Change Your Brain Every Day - Practical Tips for Kids’ Use of Technology, with Dr. Lisa Strohman

Episode Date: December 26, 2019

In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen are once again joined by psychologist and author Dr. Lisa Strohman for a final discussion on kids and technology. In this episode, Strohman and the Amens give you practical tips to make your family’s technology habits happier, healthier, and safer.

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. We are back and we are still here with our friend, Dr. Lisa Stroman and her book Unplugged. And I just, I'm loving this topic. This is just so good. I'm actually learning a lot. This is amazing. So thank you for being here with us. It's really validating

a lot of what I've felt and thought over the years, especially for parents who are not staying connected with their kids and paying attention to what's going on in their worlds. And you touched on something in the last episode. In this episode, I'd really love for you to give us more tips, practical tips, but also address one thing. You talked about how, why do kids need technology if you are dropping them off, if they're with a tutor, if you know where they're at. But not all parents know where their kids are at. And not all kids feel secure in their environment. So what do we do about those situations? I was a latchkey kid.

We didn't have phones back then. But what about those situations? And because of that, you actually had an anxiety disorder. It's severe. When she was nine, her mom sometimes wouldn't come home and she'd end up calling the bars and trying to hunt her down. And you actually drove a number of bartenders crazy. Yeah.

Well, 24 hour restaurants. Yeah. So there, I mean, we didn't have phones back then. I mean, I used a landline, but what do you do for those kids who are latchkey kids, who walk themselves home, who don't have the perfect environment at home, who come from broken homes and parents are fighting and not letting them call. And do you know what I mean? Like those types of situations. What do you say to that? Excellent point on that situation, because I think that we have more and more families that are,

that are divorcing, or you have kids that are coming from fosters, or you have like, you know, these kids that need some sort of belief or comfort that they have somebody looking up over them. So again, that goes back to if the kid's using it as a tool whereby they're like, you know, I'm feeling uncomfortable in this situation because there's a stranger in front of me, or I'm uncomfortable in the situation because I got home and one of the windows was open. I'm going to call. I'm just going to like walk myself through the house while I have an adult on the phone that I trust. Excellent use of the phone. If they're using it because they don't, they're not learning that internal locus of control. So in psychology,

there's external locus of control and internal. External is everything around me is in control and makes me feel better. The things inside of me don't. So that's the balance or the line there. And again, it's divorcing parents. You want to understand like your child needs to still learn how to internally manage themselves. And so don't let it get that far where you feel like you're kind of beholden to your child to like answer the call so they feel better. And just pay attention as a parent to that. But it's an excellent point that I think a lot of kids need some sort of security in these transitioning times with them. And it's still our job as the adults in the room to teach them how to have that internal fortitude, grit, get them into that place where they feel confident inside themselves.

Yeah, and I like what you said about are they using it as a tool or are they being used? And that's pretty important. That makes sense to me. Well, it completely fits with the evil ruler concept in the end of mental illness or the fact that you're in a war for the health of your brain, but also the brains of the kids. Saying, do you mind if we track your location? And yes, I mind. Why do they need to track my location? Even the apartment building that we have up in LA, can we track your location and yes i mind why are they why do they need to track my look even the apartment

you know building that we have up in la can we track your location no why do you need to track my location why does everybody need to track your location it's crazy we don't well they sell it so let's do tips um based on your extensive experience and we have seven minutes, give us as many tips as you can that our brain warrior families can start to implement. The first one is be aware that you said. What else can they do? The second thing is sit down with your kids. And that's why I always give this free trial out because I think you sit down with your kids and go through the key concepts of where they are developmentally. Like, do they understand the terms of service? Do they understand what it means when you say yes to

downloading an app? Do they understand that there's a geolocation service based on each one of these apps, right? Our kids feel like there's a lot of things that are free in this world because of technology. And the adults typically understand that that's not true. Everything is an exchange. Everything is a transaction. And so if we're giving ourselves an app or a free trial of an app on technology, they're typically taking something from us, whether it's our facial recognition data, whether it's our tracking location, and they resell it. So that's how they're making their money or they're advertising to us. So get the terms of service would be the second thing is sit down with your kids and say,

do you really understand what this means? Cause I think kids, of course, like depending on their age, they're smart enough to understand this. And, and I will tell you, Tana, for your 16 year old, you sit down and you go through the terms of service of Instagram or TikTok. Oh, absolutely. Like it's a global license that they're giving away that they can resell and their image can be on billboards anywhere in the world. And they never have to tell her like that. That's frustrating. I didn't even know that. That's crazy. Absolutely true. Yeah. So one of the, the app presentations I do, yeah, they can take it and you license them on all of them to take it and resell it. They can even modify it. So if

they want to change her face or body, I think the whole world is watching me all the time. Oh, I do too. I'm convinced of it. Everybody's watching. When Edward Snowden came out and said the, what was it? The CIA is basically watching everything you do.

Yeah. I'm like, well, my life's not that interesting. When you grow up Roman Catholic, like I grew up like seriously Roman, you think God is watching and judging everything you do. So it's like now

god the government i'm fine having god watch me everyone else i'm not so sure but i give up it's like i know they're watching so you know i'm just gonna like give them a big okay more tips yeah so mood changes so this is a challenging one like with littler kids elementary school so i'll kind of break it down elementary Elementary school, you start to see mood swings. You start to see friend group changes or you start to see grades shift at that elementary school age. That shouldn't be happening there. So that's a huge sign. Online bullying happened to my, happened to my niece in fourth grade. It's, it's a real thing that people, again, kids don't know how to talk about it. And when they do talk about it, parents freak out and they take their technology away. So guess what? Kids

don't talk about it. You teach them to lie. Right. So it's, that's the challenge of like, with our kiddos of like, so that elementary school age, you shouldn't be seeing those massive mood swings. You shouldn't see in that. When you get to middle school, middle school to about sophomore in high school, that's when I tell parents like the wheels come off the bus, you're going to have to like belt in and like really kind of prepare because mood swings, like, you know, them telling you that they hate you, that their friends are more important, they don't want anything to do with you. That's all pretty normal. But it's exacerbated by technology. Because if you allow them in the bedroom, and you allow them to shut the door, to me, that's as bad as letting them get on a field with a football and a helmet.

So what should parents do? Because a lot of kids when they're 10, 11, 12 do get phones and they often will keep them at night. So what is your thought is when you go to bed, the phone needs to be in my room? There should be a central charging station. As parents, we should role model. We should not have our cell phone in our room. There's absolutely no reason why people are sleeping with their phones at night. Kids are not trauma surgeons that need to be woken up at 2 a.m. because there's some like a crisis in the world's there's a minute amount of people in this world that need to be able to answer and it should be in silence in the middle of the night yeah i always say if you're again like people are like

oh i need it for my for my alarm really they're like 4.99 at target at this point so so there's no reason that you need to have your phone next to your bed it is you know in in adult couples it is absolutely a wedge that goes in between couples because we're looking at our feeds, like we're like paying attention, we're reading articles, whatever it is that we want to give excuses for. It is not what we should be doing. And we shouldn't be role modeling that for our kids. They need that sleep. It is priority number one for developing brains is getting them sleep, nutrition, all of those things. Could not agree with you more.

Now he wants to change the subject. Central Jardine station. Don't sleep with your phone. I actually read myself to sleep. So, yeah. But I have blue light blockers. And leaves it on the bed. Drives me crazy. I throw it off the bed because it just drives me crazy. It's the mistress.

I call it the mistress. I call the phone the mistress. Drives me insane. I would say try it for a week. What a great Christmas present, holiday present, right? But, you know, give it a present. Give a week without technology in your bedroom and see how things change. Get the mistress out of the bedroom.

Did you hear her? I heard it. Another tip for kids. You're leaving me speechless. All right, other tips. I'm never going to be invited back. I know you are, for sure. Another thing I think with kids is to recognize is when you see them changing weight rapidly.

And again, this is hard because of puberty and that age. But they're not moving. Butberty and like that age, but, but, but it's like that. Yeah. So they're not moving as much. They're not active as much. So, so again, I always say, if you're going to allow your child access to technology, then counterbalance it with something. So is it, are they doing a musical instrument? Are they doing activity? Are they doing a sport? So in my house, real sports before fake sports, you absolutely get no technology time on the weekends. We don't do any technology money through Thursday weekends. We allow it, but it's only if you're engaged in a real sport. So you have to be on a team sport or participating sport

and you have to have done your music every day during the week. Cause I know that that helps build neuronal neuronal structures in their brains and what they need to do. So it's interesting. You and I were talking about this before we started. Our daughter, she started noticing it in probably eighth grade that when she spends a lot of time on her phone, it's proportionate. She starts to not feel well. She starts to feel anxious. She's very anxious anyways. She starts to feel anxious. She starts to feel depressed.

She starts to compare herself to other people. And she pointed that out to me um and which we've been telling her forever but she actually then fortunately notices it and so she started limiting herself which i thought was fantastic um which you know we would anyways but she did it to herself like to an extreme which i thought was amazing um so she would stay connected to her friends but not she wouldn't really spend a lot of extra time surfing through Instagram and stuff like that. So I thought that was actually really interesting that she would notice that it made her feel bad. We're going to have to stop.

But Lisa, tell people how they can learn more about your work and how they can use that to protect themselves and their children. I would encourage the listeners to go to dcakids.org. We are 100% behind parents, families, kids of understanding how to manage balance, have healthy relationships with technology, how to use it as a tool and not have it use you. That's our platform and that's what we try to do every day at dcakids.org. This has been so informative, even for me. I just, I learned a lot. This was great. Thank you so much. We'll look forward to having you back after we have this discussion. Thank you. Thank you so much. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always

know when there's a new episode and while you're at it feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast if you're considering coming to amen clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from brain md 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. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.