And so what was that pivotal moment that you saw with your daughter, Rosie?

You know, there was one evening she was we followed the advice out there.

And I just say it doesn't work.

It's old.

It's based on old science.

And every night we struggled to get her off.

And it got harder and harder to get her off YouTube, to get her off the phone, the iPad.

Step one, take it away.

What are some of the adverse effects that you have found maybe in the last 5 to 10 years regarding screens and ultra-processed food as it relates to children's emotional, physical development?

Yeah.

You know, I think some of the strongest evidence...

So there's a lot of evidence has come out in the last five years with ultra processed foods, even while I was writing this book.

I think there is kind of a unanimous agreement among most scientists that ultra processed foods trigger most people to overeat.

And it's significant.

It's like 500, hundreds of calories extra a day.

Yeah.

If it really doesn't matter, then who cares? Yeah.

It doesn't matter, right? We're just, it's dinner, right? Um, and so let go of kind of this need to micromanage, you know? And, like, and if she comes in and says like, "I don't wanna chop the carrots, I wanna do this," which she does a lot, like, "Okay.

Okay, well, what do you wanna do?" You know, if, and if, "I don't, I wanna make my own dish." "Okay, make your own dish." Like, right? Like, let them have a voice, right? And, and a, and a say in what you're doing.

This is a team project.

This is not me.

I'm not some s- chef, right, like directing it.

And so that's the autonomy.

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

Like they want rats and mice and apes to press buttons.

Pigeons.

It's almost like an iPad, right? It really, it really is like press, press, press, tap.

And for a long time, they could light up this one region of the brain and it, and the animals would go crazy tapping.

Tap, tap all day long.

They wouldn't even go to the bathroom.

That's where you get the serotonin and the endorphins.

And my guess is it's the same mechanism of action, right, in the brain, right?

Yes.

I mean, this is how our brain works with habits and things that we do kind of unconsciously every day is right.

Is there some trigger, right? Or cue something? It can be something you see, something you smell, but also a thought, a feeling.

And that trigger activates a dopamine surge and activates a wanting.

OK, when I when I when I feel a little bit bored, I want to check social media.

Right.

Like, of course, they're they're like super marketers.

That makes me so sad to hear, 'cause it just shows the power these devices have on people's attention.

Yeah, and the power they have on people's time and money as well.

In her 15 years of researching, Natasha found four features that when combined together can trigger a trance-like state in people.

You lose track of time, where you are, what you're doing.

Scientists call this the machine zone or dark flow, and some people have a really hard time stepping away from a device when they're in this state.

And Natasha realized that apps on phones can sometimes trigger this same machine zone state.

How'd you do that?

We canceled all of our subscriptions and now have to buy each video a la carte.

... execute, yeah, your plan, your five-step plan.

Yeah.

The dopamine system is this powerful part of our brain.

It's in basically every animal that's been studied, and its goal is to fulfill your needs as a human.

And so it's very powerful.

Like one, one researcher told me, "What does the dopamine system do? It tells the rest of the brain what's gonna happen." [laughs] So if the dopamine system decides this is important, the kid becomes very motivated, very excited, very willing to work hard to get it.

And so it is there in our kids' brains to get them to fulfill what they needed to survive, what feels like survival, right? And so of course food is one of them, food and water.

Slow drip dopamine

That makes me so sad to hear 'cause it just shows the power these devices have on people's attention.

Yeah, and the power they have on people's time and money as well.

In her 15 years of researching, Natasha found four features that when combined together can trigger a trance-like state in people.

You lose track of time, where you are, what you're doing.

Scientists call this the machine zone or dark flow, and some people have a really hard time stepping away from a device when they're in this state.

And Natasha realized that apps on phones can sometimes trigger this same machine zone state, so she started to analyze the design of apps, social media, games in the same way.

Yes, it does.

Neuroscientist Jonathan Morrow studies addiction at the University of Michigan, and he thinks this ingredient is probably the most important, and he explained how it works.

Like, it's telling you to go to the thing.

That's right.

It gives you the feeling of, of I want this.

And not just the feeling of like, "Oh, I kinda wanna hang out with my friends," or, "I kinda wanna go to the park." It's the feeling of like, "I need to do this, and if I don't do it, I'm gonna feel bad," right? "I'm gonna feel disappointed.

I'm gonna..." It, it, it's also if you talk to a lot of neuroscientists they'll say it's, it's willingness to work.

So it's the feeling of like, "I'll do anything to get this." And, you know, kids, kids and video games are, are interesting with this, right? Like if they're used to playing video games and somehow you block it, they'll work really hard to get that video game, right? They'll like hack into the computer and like do all these things, and that's dopamine, right? So it's, it's, it's...

And the reason why we have this is because this is the part of our brain that is responsible for getting the things that we need to survive.

And I'm in my 40s.

Okay

... what the method is is to find something that's just as exciting and alluring, maybe even more exciting than LEGO Ki- LEGO Girls.

Um, and maybe at first it won't seem that way to the kid, but over time, as they experience the pleasure of it, it will start to feel like, oh, this is even better.

So let me give you an example.

So when we decided, like, we actually at some point were like, "Okay, we're not gonna have any screens after dinner," because my nervous system can't handle it, and, like, nobody in the house's nervous is...

You know, like, we wanna get ready for bed.

So I didn't say, "Okay, Rosie, sorry, LEGO Girls is out." I said, "Okay, we're gonna take a break from LEGO Girls.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And I just say it, it doesn't work.

It's old.

It's based on old science.

And every night we struggled to get her off, and it got harder and harder to get her off YouTube, to get her off the, the phone, the iPad.

One night she was screaming, yelling, and she actually curled up under a desk, like whimpering, and I was just like, "I am so done with this.

Why are we doing this?" And I thought I was doing it because she loved it so much, and it was her favorite activity.

Step one, take it away? [laughs]

Yeah

... right? So we really need to, we need to present these alternative activities as fun and interesting and exciting.

Um, and then I think the other thing that is lost in the advice world out there is we really have, especially if a kid is, has a habit of eating ultra-processed foods or being online and being wa- you know, watching a lot of videos, is we have to create times and places in their routine where it just is not an option.

Like, it just, like, completely vanishes.

Like, you can't just, like, s- put the video console in the living room and turn it off and say, "Nope, not now," because this is just going against a h- like, all of, like, 100,000 years of evolution for that kid to, like, pull towards it because that thing has been designed to make them feel like it's absolutely essential for their lives for them to play that game.

And so I think you have to create these spaces where the other option is the only one.

Um, in the book I talk about, I think, a really great place to start is the car or the train, like, on your commute.

It's apples and oranges because-

What is actually happening in their brain during that transition where they're not able to get off?

Yeah.

So one thing to, to, to keep in mind is that dopamine triggers wanting and desire, like I said, but it's not like, "Oh, I kinda wanna go to my friend's house," or, "Oh, I, I want world peace," or, "I kinda wanna improve my relationship with my mom." It's not like that, right? It is like, "I need this to survive." Dopamine is there to keep us alive and make sure we get what we need to survive.

So food, water, eventually sex, but for kids, also social support, exploration, creation.

These are fundamental needs of humans, and dopamine's there to not just get the kid to want it, but to go get it.

So a lot of neuroscientists will tell you dopamine is like willingness to work.

Like you're gonna work hard, right? And you're, you're gonna fight.

But it's, we're really seeing changes to the baseline, right? Like, this is what we're most concerned w- with.

were some of the first things if you can name one or two that you really learned from her that you saw your daughter's rosie that you saw affect rosie's behavior and mental health what were they

You know, one of the things is what you're talking about, right? Like, so in our society, we shoo kids away, especially little toddlers when they want to try to help, right? Because we think they just want to play, they want to make a mess.

And so like, there's studies on this that American parents, if you say like, okay, if your three-year-old comes up to you while you're doing the dishes, can I help? Or, you know, tries to help, probably just tries.

Most American parents would shoo them away and tell them to go play.

Yeah.

Um, the, the same study, they asked the Maya parents, what would you do? And the Maya mom says, well, you know, I, I would be a little worried cause she's going to make a mess, but I would give her a job or that would, that would, that she could do that she would be capable of.

Right.

jackpot.

Mm-hmm.

And I just say it, it doesn't work.

It's old.

It's based on old science.

And every night we struggled to get her off, and it got harder and harder to get her off YouTube, to get her off the, the phone, the iPad.

One night she was screaming, yelling, and she actually curled up under a desk, like whimpering, and I was just like, "I am so done with this.

Why are we doing this?" And I thought I was doing it because she loved it so much, and it was her favorite activity.

Step one, take it away? [laughs]

Mm-hmm

... you know, stick to things.

That's why kids want screens so much, is because it's tapping into this sy- this really, this motivation system, right? This drive or fuel.

So we want it, but we just wanna direct it to the activities that actually help our kids, and that actually bring joy to our kids, and make our homes peaceful and happy, right? And so for me, after writing this book, I spent about six years studying the dopamine system and trying to figure out, like, how can I use it for myself and my kid to, to make our lives better, right? Because that's really what it's there for.

It's there, it evolved in our brain to make us seek out things that do make us feel good.

So I think one of the first signs is how the kid feels afterwards, right? Like, w- I always say to my daughter Rosie, who's 10 now, I say, "You deserve activities that make you feel just as good afterwards as y- you do while you're doing them, or beforehand.

And if the activity is making you feel cranky, uh, angry, frustrated, kind of this endless desire for more and more and more, that's not a good feeling.

this challenge?

Yes

... we had to, like, do a backflip and, you know, I was, I was looking up strategies to get the kid off the screen.

And, like, and sometimes she would just turn into, like, this, like a toddler.

Like, it was, like, it was a different child.

It was like the child when she was three or four years old.

Um, and I, I interpreted that behavior as, like, meaning she loved it so much, right? Oh, she just loved it so much she couldn't separate from it.

And, and, and so I didn't wanna take it away from her, 'cause who wants to be a parent that de- deprives kids of what they love, right? And then as I started studying dopamine, and, you know, what m- motivates kids and what brings kids pleasure, I realized, oh, what Rosie is feeling after I pull her off the screen isn't pure pleasure at all, but it's this intense motivation and desire to keep going.

And I, I, I just think about how different those circuits are.

So explain that.

For sure.

So they both work through this dopamine system in our brain, which I think is better to think of as like a motivation system.

The dopamine system is this very powerful part in your lower brain, like all animals have it, that is there to make you work for and get what you need to survive.

So food, water, eventually sex.

But for humans, it's also social support, kids absolutely needed to feel a sense of belonging to survive.

It's exploration, adventure, creation.

like, you got to start small,

Yeah.

But, um, it, I would try it over and over again.

And because we evolved, our dopamine system, s- survival, it evolved to find the highest number of calories in the smallest amount of food, and also the fastest.

And so these ultra-processed foods, all of this, again, speed coming into play, all of these things digest, like, instantly.

They just melt in your mouth and they just go into your blood.

And so it's basically like refined sugar.

It acts in our body like refined sugar.

I bet it feels so good.