We have to build trust with each other. Trust that we will be here for you to come to if something goes wrong.

And we’re here to listen and then help you think through what you can do, because there’s nothing more powerful than the natural consequences of actions that shape the next set of actions and learning.

You’re listening to TEDMED conversations, where we share stories in health and medicine to inspire change for a healthier world. I’m your host, Kelly Thomas.

Today, I’m speaking with doctor Anne Marie Albano, clinical psychologist, youth anxiety specialist, and founder of the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders.

We talk about the mental health challenges today’s youth face, especially related to social media exposure and societal pressures.

Anne Marie shares tools for parents and educators to create a supportive environment that fosters independence and resilience.

She emphasizes the importance of open communication, building trust, and modeling healthy coping skills.

Ann Marie, thank you so much for sitting down with TEDMED again. We are happy to have you back. Well, thank you for having me back because it’s always a pleasure. This is such a great medium for families, for parents, and for youth. You’ve dedicated your career towards studying and treating anxiety and mood disorders in our youth.

If you were to build a toolbox for kids and their parents to use to help them successfully launch from adolescence into adulthood, what would that look like?

Oh, boy. That’s a great question, and that’s what we try to do. Right? So the thing I would say is let’s start with the ability to socialize and to engage with other people. So one part of the toolbox would be social skills.

And this isn’t just, but it’s important to make and keep friendships.

And that you don’t have to have a hundred friends, but one or two good friends. You also want our kids to be able to talk to people in authority, teachers, principals, coaches, and be able to express their needs and express their thoughts without feeling that they can’t. Also, how to speak to people that are younger than you or that you’re in a subordinate position if you’re president of a club and you’ve got club members. How to do that without making them feel inferior to me. So social skills are important, and they should be shaped from the earliest stages. What’s really important too is problem solving skills.

And this is where when parents come in and solve the problems and keep solving the problems for the kids, everything from they didn’t like the way the paper was graded to they didn’t get accepted into a position, an internship or something. The parents are the ones calling and doing all the renegotiating and solving those problems. They don’t learn the skills. They don’t learn another part of the toolkit, which is emotion management skills.

How to be disappointed, embarrassed, hurt, anxious in any given moment, you know, and maintain your steady state as best as you can, and then how to deal with and solve whatever the situation is to the best of your ability.

So those are also skills along with all this of perspective taking skills.

And I do a role play with parents and their kids switching the roles. So they learn what it’s like to be the mom saying, what’s the matter with you? Why won’t you do such so? And the kid being, you don’t get it.

They learn to take this perspective of another, and this is important.

So in all of this problem solving skills, social skills, emotion regulation, perspective, also realistic thinking. In this world of social media and media, everything’s coming at you. Misinformation, wrong information, catastrophic information.

How to weed through and find credible information.

And then that allows you to think realistically about in this given situation where I’m upset about x, y, or z, what realistically can happen?

Not what am I catastrophizing?

Because that helps to ground a kid. All of these will build then upon the youth’s ability to manage anxiety and mood changes, getting angry, frustrated, depression, and delay gratification because she can’t satisfy everything every moment immediately.

There’s my toolkit.

That sounds like the perfect toolkit for a successful adult. How would you characterize the challenges that today’s kids face when it comes to affecting their mental health?

The mental health challenges of youth today are very different from what earlier generations experience.

Even people in their thirties, you know, very different from their time of growing up. Now part of that is because just media is continuing to flourish in so many different ways and to be so accessible and at fingertips twenty four seven. I mean, that was the case ten, fifteen years ago, but there’s just so many more outlets.

So kids and when I say kids as early as seven, eight years of age, they’re exposed to media. They’re exposed to using devices, and there’s many different ways that then they’re getting hit with images and sounds and messaging of all kinds of scary things that are happening in the world locally as well as in the larger community and around the world.

And so mental health challenges today are very different because it’s almost as if there’s no place where kids are really completely secure except at home, perhaps, and it depends on the home and the environment, but where, you know, they can escape from and just have quiet and time to reflect and do things that kids should be doing, playing, doing their homework, and such. You know, media is one thing, but the other thing too, and this is largely unique to the United States, is kids go to school today, and it’s not just about fire drills. It’s about active shooter drills.

And even there, school is no longer just the place you go to grow, learn, meet your friends, have fun. There’s, you know, there’s this, sense of uncertainty and an inability to predict, will my school be safe today?

This has weighed very heavily on kids, in the United States, especially, as I said, because outside of perhaps their home, there isn’t a safe space where they can just be themselves.

And then we see just a lot of other things that are impacting kids and their mental health. I did a a survey, focus groups with a number of adolescents and young adults in their early twenties. And these kids all said that the pressure to succeed in life, to get into a good college, and know what you’re gonna do, and get a good job, they feel it by the time they start middle school.

So we’re talking eleven and twelve years of age, and they’re thinking about they have to get a certain GPA and to get ahead in the world. This was a range of mixed kids from around the country, and it was just striking that it didn’t matter if they were from higher income, middle income, lower income. They all felt the same pressure and not from their parents per se. It’s just what they are absorbing from others around them. So there’s a lot of pressure on them. It’s because we can get information in all different ways. Kids are talking about things more openly than ever before, and it’s dripping down to the younger and younger ages.

And what are the top things that we can do as caregivers for these kids to help them feel a little bit more at ease?

Yeah. That’s a great question, and that’s the question we struggle with with all of our families.

Because what we wanna focus on is creating a space for kids where learning becomes not just a fun activity.

It really it should be fun to learn and feeding their curiosity and helping them to ask questions because we want them to be lifelong learners.

What’s happening is pressure leads them to say finish high school, finish college, and I’m done. We don’t want that to happen. So what we could do as parents and as teachers and educators, it starts really locally. It has to start locally with giving kids the space to get into the process, the process of learning, the process of engaging with others socially, the process of asking questions without judging them and without setting a bar that they have to reach. If the focus is on, well, you’re gonna have tests to get into the certain middle school or high school, and you’ve gotta prepare for tests. Or, you know, if the focus is always on what’s the next step you have to achieve, that just takes away the joy, takes away the interest.

And this also has to come from, really, the parents and the local communities to model for kids that, you know, it’s about process and it’s about the engagement with others, engagement with your teachers, engagement with the peers in class, engagement with the coaches. It’s about that. That’s why you’re in school so you can learn and engage with others.

Not that you have to get a certain record, achieve a certain grade or score. So it really has to start at home with giving that space.

And I think with parent teacher organizations and the parents in the schools working together to promote a community that doesn’t rank kids and focus on who’s, you know, first, second, third, but a community on inclusiveness of all the kids in the school and engaging together in activities and such.

If we were to do something at home to foster that community, what comes to mind as one of the first things parents and caregivers can do?

One of the things we try to look at is what’s our own self talk?

How do we, as the parents, think about the people in our lives that surround us, our neighbors, friends, the parents of our children’s friends, and the teachers? And what are we saying inadvertently at different times in frustration that the kids overhear?

And what are we modeling in terms of engaging in outreach to others?

So the first thing is take stock of ourselves, and what are the things that are are hot buttons that we want to step back from and, you know, take a few moments to think, do I want my child to hear this message? Right now, I’m frustrated with their school because of x, y, or z. Do they need to hear this? Or is it something that I can think through, work with, you know, parent teacher association or whomever on something that needs to maybe go differently or we could think through?

The other thing is and look, I credit my parents, like, with this. My mom made our house the center. Now I’m not saying every parent has to have the whole school over, but it’s helpful if you can get your kids together with other families and other kids once a week if possible that they’re going somewhere or you’re inviting them over or something so that you show that you’re open to meeting their friends. You’re open to the community that the school can build.

And then there’s a lot we can teach our kids at home just about very good mental health skills by modeling some of these things. And we could talk about a number of them, but everything from how we use social media or our phones to how we prepare for bed and going to sleep. There’s a lot of things that we could do for modeling and setting the stage and encouraging healthy habits.

Absolutely. I agree. I feel that we do use our phones to communicate and to make plans to get together with other people, but there’s also negative ways with social media that it’s impacting us.

How can we manage that and model that with our kids?

Well, you know, I now talk with parents about thinking about when we were raised and, for the most part, the things that we went through when we were younger in terms of how we had to learn responsibility and good habits, the number one thing is when we were taught how to drive.

And if you think about there was a class, usually driver’s ed, that you went to, but also your parents took you out to a parking lot somewhere. You know, we were taught how we were given instruction in a classroom. We were given instruction in the car. Parents and other adults were helping us with this.

And then think about this as parents. You know your child.

Who is more vulnerable of your children? Who’s more vulnerable to be very introspective and take things hard and beat themselves up? Who’s the one who gets really excited and engaged but can get a bit too much into one thing and just can’t put it down? You know the vulnerabilities.

Who’s your risk taker? Who are the kids who you worry about? So this is the same thing with social media as if with driving, where a parent would put a curfew or how long and where you can drive. We have to put rails around social media, where parents start by modeling and teaching them about it.

It would be great if every school had a social media course, probably starting in sixth grade at the latest on teaching kids how to handle using their phones and social media and such, or communities do this, but parents have to do this. And then you really have to not just model putting your phones away at the dinner table at a certain point in the evening, showing them I’m getting off of a certain social media site because it’s just gives me information that’s not healthy for me.

Things like that and have discussions around it. And then also just really the literacy of who do you wanna keep as your friends. It’s okay to turn off some people.

All of this has to come from the parents at first. And knowing what guardrails of you being a hidden friend with an avatar who is on their pages or whatever it is, just observing with their knowledge until you feel comfortable that they can handle things on their own or that you have to restrict for some kids the social media if you see that it really is not having a positive impact or a neutral impact of being an information center for your youth. But it has to start in that way at home.

It sounds like communication is critical in these relationships.

We wanna be open to hearing from the kids what they think and starting these conversations when they start asking for a phone or when you see that other kids are using it and, you know, or that’s how they’re getting together. What does your son or daughter think, and how do they feel about it? And not judging them and not jumping to tell them, well, it’s gotta be this way, and I don’t want you on you’ve gotta let them speak at first and be open to listening because we don’t wanna close them off from hearing you.

They close off when you start judging and if you start getting afraid and you’re telling them this is bad, that is bad. It makes their curiosity go up, but also they feel not trusted. We wanna give our kids a chance to prove themselves with trust. And they might mess up or, you know, there’ll be missteps, but it’s not punishing them, but saying, wow.

That was, you know, really a strange, you know, post that was on your wall. Can you tell me more about that? I found it. I didn’t understand it.

And, you know, get a sense. Well, what do you wanna do with that now that you know? Look at all the negative comments. What do you wanna do about that?

So giving them the chance to rise to the challenge.

If you don’t have that open line of communication with your child, how can you start to build that? I know it probably can be hard with teenagers if it’s already a closed relationship and you really wanna try to turn it around.

As a mental health professional treating adolescents, there’s a lot who come in who have had their own shadow social media accounts the parents don’t even know about.

And, of course, doing other things that they hide from parents. Now look, we didn’t tell our parents everything. We get that. But what creates that is when a youth feels that they are going to greatly disappoint their parents, be punished because of something that either they did or someone else might have done on their social media. So they’re afraid of the consequences of having social media and being judged and micromanaged.

These are things that kids react to. So, really, it’s about from the very beginning, you just have to sit down and say, look. We wanna give you a chance. We know this is important. This is the way people relate to one another, but we have to build trust with each other. Trust that we will be here for you to come to if something goes wrong.

And we’re here to listen and then help you think through what you can do.

Because there’s nothing more powerful than the natural consequences of actions that shape the next set of actions and learning. K? So a parent saying, I don’t want you on that site anymore, is not the same impact. That layers on guilt, shame, upset, anger.

But a parent saying, oh my goodness. I see how upset you are about that post.

I can see you’re upset.

What do you think you wanna do?

How do you wanna handle this? Is there a way we can help? When you approach things that way, and this is for any situation where you can be the parent who’s listening with concern and love and not judging.

They’re gonna be open to tell you about what’s going on.

And having empathy and remembering that we were there once as well. Mhmm. If you are worried about your child, what does anxiety look like in a school setting? Is there something you should be looking for, behavioral changes, etcetera?

Yes. Very good question.

The things that I have parents look for when it comes to anxiety in their children is first and foremost, if you go to parent teacher conferences and the teacher say, oh, I really don’t know John or Mary because they’re so quiet or they never come up to me. That’s number one.

Why doesn’t a teacher recognize or really have much to say about your child? And that could be an indication of social anxiety, and that that child is uncomfortable around other people for some reason. Now this could be growing out of temperament and that they’ve been socially anxious and more demands as they made it through middle school to high school to talk and engage. They’re not rising to that challenge.

This could be something that’s been there. Doesn’t matter. When you hear this, you wanna try to think through, okay. Do we need to intervene in some way?

Other things that you would look for are, I don’t wanna go to school or phone calls, can you pick me up? What’s going on that is making school a very uncomfortable place for them?

And this could be any range of things. Yes. It could be bullying that we need to understand and intervene and make schools safer, engage with the schools around that.

It also could be that for various reasons, they don’t feel they fit in or they feel overwhelmed with the work. It could be a range of things, having some depression even, panic feelings, and they feel safer at home or they feel less burdened at home. But we need to figure out what that is if they’re not wanting to attend.

And then we do look at what is it like for them at when they come home, are they just focused on I’ve gotta work and they work from the time they get home until midnight, one, two in the morning, and they don’t feel that they’re getting the assignments right or it’s not perfect enough. Perfectionism could get in the way. So a lot of things can drive worry, separation anxiety, and what could go wrong while they’re away from you, social anxiety, depression, panic. There’s a number of ways that anxiety manifests, and it interferes with their ability to sleep, to concentrate, to be relaxed, and and just, you know, take it easy at home and to really wanna be at school or around other kids.

And watch to see if they start dropping out of things. If they drop out of the sports or the clubs they love or if they stop seeing their friends and start making excuses. What’s going on is the question.

If you’re in that situation and you are noticing some of those behaviors in your child, what’s the next step? How do you help your child start coming out of their shell and building confidence and independence?

Yeah. The first thing we have to do is listen.

And parents will say, but my son or daughter doesn’t talk to me. And it’s even listening to the silence.

It’s making yourself available, close to them, in proximity and just being calm while they are silent to start.

And this might be during dinner. It might be just in the family room. And then you can reflect and say, you know, I noticed you haven’t been going out with friends or you’re no longer, you know, going to whatever club or sports.

Do you miss it? Is is it okay that you’re not doing this anymore? What’s changed?

Not that you’re judging it. And and it’s okay. You wanna do things just wondering what’s changed.

Ask them their opinions and see if they’ll be forthcoming.

If they’re not, if they get upset, you can wait and you can circle back with, you know, I just noticed that these things are different, and I’m just wondering how you’re doing. You’re spending a lot of time alone now in your room.

Can we talk about this?

So it’s asking for an engagement without telling them how they’re feeling or judging them for whatever the change is and saying, I’m noticing this.

If you notice they’re not wanting to go to school, if you notice they’re not getting good sleep, if you notice they’re more irritable, then you could say, I see that it’s been hard for you to get out of bed or to get to school, to get up in the morning. Label the observed behavior, not judge it. Just I see that it’s been difficult to get out of bed. I see that you’re not wanting to go.

Can we talk about that? What’s going on?

So you have to open the door that way. And if they come and they start telling you what’s happening, that gives you what you need to say. Maybe we can talk with whether it’s the school counselor or talk with a professional therapist.

Or if they’re not giving you anything, you could say, you know, I want to help you here. You’re pushing me away a bit, but I wanna help you here. And let’s see if I leave you alone over the next day or two to think about this.

See if you could come back and tell me what’s going on. Okay? Two days later, a day later, you go back, and you say, we haven’t talked. Can we revisit this? And if they can’t come out with it saying, I think we need to see somebody to try to get at what’s bothering you, because there’s been these big changes that are concerning.

So continuing to stay engaged with your child to keep going back to them so they know you’re there even if they’re not ready yet to talk to you.

Right. In calm, gentle moments, not at the height of crisis.

We spoke with the head of school, Bill Knauer, at the Harvey School, where they did implement a phone free environment. They’re using Yonder couches in their upper school. And one of the things that he mentioned was that you are seeing people’s eyes, and people are communicating face to face. They used to text to meet up on campus throughout the day.

Now they have to make plans. They have to figure out how to meet up with each other. And he has been so excited about what’s happened over the past few months. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on how this policy might help change the level of anxiety overall among the school, the the children, and the staff.

Well, I was delighted to hear the I listened to the whole podcast, and I can’t wait to hear their outcomes because I know they’re looking at getting qualitative information on how the kids are feeling through the course of the year, the parents, and the teachers. And I think they’re gonna be really pleasantly surprised.

The thing that they’re doing, quite frankly, too, is they are doing their own natural training in social engagement in preparing these kids for adulthood and for the next step. Because no matter what, after they finish high school, whether they go to college or go into the workforce, a training program, what have you, they’ve gotta do this independently.

And by having them engage with one another, they’re using different social skills than just texting a message. They are having to make eye contact. They have to use their voice and speak up and be heard at a level that you can listen to. Right? They have to smile and use facial and nonverbal cues.

And also take extra time. Take extra time to find their way to the club meeting room and get lost a little bit. All of that is so important for shaping problem solving skills, social engagement skills, assertiveness skills, and these are what you need to get into the world.

And I think one of the biggest things they’re probably getting more of is helping the kids to develop empathy, a real understanding of how challenging some things could be at times, but you could work through them. So they’re gaining perspective, I think, of not just me, me, me, but so and so is late. I didn’t meet up with them in math class. Maybe they don’t know where we are.

And, you know, well, I’m worried about them. Maybe we could send someone to try to find them. They have to think through ways of what the other person is feeling and what can we do to engage them and help them. So empathy is critical.

I just think it’s fantastic and something that I hope more schools do.

One of the things that the head of the Harvey School mentioned when we had our conversation was that he was so happy that most people, students, and parents were very supportive of implementing the Yonder pouches. But there were some parents who felt like they were not going to be able to contact their child during the day, and it was a difficult emotion for them. The Harvey School did change their phone system so if a parent calls in, they actually speak to a a real human, not just an answering service.

How can you help teach parents to help their kids build independence and support that when the parent wants to be in touch all the time? What do you tell the parents in that situation?

This is an interesting observation because with the various things that have happened at schools, the violence and gun issues, parents wanna be able to know in the moment, and they wanna be able to react in a moment.

What I understood from the Harvey headmaster was that that’s taken care of with having somebody always there to respond. And that the kids’ phones are in the classroom, but they’re in the pouches and in an emergency. The teachers are ready. Everybody’s ready. But the thing we we wanna look at here for parents is a quote from Alfred Adler, nineteen thirty, a wise analyst. This is paraphrased. You could love your child all you want, but you must not make them dependent, and we need to train them from the beginning to be independent beings.

Now research done by Jeffrey Jenson Arnett, who studies emerging adulthood, showed us back in two thousand fifteen that sixty one percent of parents were in touch with their children every day in college. That’s not necessary.

What we really wanna do is help our kids to be independent at every step from the time they were little, they should be doing things independently and also through school.

If your child has a special need that you wanna stay on top of, arrange with the school for who you are to contact during school or how you’ll be contacted if something is is necessary.

But, otherwise, we really should let the kids do their own thing.

And given their age, you increase the amount of independence and add responsibility so that they learn the skills that are necessary for self control, self management, good safety behaviors, but also getting into the world. So we have to address what is the parents so worried about that they need that open contact at any given moment?

Because it gets to the parents’ anxiety.

And it could be the parents are coming with a history of their own of things having gone wrong when they were younger.

It could be that they’re worried. They’re they themselves are worried about the state of what’s going on or various things like that, or they could think that their child is incapable of managing. And that’s something we could help their kids learn how to do.

At the same time, we can help parents to take stock and recognize you being calm, confident, and trusting of your child learning how to manage and making mistakes, not big things, but mistakes along the way, is what they need to be independent beings.

That’s probably a difficult thing for parents who want to feel so connected to deal with, but very important for the success of their children and also themselves.

The best thing I think we ever did was put together a five session parent group, and I have parents in it all the time from all across New York City. And it’s about helping your child to become an independent being through high school and college and addressing, you know, how to set things up so that they learn as you step away, how to do their own laundry, to shopping, to making their own appointments for the doctor, the dentist, while they’re under your eyes at home, because they’re gonna have to do this once they leave your house. Mhmm. And it’s important that you help set them up. So when I get all these parents together, they learn that they’re not alone in their worries, and they get support for letting go of the worries as they give their kids more freedom and movement and more responsibility.

And it is so empowering to the parents because then they’re freed from their anxiety, and they could actually enjoy life again in in various ways.

That sounds wonderful.

How do you feel smartphones and cell phone use has prohibited the development of critical skills?

There’s an interesting book that came out, The Dumbest Generation.

And it’s about the way that prior to cell phone per se, but just the web has shortchanged our kids in their ability to really search for information, do research, think through way evidence, way conflicting information and so forth, and come up with a coherent essay or ideas.

And I think that the ability to get anything answered immediately contributes to that even more than just the web itself. You know, a Google search is a Google search, but now with, chat GPT, you could just say, tell me, and then you get the answer.

So I think that’s part of what’s gotten in the way of skill building and in the way of kids being able to reason through and manage when the answers are right there. If not on the phone, if someone else does it for them, it doesn’t allow them to struggle to learn that we have to learn to self soothe.

As another part of my toolbox would be self soothing skills and delay our gratification to have a situation resolved or know everything at every moment. We have to learn how to live with uncertainty, being flexible of mind, having patience, and being persistent in a reasonable way in terms of working towards solutions. I think cell phones have gotten in the way of all of those skills because the press of a button, you can get someone or something to resolve the situation for you.

Mhmm.

And it feels like the onus of regulating that is really on the user side, the parents, the child. But the companies that are producing these apps or ways in which we can just access any kind of information don’t really have responsibility to us. How do you think that might change?

Well, it’s interesting. I was having lunch with a gentleman who works in the European Union on the committee that regulates all new technology, And they do a very deep dive into thinking through all of the different ways that any new technology can go in terms of harms as well as they do a big benefit risk ratio. So they’re very cautious. They take their time with AI, with all these things coming up because they’re trying to figure out what needs to be put in place with the developers as well as on national and local levels.

I think these folks who develop these things know that flashy screens and all they work, especially when it comes to youth, they work on the deep centers of the brain that are involved in reinforcement mechanisms That is turning the switch on, so to speak, so you stay constantly engaged with this thing. Some people call it addiction. It’s engagement, and it is continuous engagement.

And some kids are more vulnerable if they have attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity, anxious youth, depressed youth, girls more than boys in some ways. Boys may be for gaming, but girls for the negativity of social media. And I’ll just step back. Even before phones, we knew that individuals with mental health conditions have a selective attention bias, a bias to find information that confirms their fears.

Okay?

Cell phones and apps and these things have made it all the worse. I think it’s on developers, whether it’s Facebook, Insta, whatever it may be, to manage and understand you have different age groups and constituencies, and we need to have different rails put around access and what content may be there. Not that we baby and over parentify kids, but there’s gotta be ways that parents and the youth can adjust what they’re having access to as they meet higher and higher levels of responsibility and being able to then manage open access, let’s say, to the social media.

What can parents do to set that in place for a seven year old versus a twelve year old versus a seventeen year old? As a parent, I’m curious as my younger children continue to grow. We want them to have responsibility and independence, but also we wanna protect them.

It does start with your seven year old or it starts earlier.

I’m one of these folks who thinks that limiting the amount of screen time your babies and your toddlers and preschoolers have is important. I think the American Academy of Pediatrics agrees.

It should be minimal if any when they are preschool.

And you want it to be more educational content.

This is where Sesame Street comes in and things like that. So you wanna be very mindful. And as kids grow into using screens and look, we FaceTime with our grandchildren, and they are five and under, But it’s kept to a certain time, and it’s kept short so that they have access to us, but that’s it. You know? No bells or whistles around it. But as they grow, then you sit with your child, and you do a tutoring on how they’re using it and use the parental controls.

And I think with parents, the earlier you start this, we’re gonna monitor your use.

And there’s ways that parents can do that by everybody being on the same family plan and having the parental controls and so forth. We’re gonna monitor it, and we’re gonna help you learn.

Then you can release those controls as they age.

It’s also saying, and we trust you. The message should be, we trust you that you’re gonna work with us, and you’re gonna take care and learn. And if things come up that are upsetting or that are dicey, you’re gonna let mom and dad know so we can work together. You have to set that up from the beginning.

Doing it now with kids who are already teenagers means getting to the table with them sitting down calmly and saying, you know, we wanna be helpful, and we wanna be here. There’s been too many incidents where kids have suicided following bullying experiences that were online or various things. So parents are scared, and it’s understandable. We understand that. It’s having the conversations and being open to, does social media make you feel really terrible?

Tell us about that.

What is it about it that gets to you? Is it certain people?

So that you can be there to help if they say somebody is going after them, and that’s when you have to step in. But, otherwise, we have to give them the space and our trust that they’re managing.

Mhmm.

Communication and trust is just so important. I feel like that has been your message so many times while we’ve been speaking. Yeah. If you’re a parent of a teenager and you don’t want your child on social media, but their friends are on it and they come to you, and it’s a really a big point of contention because they feel like they’re not part of the group. How do you manage that as a parent?

A number of parents are afraid.

They’re afraid of what the impact is. I would manage it by having a conversation and being open about your concerns. Look. We have seen things in the news.

We get it. You’re telling me it’s not you. It’s not your friends. Understand we’re afraid. We’re anxious. Because we know once you get an Instagram account, anybody can ask to friend you unless you make it private.

So let’s wade into this together in a way that’s step by step, because we don’t want you to hide things from us.

And we want you to help us understand where it could be meaningful for you.

So we have to be open to being honest about if you start this account on this social media, how it’s going, and we’ve gotta be able to see it.

That’s what I would do. Let them know your concerns.

Tell them that you’ll trust them as long as you’re engaged together and that you wanna learn from them.

That empowers your kids, and it does open it up to the conversation to be more collaborative.

Mhmm.

I imagine it can be very difficult as a parent to stay calm in that moment, but it’s so important to do so. I have some friends who have older children in their late twenties and thirties, and I’ve had several recently who have said my son, my daughter decided to shut down their social media accounts. They don’t feel that it’s personal, and it was so interesting to hear that. Are you seeing more of that in kids as they grow into adults and they decide it’s just not for them anymore?

I’ve seen it even in high school kids, which has been absolutely wonderful for them. And they have figured out ways of connecting with others and doing it by the old telephone. This is the other thing, parents, to bear in mind. Remember what would happen if your parents told you, I don’t want you to see that boy.

You saw that boy. You snuck out and saw that boy. But then when you figured out that boy really wasn’t the right one for you, then you let it go. Kids themselves, if their parents are nonjudgmental and if their parents are good listeners and reflect back what you hear and see and let them deal with it, they’ll come to their own decision on getting off things oftentimes.

It’s if you see that there are disturbances in their sleep, if that phone is under their pillow, vibrating all night, if they are not able to pay attention because it’s always here and they’re missing out on important things as well as everyday things, that’s when you wanna step in and say, can you take stock really of this this helpful to you?

So if you’re seeing problems, that’s one thing. You’ve gotta be more engaged to say, what’s contributing to? You’re falling behind in school. You’re irritable.

You’re snappy. This is what we’ve noticed. What’s contributing to that? And to help them see, it’s probably too much time on the phones.

But if you just reflect things and let it go, you might see them saying, I just had to get off it. I got off it, and I’m free. I feel so free. This is what I’ve heard from so many.

Wow.

That’s really wonderful to hear.

This has been so helpful for me as a parent, and I think anyone who has kids in their life, so many great lessons learned from this conversation, and I appreciate it so much.

Thank you, Kelly, so much, really. It’s been a pleasure once again to be here with y’all.

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