Are we using screens as a scapegoat for teen mental health?

For years, we’ve heard that social media is fueling a teen mental health crisis. But the evidence is more complicated. Developmental psychologist Candice Odgers unpacks what the research actually says—and where parents, policymakers, and the media often get it wrong. TED Radio Hour+ listeners now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and deeper conversations with Manoush. By signing up for Plus, you directly support our work and public media, so all your episodes (like this one!) come to you without sponsor breaks. Learn more atplus.npr.org/ted http://plus.npr.org/ted. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today, we are talking about the relationship between kids, screens, and social media. Sound familiar? Yeah, it's a topic we have covered on the show before. And it's fraught. Most of us have heard how harmful tech can be for kids and their mental health.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  The anxiety levels are through the roof. The mental health issues are through the roof. Are we just gonna sit by and watch that happen? Or are we gonna-

• 1:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  In response, many states in the US have passed laws banning cell phones in schools.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  These devices have no place in a formal education process. Vote yes.

• 1:24Manoush Zomorodi?

  Some countries are banning teens from social media altogether.

• 1:28Speaker 05

  There's in Australia, who use Instagram, Facebook, and Threads are about to start seeing their accounts closed down. The tech giant-

• 1:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  But maybe these tactics don't address what's really going on. This is child psychologist Candice Augers.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  I study children's mental health and spend a lot of time working with them on their mobile devices, trying to understand the influence of all the things- Things in their life, but digital technology in particular on mental health, sleep, and their well-being.

• 1:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  Candace does her research at UC Irvine and at Duke University. And she understands why parents are worried. But she says the message that we've been getting, that technology is causing an epidemic of mental illness in young people, is not based on solid science.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  I'm not saying there are no harms. What I am saying is that the story that we're repeatedly told as parents and policymakers and people that are invested, that social media is universally harmful, that it is damaging brains, that it is leading to an epidemic of mental health problems, that simply isn't supported by the data.

• 2:38Manoush Zomorodi?

  Blaming tech as the root cause versus taking a more nuanced approach to teen mental health, it's a debate that has been roiling academic circles for years. And it's hard for parents to know what to think. Candace wants us all to take a deep breath and be open to a larger conversation about what is happening with kids today.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  When you compare all the factors that contribute to youth mental health, social media often doesn't make the list. It's one of the least influential factors in predicting children's mental health.

• 3:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  On the show, the controversy over teens and screens, what can we blame tech for? And when do we need to take a harder look at how we're all letting down young people, especially here in the US? Developmental psychologist Candice Rogers explains what teens are really stressed out about, including rising rates of anxiety and depression in the adults in their lives. And we'll also get into how to know if tech is or isn't a problem for your child. A warning, this episode includes mentions of suicide. So let's get back to Candace Rogers. Here she is on the TED stage.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Since 2008, we've been working with thousands of 10 to 14-year-olds, getting information every day from their phones on how they're feeling, how they spend their time, who they're with. We look at their school records, we track their sleep data, we look at their step count, and we see what they're doing online. Importantly, we listen to them about what upsets them and what they need to be well. It has been a really incredible and at times wild ride. It's also been an illuminating one because one of the most consistent things we have found is that the stories that you and I are told repeatedly every day about teenagers today,

• 4:39Speaker 02

  that they are lost, that they are worse off than ever, that somehow smartphones and social media have destroyed them in their brains. It doesn't match the data and it doesn't match what they tell us. There is a massive gap. And as I've tried to make sense of this gap, I keep coming back to a simple truth that we all know. Scary stories sell. They always have. And the more often you hear something, the more likely you are to believe that it's true. And scary stories are really easy to sell to parents. We are an anxious lot.

• 5:17Manoush Zomorodi?

  You have been doing this research, Candace, for two decades. Take us back to when you first got started and how you began doing it.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we were bringing at that point, young people into the lab who we'd recruited from schools and communities. And we were setting them up with mobile devices to get them to report on what they were doing and how they're spending their time. And parents had a ton of questions for us about what, you know, the kinds of things we're still asking today. So what's the age at which my child should be given a phone? Are children losing their communication skills? I know, is this harmful for them to be spending time online? And, you know, at that time, we didn't know the answer. This was a new field and I expected that there would be some negative effects. And we were really shocked because what we found was that there wasn't this overly negative story in the research at that time.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  And we started to add questions about what young people were doing online. And, you know, of course, over time, the methods have really evolved. We now do passive sensing and we scrape data and we do screen capture and we have much more sophisticated methods. But at that time, we were just surprised that, you know, there wasn't, you know, kind of a more consistently negative effects that people were finding. And so we started to add these measures of Children's digital experiences alongside all the other things that we typically measure, which is, you know, stress at school and family conflict and how much exercise they're getting in a day, for example.

• 6:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah, we have to remember 20 years ago, social media wasn't really big. And so you were really using technology as a tool. You were not studying technology's effect on kids necessarily, or just starting to.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, but what turned out is we had a front row seat to the rise of it, right? So it was a really fascinating time. We were sitting there on teenagers' phones and talking to them about digital technology as it rolled out. And so that was a bit of a unique vantage point.

• 7:10Manoush Zomorodi?

  So what did you see starting to happen? Take us through the conversation that was going on in the culture versus what you were observing.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so at that time, we were really in a panic over video games. So they were commissioning panels to try and understand, you know, is it that time online or time with these first shooter games is leading to increases in violence? Or for these horrible acts we're seeing with gun violence in our schools? And so the focus was really on video games at that time. And then it shifted and then it was screens in general. So what are screens and screen time doing to our, our children? And there was this Atlantic article by a psychologist named Jean Twenge that asked this question. Have smartphones destroyed a generation? And everybody quickly said, yes, right? Yes, they have. And so the target then became screen time in general.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  And that was, that was set off a whole debate about whether screen time was associated with poor outcomes. And we had all of these data that essentially showed there's no association or this tiny correlation. And then suddenly it started to narrow down. Well, it's not just screen time, it's social media. And it's, oh, well, it's not just social media, it's social media among girls. And the conversation really narrowed and we became laser focused on young girls and social media. As the primary culprit. So we kind of moved our target and you know, now our new target is artificial intelligence and computational agents. And so the new tech will continue to evolve and that will be continue to be the new target of kind of our ire as um as parents and policymakers.

• 8:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  Okay, so here we are, all these years later. How do you do your work now?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so we're really fortunate. We have a partnership with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. So we're able to draw a sample from a roster of every child attending public school in the state. And that means that we can survey adolescents and bring in a group of adolescents as representative of the larger state population and North Carolina maps fairly well onto the US population. And so in these studies, what we do is we typically, you know, assess young people and their parents. We are able to look at their school records and, you know, information on test scores and suspensions or absenteeism. We know the poverty levels of their neighborhoods and their families. We know a lot about them. And then when we go in and we'll take a sub-sample of those young people. So we started out with,

• 9:35Speaker 02

  you know, in one study, it was twenty, twenty-one hundred adolescents and we followed them across four years and then did these deep dives where we install an app on their phone and start to track mental health symptoms every day, sleep through wearable devices. And we've done other studies where we passively sense for over ninety days on their phone. So getting information on kind of where they're, where they are, what they're doing, how much they're moving, what, what kind of information they're typing into their keyboard. This is all with their consent and we involve youth at every stage. So we have a youth advisory board that screens our protocols and that works with us to make sure that we're asking the right questions and we're not just another bunch of adults who are making assumptions. I want to share with you a few science-based tech facts about kids today. And I'm going

• 10:19Speaker 02

  to focus on American teens because that's where a lot of the stories that you and I are hearing come from. So in the past twenty years, we've had some major wins. Rates of teen violence, alcohol use, pregnancy have plummeted to historic lows.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  You are looking at the most educated generation ever in terms of high school graduation. Young people are inventors, they're activists, they're leaders, they're amazing. But they're also telling us that they're sadder and they're more worried about the world that they're growing up in. So they report increased concerns about safety at school, climate change, racism, their future. In our studies, what we find is the most frequently reported stressors are conflict in their home and pressure to do well at school. And those are also the things that predict their mental health day to day.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Now, since 2008, we've seen an uptick in youth suicide risk. But perhaps this shouldn't be surprising because adult suicide has been increasing dramatically in the United States since 1999. We are in the middle of an adult mental health crisis.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  And caregiver mental health is the most important predictor of teen mental health by far. People ask me all the time, what could have happened during this period other than social media coming online? The answer is that adults were in distress and parents were dying. Social media and smartphones also increased during this period. But here's the weird thing, in our longitudinal studies, social media does not emerge as a major predictor of teen mental health. Many others find the same, concluding, and I'm going to quote, that social media is one of the least influential factors in predicting teen mental health.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Now, despite this, adults are quickly converging on banning social media for under 16s as a simple and singular solution to solving the youth mental health crisis. And here is the crazy part, there's not one single study to date. That is actually tested whether shutting it off impacts their mental health. And when we do this among adults, we find, on average, impacts that are close to or indistinguishable from zero. The National Academies of Science is one of the most well-respected organizations in the world, convened an expert panel, and they came to this conclusion also.

• 12:59Manoush Zomorodi?

  When we come back, more with child psychologist Candace Odger's on kids, their mental health, and why she thinks screens are not the biggest problem for teens. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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• 14:44Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. A couple of months back, we had NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt on the show. He is the author of the book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Children Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. His book has been on the bestseller list for years now, and many lawmakers and parents cite his research when they push for banning phones in schools and getting teens off social media.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  All over the world in the 2010s, family life became a fight over screen time. Parents saw their children being pulled away, pulled away from them, pulled away from each other, pulled away from life, pulled into this weird world where all kinds of weird and horrible things happened to them. They saw kids getting depressed, anxious, suddenly coming down with eating disorders. 2012 is when, is the crucial year where kids are switching over from flip phones to smartphones, iPhones in America.

• 15:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  But child psychologist Candice Odgerz says we need to look beyond just technology. It's not the only thing that happened over the last 10, 15, 20 years.

• 15:54Speaker 05

  We've seen an increase in school shootings, right, during this time as well. We've seen a change in the demographics of US adolescents. So now in California and Texas, for example, 70% of students in high school actually identify with a group that has been traditionally minoritized or discriminated against. And we know that that matters for daily health. And so there's, there's a lot of factors. And so when we look at that period and people draw these graphs and say, well, social media increases, like what else could possibly be happening? You know, we, we have to have a discussion about adult mental health, you know, in this conversation. So we need to broaden the tent.

• 16:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  You know, to some, a layperson, mapping the rise in suicides and depression and anxiety in young people with the rise in use of social media and smartphones, I mean, it's compelling, Candace. Like, it's, it also, I think, is like, oh, look, we can see why this is happening so we can fix it.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I think, you know, it is, it is, um, simple to scare people with statistics. And, you know, I'm a quantitative psychologist as well.

• 17:06Manoush Zomorodi?

  Teach graduate statistics and you know, we can draw a lot of scary scary graphs and that happens unfortunately that happens in the media every day and whenever I see one of these graphs, what I do is I do the thing where I expand the axes and say what's really happening and then I go back to the original source. There is so much incentive right now to sell these scary stories about our young people because it sells. And we just did a we did a survey of California voters and the only thing that Democrats and Republicans and independents agreed on was that they wanted to ban smartphones in schools and they wanted to get kids off of social media. There are no differences

• 17:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  between Democrats, independents and Republicans on that issue in America today, which is incredible. So if you are running for office, this is an easy thing to target. Children don't vote. They're not going to get a say, you know, in terms of advocating to have a right to this information that's that's online or to have access to these types of platforms. So they're they're an easy group to to push aside and to tell stories about. It's a political win. Now, this isn't to discount the the harm or to advocate for big tech. I mean, no, but what what we're doing is we're actually giving them a pass when we go right to a ban. It means that they don't have to clean up and fix these fundamental issues with the digital ecosystem, right? Where adults have really

• 18:32Manoush Zomorodi?

  broken the internet. They've done it. They've finally just broken it. And now we're just going to kick kids off and say that the problem is solved.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Instead of cleaning up the online world and prosecuting perpetrators of online harm, regardless of the office or the position in society that they hold, we we are punishing victims. We're kicking them out of the spaces they go to be with friends, to consume youth culture, and yet sadly, many times to escape people that are harming them offline.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  So a social media ban might feel good for the adults in the room, but teens Tell me, and I believe them, it's not going to work. It'll push them into less safe and less regulated spaces. And it will prevent us from doing what we really need to help them to be well.

• 19:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah, so that is where I think people get tangled up, or I certainly get tangled up. It's like, we agree, everyone agrees that tech companies take advantage of human behavior for their own quarterly earnings report. They allow dangerous people into online communities. They allow false information to flourish. They take little responsibility for safety on their platforms. We clearly need regulations and standards so that we get more of the good parts of being online and less of the bad. So I guess part of what I hear from people is like, well, nothing else is working. So what's the harm in using kids as a way to start to put pressure on tech companies? Those companies, there are parents too that work at those places.

• 20:09Manoush Zomorodi?

  We have to, we have to ring an alarm bell that's loud enough to actually make a change. And why would it be bad if this is the way we do it?

• 20:19Speaker 02

  That's a great question. And people actually have approached me, because I've been pretty vocal on this, and said, okay, Candace, just back off. Like, what's the big deal? What's the harm in going forward, you know, and using children as the tip of the spear here? If it's gonna, if it's gonna result and be the thing that we can finally, you know, use to slay social media companies? And, you know, I have thought about this a lot. And one of the parallels I draw is that if someone was going around and saying, you know, purple dye is the cause of pediatric cancer. I would want a pediatric oncologist to stand up and say, actually, it's not the main cause of childhood cancer. I mean, these are serious issues. Childhood depression, anxiety, depression is one of the leading causes of disability

• 21:04Speaker 02

  in the world, right? People are dying, people are being harmed due to mental health problems, right? And so we need to have a clear-eyed view on what the causes of that are and what we can do that can actually help prevent mental health problems. Problems early on because it has always been the case that the first signs of mental health problems emerge in early adolescence and that was true long before smartphones and social media came on. So we have this window of opportunity and we need to use it. But instead, if we allow ourselves to tell a story that social media or time online damages children's brains, right, that it means that they are addicted, that the behavior that they're

• 21:46Speaker 02

  engaging in is shameful, that parents should be ashamed of letting their children engage in these activities that are pretty normative and that they do themselves. You know, we are sending messages that are not based on evidence, right, that are shaming our young people and that are really allowing us to, you know, bypass the harder work that has to be done in order to actually support young people and address mental health issues.

• 22:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's tricky because I think many people cheered, right, when a California jury a couple months ago found Meta and YouTube libel in this landmark or bellwether case that accused the tech giants of intentionally addicting a specific young woman and hurting her mental health. And the prosecutors leaned on the design element, that the way that the platforms had been designed, created addictive behaviors that led this young woman down a very dangerous mental health crisis. And as much as I know that you're not a big fan of Meta or YouTube

• 22:59Manoush Zomorodi?

  necessarily, do you think that the jury was right on this? And and will there be, like, in terms of an appeal, will those companies have a case because this is on shaky ground? Based on what your research says, I think so.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's a civil trial and juries are going to take their pound of flesh, right? It feels good to hate social media right now and these are going to be chances to kind of get retribution and get a payout, for sure. Now, whether or not it would meet the standard of evidence, if you had to actually prove that this was a cause, you know, that's that's going to be a much harder. Harder case to, you know, to make. And I think, you know, this, the cases are tricky because the arguments now are being made on the design elements of the platforms. And we can agree that the autoplay is not good. There's many, it should be safety by design. I agree at all of those things. But we cannot separate design from content, right?

• 23:57Speaker 02

  So if you had an autoplay of me teaching statistics, kids would not watch that, right? Even if, even if you autoplay it, right? So structural occasion modeling, no, no, no, no, right? But, you know, an autoplay of them doing the latest, you know, it's not six, seven anymore, but you know, whatever is the latest trending thing, they're, they're gonna watch that. And so we're trying to, you know, separate these hard things and attack it on, on kind of harmful design principles. And that seems to, seems to be effective and we'll see, see, see where that takes us. But we're gonna have a flood of lawsuits. And I know because my phone rings every day from all signs to testify. And what I do is I simply ship them off a fact sheet because what I say about this

• 24:41Speaker 02

  is not gonna change, you know, depending on who, who I'm talking to, right? So I just have a simple fact sheet that said, this is the evidence. This is what the National Academy of Sciences says. Here's where all of the reviews of all of this evidence say, you know, here's what the numbers are. Here's what, you know, the, the, the people who are doing the most work closest to young people are saying about this, and I share that. And both sides can do with it what they, what they may. So I'm a bit agnostic about the court cases, um, because they're gonna play out for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with science.

• 25:15Manoush Zomorodi?

  Or what teens even really need, I suppose.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:19Manoush Zomorodi?

  So at this point, one might be listening and thinking, okay, well, fine. What do you want me to do as a parent, as someone who cares about young people? At least with getting phones out of schools or banning kids from social media. These are clear, concrete rules that like, nobody has to be the most amazing parent, you know, like, yeah, sure, I'd love to have conversations, deep conversations with my kids, but maybe that's not happening, like. What what what are we supposed to do? You're you're talking about an entire society that is falling apart from so many different ways.

• 26:00Manoush Zomorodi?

  Some people would say, whether it's like lack of healthcare and the social support and poverty and, you know, food scarcity even.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think the first thing to do is is to it's it's gonna feel good to ban and to blame. And that's, you know, maybe maybe that's okay for adults to feel good about that for a while. But I think if we're look, it's not at all clear that that's gonna help young people, right? So we know that the bans are coming, that they're hugely popular. And those are really normative and value-based judgments. I mean, adults and parents want their kids on technology less. They don't trust tech companies with this, right? So they want a different reality for the young people in their lives. And that, I am not here to tell anybody, you know, how much screen time their child should should have

• 26:50Speaker 02

  or how they should make these decisions in terms of what they they want kind of normatively. But if you're doing this from a position of fear and you're being told that you should do this because social media causes all of these things. For example, you know, that's a that's a message that's not supported, you know, by the science. And, you know, we could make those decisions based on values, but I I wouldn't make them from a place of fear where your child is going to fall into. It's a tough, tough spot for parents to be in who want something different and don't know how to get there. But I do think that putting all of our hopes and prayers in banning is going to backfire, right? And it can actually make things worse.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  And we just know, I mean, if we step back and think about this at all, we know that banning use from online spaces is not going to work. And we're seeing that play out in Australia right now.

• 27:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah, yeah. So what has happened there? Like, they they got kids under sixteen allegedly can't go on social media. And then they started tracking what actually happened?

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Australia was the first country in the world to ban social media for under sixteens. And this came after a whole, you know, they rushed it through after a year. Actually, actually, after one of the wives of a politician read The Hunches Generation and this all went through very quickly. And then all the politicians discovered they didn't know what social media was, right? So they. Had to make a list of social media platforms and what went on it. They didn't have YouTube on it, for example, and it's the number one platform that the children and youth are on. They ended up putting YouTube on it and in December twenty twenty five, when they kicked kids off the their platforms. What happened is that all the under sixteen still had access to YouTube, but what they had lost were their accounts, which had parental controls,

• 28:41Speaker 02

  content moderations and filters. And so on day one of the ban, you just made a situation worse. You took all of the safety protocols that were in place based on the accounts and you threw them out. And like I was previously a professor in a policy school and that's really impressive. Like usually you have to do two or three steps after the policy to see where things go wrong or where there's adjuvantic effects, but here, you know, kind of on day one. And then after that, they've been following young people and to see what they actually do. And it turns out the vast majority, so over seventy percent are still on the platforms. Others are probably in less regulated spaces. They decided that, you know, you what you have to do is you have to violate the privacy rights of everybody to figure out who's sixteen or not.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  So it's not just the kids that have to upload their data, it's all the adults. So now we're saying, let's give all of our data over to these companies that have shown that they're not very good at not monetizing it and they're not able to protect it or not motivated to do that. And then they had the idea that they would use facial recognition to predict how old somebody is. And so we both, you know, have teenagers and they went through middle school. So can you imagine trying to go into a middle school and predict whether, you know, a thirteen year old is eleven versus.

• 29:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  Some of them look like they're twenty five, so.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. So there this there are many problems that computer vision can solve and this is just not one of them. So it turns out like they're probably about two years off. They do worse with children from a minority background.

• 30:10Manoush Zomorodi?

  Also, like telling my kids to hand over their face to these companies. Wait, haven't I been spending the last ten years telling them not to do that?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Well, the next thing is Meta is going to do it with bone structure now. Like, that's a great idea, isn't it? So it's leading to all of these more invasive surveillance issues for us and for our kids. And so I don't think this is the path. It's also, you know, there's kids that took pictures of their dogs and pictures, you know, they drew a mustache on their face and that works. So it's clear that the company. companies are not actually trying that hard to stop this because those are those are problems that computer vision can solve. So, you know, you follow it through. There's no changes in bullet in online bullying after this happened so far. And again, I don't want to. I guess I should pull back and say that I don't think any one study is definitive and there's going to be people on kind of both sides of this.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  When the early evidence comes out that either declare victory or declare failure. But I do think we've had some really sobering looks with both with Australia and then this new evidence that's come out on the cell phone bans in schools. Showing no effects on academic performance and attendance and bullying that should cause us to really pause and say. Is this how we want to be spending all of our policy effort, time, money? Is chasing, you know, these companies when there are very real, you know, threats and issues and resources we could be directing towards young people.

• 31:34Manoush Zomorodi?

  Okay, so if I'm a parent and I'm like, oh, my God, okay, so but I thought that if I just say like no smartphone till you're 16. Or maybe, you know, I was psyched about these bans getting kids off of Instagram or wherever else. If you're telling me that that's not the solution, then what should I be doing? Because I am worried about my kids. I see how much they want to be on their social media feeds. Or that they feel like they're missing out if they don't get to look at their phone.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so a couple of things. I would start to look at things outside of the phone first. So when you think about your child, if you immediately think of the phone, it's easy to get sucked into this negative narrative and fear. But broaden out and start to ask, so is my child sleeping? Do they have friends? Do they seem happy, right? Is there, you know, things that they're doing that they enjoy in their lives? If those things aren't happening, let's start to tackle what's happening there. And let's start to think about whether or not the phone might be playing a role in, you know.

• 32:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  Causing them to spend too much time and miss out on opportunities for sports or to be together with friends. And that's a more kind of productive place to be in.

• 32:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  In a moment, more with child psychologist Candace Oders on navigating parenting in this high tech age, which of course has to include a conversation about AI and chatbots. I'm Manoush Zamirodi and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

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• 33:52Manoush Zomorodi?

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• 34:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  Go find TED Talks Daily wherever you listen to podcasts. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, developmental psychologist Candice Odgers with a different take on kids, tech, and mental health. So, over the past few years, many states have banned cell phones in public classrooms, and currently, more than 30 states and DC have some sort of restriction. Candace, who is the mother of two teens herself, says that banning phones isn't necessarily going to help kids when the schools don't have enough support systems for them in the first place.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Just the ratio of counselors to students, you know, sits nationally about 1 to 500. And that's just counselors. If we think about mental health counselors, we're now up to about 1 in 1,300. So there's no way that any type of reasonable care or attention could be devoted with that kind of investment. But yet, we're spending millions of dollars. In fact, I was called in to my child's middle school last week because the yonder lady had chased her in. She gave me permission to share this. The yonder lady had chased her into the bathroom.

• 35:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  The yonder, for people who don't know, is the little pouches that kids put their phones in when they get to school that supposedly locks it up for the day.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Yes, they lock them up for the day. But I was called into the office because she invoked her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. But, you know, I say that-

• 36:00Manoush Zomorodi?

  I love your kid.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  I know. I say this jokingly, but this is actually one of the impacts of the ban. So in Florida, and in this new study that was released also, what they found was immediately after the bans went up, suspensions went up. And in Florida, it was against black and brown students. And so, we know being suspended from school and having that on your record is not a great thing for a child. So what are we doing? We're spending millions of dollars on these pouches.

• 36:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  How do you respond, though, to people who say, well, the teachers love it, there is a line drawn, that you cannot have your phones out, and kids aren't subjected to FOMO? You know, that these companies know how to manipulate them to get them to want to look at their phones so bad that they can't help themselves?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So people will assume. And I should clarify that I am not saying in any way that children should be on their phones, and the phone should be on the desk, dinging, et cetera. But that is nowhere where I'm going here. But this was actually a problem that was largely solved. So we might be kicking down a door that's already open. So prior to this, I had children going to the schools and spent a lot of time in schools collecting data. There was something at the back of the room, maybe it was a shoe rack. The students would put their phone in the back of it, or they'd have their phones in their backpacks. And so I think the real risk here is that we have these policies that go through. Policymakers can declare victory that they've done something. But on the reality of it, they haven't actually changed access to the phones.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Because young people are circumventing the ban. Or, you know, they were already limited in their access to begin with, within school hours. But still, they're declaring victory in that they've solved some sort of learning loss issue or mental health problem. And again, it's that redirection, it's an opportunity cost where we should be focused on young people and what they need. Instead, we're investing all of our efforts in these policy solutions, which don't seem to match, you know, the problem. But I get, I mean, I'm married to a teacher. I support teachers and what they want. And I think there is something to be said about teachers supporting the ban. And if we want to do that, then we can make that argument.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  We could say that we just, as a value normative judgment, we don't want phones in schools. And you can do that, but that's not what's happening. They're making an argument that this is actually going to improve mental health, that it's going to improve learning, that it's going to reduce bullying, that's going to help absenteeism. And that is just, you know, a story that's being sold to distract us. So if a social media ban might make things worse, what would make things better? So first, we need to invest in the adults around children. Spending millions of dollars on yonder poaches to lock up kids' phones is not going to solve that.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  We need to take that money, we need to hire teachers, we need to hire counselors, and we need to pay them well.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Building a healthy human requires investment in children and the adults around them, full stop. Second, we need to build spaces that are welcoming and safe for all teens to build the skills they need for the future. So my colleague Stephen Schuler spends his days designing digital mental health services for communities and rural communities and opening up youth drop-in centers across the state of California for young people who need it. We know young people are more likely to go online when they're anxious and depressed. We need to be there to build the services and supports that they need instead of just focusing on taking things away.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  And three, please, do not believe everything that you hear about young people today. A favorite pastime of adults has been shaming young people. But this generation is not lost or destroyed. They are resilient. They are resilient because they are succeeding despite the suffering of adults around them. And if we want to help them to continue to succeed, we set high expectations and then we need to support them in getting them there. This is the magic combination that has always worked in teaching, in coaching, in parenting. It still works with teens today. Tech has not changed that.

• 40:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  We have to talk about AI because, you know, there are those who are calling that it's the final chapter for social media and it may not matter within five to 10 years anyway. And AI is the next thing and that kids are really, really vulnerable. Chatbots that seem like people that can convince them to do things, maybe even harm themselves. There are numerous cases, parents going up against tech companies saying that they caused their kid to kill themselves. It's a really serious situation and it sounds really, really scary, Candace. What's your take?

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it is, I mean, it has moved rapidly and it is disrupting all aspects of life and there are definitely issues and real issues that we need to focus on with young people. And so when I sit back, I think, you know, what can we learn from this journey we've been on with technology? And young people and where the real harms are and where the fears are and how our policymaking really hasn't worked to date. And I think we know a couple of things. I think we know that young people are going to be early enthusiastic adopters of any new technology and we're seeing that loud and clear with artificial intelligence. So they are gravitating towards these platforms, are using them frequently. The other thing we know is

• 41:46Speaker 02

  that tech companies cannot be trusted to put in guardrails that are developmentally appropriate. There is just too much money involved and the incentives are not aligned. And so that creates, you know, a toxic mix. Now, the structural, if we can get to the structural constraints and the penalties on tech companies, then we might have some, some movement. So how, how can we position ourselves to get the safeguards in place within the models and within the companies and also work to educate young people and their families around AI risks and benefits? Because the other thing is that this will be the workforce of the future, right?

• 42:23Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  And what will happen is if we ban AI in schools, that all of the high SES families will send their kids to Stanford or here to use AI and they will get educated in the latest and the greatest in using AI. And lower income kids will be left out of not only the education part of this, but the job market. So I think i- it's going to be a really complicated and big tent issue to solve. But if we go down the path that we have gone down with social media, which is fear and ban, we are going to end up in a very bad place.

• 42:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  I mean, anecdotally, I see my younger daughter, who's 16, who will not touch AI. She's been convinced that morally it is reprehensible. Whereas I'm also seeing, you know, these, um, these graduation ceremonies at universities where every time the commencement speaker says the word AI, the kids boo, presumably because they're worried about their livelihoods going forward and getting jobs. And then I see a more pragmatic approach. Uh, my son's professor, who required them to use AI in a class and talk about what it did and how it worked and how it

• 43:37Manoush Zomorodi?

  was helpful and where the dangers were and all of those things. Um, so, you know, we're figuring it out, is what it feels like.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it sounds like your daughter and my daughter would get along. We both, my husband and I got a lecture the other day about the climate, and which are real, which is real.

• 43:53Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yes, yes.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  The climate damage of, of all these data centers. But yeah, it's going to be a challenge, but I think that we do know that the first impulse will be the fear in bands. And then there's, there's the continuum, right? There's the, the people that show, think that this will be the opportunity in terms of personalized education. And the effects are very different, for example, in the global south, right, where we don't have enough teachers or enough room in the, in the school for all the children. Or it might not be safe to get to school, or you might be out harvesting a crop. And there are real opportunities to deliver personalized learning and low-cost tutoring and all the rest of those things.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  So it's really is the challenge of how to, um, realize these, the potential of this with, without, you know, being subjected to all the harms. And I think the other thing that we know from just years and years of comms researchers, anytime a new technology rolls out, it will amplify inequalities because people who are positioned and families who are positioned to tailor this for their young people and to use it in ways that will enhance learning and, you know, um, prospects in the job market will do that, right? And so the, if we don't design from the beginning in ways that brings all our young people along around digital literacy and training and safety,

• 45:13Speaker 02

  you know, then we're going to have even, even bigger gaps within education, you know, mental health and other things that we care about.

• 45:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  I do also want to ask you about my growing sense, and I wonder if you would concur based on data, that much of what we're talking about when we talk about rising anxiety, depression, inability to focus, is also potentially simply because of what we're not doing when we're on screens for a long time? It's not necessarily the screens themselves, but the fact that sitting for long hours, looking at a piece of glass means that we're not up and outside and talking to people and getting fresh air and all the other things that the human body craves and needs.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And yes, and so we need to be moving our bodies. Our children need to be moving our bodies. But again, as you know, like it's easy to blame the phone for us just sitting here all day at the screen. And it's harder to look at kind of ourselves of why didn't we go for that run this morning? Or why are we getting rid of phys ed in schools? Or why are we kicking teens out of skateboard parks where they're active and, you know, getting some, some exercise? And so it is one of these things where, in the same way that we blamed the obesity epidemic on phones, right? That was for, among children, that was increasing long before. And we know that, you know, in American culture, for sure, sugary foods and drinks were a

• 46:49Speaker 02

  big part of that story, that shutting down and reducing phys ed in schools was a big part of that. And then it's highly stratified by social class, right? Where, where children from higher SES families are in every kind of sports and activity and are moving a lot more. And part of that is, is money, not motivation.

• 47:10Manoush Zomorodi?

  I wonder if I can end our conversation with a question that I had, I had breakfast with a friend the other day, and he said to me, "My 12-year-old wants to be on Snapchat. What should I do?" I said, "Well, why does he want to be on Snapchat?" And he said, "Because three out of five of his besties are on there." I was like, "So it's to talk to them?" "Yes." "Okay." And he's like, "Should I just say, 'No, you're too young'?" And I said, "Well, I'm going to tell you what I think Candace Rogers would say, which is, have you had a conversation with your son about, you know, the internet generally? What's on there? What's false information, safe ideas of, that you don't feel comfortable with as a family?" "Yes, I've done that."

• 47:55Manoush Zomorodi?

  I was like, "Good job, friend." And I said, "And I think she would say, but most importantly, is your kid having other issues? Like, is he having sleep problems? Is he struggling at school? Is he struggling with these friendships?" And he said, "No, he seems fine." I was like, "I think Candace would say, like, pick your battles, and maybe this isn't one of them." How did I do, Candace?

• 48:17Speaker 02

  You did great. Um, you know what? I would, I would add one thing, and this is something I had to learn. And I learnt it from the young people in our study, which was when you first turn over either a device or you open up a new platform for the young person in your life, have the conversation that if something bad or scary or upsetting happens here, I want you to talk to me about it. And if you do, I will never shut this off or take it away for doing that.

• 48:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  Hmm.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Because we hear time and time again that young people hide, don't tell, don't go to a trusted adult because they're worried the adults will take the tech away. And that now in retrospect seems obvious to me, but I, I, I needed the 13 year olds to tell me before I changed my own parenting strategy.

• 49:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  Well, you've just sort of shamed me into asking, what else do they tell you? Because I, I should have asked that earlier in this conversation.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean, they, it is really actually incredible to see the way that young people can creatively use digital technology. They, they're actually better in so many ways at silencing notifications of kind of curating their own feeds. And this happens over time. So it's very different when we talk to the young, the young, younger kids around 12 to 11 versus 15 or 16, when they're kind of veterans or experts at this. And they have a lot to share in terms of teaching us. They also think we're terrible at it, and they're probably not wrong. And so one of the other things that I love to do with a car full of kids when I'm driving carpool is to just put out some question about tech and like how I should do it. And they just, they just fill up the car with advice

• 49:59Speaker 02

  and really good advice, actually.

• 50:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  Like what? Give me one.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, so I actually, my daughter went on Snapchat pretty young. And the reason that she went on is we had suffered a really sad loss in, in our extended family. And the, the children that were impacted by this were far away. We wanted to be there as a group and they were on Snapchat. So we all went on to kind of have fun together. But my husband and I were kicked off the chat, and I didn't know why.

• 50:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  Cause you're grownups?

• 50:29Speaker 02

  That's true. Kids do not want us in their spaces. Well, we weren't actually kicked off. They, the chat just kind of went quiet and I realized that they had gravitated towards another group. So this might have happened in your lives. But, you know, we were on Snapchat where the norm is like a funny picture and then you're done. And I was writing like War and Peace, you know, checking in on everybody and mothering. So, you know, you just, you don't know the norms, right? And there's just a sign that, you know, you're an old in the young space. And they want their space. They want to own their space. And right now, we're just, we're just coming in and taking away their spaces. Yeah. And we're not giving them alternative spaces to go to that are safer and allow them to do the things that they need to do to develop and grow.

• 51:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Candace Audger. She is a developmental psychologist and professor at the University of California, Irvine, and at Duke University. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, please call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This interview was done in partnership with the team at TED Talks Daily. You can hear Candace's full talk and much more on the TED Talks Daily feed. Thank you so much for listening. This episode was produced by Rachel Faulkner White and TED Talks Daily's Lucy Little with help from Katie Monteleone. It was edited by Alison McAdam, Sanaz Meshkempor, and me.

• 51:54Manoush Zomorodi?

  Our production staff at NPR also includes Matthew Cloutier, Avery Keatley, Theo Guerin, Hersha Nahada, and James Delahoussaye. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineer was Stacy Abbott. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Sal Khan, Logan McClure-Davda, Helen Walters, Roxanne Hylash, and Daniela Bello Razzo. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you have been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

• 52:28Speaker 00

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