Offline with Jon Favreau - How Should Parents Manage Kids’ Screen Time?

Episode Date: June 5, 2022

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Starting point is 00:00:00 During the pandemic, a lot of our kids were using platforms like Roblox to socialize with each other and keep those relationships up. And I think that had a lot of really positive benefits. But, you know, I think that the overarching thing for parents is that we're always told how to say no and that good parents say no. But we're not given enough examples of what saying yes can look like. And, you know, watching a funny TikTok with your kid or looking something up online to answer a question that you both have, or, you know, merely just asking your kid what they did online today is something that we need a good paradigm for. And one of the experts in my book was saying, like, everybody knows what a soccer mom is or soccer dad. They bring the orange slices, they cheer on the sidelines, like they say great game. But what is a Minecraft mom? I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. My guest today is Anya Kamenetz, education correspondent at NPR and author of The Art of Screen Time.
Starting point is 00:00:57 We've talked a lot on this show about our relationships with our screens. But even though I've mentioned it a few times, we haven't really dug into our kids' relationships with their screens. But even though I've mentioned it a few times, we haven't really dug into our kids' relationships with their screens. It's something that Emily and I have been thinking about a lot now that Charlie is almost two, which means that it's getting harder and harder to keep him away from the television, YouTube, or even our phones. And I'm sure a lot of you with children, especially young children, have faced similar challenges. Whether you're asking, is my son or daughter on TikTok too much? Why are they spending so much time on Minecraft?
Starting point is 00:01:29 Or what are my kids hiding from me online? And then there's the pandemic, which put our kids in front of computers for hours a day, taking away learning, socializing, and play opportunities. Things that are essential to the development of all our kids. So here we are, in an increasingly online world, all struggling to make sense of what it'll take to raise kind, thoughtful kids. Anya Kamenetz has thought a lot about this too. She's the author of The Art of Screen Time, an evidence-based guide for parents on what
Starting point is 00:02:01 to do about kids and screens. She's interviewed pediatric and screen time experts to make sense of the research, and she's talked to hundreds of parents to find the best practices to help get your children's screen time under control. As an education reporter for NPR, Anya has also spent the last two years reporting on the impact of closing schools during the pandemic, and has tried to make sense of the consequences for an entire generation of students. We had a great conversation about what a healthy amount of screen time actually looks like, and how the pandemic has reshaped our understanding of screen time. As always, if you have questions, comments, or complaints about the show,
Starting point is 00:02:39 feel free to email us at offline at crooked.com. And please do rate, review, and share the show. Here's Anya Kamenetz. Anya Kamenetz, welcome to Offline. Thank you so much for having me. So when I started this show about all the ways the internet is breaking our brains, I was thinking a lot about my own screen habits. But now our son Charlie is almost two. So my wife, Emily, and I are starting to think a lot about his screen time, especially as he gets older. So you wrote a book in 2018 called The Art of Screen Time, which is all about how families can balance digital life and real life.
Starting point is 00:03:21 This obviously got a lot tougher during the pandemic, which I do want to get to, because I know you've talked a lot and written a lot about that. But way back in the before times, when you started writing the book, how much evidence-based research was there about kids and screens? And what did it say in general? So it's really interesting thinking about kind of like the overlap about what you talk about and what I was doing with that book, because it really became a game of kind of like, what is the quality of evidence that we're basing our recommendations and our decision making on? Because everybody says, OK, follow the science. But when it comes to things like what is the impact of watching television or playing video games or watching mom and dad on their phones. We just don't have great evidence. And a really good reason for that is that you cannot randomly assign toddlers to watch television for 12 hours a day, right?
Starting point is 00:04:13 It's not ethical to do that. And so literally, when it goes to things like, very simple things like, does watching a cartoon character hit another cartoon character make kids violent? We don't have good research on that because it's been considered unethical for decades to do true randomized controlled trials. That is interesting. And I saw you somewhere say that even like the Academy of Pediatricians, they have the, you know, no screens before two years old is the rule. And they basically said that they've kind of made that up. Dr. Victor Strasberger, who co-wrote that recommendation, said to me on the record in
Starting point is 00:04:52 the book, there was no evidence, none. We made it up. It was just based on what we thought would be a good idea. And they later kind of like backpedaled, soft pedaled that recommendation because we still don't have great evidence. But what they realized was that we're making these guidelines and literally no one is following them. And so we're losing our credibility, which you kind of can draw a parallel right from like the COVID stuff. Yeah. Well, I remember that because it was, you know, Charlie was over one years old. I can't remember how old he was exactly, but we took him to the pediatrician. And I remember Emily said at one point, like, well, we don't have him in front of screens, but like, if I'm like in the kitchen for a second, if he's just watching like five minutes
Starting point is 00:05:32 of something, that's okay. Right. And the pediatrician was like, no, it is not recommended. We're like, oh shit. Okay. So what have you seen in terms of evidence as like, like what are some of the risks of too much screen time for kids that we know about? Okay. So I think it's really important that you kind of started by talking about your own screen habits, because literally the most important thing and some of the most innovative research, especially with little kids, has to do with the screen interference that's happening, because really it's adults that are spending so much time on screens and children are modeling and watching us. And so the way that it kind of can interfere, there's pretty good research for example, on the effect of background television.
Starting point is 00:06:16 So when television is playing in the background, it causes a dramatic drop in parent-child conversation and interactions during playtime. And similarly, there's pretty innovative research. Dr. Jenny Rudesky is one of the people that worked on it, showing that if a parent is engrossed in their phone and a child is doing, you know, the things that children do, toddlers, the parent's going to be less skillful and kind of like, they just don't know what happened. They're kind of like missing what's right in front of them.
Starting point is 00:06:43 You know, you're not doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing as a parent, which is help a kid respond to their environment, process emotions, and repair when they get upset. And so it just kind of like lowers the quality of parenting in the house. I've tried to, when I'm playing with Charlie, like put my phone away. I obviously do not always succeed, but it really hit me the other day when I was like on my phone and he was playing and then he just sort of like looked at me and was like, hi daddy, hi daddy. I'm like, oh yeah, cause I'm on my fucking phone.
Starting point is 00:07:13 You know, and then I was like, all right, put this thing away. One of my favorite studies on this was done by an economist and it showed where like, so like when the iPhone came and there wasn't 3g everywhere it kind of was like you could see a natural experiment because there were some counties
Starting point is 00:07:28 that had it some counties that didn't and they documented a rise in playground injuries for young children which they attributed to the fact that like the people watching them at the playground were on their phones that one i'm less worried about because I'm such a helicopter parent and I'm like the anxious, like I'm like following him around everywhere on the playground right now to make sure he doesn't fall. That's a whole other episode.
Starting point is 00:07:53 Yeah, that is a whole other episode. Like I'm going to prevent him from ever falling. But that's scary that that's happening. How did the risks change with age? Like as kids get older? Because that's another, I'm sure it's not equal for all ages at all. It absolutely isn't. And I mean, with all of this stuff, it's very important to recall kind of the, so there's
Starting point is 00:08:15 like the dandelion versus orchid dichotomy. Like most of our kids are okay. Most of them are resilient to most circumstances and they're like dandelions. They can do well in a lot of environments. Some of our kids are very sensitive. They're like orchids. They need special consideration, special treatment. And so there's no one kind of prescription that's going to really go for all kids. And you really know your kid best. Right. That's a bottom line. That said, like across populations, we do see kind of interference with screens and bedtime. That's a huge issue.
Starting point is 00:08:48 And especially because the screen, you know, there's the light that shines in your eyes, there's the stimulating content. And kids tend to not do as well when they have television in their bedrooms, when they have, you know, access to screens kind of at all hours. And that's huge because it interferes with like, I mean, kids need sleep really a lot when they're developing when their brains are developing to learn um so you know that's that's a major area of focus and then there's some research about like eating and screens like it's interesting because kids aren't watching as much commercial television they're watching more videos and so it's not as, it's not the same as it was like Saturday morning cartoons when we were kids. But there's still some evidence that shows that like screens promote mindless eating.
Starting point is 00:09:33 And there's some correlation with obesity there. Those are the two major areas where there's the strongest amount of evidence. And then getting into older kids, you talk, start talking about social interactions and mental health effects, and then we can kind of get into that. So limiting screen time or maybe no screens for like a couple hours before bed, probably a good idea. And then we've been trying to do this this too that like when we're eating to make sure that everything's off so we can actually have a conversation it's funny you said that about the ads though because you're right like charlie now wants to watch like youtube videos and then when they're interrupted by an ad he now he just goes ad ad like like i'm just gonna like click because
Starting point is 00:10:21 you can skip the ad it's like okay great which like, I guess that's a good thing that you can skip ads now when kids aren't watching a bunch of ads, but still. Yeah. Do the risks differ between types of screen? Is there any research on that? Like, does a television differ from a phone or a laptop or an iPad? Absolutely. They all have totally different kind of affordances, right? So oddly enough, like there was, you know, from the 1950s on, there was a lot of panic about television and the impact, the moral impact of television and addiction to television.
Starting point is 00:10:53 But now it's like flipped around because families that sit and watch a screen together, that's kind of like the nostalgic thing that is like actually can promote bonding and conversation. And it's actually, I mean, it's considered potentially a positive family activity, especially if you choose carefully, if you're watching with your tween kids and you talk about what's on the screen. I mean, any kind of conversation, any kind of media that promotes parent child interaction can be good. It can help build vocabulary. It can help build kind of mental concepts. So that's, that's kind of TV. Weirdly, weirdly TV became a hero, right?
Starting point is 00:11:26 Which is very funny. Mobile devices, our problem with them is they go everywhere, right? There's no boundaries. They can go in the bath, they can go in the mealtime, they interfere when you're like having going on outings. And so thinking about like, when you want to have them when you don't want to have them is a big thing. And then you kind of think about apps, right? Apps and games, which have all these rewards built in, they kind of this addictive structure, and they can be, they can promote some kinds of dependency with those things, apps and games. So the pandemic, of course, meant a lot more screen time for everyone, especially kids.
Starting point is 00:12:01 You wrote a New York Times piece in July of 2020 titled, I was a screen time expert. Then the coronavirus happened, where you actually apologized to any parents who'd felt judged or shamed by past implications that they weren't enforcing healthy screen time balance. How did the pandemic change your views about kids and screens? I think what it really made obvious and visible to me is that the way that we talk about parenting in America is so blinkered with privilege, right? Like the whole idea that the bringing up of children is an activity called parenting and that people, individual families should be optimizing their children's experience rather than it be a collective responsibility that we all need to ensure is happening for every single child, regardless of whether
Starting point is 00:12:51 their parents have time to read a goddamn book or not, you know, why are we not making a safe environment for all of our kids? And the pandemic just intensified that so much. And it puts so much on individual families with very, very little help from the outside. And, you know, like I knew, I knew intellectually that I was like recommendations like, you know, turn off the screens an hour before bedtime. If you're a single parent and you're working the night shift and, you know, a family member is taking care of your kid, you have no jurisdiction ability to enforce these limits. It's a pipe dream, right? So we have structural issues to
Starting point is 00:13:25 fix before we start talking about what's optimal for kids with regards to screens. And I guess the pandemic was a leveling event in that way that even more privileged families who were used to being able to enforce those rules, suddenly you're all stuck at home. I mean, it was interesting to me because Charlie was a baby. He was born in July of 2020. And so we were privileged and didn't experience the like both parents working while the kids are running around. But I will say we all finally got COVID a month ago. And now he's almost two. And even just being together, stuck for seven to 10 days in the house during our quarantine. Emily and I both had such appreciation for all of the parents over the last several years
Starting point is 00:14:10 who were working nonstop in a home with kids who were five, six, seven, eight, nine, running around and trying to parent while you're working without any help. I don't know how people did that. And as you point out, for most people in this country, that's life almost every day outside of a pandemic. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have a childcare crisis and I mean, I ended up writing a whole other book about kind of parents' experiences during the pandemic because it was so glaring how much we fail to put children in our priority list, really. They weren't even there, like not even top, bottom.
Starting point is 00:14:49 But yeah, I mean, I think the key thing is though to remember that it's not really about the dosage of screens. It's really about like the whole environment and the whole context in which you're raising kids. Like having, you know, you could have a kid who is, you know, never exposed to media, but their parents are completely stressed out all the time and depressed and angry because they're overextended. And that's not necessarily better for your kid. You know, and the reality is that we have trade-offs in our day. And for example,
Starting point is 00:15:16 like, you know, if you put your kid in front of a television show, you can cook them like a nice organic meal. That's one trade-off. Or you spend that time doing a puzzle and you eat McDonald's for dinner. That's another trade-off. And the parent could argue either way, like those things could be the right thing for your family in that moment. What does the kid need? Do they need the one-on-one time with you? Or would you prefer to give them the balanced meal? Yeah. I heard you say something that I love, which is that it's not necessarily about time on a device. It's about the relationship you have to that device. Can you say more about that?
Starting point is 00:15:49 Oh, yeah, absolutely. So the way that the people who are doing really good research on this stuff talk about it is they talk about problematic media use. And really what it has to do with is what role is that media fulfilling in your life, right? So they use a scale that's borrowed from gambling addiction, which is a behavioral addiction. And it has to do with like, is this the one thing that the kid asks for? The one thing that they want, the one thing that makes them feel better when nothing else will, the one thing that they are willing to neglect other things in order to do it. Are they going to break the rules, sneak around?
Starting point is 00:16:27 You know, do they have that level of obsession with it? And those are the kinds of red flags, you know. And I think it's very, you know, easy to kind of understand it because we've all been through dark moments in our lives. I think when we're over relying on whether it's screens or anything else to get through the day. But that's what we're kind of looking for is those patterns of emotional attachment when it comes to our kids and media. In your New York Times op-ed during the pandemic, you had some great advice for parents. And one of them, there was, I believe, a doctor told you, his name was Ken Perlin, talking about connecting with other people. And he said, all we care about is whatever is going on between me and another person. Any medium that enriches that is successful.
Starting point is 00:17:06 Any medium that replaces that is a failure. I thought that's interesting. So electronic devices, digital devices are okay if they are sort of fostering greater connections with other human beings for kids and less okay if it's just like some kid playing a game. Is that what he meant? Yeah. I mean, it gets very complicated because, you know, and during the pandemic, a lot of our kids were using platforms like Roblox to socialize with each other and keep those relationships up. And I think that had a lot of really positive benefits. But, you know, I think the overarching thing for parents
Starting point is 00:17:40 is that we're always told how to say no and that good parents say no. But we're not given enough examples of what saying yes can look like. And, you know, watching a funny TikTok with your kid or looking something up online to answer a question that you both have, or, you know, merely just asking your kid what they did online today is something that we need a good paradigm for. And one of the experts in my book was saying, like, everybody knows what a soccer mom is or soccer dad. They bring the orange slices, they cheer on the sidelines, like they, they say great game. But what is a Minecraft mom? Yeah. You know, I've started to have that instinct as sometimes if I'm sitting on the couch with Charlie, and he's watching something on TV
Starting point is 00:18:21 for a few minutes, I always want to like ask him like, what did you think of that? What is that character doing? Why do you like that? Oh, is that the garbage truck you like? What's the garbage truck doing? Right? Just because I'm feeling like, I was like us, the two of us just zoning out him watching this and me and my phone can't be good. Like, but some kind of interaction with each other about what we're watching seems like it's a healthier outcome. That's spot on. That's exactly what the experts would tell you to do. I mean, not that you're like chattering in the kid's ear constantly, like they're okay. They're allowed to be like, yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to overdo it either, but I mean, parents are always
Starting point is 00:18:56 trying to overdo stuff, but like, but having that interaction, building that literacy and then that kind of character literacy, emotional literacy, especially if you're raising a little boy, like, why do you think, how does he feel right now? Why do you think he feels that way? Yeah. I do a lot of that. Oh my God. Yeah. It's great. Like it's, it's really great. It's not that different from a picture book. Like what really matters is the conversation that you're having and the way that you get to know your kids through their enthusiasms. And by the way, that's, what's so important when they get towards puberty and they want to start to hide their lives from you. If you have that established line of communication about what
Starting point is 00:19:28 they're doing online, what they're enjoying in media, it can open up so much when they get to that level where they're doing stuff that we don't, you know, we're worried about. That's a smart point. I think the question on every parent's mind is like, how do we encourage these healthy relationships? And, you know And you've talked about this. It seems like there's two basic strategies. One is regulating your kids' screen time, and the other is teaching them to self-regulate. Just to start with the first one, what are some of the healthy ways to set rules and boundaries for kids with screens? So we kind of talked about the big North Stars, protecting sleep and the bedtime and trying to have some screen-free family time, especially around meals.
Starting point is 00:20:10 Looking at the kids' overall schedule and rhythm and routine, you know, you also want to have the homework time, the outdoor time, the time with friends. And then hopefully screens kind of fit in with these other things that you're doing. That's kind of the big picture. Now, in terms of strategy, I'm just a big proponent of buy-in, you know, talking to kids, helping them make up rules together. You'd be surprised, even a very young child can kind of talk to you about strategies and rules. And then you can have the external structure things.
Starting point is 00:20:40 So having a certain place designated for the screens, chargers go in a certain place designated for the for the screens um a charger is going a certain place having visual calendars reminders passes um you know where you so people can see or the visual schedule where people can see like where the screens come in and everybody knows it using a timer i use the timer my kitchen stove constantly yeah we've done the timer a little bit five more minutes and then we're gonna have dinner it is your best friend because it's like it's not me that said it it's the it's the ringer emily does that a lot and that's that's been very useful um and this seems like the more difficult one but probably the more productive which is teaching kids to self-regulate when it comes
Starting point is 00:21:19 to screens how do you how do you do that well if they never get a chance to do it they're not going to develop it if you're always the external force if they never get a chance to do it, they're not going to develop it. If you're always the external force, then they never get a chance to do it. So, you know, teaching self-regulation can be pretty tricky, but it can be as simple as kind of like prompting a moment of reflection. So, for example, you know, when we're talking about cookies, right, it's like, how do you know when you're full? Okay. Do you, does your body really want another cookie right now? Just getting them out. And of course they're gonna be like, yes,
Starting point is 00:21:52 it does. And they're grabbed the cookie. But like over time, that kind of question gets insinuated and it becomes kind of part of the process. Um, and you know, the other thing with self-regulation, you know, it was sort of a, uh, extreme idea, but some people I know have tried it with success to be like, we're going to have a no-holds-barred day where you decide how your screen use is going to go, and then let's see how you feel. Oh, interesting. That's a way to do it. Yeah. It's like, eat all the junk food you want for a day, and then we'll talk about how your stomach feels. We talked a little bit about, at the beginning, about sort of the most important relationship is, like, parents with their own phones. Yes.
Starting point is 00:22:42 Like, what's your relationship with your phone like when your children are around? Have you set like rules for yourself? How have your habits changed since you've started doing this reporting and writing? Well, I would say that I'm not the paragon by any means. I'm definitely a person who uses a lot of social media and who's connected a lot of the time for work. But I really do try hard and I kind of prompt that conversation where, you know, we keep our meal times pretty designated. We have times that are, you know, screen free, free time during the day, like on the weekday and then on the weekends as well. So, you know, but it's really more of an atmosphere where like my kids can also ask me for the time, like if they need me to put my phone away or, you know, if I'm asking them to put the phone away, they can ask me to put the phone away too. And I'm trying to make sure that they're keeping me honest. But honestly, it's a work in progress because the kids get older,
Starting point is 00:23:32 you know, everybody kind of, your routines and your rhythms change. Right. You got to just keep adjusting. Pandemic meant a lot more screen time for kids. It also meant a lot less school time, at least in person. You mentioned the new book that you're writing now about the pandemic's effects on children called The Stolen Year. What have you learned so far from that book? I mean, I feel like this is going to be some of the longest lasting impacts of the pandemic as a social phenomenon is the way that we pushed our kids off of their developmental trajectories. They have lost learning time. They have lost social time.
Starting point is 00:24:10 There has been a mental health implosion among many young people. And then the way that we kind of allowed families to suffer economically as well by pushing mothers out of the workforce. And first we extended economic help and then we withdrew it. And we kind of like left families, you know, worse off than they were at the beginning. So, you know, it's a real, it was a real heartbreaker to witness and be a part of at the same time. And I think what's dangerous to me now is, I mean, we're just starting to get the real evidence. I mean, people who watch these things knew that the pandemic was going to have a severe
Starting point is 00:24:49 impact on kids' learning and social development, but the numbers are coming in now. And there's such an urge to kind of write it off or wash it away or rush back to normal. And I just don't want us to do that because we need to deal with this because we're going to be dealing with this for another decade at least. This issue has really concerned me because I also think that the danger here is that it's fallen into these partisan buckets, right? Where like, if you're concerned about what the pandemic sent to kids, and then that goes to school closures, then you're someone who didn't take the pandemic seriously enough. And that was the Republican side. And then the Democrat side is like we took the pandemic very seriously and it was necessary to school to close the schools. But the truth is, like, yes, we needed to take the pandemic very seriously.
Starting point is 00:25:35 But also there's incredible damage being done to kids that has been done to kids by by closing schools. And when we were talking about this, everything has trade-offs and thinking about those trade-offs in a really critical way and, and trying to like push the politics out of it and just think about sort of what's best for kids and what are the risks that we're sort of willing to bear and how, if you close a school or not close a school, there are, there are plenty of risks either way. There's risk to health and then there's risk to learning. Um, I don't think that we've we've really, we've given that sort of the thoughtful public debate that it deserves. The closing off of the public conversation about it was very heart-wrenching to watch. And as someone who, you know, I was working for National Public Radio, we're not a polarizing voice in media. And I was trying to quote what followed the science. And I think
Starting point is 00:26:26 actually my work in the artist screen time helped me understand that the science is obviously a moving thing and communicating the science of the public as a whole other thing. But the bottom line is done like no other country did what we did. We did not have any jurisdiction in the United States that ever closed bars and open schools. We either had Florida open everything up or we had cities all over this country with open dog parks, closed playgrounds, open bars, open restaurants, closed schools. And that is not justifiable.
Starting point is 00:26:56 Yeah. Like from a public health science or moral perspective. Well, and look, like I think that that there's a, there's a time at the beginning of the pandemic, and particularly a time before vaccines, where you were like, we didn't know what the science was, there wasn't enough research. And there's a deadly pandemic. And so yes, we're going to do whatever we can, we're going to, you know, even then, a lot, you know, bars and restaurants tend to be to be open, which is, of course, we make the decision that like, you know,
Starting point is 00:27:25 that we're going to let capitalism continue, right? We're going to make sure the bars and restaurants are open, but we could close the schools who are closing the schools. But I do think then it got to the point where there was enough science in and we started looking at the risk for kids and stuff like that. And it just, I mean, it seems like remote learning was mostly a failure. But I don't know what you've seen from your research. You've been writing this book. Well, first of all, I just want to address the timeline for a sec, because Europe started opening their schools in April of 2020.
Starting point is 00:27:55 And Europe, the European equivalent of the CDC was full throated on the need to open schools and the fact that opening schools could be done safely. Wow. So we have a real divergence there. It's also the case, one thing that I reported on was, you know, not every childcare center could close in the US because doctors had to go to work. And so, for example, in New York City, there were 100,000 children of essential workers
Starting point is 00:28:22 going to school in school buildings from the first days of lockdown. So not only did we have, we had actual real life data of what happens if you follow protocols and you kid kids in cohorts and you have masks, not only, so it was New York City, there were across the country in YMCAs, there were children were congregating with adults. And those environments were not high spread environments, even when they didn't know anything, even more the CDC had put out any guidance. They were like, well, we are going to try this and because they had to. And they did. And by July 2020, we had pretty good evidence from Europe and from our own experience in the U.S. that it was possible to keep spread down. And with a really concerted effort and good public communication, we could
Starting point is 00:29:11 have built confidence in those measures and we could have given schools what they needed to stay to open and stay open safely. That's my belief. It would have taken a whole lot of things to go differently, but it could have happened. Yeah. And like so much of the pandemic, the communication becomes difficult, it becomes difficult to have a public conversation that is not like riven by politics. Like trust in institutions, which started off very low before the pandemic, became even worse during the pandemic, no matter how hard people were trying to get things right. It was a real, real mess. It's a people were trying to get things right. Like, it's just, it was a real, real mess. It's a real mess. And I do worry about like, I've been talking about this a lot, having, having a child now, just the law. I mean, I think Charlie was, is at the age where
Starting point is 00:29:56 it was okay for him to not see kids. Cause he was on, you know, one years old when this was going on. But, uh, I have friends with friends with children who were four, five, six, seven, eight, and have noticed a difference in how they socialize and how they're developing because they haven't been around friends and they haven't been around other children. And I don't know how you fix that. I mean, that's a pretty scary thing. It's going to take time and sensitivity and what we didn't do, which is prioritizing kids' needs. I mean, there is a, you know, the Surgeon General declared to children a pediatric mental health emergency. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:33 But part of that had to do with we'd never had the personnel that we needed to serve kids' needs. And it was taking months and even years for children and adolescents with psychiatric problems to see and get the treatment that they needed. And the pandemic just made that a thousand times worse. But what I don't see is like the massive federal investment in training, you know, pediatric mental health professionals to get them into those seats so that we can start to have the beds that we need to treat kids and the counseling that we need to treat kids. Or the investment in public schools in general and education.
Starting point is 00:31:07 That's a whole other podcast. So we're all living through a pretty difficult and turbulent moment right now. Many kids, as we've talked about, are experiencing that turbulence themselves. Many of them are seeing it on their screens. What's the most important lesson you've learned as a parent, a reporter, now an expert on this subject, about how to help kids cope and thrive in times like these? That's a great question. So what I believe really strongly is that we don't make a better world for our kids by not talking to them about the hard stuff.
Starting point is 00:31:47 I think that there is, whether it's a school shooting, whether it's climate change, whether it's the impact of the pandemic, there are ways to talk about all of these things and to deliver the message that I am here for you. I care. It's okay to have big feelings.
Starting point is 00:32:06 We deal with our feelings. We have a toolbox for dealing with them. And the fantastic thing about it is, you know, I followed five families in depth throughout the first pandemic year. And these are families, you know, some of them in really tough circumstances, but they all received moments of kind of grace and clarity just from having that extra time together. And it's such a sad thing because we forced so many parents away from their kids and into the workplace and long hours. And just that they all appreciated, every parent that I talked to appreciated the time that they had. And it gave them a new perspective on who they were as parents, their resilience and on their kids' resilience. And, like, I am the farthest thing from a Pollyanna.
Starting point is 00:32:56 But the reason I care so much and the reason I, you know, spend all my time thinking about children is, like, children are this long-term upside opportunity. You invest in a kid today and you get the return on that investment for decades to come. And the same thing is true for, you know, kids go through tough times. They have the ability, ability. It doesn't mean it's a certainty to bounce back. If they get their investment, if they get the time, if they get the love and the care, they can come back. And I think that there is such a huge opportunity for the kids of this pandemic generation to be able to incorporate it into their lives and their life stories and to who they become as adults and say, yeah, I went through a really intense time, but I'm stronger because of it. And that's part of the story that we're going to have to help them tell by actually doing it, actually doing what it takes to repair and to make it better.
Starting point is 00:33:40 Yeah. There's a lot of things we can't control, but what we can control is like whether we're there for them and listening to them. And you ended the op-ed with that where you can't control giving them a hug. That's right. You can be there next to them. Anya Kamenetz, thank you so much for joining Offline. This was a wonderful conversation and I appreciate all the work you're doing. Thank you so much for having me. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau.
Starting point is 00:34:14 It's produced by Austin Fisher. Andrew Chadwick is our audio editor. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis, sound engineer of the show. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thank you.

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