Dr. Tim Thayne interviews Dr. Ryan Anderson, author of Screen Savvy. They talk about the pros and cons of social media and how to develop healthy habits around your devices. When listening to this you will recognize things that you do personally and you will know how to better create boundaries for you and your family.
Dr. Tim Thayne interviews Dr. Ryan Anderson, author of Screen Savvy. They talk about the pros and cons of social media and how to develop healthy habits around your devices. When listening to this you will recognize things that you do personally and you will know how to better create boundaries for you and your family.
Welcome to the not by chance podcast on talent Tim thin son and podcast manager. Today Dr. Tim Thayne will be interviewing Dr. Ryan Anderson. Ryan received his master's degree in marriage and family therapy from Brigham Young University and later his PhD in medical and family therapy from the East Coast Carolina University and completed his internship at Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. He has done so much in the social sciences from working as a wilderness therapist to working in cancer care, and also clinical director at Tsu. He has taught college courses first year medical students, community outreach and education programs, as well as spoken at various conferences and continuing education events. In addition to his work in social sciences, Ryan spent nearly a decade dabbling in various degrees in video game design and production, working as a voice actor writing and designing for numerous mods and several independent games. Amongst all of this, he still has time to enjoy his hobbies, which are martial arts, history, cooking, music, language, physics, astronomy, hiking, and European board games. But most of all, Dr. Anderson enjoys spending time with his family. So without further ado, let's jump into this.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Ryan, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Today, I'm excited about the topic we've chosen to discuss. We're going to talk about social media, and the pros and cons of it. And some of the some of the things going on in the country mental health wise around it. So we had a great conversation before this that I hope we can draw from as well. But before we jump into all that, Ryan, I'd like you to share a little bit about your background, you've got a very interesting, varied background, you've got the clinical side, you've got you've got some technical in there, you've got I realized you also have some martial arts in there. Yeah,
Ryan Anderson:I'm not sure how much it helps.
Dr. Tim Thayne:So I'd love to just just introduce you yourselves to the audience, even though we've we've shared a little bit of your bio.
Ryan Anderson:Yeah, sure. So I think one of one of the things that makes me a little bit interesting when it comes to this particular topic, because I actually spent a number of years as a software developer. Most of my work was in video game development, I worked for a number of indie companies had one time I collaborated with a triple A type company, and had a lot of experience just kind of creating video games in that world. And that was at a time when video games were really evolving. And we were beginning to see some of the pay to play pay to win type mechanics and some of those things that have really altered video games in the way that they affect people. And this was at the same time that I was studying in school and learning about psychology in neurology and just kind of begin looking at those connections and saying, There's something here I want to understand better. And so it started off just kind of as a personal desire to understand and then finding more and more of that popping up in my clinical work. And realizing there is something here that is maybe bigger than we currently realize. And there are pieces at play that that based on my work on both sides, I began to look at opportunities and options for for working and improving what was going on with the people I was working with. So that's kind of what got me into this particular interest inside the field of therapy.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Yeah, it's really an interesting mix of experiences you've had and expertise and I, I really consider you one of the brightest minds in this space in terms of understanding the technology, the human connection between the two and how you some of this has happened. In fact, I want to make sure that everybody out there has heard about Ryan's book. It's called Screen savvy, creating balance in a digital world. And it is in depth. And it covers all kinds of things, not just the negative side of technology that you cover and some of the downsides, but also the benefits.
Ryan Anderson:I think that's important. I think there are a lot of people who rightfully are raising concerns, partially because most people seem to be unaware of the concerns. And sometimes it can, you can end up sounding like you're saying the apocalypse is arriving, where at the same time, there are genuine benefits to having digital media of all kinds in our lives. But really knowing how to navigate it knowing how to walk the different paths that are there. Being able to understand what the different options are, what the different pitfalls are, I've always felt it was important to be able to see the whole story.
Dr. Tim Thayne:So I hope that anybody out there listening Take a look at your book because I don't think there's a parent that has a teenager with a smartphone that's not concerned about their relationship with that smartphone and everything in it. So, and that probably gets us into our conversation, the more specific focus of our conversation about social media. And, and that's kind of the direction we wanted to go. And let's, let me just ask you, first of all, what are the benefits of social media? What? What's good about it?
Ryan Anderson:Well, you take a look, social media has a lot of ways where it's a tremendous force for good on a societal level. When when I think about things like people coming together, to rally around a good cause, think about, for example, currently, as we're talking about this, there's these huge wildfires in Australia, right. And this has been a way to raise people's awareness to rally medical resources and, and charitable efforts of all kinds in a way that's unprecedented that, that no one's been able to get this kind of force going. Prior to the time of social media. There's lots of ways that social media can be very good at raising awareness of different causes, whether it's health issues from a public health point of view, whether it's concerns that are popping up in a society, it's a place where you can go where if you don't know where or you can talk to someone about something, you can usually find people who've had experiences in those areas. It's a great spot for collaboration, I think a lot of us who work professionally, no, it's great to kind of pop onto LinkedIn and see, hey, I could really use a consultation in this area or that area. And you can easily find people who can do those things. So the accessibility of social media and just providing a much wider menu, and giving the tools to find what you're looking for in there is incredible. And I know for myself, when I think about family members and friends, I have spread all over the globe right now, it's often very difficult knowing how to use your time to stay in touch. And and it is a way to stay in touch, you have to recognize that it's it's usually sort of shallow skin deep. But it's still the maintenance of some kind of connection that can be hard to do in other ways. So all of those I think are great aspects of social media.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Yeah, you know, just just the other day, I ran into someone at the store, and hadn't seen them in a long, long time. And I don't, I guess I don't consume a lot of social media. And I take that to mean, I'm the one there kind of combing through it, reading it and understanding that I probably post more than I consume. Is that is that a different? That's a whole different kind of Yeah, aspect, right? Two entirely different mechanics. Yeah. So So I'm there and I see someone I hadn't seen in years, and they were up to date with me. They knew everything that had happened, they knew about our son's in missions and different things that had happened. And I felt a little bad that I didn't have that information about them. Because I had not been really the on the consuming side.
Ryan Anderson:Well, and you actually bring that up is this can be something that is tricky about relationships and social media is they can very much be asymmetrical. Some people spend a lot of time combing through their feeds, some people don't. I purposely kind of minimize the amount of time I spend. One of the things I find societally is that sometimes people actually are kind of offended, if you haven't been following and you're asking you about things. So like I totally posted about this on Instagram, right? Where were you, you know. And so it's interesting in the fact that it is changing a little bit of our, our expectations of each other. But what is what is often missing is we kind of the ability to have reciprocity breaks down because there's an assumed reciprocity. And that give take that kind of, from the from the first moments, human beings are starting to communicate where your baby's coming at you you're coming back, we're teaching each other that give take reciprocity, that that breaks down on social media, there's not really it lacks that portion of
Dr. Tim Thayne:a really interesting point that I don't think most of us think of. And yet that's fundamental to to an authentic relationship.
Ryan Anderson:It is the difference between a secure and deep attachment and something that's more of an acquaintance, you know, people, people may be looking at your social media feed, and it's kind of like collecting Pokemon cards of you, they know you had this achievement and that experience and whatever it may be. So they know a lot of superficial things and it can give, it can give the mirage of intimacy. But when there's sort of that slow, deeper dive of people where there is real reciprocity, and there's also some of the mundane and The other thing about social media is that for the most part, we're sharing snapshots and highlights. What we're lacking is the mundane. Interestingly enough, if you go back to some of the research on the most satisfying relationships, I'm thinking, for example of John Gottman, and he looks at what communication looks like between satisfied people and dissatisfied people in their relationships. One of the things he notices that the people who are happiest and most connected share the mundane with each other.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Yeah, and they understand that no one really gets us like we do, because we are sharing the full breadth of of that. It's not just the highlights. Yeah. So yeah, that's, that's interesting. Let's, let's take this a little bit now to parenting and teens for a second. Given the fact that, you know, you've been in the in the team treatment field for quite some time I have as well, a lot of our audience will be parents that, that this is their number one concern. A lot of times when I'm at Homeward Bound, when we're working with transitioning someone out of a treatment setting back into home, this is really their number one question, what are we going to do about the cell phone? Or what are we going to do about social media and all of that, because prior to treatment, a lot of times there, there's, there's trauma around the use of these devices. And, and the way that it it, perpetuated sort of their spin, whether it be depression down into deep, dark depression, or socially, doing things that that put them at risk, in some ways, was often perpetuated by social media. Yeah. So that's a major concern. Let's talk a little bit about the mental health of youth and the present the parental role in social media.
Ryan Anderson:Oh, absolutely. And this, this is a topic I really care a lot about, not just because of what I do professionally, but I have four teenagers of my own now, yeah, all at once. And this is this is very much a part of their lives, even. Even if we as parents are trying to take a certain approach. They're being bombarded, you know, by a whole bunch of friends who are doing different things on social media, wanting them to be involved in it as well. And I think what's difficult and intimidating is as a parent, catching up, and even knowing what they're talking about, is hard. You know, if your child comes to you and says, I want to join this Discord server that my friend is on, like, I That sounds like you argue a lot, what is discord? You know, or tick tock? You know, my friends are doing tick tock, oh, it's just music. And you seeing, okay, is that all tick tock really is? Do we know anything about this? So what is what is really difficult, I think for a lot of parents is it's a world that is evolving faster than they have any idea to catch up with. And the difficult part also is that there is among teenagers in particular, an assumption of, if I've got a phone, that's my phone, if I've got social media accounts, those are my accounts. There's this assumption of, of privacy, and I'm just going to do what I'm going to do, and you're going to stay out of it.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Well, and I think parents buy into that philosophy all the time. Sometimes they don't want to know what's going, yeah, they don't want to know. And they also maybe over empathize with the feeling of someone invading their privacy so that they don't actually maybe parent at times that they need to and step in and actually know what's going on.
Ryan Anderson:Yeah. So one of the one of the things I'm finding is that, you know, this is one of those things where it's a lot easier if if you start it out solidly, and you have things established from the beginning and move forward. Yeah, it's always much more difficult when you realize that you've opened Pandora's box really hard to rewind this app and kind of go down and say, Okay, we need to rethink this. So as I think about it, as parents, there's, there's a couple of things that I would recommend for everyone. First is that if your child is going to have a smartphone, if your child is going to have access to social media, while it's true that they need to learn handle it, it's true that they need to learn to handle it. You don't just hand it to them. You know, it's kind of like when we teach our children to drive you don't just hand over your keys your car and say don't get erect, see it go out there and figure out how to do this thing. Yeah, imagine what would happen.
Dr. Tim Thayne:So it doesn't have to be an all or nothing. You get the full suite of opportunities, just because now you have a phone and you've downloaded the social media,
Ryan Anderson:and you can just knock yourself out with whatever is there. Yeah. So I think one of the things that's most important is if you can from the beginning, and if you can't, coming back and setting this up, and that's a whole other conversation to say. Your life on social media is going to be really important to you. It's also a place where people get in trouble really fast, and where there are going to be certain things you're going to run into You better above your current level of maturity with impulse control and insight and wisdom and experience. So I'm not telling you, we're not going to do this, I'm telling you, we're going to approach this wisely. Understanding what social media is, what you want to get out of it. And what it's going to try to get out of you. There are a couple of things that I I always want to establish with any teenager who's going to begin using social media is to help them understand what is the product that social media sells? You ask a teenager, this, it's always kind of interesting what they might answer. The right answer is you. You are the product that social media sells. You don't pay for Facebook. And yet there are how many multi million dollar company, you don't pay for Instagram, you don't pay for most or all of these. So the question is, how are they making their money? By selling you. They're gathering your information. They're they're getting ideas about what you pay attention to. They're providing influencers, and they're giving all that information and packaging that together to people who want your attention, your time and your money, and they are selling you. And nothing you put on there actually belongs to you. It all belongs to if it's Facebook, that you're putting it on, it belongs to Facebook, if it's on Snapchat, they tell you it disappears. It actually doesn't. It goes to their servers, they have it, they own it. And so when you ask yourself, when you know that about social media, does that have any implication as to how you will use it? And also understanding that you're not just going there to have a good time, you're going there to be influenced.
Dr. Tim Thayne:So Ryan, what are the big like, scary issues about social media that most parents don't understand? Boy, that that they need to know so that they can even begin to have this conversation Sure, with their kid so
Ryan Anderson:so there's a couple things that they need to know number one on social media, anyone who could be looking for you is looking for you. Now that can be reason to say that sounds very alarmist, but it is true. Actually, there was just interestingly enough, a company that's doing an undercover story of a woman portraying a teenage girl on Instagram. And in a single night she gets multiple sexual solicitations. You know, there's a lot of these were the you might think that the social media sites are regulating, they have privacy settings and things like that. But you need to understand, those are all going to be bypassed, those are all going to be come around your children are going to have times when someone is portraying themselves to be someone other than who they are with motives other than who they are with bad motives. And your child is going to have to learn how to discern that how to respond to what their vulnerabilities are how someone would try to take advantage of them. That is the reality of social media, no matter where you go, that's going to be something you run into. And it's going to be something that they're not prepared for the problem with our teams, is they grew up with technology. And so they're really confident in it. confidence that they actually don't merit because like we know how to use this were the ones who taught you how to heal. Okay, Boomer, you know, we taught you how to do all this stuff. Yeah, when it comes down to is we are the ones you might think that most of the people getting internet scammed or your grandma, right? Most of the people getting internet scammed are teenagers. Because they feel invincible. They feel like they know what they're doing. They don't go into it thinking credible or confident because they feel like they have this intuitive sense. And that makes them very easy to exploit.
Dr. Tim Thayne:You know, the whole the whole Snapchat thing, for example, you know, this disappears, right? When you mentioned that it doesn't, it's over here and their servers.
Ryan Anderson:Actually one of their servers is not too far from where we're sitting right now. Is that right? And interestingly enough, a few years ago, I got hacked. So everything that was on Snapchat that disappeared before then somebody out there has it, all of it.
Dr. Tim Thayne:There you go. I mean, that's that's a very sobering kind of reality that kids need to know. And and so there's a couple there any others that big, like? So there's the secrets,
Ryan Anderson:their secrets. One of the things you need to understand is that the algorithms of social media, what they're designed to do is to get you to engage with social media as much as possible, because the more they get you to engage the more market value they have, right for anyone they sell your information to. What that means is that the artificial intelligence of these social media sites has gotten really advanced. If you take a look at Facebook Books algorithm, it's practically something you'd see in science fiction. It knows what your mood is. It knows exactly where you're looking on the screen for how long. So watching your eyes. It's not watching your eyes, but they've studied enough about the way people use their mouths, when they scroll and things to get a sense of it can read, you can read you very, very well. And what it's going to do is it takes everything can tell about your mental state, your emotional state, and it takes tabs on here is what's going on with you when you engage. So for example, if you are depressed, and you go to Facebook to try to feel better, Facebook knows that what drew you to Facebook was feeling depressed. And therefore while it might give you a couple of dopamine hits, here and there, it's also going to make sure that the way it filters your content and provides things to you, encourages and promotes and perpetuates the emotional state, which you are in that drew you to it in the first place. Wow, that's scary. So if you go to social media, because you're depressed to feel better, it, the AI will invest itself in perpetuating your depression. And it works and it's good at it. And so that's one thing to be aware of one rule of thumb for me is, you need to be thoughtful about your state of mind, when you go into social media, if you are depressed, if you are lonely, if you are whatever it may be, you need to do something in the real world to work with that emotional state, before you decide to go to social media. Otherwise, you program your social media to try to provoke that kind of a mental and emotional state in you.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Wow, what an interesting thing. It's a self perpetuating cycle here, you've got a platform that you go to to not be depressed, and you get the few of those hits, make you feel a little better. But overall, it's creating depression. And and that's not just you saying this, this is research to as well as this is research. And it's showing that that depression anxiety is much higher with those who use less social media. Right,
Ryan Anderson:right. Yeah, that's that's pervasive in the research, you see it everywhere.
Dr. Tim Thayne:So interesting, that the medicine is creating the problem, right, in a sense,
Ryan Anderson:well, you know, they say if you can create both the problem and the solution, then you've got yourself a business.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Yeah, absolutely. Let's, let's talk a little bit tips for healthy relationships with social media.
Ryan Anderson:Sure. So I'm going to start with some simple things. And then we can move a little bit into some more complex things. One of the first and easiest tips I would share with anyone is turn off your push notifications. This push notifications are a big part of how social media is fighting for your attention. Utilizing thing utilizing the principles of behaviorism, specifically, what's known as an intermittent reinforcement pattern, which we know is the most powerful behavioral pattern you can use to create addictive and compulsive sorts of behaviors and people. And so first and foremost, turn those off. Do not have Twitter telling you when there's a new post, anything you have, and for me, I've kind of gotten to the point where if, if I have something that doesn't allow me to disable push notifications, I don't use it.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Yeah, notice you've got a regular watch on Yeah, I view. I've got a Apple Watch. This is new for me. But you know what, what's happening to me right now, with push notifications is now I mean, it's like a whole nother level when you've got it right here on your wrist. Yep. benefits in your pocket. Yeah. And it's not just, there's a little vibration. That happens. You know? And and that immediately gets you to look.
Ryan Anderson:Yep. Well think about it right from from the design, what they're looking for is they're trying to increase your desire to complete a loop. So I've got my phone in my pocket. And we've been talking, it's buzzed a couple of times. And of course,
Dr. Tim Thayne:you weren't 100% focused on this interview during that.
Ryan Anderson:No, there were a few moments or strikes, you know, because I'm, you know, I still have my my work. Yeah. And the interesting thing is what it's trying to do as it's buzzing, and then that stimulus number one, and then the buzzing is trying to get behavior number two, which is to look yeah. Which is can then quickly be followed by behavior number three to click into it. Yeah. So the interesting thing about an Apple Watch is it's trying to take one and two, and put them together so that you're hit by a double dose of that desire to check into look,
Dr. Tim Thayne:the interesting thing is, it happened while you're just talking to me just now and my I'd left for a second onto this. And like, I can't in this interview look down.
Ryan Anderson:But it's an interesting poll. I mean, even for someone who's a well adjusted, yeah, adult, there's this piece of like, this is this is powerful, right? It's been taught to me it almost for some people having their phone buzz is almost as powerful as stimulus is hearing your infant child cry. And you have to get to this point where I know for me, kind of a training I went through for myself is I can't have my phone never buzz. But I've also taught myself and I've taught my my companions at work. If something's really important, call me. Because if you're sending me a text expecting me to check it immediately, I'm not going to be doing that. Because one thing I've learned to train myself to do is when a phone buzzes, it's a request. Yeah. You know, it's kind of interesting. I was even thinking about that. While I was leaving home this morning, I was giving my wife a hug, and lingering with it, because you should you should give your spouse and nice thing on the way out the door. Yeah. And, you know, I knew it was Monday and things were getting started and you know, a Monday mornings. And my phone was buzzing multiple times, I was thinking, what would that do to this moment? It was like, sorry, honey, I have to stop this because my you know, my phone's buzzing, I really need to check this right now. And realizing, wow, the opportunity cost of that moment, no real connection versus checking my phone 15 minutes later when it was totally okay. So that's one of the things we talk about is get used to as a family create a culture, where the notifications that do come whether it's text or email, whatever it may be, are treated as requests. And we're what we're doing is we're prioritizing who's here in front of us. Yeah. Now, I found that to do that, though, you really have to let the people in your network know, this is how I function. Otherwise, it tends to make them really angry, when they know this is the way it is, and they know if they really need to get a hold of me.
Dr. Tim Thayne:That's another reason behind it. Yeah, but that whole idea of attunement, you know, and really deeply being present with with another person goes out the window a lot of times with these notifications and all of that happening. And so, before this attunement and being present, and and fully with someone, it's always been a challenge, this is now exponentially more difficult. So it's going to affect relationships. So push notifications,
Ryan Anderson:turn those off, create a culture of of treating notifications as a request. Another thing I would say is limit the number of platforms you use. One of the things that it's interesting is there's a study, you know, one of the studies was, alright, well, we know that social media use tends to create distance between spouses in particular. But what if you're connecting to your spouse on social media, you're using that as another way to connect with them? Wouldn't that strengthen the relationship? The interesting thing about that is there was an inverse correlation. Having just maybe one that you connected with them on was fairly neutral. But if you tried to connect with them on 234 or five, it actually had a negative effect. And what they were finding is that well, on social media, it's not just my spouse, I'm connecting with every platform is another 300-500-1000. Other things, calling for my attention, dividing my attention. The fact that my spouse is there is kind of like the bait on the hook to let me say, Oh, this, this will help. And from there, for example, when I try to connect with my spouse, now it's more we'll send text messages or things like that things where it's me, and it's her. Yeah. And on that platform, there's no one else calling for my attention. And there's that aspect of saying, keep in mind, every single new social media platform you have is hundreds or 1000s of different things vying for your attention. So it's just a more choose one choose to Yeah, but minimize it.
Dr. Tim Thayne:You know, I picture a cluttered house, as you talk about this, you know, the more of this you bring in, the more things you have to attend to, or, or deal with. And it's just another so we're talking about exponential numbers of things as you add another platform.
Ryan Anderson:And we have we have to be aware that as our distractibility grows, the first thing that we lose is an awareness of our degree of distractibility. We tend to think we're doing a good job. The funny thing about the research is, the better people think they are at managing all these pieces and having a lot of them actually the worst they are yet yeah, but they have no awareness of it. So minimize how many of them there are. One of the other things I encourage us doing is right now the thing with social media is it's always alive. You know, they say, you have to talk about certain cities that never sleeps, social media. literally never sleeps. And so it's always there. And there's always some kind of new stimulus, there's always some kind of new story, it may not be one that you care about, but it's new. And then again, this is part of what they do on purpose is they put a bunch of stuff in there you don't really care about. And then you have to scroll through. And every now and then you find that thing that was, oh, there's this picture of my friend doing this thing, or whatever it may be. And so you have to go for a while, and you're used to it being unsatisfactory for a while. And then every now and then these little golden nuggets pop up. And so what it means is, you can literally scroll forever. So one of the things that I encourage is, don't treat it like it's always available. Because if you do, it will always be calling for you. So I'd say make a place for it. If you're going to use social media have a place and a time where you use it, use it then, and then put it away, and move on to other things, we as human beings, we are contextual learners, if I check my Facebook literally everywhere, then literally everywhere I have cues to want to check it, right. But if I decide if I limit it in space and time, I'm beginning to free up my mind and my impulses a bit, for not wanting to use it everywhere, and allowing my attention to be more focused on what is there. And then, you know,
Dr. Tim Thayne:you're making me think, again, as we, you know, main main topic here with with adolescents and their lack of ability, a lot of times to be able to govern themselves, because most of what you're talking about is having the wherewithal maturity, to be able to turn off notifications to maybe even and I'm sure you'd probably advocate for this at times, do social media fast, right for a period of time, you would love your kids to do this on their own. I mean, you would love for them to, on their own say, Hey, Mom and Dad, guess what, I'm going to go off social media for a month, I'm going to delete all my social media apps, we'd all love that. That's probably not going to happen
Ryan Anderson:likely, because for them, the social cost is huge, right? It's that FOMO? Right? Yep. It's the FOMO. And again, one thing you do have to realize that that kids do get punished. So for example, I, my kids have tech, but I'm, I'm a tech minimalist on purpose. I love it. I'm a proponent of it. And I'm very careful, I'm a slow adopter, I, we approach it very carefully. And there are times that, you know, my kids will admit, yeah, this is a good idea what we're doing. And other times like, I'm the only kid I know who's not on X, Y, or Z. And, and there's, there's an exclusion that's occurring. And that that is hard. So I think one of the things about this also as parent is we get very focused on how we want to help our kids govern their behaviors. One of the things that can often be very difficult is that our behaviors around this can easily be out of whack. Yeah. And so one of the things to be really important about is that if you're ever sitting down with your child, to say, hey, there's you're wanting to do this new piece, or there's this piece going on that I have some concerns about, it's important to also be able to say, let's take a look at how I'm doing to how am I doing with availability? I often joke that you know, the the New Age parenting technique is this one just hold on a second father Dad right now because you know, I got to finish away, right? You know, this is just it'll just take a second and never takes just a second. You know, but there's an aspect of like, wow, kind of being able to look in the mirror a little bit and say okay, so so for me when our kids are wanting to do something, you know, one of the things I want to do is say let's sit down and really take a look at what this thing is together and not just the marketing side. So for example, I mentioned tick tock earlier tick tock is really popular. Tic Toc is also currently under a lot of scrutiny, because of you know, for example right now, there I say this on the air. So there are two very big fads on Tik Tok right now one is lighting your house on fire and then posting that you just let your house on fire then hopefully putting it out. This is a big thing on tick tock, right goodness. Another is shall we just say dipping certain aspects of your anatomy in soy sauce to see how they respond and posting this on tick tock because it's the trend is going on. Right. And with tick tock. They've done a very poor job of limiting how abusive people are of each other a very poor job of having these dangerous and illegal things going on. And so tick tock which markets itself about hey, what What What's everyone's singing these days is like worldwide karaoke. But what is actually happening on Tik Tok? So, it's always a good idea to Yeah, take a look at the app. Then begin to google it see if there are any news story He's about to go to spots like Common Sense Media or things to get some reviews. And just kind of take a little bit of time. And I think there's always a little bit of a cooldown period of Okay, so we've researched it, here's what we've learned. Here's the pros, here's the cons. Here's what we'd like about it. Here's the concerns we'd have, if we're going to use this, here's what I'd want to see from you. And let's talk about how we can can check in with each other and see how that's going. And if the if they're saying no deal, I'm not going to do that with you, then, then it is your right, no deal. If we're not ready for that yet, then we're not ready for that yet. And that's okay.
Dr. Tim Thayne:You know, let's let's maybe hit one more thing. Sure. And that is the case where it hasn't been managed. Well. Yeah. Okay. And, and we get a lot of these situations in cases where it's out of control. Yeah, they're on it all night. They're, they're getting into trouble with it. They're depressed, they're socialite li isolating all these things. And the parents become aware of the fact that social media is a part of it. And so are their phone in general. And so they're going to take it away. And I've seen, I've heard this many times they take that away at that point, that a lot of the youth will go to great lengths to get it back and including threatening to take their own life. Yep. Feeling so like, distraught that they really feel suicidal? It's not just a threat. They really are suicidal?
Ryan Anderson:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because that their life has become integrated into what's going on there. Their whole the whole pleasure center in their brain. That's that's the dopamine Central Station, right? Yeah, yeah. So now you're gonna take that away. And now their brain doesn't know how to get that anywhere else, you have to keep in mind that I tend to think about, if you think about what constant social media use is doing to your brain is kind of getting used to thinking everything is a microwave burrito. Right? Everything is instant and fast. And it doesn't have to be that good. Right, but it's just there. And your brain gets used to if something isn't immediate and fast and abuzz, and then it's the next immediate fast buzz, it literally doesn't know how to function anymore. And you go through a time where the brain is dopamine starved, and nothing feels good. And they literally do feel empty. And they need some help during that time. So so to speak to this 10 This is, again, this could be a whole other podcast, itself is kind of the how do we begin the whole unconcerned about your social media conversation. So let me start off with a couple of things not to do. If it comes out as the, you know, angry, belligerent, confrontational, you know, you've got big problems, and this needs to stop and all that kind of stuff, that tends to be a really rough way to start this. Also, just immediately, starting by taking it away, is a really rough way to start it too. So a couple of things that I have learned is that where where I found the best setup, and again, that doesn't mean it's ever going to be easy or smooth. We're talking best setup here, right? Where I found the best setup is having an opportunity to kind of sit down with your child. And rather than immediately bringing up the concern saying, you know, this means a lot to you, doesn't it? This is really, really important to you. And I recognize that there's there's pieces of your relationship with this that that I know and pieces that I don't you don't want me to know. But one of the things I'm really wanting to understand is what is what is it you love about this? You know, what are the parts of this that are feeling the best for you? What are the parts of this that matter the most to you start off by entering their world and seeking to understand. And one of the interesting things for me is that if you do a really good job of that, then when the conversation kind of begins to go to, are there any parts of it that don't feel good to you. They usually have a couple of things they're willing to tell you. Which they won't tell you if you start off with this is the devil's tool, and you shouldn't be using it. You know, so they might talk about like, well, sometimes I feel like I spend too much time on it. Or, you know, I feel like everyone else has these awesome lives and I have nothing or you know, I just I find that I just, I prefer talking to people online so much. I just hate talking to people face to face anymore, whatever it may be. And so when you've spent some time to really enter their world, most of them are aware that something doesn't feel good to them, something feels off to them. And when you can help them get to the point where they felt safe enough with you that you're not just coming in judgmentally then we're at a spot where we can say you have had a few worries too. Are you willing to hear them And then from there to kind of begin to explore. All right? What do we want to do about these, the message I'm constantly sending is, I'm not wanting this to not be a part of your life, I want this to be a really good part of your life. And I also want the rest of your life to be a really good part of your life, too. And most, you know, the funny thing is almost everyone I have met, at some point in time will say, I play too many video games. I care too much about what's going on online. I neglect my homework, I really shouldn't. When they can almost all get to that point. Then from there, you know, there's this whole conversation about how do we get there, you know, and there's an I've learned, it's helpful to say, you know, some people, some people find that they need to cut themselves off from it from a while and kind of reboot, some people want to try to control it, talk about all these different things, which of these do you feel is going to be most effective for you. But understand that for me, I'm willing to experiment on a couple of different levels. But what matters to me is that we get the results that that you need, right? And I'm willing to try a few things I'm willing to go. But understand that maybe, maybe where we're going to have to go is this cut off and rebooting from the ground up, we might have to do that if these other things you want to try don't work. And what's funny to me is that sometimes kids will say, All right, just just let's just dump into the swimming pool, we probably need to go there. Others will say I really want to try this, I think I can manage it. And part of the experience they need is to see actually I really can't, when I'm genuinely trying when these other things are going on. So there's so much nuance and some of it really comes down to knowing your child. Who are they? How do they function? What are their feelings? How much do they trust you? How much will they let you in? So exactly what to do with each child depends on well, who is your child? Right? Right. But these are, these are principles that have found to be good guiding principles
Dr. Tim Thayne:are right, really great. And there's always those cases that in many of them, they've got a lot of history behind them in a lot of conflict and issues there. And I think sometimes they may need someone to help facilitate exactly what you just talked about, you know, third party to step in and help them to to have a conversation that's healthy, that's it's opening doors to listening for the first time around the subject and a long time,
Ryan Anderson:which is hard to do, because there's usually so much anxiety built up on both
Dr. Tim Thayne:slots of history, baggage anxiety, and and they've done it wrong on both sides. And so I think that that's really, sometimes the best. And I think what you're saying ultimately is the best approach to this, really, is to get into a context where there's the ability to solve the problem together. Yeah, help them get to a point where they realize there's a problem, and then help solve, you know, come up with ideas of how to solve it together, and then let some of the consequences come of failure, be the bad guy or their, their inability kind of the wake up call, okay, I guess I can't do this on my own. As much as I might protest, you told me ahead of time, if we couldn't get this under control, there would have to be a break from it.
Ryan Anderson:There is a caveat to that is that if if your child is doing something that is genuinely dangerous, yeah, you know, if they're being solicited by people on their social media or things like that, there may be times saying, Okay, there's some other areas where we can work with this, this, this is so dangerous. We have to, we have to put a stop to this right now. So it's important to be wise about those things and be aware of what's going on. But for the most part, that approach is, is the right approach.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Oh, that's, that is fantastic. Seriously, I could talk to you for another couple hours, on all of this so much. This is such a great topic and so important. So thanks for coming. Thanks for letting me interview you and, and I know that the families out there get this they're going to just eat it up and and it's going to give them some great ideas and help them become aware of really some of the dangers. I think there's a lot of night naivete out there on the part of many of us as parents, you don't know what you don't know. Right. And so I think this is a great impetus for learning and again, I hope people go to your book screen savvy. Dr. Ryan Anderson and take a look at that because if you like the podcast, they're gonna get a lot more a lot more of that in his look at so much
Ryan Anderson:more depth and a lot of very hands on practical. Here's what we can do. Here's what we can try type approaches.
Dr. Tim Thayne:Fantastic. Thanks, Ryan.
Talmage Thayne:Thank you, Tim. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We were really excited to get Dr. Anderson on, because he has so many good thoughts on screen time and social media, and just technology in general. So if you're wanting to learn more, make sure to get his book. Also go on her social media and comment what you learned, or what you want to implement in your own family, as well as comment things that you want to hear more of. We're always looking at this comments, making sure that Tim's going to talk about the things that pertain most to you, or has somebody on there covers those topics. So we hope to see you next week.