S7 E4: Youth and Social Media Use
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Dr. Yeung suggests kids are experiencing such intense pressure not only while they are online but also when they are offline thinking about their online life in an intense way that earlier generations were not exposed to or experiencing. She saw dramatic increases in mental health issues coinciding with the increase in social media use among youth over the past decade.
Social media platforms have become a way youth message and communicate with each other instead of using a regular phone to communicate. These platforms are not just social media, they are also direct ways of communicating with each other.
Teachers are having a hard time engaging their students more than ever given how stimulated youth are through their phones making normal interactions less interesting to them. Educational technology comes into the school as much as schools are trying to ban cell phones. At the same time, perhaps society needs to invest more into education and educators in a way that helps facilitate deep, meaningful, and engaging learning that does not simply rely on technology.
You can learn an endless amount of information online; however, genuine learning that is effective, contextual, and organized is not necessarily simply getting more and more information. Youth do not really have the scaffolding and guidance on how to regulate their learning.
Kids may even require their parent to be sitting with them to focus on their schoolwork due to the distractions of their phone always being available. It’s like the Marshmallow Test by Dr. Walter Mischel.
There is a debate as to whether not kids can actually learn how to self-regulate their phone use. It does not seem reasonable to expect that most kids can regulate something that is built to be addicting.
Just like in addiction research, having someone with a substance addiction, you would not intentionally allow the person to be exposed to the addicting
Youth can be considered as being like in an experiment and it can be sad to see later on as time goes on the negative consequences. This even includes the negative impact marijuana can have on youth that is coming out in the literature over time.
Pre-adolescence and early adolescence is when kids start getting to use smart phones. This can be problematic because that is the time when kids become self-conscious and very concerned about social status more than ever. It can be difficult to tell a kid to not use something everyone else is doing especially at this time. Older adolescents and young adults may have more perspective to realize the downsides of social media to separate themselves from it.
This is also the time of life when everyone is ‘awkward’, which should not be avoided but embraced in some way. The timeless book “The Hurried Child” by Dr. David Elkin, suggests kids may grow up too fast and lose the inherent nature of childhood. The awkwardness and the uncertainty is to be experienced and navigated, particularly with supportive others in their life, rather than allow social media to dictate and control how they ‘should’ be with unrealistic expectations. This can prevent kids from gradual up and down development that is bumpy and takes time.
In fact, therapy and mental health is about getting better at tolerating uncertainty. So losing this ability may be partly why mental health can get worse when relying on social media to find a ‘perfect’ way of being in a particular category rather than a more organic way, or even messy, way of growing up at this stage of development. Kids may fear being different or not fitting a mold as it may be looked down upon as it may be publicly displayed.
Even more, kids have a ton of ideas. Before social media, ideas were just ideas and the ideas that may not have been worth pursuing were just ideas. Nowadays with social media, kids may act on those ideas and it may end up online for all to see.
Even more, social media has become a performative space. Even if the child is not filming themselves, someone else might be filming everything around them. There is such pressure to fit into a mold. It can preclude an intention to be present and genuine in interactions and activities.
Todd Rose’s book “Collective Illusions” talks about how the loudest voices (which are often listened to and fed to you online) tend to be listened to as being right. Furthermore, cognitive dissonance can make it difficult to make a change in how you think, feel, or act, because people tend to prefer consistency. This can make it difficult to dissent from what the individual thinks the ‘collective’ believes or does.
While there is a benefit to seeing and learning from others outside your immediate environment and community, you may start off just looking for validation or someone to like you, but then you are fed intense and extreme messages. Even if it started from wanting a space to belong, it can turn into something that traps a child into feeling like they have to hold onto a specific identity or way of thinking.
The algorithm will continue to feed the intense content that is hard to not look away from, even if it is not healthy for us.
If everyone is being split into categories of ‘people’ online, and simultaneously people are not interacting with different groups of people in real life, all the while online groups of people are fighting with each other, it seems like a recipe for division and hate. On the other hand, exposure to different types of people in real life and seeing common humanity may be the thing that allows people to bypass that urge to hate and divide. This can even apply to kids within the same school; whereby helping kids interact with each other and find commonalities may help reduce this online division. One of the reasons people can be so mean to each other online is because there is separation online where they are not in the presence of the other person.
When you do not have exposure to interacting with people in person, it can create anxiety of doing so. Exposure therapy suggests avoidance breeds anxiety and cognitive thinking traps that make it more difficult to develop the skill that can seem too difficult or awkward to try and explore.
Parents' motivation to give their child a phone may be to maintain communication or fear their child becoming isolated. Dr. Yeung suggests finding middle grounds such as using devices that serve an intermediate function, such a device to communicate without social media and internet functionality.
If kids are given the opportunity to go online, it is more likely they will use it because it’s simply easier. Parents can set even simple limits like creating sacred spaces and times to not use technology or social media. Parents can also model avoiding overuse, as social modeling is very powerful. Parents can also model self-regulation such as telling them, “I am going to use my phone for [this purpose] right now for the next 5 minutes.”
Having access to our friends 24/7 seems to simply be an unhealthy way of engaging with friends. Kids can learn the helpful nature of boundaries.
Society seems to teeter back and forth between boundaries and lack of boundaries. The pendulum seems to shift back and forth over time. Without boundaries around social media it does not seem to be healthy. Boundaries take practice, modeling, and support. Boundaries even include filtering out what is important information and what is not.
Kids can mimic their parents’ behaviors.
Having kids exposed to such intense and extreme content
Famous people tend to wish they can live a ‘normal’ life due to the pressures and difficulties of portraying a famous persona. And so it’s like “be careful what you wish for” putting yourself on the internet in a performative way. It may be enticing but also turn out to be very stressful and negative for mental health.
The online world may not necessarily be considered ‘real life’ and yet kids are being exposed to such adult content as if it is real in their life. Some of the content can be even beyond what adults can imagine once kids get sucked into a rabbit hole.
It is cognitively taxing to straddle living in a physical reality and a virtual reality. It can be very unhealthy to continuously shift your mind between the two realities.
It can help to teach children to reflect on what experiences feel the most meaningful, fulfilling, and enjoyable - when they use social media or when they detach from it and focus on being present with others in a genuine way. The key is to help youth to have these positive experiences in real life without constantly wondering what is going on in the digital social media world, which can distract from being present.
Laughter is such a great way to connect with others. At the same time, there is a difference between showing someone a video reel that is funny to laugh together… compared to people having their own inside jokes and humor that brings genuine connection even if it’s not meant to be shared to the public on social media. Even if the joke is silly and only funny to you and the other person, that could be enough and in fact actually more meaningful than relying on social media to bring laughter into life. Both can be important ways of connecting.
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Gerald Reid 00:00
Welcome back to season seven of the Reid ConnectED podcast, co hosted by myself, licensed psychologist Dr Gerald Reid and my sister educational therapist Alexis Reid
Alexis Reid 00:18
hi Jer. Today we're diving into an incredibly hot topic that impacts so many people around the world, social media usage among youth. In our work with parents, caregivers, educators, coaches, therapists and youth, we're constantly hearing about the influence social media has on young people, even individuals who use it a lot seem to have a love hate relationship with it
Gerald Reid 00:43
before we are joined by our guests today, we want to share a few observations and questions to consider regarding how social media might be affecting the mental health of young people today. So let's set the context. We live in a society where we tend to use screens all day. School or work requires computers. We take breaks from screens to look at another screen, say, for entertainment or as an outlet from the stressors of life. For a while, we look at screens where other people are doing something on their own screen while they're talking about looking at their screen. We capture life in the real world with our phones, and immediately put it onto a screen to look at our screen. You get the point. At this point, we use screens a lot, and like most things, there are pros and cons to everything, and the context and the details matter. And so we're here today to provide education for you, the listeners, to consider different ideas and different perspectives, to make decisions in an intentional manner, or at least use this information to begin or expand discussions with others. I do think certain individuals are more vulnerable and susceptible to the downsides of whatever is available to young people. So for instance, there may be certain kids who are more susceptible to the downsides of social media. Kids with significant anxiety may be more likely to latch on to fear based messages on social media and ruminate or obsess over it. Additionally, kids with low self worth may be more likely to be devastated by viewing these false realities of the perfectionist ideal online. In a recent press release by the American Psychological Association, there was a new study that came out that reviewed 117 of all the studies that looked at social media use and emotional behavioral problems among youth, and what they found was they believe that there's a vicious cycle that happens between the emotional and behavioral problems and screen time. In other words, as youth increase screen time to high amounts, they may experience higher emotional and behavioral issues, and in turn, when those issues arise, they may actually use more screen time to cope with those emotional and behavioral problems. It's cyclical. It goes back and forth, sort of like the way addiction works. Someone uses a substance, and then they begin having problems by using the substance, and in turn, with these problems that originally started from the substance, they end up using more of the substance to cope with those problems. It's a vicious cycle
Alexis Reid 03:05
around the globe. There are constant debates about whether children should be allowed to use their smartphones during school and whether young people should have unrestricted access to digital technologies. Many are even going back to having landlines and technology free times and spaces in their day. The question to consider, especially from a neurological and developmental perspective, is, are children capable of controlling attention, focus and actions when equipped with such a powerful device in their pockets? Can they actually self regulate their own screen time? These devices are so robust, portable tools that can be helpful but also harmful. The exposure to social media on these phones are often shrouded in content that appeals to human emotions, feelings, needs and aims to fulfill a function many images or videos revolve around the human desires to be accepted, loved, purposeful, goal oriented and to have status or success, to feel pleasure, relieve stress, wield power, and so much more, all of which is being represented in digital media within split seconds.
Gerald Reid 04:15
Yeah, social media grabs our attention in split seconds. I wrote a song called present moment, about being really out of control in terms of using social media, but not even realizing that it's happening. It's almost unconscious, and part of the lyric goes, the scariest part is that we don't even know it, and from the moment a social media application is opened, it can feel like a never ending adventure. One of my patients recently astutely commented, I like to achieve a goal, but when I'm scrolling, there actually is no goal or end point, so I just end up scrolling more and more and more. It could feel like the more the better. There's really no boundary. There's no clear continuum determining when is too much, when is it too much, when is it unhealthy? There are really no demarcations in. Indicating when it is too much or when it becomes unhealthy. And really, you know, in terms of the motivational research, the more you get something that's pleasurable or stimulating, simply by being exposed to it, the more you want it. The idea is getting begins wanting, meaning that even if you didn't seek something out in the first place, if you're exposed to it and it's pleasurable or stimulating, you can end up wanting it more and more, even if you never want it in the first place. So
Alexis Reid 05:25
like many things that release dopamine in our brains, so many of my clients have shared that they have a love hate relationship with social media too, especially the young people. I do anecdotal surveys all the time to see how the young people I'm working with are actually interacting with their technology. So there's an enjoyment or communal sense to it, but they rarely feel fulfilled. And I feel the same way too. To be honest, they never really feel good after strolling or interacting with social media. And it tends to kind of just become again, like you said, Gerald, this vicious cycle. So despite some of the woes and cautions, we always need to be mindful that there's nuance to everything that we have concerns we're not inherently opposed to social media. In fact, we use it frequently to share messages from our work and others who may uplift and support the people that are interacting with the media that we post, we can all use access to interesting information, a little distraction, sometimes or entertainment, right? So the greatest challenge for us all is to be in tune enough to know when something is helpful and when something becomes harmful. Something I'm frequently saying in all the work that I do, the concern we aim to discuss today is for young people, especially, who may struggle to make that determination. How do we best support them in their goals to be able to be present and available, while also moderating their use in the digital world.
Gerald Reid 06:54
To join our discussion today we have Dr Allison Young, who is a family physician from Kitchener, Ontario, Dr Young has spent the past decade becoming acutely aware of how youth are struggling in new and unprecedented ways, increased rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self harm and suicidal thoughts. Dr Young is highly concerned that kids today are showing signs of feeling more alone, less motivated, and lacking a deep sense of purpose, not to mention getting less sleep. We are very excited to speak with Dr Young today about her advocacy for mental health, specifically regarding the potential negative impact of social media on youth. More information about her efforts can be found on her instagram handle at the smartphone effect MD and her sub stack, the smartphone effect. MD, dot sub stack.com, and we're just so excited to talk about this topic today with Dr Young. And thank you for joining us from Canada, and congratulations to the Toronto Blue Jays, who are playing much better than the Red Sox and the Yankees. Yes.
Alison Yeung 08:01
Yes, I could go on a couple days, but thank you for having me.
Gerald Reid 08:06
Great, great, great. So maybe we can just start with an open ended question. You know what's on your mind about this topic? You know what? What has really harnessed your attention to how these children's attention is getting grabbed in so many different directions? You know what? What? What? What motivated you to get involved into this?
Alison Yeung 08:26
So I think that's, you know, evolved a lot over time as I've learned more and really sort of invested myself in this space. But the initial motivation came from just seeing, like you mentioned in the intro, a change in the way that my patients were presenting to me. And I mean, I've only been practicing since 2014 so really, like I sort of came on the scene. I started residency in 2012 that was like when social media kind of blew up, right? So even in that short ish period of time, I started to sense this change in the way that kids were presenting. And of course, covid made all of that worse, but it led me to dive into the research, because it didn't feel like this was maybe two and a half years ago that I started talking about it, and it didn't really seem like many people were talking about it at that time. And it was certainly nothing that I learned about in med school, because it really wasn't a thing at the time. So when I went into the research, I was like, Oh my gosh, there's such a connection here. And it doesn't seem like parents are really aware. And of course, we know that that's the case, right? So many parents were handing smartphones over to their kids a decade ago because they had no idea and there was no research. And now we know so much more. And so I really invested, like all. My spare time into this space and just talking to kids and to parents and to educators. The word that I always keep coming back to when I think about kids, teens and devices and social media is is the word pressure, like I feel like there's so much pressure for them to be online, and then when there's when they're online, there's so much pressure, you know, to show up and to perform and to look perfect and all of those things. And so, you know, I really feel for kids right now. I think that they're dealing with issues that none of us had to deal with, and we're seeing that play out in real time in terms of how it's affecting their mental health and their physical health too.
Alexis Reid 10:46
I think it's so interesting that you talk about the timeline, because oftentimes when you think about smartphones or social media, it seems like it's just been something that's in our world forever, but it really has only been around for such a short time, and a lot of people attribute it to like the advent of the iPhone and Apple's technologies evolving so rapidly and quickly, even though, of course, they're not the only technology out there, but that timeframe is so short, and I think it's it's so important for us to take note of the timeframe and the sequence of events That kind of go along with them. Not to say, you know, smartphones and social media alone are the things that are correlated with some of these adverse situations that we're seeing in teens mental health, but that they most certainly contribute in really large way. And the fact that, you know, back in the day when these it's almost like the newest toy came out. When you were talking about it, I had a vision of like, you know, the new toy just came out, and all the parents need to get it for their kids, and now it's just something that's so ubiquitous that everybody feels like you need to have one.
Gerald Reid 11:55
What was your first cell phone? By the way, just as a fun little question, was the first,
Alison Yeung 12:01
yeah, what was it? Oh, gosh, I don't know, some flip phone I started using. I think my, my dad's cell phone like to text friends in high school kind of thing. But it was, I don't even remember, yeah,
Gerald Reid 12:16
yeah, until Alexis is point like, it's so ubiquitous. I'm so surprised that we I'm bringing up the old phones, right? We had, like, a Nokia, like flip phone with the antenna that we had to pull out, right? But we use that to message, to make plans with people, to communicate, right? And now it's so interesting that social media platforms have sneakily become a text messaging service, yeah, so that, as you're saying, it's like, everybody needs the new toy, and part of it is because kids use it to communicate with each other. They don't text message each other on a regular phone anymore. And in fact, if you only try to text message from what I've heard, kids like can't communicate because nobody's doing it. It's all kind of through social media to communicate with each other, which is, which is a very good marketing tool, which I'm not happy about the way that they've sneakily done that.
Alison Yeung 13:01
I talk about this all the time with Snapchat, right? Because Snapchat is typically the first platform that you'll see tweens getting on to start messaging, and they'll say, I need Snapchat because that's where everybody is texting. But somehow Snapchat has done this great job of like, cornering the market of messaging for kids, when I think a lot of parents don't even realize that it's so much more than that. I mean, it's fully a social media platform, but it provides so much more than just the messaging. So it makes sense that kids want to be on it, because there's to them all this interesting stuff happening, but, yeah, it's no longer just the simple messages, right?
Alexis Reid 13:47
You both can talk about this more, but there's such, like an addictive tone to all of this. I was talking to an educator last night who was talking about, you know, there's a TED talk about how Duolingo captures your attention and gets more people involved in coming back to the work and the learning. And educators are like, how do we do more of that in the classroom? And basically, it's like making people addicted to these streams of like, you don't want to lose your streak. And the same thing happens on Snapchat too, where kids are getting pulled in to continue a streak, otherwise it looks like they're not doing well. And I joke all the time. I'm like, I wish students would do that with their homework, with their learning, versus just this, like, social motivation to just be connected or to snap.
Alison Yeung 14:38
Well, it's funny that you mentioned the education piece, because I think that brings up such a valid point where teachers are saying, like, I can't keep my kids engaged. I can't do like front flips at the front of the class to be as interesting as those 32nd reels, or this validation from a snap streak, or what. Whatever it is. And so now we're seeing a lot of these ed tech tools coming in that are serving the same sort of purpose. They're rewarding kids. You get, like, little kids are getting the coins, the stars and all this stuff. So it's like, now education is becoming gamified, and it brings up, I don't know, I just think a really relevant point about how there's this movement to get phones out of schools, yeah, but there's so much technology coming into the schools that it's like, we have to look at that as well. It's and it's hard, because kids truly are having trouble paying attention, because these devices are stealing their attention. So it's education is trying to, like, maybe pivot and be more interesting. But it's, it's just, I don't know,
Alexis Reid 15:48
rewiring everybody's brain, which I don't think is actually a good thing.
Alison Yeung 15:54
And Anne, to your point, I think about all the time, how like you say that the devices have really only been on the scene since, I mean, the first iPhone was 2007 right? So just over a decade, and it's not like our brains have evolved at all in that time, but so quickly and so insidiously, so much has changed.
Alexis Reid 16:15
Totally, totally, such a good point.
Gerald Reid 16:16
Y'all are making great points. I'm really excited for this. So let's talk about the the addictive part of it, right? So, so as we talked about the introduction, it's hard to know, like, more is better, more is better. More is better, right? And that could apply to anything. You can be learning about it, like a social justice issue, and just keep learning and you feel like, okay, this, this is making me feel good about myself, and you just get more and more and more and and learning actually is not like that. So as you're talking about education, I almost feel like we need, as a society to invest in educators and support educators, which, Alexis,
Alexis Reid 16:50
you do say that a little louder to the people in the back?
Gerald Reid 16:53
No, really, yeah. And that's why I'm so glad I have you as a sister to really, you know, inform me about education, because there is not a lot of investment in education because, you know, people don't, there's no venture capitalist putting money into education because they want to make money off of stuff. So, so all that being,
Alexis Reid 17:09
I want to be clear too, there are a lot of people investing in education, but it's not necessarily valued at the same level as a venture capital firm that's investing in, you know, at the current moment, AI and factories that are going to support more technology, which, you know, we benefit so much from technology, especially a lot in my work, for individuals who might have different various learning needs or disabilities. But you know, at the same time, we need to be very mindful about this delineation between what is helpful, like we said in the intro, and what is not helpful that can potentially be harmful.
Gerald Reid 17:46
Totally Yeah, and we don't have to go too far in this direction about education, but I do think it's a good point that like, kids could be learning so much outside of the classroom, but it doesn't mean that they're learning in an effective, helpful way. Lexi talked about this in our first episode. You can get so much information, but if you're not organizing it well, if you're not using it in a productive way, if you're, you know, not integrating all this information. It's just like a lot of noise. It's just a lot of information. And plus, on top of that, I want to make this really important point. There's a book a long time ago by Dr David Elkin. It's called the hurried child. It was such a timeless book. It was a few decades ago. Yeah, it's a good one. And the whole idea is that, are we? Are kids growing up too fast? So we can relate this to education. We can relate this to how kids are growing up in terms of culture, how they're presenting themselves. But if we want to focus on education right now, if you're like a fifth grader exposed to all this information on the internet or social media, is that healthy for a child to have all this information? Are they capable of integrating it? Are they capable of using in a productive way? Are they capable of really understanding it, as opposed to just being like, oh, that's almost like a movie I'm watching, or this is just something stimulus is just like information? No, this is like real life information. Do you understand the meaning of this information? Do you understand the context of this information? And so, you know, we're talking about how we're teaching kids. I don't know if we can rely on the internet to teach kids in an educational developmental sense, for that reason. And as you're saying, if just more technology is going to be fed into, you know, into education, maybe that's not the answer necessarily. We got to help educators to, you know, get back to the basics of what learning is, you know, fundamentals about education. I don't want to go too much I
Alexis Reid 19:41
could talk about this forever, but I want to hear what Allison has to say.
Alison Yeung 19:44
Well, I was gonna even say, like, even to sort of loop that back into social media. It's like, what expectations are we placing on these kids to be able to regulate that learning that's supposed to be happening on device? Places like my friend got a, you know, first day of letter home from their teacher for their her grade one son, and it said, like, something like, we will be using our Chromebooks regularly, and the students are expected to use them responsibly, something like that. I just thought, you know, like, What message are we sending when we're asking kids go home, do your homework on your Chromebook, but your Chromebook has access to the entirety of the internet and just but, but don't, don't look at other things on there that are built to be addictive, and don't, you know, click off onto another tab and go and check out what's happening on YouTube, or Tiktok like. So I think it's not just even like, there's a debate to be had about the Ed Tech Tools in general, and are those really actually fostering better learning, which I think there is a big absence of evidence for but we're also like that's also not able to be separated from all of the other distractions that you know. And for parents who really are trying to moderate their kids use of technology at home and things like that, it makes their in my view, it makes their job a lot harder, because you have to keep your eye on your kid a lot more if they're doing their homework on a Chromebook than if they're sitting there with a pen and paper, right? Like, so it's, it's just yeah, so many thoughts.
Alexis Reid 21:33
My favorite, we did a whole episode on this, but my favorite line is like, Oh, you just need to focus and pay attention. Just get your homework done, right? And it's like, how can you do that with so many distractions? It's like the ultimate marshmallow test that Dr Michelle did. Like, if I give you, if I leave you alone with this one marshmallow and you don't touch it, you'll get another one. Or, you know, like when the kids find where the presents are hidden, and they're like, Oh, I just want to look. You know, they're going to be tempted to want to do that, and this digital reality that they have access to everything all the time.
Alison Yeung 22:07
Yeah, it does lend back to, you know, this thought, and to me, what is more or less a big tech narrative of, you know, saying we just need to teach the kids how to use the technology responsibly. We just need to teach them how to put their phone away. And, you know, of course, there is some merit to that. We do need to teach them, but I don't think we're paying enough attention to which, I mean, Gerald, you can speak to as well, like their brains are not. We can't expect that from them. I don't think there's going to be the odd kid, of course, who can do that effectively, and that's amazing. But for so many of these kids, it's just such a big ask, I think, to put it solely in their hands and say, just put your phone down.
Alexis Reid 22:55
In the late 2000s when I was in grad school, they were, this is where, in the US, there was like a big ed tech push, right? A lot of schools got tablets and computers. And what we found, I can't generalize this across every state, but there were a lot of studies that showed that a lot of that technology actually stayed locked up because they weren't able to integrate the time to teach how to use the technology, and I think it's so interesting. And as you were talking, I was thinking about what, what's going to happen in the future when these kids who have been raised on technology become parents themselves, because we weren't necessarily digital natives, I think our generation is like the only generation who both grew up without and with technology in such a big way, and it's so fascinating to think about like, you know, we're trying to figure out how to use it well for ourselves as adults, and without this developmental aspect of self regulation and understanding how to prioritize time and attention and resources. Well, kids have a difficulty doing that, but if they've been raised in this world, maybe they have something to teach us in the future, right? I'm just trying to take both sides and think about, how are we like you said, like teaching what responsible tech use is when most adults don't know how to figure that
Gerald Reid 24:14
out. Well, I think it's possible to, in some ways, particularly as kids get older to teach responsible use however, we have to take the context into consideration. They're built to be addictive, yes, and so, like, that's like telling someone who has alcoholism go to a bar and be around other people who are drinking. You would, you know, maybe certain people who can are capable of doing that, and that's fine, but like the large majority of people who have difficulty with addiction, the idea of helping them is to find ways to control your stimulus, control the stimulus that is addicting to you, so you're not around it all the time, so you don't get triggered. As I said in the beginning, getting begets wanting, and like the. Kids are being fed things that are, as you said, Alexis, in the beginning, it's every biological, inherent evolutionary need is being fed to them like this is not the kid's fault, you know, and it's like anything you could think of, like all these, you know, appetitive, you know, desires, or like, anything you can think of, is there,
Alison Yeung 25:22
yeah. And I was just thinking as you were talking how you said, you know, often for the older kids you you can effectively teach them. And I often say, when I'm talking to parents, like, I see such a big difference when I talk to say, a 14 15, year old kid in my office, versus a 19 20 18 19, 20 year old kid. It's a completely different conversation, like, once they're older, they do have that insight to look back, and it doesn't mean that it's easy for them to control still, but they've, they've developed the insight to say the product is harmful, and it's I get it, and a lot of them say, I won't give my child a phone for sure for a long time. That's how they all say. That's why I really I love that. I hope that's true, but I think we need to remember as well the context, like, the average age that a child is getting their own smartphone is 11, so we are giving them these addictive technologies at the time when they are most vulnerable to the effects, right? And when you talk about alcoholism, you talk about smoking, cigarettes, porn, we know from decades of research that when we give those addictive products or expose them to those behaviors at a young age, they're more likely to suffer from addiction into adulthood, right? And so I think it just needs to be this reframe about it's not never, it's not that we should never give the technology, but I do think it makes a lot of sense to wait until the child is developmentally more capable to understand what it might be doing to their brains. Yeah,
Gerald Reid 27:11
absolutely. It's similar to the literature on marijuana. You know, people started to say, marijuana is okay, it's like, a healthy thing, it's natural. But like, reality is, there's kids who are, like, having really bad episodes, mental health wise, because they've been using marijuana for a long, long time. And they're young people, they're young adults and their children. So like, this is all the big experiment, you know? And it's sad when people are kind of collateral damage of these experiments, you know, I do want to make a point too about what you just said, middle school, right? 11 12, 13 14, like pre adolescence, kind of you know, when kids are really wanting to belong, they start thinking about who they are as a person. These are developmental tasks. That's the age where they start to become more self conscious. And as you said, Allison, that's when they're getting phones. That's like a recipe for, you know, not not great things. I asked my students at BU, we had, we have a class, and I said, a grad class, who are therapists and training. I said, Hey, we're gonna do this talk tomorrow. What do you think? What are your ideas? And one of the students said, You know what, when I was in middle school, I was awkward, so awkward, like, by the way, we're all awkward in middle school. I'm glad she she named it and validated it, but, but to your point, if we're being fed social media at that age, we're losing the ability to be awkward. And she was like, you know, like her message, in many ways, was like, let's embrace our awkwardness. That's like a beautiful time of life. And back to that book, The hurry child, we can't get childhood back when those years are gone, those years are gone. And this is just kind of a context, developmentally about like kids got to be kids, you know, when kids are and, you know, one of my students were saying, like these girls in middle school look like they're adults. They're dressing like adults. The other student was saying they're going to Sephora, getting all this makeup that like adults wear, and all this stuff. And I'm like, I'm not, I'm not trying to say anything bad about how girls or women present themselves, but I'm saying, if children at any boys, girls, whatever, like, if they're growing up too fast. They're losing that awkwardness, which is uncomfortable. It is supposed to be uncomfortable, and part of therapy. I said this to my students the other day, if you're a therapist, you're trying to help someone. You don't want to try to teach them about having certainty about in life. Therapy is about tolerating uncertainty. It's about being okay in the gray area and navigating it with the support of people who know you, who care about you, and growing through yourself through those experiences. And that's like, if we're just throwing, you know, if a kid has a smartphone, they're using it all day. They're missing out on all those opportunities to experience these things. And I think that's probably partly why mental health gets worse. They're not really going through these and, you know, these more. Um, there's the uncertainty of being at that age and learning and reflecting talking about it, you know, like having deep conversations about, you know, if it's just kind of like mindless social media feeds about how they should be, or be like this adult, or be this perfect person, or Alexis, you always say this like, you know, if you're an athlete, you have to be like the best athlete in the world at age 14 or you have to be doing the things that the NBA players are doing already when you're like in high school. It's just unrealistic, and we're losing touch with just that gradual growth and development that is just part of being human. So it's sad to me like I wouldn't I'm so glad. I feel bad for the kids. I feel bad for the parents. You know, there's things I did in childhood that I cherish, and they were awkward moments too. Like, sometimes we had like, ideas, and we would throw ideas out, but we wouldn't post it on something. And then, like, then it becomes a thing. It was just like an idea, that's a bad idea, and they would tease each other about it. Now, that's a bad idea, right? But when you have an idea now you just kind of put it on social media or whatever. It's like, it becomes its thing. It becomes a thing. It becomes part of your identity. It becomes everything, right? There's no more that kind of just, just be a kid, just explore, just go do things, all that stuff.
Alison Yeung 31:11
And I think it's such a great point too, because, you know, when you think about kids in general, like the trend of kids are, you know, they're they're drinking less, they're partying less, they're having sex less, and some of that is good. It's not to say that those things aren't good, but I think, you know, I often think if we try to figure out why is that happening, like social media has become such a performative place where everything anybody does goes online. And so I think if, if I was a teenager right now, how much are they censoring themselves? Because, let's say it's not even you carrying the phone, but everything is being filmed all the time, right? Kids are uploading moments of their friends or and so I would think that you're living again with this pressure of, well, I don't want to mess up. I don't I don't want it like so you're almost not exploring your identity and maybe your weirdness because you're scared that it's going to be all over the internet forever, which is just what it is. And so I think that that part is is, yeah, also just really unfortunate that kids aren't able to explore themselves the same way. Of course, social media can, in ways, also help with identity exploration, and I think that that's a very valid point. But I think that day to day, that day to day pressure of just being online, and I say to parents too, you know, once, once they get on social media like they're going to be instantly told who to be, how to look, what to say, what to think, and you see the videos of the little girls doing the Get Ready With Me videos online, and then a lot of girls are watching that on YouTube. And then, of course, they want to do the same. And I sometimes talk to parents like, well, what? What's their motivation for wanting to do those videos?
Gerald Reid 33:20
Can you explain those videos? Just for, oh,
Alison Yeung 33:22
sorry, sorry. So there are, you know, millions of views, hundreds of millions of views on on these videos where little girls, ranging from elementary school all the way up to adulthood, they go on Tiktok or YouTube, and they film themselves getting ready. So it's a whole thing. They're called Get Ready With Me videos, and they they typically will show the products that they're using, and so they'll put their makeup on, and they'll maybe just chat with the camera. And so that's fueled a lot of the desire for the Sephora products and things like that, because, of course, they're promoting products. And I don't think it's, I don't think it's inherently bad for a little girl to want to put makeup on and look nice and that kind of thing. Like, I remember when I was in elementary school, I would put on, like, ridiculous white eyeliner, and just like, you know, you back then, yeah, right. Like, wet and wild products like, and you see your mom maybe putting her makeup on. You want to be like, but now little girls are wanting to perform and put on their makeup and these products and post it for the world see, like, it's not just this intrinsic motivation to explore how they look, or, you know, test out makeup. It's, it's I want to show other people, and I want them to look at me, and that's what I worry about more, is, you know, where does that motivation to perform come from? And it's from what they see.
Alexis Reid 34:57
I think we live so much in this world that. Everybody's trying to perform, both on video, in whatever you post, but also in real life. Sometimes too. I take a yoga class, and my instructor often will say, you might have seen this pose on Instagram, done perfectly, but that's not actually what the goal is here right now. The goal is just to be as present as you can with your breath, with this moment, with how you feel, rather than making it look like something somebody else showed. And we're talking about this idea that when you post something on social media, it becomes a part of your archive, right in life. And when we grew up, like Gerald was saying, like, you can do a thing, you can have ideas, you can make a mistake, and you can learn from it, and you it becomes a part of your identity, your tapestry of yourself, too, but it becomes something that's a little bit more personal, that we save and we savor for ourselves. And I don't know about you all, but I often will have people I've worked with in the past, come up to me and be like, I remember when you said this. And I'm like, Oh, I said that. That was actually pretty good. I'm glad you held on to it. Or, oh, gosh, I said that. But now everything you say and do becomes archived in this digital world that to be honest, going back to this idea of, how do we teach responsible use, it becomes a part of your digital footprint that I don't think young people, especially when you're, you know, a young child getting ready with with the rest of the world, realize this,
Alison Yeung 36:33
yeah, because correct me if I'm wrong, Jerry, but I think kids are most susceptible To peer pressure between I think it's 11 and 14, and so it would be really hard to say to a kid, no, you know, like you don't need to do what everyone else is doing. That's that doesn't fly, or that doesn't feel meaningful to them, because they just want to do what everyone else is doing. And for us, like I think, I think we as adults are vulnerable to comparing ourselves, obviously, right? Like, we all do that, but I just think about the ways that it's different. Like we we compare ourselves, but nobody would actually care if we didn't show up online. We don't, we don't have, like, our peer group and all that social interaction really doesn't happen online. We might see people posting their best moments and things like that, but we do most of our socializing by, you know, direct texting our friends, or, like, seeing them in person where phone calls, phone calls, yeah. So for these kids where everything is online, it's, I think it's, I just think it's a lot harder for them to say, like, oh, I don't need to be a part of that. Like, the pressure is real,
Alexis Reid 37:51
right? I think too, that you can bring up another great point that, you know, you feel like you want to be like other people, and it's hard to say no. But you know, from a developmental perspective, there's like this cognitive overload, because the images they're seeing are so vast and varied. It's like, Who do you want to be like? You know, there's so many different things. And I think the fear with social media is that once you have a certain algorithm, you're only fed certain information. So it's like the people that you end up, quote, unquote, being like, is often dictated for you, instead of just being a part of your community that you're interacting with every day. And I think that becomes a really slippery slope. We mentioned this in other podcasts about Todd Rose's work and his book of collective illusions, that the loudest voice often becomes what we believe is real instead of what actually is reality.
Gerald Reid 38:43
And then, and there's something called cognitive dissonance, which means that once you begin aligning with something that you believe, or you begin acting as if that's who you are, it's very hard to detach and shift, because it's like, oh, like this person's feeding me this algorithm. I keep learning about this, that must be who I am now. And especially if you're being fed it on social media, constantly looking at it and being exposed to it, it's going to be that much harder to break away, right? As opposed to when we're growing up, you know? You may, oh, I'm kind of going through this phase of this, and, you know, you're not constantly being reinforced about it. You're just like, Okay, I tried that out, and now I'm trying something else out, you know, and that was just part of natural development, and that's what cognitive dissonance is. And these algorithms are feeding into cognitive dissonance, because once you're aligned and attached, it's very hard to separate and say, Wait, I don't I'm not totally aligned with everything they're saying, or maybe I'm starting to disagree with it, but it's hard to pull back and do that. And so, like, that whole exploration, that whole natural development, I was
Alison Yeung 39:46
just gonna say, I think a really good example of that that we're seeing happening more and more, is when, again, when you go back to, like, middle schoolers feeling awkward and that kind of thing the boys and the young boys. Who are feeling awkward, or maybe they're feeling like girls don't like me or whatever, and they're going online and so quickly being wrapped up in what they're calling the manosphere, where you know you're you just start out looking for some validation, or some people that are like you, and so quickly that algorithm picks up on that and starts feeding you that misogynistic content of you know, you need to be a man, and girls are this and like and so we're seeing boys get radicalized online so quickly. And really that just comes from a place of wanting to belong. And I think that that's that's really tough, and it's not to say that they don't have parents that love them and are good role models, or whatever the case may be, but those algorithms can be so much more powerful than anybody in their real world sometimes.
Alexis Reid 40:55
Yeah, I was just gonna say that, you know, there's we're talking about and amplifying the negatives of being a part of a community. But there also has been some really great aspects of social media, because I was thinking Jerry as you were talking that sometimes we're only interacting with our immediate community. And Jerry and I grew up in a small suburban town in New Jersey, and there was only what we knew was what was around us. So there is a benefit in being able to see outside of your community. But I think what we're saying here is, when you're a young child, you know, as an adult, we can have cognitive overload with all the information we're taking in, but for a young child to be exposed to all of this information, or sometimes being like, vetted or routed into just one example of what life could or should be like. Extreme examples, these extreme examples, like you were saying, it could turn into this radicalized thinking, or can turn into something that can be so overwhelming and confusing, which leads to a lot of mental health challenges and overall confusion. Well, I mean,
Gerald Reid 42:00
think about it, right? If it's an extreme version of how to be, it goes back to what I said before. Life is not so extreme. And so if you're thinking, like, Wait, I don't agree with everything they're saying, you can't disagree. You'll get, like, pushed away, right? And that's what Todd Rose's book is about. It's really interesting idea of collective illusions. But, you know, so, so all that being said,
Alison Yeung 42:20
can I just say one more thing? Go ahead, please, please. I think a lot of it also speaks to the companies right, like it often goes back to the companies where social media could be harnessed as and it is for some people, of course, but we know that the algorithm feeds on people having big emotional responses, right? And often those are negative responses. And just the way that our biology works is we're more likely to go down rabbit holes and stay online if we're upset about something. And so to me, it also goes back to these platforms needing to be accountable, because they could be doing so much more for kids if they just simply change the way that their algorithms work. It's something they could do and, you know, but it changes their bottom line, and so they don't. And so it's, it's just unfortunate that, yes, people who are from small communities, or they're in a particular minority, like they really could find community and and have it not turn into something else or something darker, but the platforms need to have a part in
Alexis Reid 43:36
that. Oh, absolutely. I love that you said that. I mean, you know, there's this sense of otherness that usually draws people to these platforms to find folks that are similar, but and then that otherness gets amplified by the algorithm. Unfortunately, rather than what I think all of us are trying to advocate for is that there's beauty and variability, right? There's beauty in us seeing that we don't all have to be the same, that actually that makes for, I always joke that that makes for a very boring society in life if everybody's the same. But that's somehow what social media often perpetuates, especially for young people who only see certain images.
Gerald Reid 44:19
Yeah, we're complicated beings, and we're usually not just one thing. We are, as I say, like a mosaic where different aspects of ourselves become, become one and and that that's almost like an impossible thing for the algorithm to figure out how to, like, feed us that type of mosaic, right? Because it's like one extreme thing at a time. You know, the algorithm is not capable of, under, you know, of reflecting our human nature as an integrated being, right? And
Alison Yeung 44:46
just because you take something or spend more time on it, on the algorithm, doesn't mean you like it, like watching awful, violent content, because that's again, that's just our natural tendency is to you can't look away, you know what I mean. But. Yeah, the algorithm then is like, Oh, you like violent content. Okay, here you go. Here's more and more and more and more, and then you're down that rabbit hole. So, yeah,
Alexis Reid 45:07
that's such a good point, too. And I think our brains inherently, especially kids, we're constantly drawn to things that we're unfamiliar with, and sometimes that, like you said, evoke this emotional reaction. And sometimes you know, when you're interacting with negative things, you're waiting for the good thing to come up. But that doesn't always happen in this digital world.
Gerald Reid 45:28
Yeah, this is kind of a side note. I remember watching a news A News episode, probably like CBS Sunday Morning, something like that, and they were talking about two people from extremely different walks of life. One was, I think, a black person who experienced a lot of racism, and another person who, like, I don't like, got caught up in, like, white supremacy or something, and they came together and somehow developed a relationship. And so the reason I'm bringing this up is that, like, if we're being sorted in categories digitally, how are we ever going to come together and find common humanity and like, respect each other and develop a relationship? Because I find you know that people from different groups, it's exposure exposure therapy actually explains this. The more you get exposed to someone different than yourself, the more you get used to that person as another human being, the more you actually can see humanity in them. And if we're physically isolated from other people, if we are only being sorted into categories on digitally, no wonder we're so divided as a people.
Alison Yeung 46:35
That's such a great point. And I talk about this a lot with like now that I do content on Instagram, and I say because I try to make a conscious effort to follow or look at people that have maybe differing viewpoints from my own, because I think that's important, but it's hard. Like it becomes an echo chamber where I'm like, Oh my gosh, there's probably a lot of people that disagree with me, but you wouldn't know it when you look at my content, because people are more likely to comment when they support it, right? And so yeah, exactly as you say it, looking at different points of view is so important for identity formation and exploration, and I just don't know that that's happening.
Gerald Reid 47:20
Yeah, and I really want to emphasize the physically being with other people that's so important. It's so different from just engaging online with someone that is physically you are with someone you are seeing them as a human being, physically in the flesh, with their emotions, everything with them. It's very different. And this is partly why kids are so mean to each other online. It's because they're not there seeing, like, Oh my God. Like, this person's devastated because of what I said to them. They're we're more willing to say disgusting, horrible things, partly because they don't see it happening. They don't see the effect of it. And so, like, the more physically we're divided and not actually coming together physically, because we're just constantly on our phones, the kids growing up, right? It's going to make it, I think, more divided, you know, with the kids and so, like, hopefully there's ways to bring people together, because that's not great for society either, as these kids are going to grow up,
Alison Yeung 48:13
and that's a big part of my messaging is trying to, you know, obviously, with with older kids now and kids who are already on social media. It's really about the harm reduction and the digital literacy and all of that stuff. But I'm trying to reach parents of that younger demographic where their kids don't have these devices yet to say, like, hold on. You know, why don't we wait? Like, do, do our kids really need to start texting with each other in grade three? Or should they maybe just like, let's plan a hangout and have a play date. Or, as you said in the intro, like people are getting landlines even talking on the phone, they are going to engage with each other much differently than they are over a message where kids don't have the executive function to filter their thoughts on it, right? And so those things can come off really harmful and or hurtful, I should say, and, and parents are kind of driven crazy over their kids in these group texting situations when they're 910, years old, because they can be so toxic and so nasty, and it's not their fault, it's that we haven't been able to Teach them that etiquette of how to communicate with their friends digitally, right? Like they need to learn that in person first.
Alexis Reid 49:26
Yeah, I always say. And we had a whole, a whole episode on self regulation, thinking about how we develop and build these skills. And if impulsivity is just so rapid and immediate when you're on digital technology, how do you actually learn to like, pull back and like Jerry says when you don't see somebody's facial responses and their nonverbal cues when you're communicating, it's really difficult to anticipate and interpret how comfortable or uncomfortable somebody might be with the topic and content of a conversation. What tips and. Advice you often give to parents who are considering, you know, giving their kids devices. You know, any, any of the questions that you tend to field from parents when you're giving talks or you're interacting through your practice, and they're like, you know, what do I do? Because one of the things I really like about the social media world for parents is that they often don't feel so alone in this parenting journey, and sometimes they are guided and supported by some of the information they're getting. But like everything in social media world, everything in media in general, there might be a spin or people trying to sell something, and the information may or may not be accurate, so they might be hearing certain messages thinking it's okay to, you know, give a third grader a phone, or they might hear that it's really detrimental to give a third grader a phone. How do you help them reconcile with this conflict between, well, what is right and what is not, and what am I responsible for as a parent?
Alison Yeung 50:59
Yeah, I and, you know, it is tricky, because there is that when I talk to parents and they're thinking about giving their child a device of some sort, like a personal device, either a watch or a phone, usually that motivation is is from one of two things they want to be able to communicate with their child, because they're getting a little bit older, and maybe they're away for longer periods of time at sporting events or whatever it may be, sleepovers. Or the other motivation is, well, everybody else has one, and my kid is feeling that pressure, and I don't want them to be socially isolated, and so I try to educate parents around Okay, I think still, largely in society, we kind of think that it's either no phone or it's a smartphone that has internet access and all the things on it right. And there are now a lot of devices that I think of as an intermediate and serve an intermediate purpose. So my first thing to say is, you know, what's the reason for the phone, and if we can uncouple that idea of phone from smartphone. And so if you want a way to be able to get in touch with your kid, give them something when they're going away, you can now get watches that just talk and text to people you approve of, or you can get now phones that don't have any internet browser, they don't have any social media apps, and so I think for that child, who may be sort of middle school, and I try not to give ages specifically, because I think it does really depend on the child and their maturity level And the family's needs, all of these things, your values, but around middle school, maybe is a good time for one of those starter phones. I think for kids in elementary school, like a landline serves a great purpose. Or a lot of parents are now having like, one common phone, like they may use an old phone of theirs and completely lock it down so that it can't do anything other than call, and they'll just lend that out to their kid when they're going and then when they come home, the phone is away. Like we need to start thinking about using these things as a tool first and as sort of training wheels. Yes, yes. And then, you know, in my view, I think we need this cultural and it has to be a collective action thing like, I think the parents who have had the most success in delaying some of these devices until later than the norm are parents who have banded together with it. Can just be a small group of other families, but, you know, they've found a social way so that their kid doesn't feel so isolated. And really, I think a kid just needs one or two friends that's in the same boat as them, and they can complain about how much it sucks, but that will be okay when they get into those older ages, like, I say, later into puberty, when you know, maybe they they're old enough to like, take public transportation by themselves, to maybe have a job to like, keep the family pet alive on their own, like, you know, as The reasonability increase, yeah, right, and where their frontal lobes are more developed, that they can actually look at content that they see online and have some skeptical eye of what they're seeing and not just believe everything for face value. And, you know, so that's the shift I'm hoping to see. I
Alexis Reid 54:39
think it's so funny, as you were talking about, you know, handing a phone over to a child, and different types of phones, I was thinking back to when we were younger, and I remember, you know, there was the family phone that, you know, if you were on it with your friends, that anybody could pick up. What's happening, right? And then it was, like, it was. Like a rite of passage to get your own phone or your own phone line. Like, we should bring that back, rather than, like, you know, everybody has one, so you just get one too. Like a privilege. It is a privilege, and it is a point of responsibility that, you know, we can't just say, use this responsibly. But like you said, it's like training wheels. We can scaffold the ability of young people to be able to use. It's not just about the technology. It's about a point of communication. How are we communicating responsibly? Because ostensibly, this is like teaching social skills, which I think we need to bring back more of, also which involve, like you mentioned so much, frontal lobe activity with our executive functions, to be able to pause and listen, to be able to think about what was just said and how should I respond. How should I respond thoughtfully? How do I respond in a way that's gonna continue the conversation later, like we're doing here, we have to pause and consider. How do we exchange and interact and and work together. Instead of it just being this one sided, I'm gonna just feed out information, content and communication.
Gerald Reid 56:07
Kids actually talk that way. Sometimes it actually makes me sad. Like I've seen girl like, probably even college students walking, maybe high school college walking on the sidewalk in Boston. And I'm just like, they're just like, in front of me, so I'm not trying to listen, but they're talking. They're talking. They're in conversation. Can't miss it. Sometimes they're talking very loud, very loud. And I couldn't believe it. There was like one person was just talking about themselves, like for a good, like, two minutes, then the next person just talked about like themselves. But there was literally no cohesiveness in their conversation. And to me, it felt bad, because I'm like, they're not connecting. There's not a genuine connection there. And so when I think about I love all the tips that you're giving, like really, really thoughtful and nuanced about how you're thinking about this. Allison Alexis as a psychologist, I'm thinking about it from an emotional level, and I'm going to integrate what you had said. If you're not having real life in person interactions, you're probably going to be afraid of it. This comes back to exposure therapy and anxiety. You avoid something, you get more afraid of it because you're afraid. Like you imagine things you expect the worst. As you said, Alice in the beginning, there's pressure, pressure, pressure, pressure. So, you know, I'm not saying every kid needs a therapist, but like, help address that anxiety about, oh my god. Like, if I don't have my phone, how am I going to interact? Well, you can like, let's, let's do the hard thing, you know, let's do the hard thing. And like, help you to feel successful doing it, and help coach you. Or, like, be honest about your anxiety instead of hiding it, because, at the end of the day, because kids also don't want to, like, be fearful, you know, if it's like a middle school boy, high school boy, be like, Hey, what are you afraid of? You know, they'll be I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. I'm like, Well, it seems like you are afraid of actually talking in person. So let's, like, help you to get over that fear. I'm not going to shame you for that. It's not your fault. Like everyone's afraid of everything now, because it's like they're avoiding real interactions, real people. And you can only get better by doing it and practicing
Alison Yeung 58:00
it and being awkward. Yeah, it's such a great point, and I think that it's natural right for us to take the path of least resistance. And so that's when I also talk to parents about especially when we first introduce kids to whatever it is, you let them have some time on Snapchat or whatever. It can't be like a fire hose all at once, because parents really need to be their child's frontal lobe for a period of time until we like, we can't again. We can't expect them to regulate. And so I think when some of these technologies are introduced, it is so important to say, you know, like when we were kids and we went on, I secure, or whatever, if our parents picked up the phone that we were done, cut off. And so I think it's so important for parents to set out the expectation of, okay, we're going to, you know, learn about this together, and we're going to see how it goes, but we're going to start, we're going to do 20 minutes a day, or whatever it is, and then, you know, you're the phone's going to come with me, or we're going to turn the Wi Fi, whatever it may be like putting those boundaries in place, because if they're given the opportunity to be online, they're going to take it. It's just easier. It's easier than doing everything I talk about, that a lot, right? Easier than everything. So parents have to have that active role and set those expectations early.
Alexis Reid 59:25
I think you you touched upon this before, but I had a parent explicitly asked me, you know, what? What do I do when the only way my kids friends were communicating is through Snapchat? And I think you touched upon it before, but I just wanted to ask that question specifically, because I think a lot of parents are just feeling this frustration of they have no power. And I have an answer in my head, but I want to hear what both of you think about like the role of the parent in all of us, that you're not disconnecting your kid, but you can give them other opportunities to connect and in more maybe meaningful. Or in real
Alison Yeung 1:00:00
life ways. Yeah, I say to parents, not infrequently, you know, your child doesn't need 24/7 access to their friends, and in fact, that's not healthy. It wouldn't be any of us to have access to 24 hours a day,
Alexis Reid 1:00:21
a lot of pressure,
Alison Yeung 1:00:23
so much pressure. And like, I feel like, if, again, you know, you talk about peer pressure, it's, you know, as a parent, obviously, easier said than done, I totally get it like my kids aren't there yet. I'm I sometimes feel like I can't or I shouldn't say these things. But if, if we don't want our kids like if we want our kids to learn how to stand up to peer pressure, we have to model that as a parent. And if we just say, okay, because everyone else is doing it, then I'm going to let you do it. I think it's okay to set that loving boundary of, you know everyone's house is different, and it's my job to protect you, and this is what I feel is going to be best for you long term. And I know that that sucks, and you can, you know, be mad at me. That's okay, but I'm gonna hold this boundary, because I feel like that's the safest thing for your brain.
Alexis Reid 1:01:18
It's similar to, like, sleeping, right? Every kid might have a different bedtime, but just because one kid goes to bed at midnight doesn't mean every kid to go, you know, not saying Midnight's the right time. But oftentimes kids will be like, Oh, my friend was up till midnight. I should be able to stay up late too. Yeah, back in the day, Jerry, you and I, I don't know if you remember this, mom used to put us to bed sometimes, and it was still daylight out during the summertime, and I remember having arguments like, what the sun's still out? Why are we going to bed? But the same thing, I think it's the same conversation and in different contexts, about social media and Snapchat and access to friends and everything all the time.
Alison Yeung 1:01:57
Ah, good. It's not good for anybody. And like, I had a 15 year old, 1415, year old in my office, and she was saying to me, like, I can't do homework unless my mom is sitting right beside me. Because my friends won't leave me alone. They won't stop blowing up my phone, and if I don't answer, they just blow it up more. It's like anxiety.
Gerald Reid 1:02:26
That's anxiety on both sides, anxiety to say, Hey, leave me alone, and anxiety to like, accept that you're being annoying.
Alison Yeung 1:02:34
Yeah, yeah. So it's yeah, they will thank you one day. I know it's like, easier said than done, but I think they will thank you one day,
Alexis Reid 1:02:44
but it kind of goes back to the frontal lobe. You know, I love a good conversation about executive functions. You know, it's, it's, we're developing this filter to prioritize what's important. And you know, I think with with so much exposure to so much messaging, whether it's in real life or on our phones and social media. I think we are responsible as adults in the lives of young people to help them filter out messaging so that they can make good decisions. I teach a child growth and development course, and rather than talking about what we have to do, I talk about, you know, the stages of ethical development through kohlberg's model. And you know how at different stages of life, our brains can only understand so much, and we need to be the ones in their lives as the adults who have had these experiences before, to help them just have these curious conversations and modeling. How do we actually pull back. How do we create boundaries for ourselves that are important? And I had another question that I was thinking of, and I'm so curious to hear what you think I have like again, I have a love or hate relationship with social media. Hate is such a strong word. I have a very uncomfortable relationship with social media, I should say, because I do love it and I also have such an aversion to it at the same time, but I see a lot of these, like mom influencers on there, and then I see them bringing their kids into the conversation. And this is not judgmental. This is purely through a developmental lens that I think to myself, if we are constantly showing our children in our lives through an adult perspective on social media. What message is that sending our children about how they need to perform, as you said before in their lives? I think it's so difficult to separate the kid from the information, from the connection with their friends, and then they see adults in their lives showcasing every part of their lives on social media too, which I think is sending so many mixed messages. We're telling kids not to do it, and then we're doing it ourselves. We're at the dinner table, and, you know, everybody's got a phone out instead of being present. So I'm so curious, too, Allison, about how you approach all that, because I know you talk a lot about it on your social media feed, too.
Alison Yeung 1:05:00
Yeah, yeah. And you guys, I'll put a plug in for Sarah Adams. She's another Canadian that talks all about the world of, you know, Kid influencing and parents basically putting their children online. So she's great. She has a great perspective as well. But I think what you're saying speaks to that idea of modeling and in general, and we can't expect our kids to do something that we're not willing to do ourselves. And you know, there's been multiple times where I'm trying to talk to a teenager about how can we maybe reduce or optimize your time online a little bit. And the parents sitting there, yep, yep, nodding their head, and then the kid will turn around and, well, you're on your phone just as much as I am. Yeah, totally, yeah. And they're so Right. Like, and modeling is truly it's difficult, like, it takes so much concerted effort and thoughtful behavior and things like that. But I think if as a family, you can come up with, I mean, first of all, like the parents that are speaking to, like the parents that are putting their kids online, I think that's a whole other topic where you got to question why they're doing that, and what's the what's the motivation there? It's usually financial, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a whole other beast. But I think just in general, like having those routines and expectations around the house and narrating, obviously, we use our phones as tools too, so I'll often say, like, I just have to order this grocery list or whatever, or like, let them know. But really trying to save your mindless scrolling for when your kids are in bed or when they're not home, I think is important. Your kids are always going to do what you do. If you value physical activity, your kids are more likely to be physically active, right? If you smoke cigarettes, your kids are more likely to smoke cigarettes. It's just
Alexis Reid 1:07:10
oftentimes kids know what they see. But I think that's also the fear of social media, like you said before that. You know, once you get into this algorithm, you're going to be fed all of these messages. And it's interesting, there's a video online. I'm not sure if you reposted this, that Jonathan Haidt reposted it. You know, a father putting his kid to bed, and he's like, Oh, just, you know, try to rest. And then there's all of the possible influences around him. It's like a hockey player. It's a woman that's scantily dressed, it's like these aggressive voices, and it's like the same as when you give a kid a phone when they're in their rooms or going to bed. It's like they could potentially have all these influences that in real life would you want surrounding your child? And it's so interesting when we think about how we be able to pull those pieces apart and protect them, and the way we model our use is so important, and I just want to amplify what you said about narrating why we're using our phones when we're around our kids, like, hey, I need to order groceries. Let me just step away and do this real quick, and I'll be right back or I have a work emergency that I have to tend to. Can you give me five minutes and I'll, I'll come right back to
Gerald Reid 1:08:26
you or, or I'm gonna, I'm gonna do social media for like, 10 minutes, and, like, having a boundary around it, and modeling, having a boundary, like, such. Like, one of the kids I, one of the kids I work with, is like, Okay, since I need a goal, I'm gonna make my goal 20 reels and it's over. Yeah? Like, that's brilliant. You know, if you I mean, it's still hard
Alexis Reid 1:08:42
for me down from five when I need to turn it off totally.
Gerald Reid 1:08:46
There are no boundaries. I want, to make two points. Based on what Alexis and you both are saying, think about famous people. They're in the public eye all the time. People are watching everything they do. And from my experience, listening to famous people, what do they do once they become famous? They try to, like, not be famous, very free. They try to be a normal they try to be a normal person. Like, I don't want people coming up to me and, like, acting like they know me. I don't, I don't. I want my privacy. I want to just be normal, you know? And so it's like, be careful what you wish for. We have kids trying to they're basically, in some ways, it's a parallel to becoming famous. Let me put myself on the internet. Everybody's gonna watch everything I do. It's gonna be performative. And it's like, if you work backwards, go find someone who's famous and go listen to what they say. Maybe parents can teach kids about this. Well, actually, that person who looks super confident is super insecure, super anxious, doesn't even like doing that. They feel all this pressure to perform right and educating them the older kids. Can probably understand this better than the younger kids, but kind of like, be careful what you wish for and realize what you're actually engaging. It's the same dynamic as if you're, you know, famous in some ways. You know, there's there's parallels there.
Alison Yeung 1:10:11
There's a great documentary. I think it's it on, I want to say it's on Disney, and it's called Born to be viral. Have you heard of it? No. So it's about, it follows a number of YouTube families. So it's the idea of the parents having their kids, and they film, you know, day in the day in our life, and they're super popular. And it looks at exactly that, right, like there's these behind the scenes pressures that you don't see on the on the outside when you're just watching, but you know, they don't really always love what they're doing, and the kids don't want to be filmed, and it's a job like it's not actually as glamorous as it sounds. And I just wanted to touch on one more thing that you had said, Alexis, about this is bouncing around again, but kind of going back to when do it? When does a parent maybe know if their kid is ready? Because you were talking because you were talking about that, that video of the child in the room and all these live people around them. And I often say, like, if you could imagine that your your child is entering a mall, and like, every store in that mall represents something that they could be doing on their phone. So there's like the content creation store, there's the homework store, there's the porn store, there's all the different things you could do. Like, do you feel like your child is developmentally at a place where they can pick the good stores, mostly, or if they accidentally walked into the porn store, like, what would they do in there? Would they be able to get back out again in good time? Or those kind of, you know, I think we don't often enough picture it as real life. Picture it as this online world that Almost doesn't count or something. But there's so many things about what kids do on their phones that we would never allow them to do in real life.
Alexis Reid 1:12:05
Oh, that's so interesting. I'm picturing, you know, little kids walking through the mall and there's like, the lingerie store, you know, and my parents are rushing them through, like, Oh, don't look over there, you know. Or they're distracting. But when you have the phone in front of you there, there are no filters a lot of times for kids,
Gerald Reid 1:12:23
and this stuff gets really extreme, from what I've heard, like Dr Jonathan Haidt and others later saying, like, the stuff of the things that they're exposed to is beyond what adults can even imagine, once you go down the rabbit hole of it, which is very easy to do. I
Alison Yeung 1:12:37
have so many parents tell me they're like 10 year old saw the Charlie Kirk and things like, just things that no child, no adult should really you know, it was hard for me to
Gerald Reid 1:12:46
watch. Yeah. I mean, that happened during 911 they just kept showing 911 the plane over and over and over and over. I'm like, why are they showing us this image over and over and over? I just want to make a quick point that you are describing living in two different realities and straddling a virtual and an immediate physical reality, I think that is extremely cognitively taxing. Number one, totally, we're constantly shifting between thinking about what's in front of us and what's somewhere in this digital world that's not even in front of us. That's cognitively taxing. You know, there's research about that. It's like stressful. It creates stress going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, right and and I think that I just this will be my last point. I'll let you all wrap up. Is that if you can treat your life like an experiment, you would realize that real life connection oftentimes feels better. And if you can pay attention to that, and if adults and parents can help foster that, oh, like, let's talk about how that felt when you were, like, just being silly and playful, or playing with blocks or or building a tree house or going for a bike ride. Let's talk about when you were in the moment and not distracted. This is a key point. While you were doing these things, you weren't imagining. Oh, what's going on in virtual reality. You weren't distracted thinking about that, because that actually prevents you from enjoying the experience and being present with it. So let I would say important thing that parents and adults, we can all think about, pay attention to when you're not wondering what's going on in virtual you really are present. You're truly engaged in what you're doing, immersed in it, you're open, you're not self conscious, you're just being yourself and how that truly feels with another person in the connection that feels genuine. And you got to go through those awkward phases. It might feel awkward at first, right? Conversations feel a little awkward when we first met there, before this podcast. It's a little awkward in the beginning, right? That's normal. That is normal. We can ride the wave of that anxiety and get into feeling a real experience with people or with nature or whatever it is, and comparing that when you're just scrolling on the internet and seeing how it feels differently,
Alexis Reid 1:14:50
I just want to validate as you're saying all that I'm thinking about the enormity of how difficult it is for not just children, but all of us. To be present. I think children actually sometimes do that better, right to be present in a moment than it is for an adult. So I just want to validate like, you know, sometimes sitting with the discomfort and uncertainty and all of that is really hard. We did a whole episode on presence because it's really difficult to just be still. I think this is why meditation and mindfulness is a thing, because we are really struggling to do that as a society, especially as adults. I think sometimes kids aren't thinking as much. I always joke that my frontal lobes are too developed, that I know better than too right, and children sometimes can just absorb it all. But I think that's the fear in the lack of filters for social media. So I think you bring up a really good point, and I want Allison to react to it, but for the listeners out there, like, I can validate that it's really hard to be present.
Alison Yeung 1:15:48
Yeah, no, Gerald, I love everything that you were saying. I feel like that's such a an important skill to teach because, as you guys were saying, like, if you start, I call it the ick, like, if you're online and you start to feel like the ick, like, oh gosh, I'm I've been so unproductive, or like, Oh, I just don't, I don't feel good. That awareness is everything, and I think that that's ultimately what we want to teach kids to feel and then to be able to react to is that self awareness of like, when have I had enough? And when does this go from like, I just needed a moment to kind of have a break and mindlessly scroll to like, Okay, now I'm feeling gross and unproductive and negative, you know? So I love, I love everything
Gerald Reid 1:16:35
you said, and cherishing those moments that really feel good, like, genuinely feel good like, when, I mean, we as adults, like, we got to remember what was that like when you just, you know, just did that really fun activity as a kid, like, recreate that memory? Because we, you know, it's easy for adults and kids to lose touch with what that really feels like. That's, that's what makes us human, and that's what feels right. And that's like, you know, that's something that's always been important for us, and if we lose touch with it, we're gonna, it's gonna go away. You know, the user to lose it.
Alison Yeung 1:17:02
And I feel like that's so important. When you talked about, like, preserving childhood, and you only get one childhood, you know, I don't think that most people are going to look back on their childhoods and think, Oh, I had such a good time scrolling Tiktok
Alexis Reid 1:17:19
Exactly. I
Alison Yeung 1:17:20
i i feel like childhood is so worth I want to give my kids those core memories that they think back when they really were present and they were just loving their time with their friends and laughing like those gut laughs that you just you just doesn't happen when you're immersed in that online world. And so I think finding that balance for all of us, but for our children, to allow them the balance between the being social and having some social time on there, but really just living in the moment and, yeah, realizing that the real world is a good place generally.
Gerald Reid 1:18:00
And by the way, you said, laughter, laughter is such a great way of connecting with people, and that's a different laughter than saying, Hey, look at this funny video. Let's laugh together. To make someone else laugh, or to allow someone else to make you laugh in an organic way, is an unbelievable experience. And like, it may not be funny to everybody, so like, if I'm gonna make you laugh, Lex, because I said something silly or just like, goofy in the context of our conversation or our lives or an inside joke, it's funny to us in that moment. It doesn't have to be funny to everybody you know, like, that's, that's what builds a connection between us. I remember that, like, dumb thing I said, you know, but it was funny in the moment you know, like our you know, and like when you're growing up. Like, people have inside jokes that, like, not everybody needs to know about it. It was just funny to us.
Alexis Reid 1:18:45
Well, I think what do they say? Laughter is the best medicine, right? And it also leads to connection. But laughter can be so healing, and when it's organic, again, it leads to connection.
Alison Yeung 1:18:57
Well, I was gonna say my like, whole goal in all of this is like, I just want to see more kids smiling. I want to see more kids feeling light and, you know, so it's, it's all that, like, I I don't want to see so many sad kids in my office.
Alexis Reid 1:19:11
Yeah, and I think it's important for us to just roll back as adults and go back to some of the basics. I think we all need to just press pause and think about what is important to me as a human what's important to me as a parent or caregiver in the life of a young person. And how do we want to explore and expand upon these values and these shared moments and these core memories that we want to be able to establish, because we as adults are craving this, like jovial silliness, what we used to have during childhood, and for whatever reason, we think it's okay to let social media guide and dictate a child's life. It's like we're craving for to relive childhood, and then we're taking childhood away. So I think we need to meet somewhere in the middle to be able to say, hey, we have this exposure to this technology, it could be a really great tool. I'm so glad you used that term, because I think it's so important, because technology and social media can be a great tool within reason with boundaries, as long as we are bringing it back to real life and cherishing childhood, I think that is probably one of the greatest take home messages from today's conversation.
Gerald Reid 1:20:26
Love it. Hey, this has been fantastic conversation. Just I feel like Time has flown by. And you know, the things we were saying, by the way, were very organic. We have, I have some notes in front of me. Alexis has some notes, but this is a free flowing conversation. Ideas popped in our head while we were talking, and that that is just a testament to getting back to the basics of interacting with other people. Allison, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your knowledge on this topic and and your passion. You know everything you're saying comes from I know, like the moment we talked and I got to know you a bit, I can tell it's genuine. And to me, I think we both connected on that way. We both felt like we're genuine people and and it's nice when you can feel that with each other. And I appreciate that I did cross paths with you, because it's evident in having this conversation with you how much this is just a genuine passion that you care about people, you care about kids and like, if you care and you generally care, you're gonna be open minded to finding what's gonna work, what's gonna help, because you want the help, right? So that's wonderful,
Alexis Reid 1:21:30
and a positive outgrowth of social media, I will say. So there could be some
Gerald Reid 1:21:36
Exactly, yeah, because it just came from me, you know, connecting with you and letting you know how much we appreciate what you're doing. And so my last question, we're going to start doing this for our guests, because every therapy session I have, I started doing this a few years ago. I think it's a nice way to end a therapy session. You're not in therapy now, but I think it's a good way to bring this into the context of our podcast. I always ask two questions, what are you proud of and what are you grateful for?
Alison Yeung 1:22:02
Oh, my goodness, okay, what am I proud of? Well, I'm proud that I made two amazing children that are seven and four, and they make me proud every day with the things that they say and the ways they surprise me in between when they're driving me crazy, you know,
Alexis Reid 1:22:28
the best and hardest time sometimes.
Alison Yeung 1:22:31
Yeah, yeah, I'm proud of that, and I'm proud of, I'm proud of what I'm doing in this space, because I, I actually like, hate public speaking and but I I've done it. I forced myself. I feel like my passion has overridden my fear, and I'm just like, I'm going to do it, and it's gotten easier over time, which is a lesson that we obviously try to teach to our patients. But so that's proud. And then what am I grateful for? Oh my gosh, so many things. I mean, I'm grateful for my family and my health, and the ability to help people and like, meet great people, and just these little reminders every day that the world is generally a good place, because you can find a lot of reasons to think that it's not a great place, but there's so many things to be grateful for
Alexis Reid 1:23:19
that's such a nice way to end. Thank you so much for all that you do, and thank you for joining us today. We appreciate you.
1:23:26
Thank you so much. Thanks, Allison,
Gerald Reid 1:23:30
Thanks for tuning in to the Reid Connect-ED podcast. Please remember that this is a podcast intended to educate and share ideas, but it is not a substitute for professional care that may be beneficial to you at different points of your life. If you are needed support, please contact your primary care physician, local hospital, educational institution, or support staff at your place of employment to seek out referrals for what may be most helpful for you. ideas shared here have been shaped by many years of training, incredible mentors research theory, evidence based practices and our work with individuals over the years, but it's not intended to represent the opinions of those we work with or who we are affiliated with. The reconnected podcast is hosted by siblings Alexis Reid and Dr. Gerald Reid. Original music is written and recorded by Gerald Reid (www.Jerapy.com) recording was done by Cyber Sound Studios. If you want to follow along on this journey with us the Reid Connect-ED podcast. We'll be releasing new episodes every two weeks each season so please subscribe for updates and notifications. Feel free to also follow us on Instagram @ReidConnectEdPodcast that's @ReidconnectEdPodcast and Twitter @ReidconnectEd. We are grateful for you joining us and look forward future episodes. In the meanwhile be curious, be open, and be well.
In this episode, Jerry and Alexis speak with Dr. Alison Yeung about how youth engage with social media. This episode broaches topics of mental health, child development, education, parenting, and psychology. Dr. Yeung is a family physician from Kitchener, Ontario who has spent the past decade becoming acutely aware of how youth are struggling in new and unprecedented ways - increasing rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. Dr. Yeung is highly concerned that kids today are showing signs of feeling more alone, less motivated, and lacking a deep sense of purpose. We were very excited to speak with Dr. Yeung about her advocacy for mental health, specifically regarding the potential negative impact of social media on youth. More information about her efforts can be found on her instagram handle: @thesmartphoneeffectmd and in her substack https://thesmartphoneeffectmd.substack.com/
Be curious. Be Open. Be well.
The Reid Connect-Ed Podcast is hosted by Siblings, educational therapist, Alexis Reid, M.A. and licensed psychologist, Dr. Gerald Reid, produced by CyberSound Recording Studios, and original music is written and recorded by www.Jerapy.com
*Please note that different practitioners may have different opinions- this is our perspective and is intended to educate you on what may be possible.
