Ep 187: When is the digital world too much for kids? And what can realistically be done about it? With Julie Frumin, MFT

In this episode of Your Child Is Normal, Dr. Jessica Hochman talks with therapist and screen-time educator Julie Frumin about the digital world kids are growing up in—and how to push back. They explore the rise in anxiety, sleep deprivation, and attention issues linked to screens, and how we can respond as parents and communities. Julie shares her personal story, professional insights, and her work with Healthier Tech and MAMA (Mothers Against Media Addiction). From delaying smartphones to modeling unplugged behavior to creating phone-free spaces, this conversation is filled with realistic, empowering tools to help kids—and adults—reclaim their time and well-being.

Dr Jessica Hochman is a board certified pediatrician, mom to three children, and she is very passionate about the health and well being of children. Most of her educational videos are targeted towards general pediatric topics and presented in an easy to understand manner.

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Transcript

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Jessica, we've overprotected kids in the real world and under protected them online. That line really stuck with me. It's from today's guest therapist and screen free parenting advocate Julie fruman, and it captures so much of what we're seeing in childhood today. Welcome back to your child is normal. I'm Dr Jessica Hochman, and in this episode, we're tackling one of the most important topics in parenting screens Julie is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She's the founder of a nonprofit healthier tech and she's a grassroots leader for Mama Mothers Against media addiction. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about the real effects of screen time on our kids' mental health, why it's so hard to set limits in today's culture, and most importantly, what we can actually do about it. So if you're feeling overwhelmed by screens in your home and you're looking for doable, honest guidance, this episode is for you. And also, if you're enjoying your child as normal, please take a moment to leave a five star review wherever it is. You listen to podcasts, not only do good reviews make my day, most importantly, it helps other people find the podcast. Julie Freeman, I am so looking forward to talking about an issue that is near and dear to both of our hearts, and that is the intoxication of the screen world in our children's lives. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. This is very important to me as well. So tell me. I'm just curious. I know that this is an important issue for many of us parents, but what led you to spend so much time focusing on kids and screens? So about 10 years ago, I started my private practice in Westlake. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I've also spent seven years as the mental wellness expert at the Four Seasons center for health and well being in Westlake, and I found myself saying in almost every setting, gosh, it really seems like that technology is getting in the way of you achieving your goals. I would hear about how they would spend many hours doing their homework, and then when I dug down deep, I found that they were on their phones at the same time, and that was keeping them away from their friends with the older, midlife or adult populations that I would see, I found that they were on devices so much that it was impacting their health choices, more sedentary behavior, but also impacting their marriages and their willingness to get out there and go do something social in real life. But what I saw over my 10 years or so of working with people across all all walks of life, was that the overuse of technology was really getting in the way, and it was getting in the way of my ability to succeed as a therapist, because I can't compete with, let's say, a 24 year old girl who's got a body image problem I can't compete with my one hour a week of therapy and her sometimes 1214, hours a day of looking at images on Instagram that make her feel worse. And so I really started to get frustrated. And then when it hit home for me, was when someone asked me, when I was walking my kids to school about a year and a half ago, if I was going to get my son, who, at the time was in the fourth grade, a phone, and that's when I put my foot down and said, Okay, I'm no longer just gonna do this in my practice. I need to step outside of my comfort zone and start something to make changes in the community. It's amazing, and I'm so appreciative that you're here, because I do really feel like the more and more I learn about the harms from screens, and the more and more I try to talk to families and my own children about making considerations to not have so much screens in their life. I do think it makes a huge difference if everybody is on the same page, if we're all on board together because or else, kids are honestly just feeling left out. They're feeling left out. If their friends playing Roblox and they're not, or they're friends on Instagram and they're not. I do appreciate that you're trying to get the word out to get the word out to the community. I think that's going to make a big difference. That's my hope. I think a lot of us can understand why screens are a problem. As you mentioned, it takes away our attention, which is so important. It's true if kids are sitting down to do homework, which isn't that interesting for a lot of kids, right? Let's be real, if they're sitting down to do their social studies homework or write a paper, and in front of them or next to them, is this very addictive screen where they can look at what their friends are doing and chat with their friends and look up anything they want on the internet. I would say, to tell a child to not look at their screen is it's just not realistic. And in addition to that, I know we're both very interested in Jonathan heights work. We went together recently. We heard Jonathan Hite lecture in Santa Barbara, and I just thought I would start our conversation by sharing with the audience some interesting statistics that he points out that really wake me up to the problem that's happening. The first is he talks about the increase in mental health diagnosis that since around 2010 plus or minus a couple of years coinciding with when smartphones became widely available, we've seen an increase in anxiety disorders, major depression, all kinds of mental health diagnoses have really increased since that time, we've seen a rise in self harm and suicide rates and America, just to share a couple of these stats, American teen girls, 62% increase in suicide rates ages 15 to 19. 189% increase in younger teens age 10 to 14, and similarly, suicide rates rose by 70% for older teen girls and 151% for younger teen girls compared to previous decades. Also another point to bring up, decreased in in person, social interaction. To me, that is really important when I think about my childhood and what I loved about being a kid, the best times were always playing with friends. Most teens used to spend a couple hours a day with their friends, and now that number is way decreased. And then another big point is he talks about sleep deprivation. We all know that sleep is a bedrock of health, and a number of students are now getting less than seven hours of sleep, and we're seeing that number decline since 2010 so not to scare people, I'd like to just wake up the community that screens are getting into the way of our life in many ways that are causing harm Absolutely. And he lays out the case so beautifully in his book. Jonathan Hyatt does in the anxious generation. He's also on almost every major podcast. So if you want to hear if any of you are curious and want to dive into his work, I highly recommend the book, but I also recommend just searching literally through any podcast. He has a lot of long form interviews where he lays out what he calls the loss of the play based childhood, and then the development of the phone based one and although that does sound Stark and again, harsh when you think about the sheer amount of time that the average teen or tween is spending, and the ages are getting younger and younger for that first smartphone, we're really just seeing that those words are true, that his thesis of the book in one sentence, he says, We have over protected them in the real world, and we have under protected them online. If you really boil it down to a sentence, that's that, that is it, and the four foundational harms that you just laid out are the ones that he says affect most kids. So we've got the health and well being on a spectrum from healthy childhood, healthy teens, to the worst case scenario, which would be the self harm and suicide, which has increased just signally, but then right there in the middle, the majority of our young people are dealing with these four harms of attention fragmentation, sleep deprivation, social deprivation and addiction. And that word I don't use lightly, but what we see sometimes and what I hear about also in my practice, from families who try to start to reel it in with screen time, is a response with kids and teens that looks like truly when you take someone's drug of choice away. And sadly, Anna Lembke, who wrote dopamine nation, says in her book, which I highly recommend, that book, she talks about how the sad part is that when we if we get to that place of addiction with anything that produces quick, cheap, easy dopamine, then without it, once it's removed, that everything else in life seems boring. And so we see some of those results in the data on self described life satisfaction over the years, and actually the results on life satisfaction are changing so drastically that it used to be that satisfaction was on the U curve, so we were really happy in our younger years, and then mid life was harder when we were working and building a family. And then as we got older, the U goes back up on the other side to show more happiness and more life satisfaction. But that has changed so much so that it doesn't look like a you anymore, because young people are not satisfied with their lives. And that's just that really gets to me, because when I pull back and think about my own children and then just the future of our world, you know, we're so fortunate. We're in such a safe, relatively time with so much to be grateful for. And I just want people to live lives of enjoyment and to self describe their lives as satisfying, and to find joy and in each other and in why we're here. I always think with the saying that comparison is the thief of joy, and I think it's never so true and so highlighted, as in the case of smartphones, because kids will compare constantly. They're comparing who's better at sports, who's better at video games, who's wearing a better outfit, who's having more fun. You're always looking at what other people are doing, and it's just not healthy. I have a hard time now with my kids, because I'm really trying to make an effort to keep them from social media. And what I find really tricky is a lot of their friends, honestly, are on social media. And so when we get together with those friends, they're not thinking about Tiktok, usually, but when we're with friends where their kids are on Tiktok, then it becomes really hard for them. I can see they feel sad. They feel left out. My son was once disappointed because I wouldn't let him play video games, and he felt left out of school conversations. And I get that what all kids want is to feel like they're fitting in. And so what's hard for me as a parent is I know that this is the right thing for our family, but then I feel bad because they're not fitting in with their peers, definitely. And I talk a lot about this, actually, as a therapist, but I will say that what I would tell you, if we were in that, if we were in that relationship, is that. That it is good for your kids to feel left out at times, that this is natural and normal. It's part of the human growth experience, and it is hard, and I do believe this is why we need a collective action solution, because we don't want kids consistently feeling left out. We don't want kids to actually end up feeling bullied or feeling really isolated, so we do need to change things, but at the same time, this is part of how we live and how we teach kids that they don't always get what they want. I appreciate that reminder by the good for them. It is really good for them. It's hard, and also too, just to talk a little bit about parenting in the way that we parent now tends to be so gentle, and we're so concerned about their emotional lives, as we should be, and we've also swung really far into wanting to sometimes make them just comfortable and happy, and that doesn't really serve them in the long run, because life is so hard. Life is really a challenge, and so having boundaries and saying no, even when your kids, and I say when, not if, when they are so mad at you, whether it's that they can't go to a party that there's no parents, or whether or not you're saying no to a cupcake when they're little, or you're saying no to social media when they're too young for social media. It's hard as a parent, but we have to know, as Dr Becky always says, We are the pilot of the plane, and kids want a sturdy pilot. They want someone who believes in what they're doing and stands up for it, and that's how they're going to learn to do that one day, too. One more thing about parenting, though, I have to say, is that we didn't have a lot of this data. This conversation we're having is quite new, and there's so much guilt and shame. And so I just want to say, let's, like, throw all of that over into a pile and light it on fire and leave it, leave all the guilt and the shame aside and just say, okay, knowing what we know now, what people say, Oh, it's too late, or that ship has sailed. Never, never. It's never too late. We can always pick up an exercise routine, or we can always start to eat better. We can always start to reduce our sedentary time or our isolation time we have as long as we're alive, there's potential. Absolutely no, that's a it's a very helpful reminder, because I do think a lot of parents feel that it's too late, that it's too much a part of their lives, and they can't go back. I'm thinking about what you're saying, how it's our job as parents to lay down the boundaries, and I think everyone listening can agree with that concept. We wouldn't let our kids have ice cream every night for dinner, even though we know our kids would like to have ice cream every night for dinner if it was offered, but we know that it's not healthy for them. We know that's not the best thing for our kids, so we don't let that happen. But for whatever reason, with screens, I find that it's a lot harder for parents to lay down those clear boundaries. From your perspective, why do you think it's that way? Why do you think it's so hard for parents to say no to screens? I think that is a really great question that has like so many answers, but one of the things I want to say is just how ingrained screens are into our current life. So when I started doing this work, I really wanted to get specific and intentional about what we were doing in our home and how I myself as a fully grown woman, could do better as well. So I started trying to put limits on myself and on our family that were spelled out. And previous to this, we'd been, I'd say, a low screen family, but I'd never really measured it or considered what our boundaries were. My kids had been younger, too, so I was thinking, how am I going to operationalize this as they get older? And I found it to be really a challenge. So one of the first things we decided to do, or I decided for our family, is that we were going to say no screens before breakfast, no screens for an hour before bed, no screens at the dinner table, just setting aside some zones and times. And that's one of the first things I encourage people to do, is to consider the fact that screens are ubiquitous. They are in our bathrooms. When people shower, they're everywhere. They are everywhere, everywhere. They're at the gas station when you're pumping gas, if you get in a cab in New York, they're in the back of the cab like they're we could literally and oftentimes, especially teens are and some adults are literally looking at a screen for every second their eyes are open of the day. And so to pull back from that, just that piece alone is so hard for parents, and I found that we had to get a landline for our house. So if I was going to put my phone away, good for you. You have a landline. I like that landline. I was like, Okay, I'm going to put my phone away for these amount of times. And then I just started thinking, if I'm going to try and be unplugged more, then we should have some sense of some way to communicate. So we got a landline. I also had to buy a watch because I didn't know what time it was. I'm wearing it right now. We put clocks all over the house, because with your phones and drawers, again, we had no way to tell the time. We bought a record player because we decided to do. Tech free Shabbat in our home. So from five o'clock on Friday, where we put the phones away, and then I realized our phones are hooked up to our Spotify and our Sonos, so we had no way to play any music during dinner. So we've been figuring out just how hard it is to pull back at all. And then I would say there's this added piece for parents to children, that parents, again, want their kids to be happy, and they assess that it's going to make them happier, because the kids are stomping about it. Oh, I need this. And it's really hard for a parent, day in and day out, to fight that fight, and so oftentimes we give in. But as you mentioned in the research at the beginning of this conversation, we found it has not made them happier at all. You know, what's interesting is I found what we had to do was get rid of a lot of our media devices. So for example, we took a long family trip where we were on a plane. We went to Japan with our kids, and I bought them iPads because I was worried about getting through the flight. And then when we got home from the trip, they were still interested in their iPads. They kept asking for their iPads, and sometimes I would acquiesce and let them look at their iPads for a little bit. And then it became a fight, a constant battle. They were constantly asking me, Can I have iPad time? Can I have iPad time? And sometimes I would say yes. And then, quite frankly, I was happy to have some quiet time, and I could just feel it really getting in the way of our family time. We were fighting more. They were constantly thinking about it, and it scared me to see how much they were thinking about the iPad. So finally, to my mother in law's credit, she said to me, you're gonna have to get rid of these iPads, get them out of your home. And so we did, and she was right, and I was surprised at how worried I was to do that. I don't know what I was worried about, but I was nervous that wouldn't go well, and it was honestly the best decision, because once it was out of the house, they stopped asking for it. So for parents listening, I mentioned this because we were talking about, how can you pull back once you've delved into the media world and you can, and honestly, your kids will be better off for it. And oftentimes, and I've worked with a client, actually recently with several children, and she bravely, just did this too. She was terrified. Her kids are younger than yours, and she was using the iPads as many do. They're so incredible. These devices pull us in and can take a screaming child to a passive, quiet one that frankly, in this busy life, that a lot of parents utilize that. And so it is very scary to think, oh my gosh, what am I going to do when they don't have that, that quieter, that pacifier, almost in the eye in the form of an iPad. But the reality is, like you said, is that there's a adjustment period. Like with any behavior change, there's an adjustment period, and afterward, we find that there's more peace in the home that the dopamine response that comes from these quick videos and these bright lights, but we feel a little bit of a crash afterward. And so when we just completely remove access, it does make it it makes it easier to abstain and to cut back on hours as well. Yeah. So I like the way this conversation is going, because I know in the beginning, I threw out some scary statistics. I know people might be feeling badly about screen use and all of the potential harm that it's causing, but what I'm really looking forward to talking with you more about is solutions to this. Because there really are some solutions. And just to recap what you pointed out so far, there are things that we can replace, the things that we use our phones for, maybe take an old fashioned look and replace them in your home, like clocks, you pointed out more traditional ways to play music that don't require taking your phone out. And then also the point that parents, you're not alone if you're scared to pull back on the screen, use that you can do it. And that, I think, if you think about the adjustment period, get ready for that. But then after that period, you will feel better. You'll feel more peace in the home. Yeah. And so when I started doing this work, I created a three pronged parenting approach, because I found myself talking doing workshops that started out in my home, and now they've grown. So I really wanted to figure out, what do I want to tell parents? What do I think is really important to say. And so that is delay, teach model. And so delay is obvious, that the longer we delay, the less we have those devices in the home, the less we have to fight it. And of course, once if you're listening to this and your kids already have smartphones again, we still have solutions for that too, as to how to roll back and how to set some new boundaries and really reassess. But delaying is key. I think delay is such an important point whenever I think about addictive behaviors, whether it be smoking, drug use, screen use, alcohol use, all of the data shows that delay that's the key to preventing addiction in the adult life. For example, if you talk to people that are alcoholics, there's a really good chance that they tasted and liked their first sip of alcohol before the age of 18, and this is true for, I think, most major addictions. So I bring this up because a lot of US adults are very attached to our phones, and we didn't start looking at our phones till we were adults. So think about how much. Harder it's gonna be for kids that start at an earlier age, absolutely. And like I said, earlier, the trend is that it's getting younger that we get the first smartphone for our kids. And I think that's really gonna have to swing back the other way. We're gonna have to stop getting young kids their first smartphone for many reasons. There was a study, actually, of 28,000 young adults, so 18 to 24 from sapien labs, where they did just a mental health survey for these global 28,000 or so youth. And what they found is that not only does every year of delaying improve the positive qualities of mental health, but it also decreases the negatives of mental health outcomes, and so literally, every year that you can wait, we should. There's a great organization called wait until eighth. If you look at the fine print, it's actually wait until the end of eighth, because that organization is trying to help families and communities delay the first smartphone until high school. That's also Jonathan heights recommendation is waiting until high school for the first smartphone. It's also my recommendation as just a therapist and a grassroots organizer advocate. Definitely, if we can do that together, it's gonna be easier. We can definitely get them a flip phone. I have a flip phone now. It's a quote, unquote dumb phone. It doesn't flip but it doesn't have the internet and it doesn't have the app store. It's called the wise phone, and it's made by Samsung. And I'm just, I just figure I should, I should walk the walk and see if I can do it, see how it goes. If I'm gonna expect them to do it, how's it going so far. It's a challenge. It is a challenge. And I'm a bit cheating too, because I have two phones. I have an iPhone for work, and so if I leave that one in the car, typically, but if I needed to go and run and check an email, I can do that with my work phone. So I'm not totally abstaining, but I really wanted to see if it was doable. So that's first delay. We want to delay the first smartphone, wait till eighth. Can help you with that? Getting together with like minded parents is just going to be key, because you it's really a challenge if your kid is the only one. And just to touch on that some more, I really do find that is key. It's key because I know we were talking about how it's part of life for kids to feel different, that it's okay, but if it's happening all the time, it really is hard for kids. So I do agree. I spend a lot of time with my sister's kids because they're like us. And so my kids, they play games, they do puzzles, they're running around outside, and they're never thinking about the screens when they're with their cousins. I do find, if you can team up with parents and make verbal contract that you're not gonna have screens when you get together, it does make a huge difference. That's a great point, because one of the things that as my son, who's almost 11, he's got friends that are in middle school, several of them and we live in we're lucky. We live in a neighborhood where kids are pretty free range. They're running around and knocking on doors, and I found recently, a few of his seventh and eighth grade friends are coming over with a phone in their pocket, which was new for me as a mom within two seconds, of course, like moths to a flame, they're all staring at the one kid's brand new iPhone. And I walked out and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna take all the phones who has one, who has one, and only that one kid raised his hand, and I was like, if you need to text your mom and tell her that she won't have access to you, then do that. And so I just and then I talked to the mom later. I was like, just so, you know, I know your kid got a phone when he's at my house, I'm gonna have it in a drawer so that he won't be able to access it. And she was like, Oh, that's such a good idea. And so it's one of these things where we can own that. It's my house. I'm the one feeding you snacks, right? I bought the trampoline. So if you come here, these are my rules. The same thing can be done at a baseball tournament or a softball tournament, if we take them out to eat in between games. I'm not comfortable with all of them sitting there at the dinner table staring at their own individual devices, because it's the content that they could be seeing, of course, is horrifying, and we know that to be true, but the flip side for that, for me as a therapist, is that they're what they're missing. And what they're missing is that opportunity to build relationships, to be able to talk and look people in the eye, and they're just missing so much, and so I think we've got some work to do with community, not just with delaying, but also with creating places and spaces for kids to go that are phone free and tell everybody your kids ages. By the way, my son is about to be 11 and my daughter is eight. Amazing, so they know when they go to your home. That's the rule that's set if they're gonna go to the Freeman home, yes, they're gonna be playing, but they're not gonna be playing using their devices. And I think that's great, yeah. And I have a feeling that, honestly, probably a lot of kids are gonna go into your house because of that. I hope so. That's the goal I really want to create. I hope so too place for people to go. That's part of the work that I'm actually going to be doing, which I'll get to in a moment. But I want to finish with this delay teach model thing. So really quick. What I talk about with parents and workshops is I encourage delaying. I talk about the why. We also talk about delaying social media until 16, which I think is, again, these are minimums. And I know you heard Jonathan Haidt say this, that as a social scientist, he's trying to make suggestions that the world can meet and that we can look at and think, okay, maybe because, as of right now, most 10 year olds are. Already starting to engage in this. So my desire is 18 for social media, but at a minimum, we should not be filming their middle school years because, good lord, middle school is so hard. And who wants that out there in the public, not me, and then delaying social media as long as possible, because it's wildly inappropriate for kids. But the second prong is teach. We've got a lot to talk with our kids about if they're going to be exposed to the whole wide world, which they are eventually. And we want that for them eventually. We know one day they're gonna see pornography. We know one day they're gonna see violence, they're gonna see really difficult things that challenge their values, but we want to have been the person to hopefully talk with them about some of that stuff beforehand. So we've got a lot of work to do in the Teach prong, if we can just put it away for chunks of time again, zones and places and spaces to where they feel. Our real attention on them, it's really important to do. If I'm on my phone and my kids pointed out to me, mommy, you're on your phone, I actually welcome that reminder, because I know that I'm not being the best mom that I can be if my phone's out. So I'm actually glad when they tell me. And I also think about how if I'm with a friend and they take their phone out, then all of a sudden, subconsciously, I'm thinking, oh, what I'm saying, isn't that interesting? I must be boring. So maybe I'll take out my phone too totally, and the next thing I know, we're having both of our phones out, and that's not quality time, that's not us enjoying each other's company. And so I don't want my kids to feel that if I'm with them, that if my phone's out, that they're feeling less than because my phone's out. So I do think it's such an important reminder to us parents, because these phones are so addictive that we have to make an effort to put our phones away and consciously put them away so that we can spend quality time with our kids. And that's part of the reason why, with some of the work I've been doing as I've been brainstorming, how do I want to take this to the next stage? Like, what do I really want to build in our community that I've decided I'm going to purchase some yonder bags, so those are lockable, magnetic pouches that are used oftentimes in concerts or comedy shows or in schools. And the founder, his name is Greg do Goni. He said he wanted he knows that once technology was coming into our lives, that it was going to just permeate our every experience, unless we create national park like settings in certain places and spaces which were free of that. So if you imagine like the chaos of LA and life and work and traffic, and then you go to Yosemite, and you're just in this total national park, you're in this totally different setting, and that we need that as like a protective thing for our soul, almost. And so he wanted to create that as a way to protect us from technology's choke hold on all of our time and attention. And so really, it's just an ingenious solution to this problem of phone ubiquity. What I've decided to do with in my nonprofit is called healthier tech is I want to invest in some yonder bags and start hosting offline clubs to where families and kids can come to places and spaces throughout the year and just host people to show up and they're if they're willing to put their devices away for that hour or 90 minutes. Maybe we're at a park, maybe we're at a coffee shop, or maybe we're at an ice cream shop, that everyone in that space is going to be phone free for that period of time. So that's part of one of my goals, too, is because what we've got right now, and what has happened, is that once a kid has a phone, the kids don't ever have any chunk of time where they are unplugged again. And so I want that for them. I want them to feel it because we had a phone free concert somewhat recently, my husband and I, and afterward, he was like, Oh my gosh, she goes. I have a feeling that if people experience what that feels like for hours to have an experience, and you're fully there, just like the phone pulling out is a contagion. So is the unpluggedness of it, because I find since I've been doing this work with my own family and myself, I want more of it. I'm drawn to it, and I'm drawn to those conversations and environments in which people are so super present. And if it's not that, I find it to be a little lackluster. It's great. It's true. It is it is true that if you're engaged in a conversation with someone, and the screens come out, it definitely diminishes the quality of the conversation. So tell everybody more about healthier tech, the nonprofit that she started again in the fall of 2023 I started talking to moms in my own home, offering coffee and really begging people to come to my house, because I just wanted to get my son, who's my oldest, I wanted to get his friend's parents on board with delaying the first smartphone, but what I found was that there was such a need for conversation around this topic, and that so many people felt lost and overwhelmed and scared. And so I really wanted to dig deeper and do some more research. And so I did a few more talks. And then in the meantime, Jonathan Haidt published the anxious generation, and that same month, this journalist in New York, her name is Julie skalfo, started a grassroots movement of parents called mama, which stands for Mothers Against media addiction. So she launched mama in Brooklyn, New York, in March of last year, and I read about. It, I read about her desire, and basically it's to fight big Tech's hold on childhood, and to advocate for and fight for a world in which real life experiences and interactions are at the heart of a healthy childhood. And her vision for that was threefold, parent education, getting phones out of schools, and then legal solutions too, because as of right now, other countries are doing things at the national level, and we've got some things happening too in our country at the state level, but these products are, as they are now, completely unsafe, and it's unfair for parents to have to bear the burden of that, to have to keep their children safe from something that's not safe. So that really interested me. So I was probably one of the first people who reached out to her and said, I'm already doing the parent education piece, and I want to do more. I want to work with getting phones out of schools. I want to do whatever I can. I think that piece is huge. And then I don't know much about legislation, but I'm, I'm, I'm jumping in on that piece too. So I joined, and I launched our Westlake Village, Conejo Valley, greater Conejo chapter. If you're anywhere in LA and you want to be a part of it, please let me know. I'll sign you up for our my I say our, it's just kind of me monthly newsletter, but I've got 150 people on the newsletter, and we've had a few gatherings since then. So I keep my own nonprofit status for the parent Ed piece, because that piece is real parent and kid. I speak to kids too. That piece has taken over a lot of the work that I do in my day to day life. So as it turns out, it was necessary. I'm probably speaking to a group a few times a month at this point. So that's like through my own little healthier tech piece, but also under the greater umbrella of this awesome organization that encourages community. Because I don't want to be a one woman show. I want a chapter of powerful parents around me, and I want to just reiterate that the group is for parents and teachers and allies and grandparents and uncles and anybody who just wants to really see a return to real life experiences over the span of childhood and adolescence. And you also are doing talks for kids too, yes. So I've been speaking at schools. I've been speaking at people's homes, really, wherever anyone will have me. And I've got a few different topics that I've been working on for kids. One of them is just about balance, and how certain choices make us feel when we look at certain things online. And then another one is about the dopamine, the dopamine response to quick videos, which we know it really changes our ability to attend over time. If our brain expects new stimuli every 20 seconds, and kids get it. Kids are online almost constantly right now, especially teens, constant quick dopamine, and then everything else other than that, preferred activity, screen time, it's going to feel boring, which is just that to me, and that is what we cannot have, is a world of kids that are bored by the world that's so sad, so sad. It's true. I actually got nervous last night. My son told me he likes seeing reels. He goes, I like reels because we've been watching some comedy together before bed, and that got me nervous. I said, Wait, we need to go back to reading books before bed. And he's almost 12. So we spent a lot of years where we where our habit was to read books before bed, and we've gotten into some bad habits, but it's okay. We'll take a step back. We'll readjust. Yes, we always do every holiday season. We have to, like, recalibrate afterward, because I always we always overdo it with cookies, and we always feel a little gross after. So I think it's part of what we do as parents, and we just have to transition it to this issue too, because parents are like, Oh, I don't know how I'm gonna do it. And like, but you do because we do it all the time. Yes, no, that's a good reminder that we can and we should recalibrate now, if people are listening and they're thinking, Oh, I would love to have her come speak to my mom friends, parent friends, my church, my kids school. Can they reach out to you? Absolutely. So I have a website. It's www dot healthier tech.org, and you can find me there. You can reach out to me. You can also sign up for my newsletter there, and then you'll know about what's going on. I'm trying to do something every so often, a few times a year that the community can come to if you want to know what's going on there and what's going on too nationally, there's a lot going on with this legislation, different pieces of legislation, and also, a lot of people have said they want to help out with school policies, because it's not really just the smartphone. So there's a lot to be done. If you have any questions, just reach out. Now, I thought, before we finish up, I thought it might be helpful if you and I both share some realistic, actionable tips to maybe help parents steer their kids away from too much time on the screens. Sure, do you want to start? Or should I start? You go, I would encourage parents to let their kids try things that are out of the house that you might not be comfortable with for example, I've been having my kids go to the grocery store by themselves. I give them money. They go in and they buy the things that they want. I've been letting my kids ride their bikes outside. I've been letting them walk to their friends' houses by themselves. Let them walk home from their friends' houses by themselves. I've been having them walk the dog by themselves. I'm really in. Encouraging them to participate in activities out of the home without me, because I find that gives them some natural excitement, and I find that takes them away from thinking about screens. I'm so glad that you said that, because we touched on the harms earlier. But now we're talking really about Jonathan heights four solutions, delaying the first smartphone until 14, which we talked about delaying social media till 16, which we talked about getting phones out of schools, which we've talked about, but the fourth one we hadn't until now. And the fourth one is more free time, play time, responsibility and independence in the real world. And that piece is huge, because if you just take away the screens, it feels like punishment. What do we even do with these kids? If you just take away the screens. We've got to let them go outside, which is really where they should be. They should be with their friends doing things that scare us just a little bit, the risky, rough and tumble play that teaches them, it makes them feel less anxious when they know that they can handle themselves, that they've tried something and they maybe fell out of that tree and they were okay, that's going to be a lot more resilient of a kid than a kid who's afraid to climb that tree. So we've got to have them go do more, and especially the older they get. It's time 12 year olds used to babysit. Now 12 year olds have a babysitter. What's going on here? So we really need to allow them to feel that they're able to participate in this world. That is such a great way to squash anxiety. I know you interviewed Lenore skenazzi, and she's got that great book, free range kids. She's got her organization, let grow, which you can find a lot of people are afraid, really afraid, to let their kids go outside. But if you look at her website, letgrow.org there's research and statistics from the FBI that shows we do not have a rampant kidnapping problem. The world is much safer. The real world is much safer than we think that it is, and online is actually where a lot of the problems are happening. So thank you for bringing that up. I'm glad that we didn't stop this conversation before we talked about that. Peter Gray, who was also on the podcast a while back, he had a great line that I think about a lot. He said, The truth is, nobody wants your children. So true. He said, if you look if you think about kidnappings, or if you look into kidnappings, truthfully, it's almost always from a family member, a contentious relationship in your life. It's usually not a surprise stranger out on the streets that takes your children. I think about that a lot because it is an inherent worry with a lot of parents. And the thing about worry and risk is that nothing is risk free. So you might save yourself the worry by telling yourself that it's less risky for your kid to be at home, indoors, on their own, maybe on a device. But it's not see the sedentary, isolated behavior alone is riskier than them being out and about, and it's not a quality childhood when you think back about how much fun being a kid was, the fun was being out with your friends and playing and getting into trouble and riding your bike and going to shops with your friends. It had nothing to do with being on screens. I challenge people to think about what was your best memory as a kid. I'm willing to bet that it had nothing to do with screen time. Totally one, one sort of measurable or simple way that I like to share with people to get to reduce screen time. Sometimes people are like, Oh, I can't follow the American Academy of Pediatrics rule of two hours max. That's way too little. We're a heavy media family. That doesn't work for us. And yet I still I hear what you're saying. I do wanna reduce screen time. I say, okay, you can use balance as a measure. Then consider whether or not they have moved their bodies, spent time in real life with friends, done their chores as they should have, chores to participate in the home and to feel like a meaningful participant in the world. Have they done their homework? Have they read a book or read something that day, all of the things that they should do, if they've done all of those things, then digital media might be something to use. But until then, that's when we get out of whack. Is if we what we do when we are online seven to nine hours a day, is we don't do anything else. So using balance as a measurement is helpful for those who don't want to particularly say lock it down to 30 minutes or an hour a day. That's a different way of looking at it. Yes, you want to lead your life by doing those activities that we know are good for us, and then if there's time at the end of the day, absolutely fitting in a little screen time where it feels balanced, I agree is okay. Yeah, yes. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this conversation, because I think it's really important for parents to be aware not just of the harms of screen time, but also think about the solutions and how we can swing the pendulum back in the other direction. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate the conversation. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of your child is normal. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review, wherever it is, you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at ask Dr Jessica. See you next Monday. You.