MPI: The Screentime Struggle (from live)

24:21Hunter Clarke-Fields:Oh my gosh. We're going to literally talk, I'm sure, like 12 hours, like nonstop podcast. For five hours about this. I want to jump ahead. I want to jump ahead. So we agree we want to limit it. We want to recognize some of the harms. And I think that we want to, one of the things that is really interesting is that what's different between now and 13 years ago when I started this podcast is that we really, really, we were kind of guessing at the harms before, but now we really are seeing the results of the harms. And I think it's so interesting. And I do recommend everybody read The Anxious Generation.

24:58Hunter Clarke-Fields:He is so busy with this book. He can't come on the Mindful Mama podcast, sadly. We were trying to get him to the Harvard conference, and he's like, yeah, I can't even. So, yeah, it's tough. But basically, what he argues is there is a great rewiring that play-based childhood is what we had. Started to get worn away and then really started to shift radically like around 2010 because basically that's when kids were starting to be given smartphones. They started to have things like social media all the time rather than it being like something they did at home on a computer. It started to be something they pulled into their pocket.

25:42Hunter Clarke-Fields:They started to have front-facing screens. So they're doing all these things. And there is a lot of strong data that shows that it has really harmed kids. And I don't harm kids all around the world all at the same time, which is really interesting. Because we can't blame it on a school shooting that happened in 2012 in the United States because it happened also in Australia and Scandinavia, etc. But basically, it's led to sleep deprivation, social isolation, and addiction. And so the… Right. It sets up that brain, the dopamine thing for all these other addictions, whether it's gambling, which we could go on and on about in terms of screens and especially boys, but other kinds of addictions.

26:31It's just set up for them because it's wanting that… Anyway, sorry, I cut you off. Cut your face. No, no, no. We're both passionate here.

26:37Hunter Clarke-Fields:they they get hooked but i mean for me i guess and i and actually wrote down a page i wanted to about getting hooked about on on it um yeah um yeah basically this the one thing that's insidious is that you know that addiction thing we did already talk about that but for me the thing i struggle with so much and i see i've seen in my children enormously is the social deprivation i I think this is so fascinating that when American adolescents moved onto smartphones, their time with friends in face-to-face settings plummeted from 122 minutes a day in 2012 down to 67 minutes a day in 2019. And I'm sure it's gone down even more.

27:26Hunter Clarke-Fields:And they're lonelier because they are not having this social connection. And I've definitely seen that. I remember when I was a teenager, it was a rare day that I wasn't with my friends after school. I mean, we were up to no good. But I was with my friends. Right, right, right. But it's so hard for these kids to get together, at least in the teenage, without some kind of a group or a sport or something like that. It's incredibly hard. And basically the anxiety has ratcheted way, way up for everybody all around the world. And we're seeing that it really is the screens. It is the social media. It is the multiplayer video games where kids are only in their houses and not in the same room.

28:24Hunter Clarke-Fields:Like Mario Kart's pretty nice because they're actually in the same place. But like, these things are really causing harm to our kids. And we do, I think as parents, if we need to be aware of this and to really be aware of this and take steps. Yeah. And it's this combination, I think, of like, I think people forget that there are two things happening with screens. One is that, you know, there's bad things and good things that happen on screens, right? and there are some great things that can happen and community that can be built and there's a lot of bad things that we wring our hands about but the other thing that happens with screens is that just takes up the time of other things it takes up the time as you say of face to face play it takes up the time of reading it takes up the time of time outside of sports of sitting around you know for hours on end building really deep relationships whether it's in the dorm room or you know just kind of like hanging out after school at someone's house or in the park And yeah, sometimes up to no good in those places without a doubt.

29:25But it's what it's replacing too that's so important. And it's replacing those social and emotional skills. Like, you know, how do I interact with people? How do I build empathy? How do I read, you know, facial cues? How do I, you know, all those kinds of things. Have conflict and resolve it. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. That it's like that there's like social rules, not just the video game rules that you're out or you're in. but like you have to compromise and no that wasn't a strike and yes it was a strike or whatever it might be or you know I mean all that stuff that doesn't happen and yeah like a lot of no good happens like but but still it's like yeah well it's interesting because we went it's interesting

30:07Hunter Clarke-Fields:because it's my generation who did this right like we were so free I biked all around my town I was free after school every day I had to run away from the kids who threw rocks at us down the street scary but um the and and my generation got so there was there became this collective idea of parenting as this overachieving over involved kind of thing where we're way over protecting in the real world and way under protecting yeah in the digital world because you know there are not predators hanging around in playgrounds that's way too dangerous but they are on instagram where they can pose as whoever and talk to your like 12 year old girl right like that yeah yeah definitely where it's happening it is definitely not you know in the real world has actually gotten safer and safer and safer but there are no kids even if you want to have your kid go out and play if you want to let your 10-year-old take his little sister to the playground down the block, then you're also afraid of someone calling the cops on you.

31:18Hunter Clarke-Fields:It's bananas. I mean, I drove down Sunday, on a Tuesday. Sunday, we were visiting some friends. I drove down Randall Park, Newton, Massachusetts, the street I grew up on. It was all kids in the street all the time, not a single kid, Sunday at 11 a.m. We would have been out there with kickball and yelling car and coming back in or tromping around the neighborhood didn't see a single kid like and you know kind of charming quiet super safe neighborhood and it is this like some of it i think is probably parents getting older and i think we all as we get older you know it's like we've heard more horror story you know i've heard more bad accidents and stories like that and things like that but it is like this emphasis on i kind of joke it's like when did we get so obsessed with making you know parent a verb like can we make parent a noun again like and just be parent it's like the mindfulness thing It's like, you know, human beings, human doings.

32:07It's like, can we just be parents instead of doing parenting? Like, because if we're doing it, then we're either doing it right or we're doing it wrong, right? And we're judging other people and we're judging ourselves and all of that that comes into play. And the predators online, whether it's sexual predators, whether it's, I just read, talk to your boys, but kind of like ideological predators, financial predators, gambling predators. I mean, all these other kinds of predations that are just dangerous or risky or not where we want our kids to be. And again, there's that stuff in the real world.

32:48But like, there were there were other grownups kind of looking out on the street, you know, if a kid's getting a little wild, there'd be a call, you know, to our house, you know, if we were getting up to shenanigans in the neighborhood. But there's not any, you know, it's like if a kid's online getting into trouble, there's not another adult saying, hey, I'm gonna, you know, let your parent know I'm a little concerned about this behavior. There's just no one who gets just all invisible. And so it's, yeah, I mean, that kind of piece about like, we've overprotected them in the real world, underprotected them.

33:16them online. It is so true. And stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcast right after this break.

33:29Hunter Clarke-Fields:As we get older, and our kids get older, keeping up with the schedules can be so hard. My daughter Sora has been doing the tech for the play, Mama Mia, there's a lot to do and we're busy. And And that's why I really love the Kozilla Calendar Plus 2. You get your calendars, your to-do lists, and your reminders all in one place. And not in, yes, it's in your phone in your pocket, but it's on in a centralized place in your house. So it's a beautiful frame. It has a calendar sync to keep everybody's calendars up to date, real time, avoiding conflicts. and we don't have to like crane our head necks down and pull out these objects to check it.

34:15Hunter Clarke-Fields:We can all do all the planning and we can do event creation all in one place together. It even has a reward system to encourage kids independence and meal planning. I mean, it's great and it really supports kids who are developing independence and you can have independence without having the, you know, device in your pocket. Kids with ADHD can benefit from structured routines and you get this large display that is really easy to use. Seamless, easy, syncing. There's also flexible size options. Really a different way to do it to make things simpler, to really reduce the mental load in the house, to manage schedules and encourage kids' responsibility and just coordinate family life so it is less stressful go to kozilla.com and use the code hunter to get$30 off your first order at checkout that's c-o-z-y-l-a.com to get$30 off your first order with the promo code hunter yeah I think that really needs to come into this conversation like this idea of like yes and we're going to talk you and I we're going to talk about boundaries maybe we would have a different ages but like one of the things that is really tied into this is like kids having a childhood where they can play you know a kid's having a childhood that is not so mediated where they have time to to play with each other where they can like down the street they can do things that maybe maybe it feels a little scary to let your you know 10 year old walk to school and maybe the first time you air tag them to like to let your anxiety down a notch but probably probably after the third time they walk to school by themselves you're not going to even think about it and that but that's the thing that's how we i mean there's a whole generation of these anxious kids yeah it's even so overprotected and they don't know how to handle challenges yeah but That's how we learn to handle challenges, that we do something that's a little scary, and then we realize, oh, it was okay.

36:34Yeah. And then we do it again.

36:36Hunter Clarke-Fields:And then that's how we tame anxiety. Put your hand on the stove and discover, don't put your hand on the stove. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I grew up with wood stoves, so I learned about them. I learned about them very quickly. You learned at a young age. Right, right, right. But anyway, so this technology is so, so persuasive. We see it in ourselves. We see it with our kids. And that's kind of the allure in some ways where like you give the kid this box and then boom, they are out. They are like a zombie and you're not worried about behavior problems anymore. Yeah. Everyone gets a break. But we have to really think about that attention fragmentation, how it can definitely interfere with executive function, all the notification.

37:22Hunter Clarke-Fields:It's funny because Sora at school, she's 16, she just read, what's the name of the story? It's like a classic story they make kids read at school. Gosh, I'm going to forget it. But it's about a society where everybody is forced to be equal rather than there's anyone exceptional, etc. So you're all forced to be equal. And so there's this one kid, teenage boy, who's very smart and really strong and things like that. So he's forced to wear weights on his body to equalize him to everybody else. And also, one of the things that's happening, and I know somebody in the audience is like, it's this story, it's this story.

38:03Hunter Clarke-Fields:Anyway, forget it. One of the things they do to equalize his exceptional intelligence is that they make a sound, a ping happen in his ears every, I don't know, two minutes or something like that. so that his attention is fragmented. And it's so fascinating because it was written a long time ago just to talk about equality, et cetera, versus societies. But that's notifications. Like a ping that is happening at random occurrences to fragment your attention so that you can't focus. It's so crazy. Okay, so let's talk about what maybe we do to limit screen time. Enough hand-ringing. Let's solve this problem.

38:56We got this.

38:57Hunter Clarke-Fields:And what we would love to do or what I wish I could have done because I can sort of look back and see that and things like that. So let's think about, yeah, when my kids were younger, we had limits on screen time where, you know, I can't remember what they were. Sorry, guys. I can't remember. But it was, you know, it was like you have a certain amount of time and they would watch My Little Pony and half the time I would get sucked in to watch Twilight Sparkle happened, what happened to her, sadly. What do you do? You have, your youngest is seven. What are you doing for screen time? Yeah. I mean, I think we have been very lucky that our kids are not particularly screen oriented.

39:44Like we've got kind of outdoor kids and pretty imagination based kids. And so I just want to say like a lot of it's just temperament, right? So we've done some things probably right. And we've done some other things. They, I mean, we did things like we, I mean, I sort of would joke. It's like, you know, we'll get video games once the kids, you know, maybe, and we have not yet gotten video games, but like, you know, once the kids are old enough that they'll never be able to catch up with their friends and they'll just suck at video games so it won't be fun for them. Like, that's basically the philosophies.

40:15They go to their friends' houses, they play Mario Kart, and they just suck. And they're like, this isn't fun. Let's go play baseball. So, like, that was one strategy. We didn't. We literally got a TV, like, three weeks ago that the kids watch. We just like made it. I mean, it's what my parents did. They had a black and white TV until I was 15, like just to make it as unappealing as possible. I didn't have cable, you know, it was just like, so just, you know, and then we have like one, you know, they'd watch on one of our laptops and they have to, you know, pick the show together, even though they're, you know, three years apart.

40:49So they have to learn how to compromise and they have to co-regulate and, you know, laugh together and cry together and get nervous together. And my daughter gets scared and my son says it's going to be okay. and so it can be a little bit of that they get one show at night sometimes we have a special occasion where they get two um i don't usually watch much with the kids um you know except i like to do family movie nights because i like movies and it's kind of a thing to do together um so we do that um but they really like my son got into duolingo recently um and my daughter went through like a Khan Academy phase.

41:28But even that, like pretty limited. So they don't do much. And I, again, like I feel like I'm lucky that they're not that interested. And especially I feel like in video games too, which are the, I feel like are just so much of that dopamine thing. Yeah.

41:47Hunter Clarke-Fields:Well, they're seeing what are you and your wife doing, right? Like they're seeing that too. um the one thing so there's some things i think were i was really proud of that were great from when my kids were little and some things i regret so the thing i regret is that when we had screen time we let them have divided screen time you know you're you can watch a show and you can watch a show and i wish we hadn't done that i wish we had made it so it's a thing like that actually the idea it's funny because it was such a rebellious thing when I was first moved to my house to not have a tv but the idea that it is in a centralized location that you have to gather around I think is actually a really smart thing then that negotiation and stuff like that so I regret that because it's it carries out till today um the things I do did like that we did we did family movie nights and that's I think it's really bonding and great and you're watching a whole two hour long long-form thing, not a 15-second video, right?

42:53Hunter Clarke-Fields:And the other thing I'm proud of is that we had screen-free Sundays forever. And that was - That's awesome. And we just took a break on Sundays and we're like, oh, it's Sunday, no screens. And that was when all the biggest creative projects would happen. And that was so healthy for them, but also for me and Bill. I didn't even look at email. It was fantastic. I highly recommend that. That was great. Yeah. Do you have any plans for as they, so one of the things I want to mention that Jonathan Haidt recommends, and I think this is so, so smart, is he recommends no smartphones before high school.

43:33Hunter Clarke-Fields:And I think that is so, that makes so much sense. Do not give your kids the whole internet with all that pornography in their pocket. Yeah. And all that pornography, all the danger, all the, you know, that's, it's like, it's a, it's a scary world in their pocket. If it's a smartphone, don't give them a smartphone. If you want to contact your kid, like that's great. Like fine. Get a flip phone. I, I've heard of them. They don't recommend an Apple watch, but there's other watches where you can, a kid can call like three numbers or something like that. But yeah. The gizmo, the gab. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

44:12Hunter Clarke-Fields:And what we did with Sora is that we gave her a Bark phone when she was 13. And that was like, it looks like a smartphone actually is an Android smartphone, but it's got this heavy duty software that's like parent controlled and, you know. and the other norms that he recommends are no social media before age 16 and there's a some really interesting research about why no social media before age 16 in this because their brain is in a sensitive period between 11 to 15 about absorbing social and cultural norms and you want them to absorb those social and cultural norms from real people in real time not asynchronous from you know influencers and from whoever you know etc like so it because it really can cause a lot of harm in that sensitive period of early early adolescence and then the other two norms he recommends are phone free schools which i wish we could get in delaware and and more more free play.

45:21Hunter Clarke-Fields:So I don't know. With all those recommendations, what do you think about those? Yeah. I mean, to me, I think like, you know, what we're, our son had a watch, like a Gabbard Gizmo. He just upgraded to an Apple watch. He's 11. I'm actually a little bit disappointed because Apple products are so easy to use. And then like the Apple watch is actually surprisingly complicated to use. It's really been kind of frustrating. Our rules around it are, it doesn't go in his room. It's just, you know, for school and for pickup, he can chat with his friends, it goes off, you know, from 8am to 8pm. No, yeah, it's off in school, it's off evenings, you know, anyway.

46:02So things like that, we have it as locked down as we've been able to figure out. The one thing I think that we got from a friend that I thought was really helpful was like, we're like, okay, we're not gonna like snoop, you know, all that often through your phone, but we do have a right to do that. And we're going to be really wary of group chats because I feel like where bad things happen is in group chats. That's where someone says something a little inappropriate. That's where I feel like people amp themselves up in not so healthy ways. So we're pretty clear like, yeah, you can be in your soccer team group chat, your advisory at school group chat, but we're going to be taking a look at that.

46:43Um, so that, that becomes what it is, but it's, you know, it's like he, you know, doesn't, he texts his friends sometimes and he is able to text us. And I think when it comes to phones, we haven't figured out what it is. Um, it's going to be a while, you know, at least till high school. And I think really shutting down social media, what I've seen like friends do. And also what I've read places is like, first you start with like a family phone, a little bit like we had when we were kids. And actually a lot of people suggest even just getting a landline, but like a family cell phone yeah and that's like the tin can you can get one the tin can yeah yeah yeah that so i

47:20Hunter Clarke-Fields:know some people hadn't heard about that so yeah the tin can a bunch of like wealthy celebrity uh silicon valley people are doing this they get this tin can phone and it's connected through the internet but it's a landline and so your kids can call their friends yeah yeah i like that and and like even if it's a a family cell phone you know like we have a family ipad and it's just sort of like okay and a friend of mine started just like an instagram for her cats and it's like the family you know they're not posting pictures of them the kids but it's like you know and they can follow a couple other accounts and they have to ask and that you know like and even that i would like to shy away from but i think that's pretty brilliant way to start but i think like starting with like sort of family accounts on these things and then if the phone rings it's like anyone can answer it, but it's not your phone.

48:08It doesn't go to your room at night. You know, that kind of thing. That's what I hope we'll do when we get a little bit closer to that point. Yeah.

48:17Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah. That's one of my biggest recommendations for parents is to get yourself an alarm clock. Yeah. Do not keep your phone by your bed because then when your kid does have a phone, they will just, that is the normal thing. Like that's what's normal in my house is everyone plugs their phone in downstairs at night and that can you know that is the sleep deprivation is like a real real challenging thing for teenagers so like if your kids are younger do it now you have to model i mean this is i'm thinking that your kids are probably active outside because you are active outside right i imagine yeah and and i think that modeling might be the biggest challenge for us as parents the idea of like setting the rules that we aspire to that can be a little easier than actually like curbing our own habits i speak from experience yeah oh my gosh i don't know um oh yeah okay yeah so we're seeing sarah we're doing a live podcast for those listeners um 13 year old daughter has a pinwheel talk text and photos okay recommended did.

49:28Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah. How would you address the pressure when the child, when all her friends have a phone and she does not have one? Yeah. I mean, that's interesting. And that is one of the reasons that when she was 13, which is a little bit older, we got Sora that Bark phone because it did look like sort of a smartphone. But one of the things I think is that's a really important part of this discussion that we haven't talked about. We're talking about individual solutions is that we need to get together on this. We need to get together as communities. Letgrow.org has these things that we can do with schools and communities.

50:09Hunter Clarke-Fields:But it's so much better if we could have, I don't know, when your kid's 10 years old, if you could talk to a bunch of the other friends and say, hey, let's all start by reading, read Anxious Generation. Maybe start a book club in your school. Let's read Anxious Generation. And then you can say, oh, wow, we don't want this for our kids. Let's all get together and agree to just do flip phones when they're 11 or to make sure we have a house phone and encourage our kids to call each other or to, I mentioned letgrow.org, because one of the things that they encourage that I really love is they encourage kids to have like a play group, like at your school, like where you have like one adult who's hanging out after school and like one of the optional, you know, activities that extracurriculars, things that you could do is just that, you know, kids sign up to get to go to just play at the playground on Friday afternoons or Thursday afternoons or Wednesdays or whatever.

51:17Hunter Clarke-Fields:And adults there in case anyone needs a band-aid or something but there there's no direction they just can go and play right so we if we can get together normalize real in-person life and and normalize protection around this online space so that our kids are not suffering the way that the kids who are like sadly the the guinea pigs for this are right or have been right yeah yeah and it's like i mean yeah i do feel like the more we talk about this and i think we have to find ways to talk about this in a non-shaming way like i i read you know jonathan's book and like loved it and was telling everyone to read it and my friend read it and then he posted something about it on facebook and the amount of like i'm not on facebook right you know but like the amount of blowback he got of like, oh, Jonathan A's such a jerk.

52:11And oh, you know, this is like, it was just like, can we have like a reasonable, sane conversation about this? And probably honestly, we can't if we try to do it online, is the truth of it. But like, how can we do this without, you know, I mean, a lot of us, you know, a lot of parents are feeling like they don't know what else to do. And how do we empower parents with like other things besides phone bad, screen time bad, you're a bad parent if you do this, or even just like, you know, don't do that. Even if we're saying you're not a bad parent, but it's like, how do we empower people with alternatives and empower people with new strategies?

52:45Because otherwise we, you know, parents and kids are going to feel attacked and ashamed. And I think finding ways to relanguage this, to come to group agreements that don't feel like, yeah, we're just not going to win people over that way. And so how do we relanguage this and knowing how sensitive people are to feeling shame about this is I think really really hard like absolutely absolutely well i don't think we've solved the world's problems

53:12Hunter Clarke-Fields:on this topic we're leaving we're leaving maybe with questions as well but maybe maybe some answers i mean i hope that um yeah if you guys were here live if you have any takeaways if you want to put them in the chat and suggestions yeah i'm hearing suggestions um yeah yeah i do think um And it's, we're kind of like we've been experimented on. We've like had this super, super addictive, pervasive, you know, persuasive technology has just like infiltrated everyone's lives. and um yeah and we need to kind of you know i think we need to address it individually and collectively you know but more collectively than individually i don't know but just to recognize i think it was interesting i listened to jonathan height talk about this on a podcast and he talked about how we are all so optimistic in like 2000 2009 up to 2012 we were all like so optimistic about the internet being like so great and solving the world's problems right and so yeah these kids were just like you know we're and now we're seeing oh yeah there's real repercussions and yeah and things like that um yeah um yeah and i think you know sarah's writing in about now that her kids are 14 or 16 it it's harder and um and i agree and one of the things that i've been doing with my kids as they get older is i i am on a campaign of persuasion on myself um kind of as much as i learn things i pass it along you know because i talk about i do talk about like yeah i'm trying to get this you know i i put facebook on i had this conversation with the other day i put facebook on my phone the other day and then i took it off again and then i you know and i'm yep struggling with that and and having these conversations and sharing the research and things like that with them um oh and also watching what's a good sorry a good idea might be to watch those um like the social network the documentaries watch them with your kids because when they realize how they're being manipulated, it's really eye-opening.

55:40Right. Right. Absolutely. I think once people see, I think often about the most successful anti-smoking campaign, I don't know if you remember from the 90s, 2000s, was the Truth Campaign. And it was really, so much of it was about these crusty old men are trying to fool you into smoking. And I think that ended up being so effective because no one likes feeling like they're being fooled or tricked or manipulated. And when we empower ourselves and our young people with like, they are these crusty old people are trying to fool you into spending all this time on here so that they can take your data and sell you more crap.

56:14Like, I think that that ends up, does it work 100 %? No, but it makes us more aware of kind of what's going on. And we can be a little bit more deliberate in how we approach this. And I think even though it's a battle, as Sarah is saying, you know, I think that doesn't mean we give up. And it means also that, you know, any, any, the good news is too, I think, you know, you talk to young people and all of them say, I wish I didn't have the relationship to my phone that I had. I talked to boys in my practice. They all say I wish, and men, I know they all say I wish they didn't have the relationship to pornography that I do.

56:45Right. I mean, everyone knows that this is unhealthy and makes them unhappy. And And so everyone's looking for help and support on how to put these things away. And it is, I think, as you said, Hunter, too, just going to be this collective effort to do that. But it is really hard. The older they get, you know, there's that kind of meme, like, I was the best parent in the world until I became one. You know, it's like I was the best screen time parent in the world until I had a teenager. Like it's the same thing and just being kind to ourselves and figuring out which limits we can set, which ones we can stick with and which ones we can model for ourselves, I think is so, so important here.

57:24So thank you. It's a great conversation.

57:25Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Chris. I always love talking to you. Chris Willard, psychologist, author of 50 ,000 books. And anyway, Chris and I, we do work together. We bring programs to parents for mindfulness programs to parents in groups like schools or companies. So if you would like to have us come, tell your HR about it. We're working under the Mindful Parenting Institute. So if that's something you're interested in, that's something we do together because we like hanging up, too, and talking about this stuff. Thank you, Chris. This has been lovely to chat. We're going to go out and get into the beautiful spring day.

58:16Yeah, let's spend some time outside off our screens. Absolutely. Let's spend off our screens. Okay, this has been so fun.

58:23Hunter Clarke-Fields:Thank you so much for listening, everyone. Bye-bye.

58:31Hunter Clarke-Fields:I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, if you want to be part of the live audience for anything we do, go to mindfulmamamentor.com and sign up for any of the freebies to get on my mailing list, and I will let you know about it. As kind of an update, I was reading today, we talked a bit today about Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation. And then I read in a New York Times article where they quoted him very, very recently. And I think this is a really interesting update. He wrote that years of consuming short videos during childhood and puberty seem to disrupt the development of executive function, which refers to the cognitive processes that support goal-directed behavior.

59:16Hunter Clarke-Fields:Young people who watch a lot of short videos, which is most of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, find it difficult to do anything that is hard or that requires deep thought and can be only accomplished with persistent effort. I believe that TikTok Instagram reels and YouTube shorts are bringing America to a cognitive catastrophe. Anyway, I think that is so fascinating. This subject of screen time and how it is affecting us is being updated daily. So I would love to hear what you think. Look for me at mindful mama mentor, or if you're on the mailing list, just respond to any email and let me know what you think.

59:55Hunter Clarke-Fields:and I'd love to hear about it. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. And you know, this whole screen time thing, it's tough. It's not an easy issue. But I hope at least today listening to this, you feel a little less alone in it if you're struggling. And, you know, we can always, always begin anew. So wishing you the best of luck as you go through this and wishing you some hugs and sunshine and all the good things in life to focus on as well. Take some time. Take this podcast out of your ears. Listen to some birds. Listen to some traffic. Listen to your breath. Just breathe maybe for a minute today and just allow yourself to be still and quiet and remember that you are a cell in this earth body and that you are a part of everything.

1:00:53Hunter Clarke-Fields:Wishing you all the best and I'll be back to talk to you again real soon. Namaste.

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