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Chapter 1: What are the implications of the UK social media ban for under-16s?
Hi there, welcome along to another episode of High Performance. And this is one of the Wednesday episodes where myself and Damien look back on some of the guests who've joined us over the past few years. We delve deep into a specific topic, and today's specific topic is the use of smartphones. So if you've got a teenager in your life, if you've got a younger person in your life...
if you yourself are struggling with your phone use or your use of social media if you feel that it's stealing life from you then you need to listen to this episode because we are going to be talking the truth about social media the truth about being online too much the harm that it causes we're going to be hearing from high profile people we're going to be hearing from experts and we're going to be giving our instant reaction to the ban that's been announced that comes into place in december 2027
Your initial reaction to Sir Keir Starmer's announcement, Damien? Absolute delight.
I think you can't have been in the seats that we've been lucky enough to be in over the last six years, sat opposite some of the finest minds on the planet that have explored the impact of social media, especially on young people, and not come away with a sense of alarm about what it's doing and what we're sort of allowing to happen and check.
So to see somebody draw a line and to not take away social media, but to give back the life, the opportunities, the fun that we grew up experiencing.
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Chapter 2: How does social media impact childhood development according to experts?
That to me just leaves me delighted. And it's exactly the point that Sir Keir Starmer made when he announced this. He said it's not about us taking something away, it's about us giving you something back. And actually what he's giving people back is the single most important thing that we can give them, which is life, which is exploration, which is human connection.
We're going to hear from a number of guests. And actually, it's alarming for me how often we sit and have a conversation on high performance and we speak to high-achieving people who aren't very happy. And actually, when you think about it, so often it's linked to the fact that they have social media in their lives.
So a long time ago, we spoke to Eddie Hearn, the boxing promoter, who told us he doesn't really feel much joy anymore after one of his big boxing events because he goes straight onto social media and everyone tells him that his boxing event was shit. We actually have a podcast episode coming out this coming Monday with Liam Lawson. Yeah.
Chapter 3: What alarming statistics exist about children's smartphone usage?
and we asked him didn't we we said what's the one thing that you've had to sacrifice or give up to pursue being a formula one driver and his answer was happiness and liam is one of the drivers that i think gets the most criticism in formula one and i don't think it's a coincidence that he feels he's given up happiness at the same time that he is sucking up so much online abuse and i know that we're talking here about high profile people
But the evidence is clear that it's not just about social media criticism or abuse, it's just being online. And I think one of the most startling bits of data was from Meta's own research, right? Because I think the argument here is devastating, right? Social media companies didn't just accidentally harm childhoods, in my opinion.
They designed products specifically to capture young people's attention, right? And the evidence of anxiety, of depression, of addiction, of the loss of sleep, I think is absolutely devastating. MetaZone data, one in three teen girls said Instagram made their body image issues worse. Now, we both have girls.
Chapter 4: What personal experiences do parents share regarding smartphone use?
You have a 10-year-old, I have a 13-year-old. And I guess, really, we've been asked a really simple question. If something knowingly harms millions of children, why have we been treating it like harmless entertainment for so long? Well, we're going to go back and listen later on in this episode to the interview that we did with Alex Greenwood, one of the inspirational England lionesses.
And we're going to hear how... At 15 years of age, she was being subjected to comments about her body shape and size and the impact that that had on her. Now, some of those examples you just offered there, Jay, whether it's Liam Lawson, whether it's Eddie Hearn, we're talking about adults here. And yet...
What we know is your brain doesn't reach full maturity until you get to about 25 years of age. So these are people that are still at full maturity and they're still talking about the damage, the hurt, and the isolation that follows from it. You amplify that to a kid that's 15 that's receiving that kind of abuse in their own community. I don't think it's even about abuse. I think...
let's not get too hung up on the abuse thing. I don't think social media abuse is the problem. Social media is the problem. Addiction to being online is the problem. YouTube is a problem. Snapchat is a problem. For me in my life, my daughter's not allowed anything.
Chapter 5: How do high-profile guests perceive the effects of social media?
She only has WhatsApp. Even WhatsApp's a problem. How often do you have a conversation with one of your kids and they're picking up a phone and you go, get off the phone. And they go, I'm just... I'm just looking at YouTube. I'm just messaging a friend. I'm just checking Teams, which, by the way, is a bugbear of mine that her school used Teams to communicate with kids.
Let's please stop that immediately. I know the social media abuse thing is painful for a lot of people, but I would say the majority of people don't. That's not the issue, is it? I think you're right, but again, don't even think about it with your kids. How many times do you meet another parent, and I'll have you a bet,
that within an hour of a conversation, definitely within the first hour, you talk about how you're managing the phone use for your kids. For me, it's a huge percentage. What do you reckon for you? I think it's massive, but I actually think it's, for me, it's not just a conversation about whether my kids can handle social media.
I actually think that we're... I think one of the main reasons we're banning social media is not because children can't handle it. It's because we've got to a point where we've admitted that even as adults, we can't handle it. And I think we know it's damaging us. And that is the truth, right?
Chapter 6: What does Jonathan Haidt say about the dangers of smartphone addiction?
I know my life's being stolen by the use of my phone so much. Not just sitting on the sofa scrolling, but also going somewhere and needing to take a freaking photo and video of everything. Like, why do I need to do that? Like, how many, have you got your phone there? No, no. How many photos do you reckon I've got on my phone? About 500. No, mate, are you mad? Go on. 27,000. 27,000 photos? Yeah.
I bet you 26,500 is just nonsense. I've just taken a photo of a meal or a video out of a train window or an amazing... I'll tell you a good example. There was a rainbow over our house last week. A double rainbow. Nice, right? Yeah. I looked out the window. Florence, Seb and Harriet were all taking photos on phones and I went out and took a photo on my phone. Like, what is this about?
So let's get into hearing from one of our guests then, because I think this is a really important first clip to start with. Jonathan Haidt, who wrote an amazing book called The Anxious Generation, he joined us on High Performance, and this is what he told us about the use of smartphones and childhood.
Take everything important out of childhood and replace it with millions and millions of 15-second TikTok videos and Instagram posts. That's what we've done. So we can't expect our kids to grow up to be confident, creative, good performers if we don't give them a childhood that nature evolved for us in order to bring humans from childhood to adulthood.
We have overprotected our children in the real world and we've underprotected them online.
I think Jonathan Haidt is the perfect person to begin this episode with. And this idea that we've taken real life and replaced it with quick 15-second TikTok videos really sums up the life that we're living and that young people are living at the moment. And I guess we all need an understanding of how we've ended up in this position, don't we?
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Chapter 7: What strategies can parents implement to manage smartphone use?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love Jonathan Haidt. His book, The Happiness Hypothesis is... one to me like a seminal text that I often go back to but in his more recent research he talks about how it's almost like we're running this giant global social experiment without actually recognising what we're doing so he gives you the idea that we're like we're wrapping children up in
bubble wrap in the physical world and then we just leave them isolated and alone in the digital world so we've stopped them climbing trees or walking to school on their own or taking those small risks that kids need to build resilience and at the same time we've given them a device that gives them access to the very best and equally the very worst of humanity 24 hours a day so
I get fed up when people talk about snowflakes and they go, kids aren't different. Kids haven't changed. The question is whether it's our understanding of risk that's kept change with the world that we've sent our kids into. So we think that the real world is riskier. than it is, and we think the online world is safer than it is.
So our kids are no longer climbing trees in case they fall, but they are absolutely spending time on social media and if they fall then the consequences are devastating. And if you're listening to this conversation and you still don't think that what we're saying is real, Johan Hari, another guest who joined us, told this brilliant story.
He was at a Silicon Valley conference and he watched a designer of smartphone apps ask the room, would any of you in here like to live in the world that we're creating? How many hands went up? Not one. Not one hand was lifted in the end. These are the people that have created the world in which we're living. Let's hear Johan Hari actually explain what's really happening here.
You can try having self-control, but every time you do, there are 10,000 engineers on the other side of the screen trying to undermine your self-control.
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Chapter 8: How can we foster a healthier digital environment for children?
I mean, the way that he says that, 10,000 engineers on the other side of the screen trying to undermine your self-control. And I think this is where we actually have to also be kind to parents and kind to young people and kind to ourselves. Because companies are spending billions of pounds to addict us to tech.
How can you and I, with all the love in the world that we have for our children, possibly compete with the data, the knowledge, the influence, the expertise, and the spend of these big digital companies? We literally can't compete. Therefore, we were always going to end up in this position. Therefore, it's totally the right thing to add some sort of control, is it not? 100%.
There's a great parallel when we sat down with Chris Van Tuleken and he was talking about ultra-processed foods and he gave that great example about food in Mexico that up until the, I think it was the 1980s, there was like some kind of... Up until the 1980s, there was some kind of trade embargo that food primarily from America wasn't allowed into Mexico.
And then there was a very clearly before and after state when the embargo was lifted, then lots of ultra processed foods could find their way in. And you can see the impact on...
heart diseases diabetes and all those other kind of diseases associated with unhealthy foods on the population of the country so what Mexico did as Chris explained to us is they now put like large black warning labels on the front of food that is considered as dangerous that might be high in sugar or salt or calories
So the Mexican government understood that asking people to rely on willpower alone wasn't going to be enough when billions were being invested in making products more unhealthy, but ultimately being irresistible. And I think smartphones and social media raises a similar question.
If we acknowledge that kids need protection from products that have been designed to steal their attention, to steal their focus, to steal their sense of connection, why would we treat digital products any differently from the food products that Chris explained? You know, my frustration in terms of the reaction to the news from the government, right, is everyone going, oh, there's workarounds.
Oh, it hasn't worked in Australia. Oh, I know a 12-year-old in Australia that's still on social media. Like, there's workarounds for everything. There's a workaround if your kid at 12 wants to go and buy cigarettes. There's workarounds if your 16-year-old wants to buy alcohol and go to a party and get drunk. Like, we all know there are workarounds.
I actually think that what the government are really doing here... is they're putting a warning out to all parents and people in a position of responsibility to no longer stand by and watch. And I think any parent that goes, there'll be a workaround. You are being a useless parent. It's your job to stop the workaround. So Harriet and I had a conversation yesterday.
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