Good Inside with Dr. BeckyHow Screens Are Rewiring Attention | Dr. Becky, Jonathan Haidt & Catherine Price
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
50 min read · 10,242 words- 0:00 – 2:46
No-shame framing: why screens are on every parent’s mind
- BEDr. Becky
Screens, phones, kids. Okay, look, I know what you're thinking. What can I possibly hear that I don't already know? And maybe you're thinking, "Dr. Becky, if you say one thing that makes me feel guilty about these topics... I mean, I am just trying to survive. Parenting is so hard." I hear you, and I hear that thought also, knowing I'm about to dive into a conversation about these topics. But here's the other thing, I'm hardly ever talking to a parent when screens and phones aren't on their mind. On some level, they know, "I feel like it's affecting my kids' behavior and our connection. It affects my own mood. I just feel so stuck. It feels like so much of my life is on the phone." So here's the framing of what I wanna talk about today, and I promise you no judgment, no shame, no morality, and let me start by taking myself off a phone pedestal. I'm on my phone too much. I sometimes give my kids too much time on their iPads. I end up yelling at random moments, "Everyone off their screens," just because I feel guilty. So I am right there with you. What I have done is brought here two incredible minds about this topic, Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price. You probably know Jonathan from his book, The Anxious Generation, which, I don't know, took the world by storm. What you might not know is Jonathan teamed up with Catherine Price, who wrote How to Break Up With Your Phone, and they created a book for kids. It's called The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World, and it came out on December 30th, 2025. And what I have in store for you is something amazing, a real conversation where you're also gonna hear about the struggles we all have in our home in a very honest way. No pedestal here. And you're going to leave feeling more empowered, more equipped to make maybe one or two small shifts, and you're gonna have a way to get your kid involved in the process so you're on the same team. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is Good Inside. We'll be back right after this, and you do not want to miss this episode. All right, Jon. The Anxious Generation has been out in the world a little bit now, and I feel like parents know the headline-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Mm-hmm
- BEDr. Becky
... which is also just a testament to the power of your message and the way you tell the story and how much it resonates with people. Just incredible. A couple questions following up kind of The Anxious Generation. Since publishing the book, what is something you've learned or see differently or maybe wanna put a magnifying glass on-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Sure
- BEDr. Becky
... 'cause you realize it was even more important than you realized?
- 2:46 – 3:46
Haidt’s post-book update: collective action is spreading fast
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. So I'll say, uh, one good, one bad. Um, the good one, the good thing I've realized is that, is that the world already saw the problems, wanted to do something, but didn't know what to do, and this especially was clear with mothers. What amazed me was the degree to which mothers around the world, as soon as they got the book, they jumped into action. They... You know, i- in the book, we, we call for collective action, but the mothers... You know, I mean, dads read it, said, "Yeah, I agree with this," but they didn't- they're not as likely to do something. The mothers, I mean, it was instant. Like in Brazil, um, mothers got together. They, they worked with a female legislator. They got legislation introduced to ban phones in schools. They got it through the legislature in, uh, 10 months. Um, so, so that was the, the thing I didn't expect, was the speed with which people would take action around the world. Um, with Australia last week, they raised the age to 16. So that's the good thing, which it makes me really optimistic that we actually can change this. We can get our kids back from the
- 3:46 – 4:29
The underestimated harm: attention, focus, and sustained effort are eroding
- JHJonathan Haidt
technology. The bad thing that I've realized is that the problems I describe in The Anxious Generation, I've really understated it. That is, I focused on mental illness, and I think I got that right. Like, the levels are horrible, and they're, and they're rising. Um, but I didn't fully appreciate the degree to which it's changed the human ability to pay attention, to read a book, to focus, to accomplish anything over a period of time. Um, this I think ultimately might be the biggest damage-
- BEDr. Becky
Mm-hmm
- JHJonathan Haidt
... that has happened, and so the- w- we have to look much more broadly when we look at the effects of this on our kids.
- BEDr. Becky
Could you ground that in a story, in a moment, just to, like-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh, sure
- BEDr. Becky
... bring that to life?
- 4:29 – 5:35
A college classroom case study: getting students’ lives back from scrolling
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so, um, my students, I teach a course at NYU, and so I have... My undergrad class is 30 19-year-olds roughly, and about a quarter of them spend four hours a day on social media or more, and the, the degree to which it prevents them it from living, it's like, it's like it's all they do other than class is, is, is watch short videos. And when, uh, over the course of the semester, the assignment is you have to pick something to change about yourself that will make you happier in the long run, and those that are on heavy social media, I say, "You have to work on this. There's no point in you doing anything else unless you work on this." And when they do, they get their lives back. They say, "Oh, I have so much time to do my homework now, so I'm not stressed about it anymore, and I have so much time that now I can go out with my friends." Like, you come to New York City.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
You're in college in New York City, and all you do is scroll through TikTok? Like, no. They're getting out there. They're going to Broadway plays. They're exploring parks. So, um, it's amazing to see the way they come alive when they get their attention back.
- 5:35 – 7:05
The “start of day” problem: low-effort dopamine and frustration tolerance
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah. I have a follow-up to that, uh, because one of the things I've been talking to parents a lot about, and, and it has to do with how you start your day, but th- that's just one manifestation of it. I feel strongly that if you have young kids... And look, nothing has to be rigid, but if every Saturday and Sunday they have X number of hours of time on the iPad as the start of their day, the idea that starting your day with what I call no effort, high dopamine-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm-hmm, and the idea that later they're gonna, like, do a puzzle- Or listen to you when you wanna leave the house, or be able to manage frustration with their sibling, which requires a lot of effort and basically no dopamine 'cause the best you get is being like, "Well, I guess I'm not gonna get the blue cup." Like, you know?
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
Okay. Um, right, um, I keep saying to parents, we've been talking about this a lot in our membership, like I have a million psychological interventions, but let's put them all on the shelf. Let's just look at the rhythm of how you're spending time, and it's been a really powerful shift or at least something to add on. And I, I think that's kind of in line with what you're saying. If you're spending four hours on social media, forget time, but also how an assignment from your class is gonna feel. Like, they can't swipe you away. They can't be like, "Dr. Haidt, nope, nope. Next one."
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
I don't know if they tried.
- CPCatherine Price
You don't wanna swipe John away.
- BEDr. Becky
Do you ever get that in class? You're like, "No, I don't. I want the next-"
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah, right.
- BEDr. Becky
"... next professor."
- CPCatherine Price
You just like reach out. Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
[laughs]
- CPCatherine Price
Real godly.
- BEDr. Becky
And you're like, "I'm not swipeable."
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
"I'm, I'm here. This is a class."
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah. You, you paid money for this. Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
But is that in line with kind of also just the attention, the tolerance of frustration?
- 7:05 – 10:23
Attention as a life resource: phones hijack mornings, nights, and agency
- CPCatherine Price
Oh, yes. Because w- the other thing that I do with the entire class on day one is I ask them to fill out what are the five first things you do when you wake up in the morning?
- BEDr. Becky
Mm.
- CPCatherine Price
At what point do you go to the bathroom, drink water, get out of bed, pick up your phone and scroll?
- BEDr. Becky
Mm.
- CPCatherine Price
And almost everybody, the first thing they do is look at notifications and catch up. Then I say, "Now count down to the end of the day from five down to one, zero. Zero is you close your eyes." And again, the last thing they do, most of them, is check their phone. And what do they do in between? Mostly check their phone. So when I put it to them that way and I say, "Okay, you've got to carve out a time for yourself to recharge." Uh, and so yeah, so like, so how do you end your day? To get a good night's sleep, but you're not stressed. And how do you begin your day to develop focus that you can do the things that you choose to do? Because what they're doing is they're handing over the decisions about their consciousness to these algorithms, and the algorithms are gonna control them from the moment they open their eyes to the moment they close their eyes.
- BEDr. Becky
So just to mirror some of that back, one of the things it sounds like that's become even clearer to you since the book is, yes, anxiety, things like that, but focus, ability to take on hard things, how people are even spending their time, and then what comes into their life because they're spending on their time. Those are even bigger umbrellas for the impact around phones than maybe even you realized when you wrote the book. Is that right?
- CPCatherine Price
That's right. That's right.
- BEDr. Becky
Okay. Catherine, speaking about focus, time, attention, right? I know you've spoken about how attention is like our most precious resource, right? Um, and that in some ways, this isn't just some small topic. Like there's an existential nature to giving our attention away or to not having control over it. Can you just talk about attention and how phone use relates to that?
- CPCatherine Price
Uh, sure. So my previous book or one of my previous books was called How to Break Up With Your Phone, which is for adults. And so just to piggyback on what you were just saying, I hear from adults all the time about how fragmented their attention feels. Also, how useful it is to get your phone out of the bedroom and get a standalone alarm clock because the reason people check their phone first thing in the morning is they're silencing the alarm.
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- CPCatherine Price
And when you silence the alarm, you touch the alarm, and if the alarm's the phone and it has all these notifications, well, now you've just allowed someone else to take over your day.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm-hmm. 100%.
- CPCatherine Price
So but in terms of the idea of our attention being our most valuable resource, that was my biggest personal takeaway from my previous work, which is the idea that ultimately we only remember what we pay attention to because we only experience what we pay attention to. And one of my biggest personal takeaways that I try to remind myself of as much as I can is that our lives are what we pay attention to. And so every time I or any one of us is making a decision in the moment about what to pay attention to, we're making this much broader decision about how we wanna live our lives.
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- CPCatherine Price
But the good news there, 'cause that sounds very heavy, is that we do have the ability to decide what to pay attention to. So if you have that realization and you say, "You know what? I don't wanna spend all my attention on my phone. I don't want to allow my attention to be fragmented and lose my ability to focus," you actually-- we, as adults and then doing this for our kids, we have the ability to take back control there. And it's actually very inspirational to hear from people who started trying to build up their attention span and how quickly it comes back.
- BEDr. Becky
Oof. I love anything around hope.
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
But is this... I, I do. [laughs] I'm a, I'm a sucker for hope. What can I say?
- 10:23 – 12:23
It’s not willpower: devices are engineered like slot machines
- CPCatherine Price
You know?
- BEDr. Becky
Um, is this more of a systems issue than a willpower issue? Because, uh, one of the things I say to parents a lot, so like my kid takes their iPad when it's not iPad time. My first question, they always expect me to come down on the kid, and I'm like, "Where's the iPad when it's not on t- iPad time?" They're like, "It's on the kitchen counter." And I was like, "Look, I'm just gonna speak for myself." When my phone is on the kitchen counter and I'm an adult, and I tell myself, "Don't take my phone. Don't take my phone," I'm successful .1% of the time. I, I mean-
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah
- BEDr. Becky
... I joke my phone has to be behind two closed doors. I've tried one.
- CPCatherine Price
Mm-hmm.
- BEDr. Becky
It's just not enough for me.
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
It has to be two. It's my bedroom door and my bathroom door, literally. And so when I think about a five-year-old who sees the most enticing, dopamine-filled, low effort, easy, you know, pleasure device, uh, I feel like it's asking a kid a lot, which makes me think, is this willpower? Are there system changes adults and kids need in your environment to help get your attention back?
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah, it'd be ridiculous to try to talk about this, this in terms of willpower. The people who are in charge of designing the most problematic apps and devices hire thousands of engineers whose job it is to hack our brains and to get us hooked on their devices in the same way that slot machines are designed to hijack our time. And when I say in the same way, I mean literally they studied slot machines. It's worth noting that slot machines are considered to be so addictive that states don't allow people under 18 to play them. Yes, and these tech companies hire people who copied those techniques, put all of these dopamine triggers into their apps that are the same dopamine triggers, bright colors, variable rewards, you know, sounds, all these things. They're in slot machines, and they are in smartphones. In fact, many experts refer to smartphones as slot machines we keep in our pockets. So if you're not going to expect an adult- To be able to resist with willpower the call of the slot machine, and it's absolutely ridiculous to think that our kids would be able to resist a device and an app that's been deliberately designed to addict them.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CPCatherine Price
I know John has thoughts on this too.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
[laughs]
- 12:23 – 15:16
Changing behavior requires systems: the rider-elephant model (and compassion)
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, no, if I could add, add in, 'cause this is the central challenge that my students wrestle with, how do you change your habitual behavior? And the underlying psychology that, that they find helpful, um, is that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. And the metaphor that I developed in my first book, The Happiness Hypothesis, which was about ancient wisdom, what were the ancients right about, almost everything when it comes to psychology, um, is that the... I- if you think of your mind as being like a small rider on top of a very large elephant. The elephant is very smart. The elephant is all of the intuitive processes, the emotions, the automatic things that our brains do, 'cause our brains are very, very smart. The rider is the thing that is our conscious reasoning, and if you, like, close your eyes and you're thinking, like, that's the rider. That little thing that's, like, got the language, and that little thing says, "I'm only gonna have one piece of chocolate." Here I'm speaking very, very personally.
- BEDr. Becky
[laughs]
- JHJonathan Haidt
I realize I-
- CPCatherine Price
Deep and personal.
- JHJonathan Haidt
You know, yeah. As soon as I take a piece of chocolate, I'm gonna go through the whole bag. I- it's very hard for me to stop myself.
- BEDr. Becky
You are not alone.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So [laughs]
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah. [laughs]
- JHJonathan Haidt
We, we see you.
- BEDr. Becky
[laughs]
- JHJonathan Haidt
So the, so the rider is, is, like, what we're aware of, but the thing is, the rider is not in control of the elephant.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
In fact, the rider evolved, language evolved to make us more effective at manipulating others, at dealing with our environment, which is why you would say, you know, if you're gonna go for the second piece or if you're gonna go for the iPad, your reasoning isn't saying, "No, don't do it." Your reasoning's saying, "Well, just this once. I was good yesterday. Oh, I deserve this." You know, so our, the, the reasoning is in service of the elephant, and what this means is if you wanna change your behavior, your habitual patterns, you must change the elephant.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
You have to change the habitual th- and that takes time.
- BEDr. Becky
Yes.
- JHJonathan Haidt
It takes a few weeks. So you gotta develop habits and patterns, and, uh, uh, and over time, that will train the elephant.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
But if you put it all on willpower, and I tell my students, "You are not allowed to do that. That is a guaranteed fail in this course." If you say, "Well, I'm gonna be nicer to people, and I'm just gonna do it by being nicer to people," like, no, that's not gonna work. You, you have-
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah
- JHJonathan Haidt
... to have a system.
- BEDr. Becky
Well, well, I think, I, I just, I love this because it takes away so much of the shame and self-blame-
- CPCatherine Price
Mm-hmm
- BEDr. Becky
... which ironically-
- CPCatherine Price
Yes
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah
- BEDr. Becky
... I tell parents all the time, like, the, the best way to let yourself off the hook for change is to blame and shame yourself. Like, because it freezes your body. It's a freeze response from an animal defense state. When you blame and shame yourself, you're frozen. You can't change when you're frozen. So people somehow got this idea that any type of more compassionate understanding, the phone thing, i- it- it's just, it's not a willpower thing. It's actually designed to make me feel like it's never been enough and like it's the answer to all my problems forever. So if I tell myself, "This is my problem, I should be stronger," that's the best way to make sure you never change. It's, like, so ironic because when people hear, "Oh, so it's not really my fault," first of all, that doesn't mean it's not your responsibility.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- BEDr. Becky
It could still be our responsibility-
- CPCatherine Price
Mm-hmm
- 15:16 – 19:00
‘Kids must learn eventually’—reframed: training pools vs hard alcohol
- BEDr. Becky
... to think of a new system, but the system has to change. And I tell parents, 'cause parents tell me a lot, "My kid's gonna have to learn how to deal with this at some point."
- JHJonathan Haidt
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
At age, right?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- BEDr. Becky
But I say-
- CPCatherine Price
An entry about sex-
- BEDr. Becky
Right
- CPCatherine Price
... smoking, and everything else.
- BEDr. Becky
Or I think about-
- JHJonathan Haidt
And you don't introduce it
- BEDr. Becky
... someone who wants to stop drinking.
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
A friend who wants to stop drinking, we're never like, "Hey, meet me at the bar. You're gonna have to figure this out." Like, it's a, a... What? Like, you can't put someone into the fire and expect them not to have to deal with the fire. They need a period where their urges are developing, their brains are developing, and where they've seen that they can develop a life outside of a phone to be able to, over time, make better decisions.
- CPCatherine Price
Another analogy I hear people sometimes make is like, "Well, kids need to learn how to swim, so you shouldn't keep them out of pools." Right?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Right.
- CPCatherine Price
And I'm like, "Okay, can we just talk about that for a second? What if that pool was filled with pedophiles?" You know?
- BEDr. Becky
[laughs]
- CPCatherine Price
And there's someone in the corner who's like-
- BEDr. Becky
How did we get there? Wow. I like it
- CPCatherine Price
... sorry, really quick.
- BEDr. Becky
I like it.
- CPCatherine Price
It gets dark really fast.
- BEDr. Becky
Go, go.
- CPCatherine Price
Which is super fun at holiday parties.
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- CPCatherine Price
Um, but [laughs] you know, when there's someone in the corner who's, like, teaching people how to-
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah
- CPCatherine Price
... harm themselves, right? And then you've got a violent movie. It's a pool party with this violent, like, beheading happening. You would never let your kid-
- BEDr. Becky
Of course
- CPCatherine Price
... learn. That's not where you learn to swim.
- 19:00 – 23:23
Phones as relationship blockers: marriage strain, infancy development, and ‘still face’
- BEDr. Becky
We're talking about kids and phones, and I think an element of the conversation that I love that you guys always bring to it, and it's something I think about a lot too, is our kids' relationships with phones and devices is also really impacted by our relationship with phones and devices and what we're doing in the home and what we're modeling in the home. And so I'm just curious from your perspective, how has that impacted family life, us being on our phones?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Well, let's start with what we know about what these devices have done to all of us. I was just talking with a marriage therapist the other day, and you can guess what she said.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm-hmm. [laughs]
- JHJonathan Haidt
Couples are not having much sex, or at least having a lot less. Everyone's exhausted. Uh, you get into bed and your spouse is already scrolling, and so then you scroll, and then you both just kinda get, you fall asleep. Um, so the phone is an experience blocker and a relationship blocker. The phone connects you to thousands of people, including pedophiles sometimes. Let's keep that in play here.
- BEDr. Becky
[laughs]
- JHJonathan Haidt
But the thing is, as it connects you to all those people far away, it necessarily disconnects you from the people physically around you. Necessarily. That has to be the case.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
So just what it's doing to marriages is terrible. Okay, now that's two adults. Now you've got this infant who's first struggling just to do the, the eye contact thing, struggling just to get the reciprocity going in those first weeks and months. You have to be there for that. You have to be totally attentive. And if they see the back of the phone a lot, and if they make a little bid or when they start smiling, nothing comes back, that's really bad for their development. So, um, because these devices are, are, are relationship blockers and presence blockers, they're terrible, especially i- in early childhood. Um, so yeah, and then it just goes on from there.
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah, I would add to that 'cause then [laughs] some people may be like, "Oh my God. Wait, what did I? What have I done?" It's really important to not have self-blame and shame in this conversation, just as you were saying, Becky, 'cause then you end up paralyzed. There's no reason for that. And I'd say that to adults I work with with their own phone relationships. The best time to change, maybe it was a while ago, but it's right now.
- BEDr. Becky
Always.
- CPCatherine Price
Like you have to start now.
- BEDr. Becky
Always now.
- CPCatherine Price
And yeah, and to John's point, I actually had that experience with my own daughter where I was holding her when she was a baby and I realized that I was looking at my phone instead of her, and that actually inspired How to Break Up With Your Phone, um, because babies can only focus about 10 to 12 inches in front of their face. But that was, uh, the impact of not responding to your kid's face was shown in this experiment called the still face experiment.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- CPCatherine Price
A very well-known experiment that's been replicated numerous times, and basically the idea was having a parent interact with their baby normally for a couple minutes and then go totally still faced with no, no reaction for a couple minutes, and then they monitor what happens to the babies. They get incredibly distressed. Their cortisol levels spike. I bring that up though because one thing that Tronick says at the end of this clip that I'm referring to, he says the good news is that if you reestablish that connection, you can undo some of that. So I would say to anyone listening, this is just a wake-up call for us, and we should just listen to it. But starting today, right now, you can start to model habits yourself that will really bring you closer to your children, to your partner. You know, we can open up a conversation, so there's no reason to feel bad about what's happened in the past, but let's talk about how we can move forward.
- BEDr. Becky
I, I, I do think any type of learning around parenting is the most vulnerable thing we do because as soon as we learn a new idea that makes you say, "Oh, I didn't know that," or, "I hadn't thought about that before," I think most parents go right to, "I, I, I fucked up my kid. That's it. Like, I messed up my kid forever," and right? And so even being open to a new idea, every parent knows like, "Oh, I'm, I'm kind of bringing myself to the edge of the worst parent thought ever," right?
- CPCatherine Price
Right.
- BEDr. Becky
Which is, "I messed everything up. I'm a failure." And what you're saying is so true. Learning is so important. I- it's just been that parenting has been one last area where we've made it seem like we shouldn't learn. Oh, you have everything you need. You have instinct. And so it's a new thing in our generation to be like, we can learn in parenting. But to watch for that shame, I think that's exactly right. And I think just specifically with what you're saying, I know the experience, so I'm sure you guys do too, unless your marriages are, you know, just 100% perfect. Tell me your secrets after. Is I know the feeling of trying to talk to my husband when he's on his phone, and I know what that feels like, and I'm a-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah
- BEDr. Becky
... fairly well psychologically resourced 40-something-year-old, I will say.
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs]
- JHJonathan Haidt
[laughs]
- 23:23 – 27:46
Repair and collaboration: making kids allies (code words, calling parents in)
- BEDr. Becky
Okay? Um, and I do think, you know, one of the things I think that kids are always asking their environment, even though they never ask it, and I honestly think adults are too, is, "Am I real?"
- CPCatherine Price
Mm.
- BEDr. Becky
I really think that's what a baby's question is. They don't know. They're no- Like, "Am I real?" And I think when I think about the Tronick experiment from all my learnings, the reason you want responsiveness, I, I, I'm, I'm gonna tear up, is 'cause it's a way of saying, "You're real."
- CPCatherine Price
Mm-hmm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
"You did this thing, and you see a reaction. You are a real person here." And at every age, that matters, which also means at any age that a parent's listening to this, repair is where everything's at. You can say to your kid, "I was listening to this podcast. I was thinking beyond my phone being annoying, because I know I'm on it a lot, I think it gets in the way of us being closer. And I know other people do that, and it hap- and that happens to me. I just wanna name that and own that, and I'm gonna try to do a better job, and if I don't- Call me out. Give me a, give me a review. Hey, you're doing the phone thing again. And, and if we enlist our kids to even help us and we look at the feedback as helping us align with our values rather than our kids telling us we're a bad mom or dad, eh, that system can move things really quickly.
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah. I would even take that a step further. I mean, I, I see that all the time, or I always am encouraging parents who are concerned about their own phone habits-
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah
- CPCatherine Price
... or their kids'. It's like, "Okay, let's turn the mirror on ourselves and ask our kids, 'Hey, how do you feel when I'm around my ph- I'm using my phone in front of you?'" And I ask kids that when I give talks.
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- CPCatherine Price
I say, "Have you ever felt ignored 'cause your parent was on their phone?" All the hands go up.
- BEDr. Becky
Mm-hmm.
- CPCatherine Price
But the way I think we can approach that as adults to, again, like, not just start beating ourselves up about it, is say exactly what you're saying. Talk to your kids about, "Hey, I noticed that this might be having an effect on you." Totally blame us. Say that you listened to this podcast. And say, "How do you feel when I'm on my phone? Is there anything I can do, and can you call me out on it?" My husband and I actually did something where we came up with a code word for our daughter, 'cause I also know in a lot of marriages this can be a fraught conversation, right? Where it's like everyone gets super defensive. So we're- which thankfully was not our situation, but we were like, "Let's come up with a code word that our daughter can say when she feels like one of us has been on the phone." And I think she chose for some reason asparagus, right?
- BEDr. Becky
It's usually a food. Banana something.
- CPCatherine Price
Banana.
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- CPCatherine Price
And you know, and then it's, like, kind of like a gentle, gentle reminder that, "Oh, right. I me-" So it doesn't feel confrontational or like an attack. But anyway, I think if you can bring a bit of playfulness and a bit of vuln- honestly, vulnerability-
- BEDr. Becky
Yes
- CPCatherine Price
... to the situation, it helps you connect with your kids, and it helps us all get on the same side. It's not an us versus them thing. It's us versus companies that are trying to addict our children and hack our brains.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. Just like to add on. I j- I was thinking, thinking about you, uh, what you said about, you know, do-- am I real? Do I exist?
- CPCatherine Price
Mm.
- JHJonathan Haidt
That's very powerful. Uh, I'd like to suggest a slightly different word. I, I think what they're asking themselves con- what we're all asking ourselves is, do I matter?
- BEDr. Becky
[laughs]
- JHJonathan Haidt
And so it's, it's similar. It's like, am I real to this person? Am I a person of worth? Am I a... And the reason th- what, what lit up for me when you said that was that the, the saddest graph in The Anxious Generation is the one about a survey question given to, uh, a lot of high school seniors since the 1970s. Um, um, my, uh, my life often feels useless. Do you agree or disagree with that on a five-point scale? And what we see is that in the '90s when they first added that question, um, the-- it was about, uh, it was about 17% or so said yes, uh, agree or, or strongly disagree. And then that's Gen X. And then as the millennials go through, it goes down a little bit, maybe down to 14%. Um, and then all of a sudden in 2012, 2013, when Gen Z enters the data set, this is born 1996 and later, it, it doubles. It goes up very, very quickly, and this is before COVID. So something happened so that pe- or young people born after 1990, '95, '96, they just feel that their lives are useless. They don't matter. And of course, because if all you're doing, you know, five hours a day is the average amount of time, that's the average that kids spend on social media, and that's mostly scrolling. It's mostly short videos. So and if that's what you do all day long, you go to classes and you scroll, your life is useless. You're not doing anything. And so anything we can do to convey to our kids, "You matter. You matter to me. You matter because you're doing these things that help out our family. You're doing these errands for us later when you're a little older." So yeah, we have a mattering crisis. Uh-
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah. Yeah
- 27:46 – 28:28
Concrete family systems: mealtimes, charging stations, and alarm clocks
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah. And one of the easiest ways to, yeah, show your kids that they matter is to be present with them. And so there's just some easy changes that everyone can make even starting today to help with that. One is to get the phone, uh, away from mealtimes. Say, "All right, we're gonna be present with each other. This is a time when we can s-spend time together, and I wanna be present with you, and so we're gonna keep our phones away." You can have a family charging station for devices that's not in anyone's bedroom. Really important. You know, and you can have conversations with your kids about this, ask them to call you out on it. So I just think there's a lot of little things, little tweaks, getting alarm clocks so that, you know, people are actually not having their days hijacked, but there's a lot of little changes we can make starting now that can make really big differences in our relationships with the other people who matter the most to us.
- 28:28 – 32:13
‘It’s too late’ and ‘I can’t change my mind’: the pilot metaphor for firm resets
- BEDr. Becky
I, I love those concrete suggestions. They're so manageable, and I wanna bridge the gap a little bit between any parent being like, "Yes, I wanna do that," and I think the thing that can stop parents, right? And just to, like, bust a couple of them. So number one, like, "Ugh, it's kind of too late. Like, I'll do that for my next kid, or I'll tell my sister to do that."
- JHJonathan Haidt
[laughs]
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
"But my kid already has the device in their room, or we already have a different charging system." And I think I hear of a lot from parents like, "I want-- I, I can't change my mind," or, "I don't wanna go back on something I said." And, and I just think this perspective's important, that the only thing we promise our kids, I think, is that we're gonna always do the best we can with the resources we have available in the name of protecting them long term. So much of being a good parent is making decisions that your kid doesn't like short term because you think it's good for them long term. And if you think about that as your job, well, as you get more information, "Oh, I listen to this podcast," you might, quote, "change your decision" on the surface, but that's a very surface level look. What you're actually doing is being remarkably consistent because you're saying, "I'm still making the best decision I could with the resources I have," right? And so I, I do think it's helpful to compare it to a pilot where y- when you get on a flight in New York and you're going to LA, even if you're saying, "Very important. I'm going to this meeting. I have a wedding," on some level, your ticket is promised to get to LA, but if your pilot says, "Hey, I got new information," uh, you know, "I think we're gonna crash" whatever it is, right? [laughing]
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
"I got new information."
- JHJonathan Haidt
It snowed in.
- BEDr. Becky
"There's some bad lights going off."
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
And they say, "We're gonna have to land in Kansas." And then you say, "But you promised LA." And your pilot's like, "You know what? You're right. I did. Forget it. Forget it. Forget it. You're right. Let's go to..." You freak out as a passenger. And in some ways, even though the pilot changes the landing spot, they actually are being remarkably consistent in their job, which is to keep passengers safe with the information they have. And so I think when parents look at it that way, they don't think of it as changing their mind. They actually think about it as doing their job consistently. It's just that the application looks different. And so I just really wanna make sure parents listening hear that, because it affirms a change in decision while it also affirms re- remaining remarkably consistent to what your job is in the house.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And I really wanna underline the, the power of that metaphor. I first heard when you and I started working together in 2024, I first heard it, and, and I was kinda kicking myself because it was like, I... If only I'd known that two years, two or three years earlier, because also emphasizing Catherine's point about having empathy for how hard it is-
- BEDr. Becky
Yes
- JHJonathan Haidt
... to be a parent.
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
I, you know, I've been studying, so like I did a good job keeping my kids away from social media. That's what I was studying. Like I said, "No, you're not having that." I did a good job of that. Where I fell down was the kids had, had, uh, uh, their computers and often their phones in their bedrooms, and w- you know, during COVID w- w-
- BEDr. Becky
Sure
- JHJonathan Haidt
... but even s- but, you know, after COVID, like, you know, my wife urged me, like, you know, make, you know, make them get it all out. We'd have to-
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah
- JHJonathan Haidt
... f- um, but I wasn't firm with my son, who was already a junior in high school-
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah
- JHJonathan Haidt
... a senior, you know, and, and he, you know, and he argued back, and I gave in.
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And so I just wanna first of all empathize, like, you know, we're not sitting up here as like we're the experts.
- CPCatherine Price
Oh, yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
You should do what we-
- BEDr. Becky
Me neither
- JHJonathan Haidt
... like, you know.
- BEDr. Becky
Off the pedestal. Let's-
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah.
- 32:13 – 35:30
Authority without aggression: scripts and conviction for device boundaries
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah, so I think the first thing that I don't always articulate, but matters so much, 'cause I asked this in a live event we did in our membership. When you're about to deliver a decision to your kid that you kind of know they're gonna push back about, what percent conviction do you have in your own decision? Guess what the ranges were that people shared.
- JHJonathan Haidt
30.
- BEDr. Becky
Zero to 30.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Oh. [laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
Zero to 30. [laughs]
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
And I was like, you know what? Forget any script, because if you're going into telling your kid that you're no longer gonna let them charge the phone in their room, and you say it like this, which is what it sounds like with 30% conviction, "Hey, there's no more phone in your room, okay?"
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah. [laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
"Don't you think it would be a good idea?" Like I picture my kid being like-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah
- BEDr. Becky
... "Are you asking me to do your job?"
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
"Like I'm a 16-year-old boy. I'm not..." You know.
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah.
- BEDr. Becky
And it's, and then of course-
- CPCatherine Price
It's like the pilot being like, "We're maybe not gonna go to Los Ang-"
- BEDr. Becky
Do you wanna-
- CPCatherine Price
I don't know. What do you guys think?
- BEDr. Becky
Let's, let's take a vote.
- CPCatherine Price
Yeah. [laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
Who thinks an emergency landing's a good idea?
- CPCatherine Price
Right. [laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
What? Right, if you have 100... And, and that's why the first work, and I think this matters so much, it's not just clinical psychology jargon. You have to look in the mirror and say it over and over until you can look in the mirror and be like, "I believe myself." And, and the best part of being a parent, I mean this, I don't need my kid's permission to do anything I think is best.
- JHJonathan Haidt
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
It's actually like empowering when you realize that. It's scary, but I'm like, "I'm not five anymore." It's kind of powerful. So you have to find that appropriate, we always say at Good Inside it's authority without aggression. It's authority without aggression. Then I can say to my kid, and this is something I also went over recently. How many of you have started a sentence like this with your kid? "I want to tell you about a decision I've made." Everyone's like, "Can I say that?" Yes, you can. There are certain times you don't need to, but I wanna tell you about a decision I've made. I've been learning about the impact, and this is just one example, of having your phone in the room at night, and I know you've had that from the start. So trust me, changing that, I- I'm not expecting it to be smooth sailing on your end. But I've learned how that can affect your sleep and other things, and I wanna tell you about a decision I've made, that starting tonight, your phone will no longer charge in your room. Now, to clarify, I don't expect you to say thank you. I actually expect you to give me a hard time for at least 18 days about it.
- JHJonathan Haidt
[laughs]
- BEDr. Becky
And even though I've changed my mind in the past, I won't this time. And if it matters, I know that my job is making decisions that I believe are good for you, even if you're not happy with me. That's actually how much I love you, and this is just gonna be one of those decisions, and I know we'll get through it. Now, I think people think when I say these things to my kids, on some level they're like, "Sturdy leadership. That was it, Mom." No. No, the way you get rewarded for making your best decisions as a parent is whining and like random words that come out. "I hate you." You're the, "Oh, okay." You know, but just like a CEO gets when they make a hard decision. But if you have the conviction, and yes, you have some starter language just to like get in there, and if you anticipate your kid's pushback, you can say this weird thing at the end. Like kind of, "That all went according to plan." Even my kid's argument, I, I predicted the whole thing, which doesn't make it easy, but to me with parenting, often the best we get is bringing impossible to difficult. It ne- impossible never gets to easy. It just doesn't, and if you know that, it's manageable.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Although, I think if you give your kids The Amazing Generation, it will get a lot easier.
- 35:30 – 46:34
The kids’ book solution: The Amazing Generation and the ‘rebels’ identity
- BEDr. Becky
So tell me about that.
- CPCatherine Price
Please, yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Yeah, yeah. So as soon as The Anxious Generation came out, parents and mothers in particular-
- BEDr. Becky
Yes
- JHJonathan Haidt
... began asking us, "Is there something I can share with my child?" And I'd say, "Well, I have a video you could show them," but, but there was no, there was nothing written.
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
And so we had the idea to create a, a children's version of the book, and we looked into hiring a person who could, you know, write for children. Um, and Catherine and I had already been working together a little bit. We'd been talking about issues about fun and play. Um, and so, and she heard that we were doing this, and she volunteered for it. And my team, we, we talked with her about it, and she had all these great ideas for how to make it, not just like rewritten for kids. This is a totally new book. It has a graphic novel. It tells sort of the story in a graphic novel. It tells the story in the main text. There's all kinds of call-out boxes, and a lot of testimonials from rebels, we call them, from young people who have said like-
- BEDr. Becky
Love it
- JHJonathan Haidt
... "No, like this has taken my, my childhood."
- BEDr. Becky
Yeah.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Um, so the idea is, um, if kids see a vision of childhood that is enticing, this isn't just I'm taking away the thing that's at the center of your life. This is do you, do you wanna have the kind of childhood that, that, that your parents and your grandparents had? You've heard us talk about it. You've seen movies that took place in the '80s and '90s. You see that kids used to be out on bicycles. Do you want that? Or do you wanna just scroll like your older siblings or your older cousins? And they say they want this. So, uh, so Catherine-
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs]
- JHJonathan Haidt
Tell, tell the good people, uh, more about this book.
- CPCatherine Price
Why, thank you, Jonathan. Um [laughs] no, we really wanted to make something that would take the core messages of The Anxious Generation, um, and the takeaways from that, which are the four norms that Jon writes about, which the idea that we should delay our kids' access to smartphones and social media till at least 14 for smartphones, if not later, and so at least 16 for social media. We need to get phones out of schools, which is happening at an amazing rate, and we also need to help our kids have more independence and free play-
- BEDr. Becky
Yep
- CPCatherine Price
... and responsibility in the real world. So we wanted to take those four norms and translate them into a form that would make kids excited about adopting those for themselves, and the way you do that is not to lecture at kids, it's to get them excited. So the subtitle of the book is Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-Filled World. And what we realized is that it makes sense that kids are clamoring for phones and social media because right now their impression is that you get more fun and freedom and friendship, is what we call, call it in the book, on a screen. That's what the social media companies have told us, you know? But in reality, as, as we all know and parents know 'cause we have experience, lived experience, the best stuff happens in the real world, real friendship and real freedom and real fun. And so the point of this book is to get kids excited about living that kind of life, and we actually discovered that there is this growing youth rebellion of young people who are standing up and saying, "I don't wanna, I don't wanna give my life over to a technology company." Some of them on our, in our, are in our target readership, which is roughly nine to 12. It's applicable whether or not your kid already has a smartphone or social media, but we're trying to intervene early. But we also know of a lot of young people who are older than that, in their teens, early 20s, who also are trying to turn things around, and so we tried to give lots of examples that would inspire kids to join this rebellion. And we have what we call the Rebels' Code, which is very simple. It's to use technology as a tool. Don't let technology use you. 'Cause we're not Luddites, but we're saying there's y- there's good screens and bad screens. And then also to fill your life with real friendship, freedom, and fun. And what's been so cool so far, I've given some talks with early readers, like at my daughter's school. I just spoke to 100 fourth and fifth graders last week, and the kids are so excited about becoming rebels. They don't want their lives to be taken over by tech companies. And I have some thank you notes that just really show this, where kids say, "I used to think I wanted to get TikTok and Instagram, and now I've decided I don't wanna do that. I wanna hold onto my freedom for a little longer," is what one of them says.
- BEDr. Becky
Amazing. Well, I love this continued partnership around, like, highlighting the issues in a really clear way, painting a vision for our kids. It's not about taking away. It's actually about a different pathway to the things you actually want, and I'm always happy to show up and help parents create the containers to make that possible in a very practical way, so this is just amazing. So I wanna end with a rapid rapid fire-
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay
- BEDr. Becky
... 'cause we don't have a lot of time.
- JHJonathan Haidt
All right.
- BEDr. Becky
Okay?
- JHJonathan Haidt
Let's see.
- BEDr. Becky
And you're people with big thoughts. I'm gonna have to limit them to small, bite-sized thoughts.
- JHJonathan Haidt
Okay, we'll try.
- BEDr. Becky
Okay, Jonathan, if you had to draw one hard line, just one rule that you would tell every listener to really try to put in place, but only one, where would you start?
- JHJonathan Haidt
No screens in the bedroom ever. If you start that early, then you can enforce it, uh, much more easily, and that will cut off the worst things that happen, which is often a s- screen overnight-
- BEDr. Becky
Yep
- JHJonathan Haidt
... talking with strangers.
- BEDr. Becky
Great. Catherine, first change you'd recommend to someone who says, "I'm on my phone too much."
- CPCatherine Price
[laughs] Get an alarm clock. I'm amazed by how many adults tell me that's a life-changing decision. I'm like, "Why did I bother writing a book? I could've just bought you an alarm clock."
Episode duration: 46:35
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Transcript of episode iMPWO1xUK54
