# The Screen Habits Rewiring Our Kids’ Brains \[with Dr Mark Williams\]

An episode of [Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1082244480), 28 Apr 2026, 25 min.

Audio: https://mgln.ai/e/187/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/b69b2795-5503-4de1-ac91-af460017906e/7adc3a07-270f-4572-9487-b430005ad8ea/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=a05f1702-0c0e-4b0f-8014-af460017907c

Your child’s brain is being shaped right now — and screens may be changing it faster than most parents realise. In this confronting but deeply practical conversation, neuroscientist Professor Mark Williams joins Dr Justin Coulson to unpack what excessive screen use is actually doing to developing brains. From dopamine loops and gaming addiction to social disconnection, emotional health, and the alarming changes researchers are seeing in children’s brains, this episode explains why so many parents feel like they’re losing their kids to devices — and what they can do about it. You’ll hear the simple question Mark asks his own son to check whether gaming is becoming a problem, why “educational apps” may not be as educational as parents think, and the small changes that make the biggest difference. If you’ve ever wondered whether screens are really affecting your child… this episode will stay with you. KEY POINTS • What “brain rot” really means for children and teens • How screens affect white matter and brain development • Why dopamine keeps kids glued to devices • The hidden problem with “educational” apps • The social and emotional skills kids miss online • Why face-to-face interaction matters so much for healthy brains • Mark Williams’ practical approach to gaming and screen boundaries • Why doing the “hard stuff” early makes parenting easier later QUOTE OF THE EPISODE “If you do the easy thing when they’re young, it becomes a whole lot harder when they’re older.” — Professor Mark Williams RESOURCES MENTIONED • Screen Smart Children • Mark Williams • Justin Coulson ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS • Delay personal devices for as long as realistically possible • Prioritise face-to-face connection every day • Watch for changes in mood, motivation, and social behaviour after screen use • Keep gaming and screen activities balanced with real-world activities • Ask yourself regularly: “Is this helping my child thrive offline?” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: Today, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Professor Mark Williams
[0:09] Speaker 1: joins me on the pod today. He was on sixty
[0:12] Speaker 1: Minutes about a month ago talking about brain rod, the
[0:15] Speaker 1: way the screens are affecting our children, their well being,
[0:17] Speaker 1: their health and their capacity to think. Doctor Mark Williams
[0:21] Speaker 1: is an internationally recognized professor of cognitive neuroscience, with other
[0:24] Speaker 1: twenty five years experience conducting behavioral and brain imaging research
[0:28] Speaker 1: focusing on our social skills. He's taught the fundamentals of
[0:30] Speaker 1: neuroscience to a wide rage of undergraduate and postgraduate students,
[0:34] Speaker 1: as well as publishing more than seventy scientific articles. He's
[0:37] Speaker 1: been awarded numerous high profile fellowships and grants and worked
[0:41] Speaker 1: both at MIT in the USA and at universities in Australia. Recently,
[0:47] Speaker 1: Mark also published Screen Smart Children, a book he wrote
[0:52] Speaker 1: with Gavin McCormick that's available on shelves and in bookstores now.
[0:55] Speaker 1: Definitely worth having a look at. I can't wait to
[0:58] Speaker 1: share with you everything has to offer in terms of
[1:01] Speaker 1: helping our kids to live safe, healthy lives online. Stay
[1:06] Speaker 1: with us. That's next. Hello, Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast,
[1:11] Speaker 1: where you get real parenting solutions every single day. It's
[1:13] Speaker 1: Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. My name is doctor Justin Colson.
[1:16] Speaker 1: I'm a dad to six kids, the author of ten books,
[1:19] Speaker 1: maybe eleven, with my next one coming out in about
[1:21] Speaker 1: two months called Boys Boys Building Strong Young Men from
[1:25] Speaker 1: the inside Out. You can pre order it now online.
[1:28] Speaker 1: I'm going to ask today's guests a little bit about
[1:31] Speaker 1: boys and the Internet. This guy knows Internet. This guy
[1:35] Speaker 1: knows how screens are affecting our kids' brains. Doctor Mark Williams,
[1:38] Speaker 1: dad of two a sixteen year old girl and a
[1:40] Speaker 1: fourteen year old boy, on sixty Minutes about a month ago,
[1:44] Speaker 1: talking about screens, brain rot and the neurological impact that
[1:49] Speaker 1: too much time staring at a screen can have on
[1:51] Speaker 1: our kids. Mark, so good of you to join me.
[1:54] Speaker 1: Let's get straight into it. You talk about screens literally
[1:58] Speaker 1: rewiring the developed brain. Your new book Screen Smart Children
[2:02] Speaker 1: is about that. You talk about abnormal white matter developments,
[2:06] Speaker 1: which I definitely want you to go deeper on. You
[2:08] Speaker 1: talk about changes to the corpus closome. A lot of
[2:10] Speaker 1: people might not have even heard those two words together
[2:13] Speaker 1: or on their own either for the parent who's going, Oh,
[2:16] Speaker 1: my goodness, what is actually going on here? Like a
[2:18] Speaker 1: lot of parents would just say I don't want to
[2:20] Speaker 1: know because none of this makes sense, but it does
[2:23] Speaker 1: sound alarming, but it's a bit abstract. What does this
[2:26] Speaker 1: mean in the day to day behavior of children? What's
[2:29] Speaker 1: the observable signal that something neurological is going wrong when
[2:33] Speaker 1: kids are on screens too much?
[2:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question justin but a very difficult
[2:38] Speaker 2: one to answer in a short amount of time. But
[2:41] Speaker 2: we're seeing a whole bunch of raft of issues as
[2:44] Speaker 2: a result of the devices. And what we need to remember, well,
[2:47] Speaker 2: there's two things we need to remember. One thing is
[2:49] Speaker 2: that our brains haven't changed in the last thirty five
[2:51] Speaker 2: thousand years, and so they're still the same brains that developed.
[2:55] Speaker 2: Talking back when we were together. It's when we're spending
[2:58] Speaker 2: lots of time together in groups, and we're helping each other,
[3:02] Speaker 2: and we're collaborating with each other, and we're emphathizing with
[3:05] Speaker 2: each other, and we spend a lot of time grooming
[3:08] Speaker 2: each other and just hanging out together. And now all
[3:11] Speaker 2: of a sudden, we have these devices, and then, let's
[3:14] Speaker 2: be honest, these are amazing technology, but they're being designed
[3:17] Speaker 2: in a way which is really distracting for us and
[3:20] Speaker 2: isn't optimal for that brain that we actually have at
[3:24] Speaker 2: the moment, and we need to change that. We need
[3:26] Speaker 2: to make it more optimal for our current brains so
[3:30] Speaker 2: that we can all thrive and so our kids can throw.
[3:33] Speaker 2: And so what they're doing is they're basically just distracting
[3:36] Speaker 2: us constantly from what we actually need to be doing,
[3:38] Speaker 2: rather than putting this in situations that will actually benefit us.
[3:44] Speaker 2: And that's really bad for our kids, because our kids'
[3:46] Speaker 2: brains are developing, and they need to develop in a
[3:49] Speaker 2: positive way, and unfortunately, because they're doing lots of things
[3:53] Speaker 2: that are impacting their brains negatively, that's having really negative
[3:57] Speaker 2: impacts on that development.
[3:59] Speaker 1: Not the the quote from EO. Wilson, Edward Wilson, the
[4:03] Speaker 1: real problem of humanity, he said, is the following. We
[4:06] Speaker 1: have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god like technology, and
[4:11] Speaker 1: it is terrifically dangerous and it is now approaching a
[4:14] Speaker 1: point of crisis overall. So let's talk about specifically the
[4:17] Speaker 1: abnormal white matter development. This is the bit that white
[4:21] Speaker 1: matter and gray matter. Can you just talk a little
[4:23] Speaker 1: bit about what's going on with the developing brain and
[4:26] Speaker 1: kids staring at screens when it comes to white matter
[4:28] Speaker 1: and gray matter, and also what are white matter and
[4:30] Speaker 1: gray matter and why do they matter?
[4:33] Speaker 2: So the white matter tracts are basically I like to
[4:36] Speaker 2: think of them as a big highways in your city
[4:39] Speaker 2: which connect all the suburbs together and make it easy
[4:41] Speaker 2: to get from one suburb to another unless you live
[4:44] Speaker 2: in city, of course, But they're basically those big tracks
[4:47] Speaker 2: that connect all the different areas of the brain together
[4:49] Speaker 2: and connect the left hemisphere with the right hemisphere. And
[4:52] Speaker 2: lots of parents have probably had the experience when kids
[4:54] Speaker 2: are really young, they would take them to different preschool
[4:59] Speaker 2: events where they get them to do things like crawl
[5:01] Speaker 2: with both arms or do things with both sides of
[5:04] Speaker 2: their bodies because they're trying to develop those white matter
[5:07] Speaker 2: tracts to connect the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere
[5:09] Speaker 2: together and get those those connections working really well. And
[5:13] Speaker 2: we know now, and there's about ten studies now showing
[5:18] Speaker 2: that kids who are given devices or are on screens
[5:21] Speaker 2: at an early age have abnormal development of those white
[5:25] Speaker 2: matter tracts. They're not forming in the right way, and
[5:29] Speaker 2: they're not as thick as they actually need to be,
[5:31] Speaker 2: which means is a different areas the brain can't communicate
[5:34] Speaker 2: with each other as well, which means you have a
[5:37] Speaker 2: whole bunch of other things going on later on in life.
[5:41] Speaker 2: The gray matter is outer surface of the brain, and
[5:45] Speaker 2: that's where all information stored. So then that's where when
[5:48] Speaker 2: you wrote learn something, or when you learn to write
[5:51] Speaker 2: or read or all those things, all that information is
[5:53] Speaker 2: stored out there in the gray matter areas. And we're
[5:56] Speaker 2: also seeing changes in those areas as well later on
[5:59] Speaker 2: in life, so during teen years and in early adults,
[6:02] Speaker 2: when people are using devices.
[6:04] Speaker 1: A lot, right, Okay, One of the things that really
[6:07] Speaker 1: bothers me, concerns me, troubles me is the number of
[6:10] Speaker 1: parents too say, oh, well, it doesn't really matter because
[6:13] Speaker 1: my child is using educational apps. You've made the point
[6:18] Speaker 1: that game of FID learning apps I can hear laughing
[6:21] Speaker 1: already exploit what is it, the intermittent and interval reinforcement,
[6:26] Speaker 1: the same way that poker machines do. It's a pretty
[6:29] Speaker 1: confronting claim. I haven't found any evidence yet, by the way,
[6:31] Speaker 1: that any educational app is actually educational, but a lot
[6:35] Speaker 1: of parents feel really good about their kids using the
[6:36] Speaker 1: educational iPad. Can you walk us through that mechanism and
[6:40] Speaker 1: tell us what parents should be looking for to tell
[6:43] Speaker 1: if an app is genuinely useful rather than one that's
[6:47] Speaker 1: a slot machine dressed up as a classroom.
[6:49] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they call it gam of fine because it
[6:52] Speaker 2: makes it sound good and makes it sound fun. But basically,
[6:55] Speaker 2: what they're doing is using intermittent or random reinforcement schedules,
[6:59] Speaker 2: so they hold off on giving a reward for long
[7:02] Speaker 2: enough that the child really wants a reward, but not
[7:05] Speaker 2: too long that they start getting bored and move away
[7:07] Speaker 2: from the device. And they talk about return to service,
[7:11] Speaker 2: and this is the idea that they want to keep
[7:13] Speaker 2: them on the devices for as long as they possibly
[7:15] Speaker 2: can by keeping them motivated. And each time they get
[7:18] Speaker 2: those rewards, you get a little bit of dopamine. And
[7:20] Speaker 2: people talk about dopamine as this reward or the happy hormone,
[7:25] Speaker 2: but it's actually not. It's a neurotransmitter that when it's released,
[7:28] Speaker 2: it actually makes you search for more of what you
[7:30] Speaker 2: just received. And so therefore these kids get this little
[7:33] Speaker 2: bit of dopamine and they want to do more of
[7:35] Speaker 2: what they just did, and then they want to do
[7:37] Speaker 2: more of what they just did and more of what
[7:39] Speaker 2: they just did. Now, in the natural environment, in the
[7:42] Speaker 2: way we actually evolved, we would have got satiated after
[7:46] Speaker 2: a time. So this dopamine feedback system is for things
[7:49] Speaker 2: like food. So you would have found some berries, you
[7:51] Speaker 2: would have eaten them, you would have got some dopamine
[7:53] Speaker 2: would have said find more of those because they're good
[7:55] Speaker 2: for you, so you would all look for more of them.
[7:56] Speaker 2: You would have eaten more of them, and so on
[7:58] Speaker 2: until you got full. You would have moved on to
[8:00] Speaker 2: something else. But unfortunately, when you're on a device, you
[8:04] Speaker 2: don't get full, so you keep doing it and doing
[8:06] Speaker 2: it and doing it. And this is why the kids
[8:08] Speaker 2: get addicted to it. And the problem is that once
[8:10] Speaker 2: you're addicted to one thing, you're then more likely to
[8:12] Speaker 2: get addicted to other things. So we know kids that
[8:14] Speaker 2: get addicted to gaming are more likely to get addicted
[8:18] Speaker 2: to gambling, and then they're more likely to get addicted
[8:21] Speaker 2: to alcohol or drugs later on. They're called gateway drugs
[8:24] Speaker 2: to other drugs. And that's the real problem is that
[8:27] Speaker 2: if they're on these devices and they're more likely to
[8:29] Speaker 2: get addicted to other things. Pluce. You've got a problem
[8:32] Speaker 2: is once they're going to school or when they're in school,
[8:35] Speaker 2: they're not getting those rewards. They're not getting that daya
[8:38] Speaker 2: mean hit all the time, and they're always looking for it.
[8:41] Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, it makes it really difficult
[8:43] Speaker 2: to teach these kids because they're not getting this constant
[8:46] Speaker 2: reinforcement for what they're doing. You know, the real world
[8:49] Speaker 2: is not full of constant reinforcements. Real world is much
[8:53] Speaker 2: slower and it takes much longer. And by teaching kids,
[8:56] Speaker 2: you need to be getting these reinforcements all the time.
[8:58] Speaker 2: You're setting them up, are you later on? You're setting
[9:01] Speaker 2: up anxiety and depression later on, and you're setting them
[9:05] Speaker 2: up for failure later on, which is really sad.
[9:08] Speaker 1: It's kind of a depressing conversation. Mark, put your kids
[9:10] Speaker 1: on the screens, and you are setting them up for failure.
[9:14] Speaker 1: There are two things that you've just mentioned there dopamine.
[9:16] Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw about a month ago,
[9:18] Speaker 1: seventeenth of March twenty twenty six in Nature, a brand
[9:21] Speaker 1: new paper published, Dopamine takes a Hit. How neuroscience is
[9:24] Speaker 1: rethinking the feel good chemical so there's there's a total
[9:29] Speaker 1: upending of everything that we know about dope mean, and
[9:34] Speaker 1: some people are pushing hard against what dope mean once was.
[9:38] Speaker 1: And your comments are much more aligned with what they're
[9:42] Speaker 1: suggesting than than what we have previously thought. So I
[9:47] Speaker 1: love that you said that. The other thing that jumped
[9:49] Speaker 1: out at me was a published paper just in the
[9:51] Speaker 1: last few months looking at a bunch of kids in Europe,
[9:55] Speaker 1: about five hundred kids in Europe, and the more they gained,
[9:58] Speaker 1: the more they were exposed to gambling streams, loot boxes
[10:02] Speaker 1: and other gambling technology, which changed their attitudes towards gambling,
[10:07] Speaker 1: which increased the likelihood that they would gamble. So the
[10:10] Speaker 1: evidence just keeps on coming in. Hey, Mark, after the break,
[10:13] Speaker 1: I'm going to hit you with a lightning round. I've
[10:15] Speaker 1: got five yes no questions that are going to intentionally
[10:19] Speaker 1: put you in a bit of a tight spot, and
[10:22] Speaker 1: I just want to get a yes or no because
[10:23] Speaker 1: sometimes parents just want to know what do I do?
[10:24] Speaker 1: Do I do this? Or do I do that? Full
[10:26] Speaker 1: stop end of story. Plus questions about one of your
[10:29] Speaker 1: favorite topics when it comes to screens, connection, banning, screens,
[10:33] Speaker 1: and more. Stay with We're back This is the Happy
[10:43] Speaker 1: Famili's podcast Doctor Mark Williams, Professor, Mark Williams Format, Massachusetts
[10:48] Speaker 1: Institute of Technology, Lecturer and professor and now here in
[10:52] Speaker 1: Australia on Sydney Northern Beaches. Oh by the way, Mark
[10:54] Speaker 1: didn't ask me to mention this, but I spoke at
[10:56] Speaker 1: a conference a few months back with Mark in Victoria
[10:59] Speaker 1: on the Tory in New South Wales border and I
[11:02] Speaker 1: just love listening to him. I could listen to him
[11:03] Speaker 1: all night. If you are in an organization where you
[11:06] Speaker 1: get guest speakers in from time to time to talk
[11:08] Speaker 1: about tech, you definitely want to talk to Mark about
[11:10] Speaker 1: the work that he does in this area. He is
[11:12] Speaker 1: globally recognized for his excellence. And Mark, I hope you
[11:17] Speaker 1: don't mind me blurbing you just now, but everybody should
[11:19] Speaker 1: be talking to you about that. Hey, let me hear
[11:21] Speaker 1: with these lightning round questions just just or no? Should
[11:25] Speaker 1: kids under too have zero screen time?
[11:27] Speaker 2: Yes?
[11:28] Speaker 1: It is an hour of gaming genuinely more harmful to
[11:31] Speaker 1: the brain than an hour of passive.
[11:32] Speaker 2: Youtubeh It's yes, but I wish I could do a
[11:37] Speaker 2: caveat to it.
[11:38] Speaker 1: Yes, So I'm going to jump in here with a
[11:42] Speaker 1: quick caveat. Colleagues Wayne Warburton and Brad Marshall at McCrory
[11:47] Speaker 1: University recently published a paper looking at the impact of
[11:50] Speaker 1: gaming and they found that if you do have Internet
[11:52] Speaker 1: gaming disorder, the impacts significantly greater than having a smartphone.
[11:57] Speaker 1: Overuse or using social media is certainly not the benign
[12:01] Speaker 1: thing that some people have claimed it has been over
[12:03] Speaker 1: the years. There are some serious challenges there, one of
[12:07] Speaker 1: those being the gambling stuff that we talked about previously.
[12:10] Speaker 1: Next one, does the content kids watch matter as much
[12:14] Speaker 1: as the amount of time they spend watching?
[12:20] Speaker 2: Yes, but that's a limit. So once you give a
[12:27] Speaker 2: faster certain amount of time, it doesn't.
[12:28] Speaker 1: Matter what is that time.
[12:30] Speaker 2: It depends on the age, which makes it difficult for
[12:32] Speaker 2: a year and no answers, but I would say zero
[12:37] Speaker 2: up until they go to school. Once in primary school,
[12:40] Speaker 2: I would say no more than half an hour a day,
[12:43] Speaker 2: and then after oncere in high school, nor more than
[12:45] Speaker 2: Now yeah.
[12:46] Speaker 1: Great, And I always just hammer the content piece because
[12:49] Speaker 1: there are so many kids that are doing so much
[12:51] Speaker 1: stuff online that is so unhealthy and seeing so much
[12:54] Speaker 1: awful content. I really worry about the content sometimes, as
[12:57] Speaker 1: you said, more than the amount of time unless the
[12:59] Speaker 1: amount of time is egregious colossal? Number four, Should smartphones
[13:03] Speaker 1: be banned from primary schools entirely? And smart devices like
[13:07] Speaker 1: do kids need smart devices in primary school?
[13:09] Speaker 2: Absolutely banned?
[13:11] Speaker 1: Is there such a thing then as a This is
[13:14] Speaker 1: a follow up question. This is not a lightning around question.
[13:16] Speaker 1: This is a follow up Is there such a thing
[13:17] Speaker 1: as a truly educational screen activity for under tens and
[13:20] Speaker 1: a twelves?
[13:22] Speaker 2: I haven't seen one, okay, and I've looked a lot.
[13:26] Speaker 1: Okay, here's my last one. Can a teenagers brain recover
[13:30] Speaker 1: from years of heavy screen use if they change their habits?
[13:33] Speaker 2: Yes, we hope.
[13:36] Speaker 1: Right, this is such an interesting conversation. I mean, I
[13:40] Speaker 1: love lightning rounds because they force us to confront really
[13:43] Speaker 1: hard things. And I know that there's so many oh yeah,
[13:45] Speaker 1: bart and caveats all over the place with these conversations.
[13:49] Speaker 1: But when you're a parent, you just want answers. Now
[13:51] Speaker 1: those are answers that you can go and do something with.
[13:53] Speaker 1: And I really appreciate it. Okay, Mark, I need to
[13:55] Speaker 1: honor the time that you've given me, and you are
[13:57] Speaker 1: very much a man in demand. Let me just ask
[14:00] Speaker 1: you two more questions that I think so many parents
[14:03] Speaker 1: are struggling with. The first one is this your whole
[14:06] Speaker 1: frame is a neuroscientist, and I was so impressed with
[14:09] Speaker 1: that when I went through your Screen Smart Children book.
[14:11] Speaker 1: So much of what you talk about is built around
[14:13] Speaker 1: the social brain, the idea that human brains evolved fundamentally
[14:19] Speaker 1: for connection. So when screens displace face to face time,
[14:24] Speaker 1: can you describe what gets lost neurologically?
[14:27] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question, and I'm glad we got
[14:30] Speaker 2: an opportunity to talk about that because what we've got.
[14:33] Speaker 2: What you've got to realize is when you're online, you
[14:36] Speaker 2: do get dopamine. But as I talked about before, dopamine
[14:38] Speaker 2: doesn't actually make you feel happy. It just makes you
[14:41] Speaker 2: search for more of what you just got, which is
[14:43] Speaker 2: why you feel pretty loudly afterwards. When we're actually face
[14:47] Speaker 2: to face, lots of things happen. So one of these
[14:49] Speaker 2: we touch each other, and when I talk about touching,
[14:52] Speaker 2: knife and get lots of giggles. But appropriately we touch
[14:55] Speaker 2: each other, and in all societies we have some way
[14:58] Speaker 2: of doing that appropriately, such as here in Australia we
[15:01] Speaker 2: shake hands. In Europe do kiss each other on the
[15:03] Speaker 2: cheeks and even the inuits because therefore we cover they
[15:06] Speaker 2: ll rub noses. And the reason we do that is
[15:09] Speaker 2: that you activate sea fibers in the skin which activate
[15:12] Speaker 2: the touch, and then that activates oxytocin in your brain,
[15:15] Speaker 2: which makes you feel more connected to the person who
[15:17] Speaker 2: just touched you and makes you feel more open to
[15:20] Speaker 2: actually have a good relationship with them. You don't get
[15:23] Speaker 2: that when you're online. You also don't get the body
[15:26] Speaker 2: language that you can see when you're actually face to face.
[15:29] Speaker 2: And when we actually you make each other's body language,
[15:32] Speaker 2: which we do automatically through what we call a mirror
[15:35] Speaker 2: neuron system, we get a serotonin released and are they
[15:39] Speaker 2: really good in dolphins, which again makes us feel good
[15:42] Speaker 2: and make us feel more connected to the person that
[15:44] Speaker 2: we're actually interacting with. And then you've got the procity
[15:47] Speaker 2: of the voice, which gives the emotional content of the
[15:49] Speaker 2: conversation you are, the facial expressions, and it goes on
[15:52] Speaker 2: and on. There's all these myriad of neurotransmitters and dolphins
[15:56] Speaker 2: that are released when you will face to face, which
[15:58] Speaker 2: makes you feel really good out actually interacting with people,
[16:02] Speaker 2: and they make you feel good for a long time afterwards,
[16:04] Speaker 2: when you're online, you don't get any of those. It's
[16:06] Speaker 2: a really add normal release of just opamine and nothing else.
[16:11] Speaker 2: And so therefore you get me hitted open meine and
[16:14] Speaker 2: then you're searching for more of that. You don't get it,
[16:16] Speaker 2: and then you feel out. If you don't just keep
[16:18] Speaker 2: doing what you're doing. Is keep doing what you're doing,
[16:20] Speaker 2: then you're wait hours and hours in your life. So
[16:22] Speaker 2: that's a big difference between the two, and that's why
[16:24] Speaker 2: we need to be doing things face to face.
[16:26] Speaker 1: Hearing you say that reminds me of a study that
[16:28] Speaker 1: I talked about here on the podcast a couple of
[16:29] Speaker 1: years ago. It was a twenty twenty two study published
[16:31] Speaker 1: in NeuroImage, and the research is there found that live
[16:35] Speaker 1: face to face mother child interaction produced nine significant neural connections,
[16:40] Speaker 1: while when they were talking over a video screen like
[16:43] Speaker 1: having a FaceTime call, there was only one significant neural connection,
[16:47] Speaker 1: like literally nine times to neural connections where you're having
[16:50] Speaker 1: a face to face conversation versus a screen based conversation.
[16:53] Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing that so many of those studies out there,
[16:58] Speaker 2: and then so important as humans to actually be doing that.
[17:02] Speaker 2: And it's also been shown right. The Harvard study Bois
[17:05] Speaker 2: has been going on for seventy five years has shown
[17:07] Speaker 2: that the number one way to actually increase your lifespan
[17:09] Speaker 2: by ten to ten years, decrease mental health issues, increased
[17:14] Speaker 2: cardio escar system so you get healthier and you don't
[17:16] Speaker 2: have heart attacks, and increase your IQ is just to
[17:20] Speaker 2: sit down with someone you trust on a regular basis
[17:23] Speaker 2: and chat with them, right. And we're doing far less
[17:25] Speaker 2: of that today than we ever have in the past,
[17:27] Speaker 2: which is very, very bad. Can I ask you one question?
[17:30] Speaker 2: He said, all right, am I left to say to
[17:32] Speaker 2: keep you working as well. I have a fourteen year
[17:35] Speaker 2: old son who're coming too before and I just watched
[17:38] Speaker 2: the documentary which scared the guds out. Yes, yes, so
[17:45] Speaker 2: I'm just going to say it. Yeah, And I want
[17:48] Speaker 2: to ask you what do we do? I mean, I'm
[17:50] Speaker 2: very careful with him, and he plays basketball and does
[17:54] Speaker 2: he's a surf life saber, he won you know, wards
[17:57] Speaker 2: for surf Life Saving and he's a great kid. But
[18:00] Speaker 2: excuse me that something's going to happen and what would
[18:02] Speaker 2: your advice be around the whole managecent problem?
[18:05] Speaker 1: So I really appreciate the question. First of all, it
[18:09] Speaker 1: sounds like you do not have a son who is
[18:11] Speaker 1: struggling to thrive, Like this is not a failure to
[18:13] Speaker 1: launch situation where the fourteen year old boy who's involved
[18:15] Speaker 1: in so many activities. And I think that's one of
[18:17] Speaker 1: the central things that helps boys to thrive is they
[18:19] Speaker 1: do things with meaning and purpose. They're active, they're with
[18:22] Speaker 1: their peers, they're pushing themselves, they're doing hard things, they're
[18:26] Speaker 1: taking risks. All of these things are associated with healthy living.
[18:30] Speaker 1: Whether it's masculinity or otherwise, it's just healthy living to
[18:33] Speaker 1: be with people outside living life large. So I hear that,
[18:38] Speaker 1: and I just think, yes, my interest is more related
[18:40] Speaker 1: to the whole screen stuff and the intersection of what
[18:43] Speaker 1: you're doing with how your son's health and well being
[18:47] Speaker 1: would be. And I would be just I'd be following
[18:50] Speaker 1: the stuff that you've talked about from a screen point
[18:52] Speaker 1: of view. I really think that if we could remove
[18:55] Speaker 1: screens from the lives of our boys, or at least
[18:57] Speaker 1: reduce their access to the course and degrading content, the
[19:03] Speaker 1: content that makes them ei to feel one up or
[19:05] Speaker 1: one down or has them push others into that alpha
[19:08] Speaker 1: slash beta zone where they feel like they have to
[19:10] Speaker 1: be alpha and everyone else's beta. I just feel like
[19:13] Speaker 1: if we could help our boys to stay away from that,
[19:15] Speaker 1: then they probably grow into great kids, good role models.
[19:19] Speaker 1: But all the stuff that you talk about is right
[19:22] Speaker 1: at the very core of it. Screens are in the
[19:25] Speaker 1: heart of the parenting context now, and that question, I
[19:29] Speaker 1: don't know if that's satisfying or helpful for you, but
[19:33] Speaker 1: that questions, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good news for you.
[19:38] Speaker 1: That leads very much into where I was just going
[19:40] Speaker 1: to take the conversation to wrap up, and that is
[19:42] Speaker 1: that you in screensmat children, you deliberately don't advocate for
[19:48] Speaker 1: turtle bands, which is much harder sell than saying just
[19:53] Speaker 1: throw the iPad in the bin. Actually, before I answer
[19:56] Speaker 1: ask the question, let me give you some context. Some
[19:59] Speaker 1: years ago, probably ten twelve years ago, I had a
[20:03] Speaker 1: very inflammatory Twitter war back in the days when I
[20:06] Speaker 1: was on social media with somebody who at the time
[20:09] Speaker 1: was a very highly regarded parenting expert here in Australia.
[20:12] Speaker 1: I won't say who it was. And then one of
[20:14] Speaker 1: that person's colleagues also chimed in and they both started
[20:17] Speaker 1: going at me really hard because I was saying, you
[20:19] Speaker 1: can't ban you can't ban. You can't ban. It would
[20:22] Speaker 1: be great if you could, but you can't ban. It's
[20:23] Speaker 1: not realistic. It's kind of like saying, well, we've got
[20:26] Speaker 1: to fence the pool. We've got to fence the pool
[20:27] Speaker 1: to keep the kid saveement. It's like, hello, have you
[20:28] Speaker 1: seen the ocean. You can't fence the ocean like fancy
[20:31] Speaker 1: pool by all means. But banning, as soon as the
[20:33] Speaker 1: kids are out of your sight, out of your house,
[20:35] Speaker 1: your bands are useless. It's a harder sell. So here's
[20:40] Speaker 1: my question for you. Is there any neuroscience around not
[20:43] Speaker 1: going cold Turkey? But more than anything, at a practical level,
[20:48] Speaker 1: how do you frame it so that a parent can
[20:51] Speaker 1: deal with a like a fourteen year old boy or
[20:54] Speaker 1: girl who wants to be on their phone all the
[20:56] Speaker 1: time at home And you're not going to ban screens
[20:58] Speaker 1: because you know that's kind of backfire.
[21:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a great question, because this is on you.
[21:03] Speaker 2: There isn't a lot of neuroscience around the cold Turkey issue,
[21:09] Speaker 2: which me, I mean the thing I use My son
[21:13] Speaker 2: loves to does gaming. But what what I do, which
[21:18] Speaker 2: is why I said there's a caveat there is he
[21:21] Speaker 2: plays the NBL NBA game on the Oni device, and
[21:25] Speaker 2: it's not hooked up to the internet, so he's just
[21:27] Speaker 2: playing against himself and it ends, right, he plays the game,
[21:32] Speaker 2: and then it ends and it moves on, and I
[21:34] Speaker 2: have a little trick of making sure that he's not
[21:37] Speaker 2: getting addicted to it by just every now and then,
[21:39] Speaker 2: when he's playing, I'll say, do you want me to
[21:40] Speaker 2: drive you down to the courts and you actually have you
[21:43] Speaker 2: find a pickup game, which he loves doing. And the
[21:46] Speaker 2: day that he turns around and says, no, I'd rather
[21:48] Speaker 2: play the video game is the day I know I've
[21:50] Speaker 2: got a problem, because he should enjoy actually going down
[21:54] Speaker 2: to the course and playing the real game rather than
[21:56] Speaker 2: playing the video game. And so that's the sort of
[21:58] Speaker 2: trick that I use anyway to know that I don't
[22:02] Speaker 2: have a problem with him at this stage, and if
[22:05] Speaker 2: I ever do, then I would sit down and talk
[22:07] Speaker 2: to him about it. So why is it that you
[22:09] Speaker 2: prefer to do this and actually do it for real?
[22:11] Speaker 2: And how can we move forward from this? Because the
[22:16] Speaker 2: devices are everywhere. Right, You're walking on a cafe and
[22:19] Speaker 2: there's a big bloody screen on the wall, right screaming
[22:21] Speaker 2: at you. We need to teach the kids how to
[22:24] Speaker 2: use them properly, but we also need to safeguard them
[22:29] Speaker 2: when they're younger from all of the evils that are
[22:31] Speaker 2: out there. And we also need their brains to develop
[22:34] Speaker 2: in a way where what they want to do is
[22:36] Speaker 2: go out and socialize. What they want to do is
[22:38] Speaker 2: go out and spend time with their friends. What they
[22:40] Speaker 2: want to do is sit down and chat to somebody
[22:43] Speaker 2: rather than be on the device. So that's a difficult
[22:47] Speaker 2: balance and it's not easy, but I think parents just
[22:52] Speaker 2: need to realize that by doing the hard stuff when
[22:55] Speaker 2: the kids are young, it's much easier when they're older,
[22:58] Speaker 2: Whereas if you do the easy thing when they then
[23:00] Speaker 2: just hand over the iPad because they'll be entertained, it's
[23:03] Speaker 2: going to be a hell up. Yeah, way harder when
[23:06] Speaker 2: they're older. And I know, I volunteer for the Digital
[23:09] Speaker 2: Detops program for Picada Foundation, and you know, when you
[23:13] Speaker 2: see those teenagers who have serious problems, you're like, yeah,
[23:19] Speaker 2: I'm going to do the odd stuff and when they're
[23:21] Speaker 2: young and I'm going to make sure this doesn't happen.
[23:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I'm right in the trenches. Listen
[23:24] Speaker 1: to you say that, So our just turn twelve year
[23:27] Speaker 1: old is in me almost every day. Can I please
[23:29] Speaker 1: have an iPad? Can I please have an iPad? And
[23:32] Speaker 1: as it is, she borrows our phone and she borrows
[23:34] Speaker 1: our computer. But at least we've got a level of
[23:37] Speaker 1: control over this. We've we've got some boundaries. But tell
[23:40] Speaker 1: you what, this kid, if she had an iPad, we'd
[23:43] Speaker 1: lose her and got to do the hard stuff now
[23:46] Speaker 1: to make it easier later. So love what you've said,
[23:48] Speaker 1: could listen to your day, could talk for hours. I
[23:50] Speaker 1: feel like we've literally barely scratched the surface. And these
[23:54] Speaker 1: questions that I've asked you, I have about thirty more
[23:58] Speaker 1: on every single question that I've asked. This so much
[24:00] Speaker 1: to talk about here, Mark, It's a delight to spend
[24:03] Speaker 1: time with you. You're so generous in chatting and sharing
[24:06] Speaker 1: your knowledge and I really appreciate that. Thank you for
[24:08] Speaker 1: making time to be on the Happy Families podcast today.
[24:11] Speaker 2: Thank you justin, thanks for having me in and good
[24:13] Speaker 2: luck with the book at the moment.
[24:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much. Mark Williams. Professor Mark Williams.
[24:19] Speaker 1: You can find him online just google professor Mark Williams,
[24:22] Speaker 1: Doctor Mark Williams dot com. His new book Screen Smart
[24:25] Speaker 1: Children definitely worth a look. Oh, I've blurbed the cover,
[24:28] Speaker 1: by the way, my name is on the front cover
[24:30] Speaker 1: because I thought it was definitely something that everyone should
[24:32] Speaker 1: get a hold of. And if you'd like more, if
[24:35] Speaker 1: I about him, you'll find him online. We'll link to
[24:36] Speaker 1: all of that in the show notes. The Happy Family's
[24:38] Speaker 1: podcast is produced by Justin Rouland from Bridge Media. Mim
[24:41] Speaker 1: Hammons provides our additional support and for more to make
[24:43] Speaker 1: your family happy, I visit happy families dot com. Do
[24:46] Speaker 1: you

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