Jacyln Halpern

Wed, May 10, 2023 2:51PM
56:26
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
kids, social media, parents, find, child, phones, kiddos, feel, conversation, talk, great, cyber bullying, school, community, content, encourage, signs, spend, happening, risk

00:02
You can do a redo. You can say, I don't like that question. And we'll just cut it out.
00:07
Okay. And I've got my notes in front of me too, to kind of go through from my variousslideshows. But I know a lot of this is just a question of pulling it out of my brain in any given moment. So
00:17
I hear you, I hear you, when I, I don't get nervous when I'm the host. But when I'm being interviewed, I get so nervous. And so I understand and like, I put notes in front of me to it. So I know it. It's just about
00:33
right all day, like with my team are in session without any nerves, but there's sort of thatpressure of like, you're on camera, and people are listening. And then all of a sudden, it's like, I actually will tell you, I don't know what I said at 60 minutes. I have no idea what I said. She was like, You were awesome. And I'm like, well, good, because I don't know what came out of my mouth
00:53
is sometimes I know, I've never been interviewed by 60 minutes, but I would I know. And just the little interviews I've done, I would have been like I do. I'm like, I don't know what I said, Did I say the right things? I don't cuz you're just like in this other zone. Yeah, exactly. But whatever you need to say. And then if you we've even I've even had people email me later on and waslike, Hey, I answer that, and I don't like it. And we just pull that. No pressure, this is a no pressure situation. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I will just say hello, and welcome. And thank you and that we are talking about social media and kids and mental health. And we'll dive in. And I'll just have you introduce yourself and give you a sec. Can you give us a little bitabout you and who you are and how you came to be an expert in this field kind of thing? Yeah.Perfect. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I'm excited. Today we are talking with Dr. Halpern. And she's going to introduce herself, but we're talking about social media, mental health,specifically with our teams, our kids are vulnerable youth. And I hope everybody is listening upbecause this is a hot topic that parents and even professionals have a lot of questions andconcerns about. So thank you for joining us. And welcome. Thank you. Would you like to give usa little bit about who you are, what you do and how you came to focus on social media andmental health? Sure.

02:28
I'm Dr. Jacqueline Halpern, I'm the director of the SOAR program for psychotherapy and testingat Washington Behavioral Medicine Associates in Chevy Chase, Maryland. And so my days are acombination of therapy of reading and supervising testing reports of supervising my task atTet, my staff, and I'm working with families. And just to tell you a little bit more about ourpractice, we're an integrated practice, we have psychiatry, we have therapy, we have testing,we are doing a lot all the time to help families. And that's really how I became an expert forsocial media, there was a need, it wasn't something that I knew a lot about not that long ago.But we started to get requests for articles, we started to hear from families that they werehaving concerns about their children's social media use, and it required me therefore to startlearning and researching.
03:20
Isn't that always the way right? There's no need? And you're like, Alright, let's do this. I see this, and I'm sure parents are coming to you. And you do excellent work of just a lot of questions and concerns. So let's jump into that world of social media. How does it relate to kids that are both neurotypical and neurodivergent? Or does it mean is there a difference?
03:41
Yeah, all kids are impacted by social media? That's actually a wonderful question. You know, it is so prevalent, it is very hard to get away from. And even though most of the social mediashave an age limit, which you're not supposed to join before a certain age, kids are getting on atall ages, and even things like YouTube are technically social media. So we have little ones really little ones watching videos at young ages. So all kids are impacted. The way that theirbrains are impacted may vary based on whether they are neurotypical or neurodivergent, weactually see some more positives with our neurodivergent kiddos in terms of allowing them tojump on and have a space where it might be easier for them to interact without having thatface to face interaction where they can stop and pause and think more about what they want tosay and how they want to say it. The screen kind of creates just a lower anxiety in them, thatmakes being who they are come to life. And also, you know, they're able to find their passionsand their interests and others like them in a way they may not in their day to day socialinteraction. And in many cases, this is very regulating going into the screen. This is social media, but you know screen time in general video gaming, a lot of these kids their sensory needs are rarely met by being on the screen. At the same time, those neurodivergent kiddosmay be more vulnerable to screen addiction, they may be more vulnerable to cyber bullying.And so while there are benefits, there are also risks. And that's the same for neurotypical kids.There are benefits, and there are risks to getting on that screen.

05:21
So how do we start the conversation about social media with our kids.
05:26
So like any conversation, the earlier we start, the better, you know, around these hard topics, ifwe start with a little one, you know, you can watch, I'm gonna watch with you, I'm gonna findthat video for you and turn it on. If an inappropriate ad pops up, it's, you know, I'm going toturn that off, let's not watch that, you know, sometimes these things that come up, they're notthings that are for kids. And it's starting early with something like that. And then moving as ourkids get older, into really explaining what those dangers are, you know that there are peopleout there who may want to take advantage, there are cyber bullies, that we leave a digitalfootprint with everything that we do, things don't just disappear, even if we think that they do,that the content on social media may not be accurate, we might be looking at false news, so tospeak, or very polarized content. And we have to start telling our kids, you know, very early onwhat this may look like, and then building it an age appropriate level.
06:22
And if I may add this, I have a question. And I don't know if you may have the answer or not. So when we talked about neurodivergent kids, and you said that it was provided a space for themto kind of be more social, have a pause and be able to interact? Are we is there any correlationof that then being able to transfer to face to face like in real life? These skills? Or it may be toosoon? To know?
06:51
That's a great question. I haven't specifically seen research on that, you know, there is a huge world out there. So you know, I'm talking specifically I should say about artistic kiddos when Isay this, but where they can find other autistic individuals and autistic adults who have beenthere and experience and who really can become mentors, if they're in a space where they canguarantee safety and more parents can help them guarantee that safety. And you know, whenthat's happening, if kids are starting to feel connected, if they're starting to feel confident, whatwe know, in general is that self esteem will start to translate if they're less anxious and lessdepressed, because they have a sense of well being and a sense of who they are. And they feela part of community that's likely to transfer over but I haven't seen any direct research on, youknow, if they're socializing on social media, does that then carry over directly to real lifeinteractions?

07:43
I was just curious. So can you talk a little bit about the dangers you've kind of mentioned them?But then how do we get our kids to understand these dangers? Because, you know, we're theparents, and according to our kids, we don't know anything. So how do we get them to? Youknow, start to understand that? Yes, it's, there's some great positives, but then there's alsosome dangers.
08:07
Yeah. So you know, you touched on something that actually, we kind of joke about it, but ourkids kind of think we don't know anything. And when it comes to social media, we might not compare it to them. When it comes to screens, we might not compare to them, we generallygrew up in a completely different generation where we didn't have this. And so a lot of times, our kids are more screen fluent than we are at a very, very early age. And so they may knowmore about each of the social media platforms, they may know more about what's going on,they may even know how to trick us because often that information is out there and easy tofind. And they're finding loopholes. And so what this really comes down to more than anything is building a foundation of trust. So in our practice, one of the things that we always alwayshighlight is starting as early as possible to build trust with our kids and to create a, like afoundation of, you know, I'm here for you to really use attachment as a foundation forconnection. And when our kids trust us when they feel seen when they don't feel like they'regoing to be judged or get punished for every conversation they have or every mistake that theymake, they're more likely to listen to us in general, if we're not simply trying to control them, ifwe're not punishing them. If we're not judging everything that they do. When we come to them with a concern. They're a lot more likely to take it seriously. So this isn't social media specific,but we really want to help parents create that foundation of trust to move away from you know,okay, you did something wrong, I'm going to punish you or to jump to a quick conclusion or tooffer a judgment on their child's behavior, but rather to say, come talk to me, let's problemsolve together. If there's something happening, that's a concern in the house, you know, let'ssit down and talk let's figure out a solution that works for both of us. Helping parents learn to coregulate when their kids are upset, rather than trying to talk them out of their feelings bepresent for those emotions when the kids are having a meltdown, and being able to be thereand say, I've got you, when that foundation is there, that trust is built. And when that trust is built, these conversations can happen. And our kids are a lot more likely to take us seriously.
10:20
That is beautiful. Thank you. So, and sometimes, you know, I think, just as a mom of three, it'ssometimes best practice and then it doesn't always go the way we we want in a moment, but Ilike that CO regulation and, and to kind of walk beside them. And I always think of the there's a phrase about being there. Being there. Josh, you're gonna have to cut some of this out becauseI can't think of the phrase being um, what is it a being a mentor, not a guide? No, I don't knowthe phrase be a hold on Josh. It's coming. Josh's our editor. You are a at one point, you becomethe director and then you become the it's gonna come to me. But it was good. It was like you're a director, but then you are kind of a mentor. But it's a different phrase. I don't know the phrase, oh, anywho. All right, we'll move on.

11:17
I can say a little bit more. And I think you know, when parents don't get it, right, it's reallyimportant to recognize we don't have to be perfect. Whether we're talking about social mediaor anything else, we're gonna mess up in these conversations, we are going to have momentswhere we're dysregulated, we're upset, we say the wrong thing to our kid, we are not expectingany parent to be perfect. I teach this and I am far from perfect. But it is about really going backand repairing and modeling for our kids taking responsibility, hey, I was upset. I said somethingthat I regret I you know, I don't want to hold to that, or I treated you in a way that isn't okay.And I'm sorry, and really trying to repair in that moment. And you know, along with that, wetalk about the five to one rule, you make one mistake, try for five positive interactions, theydon't need to be big, but you want those positives to outweigh the negatives. And being gentleon yourself, just like you would be on your child around mistakes is a great way to model thatit's okay for them to come to you because you are going to be thoughtful about it.
12:17
Can we talk about you had mentioned the commercials? And we have zero control over that?How do we choose what commercials or ads kids might see? What can we do in that situation?
12:30
There's really very little so it's trying to find, you know, if we're working with little kids, youknow, for showing our kids things on YouTube. And using YouTube kids generally is safer in terms of the ads that are gonna pop up. Now, there may be ads for toys that you don't want tobuy your kids, but you're less likely to see something violent or sexual. But even then, there's so many people posting things do get through the controls that they have set up in the filtersthat they have set up. So you have to be careful, there's no real way to control it. When kids are on, you know, many of the social media platforms, there are all kinds of things popping up.And here's what we know, if you click on one thing, it is likely to give you more that is similarand over time, the more time you spend, the more polarized the more extreme, the moreemotional that content is likely to become. That's what whistleblowers are saying that the waythat the algorithms whatever those actually are, because we don't really understand them. And there are so many of them, whatever those algorithms are, the more time we spend, the morewe see content that takes us further and further away from what our friends are posting, andour friends are doing to what other people are doing and to, you know, the most extreme, mostpolarized content. And that's what's so hard. And that's what we need to explain to our kidsthat they might be engaging with something that is not accurate. And that's not necessarily you know, an ad may pop up. We don't want them to click on those ads, we want to encouragethem to stay away to end them as soon as possible. We want to be there as much as possibleto steer them away from things that are inappropriate. But of course, particularly with ourteens who have their own phones, or they have their friends phones, even if they don't havetheir own. They're getting into things sometimes when we are not around and able to see it.
14:12
We just talk about some of the benefits of social media, because there's a lot of fear. But we've kind of hit a little bit on some benefits, but kind of as a whole. What how do we highlight the positive? Yeah,

14:26
there are actually a lot and so what we want to start with is the idea that, you know, thebenefits are there for the kiddos who are mature enough to handle social media, whose parentsare involved and engaged or caregivers are involved and engaged and paying attention, whohave the education and understanding about what might be happening on social media, andthen who are using it responsibly. That means that it's balanced in their life. They're not only using social media, they're doing other things too. And then when that's the case there, there's a lot of good, it is an opportunity to connect with friends perfect really friends who maybe arefar away who they don't get to see day to day in person, it's an opportunity for them to findcommunities of shared interests. This is particularly true, you know, for, let's say, our LGBTQyouth, who really need to find a community of support or our neurodivergent youth, dependingon what that diagnosis may be, what that need may be, they can find others like themselves,this can help people find areas of interest and passion, they might discover new hobbies, orthey might be able to find others with similar hobbies who can really be you know, role modelsand kind of CO conspirators in creation. And that's the thing that they might be able to
15:37
conduct our helper and can you just go back like five seconds, you froze?
15:41
Oh, okay. They might find a sense of community, you know, and find others who can be coconspirators in creation, who will help them build their ideas and build their identity in apositive way. You know, social media can be a great place to experiment with who you are, andto put out ideas and creativity and share what you've built in this world, whatever that may be.It may be an opportunity to correct connect with political views that are like your own. And to, you know, protest, if you're concerned about something in a relatively safe way. There's a lot of good that's out there. In social media, it's an opportunity, you know, to help people, one of theways that I've used social media and my friends have is you have a lost pet in the area, it's agreat way to share and say, hey, you know, keep your eyes out for this pet. That's a wonderful use of social media. So there are those things out there that are very positive, it's a way tolearn if you can access a healthcare information that maybe you're not so comfortable talkingto your parents about, particularly maybe in a rural area where you don't have access to alldifferent kinds of health care, being able to find those communities and those groups, again,with the caveat that you have to make sure it's actually accurate, and not inaccurate. And that's part of what's so hard. How would a group find their their group? Like, how would a child find their group? Mm hmm. Yeah. So you know, the good news is, it's very easy to search. And the bad news is, it's very easy to start, right. So if you're interested in something, you can startkind of finding, you start Googling, or you're in the social media, and you type in an area ofinterest, you're gonna get a whole bunch of groups that pop up. And so you know, as parents,then we want to go back in and we want to help our kids figure out, okay, what groups areappropriate for you. And if we've set that stage for the conversation, what we're hoping is thatwe'll sit down with our kids. And this is something that we can really encourage with them or even require, you know, that they're using social media, not locked in their room, but rather ina shared space, that that computer, or those webcams are in a shared family space. And so you're seeing what your kids are doing. And you're sitting with them and saying, okay, youknow, you want to find a group of this around this area of interest. Let's look together, let's read the group guidelines. Let's see what people are saying, let's see if this is an appropriate group. You know, often also, once you have a group of friends, you can see if they're trustedfriends, who are they following? What are they doing, and that also helps to build, but thoserisks are always there. And so even with all of those positives, we have to have in mind, it could go wrong very quickly.

18:29
When does support become helicopter parenting with social media? And can we overdo it as aparent?
18:35
That is a great question. And I don't think it has a particularly easy answer. I really encourageparents to monitor their kids social media use, but to be transparent about it. Where it reallycauses a problem is if we don't tell our kids, hey, we're checking your devices, hey, we haveparental controls on hey, you're not going to be able to download an app without gettingpermission from us first, because we're going to get an alert, you know, or we have bark orsome other parental control that's going to flag certain words, or, you know, we're going intoyour accounts and looking at them. We're following you, you know, on your different accounts.It's important to communicate to our kids what we're going to be doing, and even again, toinclude them in that dialogue, where you're deciding what is this going to look like? Becausethen it's something that's collaborative, it's not just us standing over our kids. And what's hard is no matter how much we actually helicopter parent with social media, our kids go otherplaces. So even in a household where there is none. Our kids might access it on their friend'sphone, or they may find a way through the different safeguards on the school computer andthey may get to the social media. So in some ways, saying nothing you can't have anythingmay actually encourage them to do more behind our back. Whereas if we collaborate and we find a plan that works for our individual family, we may be more successful.
19:58
How do we model as pay Erin's that healthy online presence,
20:03
this is so key, you know, our kids are looking at what we do. And ultimately, that probably matters a lot more than what we say. And so there are a bunch of things that we want tomodel, you know, kids have fear of missing out. And that's one of the things that becomesdangerous for them on social media is the sense that, you know, everyone else has more,everyone else is doing more, everyone's life is happy. And they're not recognizing that, youknow, every other kid is also taking, you know, 50 photos before they post it online, or they are using filters to make their bodies or their faces or their clothes look different. Same thing withcelebrities that they might be following, or the kids, you know, don't realize that the other kidsare only posting or other people that they follow the good parts of their life and the highlights,which may have only been a moment in time. And parents, you know, we can change that forthem by being a lot more real by putting a photo that isn't perfect by sharing, you know,moments of happiness and moments of sadness, moments of joy and moments where we'restruggling, and maybe looking out, you know, to our friends for some help. So if we're careful about what we curate, or not curate, in this case, that model is that for our kids, there's also you know, what are we saying, Are we putting ourselves down are we, you know, worrying somuch about our body image that we're teaching our kids to do the same? Are we, you know,being aggressive in the language that we're using? Are we being provocative in the languagethat we're using, you know, we want to follow our kids and have our kids follow us. And just likeother areas of our life, we want to make sure that what we're showing them through our ownbehavior, is what we would like to see them do. The other way that we can model is by modeling good screen use in general. So having balance in our own lives, not having our phoneat our side, every second, having times of the day where we all as a family, put the devicesaway and tune into each other, doing activities as a family where the phones or the otherdevices are not present. Getting out getting fresh air and movement. You know, what we've seen over and over again, is that exercise is very protective against mental health concernsinvolved with screen and social media use. So as a family, getting out and exercising, we alsoknow, as I've said a few times that balance is key. So making sure you know that you're notonly using social media, that you're not only on your phone all day, but that you're getting upand interacting with people in person. That was harder during the pandemic, of course, thatyou are, you know, going out and doing things in the world, real things in the world. And youknow, that we are potentially putting away or locking away devices for the whole family atnight to model good sleep hygiene, which is also so key. So those things that we do every day, set the tone for what our kids

22:53
do. So that just kind of brings us to our topic in terms of social media and mental health. And, you know, you talk about a curated feed for our kiddos, and even for us. And so I think it's really easy for adults and even kids to get in this trap of everybody's life is perfect. It's easy. It's this, it's that whatever that loop may be, and even now just how there could be a party, andthen it's on social media, and maybe you weren't invited. Right? So how do we mitigate someof that, as parents? How can we kind of build that self esteem within our kids, when it'severywhere, it's so hard. So this is this
23:44
is one of the keys, right? Social media is there all the time, in a way, and what we're seeing inall of our kids, is that they want to go and that's how they're measuring their popularity. That's how they're measuring their success. They want to go on and see how many likes do I have?How many followers do I have? How many comments do I have compared to other people? Andthey're worrying about, you know, if I post this, are people going to like it, you know, are peoplegoing to respond to this. And this is really hard, or again, that fear of missing out, you know,okay, I might have missed this party. Or they look like they were having fun, I wasn't included.And this is a difference from when we were growing up. Those things might be happening, but it wasn't in our face all the time. And the hard part is there's not an easy way to mitigate those difficulties, it's going to happen. But this goes back again to creating that safe space for ourkids to come to us when this is happening. When they are hurting when they're feeling left outthat they know they can come they can talk to us. We're going to help them work through those feelings. We're going to help them you know, figure out how do I want to handle this, youknow, what am I experiencing right now and why what's it like to be left out? If they're feelinglonely? How do we start to help them build a sense of community if they or feeling you knowthat they're not included with their friends? How do we find them, you know, some other friendsor some other interests that could potentially build friends in their day to day life to get them,you know, feeling more confident, there's not a super easy answer to this. And, you know,along with this, what we find is because of that need to, to check, because it's there all thetime, kids are often they're walking away. And this happens to us as adults, too. They'rewalking away from social media, and they're feeling anxious or cortisol levels are building. And then they go back to the social media, and especially if they hear a ding, or they get a like, andthat the dopamine rises, and it feels good. And then they walk away again. And that anxiety,what are people saying, what are they doing? Am I missing something is there and that createssuch a negative cycle that can lead to a very high level of anxiety that can lead to depressionfor kiddos, if they are not getting the attention that they would like to get there. And so this takes us back to building a life outside of what's happening on the screen.

26:05
It's interesting, you say that, so when I run carpool with my personal kids in the carpool, itseems like if I automatically everybody has a phone out, and then the car is silent. I'm always like, put your phones away, be human talk to each other. And they're like, when Miss Taylor,whatever they call me, but it's like, they know when they get in the car that I'm like, Be humantalk to each other.
26:28
Yeah, and it can be hard, because, you know, this is a different generation of kids who, youknow, I've heard kids talk about being on playdates, basically. And they're sitting there, andthey're using their phones, sometimes actually, to talk to each other while they're sitting nextto each other. And, you know, as parents, that's such a scary troubling thing. And to them, it's just natural. And so we're moving into a generation where it phones are going to be a part of it.But we want to try to balance it again, we want to try to say, okay, you know, your phones aregoing to be there. All right, now we're going to find a time maybe it's in the car, maybe it's not,because it's hard for you to be face to face if you're driving. But we're all going to put it down,we're going to talk to each other, we're going to do an activity together that doesn't involve aphone, we're going to play a game, we're going to tell a story, we're going to go out for icecream, we're going to do something and we're going to leave our phones behind. And honestly, that's hard for us, right as parents, we find ourselves drawn to it too. And so this is where it goes back to we want to set that tone as much as possible. And make sure our kids understand what are those dangers by talking about it, making it a regular part of conversation,normalizing that, hey, there's great things and you love it. But there's also some concerns, and we've got to come back to them and you need to be aware to stay safe.
27 49

27:49
What are some warning signs that a parent may notice when you talk about that negative cycleloop in terms of anxiety? And then dopamine? How can we as parents notice it? And then whatcan we do to kind of I think I think you're explaining this in terms of not I think I know we'rehaving this conversation of what we can do to reduce that. But what are some warning signs?
28:12
Yeah, so the warning signs, they're not necessarily unique to social media, they're warningsigns of mental health concern or distress in general. So we're looking for things like changes,right changes in eating changes in sleeping changes in friend group changes in how a child isbehaving changes, and how a child is dressing changes for the negative and how they're doingin school, if we start to see decreasing grades, kids who are isolating more wanting to spendmore time in their room, and of course, many teenagers want that. So we have to look at it as a whole picture, you know, are they coming out? Are they engaging with the family, you know,looking for signs, perhaps that they're getting more and more anxious that they can't sit still,they're running to their screen over and over again, and they're having more more trouble thanthey ever did before separating from it. And that's tough too, because many kids have troubleseparating, but an increase in that difficulty, if we're seeing that they're withdrawing from realworld interactions, so that they're spending less time with friends that they would have wantedto spend time with before or they're spending less time engaged in activities that they onceloved. That would be a sign with cyber bullying, which we haven't touched on much yet. You know, the signs we want to look for are all of those. And then also, you know, if we see that ourkids seem particularly nervous when they do get a text message or they get a ding on socialmedia, they look nervous, agitated, worried, if they are, you know, finishing on the screen andwalking away seeming very upset by something if they're starting to feel nervous about goingto school, or they're they're saying that they don't
want to go or more and more they'recomplaining about stomach aches or headaches or other things to stay home. These are generally signs and obviously There are bigger ones like lying, cheating, drugs and alcohol use,these are the things where we know there's really, really a problem. But even those more subtle signs tell us something is going on maybe social media difficulties may not be. And there's all kinds of social media difficulties, it could be something like the cyber bullying, itcould also be, you know, where we're seeing more of an addictive tendency where our kidscan't get away from it. It could be that, you know, they're having trouble concentrating on theirschoolwork, because they want to be on social media, and they're feeling drawn back there.And then they can't get their work done. And so they're struggling, because of the the addictive quality and that desire to go back. Kids are often sneaking phones at night. And you know, sothis is a sign that they're, they're finding the phone that you've put away at night, or, youknow, you hear them, you're you're peeking in and they're awake, and they're using theirphone, that is a sign of not necessarily you know, that they're struggling with it in terms offeeling like they're suffering, but their sleep is suffering, which is negative for their well being.And they may be starting to show signs that they're beginning to come become addicted to itand can't really break away, even at night. And that's why in some families, we really dorecommend take all of the devices, put them away under lock and key at night, put them in asafe, because it's so crucial that kids sleep for their mental health and their well being.

31:23
Can you explain what cyber bullying is? Or what it looks like? And how would we as parents or

ypyyg pprofessionals qn have some of that.
31:33
So cyber bullying looks like the emotional bullying that we would see, you know, in real life isn'tgoing to be the physical bullying, it could happen at the same time at school. But cyber bullyingcould be anything from, you know, leaving a child out just consistently, you know, treatingthem as if they are not present. It could be you know, putting negative comments on their feed,it could be criticizing them, it could be getting other kids to say negative things, this canhappen in a text chain. You know, it can also happen on any social media. And, you know, oftenit could be one person or it could be a group of kids who get pulled into you making anotherchild feel left out making another child feel badly about who they are about what they'reposting. And there are different levels of you know, of what that may look like, it can be verysubtle, or it can be very extreme, the snubbing is, you know, often very subtle, we might thekids might talk about feeling ghosted. You know, that can be very subtle, it can take time tosee, or it may be, you know, much more aggressive, where the child is actually being activelybelittled with negative comments. It can be as extreme as people telling them, you know, gokill yourself, you know, it can get really, really bad. And so what can we do to mitigate it? Thisgoes back to, you know, we want to be monitoring, we want to see what our kids are postingand how people are responding to it. We want to be following our kids. And again, we are notgoing to know for sure, do they have some other account somewhere that we can't see. So we want to be looking at the signs in real life to You know, do they engage with us in the way thatthey always did? Are they themselves? You know, yes, there are developmental changes,because they're getting older, but at their core, you know, are they are they themselves? Arewe starting to see those changes that we talked about before, you know, where they're noteating that sleeping, changing friends, changing clothes, seeming more anxious, not actuallywanting to be on their phones, or seeming so connected to it, that they just can't let go? Theseare the things that we would be looking for the most.
33:41
And we as parents work with other parents to kind of help this, and what would that look like?Yeah,
33:48
that's a great question. So you know, anytime we can have a network of support for our kids, it's great. Because you know, maybe we don't see something but another, you know, your kidhas a friend and their parent who you've gotten to know see something, and they can pick upthe phone and call you and say, Hey, Wendy, you know, I'm really worried I saw this and Iwanted to give you a heads up. So having that network of support, be it you know, teachers orother community members, or you know, other caregivers who we get to know and you know,we know our kids and we know their friends, and we're talking to each other to say, you know,let's keep an eye on this. Let's see what we're seeing. If you're monitoring your kids textchains, and you see another child, you know, talking about self harm, or suicide or sex, oranything else that might be a concern, eating disorder type behavior, you being able to flagthat and reach out to the other parents or the school if you don't know the child, to say, Hey, I'm worried about this kid. And the more people you have who are doing that and talking toeach other, the better because that's more safeguards. Those are more people with their eyeson the kids having those conversations and being watchful.

34:55
Have you seen success or what does that look like when a family has free reached out to theschool,
35:02
it depends very much on the school it, you know, I've seen schools really rally to help. And I've seen the opposite. And so it's not universal. You know, I know that there are schools that are starting to teach about digital safety as early as kindergarten in first grade at an ageappropriate level. And, you know, that's wonderful. And they're having the conversations there. And that's great. Because the more again, the more the community is educating kids andnormalizing, like, hey, you need to be aware of this, and this and this, and this, you know, thatthere is content that could be sexual, that there is content that could be violent, that there is content that could try to pull you in, you know, to self harm or harm others or to behave, youknow, in ways that are dangerous to yourself and others that there is content, you know, that ispro eating disorders, these are some of the big, you know, very scary things that are out there,if the schools are teaching that, that's great. If we see a cyber bullying situation, and we let theschool know, and they intervene, they, you know, start to put in whatever whatever bullyingprogram that they use in school, if they bring that into, okay, if this is happening, you know, onthe internet, if this is happening in text messages, or in social media, we're going to interveneas well. And the kids know that, that's another another thing that is kind of making them pauseand stop and say maybe I shouldn't do this or helping them feel supported. The problem is, weknow this, right, there have always been bullies, and they're likely always will be. And so we goback to, we have to teach our kids, we have to teach them, you know how to treat otherpeople, so that they are not the bully, we want to teach them the dangers of what they coulddo to another child if they behave in this way. And then if they are being bullied, we want themto be able to come to us, because we've created that sense of safety. And you know, maybethey're more comfortable with the school counselor, maybe they're more comfortable with theirtherapist, maybe they're more comfortable, you know, with a member of their, their religiouscommunity, you know, we don't know who that person is going to be. But the more safe peoplein their life that they might be able to go to the better because we can't stop these things fromhappening. We can help our kids learn how to manage them, and know that they have asupport system around them in order to manage it once it happens.
37:18
How can we have a conversation with our kids to be in tune with their feelings? More so so thatif something's coming up, whether it's anxiety, it's depression, whatever it is, you know, Imean, it does correlate right social media and that mental health, and that's why we're talkingtoday? How can we as parents kind of set the stage of bringing in that feeling of mental health?
And what does that mean? And what does that look like? And keeping that conversation openso that our kids feel comfortable coming to us and being like, I don't, I don't feel good, orwhatever that looks like for them at that age? So

37:59
that's a great question. Because kids are so different in their willingness to talk about feelings.Some kids will talk about feelings all the time. Some kids do not want to talk about them at all right? They don't want to talk about their day, they don't want to talk about anything. And then a household. Even within a household, you can have personalities. And so this is really about, again, that sense of safety. And so maybe you're coming together, and you're not directlytalking about feelings, but you're spending time doing something that is quality, ideally, nonscreen based child led activities, no matter their age, right, what do they want to be doing withthat time spent with you, we often are recommending every parent's spend one on one timewith their child or children every day, and that may only be 10 minutes, you have three kids,let's say and you know, you're a busy parent or caregiver, you know, you might not have a lotof time, but you spend 10 minutes and you let them kind of lead what they're doing. They maynot communicate with words, but they may communicate with play or they may communicate,you know, through their body language you might pick up on you know, they just lookexhausted, they're sulking, they're slumped over, you might start to notice they're not quitethemselves, right? They're not engaging in the way they would. They're not you know, wanting to be present with me. They are just seeming like they're down. Or they're more revved up, they're more anxious when we spend that time with them. Even if they're not talking aboutfeelings, which ideally they would then they're showing us in some other way. If we want them to talk about feelings, we want to talk about ours not overwhelmingly and not you know ever ina blaming way we don't want to talk about like you made me feel this way but rather likenormalizing mistakes are okay big feelings are okay. You know, you are welcome in this housewhen you are sad, angry, happy, joyful, whatever that emotion may be. I'm going to be there and that's when we go back to the CO regulation. Right? We stay present. We don't send our kids nuts. thoroughly for a timeout when they are acting up, but maybe more of what we call atime in, okay, let's go to a place together in the house or, or maybe you can't move them. I'm going to sit here and I'm going to be with you through this big emotion and show you I've gotyou, right, I am here, when you are having a hard time just like I am here when things aregoing well. And that may not necessarily be through a conversation, but they are calm presence. And that is so key. Because when we're showing our kids time and time again, we're showing up for them. And we're going to be there for any emotion or any experience, it allowsthat conversation or that modeling of nonverbal cues that is going to let us know something's wrong.
40:40
How do we personalize our social media roles to fit the maturity levels of our kid?
40:47
That is a great for kids? Yeah, yeah, that is a great question. Because, you know, there is a lotof conversation right now the Surgeon General said 13 is too young, right, which is generallythe age but that social media says you have to be 13 to to get an account. Now, of course, our

g yy g,, kids are figuring out, oh, wait, I can just change my birthday. There's no checks and balances there. And, you know, there's a lot of conversation on both sides about what would be goodabout more checks and balances, what would be bad about it? And how can our kids kind of getaround that and kids are getting around it. But the reality is, there's not a perfect age for SocialMedia, you have kids of all ages, who have different levels of maturity, different developmentalneeds, in different monitoring, different awareness that changes whether or not you know, theyare ready for social media, there's not a perfect age to figure that out. It's not cut and dry. And what's so scary is sometimes we don't know for sure, as parents, we think our child is matureenough and able to handle it. And they're not or vice versa, we think that they can't, and they absolutely can. And so you know, it's often starting small, it's deciding, you know, through yourresearch, and I recommend Common Sense Media is great, because they actually go throughon their website, all of the different platforms and kind of what parents should know aboutthem. So picking maybe one platform that you know, your child's friends are on, and that yourchild wants to use, and then using it with your child helping them learn it, showing them kind ofthe ins and outs without what's safe, what's not helping them look at the different contentthat's there, what are their friends posting, and, you know, as much as possible, using thatsocial media with them early on, and it may be you know that you have it not on their phones,again, we don't know what they're doing on someone else's, but on yours or on a shared familycomputer, where you're looking together. And that's how you begin and you see how does thatgo? Is my child able to use it responsibly? What are they searching? And then you slowly buildfrom there? It may not be just kind of the deep dive into everything at once.
42:57
What is how does that work with social media and brain development? Like specifically with saycommunication or social skills? emotional skills? Yeah, real life examples. So that,
43:09
yeah, I can try to think of some. So, you know, what we see is that, or what we know aboutbrain development in kids is that the frontal lobe, which is the thinking part of the brain, thepart that kind of controls everything else, and helps us make good decisions and solveproblems develops far more slowly than the emotional center of the brain. So for our kids, for our teens, they are really guided by emotion, even more than adults are. And this is a big partof what makes social media use so challenging is when you have this content that's out therethat might be, you know, really extreme really polarized or inappropriate. Again, you know, sexual, violent pro eating disorder, content, self harm, or suicide content. Our kids may beswept in, right, you've probably been on social media, I know I have, and something pops upand you're like, oh, my gosh, that is so gross. And I cannot look away or oh my gosh, that is so troubling. You know, I can't believe what I'm seeing right now. And you can't look away. And that happens to our kids too. And if they click on that, and they watch, then something evenmore extreme pops up and more extreme pops up. And what's hard is that emotion center of their brain rules everything, whether it's positive or negative, and they're going to be drawn toit, whether it's positive or negative. And they may not have developed enough, you know,frontal lobe ability to say, wait a minute, stop. You know, this is not what I want to see or hang on this content. This doesn't look right. There's something wrong here. I'm not sure this is accurate. Or oh, this content is too violent. I shouldn't be watching this is going to disturb meor, well, these people they're seeming to be kind and gentle and they're pulling me in but they will they want me to start starving myself or they want me to hurt myself or they'reencouraging me to be aggressive. And, you know, kids are also by nature for the same reasonin brain development more impulsive, they're more likely to act based on, you know, in amoment like, hey, oh, that sounds like fun or oh, you know, my friends or this person isencouraging me to engage in this behavior. And they'll think I'm really cool if I do this very riskything that puts me or someone else, you know, at risk, and they're not stopping to think aboutthose very real consequences. So they're putting themselves in danger, they might be puttingothers in danger, they may not realize until much later, that the content that they're looking atis encouraging them to eat in ways that are damaging to their body, or, you know, helping orcausing them to feel worse about their body image or to, you know, to self harm or to, youknow, start to push away you friends that they care about, you know, that they're maybe beingencouraged to bully or belittle others, because they get swept up in sort of that, that need toplease peers, particularly popular peers, or, you know, others who they come across who theykind of look at, and they're like, wow, you know, you seem really cool, I want to make youhappy, I want to do what you're doing. And because of how their brains are developing, they'renot necessarily stopping to think about those consequences.

46:19
What are some tips that you could give, I'm going to start with professionals first, to kind ofimprove that sense of a village that we can create, to support mental health, as it aligns withsocial media or online activities. So I think mental
46:36
health professionals, tutors, you know, anybody working with kids, right? Executive functioningcoaches, teachers, again, we go back to caregivers, but really, anybody in the communitywho's working with kids to actually have these conversations to talk about it, kids are on socialmedia, they often do want to talk about it. And so you know, anywhere in everywhere, thatthey're hearing the messages of, hey, there's good stuff. And there's also danger, the better.And all of those people are really looking for those signs that the kid is having a hard time. You know, we have seen that as much as kids don't want to step away, when they finally do, a lot ofthem feel less anxious. At the same time, there are a lot of kids who feel like their entire social media use is very, very positive. And often those are the kids who have a lot of balance in their life who are interacting more with friends or within their areas of interest. And so, you know,everyone working with our kids can kind of get a pulse on that, you know, what are you doingon social media? What are you looking at? What are your friends doing, maybe your kid doesn'twant to talk about themselves, maybe that's too intense, but what are their friends doing, theymay talk about that, what's going on with them, you can get an idea of who your child is, orwho somebody else's child is, if you're working with them, you know, as a professional, bythose conversations about their friends, and what friends are doing, and what they'reconcerned about with their friends, and what they wish they could do, that their friends aredoing that gives us a lot of insight into what might be going on into in that world.
48:07
That's great. That is great, in terms of flipping it in terms of what is what are your friendsdoing? What do you think about that? What are some tips then for parents? Yeah, gy pp,

48:18
I'm not sure they're particularly different than what we've already talked about. You know, for parents, it really is starting the conversations as early as possible. And really encourageparents to pay attention to, you know, recommendations that are coming out on screen andsocial media use from trusted sources might be, you know, Academy of Pediatrics, it might beAPA psychology, it might be looking at Common Sense Media and their updates all the time. I encourage parents to research the different parental controls that are out there. I encourageparents to also learn about you know, what, what are what are the ways that kids are gettingaround, you know, the parental controls, because part of of what kids are finding are theseother apps that hide the social media apps on their phone, or they can go on and they canactually learn you know, how do I short circuit you know, these different regulations on myphone or on social media? And so parents need to know about these things. And it's always changing. It's not concrete, it's not like you learn once and then you're done. You have to always be paying attention to what's happening with social media. What are you know, the thetrendy apps you know, used to be Facebook now not so much kids run tick tock kids are onInstagram, kids are on Snapchat, it is different. What are those recommended ages? And thendoes that actually work with my child's developmental needs and how much I can monitorthem? What are the current trends in terms of you know, what are kids getting in trouble forwhat are you can find a lot of information about like the newest challenge that's coming up forkids, you know, it might be Most recently, I read kids were being taught how to steal Kia cars.And you know, there were there was a challenge, not that long ago about vandalizing schools.And then of course, there are more dangerous challenges than that. So what are those trends? What's out there, parents should be reading and learning and community members should bereading and learning and trying to stay on up as up on this as possible. And that's actuallyreally hard to do, because there is so much out there, and the landscape changes so quickly.And that's where, again, as a community, we can help each other. You know, maybe if youhave a group of parents or caregivers who are friends, being able to say, you know, I'm goingto monitor this, I'm going to monitor this, and I'm going to monitor this and let's talk in thatmay be a way to do it.
50:46
As we kind of wind down, what did I not know enough to ask that I should have asked? Oh,that's a good
50:52
question. Let me think about that for a minute. I think, you know, understanding, just the fullscope of this, that there are, and you touched on at all, but that there are really positiveaspects of social media. And there are really negative aspects of social media. And the reality is it is not going away. And so we have to learn to live in the world that has both those pros andthose cons and just continuing to be very aware, and talk to our kids, I've said it over and overand over again. But that tends to be the bottom line is talking to your kids creating that safe space for your kids. I think you know, me, maybe another aspect of this and give me a minute,I'm going to pause because I'm just looking through my notes to see love it. Anything else that I want to say?

51:49
I think that nothing is foolproof, we have to remember that we might be doing everything right,and our kids may still run into trouble. You know, no matter how much we're doing to try toprotect them, they might run into trouble. And so that's a really scary hard thing as parents, wewant to recognize that the research is still very new. And so it doesn't all agree with each other.You know, there's some research that says kids who spend more time on social media are morelikely to be anxious and depressed. And then research says, Well, it's actually the anxious anddepressed kids who are spending that time they were already anxious and depressed. And this is giving them an outlet. There's research about why social media might be addicting and thatthere may be changes to the brain that happened by spending a lot of time on social media.And then other research that says it's not actually so much about the time, it's about thequality of the use. And if they're using it in a way that suggests addiction. That is when we start to see those brain changes and those problems, whereas the kids who are spending time butusing it in a balanced way in their life, they're okay. As I mentioned before, that things likeexercise and time spent and other activities is very protective for these mental health concerns. And potentially being aware, there's some research that says, you know, it's minoritykids who are most at risk, and that could be girls, that could be ADHD ears, because they tendto be by nature a little bit more impulsive, or autistic kiddo kiddos who may be morevulnerable. LGBTQ youth may be more at risk, black and brown kids may be more at risk. Kids who have come from a background of lower socioeconomic status may be more at risk and justbeing aware. But there's no one who is not potentially at risk are boys in the research says thatthey may be more at risk for aggression, while girls are more at risk for self esteem issues andeating disorders. And yet, boys also, there's a lot out there on bigger Exia you know, having tobecome more and more muscular. And so it can be a challenge for everyone. And we just wantto try to be as aware as possible as parents so that we can help our kids navigate this very newlandscape that was not there when we were children.
54:10
I think we just like just hit the tip of the iceberg in this conversation. But I would say definitelybeing aware and being comfortable with having those conversations with your own kids. And then for our kids that may not have that network within their family, as professionals, whetherit's in a school or outside of the school, having that awareness so that we can help do our partto guide our youth is incredibly important.
54:39
credibly, yes, it takes the whole community. You know, it would be great if we could rely on thesocial media companies to figure this out and to keep things safe for our kids. And you know, I would absolutely encourage them. I don't think that any individual involved in social mediawants to hurt our kids and yet collectively, that's a lot of what's happening. This content is being and created, knowing the kids are going to be drawn to it because social media, their businesses, right? They want to draw people in. They want users, they want people to come back. And they're not necessarily caring what age they are thinking about what age they are.And that content is there. And they know it, even if any individual would say, I don't want tohurt a child, of course not. And so as much as we want to rely on social media, to fix theproblem, and we can fight and we can encourage, and we can legislate, we have to look at thecommunity as a whole. It's everybody's job to talk to our kids to make our kids safe to putthose safeguards in place to help our kids find balance in their lives. It's not any one person who can do this, it is everyone working together. How do folks find you? They can find us on our website, which is w bma.cc. Little bit of a different website. And that's a great way to learn about me and our practice and what we are doing.

56:02
And we'll also have that in the show notes. So such a pleasure. Thank you for taking your time out of the day. And I hope this touches on folks that they can start to bring awareness and havea better conversation to support our kids as they're going and navigating a time that we asadults didn't necessarily have to navigate.
56:22
Thank you, Andy.
56:24
He'll bat Thank you