The tech exit

LINDSAY MAST: You’re listening to a special weekend edition of The World and Everything in It. I’m Lindsay Mast.

In the last week or so, you may have seen a startling picture of data put together by an analyst for Financial Times. The graph shows changes in personality traits over the last 8 years. Starkly down: conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extroversion—particularly for young people. These are traits that positively affect career, marriages and life expectancy. On the rise, neuroticism. People are more anxious, tense, and emotional. The author of the article blames it on distraction. He points the finger directly at the digital world.

And in a somewhat ironic twist, the graph went viral… on social media.

Both the information and the irony in how it was presented to the public likely comes as no surprise to our guest today.

Clare Morell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. She has studied the effects of social media and internet usage on children for years.

And she wanted to know: is it possible these days for a family to fully disconnect from smartphones and screens? What she found became the basis for her book The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones.

Going against the digital grain is counter-cultural. It takes a lot of work, particularly for parents. But Morell says it is possible to restore what screens have taken: presence, peace and connection. Here’s our conversation.

MAST: Clare, good morning.

CLARE MORELL: Thanks so much for having me.

MAST: You advocate for essentially a tee-totaller approach to screens. Tell me a little bit about where you were when you hit your breaking point and you started to think it all needs to go.

MORELL: Yes, okay, that's maybe hard to pinpoint the exact moment. I've been researching basically the harms of social media and smartphones for the last four years. And pretty early on into my research, it became clear to me that the parental controls and screen time limits that most parents were employing as the main means of protection for their kids were not sufficient for the harms, that there was always workarounds kids were finding. It was too easy to stumble across something on social media, even when parents had controls enabled.

So when I was asked often in my professional role by parents for advice, what would you do for your own kids? I said, I've come to the conviction my kids will not have smartphones and social media, but I also, had not yet navigated the teen years and didn't know, is this possible? How have families done this? I was looking for a book to recommend for parents that would show them how to give their kids a smartphone free childhood and I couldn't find a book explaining how to do that. And so I ended up writing it. And so I set off with this hypothesis that a smartphone free childhood was necessary, but I wanted to find out is it possible? And if so, how have families done this? And I became overwhelmingly convinced through my interviews with just dozens of families who have successfully done this, launched kids to college.

Not only was this necessary, it is possible, and it's the best possible thing we can do for our kids.

MAST: The harms with social media and smartphone usage have been pretty well-documented…but I'd love to hear from your research what you see as, let's just say maybe three ways social media and smartphones can damage family life in particular.

MORELL: I would say the first is that the unfortunate reality is the technology is addictive by design, and it caves children in on themselves and turns them inward, away from their families. And even a short amount of time is incredibly addictive. And this is one of the things I explain in the book. Why do screen time limits not work for interactive screen technologies like smartphones, like tablets, is because even a small amount of time is incredibly craving inducing and compulsion inducing. Because the brain science level this dopamine is spiking in the brain at an artificially high level But as soon as they come off the device it crashes below baseline into a deficit which incentivizes them to just get back on they will constantly crave it. The design itself regardless of what content is on the screen is really addictive and that then turns children inwards and away from their families, even if it's a time-limited amount.

The other challenge I've seen with the screen time limits and parental controls is a lot of parents said they thought that by giving the smartphone, they would remove some of the friction in the parent-child relationship, that the child was always begging them for a smartphone. But what they said they didn't realize was that giving the smartphone was going to result in 40 new battles a day because now they're constantly trying to say, hey, put your phone down, get off the app. And trying to stick to the time limits and parental controls is very difficult and has introduced a lot more conflict and a lot more tension into family life.

And then the final thing I will say is just the nature of the platforms. When you hand a child a smartphone, you're inviting the entire world into the task of parenting that child with you. There are thousands of portals inside a smartphone to the internet. I think parents don't realize even innocuous apps like an educational game has an in-app browser to the internet and strangers, complete strangers online can reach out to them even through those kind of more mundane apps. And so the problem is then total strangers are conveying their worldview, which may not be the same as a parent's to your children. They can come across dangerous content, bad actors, and people opposed to your style of parenting and can really undermine parental authority in the home and again come between parent and child.

MAST: You say a problem with smartphone technology is too many hits of dopamine. But that they also introduce a new problem, of too little oxytocin. Explain the contrast. 

MORELL: I actually think the brain science is some of what has been the most compelling to me as to why these devices are so bad for kids. So they get this hit of dopamine, which is like a pleasure neurotransmitter in the brain that's released when you do something that's pleasurable. And so this is being released by social media or even by smartphones every time they get a text or a notification or a new like or they see a new video, it releases that dopamine.

But the dopamine doesn't actually produce lasting satisfaction. these artificially high levels of dopamine they're getting all the time puts their brain in a chronic dopamine deficit state and they need ever increasing levels of dopamine to even feel happy or experience pleasure. so real world activities that used to be pleasurable start to not create that feeling of happiness or pleasure for them, like going on a walk with a family member or seeing a sunset. So they become desensitized to pleasures in the real world.

They're also not getting oxytocin, which is a really important other neurotransmitter hormone that bonds us to humans. And so it bonds a mother with her baby. It bonds husband and wife. It bonds friends. And it's released by eye contact and physical touch and actually physically being with people in real life. And so they are getting these artificially high levels of dopamine that don't produce satisfaction, just creating a constant craving for more that then over time desensitizes them to real world pleasures. And at the same time, they're in this oxytocin desert where they're not getting that critical hormone. And what happens then is their friendships online are extremely shallow because that oxytocin really creates deep bonds of trust. And so they're not experiencing that type of relationship that we were made for. And so we have this epidemic of loneliness among teens today is that they're more connected than ever, but they're not getting that oxytocin that they need.

MAST: One thing that I found kind of jaw-dropping in the book was what you found out about the physical toll on children's eyes.

MORELL: Yes, this was probably the most shocking thing to me because I've done years of research. I knew a lot about the mental health effects and the brain harms. But I learned this from talking to an ophthalmologist, that she was seeing kids coming into her practice struggling with chronic dry eye. And these are eight or nine-year-olds. And it's usually a condition seen in like 70 or 80-year-olds that your eye glands that release this oil that helps lubricate your eyes, they dry up as you age. And so she could not understand why these eight or nine year olds had completely lost their oil glands. And she realized just through ruling out any other types of factors, no autoimmune conditions, that they were just watching a lot of screens. And, she realized they're not blinking enough while they're watching a screen.

And she thinks that the screen is doing something to that brain blink connection. She would even tell them, hey, can you blink your eye? And they would say, I blinked. And she would say, no, you actually didn't. Your eyes did not move. And so she was saying then that what happens is if kids aren't blinking enough, those oil glands dry up. That like milking a cow, when you blink, it releases the oil from the glands. But if it's not released, it dries up over time. And now, unfortunately, what that means is these kids will struggle with dry eye the rest of their lives.

They'll always have to externally with drops be lubricating their eyes. So kids are entering life with a chronic health condition they'll always have to manage because they were watching screens too much.

MAST: You found that smart phones don’t just negatively impact the user… but they also work outward to affect other kids who may not be using that technology. You call it negative network effects. Tell me more about that.

MORELL: Yeah, I talk about this in the book. And what that means is that because of the nature of smartphones and social media, the problems that come from them are not only individual level, but they actually create harmful group dynamics in a harmful social environment for other kids even who aren't on the smartphones or social media apps. And that's because now the social relationships are all being mediated through the apps and the phones.

And so a kid who isn't on the smartphone could actually still experience some of the loneliness and anxiety that the kids on social media are also experiencing just because they're not on the apps. And so there are collective aspects to this problem, which is part of the reason I emphasize so much in the book that if you do the tech exit, find other families to do this with you to kind of create your own collective solutions that your child is not the only one not on the social media apps or without a smartphone.

But then I also explain why schools and policymakers play a really important role in trying to back parents up because the school has a lot of power over this culture that is set at the school.  If it's a culture that is there's no phones during the day, that protects the kids' social environment during the school day from the negative group harms of smartphones and social media. And then similarly, policymakers can consider solutions on an even higher level, trying to help empower parents by either age-restricting social media out of childhood or something like that, where it helps everybody out and kind of solves for that collective action problem. But I do encourage parents, you don't have to wait on those policy solutions even just banding together as a group of parents, you can help mitigate those negative group level harms.

MAST: Before we get into the actual detox, I want to talk a little bit about the effects of screens on self-control. You write at length about that. It's something our listeners certainly value. So can you explain how screens work against the goal of developing self-control in kids?

MORELL: Yes. studies have been done basically to show that kids who are handed a device, instead of kind of being left to themselves when they're having a tantrum or a fit, they actually do not develop the kind of emotional regulation skills or self-control that they should. And so children who are kind of frequently handed devices end up having more what they call externalizing behaviors like tantrums and poor focus and dysregulated emotions.

And a lot of this again comes down to the brain science that when a kid is handed a screen, it does calm them immediately in the short term, but cumulatively it puts their nervous system, a developing nervous system into this fight or flight mode where the screen actually releases adrenaline and cortisol in their nervous system. They're very stimulated by the screens and there's no kind of outlet for that. So it kind of actually, addiction scientists explain too, it really makes kids live in the limbic part of their brain, the reward center where they're getting all these rewards.

Any time you hand them a screen, you're working against yourself because it may immediately calm them down but it's too overstimulating for their nervous system. And it's really activating the part of the brain that just will incentivize them to keep doing more more and more. The gas pedal and the brakes, the prefrontal cortex is then underdeveloped.

There's been more and more studies coming out showing that kids who spend a lot of time on screens, particularly between the ages of zero to four, have a very underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. And so that ability then to even exercise self-control is being stunted because that part of the brain is not being activated by the screens.

MAST: So let's talk a little bit about detox. And first, there's so much of this that I think is just, it is so counter-cultural. you know, there are school programs, sports teams, even churches which use certain apps for communication or even to, in their eyes, enhance learning. So how does that work for a family looking to opt out going, “I don't even see how this is possible because of the things that we're involved in and the way the system is set up”?

MORELL: Yeah, so I recommend starting with a 30-day digital detox. And even if 30 days sounds like too much, just try it for a week, because it's incredibly freeing. think there's actually a science to why 30 days is so helpful that it actually really takes that long for a kid's nervous system to re-regulate. Like these hormones, we were just talking about the kind of adrenaline, cortisol, the odor stimulation of the nervous system, and the effects of dopamine, how they've become desensitized to real-world pleasures.

Once they go without that and their brain actually returns to baseline, it returns to normal and they actually won't crave the apps and screens as much, that addictive kind of pull of it will lessen and they will be more calm and able to self calm and emotionally regulate themselves. And so I encourage parents that maybe it seems daunting to do it over the long term.

I think anyone can commit to doing something for 30 days, explaining to your kids what you're doing, why you're doing it, and being team players as parents. Now, parents don't necessarily have to give up their smartphones, but putting some serious distance between ourselves and our phones, putting them in a phone box, being very present with our kids when they're awake, and saying, here's all the things we're gonna do instead, all these screen-free activities we're gonna fill our time with.

And we're going to try to establish better habits without the devices. And that is often then how these families ended up becoming tech exit families is they saw the results for themselves.

A lot of parents said, we couldn't imagine, honestly, parenting these kids without the screens. It seemed impossible, and it was hard for the first few weeks. But then they started to learn how to play on their own. They were imaginative. Their creativity came back. They were self-entertained. And so we just said, why would we go back to the screens? And so they just kept going.

And try to find another family to do it with you if you can, to help have some team support from another family of parents, and so other kids are going through it with your kids. And to your point about the app, the parents I interviewed said that we just have to get more comfortable pushing back as parents to say, my kid is not gonna have this app to be on this sports team or part of this youth group. Like you'll have to find another way to get in touch with us.

And for every parent that kind of stands up to that tyranny of the smartphone, it makes it easier on the next parent. And I never met a family who said that they weren't able to find some accommodation or some work around by just simply saying, I'm sorry, my child's not going to have a smartphone. They're not going to be on this app. We'll just have to find another way to be in touch with you. As parents we have to have a little bit more of a backbone to say, we're not going to cave in for the sake of this one activity to giving a child a smartphone.

MAST: You say that a tech exit does require a lot from parents particularly in terms of time. So what should parents do to manage their expectations? What would you tell parents about what they can expect while they go on a detox of any length of time?

MORELL: Yes, I would encourage parents and say, you do need to set aside some more time and be prepared to give a little bit more energy and intention, especially at the beginning of a detox, because at first, you'll be replacing the screens with your time and attention and helping them learn how to play, giving them activities to do, coming up with activities, but then over the long term.

That kids are just naturally creative and they will start to become more imaginative and they will come up with their own games. And so one mom said, you know, did I love playing Monopoly five hours a day? No, but I did it to get my kids started that first week of the detox.

But pretty soon,, then they were having their own board game tournaments and inviting neighborhood kids over to do the Monopoly with them. And it kind of then took off, and she didn't need to invest as much time. I think just understanding as parents initially, it may require just a little bit more assistance from us to help our kids play and come up with non-screen activities to do. But over time, they will actually develop those skills themselves. So yeah, just preparing yourself time-wise and just having a list of activities or ideas to do instead. And I give an example sheet at thetechexit.com. I just have a kind of PDF resource of here are some screen free activities for different age ranges just to stimulate some creativity on the part of parents. I know we're all busy, but I just try to offer some ideas there for ways that parents can help their kids engage off screens.

MAST: You emphasize in the book and even in this interview that there is human flourishing on the other side of all of this. Can you paint the picture? What does this look like for a family on the other side of detox?

MORELL: I've had the pleasure of getting to know several of these families, and I would say a couple distinctive standout. Their kids are very socially engaging. They're able to have conversations with adults. They're not staring down at a screen, and they don't have social anxiety, which a lot of kids who have screens just are not comfortable interacting in person. They also have really close sibling relationships and parent-child relationships that, you know, not having screens, they spend a lot of time together and they are their main source of entertainment is playing board games, going on family walks, running around outside in the yard. And they spent a lot of time just doing things together and strengthening those family bonds, enjoying meals and dinners without phones.

And their kids are thriving academically and in sports because they give a lot of their energy and time and attention towards those things, towards playing sports, developing hobbies like music or art. Yeah, they're incredibly creative. A lot of these kids are reading books.

And they're good writers, and they're really thriving in school. And the kids then who are grown and go off to college explain that they see such a difference between themselves and their peers on the college campus, that they're able to pay attention in class, they're doing well, and they have really strong relationships off of screens. in every kind of aspect of human flourishing, being off the screens and forming their habits without them from ages zero to 18 makes such a difference.

MAST: And what if you extend that out for me to, say neighborhoods, their school communities?

MORELL: Some neighborhoods that have done this, like the culture on the street is the kids are playing outside, riding their bikes, laughing, working through conflict without parents around. Actually developing the skills to be mature adults and to be self-entertained and self-controlled. So, the communities where I've seen this done are extremely vibrant and they're really focused around in-person, real-life relationships and sharing real experiences together.

MAST: You know, early in the book, I started to wonder, 80 years from now, will young people think of this like young people today think of cigarettes and the attitudes toward those back in the mid 20th century? But you actually do some comparison in the book to drunk driving. Why do you see that as being maybe a more apt comparison?

MORELL: You know, the Mothers Against Drunk Driving that was started in the 80s was in response to their kids being harmed by drunk driving accidents and that it actually wasn't enough for parents to teach their own children not to drink and drive. But if there were other drivers on the road who were driving and drinking and driving, they were a threat to everyone, not just to their children, but other families and parents and members of the community as well.

Similarly with social media and smartphones, like the effects are not just individual and that you can kind of teach your own children why they're not going to have smartphones and social media, but if their peers have these devices and this is how all the social relationships and social environment is being mediated, it's really toxic to everybody. The effects of those spill over to the community as a whole. And so I kind of say similarly, we need just a movement of parents to rise up and say, like, we're not doing this for our kids. And both kind of at the community level through the schools, parents can have tremendous influence on the schools to say, hey, we want to ban smartphones at our school from bell to bell and create a school academic and social environment free of these devices. But then parents raising their voice to their state legislators, to their Congress members is also really powerful. And so that's kind of why I use that analogy in the book.

MAST: But Clare, I think some families are going to be wary of policy solutions. They think decisions should be up to the parents. You're advocating for more laws and those are often at odds with personal freedoms. So what would you say to a mom or dad who's worried about government overreach? What's your best argument for the benefit of legal actions?

MORELL: There's a range of solutions. So a lot of the solutions I've worked on have actually been parental consent laws. I just want parents to actually have to consent to their child creating a social media account and put parents back in the driver's seat between the relationship that a child has with one of these giant tech companies because parents have been completely cut out of the process. So I'm like, that is at minimum a basic first step.

I do think, though, it is worth considering higher level solutions. There are certain things in our society for the sake of the common good, actually for the sake of all children, not just the children of involved active parents, that we say something is harmful for childhood and we have just age restricted it. And we're not saying adults can't use their freedoms to engage in these things, but that they're just particularly harmful for children in their development. And those analogies would be tobacco or alcohol or even other technologies that we just recognize kids are not mature enough to operate, like motor vehicles are age restricted, firearms are age restricted. So I think I would certainly not want the government taking the place of parents, but these solutions for the common good, I view as coming alongside parents because now it's not on every individual parent to make sure their child is not out purchasing tobacco or alcohol. It's just age restricted and that keeps all children safe. And so I do, I view these laws actually as a support to parents to say we've recognized social media is so harmful for kids. It's fine for adults. We don't want this part of childhood. And so that's why, that's the case I would make for age restricting it as we have other technologies that are just harmful to kids.

MAST: Well, I know policy changes are coming pretty fast and furious right now. So what developments are you seeing that could be beneficial, in your view?

MORELL: Yeah, the biggest wins we're seeing right now have been the state level age verification laws for pornography websites. 24 states have passed those laws and the Supreme Court just in June ruled that these laws are constitutional. And so this was a huge win for parents, for policymakers, for kids across America to recognize that these websites must age restrict their material so a kid can't just accidentally click on a link and all of a sudden be sucked into all the obscene content on these websites. I do think Congress is also looking more into what they can do around social media. Social media is also a real threat to children and their flourishing. And so I know different bills have been introduced at the federal level, things like KOSMA, the Kids Off Social Media Act, which would just try to remove addictive algorithms for any minor accounts like certain features would be off limits or targeted advertising and it would actually truly try to enforce the age to be 13 and up. I wish the age would be even higher than 13 but I think 13 and up at least would protect the 8 to 12 year olds. And I am encouraged that there are solutions that are being passed to really help support parents who, of course, parents will always be on the front lines. But the solutions that I'm looking at are things that would actually support parents.

MAST: I want to end with a story. Tell us about another family who really committed to kicking screens out and saw substantial change.

MORELL: Well, the family that really first comes to mind is a family I feature in the book. they had three young boys, and they were all kind of addicted to their tablets and their gaming apps and just really were on screens a lot, video games, tablets. And they just had kind of reached rock bottom when their youngest son was told he wasn't going be ready for kindergarten.

The pediatrician said, you know, looks like he has ADHD and really your only hope of him starting school is going to be to medicate him. And the mom was like, I don't want to do that. And they had friends of theirs who kept telling them ‘You should detox from screens. We did it. It's been amazing’. And they said, ‘We can't imagine, though, dealing with these kids without the screens. Like they have behavioral issues and it just, calms them down when we hand them the screen.” But they felt like they reached rock bottom. And so they're like, okay, we just, have to try a detox. And they, she said the first two weeks were so difficult. Their kids cried. They wanted the iPads every day. But she said, we just kept going. And then they kind of stopped asking for them and they started playing together. And this is the family that was doing these Monopoly tournaments and they reached 30 days and they saw these results. And so they kept going and the most encouraging part of the story was not just that their youngest son who had had serious behavioral outbursts in class, he would get into fights in preschool, became the most mild mannered, best behaved in his class. But their middle son had been diagnosed with autism and was always struggling academically and socially and had just always been behind.

They said the most unexpected result of the detox was that their son with autism started doing extremely well academically and socially and made the club basketball team, started getting the top grades in his class. And they never imagined that this would be possible. The state coordinator who would visit their house every month to check on their son with autism said, I wish other families would do what you do because he said, most homes I walk into, the child with autism is just glued to a screen and they don't even make eye contact with me. But the progress I see in your son Dylan, is just remarkable. And so I would just say it can seem impossible. Like this family would have said, we can't imagine doing this. But just taking the screens away, they saw just huge improvements in their kids, behaviorally, academically, socially, and just in their family relationships.

Clare Morell is the author of the new book, The Tech Exit, A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones. Clare, thank you so much for being with us.

MORELL: Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

MAST: You’ve been listening to an extended interview with author Clare Morell. This is the full version of the edited conversation you heard earlier this week on The World and Everything in It.

If you’re looking for a screen break for your kids–check out God’s World News at gwnews.com. You’ll find we offer hard-copy bimonthly magazines for kids from 3 to 14–no gadgets required.

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We'll talk to you Monday. Have a great weekend!

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