Keeping Kids Safe on Social Media: A Report on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and the Guardians of their Apps (with a Comment by Ahmed Ahmed)

“This report underscores the urgent need for reform of online spaces,” said the CCDH’s Ahmed. “Without oversight, TikTok’s opaque platform will continue to profit by serving its users – children as young as 13, remember – increasingly intense and distressing content without checks, resources or support.”

The director at the market research firm ABI Research said that social media platforms were not offering much in the way of substance to counter the ills of their platforms. The onus is on the guardians to turn on various parental controls that include blocking access, and more passive options such as monitoring and surveillance tools.

For now, guardians must learn how to use the parental controls while also being mindful that teens can often circumvent those tools. Here’s a closer look at what parents can do to help keep their kids safe online.

After the fallout from the leaked documents, Meta-owned Instagram paused its much-criticized plan to release a version of Instagram for kids under age 13 and focused on making its main service safer for young users.

The family hub on the short form video app allows parents and teens to set their own safety settings. A parent can also link their TikTok account to their teen’s app and set parental controls, including how long they can spend on the app each day; restrict exposure to certain content; decide if teens can search for videos, hashtags, or Live content; and whether their account is private or public. TikTok also offers its Guardian’s Guide that highlights how parents can best protect their kids on the platform.

A feature encourages users to take a break, such as suggesting that they take a deep breath and write something down, check a to-do list or listen to a song after a certain amount of time. If teens have been fixated on architecture and travel destinations for too long, they will be pushed toward other topics, like architecture and travel destinations, in order to get them to stop consuming any type of content.

Parents will be able to see which new friends their teens have added and they can report accounts that may be interacting with a child on the platform, as well as some other features. It’s also working on a tool to give younger users the option to notify their parents when they report an account or piece of content.

The company told CNN Business it will continue to look at feedback from the community, policymakers, safety and mental health advocates, as well as others, to improve the tools over time.

TikTok has recently introduced new safeguards that include ways to remove potentially problematic videos from the site. It added a feature in July that helps people determine how much time they should spend on TikTok video by giving them a dashboard that details the number of times they watch a video. TikTok has a number of parental controls.

In addition to parental controls, the app restricts access to some features to younger users, such as Live and direct messaging. When teenagers under the age of 16 are about to publish their first video, a pop-up asks them to choose who they want to watch it. Push notifications are curbed after 9 p.m. for account users ages 13 to 15, and 10 p.m. for users ages 16 to 17.

Last year the Senate did not take up the matter of the popular messaging platform, which has faced criticism over difficulties in reporting problematic content and strangers getting in touch with young users.

It is possible for a minor to meet strangers on public server if the person was invited by another person and if a channel link is dropped into a public group that the user accessed. By default, all users — including users ages 13 to 17 — can receive friend invitations from anyone in the same server, which then opens up the ability for them to send private messages.

On the Violations of Instagram Policies on Selfharm, Eating Disorder, and Suicide: A Case Study on a TikTok Account

In a report published Wednesday, the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that it can take less than three minutes after signing up for a TikTok account to see content related to suicide and about five more minutes to find a community promoting eating disorder content.

Young people are bombarded with harmful, harrowing content that can have a significant cumulative impact on their understanding of the world around them and their physical and mental health, according to the report.

A TikTok rep said the study is inaccurate due to the small sample size, limited 30-minute testing window and the way that the accounts scrolled past a series of unrelated topics.

“This activity and resulting experience does not reflect genuine behavior or viewing experiences of real people,” the TikTok spokesperson told CNN. We consult with health experts, remove violations of policies, and provide access to supportive resources. We are focused on fostering a safe and comfortable space for all, and we care about people who choose to share their recovery journeys or educate others on important topics.

The spokesperson said the CCDH does not distinguish between positive and negative videos on given topics, adding that people often share empowering stories about eating disorder recovery.

(After CNN sent a sample from this list of five accounts to Instagram for comment, the company removed them, saying they all broke Instagram’s policies against encouraging eating disorders.)

The spokesperson told CNN when someone searches for banned words or phrases such as #selfharm, they will not see any results and will instead be redirected to local support resources.

On the Role of Internet Addiction in the Mental Health of Teens: The Case of Yankee’s ‘Show Me Ignoring Addiction’

Jerome Yankee’s story may sound extreme, but as I said, it’s actually not that out of the ordinary. A lot of teenagers in the US use TikTok a lot. That’s mind blowing all of their time on a single app. And you know what you’re going to do? It’s not just TikTok. Or teens, for that matter. Three out of ten adults say they are online almost constantly as well. This is the thing. It’s important, but this data is useful. It doesn’t paint a complete picture. What these numbers don’t tell us is how TikTok affects the mental or physical health of people. A survey suggests that those surveyed consider themselves to be addicted. And here’s one thing that I learned. As much as we like to throw around the word addiction, we need to be careful here. Internet addiction is not a thing at the moment. It’s not an official clinical diagnosis. There’s even still a lot of discussion on whether or not it even qualifies as a mental health disorder or even how to define it, how to measure it, how to test for it, and especially how to treat it. Most do agree, though, that regardless of the semantics here, whatever you want to call it, too much doomscrolling can be bad for you. Many people are in need of help. And that’s where Dr. Michael Rich comes in.

I do not want to say that intensive use is not concerning. In another study, we distinguished between three groups: normative users, who show one or no symptoms; at-risk users, who show 2–5 addiction symptoms; and problematic users, who show 6–9 symptoms2. Some 30% of youngsters in the Netherlands are middle at-risk. Adolescents are more at risk of having trouble with sleep, mental health and school. From our research, we find that there is more susceptibility to experiencing issues related to addiction when an adolescent has more symptoms of addiction. So, although the percentage of adolescents that show problematic use is low, when a few symptoms are present there is still reason for concern.

The findings were more complicated for other indicators. For example, in countries where intensive use was common, because the percentage of intensive users was high in the adolescent population, intensive users reported more life satisfaction than did non-intensive users. Less life satisfaction is reported by users in countries where intensive use is uncommon.

The Rise and Fall of Screens and Technology: What We Should Don’t Tell About Our Brains, or Why We Can’t Let It Happen

Screens and technology are not going away soon. For many of us, this sprawling topic of screens and technology has so many strands, which overlap and merge into a giant conflated mess. I hope that by focusing this season on some of the more germane issues and exploring them in depth, I can help unravel the knots. I know I feel better for having a bit more clarity, because we all – especially Gen Z and those who come after – need to learn to use and manage them in ways that enhance, not diminish, our lives.

In the new season of the show, I discuss how technology can affect the development of brains and what we should do about it. I am speaking to real experts on my show and have never done that before, so I decided to do it.

A couple of statistics jumped out at me: About two years ago, roughly 85% of US adults reported being online at least daily, with 31% saying they were online “almost constantly.” And as of last spring, for teens, the numbers were even higher: A stunning 97% report being online every day, with 46% saying they’re online almost constantly, according to Pew Research Center surveys.

Those numbers are worrying but not surprising. We are expected to do a lot on our screens for school and work. But we also do things for fun, like killing time on TikTok or doom-scrolling the news. Add to that constant communication; we text, Snap and Slack throughout the day. You get the digital idea: It’s easy to be on our screens a lot.

In my basement studio, I began this journey talking with my daughters, proud digital natives, as well as Gen-Xers:Sky, 15, and Soleil, 13. (Even if you don’t host a podcast, I highly recommend sitting down with loved ones and having uninterrupted, face-to-face conversations on any important topic. You will learn so much!)

Most parents think that their kids are smart, and I am no exception. I found our conversations to be very thoughtful, with good insights. They didn’t hold back.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/health/screens-technology-brain-chasing-life-gupta/index.html

What my daughters and I can do about screens and social media at a young age: A case study in the Gupta House Rules

And she’s right: It would be hard and isolating, especially for a young person, to be completely off everything. She said that she can not see herself using another platform like social media at a certain age because she would be embarrassed.

Sky said she spends about 3 hours a day on social media, texting and playing games. I was relieved to hear that she doesn’t let it get in the way of her homework, but I was a bit surprised when she said that on occasion, she lets it interfere with her sleep (but only on the weekends, she assured me).

I asked her if it was a good thing or a bad thing when she was younger and she said it was like a Zen master saying it was a thing. I don’t think it’s a good or bad thing. There isn’t much people can do about it. It’s just a thing.” She also reminded me that this was the world handed to her, not the one she would’ve chosen.

The three of my daughters all told me that they would have preferred the era of cell phones and social media. These platforms, they tell me, create an obligation to engage, more than a desire. A friend of mine, Soleil, told me that she did not want to let her friends down.

My daughters believe that today’s teens and future generations will have to figure out how to keep themselves safe, just like people do around temptations like chocolate and potato chips.

They learned what I thought about my and my wife Rebecca’s parenting decisions around screens. As part of the Gupta House Rules, we decided to make the kids wait until middle school before giving them smartphones. We have access to their social media accounts and set time limits. We also try to have family dinners every night, when we all cook together and everyone’s phone – including mine – is put away.

But now, after having talked to my daughters and quite a few experts, I question whether we provided the proper guardrails. A 16-year-old with a learner’s permit would never get my car keys if I said, “You’re on your own!” I think I did the digital equivalent.

Talking about screens and limits makes me feel vulnerable. I constantly ask myself, am I doing the right thing? Am I being a good dad? Is there too much pushover or too strict?

As a doctor, I am used to having the answers – and the data to back up my beliefs – but this is one area where I don’t. These are not normal waters for my family, and for everyone around them. There are no agreed-upon best practices. Many questions have yet to be formulated because the studies have not been done. When we get a handle on one question, there are five new ones. It is like a hydra, a water serpent that grows two new heads for each one cut off.

On the one hand, I worry about imposing my values, derived from US culture in the 1970s and ’80s, on my kids and their current situation, much like my parents did to my brother and me with their 1940s Indian culture. To us, it felt like their antiquated beliefs were woefully out of step.

It scares me that I can not depend on my own experience as a parent. We have reference points where we can choose to follow in the footsteps of our parents or not, that’s usually what we do. But with screens, I can’t say, “This is the way we used to do it when I was a kid,” because nothing so all-encompassing existed back then.

Why social media today? How social media affects young girls’ brains and bodies, and what they can do to protect their children’s brains

The numbers are very sobering. In the past year, nearly 1 in 3 teen girls reports seriously considering suicide. One out of five teens are attempting suicide in that time. Between 2009 and 2019, depression rates doubled for all teens. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic. Why now? The question is posed.

“Our brains, our bodies, and our society have been evolving together to shape human development for millennia… Within the last twenty years, the advent of portable technology and social media platforms is changing what took 60,000 years to evolve,” Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association (APA), told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. “We are just beginning to understand how this may impact youth development.”

Humans are social creatures and we learn through interaction. In fact, said Prinstein, “numerous studies have revealed that children’s interactions with peers have enduring effects on their occupational status, salary, relationship success, emotional development, mental health, and even on physical health and mortality over 40 years later. These effects are stronger than the effects of children’s IQ, socioeconomic status, and educational attainment.”

It helps explain how social media platforms have grown in a relatively short period of time. But is the kind of social interaction they offer healthy?

What’s the right kind, you ask? It’s interactions that are based on support, emotional intimacy, disclosure, positive regard, reliable alliance and trust.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1157180971/10-things-to-know-about-how-social-media-affects-teens-brains

How social media affects teens’ brains: How “likes” affect the brain: why bullying, intimidation, and self-harm affects young people and girls at school

Digital platforms have been pointed out as an important space for self-discovery and expression for many marginalized teens and as a way to protect them from the effects of stress.

Prinstein said, when teens viewed these same illegal and/or dangerous behaviors on social media alongside icons suggesting they’d been “liked” by others, the part of the brain that keeps us safe stopped working as well, “suggesting that the ‘likes’ may reduce youths’ inhibition (i.e., perhaps increasing their proclivity) towards dangerous and illegal behavior.”

Parents worry that violent and overly sexualized films can have a negative effect on teen behavior. Teens are seeing bad behavior on social media. But it’s complicated. This is something to check out.

The brain regions involved in addictions to illegal and dangerous substances overlap with those that are activated when you use social media.

Discrimination, intimidation and harassment of minorities are frequent online and often targeted by young people. LGBTQ+ youth experience a heightened level of bullying, threats, and self-harm on social media.”

According to research, online harassment causes the same brain areas that respond to pain to be used as a mechanism for physical and mental health damage.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “youth who report any involvement with bullying behavior are more likely to report high levels of suicide-related behavior than youth who do not report any involvement with bullying behavior.”

Earlier this month, a 14-year-old New Jersey girl took her own life after she was attacked by fellow students at school and a video of the assault was posted on social media.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1157180971/10-things-to-know-about-how-social-media-affects-teens-brains

What Does Social Media Really Tell Us About Teens? A Case Study of a Student Who Used to Sleep All Nighter and Never Seen AnOTHER

Even adults feel it. We go onto social media and compare ourselves to everyone else out there, from the sunsets in our vacation pics to our waistlines – but especially our waistlines and how we look, or feel we should look, based on who’s getting “likes” and who’s not. Teens can be amplified by such comparisons.

Exposure to this online content has been shown by psychology to have a negative impact on the body perception of young people. This exposure can create risk factors for eating disorders, weight-management behaviors and depression.

Research suggests adolescents who are on screens early in the evening are less likely to get the sleep they need. Not only is poor sleep linked to all sorts of downsides, including poor mental health symptoms, poor performance in school and trouble regulating stress, “inconsistent sleep schedules are associated with changes in structural brain development in adolescent years. It is possible that youths preoccupation with technology and social media could affect the size of their brains.

“It just kind of started to really wear on me physically first, I think, because that was when I was just scrolling for hours, not going to sleep – it was taking hours out of my day. I wasn’t really doing much else in my free time,” he explained.

The story that I’m going to tell will sound similar to a lot of other stories. It’s about a college student named Jerome Yankey. He was pulling all nighters, but wasn’t studying for exams. He wasn’t hanging out with friends.

What happened to the first time I read a TikTok book, and I realized I didn’t really know how to stop. I started to cry

It was very difficult to stop. It was as hard to say, okay, I’ve seen enough because there isn’t enough on TikTok. There’s no winning on TikTok. There’s no end point. You just keep going.

Add it all up, half an hour to an hour when I wake up, you know, a little bit in the free time during the day, maybe during a meal, another 2 hours during the day, maybe averaging 5 to 6 hours a day, even more if I had more free time.

It’s that journey of telling people, “this is my TikTok account.” I don’t have any followers. The only people I know on here are my friends, and I’m going to post and someone might see it because there is a chance. Because that’s how the TikTok algorithm works.

And then everything changed. He saw the sun rise after scrolling away. He was falling behind in school, and hadn’t slept all day. He decided he had to break up with TikTok.

I was simply watching, just scrolling, just kind of just droning on through endless content. That’s when I started to become less of a creative and more of a cynic, you know? All I would be doing is just reviewing content. I would see it and I would be like, Oh, I could be funnier than that. They’re not that good.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

What Did Jerome Tell Us About His Family? A Memoriam for Me and My Daughter, Sage, and the End of the Rabbit Hole

Jerome says something deep inside of him stirred. Maybe it was just an urge to just look at his phone and enjoy the world around him. It felt like it was emerging from a fog.

It wasn’t until I started taking time away from the app that I realized that I wasn’t unattractive, I wasn’t unsuccessful, I wasn’t, you know, unpopular. It was just the fact that I was comparing myself to the super ideals of every form.

That. That is the thing that really stuck with me about Jerome’s story. It all started innocently. And if I’m being honest here, as a dad of three teenage daughters, I can’t help but think about how I can keep my daughters from going to that same place. Look, I see how much they enjoy the app. I am aware of the appeal. We’ve made videos together. This is what I worry about. As much as I work hard to protect them, in their real world, I do worry about their digital world and what might happen to my girls when they don’t have as many rules or supervision. My oldest, Sage, is about to head to college, which means soon she will be the same age Jerome was when this all happened to him. It’s hard to believe, but might the same thing happen to her? Thankfully, he found it on his own. But I know not everyone can do that. Sometimes it gets so bad people need medical help.

There is a resource there that can be used for children and families who have gone down the rabbit hole in terms of gaming, social media and information bingeing.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

Chasing Life: Where do we stand in the age of Internet? What can we do about it? An Empirical Interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta

We’re in a brave new world where we have to figure it out as we go along. And it’s not even generational anymore. I worry about my sibling because the environment is evolving so fast, and I have 17 patients who say they are cool but I really worry about them.

I have questions, many, many questions. Is there too much screen time? There are warning signs. Things are going wrong. Most importantly, what can you do about it? He has lots of tips for kids, parents and anyone trying to navigate a new world. I’m Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent. Chasing Life is what this is.

We went to see virtual things before the lock down. The reason that the parents of children who are struggling with their interactive media use would not show up for their first visit is due to the fact that they would wait until the night before or the morning of the visit to see the doctor. And of course, the kids would say, no effin way, I’m out of here. As soon as we went virtual, our no show rate dropped to zero because they’re comfortable in this environment.

What I found out is that I knew a lot more than my parents did about social media. Mostly, Dr. Rich said that my parents, they should listen to me when I say something about screens. They should trust me to be like, open with them because I’ve been open with them in the past. So my first impression was a lot of him supporting the things that I wanted and also trying to get my parents to understand why I wanted them and how they could be good and how they could be how they could support me. I wanted to use social media.

What do you worry about when you’re going to see a parent? A question for the parents of children in Adolescents

I spent my wicked youth in the film industry. You know, I love Screen Media, but I also respect it, you know? And I think that in any great love affair, there’s a deep respect as well.

When you have a parent bringing a child to see you, it’s because they’re worried, right? I mean, if a parent is taking their child to see the doctor, period, and leave alone for something like this, it’s because they’re worried. You know, they’ve been having pain, they’ve been unable to keep food down, whatever it may be. They’re coming into you with a lot of concern. What do you worry about? Exactly. I worry that my child is spending too much time on a screen. What?

The young person withdrawing from various aspects of her or his life is something the parents see. They don’t get up for school. Occasionally they’re staying up all night on social media or gaming. So they see the young person withdrawing actually from them most acutely. The kid is in their room. The kid, you know, is on screen. You know, instead of having meals together, instead of just spending time with the family. I think that’s the most painful point for parents.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

What are you doing in the world? What are normal limits and what are you trying to tell me? What is normal in medicine and what do I need to do?

Do you define for the patient and or the family what is too much, what is abnormal in this world? And we have to define within normal limits in medicine. That’s the method you use to get lab results. What are the normal limits here?

The problem comes in when their day-to-day functions are impaired. They are not getting enough sleep. They are overeating. They are missing school or falling asleep in school. They are leaving their friends.

addiction is not an accurate model for what’s going on here due to a few reasons, the most important of which is the therapeutic goal of any addiction as we call it, is abstinence. The therapeutic goal of treatment for problematic interactive media use cannot be abstinence. This is an essential tool, an essential skill of our time. We think that this is similar to binge eating disorder, in the sense that it is the over use of a necessary resource that leads to psychological needs not being met.

One of your patients, if you were seeing them in a world where we did not have as much screen time or social media. 15 years ago. Did you know what, 20 years ago, whatever it may be. Would that child still be with you? But instead of social media, it would be ex, you know, TV watching or, you know, some other sort of hyper binge activity.

Dr. Rich’s Theoretical Approach to Screens as a Treatment: Towards a Model for Children with Addiction

While Dr. Rich recognizes that screens can feel addictive, he doesn’t think it’s the right way of describing it. Why? Because, like it or not, we need screens, just like we need food.

We use the term addiction as a negative thing, so I move away from addiction as a model. We think of people with addiction as weak, weak people, and so we approach it as a punishment rather than a cure. There are short term problems with these kids withdrawing from these behaviors. It is not the behavior of the young person that makes them feel better, but the behavior of a young person who is interested in pursuing it because it will make her or him feel better because she or he has been feeling behind all day. Including their social interactions where they can’t keep on top of a conversation. They return home and play a first person shooter on the screen. And not only are they in control of that universe, but in many ways they are better than so-called neurotypical kids at a game that actually reinforces and rewards distractibility, hyper vigilance, and all the aspects of ADHD that are problematic in a classroom setting.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

How Should We Train Our Child to Drive a Car? Dr. Rich and the Social Media Platform as a Power Tool to Help Children Learn to Drive

That’s fascinating. That’s the idea of how you could go on a day like that where you’re behind all day. and then you come home and you can regain some sense of control. I mean, yeah, that sounds familiar, doc. It sounds just like what I can see with my children but I will find myself playing silly games on airplanes and things because I’m. I need to regain control. Maybe I need a victory or two. This computer can beat me, even though I have had a bunch of losses today.

Dr. Rich’s last point made me stop in my tracks. When you treat someone who’s addicted to something like alcohol or cigarets, what you’re asking really is for people to give those things up. That makes sense. But again, for most people these days, that’s simply not realistic with technology, let’s face it. Dr. Rich believes that you should learn to live with it and respect it. I know that’s a big change from the doom and gloom warnings. We often hear that social media is harming us like a bad drug and that it. Needs to be left out of our lives.

I think that if we can take a step back and treat the smartphone or the tablet or the social media platform as the power tool it is, and think about it the way we think about our child driving a car, for example. Right? A car is something kids love to own. But that being said, I don’t think we would teach our child to drive either, because everyone else is doing it regardless of what their age is or in a way that is sort of a have at it, you know. We will give a four year old who is screaming an iPad and say, “Go play Angry Birds or something like that in order to calm them down.” without thinking about the implications.” And so I think that we just have to treat these tools as tools and with more respect and also help these kids learn to use them, not in fear, not in stay safe, because we don’t teach driving a car by saying, don’t hit that tree, don’t run over pedestrians. We teach them to drive a car and in the process they learn to be safe. I think that we need to approach it not out of fear, but out of a sense of mastery of this powerful tool.

Think of it as a power tool and sort of like an automobile. I think it’s really interesting as my children are starting to drive. I think about it all the time. Like if you said, what is my biggest concern about screens with my teenagers? It is important that they use it when they are behind the wheel of their car far away, because that can be catastrophic if they fail to do so. How much they’re using it is something that I worry about. Sure. I worry a lot when they use it and what they use it for.

Content that we are both consuming and creating in this space is the most important thing here. You don’t want your kid spending time in the middle of the day in bed or sitting at the dinner table because you don’t want them sleeping and you don’t want them online because you don’t want them going to sleep. We should really focus on the content. And is this healthy content? The content is helpful or not. What is the context in which they’re doing it? I think the thing that screen time doesn’t do is tell me what I could be doing. Yeah. Is it possible that I’m talking to mom or dad from the kitchen table? Could I could I be out playing with my friends? That is where the seductiveness of online space can affect the rich and diverse menu of experience that is so helpful to growing up.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

A Conversation with Dr. Rich about “Chasing Life” — a Baptism by Fire for a Family with Screens in a World by Fire

And I’m going to get his advice for improving my own family’s relationship with technology. Stay tuned. And now back to Chasing Life. Before we hear more from Dr. Rich, I want to first introduce you to one of his patients.

Allison visited Dr. Rich for the first time as a preventive measure. Amy says she was having trouble raising her children in a world that was different from the one that she grew up in.

The TV was broken in my father’s closet, and it was fixed when I had my tonsil removal. I had a TV in my house, but it was not in the living room. So coming at that, you know, with screens everywhere, raising kids, it was definitely baptism by fire.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

A well-being check for the use of mobile phones: Allison, I forgot to mention that I can’t play YouTube at 715 and 830 in the morning

I implemented downtime where I can’t use my phone until 715 in the morning and I can’t use it after 830 at night so I can wind down for bed and have my morning routine. But I also made app limits so I can only spend a certain amount of time on YouTube. I only have a small amount of time to play games. I can only spend a certain amount of time on other apps. I don’t spend a lot of time scrolling.

It’s pretty impressive. And again, keep in mind, she’s only 13. Now, Allison, I have to tell you, I can really relate to your parents. We often think of going to the doctor for checkups to help prevent future health problems. And in many ways, that is what your parents did for you here as well. And for all of your people. This is what the conversation with Dr. Rich on the podcast is supposed to do for you. Think of it as a well-being check for the use of cell phones.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

How Do You Gain the Trust of Your Patients? Is That the Right Thing? The Oldest Thing that I Can’t Describe

How do you gain the trust of the patients you treat? I mean, I’m not saying that they’re looking at you saying this guy is some old guy. You and I are the same age. I’m not really saying that. How can they understand what’s going on? How do you gain that trust?

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

What do you think about Grand Theft Auto and what do you want to learn from your kids? What are some top sort of tips that you can give to your children?

I ask them what games they play, or what socia-, seriously. You know, and I show them that I am knowledgeable about it in ways that are not pejorative, that are not saying it’s a bad place. I’m approaching it as the world in which they live. I think that’s a mistake most parents make, which is they’re sort of using it as something else. They’re standing at the top of the basement stairs saying, turn off Grand Theft Auto. I hate that. I encourage parents to play Grand Theft Auto with their child if they can, because there are some really interesting things that will happen when you play it. It’s bad for you to say, “I love you, I care about you,” instead of saying, “I hate that.” I want to understand what engages you. I want to understand what you’re doing here. And then when you finally figure out the 47 different moves with your thumbs it takes to steal a car, and you ask your child, okay, I finally figured out how to steal cars. We might want to rehearse that over and over again, so we should talk about why. Right. You’re coming from a very different place. You are learning something from that child. I care about what you do and you are changing the power differential in a way that is meaningful to the kid. You’re giving them a way to move on, because you care about you, and you’re not wagging a finger at them so much. It isn’t really a punishment, it’s the next step.

If you distill it all down and ask people if there is a best way and a right way to raise your children, then you’re going to get a lot of responses. Like, what are the other top sort of tips that you give?

The most important question I asked Dr. Rich was not about the data. I wanted to be sure he was aware that I was a fellow father and doctor. Does he have a lot of hope?

I am hopeful. I will acknowledge the fact that as a pediatrician that’s kind of a occupational hazard is optimism. I hear from the children that I am hopeful. And so I think that we will get better. We will also encounter problems we don’t even anticipate yet. I think things are going to get better. And yes, there will be some potholes in the road. The real question comes down to will we be able to spot those potholes and steer around them? Or are we going to hit them and have to resolve them as problems? But either way, I’m confident that we can do this. We have to take a yes we can attitude toward this and be prepared for problems to occur and solve them without guilt.

I like that. I do. The reason why I’m doing this season is because I am able to attitude towards this big issue. Social media and technology were having an impact on us all. But I also wanted to make sure that the tone of our conversations were right. It’s not about being a bad parent. It’s not about being a bad kid. It’s not about right or wrong. I might not be making the right decisions as a parent all the time. I know that. I think that’s alright because it’s more about doing the best you can with the best intentions in mind. There is little doubt that we’re in the Wild West when it comes to these technologies. We’ll make some of this up as we go along, but it’s all about figuring out what works best for you. For some people like Allison and her mom, Amy, it did make sense to tackle these issues early before anything bad happens. Others, like Jerome were able to self-identify, they have a problem, and then one day just decide to stop cold turkey. And I do realize that for some of you listening, you may be still worried about your habits and still not clear what exactly you need to do to change. In the next episode, Catherine Price is going to show us how to break up with our phones.

Get in the habit of taking a break, so that you can both better understand the effect that your relationship with technology is having on you, and then also appreciate its benefits more.

I think I could quit both of them. I think that it’s more difficult to give up onSnapchat because it’s my main source of communication.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/f2b7f7a5-ae60-4b5a-a795-afac01011dd1

How Much Is Too Much? And How Did Jerome Yankey Quit When he Was Trying to Avoid Social Media? An Analysis with the CNN Audio Project

That’s going to happen. Thank you for listening. CNN Audio is a production of Chasing Life. Grace Walker, Xenia Lopez, Eryn Mathewson, and David Rind are the people behind the show. Haley Thomas is our senior producer. Tommy Bazarian is our engineer and we have medical writers as well. Dan Dzula is our technical director. The executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. And a special thanks to Ben Tinker, Amanda Sealey and Nadia Kounang of CNN Health and Katie Hinman.

How much is too much? It can be hard to know. But sometimes, the answer is much more obvious. It was for Jerome Yankey. He was a college freshman when he noticed that his use of social media, specifically TikTok, had become problematic.

When the toll shifted from physical to mental, he decided he needed to quit. And he did it cold turkey – no easy feat.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/24/health/screen-time-gupta-podcast-wellness/index.html

How much screen time is necessary to be addicted? A counterexample to this myth about YouTube and internet addiction, and how to handle it

Yankey is far from alone. The 2022 Pew Research Survey of US teens found that 67% of them use TikTok, and among those, 16% use it “almost constantly.” That number is even higher among the 95% of teens who use YouTube, with 19% using it “almost constantly.”

internet addiction is not an official diagnosis at the moment. There are still a lot of questions about whether it qualifies as a mental health disorder on its own or whether it should be considered part of another mental health condition. There are also questions about how to define it, measure it, test it and treat it.

Most experts do agree, though, that regardless of whether it is a true “addiction” or something else, too much screen time can have bad effects, especially for kids.

We use the term addiction in a negative way. He said that the way we think of addiction is to treat it as something to be punished rather than healed.