Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - We Chat to A Parenting Expert About The Netflix Show Adolescence

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

A family's world turns upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested for murdering a schoolmate. The charges against their son force them to confront every parent's worst nightmare. The new Netflix show Adolescence is putting a microscope on what it's like to be a teen in this day and age. We chat with parenting educator and advocate Holly-Jean Brooker about navigating this new climate as a parent.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Jono, Ben and Megan podcast, thanks to HelloFresh, your home advantage for delicious midweek dinners everyone will love. Joining us right now, friend of the show, Holly Jean, of course you're a parenting educator and advocate. Thanks so much for your time. You're welcome, thank you for having me on the show. A lot of talk about the Netflix show, which has really sort of shone a light upon the topic, which I was spoken to you about previously. Where are you sitting on it? Well, I saw Adolescence last week and kind of binge watched it. It's not easy viewing. It's raw and it's authentic, but it's very real. And what's great is that it's really

highlighting this issue that I'm really being really concerned about in my advocacy work for a few years is just this unfiltered online world that our kids are growing up in that often as parents we just don't know about and we just don't understand. Did you guys watch it? Even just talking about it gives me anxiety so I watched it and I couldn't sleep because I'm just torn like my kids are two and four and so I'm they're not even on social media. But my son is already asking if he can go on YouTube, and he's four. And I'm like, no.

But I feel like I can only fend him off for so long. But also, you're like, once you open YouTube, you're like, geez, it's a wonderful babysitter. At times, it's got its pros. It's got its pros. But then they start watching one thing, and then suddenly you're like, how are you here? Yeah. This is the thing.

I guess we're all just navigating through this time. I was saying that to my kids the other day. You know, like, I haven't grown up with this as being the norm. It's easy to say, okay, no phones, but then you're like, well, they're not in touch with their friends, and they miss out on things as well, and you don't want to do that to your kids. So it's a real delicate balance as a parent, right, Holly?

It is, and I think, yeah, that's absolutely true. We live in a digital era, and we don't want to just fully lock the door down and not have our kids connected because this is the world that they live in. But I just think it's really essential as parents that we understand the world that they live in and that they do have boundaries in place

because, you know, with older kids, ideally we're putting boundaries in place and we're teaching them critical thinking and we're kind of scaffolding them into this independence online. But at young ages, we absolutely can put good boundaries in place. If you've got kids at a primary school age, you are in the ideal zone putting strong boundaries in place around tech because if you don't, it does take over.

I am a big fan of YouTube kids over YouTube because with my advocacy work with YouTube, I understand how little filtering goes on with YouTube. And there's just so much content getting uploaded every single day, 3.4 million videos every single day. So they have an automated filtering process, but things slip through the cracks. So there's a heavy reliance on user reporting. So we just have to really make sure that we're keeping them on platforms

that we know are safer. So YouTube Kids is a great example of that. And then just trying to keep tech out of bedrooms, keeping devices out of bedrooms. I can't say that strongly enough. Well, that's the thing, I think, you know, something that's really stuck with me, I've seen it on social media from the show,

is, you know, the parents saying that they thought their kid was safe because, you know, he was at home. The teenage kid at home, he's home, he's safe, but what's going on with the phone and the computers and all that stuff in the bedroom? They couldn't see. It's another world, and that really hits home to parents. Well, I think this is it.

When we give our kids a phone or a device, an iPad, we're giving them access to an unregulated adult environment. So we're giving them access to content that is not, there's no classification of content. It's just you're giving them access to everything. So that's where the filtering comes in, parental controls, and then really good conversations with our kids to help them think about what the content is that they're absorbing and how it's impacting them.

So we want the boundaries, we want the filtering, but we also want them to think critically about what they're absorbing online and how it's impacting them. Interesting, you know, you've done a lot of work in this area and hearing from you, you don't have your kids on phones. So if you were to push reset on this whole period in history and you could have rules in place for when kids did get on technology, what age would that be? Do you know, I understand that parents want to be able to connect with their kids via a phone, but I think what we've done culturally is we've created this norm where our kids are having phones at a really young age so normally by nine or ten kids in New Zealand have a smartphone

and I think that's crazy because we're giving them access to like I said unfiltered online environment but I know the impact that the constant checking the constant notifications the constant content information coming at me. I know what that does for myself and my mental health. I see the research. I'm engrossed in the research all the time with my studies and my advocacy work. And I just don't want that for my kids. I'm holding off as long as I can. And my kids are fine about it because we talk about it. We've actually got a kid safe, the Samsung safety for kids safe smartphone that we keep at home so my son can WhatsApp messages friends, but it's just not free for all, free access all the time. Just at home when I'm around, I've kind of set an hour limit on it and he's

fine with that. Because do you think the constant connection, the fact that we are constantly contactable has made us scared and we've forgotten that back in the day we would go out without a phone and we were fine. Yeah, well, I think that's what, you know, there's a lot of work being done, advocacy work by Jonathan Heights in America, and he talks about the loss of free play. So we're more anxious about our kids going out to the playground down the road and playing by themselves, climbing a tree

or getting injured. We're more worried about that than we are about them being at home on a screen. And so I work really hard to balance that with my kids because I see the benefits. I really do see the benefits of the kids being outside. Like they're 13 and 9. They're still playing outside in the backyard or going into the park

with their mates and playing soccer and they're not on their phones. And I'm not saying that I've got all the answers because I absolutely do not and we do use screens. But I just see the benefits so clearly and the research is coming out now to back that up and I love that. I love that we've got really good data and research now. We've had screens and phones for 15 years with our kids and we're seeing the impact of that. So this is the time that we can go,

oh, actually, let's learn from some of these things. Let's use tech to our advantage, like really limit the disadvantages. And we have to be proactive about that as parents because it's not just, you know, my work is in government and advocacy, calling on government and big tech to put measures in place to protect our kids. But we need a systemic, multifaceted approach. The parents play a massive role in that. Interesting one, too, that now we've had all of this experience, if laws will be put into

place, like if there's an age limit, 16. Do you think 16 is a good age? 16 when you can start learning to drive. I think the date now in Australia is at 14 or 16 in Australia. They're pushing for 16, yeah. I mean, academics would say 18 is the ideal age because that's when your brain's more fully developed as an adult. But 16, I think, is a more realistic time frame and I would absolutely support kids not having social media

to 16 because honestly in the last two years and just if you if you look at the research and what's happening online you will see such significant shifts in the way content and the types of content that's been pushed out on social media now it's's not what it was five, ten years ago. There was an article in the Herald today about sadistic exploitation. So groups targeting young people with really sadistic, disgusting, depraved content and encouraging them to create it. So we've got a really different landscape that our kids are actively consuming and things have changed for the worse.

So we have to be realistic about that. We want our kids to be online. We just don't want to give them free, unfiltered access. Because that's what I was going to say to you is it's really like, it's great that you're saying that and it's great that Australia are thinking about the 16 law. But once they're already on, say you've got a 14, 15-year-old who's already on it, talking to all their friends, how are you going to pull that back? Yeah, it's hard now in some ways.

I mean, it was good probably that they made the rule in some ways, whether you believe it or it's a good thing or not. Phones in schools, at least that was the rule for everyone. Yeah, that's the benefit of having a legislation around this, is it does give parents more power. Oh, but that's the rules. Things are illegal. Yeah, the police said so.

Yeah, it's the government. They've done it. But yeah, I think kids that are teenagers or early teens that are already online, I think it's absolutely within your power as a parent to say, hey, I know that I've given you this phone and I've given you access to Snapchat and TikTok. There's a lot of great information coming out online now

that is really concerning, and I'm a lot more aware of what's happening online, and I actually really want to try and scale things back with your phone here. So I don't want to take it off you, because I understand that's how you connect with your friends, but I want to scale it back. So we're going to make a new rule in our family. Maybe it's like from six o'clock the phones are off for the night or seven o'clock, and then you use the tech to reinforce your new boundaries. So you use parental controls. I advocate for Safe Surfer.

So use the parental controls to enforce your boundaries and expect pushback. Your kids will be pissed off about it. There might be a few days where they're really upset about it or maybe a few weeks, but it will adjust and the new norm will get established and you will see positive benefits from that. Tell you what's another good one is I was reading an article will adjust and the new norm will get established and you will see positive benefits from that tell

you what's another good one is i was reading uh an article a couple of weeks ago from uh an expert and they were like in their eyes there's no privacy when it comes to kids and their phones so if you want to look through the chat you can look what's being said on whatsapp and all their chat groups and you can gather a lot of information by doing that nightly. Yeah, that's such a good point, and I think we really want to implement those kind of philosophies early on. So when your kids are young and you give them a phone or a device, set that as a standard.

So in my family, I say it's a family. I own it, and the kids don't just have free access to devices. Because I just see it in my work. I see how much it takes over. But it's just that it kind of takes away that feeling of, oh, this is my phone. You can't look at it. I had a parent say to me two weeks ago when I did a parenting talk that the eight-year-old has a phone because of the school bus. They really respect their privacy, so they never look at it, but they're not sure if that's the right approach. And I just thought, gosh, an eight-year-old, respecting an eight-year-old's privacy to

the point that you're not checking their phone, but giving them free access to the internet, that balance is off there. And we talked about that, and we talked about strategies of how she could change that culture with her daughter, and she left feeling confident that she could change that. But the balance really is off in society, and we've got the power to change that so it's cool to talk about this and it's cool to chat about it with other parents and whole new world whole new world isn't it i'm happy it's come from a fictional tv show and not from a real life yeah you're right i mean i i'm sure it's similar things have happened it's gone to the extreme on

a fictional tv show you're right so it's probably quite a good conversation it's a good platform holly i'm sure we could continue to do this all day, but thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. We appreciate it. Holly, Jim, Brooke, thanks so much for your time. Cool. Have a good day.