When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke
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What does Dr. Anna Lembke mean by digital media as a drug?
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.
How do smartphones act like hypodermic needles for our kids?
You say, smartphone is the modern day hyperdermic 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 addiction 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
What signs indicate that my child may be addicted to their device?
in Jackson, Mississippi, who watches the podcast and saw our episode on Gen Z tech addiction. And 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 Lembke here to be here. She's a psychiatrist and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic.
How can parents effectively manage their teen's screen time?
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 Dopamine Nation if you haven't yet because it's extremely eye-opening, especially
What strategies can help college-aged kids with tech addiction?
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 going to shoot the heroin, do you think they'd curse you out? Do you think there'd be a fight? And she went, whoa.
Why does Sophie Winkleman believe tech in schools is harmful?
But it's kind of like that, isn't it, Dr. Lumpke?
Yeah, I think it's a great 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.
How can parents help children learn without screens?
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.
What are the long-term effects of tech addiction on children's learning?
And I think this is a really important point that I want to 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 food. Okay. For some people it's romance novels. That was mine. That sounds silly, but I actually did develop a 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 overconsumption 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.
That's exactly right. To really conceptualize digital media as a potent drug and to think about, you know, protecting their child from it.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does Dr. Anna Lembke mean by digital media as a drug?
0:00–0:17
2
How do smartphones act like hypodermic needles for our kids?
0:17–1:12
3
What signs indicate that my child may be addicted to their device?
1:12–1:51
4
How can parents effectively manage their teen's screen time?
1:51–2:27
5
What strategies can help college-aged kids with tech addiction?
2:27–2:56
6
Why does Sophie Winkleman believe tech in schools is harmful?
2:56–3:25
7
How can parents help children learn without screens?
3:25–3:48
8
What are the long-term effects of tech addiction on children's learning?
3:48–56:41
Speakers
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