Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / How to Weigh the Risks of Social Media: A conversation with the Surgeon General

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How to Weigh the Risks of Social Media: A conversation with the Surgeon General · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

0:00
Speaker 1: This is parent data. I'm Emily Oster. There are many
0:05
Speaker 1: hard questions in parenting. Among the hardest when should I
0:09
Speaker 1: get my kid a phone? But even harder than that,
0:12
Speaker 1: when should I get them access to social media? For decades,
0:16
Speaker 1: there's been that Surgeon General's warning on packs.
0:18
Speaker 2: Of cigarettes, but this morning, for the first.
0:20
Speaker 1: Time, a new warning about something else, social media and
0:24
Speaker 1: what it means for kids' mental health.
0:26
Speaker 3: The nation's top doctor sounding the alarm on the impacts
0:29
Speaker 3: of social media on our children.
0:31
Speaker 4: This morning, the US Surgeon General taking a stand against
0:34
Speaker 4: kids on social media, saying thirteen is still too young.
0:44
Speaker 1: For many of us.
0:45
Speaker 2: Social media is terrifying.
0:47
Speaker 1: We worry about what our kids might be exposed to,
0:50
Speaker 1: about being exposed to things before they're ready. We worry
0:53
Speaker 1: about bullying happening through their phones. But on the flip side, we.
0:59
Speaker 2: Have many of the same concerns.
1:00
Speaker 1: If we don't give our kids social media, maybe then
1:03
Speaker 1: they will be bullied, Maybe then they will feel left out.
1:07
Speaker 1: This is such a hard balance, and it's an example
1:11
Speaker 1: of a question where mostly as parents, we're going to
1:14
Speaker 1: struggle to solve it on our own. There's a lot
1:17
Speaker 1: of discussion these days about the role of policy, the
1:20
Speaker 1: role of companies, and the role of the government in
1:23
Speaker 1: regulating what kind of social media access kids can have
1:26
Speaker 1: and when. To a large extent, this probably is a
1:29
Speaker 1: collective problem which may need collective solutions. So today I've
1:35
Speaker 1: got the US Surgeon General, doctor VIVEK Marthy, who has
1:38
Speaker 1: been very vocal about changes that are needed in his
1:43
Speaker 1: view to social media platforms and limits on when kids
1:48
Speaker 1: can get access to these tools. Doctor Murphy and I
1:51
Speaker 1: talk about why he is interested in setting those limits,
1:55
Speaker 1: and I push back a little bit on some.
1:57
Speaker 2: Of the concerns I think parents have.
1:59
Speaker 1: On the other side, Doctor Murphy and I both love data.
2:03
Speaker 1: We talk about how we want more of it, and
2:06
Speaker 1: we're also both parents, and we talk about how hard
2:09
Speaker 1: it is to make these decisions for yourself and also
2:12
Speaker 1: think about them for everyone else. I really appreciated this conversation,
2:16
Speaker 1: and I hope that you will too. After the break,
2:20
Speaker 1: Surgeon General, Doctor Vveck Murthy. Welcome, Doctor Murphy. I am
2:32
Speaker 1: so happy to have you here. Thank you for joining me.
2:35
Speaker 4: Well, thanks so much, Emily. I'm glad that we're having
2:37
Speaker 4: this conversation.
2:38
Speaker 1: So I want to start by asking you about the
2:40
Speaker 1: stand that you took this summer on social media for kids.
2:44
Speaker 1: You linked social media used to mental health issues and
2:46
Speaker 1: children you argued effectively for a ban on social media
2:50
Speaker 1: until least age thirteen, or at least that's how I
2:53
Speaker 1: read it as a surge. In general, I would have
2:56
Speaker 1: thought you get a limited number of bites at the
2:58
Speaker 1: apple in terms of making stands on topics, and so
3:03
Speaker 1: I want to know why you picked this one.
3:05
Speaker 4: Well, good question. Well, only one thing I learned of
3:08
Speaker 4: during my first hint as surch in general was that, well,
3:11
Speaker 4: you may come up with certain ideas, come into office
3:13
Speaker 4: with certain ideas of what you want to address that.
3:16
Speaker 4: Just like in medicine, it's important to listen to the patient,
3:19
Speaker 4: to listen to the public in this case about what
3:21
Speaker 4: they care about, what they're concerned about. And what I
3:24
Speaker 4: was hearing almost consistently in every single visit that I
3:29
Speaker 4: made to communities was concerned from parents about youth mental health.
3:34
Speaker 4: And the most common questions I would get about that
3:36
Speaker 4: were questions about social media, where parents would ask me, Hey,
3:39
Speaker 4: he's just really safe for my kids. I feel like
3:41
Speaker 4: it's harming my children. What am I supposed to do
3:43
Speaker 4: about it? And it was for that reason that I
3:45
Speaker 4: decided to actually dig into this topic and to put
3:48
Speaker 4: out an official search in general's advisory and the topic
3:51
Speaker 4: to help parents understand what we know, what we don't know,
3:54
Speaker 4: where we need more research and study, and what steps
3:58
Speaker 4: we ken and should be taking individuals, but as policymakers,
4:02
Speaker 4: as a society, to address the concerns that I think
4:05
Speaker 4: many parents rightly have.
4:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, and certainly, as a parent of a twelve year old,
4:10
Speaker 1: I have many of those concerns. I actually want to
4:13
Speaker 1: talk mostly about sort of two pieces of pushback. So one,
4:17
Speaker 1: this is a podcast about data, so it's about data,
4:20
Speaker 1: and then I also want to talk about some practicality issues,
4:22
Speaker 1: but on the data.
4:24
Speaker 2: So my read of the data.
4:25
Speaker 1: Is actually, we don't really know for sure what the
4:28
Speaker 1: social media impacts are on kids, and in fact that
4:31
Speaker 1: they probably vary, and you should tell me if you disagree,
4:33
Speaker 1: But that's my initial read.
4:36
Speaker 2: And also the quality of data is very poor.
4:39
Speaker 1: There's nothing randomized, there's a lot of cross sectional evidence.
4:42
Speaker 1: And we've seen things like this before, so we've seen
4:45
Speaker 1: these kinds of similar types of studies, sometimes similar kinds
4:50
Speaker 1: of rhetoric around things like screens, maybe even video games,
4:55
Speaker 1: which and some of those results didn't ultimately hold up
4:57
Speaker 1: when we had better data. So for someone who comes
5:00
Speaker 1: and they say, you know, the data doesn't really support
5:01
Speaker 1: your view that social media is the problem, like, what
5:04
Speaker 1: do you say, I mean, do you read that data differently?
5:07
Speaker 4: Well, I think you have to step back and ask
5:09
Speaker 4: what's the question that we're trying to answer here? And
5:11
Speaker 4: I think if you're to me as a parent myself
5:15
Speaker 4: as well as as a doctor and surgeon general, the
5:17
Speaker 4: most important question that I have is a question that
5:20
Speaker 4: parents were asking me, which is is this safe for
5:23
Speaker 4: my kids? That's a different from a question, and I
5:26
Speaker 4: think the right question, and it's a question that we
5:28
Speaker 4: ask actually often with medications, with children's toys, with other
5:32
Speaker 4: things that we expose kids to. And one of the
5:35
Speaker 4: key conclusions we make, in fact, in one of the
5:37
Speaker 4: very first ones that I'm make in the advisory, is
5:39
Speaker 4: that to your point, we don't have enough data to
5:42
Speaker 4: actually say with clarity that this is safe for our children.
5:46
Speaker 4: Number One, there are open questions that we need to answer,
5:49
Speaker 4: and part of the challenge that I worry about is
5:52
Speaker 4: that we don't have full access to the data we
5:54
Speaker 4: need to do the analysis that researchers want. This is
5:57
Speaker 4: a theme we constantly heard from regardless of their views
6:01
Speaker 4: on this issue across the spectrum, is that they felt
6:04
Speaker 4: that they were not able to get full access to
6:07
Speaker 4: the data from social media companies. So that's that's the
6:10
Speaker 4: most important, you know, conclusion we make and a point
6:13
Speaker 4: of concern. But with regard to harms, I think, you know,
6:17
Speaker 4: there is certainly a lot of correlational you know, evidence
6:21
Speaker 4: that we have, and I know you're in some of
6:23
Speaker 4: your writings you've pointed that out that there's obviously a
6:26
Speaker 4: difference between correlational data causation data. That's something that we've
6:29
Speaker 4: got to think about. The causation data that we have.
6:33
Speaker 4: You know, arguably we would love to have more of
6:36
Speaker 4: that have stronger analysis. Right there are small studies that
6:39
Speaker 4: are done, some natural studies based on sort of the
6:42
Speaker 4: rollout of platforms like Facebook at college institutions, which you know,
6:47
Speaker 4: those results while they're concerning, we cite some of them,
6:49
Speaker 4: they've been published. Ideally we'd want more of these. But
6:53
Speaker 4: one of the most important, like the points that came
6:57
Speaker 4: to my mind and the reason that I was really
6:58
Speaker 4: pushed to do this, is that I believe we should
7:01
Speaker 4: be functioning from a safety first principle here when it
7:05
Speaker 4: comes to social media and our kids, which is to
7:07
Speaker 4: ask ourselves is this safe? And if we don't have
7:10
Speaker 4: enough data to say that it is sufficiently safe for
7:12
Speaker 4: our kids, to ask ourselves, how can we make it safer?
7:15
Speaker 4: How can we get the data to more fully understand
7:17
Speaker 4: the consequences here?
7:18
Speaker 5: To me?
7:19
Speaker 1: So can I push a little bit on this issue
7:21
Speaker 1: of safety because I think we talk like, I think
7:23
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right, Like, as a parent, what I want
7:26
Speaker 1: one of the main things I want is for my
7:28
Speaker 1: kids to be safe.
7:30
Speaker 2: But also.
7:32
Speaker 1: There are different kinds of safe, and there are different
7:35
Speaker 1: you know, there's physical safety, there's emotional safety, but there's
7:39
Speaker 1: I think someone could argue that it's not safe for
7:42
Speaker 1: my kid not to have a phone and not to
7:45
Speaker 1: have because I need to be able to track them.
7:46
Speaker 1: It's not safe for them not to have a phone
7:48
Speaker 1: because the friendship downsides for not having access to being
7:53
Speaker 1: able to text their friends. You know, that's not safe,
7:55
Speaker 1: that's harming them in some other way. And so in
7:59
Speaker 1: a sense, you know, you've got kind of one side of.
8:02
Speaker 2: Safety or one type of safety. But safety is broad.
8:06
Speaker 1: So I think it's hard to say this is the
8:08
Speaker 1: safe way to behave, as is true for anything. Right,
8:10
Speaker 1: you could say like, don't let your kid go play
8:12
Speaker 1: outside because it's not safe.
8:14
Speaker 2: You know what if a meteor hit them.
8:16
Speaker 1: Okay, well what if they don't get enough exercise and
8:19
Speaker 1: then that's not safe.
8:20
Speaker 4: Well I don't think that's inconsistent at all, right, because
8:22
Speaker 4: safety doesn't mean that you don't look at the balance
8:25
Speaker 4: of risks and benefits, right, But safety is an important component. Again,
8:28
Speaker 4: let me draw the correlation here to medications. Before you're
8:31
Speaker 4: a child, or my child or any child out there
8:33
Speaker 4: takes a medication, those medicines are assessed for safety and
8:38
Speaker 4: then for efficacy, and then there's a balance that's assessed
8:41
Speaker 4: and then a recommendation based on that. But that's what
8:44
Speaker 4: we have to do here, and it's frankly what we
8:46
Speaker 4: have not done here over the last twenty or so
8:49
Speaker 4: years that social media has been made available. Let me
8:52
Speaker 4: just also say this, if I told you that there
8:55
Speaker 4: was a medication that was just put onto the market
8:58
Speaker 4: that hadn't really been studied, was but it was out there,
9:01
Speaker 4: millions of people were using it. We were getting thousands
9:04
Speaker 4: and thousands of complaints, you know, reflecting millions of people's
9:08
Speaker 4: concerns about the impact this medication was having on their health,
9:12
Speaker 4: concerns from their families about what they were seeing in
9:15
Speaker 4: terms of the impact. We wouldn't just blow by that
9:18
Speaker 4: and say nothing to see here, Let's just wait until
9:20
Speaker 4: the other ten years until we get data. That would
9:22
Speaker 4: be irresponsible. What you'd say is that we would take
9:25
Speaker 4: those concerns seriously and we would say, yes, look, maybe
9:28
Speaker 4: some people are being helped, maybe some people are being harmed.
9:31
Speaker 4: We need to understand this more fully and approach this
9:34
Speaker 4: with caution, right, And we've done that in the past
9:37
Speaker 4: with medications. We've put pauses on medications to assess them
9:40
Speaker 4: more deeply, and we made things safer. One other parallel
9:44
Speaker 4: to note here is with motor vehicles. Right, Like when
9:47
Speaker 4: I was growing up, and you and I are in
9:50
Speaker 4: similar age ranges, so when you and I were both younger,
9:54
Speaker 4: we know that there was a time when motor vehicle
9:56
Speaker 4: accident debts were incredibly high. Now, what we didn't say
10:00
Speaker 4: in that case is you know what cars are not safe.
10:03
Speaker 4: Let's go back to horses and buggies, Like, we didn't
10:05
Speaker 4: say that, right, there were there were.
10:07
Speaker 1: Some push for that, but yes, I agree, not a
10:10
Speaker 1: widespread absolutely.
10:11
Speaker 4: Not a widespread But we also didn't say, you know what,
10:14
Speaker 4: let's just this is just modernity. This is just a
10:17
Speaker 4: new way, the new normal. We just have to accept
10:20
Speaker 4: this and move on. We didn't say that either. What
10:21
Speaker 4: we said is, you know what, things are evolving, Technology
10:24
Speaker 4: is evolving. How do we make this safer for our children?
10:27
Speaker 4: I mean, and for all of us? And so we
10:29
Speaker 4: put in place motor vehicle safety standards that helped us
10:33
Speaker 4: get air bags into cars, seat belts into cars, and
10:35
Speaker 4: a host of other safety you know as standards and
10:39
Speaker 4: the and those are actually enforced. It wasn't left up
10:41
Speaker 4: to the companies, by the way, to enforce these. We
10:45
Speaker 4: had standards and we enforced them, and as a result,
10:48
Speaker 4: we were able to save thousands and thousands of lives.
10:51
Speaker 4: And that's what we need here. One of the things
10:52
Speaker 4: I call for in this advisory, in addition to the
10:56
Speaker 4: data transparency so that every research or every parent out
10:59
Speaker 4: there has access to the data that the companies have,
11:01
Speaker 4: is I also call for actual safety standards that we
11:04
Speaker 4: put in place. And are these easy to figure out?
11:07
Speaker 4: None of this is easy. None of this is simple.
11:09
Speaker 4: This is complicated. But I think we owe it to
11:12
Speaker 4: our kids, We owe it to parents to do the
11:14
Speaker 4: hard thing here, which is to have the debate over
11:17
Speaker 4: what these safety standards should be and actually put them
11:20
Speaker 4: in place, because the current approach of just allowing companies
11:23
Speaker 4: to figure it out on their own and to just
11:26
Speaker 4: assure us, without data transparency, that they're doing the best
11:29
Speaker 4: they can this is not cutting it and it's not
11:31
Speaker 4: fair to our kids or frankly to parents on whose
11:34
Speaker 4: shoulders the entire burden of managing this has been placed.
11:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're going to get to that.
11:38
Speaker 1: But I want to ask you one question about the data,
11:40
Speaker 1: because I think I'm extremely aligned in the view that
11:44
Speaker 1: just we need more data on these questions in some way.
11:48
Speaker 1: If you, let's say you were in charge of a
11:50
Speaker 1: government agency and a very important person, what is the
11:53
Speaker 1: study you would design, Like, what is the thing you
11:56
Speaker 1: would want to do in the data?
11:57
Speaker 2: What do you want to see?
11:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, sicko ad question? And we actually I laid down
12:01
Speaker 4: in the advisoring a number of questions that we need
12:04
Speaker 4: to answer from a research perspective. And look, here's here's
12:08
Speaker 4: some things I really want to understand. I want to
12:09
Speaker 4: understand which children are most at risk, recognizing there's a
12:12
Speaker 4: heterogeneity right in differences across kids In response, I might
12:16
Speaker 4: be fine, others are have terrible impacts when it comes
12:19
Speaker 4: to social media use. The second thing I want to
12:21
Speaker 4: understand is what kind of utilization generates harm versus benefit
12:25
Speaker 4: if I'm and that has to do with how I'm
12:28
Speaker 4: using it, what time of the day I'm using it,
12:30
Speaker 4: how much you know I'm using social media. One of
12:32
Speaker 4: the things that concern me is that a third of
12:35
Speaker 4: adolescents say that they're staying up till midnight or later
12:38
Speaker 4: on their screens. A lot of that is social media
12:40
Speaker 4: use taking away from children's sleep, sleep which is ordinarily
12:44
Speaker 4: so important, so important, and we know, and I just
12:47
Speaker 4: want to say this to be clear for all the
12:48
Speaker 4: parents out there, that when kids sleep is compromise that
12:51
Speaker 4: puts them at increased risk for a host of bad outcomes,
12:53
Speaker 4: including poor mental health outcomes. So that's a second piece
12:57
Speaker 4: that I'd want to understand. But the other big thing
12:59
Speaker 4: I want to under standards around interventions. Right, the companies
13:02
Speaker 4: are telling us that they are putting measures in place
13:04
Speaker 4: to keep our kids safe, are those actually working? Right?
13:08
Speaker 4: We should take a data driven approach to understanding the
13:12
Speaker 4: answer to that question. So these are some of the
13:14
Speaker 4: things I think are critical for us to understand. In
13:16
Speaker 4: an ideal world, if we had this data, not only
13:19
Speaker 4: could we tailor public policy appropriately, but we could empower
13:23
Speaker 4: parents to better understand whether their kids may be at
13:27
Speaker 4: risk or not, how to think about when it's safe
13:29
Speaker 4: for their child to start using social media and in
13:32
Speaker 4: what manner. And right now, parents just don't have those
13:35
Speaker 4: tools right now because we just haven't done the research
13:38
Speaker 4: to help them understand how to manage this incredibly challenging
13:42
Speaker 4: and complex phenomenon which is social media.
13:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what's interesting and hard about those questions
13:47
Speaker 1: is I agree that they are the right questions. And
13:50
Speaker 1: I think the last piece, which is what happens when
13:52
Speaker 1: you put regulations on these or restrictions on them, that's
13:55
Speaker 1: something actually the company alone could tell you a fair amount, right,
13:59
Speaker 1: they could show, like principle, if you had access to
14:01
Speaker 1: all of their data, you could see when you introduce
14:03
Speaker 1: this restriction, how does that change usage? And that's I mean,
14:06
Speaker 1: that's a mineable thing out of sort of just data
14:09
Speaker 1: that is obviously exist somewhere in the back end of TikTok,
14:14
Speaker 1: or probably can't get out of TikTok, but out of back.
14:16
Speaker 2: Of a Instagram or snapchat or whatever.
14:19
Speaker 1: The thing that's much harder is the first pieces you said,
14:21
Speaker 1: which is, you know what happens, like which kids are
14:24
Speaker 1: most affected, you know what happens when you change the
14:28
Speaker 1: timing of things. I mean, I can imagine experiments that
14:31
Speaker 1: would say, you know, we're going to take a group
14:33
Speaker 1: of kids and you know half of them were going
14:35
Speaker 1: to make their phone turn off at eight o'clock and
14:38
Speaker 1: half of them were not. I mean, but those are
14:40
Speaker 1: those are experiments that I would almost say, like, you
14:42
Speaker 1: need researchers to run those experiments, that companies are not
14:45
Speaker 1: going to run those evaluations for you.
14:47
Speaker 2: That's something like people need to do.
14:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, And in no way do I think that we
14:51
Speaker 4: should be relying entirely on companies to do this. I
14:53
Speaker 4: think we need to let researchers do what they do well,
14:56
Speaker 4: which is to conduct an independent analysis and to design
15:00
Speaker 4: their appropriate experiments, to execute them, to do the analysis,
15:03
Speaker 4: and then to share that data with the public openly
15:06
Speaker 4: and freely. Look, I'll just say this. You know, I
15:09
Speaker 4: come to my job first and foremost is as a parent,
15:12
Speaker 4: and particularly to issues around youth mental health, which is
15:15
Speaker 4: why I've made such a focus of my time as
15:17
Speaker 4: search in general. But as a parent, I never want
15:20
Speaker 4: to feel like things are being hidden from me about
15:22
Speaker 4: the impact of the things my kids are using, whether
15:25
Speaker 4: their toys are using, medications, are using anything. And in
15:28
Speaker 4: this case, when I talk to parents around the country,
15:30
Speaker 4: which I do all the time, you know, parents I
15:33
Speaker 4: think appropriately feel frustrated that they aren't being given the
15:38
Speaker 4: full story here about the impact that these platforms may
15:41
Speaker 4: be having on their children. And look, it's not like
15:44
Speaker 4: parenting got easier over the last twenty or thirty years, right,
15:47
Speaker 4: Parenting has always been challenging. But what we have asked
15:50
Speaker 4: parents to do now is, on top of everything that
15:52
Speaker 4: was hard, take on an entire youth phenomenon and somehow
15:55
Speaker 4: manage it even though we haven't had clear recommendations, you know,
16:00
Speaker 4: from societies and others on how to medical societies and
16:03
Speaker 4: others on how to actually manage it. So I just
16:05
Speaker 4: think that at a time where parents themselves are struggling,
16:08
Speaker 4: at a time where we know that the mental health
16:10
Speaker 4: of parents is being profoundly challenged by all the circumstances
16:14
Speaker 4: they're dealing with, and when we know that the mental
16:16
Speaker 4: health of parents impacts the mental health of kids, I
16:18
Speaker 4: just think we've got to have parents' backs on this,
16:20
Speaker 4: And this is why I'm really pushing in this for
16:24
Speaker 4: policymakers to step up, provide the funding we need for research,
16:28
Speaker 4: ensure that we have the data transparency from companies, and
16:31
Speaker 4: put these safety standards in place. We've got to start
16:35
Speaker 4: now with kids. Only have one childhood. A year in
16:37
Speaker 4: the life of a child matters immensely and we just
16:40
Speaker 4: don't have time to wait.
16:42
Speaker 1: So from the parenting standpoint, I think what is most
16:47
Speaker 1: there's really two challenging pieces here. So one is knowing
16:50
Speaker 1: what's right for my kid and feeling like I have
16:54
Speaker 1: the data transparency and everything you said makes a lot
16:57
Speaker 1: of sense as a parent, Those are things that I
16:59
Speaker 1: would like. The other piece is that it is extremely
17:03
Speaker 1: difficult to enforce limits of this type on your kid
17:09
Speaker 1: given their social environment.
17:10
Speaker 2: So I'm going to give you an example.
17:12
Speaker 1: We are specifically time at social media, but there is
17:14
Speaker 1: a general related question about phones and the world is
17:18
Speaker 1: not well designed for your child to not have a phone.
17:22
Speaker 1: My twelve year old did not have a phone. So
17:24
Speaker 1: she finished sixth grade. In the middle of sixth grade.
17:26
Speaker 2: She had no phone.
17:27
Speaker 1: And last year at school, they told us download this
17:30
Speaker 1: bird app on your phone, download the bird sound app
17:33
Speaker 1: on your phone.
17:34
Speaker 2: So I told somebody this once and they were like,
17:35
Speaker 2: the bird app like Twitter. I was like, no, like
17:38
Speaker 2: an educational app about birds.
17:40
Speaker 1: She didn't have a phone, and like generally the school
17:43
Speaker 1: is great, and like they don't let you use phones
17:45
Speaker 1: at school, like they have a sort of pretty aggressive,
17:48
Speaker 1: you know, no middle school phone policy. But there was
17:51
Speaker 1: this underlying assumption that was like, of course your kid
17:54
Speaker 1: has a phone where at home they can go walk
17:56
Speaker 1: around their backyard undercord birds. And in the end where
17:58
Speaker 1: we worked around it, but ultimately we got her a phone,
18:01
Speaker 1: basically because it felt like she needs this to navigate
18:05
Speaker 1: through pieces of her world that sort of have nothing
18:09
Speaker 1: to do with like the social environment. It's not well
18:10
Speaker 1: set up for me to wait until my kid is
18:12
Speaker 1: in eighth grade to get them a phone because I need.
18:16
Speaker 2: The bird app.
18:17
Speaker 1: And even if they don't need the bird app, then
18:19
Speaker 1: people worry when my kid's going to be ostracized.
18:20
Speaker 2: There's a group chat, what about Snapchat?
18:22
Speaker 1: Their friends are planning things, you know they're left out,
18:24
Speaker 1: and so like, what do you tell parents religious like,
18:27
Speaker 1: I can't hold this line. I can't, I just can't
18:30
Speaker 1: hold it.
18:31
Speaker 4: Really good question, Emily, and I think it's the right
18:33
Speaker 4: question to ask, because I do think it's incredibly hard,
18:36
Speaker 4: especially if you're the only parent out there who's trying
18:39
Speaker 4: to put some sort of guardrails around social media use
18:42
Speaker 4: for your child and everyone else around them is using devices,
18:46
Speaker 4: is on social it can almost become isolating, right for
18:49
Speaker 4: them to be the one who's left out. And we
18:51
Speaker 4: hear this. I hear this from parents all the time.
18:54
Speaker 4: But I think that I think the couple things that
18:56
Speaker 4: keep in mind here. One is partly how we got here,
19:00
Speaker 4: is that social media and technology more broadly just rapidly
19:04
Speaker 4: infiltrated our lives and our kids' lives, right, and it
19:07
Speaker 4: almost we sort of assumed that this is just the normal.
19:10
Speaker 4: So when you talk about schools, for example, making the
19:12
Speaker 4: assumption that every child has a smartphone and can use
19:16
Speaker 4: apps and download apps, et cetera, that is a piece
19:19
Speaker 4: of that. But here's what I think we have to do.
19:21
Speaker 4: Number One, I think we should make a distinction between
19:24
Speaker 4: social media and technology more broadly, like for safety purposes.
19:28
Speaker 4: I can absolutely understand that someone might want their child
19:30
Speaker 4: to be able to make phone calls so texts, have
19:32
Speaker 4: access to maps, to be able to navigate the world
19:35
Speaker 4: for their safety, and to reach out to their family
19:38
Speaker 4: if they have an emergency. Then you can do that. Actually,
19:41
Speaker 4: it turns out without necessarily having social media on your phone,
19:45
Speaker 4: and we can separate conversation talk about how to do that,
19:47
Speaker 4: how we can help design technology that makes that possible.
19:50
Speaker 4: Some of it's actually going back a little closer to
19:53
Speaker 4: what we think of as a dumb phone era. But
19:55
Speaker 4: the point is there's a distinction in tech and social media.
19:58
Speaker 4: But the second thing I think to remember here is
20:00
Speaker 4: that this is hard to do alone, which is why
20:03
Speaker 4: I think it's so important for parents to increasingly support
20:07
Speaker 4: one another and partner with one another in this regard,
20:10
Speaker 4: because it's harder to do these changes alone. But if
20:13
Speaker 4: you are part of a group of two parents, three parents,
20:15
Speaker 4: four parents who are actually trying to make these changes
20:18
Speaker 4: for their kids, not only do you have more support,
20:19
Speaker 4: but your children also may start to get the sense
20:22
Speaker 4: they're not the only ones alone. Finally, let me just
20:24
Speaker 4: say this, I have now met and spoken to many
20:27
Speaker 4: parents and kids across the country who made a decision,
20:31
Speaker 4: like during early adolescence not to use social media. This
20:36
Speaker 4: is a minority of children, to be very clear, it's
20:38
Speaker 4: a small minority, and it wasn't easy for those parents either.
20:42
Speaker 4: A lot of times they didn't have other parents who
20:45
Speaker 4: are doing the same thing. They were the only ones
20:46
Speaker 4: out there, and that was really tough for them. But
20:49
Speaker 4: almost to a tea, all of them, especially the kids,
20:52
Speaker 4: say that they are grateful that they went down that
20:54
Speaker 4: path of delaying use or having guardrails around their use
20:58
Speaker 4: of social media, because even though they were frustrated and
21:00
Speaker 4: angry in the beginning, they now feel the benefits of
21:04
Speaker 4: it and can see it and specifically benefits and not
21:07
Speaker 4: necessarily being subject to the kind of anxiety that they
21:10
Speaker 4: see in their friends, and not having their attention constantly
21:12
Speaker 4: diverted to devices, detracting from sleep, conversation with others, etc.
21:17
Speaker 4: I'm not saying any of this is easy, but we've
21:20
Speaker 4: gotten ourselves into a deep hole. Digging out of it
21:22
Speaker 4: is not going to be simple. But one thing I
21:25
Speaker 4: think that can make it easier is if we work together,
21:28
Speaker 4: support one another, and partner as parents. It's something that
21:30
Speaker 4: my wife and I are planning to do as our
21:33
Speaker 4: kids get older. My kids right now are five and six,
21:35
Speaker 4: and as young as that may see.
21:37
Speaker 2: Have they started asking you for a phone?
21:39
Speaker 4: Are you kidding? If it was up to them, they
21:40
Speaker 4: would like have our phones all the time and they
21:42
Speaker 4: would be using them constantly. And so we've already had
21:45
Speaker 4: to negotiate that with them. But even more so Emily,
21:48
Speaker 4: like my five year old before she finished preschool, she
21:50
Speaker 4: came home one day and she asked me if my
21:54
Speaker 4: wife if we could post a picture that we took
21:56
Speaker 4: of her on social media. We were a flabbergas we've
22:00
Speaker 4: never talked her about social media. She's in preschool, for
22:02
Speaker 4: God's sakes, but her classmates are talking about social media
22:06
Speaker 4: and about posting pictures on there. So we know that
22:09
Speaker 4: this age of thirteen that people seem to think is
22:12
Speaker 4: the age at which it's then you're allowed to get
22:14
Speaker 4: on social media, that is an artificial barrier. We know
22:18
Speaker 4: forty percent of kids eight through twelve are on social media,
22:21
Speaker 4: even though thirteen supposedly the restriction that platforms put in place.
22:25
Speaker 4: So we've got to do this together as parents, and
22:28
Speaker 4: I just I think doing it alone is incredibly hard.
22:31
Speaker 4: I really sympathize with parents out there who are navigating
22:34
Speaker 4: this and all of us are kind of in a
22:35
Speaker 4: similar boat here because this is not easy, which is again,
22:39
Speaker 4: finally why we need the support and assistance of policymakers
22:43
Speaker 4: here to establish manageable standards here so that we can
22:46
Speaker 4: make it a bit easier for parents, give them more
22:49
Speaker 4: clarity and guidance and ensured that. Look, I don't have
22:51
Speaker 4: to think when when I buy a toy in the
22:53
Speaker 4: store about whether or not there's lead paint on that toy,
22:56
Speaker 4: whether it's going to poison my child, Like I shouldn't
22:59
Speaker 4: have to think about that. When your kid turns sixteen
23:02
Speaker 4: and you perhaps want to get them into a car,
23:05
Speaker 4: we don't say to you, you know what, why don't you,
23:07
Speaker 4: as a parent go assess the breaks by yourself. Make
23:10
Speaker 4: sure that the frame is strong enough so can sustain
23:13
Speaker 4: they're a collision, make sure that the airbags are up
23:16
Speaker 4: to stand. We don't say that because that's ridiculous. These
23:18
Speaker 4: are complex technologies that we need independent standards and we
23:23
Speaker 4: need independent enforcement, and that's what we got to have
23:26
Speaker 4: with social media too.
23:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that.
23:28
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that I would say, there's
23:30
Speaker 1: there's got to be kind of two parts to this.
23:33
Speaker 1: So the regulatory side does seem like we can help people,
23:38
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, this is a
23:41
Speaker 1: within family effectively a within family and negotiation. I think
23:45
Speaker 1: it's what you said is very interesting about sort of
23:48
Speaker 1: kids reflecting if they have in a situation in which
23:51
Speaker 1: they did they wanted social media, they didn't get social media,
23:53
Speaker 1: and now they feel good about it. And I do
23:57
Speaker 1: get the sense that there is there are opportunities to
24:00
Speaker 1: engage once kids, even in experimentation around you know, let's
24:06
Speaker 1: try not having our phones for you know, like after
24:11
Speaker 1: eight pm. Or let's try, you know, not having our
24:13
Speaker 1: phones one day on the weekend, or let's try and
24:14
Speaker 1: like let's actually think about how we you know, how
24:17
Speaker 1: we feel about that, or how how that goes and
24:20
Speaker 1: does that improve things?
24:21
Speaker 2: Does that make things worse? Did you actually miss anything?
24:23
Speaker 1: Oh you didn't. You didn't actually miss anything leaving your
24:26
Speaker 1: phone for four hours?
24:27
Speaker 2: Like so I.
24:31
Speaker 1: Struggle sometimes with I think our our instinct to just
24:36
Speaker 1: think about putting restrictions in place, fighting up against what
24:42
Speaker 1: maybe for me is almost more necessary, which is trying
24:44
Speaker 1: to figure out how we can help people navigate this,
24:46
Speaker 1: and I do think these restrictions can be part of this,
24:49
Speaker 1: but it ultimately it is about navigation. Eventually, your kid
24:52
Speaker 1: is going to have a phone, very likely most adults do,
24:54
Speaker 1: and we don't want it to be like we tell
24:58
Speaker 1: them they can't drink and then on their twenty first birthday,
25:00
Speaker 1: you know, they have twenty one shots. We don't want
25:02
Speaker 1: it to be you can't have any phone, and then
25:04
Speaker 1: as soon as you get your phone, like all you
25:06
Speaker 1: do for twenty four hours a day is you know,
25:08
Speaker 1: post these pictures that you wish your dad had mosted
25:10
Speaker 1: of you on social media, just in a crazy manner.
25:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that is too emily. But what I do
25:16
Speaker 4: think is important here is this isn't either or. We
25:19
Speaker 4: need to have sensible regulation in place, and we need
25:22
Speaker 4: to be able to help families make the decisions that
25:26
Speaker 4: are appropriate for their children, recognizing the kids mature at
25:29
Speaker 4: different ages and they're ready at different ages. Like we
25:31
Speaker 4: actually to come back to motor vehicles, this is actually
25:33
Speaker 4: what we do with motor vehicles, right. We don't mandate
25:36
Speaker 4: that every child starts driving at sixteen, right. What we
25:39
Speaker 4: do is we have standards in place. I'm sure cars
25:41
Speaker 4: are safe. We have laws to make sure that there's
25:43
Speaker 4: speed limits, et cetera. But then we also support parents
25:46
Speaker 4: in having a discussion with their child, assessing when they're ready,
25:49
Speaker 4: what situations are appropriate for them to drive, in counseling
25:53
Speaker 4: them about drinking and driving. So you're right that we
25:55
Speaker 4: have to take a combination approach here, and I think
25:58
Speaker 4: that if we put it entirely on parents, or if
26:02
Speaker 4: we put it entirely on regulation, I think we will
26:04
Speaker 4: miss the boat here and miss an opportunity. And finally,
26:08
Speaker 4: I would just consider this too, for no parent wants
26:12
Speaker 4: to feel like they're being told how exactly how they
26:14
Speaker 4: should be parenting their child right or as parents, And
26:18
Speaker 4: I feel this too, like I want to be able
26:19
Speaker 4: to know what the guidance is, what the data says,
26:22
Speaker 4: and then look at my child and figure out how
26:24
Speaker 4: it applies to them. But I think that's not the circumstance,
26:28
Speaker 4: and I don't think we should take that right away.
26:29
Speaker 4: But that's not the circumstance that we're in now, Like
26:32
Speaker 4: we're in a circumstances where parents are just being utterly
26:34
Speaker 4: overwhelmed by new technology that they didn't grow up with
26:38
Speaker 4: that's rapidly evolving. That is frankly different from other tech
26:42
Speaker 4: advances in the past. Like sometimes people think, hey, is
26:44
Speaker 4: this the same moral panic that we experience when TV
26:47
Speaker 4: came on the scene, when telephones.
26:48
Speaker 1: Or Victorian novels, you know, ladies reading too many novels?
26:52
Speaker 4: Yeah too. And the truth is, look, every time there's
26:55
Speaker 4: a major shift in society, there are voices that will say, hey,
26:58
Speaker 4: is this good for us? Is this going to cause harm?
27:00
Speaker 4: Et cetera. But here's in my belief what is different
27:03
Speaker 4: about social media. Social media has changed the fabric of
27:07
Speaker 4: our social interactions with one another in a profound way.
27:11
Speaker 4: Like number one has to do with volume, The sheer
27:14
Speaker 4: amount of content coming at our kids through social media
27:17
Speaker 4: just dwarfs anything that children encountered with TV, with other
27:22
Speaker 4: forms of technology, with the telephone. The second thing, though,
27:25
Speaker 4: is just to think about the pervasiveness. Like I didn't
27:28
Speaker 4: when I was growing up and there was a TV
27:30
Speaker 4: in the house. I couldn't carry my TV into my
27:33
Speaker 4: bedroom with me, put it in my bed and watch
27:35
Speaker 4: it until four in the morning, right, Like you couldn't
27:38
Speaker 4: do those things. But now with your smartphones in particular,
27:41
Speaker 4: people have twenty four to seven access, and we know
27:43
Speaker 4: our kids are actually losing sleep literally as a result
27:46
Speaker 4: of these devices. And finally, these devices are devices are
27:49
Speaker 4: also designed to maximize the amount of time spent on them.
27:55
Speaker 4: And what I care about as a doctor is the
27:56
Speaker 4: quality of time that kids are spending on them. But
27:59
Speaker 4: the plots are maximizing quantity because that is what the
28:02
Speaker 4: revenue models are based on. In that universe, when you're
28:06
Speaker 4: pulling kids in more and more and more, keep in
28:08
Speaker 4: mind that kids are not little adults, as you know well, Emily,
28:11
Speaker 4: and all parents know too. They're at a unique stage
28:14
Speaker 4: of brain development, particularly in early adolescence, where we know
28:18
Speaker 4: in that phase of early adolescents, kids are more prone
28:21
Speaker 4: to being influenced by social comparison and by social suggestion,
28:25
Speaker 4: both of which abound in overwhelming abundance on social media.
28:30
Speaker 4: So this is why I actually think what we're dealing
28:32
Speaker 4: with with social media is fundamentally different and more transformative
28:37
Speaker 4: than what we saw with prior technologies. And I do
28:40
Speaker 4: think the concern that you're hearing and I'm hearing all
28:43
Speaker 4: the time from parents is actually warranted. I don't think
28:46
Speaker 4: it's something to be blown off as just routine concern
28:51
Speaker 4: about technological advances.
29:00
Speaker 1: I agree, thank you for your work on this. I
29:02
Speaker 1: think as from the standpoint of a parent, I really
29:06
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're trying to get some help. So thank you.
29:08
Speaker 3: Thank you for trying to help well.
29:11
Speaker 4: Thank you also for trying to help Emily, and not
29:12
Speaker 4: just send this, but I know you've worked hard to
29:15
Speaker 4: be there for parents on a host of other issues,
29:17
Speaker 4: especially during the last few years. So thanks for all
29:20
Speaker 4: you do as well.
29:21
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us.
29:23
Speaker 1: Of course, more parent data, including your best social media
29:38
Speaker 1: and smartphone life hacks after the break.
30:08
Speaker 5: I'm Offiat Eisenberg and here is my hack. After a
30:11
Speaker 5: lot of fighting with my eight year old over his
30:13
Speaker 5: iPad use, I went into system settings and I set
30:16
Speaker 5: age limitations on content and time restrictions. So we set
30:20
Speaker 5: it to fifty minutes, and at that time a pop
30:23
Speaker 5: up comes up saying that you've reached your time limit.
30:26
Speaker 5: Sometimes he begs for more, so we'll extend it ten minutes.
30:29
Speaker 5: Other times he moves on, and yes, sometimes it still
30:33
Speaker 5: devolves into tears. But sometimes tears happen when he complains
30:37
Speaker 5: that his Plaine pasta is too spicy. So I'm counting
30:41
Speaker 5: this iPad hack as a whim.
30:43
Speaker 1: Hi.
30:43
Speaker 6: I'm Jenny Wallace. Instead of getting furious, let's get curious.
30:49
Speaker 6: You might ask your teen who's your favorite person to
30:52
Speaker 6: follow on Instagram or TikTok. If you were a parent,
30:57
Speaker 6: what kind of limits would you set for your child
31:00
Speaker 6: called cell phone use. Kids are happier to have these
31:03
Speaker 6: non judgmental conversations than we might expect. Let them know
31:08
Speaker 6: that we take as much interest in what's going on
31:11
Speaker 6: in their online world as we do about the party
31:15
Speaker 6: they're heading to on Friday night.
31:17
Speaker 3: Hi, this is Jonathan Hite, author of the forthcoming book
31:20
Speaker 3: The Anxious Generation. Among the most important things you can
31:24
Speaker 3: do for your child's development and mental health is let
31:27
Speaker 3: them have a childhood. That is, do not give them
31:30
Speaker 3: a smartphone until at least high school. But that doesn't
31:33
Speaker 3: mean your child has to be cut off. Give them
31:36
Speaker 3: a flip phone. People, forget about flip phones. They're great.
31:38
Speaker 3: They allow your child to text and to make phone calls.
31:41
Speaker 3: They allow your child to stay connected without taking over
31:45
Speaker 3: their attention and filling up their minds with bizarre content.
31:49
Speaker 3: So give a flip phone.
31:51
Speaker 1: Hey, it's me Emily, I'm back to tell you what
31:54
Speaker 1: my family does. Our rule it's very simple. There are
31:58
Speaker 1: no screens within an hour of bedtime, and so when
32:01
Speaker 1: you get to an hour before bedtime, all screens, phones, iPads,
32:06
Speaker 1: they're away, and they're away until the next morning, so
32:09
Speaker 1: everybody gets as good.
32:10
Speaker 2: Sleep as possible.
32:26
Speaker 1: Parent Data is produced by Tamorrow Abishai with support from
32:29
Speaker 1: the Parent Data Team and pi Rex. Also special thanks
32:33
Speaker 1: to our house violinist, my daughter Penelope. No problem. Well,
32:37
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts on this episode, please join the
32:39
Speaker 1: conversation on my Instagram at Prof Emily Ostar, and if
32:43
Speaker 1: you want to support the show, become a subscriber to
32:46
Speaker 1: the parent Data newsletter at parentdata dot org, where I
32:49
Speaker 1: write weekly posts on everything to do with parents and
32:52
Speaker 1: data to help you make better, more informed parenting decisions.
32:56
Speaker 1: For example, we've recently published an essay on how to
32:59
Speaker 1: man and into your family's relationship with social media and smartphones,
33:03
Speaker 1: which I actually wrote in direct response to the Surgeon
33:05
Speaker 1: General's recommendations, and which also has some advice as practical
33:09
Speaker 1: as some of the hacks you just heard. If you
33:11
Speaker 1: like what you hear, please leave the show or a positive
33:14
Speaker 1: review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps people find out
33:16
Speaker 1: about us. Right finalpe Right mam.
33:21
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time.