Change Your Brain Every Day - iPad Childhoods: The Hidden Cost of Growing Up on Screens & Social Media with Dr. Lisa Strohman

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Should you post photos of your children's faces online? What about screen time? iPads? This week, Dr. Amen and Tana are joined by Dr. Lisa Strohman - who is an attorney, clinical psychologist, and author. As a licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Strohman has spent more than a decade working with individual, family and adolescent clients struggling with issues including depression, anxiety, addiction and technology overuse. She is the founder and director of Digital Citizen Academy, one of the first organizations to address the global issue of technology addiction and overuse.   https://digitalcitizenacademy.org/

I tell parents all the time that a phone unrestricted is actually more dangerous than a loaded gun on a table. You cannot educate the evil that's on those phones and those devices that comes to them. Dr. Lisa Stroman is a clinical psychologist. Ted Talk speaker. Author, former FBI agent, attorney, and the founder of the Digital Citizen Academy. Recognized for her expertise in youth technology addiction. Dr. Amen, Tana, and Lisa discuss the dangers of smartphones and social media for kids. Parents are sharing far too much.

much. The minute you put that image out there, they actually can take that image and create movies with that child, pornographic content, and then those are sold overseas. The minute that you put your child's image online, you've lost control. So you as a parent, the only thing you have control over is to protect that child the same way that you don't want a stranger in your house. Why would you put their image out online? And what do you think about Snapchat for kids? Oh, Snapchat, I think is. Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day.

Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Eamon. I am so thrilled to talk about our brand new course, Brain Thrive, for preschoolers through grade one. In this course, we're going to teach kids to love their brain, to know that it's amazing, to know that it controls everything they do and everything they are is if they learn to love and care for their brains, everything in their life will be better. Welcome. We have such an exciting guest today. I love this topic.

I will save it until we get started. But we have Dr. Lisa Stroman, J.D. Ph.D.D. here today. She's a clinical psychologist, attorney, author, and nationally recognized expert on psychological impact of technology on children and families. So you can see what we're going to be talking about. She's worked as a visiting scholar with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, served as a legislative intern in Congress, and brings a rare combination of clinical, legal, and policy expertise to the growing digital mental health crisis. Dr. Stroman is the founder of Digital Citizen Academy and its foundation, organizations dedicated to proactively educating and protecting students, parents, and

educators from the harmful effects of technology. Such an important topic. Thank you for being here. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me. That is great. Digital technology is creating mental illness. When did you first get involved with this? Actually, it was way before we had the issue of social media because when I was at the Bureau, that's when Columbine happened. And so it was before we even have the platforms as they are today. And I saw what those young boys had posted online. And I started to see very quickly that the intersection of psychology and the influence of what you could find online was going to change just structurally what these kids in a developing phase were going to be impacted by. So Columbine is what got you involved in this? Absolutely.

It's what shifted me into the intersection between psychology and technology. Oh, interesting. What are some of the biggest lessons you've learned? And then will get to the recent trial with META and YouTube. I would say that I think that it's hard. Parents feel so challenged today. I think that there's a lot of guilt. There's a lot of shame. I started seeing that parents were acting almost as if it was an addict that we saw back with drugs or alcohol or something like that because they were hiding it.

They were shamed by the fact that their children were punching holes in the wall or throwing devices or throwing these massive tantrums. And I really have spent a career trying to educate people that this is not about willpower or parenting. This is about a neurobiological vulnerability that the industry has just taken for granted. And they've really shifted it and put parents in just the backseat of where these kids are developing nowadays. Well, and one thing that I've seen just as a parent, so you can do your part and try and limit it. But kids are figuring out ways around it. They're creating false accounts. We found it in our own family with, you know, my nieces.

They create these fake accounts. And, you know, it makes it so hard to find them. So some of the tips that I got from you a long time ago, I ended up finding them. Right. No, when we had a crisis with one of the grandkids, we're like, okay, you have to talk to Dr. Scrowman. Yeah. It's so important.

But, you know, I first saw it in 1987 when Atari came out. with video games. And the first video games were so primitive. Right. Four colors. My son, who is getting straight A's, all of a sudden he's getting Cs and were arguing about get off that thing. And then I just took it out of the house. He's like, where did it go? I said it left. I'm not going to fight with you about it. So smart. And that was smart on my part, but I just saw how addictive it was.

And then when one of my grandkids, when he was literally 10 months old, someone gave him a phone and he figured out how to use it. He's 10 months old. And then for the, and I'm like to his parents, this thing is dangerous. And it's been a problem ever since. Later they decided. Later, they agreed with me. But it was like for the first five years when I was. I come over his house, phone pop up, phone. And I'm like, no, phone pop up, phone. And here I am

arguing with my grandson, who I adore, and you just see how addictive it is. And suicide and young people has gone up 62% since the year 2000. And what's happened since 2000 phones, social media. Yeah. Well, and I think it's interesting because with your grandson and you're arguing against it, there's so many layers there because you're trying to honor your kids, honor their parenting style, even though you know the science behind it. And the child, as you know, their reward system develops before their decision making. They have no executive function. So we have to get that narrative out there that we have to serve as that executive function for those kids and even for the parents who grew up with it. So the parents nowadays are the

ones that were first influenced by it. So it's this multifactored issue that I try to go out and do where I can as much as I can. Right. So let's try to be as practical as we can. Why did you start Digital Citizen Academy? I think serving as a clinical psychologist, I had families in my room that had children that were cutting themselves, that had taken their lives. I've had, I've speak about this often. I've had 38 funeral invitations for children over my career. I could not sit in the room anymore and not try to do something bigger and scale it further. So the funeral invitations you're talking about had somehow been connected to digital platforms or social media?

So families across the United States that will call me and say, I know that you're an expert in this field. Can you help in this situation? What can we do for our child? And so I would advise people along the way or talk to schools or principals and ultimately we can't save them all. And that's why DCA was born was how do I get this message out further or faster as much as I possibly can. Well, and as therapists, both of us, it's just common to have a girl send a boy a picture and the boy then puts it on social media. she's shamed and now she's suicidal. Absolutely. Because she just feels trapped and there's no way out.

And this is something when we were growing up like never happened. Right. You never heard of it. I mean, it's like worldwide shame in an instant. Well, and now recently we have a huge issue with apps that are on these app stores that nudify children. So you don't even now have to get an actual photo from a girl to take that image of that girl from wherever you have it and create a nude image and then send it out. I didn't even know that existed. Yeah. And most of them, and I talk about this in some of my

presentations, you have to be four years old to download that app. It is ridiculous of what they allow on that app store, whether it's AI conversions or nudification. Why is that a legal thing? It's the First Amendment right for people to put what they want out in content in Section 230 over the years has protected these platforms because it is content that they don't generate. Right. But you're doing something against another person's will that they didn't consent to. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so how do you stop that?

How do you go after that child? How do you prove that point and that they nudify that and sent that out? I mean, isn't that child pornography? Absolutely. Even if it's a digital format, it has to. how do we get the breadth of law enforcement in the Attorney General Office or the district attorneys to be able to go after one case at a time? And we just don't have the manpower. And that's why I think we're at this convergence point where we're going to have to go bigger

and bolder in order to get these things taken off these platforms. That's crazy. Yeah. Bigger. So Australia banned social media for children under 16. Absolutely. And although they made it the social media platform's job to do that. So you actually have no idea how effective they are. I talked to one of the senators when I was in Washington about it. And she just didn't think that they could police it. Well, but you were saying that kids have figured out how to get around it even in Australia. They have. And that's the problem with allowing the industry themselves to self-police. And it continues to be a shell game. And I think Senator Blackburn, we've got Senator Holly, there's a lot of bills that we're working with right now. Senator Cruz has one on AI chatbots.

But what we have to really look at is the architecture and the infrastructure of age verification because it simply can't be what the child puts in as their age anymore. We're going to have to look at constructurally looking at a more broad ability to do that verification and give that control back to the parents. That's what we're looking at trying to strengthen those bills with. No, we had one of the kids in our family go on one of the dating sites. I caught her, thank the Lord. But she was very underage.

And she put, you know, that she was 18. It just accepted it. And she went out with someone 25. Terrifying. On what planet should that be okay? Right, right. And there, I mean, the cases that you think about the sequela of, if you have young children, there was a case just recently, a 16-year-old and a 25-year-old.

And the parents, she wanted to run off with the 25-year-old that she met on one of these apps, and they ended up going in and taking out the entire family and running off together. And that's the part that I think that we don't as a society see how far it goes. It's not just about meeting strangers online and having... No, because they're impressionable. Right. And the vulnerability that they have and the fact that we're aging them so quickly through all of this content is really where we have to try to get ahead of. So the first thing parents can do is not give them the technology. Correct. That's got to be the first thing is because when you give a child a smartphone, you are not just giving them

access to the world. You're giving the world access to them and all of its goodness and badness. Absolutely. I tell parents all the time that I think that a phone is actually more dangerous than a loaded gun on a table. And if I had a choice, I would say the phone, unrestricted, is more dangerous because children know naturally that a weapon. You can educate. Right. You cannot educate the panacea of evil that's on those phones and those devices, as you just said, that comes to them. So what are your thoughts on parents posting their children, underage children, their faces online, and what kind of a problem does that pose? Or say, apps like Snapchat where they're there and then they're gone. I've actually found Snapchat

to be a big problem within just the family with lots of the kids in our family. But I'd love to get your feedback on that. I've talked about this, I think a decade ago, I started talking about Sharonteen, you know, that parents are sharing far too much. The minute you put that image out there on your child now with age progression or anything like that, they actually can take that image. And as I said, you can take an app and you can create movies with that child. You can create pornographic content with that child, and then those are sold overseas through other servers. And so the minute that you put your child's image online, you've lost control over a magnitude of various things. Think about whether or not they will

get a loan taken out in their name. They will get a driver's license put into their name. You can age, progress them in those situations and use that to create false identities over and over and over again, and they won't even catch up to that for 18, 19 years. So there's a lot of different reasons that I think putting images of your children online is just not wise as a family to do. We do not know how AI is taking us right now. And even if you look at the people, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, the people that are actually creating it are telling us already that they don't have control over it. So you as a parent, the only thing you have control over is to protect that child. And so the same way that you don't want a stranger in your house that you don't know or putting

them in some unsupervised arena where you don't know the adults in there, why would you put their image out online? I just don't think it's a smart choice. And what do you think about Snapchat for kids? Oh, Snapchat, I think, is one of the worst. From a law enforcement perspective, one of the best. I will tell you, because they actually have every single image and message and content on their servers. And they work very well with law enforcement. So one of the things I tell children is that those images and those messages disappear from your device and your friend's device. It does not disappear from the servers. And so kids get very frustrated when you actually go through the privacy terms of all of the platforms and where they are told and taught that these are basically perpetual licenses that you're

giving to these providers and that any of those messages or images that you're sending online is owned by the platform themselves. So kids need to understand that. They do. Yes. And that's with DCA, that's one of the things I go out and try to teach kids about. Because I want them to be a voice in this space. I want them to become the leaders in this space. Because we can't do it without them.

Well, and I think one of the most effective things is getting them to see the war they're in for the health of their brains. That someone's making money off of making them

miserable. And it's so little. It's like the bullying of the frog, right? It's little by little by little. And so they don't feel it and they don't see it. We do, right? Those of us that have witnessed their shift the minute you hand them the device. Yeah, and those of us who didn't even grow up with social media, like it's, for us, it's so obvious because it's just a weird phenomenon that happens so fast.

Right. But when you grow up with it, you don't even, you have no idea. I mean, the level of anxiety I've seen in the level of anxiety I've seen in the, you're just a weird phenomenon. the girls in our family is crazy. The comparison game, the, you know, it's like all of a sudden you're comparing yourself, not to your neighbors or the girls at school. You're comparing yourself to like, what, 8 billion people on a Monday morning. It's just crazy.

Right. And I think that that's that external validation, particularly for girls, because we are such a visual society with these, with the apps that they're using. And so you start to see the morphism, and I'm sure out here in California, like many of the girls all start looking the same. They're all going in and having procedures done and trying to look like everybody else. And it's so damaging. They actually called it Snapchat dysmorphia for a while. They were going to plastic surgeons and saying they wanted to look like their Snapchat app, like the filters. Yeah. I've had a couple of plastic surgeons that I've known who have actually said those apps are so helpful

because it actually uses the structure of the person's own face. And I said, be careful of where you say that out loud. Yeah. Because I think that's going to come back to haunt you, that you actually are endorsing, basically structurally shifting somebody into a version of themselves that isn't who they are. And that's psychologically really, really damaging. So what are you seeing now that concerns you the most? The lack of critical thinking, I think, and the lack of resilience in our children. You know, I think a lot of individuals are relying so much on AI now. that we aren't even taking a minute to have that mindfulness or meditative space. And that really, really frustrates me because people have such a beautiful soul in mind. And that individuality, I feel like we're losing. And that's what really worries me.

It's very interesting that you say that because even when I, you know, as somebody who has a social media platform, I look at other social media platforms. I can tell immediately who's just using, you know, chat or whatever. because they all sound the same. Right. And there's not a lot of thought going into it. It's just they're spitting out the same answers. And you can tell, you know, it's very interesting that you say that.

Yeah. And we're outsourcing our own selves. Yeah. Right. And so I think that that goes back to authenticity and that human connection. And I think you've probably saw, I think it was March of last year, there's a study that came out that said, we have the lowest levels of oxytocin in the generations coming up than we've ever seen before.

which is our bonding hormone, right? We're lonelier than ever. Lonely than ever. 58% of young people report being persistently lonely. So if you have a lonely person who's now on some of these dating apps, you end up doing things that are very risky. And, you know, I always say God gave you parents for them to be your frontal lobes until your frontal lobes develop, which for many people's not until they're 25.

Right. And so parents, when you give a child a phone, now their frontal lobes are not going to develop. And you saw the statistics, 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad. Yeah. 32% of thought of killing themselves. 24% have planned to kill themselves and 13% have tried. It's like these are statistics that are unlike anything. Well, it's almost as if what I see clinically is that it's a badge of honor in some ways. So these girls are cutting themselves or burning themselves or doing things.

And it's not that they're hiding it, right? It's not a borderline behavior. So now it's almost validation. It's validation. And it gives them like a, I think, a belonging in the society of sadness. Correct. So it's obviously negative reinforcement that they're getting. Do you know what stops it is now trying to?

If you give them an altrexone, so naltrexone's an opiate blocker. And I think they cut themselves to get an opiate high. And so if you block it, they stop cutting because it really hurts. And there's no reinforcement for it. That's great information. But the fact that they're doing it for social reinforcement is interesting. Yeah. Let's talk about the trial against Meta and YouTube.

and Google. And then we haven't heard anything about it. I mean, I think it's so interesting how it's disappeared. But it's huge because it basically said they knowingly created addictive gadgets that hurt people. So there's two separate kind of paths of litigation that are happening right now. There's the state-based litigation, which most famously recently was New Mexico. There was $375 million finding, which is a public nuisance product liability case.

So instead of going after them for the content, it was going after them for the algorithms and the intentional design that they created that caused this basically public crisis. And that's what they were found guilty of in the state cases. And as I was saying to Tanna, we had 33 other states that are coming back behind. them. And so, so $375 million to META is not a big deal. This past week, Raul Torres, the Attorney General's office, has asked for now $3.7 billion for a remediation fund, like the opiate fund. And as you said, it's very similar because they did the exact platform. They basically meta went in and hired their own researchers. They did the research. They found out that it was

harmful and intentionally harmful, even though they've had all these whistleblowers along the way, but then they tried to bury the research the same way tobacco did. And so they got caught. And I think what they didn't think was that those researchers were families and they were parents and they were people. And so that's really, I think, that they won't be able to get away from that. And then the other vein of litigation is what we call bellwether cases. And those are individual cases where somebody's harm. So the lawsuit in L.A., was an individual child that sued, and it was about $6 million litigation. And that is an example of what we call the MDL or the multi-district litigation in Northern California.

And that is the case against all of big tech. So bite dance, YouTube, Google, meta, all of them. And that is a huge consortium case. And that's moving forward further than we thought. And that one is strictly I'm going to be for these cases of individuals that were hurt. But doesn't that set a precedent? It does set a precedence. So the LA cases of precedence, the New Mexico cases of precedents, we're starting to see in New Mexico,

one of the judges that involved, is saying, you know, I'm not going to go and tell meta how to change their algorithms, which is why, you know, I've kind of jumped on and put my policy hat on and starting to help the senators and in legislation and looking at some of the companies that own the patents to be able to do the age assurance. and the parental notifications and things like that. So there are companies out there that have the ability to solve this, but they haven't been able to fight a trillion-dollar industry before. And so we're hopeful now that we're going to have some ability to actually compete on at least almost equal footing. Wow.

Yeah. That's huge. Yeah. So what's been your role in some of these cases? So about five years ago, one of the firms, Motley Rice, who is an amazing firm, They're the ones who handled the 9-11 fund. They're the ones who sued the cartel. The attorney Joe Rice is one of the founding members of Motley Rice.

And he really, he had a situation personally with a granddaughter. And he said, not on my watch. Is there another kid that's going to get hurt? And so about five years ago, they brought me in, and they had me do a training for all of their attorneys. And I started advising with them. And for several years was on a call every week, listening to case after case after case, listening to, you know, this child was born to foster parents

and had a brother that committed suicide, would that be a case that we should be able to put in front of a judge and should that case be something that we use as an example and trying to help advise them on, you know, psychologically, can a family really bear the brunt of litigation or is that child strong enough or is that family strong enough to go forward? So about probably about four years, of working with that firm and helping them in those cases, identify the right people to go forward with what we call Bellwether cases, just the magnitude of humanity that those attorneys have had to go through, just advising and helping support them on top of that,

and trying to just be a good steward in that space. And the lawsuit in New Mexico, we brought one of the investigators that I worked with. She was the one who built the case. She was the one who came in, created the account for New Mexico as a child account, turned it on, and then recorded everything that happened after that moment. And so it was that work that she did. And that's why I was in the pleadings of New Mexico. And that's why I met it was going to depose me because my name was actually in those pleadings. But that case was built on an investigator that I work with very closely, who Jeannie Parker's her name.

And she spent a lifetime in Internet crimes against children. And so I'm so proud of her for doing that and bringing that because we wouldn't be here without the people that have given their careers to do this. So, wow. Amazing. It takes a lot of people. Yeah. So let's go back. Tell me about why a law degree, a psychology degree, and the FBI.

How did that all come about for you? Wow. Well, I was working in undergrad. I was at UC Davis, and I worked with a family that had four autistic children. And so I got interested in policy work for them and advocacy. And I just had a professor at UC Davis, Dr. Horn, and she said, you know, you might want to look at going to a J.D. Ph.D. program so that you could actually do policy work and analysis. And I didn't know any better. We didn't have anyone in my family that gone through college.

And so I just said, sure, I'll try that. And so that's how I got there. I applied. I didn't actually have a high enough score the first time. And the director at the time, Dr. Bersoff, who wrote the book on ethics for psychology, Don Bersoff, he said, oh, you know, if you would have got two points higher, we would have guaranteed your admission. And I said, so if I take it again and I increase it two points, are you saying I'm admitted? Because they only let five people in a year. And he said, yeah, but, you know, it's pretty difficult. I'm not sure. And I said, okay. So I went and took it. I got three points higher. I called them back. And I got admitted to the program. And so that's how I got into that. And then when I was there, my dad was a bureau chief of department of justice. And so I grew up with law enforcement my whole life. And so I heard about this honors intern program with the FBI.

And I'd been to Quantico several times with my dad as a child. And so I thought, you know, that would be really interesting. And that was how history was made. I just applied. And I actually just, it was fortuitous that I got put into the profiling unit. I worked in Cashew Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit. And I did homoic— Oh, my gosh.

Heart-wrenching. Homicidal pedophilia was what I worked on in the summer. And so that's really where I was thinking I learned that it's not the white van around the corner anymore. You know, at that time, which was 1998, 1999, is when I saw we had 100 agents at a time, and they were all working at the same time. and they were working and they were they were being abused and vulnerable online as posing as children already. So because because that's when the online form really took off. So that's when everything changed.

Back with MySpace. And yeah, and it was just, it really was where we opened everything up. And in Section 230 just basically said there's no rules. You know, you guys can do whatever you want because at the time, back in the day, I'm going to date myself, CompuServe and Prodigy, they were getting sued. and they were getting sued because of content that had been put online. And that's when this protection went into place. And they said, we're going to stifle the growth of this internet if we don't protect them. And so it just went 25 years too long of giving them that protection, in my opinion.

People want big changes. But the brain responds to small, consistent habits. What you do every day matters. That's why I focus on daily brain. support. Go to BrainMD.com and use code podcast 20 for 20% off my favorite brainfirst supplements. So if we think of the top five things parents can do to protect their children, I mean, the cat's out of the bag that social media and cell phones are dangerous. In fact, there's a new study. the earlier the child gets a cell phone, a smartphone, the greater the chance they have a mental illness.

In fact, they're suicidal. So if they get it at five, 50% risk of having suicidal thoughts. And to tell parents that giving them an old phone that isn't connected to a cellular service still has Wi-Fi capability. So a lot of parents aren't even aware kind of technologically that they can still access it. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. Can flip phones? Flip phones can still connect online, but they don't have access to the apps and the videos and all of those things. Because I think one of the things parents would say is with all of the school shootings, I want to be able to track my child.

Yeah. Or I want my child to be able to get a hold. Like everyone in my family is on my 360. My anxiety will not allow it. Yeah. Yeah. I think that when you look at, and I tell every parent this when they say that argument, and again, you have parents that are divorced and one parent, you know, the father wants to know

where the kids are or wants to have access to them and all of it. There are devices that are, I don't want to call them dumb phones. I'll call them wise phones. And there's a phone calls, the wise phone, which actually doesn't have anything but the ability to call. So there are technologies out there that you can get your kids in those situations that you need it. But if you watch the footage of Columbine, and I was unfortunate enough to have to watch all of the footage that the law enforcement that had access in there, that the CCTV camera shows that several of those children that were killed were because they got on a phone to call a parent.

And it oriented the shooters to the sound of those children being on the phone. So I will tell parents every day until I cannot breathe another breath. That's not going to save your child by having them have a phone. We put our children in schools that we trust. Those adults and those professionals are there to protect them. So please don't think that a phone is going to save your child in that situation. I just gave me goosebumps. I wish at some point I could just take my brain and the things that I've seen and just put it on a projector for parents, you know, to say.

Well, that's what we're doing right now. We're taking your brain. It's just so much. Yeah. Let's talk about gaming because I've had kids. who are clearly addicted to video games. And I actually had one child who, when the parents took it away, just completely trashed the house and ended up in an addiction treatment program for gaming. What's your perspective on that?

Because parents think it's like a constitutional right. Well, I talk about this and went my first TED talk. I had Atari and I had pitfall as a kid and I could not turn it off until I got every jewel and had a perfect score. And the minute it was done, my grandmother took me away. And this was in the 80s. The grandmother took me to the side. And she said, let me talk to you about what an addict is. And let me talk to you about what your parents' addictions are. And let me tell you what you just did. And I never played another video game in my life. And so I've spent a career. talking to parents about if Atari back in the day, as you said, could be that addictive because there's a potential in me to have that addictive potential genetics and just environment, whatever it is, the games that are now built with the algorithms and the leveling up, and particularly the multiplayer systems where kids are saying, oh, it's a social situation for me. I don't have any friends in real life.

And it's the only place I can have friends. As a parent, you're torn. You're torn between, do I let me? my child sit in a room and be quiet and never have any friends or hand them this controller that lets them have a social situation. And we get tricked into that as parents. And so the first thing I would tell parents is that do not hand them the device, turn it off, stick through the two weeks that's going to take them to get disconnected where their brains relevel, protect their sleep, make sure that their nutrition is right, get them outdoors, get them outdoors, get

them oriented back into kind of that space and then start again. Because I do not see one child that I've ever managed in my clinical practice that's a gamer that has ever ever had a healthy relationship with gaming. So I read something and, you know, every time you say to people that there's a connection between violence and gaming, they just get very defensive. They said that's not accurate. There's no evidence. But I read a book one time. And I think that there's, you can correct me because you will know this. There's a study showing that kids who played regularly video games where they were shooting people on video games were like 100% accurate with shooting on video games. And unfortunately, some of the, like, I don't know if there's the connection between when they would walk in and actually use a real gun that they were far more accurate.

But because of that, the military actually started using some of the video game platforms to train because it just increased accuracy. Absolutely. Well, that's really scary. Desensitization, accuracy, and aggression. So what you do find in the studies, and there's a multitude of studies that show that is violent video games increases activity in the brain that increases aggression in children. So they can't say that it directly influences a violent act where somebody is assaulted or there's actually behavior based on it. But the aggression and the aggressive dysregulation of the brain and the child is definitely proven over and over again in research. Right. And then you desensitize them and then you put a weapon into the hands of someone who now is very accurate because they've been doing it 10,000 times. Correct. Correct. And the access, you know, you look at it and the access to the video games is so easy. So even if you're a parent that says that you don't want it, I'm just going to go to my friend's house. I'm going to play it over there. And there was actually a video game

that came out that was a school shooter video game. And it was very soon after, I think it was one of the shootings, Sandy Hook, I think. And I remember it coming out and I remember thinking, how is it possible that we're going to allow this in our society where you actually have a school-based active shooting video game.

Isn't that crazy? That's like seriously crazy. This is evil. It's money. But it's evil. It is evil. And it's something that you have to as a parent pay attention to.

Right. So you can say, oh, I'm going to let my kids play. video games, but it's only going to be sporting video games, because that's going to be okay. But once you kind of open that threshold for that child, you have to ask yourself, what is, what are you sacrificing? You're sacrificing that child from writing a bike, from going out on a skateboard. But there's another aspect to gaming, and that is the chat rooms. Aren't they a big problem?

100%. Particularly discord that attaches to it. A lot of parents don't know in PlayStation, they actually have a private browser that's hidden, that kids can go in and actually search the Internet on PlayStation themselves. Tell me why the platforms are doing that and why they're giving kids more and more access on it to allow those kids to become more connected to whichever platforms they are. So those chat functions and the ability for those kids to talk and to communicate are getting more and more private and more and more secretive from parents.

So as autism has gone up, parents use video video, games hope the kids will be able to connect because social problems are the hallmark of autism, right? It's one of the hallmarks, but actually it's making the problem worse, not better, because they're not interacting in real life. They're interacting in a fantasy life. Right. And they're not actually engaging in ways that are what normative behavior. is. There's not a video game that you go, you know, out that kids get, want to be a part of that doesn't make them a super star of an NFL football team or, you know, go out and become this

super aggressive military operative that's going out and getting all these rewards and having all these things. It's not, they're not going out and going to a playground and actually enjoying kids on a swing set in video games. You know, I was just thinking, we're working on a documentary on the end of mental illness and was four parts. And the first part was shit show. Because that's what we have in our society, right? With the level of mental health problems, addiction, every week, it's a school shooting. If we had to, like, agree on the top 10 causes of this shit show.

So we've talked about cell phones and social media and video games. What else would you put on the list? You know, I think it's the disconnection, the authenticity and connection between a family, right? We're not protecting that anymore. People used to talk about that family meal that we all sit down together. It wasn't about the meal. It was about connecting and being with each other, right? in spending time one-on-one, looking at each other in the eyes.

I don't meet a teenager nowadays that knows how to have a conversation and connect. They've lost that skill set. They don't look people in the eye. It's very interesting. Some of them. I mean, obviously. Yeah. Okay.

So the lack of family time. And even when families are together, everybody's on the phone. Model the behavior you need. and wish to see in your children, correct? Oh, no, I would get so upset because we had dinner together every night, and that was my, it's like, no, like that is, I would get very upset if people were on their phones. So I call the phone the mistress. It's just not, I'm not sharing.

Right, right, right. And adults have that problem. That's where I think kids are, I mean, they're checking email on there, whatever, but you still have to put limits on it. Right. And the political divide. is part of this as well. And I think that's the negative news and social media.

I think it's by design. That feeds what if you lean like a little bit left, will you end up more so? And if you lean a little bit right, you lean more so. And then it's so funny when some of my friends talk to me because they know I'm working with the White House, the White House Faith Office. And I give them my perspective.

They go, I never hear that. And I'm like, what do you mean? You never hear that. You know, you could have your political beliefs. And we didn't, it's like you just disagreed with people. You still had meals. You talked about your disagreements. And you might even have heated discussions about it.

And then you hugged it out and you like it was over with. Now I feel like it's by design. I feel like they want us to stay very divided and upset. and the algorithms are designed that way, and social media is a big part of that. But I've never seen people as angry at each other. It's so weird to me. It's wild. It is by design, because the more contentious it is in a platform.

They have control. They have control, and it engages us further. Right, but also the powers that be are just more in control. So I just, when I look at it that way, I'm like, I don't want anybody having that much control over, like, why do I care what your beliefs are? I don't, it doesn't, I can believe what I believe and you believe what you believe. Right. I talk a lot about empathetic curiosity.

Yeah. How can you be empathetic with somebody's position and curious how they got there without being disassociated or angry or stepping away? Yeah. It's craziness. So what about pornography? What about it? Do you want to talk about how big the problem is and how young?

I think the average age now is in the United States is eight. So by second grade, we have what in our core standard, we, we, we assign their first research project to research a historical figure. So in second grade, your children are now having Google accounts, right? They have access to the internet through the school. And they're told, we want you to look at Martin Luther King or Ponce de Leon or Sir Francis Drake, whoever it is. In the industry knows, and it's something called ad bundling. And they go and they bundle on these historic figures.

And as you can imagine, those children now 10 years before the age of 18, are now really subjected to pornographic images, and then you've got curiosity, you have shame, you have really pain. A lot of times I've got families coming in there. Like, I cannot get my kid now not to try to look at it because they're so curious and now they've talked to their friends about it, and now their friends are talking about it. So it's in elementary schools now, which is why we have to get, we have to start earlier. And I get called in mostly middle school. high school. You know, that's hormones are a mess. And, you know, kids are making questionable choices all the time anyway. But what we're not paying attention to is a preventative work.

And that's where pornography lies now is in that very, very young age where they're targeting them intentionally. So what do you think it does to their brain to be exposed to those images? I think that it causes massive damage in terms of their developmental phase. I think that it causes them a crisis of where they probably can't shut their brains off. I think that the dopamine spike, that probably the fear, you know, that whole system in their brain is probably highlighted in there. I just see a lot of kids in crisis not able to sleep. You know, they're really having struggles with their family, right?

Imagine how a young child now looks at your own behaviors. And if you don't have dopamine, you're depressed. You have no motivation. You become apathetic. You become excitement. seeking, and you're more likely to use substances. There's a great book. I think it was written 20 years ago called Thrilled to Death by Archibald Hart.

And he was talking about video games. It was written before social media and this explosion of pornography. That is tragic. So we have young girls in our family. and something so interesting with only fans is that they've been brought up to think, like at first it was like, oh my gosh, so-and-so is on only fans. And now it's not that big of a deal. And then it went from not being as big of a deal to, did you see how much they're making?

Like there's no normal job you can make that kind of money in. Now, fortunately, we've done a lot of preemptive work, but that's really hard to compete with. Extremely hard to compete with. And I think that we're not actually taking it seriously enough because if you think through what young girls are learning in that only fans environment is that the more that you take off, the more vulnerable and exploitive you are on that platform, the more money you're going to make. You don't really have to go out and engage and you don't really have to do those things. And I have images and video that we did a sting way back in the day with OnlyFans where you had children under the age of 12. And I see these young girls on there and they played a game. What can I do for you?

And it was this really interesting, like, subthread of where you had these very young girls on there. And we ended up having, we had KTLA, one of the investigative reporters, Bill Malusian at the time, came in. did this whole focus on OnlyFans and LiveMe and these other platforms where you had younger and younger kids going in there. But it is, like the days when I was in Philadelphia where I worked as a juvenile prosecutor. And I remember I would work with these drugs, these kids that were selling drugs on the street. And they were lookouts or 13, 14, 15 years old. And I'd say, you know, you don't want to do this forever. You know, you can have a real life. And they're like, what kind of life's going to pay me 10 grand a week? That's the problem. And we're talking about a

society where people are having a very hard time with a college degree making enough money to pay rent. Right. And then they figure out this hack, you know, and it's, what do you do? And how do you convince them in the short term that it's not damaging, right? So that's the part where it's like, oh, you know, it's not a big deal. I'm at home and nobody really can see me. And then that image or that, the only way that you get successful is if it gets sent out further in, further. And so it gets attached into these other threads, right, on other things like where other people are talking about it. So what are some of the problems you've seen? Well, you basically have, I had a 26-year-old that took her life because she was, had started out in one of those platforms and she basically

couldn't go out into public anymore. So she got big? She got very big. She was making lots of money, but she was absolutely paranoid. Almost, almost if you saw her, you would think that she had a schizophrenic paranoia. But it truly was built upon. the fact that when she went out into public, she was assuming that she had become so big in this pornographic world that people were recognizing here and seeing her. And she was just terrified of somebody coming up to her in real life. She could not handle it anymore. And by the time she was 26, took her life. Wow. Yeah. So it is a, it's a huge problem. And I think that there's a lot of young kids that grew up in that YouTube space, right, that the parents actually, and there's a lot of

documentaries that are out there that like the parents were actually renting these big mansions and they would bring the kids in and they would create these identities and and you look back and you see that those kids come back out of that and they're like I was a slave my parent was making me do all of these things over and over again it wasn't fun and and then I look at you know kind of reading levels and educational levels like kids aren't they're not interested and like going through the process of becoming what I would consider a functional member of society anymore. Yeah, of course. Because they can have these shortcuts and make the money.

And they don't see at the end where that's going to take them. So it comes about money and not purpose. Right. And the influencers. You know, you think about, I have so many people. I've got 20 and 30-year-olds that come to me and they're like, well, this TikTok psychologist I'm following said that this is probably what I should do. And I said, well, how's that working for you?

Right. So it's not really somebody that's educated in the space or really understanding it, but they're popular and they have millions of followers. So how do you not take that and use that as advice, even though it's terrible advice? And often it's really terrible advice. Well, I try to give really good advice. I do too. Even if it's good advice, you should take it for what it's worth. It's a tidbit.

It's a tip. It's not the whole thing. Right. So what do you think is the solution to the, issue of pornography, only fans. A very small group of people are making a lot of money, and most people aren't. They're just exploiting themselves. Right, right.

Well, and I think what happens is you see a lot of those people move from, if they're not making the money, they move into the space of I'll teach you how to do it and you pay me to teach you how to do it. And so we're starting to see kind of these ongoing platforms that are doing it. And I think the only way we're going to get around it to your question on the pornography is to go back to the family values, go back to the level. I mean, I would love my program to be in every hospital bag that a family goes home with. I want them to have my book. I want them to have your book.

I want them to have all of the information that they can before that child can even speak. Because once they're there, it's so hard to unwind that. And it's hard, particularly if you're a family with a family with that. the ability to support, right? And you don't have the resources for a therapist. You know, you're an influencer with education. You're an influencer with education, right? I'm an influencer with education.

I actually hate that word, but yeah. Right. But we're not called influencers. Right. We're called experts. Right. And we're going out there and we're talking about our expertise. We can't compete to the non-educated, non-expert influencer because of the number of

millions of views that they have. Right. Right. And so it's differentiating that and getting people back to wanting the content that really is valuable. Right. Versus just following along because it's going to get them the likes or get them paid at the end of the day. Right. Doing something purposeful. Yeah. You know, I was just thinking it's like, okay, so what's the answer to all of this? And I always go back to this one question. Whatever you're doing now, is it good for your brain?

or bad for it and doesn't make the world better. And if you can answer that, everything we've talked about is bad for your brain. Except having dinner without devices, that's good for your brain, especially if you're eating out of tennis cookbook. That's so much better for your brain. If you're walking in nature, if you're going to bed early, and I guess we should talk about it, going to bed with devices, good for your brain or bad for it?

Bad for your brain. Yeah. Never have a device in the bedroom. Yeah. The excuse of I need my phone for my alarm. I can buy you an alarm for $5 at Target. I'm not going to apply for that. And people are not on one device at a time.

They're on their phone, their iPad, and their computer. My word is, or when I talk to kids, I was like helping or hurting. you know, so you have to have a distinction between those two things. And you really have to recognize, like, if you're going to wear a helmet when you ride a bike, then you have to protect the brain on the inside. And so I talk a lot about it, yeah, about just nutrition and sleep and quiet space, right? We need to have more quiet time. And whether it's mindfulness or meditation or just giving yourself space where you can, like,

just take in some breathing. I noticed a huge difference in myself. I mean, for me, not everyone's going to agree with me on this. My faith's just whenever I feel like this is all so much and where do you start and how do you start over, I just, I have to bring it back to my faith because it's grounding. And it's like if it doesn't fit in with that, then, you know, it's easy for me. Not everyone's going to agree with that. But you have to find, you have to find that thing that grounds you if that's not for you, right? It's got to be the thing that that's your ground zero that you can ground to and know that it's how it's how you judge.

This is right and this is wrong. It's your moral compass almost, you know, that you can gauge against. Right. And I think that that's great. I think my grandmother, when I was a child, took me to a different church every six months. And she said, I want you to have an eclectic understanding of religion because world wars are fought over it and everyone thinks that they're right. And so I've continued that with my kids. And I'm the same way.

It's like you have to find some central, that North Star for yourself. And it doesn't matter what it looks like for yourself. but find that part that you can pull into and give yourself space to have that calmness and support internally. I'm just thinking we're doing this program in 100 churches, faith-based organizations around the world called the Aman Hole 4. It's a new 18-week program. I've built, and it's all based on Romans 12-1 and 2, and Romans 122 is be transformed by the

renewing of your mind, then you can test whether it fits God's good, pleasing, and perfect will. And so it goes back to the question, is this good for your brain or bad for it and doesn't make the world better? And if it doesn't fit that, it's not good for you. And then as a parent, having the courage and the... I like that word. Yeah, because it's not easy to say no sometimes if you're divorced. All my friends do it. One of my grandkids.

Well, if you're a divorced parent, there's a lot of guilt. And there's different reasons. And then there's fighting between the parents. Of course. One parent says it's okay and one parent says it's not. And then the child feels caught. And the child gets angry, but he can't express the anger. So he buries it and it comes out in anxiety or addiction or cutting themselves.

It's self-harm. But boundaries are love. And I tell that to, oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that was such a freeing thing to me. It is not my job to be my child's friend. I want to be their friend. Right.

Absolutely need to be the mother first. And it's not my job to make them, you know, think of me as their friend. It is my job to turn out a responsible, loving, grounded human being who, you know, who does good in the world. Thank you for saying that. So how can people learn more about you and your work? Probably the best way is to go to AskLisa.com and check out what I'm doing with Digital Assistance Academy or Foundation. We just recently finished up our AI, K-12 programming, so we're going to try to get the little kids understanding algorithms, understanding how to make better choices in that.

And then we have a teen leadership council that we're actually trying to put into churches into schools. where it's actually creating mentors in the kids. So sixth grade to 12th grade, and we're getting those kids to understand what technology is, understand what a leader is in the space. And then how do we create kind of a reading buddy system where those mentors go and then assign mentees in younger grades? And so they're going to start leading themselves.

So we just launched it, and it's working beautifully and creating, I think, hopefully a whole cohort of kids It'll be in the space speaking on it. Well, thank you so much for coming and being with us, especially in person. Yeah, it was wonderful. So grateful for our friendship and grateful for you. You're in a war for the health of your brain. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to shove bad food down your throat that will kill you early

or give you an addictive gadget, put terrible news in your head making you anxious. Hi, I'm Dr. Daniel Ayman, founder of a very. Amen Clinics and Amon University. My wife, Tanna, and I created the Brain Warriors Way course. It's 26 hours of content where we walk you through specifically in detail how to have a better brain and a better life. From the food you eat to the thoughts you think to the strategies that you can engage in every day. If you want to survive and thrive, you have to become a brain warrior. You are watching.

Change your brain every day. Leave us a comment, question, review, subscribe. Go to Dr.Lisa's AskLisa.com. AskLisa.com. AskLisa.com. A great website. And learn more about her books and Digital Citizen Academy and all the great work she's doing. Thanks for being with us.