Dr. Nicholas Carderis is one of the country s foremost addiction and mental health experts. He s written two books on how screens are hurting our children s development. And today, he s going to talk about the science behind the damaging effects of screen time and social media addiction.
00:01:29.920I run treatment programs around the country that I've developed.
00:01:33.400I've been a professor at Stony Brook Medicine for 10 years.
00:01:35.980A clinician that has been, I think, one of the first, I was one of the first psychologists that began to sort of raise up the red flag that, or the red flag, a flag of awareness or that there's trouble in the waters of digital media in our society.
00:01:52.960You wrote a book last year, it came out, Digital Madness, how social media is driving our mental health crisis.
00:02:01.520I think a lot of people would probably just agree with that title, that social media isn't great for our brains, especially the adolescent brain.
00:02:09.140But most people don't really have the words to describe how.
00:02:12.440So when you've studied this, like, what is it exactly about social media and screen time that is kind of deteriorating, not just everyone's mental health, but specifically the mental health of teens, young people?
00:02:43.840And one of the narratives has been, as we've grown mad for our devices, are our devices driving us mad?
00:02:51.980The research, and I included over 200 peer-reviewed studies that looked at how, yes, we can be addicted to devices.
00:02:58.660They spike our dopamine in ways that are very habituating and classic addiction neurophysiology.
00:03:04.580But addiction was just the price of admission.
00:03:07.680What we started seeing then is, yeah, we were not only becoming addicted to our devices, and especially younger people were getting disproportionately impacted by that addiction.
00:03:18.680So what did that addiction translate into?
00:03:21.560And that's when we started seeing the mind-shaping effect.
00:03:25.280So the neurophysiology of a young person gets compromised developmentally the more they're on screens.
00:03:30.620We have clear fMRI research that shows that basically the prefrontal cortex, the executive functioning part of our brain, that part behind of our forehead, it begins to shrink in the same way that it does with chronic substance addiction.
00:03:45.700So it compromises things like our impulsivity, our decision-making, and it creates a highly impulsive profile over a lifetime.
00:03:55.860So we've created addicted people who can't manage without their devices.
00:04:03.060But then now we're seeing that predictive algorithms that are very predatory attack vulnerability because the name of the game is engagement.
00:04:11.160So if the predictive algorithm smells or senses that the user has body image issues or is politically predisposed a certain way or has other underlying vulnerabilities, it sends content that really exacerbates those vulnerabilities.
00:04:28.920And this was shown by Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower that came out about a year and a half ago, and she pulled the curtain back on Meta's own research with Instagram that showed that the predictive algorithms of Instagram were attacking essentially vulnerable adolescent females that were to a level that was increasing their suicidality.
00:04:49.480So suicide rates for British girls were going up 12%, and for American teenage girls, they were going up 6%.
00:04:55.660So it was making people more depressed, more suicidal, but then we started seeing psychiatric influencers who were really popular on sites like TikTok, who were getting billions of views.
00:05:07.400The TikTok Tourette's phenomenon, dissociative identity disorder, the gender dysphoria issue, all these psychiatric issues were spreading via digital social contagion.
00:05:19.700And so we've always had social contagions, and basically the definition of a social contagion is behavior that spreads via social means.
00:05:29.580And so something like smoking is a social contagion.
00:05:32.700If your friends smoke, you're likely to start smoking.
00:05:35.440But now we started seeing the impact of influencers who were having millions of followers that were now shaping via social contagion means their devotees.
00:05:46.900And we started seeing huge spikes in personality disorders, anxiety disorders, depression, suicide, all the toxic psych metrics were spiking.
00:05:57.200And there's so much in your answer that I want to unpack and ask questions about going back to what you said about the addiction to social media or the use of screens of young people hindering the development of the prefrontal cortex.
00:06:13.980And that's the part of the brain, right, that's not developed fully until about age 25.
00:06:21.480So you mentioned impulsivity because the prefrontal cortex is what allows us to kind of foresee the consequences of our actions, to make better decisions, right?
00:06:31.600To have a little bit more discernment.
00:06:48.700And so any parent especially can, even if they don't have the language for that, they understand that their toddler doesn't have impulse control.
00:06:55.620Or even their teenager who just started driving.
00:06:58.840There's a reason why insurance is high for these young people.
00:07:03.160It's also a lack of ability to be able to see how their driving consequences or driving actions could have certain consequences.
00:07:10.040So you're saying that screen usage is inhibiting the development of a part of a brain that is already, it's like already kind of competing.
00:07:24.420It's already trying to, it's already trying to like take its proper place in a person's decision-making.
00:07:32.540And this is making it even more difficult for young people to be able to mature in that way and then to make proper decisions.
00:07:42.160Yeah, it stunts the development of the prefrontal cortex.
00:07:45.060And if you want to get a little bit more technical on it, there's really two ways that the brain imaging research shows that it does that.
00:07:51.360As our prefrontal cortex develops into, you very accurately said, our mid-20s, there's something called the DGM, which is the dense gray matter.
00:07:59.700And the dense gray matter is essentially the robustness of that part of the brain.
00:08:03.940What we've seen in MRIs of chronic substance addicts and chronic screen addicts is the DGM tends to shrink.
00:08:12.900So essentially, you're shrinking that part of your brain that you need to be full and rich and robust.
00:08:17.840That's one aspect of the neurophysiological effect.
00:08:20.780The other aspect that has to do with what's called the myelination or the myelene sheath of the brain.
00:08:25.840And that's sort of the insulation cable of our neurons.
00:08:30.140A strong myeline sheath allows our brains to communicate well, to function well.
00:08:36.740So things like dementia and Alzheimer's are myeline sheath abnormalities.
00:08:42.380So what we're seeing is that the myeline sheath with chronic substance addicts and chronic screen addicts begins to show, it's called microstructural abnormalities.
00:08:51.900So it shrinks the gray matter of the prefrontal cortex and it attacks the myeline sheath in ways that really stunt development.
00:09:00.400And that was, I think, the most shocking part.
00:09:05.800I've taught neuropsychology, but I'm also a parent.
00:09:08.600So I've got skin in the game as one of those.
00:09:12.640And I think that's what shocked most people.
00:09:15.680Most people thought, all right, screen time.
00:09:17.620Little Johnny and Susie are getting kind of too habituated to their little phones.
00:09:21.480But they weren't really, you know, once people started seeing in black and white the brain imaging research, that was the sort of Houston.
00:09:28.880We have a problem moment for a lot of folks that started realizing this is more significant than I think most people, most of the adults in the room anticipated.
00:09:37.140Because most, I think the problem was most of the adults, most of us of a certain age, conflated modern tech with television.
00:10:37.940So do you find that the gray matter in the brain responds the same way when there is a child who is addicted to TV versus a child who is constantly given an iPad?
00:10:47.680So the person who did all this ADHD and screen time research was Dr. Dimitri Christakis at the University of Washington.
00:10:53.880He's also the editor of the JAMA, Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics.
00:10:58.880So he's a pretty well-respected researcher.
00:11:02.260And he started doing research on television effects on ADHD back in the 90s.
00:11:06.600And he's since done it with interactive screens like iPads and Chromebooks.
00:11:10.900And back in the 90s, if you're so the key developmental windows for children with their attention is between the ages of two and six.
00:11:20.100That's when their brain is really developing their ability to attend, to focus.
00:11:25.360In the same way that, like, language is a developmental window, right?
00:11:29.340We've seen that if kids aren't exposed to language during the key developmental window, they're going to become lifelong compromised with language.
00:11:36.120We've seen that with, like, feral kids who have never been exposed to language.
00:11:39.500They can never really get language because that part of their brain devoted to language never really got nurtured at that key time.
00:11:45.620So it's the same thing with attention.
00:11:48.200So two to six is that key window for attention.
00:11:51.220And Dr. Christakis' research showed that for every hour of television, this is back in the 90s, you had a 10% higher rate of ADHD.
00:11:59.380So if a three-year-old watched three hours of TV back in the 90s, they had a 30% higher rate of ADHD when they got older.
00:12:07.340They did that same research with interactive modern tablets and screens.
00:12:11.960And that effect was exponentially increased.
00:12:14.420So the ADHD rates were spiking more significantly, which, by the way, explains our spiking rates of ADHD.
00:12:20.880There's a reason why our kids are now being diagnosed to such a great degree.
00:12:26.340And, you know, one of the counterarguments had been, well, we're just more sensitized to ADHD.
00:12:30.920So we just happen to be diagnosing it more.
00:12:33.180And I can tell you as a researcher and as a clinician who works with young people, we're not just diagnosing it more.
00:13:16.920But really think, and I think the Lord for this, like we didn't have Snapchat and Instagram and all of these algorithms trying to constantly vie for our attention.
00:13:26.240I wasn't addicted to my phone every night before, you know, I went to bed.
00:13:30.720It might have been trashy teen fiction, but at least it was reading.
00:13:33.280But I've even noticed, you know, in my own life, obviously the dawn of real social media, the kind that we have today was when I was about in college.
00:13:42.360And so for the past 10 or so years, I have had social media and I've noticed in myself, I have a lower attention span.
00:13:54.660If I'm watching TV, I find myself also wanting to open up my computer or scroll on Instagram.
00:14:00.180So if that is true for me, someone who really wasn't introduced to this kind of social media until my prefrontal cortex was at least almost fully developed, of course, that's going to have a huge effect on these kids who have yet to be developed, right?
00:14:16.600Well, that's such a great point that you're making because, by the way, guilty as charged also.
00:14:20.340And I'm a few months older than you are, a couple of decades older than you are.
00:14:25.780So I've noticed that my own attention wanders much more readily.
00:14:28.420Nicholas Carr, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize nominated Nicholas Carr, who wrote The Shallows, he writes in the opening part of his book about he can't go more than two pages without his mind wandering and he's in his 40s.
00:14:40.820So if it's happening so significantly to us with our fully developed brains, imagine what's happening to these developmentally vulnerable children and adolescents who are much more impacted by exactly what you just said.
00:14:53.740Yeah. And do you find like if you were to look at the brain of a 16 year old and I don't know if this part matters, but maybe one that didn't grow up with constant screens, but maybe they were introduced to social media when they were 15, 16 years old.
00:15:08.120You look at their how their brain reacts to that stimuli versus how like a four year old's brain reacts to the iPad.
00:15:15.380Is it similar or is the development that that 16 year old has?
00:15:24.700Does that make sense or is it very similar just in all adolescents how their brain responds to screens?
00:15:30.120The four year old is going to be more susceptible than the 16 year old.
00:15:34.880That's why, you know, one of the biggest mantras that I keep repeating to folks is delay, delay, delay as parents, you know, as much as you can delay the exposure to the device because your kid is going to get a little bit more immunized the older they get.
00:15:50.020The other part of that is not just neurophysiologically, right?
00:15:52.660Not just will the prefrontal cortex be developing, right?
00:15:55.980Because it just doesn't go from four year old to 25 year old.
00:15:59.020It's kind of developing its armor and it's neurosynaptically growing, but a person's sense of identity and who they are is a little bit more fully developed.
00:16:09.860So there's less, you know, what I like to call brain shaping, right?
00:16:13.380Because a lot of the work and people that I've worked with have been I've worked, you know, I was an expert witness for a capital murder trial for a teenage kid in Florida who had been radicalized by ISIS and decapitated a 13 year old because of this brainwashing effect.
00:16:28.340He was a YouTuber who couldn't stop watching YouTube and eventually went down these political rabbit holes where he went from being progressive liberal to white supremacist to six months later, ISIS started sending him recruitment videos and decapitation videos.
00:16:42.620And this quote unquote, nice kid turned into this ISIS warrior and, and he didn't have a core sense of identity.
00:16:52.540So all these shaping influences were much more impactful.
00:16:56.540He had, he was basically a healthy kid, but he got brainwashed at 16.
00:17:01.300You're more likely to get brainwashed at eight, 10, 12, but the older you get, the more we'd like to think that our sense of identity has developed more so we can, you know, I use a phrase that I think is apt here.
00:17:14.820We have a more developed psychological immune system, the older we get.
00:17:18.160So we're less vulnerable, hopefully, but that doesn't mean that the 25 year old is not going to quit their day job and join the biker gang.
00:17:24.660You know, we can all get susceptible to cults and to weird things, no matter what age we are, but less so.
00:17:31.200You know, something interesting that I found is actually like my parents' generation, it seems, and I've talked to a lot of, I'm a millennial, a lot of millennial friends who have also found this.
00:17:44.460They are less, um, my parents seem to be like less believing that screens are super damaging to kids.
00:17:56.680Like, I feel like I'm more cognizant of it.
00:17:58.680Like, I'm more worried about my kids even holding my phone or, you know, accidentally scrolling or being on an iPad, whereas kind of the baby boomer generation, it seems they don't see the consequences of that quite as much, which I don't know.
00:18:12.480Well, you might think it's the opposite because they grew up without technology.
00:18:16.760But I actually find that a lot of friends my age, like we're having to convince our parents, like, you know, please don't let them on screens and things like that.
00:18:24.840Not that my parents are constantly, you know, putting my kids in front of screens, but they just don't seem to see the consequences as much as we do.
00:18:46.620But, um, but you're absolutely right, because of what I think what I said earlier was, again, the older generation conflates modern screens with television.
00:18:54.900And so, you know, the boomer thinks this is, you know, I watched I Love Lucy, or, you know, I was watching Starsky and Hutch as a, you know, as a 20 year old.
00:19:03.420So we tend to think that this might be just television.
00:19:06.460And so that's why we don't fully appreciate where the millennials get it more because you get it because, you know, the one fact that's interesting is when you look at mental health metrics by generational cohort, like things like depression,
00:19:19.880the baby boomers have the lower rates of depression and the most face-to-face friends.
00:19:26.220And you go down to Gen X and millennial and then Gen Z and the younger the cohort, the more connected the cohort, the more psychiatrically unwell they are.
00:19:35.160So one in five millennials have zero friends.
00:19:38.940You know, it's a pretty high number to have zero friends.
00:20:03.520And theoretically, we were supposed to be healthier because we'd have more friends, more connections.
00:20:08.380And that's a good thing for human beings.
00:20:10.320But what we found is that this was a counterfeit connection, that digital connection isn't the same as a face-to-face friendship.
00:20:17.280And in fact, it robs us of face-to-face friendships because we're so sedentary, isolated, screen-staring that we're not really developing these meaningful face-to-face friendships, which really are what nurture our psychological immune system, our soul.
00:20:35.400And so your generation kind of sees that more because you're living it.
00:20:40.160You're seeing your depressed friends and your friends who can't leave the house and your friends who are, you know, getting substance taking more because they're depressed more.
00:20:49.400Where maybe the boomers are kind of like a little bit under aware of the realities of some of the younger people.
00:20:56.320Where I've seen it among kind of my age cohort for, and I'm thankful that I'm married, but my friends who are on dating apps right now,
00:21:19.160they have the kinds of interactions with guys that I just, that, I mean, even 10 years ago or 10 or however many years ago it was that I was dating.
00:21:30.720Yes, it was digital in that you would text or you would maybe talk on the phone or something like that.
00:21:35.980But now it seems like with the rise of dating apps, there is even a higher acceptance of what's typically referred to as ghosting or basically interacting with someone on an app,
00:21:47.300even saying that you're going to go on a date and then just standing that person up or not responding.
00:21:52.720And it does seem like our reliance on social media, on dating apps for connection has rather than helped us connect with people,
00:22:00.400it's actually inhibited our ability to connect with people on a real level.
00:22:04.880And it seems like it's made people a lot more insecure, a lot more scared to actually interact with people in person because they no longer have,
00:22:14.040I don't know, the skill to be able to do so. It does take a certain level of courage.
00:22:19.060Well, our interpersonal social skills have atrophied because we haven't used them, right?
00:22:23.340So like you said, the courage that it takes to walk up to, you know, to ask somebody out on the date, you know, that was a skill, right?
00:22:30.220It was a muscle that you had to develop.
00:22:31.680And if now everyone is essentially hiding behind the screen, you don't develop those skill sets.
00:22:37.920It's interesting, gets even worse when you talk about sort of dating and relationships with adolescents.
00:22:42.660Now, when you start talking about things like porn and, you know, kids that, you know, there are 12 and 13 year olds that have seen hardcore porn that, you know, earlier generations,
00:22:53.840you know, back in the Playboy magazine days where you had isolated imagery and you weren't desensitized to certain imagery.
00:23:04.920So, or certain, not imagery, but even sexual kind of exposure.
00:23:08.060And so there's a new phenomenon over the last 10 years called adolescent erectile dysfunction.
00:23:13.180This is a thing that pediatricians talk about.
00:23:16.600I was at a conference where this was, you know, the topic.
00:23:21.180You didn't have a thing like adolescent ED because now what we're seeing is teenagers have been so visually overly exposed to imagery that, you know,
00:23:30.780good luck going on the date now with the prom queen or with anybody, because now you have these idealized or like overly, well, you know,
00:23:40.140you've seen things that don't really relate, translate into the real world or don't translate into you having a healthy functional.
00:23:47.040And we have things like now misogynistic imagery and sort of violence and all those things and desensitization to all that.
00:23:56.500Yeah. Well, there was a trend of, of young girls, like, you know, I don't know, 13, 14 years old on TikTok.
00:24:03.880I don't remember. It was called some hashtag or some viral thing that they were all talking about in these separate videos about how they like to be choked or that their first sexual interaction was a violent sexual interaction.
00:24:16.800Look, that doesn't just come out of nowhere. I mean, that's, they're being presented with that.
00:24:21.400They're being told that that's what it takes to be attractive. That's what it takes to be sexy.
00:24:24.820Or that's just what sex is. You have to be okay with that in order to be acceptable or attractive to a guy or whatever.
00:24:31.060And you're right. These kids, they're being introduced in some cases to pornography at nine years old.
00:24:36.800And of course, that's going to affect your sexuality. That's going to affect your self image.
00:24:41.120It's also going to affect how you relate to other people if you primarily view them as objects rather than people with, as you said, souls.
00:24:47.880There's so many consequences to social media that I think we don't see.
00:24:53.300And what you said also is such a good point, just how pornography used to be different.
00:24:57.780Like you used to have to, like you saw on the side of the highway and maybe the middle of nowhere, those very smutty, dark, like XXX, you know, buildings.
00:25:08.700And you would pass by them and be like, oh, I wonder who would ever step foot in somewhere like that.
00:25:12.980That's so embarrassing. Like there was a proper stigma around that kind of thing.
00:25:16.940You had to go out of your way to hunt for the kind of sick stuff that now is readily available on TikTok.
00:25:22.980There's no stigma. It's all in secret.
00:25:26.360And a kid can, you know, go down the rabbit hole that you described alone in his bedroom.
00:25:35.620I've worked with a lot of couples who, you know, and now because of the easy access and ubiquity, like you said, there's plenty of husbands out there who are porn addicted and destroying their marriages.
00:25:50.460You know, I think the larger cloud of social media, the one thing that I talk about in my most recent book is I really, you know, because now we start talking about AI and predictive algorithms.
00:26:00.200And this very intentional attack on our, again, psychological vulnerabilities.
00:26:06.100I've really grown to, I've grown to understand social media as almost a sentient living organism driven by predictive AI controlled algorithms that feed off of our most lizard brain emotional extremism.
00:26:23.940And so it, it'll, because emotional reactivity feeds engagement, right?
00:26:28.640If you tickle that part of my, my being that, that gets an emotional response, that's going to increase engagement.
00:26:34.360So the social media is acting like a heat seeking missile that, that attacks emotional reactivity, whether it's political, whether it's psychiatric, whether it's whatever the content is that can get a rise out of us.
00:26:54.960Then it feeds us back in what's called an extremification loop.
00:26:57.940And so round and round it goes and it creates this polarity chasm where like if I'm left leaning or if I'm right leaning, it's going to amplify those propensities because it's going to feed me more and more increasing content in either direction.
00:27:10.680Because again, reaction, emotional reaction is the name of the game.
00:27:14.300You're not going to get nuanced, well thought out, reasoned content because that doesn't, that doesn't raise the thermostat of my emotional reaction.
00:27:23.460And so social media thrives off of this hyper emotionality.
00:27:28.060And so what we're seeing, cause I'm treating 17 to 30 year olds in these treatment programs around my one program in Austin, Texas, in particular, we treat tech addiction type of issues and social media issues.
00:27:41.220You're seeing young people who are much more highly emotionally reactive, who can only see things in black and white, who have a really hard time seeing nuance and discerning things.
00:27:53.080And so they're, they're essentially like hardwired, emotionally reactive nuclear bombs there.
00:27:59.000They have meltdowns and they're, they're collapsing and they need the safe spaces and all these stereotypical things we've read about.
00:28:04.660So there's this fragility that we've now baked into young people and I'm convinced it's a social media driven fragility.
00:28:12.740You know, that is so fascinating because of course I've seen that and I've never attributed that to kind of what social media causes that black and white thinking.
00:28:22.760I mean, I'm sure there are a variety of factors.
00:28:24.920I think a lot of kids are learning to think this way also in their college classroom, but it probably is already baked in at that point because of what social media promotes.
00:28:33.840But I've noticed that in my interactions, not with all students on college campuses or all the, you know, young people that maybe like message me things.
00:28:42.100But if you do try to discuss with them, like a very maybe complex topic, like any of the culture war issues, whether it's abortion or whether it's gender and try to just move them past the talking points, like move them past the maxims that really don't make any sense.
00:28:59.660Move them past kind of the circular reasoning that they're regurgitating.
00:29:02.880Their response is anger and frustration and name calling rather than saying, okay, well, this is how I think about it.
00:29:10.640It's almost like they are completely incapable in some cases of formulating an original thought, a nuanced thought and actually taking what you say and then responding to it in a way that is thoughtful.
00:29:24.940I find that it's almost impossible for a lot of young people to do that at all.
00:29:29.140And I never thought about it being attributed to social media.
00:29:33.080Well, that's, well, that's exactly it.
00:29:34.260So, so, so this hyperfragility, like you said, talk about any, any hot topic issue, intersectionality, whatever that may be.
00:29:42.700And Jonathan Haidt, I think, talks about this well as well.
00:29:45.660And he wrote his book, The Coddling of the American Mind.
00:29:47.720He's the NYU professor and he's created the Heterodoxy Academy.
00:29:50.840So, back in the before times, again, I'm an old timer and, you know, back when I was at university, you can talk to people with dissenting opinions and have really, you know, informed, interesting conversations.
00:30:03.580And nobody collapsed on the floor, sucking their thumb or was in tears or was raging at you.
00:30:11.980And then you'd go and get lunch together.
00:30:13.460Um, so now you're having this, this, and again, it looks very much this, a particular personality disorder called borderline personality disorder.
00:30:23.240I think what I wrote was that I think we have a societal diagnosis of BPD, uh, where, because the symptoms of BPD are black and white thinking, um, very emotional reactivity, um, not clear sense of identity.
00:30:38.060And, and, and it looks like the societal diagnosis is that, and, and if you look at some of the complex things that I mentioned, social media does.
00:30:46.280And so Jonathan Haidt talked about that.
00:30:49.260He began to see the safe space trigger warning fragility at about 2010, uh, around the advent of iPhone, social media, uh, you know, our, our deeper immersion into technology.
00:31:01.660And that's when we started pathologizing language and started saying language was dangerous and we needed to protect ourself from this harm.
00:31:09.960And that's when university administrators started saying language is no longer free speech.
00:31:17.040And, and, and I think we did such a disservice to university students.
00:31:20.960I was a professor for 10 years and I saw it each year, uh, each, I taught at a graduate school.
00:31:27.180I mean, these were graduate students that you couldn't, I mean, they would have breakdowns if, uh, you know, uh, you said a wrong word and, and, and it was new.
00:31:38.020This wasn't something that we had seen.
00:31:39.440So people like Jonathan Haidt and myself were, were, I'm, I'm attributing it to this new landscape that we've created.
00:31:46.120That is really just created this fragility.
00:31:49.020And then when they get out of college, they can't live life on life's terms.
00:31:52.420They wind up in places like my treatment program because now they're depressed, isolated, wanting to commit suicide, uh, in front of a screen for 14 hours a day, escaping, you know, numbing themselves through a variety of digital escapism and, or self-medicating through other substances as well.
00:32:09.160Because if you're highly impulsive, uh, because of the way, excuse me, if you grew up on this, you're going to be, um, not well in a variety of ways and just not able to function in the world.
00:32:19.320And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing Gen Z is having a really hard time functioning.
00:32:36.180It seems like that too. And a lot of parents, you know, I've, I've, I've read a lot of testimonies from parents who will say, you know, my child was, um, you know, uh, a normal girl, a normal guy.
00:32:47.760And then they went through these hard adolescent years, which we all did by the way, but they started spending more time on their phone.
00:32:55.020And maybe this parent was a little naive and said, I didn't really know what they were doing on their phone, but I thought, you know, it's fine.
00:33:01.260Or maybe even there were a parent who said, I thought I was checking their social media apps.
00:33:04.940And then one day over time, this person, this young person, teenager seems to have developed different kinds of mental issues, seems very depressed, very anxious.
00:33:16.700This is something that we see a lot with a rapid onset so-called gender dysphoria, especially among girls.
00:33:23.520And these parents are saying, what the heck, like you were just a normal girl, liked girl things.
00:33:28.060And all of a sudden you're wanting these hormone treatments and things like that.
00:33:31.800I mean, there is a whole world, I think that young people can get sucked into just depending on where the algorithm takes them that can completely kind of transform who they are as a person.
00:33:43.320I think we as parents like to think that that's not possible, that we've laid a good enough foundation.
00:33:48.120But I think we underestimate just how formative those teenage years are and how susceptible these young people are to a completely new change in identity that is brought to them by social media.
00:34:01.400I mean, when, you know, it used to be like the cafeteria in the high school used to be, you could see the different clicks and different identities, right?
00:34:07.600There were the jocks and, you know, all the different groups.
00:34:11.580And so every teenager is going through this sort of a search for identity.
00:34:32.000I've worked with genuine gender dysphoria.
00:34:34.600But it's so, the real article is so extremely rare within the society.
00:34:39.620We've seen a 4,000% spike in late onset gender dysphoria female to male.
00:34:45.960So, that's not explainable by any, there's no traditional explanation for that other than the social contagion effect.
00:34:54.680And so, you have vulnerable teens looking for identity who now fall down whatever rabbit hole that it may be.
00:35:01.240So, you may now, and let's face it, we're also looking for community in the sense of belonging.
00:35:05.600And so, you know, I remember we had a client at our clinic who, she was depressed because all her friends went off to college and she didn't.
00:35:13.380And so, she was going through what we would call moderate depression, not even severe clinical depression.
00:35:17.760But she was feeling alone and empty and a little bit rudderless.
00:35:21.560And she just fell down a BPD rabbit hole, a borderline personality disorder rabbit hole.
00:35:26.440And she started identifying with this group.
00:35:28.740And a lot of BPD women tend to be very histrionic and over the top.
00:35:33.820And so, their videos online, their social media tends to be really popular because it's performative and it's entertaining, as is something like dissociative identity disorder, which we used to call multiple personality disorder.
00:35:47.840So, now there's influencers online who have DID, who have a hundred alters.
00:35:53.720Now, again, I've worked with the real deal dissociative identity disorder.
00:35:57.760You know, what we used to see in the movies, Sybil and Three Faces of Eve.
00:36:02.880Real dissociative identity disorder, sexual trauma in childhood.
00:36:07.680You create a sort of alter identity to complementalize the trauma because you can't really live day to day without trauma.
00:36:14.240But it was very rare and typically you had a handful of alter identities.
00:36:18.920Now, you have these influencers who have a hundred identities across the LGBTQI spectrum.
00:36:24.720And they're really popular because they're very performative.
00:36:27.600And people tune in, young people tune in to watch what's called switching.
00:36:32.040So, when, and they call themselves a system.
00:36:35.380So, system Susie is now going to go from 28-year-old white female to 45-year-old black male.
00:36:42.880And that switching is very entertaining because it's like this dramatic performance.
00:36:53.480And now they start sort of emulating these psychiatric symptoms with the late onset gender dysphoria, which I'm calling now in many cases pseudo-gender dysphoria.
00:37:03.260And the proof in the clinical pudding, which I want to, I think it's important that I hammer this point home.
00:37:09.520And in my clinic in Austin, we've had people that have come in with gender dysphoria diagnoses and borderline personality disorder diagnoses.
00:37:17.040And in my treatment program, it's two months residential and there's no technology.
00:37:25.320When they're away from those influences, a healthy number of those people by the end of, because we do a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy and we do a lot of dialectical behavioral therapy, which is the type of therapy you're supposed to do if you have borderline personality disorder.
00:37:39.900By the end of two months, they're no longer, the gender dysphoria has gone away.
00:37:45.360For many of, not all of them, but for many of them, you see that's gone away.
00:37:48.900You see the borderline personality disorder is not there anymore.
00:37:52.160That shouldn't be because borderline personality disorder, if you have the real thing, it doesn't get cured in two months.
00:37:57.700Gender dysphoria doesn't get cured in two months.
00:38:00.520And so, if something goes away after you're off of social media for a few weeks, that means that you didn't really have the disorder to begin with.
00:38:09.540I'm seeing that a lot of these kids are just sort of consciously or unconsciously mimicking these behaviors or these disorders because they're now aspirational.
00:38:42.340There's also, I think, I speak as a non-psychologist, but I think there's a part of the brain that also, I mean, that likes affirmation.
00:38:51.100And it seems like something is released when you get affirmed, when you're told, wow, you're incredible, you're so brave for posting this.
00:38:58.900Look at you being a part of the destigmatization of, you know, gendered support, whatever it is.
00:39:04.340And so, it's not even just like the mimicking that I think goes on.
00:39:08.440It's also the affirmation of a new identity, a sense of belonging and purpose that these people become addicted to and attached to, which is why I think it's so hard for them to release it and it becomes so real in their mind.
00:39:26.660Nobody wants to not be picked for a team.
00:39:28.300And that goes back to evolutionarily, we needed, you know, the sociologists use a term, the tribe survived.
00:39:35.640It's baked into our psychological DNA to need community and connection because we had strength in numbers evolutionarily.
00:39:42.440We were not the strongest or the fastest species.
00:39:46.120And to survive in prehistoric times, we needed a community.
00:39:49.580And so, there was strength in that community.
00:39:51.220And so, that's been baked into who we are.
00:39:52.920So, now, when you're looking for community and you're isolated in front of a screen, you don't have genuine community and you have potential pathways or rabbit holes that you can fall into.
00:40:04.520It's kids and young people who are looking for a team to join.
00:40:08.760You know, and 25 years ago, these were young people that might have been joining a cult or finding a genuine, more meaningful community, whether it was faith-based or, you know, a sports team.
00:40:20.440You know, where I live locally, they couldn't feel the foot, the high school couldn't feel the football team last year because there weren't enough kids, young teenage boys willing to put in the effort because gaming is easier.
00:40:34.860It takes effort to try out for a football team and go to practice every day.
00:40:38.600It takes effort to date, like you mentioned before.
00:40:41.220It's changed things so dramatically in ways that are not very good.
00:40:46.580Yeah, you know, there's a lot that I want to respond to, which you said.
00:40:50.740We only have a couple more minutes, but I spoke at a university the other day in California, and there were a group of protesters outside who, and I didn't engage with them, but there were people, you know, that could have come to the event, that we did an entire Q&A.
00:41:07.500And we had a couple people from the other side of my position who came in and asked me questions, although it was very much a, okay, you're not even hearing or responding to anything that I'm actually saying.
00:41:18.800You're just saying things that I've heard a million times on social media.
00:41:21.180But the crowd outside who was yelling at me, calling me a coward for not coming up to them outside and, you know, I don't know, hearing their chants or something, I'm thinking, you know, why didn't they come to the event?
00:41:34.900We could have had an interaction, but I'm thinking it takes more effort.
00:41:38.260It takes a lot more effort, a lot more energy, a lot more courage to actually face someone that you disagree with, have a conversation with them.
00:41:46.480Of course, it's easier to stand outside and say your stupid chants.
00:41:49.460Like, there's no effort, there's all the virtue points in the world that comes with something like that.
00:41:54.340But it just takes too much effort to have the difficult conversations that we need to have as a functional society.
00:42:01.640So I guess my question to you is, because I don't think that we have even seen fully these chickens come home to roost.
00:42:08.400I mean, like only now are we starting to see what it looks like when a young child has been on an iPhone basically since toddlerhood and is now growing into an adult.
00:42:18.120I mean, we've kind of touched on these things, but if you were to like quickly summarize, like, what's the consequence of this?
00:42:24.240What is the what's the societal consequence or even the individual consequence of our kids having their main form of reality being on their phones?
00:42:32.720Yeah. Reality blurred kids who can't function or like you said, you know, talk about those college kids in California.
00:42:39.320Think about that. They don't even have the ability to have a rational discourse with you. Right.
00:42:44.620They have to be their lizard brain worst. Right.
00:42:46.720They have to just spew venom because that's all they're able to do.
00:42:50.120I think that's all they've been primed to do at this point.
00:42:52.140So the reality is that we're, you know, we're going to be a society gone mad.
00:42:56.240You know, look at I look at the Navy promotional video where you have a drag queen.
00:43:02.480That's that's right. That's the upside down part of the society.
00:43:05.600I never thought that we'd be at a place where, you know, up would be down.
00:43:09.780You there'd be no such thing as a woman.
00:43:11.740You know, you speak so powerfully about these issues.
00:43:14.080You know, we need warriors in this cause and we need the adults in the room to speak up and to say, speak truth and the rest be damned.
00:43:23.080I'm at a point in my career, you know, where I don't really care what I'm secure in what I do.
00:43:28.860And I feel it's my moral and ethical obligation to speak truth and to say the emperor has no clothes.
00:43:34.920I'm not going to use pronouns or say because once you give into the little.
00:43:40.520Yes. You know, everybody in the university I was at has to do the pronoun signatures and I'm not willing to do that because it's absurd.
00:43:47.500And right. And so I am seeing grassroots pushback.
00:43:51.560There are young people. I'm sure you've seen them on campus.
00:43:53.560They're young people who are there's a grassroots movement of an awakening of saying this is absurd.
00:43:59.660And hopefully that that grows, because if the other side keeps this trajectory going, we're going to sort of implode as a society.
00:44:08.880This is sort of the end times of Rome.
00:44:23.660What is your encouragement device to two groups of parents?
00:44:28.900We've got a lot of moms that listen to this podcast.
00:44:30.980Most of them are probably in my in my age.
00:44:34.180I've got just little kids, but then you've got some that are teenagers or their kids are teenagers.
00:44:39.620And that group is thinking, well, I can't I can't stop my kids from being on social media at this point.
00:44:46.000You've got two sons, you said, who are 16 years old.
00:44:48.680And then there are also like the moms of kids my age that you're like, oh, my gosh, but like the screen helps me cook dinner or whatever it is.
00:44:56.500So what's your like encouragement and advice, hard truth to parents when it comes to how they treat screen time, social media, all of that with their kids?
00:45:15.220For the reasons we said earlier, because it'll give them a better chance to develop their own sense of identity and their prefrontal cortex development.
00:45:22.660For the ones who have teenagers already, it's not too late to to really give countervailing forces, sports, music, clubs, community things to get your kid engaged as much as possible, because the more countervailing forces you have in the young person's life, the less the gravitational pull of the screen is the kid who doesn't have a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning.
00:45:45.960That's the kid that's going to get more lost in some of these things.
00:45:49.240So it's basically being a proactive parent, not a helicopter parent, because I think the helicopter I've worked with a lot of tech addicts who whose parents were overly had their their their their boot on their necks and the kids were escaping sort of hovering parents.
00:46:04.860So, you know, it's a kind of a fine line to be a proactive parent without being a helicopter or a bulldozer parent.
00:46:11.360You know, one of the most successful parents is a good friend of mine who's a professor also had these wonderful kids grow up.
00:46:19.600And he said, well, benign neglect, because I think sometimes we as the parents are uncomfortable with our kids finding their own path.
00:46:28.160Right. So there's a fine line with let me give you some support without doing everything for you, because the more I bubble wrap you, the more I'm going to make you not I'm not going to build your psychological immune system.
00:46:39.000But I do need to make sure I'm trying to point you in the right direction.
00:46:42.540But I can't walk for you. I can't fill out your college application for you.
00:46:47.760So, yeah, but these are challenging times, right?
00:46:50.420We're all trying to sort of figure out our way forward.
00:46:52.240But that would be my best advice to really be careful to for the little ones, especially for the little ones, especially don't have any devices till they're at least 12 or 13.
00:47:03.780Yes. And, you know, I mean, not to keep going, but I've just noticed that with my kids that when you give them the opportunity, even if they're like, no, I want to watch, you know, whatever it is, cartoons, which my kids don't have any like devices or anything.
00:47:17.240But even just TV, like if you just kind of get through that maybe tantrum or that frustration that they have and redirect their attention, they're still at the age where they will learn.
00:47:29.820They do learn how to dedicate their attention to something else besides the screen.
00:47:35.640They can do it like their minds, I think, are still elastic enough to be kind of retaught.
00:47:40.860If I can add one thing to that, you know, all the research shows reading, right?
00:47:49.200If you can make your kid a lover of reading, this research that shows, you know, reading competency at age seven and love of reading at age 15 are the best predictors of lifelong success.
00:48:00.360If you can and but then there's competing research that shows kids who are on screens are three times less likely to like reading because let's face it, reading is it makes reading boring, right?
00:48:11.820If you're playing hyper immersive video game, this and digital world that good luck reading war and peace.
00:48:17.980So carving out time to read with your child if they're young and giving giving them wonderful books when they're in middle school and still that love of reading.
00:48:28.740Yeah, you could do some TV and some other digital stuff when they get middle schoolish and past.
00:48:33.240But if you can bake in the love of reading, that's the one sword that will best immunize your your young one for the rest of their lives.
00:48:41.440And parents of teens, it's it's not too late, right?
00:48:44.160Like if they want to if they've got a 15, 16 year old at home, they haven't been monitoring their social media or screen time or anything, even though it's more difficult.
00:48:51.840It's not too late for those parents to start reassessing how they're parenting in that arena.
00:49:33.760I told you guys you are going to love that conversation.
00:49:36.200You know, I don't always get to say everything that I want to say because I want to make sure that my guest is able to articulate their position fully.
00:49:44.740But one thing I was thinking that I just wanted to follow up on, he mentioned how in prehistoric times, the advantage of the human species was that we formed community.
00:50:03.880That's why when God made Adam, he said it is not good for man to be alone.
00:50:09.440And then he made Eve as his helper and saw that this was very good.
00:50:15.180And also we see that because we are made in God's image, as we read in Genesis 127, that means there is a part of our need for fellowship that is reflective of God himself.
00:50:24.220And that is reflective in the nature of God, that he is Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
00:50:30.100He is eternally, constantly in communion with himself.
00:50:34.180And because we are made in his image, we are not meant to be in isolation.
00:50:37.780Like you even read in Jesus's life that he was led by the spirit into the wilderness, into isolation so Satan could tempt him.
00:50:46.500Of course, he used the power of God and his own divinity, his own godness and the power of the word of God to fend off Satan's temptations.
00:50:59.080But he was pushed into isolation for that temptation.
00:51:02.780And so all of these things, I think, indicate to us that real in-person interaction and not the isolation and the fake connectivity that we see on social media is actually embedded into the human psyche by a loving creator who knows what's best for us.
00:51:20.140As with all things, science is constantly just trying to catch up to God.