What Has Happened To Kids?

This podcast is hopefully going to be educational and helpful to people who don't understand addiction and maybe have a loved one who is suffering from addiction or is trying to get clean and sober, and also for people who suffer from addiction and maybe just want something to listen to for support, guidance, information, coaching, anything and everything that's related to addiction. I hope you enjoy.

This episode of the Doc Jacques podcast is going to be exploring today's youth and specifically from the perspective of a college professor. She's wanting to know what happened. How did things change so quickly? Dr. Allison Karas, PhD, Spanish applied linguistics professor at a university and her first years of teaching being that she is not that much older than the students that she's teaching, but the great divide that has occurred due to technology.

She's a little apprehensive and confused and upset, frankly, about how today's youth are experiencing life as she describes it in ways to understand the disconnect that the telephone and technology has created and the anxiety and the stress and the depression that seem to be permeating their existence. So join me as we talk to Dr. Karis and understand from her perspective, kind of what she's seeing and what's happened.

I was seeing that there was a lack of a look in my students' eyes when I was trying to teach them and I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. It seemed to be a disconnect. And I was thinking about how I learned and how I studied and I was seeing that they weren't quite processing the same way. And then I realized, maybe it has something to do with the phone.

I started to notice an impatience, a... a rushed sort of sense in my students, even when we had blocked time to chat with each other, maybe a catch up during office hours and just to see what's going on and how to approach doing your homework or how to study for the next test. And so I'm seeing the lack of attention, even during this blocked off dedicated time where we're supposed to say, study this type of reading for the test, you can practice this way.

And the students that might come through are, of course, some are focused and they're writing their list and they're processing the information. They've got it down, ready to go for later to prepare. But then there are some who are in there that are not even focused on this during this dedicated time. I'm seeing that. They're in their own world, even though they're in my office. And we're talking about a strategic plan to up your grade or improve your performance in some way. But where are you?

And so I was getting more and more concerned about the focus, the lack of focus that I'm seeing in the students sitting one-on-one with me in my office to plan for their own success. And then I'm seeing all this or hearing all of these anecdotes, all of these stories, that all I'm thinking as the more I hear is, oh, there's a little depression in there, maybe there's some anxiety. I'm just recognizing this from my own personal experience.

I'm no specialist, no expert in this field of psychology, but I didn't know what else to do but observe, recognize that I know this behavior or I know this story or I know that anecdote. I've lived that. I've lived something similar to that. And so I'm seeing a pickup in this among my students and I'm getting more and more worried about where they're headed without these personal connections. So it's making me really, I can't say it enough. It's making me sad. It's making me worried.

It's making me concerned. And I want them to know that they have a direction, but it's up to them to find it, no matter how cheesy that sounds. So I feel like I'm there to help guide them as their elder, now that the age gap is getting larger. I feel like Matthew McConaughey, right? I stay the same, they stay the same, I get older, whatever it is, like in Dazed and Confused. But it's really...

So they're not seeing, I think, overall that they're using their devices so, so much that they're missing the personal connection and thus freeing up the headspace for this hotbed of stress, anxiety, depression, whatever it may be, that all of this processing, all of the cognitive processing, all of the learning is going on really in this device, in this device. appendage that they're raised with, they're conditioned to use this device, this appendage in a certain way. We were not.

And so I'm seeing a completely different type of processing is my point. It's really, I don't know what to do to work with it yet, but I'm trying to tackle the emotional side of it first.

Maybe I was starting to email videos out and pictures. But what I'm seeing is a difference in my upbringing coming through high school with the flip phone to text or call mom when I'm ready to go home after lacrosse practice to, yeah, showing off the new iPhone that's this groundbreaking technology that's just hit. all the way to just learning the different features that will help me in my daily life or social life.

But what I'm seeing in terms of the students, what I started to notice almost right away was there seems to be a different type of processing going on. And might that be because they were raised on this stuff, on this technology, on these apps, on these distractions, on this disconnection?

The look in their eyes then upon receiving that suggestion is, oh, I would have never thought of that. That's what I mean. So it's those snippets, those chunks, but then where's the connection and a through line of logic? That's what I'm not seeing. I see sentence fragments in their language. Spoken language or written? Spoken and written, mostly written.

And I see this... this overall lack of engagement with whether it be material me each other the engagement and the interest it's again it's it's breaking my heart to see overall and it makes me celebrate those that i come across who are i i see them with their feet on the ground i see that they are seers. They're knowers. They are aware of their surroundings. They can relate to others easily. They have it down. They understand the world, it seems, and how to function within.

There are others who seemingly and sadly don't know how to navigate at all. And a way to navigate or in order to navigate, you need to connect.

they feel connected to the phone and that's where they get that feeling of feeling better right one of the things that we talk about in addiction is and and in trauma recovery is the ability to feel felt two people are talking and connecting and the point of that as a lot of my addict clients will try to figure out is like what's the point of going to meetings what's the point of working with a sponsor what's the point of you know spending time with other people because addiction's best friend

is isolation. And so you wanna feel felt. You can't feel felt from a device. It's a device.

Now you've put them in a sterile cage with nothing to do by themselves. They have nothing else except for that drug of choice that they become addicted to. And then they die from using it. So he tried a different research. He put the rats in by themselves, but he put in every rat toy that he could think of balls and tubes and wheels. And he put down lots of like the, the Cedar bedding and he had food and he had regular water. And he had the drug-laced water.

And then he would also put them in an interaction environment where they could interact with other rats as well. Surprisingly, they didn't use the drug-laced water. They would eat. They would drink. They would get on the wheel. They would play with the little toys. They would interact with each other. And occasionally, they might drink from the drug-laced water. But they didn't die. And they didn't use that water. What's missing? Right.

So what you're talking about is this kind of learned response of isolation from the use of a cell phone where they live in this virtual world from the time they're a child. I mean, we've all seen kids walking around in stores in the shopping cart glued to that cell phone or the little kiddie iPad thing because mom wants to shop. And so then a mom is not talking to them. Mom is not interacting with them.

Mom shouldn't have brought them to the store because They just forced their child to be checked out. So that kind of a learned response. And that's the generation that you're talking about, that you're teaching. That's what they did. So this appendage truly is an appendage. It doesn't seem to help. Is that what you're saying?

And then you are introducing the idea to me, at least of using this, this device, this appendage as a knee jerk reaction. This is where I go for my comfort. This is where I go to. That's addiction. That's addiction. It could

And they come to me and they say, can you help my child? And they can't enforce any rules because they never have had any rules. And so usage of devices or whatever, they've given that up a long time ago. They've given up that control a long time ago. And so now their parenting is limited to we don't know what to do. And this is our last chance before our son or daughter goes to college and fix them.

And I don't know what I can offer them other than just to say, well, they're connected to their phones and disconnected from reality. Most of the time, those are also the kids that are heavily engaged in smoking pot and drinking. that the parents know about. A lot of times they're actually, they've been dropping acid, they do cocaine.

There's some heroin usage, but kids tend to be a little bit more concerned about heroin because they hear so much about the addictive qualities of it and they've had friends who have been addicted or died. So they tend to shy away more from heroin in those cases, but pot and the psychedelic drugs and alcohol. Parents know about the pot and the drinking, but they don't know about the other drugs, cocaine and heroin.

So the feeling of disconnect and anxiety and depression that you're describing a lot of times comes up with additional things to that. And the phone is a great way to get those things. That's how they get it. So it really becomes a trap. They're addicted to the phone. They're addicted to other things usually. And here's another concept for you. Most of my clients, actually 99.9% of them, I've had one or two that claimed this is not the case, but they all have trauma in their childhoods.

Some really severe, some not so severe, but trauma, the five forms of abuse usually. And they come in and they talk about the abuse, but it's never really addressed or treated. So they're trying to escape that feeling of uncomfortable. And so the only way they can do that is to isolate because they don't want to talk about it. They don't want to have to re-experience it. So they start using a drug of choice, whether it's the phone or drugs or alcohol, whatever.

That behavior then becomes abusive, right? So now they're self-abusing on top of whatever else they've had with their trauma. So it becomes this unbelievable peak It just keeps growing and growing of views. So by the time you get them in the classroom, now what are they experiencing? They're in full bloom. And this is the first time they've been away from home a lot of times, right?

You just... I know this seems like it's a nuisance for you to come in and waste your time during these office hours that I've made you attend to talk about why I have on my syllabus, no phones in the classroom, but maybe there's a gem in there to lead you to a connection. Maybe in these five minutes that you're here with me, you can sit with me and talk and let the conversation meander and have a social connection. Maybe that can happen.

which I imagine is why you're getting so emotional about it when you're sitting here talking about it.

And that's beyond the scope of my control as a professor. I would be probably reprimanded for crossing the line and trying to help.

In my office, when somebody comes in and sits down, it's usually gotten very bad. That's why they're there. When I'm talking to them and trying to get them to tell me what is the problem, they don't know either. I get that answer a lot. So what's the problem? I don't know. Many times they've been to two or three or four different therapists and they never brought up the fact that they were molested. They never brought up the fact that mom was, was borderline and abusive.

They never brought up the fact that dad had affairs on mom and then left, but then came back. And if they did mention it, the therapist a lot of times will just kind of note that and then they move on and want to talk about the relationship they have with their mother recently because they had a fight. And so the answer to the problem is to not deal with the coping mechanism itself because that's how they've learned how to respond to the stress and anger or depression.

But rather, the answer is to work on the actual problem which is the trauma and the abuse, the neglect, the abandonment, whatever went on. And unfortunately, someone like you, who apparently is very much a feeling person, you're receiving the disconnect. You're receiving and noting and aware of that kind of situation, but you're powerless to do anything about it.

And yet you're subject to dealing with it So the answer is to get the clinical help you need and to work with somebody who actually understands trauma and understands how to treat trauma, not just therapy, but trauma, because that is the problem. And the isolation that comes with those feelings of being trapped, whether it's as extreme as PTSD or just major depressive disorder, moderate or severe, is difficult.

But labeling it is something also people don't want to do because they don't want that label. And it becomes difficult then for someone to seek help because they have to admit that they have a problem of some type. So hopefully they would come into an office like mine before it got that bad But I think with this generation, what I'm seeing with the normalization of pot smoking and what I used to call the 420s, but now there is no like 420 doesn't exist really.

But it's because states have legalized it. And now everybody says, oh, look, see, it's legal. It's not a problem. It's less harmful than alcohol. And from my perspective as a treating clinician, it's actually worse than alcohol. It's way worse.

Before it was legal for recreational use, I heard a clinician being asked, so how many of your patients that you see that have an addiction to heroin or something else come into your practice with a medical marijuana card? And without even hesitating, he said, 100%. How many of those actually needed, had a medical need for medical marijuana? Zero. And so it's like the idea of using drugs and alcohol has become normalized in a way that I have never experienced.

I'm a child of the 70s and 60s and 70s when everybody was smoking pot and it was dazed and confused in that 70s show kind of environment.

You know, when I was growing up, we didn't, my parents were Eisenhower era parents born in the depression. And I, The answer to everything was, well, get off the couch and get a job, dumbass. You know, that 70s show with Red, that was his answer to everything.