Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / The Screen Habits Rewiring Our Kids’ Brains [with Dr Mark Williams]

Transcript

The Screen Habits Rewiring Our Kids’ Brains [with Dr Mark Williams] · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:05
Speaker 1: Today, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Professor Mark Williams
0:09
Speaker 1: joins me on the pod today. He was on sixty
0:12
Speaker 1: Minutes about a month ago talking about brain rod, the
0:15
Speaker 1: way the screens are affecting our children, their well being,
0:17
Speaker 1: their health and their capacity to think. Doctor Mark Williams
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Speaker 1: is an internationally recognized professor of cognitive neuroscience, with other
0:24
Speaker 1: twenty five years experience conducting behavioral and brain imaging research
0:28
Speaker 1: focusing on our social skills. He's taught the fundamentals of
0:30
Speaker 1: neuroscience to a wide rage of undergraduate and postgraduate students,
0:34
Speaker 1: as well as publishing more than seventy scientific articles. He's
0:37
Speaker 1: been awarded numerous high profile fellowships and grants and worked
0:41
Speaker 1: both at MIT in the USA and at universities in Australia. Recently,
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Speaker 1: Mark also published Screen Smart Children, a book he wrote
0:52
Speaker 1: with Gavin McCormick that's available on shelves and in bookstores now.
0:55
Speaker 1: Definitely worth having a look at. I can't wait to
0:58
Speaker 1: share with you everything has to offer in terms of
1:01
Speaker 1: helping our kids to live safe, healthy lives online. Stay
1:06
Speaker 1: with us. That's next. Hello, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast,
1:11
Speaker 1: where you get real parenting solutions every single day. It's
1:13
Speaker 1: Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name is doctor Justin Colson.
1:16
Speaker 1: I'm a dad to six kids, the author of ten books,
1:19
Speaker 1: maybe eleven, with my next one coming out in about
1:21
Speaker 1: two months called Boys Boys Building Strong Young Men from
1:25
Speaker 1: the inside Out. You can pre order it now online.
1:28
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask today's guests a little bit about
1:31
Speaker 1: boys and the Internet. This guy knows Internet. This guy
1:35
Speaker 1: knows how screens are affecting our kids' brains. Doctor Mark Williams,
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Speaker 1: dad of two a sixteen year old girl and a
1:40
Speaker 1: fourteen year old boy, on sixty Minutes about a month ago,
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Speaker 1: talking about screens, brain rot and the neurological impact that
1:49
Speaker 1: too much time staring at a screen can have on
1:51
Speaker 1: our kids. Mark, so good of you to join me.
1:54
Speaker 1: Let's get straight into it. You talk about screens literally
1:58
Speaker 1: rewiring the developed brain. Your new book Screen Smart Children
2:02
Speaker 1: is about that. You talk about abnormal white matter developments,
2:06
Speaker 1: which I definitely want you to go deeper on. You
2:08
Speaker 1: talk about changes to the corpus closome. A lot of
2:10
Speaker 1: people might not have even heard those two words together
2:13
Speaker 1: or on their own either for the parent who's going, Oh,
2:16
Speaker 1: my goodness, what is actually going on here? Like a
2:18
Speaker 1: lot of parents would just say I don't want to
2:20
Speaker 1: know because none of this makes sense, but it does
2:23
Speaker 1: sound alarming, but it's a bit abstract. What does this
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Speaker 1: mean in the day to day behavior of children? What's
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Speaker 1: the observable signal that something neurological is going wrong when
2:33
Speaker 1: kids are on screens too much?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question justin but a very difficult
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Speaker 2: one to answer in a short amount of time. But
2:41
Speaker 2: we're seeing a whole bunch of raft of issues as
2:44
Speaker 2: a result of the devices. And what we need to remember, well,
2:47
Speaker 2: there's two things we need to remember. One thing is
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Speaker 2: that our brains haven't changed in the last thirty five
2:51
Speaker 2: thousand years, and so they're still the same brains that developed.
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Speaker 2: Talking back when we were together. It's when we're spending
2:58
Speaker 2: lots of time together in groups, and we're helping each other,
3:02
Speaker 2: and we're collaborating with each other, and we're emphathizing with
3:05
Speaker 2: each other, and we spend a lot of time grooming
3:08
Speaker 2: each other and just hanging out together. And now all
3:11
Speaker 2: of a sudden, we have these devices, and then, let's
3:14
Speaker 2: be honest, these are amazing technology, but they're being designed
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Speaker 2: in a way which is really distracting for us and
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Speaker 2: isn't optimal for that brain that we actually have at
3:24
Speaker 2: the moment, and we need to change that. We need
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Speaker 2: to make it more optimal for our current brains so
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Speaker 2: that we can all thrive and so our kids can throw.
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Speaker 2: And so what they're doing is they're basically just distracting
3:36
Speaker 2: us constantly from what we actually need to be doing,
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Speaker 2: rather than putting this in situations that will actually benefit us.
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Speaker 2: And that's really bad for our kids, because our kids'
3:46
Speaker 2: brains are developing, and they need to develop in a
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Speaker 2: positive way, and unfortunately, because they're doing lots of things
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Speaker 2: that are impacting their brains negatively, that's having really negative
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Speaker 2: impacts on that development.
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Speaker 1: Not the the quote from EO. Wilson, Edward Wilson, the
4:03
Speaker 1: real problem of humanity, he said, is the following. We
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Speaker 1: have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god like technology, and
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Speaker 1: it is terrifically dangerous and it is now approaching a
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Speaker 1: point of crisis overall. So let's talk about specifically the
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Speaker 1: abnormal white matter development. This is the bit that white
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Speaker 1: matter and gray matter. Can you just talk a little
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Speaker 1: bit about what's going on with the developing brain and
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Speaker 1: kids staring at screens when it comes to white matter
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Speaker 1: and gray matter, and also what are white matter and
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Speaker 1: gray matter and why do they matter?
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Speaker 2: So the white matter tracts are basically I like to
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Speaker 2: think of them as a big highways in your city
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Speaker 2: which connect all the suburbs together and make it easy
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Speaker 2: to get from one suburb to another unless you live
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Speaker 2: in city, of course, But they're basically those big tracks
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Speaker 2: that connect all the different areas of the brain together
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Speaker 2: and connect the left hemisphere with the right hemisphere. And
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Speaker 2: lots of parents have probably had the experience when kids
4:54
Speaker 2: are really young, they would take them to different preschool
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Speaker 2: events where they get them to do things like crawl
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Speaker 2: with both arms or do things with both sides of
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Speaker 2: their bodies because they're trying to develop those white matter
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Speaker 2: tracts to connect the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere
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Speaker 2: together and get those those connections working really well. And
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Speaker 2: we know now, and there's about ten studies now showing
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Speaker 2: that kids who are given devices or are on screens
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Speaker 2: at an early age have abnormal development of those white
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Speaker 2: matter tracts. They're not forming in the right way, and
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Speaker 2: they're not as thick as they actually need to be,
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Speaker 2: which means is a different areas the brain can't communicate
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Speaker 2: with each other as well, which means you have a
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Speaker 2: whole bunch of other things going on later on in life.
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Speaker 2: The gray matter is outer surface of the brain, and
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Speaker 2: that's where all information stored. So then that's where when
5:48
Speaker 2: you wrote learn something, or when you learn to write
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Speaker 2: or read or all those things, all that information is
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Speaker 2: stored out there in the gray matter areas. And we're
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Speaker 2: also seeing changes in those areas as well later on
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Speaker 2: in life, so during teen years and in early adults,
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Speaker 2: when people are using devices.
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Speaker 1: A lot, right, Okay, One of the things that really
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Speaker 1: bothers me, concerns me, troubles me is the number of
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Speaker 1: parents too say, oh, well, it doesn't really matter because
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Speaker 1: my child is using educational apps. You've made the point
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Speaker 1: that game of FID learning apps I can hear laughing
6:21
Speaker 1: already exploit what is it, the intermittent and interval reinforcement,
6:26
Speaker 1: the same way that poker machines do. It's a pretty
6:29
Speaker 1: confronting claim. I haven't found any evidence yet, by the way,
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Speaker 1: that any educational app is actually educational, but a lot
6:35
Speaker 1: of parents feel really good about their kids using the
6:36
Speaker 1: educational iPad. Can you walk us through that mechanism and
6:40
Speaker 1: tell us what parents should be looking for to tell
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Speaker 1: if an app is genuinely useful rather than one that's
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Speaker 1: a slot machine dressed up as a classroom.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they call it gam of fine because it
6:52
Speaker 2: makes it sound good and makes it sound fun. But basically,
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Speaker 2: what they're doing is using intermittent or random reinforcement schedules,
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Speaker 2: so they hold off on giving a reward for long
7:02
Speaker 2: enough that the child really wants a reward, but not
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Speaker 2: too long that they start getting bored and move away
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Speaker 2: from the device. And they talk about return to service,
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Speaker 2: and this is the idea that they want to keep
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Speaker 2: them on the devices for as long as they possibly
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Speaker 2: can by keeping them motivated. And each time they get
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Speaker 2: those rewards, you get a little bit of dopamine. And
7:20
Speaker 2: people talk about dopamine as this reward or the happy hormone,
7:25
Speaker 2: but it's actually not. It's a neurotransmitter that when it's released,
7:28
Speaker 2: it actually makes you search for more of what you
7:30
Speaker 2: just received. And so therefore these kids get this little
7:33
Speaker 2: bit of dopamine and they want to do more of
7:35
Speaker 2: what they just did, and then they want to do
7:37
Speaker 2: more of what they just did and more of what
7:39
Speaker 2: they just did. Now, in the natural environment, in the
7:42
Speaker 2: way we actually evolved, we would have got satiated after
7:46
Speaker 2: a time. So this dopamine feedback system is for things
7:49
Speaker 2: like food. So you would have found some berries, you
7:51
Speaker 2: would have eaten them, you would have got some dopamine
7:53
Speaker 2: would have said find more of those because they're good
7:55
Speaker 2: for you, so you would all look for more of them.
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Speaker 2: You would have eaten more of them, and so on
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Speaker 2: until you got full. You would have moved on to
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Speaker 2: something else. But unfortunately, when you're on a device, you
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Speaker 2: don't get full, so you keep doing it and doing
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Speaker 2: it and doing it. And this is why the kids
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Speaker 2: get addicted to it. And the problem is that once
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Speaker 2: you're addicted to one thing, you're then more likely to
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Speaker 2: get addicted to other things. So we know kids that
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Speaker 2: get addicted to gaming are more likely to get addicted
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Speaker 2: to gambling, and then they're more likely to get addicted
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Speaker 2: to alcohol or drugs later on. They're called gateway drugs
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Speaker 2: to other drugs. And that's the real problem is that
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Speaker 2: if they're on these devices and they're more likely to
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Speaker 2: get addicted to other things. Pluce. You've got a problem
8:32
Speaker 2: is once they're going to school or when they're in school,
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Speaker 2: they're not getting those rewards. They're not getting that daya
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Speaker 2: mean hit all the time, and they're always looking for it.
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Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, it makes it really difficult
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Speaker 2: to teach these kids because they're not getting this constant
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Speaker 2: reinforcement for what they're doing. You know, the real world
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Speaker 2: is not full of constant reinforcements. Real world is much
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Speaker 2: slower and it takes much longer. And by teaching kids,
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Speaker 2: you need to be getting these reinforcements all the time.
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Speaker 2: You're setting them up, are you later on? You're setting
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Speaker 2: up anxiety and depression later on, and you're setting them
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Speaker 2: up for failure later on, which is really sad.
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Speaker 1: It's kind of a depressing conversation. Mark, put your kids
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Speaker 1: on the screens, and you are setting them up for failure.
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Speaker 1: There are two things that you've just mentioned there dopamine.
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Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw about a month ago,
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Speaker 1: seventeenth of March twenty twenty six in Nature, a brand
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Speaker 1: new paper published, Dopamine takes a Hit. How neuroscience is
9:24
Speaker 1: rethinking the feel good chemical so there's there's a total
9:29
Speaker 1: upending of everything that we know about dope mean, and
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Speaker 1: some people are pushing hard against what dope mean once was.
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Speaker 1: And your comments are much more aligned with what they're
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Speaker 1: suggesting than than what we have previously thought. So I
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Speaker 1: love that you said that. The other thing that jumped
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Speaker 1: out at me was a published paper just in the
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Speaker 1: last few months looking at a bunch of kids in Europe,
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Speaker 1: about five hundred kids in Europe, and the more they gained,
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Speaker 1: the more they were exposed to gambling streams, loot boxes
10:02
Speaker 1: and other gambling technology, which changed their attitudes towards gambling,
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Speaker 1: which increased the likelihood that they would gamble. So the
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Speaker 1: evidence just keeps on coming in. Hey, Mark, after the break,
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Speaker 1: I'm going to hit you with a lightning round. I've
10:15
Speaker 1: got five yes no questions that are going to intentionally
10:19
Speaker 1: put you in a bit of a tight spot, and
10:22
Speaker 1: I just want to get a yes or no because
10:23
Speaker 1: sometimes parents just want to know what do I do?
10:24
Speaker 1: Do I do this? Or do I do that? Full
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Speaker 1: stop end of story. Plus questions about one of your
10:29
Speaker 1: favorite topics when it comes to screens, connection, banning, screens,
10:33
Speaker 1: and more. Stay with We're back This is the Happy
10:43
Speaker 1: Famili's podcast Doctor Mark Williams, Professor, Mark Williams Format, Massachusetts
10:48
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology, Lecturer and professor and now here in
10:52
Speaker 1: Australia on Sydney Northern Beaches. Oh by the way, Mark
10:54
Speaker 1: didn't ask me to mention this, but I spoke at
10:56
Speaker 1: a conference a few months back with Mark in Victoria
10:59
Speaker 1: on the Tory in New South Wales border and I
11:02
Speaker 1: just love listening to him. I could listen to him
11:03
Speaker 1: all night. If you are in an organization where you
11:06
Speaker 1: get guest speakers in from time to time to talk
11:08
Speaker 1: about tech, you definitely want to talk to Mark about
11:10
Speaker 1: the work that he does in this area. He is
11:12
Speaker 1: globally recognized for his excellence. And Mark, I hope you
11:17
Speaker 1: don't mind me blurbing you just now, but everybody should
11:19
Speaker 1: be talking to you about that. Hey, let me hear
11:21
Speaker 1: with these lightning round questions just just or no? Should
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Speaker 1: kids under too have zero screen time?
11:27
Speaker 2: Yes?
11:28
Speaker 1: It is an hour of gaming genuinely more harmful to
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Speaker 1: the brain than an hour of passive.
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Speaker 2: Youtubeh It's yes, but I wish I could do a
11:37
Speaker 2: caveat to it.
11:38
Speaker 1: Yes, So I'm going to jump in here with a
11:42
Speaker 1: quick caveat. Colleagues Wayne Warburton and Brad Marshall at McCrory
11:47
Speaker 1: University recently published a paper looking at the impact of
11:50
Speaker 1: gaming and they found that if you do have Internet
11:52
Speaker 1: gaming disorder, the impacts significantly greater than having a smartphone.
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Speaker 1: Overuse or using social media is certainly not the benign
12:01
Speaker 1: thing that some people have claimed it has been over
12:03
Speaker 1: the years. There are some serious challenges there, one of
12:07
Speaker 1: those being the gambling stuff that we talked about previously.
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Speaker 1: Next one, does the content kids watch matter as much
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Speaker 1: as the amount of time they spend watching?
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Speaker 2: Yes, but that's a limit. So once you give a
12:27
Speaker 2: faster certain amount of time, it doesn't.
12:28
Speaker 1: Matter what is that time.
12:30
Speaker 2: It depends on the age, which makes it difficult for
12:32
Speaker 2: a year and no answers, but I would say zero
12:37
Speaker 2: up until they go to school. Once in primary school,
12:40
Speaker 2: I would say no more than half an hour a day,
12:43
Speaker 2: and then after oncere in high school, nor more than
12:45
Speaker 2: Now yeah.
12:46
Speaker 1: Great, And I always just hammer the content piece because
12:49
Speaker 1: there are so many kids that are doing so much
12:51
Speaker 1: stuff online that is so unhealthy and seeing so much
12:54
Speaker 1: awful content. I really worry about the content sometimes, as
12:57
Speaker 1: you said, more than the amount of time unless the
12:59
Speaker 1: amount of time is egregious colossal? Number four, Should smartphones
13:03
Speaker 1: be banned from primary schools entirely? And smart devices like
13:07
Speaker 1: do kids need smart devices in primary school?
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Speaker 2: Absolutely banned?
13:11
Speaker 1: Is there such a thing then as a This is
13:14
Speaker 1: a follow up question. This is not a lightning around question.
13:16
Speaker 1: This is a follow up Is there such a thing
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Speaker 1: as a truly educational screen activity for under tens and
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Speaker 1: a twelves?
13:22
Speaker 2: I haven't seen one, okay, and I've looked a lot.
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Speaker 1: Okay, here's my last one. Can a teenagers brain recover
13:30
Speaker 1: from years of heavy screen use if they change their habits?
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Speaker 2: Yes, we hope.
13:36
Speaker 1: Right, this is such an interesting conversation. I mean, I
13:40
Speaker 1: love lightning rounds because they force us to confront really
13:43
Speaker 1: hard things. And I know that there's so many oh yeah,
13:45
Speaker 1: bart and caveats all over the place with these conversations.
13:49
Speaker 1: But when you're a parent, you just want answers. Now
13:51
Speaker 1: those are answers that you can go and do something with.
13:53
Speaker 1: And I really appreciate it. Okay, Mark, I need to
13:55
Speaker 1: honor the time that you've given me, and you are
13:57
Speaker 1: very much a man in demand. Let me just ask
14:00
Speaker 1: you two more questions that I think so many parents
14:03
Speaker 1: are struggling with. The first one is this your whole
14:06
Speaker 1: frame is a neuroscientist, and I was so impressed with
14:09
Speaker 1: that when I went through your Screen Smart Children book.
14:11
Speaker 1: So much of what you talk about is built around
14:13
Speaker 1: the social brain, the idea that human brains evolved fundamentally
14:19
Speaker 1: for connection. So when screens displace face to face time,
14:24
Speaker 1: can you describe what gets lost neurologically?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question, and I'm glad we got
14:30
Speaker 2: an opportunity to talk about that because what we've got.
14:33
Speaker 2: What you've got to realize is when you're online, you
14:36
Speaker 2: do get dopamine. But as I talked about before, dopamine
14:38
Speaker 2: doesn't actually make you feel happy. It just makes you
14:41
Speaker 2: search for more of what you just got, which is
14:43
Speaker 2: why you feel pretty loudly afterwards. When we're actually face
14:47
Speaker 2: to face, lots of things happen. So one of these
14:49
Speaker 2: we touch each other, and when I talk about touching,
14:52
Speaker 2: knife and get lots of giggles. But appropriately we touch
14:55
Speaker 2: each other, and in all societies we have some way
14:58
Speaker 2: of doing that appropriately, such as here in Australia we
15:01
Speaker 2: shake hands. In Europe do kiss each other on the
15:03
Speaker 2: cheeks and even the inuits because therefore we cover they
15:06
Speaker 2: ll rub noses. And the reason we do that is
15:09
Speaker 2: that you activate sea fibers in the skin which activate
15:12
Speaker 2: the touch, and then that activates oxytocin in your brain,
15:15
Speaker 2: which makes you feel more connected to the person who
15:17
Speaker 2: just touched you and makes you feel more open to
15:20
Speaker 2: actually have a good relationship with them. You don't get
15:23
Speaker 2: that when you're online. You also don't get the body
15:26
Speaker 2: language that you can see when you're actually face to face.
15:29
Speaker 2: And when we actually you make each other's body language,
15:32
Speaker 2: which we do automatically through what we call a mirror
15:35
Speaker 2: neuron system, we get a serotonin released and are they
15:39
Speaker 2: really good in dolphins, which again makes us feel good
15:42
Speaker 2: and make us feel more connected to the person that
15:44
Speaker 2: we're actually interacting with. And then you've got the procity
15:47
Speaker 2: of the voice, which gives the emotional content of the
15:49
Speaker 2: conversation you are, the facial expressions, and it goes on
15:52
Speaker 2: and on. There's all these myriad of neurotransmitters and dolphins
15:56
Speaker 2: that are released when you will face to face, which
15:58
Speaker 2: makes you feel really good out actually interacting with people,
16:02
Speaker 2: and they make you feel good for a long time afterwards,
16:04
Speaker 2: when you're online, you don't get any of those. It's
16:06
Speaker 2: a really add normal release of just opamine and nothing else.
16:11
Speaker 2: And so therefore you get me hitted open meine and
16:14
Speaker 2: then you're searching for more of that. You don't get it,
16:16
Speaker 2: and then you feel out. If you don't just keep
16:18
Speaker 2: doing what you're doing. Is keep doing what you're doing,
16:20
Speaker 2: then you're wait hours and hours in your life. So
16:22
Speaker 2: that's a big difference between the two, and that's why
16:24
Speaker 2: we need to be doing things face to face.
16:26
Speaker 1: Hearing you say that reminds me of a study that
16:28
Speaker 1: I talked about here on the podcast a couple of
16:29
Speaker 1: years ago. It was a twenty twenty two study published
16:31
Speaker 1: in NeuroImage, and the research is there found that live
16:35
Speaker 1: face to face mother child interaction produced nine significant neural connections,
16:40
Speaker 1: while when they were talking over a video screen like
16:43
Speaker 1: having a FaceTime call, there was only one significant neural connection,
16:47
Speaker 1: like literally nine times to neural connections where you're having
16:50
Speaker 1: a face to face conversation versus a screen based conversation.
16:53
Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing that so many of those studies out there,
16:58
Speaker 2: and then so important as humans to actually be doing that.
17:02
Speaker 2: And it's also been shown right. The Harvard study Bois
17:05
Speaker 2: has been going on for seventy five years has shown
17:07
Speaker 2: that the number one way to actually increase your lifespan
17:09
Speaker 2: by ten to ten years, decrease mental health issues, increased
17:14
Speaker 2: cardio escar system so you get healthier and you don't
17:16
Speaker 2: have heart attacks, and increase your IQ is just to
17:20
Speaker 2: sit down with someone you trust on a regular basis
17:23
Speaker 2: and chat with them, right. And we're doing far less
17:25
Speaker 2: of that today than we ever have in the past,
17:27
Speaker 2: which is very, very bad. Can I ask you one question?
17:30
Speaker 2: He said, all right, am I left to say to
17:32
Speaker 2: keep you working as well. I have a fourteen year
17:35
Speaker 2: old son who're coming too before and I just watched
17:38
Speaker 2: the documentary which scared the guds out. Yes, yes, so
17:45
Speaker 2: I'm just going to say it. Yeah, And I want
17:48
Speaker 2: to ask you what do we do? I mean, I'm
17:50
Speaker 2: very careful with him, and he plays basketball and does
17:54
Speaker 2: he's a surf life saber, he won you know, wards
17:57
Speaker 2: for surf Life Saving and he's a great kid. But
18:00
Speaker 2: excuse me that something's going to happen and what would
18:02
Speaker 2: your advice be around the whole managecent problem?
18:05
Speaker 1: So I really appreciate the question. First of all, it
18:09
Speaker 1: sounds like you do not have a son who is
18:11
Speaker 1: struggling to thrive, Like this is not a failure to
18:13
Speaker 1: launch situation where the fourteen year old boy who's involved
18:15
Speaker 1: in so many activities. And I think that's one of
18:17
Speaker 1: the central things that helps boys to thrive is they
18:19
Speaker 1: do things with meaning and purpose. They're active, they're with
18:22
Speaker 1: their peers, they're pushing themselves, they're doing hard things, they're
18:26
Speaker 1: taking risks. All of these things are associated with healthy living.
18:30
Speaker 1: Whether it's masculinity or otherwise, it's just healthy living to
18:33
Speaker 1: be with people outside living life large. So I hear that,
18:38
Speaker 1: and I just think, yes, my interest is more related
18:40
Speaker 1: to the whole screen stuff and the intersection of what
18:43
Speaker 1: you're doing with how your son's health and well being
18:47
Speaker 1: would be. And I would be just I'd be following
18:50
Speaker 1: the stuff that you've talked about from a screen point
18:52
Speaker 1: of view. I really think that if we could remove
18:55
Speaker 1: screens from the lives of our boys, or at least
18:57
Speaker 1: reduce their access to the course and degrading content, the
19:03
Speaker 1: content that makes them ei to feel one up or
19:05
Speaker 1: one down or has them push others into that alpha
19:08
Speaker 1: slash beta zone where they feel like they have to
19:10
Speaker 1: be alpha and everyone else's beta. I just feel like
19:13
Speaker 1: if we could help our boys to stay away from that,
19:15
Speaker 1: then they probably grow into great kids, good role models.
19:19
Speaker 1: But all the stuff that you talk about is right
19:22
Speaker 1: at the very core of it. Screens are in the
19:25
Speaker 1: heart of the parenting context now, and that question, I
19:29
Speaker 1: don't know if that's satisfying or helpful for you, but
19:33
Speaker 1: that questions, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good news for you.
19:38
Speaker 1: That leads very much into where I was just going
19:40
Speaker 1: to take the conversation to wrap up, and that is
19:42
Speaker 1: that you in screensmat children, you deliberately don't advocate for
19:48
Speaker 1: turtle bands, which is much harder sell than saying just
19:53
Speaker 1: throw the iPad in the bin. Actually, before I answer
19:56
Speaker 1: ask the question, let me give you some context. Some
19:59
Speaker 1: years ago, probably ten twelve years ago, I had a
20:03
Speaker 1: very inflammatory Twitter war back in the days when I
20:06
Speaker 1: was on social media with somebody who at the time
20:09
Speaker 1: was a very highly regarded parenting expert here in Australia.
20:12
Speaker 1: I won't say who it was. And then one of
20:14
Speaker 1: that person's colleagues also chimed in and they both started
20:17
Speaker 1: going at me really hard because I was saying, you
20:19
Speaker 1: can't ban you can't ban. You can't ban. It would
20:22
Speaker 1: be great if you could, but you can't ban. It's
20:23
Speaker 1: not realistic. It's kind of like saying, well, we've got
20:26
Speaker 1: to fence the pool. We've got to fence the pool
20:27
Speaker 1: to keep the kid saveement. It's like, hello, have you
20:28
Speaker 1: seen the ocean. You can't fence the ocean like fancy
20:31
Speaker 1: pool by all means. But banning, as soon as the
20:33
Speaker 1: kids are out of your sight, out of your house,
20:35
Speaker 1: your bands are useless. It's a harder sell. So here's
20:40
Speaker 1: my question for you. Is there any neuroscience around not
20:43
Speaker 1: going cold Turkey? But more than anything, at a practical level,
20:48
Speaker 1: how do you frame it so that a parent can
20:51
Speaker 1: deal with a like a fourteen year old boy or
20:54
Speaker 1: girl who wants to be on their phone all the
20:56
Speaker 1: time at home And you're not going to ban screens
20:58
Speaker 1: because you know that's kind of backfire.
21:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a great question, because this is on you.
21:03
Speaker 2: There isn't a lot of neuroscience around the cold Turkey issue,
21:09
Speaker 2: which me, I mean the thing I use My son
21:13
Speaker 2: loves to does gaming. But what what I do, which
21:18
Speaker 2: is why I said there's a caveat there is he
21:21
Speaker 2: plays the NBL NBA game on the Oni device, and
21:25
Speaker 2: it's not hooked up to the internet, so he's just
21:27
Speaker 2: playing against himself and it ends, right, he plays the game,
21:32
Speaker 2: and then it ends and it moves on, and I
21:34
Speaker 2: have a little trick of making sure that he's not
21:37
Speaker 2: getting addicted to it by just every now and then,
21:39
Speaker 2: when he's playing, I'll say, do you want me to
21:40
Speaker 2: drive you down to the courts and you actually have you
21:43
Speaker 2: find a pickup game, which he loves doing. And the
21:46
Speaker 2: day that he turns around and says, no, I'd rather
21:48
Speaker 2: play the video game is the day I know I've
21:50
Speaker 2: got a problem, because he should enjoy actually going down
21:54
Speaker 2: to the course and playing the real game rather than
21:56
Speaker 2: playing the video game. And so that's the sort of
21:58
Speaker 2: trick that I use anyway to know that I don't
22:02
Speaker 2: have a problem with him at this stage, and if
22:05
Speaker 2: I ever do, then I would sit down and talk
22:07
Speaker 2: to him about it. So why is it that you
22:09
Speaker 2: prefer to do this and actually do it for real?
22:11
Speaker 2: And how can we move forward from this? Because the
22:16
Speaker 2: devices are everywhere. Right, You're walking on a cafe and
22:19
Speaker 2: there's a big bloody screen on the wall, right screaming
22:21
Speaker 2: at you. We need to teach the kids how to
22:24
Speaker 2: use them properly, but we also need to safeguard them
22:29
Speaker 2: when they're younger from all of the evils that are
22:31
Speaker 2: out there. And we also need their brains to develop
22:34
Speaker 2: in a way where what they want to do is
22:36
Speaker 2: go out and socialize. What they want to do is
22:38
Speaker 2: go out and spend time with their friends. What they
22:40
Speaker 2: want to do is sit down and chat to somebody
22:43
Speaker 2: rather than be on the device. So that's a difficult
22:47
Speaker 2: balance and it's not easy, but I think parents just
22:52
Speaker 2: need to realize that by doing the hard stuff when
22:55
Speaker 2: the kids are young, it's much easier when they're older,
22:58
Speaker 2: Whereas if you do the easy thing when they then
23:00
Speaker 2: just hand over the iPad because they'll be entertained, it's
23:03
Speaker 2: going to be a hell up. Yeah, way harder when
23:06
Speaker 2: they're older. And I know, I volunteer for the Digital
23:09
Speaker 2: Detops program for Picada Foundation, and you know, when you
23:13
Speaker 2: see those teenagers who have serious problems, you're like, yeah,
23:19
Speaker 2: I'm going to do the odd stuff and when they're
23:21
Speaker 2: young and I'm going to make sure this doesn't happen.
23:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I'm right in the trenches. Listen
23:24
Speaker 1: to you say that, So our just turn twelve year
23:27
Speaker 1: old is in me almost every day. Can I please
23:29
Speaker 1: have an iPad? Can I please have an iPad? And
23:32
Speaker 1: as it is, she borrows our phone and she borrows
23:34
Speaker 1: our computer. But at least we've got a level of
23:37
Speaker 1: control over this. We've we've got some boundaries. But tell
23:40
Speaker 1: you what, this kid, if she had an iPad, we'd
23:43
Speaker 1: lose her and got to do the hard stuff now
23:46
Speaker 1: to make it easier later. So love what you've said,
23:48
Speaker 1: could listen to your day, could talk for hours. I
23:50
Speaker 1: feel like we've literally barely scratched the surface. And these
23:54
Speaker 1: questions that I've asked you, I have about thirty more
23:58
Speaker 1: on every single question that I've asked. This so much
24:00
Speaker 1: to talk about here, Mark, It's a delight to spend
24:03
Speaker 1: time with you. You're so generous in chatting and sharing
24:06
Speaker 1: your knowledge and I really appreciate that. Thank you for
24:08
Speaker 1: making time to be on the Happy Families podcast today.
24:11
Speaker 2: Thank you justin, thanks for having me in and good
24:13
Speaker 2: luck with the book at the moment.
24:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. Mark Williams. Professor Mark Williams.
24:19
Speaker 1: You can find him online just google professor Mark Williams,
24:22
Speaker 1: Doctor Mark Williams dot com. His new book Screen Smart
24:25
Speaker 1: Children definitely worth a look. Oh, I've blurbed the cover,
24:28
Speaker 1: by the way, my name is on the front cover
24:30
Speaker 1: because I thought it was definitely something that everyone should
24:32
Speaker 1: get a hold of. And if you'd like more, if
24:35
Speaker 1: I about him, you'll find him online. We'll link to
24:36
Speaker 1: all of that in the show notes. The Happy Family's
24:38
Speaker 1: podcast is produced by Justin Rouland from Bridge Media. Mim
24:41
Speaker 1: Hammons provides our additional support and for more to make
24:43
Speaker 1: your family happy, I visit happy families dot com. Do
24:46
Speaker 1: you