This is an episode you don't want to miss.
I'm speaking with Jonathan Height.
Jonathan is a social psychologist at NYU, and a best-selling author.
And he just came out with his newest book, The Anxious Generation.
How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.
Now, I know that title seems heavy.
And it is heavy.
But this conversation is very practical and very hopeful.
We talk about the impact of phones, social media, the decline of play on our kids' mental
health.
And whether you have a toddler or an elementary schooler or a middle schooler or a high schooler,
whether you're thinking about when to give your kid a phone or you've already given your
kid a phone, this is a conversation that you want to hear.
I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside.
We'll be back right after this.
Let's be honest, parenting is expensive.
And I hear all the time from parents that there are so many things they want to do that
just don't fit into their budget.
And it can feel kind of powerless.
But else can I do to have some extra cash to show up as the parent I want to be to give
my kids the experiences they want.
And I wanted to make sure you all knew of something that doesn't always come to mind, but
is an amazing way to have some extra money for that family vacation, that soccer class,
that lunch you want to go out to with your friends.
Being an Airbnb host means that you are providing another family.
An amazing experience because I know you've created your home with a family in mind.
And it's a great way to earn some extra money for all the different things you want to
do.
Your home might be worth more than you think.
Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.
Hi Jonathan.
Hello Dr. Becky.
Actually, what should I call you?
What should I call you?
Regular Becky is totally fine.
Regular Becky.
Okay.
Hello Becky.
Yes.
I am so excited to be talking today and I know our listeners are going to be really excited
for this conversation as well.
Your new book, The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing
an Epidemic of Mental Illness is right in line with so many things I'm thinking about
and I know are on parents minds as well.
And I know we'll get into a lot of discussion around screens and the impact screens are
having on our kids and how we can really empower parents with a message of hope and capability.
There really are things we can do.
This is not some inevitable state of our kids being impacted by this.
And I'd love to start by jumping into this term you use, this kind of great rewiring of
childhood.
Let's start there.
Can you tell me a little what does that mean and what have you found there?
Well, so the whole project started because all of a sudden around 2013 we started noticing
at universities and from other adults I talked to suddenly young people were much more
depressed, anxious and fragile.
Actually, we noticed that university is around 2014, 2015, but it turns out it really
started around 2013, 2014 now that we can look back at the data.
It was very sudden.
And all the graphs were like hockey sticks, like something happened in the early 2010s.
And as I began working on this book, I first thought it was just social media and girls
because they are the data is very clear.
So I was really looking at what is social media do to girls.
But the problems were happening for boys too.
And it turns out it wasn't just social media.
And as I dug into this and my research associate Zach Roush, he made all these graphs and
charts, plotting every angle we could find, it turned out to be a lot of things.
But what was really happening was the complete transformation of kids daily lives between
2010 and 2015.
And the way to understand this, I'm guessing a lot of your listeners are millennials.
Now millennials had flip phones when they were teenagers and a flip phone is great for
texting and calling and that's about it.
It's for communication, it's a communication device.
And in 2010, only about 10 or 15% of kids of teens had a smartphone.
And the early Apple iPhone didn't have all the social media on it.
It just had a map and browser and things.
So in 2010, you still have kids making eye contact with each other, texting each other
to meet up.
You still have something that we can recognize as childhood.
By 2015, that's gone.
By 2015, 70 or 80% of teens have a smartphone.
They almost all have social media, especially the girls.
And now, once you take this thing, this thing is an experienced blocker.
So once you give this thing to a child, that's it.
That's going to be the thing that they see most of the day.
They're looking at that most of the day.
And so everything else has to get pushed out.
There's less sleep.
There's much less time with other kids.
There's less time with family.
There's no more time for books.
There's no more time for hobbies.
So I just call that period the great rewiring of childhood.
This was not a gradual thing.
Over the course of five years, childhood was changed from a form in which a human being
could develop into a competent mature adult to one that is in hospital for human development.
Now I don't want to overstate things.
Obviously, most kids are OK.
Most kids are doing fine.
But a much larger number are not doing fine compared to kids who were born in the early
90s.
So it's really the late 90s as Gen Z, early 90s as millennials, huge difference in their
psychological outcomes.
So in alignment with everything you're saying, it's such a massive shift.
And even just pausing to recognize that, I think, is really important as a parent, right?
Wow.
That is a really big change, even using phones to kind of communicate as a way of facilitating
social interaction versus using phones in a way that starts to inhibit real life social
interaction.
That's a big shift.
So one of the things I hear from parents often is this happens at every generation.
You know, my parents were worried that we had an Nintendo and, you know, but I would be
honest for me, I feel like something inside me says like, this is different.
And so I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Sure.
This is the main counterargument I get.
And there's some truth to it.
Every generation freaks out about whatever new technology or drug the young generation
has taken.
That's true.
That's been going on.
They're hints of it in, you know, an ancient Greece.
But really it's once you get modernity, once you get, you know, the enlightenment, scientific
revolution, now each generation really is a little different from the one before it.
But let me point out the boy who cried wolf is up to fail about the boy who cried wolf.
So the townspeople, you know, the kid, you know, cries wolf twice and the townspeople
then learn to ignore it.
The wolf then comes and swallows up all the sheep.
So, you know, just because we had some moral panics before, it doesn't mean that everything
is always a moral panic.
There has never, ever been a time when teen mental health did this thing of like things
are okay, things are okay.
And then two or three years later, it's a disaster.
That has never happened before.
So there's abundant evidence that this time really, really is different.
And the reason why I had to write a whole book on this rather than just like an Atlantic
article is that you really have to understand what is childhood.
I mean, human childhood is so different, even from chimpanzee childhood.
Like, we're a really unique species because this huge amount of cultural learning.
And so that I think is one of the distinctive pictures of the book is I was going to just
write a book about social media on girls, but it turned into like first we have to, you
know, think about the evolution of childhood and what do girls have to do?
What do boys have to do?
What do cultures do around the world?
And then we can see you take all of that, you put a phone in the way, you throw all of
that out the window and what you have is this bizarre human experience that is not, it
doesn't fit with what kids need to do in childhood.
Yeah.
And I think there's some foundations here, right?
Where the experiences we go through in our early years, set up our wiring and our blueprint
for how we experience ourselves and then therefore how we experience the world, right?
And so those early years, a lot of the years that still a lot of parents say they don't
remember that, it doesn't matter, right?
They don't remember anything.
We know that as soon as we realize, wait, memory isn't just what we can say with words,
memory are the patterns that feel normal and natural in our body.
That's actually our most powerful form of memory.
Those early years are the most important.
The ones that we can't remember verbally, I would say, they'll just play out in our
body.
So those are extra powerful.
And so what happens zero to three, zero to five, right?
These early years has a huge impact on everything that happens after it's never too late, right?
We can always, but they do.
And I think you and I are in agreement that one of the formative kind of, you know, things
for kids is play, is how they experience play.
So can you speak to that a little bit?
What is play?
What are the purpose and benefits?
First, let me just comment on what you just said.
So you and I are both psychologists.
We really understand that we don't see the world as it is.
We see the world through filters and lenses that were learned in childhood, that were shaped
by evolution, that were developed within our family, our culture.
The zero to three is huge amounts of brain change.
But that's especially lower level systems, walking, talking, vision, all that sort of
stuff.
If a kid has a really bad experience, one really bad experience at age two or three, it's
probably not going to leave any, any real effect.
But what you do over and over again day after day, if the kid is playing, you know,
playing, that's how they wire up the frontal cortex versus on a screen, hours every day
for months or years, that will change, literally change the way the brain is wiring itself up.
So once you see that this huge human brain is an evolutionary novelty and what evolution
did was it said, how are we going to fill up this brain?
How are we going to, you know, make it configure?
Well, the genes have very little information in them.
The genes don't tell the brain how to develop.
They just get the ball started.
And then we have what's called experience, expectant development.
So the baby's brain is expecting to have a lot of back and forth.
The infant is like, you know, peekaboo, ha ha ha, peekaboo, ha ha ha.
Like you do thousands of times and that develops the social centers.
So in the early years, especially, it's the things that you're doing for hours and hours.
Those really do change the course of development.
But then the brain does a funny thing.
It's growing and building new neurons up until run age five or six.
And then it kind of stops and it's almost full size.
And then you have this key period of childhood around age six or seven to the beginning of
puberty where the kid is basically, it's like a cultural apprenticeship.
The kid is basically like looking at adults and looking at the baker and the construction
work or like, oh, you know, what are you doing?
They're trying to sort of understand what's going on around them.
And then they hit puberty and at puberty, the body begins to grow very fast, whereas
it had slowed down before growth was much slower in mid childhood.
So in puberty, then the brain is rewiring even faster.
So we have to really pay attention for what we're talking about.
We have to pay attention to the whole period, but they're different.
Okay, so now to the question about play.
So most of your listeners will have had a puppy or a kitten at some point in their lives
or at least they played with one that a friend had.
And if you have a puppy or a kitten, I mean, they need to play all the time.
And those are puppies.
And it's the most exciting thing for them to play.
And that's true for all mammals.
That's the thing.
All mammals play.
It's part of being a mammal.
Being a mammal is about this long childhood that the parents or the mother, especially
invest a lot in.
But the parents are there basically to give the kid security to go out into the world and
do things.
That's where the learning happens.
It's not when they're in your arms that they're learning.
It's that they then go out.
They try something.
They build a block tower.
It falls.
It falls.
It hits them.
They approach a child.
The child rejects them or maybe it's like those are the experience that they need to have
thousands and thousands of times.
And the richest kind of experience they can have.
The most nutritious is a few kids.
It could just be two.
But especially when you get three or four kids playing together.
And the adults are not telling them what to do.
And the adults are not resolving the conflicts.
Let them play.
They're going to be some conflicts.
That's the most nutritious thing you can do.
And we cut way back on that because we were so afraid that our kids would get hurt.
And that really comes in in the 90s.
This incredibly fearful parenting.
What counts as play and what doesn't maybe count as play?
Sure.
That's a good question.
There's not.
It's one of these concepts which is prototypically defined.
That is, there are prototypes of play.
And then there are other things that are less prototypical, but they're still sort of
play.
So I'd say the prototype, the best kind of play, the most nutritious kind of play, is
mixed age.
So not just two, seven-year-olds, but kids who have different ages in the neighborhood
coming together, outdoors, able to invent whatever they want to play.
They get to choose.
They then have to make the rules about it.
That's really important.
And ideally there's some risk of getting hurt, at least falling down.
Because it turns out the fear makes things thrilling.
The fear changes the brain so that, and we can all see this, are kids, they're afraid
of certain things, but they're also attracted to them.
And so they want to look over the edge of the railing.
They want to build something to the point where it might fall on.
I mean, when a kid learns to skateboard, they're then going to skateboard down the staircase
and they're going to fall.
Why is that?
Why are kids looking to get hurt?
And the answer seems to be, this is a work from this really wonderful Norwegian play
researcher, Ellen Sandseater, is that kids need the feeling of thrill.
That fear you have, and then you overcome it, and you're exalted.
You're like, yes, I did it.
And that is what rewires your brain to move it away from the fear, the defend mode, over
to a competent, discovered one.
I can do it.
I did this.
I can do more.
I'm going to do more.
So, that's the best kind of play.
And it's not that kids have to always be doing that.
But if you can find a way for your kid to play with a group of other kids unsupervised,
that's the best thing.
Now, then of course, there's pretend play, which doesn't have fear.
It doesn't have a risk.
But has special properties, and kids engage in a lot of pretend to play.
So that also is very different from the physical writing around, but that's also very valuable.
And then there are things like video games.
Definitely, there's a playful element.
They're exciting.
But when my son, I didn't let him play Fortnite in sixth grade when all the boys were on.
I did let him on in eighth grade when COVID hit.
And that was a good thing.
I mean, there was no other way for the boys to talk to each other practically.
It seemed.
But what was really interesting is the character is doing all these thrilling things.
They're jumping out of planes.
They're parachuting into dangerous territory.
They're having knife fights.
They're getting killed.
And there's zero fear.
It's just fun.
And so video games are playful, definitely.
But they don't have that nutritious, thrill, fear element to it.
So I don't think they help boys mature into men.
I think they teach boys a set of skills that are completely useless in the outside world.
You know, when you were talking about that feeling of kind of, there's risk here.
Could I get hurt?
Is this dangerous?
I'm going to kind of try to figure it out.
And maybe I then did successfully navigate that jungle gym or whatever it was.
You know, it reminds me something that it's a very different context.
But I think about with my kids a lot where I remember when my kids were younger, like doing
a puzzle.
And they got to this point being like, I can't do it.
I can't do it anymore.
Right?
And it's just for me, right?
And I remember something that I'd say to them that I watched really resonate and it reminds
me of the same experience you're describing, right?
Say, you know, look, we could take a break and let's take a deep breath and you can come
back to this.
But the feeling you get when you think you can't do something and then you continue and
you watch yourself do it is kind of the best feeling in the world.
And I don't want to take that feeling away from you.
And it is the best feeling.
It is the best feeling.
And you're right.
There is no physical risk.
But there's a little risk taking even in, you know, doing that type of play like this
is hard.
Can I push myself?
And that is where I see so many parents, so many completely well intentioned parents
kind of remove the frustration in a way of remove the risk.
And I think what we don't realize is we're also then removing this very important feeling
from our kids.
That's right.
The best thing you can do for your kid is raise him or her to be one who can deal with
frustration because life is going to be full of frustration.
And if you take the frustration out of your kids life, you make them happier in the moment,
but you're depriving them of a future of competence and success.
I think the word self-esteem is still used.
And it shouldn't be.
Self-esteem is not something that you should strive for.
You know, it's like happiness.
Like as you've said about happiness, like if the goal is happiness, you're going to do
things that are going to make you unhappy.
Happiness is a byproduct when you're making progress on the important things in life and
you're doing well.
Same thing with self-esteem.
Self-esteem is something that kids get when they know that they can do things and they
have done things.
And the big mistake that many psychologists made in the 70s and 80s was to say, we need
to raise kids self-esteem.
No, you don't.
You need to raise their competence.
Let them do more things.
Let them fail and overcome.
And then they will succeed and then they will have self-esteem.
You can't give it to them.
What you can give, I think what you're talking about is called self-efficacy, the sense
that I can do things.
And if we're always stepping into solve problems for our kids and they don't get to develop
it.
Yeah.
So I'm curious.
Like, why we think this is.
Why is this generation of parents?
Because I see parents as they're so motivated to be good parents.
So people really care about this.
And at the same time, it feels harder than ever to tolerate our kids tantrum at the puzzle
or to tolerate the risk involved in letting them go to the playground without us kind of
being right there.
Why is that?
Yeah.
So a lot has changed.
So you're a clinical psychologist.
You're strong on sort of what's going on with the feelings, the emotions inside.
I'm a social psychologist, so I'm especially dialed into how do we affect each other?
And so norms around parenting change generation to generation.
And they really hit moms, much less dads.
Moms are really judged by everything they do and the moms are judging each other.
The whole thing is really hard on women.
But let's start with the material changes.
So our grandmothers probably had three or four kids.
They didn't have much money.
And they were raising their kids in a building and a neighborhood with a lot of other kids.
And we grew up in this nice suburban town where after school, we were all on our own.
There were a lot of kids around.
So what's happened since then?
Family size is way down.
So most families are only one or two kids.
And moms are working.
So they're not eyes on the street anymore.
And so we lost, you know, because it used to be, if I, you know, if my friend and I were
out of line, like some other adult would say something to us, if we fell on our bicycles
and we were really in trouble, we knew somebody would call our mother or somebody would help.
But in the 80s and 90s, we lost a lot of that trust in each other.
And this is a really important sociological change.
Actually, I learned about this, especially from a British sociologist, Frank Verady, who
has a book called Paranoid Parenting.
So this happened throughout the English-speaking world.
We lost trust in our neighbors.
We started thinking everybody is a sex predator.
If I send my kids to, you know, sports or boy scouts, they'll be sexually molested.
And there were real scandals.
Don't get me wrong.
But we lost so much trust that now this amazing thing happens to moms in the 90s.
Moms are working more.
They're spending more time out of the home.
But all of a sudden, around 1995, 96, we see a huge increase in the number of hours per
week that moms are spending with their kids.
So in the 90s, moms are working more and spending more time with their one or two children.
And the economy is changing so that everyone's now freaking out about getting into college.
So parenting became much more about, how do I get my kid into a top college?
How do I prepare my kid to compete with the other kids?
Rather than making these to play, go out, get out of here, come back when the street
lights come on.
So parenting changed, childhood changed, kids changed.
That begins in the 80s and 90s.
That is the backstory to the great rewiring because it didn't all happen between 2010 and
2015.
That was the technological change.
So there's this quote you have in the book that has really stuck with me.
And I think it's a good transition to the next thing I want to ask you about.
We're talking about oversight and how kind of, I don't know, helicopter-ish we are with
our kids.
And one of the things you say is parents should supervise less in the real world.
But more in the virtual.
And I feel like we're understanding together the role of play.
How play is so much harder to come by now.
And where maybe as parents, both less tolerant of the risks and of the frustration our kids
inherently feel.
And I feel like a message is this is what we as parents have to learn to tolerate more.
So our kids can benefit from frustration and risk.
And then we have the virtual world, right?
And so we're supervising a ton in the real world.
And these moments aren't happening as often or kind of removing those experiences.
And yet our kids are developing this entire virtual kind of world as well.
Where I agree as parents, maybe also because we didn't grow up with it.
We're not as knowledgeable.
It's not as in your face visually.
We are far less involved.
So let's jump into that.
That's basically the summary of my book is that we've been overprotecting our children
in the real world and under protecting them online.
In the real world, we have over a hundred years of experience putting in fences around
pools and requiring seatbelts.
It took a long time to do this.
But we've created a physical world in which adults and children can both live in it.
And we minimize the risk to kids.
The online world comes in beginning of the 90s.
And this is very important to understand.
When it came in, it was miraculous.
We were all like, oh my God.
You mean I can get all the information ever, always?
Instantly?
Like this is God-like powers.
And so from the 90s, when we thought the internet was so amazing and it's going to take
down dictators and there's going to be a surge of democracy and kids all over the world
can learn and invent.
It's going to be amazing.
So then the iPhone comes out.
It's amazing.
It's absolutely amazing.
And our kids love it.
My son, I got my first iPhone in 2008.
My son was two years old.
Two years old.
He takes the iPhone and after a couple of days, he's swiping and tapping.
But when you go back to that era, we thought we had nothing to fear.
Like, hey, these kids are digital natives.
The technology's amazing.
The internet's great.
Let's let them on early.
They'll get ahead and start.
That's the way we were thinking in 2010, 11, 12.
So we didn't know that what we were doing was giving our kids an experience block or
that would block out almost everything they need in childhood.
So that's how this all started.
And then once the norms were set, that you just give your kid an iPad.
That's what parents do.
Oh, and it can connect to the internet anywhere.
So they can open an account.
You know, your seven or eight-year-old can open an account on Instagram because Instagram,
you know, they don't check.
They don't want to know if your kid is under age.
Otherwise, they could be responsible.
So these habits developed of extreme fear about everything.
Nutrition, strangers.
You know, I mean, think about how careful we are about our kids interacting with strangers
in a park.
You know, if a creepy man comes up to you in a park, like, that's a terrifying thing.
We don't ever want that to happen.
No, no, no, stay home.
Stay home.
Here's your computer.
Go on Instagram.
And guess what?
There are no more perverts in parks.
That's too dangerous.
They're all on Instagram and TikTok.
If we care about our kids interacting with creepy-strange men who are going to try to have
sex with them, like, why would you let your kid your 11, 12, 13-year-old on social media?
That's where it all happens.
You know, kids are harmed in so many ways.
You know, their kids were tricked into sending a nude photo themselves and then they're
sex-storted.
There are kids who become objects of, you know, mob hatred.
I mean, there's just so many ways that the kids can get harmed on the internet.
And we're like, well, you know, everyone else is letting their kid on, so this is just
what we do.
There are so many things I want to double-click on and we're going to get to kind of very
actionable, well, what can parents do?
Because I know you care very much about that too.
We're not just presenting a problem, like we have some ideas here.
But before we get there, because I just want you do such an amazing thorough job and
really laying out kind of all of the risks and harms to this phone-based childhood our
kids are now exposed to.
And you break it down.
And I love when people break things down very concretely.
So can you share a little bit more about that, the kind of four basic harms of this phone-based
childhood?
Sure.
So, you know, it has different effects on boys and girls, but there are a few major effects
that it has on everyone.
So actually sort of the first, there's actually really five in the sense that the first
one is what's called the opportunity cost.
The opportunity is given that kids are now spending five hours a day just on social media,
including TikTok and Instagram.
And if you add in all the other stuff, it's around nine hours a day on average.
So a lot of kids are spending more than 10 hours a day on their devices, not counting
school.
That's most of the day.
So that pushes out everything else.
So imagine if your kid never read a book, never had a hobby, didn't go over to friends
houses.
Like that would be horrible.
And that's one of the effects.
So that's the opportunity cost.
Then more specifically, the social deprivation is probably the most important deprivation.
That is what kids really, really need is each other.
What they really, really need is one or two close friends that they hang out with.
They have a best friend.
They have a group.
They have a gang.
That's what they really need.
And kids used to do that.
The data we have data in the book, it's amazing.
Young people used to spend a lot of time with their friends, whereas older people spent
much less.
But what happens after 2012 is the young people start plummeting.
And they, even before COVID, young people had mostly socially distanced themselves because
it was all on their phone.
So that's a very serious deprivation is time with friends.
Another really serious one is sleep deprivation.
Sleep is so important for the developing brain.
And so if your kid has a device in his or her room, some of them can handle it, but many
can't.
They're going to take it under the cover.
They're going to lie to you.
They've got to be on to update all their notifications and their relationships.
So sleep deprivation is very serious.
And that also increases a lot after 2013.
The fourth one on this list is attention fragmentation.
Jean Twendi just had a sub-stack about the rapid decline of reading.
Kids don't read books very much.
And they're telling their teachers they can't read 10 or 20 pages because they get distracted.
When you are interrupted every few minutes by your phone and sent into rabbit holes, you
don't have the experience of thinking for 30 minutes straight.
Some kids have never thought for 30 minutes straight.
They've never had 30 minutes with that interruption.
So attention fragmentation is extremely serious.
If you want your kid to do well in school to be able to think maybe to create something
someday, don't raise them on a phone.
It'll fragment their attention.
And the final one is addiction, behavior addiction.
There's an argument among researchers whether social media should be called an addiction.
But as far as I'm concerned, if we agree that gambling is an addiction, if we see gambling
addicts at slot machines, they lose track of time, they waste money, they regret it, but
they can't stop.
Well, that's exactly what's happening to our kids with social media.
And of course, the social media companies literally copied Las Vegas.
They literally copied.
But you know, you pull down to refresh and then it kind of like spins.
They took that from slot machines.
So these things are engineered for addiction.
And if you let your kid spend hours a day on a device that was designed to be addictive,
someone that are going to get addicted.
And those costs could be very serious, especially if it goes on for years and years.
It really can change brain development permanently.
It seems like during the school year, my kids are always coming home with something.
And finding an over-the-counter medicine for my kids that I trust is a real challenge.
And this is why I love Mommy's Bliss.
Mommy's Bliss has been the highly trusted baby brand for 25 years.
And if you're a parent, you probably know about their grape water or vitamin D drops.
Well, now they've launched a new pain in fever medicine.
That's not only safe and effective for infants and children.
It's also the first ever clean label project certified acetametaphan.
Here's what that means for parents.
No high fructose corn syrup, no dyes, no artificial sweeteners, and it's free from the top nine
allergens.
But don't worry, they didn't leave out the part that kids actually care about.
It has a delicious natural berry flavor with organic elderberry, which means my kids don't
put up a fight when it's time to take it.
For minor aches and pains caused by colds, flu, sore throats, and tooth aches, there's
Mommy's Bliss, pain, and fever.
Now that's medicine for peace of mind.
Parents might have 99 problems, but getting our kids dressed in the morning shouldn't be
one of them.
Enter garanimals.
Garanimals the original mix and match clothing brand for babies and toddlers has been making
mornings easier since 1972.
With colorful and playful styles designed to always go together, garanimals boosts your
kid's self-confidence by giving them the power to decide what to wear.
And when mornings become erasing against the clock, garanimals kid packs take the guesswork
out of getting dressed.
Every kid pack contains carefully curated tops and bottoms that easily mix a match.
Pick any top, any bottom, and voila, an instant outfit.
And with up to a month's worth of outfits in just one box, garanimals kid packs take
care of a whole lot of outfit planning.
One less thing on the to-do list.
We'll take it.
Check out garanimalskidpacks on walmart.com or follow garanimals on Instagram for a peak
into their latest spring collection, available in sizes newborn to 5T.
Say goodbye to wardrobe battles and hello to hassle-free mornings with garanimals.
I want to talk about a group of kids that I'm particularly passionate about.
Why?
Because I think these kids are some of the most misunderstood kids in the world.
I see these kids as deeply-feeling kids and the world tends to see these kids as oppositional,
defiant kids.
What are the kids I'm talking about?
They're the ones who have explosive meltdowns.
They're the ones who tend to yell, I hate you, go away when you know they actually need
your help.
They're the ones who will trip and fall and then blame you even though you were not
around them at the time.
These kids are misunderstood because they're seen for their difficult behaviors instead
of for their underlying core struggles.
And because of this difference, I really went to work a while ago and created a completely
different approach for these kids.
An approach that parents tell me leads to the first time they've ever understood their
kid and then the first time they've ever seen productive change in their home.
I want to make sure you know about my upcoming live, deeply-feeling kid workshop.
You're going to get an approach that makes you say, oh my goodness, this is my kid and
then you're going to get a set of strategies that actually work.
First things first, follow the link in show notes to see if your child is a DFK and see
exactly how we can help.
All of it is available within membership at goodinside.com.
I can't wait to connect with you inside.
If you're a parent of a tween or teen, this next message is for you.
We are living in a digital first world and we're raising our older kids amidst an unprecedented
mental health crisis.
We know that the landscape has changed and raising tweens and teens has never been harder.
Plus, the data around us and the news coverage is staggering.
And we know that reports of anxiety and depression amongst tweens and teens is at an all-time
high.
We know all of this is true and still.
I don't want to spread a message of fear, not at all.
I want to spread a message of empowerment and hope because after all here at goodinside,
we're really on a mission to help you be a sturdy leader so you can raise sturdy kids.
And I know it's never too late to start this journey.
I am so excited to let you know that we are extending our support and resources in good
inside membership to parents of tweens and teens.
From how to navigate phones and social media to how to support your team through insecurity
and anxiety.
We equip parents with exactly what they need to help their teens successfully navigate
through this turbulent world.
Good inside membership is now supporting parents of kids ages 0 through 18.
And what will you get?
You'll have access to a digital searchable library of short videos, scripts and workshops
for every single in the moment problem and struggle you might be facing.
You get access to a safe, private away from social media community monitored by trained
good inside coaches.
You also have access to ongoing support groups with other parents led by good inside coaches
to talk about the unique struggles of the teenage years.
It's all available at goodinside.com.
I can't wait to see you inside.
So let's jump into social media.
I think social media obviously is impacts on girls and boys, but why are girls especially
vulnerable to social media?
So boys and girls, the differences in their abilities are very small, but the differences
in their interest are huge as most parents will observe.
What they choose to do when they have freedom is very different and boys have more of what's
called a need for agency.
They're out trying to break things, build things.
They're much more interested in mechanical things.
Girls and women are more oriented towards communion needs, relationships.
They're interested in what people's relationships are.
They remember each other's birthdays.
They know who's mad at whom.
So they're just much more interested in the social world.
So those are well-known gender differences.
They start early in life.
They go through all of life.
That's what happens.
Video games come along and they say to boys, hey, you want to break things?
You want to fight?
Here you go.
You can do that for hours a day.
Social media comes along and says, oh, you have communion needs.
Check in on what someone just said about you.
Check in on somebody's relationship updates.
So social media really baited its hooks for girls.
They know exactly what girls needs are, but they know exactly what girls insecurities
are.
How can I get this girl away from her homework to come over to Instagram or TikTok?
How can I do that?
Because their business model is advertising base, so they have to maximize eyeballs.
So for all these reasons, the social media, girls are much more likely to be addicted to
social media than boys are.
What it does to them is, of course, the chronic social comparison.
We all know about that.
Every girl can feel that she is below average because what she sees is not the honest representation
of her pool of friends.
And there are so many direct harms to girls.
There is much more relational aggression, bullying, which is worse than seventh grade, seventh
and eighth grade.
Girls share emotions more than boys do.
So if a girl is depressed, it actually makes her friends depressed.
Whereas if a boy is depressed, it doesn't spread as much in his network.
So for all these reasons, it's just insane that middle school kids are on social media.
That has to stop.
And what I say in the book is really should be 16.
We need to see this.
None of this is appropriate for children.
This is really adult stuff.
And it's even bad for us.
Look, most of us are struggling with this.
It's terrible for kids going through puberty.
Yeah.
You know, when I was working with teens in my private practice, that would come up related
to how I think, yes, they're spending so much time on social media has had this massive
impact on how they form their sense of self, right?
And really, right?
I mean, there's many ways to form our sense of self, but I think there are two roads.
And we learn this growing up.
Do I have good, valuable things inside me?
And can I gaze in to feel good about myself?
Or do I have to gaze out and see what other people say about me to get the good outside
in?
And I had this one client who spoke so poetically and she was able to say to me, when I'm
not like on social media, when I'm just kind of alone.
I feel like I am in a room that's empty with white walls.
And what I'm looking for and what happens sometimes when not all the time is like, I go
on and I'm looking for kind of this data outside to give me color to like make and then if
we think about that yearning and that search and there's an addictive quality to that
too, right?
You're looking for something that never comes, right?
But you can't stop going there.
It's so terrifying for me when you said middle schoolers on social media.
I mean, I think it starts much earlier.
I mean, there's a lot of elementary schoolers who are spending a lot of time on Instagram
and TikTok.
That's right.
Which is horrible.
Yeah, I cannot believe that that's happening.
But yes, of course, it is.
Fourth and fifth grade girls are getting on.
So I want to get to what parents can do and also, right?
Because here's what we know, me and you.
Parents want to do a good job, parents love their kids.
And so we're holding that.
And at the other side, we're holding, okay, so are there all these kids kind of engaging
in their phones with social media in a way that we know as parents isn't good for them.
And that's a conundrum.
So like the most generous interpretation of why that is.
Let's start with that.
Like why do you think this is happening?
Because it's a social, it's a collective action problem.
This is the key to solving it.
There are many problems you can solve yourself.
If you want your kids to eat more vegetables, that's up to you.
You can feed them more vegetables.
But if you don't want your kids on social media or you don't want the kids of a phone,
it's not entirely up to you.
Or at least you can try, but it's going to be a struggle every day to control their technologies
because their friends have it.
These things are socially addictive.
They're engineered to do that.
So I teach a class at NYU, a flourishing class, my undergraduate students.
We talk about how the terrible things that spending four hours a day on TikTok,
this is a terrible thing for a college student to do.
Why don't you stop?
Well, I can't get off because everyone else is on.
I'm like, I need to be in the loop.
I need to know what everyone is saying.
So it's a trap.
And it's engineered to be a trap is designed that way.
So here's the key.
All of us as parents, we've all been struggling with this.
We've all been trying to regulate it.
We've all been trying to set limits.
And there's all these ambiguous cases in its constant conflict.
This is happening all over the country, all over the world.
It's hard to regulate if you're on your own, but it's much easier if we do it together.
So the way out of a collective action problem is to act collectively.
So what I'm saying in the book is four norms.
If we adopt four norms, we can solve this problem most of the way.
We can get most of the stuff out, especially for K through 8.
Here are the norms.
One, no smartphone till high school.
If you want to talk to your kid when he's at school, well, you shouldn't be talking
to him during school.
But you need to communicate for all sorts of reasons.
Read my flip phones.
Flip phones, as we said, are not harmful.
They're for communication.
So no smartphone till high school.
We need to make that a national norm, not a law, but a norm that kids before high school
do not have smartphones, because they'll be sucked into all kinds of internet stuff.
Second norm, no social media till 16, especially not TikTok Instagram, the big ones that are
designed to do this.
My kids run track.
They have, there's some things that are technically social media so they can keep up with other
runners, my daughter's 14, running is her life like, okay, I understand I'm going to make
an exception for that.
But I really help align at TikTok Instagram and Snapchat.
So no social media until 16, that's the second norm.
The third norm is phone free schools.
And this is one, I really want listeners, I mean, we can change this in the next year.
Every principal hates the phones.
Every teacher hates the phones.
I ask them, why don't you ban them?
They say because some parents freak out.
They want to talk to the kid all the time, they need that contact.
So if you're listening to this conversation and your kid's school doesn't require phones
to be locked up during the day, please contact the principal, the head of school.
Because if that person hears from a flood of parents saying, please give my child seven
hours a day when she can listen to her teachers and her fellow students.
Seven hours a day off of her phone.
All kids need this during the school days.
That's the third norm.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's really powerful.
That's absolutely.
You're so right to focus on the parents anxiety.
You know, my wife and I, when we first, you know, because I was friends with Lenore,
and I read her book, Free Range Kids, so in fourth grade, we started having my son walk
to school.
It's about a third of a mile away in Lower Manhattan.
The seventh avenue, intersection is really complicated.
So we were really nervous.
And that's when I gave him a phone.
In retrospect, I would give him a flip phone that you can track.
But even my old iPhone turned, you know, and so we watched his little blue dot walk, you know,
and we could visualizing with his backpack, God, his little kid, watching him get to seventh
avenue, and there was a pause.
And my, we were like, both hunched over the phone, like, you know, you could hear a pin drop
as we were watching the dot on the phone.
And he made it, he made it across seventh avenue.
And then we watched him go to school and, and it was such a relief.
And then the next day, we watched again, and we were much less nervous.
And by the fourth day, we stopped watching because, look, the kid, I mean, this kid is a really smart kid.
He understands the subway system. He understands how traffic works.
Like, this is a really capable kid.
And so we had to get over our anxiety even more than he had to get over his.
Yeah. Any, any final, any final words that sound so, so heavy.
But anything that you're thinking, we really didn't get into this.
And I really want, you know, parents and listeners to hear this from me.
Sure. So I, you know, I would say there's, there's a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness around all of this.
And people say to me, like, oh, that train is, that train is so heavy.
That train is, that train's left the station. Oh, you know, what are you going to do?
You know, you can't call this back. No, that is not true.
You know, we had let it gas, which was poisoning kids brains.
And we said, let's ban let it gas. Like, when something is this big, a public threat to our kids,
and it's damaging so many kids and families, we have to act.
But I don't want to just say, like, oh, there's a terrible situation.
We have to act. What I want to really communicate is, this is actually easy to solve if we act together.
The four norms that I suggested cost nothing, nothing, they're free.
I mean, you have to, schools have to buy phone lockers and it would be nicer states put up a little money for that.
That's it. These norms cost nothing. They are totally bipartisan.
This is not a left right culture issue. Everyone wants their kids to spend more time playing with other kids rather than other phones all day.
And if we do these four norms, they will work.
We know that if kids are taken off screens and given a lot more play, they will be mentally healthier.
So I want to leave listeners with a real feeling of hope that we've been put in a trap by the tech companies and by the absence of any helpful regulation from our government from the Congress especially.
We have to take matters into our own hands.
So I want to leave parents with a feeling of hope.
I think we can change childhood by the end of 2025, especially for elementary and middle school.
Harder to get the phones away from high school kids. I'm not saying we absolutely we should.
But we can stop giving fourth and fifth graders smartphones.
We can at least let them get up through early puberty with a reasonably healthy childhood.
And that is going to change mental health in this country.
Thank you, Jonathan.
Thank you, Becky. What did you like talking with you?
Thank you to our podcast sponsors AirBnB and Granibles.
Thank you for listening.
To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com slash podcast.
Or you could write me at podcast at goodinside.com.
Parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world.
And you deserve resources and support so you feel empowered and confident for this very important job you hold.
I'm so excited to share good inside membership.
It's the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents.
It's game changing and built for a busy parent who wants to make the most out of the few minutes they have.
Goodinside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at Magnificent Noise.
Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julianna and Kristen Mueller.
I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Brooke Zant and the rest of the good inside team.
And one last thing before I let you go.
Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves, even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside.
I remain good inside.
