Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The show that asks the questions other shows are afraid to ask. The Last Show with David Cooper. Yesterday, we reported on a new feature being launched by Instagram. The platform will alert parents of teens if those teens search for content involving suicide or self-harm. I mentioned how this is a great feature, but this is just the beginning when this feature activates.
What happens next is the conversation that parents need to have with their kids. And that's what we're going to discuss here with psychology professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Steve Jordan. Steve, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you. It's good to be here. An interesting topic today.
Chapter 2: What new Instagram feature alerts parents about their teens' searches?
So I think what's interesting is like you could have the illusion that this is a great feature and once it activates, somehow we're going to protect kids. But this feature is just the beginning of protecting a kid that is searching for content like this online. And it's a tough conversation that parents need to have with kids.
And I honestly, yesterday, I didn't feel too qualified guiding listeners through it. And so what's your take as a parent, if you were to get kind of an awful alert like this, your child was searching for self-harm content or suicide content? Yeah, I mean, it is really difficult. And the first thing to realize is how serious this is.
And I'll give you a sense, like when we do research, sometimes we have questionnaires that ask about things like depressive symptoms. And if we, in a course of research, find any respondent who suggests a high level of depression consistent with self-harm or something like that, we now immediately have to. It is imperative that we reach out to that person.
And that we connect that person to the resources because just as you said, you know, we don't really know what to say. And this is a really kind of when somebody is really seriously considering these things, it's potentially very dangerous. They, you know, they could take their life and you have to say the right thing at the right time. And most of us don't know what those right things are.
First thing, by the way, is to listen and to be supportive. And this is very hard.
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Chapter 3: Why is it important for parents to discuss harmful content with their teens?
But if the student, if the child, sorry, I always default to student being a prophet. If the child is willing to open up about it at all, then that's a gift. So first of all, you're already in a good state and your task is to listen and to be unconditionally supportive, not to be judgmental. The judgmental part is what just shuts down conversations right away.
So just listening with an attitude of, I really want to understand, I really want to feel, I want to see the world as you're seeing it. And then we together are going to find some help because this is nothing a parent should ever think about. It stops with them and the child.
the goal at that point should be getting to the child, to somebody who really has the professional ability to help them kind of go through that and to assess how serious they are.
In a case of a very serious situation, one of the first things that will happen in a clinical situation is they will be given an antidepressant that will sort of take them out of that really danger zone and potentially make them more you know, in a place where they can have discussions and work through things, but they need to get to that place first.
And so if a parent's kind of, oh, I think I can handle this. Let's keep this and that. I don't want other people to know, you know, all these silly things that we worry about over potentially the life of your child. You know, you got to put those things aside and you have to say, this person needs to talk to somebody who really knows what they're doing. My job is to get them from here to there.
And that's what we do as a prof. If somebody came into my office and suggested these things, by the way, I cannot allow them to leave alone. Once somebody suggests anything like that, it's my job to deliver them, if I must, to the professional they need to be. And that's sort of how a parent has to think about it, too. You now have a responsibility to get this person some help.
And that's your task. Now, this feeling of not knowing what to say can lead to kind of getting it wrong. You mentioned coming from a judgmental place. What not to do? What's an approach to talk to someone struggling that could be perceived as judgmental versus not?
Yeah, I mean, first of all, minimizing in any way or suggesting, you know, we hear the whole, you know, suck it up kind of thing or whatever, life's difficult or, you know, anything that suggests like they're overreacting. If, you know, if they're looking for these resources, it's on their mind. enough to kind of push them to start to be proactive. And so you don't want to minimize it.
You don't want to act as though you understand it. I think one of the best things is to come with a whole lot of humility and to say, my goodness, there must be things that you're experiencing, that you're going through, that I didn't understand the severity of. And I do want to understand. And so that's kind of more of a humility. And just what we're talking about.
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Chapter 4: What should parents do if they receive an alert about self-harm content?
Can being overly positive come off as judgmental? Like telling someone, oh, I believe in you. You're a great person. None of the things you're saying are true. Can that be perceived as dismissive? Yeah, I mean, I think if you're not acknowledging the seriousness of the situation and it is and it should be hard to be positive in that situation because it is a very serious situation.
So, yeah, anything that seems to gloss it or make it seem, you know, I think you want to as a parent, you want to feel like you got hit by a rock, like really like, oh, and you want to sort of show them your concern, show them your worry. Like, oh, my goodness, I didn't realize how challenged you felt right now. And that's sort of hitting me hard. And we have to get through this together.
And I'm not going to leave you alone in this situation. And, you know, it's often they don't want to hear that, but they do want to hear that in another level. You know, so I think, you know, that's the important thing. Once you know you're in, you're there with them and you can't deny it and you can't put any walls between it.
Chapter 5: How can parents effectively communicate with teens about serious issues?
You have to sort of be as close to them as you can at that point. This has been really helpful. Back onto this feature from Instagram, notifying parents of what their kids are searching. What if parents find out, or suppose want to find out, about other kinds of content that children search for that is...
problematic but maybe not in the self-harm territory like suppose i have a kid researching drugs and their effects like illegal drugs or researching any kind of crimes or any kind of stuff or or even adult content like adult videos that are inappropriate for children or teenagers yeah where does the conversation go there like when you find out your kid's doing that kind of stuff
Yeah, I mean, I think we're actually kind of in an interesting point with phones because we kind of had our first situation where we all got addicted to them. And this is part of the problem, by the way. It's hard to lecture your children about phone use when you're just as addicted as they are. And so, you know, sometimes that's where it starts, showing your own responsible phone use.
But I think we're going to start realizing that we've been just... giving our kids this doorway to all sorts of evil. You know, we worry when they're out in the streets. A lot of parents are worried, oh, I don't want my kid out alone out in the real world. The dangers out in the real world are so minimal relative to the dangers on that phone that you hand them.
And if you keep them completely unrestricted, they have access to everything we've just talked about. And so one notion is, okay, do we give them access or then monitor and so one of the other things I want to highlight by the way is for all of us our brains are sort of primitive brains that kind of drive us into some of these emotional states they develop early our frontal lobes are
which is the part that kind of inhibits us or controls us or tries to get us to do socially appropriate things. They develop by the time we're about 25. So in that teenage range, they really don't have a very good inhibition system. And, you know, that's why we all do really stupid things when we're teenagers, right? We just we're not planning very well, etc.
They need to learn that what's called executive control. And so you could, for example, we're going to start doing things like blocking abilities of students to do things. That's OK. That's a hard way to do it. And another nice way would be to kind of teach them how not to do certain things. And maybe that's where monitoring can play a role.
I like to point out, and I know we were talking a little bit. No, we were talking at the break. Like I'm thinking of myself as a teenager. I'd rather my parents block the websites than monitor everything I do. But it's a different age. I grew up in the 90s, like when there's dial-up internet, you know? Exactly. And it does feel like surveillance, but I also would like,
Parents to realize that they own the phone, they own the plan, they are giving that phone to their child and they shouldn't do it without rules. Like we could even sort of step back from the content thing and just say things like, I don't like text messaging, asynchronous communication. When students do that, or students, sorry, there I go again.
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