By Brittney Hansen and Conor Bentley
Listen above or on Apple Podcasts.
The princiPALS are back with an episode about the parenting book that seems to be everywhere right now: Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.
This episode features a panel discussion about the book, with four childhood experts weighing in on topics including balancing screen time with productive play, protecting children’s mental health, helping children process what they see online, and even making changes to your family’s social media decisions (it’s never too late!). Whether or not you’ve read the book, this episode will help you better navigate the challenges that face today’s families.
The transcript of this episode appears below.
Conor Bentley (00:01):
From Rowland Hall in Salt Lake City, Utah...
Emma Wellman (00:04):
I’m Emma Wellman.
Brittney Hansen (00:05):
And I’m Brittney Hansen.
Conor (00:07):
And they’re the princiPALS.
I’m Conor Bentley, and on today’s edition of the princiPALS, we’ll be discussing themes from Jonathan Haidt’s buzzworthy book The Anxious Generation.
Emma (00:25):
On The PrinciPALS Podcast, we tackle big questions and share big ideas about how to raise excellent humans.
Conor (00:33):
Welcome back to the princiPALS’ office. I am here with Brittney; Emma is away this time, but she’ll be back for our next episode. So even though we’re down a pal, we have a great episode that includes several new pals who joined Brittney for a live panel discussion of some really important issues for parents and caregivers.
Brittney (00:54):
That’s right, Conor. As you may have heard, there’s been a lot of buzz about Jon Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, and so much so that we thought it would be prudent as a school community to spend some time exploring these themes of the book together. The themes are largely centered around the many impacts of technology on child development, as well as the impacts of decreased time with face-to-face interaction and open-ended play on the development of young children. So we’ve been looking at these themes in lots of different ways, via book clubs and parent conversations, within our community, and recently these conversations culminated with a panel discussion that we held on campus.
Conor (01:31):
No, it’s so exciting, and we’re here today to share with our listeners some of that panel discussion. There were four panelists who were joined by Brittney and Middle School Assistant Principal Charlotte Larsen, who acted as hosts. And now we’ll introduce you to the panelists that you’ll be hearing from.
Brittney (01:49):
Our first panelist was Emily Quetone Khan, the director of learning services for 3PreK to fifth grade at Rowland Hall. She has 20 years of experience in PreK–12 education as a special ed teacher, a classroom teacher, an inclusion specialist, a learning specialist, and as a leader in all sorts of schools, including public schools, charter schools, non-public schools, non-traditional schools, and independent school settings all around the country.
Conor (02:15):
Deborah Wright is the emotional support counselor on the McCarthey Campus. As a school counselor working in different schools and settings, Deborah has partnered with organizations such as Communities In Schools, Partners in Education, Stewards of Children, and various other stabilization and community wraparound programs.
Brittney (02:34):
Jessica Kahn has worked as a pediatric occupational therapist for over 20 years, specializing in sensory processing disorders and various developmental motor deficits and diagnoses. She’s the owner of Blue Sky Therapeutics, which has served Summit County, Utah, for the past 18 years.
Conor (02:50):
Michele Catten is a licensed clinical social worker at Full Circle Yoga & Therapy. She specializes in directive and non-directive play therapy to help children process and heal children’s developmental challenges and traumas.
And now we’ll just jump right into the recording of the panel, with Brittney asking the first question.
Brittney Hansen (03:09):
So first question, we’re going to go out of order and we’re going to start, actually, not on screens. We want to talk about face-to-face interaction, open-ended play a little bit in Anxious Generation. Haidt emphasizes the importance of encouraging face-to-face interaction rather than online communication. What sorts of free play and face-to-face interactions do you find to be critical for young children? And why do you think it's important for parents to prioritize this?
Jessica Kahn (03:37):
I’m going to go because I’m the OT and I feel like play is everything that I do. When you say, “What types of play?” my answer to that is: any type of play. And so, when we start to guide our children through various aspects of development, that face-to-face interaction that they’re taking from your facial expressions, your vocalizations, and the way that you react to them, even from the time that they’re a tiny baby, are super, super important in their ability to interact with the world, their ability to interact with objects that are in front of them—hands-on objects, not technology; hands-on objects. So, in terms of the type of play, every aspect of development and milestone, I feel like has some hallmark milestones that you’re trying to reach with your child. And that really does need to come from face-to-face interaction from the time that they’re a baby and they’re reading social cues, vocal cues, all kinds of cues within their environment, so they start to know how to react back and mimic and model and then have a motor response to that, so that they can navigate their environment. I could go on, but.
Michele Catten (04:55):
Absolutely.
Building on what Jess said, kids need to move. They absolutely need to move their body. It is a very integral part of them learning about their world, learning how they are received in their environment, both with objects as well as all the people in their lives. And the social accountability is so different when you are feeling the emotional energy, the body language, the shifts in facial expression, from face-to-face play. I also strongly recommend outside play. Kids need sunshine. They need to feel all the sensory input of color and temperature, variation in the ground, climbing, things like that. One of the things that Haidt brought up in the book is that you’ll notice that when kids challenge themselves with something—like maybe drop jumping off of a curb, or something—they innately now want to go to the next level, and then go to the next level. And they’re offering themselves that opportunity to build a healthy relationship, and feedback loop, with feeling nervous about something and then feeling success, or feeling nervous about something and then taking information about what they might want to do differently. And that type of information can only come from what you’re learning through all of your senses.
So, sunshine also increases serotonin production, which also then increases the amount of melatonin their brain will produce naturally at night to help them sleep through the night, and it just helps to burn off a lot of stress.
Deborah Wright (06:35):
I think the beauty of facilitating face-to-face group play is that they get to practice negotiation. They get to practice discussion. Haidt brought up in the book that they can be judge and jury. They can decide, “Is this fair or should we change rules?” And that whole process is very, very important. And so, if you can try to facilitate group face-to-face play, and that comes with team sports as well, and other things, but all those skills are lost if it’s just interfacing with a screen, and the screen and the design of the game is in charge of the rules and who goes to the next level. So that's a very beautiful thing when you involve children in group play.
Charlotte Larsen (07:21):
So our next question, panel, is: from your professional perspective, what are the risks or negative consequences of spending too much time socializing virtually?
Emily Quetone Khan (07:32):
I do want to take a minute to acknowledge that there are a lot of different brains in the world and ways of interacting and communicating, and so for some of us it is much easier to communicate through a device. So, I know my own teenager really prefers to text me than to have a face-to-face conversation. It’s very intense to have the face-to-face conversation. And so I want to respect that that is a valid form of communicating.
But I think, to your question, Charlotte, something that can get really lost, as well as this empathy piece, is not really having productive ways of problem solving, because they don’t tend to really work in a virtual format. And so one thing in particular I’ve noticed with my own children is, if they have access to sort of messaging grandparents or friends, that can often be really nice and connective, especially when you want to connect with people far away or FaceTime. But the thing I found the most tricky to help my own kids navigate are group texts. And so, trying to interact socially in a group text format can go wrong really fast and no one quite knows how to help get it back on track or to solve the hurt feelings and misunderstandings that have just happened. There are not visual cues to pick up, like these women were saying in terms of faces. You don’t always infer the right tone or intensity of information. And then it’s a bunch of people witnessing it and having their own experiences and their own ideas of what has happened that then just makes it really messy to repair. So I think that is, in my experience, a really big danger of too much socializing virtually versus in person is we’re not really practicing the same problem-solving tools, because they’re not as effective.
Michele (09:36):
I know it's a real challenge for families where parents are working full time, kids are home after school, they’re social beings, they want to be able to communicate with friends, either over games or with texting or FaceTime and things like that. And I think it’s important to acknowledge that that’s not a terrible thing that they have that window and, oh my gosh, it was such a lifesaver during quarantine, that people who were so isolated had a way to at least receive some feedback, interaction, and sense of connection. So it does have its place.
One of the things that I notice professionally is that kids—well, people of all ages, really—but when we feel nervous about something that we interpret, that protective part of the brain goes immediately to worst-case scenario. It feels urgent and it feels catastrophic. That is the nature of the limbic system; that’s how it shows up for us. And so, for children and teens, they can so quickly, without even realizing consciously that they’re doing it, create a whole story about how they’re the worst. And even if it gets cleared up the next day or later that night or something like that, their nervous system is on this roller coaster in the interim, which is really tough. When there are misunderstandings in person, kids tend to hash it out and they’re like, “What did you mean by that?” Or they say, “You think I’m the worst,” and the other kiddo will say, “No, that’s not what I mean,” and they’re able to get that regulation, you know, with mirroring and attunement and all those kinds of things.
I even notice in my own life, I mean, we are creatures of habit, and I started using the app Marco Polo with friends of mine, and having an actual, in-real-time conversation on the phone started to feel weird. Like, I had a hard time with that after just several months of communicating with a friend in a different place whose schedule was different from mine. So the good news about that is that we’re adaptive creatures, and with practice we can acclimate to more of that real-time rhythm again. But it’s really tempting to go with the convenience.
The other thing I’ve noticed, just with my own children, is if they were having some kind of heated thing with somebody on a text message, as soon as they stopped the interaction, they would get up and pace around. Like, their nervous system was just bubbling over. And that’s another part of the problem is, with the electronics, they’re not in sync with what’s happening in their body with their emotions, which can be a real problem.
Brittney (12:24):
Thank you. I’d love to talk a little bit more about mental health. There’s been a lot of reporting and conversations recently in the media about mental health problems for adolescents and preadolescents being on the rise in the past five to ten years. So I’m wondering, from the four of you, or anyone who would like to take it, across the span of your career working with kids, have you noticed this trend? Have you felt it in real life? And if the answer is yes, what ideas do you have about where this change might be coming from and why this is happening for young children?
Jessica (12:58):
In the world of OT, it’s emotional regulation, and have I seen an uptick in it? It is nonstop. When I started as an OT 22 years ago-ish, it wasn't a thing, you know, in my profession. You know, it wasn’t. I was motor, I was sensory integration, handwriting. And then, as the years went on, and then obviously, especially with COVID, I don’t think it’s a surprise I started getting a lot of referrals for, you know, kids that have issues with emotional regulation. And like I was saying before, these kids that go from zero to a hundred; there’s no in-between, there are no coping skills, there are no strategies to how to kind of work out these various scenarios. And I do think it’s because a lot of them are honed in on this kind of one-dimension story or whatnot that they’re paying attention to, and they’re not given the opportunity to problem solve and to work through a various spectrum of emotions. So what I’ve had to do as an OT is kind of guide parents to that boundary of, this falls under a category of OT, and then we need to call Michele or, you know, another professional to kind of help with those things. But there is a huge uptick in my referrals that are all emotional regulation-related. And the age of those kiddos, starting at three years old, is when I would say that the bulk of my referrals are coming, all the way up to 15. But that’s also what has expanded: the age range that we are seeing these emotional, you know, issues with kids.
Michele (14:34):
First of all, the demand for therapeutic support for kiddos went through the roof starting almost overnight in March of 2021 for me and several colleagues that I would talk to across the valley. And my own little theory about that is that everybody was on high alert in their bodies, so unable to, like, reflect on what was happening as it was happening. With the pandemic, in quarantine, it wasn’t until, you know, we got a new president and then we got a vaccine and then people took a breath and went, “Oh my gosh, this has been really impactful.” And I started getting requests for therapy, at least one request a day, seven days a week, through Psychology Today or other professional referrals, for two years. So I went from, you know, hoping I could keep building my practice up—because I moved to Salt Lake in 2018, so I was fairly new to the area—to having a one-year waiting list and no one to send families to. So for a long time I felt like, “Oh, it was the pandemic. It really rocked all of us,” which it did. But to read about the data in Anxious Generation and how those numbers started to really go through the roof prior, but it really became so much more obvious, I think, to everyone post-pandemic.
Charlotte (16:09):
And that feeds so well into the next question. So, Haidt gives a number of recommendations in Anxious Generation, and one of those recommendations is that children, especially girls, should avoid using social media until after puberty—so around age 14 to 16. And he argues that early exposure to social media can exacerbate anxiety, depression, and social comparison, particularly during the vulnerable adolescent years. So, what are your thoughts on this recommendation based on your expertise and your work with children?
Emily (16:43):
Well, I want to just out myself and say, like, despite compelling evidence, I’ve not done all of the excellent suggestions from the book in my own house as a parent. So, please know that I am not speaking as someone who has done all the right things or figured it out.
I will say, I absolutely agree with the recommendation to hold off on social media for, I think, kids in general, but girls in particular. But I think the caveat, for me, is that I don’t tend to be a person who very much endorses, like, absolute bans on anything. I don’t think it’s very practical, in my experience. And so, having an 11-year-old daughter, you know, she doesn’t have social media accounts or have access to them on any of her devices; however, she absolutely is exposed to content from social media through friends and various sources. And so, I do think, regardless of whatever boundaries work for your children and your families, the reality is we all have to be pretty proactive in acknowledging and counteracting the effects that are just around our kids. And so, I find myself doing a lot of watching something that my daughter has brought up with me with her. And so, I can see what she’s talking about and what she has seen or had a friend describe, and then we can kind of unpack and process it together. And sometimes there’s, like, pretty big messages that I need to make sure she knows are not real and true, even if you see them out there all the time. A phrase we use a lot when thinking about the inundation of messages just from the world around you, whether it’s social media or otherwise, is, like, “Oh yeah, sometimes the world around us, or companies who make things, want us to think this, but we know that that’s actually not real and true, and so we are going to this instead.” And it’s just tough out there. So I just want to say, like, we’re all a work in progress, but I think that’s one key thing to add is that just banning it, in my opinion, in my experience, isn’t super helpful, but rather helping them have the ability to process what it is, so that when they do have access without me because they’re old enough or I’m not there, they have some practice in how to understand and process what’s happening, and they’re not left on their own.
Jessica (19:23):
I was just going to quickly say, and I don’t have a girl, I have a boy who wasn’t allowed to have social media until, I want to say—again, we’re not perfect—I think last year-ish; he’s a freshman now. And when he and I have these conversations, similar to what Emily said, we’re not naive. I’m not going be able to control everything that he is exposed to. But what I can do is help him process, you know, what he is seeing. So, that’s the bottom line is, we’re not going to set those boundaries—I’m not a believer in that either—because no matter how many boundaries we put out there, they’re going to find ways around them, and their friends might not have those boundaries, right? So, what I have always said to him is, “I can’t control everything, even though I’d like to, I can’t control everything that you have exposure to, but what I can do is help you control how you react to it and how you process it.” And he, very sparingly, has been allowed to have access.
The other point is in terms of, you know, the book saying, you know, that girls shouldn't be allowed to have that, you know, they are going to be surrounded not only by boys that may have it, but also the reality is a lot of their friends are going to have that. And what kind of social isolation is that going to, you know, implement within these kids that have a hard, “No, you’re not allowed to have this,” but all [their] friends have it. And then there does become a social, you know, dynamic separation that will be created. So how do we navigate that, you know, let them have it but control it somewhat at the same time, and help them navigate that?
Brittney (21:14):
So, some families, potentially some parents in this room, might understandably feel like maybe it’s too late or pretty hard to go back on a thing that has kind of, like, the cat’s out of the bag in the house, so to speak, right, to roll back screen time or to set different expectations, out of fear of upsetting their kids, right? Or power struggles that you’re used to in other areas. Like, what’s going to happen if I try to do something differently with regards to screen time? So I’m wondering, what coaching might you have for parents that are maybe a little nervous or anxious themselves about changing the way they expect their children, or even the whole family, to interact with screens in the home?
Deborah (21:56):
Because I’ve been through this over and over again with my own children, stay busy during the withdrawal stage. Figure out lots of activities, lots of things, lots of outdoor things, because there will be a withdrawal phase and there will be a lot of pushback. It’s just, this is with my personal, with my kids. Make a plan.
Emily (22:24):
I’m going to share a story, not because I would suggest you all do what I did, but rather as an example of how to get out of a sticky situation. Which is that, in the height of COVID times, coming out of isolation, we let our 13-year-old try social media for the first time. And we thought we were doing really great because we were like, “Well, you can pick one social media platform, and only one at a time, and tell us what’s one you want to try first, and we’re going to talk about it together.” And then the other agreement is that you have to be connected with us on that app. So like, great job.
And so, then a few years later, when we came here to Rowland Hall, I was having some buyer’s remorse for this decision, and I got really excellent advice from Leslie, who was the social-emotional support counselor in the Middle School at the time, here at Rowland Hall. I said, “I don’t really know how to navigate this. This is my oldest child. I didn’t have these phones when I was his age, and so, like, I don’t know what to do, but I feel like he needs more supervision. But he’s really used to being, like, a little more independent with this very new device, and I am just, like, I’m not liking how it’s happening.” And the advice she gave me was, “Emily, you absolutely should be checking his phone. That is absolutely okay to do, and you need to have a conversation with him and remind him that that is not his phone. It is your phone that you are allowing him access to.” And as tough as that conversation was, I think it was really helpful and I really appreciate that device—I mean, that advice, not the device. The advice.
And so, we did have this conversation, and over a number of weeks, I think we got to a really good place with him of understanding, like, this is a privilege that you earn, to have access to this. You don’t have a right to have a device; you don’t have a right to social media. And part of the reason that, like, your dad and I are going to absolutely have access to your phone—because they have to plug it in upstairs in the office every night—I said, “Just so you know, like, we will go on your phone. We will go on and make sure you’re connected to us on any social media platform, the one that you’re choosing this month or whatever. And we’re not doing this to embarrass you. We’re not doing it to check up on you because we think you’re doing something wrong and bad. But it is our job as your parents to make sure that you are learning how to use this technology in a safe and respectful way. And there are just so many ways that using it could turn out to not be safe or respectful, and so we want to know what’s going on so we can help you learn that, because in a few years you’re not going to live with us, and this will be your device and not ours, and we want to know you can be safe and respectful in the world with it.”
Charlotte (25:24):
The first parent question is: our first grader has had very little interaction with phones or iPads. Now that she is in first grade, she’s getting to play games on the school iPad and is obsessed. She talks about these games constantly. I'm curious of the panel’s thoughts on this in two regards. One, is withholding any iPad playing at home causing her to want it more? And two, are there studies about the impact of children learning skills on the iPad rather than from teachers?
Jessica (25:57):
So, I’m glad that we’re doing this question. I’m sorry, I jumped in here because I use the iPad with kiddos, and in my profession there are a number of really amazing apps and tools that I use for handwriting, for pincer grasp, for emotional regulation. There’s some really good apps for those too. So I want to say, maybe 10 years ago as I was exploring what continuing education to do, because we have to do it every year, I started to notice a whole new subsection of classes on how to use technology and how to navigate apps on an iPad appropriately, as a means to, you know, deliver intervention. So it’s very real in our learning community and there really are a lot of apps that can be super wonderful, and I utilize them and I know that many of the teachers utilize them, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that because, you know what? As our world moves on, so does our technology, and there are opportunities to teach in different ways, to access kids in different ways, because everybody learns different. And for some kiddos, that’s a really great way of obtaining information and retaining information.
So I’m an advocate for some of those things, but there is a difference between social media games like Minecraft—I keep saying Minecraft, but I actually don’t think that’s an awful thing; it’s just what’s coming to my head—and then these learning tools. So, yes, I believe that withholding that kind of stuff, like we were saying, is probably not a great idea, but setting boundaries on which apps, you know, your child has access to, and then time limits for those apps. So for my son, I’m trying to think, when he first got an iPad, he only had, you know, learning apps, you know, Handwriting Without Tears, or whatever. I mean, I’m an OT, so he had all the handwriting apps and all of those things. But I think it’s reasonable to allow them, you know, those opportunities because they are being used in schools and there’s nothing wrong with that; for some kids, that’s a great way of learning. So, monitoring how long and which apps you’re using is what’s going to be important, not saying, “Absolutely not,” because the reality is, they’re going to be exposed to those things.
Emily (28:30):
Yeah, I agree that it’s really important, as Jess said, to differentiate between all screen time and, sort of, smart devices, and social media in particular. And so, there’s no reason to demonize, sort of, all technology as being the same. And I don’t think that’s maybe what this conversation, or the book, was really about. But I do think that families can make decisions around the screen time currency that is worth spending and what’s not worth spending. And I think we, certainly from a school’s perspective, use that same perspective. There are some really, you know, the assistive technology and educational technology has grown so much, as Jess said, and so there are really excellent ways to leverage some of that technology to make sure that students are engaging in content that is well-designed, that is more individualized, that is self-paced. You know, an individual human person can't do 30 different things at the same time, at everyone’s level. And so educational technology and assistive technology really have a really important place in differentiating and meeting kids’ needs at this point that I agree we shouldn’t ignore. And we are pretty picky about what apps we would allow kids to use and when we’re going to spend our screen time currency. So I think that’s a really good question is, like, is this worth the screen time, you know, like, dopamine input or not? And sometimes the answer to that could absolutely be yes.
Brittney (30:12):
I’d love to close with one last question submitted that I think provides a really nice segue into connecting as parents in this community. To what degree do you think it matters whether or not parents in a school community are on the same page about cell phone use, social media, screen time, et cetera?
Michele (30:31):
I think that starting with your own family—like, if you are in a situation of co-parenting screen time and a relationship with screens in your family, doing what you can to be on the same page with your co-parent [and] other caregivers for your child. And it might be an ongoing conversation as new technology comes out, as your kids get older, as their friend group evolves and changes, and whatever. But, you know, just like back in the day, the conversations would’ve been about, you know—I don’t know, my parents wanted to know if, you know, my friends had cable TV and HBO and, you know—I don’t know, like, there wasn’t even Red Bull back then. But, like, you know, if they drink Coca-Cola when they’re in first grade or something, you know? I don’t know. But I think that recognizing that technology—I mean, at the end of the day, the thing that was the most brilliant thing to me about what Haidt identified is, first, it was, like, a perfect storm. There was stranger danger and now parents are feeling like their children aren’t safe out and about in the front yard, at the park, you know, with their friends without a parent there. And then in comes technology, and none of us knew what children were being exposed to at the age of, you know, whatever age they got onto something and lied that they were 13 or 18 or 21, and how to protect for that and all of the primitive filters, kids could get around that, and people are still spelling things in weird ways so they can access content online. So it’s just about continuing to be willing to dedicate yourself to the conversation because of what’s important to you with your family relationships and your connection to your child. Because it would be so easy to throw up your hands and say, “I can’t, I can’t even keep up.” So again, connection over control.
Conor (32:34):
That is the end of our panel recording. There are so many great things to think about that were discussed there. And as such, it wouldn’t be an episode of the princiPALS if we didn’t have some homework for our listeners. And so, Brittney, what are we going to be asking people to do, out of this fantastic panel discussion?
Brittney (32:52):
Well, Conor, we have three bits of homework for folks today. The first one is to connect with others in your community and talk about expectations and challenges related to screen use and navigating the really complex world of parenting today, with all of the technological components that we heard about in the panel discussion floating around. Right? So, connecting with those in the community, seeing where you have similarities and differences in viewpoints, and really just opening up the conversation if you haven’t yet done so.
Conor (33:18):
The next piece of homework that we have is: the next time your child is participating in a group activity, like a slumber party or something like that, challenge yourself to work together with the other parents in the groups to establish some norms and expectations around screen usage.
Brittney (33:34):
That’s right. And our last bit of homework for today is to find some time to intentionally prioritize screen-free play with your child or your children. And make sure, as you heard from the panelists, it’s really going to go the furthest for your kids if you make sure that that time is child-led. So the children are directing the play, you are fully disconnected from technology, as are they, and they have your full attention during that experience.
Conor (33:58):
As always, the resources mentioned in this episode, as well as the bios of the panelists, are included in the show notes for this episode. You can download this podcast wherever you get your podcasts or find it at rowlandhall.org/podcast. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the princiPALS. We’ll be back with Brittney and Emma for another episode very soon. Until then, this is us saying goodbye from the princiPALS’ office.
About Brittney Hansen ’02
Brittney Hansen is a graduate of Rowland Hall’s class of 2002. She has been a Beginning School and Lower School assistant principal at Rowland Hall since 2022, and was a member of the Beginning School faculty from 2019 to 2022. Prior to Rowland Hall, Brittney interned briefly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and subsequently worked for six years at Washington University in various roles, including assistant director of residential life. Brittney holds a bachelor’s in social thought and analysis from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s in education from Harvard University.
About Conor Bentley ’01
Conor Bentley is a graduate of Rowland Hall’s class of 2001. He holds a master’s degree in education, works in higher education, and has produced several podcasts, including the public-radio parody Consider Our Knowledge.
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