Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1171 - Evidence Based Solutions to Break Screen Addiction with Dr Brad Marshall

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#1171 - Evidence Based Solutions to Break Screen Addiction with Dr Brad Marshall · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:06
Speaker 1: Digital addiction is the growing but silent epidemic that's ravaging
0:10
Speaker 1: too many of our kids' brains. We're not talking about
0:12
Speaker 1: a fringe problem here. We're talking about a full blown
0:14
Speaker 1: psychological assault when it comes to our children and their
0:17
Speaker 1: internet gaming, internet gaming disorder and smartphone addiction. Something like
0:21
Speaker 1: ten percent of Australian teens are getting their dope mean hits,
0:24
Speaker 1: cheap dope mean hits from screens instead of life. It's
0:27
Speaker 1: not just a status generation of kids that are being
0:30
Speaker 1: rewired with cheap dope mean right underneath our noses, often
0:34
Speaker 1: in our land rooms and in their bedrooms. And in
0:36
Speaker 1: today's episode of The Happy Family's podcast, doctor Brad Marshall,
0:39
Speaker 1: the Unplugged Psychologist is going to break down how technology
0:43
Speaker 1: is hijacking our children's mental architecture and what the hell
0:46
Speaker 1: we can do about it. Dtor Brad Marshall is a
0:48
Speaker 1: returning guest to The Happy Family's podcast. Brad the Unplugged
0:52
Speaker 1: Psychologist has spent over a decade at the cutting edge
0:54
Speaker 1: of healthy screen use. He's an author, he's a researcher,
0:57
Speaker 1: he's a speaker, he's a clinician. Brad, Welcome back to
1:00
Speaker 1: the pod. So good to have you here.
1:02
Speaker 2: Thank you justin appreciate it. And I should just clarify
1:05
Speaker 2: there I'm not doctor yet. I've handed in my DHD thesis,
1:08
Speaker 2: but I'm probably a couple of months off yet, but
1:10
Speaker 2: I appreciate you using that tag early. Thank you.
1:12
Speaker 1: I reckon if you've handed in the thesis and almost
1:15
Speaker 1: doctor is close, but I take your point. I won't.
1:18
Speaker 1: I won't push the point. So let's talk about this
1:21
Speaker 1: paper that you've just published. This is not going to
1:23
Speaker 1: get geeky any parent who's got a child who was
1:25
Speaker 1: on screens and gaming too much. This is going to
1:27
Speaker 1: be relevant for you. But we're going to geek out
1:29
Speaker 1: for about one hundred and twenty seconds. Brad. You've just
1:31
Speaker 1: published this study about Internet gaming disorder and smartphone addiction.
1:34
Speaker 1: Obviously that's our topic today. Who was in the study?
1:37
Speaker 1: What was the study about?
1:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just top level stuff here. Basically, what we
1:41
Speaker 2: did at Macquarie University, at the research lab i'm working
1:44
Speaker 2: out is six hundred and eighty nine families joined our
1:48
Speaker 2: study and they were kids that were from kindergarten to
1:51
Speaker 2: year twelve. Now most of the kids were between year
1:54
Speaker 2: four and year eight. That's who sort of volunteered, And
1:56
Speaker 2: what we were asking them is is parents to volunteer
1:59
Speaker 2: if you have tons around smartphone addiction or gaming video
2:02
Speaker 2: game disorder, or just problematic usage. So parents signed up
2:06
Speaker 2: six hundred and eighty nine of them, and what they
2:09
Speaker 2: received in exchange for signing up was a whole bunch
2:12
Speaker 2: of videos of myself chatting about all the different strategies
2:15
Speaker 2: that I did in my first book, Detech Diet, and
2:18
Speaker 2: we were offering them education on this stuff and strategies
2:21
Speaker 2: of what you can do to put healthy boundaries around
2:23
Speaker 2: this at home. Six weeks later, we asked them to
2:26
Speaker 2: fill out a second survey. We had one hundred and
2:28
Speaker 2: fifty three do that, and then we've crunched the numbers
2:32
Speaker 2: on what happened with those one hundred and fifty three.
2:34
Speaker 2: Now we'll just leave for a second the big dropout
2:36
Speaker 2: rate then, because there is a big dropout rate and
2:38
Speaker 2: we can explain that. But essentially what we found is
2:41
Speaker 2: that sixty percent of these kids qualified for either smartphone
2:45
Speaker 2: addiction or gaming disorder on bona fide tools that we
2:50
Speaker 2: use at the start at baseline, so it was a
2:53
Speaker 2: fairly clinical sample. Sixty percent of them were considered clinical
2:57
Speaker 2: and by the end of it, sixty percent of the
3:00
Speaker 2: kid that had gaining disorder didn't have it at six weeks,
3:04
Speaker 2: and thirty two percent that had it at the smartphone
3:07
Speaker 2: addiction didn't have it at the end. So what we're
3:09
Speaker 2: talking about there is a parent only intervention trial. I
3:14
Speaker 2: never met a single kid, in fact, justin I never
3:16
Speaker 2: even met a single parent. It was just me on videos,
3:19
Speaker 2: So there was no real therapeutic alliance there or holding
3:22
Speaker 2: their hands. It was just information we're giving them. And
3:25
Speaker 2: we feel that those top line results are pretty encouraging
3:29
Speaker 2: that parents can have a huge impact on how their
3:32
Speaker 2: kids do stuff online and the impacts there.
3:34
Speaker 1: So here's my restate of this. Of one hundred and
3:37
Speaker 1: fifty parents or thereabouts who filled in that second form,
3:41
Speaker 1: you've got a one third two third improvement where you've
3:43
Speaker 1: gone from disordered dysfunctional behavior to my child is now
3:49
Speaker 1: back with it, living a functional, adaptive, healthy life. Again
3:53
Speaker 1: in relation to the way their screen's going and the
3:55
Speaker 1: intervention is they've watched a handful of videos with you
3:57
Speaker 1: across a six week period and then implemented that at themselves.
4:01
Speaker 1: Big big finding. Let's talk about this huge dropout because
4:05
Speaker 1: you've lost what is it, four or five hundred people
4:07
Speaker 1: from part one to part two?
4:09
Speaker 2: Correct?
4:10
Speaker 1: Why do you think so many dropped out? And what
4:13
Speaker 1: does that say about how strong these findings are? By
4:15
Speaker 1: the way, in a secon we're going to talk about
4:17
Speaker 1: what the videos said, but let's just address this. Why
4:20
Speaker 1: do you reckon so many people pulled out?
4:22
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean so there's a couple of different theories here,
4:24
Speaker 2: but the dropout RATEY is seventy seven point eight percent, Okay,
4:26
Speaker 2: so it's significant. It's a limitation of the study, and
4:30
Speaker 2: as a good researcher, of course, you have to be
4:32
Speaker 2: upfront about those limitations. We're not going to do some
4:35
Speaker 2: selective reporting here and try and wash over that. What
4:38
Speaker 2: I would say is there's a couple of different theories.
4:40
Speaker 2: One theory would be that parents just got really burnt
4:43
Speaker 2: out and didn't implement the strategies. The other theory would
4:47
Speaker 2: be that of those parents that didn't turn up, really
4:50
Speaker 2: there wasn't a whole lot of inputus. There wasn't a
4:51
Speaker 2: whole lot of reward for them to fill out that
4:53
Speaker 2: second survey. So what I mean by that is there
4:56
Speaker 2: was no financial incentive for them to do it. Parents
4:58
Speaker 2: are busy, they get this can survey, they've already got
5:01
Speaker 2: the videos, which typically cost fifty or sixty bucks, they've
5:04
Speaker 2: got them for free. And they've never met me. They've
5:07
Speaker 2: never met Professor Warburton, who I work with, So there's
5:09
Speaker 2: not really any I guess contract for them to actually
5:13
Speaker 2: fill in that second survey. So I do think that's
5:15
Speaker 2: a big part of it at a more likely scenario, Brad.
5:19
Speaker 1: Thanks for explaining that there were five things that you
5:22
Speaker 1: encourage parents to do as they worked with their kids
5:25
Speaker 1: in terms of their gaming disorder or their screen addiction challenges.
5:31
Speaker 1: I want to step through those five and I'd like
5:34
Speaker 1: to ask you to just talk briefly about each of
5:38
Speaker 1: those five things and to the degree you can, to
5:42
Speaker 1: what extent did each of these things contribute to the
5:46
Speaker 1: positive outcomes the reductions in dysfunctional behavior that you saw.
5:50
Speaker 1: So the first one is one that I'm a really
5:53
Speaker 1: big believer in managing the home Wi Fi with set limits.
5:57
Speaker 1: How does that work and how does that contribute to
6:00
Speaker 1: the positive outcomes?
6:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, So basically there were five things that we measured
6:04
Speaker 2: as what we call dosage variables here that we were measuring,
6:08
Speaker 2: but there are seven steps in the Tech Diet for
6:10
Speaker 2: your Child and Team book. We were just trying to
6:13
Speaker 2: pick the five that were sort of objectively measured in
6:15
Speaker 2: a research sense. So the first one is managing the
6:18
Speaker 2: home Wi Fi and setting limits around that. That one,
6:21
Speaker 2: and then strategy two and three. So strategy two is
6:24
Speaker 2: placing limits on your child's data plan. So again both
6:28
Speaker 2: of those you'll probably see you justin And this is
6:30
Speaker 2: interesting for the recent social media band debate and everything. Essentially,
6:35
Speaker 2: what we're acknowledging here from a clinical perspective is that
6:39
Speaker 2: parents that are using parental controls on phones and devices
6:43
Speaker 2: and apps and games, they're incredibly poor. They're poorly designed.
6:48
Speaker 2: There's easy ways to get around them. And you know,
6:50
Speaker 2: we can go into where the tech companies designed them
6:52
Speaker 2: that way on purpose or not, but anyway, I think
6:54
Speaker 2: they might have. Yeah, I mean I think i'd agree
6:57
Speaker 2: with you, but anyway, so I just want to circumvent.
7:00
Speaker 2: And these strategies are designed to be right. What fuels
7:03
Speaker 2: all of these devices and their persuasive design and their
7:05
Speaker 2: addictive nature and the dopamine is the Wi Fi. We
7:08
Speaker 2: know that for a fact. So if the first two
7:10
Speaker 2: steps control your Wi Fi and control the mobile data
7:13
Speaker 2: actually had some of the biggest impact that we saw
7:16
Speaker 2: when we broke down the different strategies and what was
7:19
Speaker 2: the most effective. The third strategy of setting clear boundaries
7:23
Speaker 2: around Wi Fi and bedtime was fairly effective as well.
7:27
Speaker 2: And then we get into the last two strategies, which
7:30
Speaker 2: weren't as effective. I mean, some of them had some significance,
7:33
Speaker 2: it was pretty weak and it was approaching a bit vague.
7:36
Speaker 2: And I should also mention for all five of these,
7:40
Speaker 2: what we really stuck to in the research is just
7:43
Speaker 2: the overall effect. Because some parents picked strategy one and
7:46
Speaker 2: strategy five picked they all picked different ones, and that
7:50
Speaker 2: was interesting to us is that they quite often didn't
7:53
Speaker 2: apply all five strategies. They might have just picked two
7:56
Speaker 2: or three, but it was about them picking the ones
7:59
Speaker 2: that really were for their situation. So just circling back,
8:02
Speaker 2: strategy four was to draw up an agreement for daily
8:05
Speaker 2: screen use with their child, and strategy five was about
8:08
Speaker 2: implementing consequences if they break set rules. And so four
8:12
Speaker 2: and five were not used as much and they weren't
8:15
Speaker 2: as effective as some of the other ones, but as
8:18
Speaker 2: a whole, all five strategies were found to be extremely
8:21
Speaker 2: effective for treating gaining disorder and smartphone pitch.
8:31
Speaker 1: I'm going to go through these again because there was
8:33
Speaker 1: a lot of information that you just shared and I
8:35
Speaker 1: want it to be super accessible for parents who are
8:37
Speaker 1: going I need this, I need more, I just need this.
8:41
Speaker 1: So number one was managing the home Wi Fi with
8:42
Speaker 1: set limits. When we get really practical about that. First
8:46
Speaker 1: of all, every single one of these five elements is
8:48
Speaker 1: going to have a conversational component. Right, We're going to
8:50
Speaker 1: sit down with our child, We're going to have a discussion.
8:52
Speaker 1: We're worried about this. We know that there's been a
8:54
Speaker 1: lot of contention. There's a lot of discussion ongoing the
8:58
Speaker 1: in the house, but we need to manage the home
9:00
Speaker 1: WiFi would set limits so the conversation begins. Effectively, what
9:04
Speaker 1: do parents do then? Do they start switching the Wi
9:06
Speaker 1: Fi off? Is that pretty much it? The WiFi is
9:08
Speaker 1: going to go off between i'd know eight thirty at
9:11
Speaker 1: night and seven thirty in the morning. Is that how
9:13
Speaker 1: that rolls? Or is there something more to it?
9:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, so just around the conversation. So I think that's
9:18
Speaker 2: a really important part. We always try to do this
9:20
Speaker 2: in a clinical sense as a part of a conversation.
9:23
Speaker 1: Of course with our teenagers, right.
9:25
Speaker 2: But I should also just quantify here if you're a
9:28
Speaker 2: parent at home listening to this, going, my child won't
9:30
Speaker 2: even sit down and have that conversation with meep, then
9:34
Speaker 2: for some of these strategies, these parents strategies are for
9:36
Speaker 2: those parents as well. Where you say, well, I'm going
9:38
Speaker 2: to have to go ahead and put these boundaries in place.
9:40
Speaker 2: If you're not going to come to the table and discuss.
9:42
Speaker 1: It, I've got to jump in here. Because anyone who's
9:45
Speaker 1: been listening to the Happy Families podcast for a while
9:47
Speaker 1: or following the work that I've done, read it in
9:49
Speaker 1: my books, they will know that as soon as you
9:51
Speaker 1: say that, and parents will do this as well, whether
9:53
Speaker 1: they've listened to me or not. I guess a lot
9:55
Speaker 1: of parents are just going to chafe and say no, no, no,
9:57
Speaker 1: that's not the way, not the way you're supposed to
9:58
Speaker 1: do it. But can I tell as much as I
10:00
Speaker 1: hate it, I absolutely agree with you. There are some
10:03
Speaker 1: times where I, as the parenting expert, quote unquote, sometimes
10:07
Speaker 1: I just say to my kids, We've tried to have
10:09
Speaker 1: the conversation about this four or five times and we're
10:11
Speaker 1: spinning our wheels. I'm the one with the prefrontal cortex
10:13
Speaker 1: that's operational, and I'm going to implement this even though
10:17
Speaker 1: you hate me, and you hate it, why because you
10:20
Speaker 1: know that I'm older and you know that I'm wiser,
10:23
Speaker 1: and you hate me for it. But that's just the
10:24
Speaker 1: way it's got to be. Doesn't happen very often, but
10:27
Speaker 1: from time to time, as a parent, you've just got
10:29
Speaker 1: to be the parent. And I hate saying it, but
10:31
Speaker 1: you're dead right. And I love the fact that this
10:33
Speaker 1: managing the home Wi Fi would set limits and placing
10:36
Speaker 1: limits on the mobile phone conversations first where possible. I
10:40
Speaker 1: love that you've highlighted these seem to be the most
10:42
Speaker 1: effective things for breaking the addiction.
10:45
Speaker 2: And what you find is that in a clinical sense
10:49
Speaker 2: and in this research as well, we found the same thing.
10:51
Speaker 2: When you do strategy one and two that we've just
10:53
Speaker 2: talked about, quite often, what you'll have is that that
10:56
Speaker 2: will then open the door door conversation. Then they'll back
11:00
Speaker 2: to the bargaining table and kind of Okay, well I'm
11:01
Speaker 2: pissed off about this, can you tell me why? But
11:05
Speaker 2: so for many families at home don't feel like you
11:08
Speaker 2: can't do the perfect conversation first. Sometimes that's become second.
11:12
Speaker 2: But to come back to your question justin about how
11:14
Speaker 2: do parents practically do that, well, there's no perfect way.
11:17
Speaker 2: But for setting Wi Fi limits, typically, what I talk
11:20
Speaker 2: about is using something called a mesh router system which
11:23
Speaker 2: allows you to and again I'm not going to recommend
11:26
Speaker 2: specific ones, but it allows you to turn on and
11:29
Speaker 2: off certain devices at a macro level without having to
11:33
Speaker 2: turn the entire Wi Fi off if you don't want to.
11:36
Speaker 2: For strategy too, of placing limits on your mobile data,
11:41
Speaker 2: there's two different ways to do this, and so the
11:43
Speaker 2: first way is at a macro level, you can just
11:46
Speaker 2: go to the telco and reduce the data to something
11:48
Speaker 2: like five to ten gigabytes. But the reason that we feel,
11:52
Speaker 2: and we've gone into this in the paper, but for
11:54
Speaker 2: those at home, thirty two percent of kids got better
11:57
Speaker 2: with smartphone addiction. Now, the reason that I feel that's
12:00
Speaker 2: actually a little bit lower than the gaining the sort
12:02
Speaker 2: of one is probably because it takes a while to
12:06
Speaker 2: do that. If you're a parent going away and changing
12:08
Speaker 2: a mobile plan, that could take one two three months,
12:12
Speaker 2: and we follow them up in six weeks. So I
12:14
Speaker 2: feel like if we actually had a followed up twelve
12:16
Speaker 2: or sixteen weeks, that probably would have gotten better. But
12:19
Speaker 2: just a theory. The other way that parents can do
12:21
Speaker 2: that one is there are new smartphones coming on the market,
12:26
Speaker 2: things like GMG dash Mee. I have no financial affiliation
12:30
Speaker 2: with GMI, by the way, they're an Australian smartphone for
12:33
Speaker 2: kids where essentially they allow you to put limits on
12:36
Speaker 2: this stuff at a hardware level, which is much different
12:39
Speaker 2: than the software that parents have been trying to use.
12:43
Speaker 1: Hardware is the way to go. I'm convinced of that.
12:45
Speaker 1: Number three. Setting clear boundaries around Wi Fi being turned
12:47
Speaker 1: off at bedtime, that doesn't feel like one that we
12:50
Speaker 1: need to go into in detail. It's again the conversation,
12:53
Speaker 1: we're turning off the Wi Fi when it's time for
12:55
Speaker 1: bed so that you can get some sleep. I would
12:58
Speaker 1: have imagined, well, it's not one of your strategies that
13:02
Speaker 1: I mean, there are still going to be some kids
13:03
Speaker 1: who will find a way to get access to the
13:05
Speaker 1: four G five G network. Just removing devices from bedrooms
13:10
Speaker 1: is I think the ultimate way to deal with that.
13:13
Speaker 1: But your last two drawing up an agreement with the
13:15
Speaker 1: child about daily screen limits. I found it really interesting
13:17
Speaker 1: in your paper that that was not one of the
13:19
Speaker 1: more effective strategies. I have my hypotheses, but why did
13:25
Speaker 1: you determine that that was not always particularly effective? Obviously
13:29
Speaker 1: it does work for some, by the way, but not
13:31
Speaker 1: particularly effective.
13:32
Speaker 2: I think when we drilled down into exactly which strategy
13:36
Speaker 2: was working for gaming, was working for smartphone, was working
13:39
Speaker 2: on improving developmental impacts which we measured as well, it
13:42
Speaker 2: gets a little bit muddled because some of them were
13:45
Speaker 2: using strategy one and three and five and others were
13:49
Speaker 2: using four of it. And so what happened is that
13:51
Speaker 2: when we got the one hundred and fifty three and
13:53
Speaker 2: we started to break it down into smaller groups like that,
13:56
Speaker 2: you ended up with smaller samples of maybe fifteen twenty
13:59
Speaker 2: and so we should read too much into those individual ones.
14:03
Speaker 2: But yes, as a global statement, I think it's correct
14:06
Speaker 2: in saying that this data indicates that strategy one, two
14:09
Speaker 2: and three that we've just talked about was perhaps more
14:12
Speaker 2: effective than getting into the nitty gritty of consequences and
14:15
Speaker 2: things like that.
14:17
Speaker 1: And the last one is that having consequences no surprise
14:21
Speaker 1: to you to hear me say that I'm not surprised
14:24
Speaker 1: that didn't work very well, because kids just the more
14:27
Speaker 1: heavy handed you are, the more that it damages the relationship,
14:30
Speaker 1: and the more they just push us that unwanted behavior
14:33
Speaker 1: under ground. Those first three they are about conversations, they're
14:35
Speaker 1: about working together, and it just makes sense that they work. Brad.
14:41
Speaker 1: I love the work that you do. I think you
14:43
Speaker 1: do such an important job for parents who are really
14:44
Speaker 1: struggling with this a question. Without notice, something's popped into
14:48
Speaker 1: my head as we've been discussing, Brad. A couple of
14:50
Speaker 1: months ago, federal government, with the opposition support, rushed through
14:54
Speaker 1: some legislation that's going to kick off towards the end
14:56
Speaker 1: of this year that will effectively ban kids from social
15:00
Speaker 1: media under the age of sixteen. Obviously, a lot of
15:02
Speaker 1: details still to come to light, there's a lot of
15:05
Speaker 1: work to be done before they're ready to roll this out. Brad,
15:08
Speaker 1: Do you think this is a good thing?
15:10
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean so. I gave testimony at the end
15:12
Speaker 2: of last year at the Senate and the Joint Select
15:15
Speaker 2: Committee inquiries in Canberra. I'm on the record as saying
15:18
Speaker 2: that I do believe this is the right path to go.
15:22
Speaker 2: But what I also said in Canberra to the politicians
15:24
Speaker 2: was that even if we didn't do that, even if
15:27
Speaker 2: all we did was actually forced the tech companies to
15:30
Speaker 2: give our parents parental software that works, that would be
15:34
Speaker 2: a fantastic start as well. So broadly speaking, I am
15:37
Speaker 2: in favor of this because I do believe that we
15:40
Speaker 2: have to send a clear message to parents that there
15:43
Speaker 2: are harms.
15:44
Speaker 1: Doctor Brad Marshall is the unplugged psychologist. He spent over
15:48
Speaker 1: a day. Oh sorry, I said, Doctor Brad Marshall. That
15:50
Speaker 1: doesn't I'm just gonna let it go, Brad, because any
15:54
Speaker 1: day now you're going to be doctor Brad Marshall.
15:56
Speaker 2: Soon be as long as as long as aprodotcumsa, we'll
16:00
Speaker 2: be okay, I reckon, We're safe here.
16:02
Speaker 1: The soon to be doctor Brad Marshall, clinician, researcher, author,
16:07
Speaker 1: speaker and all round tech guy expert, really appreciate you
16:11
Speaker 1: being on the pod.
16:13
Speaker 2: Thanks Justin, great to be here.
16:14
Speaker 1: The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Rulan from
16:18
Speaker 1: Bridge Media. If you want more details about how you
16:21
Speaker 1: can help break your kids screen or gaming addiction and
16:25
Speaker 1: disorder and dysfunction, check out Brad's website, we'll link to
16:28
Speaker 1: it in the show notes, or just google Brad Marshall
16:31
Speaker 1: Unplugged Psychologist, a couple of great books with really useful ideas.
16:35
Speaker 1: We will also link to the paper that we've been discussing,
16:38
Speaker 1: so that for those of you who are more academically inclined,
16:41
Speaker 1: you can have a look at the breakdown of how
16:43
Speaker 1: that worked, and if you would like more information generally
16:46
Speaker 1: about making your family happier and how to have those conversations,
16:49
Speaker 1: check out happy families dot com, dot a