Okay, so welcome back to this third and last episode. A very special feature with Dr. Richard Fried. I won't introduce you again, but this is just a delight to have you at the Simplicity Diaries.
Gosh, we've gone far, far from the shallows in this. And in this last episode, we turn our attention to what is it that we can actually do. And I want to sort of preface this, if I may, with that increasingly, at least the way from where I stand, is that I'm not only anti-screen.
I don't want to be anti, but what I am is passionately pro-connection. Connection, and it's four connections. And I wonder if we can explore these a little bit.
They're like concentric circles. The first connection, and it's the big one, the biggest circle, is connection to nature and the natural world. Not connection to nature videos, but the real, natural, the felt natural world.
The next circle in is connection to friends and play. Not playing video games. Not a situation where if someone displeases you, you can unfriend them.
But a real game where you've got to work out your issues. You've got to learn to compromise, to empathize, to figure it out. The next circle in is connection to family.
And that's real, not watching family sitcoms that disempower families, that portray adults as dumb and stupid and negligent, but real families struggling, succeeding, laughing, crying, but getting through their day. And the final connection at the core is connection to self. Connection to one's own values.
Not what we're being told that we need to talk like, be like, dress like from some influencer who's being paid ridiculous amounts of money at a ridiculously young age to influence our kids to feel that unless you have this, you are not worthy. So connection to nature, friends, family, self. What do you think? That's beautiful.
And then we really need to understand that persuasively designed modern day screens are purpose built to undermine every single one of those elements, to have kids live in a virtual world that is purpose built to profit from them and to manipulate them, for kids not to be themselves, for them to be led down the path that industry wants. It is a tremendously different world for our kids to live at a school where that's built to raise kids in a park or nature, which is we're providing for kids or to be in a family. Those are all built, they've been built for thousands of years to raise healthy kids.
It is a world of difference to put kids for eight hours and 30 minutes a day to live in an environment that number one, most of all, wants at its very core to profit from them. And just right at the get go, that means our kids are going to suffer if that's the environment that they're living in. So for mums and dads like you and me and other folk who are kindly sort of carving out the time to listen to this, what are some of the primary things we can do? I mentioned for example, the interview with Melanie Hemp at ScreenStrong and an array of strategies and this brilliant book that she brought out recently called Kids Brains and Screens.
Now in my practice, I've been recommending it over and over to parents to sit with it because it's a book for kids, right? So you sit with a child and you read through chapter lesson number one, your brilliant brain. Lesson number two, in a low or no screen environment, you'll have more friends, real friends who care about you. And lesson number three, you know, I'm probably misquoting the lesson order now, but you'll learn more and you'll remember more and you'll get smarter and it literally leads the kids through.
It's almost like what I think of as digital driver's ed, right? So on one hand, it's educating our kids into what this stuff is doing. So it's not only you and me and other adults talking about this, it's educating our kids on the kind of manipulation that they're getting on screens, but also their brilliant brain, their brilliant social, emotional being, that's on one hand. And on the other, is how can we as parents go low or no screen? You know, Victoria Dunkley wrote this book, The 28 Day, is it The 28 Day Brain Reset, Richard? It's something like that.
Reset your child's brain, I think. Reset your child's brain, that's it, in 28 days or whatever it is. Stuff like that.
What advice would you give as one of the, really, the leading people in the world on this subject? What do we do? Like, okay, so what we've done in these past episodes is that we've named what it is that's going on, right? And that's not just doom and gloom, it's a huge part of being conscious of what's happening. But then what do we actually do? What do you do for your kids? What have you done for them to help them with this and to have an intact family? A really good question. I think you, in talking about Melanie Hempe's work at ScreenStrong, that represents what I can't think of there's anything more important for parents to do, which is to come together in a community that is science-based, that is not funded by outside, really funded by Silicon Valley sources, because so many of the organizations that say that they're out there to help are industry funded.
The ones that the parents have long believed are helpful are not. And so to go to places in a community with other parents to say, what can we do together? And then use resources like Kids, Brains, and Screens. I think Melanie would want us to do two things, and I would agree with this, which is we're going to talk with kids about screens at the same time as we are raising our kids away from screens as much as possible.
And when we do think about screens for our kids, that they are not manipulation-based like video games and social media and smartphones, we're going to push back the age for those as much as possible. So we're going to limit this, and then we're going to provide this community for kids. And we're going to be talking with kids to say, this is why we're doing this.
We are doing it because we love you, and because this is going to help you have the life that you want for yourself. Yeah, one example, I was talking, this was a couple of years ago now, and I was talking with a mom and a dad. And they, first of all, they really explored not just the medium, but the media, right, both.
And they said, okay, we're going to have Friday night family film night, and we're only going to watch films that are low impact and slow. Not all of them, but most of them from decades gone by. Then they made the switch, because family night, they started baking for family night and making stuff and getting things together.
And they started realizing that the baking and the getting ready for family film night was where the most fun was. Right. And so they started, then they turned it into just Friday family night, not Friday family film night.
So they would have cookouts, they bought a couple of board games. And maybe one in every four or five was a film. Right.
But what they realized through the actual doing of it, is the most fun they were having, and where the kids requested it, was when there was deep attachment, bonding, fun and connection, rather than all sitting, you know, along, like not even looking at each other looking at a screen. And even when they did have the screen, they would eventually just start turning away from it and talking to each other, because they had had so much fun in the baking and the cooking and the whatever it was. And they said, after a while, they hardly even got through a movie, the movie became secondary, to the point where they just didn't do it anymore at all.
And I remembered that because I thought, first of all, what brave parents, it takes a certain amount of courage to do that. But also what lucky kids, what lucky kids. So Richard, for you, I know we both have two kids, raising them and delaying when they got phones, computers, and so on.
How did you do it? And what have been the effects of it? I just love that. I mean, what's helpful to me is seeing this every day. So I would have parents educate themselves about the truth.
I would have them go to places like ScreenStrong and look at my writing and actually hear the truth of, oh, you're just told by industry, give your kid a smartphone, you can control it. No, no, no, no, no. It's designed to undermine your parenting.
So know that there's, it is understanding that there's a little bit of work on the front end to set all this up. But you're going to feel immediate feedback. You're going to get joy.
Specifically for me, I played some with my daughters when I tried to do floor play a little bit with my daughters. And to do creative play when kids are young, you can see the brainpower that's developing and the communication skills. And I have two daughters, and I think they were probably ahead of me in some, I would just, I'd try to play and I'd always end up with the part like we play school and I'd end up to be the, I was always the acting out kid.
Cause that's what I seem to know. Oh, you know, Richard, you're in trouble and you go to time out and do all this or, so that, but that, that part was fun. So I would do a lot of that, but I also just like getting out of the house when my kids were young, double strolling it, and we're going to go here and we're going to walk downtown and talk to the dogs and talk to the neighbors.
I love getting out. And like here in my town, like, you know, I'm a, I'm a guy, I've got two daughters. Like, how is that going to work? So there's a local airport here.
I love airplanes. I've got another one here. My, my daughter do that car, but she drew an airplane over here.
We go to the local airport and they have a control tower. And underneath that is a kid play area. So my daughters could care less really about that.
There were airplanes taking off and, and they, but they would wave to us and my daughters when they would take off and stuff. So that was just fun for me, but here we were scootering around and there was a little play area and they would, that was jail and dad, you're in jail. And then I'd sneak out.
Like, those are just magical moments. And that got me out of the house, got me doing something that I like. Cause I get to see airplanes.
My daughters, you know, like care less a little bit about that, but like here we are and trying to find places that make, give you joy that, that, that you can share in with your daughters. And we'd always go get food before we went there. And, and, oh, and it just became a ritual.
Like every, those rituals in our culture have been something for kids to hold onto, to say, this is my family. This is my community. I know this is, I think you would call it like a rhythm.
This is where we feel safe. I know what we're doing. And that became a every weekend activity for us.
And there were other rituals that we have. So to build those, those have always been around to, to have kids feel connected and to connect them with their family. So that's me.
Cause I, you know, I like to be up and out. And so how can I, let's have the kids up and out. And that was, I think my kids know that about me still like, okay, here we are.
Let's local road trip to some other someplace. And that helped me. And now I hear from my kids, you know, just like they're older now and they'll say like, I can't, the first sentence will be, I can't believe we didn't have, they're kind of giving me a hard time.
I can't believe we didn't have iPads like the other kids. And then three, two sentences later, they're saying our kids come over to the house and we make them read. None of our friends read, like we're going to make, so we make them read like, they appreciate the fact that like, you know, they give me a hard time for doing that, but then they'll appreciate like, oh, I know this has helped me have a love for books now.
You know, one of the, one of the things I've noticed with kids who are raised on low or no screens is there's kind of painful years. There's the painful years where everyone's getting smartphones, everyone's talking about this stuff. And the way a lot of kids talk about the video gaming they're doing and such and shows they're watching and YouTubing, it really does remind me as a counselor, I worked in addiction counseling for years, and it's almost like these kids are shedding, they're having flashback, they're detoxing.
Because a lot of the kids that are consuming this stuff, their conversations are disjointed, random, nonsensical. And kids who have low or no screens have little or no access to that. And it's painful.
It's painful for them. Do we want them to join in with that random nonsensical conversation? Well, not really, but it's still there's no denying it. It's hard.
But here's what I've noticed over the years, both with my own kids and countless others, is that when there is someone in that friendship circle who's suffering, whose parents are going through a really difficult time, or their dog died or whatever, they, you know, hard stuff. They turn to the humanized kids to get a humanized response. They don't want OMG on a text.
They want to look someone in the eye, they want a hug. They want to go for a walk, they want to be with someone who has been raised in a humanized environment. And they don't know that.
But what they do know is that you get a humanized, you get a real friend, you get empathy, you get someone who will be with you. And I've noticed these kids grow up, not only do they do better academically in school, you know, they just do super well, and they can focus on things. But what starts to happen is that the blowback we get, it's not just from the tech industry, but it's from often from extended family.
Like, what do you mean you're not like, really, come on, sweetheart, you know, you got to give her an iPad, you got to do this for him, you got to, right, you got to do this for them. And, and actually, by about 12, 11, 12, 13, a lot of extended family are saying, wow, like grandparents who have got a couple of families that they're like, your children are just beautiful. They're, they're able to have conversations with you, they're present, they're not always checking their phone, they're not or they're not agitated when they don't have they're not playing the game.
And, and we're sorry, because we really criticized you. When when the kids were, you know, six, seven, eight, nine years old, at not giving them to television and YouTube. But we really see why now.
So there's two, two things that go on. Just as we round off this episode, just looking into the future, is that we're told that unless you immerse your kids in this, they're not going to do well. And the opposite is true.
We'll have kids who have good friends, dear friends, do they have a bunch of tech friending friends? No, no, not really. And even when the in their late teens and 20s, they access social networking, because they're gonna because they're away from home anyway, mostly, they won't be all that interested in it, because they will see through it because it's not human. Why? Because they've been raised in a humanized environment.
So they that we give them the, you know, we don't start off saying we're going to give them a humanized environment so they can see a human, but that's the result of it. And the other is, is friends who really care. And they will be sought out, they will be kids in college and beyond, who other kids seek out, because they have almost this unusual, I won't say unique, but a really unusual ability to be truly present.
I love that. I believe right now, as we speak, more and more parents and educators are realizing that and they are working to come together in communities. There are now, there's now a movement to get phones, smartphones out of school from K to 12.
No longer are we asking a teacher to wrestle a phone away and honestly have to call the police or the big security guys to pull that out. We're waking up to realize parents are seeing what you are describing and feeling in their heart. Smartphones don't belong in school.
Why in God's name do we have them there in the first place? So here we have communities coming together, and I encourage if you're saying, what can parents do? Trust me, the great majority of parents at your school don't want the kids to be on phones during the day. Come together and push back against powerful organizations that are working to make money to put phones in kids' hands at school. Don't believe what they say.
Make decisions yourself. So Kim, exactly. It's a magical thing that happens, and I believe an increasing number of parents are saying, we're going to reject this myth that our kids are benefiting from this stuff, and we're going to start making our own choices.
So I love that. So as we round off, Richard, I want to, if you've got a copy of your book at hand, you can just show and just, because this is, you know, you hear this thing about couldn't put it down? Honestly, couldn't put it down. And Richard, your website, pretty straightforward, right? Richardfree.com. Wow.
Wow. What a thrill to talk to you and a real treat for all the folk listening into this. I can't thank you enough, Richard.
Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Thank you for being a leader in this and getting me, orienting me towards what is right and helping me see this stuff very much in the first place.
I am very much indebted to you. So, and thank you for having me here. Yeah, likewise.
Okay. Many blessings on your work, Richard. Bye-bye for now.
