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Okay, so a few things we wanted to get into in the headlines.
I mentioned the cell phones thing. Yes, so there's this. It was discussed.
It was one of the first topics with the launch of Merritt Street Media this week. One of the first topics they handled on the morning news. Should cell phones be banned in schools? And part of why this is coming out is there's this new book out Jonathan his last name is Haidt, but he's a psychologist and he just wrote this book, The Anxious Generation. It just came out and it was instantly a New York Times bestseller.
And he's writing in this book all about these principles of like how we've created this generation for as much as our mental health awareness seems to be up and look, you and I are big advocates for mental health, but that we've created a mentally struggle generation. But he talks about the cell phone and the impact of it, and he has what he thinks should be the four new norms.
One no smartphones before high school, two no social media before age sixteen, three phone free schools, and four emphasizing more independence free play and responsibility in the real world amongst kids. Now, I have to say I'm behind all that, but I wanted to talk to you because even though I parent with you with the kids, I didn't come into Josh and Taylor's lives until they were teenagers. You
had younger kids obviously, So what do you think? No smartphones before high school, no social media before sixteen, and phone free schools.
Should cell phones be banned in schools?
One hundred percent? I agree with everything. That should be a law mandate, send it right now. I so agree.
By the way, we would be a little behind on this, like France, I believe it's illegal and I don't know how much it's really enforced, but for kids to have phones before age thirteen, to have them at all.
Doctor Phil talks about this all the time, that you can really draw a very direct line to ninety five percent of the problems going on with the youth over medicated, to the pharmaceuticals and suicide, loneliness up, yeah, all of it, all of it. You can draw a direct line to the time when we invented and brought out smartphones, period, social media, et cetera. Everything that has ailed this generation and really the previous one. You can go right back to the cell phones. It is so well.
And I would say the smartphone because I do think like I grew up get a flip phone, right, I grew up with a cell phone where I had calling. And I remember when texting was invented. I was in high school and at the time, I actually thought, it's funny how I've changed. I remember thinking this texting thing is so dumb.
I will never do it.
Why wouldn't you just call someone? And I don't think cell phones and texting were bad. I mean maybe it made us all a little overly communicative. Like you know, it's funny when you tell me that you like called your parents once a week from college. Sometimes I think, like, should I be talking to the kids more? Should I call them more? Just because I miss them? And then I also want to make sure that while they're like
away at college, we maintain a good relationship. But then sometimes I think, no, you know, quality over quantity, Like I got dinner with Taylor this week. You had a business dinner and I wanted to check in with Taylor and see her, and a two hour dinner with her, I was like, this was so great, Like we connected and we had really good conversation, and I would rather have that than like forty texts I sent her during the week.
You know that, just because now they mean nothing and it's not not nothing, that's too strong of a word, but they just become less meaningful because you get thousands of them a day and they just kind of roll. Even if you say something really demonstrative and important, it's just it's a text and you're going to get and it may mean something just to that moment, and then that high and the dopamine and all that's gone because you're going to get fifty thousand more techts that day.
Well, I do think we all live really people live more spread out lives now than they used to. I think people used to kind of stay where they grew up more and now we all move around the world and we travel more, and so it is great to be able to stay in touch. But I would put it at social media and at smartphones number one.
If the kids need you, trust me, they're going to call you. I talked to Taylor this morning because she had a really big day, and we facetimed and talked to each other face to face for a good thirty minutes about something and it was good news, but she wanted to share it that if she had texted me, I would have texted back, great, babe, I love you. I'm so proud of you. Boom, it's gone. Instead, we had a meaningful conversation your dinner. The kids will reach
out again. Yeah. I had to pay long distance phone bills when I was in college, and so we couldn't afford it. So I called my grandmother and I and grandparents, and I called my mom and dad on Sundays. That was like my day, Sunday afternoon. I would call.
Everybody, but you made the time.
But we made the time and we had those conversations. And by the way, I was fine. I didn't need to talk to them six days a week. So yeah, and so I agree that, you know, if people are out there and I think to get to a point you were about to make, I don't know what happened
with your kids. The divorce definitely advanced things, and so I kind of empathize with those people that are going through divorces because you lose contact and you lose control over your kids, and so therefore that often speeds up the delivery of phones. I would have loved to have been able to say, here's a flip phone you can or a phone that doesn't have any capability other than
texting and a phone call period. And if you want to give kids a smartphone that can absolutely do nothing, you could put a lock on it that they can't do anything. That's fine by me too. But they didn't need to ever have social media, and they didn't for quite some time. But the divorce is what sped that up. They were thirteen or fourteen, because that's when we got divorced.
Because you're like thinking, okay, I need to be able to pick them up from soccer practice, or like if they have to stay late after school they.
Got a call and you want to stay in touch too.
And saying well, and I hope that exists, Like there should be some version of like I don't know, call it kid phone where you just can make calls or even only just one number, call parents, call emergency, and.
Like send texts. Maybe I don't know, but I do think. And I was sitting here wondering, like, why hasn't this happened sooner? And maybe it's just because over the past decade the research has been done, and now we have the research to back it up and show something I think we can all feel and kind of know, which is that social media, while it can connect us also and while it can expose us to new information into
seeing new things, can also be very negative. It dumps dopamine in our brain and then we get addicted to that dopamine. It can be very isolating in terms of like it makes you feel like everyone else is living this life that you're not living. And kids' brains aren't formed for that yet, their identities aren't formed for that yet. Like, I think social media is potentially toxic enough for adults. When I think about the fact that like young kids
are on it, I can't even imagine. And Bo Burnham, who was this guy who got really big on Vine and then has since gone on to be like an Oscar nominated screenwriter, he said he's very anti social media, and he said this thing that always sticks with me. He's like, when you put a kid on social media, you're asking them to declare who they are to the world.
And they don't know who they are yet. And I thought, God, that's so true.
Imagine if you're trying to figure out who you are in front of the world. It's like we've made everybody a child star, like child stars talk about how bad their childhood was.
And that's what social media does to everyone.
The algorithm that they've created, and obviously the documentary about this and it's been found, but these are you know that this is damaging, it's driving kids to all kinds of horrible things. These are facts we know this. Congress knows this, the President knows this, everybody knows that this is harmful and bad. But these are billion dollar companies, so they have people fighting for them in Congress, people fighting for them on every level. So nothing changes. You know,
you'll hear about cases here and there. They get hauled before Congress and they do the dog and pony show. But at the end of the day, nothing's going to change because of money. It's not even debatable. It's not going to change because these people have the money, they have the purse strings, and so I don't know where you go from that other than this lies within the parents' hands and we're the ones that will have to decide and make these hard choices.
And I understand how hard that can be, because when you're a parent you're also having a parent based on what other parents are doing, because your kids coming home and they're like, well, everybody else has a phone, and I can't keep in touch with everyone, and you feel like you're isolating your kid. But I do think we're just at that tipping point now where like it's not even that you're speculating or you're sensing, it's that the research is showing.
And I mean I'm seeing all these like headlines.
Research shows kids need more risky play, Research shows kids should get outside more. Research shows kids need to be more independent. Like I I do, I wish and I hope that our government would do things like I think what I compare it to a lot is I grew up with DARE, the DARE program, like resist drugs at school. It's getting to the point that we know that social media.
Is addictive like a drug, and like we might I think, I wish the government would step in and regulated, but like you said, maybe with money they won't.
The lobbyists that they have the power that they have over these companies. And it's also you can go so deep on this about you know, favored nations of like, look, we're not going to do this but we have an
election coming up. We need you to censor this or say this or The algorithm works in a lot of different ways, and you know, obviously all that got exposed when Elon Musk took over, then Twitter, now X and so it goes deep and they know they know what they're doing, they know they're harming kids, but they're not going to turn These are public companies and they have shareholders to answer to, and so I ultimately all of this comes back to the choices you make as a parent,
and you you know it's it's you fight that fight as hard as you can for as long as you can. Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most dramatic pod ever and make sure to write us a review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you next time.