Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Has Screen Use Crossed the Line? (with Brad Marshall) [R]

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Has Screen Use Crossed the Line? (with Brad Marshall) [R] · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:06
Speaker 1: We keep on hearing about internet gaming disorder, that our
0:09
Speaker 1: kids are using their smartphones way too much, and of
0:11
Speaker 1: course that it's having some kind of a developmental impact
0:14
Speaker 1: that's negative in their lives. And yet, for some reason,
0:17
Speaker 1: the conversation keeps on happening, and for many of us
0:20
Speaker 1: as parents, it almost feels like we throw up the
0:22
Speaker 1: white flag, throw up the white flag, raise the white flag,
0:25
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and start to wonder is
0:27
Speaker 1: it even worth it? Is it that big of a deal.
0:29
Speaker 1: Everybody else is doing it. It's just the world today.
0:32
Speaker 1: I'm tired. And apart from that, we kind of like
0:35
Speaker 1: our own Instagram feeds as well. It's pretty easy to
0:38
Speaker 1: settle into that. Today, a big conversation about Internet gaming
0:43
Speaker 1: disorder and smartphone overuse in Australian primary and secondary school kids.
0:50
Speaker 1: I'm so excited for this conversation. It will be practical,
0:52
Speaker 1: it will be helpful, and it will set you on
0:54
Speaker 1: the path for where we want to go in helping
0:57
Speaker 1: our children to flourish and maybe and live a little
1:00
Speaker 1: more screen free ish. Stay with us. Hello and welcome
1:07
Speaker 1: to the Happy Families podcasts, Real Parenting Solutions every day
1:09
Speaker 1: on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name is doctor
1:13
Speaker 1: Justin Colson, and today I am joined by a frequent
1:16
Speaker 1: contributor to the pod and somebody who is fast becoming
1:20
Speaker 1: a wonderful friend and wise guy to talk to around
1:23
Speaker 1: all these kinds of things. Doctor, it's official now the
1:26
Speaker 1: PhD has completed. Doctor Brad Marshall, the chief Research officer
1:29
Speaker 1: of the all New Control Shift, also known as the
1:31
Speaker 1: Unplugged Psychologist, and a researcher at mcquarie University. Brad, thanks
1:37
Speaker 1: for being with me.
1:38
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me again, Justin, It's good to be back.
1:41
Speaker 1: So you've published an article with Wayne Warburton. The name
1:43
Speaker 1: of the article is Internet Gaming Disorder and Smartphone overuse
1:46
Speaker 1: in Australian primary school and secondary children prevalence and developmental impacts. Now,
1:50
Speaker 1: I know that most people who will listening to this
1:51
Speaker 1: don't like the academic jargon, the dent academic speak, So
1:56
Speaker 1: walk us through this one. Because almost every single person
1:58
Speaker 1: who's listened to this pod as a child who is
2:00
Speaker 1: either in primary school or secondary school, they are in
2:03
Speaker 1: front of screens devices, they are playing games. They do
2:06
Speaker 1: often own their own smartphone. How prevalent is the reality
2:10
Speaker 1: that they've got them. But more than that, how prevalent
2:14
Speaker 1: is this smartphone overused? How do you even define that?
2:16
Speaker 1: What is it? Let's hear all the details.
2:19
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so I think we need to start with
2:22
Speaker 2: When myself and my research colleagues set out with this study,
2:27
Speaker 2: it was very much designed around We have two major
2:30
Speaker 2: studies in Australia, one by Professor Daniel King in Adelaide
2:37
Speaker 2: and the other was by my research partner, Professor Wayne Warburton,
2:40
Speaker 2: who have done prevalence, which for those at home parents,
2:43
Speaker 2: it basically just means what's the percentage of kids that
2:46
Speaker 2: have an issue with Internet gaming disorder or gaming issues,
2:49
Speaker 2: or smartphone addiction or smartphone overuse. So we only have
2:53
Speaker 2: two studies to date and they were both pre COVID
2:55
Speaker 2: justin so the question then always that God asked in
2:59
Speaker 2: the clinic when I was speaking at schools and other places,
3:02
Speaker 2: was has this gone up over COVID or Usually parents
3:05
Speaker 2: were just saying it's definitely gone up, and we weren't
3:08
Speaker 2: sure about that. So we did this study in twenty
3:10
Speaker 2: twenty three. Now, what we did was we went to
3:14
Speaker 2: schools and we asked them if we could survey kids
3:18
Speaker 2: within schools and first of all, I should note that
3:23
Speaker 2: one of the limitations here is we could only use
3:25
Speaker 2: independent schools. But what we were trying to achieve is
3:28
Speaker 2: number one, the biggest sample to date in Australian populations,
3:33
Speaker 2: and number two, we wanted a wider variety of ages
3:36
Speaker 2: because one of the things I was critical of in
3:38
Speaker 2: previous research is that it focused on this sort of
3:42
Speaker 2: teenage fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year olds. But I was seeing
3:45
Speaker 2: in the clinic kids age eight, ten, twelve, so I
3:49
Speaker 2: wanted to go younger. I took what you might call
3:52
Speaker 2: the more difficult path in this because I wanted the
3:56
Speaker 2: younger sample kids. So year forty, year eight is what
3:59
Speaker 2: these kids are now. I will acknowledge as well there
4:01
Speaker 2: are not as many primary school age kids as I
4:04
Speaker 2: would have liked in this ample. It's still high school heavy.
4:07
Speaker 2: But as far as what the prevalence is, the numbers
4:10
Speaker 2: that we actually found, the pertinent numbers are. First of all,
4:15
Speaker 2: the amount of hours on a recreational screens that our
4:19
Speaker 2: kids are spending is about nine hours a day for
4:24
Speaker 2: our high school kids year seven, year eight and about
4:27
Speaker 2: six hours, just over six hours for our primary school kids.
4:30
Speaker 1: All right, So I've got to interrupt you here. This
4:32
Speaker 1: is critical that we make this distinction between what you
4:36
Speaker 1: might call or consider necessary use and what you've called
4:39
Speaker 1: recreational use. So can we just get a quick definition here,
4:43
Speaker 1: nine hours or six hours depending on the age, on
4:45
Speaker 1: average worth highlighting as well. On average means that fifty
4:49
Speaker 1: percent are above that and fifty percent below, right, that's
4:51
Speaker 1: what the average is. So there are fifty percent of
4:54
Speaker 1: kids who are getting more than nine hours per day
4:57
Speaker 1: on their screens. And yeah, high school kids, and it's
5:00
Speaker 1: recreational use that we're talking about here, So just break
5:03
Speaker 1: that down for me. Yeah, I mean so, again, there's
5:06
Speaker 1: no perfect way to measure this. The only perfect way
5:08
Speaker 1: to measure this would be to literally install tracking devices
5:11
Speaker 1: on your.
5:12
Speaker 2: Kid's devices, right, which is not possible. So what this
5:16
Speaker 2: is is it's asking kids to break down how many
5:19
Speaker 2: hours in the last few weeks, how many hours per
5:21
Speaker 2: day are you spending on a console, how many hours
5:24
Speaker 2: on your phone, how many hours on your home devices gaming, laptop,
5:28
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, iPad. Now, some of this may
5:33
Speaker 2: be a little bit confused with school time, and that's
5:36
Speaker 2: one of the difficulties in measuring this because obviously if
5:39
Speaker 2: you get a ten twelve year old kid, they may
5:42
Speaker 2: interpret that read the question quickly. But ultimately we were
5:47
Speaker 2: not targeting your use of PowerPoint in a history lesson
5:52
Speaker 2: in year seven. That's not what we were asking there.
5:54
Speaker 2: In fact, one of the limitations of this is the reverse.
5:58
Speaker 2: If you ask most kids these days how many kids
6:01
Speaker 2: in class are actually gaining or on YouTube in class,
6:04
Speaker 2: they will say that a fair amount of them are,
6:07
Speaker 2: And we were ruling that stuff out as well. Right,
6:09
Speaker 2: So we were talking about outside of school hours, so
6:12
Speaker 2: those hours of six and nine hours for primary and
6:15
Speaker 2: high school kids. I think what's really important to note
6:18
Speaker 2: here is that I gave this testimony to the Australian
6:21
Speaker 2: Parliament and the Social Media Inquiries, and that is distinctly
6:26
Speaker 2: different to what the E Safety Commissioner reported. The E
6:30
Speaker 2: Safety Commissioner told that inquiry that their research indicates what
6:35
Speaker 2: was the equivalent of about two hours a day of
6:37
Speaker 2: recreational screen use. It's nowhere even close to what we found.
6:43
Speaker 2: So I'll also point out that our data is very
6:47
Speaker 2: consistent and the amount of hours to the OECD statistics
6:51
Speaker 2: that came out in May twenty twenty five.
6:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, We talked about that when it came out on
6:56
Speaker 1: the podcast. These numbers are big, not nine hours of
7:00
Speaker 1: recreational screen use every day. So let's say a teenager.
7:04
Speaker 1: I know that you're highlighting primary versus high school, so
7:06
Speaker 1: let's stick with the high schools for a moment. Let's
7:08
Speaker 1: say that the average teenager should be getting even if
7:11
Speaker 1: we call it nine hours of sleep a night, right,
7:14
Speaker 1: that's we'd like them to be a little bit more
7:16
Speaker 1: than that, but let's call it nine hours. Then they've
7:18
Speaker 1: got to go to school and all the travel and
7:20
Speaker 1: all the stuff around that, so we've got at least
7:23
Speaker 1: another seven to eight hours. I'm not really good at
7:25
Speaker 1: live maths, but that tells me that we're somewhere around
7:28
Speaker 1: about sixteen seventeen eighteen hours of the day is kind
7:30
Speaker 1: of gone, and then we've got to find nine hours
7:32
Speaker 1: for screen. They're supposed to have a wo many of
7:35
Speaker 1: them have jobs, they've got relationships, they're involved in structured
7:38
Speaker 1: activities outside of school. It doesn't fit, which means that
7:41
Speaker 1: stuff that matters is going by the bye, so that
7:44
Speaker 1: they can stare at their screens, play games, look at Instagram, TikTok,
7:47
Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
7:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, spot on, and that's exactly why in this study,
7:52
Speaker 2: myself and my colleagues at Macquarie University developed what we
7:57
Speaker 2: call the Screen Developmental Impact question end. We wanted a
8:02
Speaker 2: way to measure what the developmental impacts are on children
8:06
Speaker 2: and teenagers in a variety of different areas, so education,
8:11
Speaker 2: social development, physical health, emotional and behavior. Now keep in mind,
8:19
Speaker 2: these are students that are responding to these questionnaires, so
8:21
Speaker 2: this is not a parent's view. This is what students
8:24
Speaker 2: are telling us. And we did find in this study
8:28
Speaker 2: that there are significant impacts in all of those areas
8:33
Speaker 2: of development when you get into these high levels of
8:36
Speaker 2: either smartphone overuse or gaming.
8:39
Speaker 1: So, Brad, this is the crux of the study, and
8:40
Speaker 1: this is really why I wanted to talk to you,
8:42
Speaker 1: because it's one thing to say, all right, kids are
8:44
Speaker 1: using their devices a lot, we've got smartphone overuse, we've
8:47
Speaker 1: got a lot of activity happening on screens, and it
8:49
Speaker 1: comes to you and I stand up in front of
8:51
Speaker 1: groups all day, every day and say, our children's well
8:54
Speaker 1: being is being undermined by screens. And there are plenty
8:59
Speaker 1: of adults who are point to the things that they're
9:02
Speaker 1: concerned about. But when we hear it in their words,
9:05
Speaker 1: and when we've got something that actually measures what the
9:08
Speaker 1: impact is, then there's more heft, there's more funk. I
9:14
Speaker 1: guess you know, like you're dropping a big book on
9:16
Speaker 1: the table rather than a pamphlet, and it's like, Okay,
9:18
Speaker 1: there's something weighty here. So walk me through. What did
9:22
Speaker 1: these young people themselves identify when it comes to the
9:25
Speaker 1: impact of their use of screens.
9:31
Speaker 2: I think what we actually have to do is just
9:33
Speaker 2: take one step backwards here, if I may justin, because
9:36
Speaker 2: we've missed here a key part around the prevalence. So
9:39
Speaker 2: not only did we measure the amount of hours, but
9:42
Speaker 2: we also measured how many kids have what we would
9:45
Speaker 2: call Internet gaining disorder, the diagnostic term on a screening tool.
9:49
Speaker 2: It's not diagnostic because you've not done a clinical interview,
9:51
Speaker 2: but it's a screening tool, which is a common tool,
9:54
Speaker 2: and how many have a smartphone addiction. So we found
9:57
Speaker 2: that four percent of Australian kids have a either subclinical
10:03
Speaker 2: or clinical gaming disorder, and about nine point nine percent
10:09
Speaker 2: of Australian kids have medium to high levels of smartphone
10:13
Speaker 2: addiction or overuse. Now, if we just extrapolate those numbers
10:18
Speaker 2: and I know I've talked to you about these numbers
10:20
Speaker 2: roughly on the podcast before, right, but we're talking about
10:23
Speaker 2: about one hundred to one hundred and twenty thousand Australian
10:26
Speaker 2: kids with gaming disorder and about four hundred thousand with
10:29
Speaker 2: a smartphone overuse or addiction. The key element here being
10:35
Speaker 2: in this study, this was the first arm of a
10:39
Speaker 2: trial and the second arm was a follow up where
10:41
Speaker 2: we were actually going to invite parents into a parent
10:45
Speaker 2: intervention treat contrial, So that is a fancy term for
10:48
Speaker 2: those parents at home of we're going to help the
10:50
Speaker 2: parents in the second trial. So in order to do that,
10:53
Speaker 2: the ethics board at Macquari University said, hey, you really
10:56
Speaker 2: need to tell these kids that you're going to tell
10:58
Speaker 2: their parents if they're is high. So we did. You
11:02
Speaker 2: can imagine how many kids aged ten to fourteen are
11:06
Speaker 2: going to read that and go, there's no way I'm
11:09
Speaker 2: answering this accurately. So those numbers that I've just quoted you,
11:12
Speaker 2: the hours and the percentages, they're probably understating the issue.
11:17
Speaker 1: So now that we've got these prevalence data and we
11:20
Speaker 1: understand that, I'm going to forgive me for being imprecise
11:24
Speaker 1: and rounding, but it's just easy to remember round numbers.
11:27
Speaker 1: Let's say about five percent of kids are showing up
11:30
Speaker 1: with a subclinical or clinical gaming disorder, and about ten
11:33
Speaker 1: percent ish are showing up with medium to high smartphone
11:36
Speaker 1: addiction or over use. How they seeing the impacts? What
11:41
Speaker 1: does this mean at a practical level in their daily lives.
11:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, one of the most practical things out of
11:47
Speaker 2: this study is that we didn't actually find any notable
11:50
Speaker 2: differences in those prevalence rates between primary school and high school.
11:56
Speaker 2: So what that tells us is that both of these
11:58
Speaker 2: phenomena gaming disorder and smartphone overuse start in primary school.
12:05
Speaker 1: The great rewiring of the adolescent brain begins around about
12:08
Speaker 1: the age of seven or eight, once these could start
12:10
Speaker 1: to really invest in these screens.
12:12
Speaker 2: Correct. But I think what you're getting out obviously is
12:15
Speaker 2: the developmental impacts, and that's sort of what I'm excited
12:19
Speaker 2: about as well. Excited and scared at the same time,
12:21
Speaker 2: of course. But we had these five main categories, and
12:26
Speaker 2: what our investigations found is that there was probably more
12:28
Speaker 2: indicative of four categories, and so the emotional impacts, the social,
12:33
Speaker 2: and physical were tied together in our exploratory factor analysis.
12:37
Speaker 2: For those at home that don't know what that is,
12:39
Speaker 2: don't worry, it's just sort of fancy stuff. That's a
12:41
Speaker 2: little bit researchy, behavioral impacts, and education. So we had
12:46
Speaker 2: a list of questions that we asked them in different domains.
12:49
Speaker 2: So for example, with education impact, there would have been
12:54
Speaker 2: a question or there was a question there around have
12:57
Speaker 2: screens or gaming ever gotten in the way of you
13:00
Speaker 2: handing in an assessment or getting your homework in. So
13:03
Speaker 2: that is an example of a question or an item
13:06
Speaker 2: that was in measuring the educational impacts. Now, what we
13:11
Speaker 2: found for all four of these areas is all four
13:14
Speaker 2: were significant in the research. But what we also found
13:19
Speaker 2: is that there are no real impacts for kids that
13:22
Speaker 2: didn't meet criteria for Internet gaming disorder or smartphone of use.
13:27
Speaker 2: Then we have a step up to the impacts that
13:30
Speaker 2: were there in developmental domains for kids that had smartphone
13:34
Speaker 2: of use or addiction, then a step up again in
13:37
Speaker 2: developmental impacts for subclinical gaming disorder, and then a step
13:41
Speaker 2: up again for kids with clinical gaming disorder. So what
13:45
Speaker 2: that tells us is that the developmental impacts on our
13:49
Speaker 2: children and teenagers is greatest for gaming disorder, and then
13:54
Speaker 2: significant for smartphone addiction overuse, and then down to the
13:58
Speaker 2: normal quote unquote sample at the bottom.
14:08
Speaker 1: All right, So, Brad, now that we've gone through the study,
14:10
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of practical implications that every parent wants
14:13
Speaker 1: to know the answer to. And these things I think
14:15
Speaker 1: are just vitally important for us to discuss. First off,
14:19
Speaker 1: I want to clarify something, and I think this really
14:21
Speaker 1: requires some It just requires a minute or so of elaboration.
14:26
Speaker 1: Gaming per se, there's a values question. Are you okay
14:31
Speaker 1: with your child playing first person shooter games or having
14:33
Speaker 1: the sound on and lots of strangers in your living
14:36
Speaker 1: room who are swearing and using inappropriate slurs and epathets
14:39
Speaker 1: and so on. But let's say that you've got your
14:41
Speaker 1: values sorted out and the kids know which games are
14:43
Speaker 1: okay from a values perspective and which games are not.
14:47
Speaker 1: The research evidence seems to indicate that playing games, so
14:52
Speaker 1: long as it's not at an excessive level, at a
14:54
Speaker 1: high level, playing too much that is internet gaming disorder,
14:58
Speaker 1: playing it pathologically and not being to survive without the game,
15:02
Speaker 1: does have a whole lot of benefits. It seems to
15:04
Speaker 1: be really good for the kids socially, it seems to
15:06
Speaker 1: be quite good for them emotionally and even cognitively. The
15:10
Speaker 1: thing that I see in the data. No matter how
15:12
Speaker 1: many studies I look at, and no matter how much
15:14
Speaker 1: I try to find an argument to just say let's
15:16
Speaker 1: get the kids off games, I'm not finding an argument
15:20
Speaker 1: that says that it's bad for them until it reaches
15:22
Speaker 1: an unsafer unhealthy level. Fundamentally, gaming is a whole lot
15:26
Speaker 1: of fun for a whole lot of people, and they
15:27
Speaker 1: don't have any negative effects. Tell me where I'm wrong
15:31
Speaker 1: or still mans the argument that I'm making. So parents
15:33
Speaker 1: can go okay, I can breathe a little safely here.
15:36
Speaker 2: There are opportunities and risks that come with gaming, and
15:41
Speaker 2: so I certainly should acknowledge the opportunities here with social
15:45
Speaker 2: connection with mastery. There is research and evidence that suggests
15:50
Speaker 2: there are benefits in smallish doses. The problem is that
15:54
Speaker 2: it's different for every child as to when that dose
15:58
Speaker 2: becomes too much, right, and so you know that could
16:02
Speaker 2: be thirty minutes a day for one pial, that could
16:04
Speaker 2: be two hours for another child. And that's why we
16:06
Speaker 2: developed the Developmental Impact Scale, because we really wanted to
16:12
Speaker 2: know and have parents understand what are the areas of
16:16
Speaker 2: red flags that you can look out for. And all
16:18
Speaker 2: of this is public knowledge. You'll see in this paper
16:21
Speaker 2: that we list all of the domains in the supplementaries
16:24
Speaker 2: as well. But I guess to sort of come back
16:28
Speaker 2: to your question of that opportunity versus that risk, what
16:34
Speaker 2: I struggle with as a researcher and a clinician is
16:37
Speaker 2: that many of the research articles and papers and information
16:41
Speaker 2: we get about the benefits of gaming have significant conflicts
16:46
Speaker 2: of interests.
16:47
Speaker 1: They're funded by the industry, they are.
16:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so it is very difficult. So I'm not
16:51
Speaker 2: sitting here saying that every single piece of evidence is
16:54
Speaker 2: that way, but a lot of it is. And that
16:57
Speaker 2: becomes really difficult because if you have a research that
17:01
Speaker 2: is funded by the industry, either directly or indirectly, and
17:05
Speaker 2: they are publishing beneficial data around this. We've seen that before,
17:10
Speaker 2: justin We've seen that in smoking, We've seen that in sugar,
17:12
Speaker 2: we've seen that in the backup. We've seen this play before,
17:16
Speaker 2: and so we have to look at both sides. And
17:20
Speaker 2: what we're saying is that when overusing gaming becomes an issue,
17:27
Speaker 2: the developmental impacts are fairly significant. Now, what that all
17:32
Speaker 2: boils down to for me, if I just sort of
17:34
Speaker 2: summarize my own thoughts on this, is that I firmly
17:38
Speaker 2: believe that this is a decision for individual parents to
17:42
Speaker 2: make about their own child's gaining. So I'm not advocating
17:46
Speaker 2: banning gaming. That's not what I'm saying. Okay, what I
17:49
Speaker 2: am saying is how do we as a government, as
17:54
Speaker 2: health policy, as researchers allow parents to actually set limits
17:59
Speaker 2: in parental controls for their child, because at the moment
18:03
Speaker 2: they don't have that. Most parental controls are just we've
18:06
Speaker 2: talked about this before on the last episode anyway, most
18:09
Speaker 2: parental controls are easy to get around, and so I
18:12
Speaker 2: believe we should be letting parents make the decision and
18:14
Speaker 2: actually apply that at the moment they can't.
18:17
Speaker 1: Brad, let's talk practical. People have listened to the study
18:21
Speaker 1: that you've done. They've heard that we've got pretty high
18:26
Speaker 1: percentages really, I mean, I think concerningly hygh percentages of
18:29
Speaker 1: kids who are using their devices in an overuse or
18:32
Speaker 1: compulsive way. That there's gaming disorder at a level that
18:37
Speaker 1: is really concerning, And any family who's going through it,
18:39
Speaker 1: they know of the just the psychological and emotional earthquakes
18:43
Speaker 1: that happen every single time there's a request to get
18:46
Speaker 1: off the screen. It's time to eat, it's time to
18:48
Speaker 1: go to bed, it's time to go to school. They're
18:51
Speaker 1: dealing with some really really big challenges. But if I've
18:53
Speaker 1: got a child and I'm just concerned that they're using
18:55
Speaker 1: their screens too much, what are your three don't do
18:59
Speaker 1: this responses? What are the three things that you just
19:02
Speaker 1: don't cross this line? Don't do this with the kids,
19:04
Speaker 1: It's going to blow up. There are better things to do.
19:06
Speaker 1: What are the three things the most common mistakes parents
19:08
Speaker 1: make here?
19:09
Speaker 2: I like that you frame that question in what do
19:11
Speaker 2: you don't do? Instead of what do you do?
19:12
Speaker 1: Oh, we're going to.
19:14
Speaker 2: Really makes me think he look. My first don't do
19:19
Speaker 2: is certainly around parents that go down the path of
19:22
Speaker 2: criticizing what their kids do online. If you found yourself
19:27
Speaker 2: in a position where you know you're sitting there, going
19:30
Speaker 2: that game is such a waste of time. It's going
19:32
Speaker 2: to rock your brain, and that social media is grating.
19:35
Speaker 2: You're always in there with that phone, and as soon
19:38
Speaker 2: as we do that, it becomes combative and your child
19:42
Speaker 2: is going to switch off. Sorry, not the screens, I
19:45
Speaker 2: mean switch off to you and what you're saying, right,
19:47
Speaker 2: So yeah, wrong, switch that's my Yeah, that's my first one,
19:51
Speaker 2: and I guess my other. Don't if I just sort
19:53
Speaker 2: of flip this if I use two. We have to
19:56
Speaker 2: be really careful about the access level that we give,
19:59
Speaker 2: especially around sleep. You've heard me talk about this before,
20:02
Speaker 2: justin sleep is one of the primary factors here in
20:05
Speaker 2: my clinical experience where things can go downhill. So in
20:09
Speaker 2: all of those developmental domains in that study, what I
20:12
Speaker 2: have found clinically is that if your child is in
20:15
Speaker 2: a sleep deficit because they're up late at night grabbing
20:18
Speaker 2: a phone, or because you let them have a phone
20:21
Speaker 2: in their room to you know, listen to music on
20:24
Speaker 2: Spotify to help them get to sleep, which is the
20:26
Speaker 2: classic one. But you know, you find them on something
20:29
Speaker 2: else that will snowball on everything else quickly, on all
20:33
Speaker 2: these other developmental domains quickly. So you know, don't even
20:38
Speaker 2: if you find yourself relaxing rules at other times because
20:42
Speaker 2: the horse has already bolted, don't relax those rules at night.
20:45
Speaker 2: Sleep has to be number one, and don't go down
20:48
Speaker 2: this path and just endlessly criticizing what they're doing online.
20:52
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to add one if I can, because
20:54
Speaker 1: I said three and you've hit us with two. Your
20:57
Speaker 1: reactions are welcome if you disagree with me. I think
20:59
Speaker 1: that when we see our kids on screens and we've
21:02
Speaker 1: asked them to get off, or we've had this conversation
21:04
Speaker 1: seven thousand times, like this is a perennial issue, right
21:07
Speaker 1: you just you never stop talking about screens. Once they've
21:10
Speaker 1: got one, it fundamentally becomes the center of their world
21:12
Speaker 1: and it changes your relationship with them forever once they've
21:14
Speaker 1: got it. My big don't is don't have the screen
21:19
Speaker 1: conversation when they're on a screen, or when you've got
21:23
Speaker 1: when you've got a head full of steam because they're
21:25
Speaker 1: on a screen, like high emotions, low intelligence. It's just
21:28
Speaker 1: not the time for it. You've got to pick your time,
21:30
Speaker 1: usually on a nice, quite Saturday or Sunday morning, where
21:33
Speaker 1: everyone's relaxed and calm, and you can give them a
21:35
Speaker 1: chocolate milkshake or go down to the local cafe and
21:37
Speaker 1: get some wedges in sour cream and say, hey, I
21:39
Speaker 1: want to have a tricky conversation with you about that
21:41
Speaker 1: thing that's drive me up the wall. If you do
21:43
Speaker 1: it in the moment, you just create World War three
21:45
Speaker 1: in your living room.
21:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I couldn't agree more, Justin, And I expand
21:50
Speaker 2: on that further to say, you know, when your kids
21:53
Speaker 2: are coming off screens, if you've said right, your hours up,
21:56
Speaker 2: come off now, don't give them a terrible thing to
21:59
Speaker 2: go to. If you transition them to now it's time
22:01
Speaker 2: to do your maths homework. You are probably going to
22:04
Speaker 2: end in tears, right, but.
22:06
Speaker 1: I reckon you and I could talk for about seventy
22:09
Speaker 1: seven hours about this and still still not exhaust our
22:13
Speaker 1: things to share. There's so much more that I want
22:16
Speaker 1: to ask you, so much more that we could talk
22:17
Speaker 1: about and play around with ideas around. You've been extremely
22:20
Speaker 1: generous with your time though, and there's no way there's
22:24
Speaker 1: no way that any parent could have listened to this
22:25
Speaker 1: and not have some really great parenting solutions to help
22:30
Speaker 1: them with their challenges. Thanks so much for your time.
22:33
Speaker 1: It's been an absolute delight, and hopefully when there's some
22:36
Speaker 1: more research that comes out that's just hot to try
22:38
Speaker 1: and perfect for parents, we can chat again.
22:41
Speaker 2: Thanks Justin.
22:42
Speaker 1: Dr Brad Marshall is a mcquarie University academic. He is
22:47
Speaker 1: the Unplugged Psychologist and he is now most recently appointed
22:50
Speaker 1: as the chief Research Officer at Control Shift. He's written books,
22:55
Speaker 1: he's a speaker, and clearly you can hear he knows
22:58
Speaker 1: his stuff. Thank you so much for listen. We hope,
23:01
Speaker 1: hope so much that this has been a useful conversation
23:03
Speaker 1: for you. The Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin
23:06
Speaker 1: Rulan from Bridge Media. If you'd like more information and
23:09
Speaker 1: more resources to make your family happier, check the show
23:12
Speaker 1: notes for Brad's resources and the studies that we've talked
23:15
Speaker 1: about and our previous podcasts, or just visit Happy families
23:18
Speaker 1: dot com dot a