April 16, 2024 • 52 mins
Welcome to the 11th episode of the Finding Time podcast where we finally talk about our main concerns surrounding social media and will subsequentially post about it on social media!
Our main focus is on 2 of the biggest critics of tech & social media: The Social Dilemma (2020 Netflix Documentary) and non-fiction book The Anxious Generation (from Dr Jonathan Haidt).
In this compelling episode, we go beyond the surface and question the ethical implications of technology's impact on our own minds and our children's minds. Most importantly, we talk through all the ways tech hurts our kids and what we as parents can do about it.
It's not all doom & gloom, but we need to start a movement of parents because the companies and systems around them (financial and political) will only lead us further down a spiraling drain.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:06):
All right. Hello, and welcome back to the Finding Time podcast.
We are on episode 11 today, which ironically enough is our favorite number.
I thought that's just my favorite number, not yours.
I think I took it over. I wore number 11 in college, didn't I?
You did, but that's because it was my favorite number.
Well, what's yours is mine. So there we go. This is marriage.
(00:27):
So today we are talking about social media.
A little bit of the background that I prepped for this is actually more about
what is so addictive on social media and not just like the platforms themselves, you know?
So what did we do to prep for this?
We watched a movie. We did.
It's a documentary, I would say. But yeah, we watched it separately because
(00:50):
we couldn't find the time to actually watch it together.
And I think we're about two years late to the show. But we both watched The
Social Dilemma on Netflix, which was a really good documentary.
I'd been meaning to get to it for so long.
So I'm actually happy that I finally did.
And then I basically forced you to watch it to prepare for today. Right.
(01:10):
He like set it up for me and everything in my early morning awake hours.
So then I just clicked play and it was definitely better to watch it in almost
full than if we tried to watch it together, we'd be stopping every 20 minutes
and it would have took us two weeks.
It would have. So that was the right way to do it. And then the other key source
(01:31):
of information, I would say, is a recent book that was just put out by Dr.
Jonathan Heap. And he's written a bunch bunch of books but this
one is called the anxious generation i think i first heard
of him a few years ago when he wrote the book the coddling of the
american mind and he's been pretty heavy critic of how now technology but then
in the past sort of our institutions are you know crippling young american minds
(01:53):
so those are the two kind of key pieces of background for our discussion today
hopefully it's not too negative and pessimistic i guess.
Right. And we'll try not to hit too much on mental health because that can be
a whole nother five or six podcasts for us and for you guys to listen to.
But obviously, that was a huge take is that it's very much connected.
(02:19):
It is. Yeah, that's where a lot of this comes from is the whole reason we even
have any desire to talk about it.
And the whole reason that anyone would want to listen to it is because there's
a huge undertone of all the issues it's causing, all of the downsides in both adults and children.
I think we'll kind of float across both boundaries because our kids are still a little bit younger.
(02:41):
They haven't been negatively impacted too much, but that danger is looming right
in front of our faces. But see, I already want to argue him because I think
it starts so young and they have been already negatively impacted.
Maybe not the twins, but the boys for sure.
Or just a different kind of impact than what we had by, what,
(03:03):
five, six years old. Oh, well, yeah, obviously they're growing up in a completely different world.
Yeah, that's, I guess, my first caution or maybe my first caveat is we are not
anti-technology in any way, right?
I don't think we would classify ourselves as being completely restrictive.
We let the boys do certain things, but I think we noticed that that danger is
(03:25):
there and trying to remove it completely is very difficult. I think our lifestyle
just isn't quite built around that and they need some exposure to it.
They need some experience with it as they grow.
But also, I think it's like, you know, being a pro bicycle in 1925, like the car is coming.
(03:46):
You got to learn how to use it, build safe roadways and build safety regulations
and all that kind of stuff.
Any kind of big technology change like this takes time.
And we're sort of lucky enough with our age that we grew up on both ends of
literally flipping that technological switch, right?
And I always say I love when we were born because we did not have technology
(04:10):
until, like you said, 2005.
We were, what, almost 15 years old. And then when it started becoming more into
households, it was a one shared family computer that maybe you could use.
And don't forget all the dial-up patients we had to endure.
Oh, yeah. That taught us a lot of patience, waiting for that dial tone.
(04:33):
And it's interesting in one of the interviews I saw, I think it's in the book,
but in one of the interviews I saw with Jonathan Haidt, he points to that,
that in the early 2000s, even still into the early 2010s, technology.
The way that we're thinking of it today, social media wasn't quite around.
So TV, movies, you know, chat, instant messenger, phone, all that kind of stuff was still very social.
(04:58):
It was not anti-social. You gathered around a TV and there was one remote and
there's a little bit of a, of a power struggle for who got to pick what was
going on, or you had to choose what went on as a group,
whether that was you and your friends or you and your siblings or your parents or whatever.
And as computers got introduced, we would hang out with our friends on instant messenger and chat.
(05:22):
But it was very social. You remember being with two or three or four of our
friends just on instant messenger talking to three or four or five of our other
friends. So it was very different than what the kids grew up with.
And he actually points that out, that people overlook the fact that tech rolled
out at this time and no one complains then.
But that's because it still was very socially centric. It wasn't as harmful yet. So funny.
(05:48):
I totally remember that and didn't until you said it, but just had a flashback.
You're right. There would be.
At a friend's house, you'd have one computer screen up and then you'd be talking
to another group of friends or however it was laid out and you'd all be seeing the same thing.
So you're still being very social. You're engaging.
I think kind of what we want to get to, at least for this episode,
(06:12):
is that it wasn't at your fingertips.
And that's kind of where we can start and hopefully narrow it down.
Because like I said, this can be like five or six different episodes.
But the way we grew up with technology or when we started technology around
2005, it still was not at our fingertips like it is now, even for our young children.
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No, you had to work for it. You had to work and plan.
You had to cooperate with siblings and your parents.
And a lot of people at that time, again, had the computer kind of in a central
location. Maybe it was in like a family room, if it was off like the kitchen
somewhere or some it was something a little more centralized and out there.
(06:56):
It wasn't until we are a little bit older that like computers were sometimes
tucked away in your room or an office or whatever.
But usually there was one computer for the house that everyone had to get on
your parents, your siblings, all of that. So, again, you still had to use those
skills to plan for it, cooperate with them and find your time and then also plan with your friends.
(07:17):
Like when were they going to be online, you know, and you wanted to match up with them a little bit.
And don't forget, we took the time to be away with our away messages. messages.
God, away messages. I'm sure there's a treasure trope of hilarious away messages somewhere out there.
So maybe we can find that and put it online.
I think you still probably have a ton saved. I bet you're like a weird digital order in some ways.
(07:42):
No, it was that he just recently found like a document on our laptop that was
from old computer 2009 or something.
And he started looking through the files and it was it was just like pages of
quotes and I guess away messages.
Well, and remember, there weren't even really emojis then.
(08:03):
She had all these weird little symbols you could make with the different symbols
on your keyboard, the colons and the parentheses and the letters.
So you got real creative with how you would make little hearts and lines and faces.
So funny. But also like I'm smiling because that was like a good time with social media.
The moral of the story is we feel very lucky and I'm sure other people do too.
(08:26):
Older people might feel lucky that they had more time without technology.
Younger people might feel lucky that they've always had technology.
But everyone else is wrong and we're right. And we are the best age group because
we got to live on both sides of the fence. That's my stance.
I agree. I definitely think we got to see the best sides of both worlds when
(08:48):
it was non-existent and when it just was a little bit rolled out.
Yeah. So we'll kind of go through like a couple of scenes, I think,
from that documentary that really hit home with us and some other things we've
seen in interviews and books and try to connect it all.
But one of the first things I wanted to touch on that I just thought was such a really telling quote.
(09:10):
So I guess it's been out for a couple of years, but for anyone who has not seen
that documentary, again, we're not spoiling it.
This has been a few years that we're late to the show.
It's basically a bunch of tech insiders, people from Google and Facebook and
Instagram and Snapchat and one of the founders of Pinterest,
just that whole world, a bunch of insiders is essentially pointing out all of
(09:34):
the flaws and problems within social media,
mainly from, I think, a pretty nefarious place, actually, not that it's bad
for you or unhealthy in any way.
We all kind of know and recognize that the main theme, I think,
is that the decisions that were made were nefarious in the later years,
like they're designed to be very hurtful, knowing
(09:57):
that this is bad for people because it's just treating
it like a drug in the earlier years it
was just pure kind of creativity let's
do this this will be a cool feature how can we keep them
scrolling how can we put cool videos and cool posts
in front of their face so that's kind of their theme in the beginning it was
they're just trying to do the best technology the best social media app and
(10:21):
it drifted drifted drifted they all pretty much agree based on money and advertising
into this world where it's how can we just suck every second of attention and
activity out of your brain,
which has a much more dramatic undertone to it.
So one quote from one of the main writers.
Guys in this. And I think he was one of the directors for it or something was Tristan Harris.
(10:44):
And he was very high up in Instagram, either a co-founder or one of the original guys that worked on it.
And he's been one of the most vocal about how bad this stuff is.
And the quote that he has is essentially he's given this speech and he says
that so many people were focused on when tech and AI and these algorithms would
(11:04):
surpass human strengths,
meaning they can take over jobs and take over functions in the world,
nobody stopped and just asked themselves,
when is it going to take over our weaknesses?
And that is 15 years in the past. We completely missed that warning sign.
And that's kind of what they're pointing out today is we totally missed that,
which I thought was really telling and sort of set the stage for the documentary.
(11:28):
I think these guys who essentially left the tech world, it wasn't because they
don't still like technology.
But it was more so once they stopped creating for creativity and knowledge to
bring back into the real world,
they were seeing themselves that it was just being created and continuously
(11:51):
upgraded for the simple fact to get the society, to get us addicted, essentially.
Yeah, they talk about that race to the bottom of the brainstem, right?
And so the whole point there is how can they put something in front of your
face that is just so integral to you as an animal, not as a human or a thinker.
(12:13):
It surpasses all of your logical processes in your brain. It gets right to the
bottom of the brainstem, which I think is where the pleasure center is.
How can we make that light up and get you hooked on what you're seeing and look
at the next thing and the next thing and the next thing?
And that's where it really does get pretty messy.
But that is the the goal is how do we keep these people, meaning consumers,
(12:34):
hooked on what we have to show them?
And the downside is the whole reason they want you hooked is so they can sell
you stuff. How do we get ads in front of their face? How do we charge more for advertising?
Because we can say we get so many viewers and we keep them glued to the screen.
And this was kind of perfect timing. There's been a few things that have come
out now. There's a big lawsuit.
(12:55):
I think that's getting either ruled or settled or something where essentially
Netflix and Facebook were in this horrible agreement where Facebook was giving
up like access to private messages in your messenger app between you and your
friends that you had no idea could be viewed publicly.
And they were selling them to Netflix, I think for a hundred million dollars.
And Netflix was then taking that and deciding what they should show you,
(13:19):
what you might be interested in.
And I think they were actually giving data back to Facebook too.
Like here's this person's viewing history or, you know, what their friend group is watching.
I don't know all the details, but something that center around that is they
were selling your private data, which I think at some level,
if you're again, our age, you should know your data is sold every single day. Nothing is private.
(13:40):
We all know this, but I think seeing some of it go a little bit beyond just
your browsing data and more like your message and stuff just feels very dirty.
There is actually, contrary to what you're saying,
a big split in how like everyone takes social media, even of our age,
because unless I always say this about my education background,
(14:03):
like we had our son and we immediately said no TV.
Whereas if that just wasn't your background or you just, I don't know,
didn't research it maybe as much, you didn't really realize the impact that
social media and just technology in general was doing.
But then with your jobs and your focus, you were into learning and growing like
(14:27):
how to work things like Google and Gmail and things like that.
So we kind of hit that balance as parents that was like, you know,
you don't want to ban this completely.
You need them to learn things, but you also need to put the restrictions on it.
And I think that maybe parents a little older than us, but even still around
(14:49):
our age, just didn't know that because there were no warning signs in the beginning. Yeah, maybe.
And we always felt that we kind of had a rule amongst ourselves.
I feel like. And we talked to some of our friends like this.
And again, this is going back a few years, which doesn't sound that long,
but we're learning a lot about this stuff every single year.
I think we waited till 18 months to show our oldest anything.
(15:13):
And even after that, it wasn't like we weren't giving them a phone to scroll
through Facebook. book.
We were letting him watch like the wiggles and, and bounce patrol,
shout out to bounce patrol.
That was one of my favorites, but we were just letting him watch nursery rhymes
and songs and colors, you know, things like that.
And, but we always said, if it feels like we're using like the screen or something
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as a babysitter, we, we knocked it off that. And that was one of our lines.
Like if we caught ourselves kind of saying like, Hey, we got to.
Put him in front of the TV to watch whatever the wiggles or something for 30
minutes while we do something.
Not there's anything wrong with that, but it was more so the principle on our
end that we felt guilty on.
(15:55):
We got no issue letting him learn these songs and letting him learn from those
shows that we feel like were positive and educational, but we had to limit it
and we had to watch ourselves because he was two and three and whatever.
He can't police himself with that stuff. And then as he got a little bit older
and got like a tablet or got a show when he gets upset or ever like had a meltdown
(16:16):
or something, if we try to take it or ever, that just goes right through me and he's done.
If he has the littlest of like a meltdown or doesn't want to give up the remote or a tablet.
Now I know you're done. You need a detox.
This is gone for however long I feel like it, but that like, you know, I don't know.
I know he's a kid, but that reaction tells me there's something in him that's
(16:39):
getting hooked and I need to cut it. Right.
And I mean, our twins now are 15 months.
They obviously have never touched a tablet. And we really have tried to stick
to these rules as we've had each child, which I think I really like about our parenting.
We never throw them a screen to distract them or have them leave us alone.
(17:00):
And some parents have to, and that's fine too. But that's just something we've
instilled than the kids, and they kind of know that they'll get it maybe as
a reward or just something in the routine that day that lets them have that 15, 20 minutes.
But to take them out and just say, okay, they'll be good if they have their tablets, we just.
(17:21):
Do. No, no. And there have been times we have like friends over or something.
And again, it bumps up into their routine where they normally would get it. We may let them have it.
And then we catch ourselves 45 minutes later because we get quiet time with
friends going, oh, shoot, they've just been sitting on their tablets for this long.
Like, let's, you know, let's step in and do something. But again,
it's you have to have that mentality that something is happening,
(17:43):
even though they're young, something is happening that's hooking them.
It's the same thing that we go if you're as adults, you could be watching whatever
you're watching and something starts to happen in your brain.
And until you pick up on it, you don't really quite realize,
but that's what they're talking about with that race to the bottom of your brainstem.
You're getting hooked on the videos, the songs, the clips, whatever it is.
(18:03):
So why don't we interject a little bit of information there around screen time by age group?
I did do a little bit of background research to help us out here.
This is the average screen time.
And again, this is including tv is this once
a day this is daily oh my goodness okay
so our 16 to 24 year olds
(18:24):
and correct me if i'm wrong but i think those are the ones like
born with technology and the parents
didn't know what the backlash
of social media and technology would be
it was just this is new for us our kids get it like hooray there's no repercussion
yeah they were basically born 2000 2008 essentially okay so their average screen
(18:49):
time is seven to seven and a half hours a day.
That's constant. Now, I mean, I'm sure they're up, I don't know,
12, 14 hours, but still, that's a lot.
That's half their day, which then 25 to 34-year-olds, I'm a little surprised at this.
I mean, we're at the tail end of this, but that is also seven hours a day.
(19:10):
So that shocks me. I mean, I don't do that.
No, no, we definitely don't do that. I didn't think about this.
We should add up what we do, but it's probably, although this includes TV and
all, if I'm I'm home, I'll watch, you know, my sports show at lunch and I'll
watch like a movie at night.
But I probably push five to six hours, I guess, now that I think about it.
(19:33):
That's true. But I don't watch TV at all. So I'm definitely like half this at that.
Yeah. All right. Then 35 to 44 is also super close is six and a half hours.
So with these three, you're basically talking 16
year olds to 44 year olds are spending spending average
seven hours a day on their
(19:54):
social media and i think that just puts so much into perspective
as like a 44 year old parent with
a 16 year old child you kind of you
know follow what you see no this is all very new i would say the pushback on
it is only within the last couple of years and again this includes tv well it's
interesting the chart i grabbed this from actually had a breakdown of how they
(20:16):
consumed it too and you can see that switch like like 16 to 24 year olds, there was so much.
Phone and internet and laptop usage and tablets.
And then the older group, and once you got over 44, that group was like,
I think five to six hours, but it was almost all TV.
So like maybe 30 minutes, 45 minutes of news in the morning,
(20:37):
three, four hours at night, maybe an email, maybe a little bit on their phone,
but like you kind of see how an older person does it.
The younger generations, they're on their laptop, they're on their phone.
The middle generations have a pretty healthy mix of like TV versus smartphone or tablet.
So it's kind of all over the place. But still, yeah, I mean,
it's it's a lot of time. That makes sense, too.
(20:57):
And I'd love to track this or ask the audience just to think how many times
do you check your phone during a two hour movie?
Because I know the few times you and me will have a movie night.
There's we cannot go the whole time without pulling out our phone.
No, we are bad at that. That's true.
It's like once you have a chance to sit down, yeah, you want to watch the movie,
(21:21):
but you're also scrolling on Instagram or checking your text messages.
So that's like just so much stimulation from a screen in general.
And then the younger kids get that, what, constantly with this computer screen,
learning on a screen at school. If you have a high school kid interested in
getting into like the medical fields, push them into ophthalmology.
(21:45):
Is that is that eyes?
We need more eye doctors because every single one of us is going to have screwed
up eyes from all the screen time we're doing.
So what about the younger kids then? So eight to 12 years old,
70% spend more than two hours a day on a screen.
And for 13 to 15 year olds, 90% spend more than two hours a day on a screen,
(22:07):
which is a lot for young children.
It is. Yeah. They didn't quite break down all of the types for that because
they don't have a lot of control.
They're not as much on school with screens, but still it's hours a day.
I think that one actually excluded school. That one was without education.
So that's just at home. That's tablet, smartphone, if they're of age,
(22:27):
that kind of thing. More so maybe the TV shows too.
But if you are a parent and I don't know, just researching this more or being
more aware of it, even our children's shows.
Certain ones specifically, are made now to be addictive, to pull them in. They are.
And that's kind of the scarier thing that I think a lot of people are waking
(22:49):
up to is that so many things are built to be addictive.
Grab your attention, you know, that kind of thing. And again,
I'll flip back then to the social dilemma.
One of the people in that who helped design some of these systems talks about
how they use a model, I'll say, that works at a neurological level.
(23:11):
It shows you new posts. It shows you things that you should be interested in.
And if you're not getting a lot of engagement, it sort of refreshes it.
And this is, you know, kind of way deep on the tech side of things.
But if you and I remember not that long ago, your Facebook feed was almost like
a newspaper and it was printed and you could only see what was on the screen,
(23:34):
but you could imagine what was below it.
And as you scrolled, it wasn't changing what was coming up. It was there.
You were going to scroll down to it, just like you would flip through a newspaper
and find the story, whatever you want it.
Now it's like the front page of the newspaper. That's what you can see on your
screen, the rest of the newspaper is blank.
And depending on how you've react to what's on the front page,
(23:56):
it'll populate each page as you turn it.
If you're liking family stuff, it'll show you more family stuff.
If you're liking a certain topic, you know, I noticed that with like Instagram,
I'll go through certain periods where I'm liking a lot of dad jokes and stuff.
I'll get more dad influencers.
I'll like a bunch of lacrosse stuff right now. My stuff is filled with lacrosse
coaches and lacrosse humor and college lacrosse stuff.
(24:17):
And it just bounces with how you're interacting, what you're liking, what you're looking at.
And the whole theory behind it, they're not making this stuff up. It's by design.
It's called positive intermittent reinforcement.
And that's basically, you know, there's studies done with mice and stuff like that.
And it basically is training you to ask for a reward.
(24:39):
It trains you to look for a stimulus and then get a reward.
And if it's a good reward, you'll do it again. And if it's not a good reward,
it's not positive intermittent reinforcement.
And this is where kind of the dirtiness comes into play. That whole theory from
psychology is the main principle used in designing slot machine.
It's pull the lever, get something you want, keep you entertained.
(25:01):
And we're not big gamblers, but 20, 30 years ago, slot machines were just that pull the lever.
You had three analog, like picture bars that spun and you either won or lost.
Now slot machines are all digital. there's lights everywhere.
You have no idea what's happening on a slot machine.
You just push the button, some graphics happen, and you either get a little
(25:22):
money or you lose some, but there's all these crazy things that just stimulate
you in such a way to keep asking for the reward.
And that's the part that is just so kind of dirty about all of this.
And I think where the defensiveness comes in, because there is a lot of good
with social media, you know, there is a lot of good with, you know, these platforms.
I remember from the movie as well, one of the guys said they actually became
(25:46):
addicted to their own system.
Like they created these systems, you know, to pull the people in and to have
like a steady flow of information for society.
But he said he started noticing that he was addicted because he was pulling
it up in the morning and then working with it all day and then pulling it up at night as well.
(26:08):
So for him he had young kids and
he actually had stopped bringing his phone into
the house or something but he said it was that
big of an addiction that this machine
or this technology was doing to him when he even created it so imagine what
it's doing to all of us yeah and that's one of the again these are insiders
(26:31):
and it's obviously a little dramatized but i think I think he was the one that
said he noticed the problem. He was part of the design team.
They're trying to get more usage, more views, more comfort and all that,
even out of something as seemingly non-addictive as Gmail.
But when he noticed that, he kind of put together a presentation.
(26:52):
I think Google had or used to have this sort of collaborative entrepreneurial
spirit. So he put together a presentation of let's stop and ask.
We're trying to make this, you know, user friendly and a great tool.
Are we stopping to consider the ethics? Are we stopping to say,
hey, are we making this a little too addictive?
Are we creating problems? And how do we put the consumer first instead of trying
(27:16):
to sell more product? And he said he got nothing but positive reviews,
hundreds of peers saying, hey, this is great. We love your presentation.
He got a chance or like an invitation to present it kind of higher up the food chain at Google.
And then nothing happened. A meeting was never set up. No one ever took it the next step.
(27:36):
And it was one of those things where it was the first time he felt there's hundreds
of Google employees saying, yeah, we're all hooked.
This is a problem. problem and none. And he knew the higher ups were aware of
it and he knew they were aware of the positive feedback that this is a problem
and no one wanted to do anything or address it. And I think that's one of the telling things.
(27:57):
They just don't have the interest at the highest level.
Fast forward to, I think just in the last week or two, but Florida actually
banned social media users under 14, I think.
And it doesn't go into effect until 2025, but essentially social media companies,
even if you have an account,
they have to deactivate your account and, you know, do all this stuff and,
(28:20):
and you have to have parental guidance and authority and age,
all this, all this stuff. And it's kind of good.
It's sort of a slippery slope to, I'm not crazy about a ton of government intervention.
But it's a good thing because I think they recognize, look, this is hurting kids.
Let's just stop the wild, wild west of the Internet and at least have some regulation on it.
(28:42):
So I think that's a good thing. I don't know all the details of it,
but I think it's a pretty good thing that they did that.
I'm not so sold on the government intervention of it all.
But I mean, you and me said even before we had kids, our kids won't get a phone
until they're like 16. teen.
They won't get social media until they're at least teenagers.
(29:02):
And I mean, well, this is only six. So we have like 10 years.
But I feel like we will stick to that. And in that way, maybe we were ahead of the game.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly hope so. Right. It's easy to say it now when they're
young and we don't have to deal with it as much.
But I do certainly hope that that's the case.
I think there'll be more support for it coming out of these parents of younger
(29:26):
kids because they've We've seen either older kids have problems with it or they've
seen older like nieces, nephews, siblings, whatever,
experience problems with it. And there's going to be a ton more research and data.
Quite honestly, this is a fairly new problem that, let's face it,
most people, most corporations are not going to support the research.
(29:47):
And there is that whole dark side to this, just like anything else,
where you need money to research this stuff.
And then, you know, if you really want to think about it, let's say you find
something that's really damaging to, you know, social media with kids or whatever,
and you write a book about it, you put a documentary out, you kind of need that
(30:10):
to get out on social media.
You can't put it in the newspaper because no one's going to read it.
So it is this tricky thing where you need to get it out on social media.
And we know they will, in some cases, censor or limit how much that message gets out there.
So it is really hard to get good information, good research out to the public
(30:31):
so they know. So this is very much a problem on parents.
Transition that to, you know, Dr. Jonathan Haidt and this book.
But I read part of the book and I've seen him in a bunch of interviews already.
He was actually in The Social Dilemma. So it kind of just spiraled into what
he's done with this book.
He he's saying the same thing that the tech companies are absolutely not going
(30:53):
to fix this. They can't afford to lose the money and the income.
Politicians aren't going to fix it, nor should they necessarily,
because if they try to make too many restrictive rules, restrictive laws,
I could see that going the wrong way, too.
So I kind of agree with him. He says the only way to do this is through the
parents or you need something to solve what is called in the social sciences
(31:15):
a social collective problem.
Essentially, everyone is doing something because everyone is doing it.
We're getting our kid a smartphone because three of his best friends have a
smartphone and he can't not have a smartphone because that's how he talks to his friends.
And if he doesn't have it, he's not going to be able to make plans or hang out
and then he'll be ostracized.
It creates this whole problem. What social scientists believe is you need about
(31:36):
a 25 to 30 percent breakthrough.
So, you know, if there's 50, 100, 200 kids in a class size, you know,
think of the kids social world. old. It's not the whole school,
but something like that.
You need about 25 to 30 percent of them to push an agenda to break through that problem.
Be something like, you know, 15 kids out of a 30, 40 kid classroom in middle
(32:00):
school not having cell phones.
And that is kind of crazy to think about. But that is the kind of parental push you need.
For sure. And I think it's almost just a matter of possibly boredom for especially
the teenager who wouldn't have the phone, At least now, when you look around.
I mean, we have some family who are in their teens, and they're together, but on their phones.
(32:24):
So when you're the parent not even letting your child have a phone,
obviously, it's easy for me to say we aren't going to let our children have
phones till a certain age. But that's obviously going to come with some pushback from them.
Or we'll just be lucky that we'll have a group of friends and parents that all
agree to not give it right away. Yeah, hopefully we can hope for that.
(32:48):
So you're not going to get a ton of support from the kids, but it is interesting
in some of the studies that they've done.
I think he's conducted some, and I know other researchers on this subject have conducted studies.
Like if you ask kids if they would get rid of Instagram or TikTok on their phones,
almost all of them say no.
But if you ask them, if your three best friends got rid of TikTok,
(33:12):
would you delete it off off your phone and no one was ever going to use it again,
then they all are like, yeah, I probably would. There's no point to it then.
So again, it just points to that. You got to get a little bit of breakthrough.
And then if they're not doing it, you know, everyone's, everyone's kind of different
in how they would handle that. But it's all about getting to that breakthrough.
And I think there was just such a quick shift on everyone having cell phones
(33:35):
now to maybe back when we were teenagers.
Most people had cell phones, but again, just it wasn't everything else at your fingertips.
And there are a lot of ways that you can still keep your child like in the know
or even us communicating with them once they have sports or are at friends' houses without us.
(33:58):
Because I see there's watches and even using an older phone,
there are ways to still work around it that don't include giving them social
media and the smartphone full of addictive apps and social media content.
So when Dan was doing his research from Dr. Jonathan Haidt, he actually came
(34:21):
up with a call to action, which I did notice in the movie, although they were
saying all the problems.
It really is just so hard to come up with some kind of solution for all this
because it happens so quickly that now people just are like, OK,
we are noticing this is somewhat bad, but what are we going to do?
(34:43):
And then it's just back to technology. Yeah, no one generally has an answer,
at least last three, four or five years.
No one really has had an answer. And especially when it comes to kids,
if you try to kind of take technology away or limit it or anything, then COVID happens.
And now everything is virtual for a couple of years. It kind of went in the
(35:03):
complete other direction and really stalled it.
He actually said it was the silver lining for his book is a lot of good research
came out of that because you had this huge sample size of kids who were locked
up, restricted, restrained, and almost fully digital.
And unfortunately for the kids, he got a ton of great research to then really build out this.
(35:27):
So he recommends four actions, and he actually recommends this to the parents
because he says that politicians, school boards, and even the tech companies are failing us.
The first one, and we have touched on this, is no smartphones before high school
because there are other options you can give your kids.
(35:47):
And I do hope we touch some parents to get on board with this because then that'll
just make it easier to not give our kids the phones, right? Look,
if nothing else, we can all save a little money, right?
We can help our kids have a childhood a little bit longer.
So I generally think people do what's in their own best self-interest.
So save yourself some money. Let's pitch it from that angle.
(36:08):
But yeah, this is on the parents to start this movement. The second one was
no social media until 16.
So that's basically like end of sophomore, junior year of high school.
And I guess they are very much tied together.
At this point, you could obviously be exposed to social media on a computer if you really wanted to.
(36:28):
But I feel like that's also not as addictive than maybe because,
again, then you're going back to when we were little. You're finding the computer,
opening the laptop, and maybe you are making it more social.
I will say, though, if you have to give your kid a smartphone or that's just
the easier option for you, there are so many ways that you can keep social media
(36:50):
off the phone, even until high school or until they're 16.
And there are like good parental controls in that way.
I just don't know if us as parents are as smart as the teenagers who were born into to this world.
And I know I would be naive to say that they wouldn't be able to work their way around that.
(37:10):
No, they definitely will. They are digital natives.
Let's never forget that. Anything that...
You can come up with to try to restrict them or whatever, they're going to find a way against.
I remember seeing in one of these interviews, the, the guy had a kid,
let's say, I don't know, she was 12 or 13 and they limited her screen time through parental control.
(37:30):
So she could get on some things, but only for certain periods and the screen
time overall was limited. So it's a good way to kind of restrict it, keep it healthy.
So one time she wanted to get on her phone or do do something.
She turned on the screen recorder, gave it to her mom, you know,
said to do this and set the whatever screen limit for the day or update it and then took it back.
(37:52):
And because she had the screen recorder on, she got her mom's password and then
went on, changed all the parental controls and then had free reign of the phone.
So again, these kids are going to be smarter than you digitally.
Just, just face it, you know, just deal with it. We got to trust them a little
bit. And And again, we recognize if you have older kids, we are not speaking from experience.
(38:13):
This is just our thoughts and our hopes for the future.
But we do know a lot of people who have gone through this and told us stories.
We know kids who have lived through this era and they're going to be smarter than you.
They're going to try to outsmart you. You have to trust them a little bit.
But it's also our job as parents to try to protect them when they don't know they're in trouble.
That's literally the definition of a kid is you're doing dangerous things when
(38:35):
you don't know you're doing dangerous things.
For sure. Sure. I mean, and again, we don't have the older kids,
but the way our three-year-old can work his tablet is almost mind-blowing to
me because I get confused with turning up the volume and finding the button to put it on sometimes.
They are digital natives.
(38:56):
They are. Okay. The third one is phone-free schools.
And we actually talked about this even before we were going to record this podcast.
And so I just feel like I had a lot to say on the topic because I don't even
know when the switch happened that...
Your phone was in school. I feel like in high school, we had phones,
(39:18):
obviously they were different, but we just kept them in our book bag and hung
out with our friends, talked with our friends.
And my thought to Dan when we talked about this originally was that I think
it just overcame the schools so quickly that most of them did have a no cell phone policy,
but then it was was almost like one of those things, it's not worth the battle
(39:42):
as all the kids got phoned and all the kids started pulling them out in the
hallways, at study halls, and then into the classrooms.
It was almost one of those things like, let's just stop fighting them and we'll work with it.
And then I know some teachers have like their own policies.
But yeah, I think that That that switch was probably one of the most negative
(40:06):
things to do to these kids because they have a phone during their educational hours in the day.
Yeah, and I think we'll see, again, some more data come out of like the COVID
years and all that kind of stuff.
One of the example schools that he pointed to in this book was Mountain Middle School in Colorado.
They've actually been phone free since 2012.
(40:28):
They outlawed phones. You know, they have to be off and removed,
but they don't allow them in common areas in the school during school hours, that kind of thing.
And what they found is over the course of a decade, I think 2012 to 2022,
they had their highest academic scores and they saw constant increases in academic
performance when most other middle schools throughout the country and in their
(40:50):
own district were declining during that time. You know, and so that was very telling.
But then I think even more importantly, two of the more subjective things that
they got just from surveys within the school and all that kind of stuff was
they had some of their happiest reporting from children about school experience,
some of the happiest reporting from parents about school experience for their
(41:11):
children and their lowest levels of bullying,
especially, again, compared to national averages.
Those two things are so telling that you're doing something right if that's
the case. I would be so curious to know like what a high school looks like right now.
I mean, again, I just remember I think we did bring our phones,
but they were in our book bags until probably even after we got home.
(41:34):
I'm just curious, like, are the kids allowed to just walk down the halls with the phones now?
I still don't think they are everywhere, but I think it's a constant battle.
So my sister's a high school teacher and she doesn't allow phones,
but she knows the kids have them. she knows they're around like they're trying
to sneak things she's on the younger side i think.
(41:55):
Middle-aged now for teachers, but she knows of the trick.
So she kind of catches kids, but they're around, they're prevalent everywhere in the kids' lives.
That's kind of the whole point. I thought in the documentary,
one of the more painful scenes was when sort of the main character,
so that if, again, if you haven't seen it, there's a bunch of tech insiders
(42:16):
giving their narration, their points, their ideas, answering questions.
But then every 10, 15 minutes, there's a little little bit of like,
what would you call it? Like a theatrical reenactment of these things.
There is a movie within the documentary kind of that unfolds.
And so this high schooler has a phone and they have this actor,
there's three of him just kind of in triple who represent the algorithm kind
(42:36):
of in like a techie command center.
And he's essentially narrating what the algorithm does.
But when you put a voice to it, it makes it just very evil what this algorithm is trying to do to you.
So this kid is sitting with his friend and he is talking, they're having fun.
They're in like a lunchroom, whatever.
And this algorithm starts talking like, Hey, he's normally on his phone right
(43:00):
now. Why, why aren't we getting his attention?
Blah, blah, blah. Why isn't this happening? This is normally an active hour
for him. Why aren't we getting scrolling? Why isn't he on this app?
And they're kind of starting to panic. Like, how do we get his attention back?
And they say like, let's send him whatever notification, like,
Oh, that didn't work. Let's send him this notification.
No, that didn't work. And then they, you know, have like an ID number,
(43:20):
which is this girl he likes that, you know, says, oh, the GPS coordinates say she's nearby.
They've interacted on a lot of posts. Let's send them something from her.
And that gets his attention, you know, and it's just so nefarious when you hear the voices talking out.
But that's literally what the algorithms in your phones are sort of doing every day.
And that's what happens to these kids in school. wool, it's kind of,
(43:40):
you know, the less you use it, you can kind of fight back against the algorithms and the stuff.
The algorithms and stuff, but it's still so hard because they're so advanced.
For sure. I thought that was like a great depiction because like Dan said,
it was throughout the entire documentary.
And by the end of it, when he got real, just drained by social media,
(44:01):
he was truly like this robot dummy, just being controlled by the algorithms of his phone.
Yeah. And it's so sad to kind of see that play out. And again,
the way they did it was really really good. It makes it very,
I don't know, visceral and like in your face.
So, but that, that again, going back to this point about phone-free schools,
there's a lot of positive outcomes if you do go phone-free. For sure.
(44:23):
And now I'll finally get to the fourth one is just to give your children more
independent, unsupervised play for age-appropriate children.
This, I think, comes from a place that shows to let the kids learn how to play.
At a younger age, They obviously don't have phones yet, so they're exploring
(44:45):
their world outside of social media, outside of technology, and so it's almost
going to become natural for them as they grow.
And if you let it happen until they're 16 by not giving them the phone,
then that becomes, too, more natural. role.
Not to say we're so great at it because we didn't really grow up with social media.
(45:07):
But like I was saying, we checked ourselves right away.
We're not going to be the hypocrites for our children.
And Dan and I actually even come up with times that we'll be on our phones or
we'll check each other and be like, put your phone away.
In an earlier podcast, we said we always do family dinners. So-
(45:28):
Nobody. And that means me and Dan are not allowed to be on our phones during dinner.
We kind of are already calling each other out because in 10 years,
we might have to call our kids out on it.
So I think as parents, or even if you're going to be parents or planning on
having children, it's good to
(45:49):
check yourself now and not so much be hypocritical in that end of things.
I know So mine all started, I literally gave up social media for Lent one year
at certain times of the day.
Like I would give myself times where I should or shouldn't pull it up and it's
literally stuck ever since.
And then we just bring it into our home. Yeah. Yeah. You have to check yourself
(46:12):
before you wreck yourself as some experts might say.
But really, I do think, I think the points are great, right?
So his strategy comes from the absence of solutions. And I'm sure not these are unique.
I think we've seen other people say similar things. So it's just about getting
kind of a movement and getting some participation behind it.
(46:32):
You know, to think about it, no smartphones before high school,
that's 100% parents, like that's all on you and your friends and your friend group to try to drive.
No social media until 16. That's a little bit trickier. There's some legislation
with that. But again, I think that should be on the parents.
The phone free schools is hard because you got to get administrators.
School boards, you got to get everybody on board with that.
(46:55):
And they can't agree on anything these days. So that is a problem in and of
itself. The unsupervised play I find is almost so unfathomable for us because
we were still, I'll say we weren't 80s kids.
Like you hear my older siblings and people a little bit older talk about that,
how they were just gone for 10 hours a day. And they joke about,
(47:17):
you know, like having commercials.
It was like, it's 10 p.m. Do you know where your kids are in the 80s and early
90s? But that kind of was a thing.
You just had to come back home. If you were 13, 14 years old,
you just had to show back up. And we still had some of that freedom.
I cannot even imagine it these days. And I think we have to force ourselves
into a little bit of discomfort and be ready for that as the kids get older.
(47:39):
But we do, we do a decent job sometimes now of, of just saying,
just go outside, just Just go to the side of the yard, go in the back,
go where, you know, I can kind of see you, but you just got to go be a little
unsupervised and it's different when they're young because they got to be safe.
But, you know, if it's safe and go be unsupervised and explore and play and.
(48:01):
I don't know, learn how to be
a kit. I mean, we have a fenced in yard and cameras throughout our house.
So if they think they're unsupervised, that's fine.
I'm not pulling up the cameras that much unless there's other people around.
But yeah, it is a little tricky to think about. I think those are four great solutions.
We're kind of putting out into the world and you've seen, or hopefully you've
(48:25):
listened to our previous episodes on conflict.
So call your partner out. If you're kind of breaking some of these rules,
Call us out if you see us being hypocrites.
That's perfectly comfortable, at least for me, to be called out if we put something out there.
You know, hopefully we can get some interaction with other parents on what you
think. Are you seeing the trends change?
Are you planning to do this? Are you trying to do it?
(48:46):
I will say if you have older kids, I almost just would say mail it in.
I feel like it would be more damaging and harder with a 13 year old to try to go.
I think this is something for parents of younger kids. I don't think we're going
to change kids that much.
I think it would be too much change. It would be so damaging.
You got to find other healthy ways to bridge the gap, you know,
(49:09):
maybe limit them, just talk to them and all that kind of stuff.
But this is something that has to start, I think, with parents of younger kids
and then grow with that generation.
And for the older kids, not that they're done for, but they're in for what they got.
You know, they have their routines, they have their technologies.
Those parents have to figure out strategies that work for kids that have been
(49:32):
raised that way. And that's not their fault.
There's still tons of success stories. It's not a failure.
It's just you can't be too dramatic with this stuff.
That's kind of what I think. I think, too, for adults, it's just being self-aware
first and then trickling it down to your kids, whether they're older.
I mean, I'm not going to go give up on all the 13-year-olds like you just mentioned.
(49:55):
Mail it in. But you're just, you know, trickling down that self-awareness and
then spreading it to your family, to your kids, to your friend groups.
And hopefully the statistics that we're seeing because of social media just
at least start to mainstream and don't keep declining.
Yeah, I think what we're really getting at is we just want our parenting job
(50:19):
to be easier when we have teenagers.
I didn't think of it till now, but, you know, that's where we need other parents
to buy in and school board administrators and everybody.
We need you to make our jobs easier because parents for the last five years
of teenagers have not had it easy.
I will say they have gone through things that older generations can never imagine
(50:40):
and younger generations of parents will hopefully not have to go through.
That's why most of them just gave their 10-year-olds phones.
It was just easier. And we definitely would have too. For the record,
five years ago, we would have 100% been.
All in on that, whatever. I think we are kind of a little, we're a little cheap.
We might have restricted it for a money perspective, but we would not have felt
(51:03):
the way that we feel now about restricting it and limiting it.
I just don't think you can take a 13 year old's phone. If you took my phone
at maybe not 13, but like 15, that was the ultimate punishment.
So, you know, if you're taking it away saying, Hey, I'm trying to save you,
you can have it back in two years.
That's going to be a rough two years. But you bring up an interesting point.
And I know we're wrapping this podcast up, I did get my phone taken away from
(51:25):
me at like 16, 17 as like a punishment or if I was sending too many texts or
talking too much because you do remember we were billed separately.
Go ahead and color your hair gray for any younger listeners.
That's because text costs like what, five cents per text or something.
And that's why your dad was pissed off. But how bad were those fights that you
(51:50):
had with your dad during that time? Seriously.
But I accepted it. So that's just a whole like the younger generation problem
because I got my phone taken away.
I took the, I don't know, I took the punishment, was mad about it,
but then dealt with it and waited till I got my phone back.
I don't think you took those punishments as good as you say you did,
(52:11):
but we will, we will ask your dad and see.
So I don't know how tough you really think you were at that time.
And again, it's just about dealing with different generations,
different technologies, and new data as it becomes available.
I'll say that. No, you're right. It is like a totally different world.
I mean, I'm glad I had a parent back then, but also we're in for it for parenting right now.
(52:35):
Hopefully we're well-equipped and hopefully you're well-equipped.
If anyone has any ideas or tips, we are more than open to listening to them.
All right. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
Music.
(00:06):
All right. Hello, and welcome back to the Finding Time podcast.
We are on episode 11 today, which ironically enough is our favorite number.
I thought that's just my favorite number, not yours.
I think I took it over. I wore number 11 in college, didn't I?
You did, but that's because it was my favorite number.
Well, what's yours is mine. So there we go. This is marriage.
(00:27):
So today we are talking about social media.
A little bit of the background that I prepped for this is actually more about
what is so addictive on social media and not just like the platforms themselves, you know?
So what did we do to prep for this?
We watched a movie. We did.
It's a documentary, I would say. But yeah, we watched it separately because
(00:50):
we couldn't find the time to actually watch it together.
And I think we're about two years late to the show. But we both watched The
Social Dilemma on Netflix, which was a really good documentary.
I'd been meaning to get to it for so long.
So I'm actually happy that I finally did.
And then I basically forced you to watch it to prepare for today. Right.
(01:10):
He like set it up for me and everything in my early morning awake hours.
So then I just clicked play and it was definitely better to watch it in almost
full than if we tried to watch it together, we'd be stopping every 20 minutes
and it would have took us two weeks.
It would have. So that was the right way to do it. And then the other key source
(01:31):
of information, I would say, is a recent book that was just put out by Dr.
Jonathan Heap. And he's written a bunch bunch of books but this
one is called the anxious generation i think i first heard
of him a few years ago when he wrote the book the coddling of the
american mind and he's been pretty heavy critic of how now technology but then
in the past sort of our institutions are you know crippling young american minds
(01:53):
so those are the two kind of key pieces of background for our discussion today
hopefully it's not too negative and pessimistic i guess.
Right. And we'll try not to hit too much on mental health because that can be
a whole nother five or six podcasts for us and for you guys to listen to.
But obviously, that was a huge take is that it's very much connected.
(02:19):
It is. Yeah, that's where a lot of this comes from is the whole reason we even
have any desire to talk about it.
And the whole reason that anyone would want to listen to it is because there's
a huge undertone of all the issues it's causing, all of the downsides in both adults and children.
I think we'll kind of float across both boundaries because our kids are still a little bit younger.
(02:41):
They haven't been negatively impacted too much, but that danger is looming right
in front of our faces. But see, I already want to argue him because I think
it starts so young and they have been already negatively impacted.
Maybe not the twins, but the boys for sure.
Or just a different kind of impact than what we had by, what,
(03:03):
five, six years old. Oh, well, yeah, obviously they're growing up in a completely different world.
Yeah, that's, I guess, my first caution or maybe my first caveat is we are not
anti-technology in any way, right?
I don't think we would classify ourselves as being completely restrictive.
We let the boys do certain things, but I think we noticed that that danger is
(03:25):
there and trying to remove it completely is very difficult. I think our lifestyle
just isn't quite built around that and they need some exposure to it.
They need some experience with it as they grow.
But also, I think it's like, you know, being a pro bicycle in 1925, like the car is coming.
(03:46):
You got to learn how to use it, build safe roadways and build safety regulations
and all that kind of stuff.
Any kind of big technology change like this takes time.
And we're sort of lucky enough with our age that we grew up on both ends of
literally flipping that technological switch, right?
And I always say I love when we were born because we did not have technology
(04:10):
until, like you said, 2005.
We were, what, almost 15 years old. And then when it started becoming more into
households, it was a one shared family computer that maybe you could use.
And don't forget all the dial-up patients we had to endure.
Oh, yeah. That taught us a lot of patience, waiting for that dial tone.
(04:33):
And it's interesting in one of the interviews I saw, I think it's in the book,
but in one of the interviews I saw with Jonathan Haidt, he points to that,
that in the early 2000s, even still into the early 2010s, technology.
The way that we're thinking of it today, social media wasn't quite around.
So TV, movies, you know, chat, instant messenger, phone, all that kind of stuff was still very social.
(04:58):
It was not anti-social. You gathered around a TV and there was one remote and
there's a little bit of a, of a power struggle for who got to pick what was
going on, or you had to choose what went on as a group,
whether that was you and your friends or you and your siblings or your parents or whatever.
And as computers got introduced, we would hang out with our friends on instant messenger and chat.
(05:22):
But it was very social. You remember being with two or three or four of our
friends just on instant messenger talking to three or four or five of our other
friends. So it was very different than what the kids grew up with.
And he actually points that out, that people overlook the fact that tech rolled
out at this time and no one complains then.
But that's because it still was very socially centric. It wasn't as harmful yet. So funny.
(05:48):
I totally remember that and didn't until you said it, but just had a flashback.
You're right. There would be.
At a friend's house, you'd have one computer screen up and then you'd be talking
to another group of friends or however it was laid out and you'd all be seeing the same thing.
So you're still being very social. You're engaging.
I think kind of what we want to get to, at least for this episode,
(06:12):
is that it wasn't at your fingertips.
And that's kind of where we can start and hopefully narrow it down.
Because like I said, this can be like five or six different episodes.
But the way we grew up with technology or when we started technology around
2005, it still was not at our fingertips like it is now, even for our young children.
(06:35):
No, you had to work for it. You had to work and plan.
You had to cooperate with siblings and your parents.
And a lot of people at that time, again, had the computer kind of in a central
location. Maybe it was in like a family room, if it was off like the kitchen
somewhere or some it was something a little more centralized and out there.
(06:56):
It wasn't until we are a little bit older that like computers were sometimes
tucked away in your room or an office or whatever.
But usually there was one computer for the house that everyone had to get on
your parents, your siblings, all of that. So, again, you still had to use those
skills to plan for it, cooperate with them and find your time and then also plan with your friends.
(07:17):
Like when were they going to be online, you know, and you wanted to match up with them a little bit.
And don't forget, we took the time to be away with our away messages. messages.
God, away messages. I'm sure there's a treasure trope of hilarious away messages somewhere out there.
So maybe we can find that and put it online.
I think you still probably have a ton saved. I bet you're like a weird digital order in some ways.
(07:42):
No, it was that he just recently found like a document on our laptop that was
from old computer 2009 or something.
And he started looking through the files and it was it was just like pages of
quotes and I guess away messages.
Well, and remember, there weren't even really emojis then.
(08:03):
She had all these weird little symbols you could make with the different symbols
on your keyboard, the colons and the parentheses and the letters.
So you got real creative with how you would make little hearts and lines and faces.
So funny. But also like I'm smiling because that was like a good time with social media.
The moral of the story is we feel very lucky and I'm sure other people do too.
(08:26):
Older people might feel lucky that they had more time without technology.
Younger people might feel lucky that they've always had technology.
But everyone else is wrong and we're right. And we are the best age group because
we got to live on both sides of the fence. That's my stance.
I agree. I definitely think we got to see the best sides of both worlds when
(08:48):
it was non-existent and when it just was a little bit rolled out.
Yeah. So we'll kind of go through like a couple of scenes, I think,
from that documentary that really hit home with us and some other things we've
seen in interviews and books and try to connect it all.
But one of the first things I wanted to touch on that I just thought was such a really telling quote.
(09:10):
So I guess it's been out for a couple of years, but for anyone who has not seen
that documentary, again, we're not spoiling it.
This has been a few years that we're late to the show.
It's basically a bunch of tech insiders, people from Google and Facebook and
Instagram and Snapchat and one of the founders of Pinterest,
just that whole world, a bunch of insiders is essentially pointing out all of
(09:34):
the flaws and problems within social media,
mainly from, I think, a pretty nefarious place, actually, not that it's bad
for you or unhealthy in any way.
We all kind of know and recognize that the main theme, I think,
is that the decisions that were made were nefarious in the later years,
like they're designed to be very hurtful, knowing
(09:57):
that this is bad for people because it's just treating
it like a drug in the earlier years it
was just pure kind of creativity let's
do this this will be a cool feature how can we keep them
scrolling how can we put cool videos and cool posts
in front of their face so that's kind of their theme in the beginning it was
they're just trying to do the best technology the best social media app and
(10:21):
it drifted drifted drifted they all pretty much agree based on money and advertising
into this world where it's how can we just suck every second of attention and
activity out of your brain,
which has a much more dramatic undertone to it.
So one quote from one of the main writers.
Guys in this. And I think he was one of the directors for it or something was Tristan Harris.
(10:44):
And he was very high up in Instagram, either a co-founder or one of the original guys that worked on it.
And he's been one of the most vocal about how bad this stuff is.
And the quote that he has is essentially he's given this speech and he says
that so many people were focused on when tech and AI and these algorithms would
(11:04):
surpass human strengths,
meaning they can take over jobs and take over functions in the world,
nobody stopped and just asked themselves,
when is it going to take over our weaknesses?
And that is 15 years in the past. We completely missed that warning sign.
And that's kind of what they're pointing out today is we totally missed that,
which I thought was really telling and sort of set the stage for the documentary.
(11:28):
I think these guys who essentially left the tech world, it wasn't because they
don't still like technology.
But it was more so once they stopped creating for creativity and knowledge to
bring back into the real world,
they were seeing themselves that it was just being created and continuously
(11:51):
upgraded for the simple fact to get the society, to get us addicted, essentially.
Yeah, they talk about that race to the bottom of the brainstem, right?
And so the whole point there is how can they put something in front of your
face that is just so integral to you as an animal, not as a human or a thinker.
(12:13):
It surpasses all of your logical processes in your brain. It gets right to the
bottom of the brainstem, which I think is where the pleasure center is.
How can we make that light up and get you hooked on what you're seeing and look
at the next thing and the next thing and the next thing?
And that's where it really does get pretty messy.
But that is the the goal is how do we keep these people, meaning consumers,
(12:34):
hooked on what we have to show them?
And the downside is the whole reason they want you hooked is so they can sell
you stuff. How do we get ads in front of their face? How do we charge more for advertising?
Because we can say we get so many viewers and we keep them glued to the screen.
And this was kind of perfect timing. There's been a few things that have come
out now. There's a big lawsuit.
(12:55):
I think that's getting either ruled or settled or something where essentially
Netflix and Facebook were in this horrible agreement where Facebook was giving
up like access to private messages in your messenger app between you and your
friends that you had no idea could be viewed publicly.
And they were selling them to Netflix, I think for a hundred million dollars.
And Netflix was then taking that and deciding what they should show you,
(13:19):
what you might be interested in.
And I think they were actually giving data back to Facebook too.
Like here's this person's viewing history or, you know, what their friend group is watching.
I don't know all the details, but something that center around that is they
were selling your private data, which I think at some level,
if you're again, our age, you should know your data is sold every single day. Nothing is private.
(13:40):
We all know this, but I think seeing some of it go a little bit beyond just
your browsing data and more like your message and stuff just feels very dirty.
There is actually, contrary to what you're saying,
a big split in how like everyone takes social media, even of our age,
because unless I always say this about my education background,
(14:03):
like we had our son and we immediately said no TV.
Whereas if that just wasn't your background or you just, I don't know,
didn't research it maybe as much, you didn't really realize the impact that
social media and just technology in general was doing.
But then with your jobs and your focus, you were into learning and growing like
(14:27):
how to work things like Google and Gmail and things like that.
So we kind of hit that balance as parents that was like, you know,
you don't want to ban this completely.
You need them to learn things, but you also need to put the restrictions on it.
And I think that maybe parents a little older than us, but even still around
(14:49):
our age, just didn't know that because there were no warning signs in the beginning. Yeah, maybe.
And we always felt that we kind of had a rule amongst ourselves.
I feel like. And we talked to some of our friends like this.
And again, this is going back a few years, which doesn't sound that long,
but we're learning a lot about this stuff every single year.
I think we waited till 18 months to show our oldest anything.
(15:13):
And even after that, it wasn't like we weren't giving them a phone to scroll
through Facebook. book.
We were letting him watch like the wiggles and, and bounce patrol,
shout out to bounce patrol.
That was one of my favorites, but we were just letting him watch nursery rhymes
and songs and colors, you know, things like that.
And, but we always said, if it feels like we're using like the screen or something
(15:33):
as a babysitter, we, we knocked it off that. And that was one of our lines.
Like if we caught ourselves kind of saying like, Hey, we got to.
Put him in front of the TV to watch whatever the wiggles or something for 30
minutes while we do something.
Not there's anything wrong with that, but it was more so the principle on our
end that we felt guilty on.
(15:55):
We got no issue letting him learn these songs and letting him learn from those
shows that we feel like were positive and educational, but we had to limit it
and we had to watch ourselves because he was two and three and whatever.
He can't police himself with that stuff. And then as he got a little bit older
and got like a tablet or got a show when he gets upset or ever like had a meltdown
(16:16):
or something, if we try to take it or ever, that just goes right through me and he's done.
If he has the littlest of like a meltdown or doesn't want to give up the remote or a tablet.
Now I know you're done. You need a detox.
This is gone for however long I feel like it, but that like, you know, I don't know.
I know he's a kid, but that reaction tells me there's something in him that's
(16:39):
getting hooked and I need to cut it. Right.
And I mean, our twins now are 15 months.
They obviously have never touched a tablet. And we really have tried to stick
to these rules as we've had each child, which I think I really like about our parenting.
We never throw them a screen to distract them or have them leave us alone.
(17:00):
And some parents have to, and that's fine too. But that's just something we've
instilled than the kids, and they kind of know that they'll get it maybe as
a reward or just something in the routine that day that lets them have that 15, 20 minutes.
But to take them out and just say, okay, they'll be good if they have their tablets, we just.
(17:21):
Do. No, no. And there have been times we have like friends over or something.
And again, it bumps up into their routine where they normally would get it. We may let them have it.
And then we catch ourselves 45 minutes later because we get quiet time with
friends going, oh, shoot, they've just been sitting on their tablets for this long.
Like, let's, you know, let's step in and do something. But again,
it's you have to have that mentality that something is happening,
(17:43):
even though they're young, something is happening that's hooking them.
It's the same thing that we go if you're as adults, you could be watching whatever
you're watching and something starts to happen in your brain.
And until you pick up on it, you don't really quite realize,
but that's what they're talking about with that race to the bottom of your brainstem.
You're getting hooked on the videos, the songs, the clips, whatever it is.
(18:03):
So why don't we interject a little bit of information there around screen time by age group?
I did do a little bit of background research to help us out here.
This is the average screen time.
And again, this is including tv is this once
a day this is daily oh my goodness okay
so our 16 to 24 year olds
(18:24):
and correct me if i'm wrong but i think those are the ones like
born with technology and the parents
didn't know what the backlash
of social media and technology would be
it was just this is new for us our kids get it like hooray there's no repercussion
yeah they were basically born 2000 2008 essentially okay so their average screen
(18:49):
time is seven to seven and a half hours a day.
That's constant. Now, I mean, I'm sure they're up, I don't know,
12, 14 hours, but still, that's a lot.
That's half their day, which then 25 to 34-year-olds, I'm a little surprised at this.
I mean, we're at the tail end of this, but that is also seven hours a day.
(19:10):
So that shocks me. I mean, I don't do that.
No, no, we definitely don't do that. I didn't think about this.
We should add up what we do, but it's probably, although this includes TV and
all, if I'm I'm home, I'll watch, you know, my sports show at lunch and I'll
watch like a movie at night.
But I probably push five to six hours, I guess, now that I think about it.
(19:33):
That's true. But I don't watch TV at all. So I'm definitely like half this at that.
Yeah. All right. Then 35 to 44 is also super close is six and a half hours.
So with these three, you're basically talking 16
year olds to 44 year olds are spending spending average
seven hours a day on their
(19:54):
social media and i think that just puts so much into perspective
as like a 44 year old parent with
a 16 year old child you kind of you
know follow what you see no this is all very new i would say the pushback on
it is only within the last couple of years and again this includes tv well it's
interesting the chart i grabbed this from actually had a breakdown of how they
(20:16):
consumed it too and you can see that switch like like 16 to 24 year olds, there was so much.
Phone and internet and laptop usage and tablets.
And then the older group, and once you got over 44, that group was like,
I think five to six hours, but it was almost all TV.
So like maybe 30 minutes, 45 minutes of news in the morning,
(20:37):
three, four hours at night, maybe an email, maybe a little bit on their phone,
but like you kind of see how an older person does it.
The younger generations, they're on their laptop, they're on their phone.
The middle generations have a pretty healthy mix of like TV versus smartphone or tablet.
So it's kind of all over the place. But still, yeah, I mean,
it's it's a lot of time. That makes sense, too.
(20:57):
And I'd love to track this or ask the audience just to think how many times
do you check your phone during a two hour movie?
Because I know the few times you and me will have a movie night.
There's we cannot go the whole time without pulling out our phone.
No, we are bad at that. That's true.
It's like once you have a chance to sit down, yeah, you want to watch the movie,
(21:21):
but you're also scrolling on Instagram or checking your text messages.
So that's like just so much stimulation from a screen in general.
And then the younger kids get that, what, constantly with this computer screen,
learning on a screen at school. If you have a high school kid interested in
getting into like the medical fields, push them into ophthalmology.
(21:45):
Is that is that eyes?
We need more eye doctors because every single one of us is going to have screwed
up eyes from all the screen time we're doing.
So what about the younger kids then? So eight to 12 years old,
70% spend more than two hours a day on a screen.
And for 13 to 15 year olds, 90% spend more than two hours a day on a screen,
(22:07):
which is a lot for young children.
It is. Yeah. They didn't quite break down all of the types for that because
they don't have a lot of control.
They're not as much on school with screens, but still it's hours a day.
I think that one actually excluded school. That one was without education.
So that's just at home. That's tablet, smartphone, if they're of age,
(22:27):
that kind of thing. More so maybe the TV shows too.
But if you are a parent and I don't know, just researching this more or being
more aware of it, even our children's shows.
Certain ones specifically, are made now to be addictive, to pull them in. They are.
And that's kind of the scarier thing that I think a lot of people are waking
(22:49):
up to is that so many things are built to be addictive.
Grab your attention, you know, that kind of thing. And again,
I'll flip back then to the social dilemma.
One of the people in that who helped design some of these systems talks about
how they use a model, I'll say, that works at a neurological level.
(23:11):
It shows you new posts. It shows you things that you should be interested in.
And if you're not getting a lot of engagement, it sort of refreshes it.
And this is, you know, kind of way deep on the tech side of things.
But if you and I remember not that long ago, your Facebook feed was almost like
a newspaper and it was printed and you could only see what was on the screen,
(23:34):
but you could imagine what was below it.
And as you scrolled, it wasn't changing what was coming up. It was there.
You were going to scroll down to it, just like you would flip through a newspaper
and find the story, whatever you want it.
Now it's like the front page of the newspaper. That's what you can see on your
screen, the rest of the newspaper is blank.
And depending on how you've react to what's on the front page,
(23:56):
it'll populate each page as you turn it.
If you're liking family stuff, it'll show you more family stuff.
If you're liking a certain topic, you know, I noticed that with like Instagram,
I'll go through certain periods where I'm liking a lot of dad jokes and stuff.
I'll get more dad influencers.
I'll like a bunch of lacrosse stuff right now. My stuff is filled with lacrosse
coaches and lacrosse humor and college lacrosse stuff.
(24:17):
And it just bounces with how you're interacting, what you're liking, what you're looking at.
And the whole theory behind it, they're not making this stuff up. It's by design.
It's called positive intermittent reinforcement.
And that's basically, you know, there's studies done with mice and stuff like that.
And it basically is training you to ask for a reward.
(24:39):
It trains you to look for a stimulus and then get a reward.
And if it's a good reward, you'll do it again. And if it's not a good reward,
it's not positive intermittent reinforcement.
And this is where kind of the dirtiness comes into play. That whole theory from
psychology is the main principle used in designing slot machine.
It's pull the lever, get something you want, keep you entertained.
(25:01):
And we're not big gamblers, but 20, 30 years ago, slot machines were just that pull the lever.
You had three analog, like picture bars that spun and you either won or lost.
Now slot machines are all digital. there's lights everywhere.
You have no idea what's happening on a slot machine.
You just push the button, some graphics happen, and you either get a little
(25:22):
money or you lose some, but there's all these crazy things that just stimulate
you in such a way to keep asking for the reward.
And that's the part that is just so kind of dirty about all of this.
And I think where the defensiveness comes in, because there is a lot of good
with social media, you know, there is a lot of good with, you know, these platforms.
I remember from the movie as well, one of the guys said they actually became
(25:46):
addicted to their own system.
Like they created these systems, you know, to pull the people in and to have
like a steady flow of information for society.
But he said he started noticing that he was addicted because he was pulling
it up in the morning and then working with it all day and then pulling it up at night as well.
(26:08):
So for him he had young kids and
he actually had stopped bringing his phone into
the house or something but he said it was that
big of an addiction that this machine
or this technology was doing to him when he even created it so imagine what
it's doing to all of us yeah and that's one of the again these are insiders
(26:31):
and it's obviously a little dramatized but i think I think he was the one that
said he noticed the problem. He was part of the design team.
They're trying to get more usage, more views, more comfort and all that,
even out of something as seemingly non-addictive as Gmail.
But when he noticed that, he kind of put together a presentation.
(26:52):
I think Google had or used to have this sort of collaborative entrepreneurial
spirit. So he put together a presentation of let's stop and ask.
We're trying to make this, you know, user friendly and a great tool.
Are we stopping to consider the ethics? Are we stopping to say,
hey, are we making this a little too addictive?
Are we creating problems? And how do we put the consumer first instead of trying
(27:16):
to sell more product? And he said he got nothing but positive reviews,
hundreds of peers saying, hey, this is great. We love your presentation.
He got a chance or like an invitation to present it kind of higher up the food chain at Google.
And then nothing happened. A meeting was never set up. No one ever took it the next step.
(27:36):
And it was one of those things where it was the first time he felt there's hundreds
of Google employees saying, yeah, we're all hooked.
This is a problem. problem and none. And he knew the higher ups were aware of
it and he knew they were aware of the positive feedback that this is a problem
and no one wanted to do anything or address it. And I think that's one of the telling things.
(27:57):
They just don't have the interest at the highest level.
Fast forward to, I think just in the last week or two, but Florida actually
banned social media users under 14, I think.
And it doesn't go into effect until 2025, but essentially social media companies,
even if you have an account,
they have to deactivate your account and, you know, do all this stuff and,
(28:20):
and you have to have parental guidance and authority and age,
all this, all this stuff. And it's kind of good.
It's sort of a slippery slope to, I'm not crazy about a ton of government intervention.
But it's a good thing because I think they recognize, look, this is hurting kids.
Let's just stop the wild, wild west of the Internet and at least have some regulation on it.
(28:42):
So I think that's a good thing. I don't know all the details of it,
but I think it's a pretty good thing that they did that.
I'm not so sold on the government intervention of it all.
But I mean, you and me said even before we had kids, our kids won't get a phone
until they're like 16. teen.
They won't get social media until they're at least teenagers.
(29:02):
And I mean, well, this is only six. So we have like 10 years.
But I feel like we will stick to that. And in that way, maybe we were ahead of the game.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly hope so. Right. It's easy to say it now when they're
young and we don't have to deal with it as much.
But I do certainly hope that that's the case.
I think there'll be more support for it coming out of these parents of younger
(29:26):
kids because they've We've seen either older kids have problems with it or they've
seen older like nieces, nephews, siblings, whatever,
experience problems with it. And there's going to be a ton more research and data.
Quite honestly, this is a fairly new problem that, let's face it,
most people, most corporations are not going to support the research.
(29:47):
And there is that whole dark side to this, just like anything else,
where you need money to research this stuff.
And then, you know, if you really want to think about it, let's say you find
something that's really damaging to, you know, social media with kids or whatever,
and you write a book about it, you put a documentary out, you kind of need that
(30:10):
to get out on social media.
You can't put it in the newspaper because no one's going to read it.
So it is this tricky thing where you need to get it out on social media.
And we know they will, in some cases, censor or limit how much that message gets out there.
So it is really hard to get good information, good research out to the public
(30:31):
so they know. So this is very much a problem on parents.
Transition that to, you know, Dr. Jonathan Haidt and this book.
But I read part of the book and I've seen him in a bunch of interviews already.
He was actually in The Social Dilemma. So it kind of just spiraled into what
he's done with this book.
He he's saying the same thing that the tech companies are absolutely not going
(30:53):
to fix this. They can't afford to lose the money and the income.
Politicians aren't going to fix it, nor should they necessarily,
because if they try to make too many restrictive rules, restrictive laws,
I could see that going the wrong way, too.
So I kind of agree with him. He says the only way to do this is through the
parents or you need something to solve what is called in the social sciences
(31:15):
a social collective problem.
Essentially, everyone is doing something because everyone is doing it.
We're getting our kid a smartphone because three of his best friends have a
smartphone and he can't not have a smartphone because that's how he talks to his friends.
And if he doesn't have it, he's not going to be able to make plans or hang out
and then he'll be ostracized.
It creates this whole problem. What social scientists believe is you need about
(31:36):
a 25 to 30 percent breakthrough.
So, you know, if there's 50, 100, 200 kids in a class size, you know,
think of the kids social world. old. It's not the whole school,
but something like that.
You need about 25 to 30 percent of them to push an agenda to break through that problem.
Be something like, you know, 15 kids out of a 30, 40 kid classroom in middle
(32:00):
school not having cell phones.
And that is kind of crazy to think about. But that is the kind of parental push you need.
For sure. And I think it's almost just a matter of possibly boredom for especially
the teenager who wouldn't have the phone, At least now, when you look around.
I mean, we have some family who are in their teens, and they're together, but on their phones.
(32:24):
So when you're the parent not even letting your child have a phone,
obviously, it's easy for me to say we aren't going to let our children have
phones till a certain age. But that's obviously going to come with some pushback from them.
Or we'll just be lucky that we'll have a group of friends and parents that all
agree to not give it right away. Yeah, hopefully we can hope for that.
(32:48):
So you're not going to get a ton of support from the kids, but it is interesting
in some of the studies that they've done.
I think he's conducted some, and I know other researchers on this subject have conducted studies.
Like if you ask kids if they would get rid of Instagram or TikTok on their phones,
almost all of them say no.
But if you ask them, if your three best friends got rid of TikTok,
(33:12):
would you delete it off off your phone and no one was ever going to use it again,
then they all are like, yeah, I probably would. There's no point to it then.
So again, it just points to that. You got to get a little bit of breakthrough.
And then if they're not doing it, you know, everyone's, everyone's kind of different
in how they would handle that. But it's all about getting to that breakthrough.
And I think there was just such a quick shift on everyone having cell phones
(33:35):
now to maybe back when we were teenagers.
Most people had cell phones, but again, just it wasn't everything else at your fingertips.
And there are a lot of ways that you can still keep your child like in the know
or even us communicating with them once they have sports or are at friends' houses without us.
(33:58):
Because I see there's watches and even using an older phone,
there are ways to still work around it that don't include giving them social
media and the smartphone full of addictive apps and social media content.
So when Dan was doing his research from Dr. Jonathan Haidt, he actually came
(34:21):
up with a call to action, which I did notice in the movie, although they were
saying all the problems.
It really is just so hard to come up with some kind of solution for all this
because it happens so quickly that now people just are like, OK,
we are noticing this is somewhat bad, but what are we going to do?
(34:43):
And then it's just back to technology. Yeah, no one generally has an answer,
at least last three, four or five years.
No one really has had an answer. And especially when it comes to kids,
if you try to kind of take technology away or limit it or anything, then COVID happens.
And now everything is virtual for a couple of years. It kind of went in the
(35:03):
complete other direction and really stalled it.
He actually said it was the silver lining for his book is a lot of good research
came out of that because you had this huge sample size of kids who were locked
up, restricted, restrained, and almost fully digital.
And unfortunately for the kids, he got a ton of great research to then really build out this.
(35:27):
So he recommends four actions, and he actually recommends this to the parents
because he says that politicians, school boards, and even the tech companies are failing us.
The first one, and we have touched on this, is no smartphones before high school
because there are other options you can give your kids.
(35:47):
And I do hope we touch some parents to get on board with this because then that'll
just make it easier to not give our kids the phones, right? Look,
if nothing else, we can all save a little money, right?
We can help our kids have a childhood a little bit longer.
So I generally think people do what's in their own best self-interest.
So save yourself some money. Let's pitch it from that angle.
(36:08):
But yeah, this is on the parents to start this movement. The second one was
no social media until 16.
So that's basically like end of sophomore, junior year of high school.
And I guess they are very much tied together.
At this point, you could obviously be exposed to social media on a computer if you really wanted to.
(36:28):
But I feel like that's also not as addictive than maybe because,
again, then you're going back to when we were little. You're finding the computer,
opening the laptop, and maybe you are making it more social.
I will say, though, if you have to give your kid a smartphone or that's just
the easier option for you, there are so many ways that you can keep social media
(36:50):
off the phone, even until high school or until they're 16.
And there are like good parental controls in that way.
I just don't know if us as parents are as smart as the teenagers who were born into to this world.
And I know I would be naive to say that they wouldn't be able to work their way around that.
(37:10):
No, they definitely will. They are digital natives.
Let's never forget that. Anything that...
You can come up with to try to restrict them or whatever, they're going to find a way against.
I remember seeing in one of these interviews, the, the guy had a kid,
let's say, I don't know, she was 12 or 13 and they limited her screen time through parental control.
(37:30):
So she could get on some things, but only for certain periods and the screen
time overall was limited. So it's a good way to kind of restrict it, keep it healthy.
So one time she wanted to get on her phone or do do something.
She turned on the screen recorder, gave it to her mom, you know,
said to do this and set the whatever screen limit for the day or update it and then took it back.
(37:52):
And because she had the screen recorder on, she got her mom's password and then
went on, changed all the parental controls and then had free reign of the phone.
So again, these kids are going to be smarter than you digitally.
Just, just face it, you know, just deal with it. We got to trust them a little
bit. And And again, we recognize if you have older kids, we are not speaking from experience.
(38:13):
This is just our thoughts and our hopes for the future.
But we do know a lot of people who have gone through this and told us stories.
We know kids who have lived through this era and they're going to be smarter than you.
They're going to try to outsmart you. You have to trust them a little bit.
But it's also our job as parents to try to protect them when they don't know they're in trouble.
That's literally the definition of a kid is you're doing dangerous things when
(38:35):
you don't know you're doing dangerous things.
For sure. Sure. I mean, and again, we don't have the older kids,
but the way our three-year-old can work his tablet is almost mind-blowing to
me because I get confused with turning up the volume and finding the button to put it on sometimes.
They are digital natives.
(38:56):
They are. Okay. The third one is phone-free schools.
And we actually talked about this even before we were going to record this podcast.
And so I just feel like I had a lot to say on the topic because I don't even
know when the switch happened that...
Your phone was in school. I feel like in high school, we had phones,
(39:18):
obviously they were different, but we just kept them in our book bag and hung
out with our friends, talked with our friends.
And my thought to Dan when we talked about this originally was that I think
it just overcame the schools so quickly that most of them did have a no cell phone policy,
but then it was was almost like one of those things, it's not worth the battle
(39:42):
as all the kids got phoned and all the kids started pulling them out in the
hallways, at study halls, and then into the classrooms.
It was almost one of those things like, let's just stop fighting them and we'll work with it.
And then I know some teachers have like their own policies.
But yeah, I think that That that switch was probably one of the most negative
(40:06):
things to do to these kids because they have a phone during their educational hours in the day.
Yeah, and I think we'll see, again, some more data come out of like the COVID
years and all that kind of stuff.
One of the example schools that he pointed to in this book was Mountain Middle School in Colorado.
They've actually been phone free since 2012.
(40:28):
They outlawed phones. You know, they have to be off and removed,
but they don't allow them in common areas in the school during school hours, that kind of thing.
And what they found is over the course of a decade, I think 2012 to 2022,
they had their highest academic scores and they saw constant increases in academic
performance when most other middle schools throughout the country and in their
(40:50):
own district were declining during that time. You know, and so that was very telling.
But then I think even more importantly, two of the more subjective things that
they got just from surveys within the school and all that kind of stuff was
they had some of their happiest reporting from children about school experience,
some of the happiest reporting from parents about school experience for their
(41:11):
children and their lowest levels of bullying,
especially, again, compared to national averages.
Those two things are so telling that you're doing something right if that's
the case. I would be so curious to know like what a high school looks like right now.
I mean, again, I just remember I think we did bring our phones,
but they were in our book bags until probably even after we got home.
(41:34):
I'm just curious, like, are the kids allowed to just walk down the halls with the phones now?
I still don't think they are everywhere, but I think it's a constant battle.
So my sister's a high school teacher and she doesn't allow phones,
but she knows the kids have them. she knows they're around like they're trying
to sneak things she's on the younger side i think.
(41:55):
Middle-aged now for teachers, but she knows of the trick.
So she kind of catches kids, but they're around, they're prevalent everywhere in the kids' lives.
That's kind of the whole point. I thought in the documentary,
one of the more painful scenes was when sort of the main character,
so that if, again, if you haven't seen it, there's a bunch of tech insiders
(42:16):
giving their narration, their points, their ideas, answering questions.
But then every 10, 15 minutes, there's a little little bit of like,
what would you call it? Like a theatrical reenactment of these things.
There is a movie within the documentary kind of that unfolds.
And so this high schooler has a phone and they have this actor,
there's three of him just kind of in triple who represent the algorithm kind
(42:36):
of in like a techie command center.
And he's essentially narrating what the algorithm does.
But when you put a voice to it, it makes it just very evil what this algorithm is trying to do to you.
So this kid is sitting with his friend and he is talking, they're having fun.
They're in like a lunchroom, whatever.
And this algorithm starts talking like, Hey, he's normally on his phone right
(43:00):
now. Why, why aren't we getting his attention?
Blah, blah, blah. Why isn't this happening? This is normally an active hour
for him. Why aren't we getting scrolling? Why isn't he on this app?
And they're kind of starting to panic. Like, how do we get his attention back?
And they say like, let's send him whatever notification, like,
Oh, that didn't work. Let's send him this notification.
No, that didn't work. And then they, you know, have like an ID number,
(43:20):
which is this girl he likes that, you know, says, oh, the GPS coordinates say she's nearby.
They've interacted on a lot of posts. Let's send them something from her.
And that gets his attention, you know, and it's just so nefarious when you hear the voices talking out.
But that's literally what the algorithms in your phones are sort of doing every day.
And that's what happens to these kids in school. wool, it's kind of,
(43:40):
you know, the less you use it, you can kind of fight back against the algorithms and the stuff.
The algorithms and stuff, but it's still so hard because they're so advanced.
For sure. I thought that was like a great depiction because like Dan said,
it was throughout the entire documentary.
And by the end of it, when he got real, just drained by social media,
(44:01):
he was truly like this robot dummy, just being controlled by the algorithms of his phone.
Yeah. And it's so sad to kind of see that play out. And again,
the way they did it was really really good. It makes it very,
I don't know, visceral and like in your face.
So, but that, that again, going back to this point about phone-free schools,
there's a lot of positive outcomes if you do go phone-free. For sure.
(44:23):
And now I'll finally get to the fourth one is just to give your children more
independent, unsupervised play for age-appropriate children.
This, I think, comes from a place that shows to let the kids learn how to play.
At a younger age, They obviously don't have phones yet, so they're exploring
(44:45):
their world outside of social media, outside of technology, and so it's almost
going to become natural for them as they grow.
And if you let it happen until they're 16 by not giving them the phone,
then that becomes, too, more natural. role.
Not to say we're so great at it because we didn't really grow up with social media.
(45:07):
But like I was saying, we checked ourselves right away.
We're not going to be the hypocrites for our children.
And Dan and I actually even come up with times that we'll be on our phones or
we'll check each other and be like, put your phone away.
In an earlier podcast, we said we always do family dinners. So-
(45:28):
Nobody. And that means me and Dan are not allowed to be on our phones during dinner.
We kind of are already calling each other out because in 10 years,
we might have to call our kids out on it.
So I think as parents, or even if you're going to be parents or planning on
having children, it's good to
(45:49):
check yourself now and not so much be hypocritical in that end of things.
I know So mine all started, I literally gave up social media for Lent one year
at certain times of the day.
Like I would give myself times where I should or shouldn't pull it up and it's
literally stuck ever since.
And then we just bring it into our home. Yeah. Yeah. You have to check yourself
(46:12):
before you wreck yourself as some experts might say.
But really, I do think, I think the points are great, right?
So his strategy comes from the absence of solutions. And I'm sure not these are unique.
I think we've seen other people say similar things. So it's just about getting
kind of a movement and getting some participation behind it.
(46:32):
You know, to think about it, no smartphones before high school,
that's 100% parents, like that's all on you and your friends and your friend group to try to drive.
No social media until 16. That's a little bit trickier. There's some legislation
with that. But again, I think that should be on the parents.
The phone free schools is hard because you got to get administrators.
School boards, you got to get everybody on board with that.
(46:55):
And they can't agree on anything these days. So that is a problem in and of
itself. The unsupervised play I find is almost so unfathomable for us because
we were still, I'll say we weren't 80s kids.
Like you hear my older siblings and people a little bit older talk about that,
how they were just gone for 10 hours a day. And they joke about,
(47:17):
you know, like having commercials.
It was like, it's 10 p.m. Do you know where your kids are in the 80s and early
90s? But that kind of was a thing.
You just had to come back home. If you were 13, 14 years old,
you just had to show back up. And we still had some of that freedom.
I cannot even imagine it these days. And I think we have to force ourselves
into a little bit of discomfort and be ready for that as the kids get older.
(47:39):
But we do, we do a decent job sometimes now of, of just saying,
just go outside, just Just go to the side of the yard, go in the back,
go where, you know, I can kind of see you, but you just got to go be a little
unsupervised and it's different when they're young because they got to be safe.
But, you know, if it's safe and go be unsupervised and explore and play and.
(48:01):
I don't know, learn how to be
a kit. I mean, we have a fenced in yard and cameras throughout our house.
So if they think they're unsupervised, that's fine.
I'm not pulling up the cameras that much unless there's other people around.
But yeah, it is a little tricky to think about. I think those are four great solutions.
We're kind of putting out into the world and you've seen, or hopefully you've
(48:25):
listened to our previous episodes on conflict.
So call your partner out. If you're kind of breaking some of these rules,
Call us out if you see us being hypocrites.
That's perfectly comfortable, at least for me, to be called out if we put something out there.
You know, hopefully we can get some interaction with other parents on what you
think. Are you seeing the trends change?
Are you planning to do this? Are you trying to do it?
(48:46):
I will say if you have older kids, I almost just would say mail it in.
I feel like it would be more damaging and harder with a 13 year old to try to go.
I think this is something for parents of younger kids. I don't think we're going
to change kids that much.
I think it would be too much change. It would be so damaging.
You got to find other healthy ways to bridge the gap, you know,
(49:09):
maybe limit them, just talk to them and all that kind of stuff.
But this is something that has to start, I think, with parents of younger kids
and then grow with that generation.
And for the older kids, not that they're done for, but they're in for what they got.
You know, they have their routines, they have their technologies.
Those parents have to figure out strategies that work for kids that have been
(49:32):
raised that way. And that's not their fault.
There's still tons of success stories. It's not a failure.
It's just you can't be too dramatic with this stuff.
That's kind of what I think. I think, too, for adults, it's just being self-aware
first and then trickling it down to your kids, whether they're older.
I mean, I'm not going to go give up on all the 13-year-olds like you just mentioned.
(49:55):
Mail it in. But you're just, you know, trickling down that self-awareness and
then spreading it to your family, to your kids, to your friend groups.
And hopefully the statistics that we're seeing because of social media just
at least start to mainstream and don't keep declining.
Yeah, I think what we're really getting at is we just want our parenting job
(50:19):
to be easier when we have teenagers.
I didn't think of it till now, but, you know, that's where we need other parents
to buy in and school board administrators and everybody.
We need you to make our jobs easier because parents for the last five years
of teenagers have not had it easy.
I will say they have gone through things that older generations can never imagine
(50:40):
and younger generations of parents will hopefully not have to go through.
That's why most of them just gave their 10-year-olds phones.
It was just easier. And we definitely would have too. For the record,
five years ago, we would have 100% been.
All in on that, whatever. I think we are kind of a little, we're a little cheap.
We might have restricted it for a money perspective, but we would not have felt
(51:03):
the way that we feel now about restricting it and limiting it.
I just don't think you can take a 13 year old's phone. If you took my phone
at maybe not 13, but like 15, that was the ultimate punishment.
So, you know, if you're taking it away saying, Hey, I'm trying to save you,
you can have it back in two years.
That's going to be a rough two years. But you bring up an interesting point.
And I know we're wrapping this podcast up, I did get my phone taken away from
(51:25):
me at like 16, 17 as like a punishment or if I was sending too many texts or
talking too much because you do remember we were billed separately.
Go ahead and color your hair gray for any younger listeners.
That's because text costs like what, five cents per text or something.
And that's why your dad was pissed off. But how bad were those fights that you
(51:50):
had with your dad during that time? Seriously.
But I accepted it. So that's just a whole like the younger generation problem
because I got my phone taken away.
I took the, I don't know, I took the punishment, was mad about it,
but then dealt with it and waited till I got my phone back.
I don't think you took those punishments as good as you say you did,
(52:11):
but we will, we will ask your dad and see.
So I don't know how tough you really think you were at that time.
And again, it's just about dealing with different generations,
different technologies, and new data as it becomes available.
I'll say that. No, you're right. It is like a totally different world.
I mean, I'm glad I had a parent back then, but also we're in for it for parenting right now.
(52:35):
Hopefully we're well-equipped and hopefully you're well-equipped.
If anyone has any ideas or tips, we are more than open to listening to them.
All right. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
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