Ep 213: Screen addiction: how can we prevent this with our children? With Dr Nicholas Kardaras

Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to your child is

(00:02):
normal. I'm your host. DrJessica Hochman, I hope you all
had a great holiday weekend anda really nice Thanksgiving. So
today we're doing something alittle special. We're revisiting
one of my favorite past episodeswith Dr Nicholas carderas. Dr
carderes is one of the country'sleading experts on technology
addiction in kids and teens.
He's an internationally knownspeaker and the author of two
best selling books, glow kidsand digital madness, which have

(00:23):
really shaped how many of usthink about screens and
childhood. I wanted to bringthis conversation back, because
screen time has only become morecentral to everyday parenting.
We're all still trying to figureout how much is too much, what's
normal, what's harmful. How dowe set limits without constant
battles, and how do we help ourkids build healthier
relationships with technology?

(00:44):
What I love about Dr carderas isthat he offers clear and
practical guidance, both withbig picture advice and steps
that families can actually use.
So now on to my conversationwith Dr Nicholas carderas.
Dr cardars, I'm so excited tohave you here. I've been reading
your books. I'm a big fan, and Iso appreciate your time, and
thank you for coming on thepodcast. Thank you for having

(01:05):
me. Can you tell us? Who areyou? What kind of work do you
do?
So I'm a psychologist whospecializes in treating young
people, young adult mentalhealth, and I've done a lot of
addiction work. I've done a lotof mental health work. I've been
a college professor. I taught atStony Brook medicine for about
10 years. I was doing a lot ofschool district work, I was

(01:27):
doing a lot of private practicework, and I was also doing a lot
of work running treatmentprograms. And it was about 10 or
12 years ago that I became oneof the first mental health
experts. I guess that reallystarted noticing the dark side
of the digital age and how it'simpacting mental health. So I
wrote a couple of books that thefirst one was glow kids, that

(01:47):
became very popular. It was in,like, that's in 13 or 14
languages, and that was one ofthe first Paul Revere, you know,
danger, danger, this trouble ofbrewing that really started
pointing out that there weresome some issues that we needed
to start being mindful of,because I think most of the
adults in the room, most of us,were too smitten by our love

(02:08):
affair with technology torealize that it was impacting
young people. So that'llcoalesced in me opening up a
treatment program in Austin,Texas that specializes in
treating what we might callyoung adult distress that looks
like a combination of techoveruse and mental health issues
and sometimes some selfmedicating with substance

(02:30):
overuse and and it's reallyyoung people not able to thrive.
I'm not really able to reallymanage life on life's terms and
so, so that's my last 20 yearbackground, just a clinician
that's worked with young people,that's been pioneering some of
this work, Ifind what's so interesting is
your story, because you came,you came to your field, not

(02:53):
directly. You had a differentcareer first, right?
I took the scenic route. Yeah,yeah, when I got out of college,
I graduated a long time ago. I'molder, so I got out of Cornell
back in the 86 and worked in thehospitality field. I was a
restless young person who waskind of, I guess you might say,

(03:14):
existentially, adrift, like manyyoung people. I remember having
seen the graduate with DustinHoffman my senior year of
college. And kind of relating toto the Dustin Hoffman character
and all my friends were goingto, you know, investment banking
training programs in Manhattanor graduate school, and I
tripped into the hospitalityfield. And so I was working in

(03:38):
the restaurant, Night Club Worldin New York, in lower Manhattan,
in the, excuse me, mid 80s and90s, and fell into some bad
habits as as empty young peoplewithout direction are prone to
do in their lives. And so, youknow, addiction became a part of
my own story and and pretty,pretty devastatingly. So it
almost killed me and my ownjourney to recovery, which

(04:02):
included treatment and 12 Stepsand all sorts of things in
between, that getting to theother side of that struggle was
what led me to go back to schooland get my own degrees and being
able to help other people. So Idefinitely put on, I guess today
we call it lived experience.
I've had some lived experiencewith struggling as a young
person, which I think has onlybenefited me in identifying and

(04:24):
working with it today. Andthat's
actually what I was going tosay, is that I feel like you're
different. I feel like for mostpeople that I talk to, that
scream about the negative,harmful, addictive effects of
screen time, because you'veactually lived through
addiction, and you've come outon the other side. You've come

(04:46):
through it honestly, where youknow the negative effects that
addiction can cause in someone'slife and the benefits of coming
through it.
Yeah, and I think that was oneof the things, because I'd been
through addictionexperientially. I. Was able
that's why I think I was one ofthe first psychologists that
started seeing it on the horizonin another manifestation.
Because addiction, by any othername, is self, it's it adversely

(05:11):
impacts or crushes your life.
And while my addiction happenedto be substance related, I
started seeing this new process,addiction, or behavioral
addiction, but it had all thesame diagnostic features. It had
all the same devastatingfeatures. And so maybe that's
why I was one of the able tosort of pick it up in the
societal ether, more than someof my colleagues were at the

(05:33):
time. And that got some pushbackinitially, you know, initially,
because, again, as I said, mostof us were too busy saying, gee
whiz, Isn't this cool? Look atmy iPhone, and not realizing
that, you know, little Johnnyand Susie were were unable to
leave their rooms, or developingall these psychological, pretty
severe issues and and not awareof it, under aware of those

(05:57):
issues.
And can you describe? I think alot of us know, or we think
about it. But what are the illeffects that you've noticed in
kids that use too muchtechnology?
You know, if we look at thislike an onion, the outer layers
of the onion first and foremost.
And we know now that the devicesand the platforms are baked to
be habituating. You know, we've,we've pulled back the curtain in

(06:20):
the social dilemma and some ofthe other documentaries, some of
the repentant big tech mogulshave admittedly said, you know,
you know, Sean Parker, the firstpresident of Facebook, had said,
Look, this is designed by thisis I'm sorry, addiction by
design. This wasn't someaccidental byproduct. So the big
tech folks knew very well thatto best monetize their products,

(06:43):
they had to increase engagement.
Engagement was the name of thegame, and engagement was all
about using really sophisticatedbehavior modification techniques
to make their platforms habitforming. So there's a dopamine
reward loop that happens. So,you know, we like the little
dopamine tickle that comes whenwe get likes, or when we level

(07:05):
up in gaming platforms, or whenwe get that validation that
happens when we get thatstimulation. So, so the price of
admission to this digital worldis habituation. And then part
two is, what does thathabituation lead to? What are
the psychological byproducts ofthat habituation. And so
clearly, depression is thefirst, most obvious one, you

(07:26):
know, and we're seeing theyounger cohorts. The younger
more connected the generationalcohorts are, the higher rates of
loneliness and depression thatare reported. And so what, to
me, what was really fascinatingwas when you looked at the
generational cohorts, startingat Baby Boomer and Gen X and
millennials and Gen z's. As yougot younger and younger, you

(07:46):
started getting significantlyhigher and higher rates of
psychiatric unwellness and andthe younger you were, the more
plugged in you were, the moredepressed and reportedly lonely
you were. There was a lonelinessepidemic happening, one out of
five Millennials saying thatthey don't have one friend. And
when you go up the ladder withbaby boomers, people were much

(08:07):
more socially connected. Andthat was that went counter to
the narrative, right? Becausethe Kool Aid that we were being
sold was social media for socialspecies. Species. It should have
been this amazing thing. Itshould have been like chocolate
and peanut butter, a wonderfulcombination. But in fact, we saw
that the opposite was happening.
It was an illusion ofconnection. And so people
started realizing that weweren't evolutionarily designed

(08:30):
to be sedentary, screen,staring, isolated, not face to
face, communicating and and whatreally was the proof of concept
of really my The sky is falling.
When I wrote glow kids in 2016was covid. Covid bought
everybody indoors, quarantinedand screen dependent. Screen

(08:52):
time doubled and depressiontripled during covid. And so we
started seeing that theseeffects were really pretty
significant. And then beyonddepression, there was
developmental issues. You know,if you were giving a child at
those really key milestones,2345, years old, from two to 12,

(09:15):
highly immersive, interactiveand dopaminergic screens, we
were seeing clear research thatwas showing the ADHD effect,
that we were creating ageneration that was going to
become intentionally challenged.
So we've seen spiking rates ofADHD because we've
overstimulated young kids duringkey developmental ages. So as
you know, the best thing forchildren developmentally is hand

(09:37):
eye activities, building blocksand working with their with
their hands, to be able to notonly develop those neuro
synaptic pathways that developthose skills, but attention,
like language, is adevelopmental window, and when
you start flooding thosechildren's developing brain.

(09:58):
Begins with the bells andwhistles of hyper immersive and
hyper stimulating screen time.
You now create a profile of ayoung person that becomes
stimulation dependent. So a lotof parents that I work with are
like, Oh, Johnny doesn't haveADHD when he's on his computer,
there's laser focus. But thenwhen you know the old thing is,

(10:19):
take away the computer, andJohnny's literally bouncing off
the walls. So it was depression,it was ADHD, it was anxiety
levels. You know, the screen,even though it was a stimulant,
also had a sedating effect, ahypnotic effect. So now you
started having kids and youngpeople and adults who were using
screen time to self soothe, tokind of calm them down. And

(10:41):
again, like any benzodiazepine,you can get overly dependent on
it. So now without the screen,you can't calm down. And
finally, were the mind shapingaspects of technology, depending
on how young you were. Now, whatwe're seeing is, you know,
pretty large spikes inpersonality disorders like
borderline personality disorder.
Clearly, we started seeing alsosome psychiatric social

(11:04):
contagion effects, where, in theinfluencer world of digital
media, which is the world thatour young people are living in,
that's their social environment,is the digital world, you really
started seeing really, reallypopular psychiatric influencers,
the dissociative identitydisorder crowd and borderline

(11:25):
personality disorder influencerson Tiktok, the Tiktok Tourette's
phenomenon were literallybillions of views for three or
four Tiktok influencers that hadTourette's syndrome, and then
you started seeing that theirfollowers, typically adolescent
females, started, now,consciously or unconsciously,

(11:45):
mimicking some of theirpsychiatric distress. So, so, so
these were the multi facetedimpacts that were happening, you
know, all at once in this massexperiment that we've been
conducting.
It really hit home when youtalked in your book about the
dopamine, the dopaminergiceffects that screens are having
on our brain that it actssimilarly as anything that we

(12:08):
really crave, as rewards, likeeating a lot or sex or any
engagement that drives humans tofeel reward that screens are
similar even more so correct.
Yeah, you know, I think whatwoke up a lot of people was
there was really clear fMRIbrain imaging research that
really started showing yourbrain on screens looked exactly

(12:30):
like your brain on drugs. Didyou know? So the dopamine reward
is the it's the neurotransmitterthat's most associated with any
kind of addictive disorder, andtypically, we tend to associate
that the more dopamineactivating or dopaminergic any
kind of experiences, any kind ofsubstances, the more the higher

(12:50):
the potential for addiction. Sothings like craving, foods like
chocolate, have a 50% increasein dopamine. Sex has 100%
dopamine spike. Cocaine is a300% dopamine spike, and crystal
meth has a 13 100% dopaminespike, and that tends to
correlate with how potentiallyhabit forming they are. Now

(13:12):
there's a lot of differentaddiction ideological theories.
There's also genetics, so somepeople are predisposed towards
liking that dopamine tickle morethan others, potentially
depending on childhoodvariables, trauma or genetics.
But certainly the The culpritis, is how dopamine activating
some of these experiences orsubstances are, and what they

(13:33):
found is that screen time wasright up there with a sexual
experience. It was 100% dopamineactivating, excuse me, and this
was a study back in 1998 by Drcope in Nature magazine. And it
showed 1998 video games, whichwere yesterday's generation of
stimulation. This was like, notquite, you know, pong or Pac

(13:55):
Man, but it wasn't Grand TheftAuto either. They were as
dopamine activating as a sexualexperience, except worse, that
because people were able toengage in these platforms for
hours and days, I've had clientswho were involved in these
different experiences formultiple days at a time. So so
the dopaminergic effect wasexacerbated because of the

(14:17):
length of time that people wereplaying it and weren't on them.
The brain imaging research thatwas also really clear that a lot
of people also saw, was that yousaw frontal cortex abnormalities
that mirrored addiction,substance addiction. So you saw
a shrinkage in the gray matterin the prefrontal cortex, which

(14:38):
is our decision making, and theprefrontal cortex is our
executive functioning. It's whatallows us to not be impulsive.
It allows us to do the if thenthinking, and anything that
shrinks that part of your brainmakes you more vulnerable
towards impulsivity. So chronicsubstance abuse is a double
whammy, because if you'readdicted to a substance, the

(14:58):
more used a substance, the. Themore your ability to just say no
to the substance getscompromised. Because you're more
your decision making center iscompromised. Well, we saw the
same thing happening with screentime. The decision making
centers of the brain weregetting were physically
shrinking. It was calleddecreased DGM, the dense gray
matter of the brain wasphysically shrinking as a result

(15:20):
of screen time, and most peoplehad a hard time understanding
that, because you're notingesting anything, how is it
neurophysiologically affectingus? But of course, we know that
things affect our brains that wedon't have to just swallow.
Trauma affects the brain. Ourexperiences affect our brain,
and this was one of them,and I can see it. I mean, I see
myself like there's such a pullto look at my phone. And I think

(15:42):
I didn't have a phone until, youknow, the last 1015, years. And
I think about my children, howare they going to focus on their
homework if they have the pullof a screen next to them? I
mean, I had a hard time in highschool staying focused, writing
essays, doing my homework. Howare children these days going to
do what they need to do withthat strong pull towards the

(16:03):
digital world? I feel bad forthem.
That's a good way to look at it.
We need to ask ourselves if we,as the adults in the room who
have a fully developedprefrontal cortex, because, as
you know, that part of our braindevelops fully in our mid 20s.
So here we are, ostensibly withfully developed brains, both of
us and we have, I mean, I know Ihave a hard time with my phone.

(16:25):
It's, it's gravitational pullcan be very strong. So how do we
expect the seven year old or theeight year old to be able to
moderate that usage? That's theproblem we we don't fully grasp
how problematic this may be forpeople in a lot of folks who
aren't parents, they see thingsthrough the lens of their own
experience, and they don'treally grasp that. You know,

(16:47):
when the child is reallyvulnerable, they don't have the
neurophysiological hardware toto moderate or to manage. And so
you're setting up a kid forfailure when you're trying to
set especially very young ages,when you're trying to say, Well,
only have your, your hyperarousing sexual equivalent to
sex device, for only 30 minutes,and then just stop, just just,

(17:09):
just put on the brakes at 30minutes, it's it's almost
impossible. So, so yeah, we needto understand that through our
own lens, again, by appreciatinghow tough it is for the adults
to be able to manage some ofthese things.
And what I like about the workyou do in the books that you

(17:29):
write is you made me feelnervous. To be honest, I was
scared after reading thebeginning of especially digital
madness that learning about allthe harms that screens are doing
to us, to us as a society, to usindividually. But I also like
that you offered hope that youhave solutions, ideas on how to
pull away from it. I'd love youto share the story about your

(17:50):
dad, how he was so resilient,even though he had such a
difficult childhood.
Yeah, and this, this goes backto one of the impacts that I you
know we haven't really mentionis that, you know, any child
that grows up in the digitalbubble or in, you know,
digitally lubricated lives,well, how does this impact their
you know, things that we know.
Because I like using the phrasehaving a strong psychological

(18:12):
immune system, right? And asexual immune system includes
things like resilience. Youknow, Angela Duckworth, a
psychologist who's written thebook group talk about grit, what
develops these, these reallyimportant skills or traits that
we have that really help usmanage life. I mean, we all have
to have this psychologicalimmune system. And to me, it

(18:32):
also includes things like theability to critically think, the
ability to, you know, I use aphilosopher warrior paradigm,
you know, the wisdom criticalthinking and ethical awareness
of the philosopher and the gritand resilience of the warrior,
both not just physical grit andresilience, but an innate sense

(18:53):
of that and young kids that areraised today, who are
essentially living in thisinstant gratification bubble,
living in this binary polarityof social media. Because the
other thing that people underappreciate, I mean, we're living
through the most polarizedpolitical times right now on the
societal level, and so we'reseeing people that are extremely

(19:16):
on either side of the politicaldivide, and one of my hypotheses
is this societal black and whitethinking has been driven by our
immersion into social media,which in its DNA is baked in to
be polarizing, because they callit an extremification loop. But
in this, the understanding ofbig tech was that engagement is

(19:37):
driven by emotional reactivity.
And that emotional reactivitycomes when, when what, what the
algorithm thinks that you likeis, is regurgitated back to you
in an amplified way, becauseeventually we'll get bored. And
so they have to keep amplifyingand amplifying the intensity of

(19:57):
the content, whether that'spolitical. Content or what have
you. So now you create this sortof what you rarely see YouTube
videos or anything that arenuanced or thoughtful
discussions. It tends to be thereal emotional hair on fire
content, and that does somethingto us, both individually and
societally. So we're this veryblack and white, very

(20:19):
reactionary, very emotionallydysregulated society right now,
and so the kids that are growingup through this cauldron of
emotionality are highlyreactive, highly emotional,
highly triggered. You know, thestereotypical Safe Space trigger
warning population that westereotype, but the stereotype

(20:40):
but the stereotype is based onreality. I was a university
professor for 10 years, and yousaw each progressive cohort was
getting more and more capable ofeven handling University
content, and so I contrastedthat with my father. You know,
my father was a World War Two.
You know, he was 14 when theNazis invaded his village in
Northern Greece and saw somepretty horrific atrocities. And

(21:00):
had a walk barefoot from, youknow, it was a two day walk from
northern Greece to Athens, andsaw the adult men in this
village lined up and shot andkilled. And, you know, trauma
with a capital T and and in acertain way to his benefit. You
know, we understand that thatbeing exposed to adversity can

(21:23):
be a really an important thingthat that most human beings have
to go through, because throughadversity comes resilience, and
when we don't build thosemuscles, when those muscles are
allowed to atrophy in the easychair of digital leisure.
There's there's a problem there.

(21:45):
And so we have young people whoare now not leaned into their
resilience or not been not hadto struggle. And I blame, to
some degree my field as well. Iwrite about this in digital
madness, where the therapeuticindustrial complex, to some
degree, has fed into theproblem. We've demonized
adversity. You know, there's thewhole aces paradigm that adverse

(22:07):
childhood experiences and andthen, you know, I think it's a
slightly, well, not slightly. Ithink it's a flawed model,
because the ACES model thatlooks as at the boogeyman as
being childhood adversity as theproblem, but if the intervening
variable that gets missed isdeveloping coping strategies and
the abilities to be able to dealwith that adversity is actually

(22:29):
it's the old Nietzsche sayingthat that doesn't kill you,
makes you stronger. And now, ofcourse, there's there's
adversity that is the tippingpoint that could be traumatizing
and crosses that threshold whereI'm not talking about severe
sexual abuse or things likethat. I'm talking about, you
know, being able tometaphorically fall down and

(22:50):
pick yourself back up withoutbeing helicopter parented or
bubble wrapped in a way thatbecomes unhealthy because, like
the child that isn't allowed tobe exposed to germs in their
environment, they don't developa viral or a healthy immune
system. And I know manypediatricians advocate you know,
don't, don't put your child in abubble, because that's not going

(23:13):
to allow their immune system tothrive. Similarly, with from a
psychological standpoint, let'slet our kids scrape their knee
and have to work through that,because that's healthy for them,
but that's not been happeningover the last 10 to 20 years as
much, and the digital cocoon ispart of that.
I think about that all the time,because, as you mentioned, we're
living in this world where teensare depressed and anxious more

(23:36):
than ever. And I think aboutcontrasting that was someone
like your father who really sawtrue trauma. And if you think
about it, the time we live innow is probably easier than it's
ever been. I mean, I know wejust went through a pandemic,
but really it's, it's the timesare the best they've ever been.
You know, life is reallygenerally easy in a comparative

(23:57):
sense to what your father wentthrough
or prior generations. You know,everywhere from prehistoric man
through the middle ages throughour parents' generation, we're
living in comparatively easytime, and yet we have young
people who are paralyzedoftentimes. I mean, I've worked
with some young clients who justreally paralyzed by life, unable

(24:18):
to cope. And you know, again,it's a bit of a stereotype
rooted in reality, but thingslike words and language are
traumatizing. You know, if youcan't, I hate to say it, but you
know, always at the forefront orthe vanguard of our culture is
humor, right? And now we havecancel culture and and folks who
you know really can't handlelanguage. And you know, Jonathan

(24:41):
Haidt, the NYU professor, writesabout this in his book, The
coddling of the American mind.
And this is this back to, backto about 2010 2012 the iPhone
and the iPad in that that timeframe, that was when university
and university administratorsstarted. I. Identifying Well,
students started saying thatcertain language or words were

(25:02):
now triggering and traumatizing,and administrators are charged
with the safety of theirstudents. So now they started
developing the safe spacetrigger warnings environments to
protect students from theseostensible harms. And so rather
than saying part of theuniversity experience is to hear
Opposing Viewpoints, processthat intellectually challenge

(25:23):
it, engage in debate theSocratic dialectic. Now we're
going to wrap you in a warmblanket and insulate you from a
word that or an idea that youmight find challenging. And so
when that cohort made it throughuniversity, by the time they
landed into the job market, theywere entirely ill equipped to

(25:44):
handle an irritable boss or thedemands of a deadline or all
those things that you know,people have traditionally had to
work through. This generationwas now suffering from increased
depression and and unable tounable to cope, and wound up in
vicious cycle mode, by the way,going then deeper and deeper

(26:04):
into the digital world wherethere was, there's a lot of
escapism. The one part wehaven't talked about is the
escapism people have always,historically escaped through
drugs and alcohol or othermeans. But now it's push button
escapism, where if you can'thandle life and life's terms, I
can just lose myself in mydigital rabbit hole and off we
go.

(26:26):
That's very true. I think a lotof people listening to you say
that could probably relate tothose words, right? Yeah, it's
life's you come home and life'syou get a stressful day, you
just go on Tik Tok or whateverthe social medium of your
preferences and lose yourselfabsolutely right?
You know, it's not, you don'thear about it as much. But, you

(26:46):
know, seven, eight years ago,Second Life was, was kind of a
more of a thing, too. And youheard a lot of stories, and
there was a lot of, you know,Second Life was a platform where
it was essentially a synthetic,digital alternate reality, where
you would pick an avatar you ifyou hated your life, you could
create an avatar that could be arock star or, you know, a movie

(27:08):
star, and living, you know,amongst other avatars in the
synthetic landscape. And therewere people who would come home
from work and would plug in andlive their essentially Walter
Mitty fantasy world in SecondLife, and spend their entire non
working lives in this virtualreality because it was a more

(27:29):
palatable reality than the livesthat were their actual lives.
And a lot of the gamers that Iwork with in my treatment
program in Austin, their gamingis a sort of a version of that.
It's, it's the profile is Idon't feel empowered in my life.
I feel dead end. I feeldepressed. My life kind of
sucks. I don't have socialconnections. I don't have
meaning or purpose in my life.
But when I play Final Fantasy 14and I'm a galactic warlord

(27:53):
conquering, you know, universezeta, I feel empowered and I
feel a sense of purpose andmeaning. It's all fake, but it
feels real.
You feel important. It feelslike meaning in your life, but
it's all a fantasy, right? Sosad, actually? Yeah, I was just
thinking when I was a kid. Doyou remember that saying sticks

(28:15):
and stones can break your bones,but words will never hurt me?
Yeah? What happened to thatsaying?
I think that was Dave Chappelletitle of his last stand up with
sticks and stones. I think thatwas his last title, exactly
because that same went out thewindow where we were supposed to
be able to manage language, butlanguage now became, you know,
violence and, yeah, there's hatespeech, but it was, again, we've

(28:38):
become extremely thin skinned toour psychological and societal
detriment. Yes, so that's whatwe're that's what we're. People
like me and people who runmental health clinics are kind
of picking up the pieces. Where?
But what do you do if you get,if you work with someone who
this is so baked into becausethis has been a long, slow,
burning development, you know,if you have somebody that's from
the time that they were born.

(29:02):
Were raised this way. These are,you know, these are not easily
fixed. This isn't likedepression and take a happy
pill. These are kind of the waythe person's become essentially
hard wired. And so how do youredo the wiring to make them
less so? So it's challenging,and that's where we talk about
things like dialecticalbehavioral therapy for long
periods of time, and to try totry to change the course of

(29:26):
history in that person's life sothat they're not in this state
of mental unwellness.
And I think it's so helpful thatyou are bringing to light all of
the negative effects and thingsto think about from living in a
digital media world. But what Ialso really appreciate about you

(29:47):
is that you offer hope, thatwhile you bring the negative
aspects to light, you also givesolutions and ideas on how we
can do better and how we can asa society, come away from that.
So for parents. Listening. Whatwould be some general advice you
would give if we want to raiseour kids to be more resilient?
I mean, the first one would bedelay. Delay, delay. Because

(30:09):
prevention, in this case, is,you know, an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure. Youknow, once, once a young
person's kind of crossed thattipping point when they need
treatment. I don't want to sayit's too late, but it's a lot
easier to prevent the problemthan to treat the problem. So
what we find is that we havebetter outcomes the older that

(30:29):
kids are when they get exposedor given their own portable
devices. So my first advice tomost parents is don't drink the
Kool Aid that your infant needsto have an iPhone and an iPad, a
Chromebook in the crib, or twoyears old, or four years old,
you know, because part of theKool Aid that we drank, part of
what we were told was screentime can be educational and and

(30:53):
that, I think a lot of insecureparents felt that this was sort
of a digital arms race. And iflittle Johnny and Susie didn't
get an iPad, and by age three,they were going to be behind,
right? That's the buy I hearfrom most parents. I didn't want
my child to be behind. And thereality of it is that these
devices are so idiot proof thatyou know, you don't, you know,
no one's going to be behind. Youknow, because we know. Not only

(31:15):
did Steve Jobs not give his ownkids an iPad, but when you read
about the most powerful minds inbig tech, Sergey Brin and Larry
Page, the Google boys and JeffBezos. There were Montessori
students. You know, they werethe opposite of a high tech
child. So first and foremost, ifyou can delay, delay, delay, you
know, there's a wait untileighth movement, where parents

(31:38):
wait until eighth grade to givetheir kids phones. And, you
know, of course, your kid'sgonna work on the computer at a
desktop and then that's what Ihave, a 16 year old twin boys
now. And you know, in middleschool, they had a desk, you
know, they had a desktopcomputer, but wasn't in the
room. And we gave them phones.
Mom, in seventh grade, we gavethem a gap phone, which was my
listeners who may know the gapphone doesn't have Wi Fi

(32:00):
capability, so you can't dosocial media or gaming, but you
know you're also not, it lookslike a smartphone, so you're not
going to be you're not you'renot going to get stoned in the
classroom by the other kids whoare stigmatizing you. So
delaying is the most importantthing. Now, if, if, if you
haven't had the chance to, andthis is in the night, get it.
Most parents are trying to dothe best that they can for their

(32:20):
kids, and if you were, one ofthe parents who did give your
two year old the tablet, it'snot too late either. You know,
you could still also pump thebrakes later in life, and the
key is to just try to backdoorin countervailing activities.
Now it's a challenge, becauseonce a kid becomes habituated to
the hyper arousing, immersiverealities of their screen world.

(32:41):
It's harder to get them to wantto go out and play baseball or
play musical instrument becausethe gravitational pull of the
device does is more powerfulthan playing the violin. So
ideally, you bake in some ofthese other interests earlier on
and rather than trying tointroduce them later on,
because, hey, don't play theWorld of Warcraft, because

(33:01):
here's a violin you could play.
It's going to take you threeyears to learn how to play, and
that's not an attractive sell tosome kids. But nature is the
other part of it. You know,engaging in nature activities
and camp and outdoor nature isthe antidote to the indoor child
and and, and I write in my bookabout how we evolved from the

(33:22):
70s into the indoor child.
Parents became very fearfulbecause of 24/7 news cycles that
developed in 1979 1980 was CNN,and as Ted Turner invented CNN,
and all of a sudden we had,instead of half an hour of News,
ABC, CBS and NBC, we had 24/7news cycles, and they had to
fill those hours with, well,with the old news axiom, if it

(33:45):
bleeds it leads. So a lot of itwas fear news that terrified
parents of child abductions. Soall of a sudden, parents who
became fearful created a shortleash for their kids. And now
the evolution of the indoorchild developed, where most of
us of a certain age were raisedas outdoor kids and just be home
by sunset or be home for dinner.
That's changed. Now kids arejust tethered to a screen

(34:08):
device. Fearful parents feelthat their kids are safe
indoors, where meanwhile, weknow that there's all sorts of
predatory things happening onthe computer.
That's so true. It's worse,worse being home on your
screens, potential for danger.
What gives me hope is that I'mseeing that there's a younger
generation of young people thatare beginning to own their
autonomy. For example, what Ifind to be one of the most

(34:29):
effective tactics when workingwith a 16 year old or a 19 year
old who feels that they want theright to be able to game or be
on their device a million hoursa day or whatever. No young
person likes to be told what todo. Every young person has an
innate sense of independence.
They want to be you know, whatthey perceive as a rebel or and
when you pull back the curtainand you explain to them how

(34:52):
they're being monetized andexploited and really just a
commodity by big. Heck, when youprovoke that sense of really,
you think you're you think thisis your choice. You have very
little choice in this wholeexperience. Then you get a sense
of like, what I'm being I'mbeing played like that. And if
you can create that sense of ofpushback from a young person,

(35:15):
there's a grassroots movement ofyoung people who are going
Luddite, who are getting flipphones voluntarily, not through
it via their parents, who wantto own their autonomy. And
that's good to see, becausethey're beginning to get that
this has been a mass not only amass experiment, but also a mass

(35:36):
enslavement, but in a certainsense, you know, waiting online
at the, you know, the AppleStore, you know, for two days
for their next generation ofphone to come in. I call it a
form of Stockholm syndrome,where we've been enslaved. You
know, we're Patty Hearst to thenews Liberation Army, but now
we've, we've fallen in love withour captors. We've deified Steve

(35:57):
Jobs and Bill Gates and and youknow, Elon Musk are all you
know, they're, they're the rockstars of our society, but
they're the ones that arekeeping us in these digital
cages, these sugar coateddigital cages that we've been
trapped in. So if you can get ayoung person to see that you're
in a cage right now, and there'sa whole great big world out
there, there, we want to helpyou experience you want that

(36:20):
dopamine to be experienced withthe wind blowing in your hair by
riding a bike or playing a sportor or just being with other
people, the dopamine that comesjust by face to face
interaction.
No, I love everything you'resaying. I mean, first, it's so
true. I can feel it myself. Whenyou pull back the curtain and
you hear about the group thinkthat's happening, it does make

(36:43):
you want to pull away from thescreen. So I think that is such
a good tactic. I agree,educating the youth on what the
potential negative effects are,and what I find so interesting
to back up what you said aboutdelay, delay, delay, delay,
that's exactly the same advicethat's given for alcohol and
kids. That's now the messagethat we give to children is

(37:03):
delay, delay, delay, because ofthe addiction potential. And I'm
just thinking about what you'resaying the beginning, about how
it's the same interaction on ourbrain as any kind of addiction.
That's, it's, it makes sensethat it would be the same advice
if parents could begin toconceptualize their devices as
being very powerful pieces oftechnology, and I analogize

(37:26):
sometimes with like a car or anautomobile. I love my car. I
don't think my car should bebanned, but I don't think my,
you know, when my kids wereseven, they shouldn't have
gotten the car keys because theyweren't developmentally at that
stage yet. So we have to beginto start thinking about age
appropriate technology. And sowhen I go to an airport and I
see a two year old, you know,just with and they're like in

(37:49):
mission control, the headset,the screens in their face and
and, and the parent feels, youknow, it's the digital
babysitter, let's face it, andthe parent, if they only realize
how much they're stunting theirchild's natural urge. You know,
there was that one studyrecently with children with
infants, rather, ages two tofour, who weren't able to play
with blocks. They didn't knowwhat to do with blocks anymore

(38:11):
because they were being so usedto being stimulated. If you're
exposing children that young toscreen time, they're they're
being wired just to seekstimulation, but they don't know
how to self soothe or createtheir own entertainment or do
their own thing. They're justthese vessels that are stimulate
me. And when I worked with someof those kids, as they've got

(38:31):
older and adolescence and youngadulthood, they are profoundly
easily bored. There I call themnot interesting and not
interested. They have no innatecuriosity, and nor are they very
interested in conversationalistbecause they've just been
consumers of entertainment.
They've been entertained sincecradle to college. And if it's
not entertainment content, Godforbid it's a book that they

(38:56):
have to, you know, use theirminds. It's engaging ideas that
might challenge their paradigms,boring.
So it's so true, and I thinkI'll hear that from my children
all the time, I'm bored. If Ihave them turn off the computers
or turn off their screens,they'll tell me, I'm so bored.
I'm so bored, I don't know whatto do. And honestly, oftentimes,

(39:17):
my husband and I will make themgo outside in our backyard and
we just say, you got to figureit out.
So that's, that's the otherThank you for saying that.
That's the other antidote, youknow, because they one of the
antidotes to this whole problemis, for some reason our
generation is so uncomfortablewith our kids being bored, like,
you know, we have to have thefive TVs on the car, because,

(39:38):
God forbid, the kids got to, youknow, have a conversation while
they're sitting in the car. Butthere's a boredom movement.
There's this idea that boredomis wonderful for children
because it forces kids to thenbe creative, right? Because
creativity is what buildsneurosynaptic pathways that are
really powerful. So if yourchild is bored, now he's got to

(39:58):
play make believe and. Now yourchild's got to pick up a stick.
And now the stick is a sword oror they got to create with
blocks. And so once your childstarts creating, and so boredom
is the mother of invention. Andthose are the things that we've
been robbing of our childrenbecause the kids at the airport
staring at the visual imagerythat visual content is being

(40:21):
created for them. They don'tknow how to use their
imagination anymore, becausetheir imagination has been is
being drilled into their headsfor them. So again, when I've
worked with 16 year olds thathave been raised on screens and
you ask them draw me a picture,or you ask them to write me a
story, blank stare there, butyou know, now that we're

(40:42):
beginning to wake up as asociety, now we're like drunken
sailors out of waking up andhaving the hangover, we're
realizing, Oh, wow, maybe that,maybe this vendor that we've
been having with digital media,you know, there's, it's
wonderful. It's great, you know,but we've got to put some
guardrails in to protect themore the more vulnerable. Yes,
yes, no.
And what I find interesting too,is I talk to parents about the

(41:04):
ill effects of screen times, andthey are aware of them, but they
have a really hard time settinglimits, like when push comes to
shove and their kid is askingfor the screens, they have a
really hard time saying no.
I say this all the time. It'shard to be a tech cautious
parent today. You know it takesmore effort. It definitely takes
more effort. So it's much easierto raise the white flag and say,

(41:25):
Okay, here's your device. Youknow, it's much easier to to
fall into that the long term.
You know, it's short sightedparenting, because, okay, you'll
quiet the savage beasts for thatshort period of time, but you're
again, you're like, as I saidearlier, creating this
dependency on simulation. Soyou're, you're, you know, that
that volume will work, but ifyou take it every day, you're

(41:47):
going to get dependent on thatValium. And so that becomes the
problem. And that's what we'redoing with our kids. It's
sedating them. It is doing thatfor the period of time, but
it's, you know, but beingproactive and finding those
alternate activities for ourkids to do. So then the big one
also is modeling what we preach.
You know, we can't tell our kidsto be off our devices if we're

(42:10):
head deep. You know, there's athing with neglected parenting
where a neglected child hasworse outcomes than an abused
child, and so this digitalneglect that's currently
happening, what they found isthat a child experiences neglect
more profoundly if you're in theroom than if you're not even
around like it's a little bitolder now, but especially when

(42:34):
they're younger, you don't wantto be in the living room with
them on your device, tuning themout while they're trying to pull
out your pant leg, or they'retrying to get your attention,
because then the internalizedfeeling is that thing is more
important than I am, and thenthat becomes internalized as a
not very good sense of identityfor that child, because it's

(42:54):
better if you weren't around, ifyou went out to the store to get
a groceries, the child perceivesit as okay. There's some other
activity that's happening. I'mnot feeling the rejection as
profoundly as I am when myparents is five feet away from
me and they're ignoring me. Sothat's interesting. That sense,
if you really have to do somework related screen time, go to
your office, go to the car,close the door, but don't do it

(43:17):
while you're sitting next toyour child, because that gets
internalized in a very unhealthyway,
so better to finish your work atwork, stay late, maybe right
then come home and be fullypresent with your kids. 100%
Yeah. And I am interested too.
You mentioned that yourinfluence from philosophy also
helped shape the way you thinkabout screens. I love when you

(43:37):
mentioned about Plato and goingon walks and how that's where he
did his best thinking. I'd loveto hear more of your thoughts on
your influence from ancientphilosophy.
Yeah, and just in my strugglewith addiction, you know, I had
studied philosophy more, youknow, Western Civ, 101, back in

(43:57):
my undergrad days, but I reallyfound it more experientially
powerful. You know, anybodystruggling with an addiction
issue faces this existentialcrisis, who am I? What am I? And
you have to really lean intothat exploration. And it was a
key part of my recovery, quitehonestly. You know, in
philosophy, you don'tnecessarily have to answer the
meaningful questions, but youhave to ask them. And in that

(44:19):
journey of searching comescertain growth. So the idea is
to become more self reflectiveand self absorbed. And in our
selfie world, we're much moreself absorbed and narcissistic
than we are self reflective orcompassionate. And so philosophy
teaches us a few things. Itteaches us both the maybe the

(44:40):
nature of existence. You know,there's the cosmology and
ontology the nature of being.
Who am I at my core? Those areimportant explorations for
people to find deeper intrinsicmeaning, rather than meaning
through extrinsic leveling upvideo game worlds or how many
likes or views you have, havinga core sense of identity that's
informed. By a value system thatis meaningful for you, and

(45:02):
philosophy has a roadmap on howto develop that. And again,
critical thinking civicresponsibility, you know, it's
this idea of, you know, caringfor our neighbors and how we are
all members. We're all in thesame lifeboat together and
caring about thy neighbor. Andwhat you're seeing in a lot of
digital media, the byproduct ofa lot of digital media immersion

(45:23):
is self centered narcissism. Andwhen you think about it, it's
almost a sense of magicalthinking. This is I've really,
truly come to see it as thistoo. Think about a kid, eight,
910, years old, and we havepredictive algorithms that feed
us what we what the algorithmthinks that we want. If you're a
kid and you search for somethingon Google, and all of a sudden,

(45:46):
everything in your digital worldstarts reflecting that search.
It's almost like a form ofMagical Thinking, because in the
digital world, the world iscreated and curated in your
image, and so the world doesrevolve around me. Some of them
think that they are there.
They're again narcissisticthere. They have very little

(46:07):
compassion for other people.
It's a lot of it's all about me.
Ism and philosophy comes at itfrom a different perspective and
and can help at least start adialog of like, true values and
what's really meaningful in theworld.
And I think about how youmentioned the importance of

(46:27):
serving others, how that getsyou out of your head, and it's
an antidote to feeling like lifedoesn't have purpose or meaning.
We're up against such achallenge. If kids are at home
and on their screens, how arethey possibly serving others in
a meaningful way?
Yeah, that was part of thebeautiful part of 12 step
programs. You know, 12 stepprograms is a lot of addiction

(46:49):
tends to be about, you know, thebehavior Look, can look very
selfish, and oftentimes it isbecause, you know, the the
addict is serving their ownaddictive need and sometimes to
the sacrifice of their lovedones. And it can be very selfish
addiction. Can be very selfishpursuit. And then 12 step world
you step in, and all of asudden, one of the mandates of a

(47:11):
12 step program is helpinganother person that's one of the
steps. And it shifts the lensfrom navel, staring looking
inward to how can I help anotherhuman being? And there's
something magical that happenswhen you start helping other
people. It puts things inperspective and and that's where
a lot of the work we do in myAustin program, Omega recovery

(47:34):
is group centered for the forthe first time for a lot of
these young folks, because a lotof them have come out of covid
they were doing like remoteschooling. Their colleges were
remote. And now we're puttingthem into groups, and we're
forcing them to work together,to care about one another. These
are all new experiences for mostof them. It's amazing part of
the healing process, amazing.

(47:55):
I am so impressed with the workyou're doing. I am so impressed
how you've personally grown yourstory, I think is really
fascinating, and I'm so proud ofyou, honestly, to come out of an
addiction, from such a low andthen to have written two books,
to have a recovery center,You're so thoughtful on these
really important issues. Sothank you for all that you're

(48:16):
doing.
Thank you for trying to raiseawareness about all these issues
and trying to do the work thatyou do, which I think, you know,
we all need to be wrong in thisboat together, because it's
going to take a concerted effortfrom people like us to sort of
awaken the the digitally drunksociety that we're in, to kind

(48:36):
of, you know, sober up and tokind of say there's more to life
than than this glowing screen.
So thank you for what you'redoing.
Oh, absolutely. And please tellus about your recovery center.
Tell us. Tell us about theprogram that you offer in
Austin.
Yes, it's called omega recovery.
We've been there now for aboutsix years. It's it's residential
and also outpatient. So abouthalf of our clients are from

(48:58):
different parts of the country.
It's six to eight weeks. It'sbut people have stayed longer.
And it's really, it's, it's theprofile, I would say it's for
failure to launch young peopleset age 17 to 30. So if you're a
young person who's not thriving,typically, the profile looks
like somebody who did well orokay through high school because

(49:20):
of the parental hovering orhelicoptering. And then when
they went off to college, theyjust fell apart. They either
didn't leave their dorm room,they started either they would
stay online all the time, theywould either self medicate a
little too much, they would fallinto depressions. And those are
all bi directional forces thedepression would feed the more
screen time, the more screentime would feed the depression,

(49:41):
maybe a little self medicatingto top it all off. And so
typically, they would flunk outof school, or they would wind up
back home in mom and dad'sbasement and unmotivated and
capable of getting a job, andjust now what? And so that's a
that's the basic profile of ourresidential treatment. Program,
and those are tough cases towork with, and that's why I'm a

(50:04):
big advocate of delay, delaydelay, because you want to
really address that issue beforeyou get to that point, you know,
before somebody's life kind of,and I've worked in some extreme
cases where, you know, reallyalmost like a form of catatonia,
where the person was they comeinto our treatment program,
almost zombie like, unable tocommunicate. And then I've had

(50:24):
clients who've hadderealization,
depersonalization, where theydidn't know there was it looked
like a form of psychosis. TheI've had, I write about this in
Glo kids. I've had clientswho've had gaming induced
psychotic breaks, where theythought that they were in the
game, and the predatoryalgorithms that attack young

(50:45):
adolescent girls body image bysending them hashtag 100
calories or less, or skin andbones, hashtags and and because
it's like looking at a carwreck, it's it's, if you've got
any body image issues and yousee something that's going to
exacerbate your eating disorder,you can't look away. You can't
look away, even though it'smaking you worse. The evil part

(51:06):
was their own internal research,as Francis Hochman demonstrated
by pulling back the curtain ontheir internal emails, they had
done their own research showingincreased suicidality, 12%
increases in suicide in Britishgirls and 6% in American girls
because of Instagram. Hey,should we dampen down the
algorithm and make it lesspredatory? And the response was,

(51:28):
hell no, that'll decreaseengagement. Yeah. So, you know,
harmful by design, profit overpeople.
Profit over people. So true, andI'm I'm thinking, too for
typical treatment centers, likeif you go to a drug rehab, the
answer is to be sober, but it'sreally, yeah, abstinence is the

(51:49):
answer. But how can you truly beabstinent with screens when
they're everywhere? I mean,that's such a challenge, and
that's where it's very similarto treating an eating disorder,
right? If the problem issue issomebody with an eating
disorder, we analogize it likethis all the time. You know, the
person that's developed adisordered eating profile, they
can't be food abstinent. Theyhave to develop first a healthy

(52:10):
relationship with themselves andthen a healthy relationship with
the problem, substance, food.
Interesting. Similarly, youmight need to be abstinent from
if you're a gamer, and yourbrain is now wired itself that
you're going to get that samedopamine high. If you've, you've
hardwired yourself to becompulsive with your gaming. You
might have to be gamingabstinent, but not computer

(52:31):
abstinent, right? You couldresearch a paper, and you could
do all sorts of otherentertainment on a computer. If
you have, you could watchmovies, but gaming is your third
rail, all right, so, so youmight have to be gaming
abstinent, but not necessarily,but, but it's challenging
because, you know, you get onthe computer and it's like
asking an alcoholic to be soberin a bar, you're right close to

(52:51):
the action every time you openup your screen, so that that's
one of the biggest challengesWith this whole thing,
finding the balance right? Yep,wow. Thank you so so much. I
just appreciate the awarenessthat you brought on this issue,
and I'm so grateful for the workthat you're doing,
and thank you for having me andand onward and forward with with

(53:16):
our collective fight.
Thank you for listening, and Ihope you enjoyed this week's
episode of Ask Dr Jessica. Also,if you could take a moment and
leave a five star review,wherever it is you listen to
podcasts, I would greatlyappreciate it. It really makes a
difference to help this podcastgrow. You can also follow me on
Instagram at ask Dr Jessica. Seeyou next Monday. You.

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Ep 213: Screen addiction: how can we prevent this with our children? With Dr Nicholas Kardaras

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