De-Stress For Success with Isabella Ferguson
This podcast is about finding calm. I talk to the experts and bring you evidence-based practical methods to help you destress and live purposefully. In my early 40’s, I bowed out of a 20 year legal career “to spend more time with the kids”. However it was more than that. Decades of running on high anxiety and drinking to cope had had its toll on my nervous system and I was burnt out. I didn’t know it at the time, but from there I started years of recovery and ultimately stepped into a new way of living. I went to rehab, retrained as a counsellor and coach, created a successful counselling practice, became a motivational & corporate wellness speaker, took up painting and now support others to destress for success.
https://isabellaferguson.com.au
De-Stress For Success with Isabella Ferguson
5. Phone Stress and Addiction with Professor Selena Bartlett
Chances are you own an iPhone or are a parent, aunty, uncle, grandparent or school-teacher. If so, get ready to have your world rocked as we sit down with globally recognised neuroscientist, Professor Selena Bartlett, as we explore how our beloved devices manipulate our brain health, increase our stress levels, diminishes our happiness, disrupts our relationships and exposes our children to addiction , mental health problems and safety risks. Our iPhones are mini-poke machines specifically made to hook us in and our kids are mimicking us and taking their use to a whole new level. This episode promises to alter your perspective on your relationship with mobile technology.
In this episode, we confront the realities of the current mental health crisis among young people – a crisis significantly influenced by technology. We're handing our children's safety to third-party apps, while crime networks exploit our negligence. Professor Bartlett lays bare the grim truth that our children's safety is at stake and our reliance on parental controls and screen time restrictions is woefully inadequate.
But it's not all doom and gloom. We round off our conversation by focusing on the crucial need for a fresh approach to parenting in this tech-saturated era. We have the parenting power to regain control by setting stronger boundaries, understanding the red flags of tech addiction and grooming and by committing to a carefully crafted Tech Family Plan that can act as a protective shield for the whole family. This eye-opening episode is a call to action to reshuffle our priorities and shield our brain health and our children from the darker aspects of the digital world.
To learn more about Professor Bartlett's work, visit:
https://www.profselenabartlett.com/about
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drselenabartlett/
https://www.instagram.com/prof_selena_bartlett/
*If you are in the education sector, parenting sector or have any ideas on how to spread this message, please email me at isabella@isabellaferguson.com.au and I will relay your message to Professor Bartlett
ISABELLA FERGUSON
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Professor Selena Bartlett joins us today on De-Stress for Success. Professor Bartlett is a world-renowned neuroscientist. She is professor in clinical sciences at the Queensland University of Technology. Outside the lab, the professor shares her powerful message about how to train the mindset using the principles of brain plasticity. Additionally, she is the podcast host of the amazing Thriving Minds podcast. Today, we are tackling our obsession with our iPhones. We're talking about the topic of how it impacts our brain health, our stress levels and how we are passing on our bad habits and our stress to our kids. Welcome to the podcast, Selena.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you for having me again and I'm really grateful to be here.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much. I'll just kick off with a question how is our mobile phone news impacting our brain health as adults and increasing our stress levels?
Speaker 2:Well, the first obvious thing to think about is addiction. So I'm an addiction neuroscientist, as you probably know, and I studied alcohol addiction for a long time and I actually got one of the first blackberries when I was running a huge lab in America and it had that little red light going off. And one day I looked down and I recognised that I was responding immediately to the red light going off. And this is in the early 2000s. People remember before the competition, before everyone was on the iPhone. But being a neuroscientist and understanding Pavlovian conditioning meaning that's what addiction is it's a paired response. So phones have been specifically designed to keep us on them and you've seen this in. There's a Netflix documentary called the Social Dilemma that talks about how to hack our psychology. What they're really doing is tapping into a very, very old circuit in the brain.
Speaker 2:And that's how we train dogs we train them with treats. So think of a phone in the same line and you know that you feel really attached to your phone like nothing else. In fact, what I'm noticing now in the world is that people actually prefer to be with their phone than with people. So that's a demonstration of what addiction is. Addiction becomes self-destructive, and you've talked about this, isabella, a lot in your podcast, and so that's what's happening, and the only way to become aware of that is to just put your phone away for a day and see what happens. How you feel about that? And that's us as adults, where we only got to be part of this picture. For me, I only got a BlackBerry when I was in my late 30s, so my brain had been well and truly formed as an adult by then. So we are in a different history of the world in 2023.
Speaker 1:When our kids are watching us Is it almost akin to like a mini-pokie machine, in the sense that you get all these dings, you get lights flashing, you get likes, you get all those notifications on your phone and so even when you're a conversational, you're distracted, you're just picking it up Like I think, if I could time the amount of times I pick it up each hour, it's shocking when you look at it statistically.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's how the sensory system is tapped into the behavior system in the brain, exactly so notifications. But why have they moved to short reels? Yeah, and 10-second bytes is because our tension span has been degraded so desperately from being on the phone all the time and on technology on laptops, everything that we now can only watch videos for five seconds and then keep scrolling. And TikTok has really done that, hasn't it? It's gone to speed. And what you're describing is what the addiction circuit in the brain is. So there's no difference.
Speaker 2:Smartphone addiction, gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, heroin, drugs you know too much of everything where we're not in control of it anymore, where you're reaching to something beyond your conscious awareness. That's what addiction is. So you can ask anyone addicted to something and they'll say I don't know why I did that, I didn't want to do it. The other thing I've been noticing in the world now is that it's really destroying young relationships between young children and I shouldn't say young, I mean young adults as well and it's because of this privacy issue where we start to imagine what they're looking at on their phone. And this can even go across all relationships, even older relationships. It's become so immersive in our environment that no one's even paying attention to what we're doing because we just believe in it so much. It's the biggest cult I've ever seen hit the world that we're bound down to without question or curiosity or taking the lead and saying, yes, this is really valuable for a tool, but we also need to be in control of it.
Speaker 2:We're being told we're not in control of it. We've been told this is absolutely the future and all jobs are going to be dictated by this. So therefore, if your kids aren't there, then they're going to miss out on jobs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if we were to summarize, really, how this phone is impacting the adult in terms of their stress levels, you can look at the obvious things. It impacts intimacy and relationships. I know I have to do a hard rule with my husband about don't look at the phone and text while I'm talking to you or keep it away from the dinner table those little basic things that I know families are trying to navigate. But in terms of our stress levels, for example, I know that you promote in your brain health exercises and all the work you do, for example, refraining from taking you into the bedroom, don't look at it as the first thing you do in the morning and there's a connection then with our stress and how we're, I guess, becoming less present in the moment and more focused on this machine. Is there a yes?
Speaker 2:there's a brain mechanism. What's going on? Yeah, so as soon as you take the narrow view on a phone, for example because our brain is mainly visual there's a direct link between the visual pathway and the stress pathway in the brain what you're doing is you're turning up the natural pathway that drives stress responses. So when I say, do the opposite, like take a panoramic view, go outside in nature, then you're doing the opposite to that you're actually turning down the natural stress system. So there's a highway in the brain between what you see and how you feel in terms of stress. So this is the neuroscience of the pathway. So when I'm talking about that, I'm talking about the deep brain structures that built for stress detection.
Speaker 2:So the other thing that happens on a phone, as you know, and everyone's trying to grab our attention and they all know how to hack it by giving us things that are really stressful and that's what we stay hooked on. We're looking for the disaster, and there have been a lot of natural disasters. There's a lot of war and a lot of things going on, but you don't see 100 beautiful stories that you're scrolling through on your phone and you have to intentionally do that. So that's really hard as a human being, because our main, oldest part of the brain is designed to look for threats first, because it's so important to keep us alive. But, as you know, we're in this modern world and we're now finding all sorts of threats through the phone and the phone is. It looks safe and it looks fun with all the colours and the bings and all the things you can do to connect with people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, look at me, look at me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, show off your life, and that makes sense. I understand that part of it, and it has increased productivity, no doubt, but it also is causing a lot of side effects. So I'm a pharmacist by training as well. As you know, with every drug there's benefits, but there's also side effects. But unfortunately, we always like to promote the benefits over the long list of side effects.
Speaker 2:And what we're going to see going forward from 2023, where children are being born into immersive technology, in the euro and all of these sort of things is going to be a generational, multi-generational, traumatic shift in terms of brain development.
Speaker 2:We always talk about the benefits, which are many, but there are also huge side effects that are going to be on our children and ourselves, and we are the only people that can think about that more broadly. Do you know what I mean? We are the ones that turn it off, for example, but we're not using to do that. So I often think about imagine, you know, with climate change, we had that time where, for a few hours in the world, we just turned off all our lights and then they had this look on the world, the lights off, and I'm thinking the only way we can improve protection and safety. For us is to have tech free day, to send a message that we are in control of this and to give people the time and space and curiosity to ask what is happening. What is the consequences? Why are we in a rush? What are we rushing towards?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's almost giving the power back to the people to make it increasingly more viable to be disconnected from it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and also to be able to see each other in our children, because we've become and the pandemic obviously accelerated this. But I just want to put it out there. I'm not out there against technology. I use it and you and I use it in our work. I'm not against that. I'm just against, like, the addiction side of something where it now destroys your life and it's happening slowly behind your awareness and it's also destroying your family and relationships and you don't realise it is because it's such a slow.
Speaker 1:It's a slow creep into, yes, and I can see it in my household. I carry my phone around wherever I go into my bedroom, into the kitchen, it's always there and I feel a little bit untethered if it's not near me. So I think, for adults, find the ways to minimise the use, be conscious of always picking it up, and when I'm thinking about alcohol in terms of what it is, this is way worse than alcohol, by the way.
Speaker 2:Yes, way worse than alcohol. Yeah, and why would you say that? Because at least you're going to sleep with alcohol. Yeah, yeah, eventually black out and it's horrible, it can destroy your life. But smartphones, we think they're safe and we think it's safe for every, or for children now, because we think it's safe and they're using a phone like we are, and I'd love to move on to that topic because parents have got two stepdaughters, their older, so they actually so they're 24, 26,.
Speaker 1:They were developing Facebook and Instagram profiles in their high school years that we all freaked out about. But my boys, who are younger, they're part of that generation that has been born with the iPhone in their lives, whereas you and I and I can remember the novelty of getting a Nokia in yeah, I can't even remember, but I was certainly in my late 20s. Now, as a parent, I'm regularly in mom's groups and sitting around. We're talking about Snapchat, for example. How we don't?
Speaker 1:Our natural instinct is to keep them away from it because we know the addictive nature of it, because it's like, again, a poker machine in a phone with all its addictive add-ons and bells and whistles. But then we're fighting the movement which is keeping our kids connected, happy. They socialize through WhatsApp, sorry, through Snapchat. So it's this kind of tension between wanting to give them independence and connection. But we know that we're feeding a potentially addictive habit and it's really hard as a parent to know when to stop. I know it increases my stress levels. In that interactive conversation that I've got with my kids about putting the phone down. What are you seeing at the moment in this arena?
Speaker 2:And what you just laid out? The exact problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We lost our powers. Parents, yes, and that's why we need to activate the network. All parents are struggling. The struggle is real. I hear it from every parent and it is a real struggle, and why should it be on the parents? This world that we've created that's unsafe and unprotected. So I just want to put out this one statement for everyone listening that are parent right now Know that we've got you back and we understand. The struggle is real and it's not a blame and shame game here, because it shouldn't be on just parents and families, but unfortunately, right now in history, 2023, it is Because, if you don't do something, if we don't do something, I'm telling you now it's.
Speaker 2:The mental health crisis going on in our youth is extraordinary Stuff I've never heard of before in my lifetime. But things like, for example, kids are getting sex-daunted online. They're targeting boys. It's financial. You've seen it recently on the news. Finally, girls are getting and boys are getting eating disorders. We have seven year olds with anorexia, five year olds in Australia right now on porn sites. They're just too young. No, they're too young, but people think phones are safe.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't look at them like heroin. Yeah, so if you see a child smoking a cigarette when they're five, how do you feel about that? So it's the greatest smokescreen happening in Australia. Australia is the leading country in the world for online child grooming and exploitation in history right now because we think it's happening outside of Australia.
Speaker 2:We think it's overseas. We're very naive in that regard. We think it's really safe. We also think of phone because of its colors and everything for child. So we go and pick up our children from school, sit in our cars on our phones. The kids in the backseat of that car on their phone are seeing the whole world.
Speaker 2:So what's happened now? Because of the tech immersive nature and I'm following what's happening in America on tech, parenting in the tech world over there and it's a bit ahead. But what I'm hearing and seeing is just outrageous. So I want to let you know that parents listening only 3% of parents in Australia think it's their children. They think it's someone else's child. They think that they have done all the conversations, they've got all the safety. I'm telling you, australia is not safe at all because we don't even have bark phones here. We don't even have bark phone apps, which are the parental control phones and apps Tech companies. Children don't even get fines until they're 16. They're all in Waldorf schools doing farming and riding by hand. We're now putting four-year-olds on devices.
Speaker 2:It's like a prerequisite to mandatory download 35 third-party apps and parents having to sign consent away.
Speaker 2:These don't know where the data is being stored and parents don't seem to have a choice about that. Right now, at least where I am, I need to say it is an alarming thing and I don't care about you feeling bad about this. I know that's horrible, but I feel like it's an urgent call to action as me, a parent with grown children like myself minor 22 and 26 and one is a tech guy. So they only got Facebook at 13 and my daughter did Snapchat in America and she did describe to me back then which is now what eight years ago. She just now told me about what some of the stuff was happening then and I'm like, oh my goodness, people sending naked photos of each other around schools, etc. So it's a really serious situation and parents have lost control over thinking that it's privacy, that they can't ask to get the phone off their kids to see what they're doing and saying. But we wouldn't do that in any other sphere. Why do we think phones have this power?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a real safety issue for these kids.
Speaker 2:It's very I'm telling you now from everything and all the people I work with in these spaces it's never been as dangerous online for children as 2023, right now, and it's police can't handle the number of cases and reports and it's something we're ashamed to talk about a little bit.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think that is a key part of this conversation, because we have having the phone in our household, giving it to our kids takes them off our plate to some extent. Oh yeah, it's babysitter. Yeah, and even with teenage boys and girls to have that conversation of give me your phone or put it down or turn it off, or all of those conversations, it just can create a determining in the household. That is the definition of addiction. Yes, that you said before. So, as a parent and I know this is very similar around all the parents around me we rely on the inbuilt screen time controls, parental controls that iPhone users say, for example, limit snapchat two minutes a day or whatever. What are your thoughts around just relying on that?
Speaker 2:It's not possible to do it anymore. So what's happened is because of tech immersion across everything.
Speaker 2:They're messaging each other in Google Docs, they're messaging other in discord of roadblocks or anything you think is safe. There's a messaging app there now and I think you'll be quite shocked if you actually took time and actually went through everything to see what's really going on and not what you imagine is going on. Children are not using the phone like we do because it's a new world and they're being exposed to things that you will be shocked to see and conversations. So there's a lot of people. Crime networks are making more money out of Australian children right now than drugs because we are asleep thinking that it's safe. Yeah, it must be safe. It must be safe. It looks safe. We're using it safe. Everyone's doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Everyone's doing it. It's like cigarettes were in the 80s. I used to smoke in the 80s and now it's not cool to smoke, right. But in terms of phones, we think it's okay, that it won't affect a child's brain. We also think it's safe because you're next to the child and it's online, so what can be wrong? But, as Conrad Townsend from Project Paradigm, who's the lead person in Australia around this, I highly recommend you go and look at the numbers in Australia. He's been trying to get politicians to pay attention to this for seven years. He's from Wales and he said September 2023 is not, is even worse than January 2023. So the problem is that we think it's safe and we think we can see our kids, but if you take away their phone or give them a day out and you go out to the beach somewhere and they're desperate, that's the definition of addiction, oh, addiction, and that's what we talk about alcohol and cigarettes and drugs and we don't want our kids doing that until they're 18.
Speaker 2:We don't let them drive until they're 18. But we're OK. Right now I've been in conversations or at tables with 18 month olds navigating YouTube. Oh gosh, Because they're smart, right, but their brains can do it.
Speaker 2:They're very clever and what's happening to just for people listening is kids. If you think you know what your kids are doing, my conrad, as an expert said to me, you're far better off thinking that they're going to get sex-daunted and gritty and putting all barriers and thoughts around that than waiting till it's happened. Yep, I agree with that, my miles. It's just so much better approach for all of us to start taking and, as parents and carers and adults in Australia who care about our future generations, we just have to do this. It's so dangerous it's like it just blew my mind yes, no, and I can hear that I can't see the actual numbers.
Speaker 2:It was scary and I've got grandchildren but I can't help it because I'm an Australian and I care about our future generations and I understand the parents.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and I think the conversation needs to spread amongst all of the networks parental networks.
Speaker 2:Yes, you've got to fly like Holland, australia, and I believe in us. I believe in us and it's not against us. It's not a blaming game, it's just something that happened. Very. It hit the exponential mark this year, I guess, with the pandemic, allowed all kids to be online all the time you bet and to keep them safe within a household, you gave them a device.
Speaker 1:If we were just to kind of let our kids absorb technology, continue on as they were with not putting quite extreme boundaries around their tech use, which I'm hearing is something that we ought to move to, actually, what's it doing to their brain health in terms of, then, their future years, when they're hitting 20s, 30s, 40s, you know is?
Speaker 2:it changing the way Teenagers I would go even earlier. Now it's all different.
Speaker 2:So we never used to have eating disorders at seven years of age we didn't have. So there's papers now coming out. The Surgeon General in the US just put out a huge report around social media and youth mental health and how we need to do something quickly all of us, across all layers of society. But in terms of mental health, what it's doing is remember. Your brain especially between the ages of 0 and 3 and 10 and 14, is massively growing and changing, related to the experiences that you're consuming. That's why early life experiences, interactions with parents, nature, school learning is so impactful. It's shaping the brain's circuitry.
Speaker 2:But at the moment because what did we say? Fines make us stressed, and you only have to ask any parent that has a child that's been playing games all day how dreadful they are at the end of the day. So we've got all of these behavioral disorders appearing and we've also got a situation where kids are going to school and they can't sit still, for example, and this is very hard on schools and teachers and they're now getting the blame for something that is happening across everywhere. It's not just in schools, it's happening everywhere. We've got changes in sex hormones happening in the brains of people seeing porn and adult material under the age of 10. So there's five-year-olds, six-year-olds, seven-year-olds, and there's a paper that just came out demonstrating the change in sex hormones. Because it's not passive, it's online, but it's still changing the brain because it's what you're seeing. And when you understand addiction, you don't just get addicted passively, it's changed something in your brain. So this is affecting child brain development and so you'll hear things like and I'm working with all the experts in eating disorders they're generated by this image of what you're seeing and what you should look like.
Speaker 2:Mostly it's all filters, and I mean you hear that all the time. Cyberbullying is a big deal Sending naked photos of each other from a very young age, just thinking because everyone's doing it, it's become normalized. And also hypersexualization of video games to young children, so that's where they're starting to think that that's how you meant to look. Also, what's happening is how people interacting romantically or emotionally in the girlfriend, boyfriend or whoever gendered interactions has become quite violent because people think that's also normalized. Because this is a huge amount of information that a child's brain has not been designed to absorb.
Speaker 2:We've been designed to be out in nature, running in trees and eating sandwiches and going to school with our parents or caretakers. That's it. That's all the child's designed to do is to stay alive, get some water, get some attention from their parents and climb the trees and learn how to get food on the table and stuff like that. That's what they were designed for. They weren't designed to be developing AI coding when they're 18 months old. So the pushback I'm getting I hear from lots of people, and I understand this so deeply is that we think to get a good job in the future, you've got to be a tech person. That's where all the money is. I hear a lot of parents saying well, if they're not using it, they're going to be left behind. But consuming rapidly, just consuming videos from TikTok, you're not developing your brain. You're actually shutting down your brain's ability to create and to be innovative and to learn to code. So for people listening, just understand tech companies, the people that have designed all of this, their children are not allowed to use devices.
Speaker 1:Yes, if you could recommend some parental hot tips and boundaries, the boundaries that we feel embarrassed to lay down and to that's why we need to do this together, right?
Speaker 2:Because you're going to get the pushback of an ex-parent. Why parent I, go there and stay with them? That's why it's activating our network. We are the parents, we are the caretakers of our future generations. We have to activate our network so we're all doing the same thing, at least at some level of safety. Look at it as a safety issue, if that's what can get you activated. So I'm writing a new book now. It'll come out this year. It's called Parenting Children in the Tech World Helping Children Be Seen by their Parents and Not by Screens. So in that, it's all this advice. So there's a few things we need to update our parenting skills for 2023. All the old ones don't work anymore. I mean, they're useful. Ancient wisdom is very useful and I'll lay some of that out, but the parenting skills for 2022 are Socratic Parenting Skills. Yeah, so what I mean by and you're a lawyer, you know exactly what I mean yeah, and you've probably got a lot of lawyer parents.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So that's why you're using open-ended questions to generate open-ended conversations. So it's not about punishment and removing stuff, because when you're addicted that doesn't work. You get massive violent reactions and stuff like that. But you can use Socratic Parenting Skills, like in my book. I'm outlying the questions you can use and become tech savvy using the right questions. So when you get the pushback, you know exactly how to use an open-ended question to counterbalance your feelings of inadequacy or that they're going to be left out of their peer group or all those things that make you feel bad for your kids, because we all love our kids and we want them to be belong, we want them to be part of stuff.
Speaker 1:And so that's yeah, it's a survival instinct and we think that's what these loans achieve. Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 2:It's much better if they actually have two good friends that are real, in real life and they learn how to communicate with them, than to have a hundred friends that have no interest in them online but just to push like buttons or Snapchat streaks or whatever it is that they do. I would say Socratic Parenting Skills we can all learn them, but we need to learn the language. Yes, there's a language around tech and sex that's age appropriate. Yes, we're also shy from talking about sex to our kids for lots of reasons for our society, but we can learn the language so that we can understand what grooming looks like. Yes, and to understand that if your children right now are on any device, any phone, anything, they are equally capable of being groomed as anyone else is right now.
Speaker 2:And that's happening across Australia, with a leading country in the world of this happening. And it's because we're affluent, so we have kids, have access to money too to keep them safe. So they're getting big and boys are being targeted. So they don't like to disclose because they're, and these people are targeting them from crime groups around the world because they know that these kids are going to disclose and they know how to shame them. So kids should not have phones in bathrooms or bedrooms.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:We're taking all the photos and creating a lot of problems. There's a whole understanding and language that we can teach around grooming and what that looks like and how you can get the early signs of that, so you start to pay attention and become aware of it. The last thing I'd like to touch on is a tech family plan.
Speaker 2:Yes, so, this is where you all sit down together and, as lawyers, you know right contracts? Yep, absolutely. And now? So this is the difficult part, right. So this is what's working for like. All we can do right now is put in some safeguards. Right, because tech companies are not coming, politicians are not coming. Organisations are only safeguarding their organisations. They care for your kids, but they have to also not be sued to death when this gets really big. So why we need to create family? Remember, families don't have IT departments either. So my organisation has a massive IT department, protecting it from data breaches and security issues, right, and being scanned and monitored. Tell me a family that has an IT department.
Speaker 1:No, the extent at which I think most parents go to is get a little password protector. It's exactly all you know this family tech Limited one.
Speaker 2:So it's got a lot of things that happen in this plan and it's got some success. I'm seating a lot of families get a lot of success out of this. So you all have to sit down as a family and write it out together, yes, and you make the agreement together, and that means that parents can't then be on. That you know if you're saying, ok, dinner time is sacred, we all sit down together for at least, you know, half an hour or an hour every day for dinner and we eat together, but with no fines. The fines in this drawer over here, like everyone will have their own version. I'm just giving you an example of what I've been in our families. If that's OK, yeah, no, I appreciate it. Yeah, making notes, yeah, yeah, no, it's a big one. This is in my book too, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I rewrap my book into lie after I discovered I was on the wrong track for parents. So, anyway, the family tech plan is your best safeguard right now. So why is that so, if you at least have half an hour, say, sitting together, and you're eating together, so you're just having a normal, you're not seeing their asking questions or trying to make anyone feel bad, you're just having dinner together or eating together or lunch or breakfast or whatever you want to do. So during that time one, you're starting to really get to know your children, meaning that you're starting to have learning how to converse again, absent of devices or TV or anything. And then in that moment, through this, just really happy times. It'll take a while to get people getting used to it this new way, old way, new way of being, but what you'll find is you'll start to learn what they're really doing. They like to talk about what other kids are doing. Yeah, right, but then no, that's your child too. Yeah, most likely. It may or may not be, so what's that doing?
Speaker 2:So you've already created, one, a tech free zone. Two, you're showing them how much time and attention you're willing to give them, because they matter the most to you, more than your phone or anything else. Your career, your money, your job, all of these ambitions. We have our dreams. We're putting them on hold, at least for 30 minutes a day, to say you are the center of my world and I really care about you.
Speaker 2:So that's the basis of my book. Is called being Seen, meaning that we all want to know that we've got love and attention, quality love and attention, that 30 minutes of just really seeing you, seeing them. But they're seeing you. They're seeing you as the parent, they're seeing you as the love. It doesn't even have to be a parent, just someone, an adult, a healthy adult that's willing to give up 30 minutes of their day for any child. So that tech plant now. So what I've noticed is that when people instigated this, it was very hard in the beginning because everyone has to agree to it, and so parents have to be called out by their kids as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I'm immediately thinking of. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But you can see the power in this, can't you? Because it's recreating the most important ingredient for brain development, for children's brain development, the most important ingredient that mitigates stress, mitigates mental health disorders is social connection with the people that love them the most. That's called unconditional love. And as you start to instigate this, you're actually saying to them whoever you become, whatever you are, I've got you back 100%. And then you're starting to get to know who their friends are. You're starting to actually pay attention to what's really going on. You're learning a digital language that we didn't get as parents. That's right. Well, you're younger than me, but we're not fit for the purpose in 2020.
Speaker 1:No, I'm completely outdated.
Speaker 2:Yes, and Snapchat is actually a very dangerous app. There's a lot of grooming and stuff happening there and kids are spreading naked photos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so anti-Snapchat, I know, but that's just one of them.
Speaker 2:There's so many. So that tech plan you can see and what I've heard from many parents that I've been following that are doing this in real life, who had really big problems with their kids and their families and they'd start to notice with time the kids love those boundaries and love their culture.
Speaker 1:I think it's something that so many of our listeners, no deep within their hearts, make sense and it's logical. You just need to hear it from other people. They're all doing it, yeah, and then you put the system in and then you're not fighting against a whole movement behind your kids, of course, who they? Say they can do it Well we all want to fit in.
Speaker 2:We're a social species and that's a lot of stress in your brain if you feel like your kids are being left out, or you feel left out or you're looking down upon as being the crazy parent that doesn't let you use technology. I think it's going to close through these conversations we're having, but they're really great ideas that I see working for people.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I love the idea of keeping phones out of bedrooms, out of bathrooms. I like the idea of delaying the time for as long as possible when you give them a phone. Gosh, give them an old fashioned phone that allows you just to make contact with them but doesn't give them access to all of the fancy downloads and then a tech family plan. I really like the idea of not even seeing the phone. You come in, you're in the home sphere if you can put it in a drawer, out of sight, out of mind. My son hasn't had his phone for the last three weeks. It was confiscated. Something's happened at school. He has not asked for it in the last week and he's so much more present. He's down on the couch when we're going to put on our next SNL episode. He's interacting more with us. He's all but forgotten the whole experience. How old is he, isabella?
Speaker 2:He's 14. Yeah, wonderful, he's got this chance of opportunity to make these changes and have a big impact on their mental health.
Speaker 1:I love the idea of getting in early and young with this tech plan, so you're not having to do all the hard work of disentangling yourself from it and the stress that that brings later. I just want to say thank you so much for this topic, for navigating the impacts to adults' brain health, how our kids are mimicking what we do, but because they're being exposed to it so young that it's having lifelong consequences, the safety risks and then some very real practical tips that we can put in place to try and regain control in our own households. I really want to thank you. I would love for you to share where our listeners can find you and when and how we can get our hands on this book.
Speaker 2:Yes, so everyone, please listen to Thriving Minds podcast. My whole life, effort and purpose right now every episode is going to be for you Is to help you get back and understand that you're not powerless. We're not powerless. Individuals can make a difference. Parents have very strong network of people and I really believe in the power of people and I'd like us to see and join in the movement. Join Isabella, help us all, help us activate the network. Whoever's listening.
Speaker 2:My podcast is called Thriving Minds. My book's going to be called being Seen Parenting Children in the Tech Age. I've written it, but it's at the stage of having to be edited, etc. I sped up the process because it became so urgent. In the country We'd like to see a public health campaign generated called Smoking Cigarettes and having children smoking cigarettes on billboards. Anyone that can join me and help me do this or not me, but anyone. It's not just me, it's whoever has the expertise in all of these different route places. We need to go really big and wide and very, very quickly if we really care about our children.
Speaker 1:On that if you've got connections or great ideas or suggestions in really spreading this word. Bring it to our attention, please.
Speaker 2:I just want to finish on this really important story. This is how bad it's become. I was sitting in a staff meeting at a school recently and a beautiful staff meeting and the teachers are sharing these stories. They love their kids. At primary school, the teacher puts up a hand and she goes oh, you won't believe this, but I was in my class the other day and I asked the kids what would they like to be when they grow up? And this little girl pops up her hand and she goes what do you want to be? She goes I want to be an iPhone. The teacher goes why do you want to be an iPhone? She goes because my parents love their iPhone.
Speaker 1:So many messages in that story.
Speaker 2:And most people recoil at that story. But that's where we are and I think that's the urgency. So, outside all of these other safety and protections, we do want our children to know that they're loved by us and not by the technology, and that's part of addiction too. So anything we can do to get this message out for our kids, we are the only ones protecting them. And I'm telling you now our children right now in Australia are not safe and are not protected if they have any access to any device.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on that note, thank you so much for spreading this really important message. Thank you, professor Bartlett. Thank you, isabella, for having us.
