That Generation Lost to Screens

New research says that screen use could be changing the size, structure, thickness of kids’ brains.  What will happen to the generation of kids who grew up heavy on screens but light on regulations designed to protect them?   Let’s talk about a few very new results and what they may mean for kids, schools, and now young adults too -- especially in the US.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

It's That Popular Podcast. Mitch Princetine is a psychology professor at UNC Chapel Hill and the former Chief Science Officer at the American Psychological Association. Aaron Keck is a political scientist and award-winning radio host. Together, they discuss the popular and not so popular quirks of human behavior. Welcome into that popular podcast. Now, here's Mitch and Aaron.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome into the podcast. I'm Aaron. This is Mitch. How's it going?

SPEAKER_02 0:27

I'm doing okay. How are you doing? I'm doing good. I have to start this by asking, because we were we were talking before we turned on the microphones about some recent studies that have come out with regard to AI and the impact that it's having on people. I just got done in my day job at a radio station recording a week-long Forum on the Hill, we call it. Because we're in Chapel Hill, so it's Forum on the Hill. And every year we have 15 hours, and it's three hours a day for five days with experts coming in to talk about all kinds of different topics. So we have like it's all locally relevant. So there's a panel on higher education, there's a panel on the arts, there's a panel on housing, the future of college sports, because we're in a college town, there's one on K-12 education and transportation and immigration and the economy in general and economic development and all these things. We do this every year. And this year, every single hour, regardless of what the topic was, eventually weaved into AI and the impact that it's having on people. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 1:33

Well, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

And we never get into the psychology of it, but that's kind of at the heart of what we talk about, regardless, right? Like when we talk about the impact of AI on the arts, what is it doing to us as human beings? When we talk about the impact of AI on higher education, like to what extent is it affecting what's going on in the classroom, but to what extent is it also causing additional stress or maybe relieving stress on students and teachers and faculty? Like everything has to do with psychology at the bottom of things, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

So I mean, are we are we at a juncture where we start to move from how humans interact to suddenly how humans interact with bots?

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Like are we I don't think we're moving suddenly. I think we've been doing that since the Industrial Revolution, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:22

I mean, it's the first time like my kids are starting to think about like my my oldest is in 10th grade, so she's starting to think about college. And I'm literally thinking by the time she graduates college, what jobs will be left?

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Yeah, and we have no idea. And it's always an uncertain time. Like there's never not a time when that question is way open and no one has a a hundred percent of a clue, but especially now, right? Because I mean, we don't know which jobs AI is going to eliminate and we don't know which jobs it's gonna create.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

We have AI Hollywood actresses. Have you heard about Tilly Norwood? Good old Tilly. So yeah. We've have AI therapists, God help us all. We have AI teachers, AI artists, AI everything, you know. But you know, the thing that gets me though is that AI is what everyone's talking about now, but you have to put it in the context of the fact that rather than us like for the first time looking at devices and AI as something new, this is being introduced to a group of a generation that already spends more time with their devices than with humans in the first place. So is AI the new thing, or is that just the evolution of people who are already choosing to look at their devices or interact via social media more than humans in the first place? Like this problem started 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

This problem started way earlier than that because prior to social media and prior to smartphones, you had the internet. Prior to the internet, you had PCs and video games. Prior to video games, you had television. Prior to television, you had a radio. Like we it's it's just been evolving since 1920.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

I mean, you know, we we actually had a paper where we talked about like, why is this different than the radio or the printing press? Like, what's going on now with social media? And one of the things that we talked about was, you know, how is social media changing the context in which kids are growing up socially? Because, you know, our social lives aren't just for fun. Our social lives are actually like where we learn how to engage as humans. And but this was the first time that we have like a more visual medium that you're putting yourself out there in this anonymous way. It's the first time that we have a public asynchronous medium where like what you're doing is out for the worldwide consumption. And it's not you and I talking right now at the same time. It's I'm gonna say something, and five years from now, you're gonna quote that because it's on a post somewhere. Yep. And then the quantification is that's the part that freaks me out the most. Because when in your upbringing did you have people literally voting on here's the number of people that like you, here's the number of people that like what you said, here's the number of people that are commenting and approving with comments about your post. Like that's just different.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Completely different, yeah. And certainly not in such a visceral way. Like popularity has always been a thing in school, but not in like a measurable, you can look at the numbers and see it kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, this whole idea about how this is really freaking out kids is so relevant because we didn't know until about 10 years ago how the brain was developing, and we didn't realize that kids were kind of like slot machine junkies for social reinforcement. And then these likes, these comments, these followers are kind of hitting this dopamine circuit again and again. And if you talk with a parent right now about what it's like when they try and get the device away from their kid, their kid has like a freak out temper tantrum, whether they're young kids or for older kids who are like, I can't, I can't order something at a restaurant because I'm not used to talking extemporaneously with a stranger.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

Yeah, that becomes the issue.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

I don't know how to date or meet someone and have a conversation. Like, oh my God. There's actually been a couple of stuff that has just come out that has started to talk about the effects of screen time and social media. And it's gotten like literally in the last two weeks, it's gotten even scarier. Okay. Like I have to tell you about this because this is like really weird. So I was talking with this guy who kind of oversees the NFL and how they market the NFL. Apparently, kids today can't sit through a full football game because and watch it on TV. That's too long.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

It's too long.

SPEAKER_03 6:46

It's too long for them. And if they try to get kids to watch a full a full game, they don't understand the rules because they've not had like the what a lot of us grew up with, which is sitting on the couch and watching game after game after game and learning the rules and you know having grandpa sitting next to you explaining everything why it's off. Get out that ridiculous chain so we can see if it's a first down or not. Like that that part drives me crazy. But like this is like a crisis for sports and athletics and the funding behind it. Because is it gonna be the case in 10, 20 years that viewership goes really, really down for sports?

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Because I mean, you gotta think AI is gonna have some positives, right?

SPEAKER_03 7:30

I mean, AI or just device use or whatever, but like it's kind of interesting. There are a lot of people out there that you wouldn't expect, like people who run the NFL, like people who are interested in driving safety and kids that are looking at their phones when they should be driving. Like there are a lot of people out there starting to notice that the effects of all the screen time in social media are way more widespread than we realize. And it's it might affect like the economies of things like sports viewership and athletic salaries.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

So That said, what age are we talking about with kids? Because I I can imagine in 1983 a six-year-old not being able to sit through a three-hour football game either. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

I don't think any six-year-old, well, six-year-olds can sit in front of an iPad for three hours when they couldn't. Is that good?

SPEAKER_02 8:15

But what age are we talking about with this particular thing?

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Aaron Powell You know, I think like 10, 11, 12 is when most kids around now are starting to get their devices. And so an interesting study just came out and they looked at what they call short form videos. And it's exactly as it sounds, right? These are short videos, but they it's not like short little plots. It's kind of without a plot. Yeah. You know, so this is like a lot of YouTube stuff, a lot of like TikTok stuff, short tutorials and it's like cut, cut, cut, and it's just you know, very fast, like little scenes and bits and memes and whatever.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

The more that kids are watching short form videos, the more they have ADHD symptoms now.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

It's kind of it makes sense though, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Yeah. So you put them in an ADHD world.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

I was watching um Rocky recently. When's the last time you saw Rocky?

SPEAKER_02 9:05

It's been a long time.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Oh my god, those scenes are so long.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Like they don't cut, cut, cut. Like Rocky's walking down the street, then he's walking down the street some more, then he's even further down the street. I'm like, oh my god, he's playing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's heading somewhere. I understand. Go to the next scene. Like, and I'm I'm not one of these kids, but like if you just walk like someone was telling me just yesterday at a dinner party that like if you watch Mission Impossible, the first one to now, the amount of time that they're spending on chase scenes, cut, cut, cut, like fast, fast, fast, versus just like watching someone having a dialogue in a scene, even just in that one franchise, we don't have an appetite for long form video and storytelling anymore. So it makes sense that kids are like, I can't, I can't pay attention to a scene.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

That lasts an entire five minutes.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

That said, we do so uh you talk about short form video. What is it? Uh is it Tubi the company that's that tried to just go all in on short form videos and then just collapsed immediately?

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Well, those were plot-driven though. Those were plot-driven. And that was yeah, because it was like something to watch on the subway, you know, like watch a little mini episode. These are like, I mean, I hate to call out like particular influencers, but you know that there are some that are not at all plot, like just these are all meant to be memes, one after the other, like a dude perfect kind of thing, you know. There's no like you can watch five seconds of it and you're getting just as much out of it if you spend three hours. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Exactly. We are also living in the world of binging TV shows, right? Like it did not used to be the case that people would sit in front of a television for six hours straight and watch six hours of a television show, and now that's like a thing that people do.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

But you know, so you know something, if you look at the research on 10, 11, 12 year olds, and if they're watch if they're doing that and they're doing that for shows with a plot, particularly around teen-related issues, that actually can be good for their development. Not watching five hours in a row, but I'm just saying, like, even just watching those shows, it helps them to process like how difficult it is to be a teen, how do people handle teen situations? Right. It's especially good if they talk with their friends or their parents about it afterwards and process it. So I right now, I mean, with two teenagers of my own, I would rather them sit and watch three hours in a row binging a plot-driven show. That's appropriate for their age, right? Than three hours of like memes, cuts, you know, like cut, cut, cut, like just non-pot-driven whatever. And if my kids were stuck on a plane or on a road trip for three hours, that's a change I can make right now. That's gonna make a difference. Yeah, that that's really that's good. You know, another study that came out, there's this big study, it's called ABCD. It's a psychological study that has about 10,000, 15,000 kids across all of America, following these kids from like nine until they're 20. So the data slowly comes out with more and more findings. A couple of big findings just came out that are also really relevant here. Like one of them, it showed that the more kids were spending on their screens, and I think this was just screens. It didn't talk about like what they were doing on their screens, but the more they watch their screens, the smaller the cortical thickness in their brains developed over time. And there this is a study where they're scanning the kids' brains every year, year after year after year. So this is a really, really well done, uh huge study. And the areas of the cortex where the thickness was kind of reduced are related specifically to things that would lead to, again, ADHD-like symptoms and more addiction.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

So this was like crazy like like scary data. If you think of it, I mean, again, more research is needed, of course, but to think like, wait a minute, we are literally changing how kids' brains are growing with all the time on screens in ways that might be affecting like long-term functioning. You know, they did the study over years when it comes to like attention, impulsivity, being able to listen and watch something for minutes at a time, you know. And you say addiction or maybe addiction and maybe being able and you know addiction, sorry, yeah, their ability to, you know, kind of stop themselves from watching more and more screens. Like this is when you think about how much money the tech companies are making and how unfettered, like they there's no guardrails, there's no nothing. Like, what are the consequences of letting them do that? Because at least for now, the data coming out, it's it's changing how kids' brains are growing.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

I mean, kind of gotta be kind of similar to cigarettes back in the day, right? When they were actively marketing them to kids.

SPEAKER_03 13:49

I mean, that's that's an interesting question. There are people out there, you know, that uh that rightfully say, well, wait a minute, like social media, it's not all bad. And there are, you know, positive things to interacting with friends. Like, let's not conflate interacting with friends with like, but um, did you see that headline that came out? Someone at I think it was Meta, and I might be getting that wrong, but it was, I read this in the Times, I believe, it was a Senate hearing, and they said something to the tune of Meta is not social media anymore. The percentage of contact that they're having with their own friends has reduced substantially its ads and its AI recommended content. So they said, We're not even a platform that is about connecting with friends anymore. They said that.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Yeah, that's my I mean, that's my experience with Facebook specifically. Like you get on Facebook, I get on Facebook and I have to scroll down oh ways before I encounter anyone at all that I actually know. Or I get on Facebook and I see someone that I'm actually connected with right up top, but it's because they've posted something like salaciously political.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That goes to the top of the advanced. Well, if it gets a lot of comments or something or likes, and even if it's just if it's just been posted and it doesn't have very many likes at all.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

If it's super political, it goes right up to the top. If it's if it's just like I went on vacation and here are my photos, it's you have to scroll so far down to get that.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

Instagram's much better, but even Instagram, you you get it But everything on there, it's like I mean, I don't know about I haven't been on this for over a year, but like when I was on it, yeah, I would go on and I would scroll and it was all ads about balding and belly fat. And I was like, what are you saying? Oh my god, like this isn't making me feel good at all. And why do you think? Are you looking at my photos and thinking that okay? Like so, but that's the thing. So kids are, yeah, I mean, getting pretty much addicted or you know, showing dependency on this stuff, and it's not even interaction with friends according to what the company is saying themselves. Right. It's changing the size of their brains, it's leading to potentially ADHD symptoms. So, okay, so you know all the phone-free school stuff that's happening right now, right? We're getting lots of calls and a lot of people wanting to know like, what do we do about this? So we just came out with a study. You're not gonna believe um, so um, like us at UNC Chapel Hill. So we were able to look at kids' device use throughout the day, hour by hour, how many minutes, and specifically what platforms are they using when?

SPEAKER_02 16:19

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 16:19

During the school day, 20 minutes of every hour they were on their personal device. Wow. 20 minutes of every hour. So that's not like lunchtime and passing time. Like that's that's math class. And that's math class. And then what are they doing on that? About 75% of what they were doing during those times was social media or what Apple on the device will call entertainment, which is essentially TikTok and YouTube. So I mean, it could have been Netflix too. We didn't see a lot of that, but it was so basically it was this whole category of like 20 minutes of every hour. Yeah. Like, how do you learn AP chemistry while you're watching a TikTok video? Yeah. I'm assuming these were not TikTok videos from comments. Biochemistry, right? Yeah, or something like that about AP chemistry. Like we all know that's probably not what it was. So literally, while they should be listening to something about biochem math, they're instead of listening to something that's actively inhibiting the growth of their brain. This is like the worst possible scenario. Oh my god. Like, and this is happening under the teacher's noses. Right. Like you're not.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

And I'm sure the teachers can see it and they can't really do much about it unless they're not going to be able to do that. Well, that's why we need these policies. Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Like we did we actually also did a study in Canada where they like Canada's always ahead of us for everything, you know. They did phone-free stuff like a year before everyone else. And this was surprising. So, you know, did kids get better without the phone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. Like, you know, you've you've seen the news. Like, they're checking out more books from the library, they're like talking to each other at lunchtime. Great. But this was surprising. We're all talking about how this can benefit kids. Actually, the data showed in Canada that teachers reported higher morale. Teachers were more likely to want to keep their jobs after. Teachers were feeling like there was less distraction for the kids, but less stress for them. So it's like, wait a minute, why are we talking about how hard this is for teachers? Like, even if it didn't help kids at all, if it's making teachers happier and making them want to keep their jobs and less stressed, that's a good thing too.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:21

So it's just amazing that like the data are clearer and clearer and clearer on this. And we are, well, in America at least, we are still a lot of this is still going on.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah. And and you said this and it it pinged my brain uh about something that happened to me recently in a school. And you talk about the the relationship between all of this and addiction. Like a lot of people who are addicted to things can't get off the thing that they're addicted to, but actively want to, and they know that they should. And I think that's the case for kids as well. So now our school district, uh, where we're sitting here, Chapel Hilton and Carborough, state passed a law requiring it, but that was something that the districts were asking for anyway. So everyone on the same page with enact a policy banning phones in school. So that had happened. This is the first full year where that policy is in effect. Creative writing teacher at Carborough High School, one of the three high schools in the district, asks me every year to come and speak to her class about she brings in special guests all the time. It's always a lot of fun. But I was in there just a few weeks ago, and number one, every single student was actively engaged in listening. No one was on their phones because they couldn't be. And to your point about people not being able to sit through football games and long shots, the teacher puts up a little mini bio about me and then asks the students to come up with questions related to something in my bio. I have another podcast called the Moonlight Awards, which is a movie podcast where we go through the history of movies year by year and try to figure out like what's the best picture of every of every year, like when history has had a chance to weigh in and judge. So a lot of people were asking me questions about that. One person said, Well, what's the what's like the movie that you've encountered in the podcast that stands out to you the most? And I said, It has to be Jean Dielman, which is a it's a longer title than this, but uh Jean Dielman is the like the the main character in this in this movie, which is a three and a half hour long Belgian movie that is the wildest thing you've ever seen. So it's about a it's about a widowed housewife who has a son, and it's just her going about her day for three days. And it is famously slow.

SPEAKER_03 20:34

Like a slice of life, just kind of watch what happens.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

It is famously slow and boring. Like a woman walks into a room, deliberately flicks on a light switch, walks across the room, adjusts a vase of flowers on a table, walks out, shuts off the light switch, goes into the kitchen, and flipping channels already. Oh my god. And I and I told the students, like, there's 30 people in the class. If we screen this movie, 29 of you are gonna absolutely hate this. Yeah. One of you is gonna think this is the best thing you've ever seen. And there is no way to predict who the one is gonna be, but it's gonna be one of you. The kids were fascinated by this. I am coming on to talk about my job with the radio and what that's all about. Ostensibly, I'm in talking about creative writing. Everyone latches onto this movie, and by the time I'm done, there's a whole table of five kids that's like, we're gonna watch this movie right now.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Oh my god, there is during AP chemistry. During AP chemistry, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

So there is, there is a there is a feeling, I think, among among kids, even when they're just all in on screens and devices and social media and all that, they feel something lacking. Like there's something about them that wants the that wants the Jean Dielman.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

I think no, I mean, well, first of all, you've given me two thoughts. One is that we either need more policies to restrict phone use in schools, or every state needs to mandate a guest. Lecture from Aaron Keck in their schools because it sounds like both lead to the same outcome. But the second is that, yeah, no, I agree with you. I mean, kids, kids are talking so much about how like they spend all day, you know, like air quotes connected on social media, but they feel disconnected and lonely. So, you know, and but also they they want the plot. They want the, you know, but are have we have we affected their brains? Can will our brains and their plasticity, you know, brains are known to adapt and change. Will that change? Or because they'll never be in a society where there's not screens, it will never change and it will just get worse and worse. I don't know. I mean, I love that you can get them excited about something that's way slower and voyeuristic and really cool because maybe they just need to be introduced more and more to that. And we can reverse this. You know, there's a natural experiment happening in the world right now. Australia, of course, has banned social media at 16. A lot of countries have appropriately set up federal regulations to kind of really stop this. Americans, American kids are arguably getting the worst version of these products compared to kids anywhere else in the world. In China, TikTok, what we call TikTok, it's very, very different for the Chinese children than the version that American children get. In most Western European countries, the phones are out of schools, and social media has to change how it works for kids. They have done that. Here in the United States, though, zip. Nothing. We have the worst version of TikTok. There are no regulations that make anything change on any of the social media platforms. But the data are showing that social media might be the problem. So one interesting study, everyone talks about like, you know, you can't have any causal data, and therefore we're totally scot-free for any legal liability. Well, you can't do a randomized clinical trial. You can't ethically be like, yeah, okay, we're going to take this classroom and force them to watch social media for their whole lives and see how they turn out.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

And these folks are going back to like video from the cigarette trials of the 90s and pulling all the same arms. Right, right, right. Oh, yeah, this is not causal. What are you talking about? I mean it.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

But what's happened is that now there are many, many studies coming out that randomize, take kids off of social media for a little while and say, like, okay, so this random group, we're gonna have you stop using social media. And the other group, just do whatever you normally do. Study after study, not all of them, but study after study after study. If you average and pool all the results together, they show that kids get better if they're off social media. But one just came out. This was really interesting. They took kids off of social media, but then measured their screen time anyway. The kids who were randomized to go off of social media ended up spending as much time on their screens as the kids who stayed on social media. So that was interesting because then the only difference was it wasn't how much time they were on their device, it was which apps they were using.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Ooh. The kids And that still makes a difference.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

And it turns out that still made a difference. The kids who were still on their screens just as much as everyone else, but they just weren't on the social media apps, they showed mental health improvements.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

I feel so much better about dinking around playing crosswords now.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

I know, right? Like my time on Sudoku and like connections and whatever, I'm like, great, duelingo, like that's that's great all day, like I guess. But there's something about the social media stuff, and that makes perfect sense when you think about that dopamine, you know, circuit. That seems to be the thing that's likely the problem.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

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