Aug. 26, 2025
Mental Health and Teen Phone Use with Oxford Psychologist Lucy Foulkes. 157
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What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover? How we parents manage technology in our homes, and what we put in the hands of our kids, has turned into one of the most hotly debated topics amongst parents and experts. In this episode, I talk to Dr. Lucy Foulkes, Oxford academic psychologist and author, about social media’s role in adolescent mental health, challenging the narrative popularized by Jonathan Haidt and exploring why phones and social platf...
What do you think of this episode? Do you have any topics you'd like me to cover?
How we parents manage technology in our homes, and what we put in the hands of our kids, has turned into one of the most hotly debated topics amongst parents and experts.
In this episode, I talk to Dr. Lucy Foulkes, Oxford academic psychologist and author, about social media’s role in adolescent mental health, challenging the narrative popularized by Jonathan Haidt and exploring why phones and social platforms aren’t the universal villains they’re often made out to be.
Dr Foulkes has a fascinating take on mental health and whether our well-intentioned conversations around the subject, especially in schools and on social media, might have gone too far; creating confusion or even anxiety for parents and young people.
If you want a nuanced, evidence-based discussion that will help you support your teen with more confidence and less fear you've found it.
Dr. Lucy Foulkes: Books
- What Mental Illness Really Is (…and what it isn’t)
- Coming Of Age: How Adolescence Shapes Us,
Website: https://www.lucyfoulkes.com/
Book recommended: The End of Trauma by George Bonanno
- It’s important not to pathologize normal adolescent struggles. Not all teenagers have mental health problems. Most are resilient and functioning well.
- All distress should be taken seriously, not just clinical disorders.
- Increased mental health awareness only helps if there is proper back-up and support for those who really need it.
- Mental health terms are often misunderstood. Words like “OCD” are often used casually, diluting their meaning and making it harder for those with real disorders to be understood and supported.
- The narrative that phones and social media are causing a mental health crisis is oversimplified and often exaggerated (as in Jonathan Haidt’s work).
- Parental engagement and open conversations matter. The best approach is to guide teens in managing technology, set consistent family rules, and model healthy behavior, rather than banning devices or demonizing their use.
- Both online and offline experi
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I don't have medical training so please seek the advice of a specialist if you're not coping.
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You can reach Susie at www.amindful-life.co.uk
00:00 - Introduction to Teenagers Untangled & Dr. Lucy Foulkes. psychologist, author, and adolescent mental health researcher.
01:25 - Why Adolescence Is So Emotional: The Story Behind “Coming of Age” Dr. Foulkes shares her motivation for writing about adolescence and the emotional intensity of teenage years.
02:50 - Mentalizing: How Teens Develop Self-Understanding and Social Awareness Exploring the concept of mentalizing (theory of mind) and its impact on teenage self-image and peer relationships.
04:01 - Risk-Taking vs. Social Conservatism in Teenagers Why teens are adventurous in some ways but highly conservative when it comes to social risks and fitting in.
05:27 - The Impact of Social Media on Teen Peer Dynamics How social media amplifies peer judgment and the pressure to fit in, with a larger and more public audience.
05:38 - The Mental Health Awareness Boom: Turning Points and Unintended Consequences The rise of mental health campaigns since 2011, their benefits, and the problems caused by over-awareness and lack of support.
07:46 - The Reality of Mental Health Support: Gaps and Misconceptions Challenges parents and teens face in accessing real help, and the dangers of misusing terms like “OCD.”
09:29 - School-Based Mental Health Interventions: Are They Working? Dr. Foulkes critiques the effectiveness of mental health lessons in schools and discusses potential harms.
11:12 - Anxiety Spectrum: When Does Worry Become a Disorder? Understanding the continuum of anxiety, when to seek help, and why all distress deserves validation.
13:51 - Exposure Therapy and Supporting Anxious Teens Practical advice for parents: gradual exposure, CBT principles, and the importance of tailoring approaches for neurodivergent youth.
16:47 - The Power of Being Seen: Validation and Compassion in Parenting Teens Why acknowledging and validating teens’ feelings is crucial, and how to balance compassion with resilience-building.
18:36 - Resilience in Adolescence: Myths, Realities, and Coping Strategies What resilience really means, why most teens cope well, and how parents can foster healthy coping mechanisms.
22:07 - Social Media and Teen Mental Health: Beyond the Hype Dr. Foulkes challenges the narrative that social media is inherently harmful, explaining its nuanced effects.
25:12 - Debunking Jonathan Haidt: The Real Story on Phones and Mental Health Why the “phones are the new cigarettes” argument is misleading, and how fear-based messaging harms families.
28:04 - Parenting in the Digital Age: Setting Realistic Boundaries Tips for managing phone use, creating family rules, and supporting teens’ gradual independence online.
31:21 - Phones as Tools: Benefits, Joy, and Self-Regulation Recognizing the positives of technology, encouraging self-regulation, and fostering open conversations about digital life.
33:56 - Family Tech Rules: Consistency and Leading by Example The importance of parents modeling healthy phone habits and creating collaborative household guidelines.
36:46 - Social Media, Values, and External Influences How online content shapes teens’ values, and why ongoing dialogue about external influences is essential.
39:24 - Changing the Mental Health Narrative: Optimism and Balance Dr. Foulkes’ call for a more balanced, optimistic view of teen mental health and the importance of not pathologizing normal struggles.
41:02 - Online vs. Offline: Rethinking the Good/Bad Divide Why both online and offline experiences can be positive or negative, and the need for a nuanced perspective.
41:49 - Where to Find Dr. Lucy Foulkes and Further Resources Connect with Dr. Foulkes on Instagram and learn about her Museum of Mental Health in the Media project.
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Hello and welcome to teenagers untangled the audio hug for parents going through the tween and teen years, where we combine expert research and our own experience to make this whole thing much less stressful and hopefully more enjoyable. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. And now, have you heard people talk about others being totally psycho, or maybe a bit OCD, or perhaps they've got anxiety because they don't want to go to a party. Well, my guest today is Dr Lucy folks, a psychologist and author whose work has been hugely influential in shaping the way we think about teenagers identity and mental health. Her group at the University of Oxford researches adolescent mental health and social development, with a particular focus on the possible negative consequences of increased public health awareness and school based mental health interventions.
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She's written two books what mental illness really is and what it isn't, and more recently, coming of age, how adolescence shapes us. Her work has been featured in national and international media outlets.
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So we're very lucky to have her here. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Rachel, thanks. I read coming of age, and the stories in that book felt so real that I sometimes remember them as things I feel happened to friends. Now, what led you to actually write that book?
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Well, I'd been an adolescent researcher for a while, and I was surprised when I spoke to my friends, my family and reflected on my own adolescent years how emotional those memories were and how strongly people felt about their adolescent self, and I felt that the research that existed and that I was doing didn't really capture that kind of emotional punch of adolescence. So I knew I wanted to write a book about adolescent development, but I wanted to kind of mix it in with some real life stories, because I think when you look at the numbers of people that are bullied, for example, it just doesn't really capture what that actually means. So I wanted it to be an emotional book, because it's an emotional time of life.
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Yeah, I think this, what's special about this book is it bridges the gap for us parents, because we forget how it feels to be a teenager and how deeply emotional it is.
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And one of the things you brought up, I think it was actually in your book about mental health and about how we invent ourselves in our adolescence, and we develop this ability to understand what others are thinking and feeling about us. I think you called it mentalizing. We go from kind of being kids to then having to read between the lines and figure out what sarcasm is. Are they lying to me, this is a really complex skill we have to develop, which I think is very hard. How do you think that that sort of plays out in terms of the emotional lives of teens and how it can maybe even
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lead to problems. Yeah, so it's called mentalizing, or theory of mind.
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So it's this skill where we are aware that other people have different thoughts and feelings and beliefs and understandings on a on a situation relative to us, and you can do the basics of that as a child, but across the adolescent years, it becomes more sophisticated, and you get better at being aware that other people have thoughts and feelings about you, and you kind of absorb that into your own understanding of yourself in the adolescent years, what your peers think of you matter so matters so much, and whether you belong with your peers. So it's this period of life where you're suddenly thinking an awful lot more about what other people think of you, and taking that into your own self image. And obviously that can be problematic if you if your peers aren't nice to you,
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we often, as parents, we think teenagers are quite rebellious, but I know that you say they're socially conservative, and this is back to this need to fit in. Can you tell us more about that?
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Yeah, so they are. They are risk takers, relative to children and adults for things where they want to experience, have new experiences and new sensations and try try out new things for the first time, but they are very conservative when it comes to social risks. So things like being different from your friends, or disagreeing with your friends, or doing something that your friends don't approve of that is a very legitimately, a really frightening, scary thing for a teenager to do, because the judgment that you get from your peers is so much stronger than if you were an adult but listened to music that your friends didn't like. So it's genuinely a kind of riskier thing to be different, but yes, it's this interesting kind of combination of in some respects, they are risk takers, but in other respects, when it involves potentially standing out from your friends, they're very conservative. And actually, just that fact, drives all sorts of teenage behavior. Yes,
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and I'm sure that turbo charges the relationship with it on. Life, because you have more opportunity for people to dislike what you're doing as well as like what you're doing.
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Yeah, you've got a bigger audience and more of an audience of strangers than we would have had growing up, where you are being judged by your peers, but it's by peers within your school, whereas, yeah, online, it's the audience is different,
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yeah, yeah. So I'd love to talk about mental health, because there's been a big change in the conversation.
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There was a cultural turning point. Can you explain what happened there and why that was important?
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I think 2011 was when they had television adverts and a big kind of national campaign. That was a real turning point in the UK, at least on England in particular.
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So this big national campaign to promote the idea that mental health problems are common and that we should talk about them more and we shouldn't be so ashamed of having them in general. Those principles are really sensible and a really good idea, but I've become interested to how in the years since then, we've possibly overshot with our awareness, or we've had some unintended consequences where the outcomes that we wanted to happen haven't necessarily happened. And I think there's an awful lot of noise, and in some respects, we're kind of talking too much about mental health, and it's not always useful, especially for young people,
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I've seen some terrifying statistics about the rises in mental health disorders in the media. How useful Do you think those are?
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Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of it isn't there useful if it leads to change that is helpful for young people. So that's a really broad goal, saying in the media that we've got an adolescent mental health crisis leads to more funding or leads to people getting help that they wouldn't otherwise have access then they are obviously good things. But it's more complicated than that.
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Those kind of newspaper articles and the campaigns encourage people to go and get help for their mental health at the GP, and then they turn up at the GP and they're told that the help isn't there. You know, the coms waiting list is very long, or there's no helpful available, or they're not bad enough to get help. So this good idea in theory about alerting people to this increase in mental health problems hasn't necessarily followed through in terms of helping parents and teenagers.
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It's basically terrified a lot of Yeah, I think you're so right, and hasn't necessarily been paired with access to treatment that is helpful in the works, I think
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you've absolutely nailed it, and I think that's what I hear a lot from parents, is this desperation that they see something going on, and then they're trying to get help and they can't find it. And I think one of the things you mentioned was that there's that lack of support, but there's also the way that we as a population understands the mental health issues. For example, people say, Well, maybe OCD, and they're talking about that, they just like to clean a lot where that's a complete misconstrual of what OCD actually is, and that presumably, then doesn't actually help. In fact, it can hinder the support there for people who are struck, because if they can't get the help from a professional, they're going to look into their
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community, and then the the gravity of that term OCD gets lost. So this is what was originally really interested in when I wrote the book, that if you unleash a word into A into the public without the depth of understanding of what it involves, which is, you know, a really serious, incredibly disabling, frightening mental disorder.
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OCD, if you just unleash that term without enough thought, then it takes on a life of its own and it gets a new colloquial meaning, which is, you know about being tidy. And then if someone really does have OCD and tries coming forward and saying that people still don't understand,
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yes, yes, and presumably it makes them feel even more alone, because they feel like they've just been misunderstood. They have, they have been trying to put campaigns into schools. What are your thoughts about the way that that that gets rolled out,
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there's just so much poor quality stuff and so much noise. I agree with the theoretical principle that mental health problems shouldn't be stigmatized and that young people should know where to get help for it. Lots of what's happening in schools is an attempt to, in an affordable way, help everyone all at once and by delivering information on mass. And it hasn't really worked, but it's and in some cases, actually, it's either useless, so the improvement doesn't happen, or it can make people feel. Worse for all sorts of possible reasons. You know, if you really do have a mental health problem, you need more than just sitting in a classroom of people who aren't unwell being taught about mental health. But it's a sort of politically difficult, socially difficult argument to make, because there aren't available alternatives, which is giving one to one help quickly to the people who need it, but also just sort of sounds like a good idea, like, of course, you want to teach about mental health.
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And, you know, I get very angry emails from people saying, you know, that, of course, it's a good idea to teach about mental health in schools. And it's, you know, very understandably, there are some people who I will never convince that these lessons are a bad idea. It's a very delicate argument.
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Yes, yes. How do you go from being somebody who's, you know, struggling a bit with something well, you know, they're, they're feeling a bit, they're feeling anxious, and when does that tip into having anxiety that needs treatment and intervention. I think for parents, that's incredibly difficult.
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So all mental health problems exist on a spectrum. Anxiety is a good example. So everyone has a bit of it. Sometimes, as you gradually have more anxiety, it becomes more frequent, more severe, more difficult to control, and particularly important in terms of diagnosis, it starts to impact your daily functioning. So once you meet all those criteria for at a high enough level, then a professional might say that you've met the criteria for an anxiety disorder. But the problem is that if you fall just beneath that threshold, you still have some problems with anxiety, even if you have, you know, quite a bit further down the spectrum, added to the complication that sometimes what starts off as fairly mild might be the beginning of a more serious problem. So the challenge is, how do we draw an artificial line to say, Okay, this is where a disorder has begun, because you do need to draw it somewhere for pragmatic reasons. But then what you do about the people in the kind of gray area, and the most important thing always, is that you you know, whatever you call it, and whatever threshold it meets or doesn't meet, is that you take it seriously. People love to say there's regular anxiety and there's an anxiety disorder and the regular anxiety, everyone needs to stop worrying about no. We need to take it all seriously. My kind of number one tip is that whatever you think it is, or whether it meets criteria or not, that you still validate it and take
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it Yes, yes.
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Yes. And my kids say that it really helps them if they know that I struggled myself with things, even if it's not the same thing as them, that actually some of the struggle is really just part of who we are.
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My daughter, interestingly, had anxiety attacks when she had to do public speaking. She wanted to be a debater, and she would get literally all the physical symptoms, and it would just shut her down. And no matter what she did, it didn't help. And then we just looked at all sorts of things, and then we discovered that if we put her on a course where she wasn't near anybody she knew, and they slowly taught her how to do this, then that might help her. And she's now a serious debater, and it was so interesting. Because I, I think, you know, the treatment for somebody who it feels that's, you know, some anxiety is slow, you know, slow exposure to what it is that they're struggling with, whereas a disorder is something rather different, isn't it? And that's, I think, for us parents, that's one of the things be like, Well, I don't know what, how am I supposed to tackle this if I can't get help?
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Yeah? Funnily enough, so I mean, that's such a nice example story about your daughter, because, yeah, one of the fundamental principles of anxiety is that you you can overcome it by repeatedly being exposed to the thing that makes you anxious, but very, very gradually and with lots of support. And actually, that is the same principle of what you do with someone who has an anxiety disorder that you It's like one of the core principles of CBT. So the B, the behavioral bit of CBT, is the behavioral experiment. So you kind of write out a list of gradually increasing challenges, and then you do them one by one, but with lots of help, and you practice each step repeatedly until not doesn't provoke as much anxiety.
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But if it, there's two caveats to that. So one is that, yeah, if it's if it's really bad and at the disorder level, the young person will probably need a professional helping them, although, I mean, to be honest, there are lots of books helping parents do CBT exercises with their children. The other the other caveat about that is about neurodiver. Divergence so some autistic or other neurodivergent young people, the nature of their anxiety will not be resolved by asking them to repeatedly expose themselves to something that makes them anxious, because often, yeah, comes from a kind of sensory overwhelm which is going to lead to a complete sort of system shut down. It's not reasonable to expect them to keep being not the same patients. This is why managing anxiety in schools is often so difficult. Because for some students, exactly what you should do is what you describe with your daughter, gradual exposure, lots of practices, and then equally, for um, other students, that's exactly what you shouldn't do, and you need a real expert to I know right distinguish between the two.
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That's why this is complicated.
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But if your child is not neurodivergent, then it's worth looking up this basic CBT graded exposure experiments, principles, even just so you can know the general thing that they'll be learning about in therapy, because, yeah, it's an absolutely fundamental aspect of treating anxiety.
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And that's one of the lovely things that I think you've got across in your book, is that having people of a, taking them seriously and B, having knowledge yourself. So, you know, my first thing is, my kids say, Oh, I've got this thing that's bothering me. I like they say, oh, yeah, that's exactly what I went through and I came through the other end. Or I'll say, Wait, I'm going to buy a book, you know, because there are so many amazing books out there now, because I think actually being seen as one of the big problems, isn't it with with any of these, you know, emotional and and mental problems,
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exactly because, as in being seen by a therapist, you know, just being seen like
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feeling like people actually care about what you're talking about, and they can see what you're saying and understand it. I
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think it's just such an important principle with teenagers in general, is to attempt to, yeah, hear and reflect and acknowledge their experience and not dismiss it.
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But, yeah, I think you really capture this struggle now, which is that some of it is normal and inevitable. And I, you know, I often say that in order to live a rich, meaningful, interesting life, then there's inevitably some suffering and distress and unpleasant feelings involved, and often they're things that you just have to keep doing, and then those feelings dissipate, but you have to deliver that message really compassionately, yeah, while also taking someone seriously, otherwise, you tip into the Oh, come On. But you know, this is just people being snowflakes, yes, yes, you should all suffer. It's just part of life. You know, there's, there's many different ways you can deliver that message, isn't there? And I
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think that's one of the problems that we have in my generation, that I'm an old mum. I came from the generation of we just had to put up and shut up. And I think we were reacting to that and thinking, Well, I don't want my kids to feel that way. And I know Jonathan, Haidt, which who's been in the press a lot with his anxious generation, and he wrote the coddling of the American mind before that. You know, he talks a lot about not allowing our kids to actually experience real life problems and challenges. And I know in your book, you've pointed out just that teens are remarkably resilient, or can be, what are your thoughts about resilience in teens and how we can support it without ignoring the things that they genuinely are struggling with?
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Yeah, I think it often gets misused or used in an unhelpful way. That resilient word, as though you know the reason why we have more mental health problems today is because they're just not resilient enough, and let's go teach them about how to be resilient. It's not a straightforward thing to do. There's actually a really lovely book called The End of trauma by George Bonanno, and he has done a lot of research into trauma and post traumatic stress, and his argument is that even very terrible events should only ever be seen as potential traumas, because about two thirds of people who go through something awful don't develop PTSD symptoms in the office.
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Wow. So actually, the dialog has so flipped now that it's seen as an inevitability to develop post traumatic stress after difficult events. And he's really making the case that actually the majority of people are resilient, and we can learn from them. And it's a really interesting resilience is in terms of your beliefs about still being optimistic about the future and all that kind of stuff. But some people will find it harder than others. And it's it's not about being weak. Some people are just more active to stressful
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events. Yes, you had a section where you were talking about people who tend to cope better in those scenarios than others, and it really struck a chord with me, because I had one of those childhoods that was actually genuinely very challenging in many ways. A's on, you know, on many measures, but I'm fine. And I looked through what you said in there, and I thought, gosh, that is what I do. And it was when you see a problem that you look for answers. You know, my first response is always okay, how am I going to find the answer here?
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And rather than the more passive, trying to push away the feeling and perhaps using drugs or alcohol to try and suppress those things. And not that it one is, you know, not that one person is better than another.
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It's just that, actually, if you're one of those people who can actively look at ways to energize your way through something and find answers that that can be a very healthy way for dealing with these very difficult situations.
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Yeah, it's about coping, basically. So how do you create the aftermath of difficult things happening? And that's what a lot of this and George's book is about, is, yeah, there are various different ways you can cope in the aftermath of something difficult, and some of them are better for your mental health than others, but also that it you know, there's not like, one perfect way of doing things, and even within one individual, they might draw on different techniques at different times.
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But, I mean, not everyone will go through something terrible, but everyone who does interesting things with their life will experience things. So yeah, I think it's we are doing a great service to young people, if we're honest about that, and talk about how you cope in the aftermath. And that's why it's yeah, it's not necessarily helpful to repeatedly tell parents that we've got a mental health crisis, because then they they're very afraid that that's what the outcome is going to be.
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And it's Yeah, I don't think that right, helpful for anyone to come back to a story about your daughter and the public speaking. It's just such a great example that something can be really scary, but if you repeatedly do it with help around you, that's often the only way that things become easier is to keep doing them.
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But to have a model who is sort of living proof of that, I think, is very powerful. Really helps.
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So what I'd love to do now is just, actually, let's, let's focus a bit on social media, because we've talked already about some of the developmental stages with teens and how they become sort of much more cognizant. And I remember my daughters, when talking to them on this podcast, saying it was almost like a light was switched on, like I suddenly before that, I didn't really notice myself. I was just happy with who I am, and everything was good. And then suddenly they just became really aware of how they looked to other people. Once they sort of become aware of themselves and what other people are thinking.
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They really want to be acknowledged as being liked and accepted with social media, it's quantifiable, because you can have likes and, and, and then it's also very public.
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Yeah, exactly.
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So we, we all care about social approval, and we certainly care about it in adolescence, but social media literally puts a number on it. So it's a number of how well liked you are in inverted commas. It's a number you can compare with other people, and it's a number that other people can see. So I think that that's, you know, there are many interesting ways that social media are a reflection of real life, social interaction, but sort of change in a certain way, and that quantifiable aspect of it is very interesting, I think.
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And I think one of the interesting things you said as well is that it's almost like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. So the people who started out being popular, or they fit into a box for them, it will amplify that. And then the opposite can be true.
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Yeah. I mean, I think if you I see social media as a phone use in general, really phone behavior a mirror of what's happening in the real world, so a mirror of who you are, but also a mirror of what's happening for you socially. So I think, yeah, if you're socially secure, have lots of good friends. Social media is probably quite fun, but equally, yeah, the opposite can be true.
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I still I'm fairly relaxed about social media and phones relative to lots of other people. Maybe relax isn't the right word, but I don't think they're as bad as some commentators have promoted, I think
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it's actually, tell us, tell us more. Go on.
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I'd love to hear more. I think
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they Jonathan height is has not been a helpful figure here, for a lot of people, he's oversimplified and misrepresented the research.
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This is very widely understood among researchers. If you Google his name and the word criticism, you will see there's lots and lots and lots of researchers pushing back against the narrative he's created. He's exaggerated the problem. There was a time when we weren't worrying enough about phones and teenagers. I. Think yes, but I think that's now overshot. He's now terrified parents, yes, okay, phones can be bad, but they can also be good and they can also be neutral. They are a normal part of adult life, so I think it's normal and appropriate that teenagers should gradually get one with increasing independence, with lots of support, lots of open discussions, lots of guardrails, but I think it's completely okay to for teenagers to gradually get a phone. I think the proposed solution by height and other people, to ban smartphones under 14, Ban social media under 16 is unrealistically strict. So that solution that he's proposed has now actually caused an enormous amount of conflict within families and between
00:26:01.319 --> 00:26:05.880
parents, it has, it has, and I'm getting that with parents emailing me, yeah,
00:26:05.940 --> 00:26:41.859
yes. When I say those kind of messages online, on Instagram, I say, you know, it's not that bad, and you don't need to feel so guilty. I have a lot of parents saying thank you, because they feel like they've somehow failed because they've given their teenager a phone, and then there's, yeah, there's a lot of judgment and shaming across parents. Someone messaged me saying that they've been told it was giving a phone to a teenager is like akin to them having heroin. Just wow. Okay.
00:26:42.099 --> 00:27:12.420
Total misunderstanding of the concepts of addiction. But so I'm very keen to somehow sensitively communicate the message that there is an alternative way of approaching this. And actually, I think there's several public commentators now and writers coming out, writing books, creating Instagram accounts to try and convey this less fear mongering, less guilt inducing.
00:27:07.259 --> 00:27:19.140
It's okay to give them a phone if you do it gradually and with support. And I think that's just so much more realistic.
00:27:19.619 --> 00:27:57.579
Yes, that's what Catherine nibbs said recently on my my podcast. I think the big worry is that there are a lot of parents who are not engaged at all. And if your child is in a school with people who are simply not engaged in and give their kids a phone at silly age, then you are now presented with a problem, and you have to have communities of people, the majority of whom accept that you were going to hold back. And we're getting because if you send your child out into the world, they're going to access things via someone else's device, if that other person is doing things that where the the parent hasn't bothered to look at what the issues are. So I can see it's it's fraught, it's
00:27:57.579 --> 00:28:21.319
very it's fraught, and that parenting would be easier if phones disappeared. Yes, now, but there are now, and it's actually now a fundamental challenge of parenting at any age. Actually, how you deal with devices and screens, it's not going away.
00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:35.359
And yeah, absolutely, as you say, that even if you're very strict within your own household and very on top of it, they You cannot escape the need for the conversation, because they will see some of the stuff elsewhere.
00:28:35.480 --> 00:29:42.460
But and then Lisa dammer is a US psychologist, and she writes really helpfully about this, the balance of limiting phone access but not causing social exclusion, to basically give them support, them to have enough device access to help the social development because I think it's really sad when you end up in a position where you have a young person who's begging for a phone, the parents won't have one. They're now very left out because there are all sorts of conversations and interesting things, fun things, happening via phones that they are not participating in. And then you know that there's no like risk free solution here, you can avoid giving them a phone, but then you introduce the social exclusion risks. I think it's a total, total headache for all sorts of reasons, but I think the solution is not to demonize phones or demonize parents or blame young people for wanting them. It's just not
00:29:42.519 --> 00:30:35.720
no. And, you know, a perfect example today, my daughter had a Nokia phone that I gave her before she was allowed to have a smartphone, you know, and this was when she was a teenager, because I was holding her back somewhat. And she pulled it out and she said, Oh, I'm going to go to this because I've been on social media too much, and this is hers. Saying this and and then she said, Oh, wait. Well, I need the app for the stagecoach bus thing, and now I need the tickets to get into this concert. They're on a smartphone. You know, we are now socially integrated into these these devices to an extent that it's, it's not just about what we want. It's actually about what, you know, what is our social environment allowing us to do and it becomes really, really difficult. And I think we can coach our kids to be their best selves online, raw, and who they follow and what they're looking at, but I think we have to really engage, don't we? And that's the difficult bit. It's like we actually do have to engage.
00:30:36.200 --> 00:32:07.319
There was, there's no pathway through this, that no reading phones. But yeah, I know you, although there are benefits of parents having phones. You know, previous adolescences involved teenagers, you know, disappearing all night and you had no idea where they were contact with you, so there are benefits for parents as well. But yeah, two things you mentioned there, which I think is so interesting. Firstly, that phones can be joyful and fun and interesting. I absolutely love my phone. I think it's so interesting, so relaxing. You know, I have like, immediate access to so many people that I love. I think what I've done on Instagram has been fascinating and has taught me. So I think I'm perfectly aware of all the problems, but I also don't think we should see them purely as problem things, you know. I think there's so much good in them as well. And I think if it's wonderful, if parents can be interested in that side of it. I was just reading a new book, which isn't here, so I can't flag it, but by Erin Walsh, and she says one of the first things she asked teenagers is, what do you like? What do you love about your phone? What do you get out of it? And just that curiosity and that acknowledgement that there might be something that they do love, I think, can be really helpful.
00:32:03.720 --> 00:32:48.819
And then the second thing that you mentioned, which I thought was interesting, is that teenagers can actually self regulate to an extent their own phone use, and that this is a skill that they have to learn, which absolutely all every adult now who, like, you know, in their 30s, who does all sorts of complicated things in their job, they have a phone, and they grew up with a phone. So and older than that, adults who didn't grow up with phone, but we all now have phones. And in order to achieve various things in our life, we have learned how to regulate our use. So that's actually a conversation that you can have with teenagers.
00:32:48.819 --> 00:33:11.039
Obviously, it's very scaffolded at first, but gradually, as they get into their later teens, it might be something that they decide for themselves. Will I put it in another room, etc? So how do you, even though phones are great, how do we sort of put buffers on them so they don't take over the other things that we want to do, and that is that can be an open, collaborative
00:33:11.700 --> 00:33:23.480
Yes, and from all the research I've done, I found that the easiest way to not have arguments in a house is for everyone to have similar rules. And so, you know, in terms of phone use, we don't use it around the dinner table.
00:33:23.660 --> 00:33:50.619
Everyone puts their phone out at night. We don't take them into the bedrooms, and the devices are removed. One of my child is less interested in handing over her things than the other one, but that's okay. And we, you know, having had discussions, she's fine about it, and she can see the benefit and and I see the benefit myself. So it's almost like, well, if it's good for me, and then it's good for them, and if it's if it's good for them, it's good for me and and actually, it's about sort of set sitting with ourselves and thinking, Why? Why should I have a different set of rules? Even
00:33:50.980 --> 00:33:53.619
this is everyone writing in this space.
00:33:54.099 --> 00:34:09.300
I've seen often advocating that, you know, the adults in the house need to well, either that you can collaboratively write rules together and then that the adults need to follow them as well, because teenagers hate the hypocrisy of
00:34:09.360 --> 00:35:01.440
100% that's the instant, immediately, my kids have got no problem with pulling me out if I try and say something, and they go, you're not doing it. And so no, absolutely, it's absolutely critical. And that's one of the things about dealing with a teenager rather than a young child. You've kind of got to be honest about your own behavior, and that's hard for us. We don't like it. I loved one of the things points you made, which was that there's an element of fear of change, that the reason we don't like phones is because it's kind of new. We've got a new industrial revolution, if you like, and that, I think you mentioned that in the past, there were headlines about how this horrific radio thing, the radiogram that was that was distracting children, and they weren't doing the work. And then there was the television. And I didn't have, you know, we didn't have a television until I was 10, so it's brand new in one.
00:34:56.920 --> 00:35:11.699
Respect. We don't have a choice about it as parents, and it is a massive headache, but it's also that it's not a new thing, in the sense that every generation has something, right?
00:35:11.760 --> 00:35:25.940
Yeah, and like, it was the same with the wireless. It was the same with, you know, video games, etc, television. Parents of teenagers will have grown up themselves in quite a different context.
00:35:22.099 --> 00:35:59.619
Whatever the details are, they will never be they will never have had an adolescence that's identical, although I guess what one of the things I really tried to convey in coming of age was that technology advances are different in each age, but that the underlying psychological processes are the same, and that feeling of being left out, for example, that that's happens across adolescences, regardless of the technological context. So I think sometimes there can be threads that can be drawn across different generations, even if the exact context is,
00:36:01.420 --> 00:36:52.539
yeah, one of the things that I think is really interesting about social media is the extent to which when our kids gain access to the world through the phone, they are gaining a value system from outside it. So it used to be that we'd be in our family homes and we would be socialized within our family and then our smaller community and our wider community, whereas now the big difference is that we are being given access to a much, much bigger community, and the language that's been used and the style of the values aren't necessarily anything like the values that we might have at home. Do you have any thoughts about how parents should consider their that side of it, because, again, we kind of want our teenagers and our kids to follow a value path that we hold dear, don't we?
00:36:53.019 --> 00:36:55.539
Do you mean things like Andrew Tate, what we're doing? Andrew
00:36:55.539 --> 00:37:27.139
Tate, absolutely, any of the any and and with girls as well. That you know that my daughter a while back said, oh, you know, these only fans, models, they're making so much money. And I said, Really? What? And she's clearly been looking at how much money them. And I said, Well, should we find out how much money they're making? And when I looked it up, it was 150 to $180 a month. And I just said, you know, that's the fact, but girls are being fed a narrative as well that is not, in my mind, healthy. So it's not just boys, and it's not just there's Miss Andrew, there's misogyny, there's whatever,
00:37:27.739 --> 00:38:12.599
yeah, and obviously there are all sorts of dreadful ideas and content of all different sorts of things on the internet. Parents do matter as well. You know, the young people do look a lot to their peers, but parents remain an important influence on all sorts of different things. So I think all that can happen, given what we said about, you know, the internet's not going away, is yet to maintain those open conversations and to have created an environment where you do have a conversation like that with your teenager. I mean, that's great that she for whatever, however that conversation came about, but that was a conversation she was interested in having with you.
00:38:08.760 --> 00:38:16.559
And yeah, I'm sure what you went and looked up and fed back to her. Did influence? Influence?
00:38:16.559 --> 00:38:27.139
Yes. So I think, yeah, that's the best you can do, really, is to model your own values and communicate them, and then hope that it's having some sort of impact.
00:38:27.559 --> 00:38:39.380
One last question, if there's anything that you'd be able to change about the narrative on mental health that's out at the moment or a best practice that you would like to see, what would that be? I would
00:38:39.380 --> 00:40:17.820
like to promote the idea that not all teenagers have mental health problems, the majority of them don't. I think it's really important to acknowledge and get help for the ones that do, but it's also very important that we acknowledge that they're in the minority, so that we take them seriously when when we do come across someone who has mental health problems, but also so that we don't assume everything is a mental health problem. And I fully understand how difficult this is on an individual level, but I think a lot of stress and challenge of adolescence does not fall under the realm of being clinical or pathological. And I think assuming that too readily is unhelpful for everyone. So that's one thing, right? And also, yeah, that, I guess, just a bit of optimism about every topic, the negative stories and headlines get clicks, and that's why that's obviously, yeah, but there's lots of, you know, there are lots of brilliant things that teenagers are doing on phones that are is relaxing and creative and fun. And you know, you can be a teenager with a phone in adolescence, and it doesn't cause. Problems. I think that's so important as well. I'm rather fixated on the other end of things, so I'm always keen to respect all of it and take it seriously. But there are lots of happy, functioning teenagers doing all sorts of interesting things, and we should promote them as well. I think
00:40:18.300 --> 00:40:23.599
I know that you've said that one of the things that's happened is we've gone online, bad, offline,
00:40:23.599 --> 00:40:47.079
good, which isn't true. It's not true. It's idea that it's it's good to be outside and it's bad to be on your phone. Is a serious oversimplification, and it's teenagers who sort of bear the brunt of that, because it means they're often deprived of doing things that they enjoy and find interesting, and yeah, I think they can both be good and they can both be bad.
00:40:47.440 --> 00:41:04.920
Yeah, it's just getting the balance. Dr Lucy, folks, thank you so much. I really appreciate you spending all of this time with us. I put your details in the notes. If there's a way that you would like people to get in contact with you. What's like you've said you're on Tiktok? What's the best way that people can find you?
00:41:05.340 --> 00:41:11.099
Instagram is probably the best route. Yeah, you've got
00:41:11.099 --> 00:41:16.320
this new, wait, you've got this new is a museum of what is it again? Museum
00:41:16.320 --> 00:41:31.579
of mental health in the media. This is a public engagement project that I'm doing with a PhD student called Isaac to try and start some public conversations about how mental health is discussed in song, TV, films and adverts.
00:41:31.579 --> 00:41:38.420
So if anyone's interested and can't find it on my Instagram, then feel free to message me.
00:41:35.420 --> 00:41:43.360
But yeah, generally, Instagram messages is the best, with the caveat that sometimes takes a while to get to it.
00:41:44.019 --> 00:41:53.139
Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you so much. If you found this useful right now, send it to somebody who might benefit. If you would like to give it five stars, feel free.
00:41:53.860 --> 00:42:09.719
You can find my details on www.teenagersuntangled.com you can email me at teenagers untangled@gmail.com I think that's it for now. If you have any other ideas or things you'd like me to discuss, just send me a message and have a great week.
00:42:09.780 --> 00:42:10.800
Big hug. Bye, bye.
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