Smartphones, while offering connection, pose significant risks to adolescent brain development and well-being, necessitating proactive safeguards and mindful usage strategies akin to safety measures for cars.
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Who remembers being in a car without a
seatelt on? Maybe it felt adventurous,
freeing, I don't know. But imagine I now
say to you, "Okay, but now you have to
take those kids all the way down to
London without a seat belt." How do you
feel now? Do you feel unsafe, worried,
[snorts] maybe a little bit scared? And
what about now? How does this photo make
you feel? Now, I do not want you to be
scared about smartphones. I'm actually
very anti-fear-mongering.
But just like cars are not good or bad,
I believe that we need to find some
safeguards. We created a seat belt to
make cars safe. And we need to do the
same with smartphones. And I've got some
ideas. But before we talk about that, I
want to talk about child and adolescent development.
development.
So one of the things that we think about
in adolescence is that they go through
these hormonal spikes and big physical
transformations. But the most critical
change happens somewhere we don't see in
their brain. And it is in adolescence
where all the kind of good juices of
development happen. And one of the
things you need to know about the brain
is that it develops backwards. So the
back happens first and the front last.
And in the front, just behind your
forehead, is the prefrontal cortex. And
this part of the brain is really
important. It's the thing that buffers
your big emotions. It's the thing that
helps you make good decisions. It's the
thing that moderates your impulses and
allows you to initiate tasks. But it
doesn't fully develop until our 20s. And
I know lots of adults feel like they're
still maturing, but it's really
essential knowledge that actually it's
not till our mid20s that our brain fully
matures and kind of the structures stay
the way that they are. And in some ways,
this is super smart because adolescence
and children have this incredible
opportunity. They were able to have
loads of experiences, make tons of
mistakes, and keep learning before the
brain kind of stocks it all up. But
there's a catch. One of the things our
brains are supposed to do is make
predictions. That's actually their main
job. So it's trying to make the best
guess about what happens next. But it's
also in adolescence where this thing
called pruning happens. And I think of
it as decluttering the brain. So the
experiences teenagers are having either
become really strongly connected in the
neurons or they kind of waste away. And
so exposure really matters.
There's some studies around smoking and
it's really interesting to know that
actually if you're a 13year-old and
that's when you light your first
cigarette, you're more likely to become
a long-term smoker in adulthood, 43%
more likely. But if you light your first
cigarette at 21, that likelihood drops
to 10%.
So in these critical brain formative
years, what our young people are experiencing
experiencing
actually leads them forward into the
future. And you know, it's not just kind
of cigarettes. It's everything. It's the
experiences that they're having. One of
the things smartphones do is they bypass
the kind of normal parental safeguards.
So, with cigarettes, you're hopefully
educating your child about cigarettes
and the health risks. You're maybe
leading by example. Um, but when it
comes to smartphones, one of the tricks
that they play is that even if you use
really strong parental controls, we've
got evidence that the algorithms will
feed 13year-olds on their first login
harmful content, be it pornography,
misogynistic context, violence, and
that's you using your best parental
controls. But it's not just the content,
because I think that's the thing that
gets talked about all the time. There's
something else that smartphones do to
our kids. And I see teenagers day in day
out in my therapy room, but I'll never
forget this 13-year-old, who I'm going
to call Kerry, but is not her real name.
One of the things that she came to me
for was overcoming anxiety. And anxiety
was playing the usual tricks that it
plays on everybody. She was scared to go
to school and interact with her friends.
It was getting in the way of her sleep
and it was really messing up with her
studies. Now, her parents had very firm
boundaries around her smartphone. She
had one, but she had no social media and
she was not allowed it after 7:00 at
night. But Carrie, every morning when
she woke up, had 200 messages waiting
for her in her WhatsApp. And in the
morning, she started fantasizing about
what she'd already missed out on. The
first thing she did was grab it and then
she would dive straight into her screen
and wouldn't look up until she'd read
all the messages.
Now, I think it's easy to think, "Oh,
you know, Carrie's a special case."
But actually, I really don't think that
she is. And if you've ever met a
teenager, you will know that they talk a
lot. Now, maybe not to you, their
parents, the adults, but they talk to
their friends. They talk to their
friends about everything and anything
because part of adolescence is about
connecting and finding a sense of
belonging with each other and this is
really healthy. The problem with
smartphones is that, you know, that
quantity of messages would make anybody
feel social pressure. But to a teenage
brain that is developing, that is
sensitive to experiences, that is also
building habits every single time it
beeps or rings at them. This is
overwhelm. And habits are not just
things that you do over and over again.
Habits are things that we build in
relationships with each other. good
habits or bad habits. When we hold them
and repeat them, they're often things
that are emotive to us and they have
meaning. They have some kind of builtin
identity for us and that's why we carry
on doing them. And what I want you to
know is that this is really important
when we're thinking about smartphones
because our smartphones are training us
to have some terrible habits. You and I,
we've all got them. As long as you've
got a smartphone, I promise it's
happened. And they trick you. So, a
couple of things. It starts with
modeling. It's that it's that minute
when your child is talking about their
latest Pokemon swap or maybe the last
thing that they saw on their favorite
series and suddenly, ping, text comes
along, you're in, you start messaging
somebody else. very quietly. The message
you're actually sending your child is
what's on my phone is more important
than you. And by the way, we've all done
it, me included.
It's using it as an emotional crutch.
So, your child is kicking off and
there's people around. So, you quickly
get your phone out. Let's give them
something to watch. Shh. Keep them quiet.
quiet.
It's those environmental cues that are
just inbuilt in our smartphones. They
ping. They buzz. They have colors. And
who's ever felt their phone vibrate in
their pocket? And you look at it and
whoop, nope, that was a phantom's buzz.
Didn't exist. Our phones have trained
us. They're really clever. And when it
comes to identity, how easy is it to see
those notifications on your WhatsApp
from your friends group and say, "I'm
just going to let that go. I'm not going
to check it yet." to a young person that
feels like a personal injury because
having to wait to read that message is
really hard. And I know that one of the
things parents say to me is, "If I don't
get my kid a smartphone, they're going
to be left out." But I want you to know
that they will be more left out. And it
will amplify this bigger the day you get
them a smartphone. Now, studies on
smartphones are
iffy. They're not very good. They're
quite flawed. But then there is this big
global study with a 100,000 children in
it aged 5 to 13. And this isn't to scare
you, but I think awareness is important.
One of the things that they found was
that the earlier you own a smartphone,
your child owns a smartphone, the more
detrimental the impact long term. So
ideas around suicide ideiation double
compared to if they start owning one at
the age of 13. The same is true for
facing challenges and learning how to
cope. And of course, five, six, eight
year olds, they haven't got the
developmental skills to cope with life
yet. That's what living is all about.
Things like poor sleep, um, more
aggression and irritability. And the one
that always gets to me, that they feel
like they're not good enough.
And what I want to bring here is a
little bit of nuance because children
who come from dysfunctional families,
who have poor peer networks or a sense
of belonging, who maybe have mental or
physical health conditions, they're the
kids who are going to spend more time on
their phones because their phones are
distracting them from a life that is
really difficult. And the way I think
about it is in some ways that's a coping
strategy. But for the kids who are just sensitive
sensitive
normal teenagers who are developing, who
are more sensitive to experiences
because of where their brain is at, a
smartphone can still amplify these
things. And the earlier we give it to
them, the less time they have to build
real life skills. Because remember, our
brains are making predictions. And if
kids are making most of their
predictions online, they're missing this
opportunity to build them in the real
world. So, what can you do? Well, I know
lots of parents of my generation are
delaying smartphones for as long as they
can. And I think that's so helpful. But
delay is a process. It is not an
outcome. And before we give kids a
smartphone or give little hands that
equipment to hold, we should be giving
them metaphorical seat belts.
The family phone pledge is something
that is not a contract. It is not going
to get you punished if you get it wrong.
It's not something that, you know, has
terrible consequences. It's an agreement
between you and your children that you
value most in your home is each other.
And you can make changes and build these
healthy habits that I just mentioned
every single day in the experiences that
you have with your child. So, for
example, my six-year-old said, "I don't
want smartphones in my playroom because
what she wants is me, my full presence."
I said, "I don't want smartphones at the
table because I like chatting while I'm
eating and I will miss the fun of that
if there's a smartphone beeping." And we
all agreed bedtime is a place where
smartphones should not exist because we
all want to rest. And the reason why it
works is because we made this agreement
together. So, my daughter is on board
because she's already got the
expectation laid out way before she owns
a smartphone. And I do warn you that if
you do this, your house will look like
chaos. This is my house. This is a den
they built. And it is going to get
louder, noisier. There's more arguments.
There's music. There's laughter. There's
presence. And there's more memories. And
one of the things I want you to know
about memories is that our brains encode
richer memories when they're experienced
fully when you embody them. So for
example, if you listen to a band on the
on the radio and you love the song and
you know all the lyrics, it is not the
same kind of memory in your kitchen.
Then if you watch them in real life and
you see them play, you hear them, you
feel the bass through your body and you
smell the crowd, right? That memory is
rich and every single time your phone
pings at you and you pick it up and
you're in the middle of an interaction
with somebody else, your child perhaps
or an experience that's a glitch in your
brain's memory system. So why don't we
just ban them? Because it's so much
easier. And as a mum, I feel like I'd
love that backup of let's ban
smartphones and my life is easier. I can
say no because somebody else said so.
The problem I have with bans is that
one, anything you ban becomes a lot more
seductive to teenagers. They're going to
do it, but they're going to do it behind
our backs and then we can't protect
them. For me, it's a little bit like
knowing that when they see a red light,
they stop. And they haven't got kids to
drive a car yet, but over time, you're
teaching them what the rules of the road
are. We can do the same thing with our
smartphones. I do think we need to push
for apps and you know big tech to become
safer because online experiences should
be safe for all of us from the start.
But again as a mom I have not got the
time to wait for governments to wake up
to hope that technology might become
more human or for research to catch up.
I have to take action right now. And the
action I'm taking is I have an open
dialogue about smartphones in my house.
I am setting the expectation straight
away. And my daughters are six and two.
And I'm following the family phone
pledge to guide me, to help me, and
delaying smartphones for as long as I
can in my house, 15, because I know that
one day when my daughters walk out the
door, it will not be the lectures I gave
them that they will remember. Just like
they automatically put on a seat belt
when they sit in a car, the things that
they'll remember are the habits, the
little rituals that I'm embedding in my
home with them. Those are the
experiences they take. And when we know
better, we get to do better. And I
really believe that we can build a
generation, choose to build a generation
of kids who don't just survive the
digital age, but they thrive within it.
And when we do this work, as effortful
as it is, there is one thing that you
are going to take with you
to experience your children's childhood
fully and hold on to those memories for
life. Thank you. [applause]
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