Mm-hmm.

Because distractibility and hypervigilance are actually a strength in that environment.

And I actually see ADHD as a normal variant, and the reason I do is that when we were hunter-gatherers- Mm-hmm ... and we crawled out of the cave in the morning in search of food- Mm-hmm ... and had to not become someone else's food- Mm-hmm ... that distractibility, that hypervigilance, is what kept us alive, and we reproduced, and we passed these skills down generation after generation until a generation sa- got told, "Sit down, shut up, and listen to the teacher." Mm-hmm.

Right? Yeah.

And all of a sudden- Yeah ... those adaptive- Engage with this factory model- ... skills ... of education immediately.

Right.

Right now.

Yeah.

In fact, one of the first things he'd like us to stop doing is calling these kids addicted.

A better analog than the addiction model is that this is more akin to binge eating disorder, which is, of course, psychologically driven use of a necessary resource, food.

We don't ask people with binge eating disorder to stop eating.

We ask them to regulate their eating, and that is what we do with these kids.

Michael thinks about it more like learning to drive.

We think about an automobile as a tool that gives you great freedom, great possibilities, but also can cause great harm to oneself and others.

And we don't put them behind the wheel of a car just because they wanna be there, but when they can handle it in a responsible way, with respect for themselves and others, and we give them driver's ed, and we sit white-knuckled in the front seat with them when they learn to drive.

And I think that we need to do something quite similar with these power tools of smartphones.

that will itch that creativity, I'm assuming, right?

Well, I got into the radio advertising and marketing business, which is basically selling time.

Yeah.

And so I did that and it ended up being something that I could do well.

And so my career kind of stayed in that business for 40 years in New York City.

But along the way, a number of my friends were involved in the art business and the opera business and the theater business.

And in the fisheries management business, oddly enough.

You're going to go to... egypt here shortly again

And how do we How do we get that under control?

Well, it depends on the age of the child, of course, but we have to be always present as we can be in their digital world.

And people ask me, when should I teach my child media literacy or digital literacy? And I say two things.

Number one, it's not just about literacy as in decoding, deconstructing, and critically viewing what is coming at us.

It is also about digital fluency in the sense that we are creating all the time with our images, with our texts, et cetera, and posting them to the world.

So it's really a matter of understanding, first of all, that this is a created thing that's coming at us, whether it's a game or a social media site or even a text from someone, that it is created by someone else.

It is not a reality or it's not the whole truth.

What does our future look like in that regard?

Yeah

... what brought me, what brought me to write it is, as you know, um, but our listeners do not necessarily, is I've spent about 30 years really looking deeply at the influence of the screens kids use and how they use them on their physical, social, and mental health, in positive as well as negative ways.

I've worked with, uh, I still work with Sesame Workshop all the time.

Uh, I, I worked with, uh, the Fred Rogers Company, you know, and y- because I see the power of screens to, um, help kids learn how to be better humans in every way.

Um, and at the same time, I'm seeing, you know, teenagers, who are my primary clinical population, um, staring at their smartphones, not talking to each other, um, disappearing into the vortex of the internet.

And so I w- I also am e- seeing a lot of parents who are confused as well as concerned and not sure what to do about it.

On the one hand, they want their kids to be able to be adept at using these new technologies, these 21st century skills, and yet they're worried that they're losing them into their smartphones and their video games, et cetera.

Model.