November 10, 2025 • 14 mins
The social media age ban is coming - and parents everywhere are freaking out. But here’s the truth: this isn’t the end of your child’s world. It’s a chance to reshape it. Justin and Kylie share five practical ways to help your teen navigate life beyond the screen - from rebuilding real-world friendships to resetting your family’s digital habits.
KEY POINTS:
-
Why banning social media isn’t enough — and what families can do instead
-
How to start calm, open conversations with your teen about the changes
-
The surprising benefits of going “old school” (yes, landlines are back!)
-
Why parents need to reconnect with their kids’ social circles
-
The power of modelling healthy tech boundaries as adults
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
“If all we do is say ‘you can’t have this thing,’ something else will fill the void.” — Dr. Justin Coulson
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
-
The Parenting Revolution by Dr. Justin Coulson
-
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
-
Pediatric Research, July 2025: “Navigating Youth, Smartphones, and Policy”
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
-
Start the conversation early - ask how your teen feels about the change.
-
Help them reconnect offline: swap phone numbers, plan hangouts, build community.
-
Fade out (or cut off) social media together - in solidarity.
-
Model it. Set your own tech boundaries.
-
Make it positive - this is an opportunity, not a punishment.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is the Happy Families Podcast. In about a month
from today, there's going to be a whole lot of
new legislation enacted, which means that social media will not
be able to be accessed by children under the age
of sixteen. Minimum age legislation is just one month away
and today on the podcast, we answer the questions that
I've been asked by media more than any other questions
(00:27):
over the last month or two. How do you help
your kids to prepare for the social media minimum age legislation.
Were the first country in the world to do it.
Nobody knows what's going on. How are we supposed to
grapple with this and get through it? That and more
coming up next on The Happy Family's podcast. Gooday, Welcome
to the Happy Families podcast, where you get real parenting
(00:49):
solutions every single day. This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
We are Justin and Kylie Colson. Kylie, We're in this
weird situation where as much as we've got a whole
lot of kids spread across a whole lot of years,
we actually only have one child affected by the social
media minimum age legislation.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I feel like one child's enough.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's our fifteen year old, and she is in one word,
now this is two words, not happy. I'm so sorry, Lily,
but I'm really glad that the minimum age legislation is
coming in. Unfortunately, she turned sixteen next year, which means
that it's not going to be lasting long enough for her.
But one of my greatest parenting regrets is the decision
(01:28):
that we made to allow her access to a device
screen social media at too young in age. Thank goodness
the government's doing this, is all I can say, Kylie.
I've been asked again and again and again over the
last couple of months to help parents to know, in
various media conversations how to prep and you're not. My
(01:48):
general response has been, don't worry, don't worry. Yeah, it'll
be fine.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Like once they don't have access, they don't have access.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Not everything has to be a new story. Yeah, But
I've been thinking about it more, especially based on some
conversations I've had with some young people, and I do
think that we do we'll all benefit from a quick
chat about it. So to kick off and before we
talk about the five things that I've outlined that we
could do to help this amendment, this change to life
(02:19):
occur smoothly. I just want to read something to you.
This is from a recently published July twenty twenty five
published article in Pediatric Research. I'm going to sneak some
doctor's desk content into today. Please forgive me. But the
abstract basically says smartphone use among young people is framed
as a post pandemic concern, with increased screen time and
(02:41):
online distractions attributed to lockdown induced dependency. However, this narrative
overlooks the trajectory of digital policy and education, where education
departments globally we're encouraging the integration of student owned devices
into classrooms before the pandemic. Really important point, right, we
were already headed down this road. COVID might have amplified it,
(03:02):
but we were already well and truly on this road
thanks to Kevin Ruden's education revolution, which happened in two
thousand and eight. For goodness sakes. Anyway, the research has
gone to say the growing focus on links between the
digital lives of children and adolescents and their mental well
being are often based on correlational data, with few longitudin
or experimental studies. There is a notable absence of studies
(03:24):
which successfully disentangle the effects of different types of smartphone
and social media usage, separating learning and education or from
recreational uses. Although I will say even since July when
this was published, there have been a couple of other
really smart papers that have come out that are helping
us to see even more why this matters. Okay, back
to the abstract last thing, and this is the key
thing that I wanted to highlight. These researchers have said
(03:46):
a growing number of governments have introduced restrictive policies to
limit access. They're talking about us, where the first government
in the world, Australia's federal government is the first government
of the world to go as far as we've gone,
And they're saying this one size fit approach may inadvertently
exacerbate inequalities or ignore the social realities of young people's lives.
(04:07):
While regulatory effort may form part of a broader digital
policy toolkit, bands alone are insufficient. They do little to
address the underlying needs that drive youth engagement with smartphones,
the human desire for social connection, access to information, and autonomy.
A more effective response must be holistic, combining regulation with education,
(04:30):
digital literacy, and the co creation of safe digital spaces
that support both protection and participation. Now I'm sharing that
because they're right. As much as I support what Julian
mcgrant and Anthony Albanezi and the government is doing here,
the band isn't going to change the game here. It's
not going to change the world. It's going to make
a big difference in terms of social media usage for
(04:52):
our kids. But if we're relying on the government to
do it all for us, we're going to be sadly
disappointed and our children are going to be sadly disadvantaged.
And that's the real crux of what's driving my five
points that we need to talk about today. If all
we do is say you can't have this thing, something
else is going to fill that void. So if we
(05:16):
don't create effective conversations around screens, another screen activity is
going to step in. If we don't create useful, productive, positive,
powerful things for our kids to be doing off screens,
then this social media minimum age legislation simply moves the
problems to other platforms and they will show up elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
At a surface level. For a majority of families, having
social media access to our children has alleviated a huge
amount of the social navigation that would normally be mum
or dad's job, as in, let's organize a hang out,
let's organize a you know, kind of payday. Kids have
(05:59):
done that all for themselves and just told us where
they've got to be and what time they need to
be dropped off or picked up. But the reality is
that in doing that, it's also taken us as the
parents out of the social circles as well.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
We no longer parents are disconnected.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, we're totally disconnected from our kids and their friends
and their friends' parents because we're not the ones organizing
the catch ups anymore. And I think that it's really
going to challenge lots of us as we go back
essentially to the playground, because that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Well, that's what we need to do. That's one of
my five things. Otherwise the kids will just start playing
games more. Right, Well, they'll be off social media, but
they'll just be gaming. So one more time, from what
McCoy and Marcus Quinn said in Pediatric Research in their
article about navigating youth Smartphones and policy, I just want
to read this line one more time. Regulatory efforts may
(06:55):
form part of a broader Digital Policy Toolkit for bands
alone are insufficient. They own address the underlying needs that
drive youth engagement with smartphones, social connection, access to information,
and autonomy. So that's what our five tips to prepare
for the December tenth legislation are about. I'll run through
(07:15):
those next. Stay with us. Welcome back to the Happy
Families podcast. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast,
please give us a follow and share the podcast with
your friends, your neighbors, you loved ones, because it will
help make their families happier as well. Kylie, let's kick
(07:36):
it off and walk through these five pointers and see
if we can be useful as we prepare our kids
for the December ten minimum Social Media minimum age legislation.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So if you haven't done it already, you really need
to start having conversations about what this is going to
look like for you.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah. Of course, every time we've tried to have a
conversation with our teenager about it, we've just had sad
face stuff up, Like she's just sad about it, full stop.
End of story. I don't like it, I'm sad, I
don't really want to talk about it. But beginning of
the conversation softly, maybe with treats is going to be helpful. Hey,
how you're feeling about it? Is there anything we can
to support you? Literally, just engaging with your kids around it,
(08:16):
starting the conversation right now, helping them to understand why
the band is occurring, asking them how they feel about
that when they agree or disagree, even if it's not
about them. What have they seen with their friends and
they're peers at school? That kind of conversation is going
to be useful. But it's also useful to say, well,
we probably shouldn't develop a plan together on how we
can approach number one reducing screen time, but also helping
(08:40):
you to have an active and full and whole life
off the screen, open dialogue, rationals. It's going to help
them to feel informed and supported.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Recently, our eleven year old asked if she could make
a phone call to her friend who'd gone on holidays.
She homeschools, so friend was overseas and I let them
have a phone call, and a few minutes later I
realized that there was no noise coming from her bedroom.
I couldn't hear any conversations. And I walked in and
I said, what are you doing? She said? We're texting.
(09:11):
And I said, no, that's not what you asked to do.
You asked to have a phone call. She said, yeah,
but we want to text. And I said, well, that's
not what we're doing here. You're either having a conversation
or you can give me my phone back, and she went, oh, okay,
And anyway, about three minutes later, they're chattering away and
they didn't stop for about fifty minutes. And it just
(09:31):
was curious to me that because of what they've watched
with big sisters, that they thought it was cooler to
actually text each other without realizing that they were missing
out on the real connection. Because once they got talking,
you couldn't you couldn't get.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So much better. Our kids have got to learn how
to do this. The second thing that I want to
highlight is getting phone numbers, getting phone numbers and downloading
stuff that the kids have put onto socials because once
they lose their accounts, they'll potentially lose all that content.
So it's worth saying let's start to ask the question,
who's got phone numbers? Because we are going to be texting,
(10:09):
we are going to be making phone calls, and get
hold of that content. The other thing that some people
have been doing is installing landlines, putting the phone on
the wall, get a landline, Yeah you can.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, oh we need to do that.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, landlines are back. They're back, baby, Yes, yeah, Like,
this is the thing our kids.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Are missing out on so much by having their own phone.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Land lines are training when we had.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
To just share with the whole family.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
If we put landline in. I think we should put
one in the kitchen on the wall, and I think
we should put one in our bedroom so that when
the kids are talking on the landline, we can pick
it up and we can listen to it. All right.
The third thing, the third thing is that we need
to fade this out gradually. Now I've put this into
my comments and I've shared this a few times on
(10:53):
media interviews that I've done. But Kylie, honestly, I don't
think that whether you're fading out or going cold tour,
it's going to make any difference. There are some experts
who are saying, oh, your social media can be addictive.
You need to gradually reduce your children's time on social
media because otherwise they're going to feel really frustrated when
they have that sudden stop at the end I just
(11:13):
don't think it matters. I really don't think it matters.
But I do want to add that it might be
a useful tool in some families toolkits, and it's at
least worthy of the conversation.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Well, even if it's not a fade out. I think
that every now and again, having a fast where you know,
as a whole family, you make a decision that you're
going to stay off screens for Saturday or Sunday or
you know, kind of a whole weekend type thing. And
I think you could very well do that as long
as you're all on Boardward.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
When I listening to a song, fade out's annoy me,
I just want to songs over. Yeah, but you're cold cut, finished, done.
We're not all like that, okay. The fourth thing that
I want to highlight is the importance of building community.
This is something that Jonathan Hate talked about a lot
in his book The Anxious Generation. It's one of his
key pillars of how we're supposed to help our kids
to have a play based rather than a screen based childhood.
(12:00):
This goes back to what you were saying, Kylie, Mum, Dad,
time to start taking some responsibility, getting some phone numbers,
organizing some stuff for the kids to do, because they
are probably going to need a little bit more support
from you so that they can engage effectively in building
their offline community, getting together with their friends.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
You think about those earlier days. It was playdates, right,
and you would organize for a family to come over
and hang out with you. We don't do that anymore.
We literally kind of drop the kids off at the
shopping center or you know, they go hang out at
the park or whatever. They don't have our involvement, and
we miss out as adults as well. So that's probably
(12:40):
the part that I'm looking forward to the most, is
just being able to reconnect with relationships that lift and elevate.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Let's do the last one. The last one that I
wanted to make a really big hooha about is model Yeah,
as parents, Let's show them if this stuff is so
damaging and it is, I would argue more damaging for
an adolescence developing brain that it is for a fully
I was going to say fully functional, let's just go
with neurologically mature adult brain, because well, I'm not going
(13:11):
to finish that sentence. Modeling it, modeling it, modeling it
if it's bad for the kids. The reality is it's
not doing us any favors. We don't need it in
our lives. And maybe it would even be something that
you can do in solidarity with the kids. You know what, kiddo,
you're off social media now, in support of you and
in solidarity with you. I'm not going to use social
media either, or at least not when you're watching, not
(13:32):
when you can see me. Maybe I might use it
for ten or fifteen minutes in the morning or ten
to fifteen minutes at night, but that'll be it. Find
a way that you can tag team, you can model
healthy living and healthy tech boundaries for your kids, and
that's it. They're my big five ways to help your
kids get ready for the one month away social media
(13:53):
minimum age legislation that's about to kick off here in oz. Hope.
That's helpful. If you know somebody who's struggling, maybe you
can share this episode with them and it might shed
some light on a slightly tough talk that they could
be having in their home. The Happy Families podcast is
produced by Justin Ruhland from Bridge Media. Men Habits provides research,
admin and a whole lot of other support as well.
(14:15):
Really appreciate the team behind the pod. If you would
like more information and resources to make your family happier
and specifically on this topic, check out my book The
Parenting Revolution. It will literally revolutionize what's going on in
your home. You can find that and a whole lot
of other resources at happyfamilies dot com dot au
This is the Happy Families Podcast. In about a month
from today, there's going to be a whole lot of
new legislation enacted, which means that social media will not
be able to be accessed by children under the age
of sixteen. Minimum age legislation is just one month away
and today on the podcast, we answer the questions that
I've been asked by media more than any other questions
(00:27):
over the last month or two. How do you help
your kids to prepare for the social media minimum age legislation.
Were the first country in the world to do it.
Nobody knows what's going on. How are we supposed to
grapple with this and get through it? That and more
coming up next on The Happy Family's podcast. Gooday, Welcome
to the Happy Families podcast, where you get real parenting
(00:49):
solutions every single day. This is Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast.
We are Justin and Kylie Colson. Kylie, We're in this
weird situation where as much as we've got a whole
lot of kids spread across a whole lot of years,
we actually only have one child affected by the social
media minimum age legislation.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I feel like one child's enough.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It's our fifteen year old, and she is in one word,
now this is two words, not happy. I'm so sorry, Lily,
but I'm really glad that the minimum age legislation is
coming in. Unfortunately, she turned sixteen next year, which means
that it's not going to be lasting long enough for her.
But one of my greatest parenting regrets is the decision
(01:28):
that we made to allow her access to a device
screen social media at too young in age. Thank goodness
the government's doing this, is all I can say, Kylie.
I've been asked again and again and again over the
last couple of months to help parents to know, in
various media conversations how to prep and you're not. My
(01:48):
general response has been, don't worry, don't worry. Yeah, it'll
be fine.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Like once they don't have access, they don't have access.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Not everything has to be a new story. Yeah, But
I've been thinking about it more, especially based on some
conversations I've had with some young people, and I do
think that we do we'll all benefit from a quick
chat about it. So to kick off and before we
talk about the five things that I've outlined that we
could do to help this amendment, this change to life
(02:19):
occur smoothly. I just want to read something to you.
This is from a recently published July twenty twenty five
published article in Pediatric Research. I'm going to sneak some
doctor's desk content into today. Please forgive me. But the
abstract basically says smartphone use among young people is framed
as a post pandemic concern, with increased screen time and
(02:41):
online distractions attributed to lockdown induced dependency. However, this narrative
overlooks the trajectory of digital policy and education, where education
departments globally we're encouraging the integration of student owned devices
into classrooms before the pandemic. Really important point, right, we
were already headed down this road. COVID might have amplified it,
(03:02):
but we were already well and truly on this road
thanks to Kevin Ruden's education revolution, which happened in two
thousand and eight. For goodness sakes. Anyway, the research has
gone to say the growing focus on links between the
digital lives of children and adolescents and their mental well
being are often based on correlational data, with few longitudin
or experimental studies. There is a notable absence of studies
(03:24):
which successfully disentangle the effects of different types of smartphone
and social media usage, separating learning and education or from
recreational uses. Although I will say even since July when
this was published, there have been a couple of other
really smart papers that have come out that are helping
us to see even more why this matters. Okay, back
to the abstract last thing, and this is the key
thing that I wanted to highlight. These researchers have said
(03:46):
a growing number of governments have introduced restrictive policies to
limit access. They're talking about us, where the first government
in the world, Australia's federal government is the first government
of the world to go as far as we've gone,
And they're saying this one size fit approach may inadvertently
exacerbate inequalities or ignore the social realities of young people's lives.
(04:07):
While regulatory effort may form part of a broader digital
policy toolkit, bands alone are insufficient. They do little to
address the underlying needs that drive youth engagement with smartphones,
the human desire for social connection, access to information, and autonomy.
A more effective response must be holistic, combining regulation with education,
(04:30):
digital literacy, and the co creation of safe digital spaces
that support both protection and participation. Now I'm sharing that
because they're right. As much as I support what Julian
mcgrant and Anthony Albanezi and the government is doing here,
the band isn't going to change the game here. It's
not going to change the world. It's going to make
a big difference in terms of social media usage for
(04:52):
our kids. But if we're relying on the government to
do it all for us, we're going to be sadly
disappointed and our children are going to be sadly disadvantaged.
And that's the real crux of what's driving my five
points that we need to talk about today. If all
we do is say you can't have this thing, something
else is going to fill that void. So if we
(05:16):
don't create effective conversations around screens, another screen activity is
going to step in. If we don't create useful, productive, positive,
powerful things for our kids to be doing off screens,
then this social media minimum age legislation simply moves the
problems to other platforms and they will show up elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
At a surface level. For a majority of families, having
social media access to our children has alleviated a huge
amount of the social navigation that would normally be mum
or dad's job, as in, let's organize a hang out,
let's organize a you know, kind of payday. Kids have
(05:59):
done that all for themselves and just told us where
they've got to be and what time they need to
be dropped off or picked up. But the reality is
that in doing that, it's also taken us as the
parents out of the social circles as well.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
We no longer parents are disconnected.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, we're totally disconnected from our kids and their friends
and their friends' parents because we're not the ones organizing
the catch ups anymore. And I think that it's really
going to challenge lots of us as we go back
essentially to the playground, because that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Well, that's what we need to do. That's one of
my five things. Otherwise the kids will just start playing
games more. Right, Well, they'll be off social media, but
they'll just be gaming. So one more time, from what
McCoy and Marcus Quinn said in Pediatric Research in their
article about navigating youth Smartphones and policy, I just want
to read this line one more time. Regulatory efforts may
(06:55):
form part of a broader Digital Policy Toolkit for bands
alone are insufficient. They own address the underlying needs that
drive youth engagement with smartphones, social connection, access to information,
and autonomy. So that's what our five tips to prepare
for the December tenth legislation are about. I'll run through
(07:15):
those next. Stay with us. Welcome back to the Happy
Families podcast. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast,
please give us a follow and share the podcast with
your friends, your neighbors, you loved ones, because it will
help make their families happier as well. Kylie, let's kick
(07:36):
it off and walk through these five pointers and see
if we can be useful as we prepare our kids
for the December ten minimum Social Media minimum age legislation.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So if you haven't done it already, you really need
to start having conversations about what this is going to
look like for you.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah. Of course, every time we've tried to have a
conversation with our teenager about it, we've just had sad
face stuff up, Like she's just sad about it, full stop.
End of story. I don't like it, I'm sad, I
don't really want to talk about it. But beginning of
the conversation softly, maybe with treats is going to be helpful. Hey,
how you're feeling about it? Is there anything we can
to support you? Literally, just engaging with your kids around it,
(08:16):
starting the conversation right now, helping them to understand why
the band is occurring, asking them how they feel about
that when they agree or disagree, even if it's not
about them. What have they seen with their friends and
they're peers at school? That kind of conversation is going
to be useful. But it's also useful to say, well,
we probably shouldn't develop a plan together on how we
can approach number one reducing screen time, but also helping
(08:40):
you to have an active and full and whole life
off the screen, open dialogue, rationals. It's going to help
them to feel informed and supported.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Recently, our eleven year old asked if she could make
a phone call to her friend who'd gone on holidays.
She homeschools, so friend was overseas and I let them
have a phone call, and a few minutes later I
realized that there was no noise coming from her bedroom.
I couldn't hear any conversations. And I walked in and
I said, what are you doing? She said? We're texting.
(09:11):
And I said, no, that's not what you asked to do.
You asked to have a phone call. She said, yeah,
but we want to text. And I said, well, that's
not what we're doing here. You're either having a conversation
or you can give me my phone back, and she went, oh, okay,
And anyway, about three minutes later, they're chattering away and
they didn't stop for about fifty minutes. And it just
(09:31):
was curious to me that because of what they've watched
with big sisters, that they thought it was cooler to
actually text each other without realizing that they were missing
out on the real connection. Because once they got talking,
you couldn't you couldn't get.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
So much better. Our kids have got to learn how
to do this. The second thing that I want to
highlight is getting phone numbers, getting phone numbers and downloading
stuff that the kids have put onto socials because once
they lose their accounts, they'll potentially lose all that content.
So it's worth saying let's start to ask the question,
who's got phone numbers? Because we are going to be texting,
(10:09):
we are going to be making phone calls, and get
hold of that content. The other thing that some people
have been doing is installing landlines, putting the phone on
the wall, get a landline, Yeah you can.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, oh we need to do that.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Yeah, landlines are back. They're back, baby, Yes, yeah, Like,
this is the thing our kids.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Are missing out on so much by having their own phone.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Land lines are training when we had.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
To just share with the whole family.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
If we put landline in. I think we should put
one in the kitchen on the wall, and I think
we should put one in our bedroom so that when
the kids are talking on the landline, we can pick
it up and we can listen to it. All right.
The third thing, the third thing is that we need
to fade this out gradually. Now I've put this into
my comments and I've shared this a few times on
(10:53):
media interviews that I've done. But Kylie, honestly, I don't
think that whether you're fading out or going cold tour,
it's going to make any difference. There are some experts
who are saying, oh, your social media can be addictive.
You need to gradually reduce your children's time on social
media because otherwise they're going to feel really frustrated when
they have that sudden stop at the end I just
(11:13):
don't think it matters. I really don't think it matters.
But I do want to add that it might be
a useful tool in some families toolkits, and it's at
least worthy of the conversation.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Well, even if it's not a fade out. I think
that every now and again, having a fast where you know,
as a whole family, you make a decision that you're
going to stay off screens for Saturday or Sunday or
you know, kind of a whole weekend type thing. And
I think you could very well do that as long
as you're all on Boardward.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
When I listening to a song, fade out's annoy me,
I just want to songs over. Yeah, but you're cold cut, finished, done.
We're not all like that, okay. The fourth thing that
I want to highlight is the importance of building community.
This is something that Jonathan Hate talked about a lot
in his book The Anxious Generation. It's one of his
key pillars of how we're supposed to help our kids
to have a play based rather than a screen based childhood.
(12:00):
This goes back to what you were saying, Kylie, Mum, Dad,
time to start taking some responsibility, getting some phone numbers,
organizing some stuff for the kids to do, because they
are probably going to need a little bit more support
from you so that they can engage effectively in building
their offline community, getting together with their friends.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
You think about those earlier days. It was playdates, right,
and you would organize for a family to come over
and hang out with you. We don't do that anymore.
We literally kind of drop the kids off at the
shopping center or you know, they go hang out at
the park or whatever. They don't have our involvement, and
we miss out as adults as well. So that's probably
(12:40):
the part that I'm looking forward to the most, is
just being able to reconnect with relationships that lift and elevate.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Let's do the last one. The last one that I
wanted to make a really big hooha about is model Yeah,
as parents, Let's show them if this stuff is so
damaging and it is, I would argue more damaging for
an adolescence developing brain that it is for a fully
I was going to say fully functional, let's just go
with neurologically mature adult brain, because well, I'm not going
(13:11):
to finish that sentence. Modeling it, modeling it, modeling it
if it's bad for the kids. The reality is it's
not doing us any favors. We don't need it in
our lives. And maybe it would even be something that
you can do in solidarity with the kids. You know what, kiddo,
you're off social media now, in support of you and
in solidarity with you. I'm not going to use social
media either, or at least not when you're watching, not
(13:32):
when you can see me. Maybe I might use it
for ten or fifteen minutes in the morning or ten
to fifteen minutes at night, but that'll be it. Find
a way that you can tag team, you can model
healthy living and healthy tech boundaries for your kids, and
that's it. They're my big five ways to help your
kids get ready for the one month away social media
(13:53):
minimum age legislation that's about to kick off here in oz. Hope.
That's helpful. If you know somebody who's struggling, maybe you
can share this episode with them and it might shed
some light on a slightly tough talk that they could
be having in their home. The Happy Families podcast is
produced by Justin Ruhland from Bridge Media. Men Habits provides research,
admin and a whole lot of other support as well.
(14:15):
Really appreciate the team behind the pod. If you would
like more information and resources to make your family happier
and specifically on this topic, check out my book The
Parenting Revolution. It will literally revolutionize what's going on in
your home. You can find that and a whole lot
of other resources at happyfamilies dot com dot au
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