When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke

Your child's device is a drug to them. And so trying to remove the drug is like your child is in the midst of taking that drug and you're trying to take that drug away from them. And you're going to have, you know, meltdowns.

I'm dying!

You say, the smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle delivering digital dopamine 24-7.

We are living in an unprecedented time of overwhelming abundance where we've drugified almost every human experience.

Hello and a warm welcome to you. Thanks for being with me here on the Oprah podcast. Recently, I saw this headline in the New York Times, America's children are unwell. The Washington Post declared, managing technology has become an overwhelming part of modern parenting. And I bet that resonates with a lot of you. So I wanted to dive deeper into tech diction in children because I know that this is not just a headline amidst

the hundreds of bits of bad news that we're inundated with every day. I got a call from one of my cousins in Jackson, Mississippi who watches the podcast and saw our episode on Gen Z tech addiction. She said that when she tried to take away her child's device, her child became so violent that she was really shaking up about it and really so concerned and asked me,

what am I supposed to do? And that's why I invited Dr. Anna Lemke here to be here. She's a psychiatrist and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. That's a lot to say.

It's a mouthful.

It's a mouthful.

But her New York Times bestseller, Dopamine Nation, Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, has sold over 1.5 million copies. And there's a reason for that, because it's resonating. It's resonating with parents. It's resonating with people who've suffered from addiction themselves.

It's resonating with people who are concerned about where we are in our culture and where we're going. I encourage you to read Dopamination if you haven't yet, because it's extremely eye-opening, especially, especially if you are a parent. That's what I told my cousin,

you got to get dopamine nation so that you understand what's actually happening to your child. So when they're screaming and you're screaming, nobody's going to get anywhere. Well, you know what I said to her?

I said, it's like, if your child was shooting heroin and you went up and took a needle from your child in the moment that they were gonna shoot the heroin, do you think they'd curse you out? Do you think there'd be a fight? And she went, whoa.

But it's kind of like that, isn't it, Dr. Lemke? reframe because unless we're thinking about digital media as a drug, we're not going to appreciate the extent to which we and our children lose agency in terms of our ability to change the behaviors. I think you need to repeat that sentence

unless you're thinking about digital media as a drug. Right.

Yes. Yeah. It's a drug. It really is a drug. It's incredibly reinforcing for our brains. It activates the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol.

And for people who are uniquely vulnerable to digital drugs, it can really lead to life-threatening addictions. And I think this is a really important point that I wanna make up front, that we're all wired a little bit differently. And so each person has a different potential

drug of choice, right? Based on their unique, for some people it's food. Mine was unique... Yeah. For some people it's food.

Mine was food.

Okay. For some people it's romance novels. That was mine. You know, that sounds silly, but I actually did develop a, you know, kind of addiction to this genre.

For some people it's alcohol, cannabis. And for some people it really is social media, online shopping, adult content, video games, whatever it is. And when we encounter whatever that digital drug is, it's just, we are very susceptible to getting caught in that compulsive over-consumption loop.

So parents who can't get their kids to put the phone down, to put the iPad down, need to know that what you're asking them is to put the drug down, to put the iPad down, need to know that what you're asking them is to put the drug down.

That's exactly right. To really conceptualize digital media as a potent drug and to think about, you know, protecting their child from it. I think a good analogy for digital media is actually processed food. So, for example, most parents would not feed their kid

ice cream for breakfast. And yet many parents are fine letting their kid, even a very young child, hold the phone at the breakfast table. I think when we think about it that way, there are occasions when you would give your child ice cream

or chocolate cake or what have you, but you wouldn't just let them have it whenever they wanted all day long.

Yeah. So Jonathan Haidt, who wrote The Ancient Generation, you've seen him here on this podcast. He's done a lot to bring attention to what social media, what those devices are doing to our children's minds. He asked Chachi B.T, if you were the devil,

how would you destroy the next generation without them knowing it? He wrote about this for an article in the Free Press. Chachibit's answer was, if I were the devil, I'd destroy the next generation not by terror or violence,

but by distraction, disconnection, and slow erosion of meaning. generation not by terror or violence but by distraction disconnection and slow erosion of meaning they wouldn't even notice because it would feel like freedom and

Entertainment. Wow. How do you see it as fueling these addictions? I think this idea that we're sort of entertaining ourselves to death and there's in fact a Famous older book called amusing ourselves to death by Neil Postman, is really does capture it well. It's very subtle and insidious. It seems harmless. In the moment, it feels good, but it's the cumulative effect over time that really adversely impacts our well-being, our mental health, and truly our ability to connect to other people.

I mean, social media in particular essentially takes our innate need and desire to connect with other people and distills it down to its most addictive elements so that for very little upfront work, all we have to do is swipe right, swipe left,

and it creates this illusion of connection even when real connection is not happening. Because real connection with other humans is effortful, right? We have to go out and find the humans. We have to, you know, compromise. There's give and take. There's going to be conflict.

There's frustration. But digital media and social media in particular removes all of that. So it's just this seamless experience where we feel like we're connecting. And now you see who's calling you

so you can answer or not answer? Right, or you get the likes or the friends or the followers, you know, the comments. It's like this trance-like state that we can get in where it just feels so good, like with any drug. But afterwards, there's this come down. And over the long run, we're not really pursuing our goals,

which with social media is nominally to connect with other humans. One of the reasons this book is so powerful, even from the very first page in the introduction, you say, because we've transformed the world from a place of scarcity to a place of overwhelming abundance, drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming,

YouTubing, tweeting, the increased numbers, variety, and potency of highly rewarding stimuli today is staggering. It really is staggering. The smartphone, this is why I loved that you said the very beginning, the smartphone is the modern day hyperdermic needle delivering digital dopamine 24 seven

for a wired generation. And if you haven't met your drug of choice yet, it's coming soon to a website near you.

Wow, that's how bad we are right now.

We are living in an unprecedented time of overwhelming abundance, where we've drugified almost every human experience, the food we eat, the games we play, the way that we connect with other people. And as such, we've all become more vulnerable

to this problem of addiction. And I always like to sort of upfront define addiction for folks. Please do. It's the continued compulsive use of a substance or behavior

despite harm to self and or others. And importantly, sometimes we can see the harm and sometimes we can't. And it is a brain disease. I think that's really important to communicate to folks the disease model of addiction.

We're not at a place yet where we can use brain scans or blood tests to diagnose addiction. We base the diagnosis on phenomenology or patterns of behavior, often what we call the four C's, out of control use, craving, compulsive use

and continued use despite consequences. But it's a very recognizable behavior when we see it, especially in its most extreme forms. And we're living in an addictogenic world where not only do we have more access to drugs that have been around for thousands of years,

but we have drugs that never existed before, right? All of the digital drugs, drugified food, right? We have a food supply with the addition of fat, salt, sugar, flavorants, processed food. So that not only are we getting calories when we eat, we're getting hits of dopamine

that make it very difficult to stop, even when we've reached our natural satiety point. And that's true for almost everything now, including importantly for this discussion, digital media. That's why, you know, what we're going to discuss here, I think very important, but you have to read the book

in order to understand what's happening to your brain and your child's brain, you know, with social media and with the devices.

I want to show a piece of tape now that we put together. Take a look at this. You have school tomorrow, Issa. You have school tomorrow.

No!

Give it!

You have school tomorrow.

No! Give it!

I hate you!

Oh, man.

That's really hard to watch. So my cousin said the same thing happened to me. I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital. I was in the hospital.

I was in the hospital. I hate you! Oh, man. That's really hard to watch. So, my cousin said the same thing happened with her 17-year-old. Yeah. Tried to take the phone away. He was in the middle of a gaming session and cursing her out and all those things. What is happening in the brain when a child is experiencing those kinds of tantrums,

a child, a teenager, a young adult? What's going on in the brain in that moment? When you expose a child's brain to a digital drug that is incredibly reinforcing, it is inevitable that that child will get into this loop of addiction where

they get into a state of craving and withdrawal when they don't have their drug. So when I see these kids and the extent to which they're emotionally dysregulated when they don't...

Yeah, that's what's happening, dysregulation.

Yeah, yeah. They're in withdrawal, right? Yes. I mean, they're in withdrawal, they're afraid, because now they've basically become dependent on this drug. On the dopamine and the hit.

That's right. In order to manage their everyday lives, right? To manage anxiety or depression or loneliness. But even separate from that, once our brains are repeatedly exposed to any reinforcing substance or behavior, we essentially adapt to that reinforcer such that over time we need more

in order to feel the same response. And when we're not getting it, we are literally in withdrawal. And the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any substance or behavior are anxiety, irritability, insomnia, depression,

and craving for that drug. So again, I see these kids and I really feel like-

So they're not spoiled.

They're not spoiled, that's the point.

They're addicted.

They're addicted and they're really victims of- They're suffering in that moment. They're addicted and they're really victims of... They're suffering in that moment. They're suffering. So based upon what we've shared here so far, when you are trying to communicate with a child who is dysregulated, you absolutely cannot.

Right. And so you have to wait until that child

gets regulated or calms down.

That's right. Have we even explained to people what dopamine is? Not yet.

We're assuming that everybody knows what dopamine is.

Tell us what dopamine is. Okay, great. So dopamine is a chemical that we make in our brains. It is what's called a neurotransmitter. And neurotransmitters are the molecules that bridge the gap between neurons.

So neurons are these long spindly cells.

that allow for fine-tuned control of those electrical circuits.

Dopamine is one of many brain neurotransmitters. It's essential for the experience of pleasure, reward, and motivation. It's also, as I mentioned before, very important to movement. And it's probably no coincidence that the same molecule that's important for getting our rewards that we need to survive is also important for movement because, you know, for most of our existence, we had to move our bodies to go get a berry bush or get meat.

And that's why exercise is so important. That's why exercise just really resolves a lot of these issues. Yes. Because if you can move, if you're outside, if you're walking, even just as you say, it's just even, even just a walk, 30 minute walk. Yes, yes. Can change the dopamine in your brain. Yes. Yes.

Exercise is a super healthy source of dopamine and it also importantly reintegrates the function of dopamine for movement as the function of dopamine to go and get our rewards. And this is what everybody who's listening and watching us needs to know that we're talking about your kids,

but it's also, you get your little dopamine hit every time you get a little like, or you get a comment that says something flattering to you. Right, or just watching short form video, right? Watching those short form videos, that absolutely lights up that reward pathway,

releases dopamine, and the difference between things that are addictive for a given individual is that they release a lot of dopamine all at once. So we're always releasing dopamine at a baseline tonic level in our reward pathway. When we eat something or smoke something or drink something or go on digital media, that temporarily increases dopamine firing above baseline

along with other chemical changes. And then you go back to normal, yeah. Well, yes. We always wanna go back to our set point, right? Or our homeostatic baseline. But what happens is that through that process

of the brain adapting to that temporary increase in dopamine firing, that essentially what can happen with addiction is that the brain over adapts, over compensates, and ends up in a chronic dopamine deficit state. So now we have below healthy levels of dopamine firing

in the reward pathway. And when we get into that state, now we need to keep using our drug, not to get high, but just to bring those levels back up to normal and feel normal.

And feel okay. Yeah, and feel okay.

That's what the kids on the iPads are trying to do.

That's exactly right.

Yeah, that's what they're trying to do.

That's exactly right.

Well, we have a lot of two girls in Massachusetts. Welcome, Ida. Tell us what's going on with you.

Hi, Oprah. Hi, Dr. Lemke. Thank you for having me. So I have two girls. They're 10 and 3. Most concerning is my 10-year-old.

She has an iPad. A lot of her friends have phones. We are not quite there yet in that department, but she definitely uses her iPad a lot more frequently than I would like. Usually right after school, it's her go-to, and she prefers to be on it all day.

It ends up being a battle when we get home from school about you need to do your homework, it's not iPad time. She does have her moments of, you know, getting upset, throwing a tantrum, being resistant to having the iPad being taken away. And it's more worrisome during the weekend.

And she will use that tool also for transitions, like in the car, for going to any of her activities after school, like cheer practice or whatnot. So after hearing you talk for a bit, it seems like she's using this as an emotional tool to cope. So, and when it is taken away from her,

she's quite anxious. So part of me is wondering, is she showing signs of addiction? And then another part of my question is, my three-year-old has had some exposure with an iPad, but not to the extent that my 10-year-old has.

So my other question is, how do I avoid what's happening to the 10-year-old

to not happen to the three-year-old? Okay, great. Well, thank you for being willing to, you know, share something about your experiences. You're certainly not alone. I think most parents are struggling with this in some form or another.

I was interested that initially you sort of framed giving your daughter an iPad as if it were maybe less addictive than the phone. But I would say that's not really the case. Any device that gives that child that kind of visual and audio stimulation and has access to the internet where they can see an infinite number of videos,

including, by the way, videos that you probably would be horrified to know she was watching. Okay, so I think this is a really important piece that it's... People think if it's not the phone, that the iPad is better. Yeah, that somehow it's safe. Or even that they know what their kid is doing or what the internet... Because the internet will push to your child

stuff that they're not even looking for and haven't even considered. So, that's one thing. The second thing is we always need to think of the age of the child. 10 years old is still within a frame, an age range, when you do have control as a parent and can do more. And what I would recommend first,

and by the way, I'm contrasting that to older teenagers where they're out in the world. But with a 10 year old, here's what I recommend. You can sit down with a ten-year-old when you're not dysregulated and they're not dysregulated, you know, you're not screaming at them to get off the iPad,

and say, you know what, we need to talk about this as a family. This is a problem. And you can describe what you see, the way she gets dysregulated, the way she kind of uses it as this transitional object, which, by the way, is a Freudian term, to talk about how we do use an object to kind of get us through emotional, you know, bumpy patches. But I would just really have a very open

and transparent discussion. And you can even bring in your own struggles with limiting, you know limiting your digital media use because we're all struggling. And I think it's good for parents to be transparent. And then, and this should involve your partner,

if you're raising her together with a partner. It could even involve the three-year-old. I mean, it's amazing what kids can understand. So get the whole family together, sit down and say, hey, we care about each other. Our use of digital media is problematic for our family,

individually and collectively. Each person can go around and say what they're observing, including asking your daughter, what do you think? You know, do you think this is a problem? What do you observe? What's good about using the iPad?

What's not so good about using the iPad? And then I really recommend a behavioral intervention for the whole family that might actually include getting rid of those devices for a period of at least four weeks. Now, importantly, you don't want to,

the danger that many parents made, I've made it myself, is you're so upset, you just dive in and you grab the devices away, the kid goes nuts like we saw in those videos. You wanna talk about it, you wanna plan it out, and your kid, she's not gonna be happy with it,

but you need to really say, this comes from a place of love, because I love you, because we love you, and we are observing signs and symptoms of an addiction to the digital media, or really just an unhealthy relationship, we're gonna pull back. We're gonna change things in our home.

I think this is the key. We can make these changes. It's effortful, but it's worth the effort.

But also what has to happen, Ida, you have to watch what you're doing with your phones and your devices. You can't tell your kid you're off of it and you have a problem and then you're sitting at the table and you're on the phone all the time,

or they're trying to talk to you and you're distracted because you're on the phone, you know.

Absolutely, we need to model what we want our parents,

what we want our kids to do. Extract this behavior, you gotta model the behavior.

And it's all about cultivating a digital etiquette in the home. So what are the appropriate times and places for you to be on your device, for me to be on my device? Like not at the dinner table, not when we have guests over, not in the bedroom, not late at night.

And, you know, it's hard, but again, with a 10-year-old, you can get in there. And here's the other important thing, if you feel you can't do it, it's just too overwhelming, get some professional help, right? Get a mental health care provider.

And there are more and more of them, thank goodness, responding to the call, who have expertise in this area, who can come into the home and help you make a behavioral plan. And then finally, I just want to add, you know, apropos, Oprah,

you're talking about Eda needing to model.

Model the behavior.

You also need to change the environment. We cannot rely on willpower alone when we have an environment that is constantly inviting us to use our drug of choice, whatever that may be. So if you've got screens in every house, devices in every bedroom, you need to change that.

You absolutely, and you might even need to think about limiting wifi to the house, right? So these are structural and environmental changes. You can't just say something, and not that you would say this, my kid's spoiled or something's wrong with my kid.

The disease process of addiction that we're facing in the world today lives in the space between our brains and the environment that we've created. So, we need to recognize that biopsychosocial interactive piece.

We can't expect ourselves to stop the behavior when we live in an environment that's constantly inviting us to consume. Yeah, I'm hearing about parents creating tech-free pods with, you know, landlines. Yeah, tech-free pods.

A lot of young people now are embracing older tech. They're getting film phone cameras, right? They're playing vinyl records. This is, much of this is coming from Gen Zers who themselves are recognizing.

That there's a problem.

That there's a problem, right? So, and that's the other piece that actually, one more thing I have to say is so important, Oprah, for Ida. The other thing, Ida, is you don't wanna just take something away without replacing it with something

that's better. So, of course your daughter is exhausted at the end of the day. It's exhausting to be a 10 year old, right? But when she comes home and she legitimately needs to relax, you all need to come up with a healthy way for her to do that.

Maybe it's spending time talking with you or doing crafts. Maybe it's joining a sports team and decompressing by being physically active. Movement is medicine, right? Dopamine is not only important for reward, pleasure and motivation,

it's also important for movement, and we need to integrate those things. So, you need to give her healthier alternatives at the same time that you're going to try to take away the iPad.

So, she had asked the question, do you think my child is showing signs of addiction? Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't like to diagnose people who are not my patients, but you know, what you're describing is similar to the types of, you know, addiction to digital media that I do see in clinical care.

Does this sound reasonable to you?

Yes, for sure. And it just, it's eye-opening as a mom. Yeah. And I mean, I feel like it's a tactic that a lot of people use. Like it's been a long day. We're all tired.

Yes. Here's this device and here we go. But it's really not beneficial for anybody. So, yeah.

We're going to send you this book so that you can understand, okay? I think I really do think knowledge is power. And I do think understanding the full scope of what you're dealing with is gonna be really helpful to you. And I think that what Dr. Lembke said is so important. 10 years old, you can still get in there. There's still hope, you know?

Well, there's always hope. I just wanna say that's a message I really wanna, there's always hope at every stage of life. But you as a parent, there's always hope. But this was 17, 16, you have a much harder time. It's harder. Yeah. Thank you, Ida, so much. I hope this was helpful. Thank you, Ida. Thank you. Thank you both. Yeah, nice to meet you. Catherine is joining

us from Toronto. Catherine, what's going on with your family? Hi. Hi, ladies. Thank you for the work that you do. And Oprah, of course, such a big fan. Thank you. So I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old. My 13 year old is my son, who I find that I have the biggest challenge with. He struggles a lot with impulse control with his phone. And even though when he got his phone about a year and a half ago,

we put a contract in place and we adhered to it pretty well.

The last couple of years I've been struggling we put a contract in place and we adhered to it pretty well.

The last couple of years I've been struggling with breast cancer and in that time, I was not able to monitor it in the same way that I used to. And I think he started using his phone as an emotional support buddy almost. And what I have found is that he is not able to self-regulate even around the rules.

And even though he cognitively can say, okay, mom, I'm gonna put it down. He takes it up immediately like an addiction, like you were speaking about. And I find it such a struggle because now he's bigger than I am.

It's the only currency I have with him to have some control, but then he gets aggressive and I'm not able to take it away like I was able to even a year and a half ago. And when I'm noticing, speaking to the addiction part that you noted, Dr. Limke, is that he's manipulating and he's using different strategies cognitively to justify his behavior like, oh, I'm just looking something up and oh, I'm doing some research for school.

And I really am struggling to figure out what to do from a conscious parenting lens. And I know that you had children, you know, close to my kids' age before, like what did you do in your home to manage this? Yeah, oh gosh. So much there.

And I wish I had better answers for you, because what you're describing is really tough and what a lot of us are dealing with. First of all, I do want to comment on your struggles with cancer and how that meant you were more preoccupied, less able to, you know, be in there the way you wanted to.

And are you better now? Are you better?

Yeah. I am. Thank you so much.

Yeah, that's great. Good, good, good. But I mean, I think this is really an important point that we blame ourselves often as parents with these issues. And yet, even like the perfect parent with all of the time in the world, it's still really, really hard.

And then if on top of that, let's say, you're a single parent or you have cancer or you're working at double jobs or whatever's going on, then you have a whole added layer where it's just, I just wanna acknowledge really, really tough for parents, even very hard, well-intentioned parents who really care.

So, your son, he's 13, is that cusp where it just starts to get really, really hard to take the device away. Because kids are manipulative, sneaky, you know, one of the telltale signs of addiction is lying about our use, whatever the drug is. If we take the device away, they'll often go and get

another device or pay for one themselves or what have you.

Have friends.

Yeah, have friends. They're gonna get, yeah. Yeah, that's why our previous guest, with a 10 year old, you were saying,

easier to get in there at 10 than 13.

Okay, so once you've entered these teenage years where you've sort of got these, they're like living off, living their own lives, this is where open dialogue really becomes core. Having, again, and I emphasize this with Ida, but sitting down with him, again, a time you're not dysregulated, he's not dysregulated, even schedule on the calendar,

I want, we want to have a family meeting. I like to call it a family meeting because it's like we're a family.

Because they get to participate.

Yeah. And being in a family is hard. And also you know that your opinion matters and you're contributing.

We're all contributing to the whole.

Yeah, that's right. We're all equal partners. You sit around the table, you get the whole families. And again, it starts with observation. Here is what I am seeing. And one of the things that is most notable and most distressing with tech addiction is the kind of anti-social traits that come out in kids

where they basically are rude, right? They treat parents badly. They manipulate. They're very self-involved. Now, some of that is characteristic of being a teenager anyway, but it's really much, much worse when kids get caught up in this world.

Parents often talk about losing, like, that child that they knew and this being a person that they don't recognize. And that's true also with many other types of addictions. So, I would reflect back to your son in particular, the specific unacceptable behaviors, his rudeness, his lateness, his not doing his chores, his lying, his disrespecting,

and talk about how it very well may be linked to his over-dependent slash addictive use of digital media. And what you can then do is, again, advise him, to his over-dependent slash addictive use of digital media. And what you can then do is, again, advise him. This is done in a very loving way. This is done from a space of love and not accusatory.

Right, and then what I'm getting to here is setting boundaries. Yeah, because you're doing it from this is what I'm seeing. Yeah, this is what I'm seeing.

Tell me what you're seeing.

Right, tell me what you're doing it from this is what I'm seeing. Yeah, this is what I'm seeing. Tell me what you're seeing. Right, tell me what you're seeing.

In comparison to who you used to be

or what you used to believe. And then, you know, and elicit from him what he's, again, this is a sort of, we're saying that. And then the offer of help. Would you like to get some help with this problem that we're observing. You would like to see a mental health counselor.

What if he says, I don't think I have a problem? Oh, he probably will say that. Yeah. But at least you've identified that you see a problem, what you're observing, you've made the offer of help. Maybe he doesn't want help now, but maybe he does.

So I like this idea too very much of saying, you're becoming someone,

like you were talking about parents saying I don't recognize my child. Right. This part of his personality you don't even recognize. Right. So I think your vulnerability and honesty as you're offering here, Dr. Limke, is going to be very crucial to how the conversation goes.

Yeah.

Because he sees your honest concern. Right. Your pain and your desire for the whole family to be whole. And I think you've raised a good boy, so he will respond to that if he's not in the throes

of being dysregulated.

Does this sound reasonable to you, Catherine?

Yeah, and I just really wonder how much onus and accountability can you give a 13-year-old understanding that their brain is not fully developed

so that you can break that cycle?

Right, yeah. I mean, here's the thing, you know, Catherine, you as the parent could always step in and say, we're gonna take the phone away, like what we talked about with you. You could do that.

And again, depending upon the severity of his behaviors, and, you know, I might even recommend that you do that. So, I'm not saying you never do that. But I don't like to just talk about taking the devices away because some parents are just simply not in a circumstance where they're going to be able to do that.

So, that's where I think at least opening up the dialogue, you know, again, identifying what you see that's distressing, eliciting from him what he thinks is problematic.

And he's already broken his word. You all had rules. You set out with rules. Right. Yeah.

And he didn't honor the contract. Right. And this is key. Thinking about a family as something that requires a mutual investment of all members of the family who must abide by the family expectations and rules. So, even if you're not gonna take the phone away,

you could say, but we still expect you to do X, Y, and Z, to show up, to talk with us, to us with respect. And then you could even use what we call contingency management. Contingency management is well-known in the addiction field to be a potential way to treat.

It's essentially using punishments and rewards to shape behaviors. So the way that we'll often use contingency management in this situation is say, if you can meet certain expectations, we expect you to go to school,

we expect you to do these chores, we expect you to speak to us with respect, to not have the device in the bedroom, to not use the device. And if you're, and we'll give you a month to do that. And if you're not able to do that, then we are really dealing with a more serious situation. And then we're going to take you to see a mental health care professional. We're going to consider, you know, to actually taking the device away. Yeah. Sounds reasonable. Thank you so much.

Yes. Beautiful. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you so much. Kelly is joining us from Massachusetts.

Kelly, your story. Hi. Oh, I love the warm fire. I love that.

Hi. Yes. So, I have an 18-year-old son who's a freshman in college and, you know, like you've already mentioned how it's a tougher age to manage that stuff.

When he was home, he was busy with school and busy with sports and really didn't have much time. You're no longer managing anything now. You're just a consultant.

No, I'm not. Yeah. And he has so much more time on his hands too with college only being, you know, an hour or two of class a day. He's not playing sports in college. So he came home from break and I was pretty shocked at how much technology he was using. Like it was, he's having a hard

time pulling himself away from it at all. And I know he uses it, he has anxiety and has been struggling with depression and so he uses it as a bit of a coping mechanism as well. And so I'm just trying to figure out, like, how am I supposed to help him with him not being in the house? Like, how do I guide him to stop using technology so much?

Yeah. We see this quite often. Kids who, while they're still living at home with the container and the guardrails that parents provide, are able to manage their relationship with technology. But when they go off to college and all of a sudden those guardrails are gone,

some of these kids will very quickly fall into a kind of a 24-7 online, you know, digital habit. And if you're not alone, you're not alone. Yeah, I know. You're not alone. And then if you couple that with a child who's prone to anxiety and depression, what's very clear from the data is that the more time a child spends online, consuming digital media,

social media, the higher their risk of becoming depressed and anxious. And if they already have depression and anxiety, that depression and anxiety will get worse. So we really have a causal phenomenon where the consumption of digital media and social media drives the depression and the anxiety. This is a really important concept.

Back to some of my earlier advice, sitting down with your son, a really transparent discussion about what you're observing that's different from before he went away to college, talking about, does he observe the same thing, offering him help.

I mean, if he has depression and anxiety and he's not getting help for that, strongly recommend you hook him up with the, you know, either your own resources for mental health or school. Most colleges have resources for mental health or school. Most colleges have very good mental health resources,

but I would, again, get in there and not just sort of assume that it's gonna get better naturally on its own. And Kelly, the reason that I would especially emphasize this is because, Oprah, we do see some kids who when they go off to college

and all of a sudden are surrounded by the wonderful opportunities and the new friend groups, they actually get off their devices, they're on their devices less, right? College becomes this kind of opening to the world.

But if your child is, if they're having the opposite experience, I think you, you know, the alarm bells should be ringing and you should really be thinking about, oh, wow, you know, how can we help? And in some instances...

I had a friend whose son had to drop out of college at 19 because he became so obsessed with the devices.

Yeah, I was just going to say...

And then when she tried to take it away from him, he ended up, you know, trying to fight her and beat her up and it's just... So it's a real thing. What you've observed is not some play thing. It's a real thing.

Right. It's a real thing. Right, yeah. And kids can get incredibly isolated. They're up all night playing video games, watching YouTube, you know, sleeping during the day, getting suicidal. So, I mean, I have had lots of patients

where they actually have to stop out of school, come home, and really get some very intensive treatment. And, you know, I have no idea what your circumstance is, so, you know, no way to make any specific recommendations. But just to give you a sense of kind of the range of issues that occur. OPRAH WINFREY And likely your son, depending upon what your relationship is

or is not, may not tell you the truth, just like we were hearing earlier with Katherine. You know, they start lying about it and making up stories about it and using other ways to get around it. And so, we're going to send you dopamine

nation. KELLY SHULZ're gonna send you dopamine nation.

Perfect.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Kelly. Yeah, thanks Kelly.

So in a clip that has since gone viral, British actor Hugh Grant vented his frustrations as a parent in the age of tech. Many say he spoke for millions of parents. Here it is in case you haven't seen this.

The exhausting nature of parenthood under these circumstances, year after year, month after month, day after day, fighting the children, no, no, no, no, no, give that back, or no, we agreed you could have 20 minutes on Saturday. And so it was extremely surprising and extremely depressing. When you get emails from the school about, or the new school, you've sent your kid just saying proudly,

and we give all our children their own Chromebook or their own iPad. And you just think, how? How could that be a good idea? If school is for anything, surely they deserve just six hours off from their addiction,

from this crazy addiction. Because to people like us, honestly, big tech with its extraordinary powers seems like a drug cartel pushing its wares at children.

Well, Hugh Grant is a patron of an organization called Close Screens Open Minds, which advocates to get screens and tech out of the school curriculum. Now another patron is Sophie Winkleman, an actress and member of the British Royal Family by marriage. Sophie, thank you so much for joining us from London.

Thank you very much for having me. Honored to be here.

Why did you get involved and what are you hoping to achieve?

I got involved from basically lockdown and seeing how terribly my children and every other And I felt in a position after that to see what worked in the classroom and what doesn't work in the classroom. And schools where tech was used extremely moderately, in fact, just for IT lessons, the children were engaged, they were learning well, they had good relationships with their teachers, they would work in a calm way with books and handwriting. These schools stood out a mile, whether it was a free school or a private paying school,

these were at the top of the heap. And then loads of other schools, strangely, especially very expensive schools, drank the ed tech Kool-Aid and splattered the classrooms with devices. And it was done in a very proud,

aren't we cream of the crop kind of way. And initially parents were thinking, yeah, my kid's gonna be Zuckerberg at 25. They're gonna be on screens all day. They're gonna know the ins and outs of this thing. And yay, I'm looking forward to a very-

Because this used to be what everybody wanted.

You wanted your kid to go to a school that was tech savvy.

Exactly. And the school presented it in this futuristic, shiny, progressive way. And to be fair, a lot of them probably did think

that it was the future of education. Oh yeah.

But then when their children started getting agitated and angry and not concentrating and going to sleep later and getting headaches and then playing games after all the online homework, parents started going, whoa, whoa, really? Is this definitely the future of education?

And haven't all these companies presented us with a solution where there wasn't actually a problem? I mean, clearly huge class sizes are a problem and teacher overload in terms of social behavior and stuff. That's a huge problem. But books and handwriting and teacher-led learning was not a problem and teacher overload in terms of social behavior and stuff, that's a huge problem. But books and handwriting and teacher-led learning was not a problem.

And, you know, we all found out later that many tech execs

send their own children to schools that don't allow screens.

Precisely. It's a very sad, hypocritical, big old secret that the Medgar tech giants understand that the human capital is now attention and focus and they send their children to schools where they learn 10 page poems and learn every musical instrument under the sun because they know that's going to be the future gold of human imagination and mind.

So what's your most important message now you want parents and educators to know?

I want educators to know that parents aren't buying this anymore. They're not okay with it. Hugh and I are fighting the British education system at the moment, which wants to put all national exams online,

which would have a disastrous trickle-back effect of meaning that children are on screens for their entire school day, because the parents wouldn't have to provide books. They'd say, sorry, the exams are online, so let's get the kids super savvy

about what they're going to be doing. So we're fighting that. I want to give parents a voice to say, so, sorry, how is this better than reading a book and handwriting a response? None of the schools can ever answer that.

They give all sorts of sort of slogan-y responses saying it's the future. No, it isn't the future. Children who can't think properly and deeply, that's not the kind of future I want to be

a part of.

And I know you have two school-age daughters, and what's your biggest concern for them in this moment?

The biggest concern for me with them is that they don't get books anymore. They don't read novels for English. They don't have textbooks for any of their subjects. They come home and everything is online, whether it's bite-sized videos

or online sort of PowerPoints, or it's all very agitating, shallow, flimsy and maddening. I can see they're not learning. I can see their physical health is suffering. They're getting, you know, very stressed out by this way of education.

And I want parents to take to the streets and start revolting.

Dr. Libke, I know you're also involved with Hugh and Sophie's organization. What's your take on screens in schools? I agree with everything that Sophie said. I think this is really important work. There are some glimmers of hope in that, you know,

I and many others have been talking for more than a decade now about getting smartphones out of schools K through 12, you know, so that kids don't have little slot machines in their pockets so that they can actually attend to learn and teachers can teach. And we are seeing more and more schools around the world banning smartphones from schools.

So I think that's really good news. But still what we have is this idea that integrating technology into the way that we teach will make the teaching better. And yet all of the data, even beyond our parental instincts, all of the data are showing that

reading ability is decreasing, mathematical ability is decreasing. And even in the creative realm, kids are doing worse. This, I think we really have to look at and say, okay, we all kind of thought getting technology and cool screens and pads and things

would make our kids digitally literate, ready for the 21st century, but actually it's going in the opposite direction. And what we're creating is a generation of distracted kids who don't know how to learn. Because learning occurs

in that moment of friction and delayed gratification. It is the not knowing that allows our brains to create new synapses, which is the definition of learning something, right? And so, again, we have to get back to having slow tech spaces in the schools where kids can experience

frustration tolerance and have to actually have enough time and space to have a thought and learn how to express it and write it down on their own.

Do you feel it's getting easier to get this message out because and learn how to express it and write it down on their own.

Do you feel it's getting easier to get this message out because more and more parents have become

equally as frustrated as you and Hugh?

I think it is getting easier just because results are going down so blatantly all across the world and it's getting easier to just say this way of learning is really not working. But we're fighting, I think, and Emily Chirkin calls EdTech, big tech in a school uniform, and it's a multi-billion dollar industry, EdTech.

And so we sort of, parents saying, sorry, books and handwriting are a better way to learn. Of course you can do your technology education, but ed tech is a very different beast. It's a huge business, and it's not doing our children a good service.

I'm just very grateful. I think this will be the turning point, being with you and talking about it on this, because millions of people watch you, so I'm terribly grateful.

I hope that it is a beginning of something that really lends itself to allowing other people to understand that we're in trouble. We're in trouble. Thank you for being the voice for that.

Thank you, Sophie.

Very much for having me.

Thank you for joining us. You know, I learned from reading Dopamine Nation that just about anybody can be powerless against these digital forces that we're all up against. And the interesting thing is we regulate cigarettes and we regulate alcohol,

and there is some regulation to gambling for children. Australia is now putting an age limit on social media. So why don't we put guardrails around this? Why aren't we aware that this is happening to our kids? I mean, we need to do just that, right? Like we don't let kids-

There needs to be guardrails. Yeah, kids don't, they're not allowed to buy cigarettes or alcohol or go into casinos and gamble. We recognize that the developing brain is especially vulnerable. That's what you said earlier,

we're not serving them ice cream for breakfast. We know that. Yeah, we know that. So we need these guardrails. And I applaud Australia and I applaud other countries like South Korea that have gotten smartphones out of schools.

I applaud states here in the United States that are moving to create these guardrails. We have to try things out. We have to. And we also importantly have to hold the corporations that make and profit from these digital drugs accountable.

They are deploying a harmful product for kids and that shouldn't be allowed, that shouldn't be okay.

So your final word, what's the most important advice for parents or families grappling with tech addiction? I go back to what you said in the very beginning, to understanding that this is a drug. Right. Yeah.

I agree, and I also, I always wanna say to parents, take a deep breath, okay? And stay hopeful. This is a problem that is insidious and typically develops over days to weeks to months. It's gonna take days and weeks to months to get out of it, right?

It's not gonna be a snap of the fingers.

You can't just pull that phone away and think that's it.

No, no. Get help from a mental health provider if it's too much for your family or for you to handle alone, but get in there. Don't just give up and say, it's too late for my kid or there's nothing I can do.

Get in there, fight at your school, get EdTech out of schools, fight for these guardrails on a legislative level, hold corporations accountable. Like, let's energize, you know, we can do it.

But in the immediate, recognizing what you said at the beginning of this conversation, that your child's device is a drug to them. And so trying to remove the drug is like, your child is in the midst of taking that drug and you're trying to take that drug away from him.

And you're going to have, you know, meltdowns and you're going to have a lot of anger and dysregulation. That's right.

That's right.

Hope you read it. Dopamine Nation, important for all of us at this time to understand what's happening to our minds on our tech devices and the minds of our children. Dr. Lemke, you are a gem for us in this age. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for helping us get through it. Yeah.

Understanding ourselves.

Yeah.

Thank you for the information. Thank you to Ida and Catherine and Kelly and Sophie Winkleman. Thank you so much. Dr. Lemke's book, Dopamine Nation. 1.5 million have already found it to be really inspiring

and helpful to them. It's available wherever you buy your books. If you want to understand what's actually going on in the brain and the hit of dopamine your children are getting from their screens, it may help you navigate your children's use of tech.

I strongly urge you to read it. I strongly urge you to read it. Until next time, go well.