Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / Is there a correlation between infant screen time and adult anxiety?

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Is there a correlation between infant screen time and adult anxiety? · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

0:24
Good afternoon, America.
0:26
Nice to nice to see all of you here today in the room.
0:30
How's how is everybody?
0:32
Everybody looks well, everybody looks happy.
0:35
But it looks like they're smiling.
0:36
It's just it's a beautiful day.
0:38
The sun is shining, at least near where we're at.
0:42
It's shining and it's glorious.
0:44
And there's some fun things to get into today.
0:48
What I really want to dive headlong into is some interesting research out of Singapore that links the screen time of babies.
0:59
Now I'm I'm not even talking about kindergarteners and preschoolers.
1:05
We're talking about babies.
1:08
The screen time of babies linked to brain prematuration, not maturation, prematuration.
1:18
This study's out of Singapore, and it is intriguing.
1:24
Yeah, we're gonna dive into it because parents need to know about it.
1:29
Parents of toddlers, parents of infants, parents of preschool, kindergarten parents of elementary students.
1:38
They need to know what's coming out of the research, what the research is telling us in terms of what screen time is doing to the brain.
1:51
And it's not necessarily destroying it in the sense that it's wearing it down, but it's apparently it appears to be maturing it faster.
2:02
And so you might ask, well, isn't that a good thing that that the brain matures faster?
2:07
Uh and the child becomes more mature quicker.
2:10
Well, uh, I mean, maybe on the surface, it might seem like a great thing.
2:17
But we're gonna see what the research says, and I think we're gonna come to the conclusion that slowly is always the fastest way.
2:26
Slowly, my friends, is always the fastest way.
2:30
But before we get there, today's a history class.
2:33
I hear I hear the school bell chiming even as we speak.
2:38
We're going, we're going to history class.
2:42
It's an important history class.
2:44
It is, and we're gonna get it right here first at the onset, because the lesson is when we don't get to history class on the onset, then nine times out of ten, we don't get to it, and that's disappointing because you know how much we love history around here.
3:00
Give me liberty or give me death.
3:03
That is the title of today's history class, and you know right where we're going.
3:07
As soon as I say those words, give me liberty or give me death, all of you, all of you immediately think of Patrick Henry, and you would be correct if you did, because it was on this day in 1775, March 23rd, uh, when hostilities between Americans and British troops uh were breaking out in New England, they were about to really come to a come to a um an explosion uh in Lexington and Concord.
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We're just a couple weeks away from that anniversary.
3:45
It was on this day that Patrick Henry stood in a packed St.
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John's church in Richmond, Virginia.
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Yes, he was in a church.
3:54
Did you know he was in a church?
3:55
Saint John's Church in in Richmond.
3:59
He stood and gave his fiery argument to the second Virginia Convention that the time had come for the colonies to gather their strength and commit themselves to action.
4:12
It was it was the Virginians here who ultimately called for for the Continental Congress to convene just a few months earlier in September of 1774.
4:27
It was the Virginians, it was old dominion or ancient dominion, as the others referred to them as.
10:00
What is it that gentlemen wish?
10:02
What would they have?
10:04
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
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Forbid it, Almighty God.
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I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.
10:20
Bum bump bum.
10:22
There it is.
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There it is, my friends.
10:26
I know not what other course you're gonna take.
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But I know what I'm gonna do.
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I am going after liberty.
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And I'm either going to achieve liberty or I'm going to achieve death.
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Liberty or death.
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That's where we're at.
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Patrick Henry, my friends.
10:48
Oh, it's just a fun history class.
10:50
It's a fun reminder that even today, it's something that we are still fighting for.
10:58
And it's this kind of history class that our young people need to hear.
11:04
They need to uh contemplate the words of Patrick Henry.
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It's a speech that really should be memorized and should be understood within its context, because it can be extrapolated out even to uh to today.
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Uh freedom is something, as Reagan said, that is not just naturally in our bloodstream.
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It's got to be it's got to be passed down from generation to generation.
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This generation has to pass it down to the next, and they have to pass it down and and so on.
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It just isn't going to happen.
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It's got to be fought for continuously, constantly gone after.
11:48
All right.
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And that's that's why we're doing it here.
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That's the importance of it.
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That's the importance of history class.
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It's why we do it.
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Uh I mean, definitely we do it weekly.
12:00
I feel like there are certain spans of time where we'd have a history class almost every day.
12:06
And it's important, it's something that we have to do.
12:08
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12:20
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They will be gone.
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You will miss it if you do not act uh and act quickly.
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It's going to be a gala of an event.
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I'm telling you, uh, nationally renowned speakers, wonderful, delicious food, fantastic entertainment, a firework display, second to none, July 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in downtown Nashville.
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Uh it's going to be a great time.
12:56
Not only are we celebrating 250 years of American independence, but we're celebrating 10 glorious years of America out loud.
13:05
10 glorious years of the uh right to speak our minds and and the ability to do it on this platform.
13:15
Ah, it's fantastic.
13:17
All right, my friends.
13:18
Speaking of the ability, speak on this platform.
13:23
I want to want to dive into some research.
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I came across this article the other day by Kara Michelle Miller.
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And she is with the epoch times, and she's exploring this research out of Singapore that is uh it's it's profound.
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Her her headline is titled Baby Screen Time Link to Brain Prematuration.
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And it's um, you know, when we think of brains maturing.
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Some might say, well, it you know, the faster they mature, isn't it?
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Uh and this research is finding that that's that's not accurate, that that's not the way we should be going about it, that slowly actually is the fastest way.
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Um screens that increasingly fill babies' early days, according to Michelle Kara Michelle Miller, can shape how their brains handle uncertainty and stress later on.
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This is what the research is uncovering.
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The study found.
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Interestingly, that the average baby, this is going to shock you.
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This right here, I mean, it shocked me.
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The average baby.
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We're talking about babies here, okay?
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The average baby spends more than two hours a day on screens.
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And the the age range here that they refer to a baby is birth to two, birth to age two.
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How in the world, you might ask, can I can a baby navigate a screen?
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How can you how can a baby spend two hours on a screen?
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Well, yet you hand it to it, you hand the screen to the child and it stares at it.
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It just, you know, whatever's happening on the screen is bouncing around and and the child is engaged in the activity.
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Well, isn't that a good thing?
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It's it's that the child is engaged, engaged just the key word here.
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The child, be it be engaged with something and following it around and allowing its eye movements and eye patterns to to uh well, no, apparently, no.
15:41
Uh, all right.
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So the average the average baby spends more than two hours a day on a screen from ages of birth to two.
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And the research has discovered that this early exposure leaves traces in the brain that persist for more than a decade.
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And and so, what does that mean?
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Well, it can influence how quickly they make decisions, or how slowly they make decisions, and how and how prone they are to anxiety as they as they grow up.
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The findings were published in e-biomedicine, and they come from one of the longest-running studies to follow the same children from birth into their teens.
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The longitudinal factor here, this study is uh is impressive.
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They followed these children, the same exact children from birth to to when they're 13, or at some point into their teens, and because of this ability to follow them for over a decade.
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Their their research and their study links early screen exposure to brain changes that are in turn connected to slower decision making and even mental health problems that show up years later, and by mental health problems, we are referring to anxiety and and things of that of that ilk.
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Uh, early experiences help shape how flexible and resilient the brain later becomes.
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The lead author in this study, I don't know how how you pronounce his name.
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Pai Holong, I think, P-E-I-H-U-A-N-G, Huang.
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I'm gonna I'm gonna say pay, maybe who won.
17:41
Um this was his statement that early experiences help shape how flexible and resilient the brain will will later become.
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And so when certain brain systems specialize too quickly, he said children may be less able to adapt later in life.
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We don't want the brain and and particular systems within the brain to specialize too quickly or to mature too quickly.
18:09
This thing is a process.
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Uh we're not like other animals, we're not like the horses where we come right out and then we get up on our on our two feet and start walking.
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There is a process that our brain needs and requires, and there are certain things that our brain needs and requires in order for this process to come to full maturation, and we shouldn't be speeding it along.
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And and what this research is discovering that screen time for babies and infants and toddlers is indeed speeding that that process along.
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All right, I'm looking at the clock here, and I see we are up against it.
18:55
So let's pause here for a minute.
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We're gonna pick this article up and this research up on the other side of the break.
19:02
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19:47
All right, my friends, more brain research on the other side of this break.
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Anytime we have an opportunity to get into brain research, I want to go there because number one, it fascinates me.
22:00
It's intriguing.
22:01
I'm I'm interested in it.
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And this research right here, describing the growth process or the maturation process that the brain goes through.
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And what is necessary for appropriate brain maturation?
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What is necessary in the in the world of a of an infant of a toddler of a baby?
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I mean, there are things that are absolutely necessary.
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And the screen isn't one of them.
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Now, here's what I don't want.
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I don't want to come across as preachy or you shouldn't have those screens.
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How dare you?
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How do I put that screen away right now?
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I don't want to come across that way because I I get it 100%.
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I mean, you're a you're a busy parent, you need a minute, and you whip out your phone and you you turn on something, some type of cartoon, some type of something or other, and then you hand it to your to the infant and and and by golly, boom.
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Um little little Johnny is mesmerized, and and and little Johnny is captivated.
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Uh, and uh and then he's busy, he's he's preoccupied for a minute, and and you've got a break.
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You've got this moment that you can uh you can just relax and take a breath.
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I get all that.
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I do, I understand it.
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But there are some things that you need to be aware of.
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If if that is the road that you want to go down, and even for a minute, because if you go down that road for a minute, then the chances are you you might end up just because of the nature of the beast.
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You might end up going down longer than a minute.
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So this is why we're here today.
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This is why we're going through this research.
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It's why we're exploring it.
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So, as I said, this came out of Singapore.
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Uh, scientists followed 168 children in Singapore, beginning at their birth and tracked them to the age of 13.
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Along the way, they would scan their brains.
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They did a brain scan at the age of four and a half.
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They did a brain scan again at six, and a brain scan again at seven and a half.
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So, right here in the middle, they're doing brain scans every year and a half, and then they were followed up again at the age of 13.
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So, on average, babies in the cohort were already spending more than one hour a day on screens by the time they hit age one.
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Holy smokes, age one, they're already added an hour a day.
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By the time they get to age two, uh, the average has doubled to two hours a day.
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Children who had more daily screen time as babies showed a faster than typical change in how visual processing regions of the brain connected with areas involving planning.
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This is just ah, this is enthralling to me.
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They um again, children who had more daily screen time as babies show a faster than typical change and how their visual processing and these regions of visual processing of the brain connect with other areas of the brain and other areas that are involved in planning, involved in attention or decision making.
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Put simply, those brain systems appeared to mature easier earlier and faster than what they would have normally.
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Now, again, we're like, yeah, it's a great thing.
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Let's get those things, you know, let's get those regions of the brain maturing faster.
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Babies with accelerated brain maturation had a higher risk of developing cognitive and behavioral issues in adolescence.
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This is what the researchers found.
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So, no.
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No, it's not a good thing that we get these regions of the brain maturing faster.
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Here's what Huang said.
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Again, he's the lead researcher here in the study.
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Accelerated maturation happens when certain brain networks develop too fast, often in response to adversity or other stimuli.
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Early brain differences linked to screen time showed up in their behavior.
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At age eight and a half, children with altered brain patterns took longer to decide when presented with a gambling task, where they had to guess which color box hit a token and how many points to bet on their choice.
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The children weren't necessarily making wrong choices.
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They were just making slower choices.
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Well, what's the big deal with that?
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That's okay that they that they take their time and making their their decisions.
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Well, by the age of 13, teens who had taken a few extra seconds longer to make decisions earlier in childhood reported more frequent or more intense anxiety systems overall.
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So now the question becomes is it anxiousness that is delaying their decision-making process.
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The authors argue that the link between accelerated visual control network maturation and slower deliberation and higher anxiety points to a plausible brain-based pathway.
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And their view, heavy screen exposure may push the brain sensory and control systems to organize differently than they would with less screen time.
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Fast moving, brightly edited, digital images strongly stimulate the visual system at a time when the brain is still learning how to filter and prioritize information from all the senses.
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And so during typical development, brain networks specialize gradually.
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They specialize slowly.
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Um to build in the efficient connections needed for complex thinking.
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The brain is this unbelievable machine.
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And in order for it to mature well, it's got to mature slowly.
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It's got to give everything an opportunity to connect.
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And if visual information is harder to regulate, the child may take longer to feel confident enough to act, which could then contribute to hesitation or worry or anxiety when situations feel uncertain or when they feel overwhelming.
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Huang said that this can limit flexibility, and it can limit resilience.
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The overall effect size was small, but developmental neuroscientists often note that small effects in early childhood can add up over time, particularly when they involve fundamental systems such as attention and emotional regulation.
29:47
Outside experts say that the study does not necessarily establish cause and effect here.
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And uh, you know, they they might be right.
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But it's still interesting enough to stop and pay attention to.
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The study offers a thoughtful link between screen exposure and future implications on anxiety decision making.
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But Catherine Humphreys, who is a developmental neuroscientist and professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt, told the Epoch Times that we should still interpret this cautiously.
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She's not involved in the study, but she's read through it and you know she understands it.
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But she's just saying, hey, let's, you know, let's not uh ultimately start talking about cause and effect.
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Brandon McDaniel is a child development research uh researcher and professor of pediatrics at Indiana University.
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Uh neither was he involved in the study, but he told the the Epoch Times that the study suggests a link between infant screen use and later differences in brain development, but it cannot show that screen exposure itself cause those changes.
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He said it could be that infants in this study who were more frequently exposed to screen use also experienced fewer higher quality interactions with their caregiver.
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And we know that high quality interactions between caregivers and infants are critical for healthy infant development.
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Now, this is important.
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McVaniel here is, in my opinion, he's nailing it.
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It might not be that it's the it's the um it's the screen time that's creating um a lagging development here in terms of uh decision making in terms of uh anxiety.
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It could be what this what the screen time is replacing, and that is the high quality interactions between parents and and children.
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Um this is this is the important thing.
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He uses caregivers and infants.
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I'm not going to call parent caregivers.
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Parents are parents, and the high quality interaction that they have with their babies is of the utmost importance.
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Now, it is true, or apparently it would seem that the um what discovered, and that is there are these um these networks involved in vision and cognition that appear to be specializing faster, his words.
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Um he said that that before the brain had built the efficient connections needed for complex thinking, that these specific areas are developing faster and quicker.
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That could be because of the interaction with the screen time.
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Uh and it could also be that the effects later on are because there's not enough quality interaction with actual humans.
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It might not just be one or the other, but it might be this vicious combination of both.
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Genetics, temperament, parenting stress, or or family mental health history could also influence how much screen time infants get and how anxiety develops later on.
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Still, the proposed pathway is useful for thinking about what infants' brains need most during these first years of life, these first most important years of life.
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There are certain particular things that um that the infants need.
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So let's kind of talk through this here.
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The first two years are a period of what researchers tell us are rapid brain growth and reorganization.
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During this time, brain systems involved in attention, self-control, emotional regulation.
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These are just beginning to form.
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The developing brain learns best from live responsive interaction.
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It's this simple back and forth that takes place between parents.
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It's these these small little moments that are happening between the parent and the child, such as peekaboo.
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Uh, yeah, yeah, you know, that peekaboo game is classic.
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And you, you know, you hide your eyes and then you you peekaboo, and the and the little the the little guy laughs or whatever.
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Um so we're looking at peekaboo.
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We're looking at shared attention during play.
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Uh we're looking at parents responding to a baby's sounds and a baby's expressions.
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You know, the the baby, you know, says googaga or whatever, and everybody in the room claps and applauds and uh and they smile, and the baby then smiles back, and there's this there's this facial recognition interaction that's constantly going on.
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Humphries says her concern is that screens can unintentionally displace the frequency and the quality of parent to infant exchanges, this shared attention, language input, co-regulation, she says.
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Uh these things support early learning, and they also support later mental health.
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They're they're imperative.
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We we cannot go without them.
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And so is it not just that the screen is causing specific areas of the brain to mature faster, but it's also replacing these very important moments that infants, babies need to be having with their parents.
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Moment-to-moment interactions help wire brain systems involved in attention, emotional regulation, and these, of course, as we have already said, they're still forming during infancy.
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The uh related work from the same Singapore team has highlighted how screens are only one piece of a larger developmental picture.
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This is interesting.
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2024, a study published in psychological medicine, the same team found that shared interactive activities between an infant and a parent may help to buffer the effects associated with screen time.
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Children whose parents frequently read with them and showed uh, or I'm I'm sorry, but children whose parents frequently read with them showed weaker associations between early screen exposure and later brain differences linked to emotional regulation.
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So if if you're reading with your child, you're interacting with them while they're still having some sort of screen time, then those uh associations between the screen exposure and um uh later uh anxiety or later uh decision making, those links tend to lessen.
37:42
All right, so what are the takeaways here?
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Uh talking, singing, reading, cuddling, playing, outdoor time, all of these activities uh provide the kind of rich real-world experience that a baby's brain needs.
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Experiences that nothing on a screen can uh replicate.
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Nothing on the screen has the ability to uh reproduce these experiences.
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Now, again, we're not naive here.
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We get it.
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Most families, most parents are going to use screens sometimes.
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Uh it's just the nature of it.
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They're here, they exist.
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It's probably going to happen that in a moment, you need little Sally to just be entertained for a second.
38:37
We get that.
38:39
Um, but the recommendation and keeping the screen exposure low whenever possible, or avoiding screens as a default way to soothe or distract babies is it's an important recommendation to follow if we default to the screen to soothe the child or distract them.
39:00
Uh, if that becomes our go-to, then um that habit loop is going to be tough to break.
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For babies under 18 months, uh, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends avoiding screens other than video chatting.
39:17
After 18 months, parents who choose to introduce screens are encouraged to watch together and help the child understand what they're seeing and limit use to no more than an hour a day.
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Uh in this article, both experts emphasize the same bottom line that early relationships being present, responsive, and playful, remain the the absolute foundation of healthy development.
39:46
Uh so there it is.
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Uh intriguing.
39:50
This is a very intriguing longitudinal study out of Singapore that uh has tracked the same individuals, 160 plus, I think.
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Again, from birth to 13, tracking their screen use, tracking their um their brain scans, tracking their emotional behavior and what they are finding is um it's something that we need to pay attention to.
40:20
Now, again, is it conclusive cause and effect?
40:22
The experts are gonna say no.
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But it's something that cannot be ignored.
40:29
It is very um, it is very, very revealing.
40:34
All right, more uh interesting uh facts about this thing and and maybe what Steve Jobs thought about it and and how he treated his own kids with with technology.
40:46
We'll pick that up in segment three.
40:48
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All right, so we just finished this this fascinating research here out of Singapore.
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Linking perhaps the screen time that that babies undergo, and also brain maturation.
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Uh, it is it's intriguing to me.
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And even though, you know, we've got the the big wigs and the experts that will kind of follow up and say, well, this uh, you know, you're there's gonna be causation here.
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We can't we can't say that screen time is the exact cause of blah blah blah.
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And there's a lot of truth to that.
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Um we we do know after years of research the importance of interaction between parents and babies.
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We we we know this.
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We know how important it is for for babies to have facial recognition, to have this time with their parents where it's goo goo gaga and peekaboo and and uh and and this playtime where they're smiling and laughing and and we are smiling and laughing at them, and we're acknowledging what they're doing, and we're acknowledging what they're saying, and it's just this is really ultimately how the brain unfolds and it unfolds naturally and it unflowed it unf it unfolds slowly and oftentimes in this case slowly is the fastest way.
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Now we're not saying you know, don't use screens.
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Um I think ultimately the child is better off if we don't use screens.
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But we get there at times where the the screen is where we think it's necessary.
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We're not that naive.
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But do you know how Steve Jobs handled it?
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Essentially the creator of the screen.
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What did he do?
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Um in 2010, a New York Times reporter having a conversation with with Steve Jobs, essentially asked this very question.
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Nick Bilton was his name, the name of the reporter.
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And in this conversation with Jobs here in 2010, he said, your kids must love the iPad, right?
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And that this was right after the the launch of the iPad.
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And this guy's like, your kids are gonna love this.
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I mean, they're their bedrooms are probably stocked full of iPads.
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They probably get their choice of which color or which blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And um Steve Jobs just simply said, Yeah, you know, they haven't used it.
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He said we limit the amount of technology our children use at home.
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They haven't used it.
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This man is its creator, the creator of the iPad.
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And Nick Bilton from the New York Times said, Ah, your kids must love the iPad, right?
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And Jobs says, no, they don't love it.
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They don't use it.
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Um, any special reason, according to Walter Isaacson, the author of Steve Jobs biography.
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What's the special reason here that your kids don't use technology?
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Isaacson said the family focused more on history.
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Uh, at home, Steve Jobs focused more on reading as well as activities.
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Um, and perhaps even activities that had to do with technology, but not the technology itself.
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Here's how Walter Isaacson explained it.
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He said every night, Steve insisted on dining at the big kitchen table, talking about books, talking about history, and talking about a variety of other things.
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Nobody ever took out an iPad, nobody ever took out a computer.
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The kids didn't seem addicted to the devices.
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Well, the kids didn't have access to the devices.
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That's why they didn't seem addicted to it.
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And what was what was Steve Jobs talking about with them?
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It's talking about books.
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It was talking about history.
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Steve Jobs was probably taking his kids to a nightly history class around the dinner table.
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Not allowing them to access the technology, not allowing them to tap into the technology, not allowing them to go down the technological road.
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Mm-mm.
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No, and instead, let's talk about history.
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Let's talk about books.
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Let's let's talk about activities.
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Let's talk about our day.
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How is your day, dear?
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You know, we we kind of we have this joke in my house where we all just, how is your day, dear?
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And then we just you know talk about our day, but that's how we start it.
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Um it's not really a joke, it's just something stupid we do.
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Uh a large number of CEOs, apparently, and prominent figures of Silicon Valley, apparently significantly reduced the time that their children spend in in regard to technology.
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Uh, Bill Gates didn't give his children cell phones until they were 14 years old.
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Additionally, he didn't allow them to have it during lunch, during dinner, or right before bed.
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Sorry, kids.
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You're going to bed in an hour, shut up that phone.
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Or, you know, we're eating dinner or or we're having lunch.
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No, we're going to put this stuff away.
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Um, according to the authors of the book, Screen Schooled, uh, several former employees of tech uh tech companies uh also do the same.
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They say that uh it it hampers creativity and it limits social relationships.
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And so they they they don't allow their kids to uh
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Use the devices.
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So what do they know that we don't know is the question.
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Um many people who have or or had to do anything with technological development, restrict its use at home.
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Uh Tristan Harris has a former Google exec.
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He warned of the tricks that websites like Facebook or YouTube use to hold our attention without us even noticing it.
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In 2020, the net the Netflix documentary called The Social Dilemma caused a furor by revealing how social networks work and how they make us addicted.
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And there's a particular phrase that stands out in the film.
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There are two industries that call their customers users.
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The two industries are illegal drugs and software.
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Users.
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That's what we are to them.
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We're users.
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And it seems that Steve Jobs saw this coming.
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The film, the the Netflix, the Netflix film here describes the addiction and negative impacts of social networks in our daily life, which apparently is closely linked to the devices with which we interact.
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Additionally testimonials in the film explain how social media companies play with our me, our emotions, play with our behaviors.
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And various studies indicate that addiction to screens leads to these problems.
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And apparently, this study out of Singapore is very similar, but yet uh, you know, again, I get it.
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Maybe this isn't causation.
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But is it certainly something that we've got to look into?
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It's something that we absolutely have to explore.
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If we don't explore it, then we are going to be uh we're going to be left in the lurch, wondering what in the world happened.
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What in the world did we uh what were we thinking?
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How did we allow this?
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Uh how did we allow this to unfold without paying attention to uh baby screen times and how it might be linked to brain maturation, which again isn't it a good thing that our that our brain should be maturing so so readily, so so quickly.
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My friend, slowly is often the fastest way.
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And the brain has to mature the way the brain has to mature.
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It's it's got to go through its processes, it's got to go through its cycles and and and every single part of those processes has everything to do with parental interaction.
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The way we interact with our children as they are infants, as they are babies, uh absolutely uh means everything.
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There's another study that I want to get into.
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Maybe don't have time to get into it today.
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Perhaps tomorrow we will we will dive into this, but um this study is out of the children's hospital of Philadelphia.
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And they uh the the point of the study was to uh look at science behind perhaps what's the right age for a child to have a phone.
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What is it?
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I mean, Bill Gates said he didn't give a phone away till they were 14.
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And you know, when the question was posed to Steve Jobs, well, your kids just love the uh the iPad, don't they?
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And Jobs was like, yeah, they don't have one.
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They they don't have access to this technology.
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And it is altogether probable that perhaps the right age to pass along this this type of technology is when the brain is fully matured.
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Now we know the brain doesn't fully mature until 25.
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That's what we're told.
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So uh that's that's probably not an option, is it?
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Sorry, Johnny, you don't get your cell phone until you're 25.
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Uh that's not gonna work.
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But I don't know.
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I I question middle school.
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I don't think middle school is is an appropriate age.
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I just don't.
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Maybe at some point in high school, maybe you give them a flip phone.
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Oh, you would not hear the end of it if you gave them a flip phone.
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But all my friends have the iPhone, all my friends have the give the galaxy, whatever.
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Oh, you would not hear the end of it.
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That's the that's the day and time we live in, my friends.
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That that's the age.
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It's the age that we live in.
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So we're we're gonna dive into this study perhaps tomorrow.
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And and ask the question, well, when is it?
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When is the best age?
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I can tell you what the best age to go to history class is.
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That that's that's right day one.
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That is the best age.
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Go to history class at day one, go to it early and often.
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Make sure that you're you're talking to them about about good stories.
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Uh let that be the conversation at dinner time.
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Stories from the great books, from the great philosophers, from the great minds of the ages.
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And the important thing is this.
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How can you tell the stories if you don't know them yourself?
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So guess what?
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Guess what you've got to do?
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You've got some homework.
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That's right.
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You have homework assignments.
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You've got to do some reading yourself.
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I don't like to read.
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Well, you gotta learn to like it.
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Matter of fact, you gotta learn to love it.
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Just learn to just take it in.
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Uh, so you can tell the stories.
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Yeah, you know, read to your kids.
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We we talk about that around here all the time.
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Read to them.
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Start out with the Hardy Boy books.
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That that was our place.
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That was our starting point.
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That was our springboard, our diving board was Frank and Joe Hardy.
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Ah, such good times.
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I would do it all over again.
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I would do it exactly the way I did it.
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And I would start with Frank and Joe Hardy.
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I might throw in some others though that I missed along the way.
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You know, probably.
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But look, the point is interact with them.
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Uh, if they got to have a cell phone, fine, but interact with them.
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Dominate their screen time with your FaceTime with just you and them.
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All right, my friends, that's all the time we have for today.
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Thank you for joining us.
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I'm so happy you're a part of this audience.
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Thank you for being here with us.
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Encourage your friends and family to get on the dean's list.
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Let's unite to renovate the age.