Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.106 - Nikki Sweeney Banned Phones and Mental Health Issues Dropped 94%

Transcript

Ep.106 - Nikki Sweeney Banned Phones and Mental Health Issues Dropped 94% · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  But I think it's bigger than cell phones and mobile devices.
• 0:03
  I think it's about helping humans connect with one another
• 0:06
  again in ways that we've kind of forgotten.
• 0:10
  This is Virtuous Leaders, the podcast for based Catholics who
• 0:14
  will speak truth, do good, or die trying.
• 0:17
  Here's the show. What you were writing about is a
• 0:20
  large part of what, what I talk a lot about in education and,
• 0:27
  and I, I see it as a, as a huge threat to our young people
• 0:31
  moving forward. And my technology background and
• 0:34
  what you're talking about, I think I read some things that
• 0:37
  you had posted and I thought, Oh my gosh, he gets it.
• 0:41
  And a lot of people in the education market who don't have
• 0:46
  the background in counseling and psychology that you do don't
• 0:50
  necessarily understand it. And I think that you write a lot
• 0:54
  about what I really believe is happening with our young people.
• 0:58
  And I think I read something that you had written pertaining
• 1:02
  to the topic of phones. And because, you know, I think
• 1:06
  it was 3 1/2 years ago that I banned them at a school.
• 1:09
  And I have to tell you like that for me, I was willing to go to
• 1:14
  the mountain and die for it. And I took a lot of heat and,
• 1:19
  you know, like changing my phone number and, you know, people
• 1:22
  following me home. Just it was crazy.
• 1:24
  Oh my gosh. So when I read your what you
• 1:28
  write, I think that's why I reached out to you.
• 1:30
  I was like, wow, this guy really gets it, you know, and very few
• 1:33
  people get into the depth of why we shouldn't have the level of
• 1:39
  phone addiction and technology addiction that we do have today.
• 1:43
  I think that's why I reached out to you.
• 1:45
  I don't really talk to a lot of people on social media, but I
• 1:50
  care about this very much. It, it was really encouraging to
• 1:53
  hear that. Really.
• 1:55
  So thank you. Thank you.
• 1:58
  I, I did want to hear your story more.
• 2:01
  So you said that you became a head of a school and then you,
• 2:04
  you banned phones and you got Flack for it.
• 2:07
  I could you just help me understand that story a little
• 2:09
  bit better? Sure.
• 2:11
  So I went down to a school in Florida.
• 2:15
  A friend of mine reached out to me.
• 2:16
  I became the head of their upper school, the high school, and the
• 2:20
  assistant head of the K12 school.
• 2:23
  And what I saw happening post COVID.
• 2:27
  I have been in education for over 30 years.
• 2:30
  I was at University School Milwaukee for 21 years, OK.
• 2:33
  And I was a director of educational technology.
• 2:36
  I was a teacher, so I understood the role, technology, the
• 2:41
  growing role that it had, and especially during COVID when we
• 2:45
  needed it to help kids learn at home, right, Virtual learning
• 2:49
  and then hybrid learning. And what I saw happen after
• 2:52
  COVID, when I came back to this school in Florida and I was
• 2:56
  strictly running the high school.
• 2:58
  I had been in schools for, you know, almost 30 years.
• 3:01
  And here's what I saw kids doing.
• 3:04
  They were sitting at a table at lunchtime on their phones, or
• 3:08
  they would come into school and they were glued to their phone.
• 3:11
  And that first year at that school, there were so many
• 3:13
  mental health issues. All I kept coming back to is
• 3:17
  these kids aren't talking to each other.
• 3:19
  And even furthermore, their parents aren't talking to other
• 3:23
  parents because they're equally on their devices all the time in
• 3:28
  Caroline and whatnot. So I said to my counselor, you
• 3:33
  know, it was a rough year. We had children who were putting
• 3:38
  their, who were making some choices that would hurt
• 3:41
  themselves and an astronomically large number.
• 3:45
  And having lost my sister to suicide, I and I write about
• 3:50
  that. I wrote about that in the 1st
• 3:52
  chapter of my book. I saw what happens when you
• 3:56
  disconnect and stop talking to another, you to one another, you
• 4:00
  have much bigger problems. And so I just thought, if I take
• 4:04
  the phones out of the school, they'll start talking to one
• 4:07
  another again, They'll start interacting, they'll start
• 4:10
  playing basketball at lunch or in Florida, you do a lot of
• 4:14
  outdoor things. So I did, I banned them and the
• 4:18
  Flack I got, like I parents were saying, you're putting my child
• 4:22
  at risk. What happens if a shooter comes
• 4:24
  in and I can't get a hold of my child?
• 4:27
  I was like, your child needs to listen to the teacher or the
• 4:30
  person in charge. You're not going to save your
• 4:32
  child if a shooter comes in the building and the child doesn't
• 4:35
  have his or her cell phone. So I, you know, that was rough.
• 4:39
  I, I basically decided I was going to do it because in my
• 4:43
  heart I saw what was happening. They stopped talking to each
• 4:47
  other in person and they even reduce the level of
• 4:54
  communication with teachers. And I thought that was getting
• 4:59
  in the way of teacher student relationships.
• 5:02
  They would rather send an e-mail than talk to the teacher after
• 5:04
  class. So I thought if I take the
• 5:06
  phones away, they'll start talking to the teachers more
• 5:08
  between and after classes and during lunch and we'll talk to
• 5:12
  each other. And sure enough, we had less
• 5:16
  visits to the counter to the counselor for mental health
• 5:19
  emergency in Florida. They're called Baker Acts where
• 5:23
  you have to intervene and and send them to a hospital.
• 5:28
  We had a 94% reduction in mental health issues in year 1.
• 5:41
  What specifically did banning the phones look like?
• 5:44
  Is it from like bell to Bell? I think they call it first
• 5:48
  beginning of the school day till the end of the school day.
• 5:50
  And what was the what was the consequence if they if they did
• 5:55
  bring their phone? Well, they would get a
• 5:58
  consequence, maybe a detention if there was something else
• 6:02
  going on. I really wanted to understand
• 6:04
  why they felt compelled to have their phone.
• 6:06
  What was it they needed it for? Because, you know, a lot of
• 6:09
  times if you can get at the goal of misbehavior, you can try to
• 6:11
  figure out how to help them so they can't.
• 6:15
  They come into school and we had phone lockers on the wall.
• 6:18
  And those are less problematic than the new cases you can put
• 6:22
  them in at the time. Now they have these other, these
• 6:25
  little pouches you can use, but they didn't really then.
• 6:28
  So we had these cases. They had their names labeled
• 6:32
  underneath the slot where their phone went.
• 6:35
  And, you know, the kids think we're naive.
• 6:37
  So they would put like, pretend phones or old phones in there.
• 6:40
  And I would look in with the Dean of students and we'd invite
• 6:44
  them down and say, help me understand why your phone's not
• 6:46
  in there, what's going on. And as soon as I would say to
• 6:49
  them, like, help me understand what's going on, they would
• 6:52
  start to tell me the truth instead of saying you're in
• 6:56
  trouble because your phone's not in there.
• 6:58
  I think it was kind of how the Dean of students and the
• 7:00
  counselor and I talked to the kids.
• 7:03
  So they really started to understand, like this is
• 7:06
  actually better for me. I feel better not having my
• 7:10
  phone on me. And they would tell us that.
• 7:14
  And then the parents figured out that they could e-mail them
• 7:16
  during the day and they would still have access to them.
• 7:19
  And we have phones in every classroom, so they could call
• 7:21
  them if there was a problem. So it was rough for I would say
• 7:26
  the first 30 days, but after that it got better and I think
• 7:32
  it improved everything, academics, social situations, we
• 7:35
  had less mental health emergency situations than we had had
• 7:40
  previously. Were they able to go on their
• 7:44
  phones after class? After school.
• 7:47
  After school they could take their phones when they left the
• 7:50
  school. So after school they could have
• 7:52
  their phones, yes. And you know what?
• 7:55
  When do you think most of the problems happened?
• 7:59
  After school I'm assuming. Absolutely, absolutely.
• 8:04
  But but you know, it was great as we figured out, the kid who
• 8:08
  participated in an after school activity theater or a sports
• 8:13
  related activity had much less mental health issues and they
• 8:17
  seemed happier, more connected and that I'll get back to that
• 8:20
  word connected. They they just performed better
• 8:24
  all the way around. So then I said, OK, I took
• 8:26
  phones away. We had this other new rule, I
• 8:30
  think they named me Meanie Sweeney because I had these
• 8:33
  rules. But you, you have to belong to
• 8:39
  something, Pick something you like or try something new.
• 8:44
  And then we also saw that that contributed to, you know, better
• 8:49
  participation, a sense of belonging and just a happier
• 8:55
  place. And so I, I feel like the minute
• 8:59
  I figured out how to get the device out of their hands and to
• 9:04
  get them involved in activities where they felt a sense of
• 9:07
  belonging, the better the school became, you know?
• 9:11
  And so we had more students taking AP courses and a broader
• 9:16
  subset of kids, so across demographic groups.
• 9:20
  And I felt like it was moving in the right direction.
• 9:26
  Were they allowed to have their phones during the
• 9:27
  extracurriculars? After school they could have
• 9:31
  their phones because a lot of kids needed to get picked up by
• 9:35
  their parents when whatever the activity ended.
• 9:37
  And also some of our sports after school.
• 9:40
  Tennis happened at a different facility.
• 9:42
  Swimming has a happens at a different facility.
• 9:45
  So does golf. So the kids would take their
• 9:48
  phones and go to whatever activity and the kids who got
• 9:51
  picked up obviously took their phones home with them.
• 9:54
  So yeah, they did have their phones in the evening.
• 9:57
  And quite honestly, that's usually when, you know, later in
• 10:01
  the evening after the activities ended, that's usually when
• 10:05
  issues really happened, you know, on the devices with, you
• 10:09
  know, bullying and things like that.
• 10:11
  And that was that was much less as prevalent as well.
• 10:18
  The funny thing about this situation is it, it really just
• 10:20
  doesn't sound that controversial to me, which it is, he said.
• 10:24
  Can't have your phone during the school day.
• 10:26
  And to me, that's just like the most obvious of common sense.
• 10:30
  And, and in fact, now it's law in in my state, Texas, and, and
• 10:34
  in other states as well. So what?
• 10:36
  What? What is so controversial about
• 10:38
  this? You know, I, I think that's a
• 10:41
  great question. I really do.
• 10:44
  And I kind of want to go back and look at when the shift
• 10:48
  happened because when I worked in schools for so many years
• 10:51
  before lockdowns, it was never an issue.
• 10:56
  It really wasn't. You know, we told our kids in
• 10:59
  my, when I was at USM, you know, you can't have your phones on
• 11:03
  out during the day. They were so mindful.
• 11:05
  They didn't care after we had those lockdowns.
• 11:09
  That's really, quite honestly, that's when I saw the the shift
• 11:14
  happen with the kids and also the teachers.
• 11:19
  You know, it's there was a, there was just a change of, of
• 11:23
  some sort. And I'd love to understand that
• 11:25
  better. It's, it's a really dark moment
• 11:32
  and it's, I hope it wasn't intentionally done to harm kids,
• 11:38
  but if it was then they couldn't have thought of a better way to
• 11:41
  do it. I don't think there's a better
• 11:45
  way to hurt children than to isolate them.
• 11:48
  And you know, my husband and I have 14 grandchildren.
• 11:52
  We have six children. And what I saw happening to my
• 11:57
  grandbabies when they were learning to talk and go to
• 12:00
  preschool with face coverings on.
• 12:03
  There's so many other things about the way we learn language
• 12:06
  and communicate that I think we haven't even begun to understand
• 12:11
  the ramifications of that with the, with the really little yet.
• 12:15
  But I at the high school level for me, even then, the older
• 12:20
  kids would say to me, I had a student who was a junior who
• 12:24
  said, you know what? I was locked in my bedroom for
• 12:27
  two years with my with my phone and my laptop.
• 12:31
  This is how I've learned how to communicate.
• 12:33
  And he was in middle school and then he came to high school.
• 12:37
  So that's how you know all the things that happened in that
• 12:40
  developmental age group. I feel like he learned some
• 12:42
  things that we have to actually help them unlearn.
• 12:47
  So in middle school, normally you're out, you're playing
• 12:51
  sports, you're doing theater, you're talking to one another.
• 12:53
  And if you all of a sudden take that away and you give him a
• 12:56
  phone and a computer and that's the only way they can connect,
• 12:59
  I'm guessing that that just laid the foundation that I was
• 13:02
  dealing with in high school. I mean, I don't know.
• 13:06
  That's, you know, purely anecdotally rhetorical.
• 13:10
  I, I don't, I don't have enough hard data.
• 13:13
  Maybe you do. Well, we do know that there are
• 13:17
  two critical periods in youth development and it's very hard
• 13:22
  to pick up skills, certain skills, if you haven't acquired
• 13:26
  them during those critical periods, language being one of
• 13:28
  them. Yeah, I think that's my fear for
• 13:34
  the littles. And as I'm watch my
• 13:35
  grandchildren grow now, I'm very attuned to how well they're
• 13:40
  learning to read and write and just the level of vocabulary
• 13:44
  they have and don't have. Also their fine motor skills.
• 13:47
  Wow, it's very different. How did your experience at this
• 13:57
  with school impacts this book? You wrote the Virtue Code.
• 14:04
  Well, the virtue code is something I've been thinking
• 14:08
  about for a long time as a technologist.
• 14:12
  So it happened before I went to the Village School of Naples.
• 14:16
  It started at University School because I was always kind of the
• 14:20
  person aligning myself with early adopters to get them to
• 14:23
  learn how to use Google Docs, to give kids more on ongoing
• 14:27
  feedback on their writing for like, what we thought were all
• 14:30
  the right reasons. OK.
• 14:32
  And then when I got to Florida, I started thinking about all the
• 14:36
  work I've been doing with the kids, some of the students that
• 14:40
  started nonprofits that really figured out how to harness what
• 14:44
  they love to do to deepen their skills.
• 14:48
  Those are the kids that really started to thrive.
• 14:51
  And I really drilled into why that was.
• 14:54
  And I began to really figure out that it's fundamentally all of
• 14:59
  those human virtues, you know, curiosity, gratitude, kindness,
• 15:04
  industriousness, those are the things that really serve them
• 15:08
  well long term. And so that's really why I wrote
• 15:13
  the book. And also when you're in
• 15:17
  education and you begin to partner with and talk with
• 15:20
  people in the business world, it even confirms that more.
• 15:26
  Who are your best employees and why?
• 15:31
  They listen, They're kind, you know, they work hard.
• 15:38
  They have all of those timeless qualities.
• 15:41
  And so I thought right now with artificial intelligence, kind of
• 15:46
  where the kids are thinking it can replace all of the things
• 15:49
  that they need to be successful. It doesn't even really get at
• 15:53
  what makes us really, truly successful, happy, thriving
• 15:58
  human beings. And so for me, it was like
• 16:02
  artificial intelligence on top of all of these other things.
• 16:06
  It was a perfect time for me to write the book and the partner
• 16:09
  with the businessman who really just confirmed some of the
• 16:13
  things I was thinking. And when you're as old as I am
• 16:17
  and you've been in education as long as I have, I have kids that
• 16:21
  I taught that are 35 years old. And you know, I've watched them
• 16:25
  grow up and even the kids that are now entering college, the
• 16:28
  ones that are happy and and successful, they have figured
• 16:32
  out it's all about relationships.
• 16:34
  And I think, I think I refer to Harvard study, the longest study
• 16:37
  in history. Your happiness is foundationally
• 16:41
  based on the quality of the relationships you have in life.
• 16:44
  So if we start getting back to what makes us uniquely human and
• 16:48
  those virtues, I feel like we're setting our kids up for success.
• 16:51
  And that's like in direct opposition with cell phones, you
• 16:55
  know, and in a lot of ways technology.
• 16:58
  So those are my reasons I guess. Would you mind sharing the top
• 17:04
  three most important takeaways from your book?
• 17:11
  I think for me that the greatest takeaways are, and I probably
• 17:16
  should preface this with my husband wrote a book called
• 17:19
  Moving the Needle and I write about it in my blog as early
• 17:23
  probably as 2013. Maybe if you can figure out your
• 17:30
  passions and your strengths and how to serve others in this
• 17:34
  world, you're it's never going to feel like you work a day in
• 17:37
  your life. So I think foundationally, my
• 17:42
  greatest takeaways for anyone in the book is to really harness
• 17:45
  those things that make you uniquely human, God-given
• 17:49
  virtues that you choose to use or not use to make the world a
• 17:55
  better place. And if you can do that, you'll
• 17:59
  have a pretty happy and successful life.
• 18:03
  And those aren't any in any way connected to technology.
• 18:11
  And when I talk about artificial intelligence, something that's
• 18:17
  contrived and not human, it flies in the face of what's
• 18:21
  uniquely human and the virtues that have historically been
• 18:27
  foundational to our success as human beings.
• 18:30
  So I think for me, though, that's the most important part
• 18:34
  of this book. Also, I have hope in the future
• 18:38
  for our kids and I think they hear all the time just like, oh,
• 18:42
  these kids are so bad. They're so hooked on this.
• 18:45
  They're they don't care. I disagree.
• 18:48
  I think that they know and those virtues inside of them, they
• 18:54
  feel them and they want to act on them.
• 18:57
  And I think technology gets in the way of that.
• 19:00
  And so for me, I wanted to express that in a book that
• 19:04
  would leave them feeling hopeful that if I just maybe focused on
• 19:09
  being more grateful, I might have a happier life when I'm
• 19:13
  with the people I love or if I am curious about something, to
• 19:19
  pursue that curiosity. So I think that's really, for
• 19:25
  me, the most important parts of the book and the message that I
• 19:30
  want kids to walk away from after reading the book.
• 19:34
  I didn't write the book for adults.
• 19:35
  I wrote it for kids and kids help me write the book.
• 19:40
  I gave it to them and I said, tell me what you think, What do
• 19:43
  you like? What don't you like?
• 19:44
  I, I think I had like 30 students from the Naples area,
• 19:48
  not from my school, but from just the, the city.
• 19:53
  I gave them a copy of the the draft.
• 19:56
  I told them to tear it apart and tell me what they liked and they
• 19:59
  didn't like. And they did.
• 20:01
  And so a lot of it was with their help.
• 20:09
  I hope that answers your. Question, would you like to?
• 20:12
  Yeah, thank you. Would you, would you like to
• 20:15
  share anything about Pay it Forward, another organization
• 20:18
  you're involved in? Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:22
  So Pay it Forward Enterprises is exactly as the name implies.
• 20:27
  I feel like I've been fortunate to work in a school with really
• 20:32
  great people and I've had a lot of wonderful experiences with a
• 20:36
  very diverse group of people and in my life.
• 20:40
  I would like to be able to pay all of that forward, all the
• 20:43
  hours and love and time that people put into making my life
• 20:49
  better. I feel like it's my obligation
• 20:52
  and my husband, he feels the same way to do that, to pay it
• 20:57
  forward. And I will tell you that the
• 20:59
  kids who figure that out early, they do really well in life.
• 21:05
  They're the ones who figure out like, if I can just harness what
• 21:08
  I love to do and what I'm good at, and I pay that forward to
• 21:12
  other people in this world, I'm going to feel good, I'm going to
• 21:16
  be successful and I'm going to have a great life.
• 21:19
  So that's what Pay it Forward Enterprises is.
• 21:21
  And, and you probably, if you've done any research, we do a lot
• 21:25
  of work with organizations to help them, military and various
• 21:30
  other organizations. Any last things you'd like to
• 21:36
  share with the audience, Nikki? I feel like if we can begin to
• 21:43
  trust what makes us uniquely human and we focus, even if we
• 21:49
  don't do all of the virtues, if we just focus on one at a time
• 21:53
  to grow in our humanity, we can be happier and we can have a
• 21:57
  happier, more connected world. So that's that's what I'd like
• 22:03
  to leave at the audience, is just to really think about what
• 22:06
  makes you human and what you love to do and just focus on
• 22:09
  that. Thanks for having the fortitude
• 22:15
  to speak truth. Do good or die trying.
• 22:22
  Well, I appreciate the work that you're doing and I really, I
• 22:26
  know that we're making a lot of these things laws right now, but
• 22:30
  I think we have to go a little bit more deeply into the
• 22:34
  situation because I think it's bigger than cell phones and
• 22:37
  mobile devices. I think it's about helping
• 22:40
  humans connect with one another again in ways that we've kind of
• 22:44
  forgotten. Beautiful.
• 22:49
  Thank you, Nick. Thank you for listening.
• 22:53
  Please like, subscribe and share with your friends.
• 22:55
  See you next time.