Dr Michelle Drouin [00:00:02] My name is Michelle Drouin, I am a psychologist, a professor at Purdue University, Fort Wayne, I'm a senior research scientist for a large hospital system here in northeast Indiana. And I own my own company called Forensic Psychology Consultants, where we do consulting and expert witness work for criminal and civil cases all over the world. Oh, and I'm newly an author. I have a book coming out in February 2022 called.
Sahil Saluja [00:00:30] Out of Touch Society.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:00:32] Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine. So I'm really excited about it.
Sahil Saluja [00:00:36] Ok, Michelle, you're type A aren't you.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:00:38] I don't know.
Sahil Saluja [00:00:39] Really? Really?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:00:40] I guess I am.
Sahil Saluja [00:00:41] You don't know?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:00:42] Is it because I have four jobs? Is that it?
Sahil Saluja [00:00:45] More like ten jobs and you're writing a book and-
Huda Cadekiwala [00:00:48] Your kitchen is pretty perfect.
Sahil Saluja [00:00:49] How do you plan your day for someone who's doing this much work? How do you plan your day?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:00:54] I keep everything on my iPhone calendar, so everything is stacked pretty tightly as it was for this. You know, I sometimes am doubled up on the endings and beginnings of things, but I usually work on all of my jobs at some point in the day. And if I've done so, then I feel like I've given the proper attention to them. The harder thing and something that I'm not sure will resonate with the people who listen to this necessarily is juggling that work life with my family life. That's where it's really hard. To manage the four jobs as long as I can extend that to 10:00 or 11:00 p.m., it's fine. But if I have to prepare dinner or pick up my children or actually spend time with my husband, I think that causes more of a conflict. So managing my day means that I'm overlapping everything, scheduling everything, usually working on all four jobs at any given day, but also making some sacrifices. So I don't know that anyone who does this and segments themself out like I have, can really feel that they're filling any piece of their life a 100% of what they could give. So I'm always feeling a little bit like I'm you know, I could be giving more in every area.
Sahil Saluja [00:02:05] How about give yourself some downtime? What do you do in your downtime?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:02:08] I walk with my mom. Since covid started, we actually usually only see each other when we walk. So it's a really nice way to connect. She's young, she's really healthy, but we're pretty vigilant about keeping each other safe. So I'll take my dog and my mom and we go walking usually every morning for about an hour. And that's that's my downtime. I actually think it's a good way to start the day, too. They say that exercising in the morning will really help get you started getting your blood flowing and getting some good ideas. So I also will walk my dog with my husband at night. So I kind of bookend my day with two of my favorite people in the world doing something that's productive for us all.
Sahil Saluja [00:02:52] See we just depend on coffee. It gets the blood flowing. It's it's my favorite person in the world sometimes. Sometimes it's really close to my mouth, which is really great. I always keep it at a sipping distance.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:03:07] Yeah.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:03:07] I have to say, I think my husband and I might be the only two people I've ever known who don't drink coffee. So I have to find other means to.
Sahil Saluja [00:03:16] You haven't had Melbourne coffee, that's why.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:03:18] Oh OK. Well if I'm in Melbourne let's do that. Yeah.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:03:23] Yeah we'll have to, we'll have to hit you up. See I had to get a coffee machine because I was that person. I was a bit snobby. I would just be like,.
Sahil Saluja [00:03:30] You are a bit snobby.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:03:32] Instant coffee just doesn't cut it.
Sahil Saluja [00:03:34] It doesn't, it doesn't. Instant coffee is the worst invention in humanity.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:03:38] I've actually found out. Do you know how instant coffee is made?
Sahil Saluja [00:03:41] I don't know.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:03:43] No.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:03:43] So what they do is get a normal coffee from, like, the coffee beans, that liquid, they kind of freeze it and then they smash it up and they put it in a jar.
Sahil Saluja [00:03:51] That's shit.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:03:52] Yes, it's terrible.
Sahil Saluja [00:03:55] But knowing that you are really busy person, the first question I kind of wanted to ask just based on that is knowing that you are a person who spends - not spends but has everything on their phone, do you ever think that it can turn into an addiction. And how are you careful about that kind of thing?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:04:10] I will say I actually addressed this a little bit in my book because I do talk a lot to parents and reporters who want to know, are we addicted to our phones? How do we break this addiction? And in the book, I admit, yeah, I'm addicted to my phone. I think the average number of touches I'm paraphrasing here, but I think it's something like more than 5000. The average person touches their phone more than 5000 times a day. And I would say I'm probably slightly below average. But still, I mean, my phone is my constant companion. It is always near me. That's normal, though. And I'm going to explain why, because I said in the book that I have a relationship with my phone. My phone actually connects me to everything that I need. It connects me to everyone who I love, every obligation I have, every single bit of this life that I cherish, you know, via this phone. So I think that it's quite normal for us to be really attached to our phones. Now the addiction kicks in when you feel like you can't live without it, when you feel like you get nervous, when you're apart from it. Again, for people who are living busy lives that's quite normal. The problem occurs when it starts interrupting your everyday life. So do I attend to my phone at the expense of the other people in my life? Are my children feeling neglected because I'm always on my phone? Does my husband feel neglected? And the way that I cope with that is to carve out sacred times and sacred spaces. So in our home we have sacred times such as dinner time is a sacred time, car rides - short rides is our sacred time. So obviously I'm not on the phone if I'm driving, but my children also are not on their phones. If it's something like a three hour car ride, we'll let them be on their phones. But we want that time to be time where we're catching up. Some other times that we would do that is like if we have guests over, if we're playing games and it's such a strict rule in my house, I think carving out those sacred times and sacred spaces really helps. Also, my husband is very intent on us if we're watching television or watching a movie, no one can be on their phones. No phones in the bedroom. So for my children, they don't have phones in the bedroom. My husband and I, as soon as we get into bed, we attend to each other. We talk to each other. We have our intimate time together. So that's how I claim that I'm not addicted. Whether or not I really am, I'm not sure. But carving out those sacred times and sacred spaces makes me feel like although my relationship with my phone is a relationship, it's not overtaking anything else in my life. Do you guys feel the same?
Huda Cadekiwala [00:06:39] I went through a bit of a thing quite recently, so I got rid of my social media for about three years. I've got rid of my Facebook. I completely blanked out all my stuff on Instagram. I got rid of everything because it wasn't even taking over my life. I would say that social media itself puts you in a specific headspace, especially when you're mindlessly scrolling through fake versions of people's lives. And it's not to say that everyone's life that they post is fake.
Sahil Saluja [00:07:05] It is.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:07:05] Well, 50 percent. I mean, I'm sure that some of them are fake. Yes. But not everybody's the same. Right. So I think for me, it was just about that. It was constantly looking through that and going, what did I just look at? And I felt like that to me was an addiction or that was not really serving me in any way. So I got rid of it all. So when I went on a holiday, I decided not to take my phone with me. Yeah, I went to Africa and I just bought myself a camera and I thought, no, not taking my phone. I had like a piece of paper with everybody's numbers on it. Every time I go to, like, an Internet cafe, then I would talk to people and that would be it. And I bought like a basic phone over there. So if I needed any help, whatever. So that was kind of my thing. I am very conscious of it. So when we started, you know, social media at the moment, especially with podcasting and everything that we do, it's quite important. So I went back on social media. Yeah. And now I've found myself back into the whole like sitting around mindlessly scrolling especially just before bed.
Sahil Saluja [00:07:59] It really bothers me, because if we are watching TV, just like you, Michelle, if she is watching like a TV show, but she's also on the phone.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:08:08] Yeah.
Sahil Saluja [00:08:08] I feel it's disrespectful, because if I'm watching a TV show it's like
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:08:11] It's someones craft.
Sahil Saluja [00:08:13] It's like someone's creation. And she's just like, yeah, what's going on? But the one thing I did want to ask you is especially because you're talking about an intimacy famine in this time of covid where we are replacing those intimate friendships with people who we could meet in person and instead talking on the phone. And does that have an effect on the friendship itself or on the relationship?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:08:34] You're touching upon so many things that I actually mentioned in the book. So without giving too much of an explanation, what I'll say is one of the things I claim in the book is we're a trading small hits of dopamine that we're getting from these social media connections and a little text messages we get with friends and we're sacrificing for those small hits of dopamine, those huge shots of oxytocin that we might get when we sit with someone that we really care about, we hold their hand or we give them a hug. I'll just give a very innocent example of my mom. You know, we text message a lot through the pandemic. That's been our way of keeping in touch. We talk a lot, too. She calls me a lot. And lately, even when we walk, we don't touch each other. So I don't hold her hand. I don't hug her. And I really miss it. When we get hugs, if there are 20 secs or longer, our body washes with all of these feel good neurotransmitters and hugs are good for us. They actually help build our immune system. So the thing that we may have needed most during this pandemic has actually been forbidden. Right. So, yeah, I mean, I think you're touching upon a really big point. I will also say, though, that I think people who are not digital natives probably feel the loss a little bit more when they are making that trade off. So when I'm not seeing my friends, I think, you know, I want to get together with them. I would love to see them. I would love to sit with them and talk with them, and you guys know how stilted a conversation can be when you're text messaging or even over video, right? If the three of us were sitting in a living room together, we'd be sharing a glass of wine and laughing and it would just be so much more jovial. And I think for people who are non digital natives, more fulfilling. For people who are digital natives, there's this drip drench hypothesis that says that you can learn something by being drenched with it. They often apply this to stereotypes, right? So we are being drenched all the time with stereotypes, strong stereotypes. And if it's a really strong stereotype that might change the way you think about the world. The Drip hypothesis says that actually if you see little remnants of stereotypes in your world, those little teeny remnants can create that same manner of thinking. It doesn't have to be a flood of something. So as I thought about this and how it related to, for example, my kids who are 11 and 13 year old boys, I thought they're being raised on the drips. They're being raised on these little text messages, instant messaging, through discord. And maybe that's going to be fulfilling for that because their barometer is different than mine is or maybe yours is. Additionally, they are actually being primed for a world that has a very distant communication. They're preparing themselves for the emails they're going to have to send when they're working for those long distance communications they're going to need to do when they navigate in the professional world that they will soon join. Our world's are getting much, much more distant. I think you guys are probably the same in Australia, but in the United States, some of our major companies have declared work from home, a permanent position. So, I mean, this is something that they need to get used to. So maybe they're learning the communication medium of the future - of the now. Right. So I don't know that it's less fulfilling for them. It feels less fulfilling for me, though. So I think, again, you're hitting upon something that is probably one of the major points of my book.
Sahil Saluja [00:11:59] I'm not sure if you talk about this as well, but a lot of older generations, the boomer generation - suddenly they've found the phones and we have something called WhatsApp, which is massive. Right. And I've seen my parents, my dad just scrolling through WhatsApp for hours and hours, just watching videos or listening to, like songs or just mindlessly on it. And he loves it and they're so addicted to it. I don't know if there's any research done on how it's affected their generation.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:12:29] You know what? There isn't a lot you know, a lot of people who are boomers and older are afraid of technology. They haven't adopted it as easily. As we get older, we become a little bit less plastic in our way of thinking, a little bit more crystallized and falling into the patterns we once knew. But I will say that as you get older, it's a really lonely time of life. So people who are 50-55 years and older are among the loneliest in our entire population. A lot of things that we take for granted. I say this because I'm nearly 50. I'm I'm 47. So I'm including myself in the younger generation. But a lot of things that we take for granted, having close friends, having people who we can love and touch and go out with, they tend to drop off as we get older. And especially I have a chapter on growing old in my book and I talk about my grandma who died and when she died, everyone she knew, every single person she had ever known had already died. She was blind. She was living in a nursing home where the staff changed frequently. The people that she was a resident with would die. The average person lives, I think, less than two years in a nursing facility. So by the time she died, she had no one. She had nothing. And had she not been blind, I would have loved for her to be able to interact with social media. She loved to read. So she would just listen to books on tape, which, you know, there's a digital version of that now. But my aunt would get something from the library for her. And I just thought, how much more fulfilling would that be? Because she was still cognitively really sharp. If she could connect with people in Australia and talk to them about the book that she was reading. So the addiction comes because it provides a new way of connection that they didn't have before, a new type of entertainment that is totally appealing, whatever your age. And it's instantaneous. I grew up in an encyclopedia era. My entertainment was like grabbing a book from the shelf and thumbing through it. Imagine now for people who did grow up like that to have the world at their fingertips, it's completely alluring. So I can see why people of all ages get addicted to this device for information, entertainment, basically everything that you said but as well connection. They can connect with you, too. You said your parents, they can follow your life. They can connect with their friends. So I think it's an invaluable tool. It's both bad and good.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:14:51] It's about the user. And I think watching us be addicted to it has made them go, well, what's the big deal? And now they are
Sahil Saluja [00:14:57] like, holy shit, this is a big deal.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:15:00] It's amazing. Truly, it is a window, you decide how big that window is right? Into who you are, and some people, I think, like you were saying at the beginning of the show, in terms of how real is that life? Some people, they give you a very, very small window into who they actually are. Other people, they open it very wide so you can see everything they think and how they feel.
Sahil Saluja [00:15:26] Do you tell your kids how big that window should be? Do you guide your kids on that?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:15:31] I do. So my son, who's 13, is just allowed to have social media when he turned 13. It's a law here in the United States. It's called COPA (Child Online Protection Act). It's a Child Protection Act that says that anyone who is under the age of 13 is protected. So your identity is protected. It is actually supposed to help keep predators away from kids and predators, not just sexual predators, but any predatory behavior like people who want to exploit them financially, for example. So the predatory behavior is something that they're trying to address through this COPA act. In any case, because of that act, I told the kids, look, this is the only time in your life from zero to 13 where you're really protected. The federal government is protecting your information so you can't have social media until you're 13. So when my son turned 13, he's like, OK, I'm on social media. And then he just made his first post. So he's been 13 since last December and he just made his first post and he didn't show his face in it. And I also not only did I tell them about their own window, I always tell them the way you feel right now might be very different than the way you feel in 5 years and 10 years. So when you look back on what you posted, you might feel very differently than you do now. So I want you to be aware of that. And then my son, who's 13, said, I already know. I thought of stuff that I wanted to post and I would be so embarrassed now. So he's already getting that. But I think that's a good conversation to have with kids, to make them understand that where you are in life might be very different than where you are in 5 or 10 years. The other thing that I did, a lot of parents like to share their children's lives online.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:17:05] I was about to get to that.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:17:09] Sharenting is what it's called, like when parents are sharing- so parents who share information about their kids online. It's become a problem in the legal system. So there was a case of a woman in England, a young woman whose mom had posted a photo of her using the toilet when she was a little girl like two or three. And the daughter, when she was a teenager, basically sued the mother and said that that was a violation of her privacy. So when parents share things about their children that children then think are inappropriate, it can actually be some kind of legal issue. I don't know how that legal issue was resolved, but I do know it was a court case. But from my perspective, what I did with my own children is any time I capture media of them, I once was taking videos that I wanted to use to illustrate points in a presentation. It wasn't even social media. It was a presentation I was giving to the Department of Education, about three hundred people. And I asked them even when they were like four and six, can I use this media? This is what I'm using it for. Eventually they both gave permission, but they were both really reticent because I really nailed at home that this is their data. So I call it their online billboard. And so what I said to them is they have control about what goes onto their online billboard, including what I share. There are very few photos of my children, but anything I've ever posted of them, I've gotten their permission first. So the short answer is one hundred percent. I have made it a point since they were very young to not only talk about that, but we might get into this as well. But talk about sexting, talk about online predators, a lot of things that maybe parents wouldn't think to address. The second you put a connected device in your child's hand, you should be talking to them about online risks and what it means to have an online billboard.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:18:59] One million percent agree with you.
Sahil Saluja [00:19:01] 1 million?
Huda Cadekiwala [00:19:01] That's a lot of percent. But I fully agree. There's so much agreeance here. So it's funny that you brought this up because this was actually one of the questions I was going to go to eventually. But we may as well, now that you've nicely segued into it. I love the fact that you have treated them as an adult. Trigger alert: this is not to say that all parents that do this are horrible blah blah bla. I fully understand why some parents may, but I think it's like almost seen as if they are their property almost. Like when parents don't ask for permission. It's like you're my property. And until you grow up to understand this, until then, I'm going to post whatever I want of you. Sounds more malicious than it probably is. It's very harmless in the parent's mind, because to them it's like I'm showing off my child. I love my child and I want everyone to see how beautiful they are. So I know it comes from a very innocent place. But, you know, the way you've said it now in terms of I ask my children, are you OK with this? I think. I think that's really cool because it's kind of giving them a responsibility to not only be like I'm responsible for me, but also to understand the gravity of it. This is a concern because it's important. I know this parent in our community sort of and she is currently got this page for her children and she's got three kids, very, very young children. Two of them are females. And she's getting them into modeling. So they perform, they dance, they do those typical things that, you know, you see influencers do where they put makeup on and they like pose and all that sort of stuff. So she's full on posting that sort of stuff. And she wants them to be models. It's like two influencers, but they're all under the age of, I don't know, five or six or something. They're so small, they're so young. And they have no idea what the future holds for them, which concerns me so much. Them being her children. I don't have the right to be like this is it? Have you thought about this? Have you considered how this could affect their future? Because, yeah, they're doing this now and they think it's all fun and games. And when they get older, you don't know what's going to happen to them, how that's going to affect their mental health. I feel like parents don't really understand the gravity themselves almost, because if they understood it, they wouldn't be doing this I feel. For the parents out there that are like this in a way - What are the things that you think they need to look out for and consider for their children in terms of, like you said, that there's predatorial behavior, which is something I really want to get into because it's it's huge at the moment. I think it's rampant in terms of, you know, not just sexual predators, like you said, but also bullying children, trolling them. And it's, you know, and that's affecting their lives. So how can we kind of for parents, really put a lens on that?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:21:45] This is a great question. I think it goes hand in hand with what I believe. So I think you say something really true. When parents do this for their children, they are they've really innocent motives or really beneficial motives for the children - like this is supposed to set them up as a platform for their future endeavors. I'm sure the parent that you mentioned. So I can see why parents want to do that. But they also have to just consider that the Internet is a sadist playground. It is a place that has anonymity, it has geographic distance. And I've seen a lot of children exploited and hurt in ways that I would have never imagined. My kids always joke with me because I'll come home and I'll give them some kind of lecture. And they're like, Mom, what did you read today? And I will read, you know, things about a teenage boy being lured into a chat room where he thought he was talking to another girl and he masturbates on camera. And then the predator on the other side says, I have this video of you, now you have to pay me. This one teen in particular as a young boy in England. And he pled with the person and said, 'I'm only a child. I don't have this kind of money.' And they said, well, you've better find it or we're sending this video to everyone in your school. So he went to his mom and his mom went to the police. They did the things that people are supposed to do. They didn't hide from the problem, the parents didn't just dismiss it. And then the next day, they didn't pay the money and they said, we can actually find these people. The police said because it was coming from someplace in Africa, it seemed to be some type of ring there that was exploiting people for sextorting them, basically. And so the police were like, unfortunately, we can't do anything. And so the kid said, I don't want to go to school the next day. What if they send the video? And then when the mom got home from school, he had hung himself. And I hear about those things. And that is enough for me. That one story is enough for me to want to shelter my children from having an online presence, because that was one mistake made by one innocent child who didn't understand the depth of deception that happens on the Internet. So I think just parents need to consider the other side and they need to make their kids really aware that these are some of the risks. I am big on children having ownership of their own decisions. So, for example, when my children are able to make decisions about their own health care, like a certain vaccination, and I'll just come out and say that we vaccinate, however, something like Gardasil. OK, so Gardasil is a vaccination that they now recommend for HPV. So it's a sexually transmitted disease. Most people have it. And I have two sons. They recommended for boys as well as girls. And I had the doctor explain it to them. And then they get to choose whether or not they have that and at what age they have it, because it lasts about ten years and then you need a booster. So at what age they think that that's going to be most useful to them to see them through, you know, a nice decade of sexual experience. So I feel I'm probably one of the parents who involves my children and a lot of the decisions about their lives. So I think that that would be a good first step for a lot of parents. Just have their children take ownership and agency over their own lives generally. Not just their online lives. That's one thing I did say too in the book. There's no online life and offline life. It's just life, right? It is just life. So the decisions that you're making with your children about how they walk through this world need to involve them. And if they're too young to understand and I think just parents need to be really aware that once you give up your child's privacy, it's gone and you need to weigh that for yourself. Is that sacrifice of privacy worth it for what you might eventually benefit from whatever exposure you're giving them? And I mean, child modeling is a thing. If you get a child into actual modeling agency, that's a great route. They can earn a lot of money. I know child influencers are becoming a thing, but I just don't know the direct route to the money source as well. But like, if they're trying to get their child to earn money for college, I mean, that's a legitimate route. But again, something that I think kids, if they can weigh in, let them weigh in.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:26:00] I think also the problem with all of... and I think that this is across the board, some of them grow up and they are great, mentally, quite stable. And it's like, well,
Sahil Saluja [00:26:09] Like who? Give me one name.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:26:12] No I know some.
Sahil Saluja [00:26:13] Yeah, give me one right now?
Huda Cadekiwala [00:26:15] You're just testing me right now. But I know that there are some kids out there that actually are guided properly and have a mature, you know, grounding to them and the people around them are supportive and all that sort of stuff. And so they don't just completely go off the handle. But, you know, you hear about a lot of kids that often grow up with huge mental health issues and lots of pressures. And, you know, I think that's a scary thing. And I think it's a real thing. Right. What I think is happening, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that because of social media and because of this access to the world, kids don't really get to leave their childhood anymore. Like, I look back and I think 'Man! I was a kid.', you know, because the iPhone came out when I was I think it was like 18 or something, you know, that was when the iPhone came out. It was perfect for me, worked out really well because I think that it's helped me have a childhood. Like I remember climbing trees, running around. I remember those things. I used to do that. Whereas now I see kids and I'm like, you grow up fast. You kind of skipped being a kid. I don't know if that's something you've noticed as well, Michelle.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:27:24] I mean, you're literally speaking to my life right now. My 13 year old. I grounded him from his phone yesterday for today. So electronics is the one thing I can really keep from him because like you guys are saying the nature of relationships has changed so much that grounding him from seeing his neighborhood friends, I mean, they barely see each other face to face. Right. So grounding him from his phone or from his computer is pretty much the the hardest punishment I can give to my thirteen year old. And so he was out without his phone for one day and he he brought school, which I'm sure his teachers hated this little tech deck. It's a little mini skateboard that you can do finger skate on it.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:28:09] Yeah I know the one.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:28:10] He used to play with it when he was like nine or ten. So apparently he fished around his room today for something that would keep them occupied if they didn't have his phone at school, which he should not be on anyway. In any case, he brings the tech deck. I pick him up from school and he said, 'Mom, look, watch this, I can flip it. I can move it. Look at how far. And there's this one kid, and he did it and flipped all the way to the ceiling. And one of my teachers let me play with that' and then he said, 'Do you think I can order some of these tech decks and can I get some more?'. And I said, 'well, why don't we just go to the store and see if they have any?' Because I'm thrilled that my thirteen year old wants to go to the toy section of a store. So we got in there and he said, 'I can't believe we're going to a toys section of the store'. And I was like, I know it's kind of refreshing. I love it. So I saw a glimpse of my child in that moment, the child who wanted to play with something. And then he said, 'oh, should we get some for Noah'. Who is his younger brother. So not only did he want to play, he wanted to also do something nice for his brother. Yes, technology is robbing children of the experiences that we think are quintessentially youthful experiences. In the book I call it the 'No Kids at the Pool Phenomenon' because we have this great neighborhood. It's purpose built for families that has fifty miles of walking trails, parks, basketball court and has pools. And my kids are on the swim team and so they go each morning in the summer and swim. But in the afternoon there are no kids there. And I grew up going to the pool and just spending days there, like in the movie The Sandlot, where the kids would go to the pool. And that was time well spent with neighborhood friends. And yeah, there are so few kids outside, even in my neighborhood, which is, you know, is saturated with families. I think the nature of childhood has changed, but I will also say it's changed for some groups more than others. I think that there is a big push back, especially from people who for one are in the know. So like the tech giants really trying to eschew technology for their own children. Additionally, when I give talks in schools, the more affluent schools like the private schools with high tuition, those parents are like, we want our children to be baking and doing clay. And they are really pushing back on tech. And I think it's taking a little while for the rest of everyone to catch on because we've been fed this message that our children need to be technologically savvy in order to be successful. But then you have a big group of people who are now pushing back on tech.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:30:47] And I also think the issue would then lie in the fact that there are some kids allowed to have tech and then your kid will look at it and go, hang on a minute, what am I missing out on? Why are they allowed? I could imagine that they'd be kids coming home going, oh, you know, Henry from my class, he's got a mobile phone. Why can't I have a phone?
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:31:03] I think that's why I think, again, what I said, when parents give a connected device to their children, they have to start with rules. Don't give a phone without rules. One of the rules we have in my house is if I ever say to having your phone, you have to hand it to me right then. And I could look at it at any time. So I am always, while you are living in this house, going to be someone who has access to this. You have no private life, because I need to know that I have parental supervision of whatever this private life is, because it can so easily go off the rails. There's no way I can do the job that I do and see the tragedy that I see without also putting some kind of monitoring aspect on my children. Other parents are more strict in terms of like they have monitoring apps on their phones. They'll restrict their access to some websites, they'll turn off the Internet at night or things like that. For us, we just have a couple of rules around tech and mostly we just try to get them to monitor themselves. The problem is a lot of parents gave the phones without setting up the rules first because they just didn't know. Right. They didn't know how big of a deal it would become. But for all parents, before you give your kid a phone, if you can set up some rules, then I think that will both help your relationship with your teen. It'll help establish structure. And then as well, it will help avoid some of the pitfalls that are not necessarily unavoidable. But you can limit them somewhat in their exposure.
Sahil Saluja [00:32:21] And actually what happened was initially the reason for a phone was great. But the phone is not a phone anymore. It's a computer. And that's the whole issue. If you actually look at outgoing and incoming calls on people's phones now, they're barely any.
Huda Cadekiwala [00:32:34] That's true. That's actually true. Yeah. Nowadays you go and get a phone plan and you're like unlimited is just given to you because there's no there is no value in it anymore because they are like whatever. It's not like people make calls nowadays. So they beleive it doesn't cost us much to actually give plans that are now unlimited calls and text, because people don't do that. They use data.
Sahil Saluja [00:32:55] Yeah. And it's so funny. When I was in university, so I went to Michigan, I went to Ann Arbor.
Dr Michelle Drouin [00:33:00] Oh, hello. I'm so excited. That's so close to me.
Sahil Saluja [00:33:03] Yeah, I know. And I remember like and you would remember this AT&T had this thing where 9 pm to 5 am was unlimited calls. And I was like a can't wait for that shit.
Sahil Saluja [00:33:13] It used to be so awesome. And I had that little like AT&T plan phone. It wasn't an iPhone.