Change Your Brain Every Day - Is Quarantine Causing Online Addiction in Children? With Dr. Lisa Strohman

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

With schools and organized activities shutting down during the coronavirus quarantine, kids are stuck at home with limited options to occupy their time. As a result, many are turning to online activities, such as binge watching and video game marathons. What can parents do to keep them from becoming addicted to this behavior? In this episode, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen welcome back Dr. Lisa Strohman for a discussion on how to monitor kids while at home.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your 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 nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome, everybody. We have a very special week for you. We have a returning guest, which is actually rare for us, but we just adore Dr. Lisa Stroman,

who is a psychologist, an attorney, an author, a mother who established Digital Citizen Academy, DCAKids.org, to help keep families safe from online dangers. Her background working as a visiting scholar with the profiling unit at the FBI during one of the most tragic school shootings in the U.S. helped create her passion to help proactively prevent and educate students, educators, and parents on the issues related to technology. And we're going to talk about, you know, kids are home now. technology uses are using the devices and they've done this for a long time but now parents have to work so the devices are now becoming babysitters yeah and so welcome Lisa it's so great

to see you again happy to be here here. Thanks for having me back. And what do you think COVID-19 is doing to the mental health of the kids in America? Well, I think that the kids, the parents, the educators, I think business leaders, I think everybody is impacted from an emotional standpoint. I'm in my clinical practice with my teens and my kids, anxiety, depression, just overall stress. So it doesn't have to have a clinical diagnosis for it to impact us. But it is not a normal situation to have to be quarantined and secluded from people who bring you joy, support, just emotional balance. So we're seeing a lot of issues psychologically that have been interesting

to me because those people who haven't had any sort of symptoms now are jumping in and saying, hey, what is this? I don't know what this feeling is. Yeah, no question. The isolation, the loneliness. And so more and more people are turning to online ways to feel better. And your work has demonstrated that's not always the best strategy. So how can parents keep kids safe during the pandemic? I mean, we know don't go out, don't go in groups. If you go to the store now, you should be wearing a mask.

And are you seeing something different during this time than you've seen before? Like, is there something special we should be paying attention to? I actually feel like our kids, my two nieces and my daughter are on their phone, like, are there on their devices less because we're home. So but we're keeping them busy. But, you know, we're here more than normal. And they're, they're with us more than normal, where they're normally with their friends more and at school and stuff like that. But my question to you at some point during our four episodes together, are you seeing something different during this time coming up on social media that we need to be aware of for kids? Absolutely. I think that what I really see is opportunists taking advantage

of it. And I think that from an educational standpoint, we are trying to keep the meter moving so that our school-age kids are moving forward and getting the content that they need so they progress into the next year. And so it's a difference between maybe being in a community where it's a one-to-one device and the kids are getting access to their teachers, they can get content, versus an inner city school district that doesn't have any technology. And they're getting a packet of papers that might be 20. And then they're closing the school and that's it for the year.

So the differential is really interesting. Just the nerdy scientist in me is looking at this and saying, there are a lot of parents that are paying attention to it. But we also have to balance in is it academic creative uh thoughtful use of technology or is it going down the rabbit hole and trying to see if we can watch everything on netflix um including tiger king that i'm pretty sure nobody would have watched we not get me started do not get me started that is like the best no psychiatric no i, I hate it so much. There is so much psychiatry. I can't, I can't watch. It's like a train wreck. I just can't watch it. I just cannot. So my world is a bit like that. Like

I'm looking at these families and I'm, I'm peering in. So they're bringing me into their worlds and they're saying, you know, my kids are punching holes in the wall or they're, they're really acting out because they might be gaming too long, which you both know. It just lights up that brain and gets them really aggressive and unregulated. And so they're not figuring out maybe that those are attached as soon as they need to. So that's what we're trying to do, obviously, with this podcast, is just talk about how increased use will, in fact, impact us behaviorally, emotionally, physically, all of those things. DCAKids.org to learn.

Tell us a little bit more of your origin story. Why did you get interested in online security for kids? So my first steps into the world was as a child myself, having been introduced to one of the first video game platforms at the Xbox, or the I'm sorry, Xbox, look at how young I'm pretending to be the Atari. And, and I remember I couldn't turn it off. So I have that addictive potential. Somebody talked to my grandmother, talked to me about it. And then fast forward, I learned that about myself, got into the area of looking at forensics, human behavior, motivation. And that's when I applied to be part of the honors internship program with the FBI.

And I was very fortunate to have been placed within the profiling unit in Quantico. I worked in, at the time, Casque. This was pre-9-11, but it was child abduction serial killer unit. So that's all we did. I started having night terrors. It was some of the most horrendous work and I remember thinking our biggest fear was really looking at the abductions that these predators could do in vans, cars, you know, around bus stops, there was like a geographic limitation on it. And so fast forward, I was there doing my PhD. And that's when Columbine happened. And it really unfolded how the internet was giving access, not only to our kids to put things out there and communicate and share their unedited thoughts, but it was literally

a two-way conduit. So these predators now could go after our kids in communication, in thought control, in grooming and learning. So that's really where I remember as a PhD student looking at this and saying, the science behind technology and psychology hasn't been discussed. And so I was really kind of at the bleeding edge ahead of where we are today. And thankfully we're catching up. Well, and I really, when we come back, I want to talk more about the psychology of technology and how important it is for parents, but also for adults to understand, because I believe these devices were created to be addictive. Stay with us. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com.

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