This is the FCB Podcast network. Areas that we won't with say then we won't to say oh we got it? Does? No one can take that? Oway gonna be okay, A preas that we won't with say then we won't to say oh we got it? Does? No one can take that owayn't okay. Welcome back to another episode of Just Listen to Yourself with Kira Davis. I am your host, Kira, and this is a podcast where we take hot topics, hot button ideas, and we discuss the talking points on those topics, and we draw those talking points all the way out to their logical conclusions. So this is an exercise in persuasion, it's an exercise in critical thinking. And today we really are going to think critically through what I think is one of the more important questions cultural questions in our modern age, which is should we be banning social media for children? And this comes up, of course, after Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida has signed legislation banning social media for children under sixteen, or restricting it for children under sixteen, and then outright banning it for children under twelve. And you know what, a lot of people have had a lot of things to say about this, and it's not necessarily falling along partisan lines. Conservatives and liberals alike are questioning this law and asking whether or not this has gone too far for the government. And I don't know totally how I feel about this. I really don't. I recorded a short just saying about it last week and you can go back and find that. But I'm not I'm not sold on anything. But as a parent whose children, I was raising young children right at the beginning of social media. Social media is real, everyday use for kids, and so I was in this weird in between phase. I'll talk a little bit more about that as the podcast goes on, but it wasn't as pressing of a question, I guess is what I'm saying as it is for you younger parents these days. I mean, it's just everywhere and unavoidable, and there's a lot of pressures as a parent that come with it. Of course there's the pressures for our kids as well, but I think this is something we should think through together. So the question today is should we ban social media for children or is that going too far when it comes to government and intervention? And I want to start out by saying this when my children were younger and Facebook came along, that was really the first in the social media game as far as general popularity. I know he had MySpace before that, but Facebook became the thing that everybody was on, and even kids, and then I don't have to lay out the history for you, but my children were coming of age right in the Facebook era, and so for our son, we did not allow social media. We let him on YouTube. There weren't a lot of controls at the time, and so we monitored lightly his social media use. I've never been a snooper, and for better or for worse, I am actually not saying that that's a good thing. I'm just saying that's how I chose have chosen to parent. But I don't. I also don't agree with the whole idea of your kids privacy. I don't think your kids have any privacy. I just I don't know that I've been responsible enough of a woman to be snooping into my kids' lives every day. So I'm actually admitting that this is a weakness for me. I think I think I could have totally been more snoopy on my kids. Now. Thus far, I've got a twenty one almost twenty two year old and a sixteen almost seventeen year old. Thus far, nothing crazy has come up to where I'm like, oh, I should have been stricter, But I have some hindsight. I've got some years behind me now. So if you parents, you younger parents, want to know if I regret not being more snoopy. Yes, I do, and again not because my children have given me any sort of indication that I should be more SNOOPI er I of course, as they get older, more may come to light, but just in general, when I see all the dangers lourking on social media and I'm more familiar, I've more experienced now as an older mother, yeah, I think I should have been more snoopy. So I'm encouraging you to be more or snoopy with your kids. That's just the little advice from this end of the parenting game to the other end of the parenting game. And when social media and the Internet really began to ramp up, I thought of it as a really great thing and interesting thing. I loved the ability to connect with other people, to peek into the lives of other people in different parts of the world, and my son and I used the Internet and that way together. When he was younger, we would explore, we would go on Google Maps, we would explore YouTube channels, and then he began to explore YouTube channels and explore all of the creative opportunity that the Internet offered and social media offered. Now, because my son is older on the gen Z in the gen Z generation chart, social media wasn't It didn't take over his life. He's never been that big about it. Even to this day, he could take it or leave it. He does it to do for work for school, but other than that, he's not got his phone in his hand all day long on social media. My daughter is five years younger than him, different story. For her, social media is very important. We restricted it until she was thirteen, and then we allowed her to get an Instagram account, and now she has a couple of different accounts, and she does some other work in the creative space, so she's got some accounts that are related to her work. That's how we've done social media in this house. Again, I think because they're on the older end, I've been able to not being a snoopy parent. So having that what I consider to be a weakness I think one of the reasons maybe I've been able to get away with that at least thus far, is because my kids were they're in the later stages of this social media addiction, if you will, and so we've been able to to craft a life for our children that isn't so highly online, and that's been helpful, But that wasn't deliberate. And I think a lot of y'all out there, you younger parents, you have to be more deliberate about it than we were. I think I would be in big trouble right now if I were raising younger kids, or I would be very, very, very disciplined, I think. So I'd like to think that I'd be intelligent enough to be more disciplined about social media now, but I don't know. Let's get to the to the meat of this issue. So this is the Florida law that's the basis for this issue. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go over a couple of things. First, I want to read the law to you. Not read it like I do the other legislation on this show. Don't panic, but just go through a quick summary, because there are some ways that this legislation is set up that will matter for this conversation. So this is Florida's HB one House Bill one. It's a social media bill. I found a little a nice little summary on the Tallahassee Democrat, and here it says, here's what HB one Online Protection for Miners does. Will appoint summary. It requires social media platforms to prohibit kids fifteen and younger from creating new accounts, terminate existing accounts probably held by kids fifteen and younger, and allow parents and children to request termination of accounts. It requires social media platforms to use reasonable age verification methods to verify the ages of account holders and disclose specified policies and provide specified resources, measures and disclaimers. Authorizes the Department of Legal Affairs the DLA, to bring actions for violations under the Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. Provides penalties, declares that any social media platform accessible in Florida is subject to the jurisdiction of state courts. Okay, So then it drills down. This is a very good article on this. When it drills down, then it goes on to drill down on the legislation to give you more details. Because that's what I wanted to know. I was like, Okay, this sounds interesting, but what's enforcement, Like, what are some of the parameters. I wasn't sure if it was vague. In California, we passed vague laws and then we spend the next ten years carving out exceptions to those laws because they're so ridiculous until the law doesn't matter. We're currently in the midst of that with our minimum fast food minimum wage law, which just started today, the day I'm recording this episode April first, April Fool's Only. This is not an April Fol's Day joke. It's real. The minimum wage law that raises the minimum wage for fast food only fast food workers to twenty five dollars an hour, which of course has now put a lot of job people out of jobs and a lot of small mom and pop fast food places are going under. And they gave this weird carve out to Panera Bread. So in the law, embedded in the law is that weird little carve out that says businesses that bake and sell bread are exempt from this, but only businesses that have done that since before twenty twenty or something like that. They didn't want anybody getting why the didn't want McDonald's becoming bed breakers bread bread bakers say that five times fast. And then of course, of course there's this outrage, and now all of these shops are applying for their exemptions. What about theme parks where food is already grossly expensive there, and now the legislature's going nuts. It's just it's mass chaos. I think they've given out fourteen exceptions so far, including to theme parks. There's many more exceptions on the books. So that's how we that are that are there are many more exceptions that are waiting to be approved. We'll see. That's how we do it here in California. So I didn't know what was like that in Florida. I doubt it because they seem like they have a lot more sense than us. But I wanted to know more details. So this article provides more details. So it says, and this is a in a fun Q and a format, what social media sites does HB one target. That's a good question and one the legislators have avoided answering. Instead, the bill seeks to define qualities and practices the social media platform must have to be affected by the bill. The bill seeks to control online forums, websites, or applications that do any of the following right. Another bulletpoint list. Use algorithms that select and present content based on user information. Use addictive features such as infinite scrolling, push notifications or alerts, visible markers of clicks, legs, or reposts, video that plays without the user clicking on a play button. Live streaming functionality has ten percent or more users fifteen years of age or younger who spend on average at least two hours a day on the platform. The bill excludes sites and services designed for email or direct messaging. All right, what are some of the penalties for social media platforms? The bill declares any knowing violation by the social media platform to be an unfair and deceptive trade practice, subject to civil penalties up to fifty thousand dollars per violation. And then there's some other penalties. So they ask the platform to terminate the accounts, and there are other penalties if they don't do that. What can someone do if their account is mistakenly deleted under the bill. Under the bill, there's a minimum of ninety days for an account holder to dispute it and verify their age. It goes into effect July first of this year. Okay, that's it. Good. So that's the basic building blocks of this bill. That is the foundation of this discussion today, the Florida Bills for Florida. It's not for everybody, but we're wondering would this be moral or of value in context of a larger national policy. Did Paul Revere really say the British are coming? And how is George Washington chosen to leave the First American Army. Join us for the Growing Patriot podcast, a place for curious kids to ask the big questions about our nation's history and get kid friendly answers from the country's top experts. Help your child learn about and cherish America's exceptional history. Subscribe to Growing Patriots on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts today. All right, So, in light of that, I did some very minimal basic Internet researching on the effects of social media for children, and there's plenty of pulling out there. There's minimal research because this is a new phenomenon and so we probably won't really have good solid numbers for another decade or so, but there's enough out there to get a good idea and I'll just read to you. I just want to set up some of the things that quote the experts, authorities, people in medicine and therapy say about the effects of social media on children. I'm not declaring it any one way or the other. I went to find what I could consider to be the best, the closest to neutral sites. So I didn't go to like Politico or Red State to find these studies. Of course, you take everything with a grain of salt. This one is from McLean Hospital, McLean or McLean. We would say McLean in Canada, but I bet here in America it's McLean from Clean Hospital. The social dilemma, social media and mental health. This is one of the things that stood out to me. Here's one passage stood out. Social media has a reinforcing nature. Using it activates the brain's reward center by releasing dopamine, a feel good chemical linked to pleasurable activities such as sex, food, and social interaction. The platforms are designed to be addictive and are associated with anxiety, depression, and even physical ailments. According to the Pew Research Center, sixty nine percent of adults and eighty one percent of teens in the US are on social media. This was a large amount of the population at an increased risk of feeling anxious, depressed, or ill over their social media use. It goes on to talk about fear of missing out and how social media creates a type of anxiety, especially among children, because they seem like they might they feel like they might be missing out on some great fun out there, the fun that it looks fun on this picture, but it's not happen anywhere near me. And also desperate, the desperation for validation. So you look at others social media and they're getting a lot of likes, and they're getting a lot of responses, and you feel like you want that for yourself as well. This goes on to say a twenty eighteen British study tied social media use to decrease disrupted and delayed sleep, which is associated with depression, memory loss, and poor academic performance. Social media can use can affect user's physical health as well. Researchers now know that there is a connection between the mind and the gut and it can turn anxiety and depression into nausea, headaches, muscle tension, and tremors. This part was I found very interesting as well. This bullet point is titled the Digital Age of vulnerability. The earlier teens start using social media, the greater impact of platforms have a mental health and this is a specially true for females. While temales tend to express aggression physically, females do so relationally by excluding others and sharing hurtful comments. Social media increases the opportunity for such harmful interactions. I thought that was very interesting, particularly in light of Abigail Schreyer's book on the transgender phenomena among teenage girls. Her book is called Irreversible Damage is really good. I highly recommend it. It's the book that eventually got her kicked out of left wing reporting because she went to write this book to prove that this was a natural phenomenon phenomenon, and instead the evidence took her in a totally different direction. And she said, what was most alarming is how it was spreading among teenage girls. In the book, she compares it to bulimia or in action. And reading this and how social media actually is most effective or affects most teenage girls just reminded me of Abigail's research so much. And I don't think that we any of us would dispute that. I guess we'll get more of this as we think through the talking points, but I don't think any of us would dispute that the girls get a lot of validation from other girls, and when you get to do that on social media, I mean, look at the Keeping Up with the Kardashians. That's not a family full of guys, right, but we would call them social media royalty. And they've changed the social media industry that one single family loan. So I just thought that was very interesting. This article says, twenty years ago, a girl who was on the outs with her friends may have been excluded from activities, but she may not have known about it unless she was told about it explicitly. And of course now it can be splashed all over social media for everyone to know, so it's easier to shame and exclude. In addition to providing young people with a window through which they can view missed experiences, social media puts a distorted lens on appearances and reality. Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat increase the likelihood of seeing unrealistic, filtered photos at a time when teen bodies are changing. In the past, teens read magazines that contained altered photos of models. Now these images are one thumb scroll away at any given time. Apps that provide the user with air brushing, teeth whitening, and more. Filters are easy to find and easier to use. It's not only celebrities who look perfect now, it's everyone. When there's a filter applied to the digital world, it can be hard for teens to tell what's real and what isn't, which comes at a difficult time for them physically and emotionally. And it goes on to describe, you know, the typical pressures of puberty. Here's one from Yale Medicine, how social media affects your team's mental health. And they talk about the twenty twenty three advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health that came from the Surgeon General's Office. So the Surgeon's General Office has issued an advisory about social media. Again, you take that for what it's worth. I know we've certainly lost a lot of trust in our medical establishment, especially the medical establishment as it pertains to our government. I know we've lost a lot of trust in them over the years. So you can take this for what it's worth to you. So this article says the Surgeon General's warning was based on a substantial review of the available evidence, and it raises a variety of concerns, including amount of time adolescent spend up platforms, the type of content they consume, and the degree to which their online interactions disrupt activities essential for health, like sleep and exercise. The report stresses that the brain is going through a highly sensitive period between the ages of ten and nineteen. This is important. I want you to remember this point when identities and feelings of self worth are forming. I mean, my goodness, maybe that's the reason why we shouldn't be giving kids hormones cross sex hormones when, especially when they don't need them for any reason other than something they're saying they want. It's hard to it's hard to look at this and see this message from the from the surgeons from the Surgeon General's Office, and then see activists on TV trying to convince us all that giving a child, a ten year old to twelve year old, fourteen year old child, puberty blockers and hormal cross sex hormones has absolutely no long term effects. And yet here's the surge in general telling of social media has a long term effect in your child's development. Developing brain. Because your identity is forming between the ages of ten and nineteen, it makes you look differently at why people are so anxious to get a hold of your child's identity between the ages of ten and nineteen. The advisory points to a twenty twenty two survey of American teenagers and their parents by the Pew Research Center, which showed that a majority respondents felt social media helped teenagers feel more accepted fifty eight percent, like they have people who can support them through tough times sixty seven percent, that they have a place to show their creative side seventy one percent, and that they are connected to what's going on in their friend's life eighty percent. But also, according to a research study American teen American teens ages twelve to fifteen, those who use social media over three hours each day face twice the risk of having negative mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety. Teens can easily access extreme and appropriate and harmful content. In certain cases, depths have been linked to suicide and self harm related content such as cutting, partial ex phicion, partial asphyxiate, partial asphyxiation, and risk taking challenges on social media platforms, eating disorders is another concern, and sexual exploitation. The same study that I just talked about says that one third or more of girls age eleven to fifteen say they feel addicted to certain social media platforms, and over half of teenager's report it will be hard to give up social media. When asked about the impact of social media on their body image, forty six percent of at all lessons aged thirteen to seventeen said social media makes them feel worse, forty percent said it makes them feel neither better nor worse, and only fourteen percent said it makes them feel better. Additionally, sixty four percent of adolescents are often or sometimes exposed to quote hate based content through social media. And of course, studies have shown a relationship between social media use and poor sleep quality, reduced sleep duration, sleep difficulties, and depression. Okay, that's just a few of the points I don't want to take up. I feel like I've already been talking about this long enough. I also, I'm not going to read you this study, but I am going to bring this up. I was reading this a study or just a paper on brain development and how it the importance of different stages in your brain development. I was really most of me ised by how quickly your brain development begins. Pretty much your your brain cells are being formed pretty much about two weeks after conception. I mean, that's pretty pretty amazing. So the cells of the brain are forming and merging, and there are neurons beginning to form and snap or whatever before a mother even knows that she is with child. It's just incredible to me. But there are it says all the other things that you hear all the time, which you hear about. You know, why we shouldn't legalize marijuana. You don't want teenagers to be smoking too much of it, just like you don't want them to be drinking alcohol because it affects the brain. Right, the brain is still developing well and developing well into early adulthood. I think we all agree on that. I don't feel like I have to read you a lot of studies about that. I think everybody agrees on that. And if you don't, then maybe this isn't a shell that you're going to enjoy. Because we like logic and reason here, and I just don't think there's anybody who's thinking objectively who think that they're the way they thought at fourteen is at all the same as how they think at forty four. And if you do think the same way, I'm worried for you. Go get help. So I want to go through some of the arguments about the social media ban should we, shouldn't we? And I want to say I want to start with some of the arguments against this particular band in Florida and banning social media in general, and let's just think through them based on what we've heard through these studies and other things, and what the law says. Okay, one argument against the Florida law is that this is the government overstepping its boundaries. These are decisions for parents to make and the government should not get involved. If they can do this, then they can do anything. And then, of course you have the typical the libertarians are always out there calling the rest of us hypocritesic. You guys are hypocrites. You say you're for freedom, but then you want laws like this that you serve parental rights. I'm pretty free tom minded, fairly libertarian, and a lot of my legal views, and I just think that that's very disingenuous. It's not everything is black and white, right, and we do have laws. Libertarians there are things called laws out there right that do usurp our own judgment when it comes to the law of the land, and so we do need some laws. That doesn't mean that the government. Every time the government makes a lot, it's overstepping a boundary. But that's the argument that's being made. This is a violation of parental rights. And I, as a parent advocate and somebody who's been working to wrestle back the public school system and as an opinion journalist in general, you guys know, I am huge on parental rights, and I think the parental unit is the default unit for who to go to to decide what's got for a child. The parents are the default until proven otherwise. I also recognize that while I believe I should make the decisions for my children, particularly and when it comes to what they're learning in school as far as values and morals and that kind of stuff, obviously I believe I'm the first line of defense for my child and the first decision maker. That being said, there are some things that I agreed to let the government decide for me. The government gets to decide what age my child drinks alcohol at. I can't give alcohol legally to my two year old. I can't legally give alcohol to my sixteen year old. My sixteen year old can only just now drive. She couldn't get a license at twelve, She had to wait till she was sixteen. In my mind as a mother, I might have felt she was able to get that driver's license at thirteen or fourteen. And before you laugh that, those of you who live in farm country know that's right around when you start driving, because you've got to drive the tractors, you got to drive the farm equipment. I know a lot of kids who live in rural areas who have to drive themselves to school. And the fact I had plenty of friends in the Midwest when I went to college in the Midwest who grew up in rural and I mean bury rural areas who were driving at fourteen, who got special driver's license to be able to drive to school and home. So I might think my child's ready at fourteen, But my government says no, sixteen, and we all seem to accept that right. We accept that the voting age is eighteen. There even if I, as a parent, might think my child is intelligent and developed enough to make a political decision before eighteen. He hasked to wait till eighteen. So there's plenty of stuff that you can't do, even if I, as a parent, will want my child to do or don't have a problem with it. Plenty of stuff that the government has already decided on and we don't argue over that, and you don't call all of us hypocrites because we abide by that law. And so I don't know where you stand on this issue. Is this and is this something that's comparable to say a marijuana law or an alcohol law when it comes to what a parent can decide for their kids or not. I think that's the question here when you're considering this talking point, and I don't I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. But we're going to talk through some of the other things that maybe we'll circle back, maybe it'll give us some more clarity on this point. So others say it's authoritarian and this could lead to government intervention and social media and we don't want the government involved in dictating what social media can and can't do. And I think we're all very familiar with the arguments and consequences around that arrangement. Look what we just went through through COVID twenty twenty. The government. By the way, the Biden administration still has They still have some agents in some social media areas. Facebook is still working closely with the FBI and still has close contact with the Biden administration. By all accounts, Elon Musk came in and changed the culture at Twitter. If you have not read the Twitter files by reporters like Michael Schellenberger, Matt Tayebe, and Barry Weiss, please go just search the Twitter files because you're not going to find that those stories in mainstream media. But there wasn't enough fan beear for what they uncovered, just literally chilling stuff. Why I don't it's not literally chilling stuff, metaphorically chilling stuff, including the FBI having agents that actually worked at Twitter. They at in fact, and I've probably already talked about this on this show, but in fact, not only did they have agents working at Twitter, embedded in the Twitter offices, not sort of communicating by email, sent those agents there. Eventually because they were doing so much work for Twitter, they ended up getting paid by Twitter. So that's not a conflict of interest. And that's just one of the hundreds of really weird and chilling things that they uncovered. So before Elon Musk got to Twitter, there was a very disturbing intertwining of government and social media that carries on today, although it does feel like it's loosening up a little bit, and thanks in no small part to Elon Musk. And now there are other conservative money makers out there, players, big players who are now getting in on the social media game to keep government out of it for just that reason. So we know that the information that they censored during COVID and then they just spread their own misinformation. The Ivermectin thing is just blows my mind. It blows my mind. This is just not a huge story in the mainstream media. But then of course they'd get caught on their own, hoisted by their own patard as it were, if they did, because here they were saying, you Trump spreading dangerous in disinformation. People are out there spreading all this dangerous disinformation about COVID. People were getting banned for saying it's healthy for you to be outside in the sunshine. People were getting their social media accounts banned for that. Listener, if you're listening to this for some reason down the road fifty sixty seventy five years. It was just that crazy. I'm not lying to you. People were having not only that they were losing their jobs, they were had Some people even had things like their bank accounts frozen. Just weird crazy visits from the FBI for going on social media and demanding that the classroom be open, or saying that being out in sunshine and losing weight will protect you, will help protect you against COVID. People were banned for saying that ivermectin will protect you from COVID. Joe Rogan, a famous podcaster Future Listeners, a very famous podcaster and comedian, was excoriated, had his YouTube channel suppressed, choked, banned, I think even for a moment, for saying he was on ivermectin. Ivermectin was then shamed throughout media as a horse tranquilizer, some kind of horse drug. Now four years afterwards, people we're prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID, but social media was banning it as disinformation when people would discuss it. That's the kind of crazy we want to avoid. We don't want to go back to that. So people say, if we let the government put these restrictions on social media and really place these outright bands for certain people that we're just one step away from, you know, back in back into that unhealthy cabal of social media and government. I share those concerns. I think that that is a valuable and valid concern to have about this. We don't want to go back to that. We don't want the government making arbitrary decisions about information. And that's where I think we could draw a line here. If I'm thinking through this particular talking point that we're endangering, you know, the oversteps of government control, government oversight, and that's where I think we could draw the line here. It's why I really liked how the Florida bill lays it out. Instead of going after platforms right and naming platforms, is going after the process. It's going after the algorithm. We're not going after communication, We're not going after what's being said. We're going after these algorithms, these prescriptions. Now, if we look here's my main argument. I'm going to make this main argument about why I think maybe there is a good valid argument for banning social media for kids if we look at social media as a drug. I think there's a really good case here. And the way the Florida Bill sets up this standard, if you will, of the algorithm of is there continuous scrolling live video that plays automatically a system for likes and clicks. We all talk about how addictive that is. We say it with ease, and there's proof that it is addictive because it activates I just read you the base of those studies in the first segment. But it activates these dopamine hits. It's a literal it's not that's physical, that's not mental, that's not just something you feel. It's actually measurable that you get a dopamine hit. It's the same thing that will come to you if you had a hit of heroin or meth or cocaine nless use cocaine, for example, if you took a drug, an illicit drug, or if you had sex. This is why sex is so it's such a delicate and precarious situation for humanity. It's why you should really limit your sexual partners, and I think they should be held to within a marital commitment because sex is a drug. And if you're if you're having different sexual partners, you are creating these new, actual literal connections in your brain. So these dopamine connections. They're creating reword in your brain and the person that you're active with becomes an addiction. I watch a lot of dayline, y'all know that, and there's always stories about affairs and someone murders over an affair they wanted to be with their affair partner. And a lot of times people around those affair partners will say it was like they were on drugs. They couldn't get enough of each other. And that's what it is. It's hard to break the affair because you are literally addicted to the dopamine hit of that affair. And if social media is doing that same thing, if it's giving you the same dopamine hit that cocaine gives you, or marijuana or whatever, or alcohol, is it so wrong? Then is it bad to say no, this isn't good for kids, This is not unhealthy. We have to ban this. They shouldn't be able to consume it. It's creating addictive connections in their brains. And again, I quoted you a couple of studies, but I don't even think I had to do that. I think every person listening to this would agree, we would agree with what it does for ourselves and then you can there's what's the one on Netflix that there's a show on social media on Netflix? And if even if you watch the spacebook story, what was that? The social dilemma or whatever, you'll you'll see the itchy practices that social media giants go to to addict you. This is not just guessing games. They are They do deep, deep, intensive studies on what will get you to look at your phone and keep your eyes on your phone. Colors, frame rates, light brightness, patterns, sounds. They do the same in casinos. That's all very scientific. It's not a guessing game, and it's not just marketing. It's science. So they are using the real science, measurable science the brain to create social media that you will not leave again. Does that not qualify as a drugs not qualify? That doesn't qualify as addictive. There's a lot of evidence out there that pharmaceutical companies purposefully manipulated opioids to make them as addictive as possible, to make them addictive, to not prescribe them safely. Because the more people are prescribed, the more addicted people become, the more they'll come back for more. And that's what social media is this is the same process. And as it turns out, both drugs, social media and opioids activate the same centers of the brain. So I think it's very interesting that the Florida law chose to address the algorithm nature of the addiction, not the platform. And that tells me that their thinking is kind of like my thinking here, which is this is possibly a drug, And if we're going to limit drugs for kids, why wouldn't we limit this as well? Did Paul Revere really say the British are coming? And how is George Washington chosen to leave the First American Army. Join us for the Growing Patriot podcast, a place for curious kids to ask the big questions about our nation's history and get kid friendly answers from the country's top experts. Help your child learn about and cherish America's exceptional history. Subscribe to Growing Patriots on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Today, I want to read to you this article from Public med Central on brain development and says that your brain is developing all the way up until twenty five and there are five different stages and this, for I think this is stage number four. Is it's called synapse synapse pruning. The overproduction of synapsis is followed by a pruning back of the unused and over abundance of synapses until the stage of synapigenesis. The stages of brain development are largely gene driven. However, once the brain reaches the point where synapsis are eliminated, the balance shifts. The process of pruning is largely experienced driven. As with synapse production, the timing of synapse pruning is dependent on the area of the brain in which it occurs, in parts of the cortex involved in visual and auditory perception per For example, I'm gonna pause here for a second. I'll let you guys know. I'm sure you can hear me stumbling over a lot of words. I'm having deep I'm having a lot of brain thog lately. I'm to blame it on menopause. I'm gonna hope it's menopause. I'm not drinking anymore, so I can't blame it on the alcohol. I don't do drugs, so I'm gonna say that it's brain fog. And it's been and it's been a long time since I've had COVID, and I didn't have these experiences during COVID or immediately following COVID. So I'm gonna blame menopause, but yeah, I definitely find that it's harder to put the words together and to get the words to spit out of my mouth. So please forgive me. I'm not an idiot, I just am old, Okay, moving forward. In contrast, I'm sorry. In the parts of the cortex involved in visual and auditory perception, for example, pruning is complete with between the fourth and sixth year of life. In contrast, pruning in areas involved in higher cognitive functions like inhibitory control and emotion regulations continues through adolescence. Do you understand what this means. I'll summarize it, and you'll just have to trust me that I'm also summarizing some other other parts that I don't want to go on to read that. At some point the pruning back of all of these connections that your brain makes to pruning or I would say honing or refining of this of this thought process, at some point it becomes experience based, which means your pre pubescent and pubescent child, the things that they are experiencing. That's the most important part of brain development. And so if they're not having enough healthy, good experiences, it's going to inhibit the synapse, the pruning of these synapses, the honing of the mind. Basically, it's going to prevent that. And so if all your child's experiences are online, then that is what is developing your brain. That's what's pruning and honing and refining your brain. So when you get a gen Z employee and you don't understand why they can't anticipate what needs to have happen next on their task list, think about how underdeveloped their brain might be. They haven't had a chance, they haven't been able to prune and hone and refine the thought process, or it's been honed by other things that you and I could never have imagined at their age. Think about if that six hours of their day is spent scrolling through TikTok and it's affirmation TikTok and gender affirming TikTok and gender theory TikTok. Believe me a TikTok relationship TikTok. And now think about how we just talked about the drugs right and then and then think about how we just read those studies about how children are now they're looking at a distorted image, right teeth whitening, apps and filters, And now think about I'll put it all together, and you've got brains that are being refined by distorted images that are not out in real life, in real time, having real experiences, and being able to judge the world and base the world and process information about the world based on real world, direct physical experiences. It's all online. Now that becomes a little more concerning. Now, is it any wonder that we are seeing this mind virus and this ideology, this viral ideology sweeping across our schools. It makes a lot more sense when you understand that there is a honing process going on in the minds of our children, and based on what is the available information to hone and refine the synapsis, the process of synapsis, it's no one. We're seeing so many seemingly immature adults. They have not made the right connections, they have not had the right experiences. Again, if we limit drugs and alcohol for kids because it affects their brains and bad ways, I think there's ample evidence that social media affects our children in bad ways and maybe even worse than drugs and alcohol, maybe even worse, because I can go get my kid rehab for a drug addiction. I can help my lock my kid up in a room and help them dry up from alcohol. You know, I I there are there are some ways I could limit my child's exposure to drugs and alcohol. But social media and the availability of the internet and phones and personal devices, it's that's a much larger problem to contain. I can still do it. I can still do it. It can be done. But what you have to do is just it's huge. It's such, it's so available, it's everywhere, and it's so accepted. It's almost I feel like I would almost have an easier time taking a needle from my son than his phone. And you know this instinctively too, because if you ever tried to take a phone from your active you're very socially active teenager. Our churches still do this, and I love this. We've we're in a new church now, but even our previous church did this, and I'm sure yours does too. When it came time for youth camp, whatever kind of youth camp, phones go in a lock box. Now they can take the phones to camp and so that they can have them, so they're not they're not unavailable, but camp communications go through to parents the old fashioned way. The counselor sends an email. Parents can call up to the camp if they need to check up on the kids. Otherwise you're handing your kids to these adults, and you're saying, I trust you with my child, and it's so hard. I have been there. When the kids are getting on the bus and the youth leaders are telling them to put their phones in the buckets, it's surprising in two ways. One you'd be surprised to see how many kids do it joyfully. They're almost happy to be free of this, and a lot of the counselors will report that too, increased levels of happiness and contentment, and the kids are actually happy that they don't have an excuse to go pick up the phone. It's almost like the phone is there. They can't not do it. They have to pick it up, they have to look at it. But if it's not available to them, they're relieved. But then you always get the few kids who have an absolute meltdown, and it's distressing to watch a fourteen year old child have an absolute fit because she has to give up her phone for the weekend and she hasn't had I'm to alert her friends where she's going. And you can laugh and giggle at it, but it's actually frightening to see because it's not you know, that's that's not very serious, you know what I mean. You don't have cancer, you don't have HIV, you're not pregnant, there's not a nuclear bomb isn't heading your way any moment. These are not. This is not a life and death issue. But to watch that child have that kind of meltdown to them, it is. And that's scary. That's scary. And to the credit of the parents I've seen in these situations, they pushed their kids on that bus and they say deal with it, and that's probably the best place for them to be to deal with something like that. But when you look at it like that, I don't know. I think I may have talked myself into being in favor of this band after going through all of this with you guys, But honestly, when I honestly this is true, when I started this, I wasn't sure because I am very libertarian in a lot of ways. I don't call myself a libertarian. I will never be one, y'all are two. I think when it comes to issues like faith, religion, and some of the moral boundaries of government, I can't get there with y'all. I can't, So I'm never going to be a libertarian. But I'm very libertarian and a lot of my views and so this was really rubbing up against that. And I believe and appreciate all of the arguments against banning social media leaving this in the hands of parents. But I think after talking through this, I think I would have to I would have to view social media as a drug. I think I do. I think I have to view it as a drug like alcohol or perhaps some would even say marijuana, which it can be recreational. It's not necessarily something that has to be addictive. If you use heroin or method petamines, you're going to be addicted instantly. That's scientific, which scares me. Probably one of the reasons I've never ever tried a hard drug because I know I actually do have an addictive personality. I know this about myself, and since I've quit using alcohol, I have discovered that I haven't gotten rid of addiction. And I use a term addiction lightly because I definitely wasn't an alcoholic. I don't, and I'm very sensitive about calling myself an alcoholic because I don't want to. I want to respect, you know, people who do are alcoholics, and respect the definition of that. But I certainly exhibited addictive behavior around alcohol. And what I have found is if I'm not indulging in alcohol addiction or dependency or prod, I'm getting addicted to something else. Right now, it's Coca cola, and frankly, the amount that I drink is not good or it's also. One good addiction that I have has been walking. So when I get stressed and I can't deal with that by having a drink or a glass of wine, I'll go out and walk, get that dopamine hit right, get those endorphins running. And I just find that it's just it's whack a mole with the addictions. It just goes from one thing to another. And social media, I get it. I feel the same way. When my dad was in the hospital before he passed away. He was in the hospital for eleven days in a coma, and I had to sit by his side, and I had to go to a place. I had to go to Rhode Island. He was in Rhode Island. I knew no one. I didn't live there. Family came in and we were by his bedside off and on, and there was nothing to do. I didn't know anybody. He was in a shared room, so there wasn't much privacy. There was nothing to do. So what did I do? I started flipping through social media and I started to realize why TikTok was so addictive. And I just spent hours, hours sitting by his bedside, flipping through social media, and I developed a TikTok addiction. I did. I found it to be very hard to put down. Did Paul Revere really say the British are coming? And how was George Washington chosen to lead the first American Army. Join us for the Growing Patriot podcast, a place for curious kids to ask the big questions about our nation's history and get kid friendly answers from the country's top experts. Help your child learn about and cherish America's exceptional history. Subscribe to Growing Patriots on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts today. So I think, through the course of thinking through this reading what I read to you, I think I am in favor of banning or restricting social media for at least younger kids, and maybe that might mean banning certain types of phones. Even now we get into that, right. I've had this argument with Steve Hilton. He used to be on Fox News. Now he's a contributor and he has California rebel base here in California where he covers California issues. His wife worked for Facebook, and Steve he wouldn't give me a lot of details, but I'll tell you this. Steve and his wife have two children, and they have never let their children, their children are teenagers, they have never even let their children have a cell phone. Steve has said that's like giving your kid a drug, and if you knew what I knew, you wouldn't. He's told that to me, and I've still given my kids phones on social media, but I'm just passing that along and he's on the inside, and he says, even your kids should not even have a smartphone. And that's the thing I would say to you, younger parents, if I had it to do over again, surely would have limited my kids to a flip phone. I think cell phone technology is great and a great development, and I think it's great for you to be able to reach your child anywhere and to have that little location tracker. But I don't think unfettered access to the Internet has been great and social media know, And if I had to do it over again, I would have given them their cell phones, but it would just be a non internet phone, would just be for emailing, texting, calling. And I see a lot of you out there making that choice these days, and I do see this stuff kind of rolling back, and I'm grateful for it, and I want to encourage you. I want to encourage you, and I want to encourage you to resist that pressure, that pure pressure I gave into it. I think too early, And if I had to do it again, I would wait. I don't think there's necessarily a whole lot of benefit to it. Besides it, it's fun, and there are some benefits. Why don't we go through those things second before I totally land on this and call it a day. There are some benefits to letting your child be on social media. I'll give you this anecdote. My daughter's a concert goer. She loves concerts. She goes to dozens a year with my husband. You know her and her dad are they're they love concerts. I'm not a concert person because I'm not a crowds person. So that's their thing. I've taken my daughter. We did. I'm the road trip mom. I'll take you on a week long road trip. One day I let her combine it. We went to Denver and I drove. We drove from here to Denver. We stopped, we took our time. It's only an eleven hour drive, so we made it a few days of it. Stopped at the Grand Canyons, stopped at Arches National Park, did some exploring, and then we topped it off with a concert of her favorite band in Denver. And then we did the same thing on the way home. Made some pit stops, you know, stopped to see some scenic outlooks, that kind of stuff. And when she travels to concerts, her and my husband do La la palooza. Now that's one of their favorite things to do. They'll be going again this summer. She meets people because half of concert life is lines. You're waiting in lines, you're trying to get the barricade position. I have learned being a concert mom, that barricade is to be right up front, closest to the barricade there before the stage, and you what do you do for four or five hours sitting in line? You meet people, you talk, you chet and my daughter has made friends that she meets at concerts wherever she goes. Now, oh, this is my friend that loves this band. We're going to meet up at this concert, and we're always there with her. She ows as a parent at these concerts. But she's been able to meet people from different parts of the world and maintain friendships with them over these common loves because of social media, and that's been great. Social media has also given my children a chance to establish their own businesses. My son and my daughter are both creative people, and so they have learned to use social media to start our own businesses. I won't share much about those businesses, but not much different than other kids are doing, which is a lot of content related stuff. But that's taught them how to manage money right, how to what taxes are, stuff like that. It's given them a really good connection between output and income. You get what you put into it, and how hard it is actually to make money on social media and the amount of effort you have put in. So it's taught them in a way a work ethic. When they've been able to frame social media around it being a business for them, so that matters. That's been valuable for them. There's been plenty of great benefits for social media for me as an adult. We're talking about Showey Bannett for kids as an adult. Someone asked a question on Twitter yesterday, do you even really know anyone that you're good friends with? Quote good friends with on social media? And I was able to say, yes, Actually, my best friends almost all of them. The best friends I have in my circle are people to this day that I met on social media, that I met on Twitter and knew them as Twitter people, and then we're able to meet up over the years. And now there's a group of friends I have who we were first. We were first friends on social media, and then we became friends in real life when we would meet at conferences and gatherings that revolved around our shared interests. And although we no longer do those activities, we love each other so much. We meet up once a year just for a friends trip. We meet up in a different city every year. I've met those people in social media and they are my best friends. They have been there for me in person in real life when I have needed them, driven in the middle of the night to help me, helped me move God to see my family in hospital. Yes, so another great thing about social media. Another great thing about social media is to be able to peek into the lives of others. That's something I could never do as a child. I had to wait for my national geographic to come every month, or hopefully that you would see something on TV about what it's like to be a teenager in California or a teenager in Northern Canada. But now we can look and peek into the lives of people right through our phones, and the world's a little bit smaller, and in that respect, perhaps that is a really fun and good thing. Social media can introduce you to different cultures and different things. Whereas we may have been ignorant before and said and done ignorant things to people who didn't look like us, or believe like us, or share our culture. Now social media has made that so accessible that I think our kids are less likely to judge each other harshly based on cultural proclivities. Then that's a good thing. But those are good things of social media. Yeah, I made the connection about work and creativity. So those are the good things of social media. But going back to my argument that I keep getting hung up on, really, I think the question here is of social media drug. Really, if you're making a judge, a value judgment on this banning question, is it a drug? And there's a lot of good things I can say about alcohol. Use right, we use it in church, We take communion with it. The wine. You don't have to, but traditionally it's used in church. It's good for social gathering. So I mean, look at Jesus at his first miracle turning water into wine. It was a big deal. It's very important for social gatherings. And we gather around drinking, and there's good culture around drinking. It's not all bad. There's good. It can engender warm feelings, it can assist in social situations, act as a sort of social lubricriant lubricant if you will, and it assists in socializing. And it can be fun. It can be something that brings you a little bit of enjoyment. So there are good uses for alcohol. It's also good for medicine different ways. There are good uses. But I don't think any of us would say it's not addictive. And we all know somebody who can drink socially. One of my best friends, she is only a social drinker. She has tons of alcohol in her house, she loves having people over to make cocktails and do stuff for them. But she doesn't drink alone. And it's not She doesn't even have to be disciplined about it. She doesn't have to actively tell herself, I don't want to drink alone because she doesn't want to. For her, drinking is purely social. That's it. Me. I love drinking alone. I love it, and in fact, when I'm out, I don't feel the need to drink just to get along with people. But when I'm alone, drinking feels better to me, So I'm not that So for her, there are people for whom drinking is only social and only a good thing and only comes with good experiences. And that's fair, and I think social media we could judge the same. But there's this other darker side. There's this other darker side to alcohol. Not all of us can can drink so casually. We have to make other calculations. So I think, as I go through all of this, I'm landing on I do believe we should have some restrictions for social media, media and perhaps even cell phones for our kids. And does this mean we have a lot more thinking to do. Yes, because the enforcing is difficult, and that's that's probably a whole other area for a whole whole other show, and I would need people who understand the law better to help me with that. But I do think that there are some questions around enforcement enforcement measures. What does that look like for parents, for teens, for social media companies, something to keep chewing on foreshore. I think I have convinced myself by the end of this podcast that it would be a good thing to ban social media for children under a certain age if you see it as a drug, and I believe I do. Let me know what you think. Write to me jlty at ProtonMail dot com. Jlt Y at ProtonMail dot com. Don't forget to go buy my book Drawing Lines Why Conservatives must begin to battle fiercely in the arena of ideas. Sign up for my substack. I'm going to be traveling into the fine state of Georgia all next week, and so if you've hit me up on social media at real Kira Davis, uh, maybe you'll see some pictures of me trapsing around Georgia. I'll be in Savannah, which I'm really looking forward to. It's a beautiful place and I haven't been there in many years. Well, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this, because really, you heard it here. You heard me make this decision in real time, I think, And so I want to know if you heard anything today that made you change your mind for or against it. I'd love to know what your process has been. All Right, until we meet again, everyone, don't forget Every once in a while, I'll just stop and listen to yourself that we won't to say, and then we won't to say, oh we gott it does no one get digte o and okays that we won't with say, then we won't to say, oh we gott it does no long to take that oway, Ma, don't be okay. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where Real Talk Lives. Visit us online at fcbpodcasts dot com.
