Change Your Brain Every Day - How Does Social Media Affect Children’s Everyday Lives? with Dr. Jay Faber

Episode Date: January 12, 2018

In part 2 of a series with child psychiatrist Dr. Jay Faber, Tana Amen and Dr. Faber dig into the topic of social media, and how it affects today’s youth. With some children spending as much as 5-7 hours a day on social media, it’s becoming more and more important that we understand the effect it’s having on children, specifically in regards to purpose, presence, and actual social skills.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. So I'm back with Dr. Faber. So thank you for joining me again. Dr. Faber, if I didn't mention it in the last episode, is one of our child psychiatrists. So we're so excited to have you. And we're going to talk today about something that is such a problem. And I hear it so much from a lot of my daughter's friends, parents, the parents of my daughter's friends, social media.

Yeah. And you hear it from parents all the time. Parents all the time. Yeah. So talk to us about what you hear and what the problem seems to be. Yeah, I mean, there's several factors we see, but I think, you know, the bottom line is the kids are spending oodles of time playing Minecraft and Call of Duty, and the parents don't know what to do. And by lots of time, we're talking about five to seven hours a day. Yeah, when you first said five to seven hours, I thought you were going to say a week. No. And I almost fell out of my chair when you said a day? Yeah, when you first said five to seven hours, I thought you were going to say a week. No. I almost fell out of my chair when you said a day. How do you even spend that much time a day on social media? I would want to shoot myself in the foot if I did that. I would like die. Yeah. How is that possible? Well, here's one of the trends we're seeing. So people go to college or high school, graduate, and all of a sudden we're done and when you think about changes in in stresses that's probably a big one and for

the kids that aren't going to school or don't have a purpose or not sure what they want to do what do you do you get some pleasure from going from level one to four and some purpose okay so you just touched on something really important because that's a big part of the book that daniel and i wrote together the brain warriors way yes a big part of the book that Daniel and I wrote together, The Brain Warrior's Way. Yes. Hence the name of the podcast, The Brain Warrior's Way, is purpose.

And so I practice martial arts and we focus a lot on purpose and it's not just about learning a new form. It's about how you live your life. Bushido, Way of the Warrior, was about, it was a model for living your life. And so it's got to be purpose driven. There you go. Yeah. And when you think about purpose, it's not like all of a sudden you wake

up and here's your purpose. It is a warrior's way. You do have to put some work in and aggressive about it to find out what it is you want to do with your life. Very interesting. So yeah, that lack of purpose can be really devastating to a lot of people. So studies show, though, that people who spend too much time on social media, not only are they not present, not only does it drop IQ points, but you're more likely to be depressed. Yeah, you're more likely to be depressed. I just saw a study two days ago. One out of five kids are spending way too much time at night on social media. And by way too late, they're like 12, 1 o'clock in the morning texting all their friends.

And then they wake up in the morning and boom, they're sleepy. They're tired. They can't do their schoolwork. Their sense of well-being is going way down. Well, being on social media actually does interfere. The screen itself, the light itself interferes with your sleep. Yeah. So that alone, kids already have a harder time sleeping because their melatonin their their circadian rhythm is different different so their melatonin releases later

so if you add to that now i'm going to stay on social media you're really messing their cycle up yeah no it's the blue light that's a whole nother conversation of itself but absolutely yeah so it's really going to mess things up. When you said that, I was so stunned. Our daughter, Chloe, we've got her so busy. So we often joke that it was our sort of like our little evil plan, our devious little plan. She's homeschooling now. And we've got her.

She's very involved in the arts. And it actually wasn't intentional. It just sort of worked out that way. She's so busy that, I mean, she's just got so many things going on. She's involved in her church group. She's involved in, you know, a global leadership group. She's got all these things. She's so busy. And one day she looked at me and she started laughing. She goes, I don't remember the last time I was on Instagram. And she goes, my friends thought that I sort of dropped off the face of the earth. So we checked her phone and she's on there. An average if you average it out, 10 minutes a day.

So when you said five to seven hours a day, I don't know what other kids spend on there, but I thought you were going to say a week and that would have been a lot. But a day? A day, yeah. And the only secret, the only difference in what we're doing is keeping her busy.

So with things that she loves and that are purposeful. So purpose. Yeah, but that's one and that are purposeful. So purpose. Yeah. But that's one of the beauties. I mean, the stuff you're doing, I think parents would be open to hearing. It's like, here's what you've got to do. It's more than just getting good grades in school, which is important, but all the other constructive activities, the church, the groups, all that adds up to make life more meaningful. Right. And we do focus a lot. I mean, granted, she's been hearing this since she could walk. So there is that. She's been hearing about how it's bad for your brain

and how it drops IQ points and doesn't make you all that smart. And so we've been pushing on that for a long time. So she has that advantage. But it's never too late to start learning that. It's never too late to start teaching even your adult kids why it's important. But one of the things that we've always impressed upon her is this younger generation, tell me what you think about this. I mean, it's what I noticed with my daughter's friends. They're not present. They're not present. They don't communicate that well face to face. So they're losing that ability to walk up and confidently shake someone's hand, look you in the eye.

I mean, that's going to affect their ability to get a job. That's going to affect their ability to interact in a social world. I feel like the world's becoming less social. Yeah. And here's sort of the with the social media piece. A lot of the kids think the more friends you've got on instagram facebook um snapchat you know the more social you are with their studies coming out saying well those social skills and those kids are actually less um it's almost like a false boost ah so the more they focus on those numbers

which it's a competition yeah it's i see the kids it's a competition how how are these like i'll hear them say well how did so and so get that many followers so their their whole thing is on getting followers getting people to like like you or whatever or getting video clicks or whatever yeah and so what you're saying is that doesn't translate to social skills in real life exactly yeah okay but it's a fooler because the kids think it does so fascinating yeah and so this is i'm telling you it's a fooler because the kids think it does. So fascinating. Yeah. And so this is, I'm telling you, it'll be a big topic the next five to 10 years because the social, you're right, the social skills, conflict resolution, finding passion, it gets lost in looking at pictures and wondering how many more people I can connect with on social media. And one thing I've seen, and you may have heard this or I'm sure you have your own ideas about it. My daughter brought this up to me. So she actually decided she wanted to homeschool. She sort of didn't like the way she saw things going at school. And she

was popular. It wasn't because there was no social issues why she chose to. It wasn't because she didn't fit in or anything like that. She just wanted to be able to focus. And so she's like, she's a very, very intense, serious kid, and she wanted to be able to focus and move her life forward. But she really didn't like the way things were sort of going at school, the lack of focus, the sort of lack of consideration she was sort of seeing. There's a lot of mean girl stuff going on and a lot of drugs and a lot of things that begin to happen. And it happens earlier than most people think. So sixth, seventh grade is where it's starting. And a lot of parents are like, what? No, it isn't.

Yes, it is. And if you don't know that, then your kids just aren't talking to you. So it might not be happening with your kid if you have one of those unique kids, but it's happening. So yeah, I mean, we're pretty fortunate to be able to know that, but she came home and it was so interesting. Chloe said something to me that was so interesting. She said, it's so much harder to be popular now. And I said, what do you mean? She goes, you know, I, she goes, the idea of being popular is silly. Like, why try? And I said, what do you mean by that? She said, because of social media. Because it's like there's so much

taking people's attention away. There's so much going on. There's just like your attention's constantly being taken in different ways. So to be popular, you have to do something more outrageous and more and more and more outrageous than the next person. So Daniel had mentioned one day about somebody who got into trouble for sending naked photos. Someone that he knew that got in trouble for naked photos. And she's like, so?

Chloe went, so? And he was like, what? And she goes, that's not a big deal anymore. She goes, I know you want to think it is. She goes, that's like the next, like it's everyone's doing it, but she goes, it's not right. She goes, is that they're doing it because they don't know how else to be popular anymore. Yeah. They have to do something outrageous. And it stunned me. It's not that they're doing it to be bad. It's they're doing it to get attention.

Because in a world where everything is just moving so fast, how do you get noticed? Yeah. And so now you're hitting, to me, a key point for parents is how can we help teach our kids true recognition? Right. And how do we develop that our kids true recognition? Right. And how do we develop that? What really matters. Yeah, and it gets into self-esteem. It gets down to parents reading books,

having discussions like we're having now, have your church groups or whatever talk about some of these real issues. Because a lot of parents will say, you don't do this. Well, why are they doing it in the first place? Yeah, that doesn't work. In the history of the universe, that hasn't worked.

Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah. first place? Yeah, that doesn't work. In the history of the universe, that hasn't worked. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah. So the nude pictures, the outrageous things, and then you think of kids, it's like their sense of omnipotence. Nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to happen. You know, and then they try to apply for college, you know, and someone says, well, let's look at Facebook or Instagram.

And what do they see? And they do jobs now. They check Facebook. They check Facebook they check Facebook one of the first things yeah so and there's no being able to say well I was just a kid yeah so because they care yeah so but to hear that from my own kid the wisdom you know she just she knew why they're doing it that well and it sounds like she's getting recognition from oh yeah other places too right that speaks highly for setting up structures at home where you get that.

Yeah, it's very, very interesting. So I love that. So if they want to reach you, Dr. Faber is one of our child psychiatrists here at Amen Clinics. So you can reach out either to our call center or is, do you have an email or anything? Well, or a phone number, your assistant's phone number? Yeah, probably the best way would be to call my assistant at 949-266-8612. Perfect. And then if that doesn't work, doc, D-O-C, Faber, F-A-B-E-R at amenclinics.com. Okay. Perfect. Great. Thanks, Doc. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast.

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