The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - How Smartphones Changed Childhood (And What to do About it)

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

The happiness of young people has taken a big hit since the advent of the smartphone - and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that there is a direct link. He warns that allowing children easy access to the internet and social media adversely impacts their sleep, their self-esteem and even how their brains develop.   Jonathan explains the dangers he sees in letting kids use smartphones, while Jill Murphy of Common Sense Media suggests ways parents can navigate introducing tech into children's lives.  This series on parenting coincides with Dr Laurie's new free online class, The Science of Wellbeing for Parents which is available now at Coursera.org. You can sign up at drlauriesantos.com/parents. Get ad-free episodes to The Happiness Lab by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.  Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, it's Dr. Laurie Santos. It's no secret that I love to travel. Not too long ago, I had an amazing experience in Italy. I could go on and on about the food and all the sights I got to visit. Our Airbnb was in the perfect spot, surrounded by these little family-run restaurants. I keep going back and forth about what was better, the pizza with the most amazing fresh

mozzarella or the handmade pasta that literally melted in your mouth. Hey, if you're plotting your own adventure filled with great food, why not let your place earn you some extra travel money while you're away? Whether it's for a few nights or a few weeks, you can host your entire home or just a spare bedroom. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. PUSHKIN

Do you remember when you got your first cell phone? I do. It was the late nineties and I was a grad student back in Boston. All my friends were starting to get mobile phones, so I wanted one too. I remember sitting outside in Harvard Square and finally unboxing my new Nokia. And it felt really cool. Futuristic even. I could call my mom while walking to work, and I could text my friends.

That new Nokia made it easy to travel and to find people while you were out in the world. Granted, it didn't have email or maps or music or a camera or even a calculator, I think, but it was still a game changer. Even today, I remember that first ringtone very fondly. But if I were to show one of my Yale students that Nokia today, they'd probably be very confused. It's easy to forget just how much and how quickly mobile phones have transformed and how they've transformed us. Today's young people can't comprehend what life was like

without infinite access to information and more streaming content than anyone could possibly consume. So for this final episode in our series on happier parenting, we're going to turn to how this massive technological shift has affected our children and what caregivers can do to offer guidance and support amidst this avalanche of information overload. And for this episode, I knew there was one expert I had to speak with. In 2010, kids mostly have flip phones. We called them millennials.

But by 2015, kids have smartphones with social media they can be on for 10, 15 hours a day, and we call them Gen Z. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is a world-renowned expert in how technology, and especially social media, is impacting children. In 2024, he published a number one New York Times bestseller, The Anxious Generation, how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.

His thesis, The Rapid Evolution in How Kids Interact with Technology, has contributed to the alarming rise in mental illness among young people. Teen mental health was actually pretty stable from the late 90s through 2010, even 2011. There's really no sign up or down. It moves around, but there's no trend. And then all of a sudden, 2012, 2013, it's as though someone flipped on a light switch

somewhere. And girls all around the Western world, especially in English-speaking countries, began cutting themselves. They were more anxious. So it wasn't just self-report. It wasn't just, oh, I'm so open and honest because we can talk about it now on social media. It was also hospitalizations for cell harm, and it was suicide.

And it wasn't just America, very similar patterns in Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Europe overall, although not in every country in Europe. So something big was happening. And then Jean Twenge was the first to stick her neck out. She wrote an article, The Atlantic gave it the title, Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation.

She had three years of solid data showing things going up. I thought at the time, just three years, this could turn around next year. She was so roundly attacked by other psychologists who said, it's just correlation, it's just a trend, nothing's happening. She really took a lot of flack, but she was right, she was absolutely right,

and it's gotten worse and worse and worse since then. This is not caused by COVID. Everything I say in the anxious generation, everything Jean was talking about, it was all there by 2019. COVID made it a little worse, but we're just returning to the trend line. What were some of the other cultural changes that were happening and how childhood played out around that time? by 2019. COVID made it a little worse, but we're kind of just returning to the trend line.

What were some of the other cultural changes that were happening and how childhood played out around that time? So my story in the book is that this is a tragedy in two acts. In Act 1, we lose the play-based childhood. Kids who grew up in the 80s still played outside. They still went out unsupervised. They rode their bicycles. So in the 90s is when we lose the play-based childhood. That's the first act of the tragedy. And in Act 2, 2010 to is when we lose the play-based childhood. That's the first act of the tragedy. And in Act 2, 2010 to 2015, we get the phone-based childhood. So in my previous book, The Coddling of the American Mind, we went deep into play and the importance

of play. And we're mammals. And anybody who knows any mammals knows that they play when they're young. If you've ever had a puppy or a kitten, they want to play, play, play, play, play. I mean, and they have to, it's a biological imperative. Their genes don't tell the brain how to grow, it just kind of starts things rolling and then the neurons have to wire up. But with feedback from the environment, that's why kids will do something over and over and over again. And so it's crucial that they play, they have a lot of independent play. And we took that away. We took that away in the 90s. Completely insane.

And this is a change that was not necessarily caused by the tech companies per se. This was a change that was caused by parents. When did adults start over parenting and what happened? So I have done this demonstration all over the country and around Europe. I simply asked the audience, at what age were you let out? At what age could you go out on your bicycle, walk to a friend's house, go to a store, no adult with you? And certainly all over America, the answer was 6 to 8, around first grade, second grade. Certainly by third grade, everyone was out.

Now, I grew up during the great crime wave. I mean, there was a lot of crime in the 70s and 80s, but we all went out and played. Gen X and the older millennials, they were all out, age 6 to 8. But then you look at Gen Z. If you were born in 1995 and you grew up mostly in the early 2000s, everyone says 10 to 12. It's three or four years later.

So why did this happen? There were some horrible abductions that were widely publicized. I'm sitting here in Greenwich Village, New York, about four blocks south of me is where Aton Pates was abducted, six years old. Wanted to walk to the bus stop by himself, never came back. This was 1979, I think. But it wasn't that one that did it because there wasn't cable TV very much then. It was really the abduction of Adam Walsh in Florida, another six-year-old abducted from in front of a store. His father

created, I think, America's Most Wanted, and he put out the idea that you must never take your eyes off your child or she will be abducted. It's because of him we get the milk cartons. I grew up with kids staring back at you on the milk carton, missing. Now, almost all the missing kids were abducted by the non-custodial parent or some other family member.

It is hardly any kidnapping or abduction in this country. But we freaked out about it, And we began locking our kids up, or at least not letting them out to have independence. It used to be you could pay an account on all the adults. Your kid's out riding his bicycle. I knew if I wiped out and my bicycle was actually hurt, my friend could just go knock on a door and they'd call my mom and she'd come pick me up.

But I don't think people think that now. They think they have to be there all the time for their kid. So for a lot of reasons, we stopped trusting our neighbors, especially in the 90s. We said, no, no, it's too dangerous to go outside. You'll be abducted. You know, sit here. Oh, look, we have a new computer. Oh, look, it connects to the internet. And the kids loved it. And the parents loved it because the kids are safe, sitting in their room on a computer all day, talking with strangers, perfectly safe.

So that's what we did. mental health didn't change actually. The millennials who grew up that way are fine. So we thought this was all okay. What we didn't realize was that the early Internet where you sit at your parents computer for a couple hours a day, and you can't take the computer to class, you can't take it into the bathroom. Couple hours a day, you're online, it was decentralized,

there was no Facebook, there was no one company controlling things. That actually was pretty marvelous and fun. And the millennials look back on that fondly. We didn't realize that in the 2000s things really changed. So early Facebook and MySpace and Friendster, those were not bad. They were ways to connect with people. That was all it was. And honestly, you couldn't be on Friendster that long. As a child of the 90s, I know, like you could hop on it for a second, but it wasn't going to be pinging in your pocket and stealing your attention and so on.

That's right. So to be doing that quasi-social thing for a couple hours a day is fine. A little bit of television is fine. The transition happens when you get the iPhone. That's 2007. But at first, it's just a digital Swiss army knife. There's no push notification.

There's no app store. There's no social media. And kids don't have it until 2010, 11, is when kids start getting it. In 2010, you get the first front-facing camera and you get the creation of Instagram. And now you get increasingly kids have high speed internet. Cause you remember when you had to pay for your texts,

like what, it was a couple cents every text. So you wouldn't send thousands of texts a day. You couldn't spend 16 hours a day on. But between 2010 and 2015, I call it the great rewiring of childhood. Half of our kids, beginning in the late 2010s, half of American teenagers say that they are online almost constantly. If you're waiting for the elevator, the phone comes out. If you're in the elevator, the phone comes out. If you're online anywhere, the phone comes out. If you're sitting at lunch, there's a lull in the conversation, the phone comes out. If you're in the elevator, the phone comes out. If you're online anywhere, the phone comes out. If you're sitting at lunch, there's a lull in the conversation,

the phone comes out. If you're sitting on the toilet, the phone comes out. The phone is always with you. It takes up every spare moment because the amount they have to process, the amount of stuff coming in, the videos they have to watch to keep up, it fills up every moment. And you've talked in your book about these four specific harms that this phone-based childhood came with. Let's kind of walk through them. The first is one that you talk about in terms of the social deprivation that comes from being in a phone-based childhood. In some ways, this is ironic, right, because our phones are supposed to be connecting us.

You can imagine our phones kind of increase connection. But what do the data really show here? There's the American Time Use Survey. So we track what people do, like minute by minute and for all ages down to I think 15. And what the data clearly show is that when you look at the 15 to 24 age group, but when they aggregate how much time do you spend with friends each day outside of school and work. So this is not school or work, just hanging out with friends, getting together, how much time. And it used to be more than two hours a day for the young people. And

then like 30 or 40 minutes for everybody who's older. All the older groups, they have jobs, they have families, they're not hanging out with their friends. And it's dropping a little bit in the early 2000s, and that's the Internet and you begin to get multiplayer video games. But it plunges after about 2012, because once everyone gets their iPhone, now everything moves online, and now you can just as well go home and lie on your side for three hours and do the scrolling

and the swiping and the texting and things like that. So it plummets down almost to where the adults are by 2019. Of course, they're connecting with hundreds of people. But if you're connecting with hundreds of people, then you have no real time for close friends. That's when we see the breakout of loneliness. Boys and girls, they become so lonely once they get on their phones. And why is this sort of in real life social connection, or at least in real time social

connection, so much more important than the connection that's happening online, especially for growing kids? Yeah. Well, here I would return to our status as evolved organisms. If you go back to child development in infancy, one of the most important things that infants are doing socially is eye contact and then synchrony. That takes a long time and it's really pleasurable for the kid and for the parent. So there's all this programming for face-to-face synchronous communication.

A Zoom call as we're doing right now, this is at least as good as an old telephone call when you and I were young. It's better in some ways. The synchronous part is okay. There are uses for that. But the asynchronous stuff has very little value. Like someone posts something and then you like it or you comment on it.

It doesn't bring you together. It encourages everyone to display. It turns kids into brand managers. And if you're constantly trying to manage your brand, you're not connecting. You're not really bonding with other kids. I just saw a video in which a teenager was saying, you know, I sit down to watch a TV program.

And before I know it, I'm doing things on my phone, like the multitasking. It just takes away from everything. There's an amazing phrase from Sherry Turkle at MIT. She says, because of our phones, because of our technology, we are forever elsewhere. We're never fully present with the people that we're with, but we evolved for these intense small group communities. And so this is a gigantic experiment we've performed

on kids in theory, back in 2007, in theory it might've worked, but now it's clear it backfired catastrophically. And we have a generation around the world that has poor social skills, difficulty making eye contact, higher levels of anxiety, poor sexual development, cognitive development, test scores are going down around the world. People call me alarmist, but if there is really something going wrong, then it's right to raise the alarm.

I love the Shelley Terkel quote, and that gets to maybe a second harm that we know comes from a phone-based childhood, which is this idea of attention fragmentation. How do phones mess with our attention, and why is it so bad when it's happening at the kind of ages we're seeing it? One of the most sort of subtle and advanced cognitive abilities that humans have is called executive function. And you know, toddlers don't have much of it, but we learn how to stay focused on a task. We think, okay, I have a goal.

What do I need to do to execute the goal? Your brain has to have sustained attention on that over time as you are pursuing the goal. And if you can do that, then you will be successful in life. You will be able to pursue goals. But what if you have a goal and then you start pursuing it, but oh, look at that. Well, what's that? Oh, this is fun. Oh, let's do that. And you never get to your goal. This

is what's happening. I was just listening to a podcast. So Scott Galloway and Richard Reeves are two people who've been writing about boys. I think the problem for boys here with attention fragmentation is even more serious for girls. Girls' anxiety, depression, they have huge increase. That's sort of the focus. social media anxiety depression. But I think attention fragmentation and behavioral addiction is really more central for the boys. Boys are more attracted to video games, which gives you quick dopamine. But when you get lots of quick dopamine,

that means that your brain, which has adapted to the high levels now is craving it, and everything is boring. So if you're a boy and you've been on video games since you were four or five, those neurons seeking each other out, they didn't wire up properly. And it's very hard for you to make a goal and then pursue it over the course of 10 minutes or an hour.

So the cognitive fragmentation, even though I didn't focus on it in the book, I'm now seeing my God, this is possibly worse than the mental health. I mean, if you have a whole generation that can't pay attention for sustained periods, and again, there are exceptions, but I think we can say at least half of the generation, half say they're online almost constantly. So if half of humanity can't pay attention, this bodes really badly for the future of innovation, work, marriage, everything that we expect people to be able to do. that we expect people to be able to do. It kind of connects with the social deprivation in a really interesting way, right? Because obviously social connection has some friction. There are some boring down times with people in real life.

And you have to work it through. You have to stick with it. It can be annoying to push through the awkwardness of in-person interactions, especially when you've got a fire hose of information and excitement waiting for you in your pocket. So how do you get a kid to put down this mesmerizing tool and notice what's going on in the real world?

After the break, we'll dive into other ways a phone-based childhood may be reshaping our kids' development. And here are some effective strategies for making it better. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Hey, it's Dr. Laurie Santos. It's no secret that I love to travel. Not too long ago, I had an amazing experience in Italy. I could go on and on about the food and all the sights I got to visit.

Our Airbnb was in the perfect spot, surrounded by these little family-run restaurants. I keep going back and forth about what was better, the pizza with the most amazing fresh mozzarella or the handmade pasta that literally melted in your mouth. Hey, if you're plotting your own adventure filled with great food, why not let your place earn you some extra travel money while you're away? Whether it's for a few nights or a few weeks, you can host your entire home or just a spare bedroom. Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, argues that the rise of smartphones, social media, and over-parenting has triggered a cataclysmic shift in how young people experience childhood and a corresponding surge in mental illness. Before the break, we covered two of the four ways a phone-based childhood has negatively affected our kids. It's deprived them socially and fragmented their attention.

So what's harm number three? More screen time means less shut eye. So sleep, there was a drop in the 90s, and then it levels off. I don't know if that was the early internet, I don't know what that was. But it levels off in the 2000s, then it drops again after like 2012 or so. Certainly there's correlational research showing that people are heavy users, have more sleep problems, especially when they use social media or browsing the internet. Those are the two that are especially correlated with poor sleep if you're doing that just before bedtime. I'm in a big debate with some other researchers who say it's just

correlational, there's no evidence of causality. But you know, if you have a technology that is causing on average, let's say something like half an hour less sleep, certainly for heavy users, and teenagers already aren't getting enough sleep. So if we make it worse by half an hour, you know, that's another REM cycle, you're going to have kids being more irritable, it'll be harder for them to focus, more anxious. And then that you get a vicious cycle, because then that pushes you into more anxiety and depression.

Now you're doing badly in your classes and you're having conflicts with your friends and you mull this over at night and you can't sleep. So to stop your racing thoughts, you watch TikTok. So you get this vicious cycle. And there's just no dispute among the scientific community that adolescents need sleep for brain development. If you're depriving a whole planet full of teenagers of sleep,

this has to have a variety of physical, cognitive, and emotional consequences. Which I think gets to the fourth phone-based harm, which is that kids wind up showing these addictive behaviors when it comes to their phone. I think you had a story about your own daughter with Candy Crush if you want to share. Yeah, oh my God, this was, I guess, 2017. It was before I was working on this.

And my family, we took a winter break trip to this lovely farm, Liberty Hill Farm in Vermont. And my daughter was in the next room at breakfast time, and she called out to me, and this is an exact quote, Daddy, can you take the iPad away from me? I'm trying to take my eyes off it, but I can't and she's about six years old there. These games are designed explicitly to retain their users.

It's a very competitive environment. Most of these apps, the ones for kids have an advertising-based model. So the more you keep them on, the better for the company. Again, I'm in this debate with the skeptics who say, well, it's not true addiction. We shouldn't call it addiction. Well, gambling is an addiction. As long as you have compulsive use, often against your better judgment, it sometimes causes you to lie. And if slot machine gambling

can be addictive, well, so much of the iPhone was literally modeled after slot machines. Literally, I mean, like the thing where, you down and it kind of bounces, that was really modeled after the slot machine. I mean, we have age limits all over our society for four reasons. If something is about graphic sex or violence, if it's addictive, or if there's physical or psychological harm, those four reasons we put age limits on. Unless it's online. And then we then we say whatever companies go for it. You can do whatever you want to a child as long as the child's old enough to lie. If the

child's old enough to say she's 13 or 18 doesn't matter and we can't sue them. They can show whatever they want to our kids. Tough luck. But you know what? Wait can I turn this around? I'm always looking for criticisms. I want to know what I missed, because there are some psychologists who are skeptical. First, tell me what you think of the general argument that it was the technology, the phones, the social media. Oh my gosh.

I mean, I think you cannot explain the hockey stick curve, as you've called it, without turning to that. But the question is like, are there other factors going on as well? But I think the timing of it just looks like it absolutely has to be social media. I talk a lot about social media in my course, right? Instagram, TikTok.

I think what's fascinating about TikTok in particular, we talked a little bit before about addiction, is that this is the first social media tool where I've seen students articulate the fact that they feel addicted. I mean, your daughter had this maybe for Candy Crush. The games might look different. But I never heard college students talk about how Facebook felt so addictive, even Instagram, Snapchat a little. But with TikTok, they talk about this all the time.

Oh my God. So do my students. That's right. So let me make a major point here. You know, we all agree social media is not monolithic. There are different kinds of social media, different effects. Instagram, the main harm that I see is that Instagram causes chronic social comparison, especially for girls, especially about face and body. The correlational studies clearly show girls and Instagram depression, anxiety, that's a much tighter correlation than anything else. I would urge everybody, don't let your daughters, don't let anybody go on Instagram until they're an adult. Snapchat, I don't think causes depression, anxiety. Snapchat connects you to strangers who are trying to sextort you, sell you drugs, and even sell you guns. So many horrible,

horrible things happen to kids on there. Snapchat, we know from memos that have come out as states are suing them, Snapchat gets 10,000 reports of sextortion from American kids each month. Wow. Every month, 10,000. And that's just the ones that are reported to them. Wow. The great majority are not reported to them. So you invent an app that has disappearing pictures.

Students feel safer, young people feel safer sending a nude of themselves. It turns out it's not a beautiful young woman wanting to flirt with you. It's a sextortion ring located somewhere in West Africa. Now, if you don't pay them right away, they will send your photo out to everyone in your contacts, and a lot of boys kill themselves. That's not mistaken correlation for causation. Their parents are not wrong that Snapchat is what killed their kid. Again, you got Instagram, depression, anxiety, and girls.

Snapchat, dangerous activities, interacting with strangers that ruins your life, even if it fun most of the time. And then we got TikTok. And what I'm coming to see is that TikTok is so bad for your attention and so addictive, I think nobody should use it. Certainly no one under 18 should use it. But it doesn't just waste your time. It changes your brain because now you need that quick stimulation. So now let's get to some solutions. If you're a parent who's worried about the phone-based childhood, what can you do to fix things?

So the first thing is to realize that you're not alone. If you feel like you're alone, then it's going to be very hard to solve this because you'll think, what do I do? Everyone else is giving their kid a phone. My daughter comes home from fifth grade and she says, Mom, everyone else has a smartphone.

I'm the only one who doesn't have one. I'm being left out. That's why we keep giving our kids phones and social media at a younger and younger age because it's a collective action problem and we are not able to solve it, so it goes down younger and younger ages. The solution to a collective action problem is collective action. We got trapped into this by the companies, but if we act together, we can get out of it with four simple norms. Here they are. No smartphone till age 14, or high

school really in America. Give them a flip phone or a phone watch. They can call and text if you're sending them out into the world, but don't give them the entire internet and all the strangers and all the apps and all the addiction. Don't do that until high school minimum. Second, no social media until 16. They know exactly how to get your kid's brain before the prefrontal cortex is developed. So don't let them have your kid until at least 16. The third is phone-free schools, and this is just a must. If your child is able to have their phone on them in their pocket or even their backpack, but especially pocket, during the day, it's very likely your child is not being educated as well as they should.

And this, I think, is one of the reasons that test scores were going up for 40 years until 2012, and they've been going down, not just in America, but around the world, test scores going down. Kids can't pay attention in class, so much else is going on in their pocket. And then the final norm is far more independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world.

We have to get back to the understanding that our children are young mammals who need to develop by engaging with the environment without supervision. Now, you know, two, three, four years old, yeah, you need to supervise them because they'll do all kinds of stupid things. But around the world, one thing I learned from cultural psychology,

seven or eight is called the age of social sense. That's the age in which many societies give their kids, like, here, take the sheep down to the river, let them drink, and bring them back. You can begin being responsible. So I think we need a sort of a norm. By age eight, your kid should have some kind of independence, maybe not wandering around town alone,

but out playing with some friends without a parent watching them. Because when the parents are watching what a kid's learned, they learn how to appeal to the adult to punish the other kid, which is a skill for authoritarianism. Whereas if kids have no rulemaker above them, they have to work out the conflicts.

They have to negotiate, they have to adjudicate, they have to forgive, and those are skills of democracy. So we have to give kids back a childhood worth having. Those four norms, parents can roll back the bone-based childhood. It would be easier if some hero could jump into a DeLorean, travel back to the late 90s, and stop social media from devolving into a polarized mess, and maybe prevent tech designers from adding those front-facing cameras. Sadly, that's not going to happen.

But that doesn't mean that society is simply forced to accept the great rewiring. There's still a lot parents can do to make things better. To recap, here are Jonathan's four suggestions. Delay smartphones until at least age 14. Hold off on social media until 16. Advocate for phone-free schools. And give kids more freedom and independence in the real world. But these solutions require widespread coordinated action, which means you might

be asking, what can I do as a parent right now to support my child in the face of such potentially harmful technology? After the break, we'll speak to an expert who's thought carefully about essential conversations you could have with your kids to help them navigate the modern digital landscape. We'll hear how parents can support kids kids technology use while protecting their mental health and fostering a sense of safety. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Hey, it's Dr. Laurie Santos. It's no secret that I love to travel. Not too long ago I had an amazing experience in Italy. I could go on and on about the food and all the sights I got to visit.

Our Airbnb was in the perfect spot, surrounded by these little family-run restaurants. I keep going back and forth about what was better, the pizza with the most amazing fresh mozzarella or the handmade pasta that literally melted in your mouth. Hey, if you're plotting your own adventure filled with great food, why not let your place earn you some extra travel money while you're away? Whether it's for a few nights or a few weeks, you can host your entire home or just a spare bedroom. Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. If you've ever wondered whether it's developmentally appropriate for your toddler to watch Coco Melon or safe for your team to play Call of Duty, you might be familiar with the work of our next expert. So my name is Jill Murphy. I am the chief content officer at Common Sense Media, which really just means I oversee all of our ratings and reviews. Common Sense Media is an awesome nonprofit advocacy organization known for their reviews of children's entertainment and TV shows.

These days, the organization also offers research-backed guides for digital parenting. These new guides have become essential resources for parents navigating day-to-day technology questions for kids of all ages. When you think about younger children, so maybe you're distracted by something you hand over the phone and want them to watch videos, and I think that right there, that handover moment, is that first introduction to, you know,

I just need to distract my kids so I can get this other thing done. But what it's become is a distraction in their life, and we are just all distracted all the time. Jill believes the most important thing parents can do to protect their kids is to have honest conversations about technology. And Jill says it's best to start those conversations earlier than you think, even with a baby or toddler who's curious about what you're looking at on your screen.

Narrate what you're doing. Actually let your kid know what you're doing but they miss tiny screens so they have a sense of what's going on because they have no idea. As children get older, Jill recommends creating a family media agreement. Common Sense offers templates for these contracts on their website. But the key is to simply start a dialogue,

whether it's written down or not. It's really a conversation. When you hear the title, it sounds a little idealistic, but I think what they can be used for is really anything, whether it's a kid is ready to start going on YouTube, but I want to set some boundaries and guidelines. It just guides you through a conversation around how you can start laying out what is and isn't okay. And then with older kids, it might be,

they're getting a phone. What's okay for them to do, what isn't okay for them to do. It's a little bit of a negotiation, little bit of a contract where they may say, and this is for my own life, I wanna have social media, is it okay if I go on maybe just for 30 minutes?

And then we say, you can have this app, but we're not gonna get you on this app yet. And so it's just a discussion around where your rules are, and holds everybody to a set of shared principles. The challenge with that is it needs to be revisited often. And I can speak from experience where we did it when my older daughter got a phone, my kids are 15 and 12, two girls living the dream and the nightmare all at the same time. We did it when my older daughter

got a phone. And it was probably a good year before we really revisited it. This is something that we need to encourage families to revisit quite regularly, almost like your quarterly goals, like what is it and what needs to be adjusted? And then the rationale of why is something getting adjusted? You know, the underlying factor here is their development. What are they ready for? We use their age as a guide, but it's not always a one size fits all. And so what wound up in your family media agreement?

Like what were some of the things that you had to negotiate with your kids about? Definitely social media. My older daughter got a phone when she was going into middle school. Biggest regret of my life. And my husband is always kind of like, shouldn't you have known better? Sure, I should have known better. For lots of reasons, we let her get a phone, but we were not letting her get on social media.

So that was the stopgap. It's just too much access. And then that was really the big like aha moment for me, I'd say about six to eight months in. It's a computer, she's just online. And she has access to literally anything. Even if it's a news story around a school shooting, like do I want her really seeing that right now without conversation from else? Does she need notifications coming up in her day around

what's going on in the world and parental controls was something that happened a little bit later. I've always been a little like around parental controls because it's it's a little bit of a false promise and there's a ton of videos online about how to get around literally any any of the parental controls that are out there. There is a hack to get around literally any of the parental controls that are out there. There is a hack to get around them. More recently, we had started using a parental control to just completely shut down the phone and to just go to a dumb phone at certain times of the day,

except for texting. Like, she could text on her phone, she could call on her phone, but otherwise everything was turned off. So it's like during the school day, at night. And when I first started doing it, my daughter was like, what the heck, like, why would you do that? But after a couple of weeks of doing this consistently, she started asking me to turn it off at night.

She was like, can you just turn this off? Don't forget to turn it off. Like she knows that it's not something that she can easily do on her own, which is obviously the goal. But I mean, we all struggle with that. And it just allows her to focus in another place, in this case on her sleep. But even during the school day or, or like her homework time, she knows like, okay, it's going to go off between three and six. So I just feel like it's really helped her take back some of her time. There's something about it that's helped her take back some of her time.

There's something about it that's provided her a little bit of like, okay, good, like a little relief from feeling like she has to be on. And I think that because we've discussed it so much, I love that she's kind of taken this approach of like, okay, I need it off, but I might not have the self control at 15 to do it and stick with it. And you've talked about some of these essential conversations, I need it off, but I might not have the self-control at 15 to do it and stick with it. And you've talked about some of these essential conversations, some of these elements that you might want to get in there. And I know one of the big ones is this idea of a digital footprint. What are the conversations that you need to have about a child's digital footprint?

I think kids are very quick to be like, less concerned about that sort of thing until probably high school and they're thinking about college or jobs. Really having them understand the trail that they're leaving behind, that it's all findable. The way that other kids are getting screenshot and screen grab conversations and use that information or share it whether it's in a gossipy way or a dangerous way and then in addition to that, of course, images that they're sharing,

personal information that they may be sharing, who they're actually sharing it with and whether or not they know that person. And the trick with that is when is it okay to have that conversation? I think that that tween set is very quick to say, no, it's a kid. I'm talking to this kid. They friended me on Roblox, or they friended me on Discord. They're less inclined to be skeptical that who they're talking to may actually be somebody

that is not who they say they are. So starting to lay all that groundwork, I think early and often, without a fearful approach, but just as an awareness Just like don't cross the street until the button says walk and even when it does say walk Look to your left to make sure no one's taking a right turn and make sure you have eye contact with the drivers and you know There's a lot of elements to consider before you go ahead and cross the street and I think we need to be Thinking about that multi-pronged approach in conversation consider before you go ahead and cross the street. I think we need to be thinking about

that multi-pronged approach in conversation. We're doing this kind of boundary setting with our kids anyway in other domains where they need to be safe. Absolutely. We teach them how to cross the street. We teach them how to cross the digital street as it were. Yeah. One of the things Common says is noted that you need to

get across the digital street are conversations about reality versus perception. I think this specifically comes up when it comes to social media. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean there's this idea of perfection, right? I mean it's talked a lot about now with Instagram in particular, but what people are putting out versus what's really going on. And that comes down to, you know, embedded products in a video that I kidnap, watch something and think that, oh, just this girl that I watched and I love her and she's buying this

product and she loves it and I want to have that product too. And explaining to her what product placement is like and that she's paid for this video and that isn't actually just her saying that and that's not necessarily her real life. She's not necessarily getting ready in the morning and looking like that and that's not necessarily her real life. She's not necessarily getting ready in the morning and looking like that and going somewhere. And then there's just this front that kids are putting out there, teens are putting out there, and we know that adults are putting out there as well. Perfect house, perfect hall video, perfect dorm room, perfect whatever it might be, and just projecting an image that doesn't really portray real life and it

sets up a false aspiration. And I think as adults we also know once you're in that vacuum it's really hard to break out and I'm a fully developed adult and so when our kids aren't even developed in a place where they can make that distinction between reality and fiction we're just putting them in front of so much information at one time. How do they parse it and how does it help shape their reality? I know there's a lot of parents out there wondering what they need to be paying attention to to figure out if their teen or their child might be struggling with technology.

What things do you suggest that parents look out for? There is this slow drip of content and what kids are being exposed to. And again, how that's kind of shaping their reality and their self-identity and self-worth. And if they feel that they can't measure up to what they're watching or compete with it or compare to it. And if you are predisposed, which I think is an important element for parents to consider, is depression in my family, is anxiety in my family, have we dealt with other mental illness in the family. That's an important factor to take into consideration. My daughter is anxious. Do I

really want her to be put into a scenario where that might be like heightened in some way? Do I want to put her in a situation where it's heightened but she's got the tools and knows how to calm herself? Some of it's preparation, but I think some of it is about, you really have to have this knowledge of your kid and how they interact and feel and function in the world. And it seems like some of it is also including your children in these conversations. One of the things that Common Sense Media recommends,

even in the case of some of these mental health concerns, is not for parents to be like, well I'm worried about anxiety provoking information so I'll just ban phones or like put parental controls in. It really is about empowering your kids to notice when they're going through that stuff and to have conversations about what they can do to do better. Right and I think we're having those conversations at ages that we probably wouldn't expect to have them and I think a lot of parents are still feeling like, I don't need to worry about that until they're in high school.

No, take an action. So what you're going to say to your six or seven-year-old compared to what you're going to say to your 16 or 17-year-old is going to be very different. But the subject of mental health can be talked about at any age, at any point. And for your younger kids, if you see that they might be acting out after they

played a game, you know, they have a stronger reaction to playing that kind of game than they do to just a board game. Those are the kinds of things that you want to just keep an eye on. And not just wait and watch, but maybe after once or twice say, what is it about this game? Or can I play this game with you? Or can I watch you play this game? You don't always have to jump in with all the answers, which I have to remind myself all the time, it's about kind of observing and letting them process and letting them articulate that to you. What's going on. And then kind of layering in like, I see that you're angry about this game.

What is it about it? It's really getting at you. Maybe that's when you might make decisions to, okay, he's really reacting really strongly to this. I might need to limit how much time they're spending on that particular game if they can't start to manage it a little bit or balance it. And I think that's parenting. We're doing that with lots of stuff. Yeah, they can play with that friend. Okay, that friend's starting to be not the best friend. Maybe we should pull back. Maybe we'll make a play date with this other friend. Maybe we should pull back. Maybe we'll make

a play date with this other friend. She's only eating fast food. We need to balance that out with maybe some vegetables. We're doing it all the time. It's the same when it comes to digital media. It's just we don't have the insight. It takes more work because again, they're behind the screen. So that is one element that I think when we decide to get phones and tablets, putting them in a common area, making sure that we can see over their shoulder what they're doing on the screen. We all have to be a little bit more mindful when we hand those devices over,

whether it's theirs to own or just to borrow ours for the moment about what's going on before, during, afterwards. There's a lot of considerations to think about when we're making these decisions about what our kids' mental well-being is going to look like. And there's so many outlying factors that we cannot control. But being present and being available for them to come back to and share some of that information is really essential as well.

All this goes to say, if you want your kids to be safe online, you need to talk to them about new media and technology. And you need to start earlier than you think. Consider making an official family media agreement. That can help foster the sort of dialogue you need to return to regularly. Pay attention to how your child reacts to different technologies, but don't just assume you know how it's affecting them. Ask questions, listen closely, and then adjust your approach as needed.

None of these strategies will fully roll back the phone-based childhood that Jonathan Haidt talked about earlier. But if you can help your child think critically about digital technology, you're well on your way to fostering a bit more flourishing and happiness.

Finally, give yourself some self-compassion as a parent helping to raise the next generation in these changing technological times. Plus, if you want more strategies, there's still time to check out my free online course, The Science of Wellbeing for Parents. To learn more, just head to drloriesantos.com slash parents. That's drloresantos.com. That concludes our series on happier parenting.

But not to worry, as the Happiness Lab will be back soon. We'll be shifting gears with a new series, exploring creative coping strategies for handling life's curveballs. Think job loss, illnesses, heartbreak, tragedies. When times get really hard, we need creative ways to cope. So we'll be looking at the weird and wonderful ways people find relief, and the science behind why these strategies work. So be sure to come back soon

for the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Lari Santos. lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. This is an iHeart podcast.