerous things in order to get to addictive substances. So they had to take risks, get access to alcohol, get access to more dangerous drugs, um, do risky things, which is what turns the boys’ reward centers on. Um, all of those things are hard to do and not everybody in the population can do them.

In fact, a relatively small percentage of the population too, uh, in fact, The amount of that occurring had been increasing fairly relentlessly for the three decades before the Apple iPad was released. When it was released, they all dropped off a cliff. So all the dangerous behavior. So teenage pregnancies are teenage violence, teenage alcoholism, all of those things.

Have chopped in half in the last 10 years or more. So kids are doing less dangerous things or less addictive things that require them to be physically present, and that’s because. They can now get a hit from approval porn or from danger porn or from online gambling, um, or actual porn. Uh, so because all of those things are available in every kid’s pocket, every hour of every day, we’ve gone from a position where only the adventurous few accessed addictive substances to now everybody does all the time.

That means. We are experimenting with an entire generation, generation Z in a way that we have never, ever done before, which is we’ve decided to expose every single member of that generation to highly addictive software available 24 hours a day. Now, is everything on a screen bad? No. We’re having a chat on a screen.

Lovely as it is to chat to you. It’s not addicted, . So most things people do on screens are not bad. Nobody’s getting addicted to Excel. Nobody’s getting addicted to word. Nobody’s getting addicted to having basically video, telephone calls. The difference is when the software is written to explicitly and work on the reward centers of the brain.

That’s a different thing altogether. So there’s the obvious ones I’ve talked about, but there’s other things too, like YouTube where parents often say to me, Well, isn’t YouTube just like watching television? Um, you know, it’s just doing it on your own schedule. Yes and no. When you watch television, it’s not watching you.

Um, whereas YouTube is very definitely watching you. They are noticing what you look. How long you look at it for, how high the volume is, if you look at it on a phone, whether your eyes look away from it, uh, whether you pause it. Um, so all of those things are being put into the mix to decide what to show you next.

Or add to show you next what? Show to show you next that is manipulating your addiction system. How would you know if your child is addicted versus just loves the screen or loves the game, or social media? Is there a test you can do? Oh, yes. Uh, very easy test you can do. Uh, so, uh, if they behave the way they would behave, If you removed a plate full of broccoli from them, uh, that is 99% of kids would say, Thanks for taking that broccoli away from me, Then they’re not addicted.

If, however, they fight you, if you try to remove it, then they’re addicted. The, the definition of addiction is something that you can’t control. It, it’s something that you can’t stop doing, even though you might think to yourself that you are in control of it. Uh, many addicts say that they’re in control and that they could stop any time, but the real test is what happens when you take it away.

Well, I’ve actually noticed that my seven year old son is being sneaky around his wee use. It’s almost like he’s ashamed. To say how much he loves it. And I, I, I kind of hate this dynamic between us. I feel like it creates that relationship of secrecy, shame, and guilt. How do we change the dynamic so that I’m not always the bad cop that he has to hide things from in terms of the dynamic, uh, with parents?

Um, the perfect answer there. Uh, remove all addiction from their life, and life will be better in general for them and for you. Um, that’s in practical terms, extremely difficult to achieve, particularly in an age when schools are requiring children to have the addiction delivery devices in their school bag.

My preferred option is what we do on school holidays, which is we lock up the devices and we don’t let them out again, uh, until the holiday is. Now that gives us a period of two to three days of really nasty shakedown at the beginning of the ho beginning of the holidays. My kids are all withdrawals  major withdrawals.

That’s right. But they get over it and then they, then we commit a sin, which is that we allow children to get bored. Um, which is apparently impossible to allow these days. You, you’re not, you’re a bad parent if you let your children get bored. Um, but we let them get bored and then probably, I, I guess about two hours after that they find something to.

And that’s something to do, doesn’t involve the screen. It involves, I don’t know, mucking around the garden, seeing if they can find some of their friends to hang out with, things like that. With my kids, it usually involves fighting with each other as well. Yeah, that’s fine. But at least they’re find something to do.

Um, and the interesting thing is that they, they do do that. And many, many times I’ve had parents come up to me who’ve said, Yes, we’ve tried this, we’ve locked them up over the holidays. And yes, it’s nasty for the first few days. But then they find something to do. You know, one mother said that her son started figuring out how to make slime.

Yes, it was kind of messy. Slime ended up everywhere, but it, it’d entertained him. It kept him busy. It found him using his brain and finding something to do. Other kids do puzzles, other kids play board games, all of this sort of stuff. It might sound sort of Victorian era idyllic, but it’s really about boring kids.

Finding something useful to do with their time, or even unusual, but not addictive. And the reason the addiction stuff matters is it’s not me being puritanical, and it’s not me saying, Oh, these naughty children being addicted. It’s because the flow on effects from addiction are very, very nasty once you get into teenage years.

So, Addiction turns into anxiety. Remember that I said dopamine. The thing that’s producing the addictive response puts us in a state of anxiety on purpose. It’s meant to sharpen us up. It’s meant to make us anxious about not getting a reward. Uh, so. It is, its intended purpose is to make us anxious. Hit it all the time and we will be anxious.

Uh, so there are undeniable rapid increases in teenage anxiety and depression stats. Depression follows anxiety as, as night follows day. It’s the same mechanism flowing through, and we are seeing these steps grow out of control in, in the last 10 years since the invention of the.  teenage incidents of anxiety and depression in Australia has doubled at a time when all the traditional sources of anxiety and depression have halve.

Something weird is going on and that something weird is on their device. Well, David, I’m sure that the moms listening out there are feeling my sentiment right now, which is that we’re anxious just sitting here listening to this feeling like, what can we do? Because it is such a struggle to manage. Let’s get practical.

What can we do? And don’t forget that a lot of the moms out there have kids not to five. You know, five to 12, and then teenager as well. So what can we do? Best time to start is when they’re born. Um, yeah. ? No, no. Honestly, it is a lot easier. Well, let’s, let’s start with the rule. The rule is say no and mean it.

It’s that simple. It really is Say no and mean. And I know as a parent, that’s the hardest thing to do. The absolute hardest thing to do. The easy thing to do is to just give. And not deal with the grief you’re going to get when you say no. Um, so say no and mean. It’s ugly the first time. It’s ugly the second time, but it gets easier every time after that because then they start to believe that you really do mean it.

If you ever say no and don’t mean it, they learn that very quickly too. Um, so you have to stick to your guns. You have to set a rule and you have to. Abide by it, and there can be no exceptions. And your role is, you know, an hour a day, two hours a day. No. Our rule is, um, no access to devices other than for school work at all.

Now that is really hard to enforce. Yeah. So why set yourself up for failure then? This, I mean, this is the challenge because they know that’s the. They know if they’re caught, there will be punishment for it. Um, it still doesn’t mean that they listen all the time. They’re not perfect angels. They’re, they’re, they’re kids and.

This stuff is addictive. If it wasn’t addictive, this wouldn’t be a problem. Uh, so the problem is that these devices are highly portable. Uh, they’re designed to be used in bedrooms, in bathrooms, on the bus, everywhere. Uh, and it’s easy to say no and mean it when the only way to access the internet is from a desktop computer sitting in your living room.

Uh, it’s very much harder when it’s from my. Uh, so, uh, a lot of parents have said to me that they’ve just let technology do some of the talking for them. So they have rules, like they just turn off the internet at, you know, nine o’clock at night. You know, one, one parent came up with an innovative thing he told me, which I thought was quite smart.

He turned off the wifi completely. You could still access the internet, but only by attaching it to a network cable that was in, you know, at the kitchen table. So the only way the kids were going to access anything, In a place that he could see them. Uh, and I think that’s the rule, which is if they’re gonna be on a device, make sure it’s in a place where you can see what’s on their screen.

Um, you are never going to be 100% perfect with this. And, and trying to make a rod for yourself and say that it must be a hundred percent perfect or you’ve failed is, is a recipe for disaster. Um, but you’ve always gotta have that as your own, which is reducing exposure. The best way to defeat addiction is to stop doing the thing that’s addictive, and reducing exposure makes that easy.

Okay, so we’ve got you. You’re setting your rules, whatever they are. Yeah. And that is sticking to them, so having a clear consequence. For example, if I catch you on the device, sneaking it into your room or whatever, um, you know you’re not gonna have it for 24 hours and you have to stick to that or take away something else.

You know, they. The, I go into crime and punishment a bit in the book, uh, about the different types of punishment and how effective or not effective they are. So the key is not so much to have the punishment as to make sure you enforce it. . As soon as you don’t, then it’s on. Then they are like the proverbial sheep with a fence, which is give a sheep enough time and a long enough fence, they’ll find a hole in it.

Um, it’s the same thing with kids and devices. Okay. I really like this idea of having the device in a place where you can see it. So like a desktop instead of being able to take the, you know, iPad into their bedroom, um, and hide under the blanket. But as a parent, sometimes we need that downtime. Whether it’s, you know, on our own device or allowing just some peace and quiet while the kids are on their devices.

Okay, Maybe it’s a little bit of device babysitting. Is there a way where we can do that without feeling guilty? Um, well think about what the downtime is for is, are you avoiding your kids or do you want to be doing something with your kids? Uh, what devices tend to do is fragment people in. You know, everyone’s off in their own room and we see this around here.

We’ll, we’ll see. Suddenly no one’s anywhere to be seen. They’re all off in their own room. That’s where my wife is very much. The stronger of the two of us in this respect, Calls everyone together and makes us watch a movie. A movie isn’t addictive  and it is great downtime. It’s great everyone being in the same room time now.

Sure, a lot of adults with very young kids are not gonna be too thrilled at the concept of sitting down for an hour or two lose clues or whatever it is today That is, is kids are watching, but Frozen too. Yeah, . But you know, if you’re saying to yourself, Well no, I just want some time without the kids, then maybe it’s about you.

Finding another way for that to happen. But the last thing you want to be doing is dropping something addictive in front of your kids so you can do something addictive. Put it in terms of, of more traditional addictions. Oh no, I, I let Freddy go and have a glass of vodka when I feel like a stiff drink.

Cause you know, I know that keeps him quiet for an hour or two. People would say you were insane if that was your approach to parenting. But that’s effectively what you’re doing when you say, I want to just plop some addictive software in front of them. Cause I know it’ll shut ’em up for a couple of hours.

Um, I know it’s not easy to not do that. That’s the task you set yourself when you decide you don’t want your kids addicted. I think also to your point about, uh, setting those rules, I, I’ll give you a real life example. So my kids don’t have screens Monday to Friday, but on the weekends they do. My two year old has her sleep and then we all basically disappeared to our screens for that timeframe that she has her sleep.

Um, I have been telling myself, That I’m not guilty about that because we have quite strict rules the rest of the time. I guess it would be when, you know, suddenly that’s four hours a day or that’s, you know, every day that something like that is happening. But I I, I do think that occasionally, um, or if it’s within those boundaries, you should be able to do it as a parent and be comfortable with it.

I guess when this comes up in talks, uh, the, the counter argument to that is, put it in terms of a traditional a. Put it in terms of something like vodka, um, and say if my kid’s good or week, I let them drink vodka on the weekends. And, and people would say, Well, that’s an extreme of reaction. I’m not doing that.

But from a biochemical perspective, that’s exactly what’s going on. Uh, and, and whilst it might be easy to manage when a kid is five or six or seven, it, it gets really hard to manage when that kid is 14 and wants to set their own rules. So it’s about deciding how well you believe you can manage it. Um, I guess, but.

At the end of the day, the fact that you want to do it tells you something about the nature of the activity, the fact that they want to do it tells you something about the nature of the activity. And I know this sounds very preachy, uh, and really hard to implement. But it’s just a biochemical reality.

Addiction is addiction and it doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, but not every child that goes on social media or plays the game is addicted to it. So I guess this is what I’m trying to understand here is, you know, if you are doing it within your boundaries, then I think that I, I should be able to say to Lockey, Go enjoy Mario Brothers.

Have a great hour. Fun, Do your worlds and, and then we stop in an hour. Yeah. Uh, there’s levels of addiction in game. So gaming has developed in very, very rapidly in the last five years. Um, so games like Fortnight, for example, where you are playing against real humans who are unpredictable. Those games are very explicitly written for addiction because they’re very, very big money, uh, businesses.

But you go to an older style. Say something, I don’t know. Go all the way back. Pacman or something. Yeah, Pacman. Something like that. I used to addicted to Pacman. I loved it as a kid. I played a Yeah, but it would’ve got old it. You’re not addicted to it now. And the reason for that is that it’s only challenging for a short period of time until you learn the algorithms when you are playing against a computer.

You eventually can predict it. Um, you eventually get to know it. Um, and it loses its addictive power because the most powerful part of addiction is uncertainty. And when you are playing against real humans, you have lots of uncertainty when you are playing against a machine with an algorithm. Eventually you learn how it works and it, it loses its power.

So it depends on the game and, and honestly, the test for you is how the child behaves when you, when you take it away. Now, if, if you say, uh, look, you can play this for an hour, and at the end of that hour we stop, and that’s that. And if that child says, Yep, sure, let’s do that. And there is never any issue about the end of that.

The child peacefully, hands over the device and says, Right, let’s go do something else. Then they’re not addicted. That’s . That’s just playing. Again, that’s like watching television. It, it’s not addictive. It, it’s just pleasure. But if at the end of that hour it’s, ah, I just need to finish this, and before you know it, it’s two hours or three hours or four hours, or if you decide to put your foot down and just take it away, you.

A tantrum then. Then you’re dealing with something else you just said, David, the most powerful thing about addiction is uncertainty. Yes. What do you mean by that? So you get twice as high a dopamine spike if you can’t predict with the outcome with 100% of certainty. So if you know that the outcome. Is definite.

So you know that if, if, if you bet a dollar, you will definitely get $2. Um, or you know that if you bet a dollar, you’ll definitely get $2 every third time. If that’s always predictable and it’s always going to happen, then you get a certain amount of dope mean, and a certain level of attractiveness to it.

However, as soon as uncertainty is introduced, the dopamine spike at least double. So as soon as you don’t know for sure what is going to happen, then dopamine at least doubles. Cause you need to be sharper to grab that chance if it comes up. Uh, so dopamine and uncertainty go together, and the more uncertainty there is, the more dopamine there is.

And it works on both sides of the equations, both on reward and on stress. Stress also produces a dopamine hit, which is what boys like, and so that’s why. Real time, real player games where you are playing against humans, where anything could happen at any time. Are much more addictive than when you are playing against a machine algorithm.

Mm. And on social media, when the, you know, tween girl posts the, you know, particular picture and you’ve got that, you know, uncertainty about it’ss, I’m gonna get Yeah, yeah. Or not just how many likes you’re gonna get, but when do you get ’em straight away? Or do you get one and then there’s none for an hour.

Oh my God, what’s going on? Or, you know, it’s, it’s that uncertainty of the. Uh, that makes it much more powerful than if it were highly predictable. But what about the negative social impact? If a child is unable to join the social media platform that all their friends are using or the game that their friends use, I mean, can’t that itself lead to feelings of rejection and isolation?

Um, this is spin put out by the people that make these platforms, which is that your child will be a social outcast if they don’t use Instagram or that your child will be a social outcast if they don’t chat to their friends on fortnight. Um, it’s utter nonsense. Art and nonsense kids will be what kids will be in terms of their social hierarchy at school because of their interaction at school in real life.

Now, those things extend onto these platforms after hours, but if your kid’s not on them, then they just, they’re not on it. If it’s really news, they’ll find out about it tomorrow. Uh, you know, and, and the harsh reality of it is, and once again I go into a lot of detail about this in the book about social hierarchy of kids, um, is that if your kid is gonna be at the bottom of a social hierarchy, they’ll be at the bottom of a social hierarchy, whether they’re on Instagram or not.

And if they’re going to be at the top, they will be. Whether they’re on Instagram or not. It, it, it’s the mechanism of the way humans organize themselves socially. And technology in between doesn’t change anything. I mean, it’s interesting talking to you cuz you’ve done all this research, but you’re also a father of six children.

Yep. So I really like the idea that you’ve been through this six times. Absolutely. . If a child is suspected to be addicted and you would take them to a psychologist, I mean, what would they do to. Get them off that, particularly if a child’s been their teenage years already and have been, you know, playing these games for many years or on the platform for many years.

So a a couple things about, uh, the teenage years bit of this, um, which I just wanna highlight before we talk about water psychologists would say. Um, so the teenage bit is really, really important because there is a significant change in the structure and the chemicals. The child’s brain once puberty starts, uh, once puberty starts, um, a suppressing chemical called gaba, uh, which would normally damp down the effect of dopamine, so make things less addictive, less en trancing, less risk of addiction, less risk of anxiety, even though they’ll still find the things attractive, there’s less risk of the flow on consequences that substance is turned off in order to allow puberty to start.

That means. That from the start of puberty, a child is significantly more like. To turn well to A B, become addicted, and B, change that from, from addiction into anxiety and depression, which is why we see the stats on addiction, anxiety and depression suddenly take off like a rocket, um, from sort of about 13 years onwards.

So that’s why it’s important for teenagers and in terms of for parents of younger kids, you have to get them used to the idea. That you will be saying? No, I meaning it well before they are bigger. I’m just from sheer experience that you know, that what goes from a mild argument in a 10 year old goes into a full on quite nasty fight, uh, in a, in a 14 year old.

And any parent who’s taken a child from five to to 15 will tell you. That’s very, very real. Now, as to what a psychologist will tell you. I actually spoke to a psychologist about this, his, his entire practice, uh, and I talked, there’s an interview with him in the book. Uh, his entire practice is, is based on, um, dealing with exactly this problem.

He didn’t start out that way, but it just turns out that that’s where all his customers are coming from, which is, wow, isn’t that scary? Parents of teenagers bringing them in, saying, What can I do with this kid? I can’t get them off their gaming. So the psychologist said, What I tell people is make them stop.

Make them stop. The only way to break an addiction is get them away from the addictive thing. And I’ve said to him, Well, how well does that work? And he said, It depends how bad it is. Um, for the really heavily addicted ones, it doesn’t work. Um, you know, he says parents repeatedly come back to him and say, I can’t, I can’t stop them.

But he says for most people it works. I mean, I don’t want moms out there feeling overwhelmed or guilty about screens because whether we like it or not, they’re gonna be here to stay. And I know I’ve got guilt coming out my ears all the time with, with parenting. If, if moms listening. To some of these rules and suggestions you’ve made, think it’s gonna be really challenging for them.

What would you say? Just one simple action they could take today that could make the biggest difference to their child in relation to screen use, it would be the thing we said before, which is make sure that the screen is being used in a place where you can see it. Now that does not mean they won’t use it on the bus or at school or you know anywhere else, but at least if you control the things you can.

Which is screen use at home, then you are doing, you are moving towards a point where you are reducing their exposure. A and that’s really all you can do. There is absolutely no point stressing about the fact, oh my God, they’re going to use their screen on the bus on the way to school or at school, um, until schools change the way they work and don’t require the screens.

There’s really not much you can do about that. Although the thing we’ve tried to do is that we don’t let our teenagers have. Devices that, uh, do anything other than make phone calls. So they have their school iPads, which they have to have because the school mandates it, but their phones are just flip phones.

Um, standard ordinary push button dial, flip phones. In fact, hang on. One of their old ones. Oh, it’s like the old, I’m looking at an old fashioned noia style phone. Aren’t they gonna get ridiculed in the playground cuz they don’t have the latest iPhone 11? Oh, absolutely, Definitely. But it’s character building for them to say, Hey, my parents don’t let me have anything else.

By the way, kids don’t mind being out of. As long as they can blame somebody else for it. Yeah. You just say, just blame. Blame your daggy parents. Blame your dad. . All right, so just to wrap up, I’m hearing that we need to set those rules, make them really clear, um, have a consequence when those rules get, get broken, keep the devices in a place where we can see them so that they’re not sneaking them away.

Um, ultimately we’re aiming to reduce exposure. You know, consider having devices that don’t have wifi access that are just able to make phone calls. And what about just communicating with your kids and, and explaining that we doing this because we love you and because we want your brain to grow in a healthy way and, you know, this is why we do this.

Yeah. And look, there’s very great power in that. Very great power. Let them understand. It, take them through this. They, they are quite capable of understanding it. Take them through it. Explain to them what it is and why it matters. They will know the experience. Say to them, This thing is manipulating you.

You know how you feel when you are doing it. You know how you feel when I try to take it away. This is manipulating you. It is making you an addict. Now, some kids couldn’t care less, but a lot of kids, um, will say, Yeah, look, I know what you’re talking about. And they will consciously try to limit their use.

That doesn’t mean that they’ll stop Absolutely. But it does mean that they know what’s going on. The power of knowing what’s going on is, is really important. And I know you’re also gonna say lead by example, aren’t you ? Well, it’s very hard to convince a kid that what they’re doing is wrong when you are sitting there on Twitter in.

Yep. Very wise advice. David, thank you so much for coming on today. It’s been super helpful and fascinating. Pleasure.