Multi-tasking Reduces Cognitive Capacity to that of an 8-year-old

Ginny: Welcome to the One Thousand Hours Outside podcast, I just finished a new book called Disconnected by Thomas Kersting and I loved it. And so we are here today to talk about his book and lots of other things. This is how to protect your kids from the harmful effects of device dependency. Tom, thanks for being here. 

Tom: My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Ginny: So we were just talking a little bit about Tom's bio because I think it's super interesting. He's a psychotherapist who used to be a school counselor and a regular guest expert for Fox News. And then he said this was a while ago, but he was also co-host of two former A&E network television series, Surviving Marriage and Monster in Laws. Those actually sound really interesting. He appears regularly on popular talk shows and new shows, providing insight and advice about parenting, family, education and wellness. I love that broad bio.

Tom: Yeah. So, you know, it kind of comes down to the same thing. It's just, you know, I'm here, I guess, on this planet to try to try to help as many people as I can to just be the best they can be, live the best life they could be, the best parents. And I just see that we all have this ability. We just need to develop the confidence and know how to just go out there in the world and do what we can do to the best of our ability.

Ginny: That's great. That's awesome. I loved your bio. It's super diverse. But like I said, also not.

I loved how this book Disconnected started out. You started out with the 80s childhood. I think a lot of people will really relate to this. 

“I was a helmetless, Big Wheel riding child of the 1980s. I walked a half mile in the dark to the bus stop each morning, faced the occasional bully through the other kids at Halloween and rode my Huffy all around town.”

You talked about being outside all day long in the summer with the kids in the neighborhood. 

“Nothing was planned out for us. The only thing we cared about was adventure. We had Atari's and Nintendos but spent much less time playing with them than we did playing with each other. When it was time for dinner, we were home on time and ate with our families every night. We had few worries and we were just, well, kids. We all survived.”

I love that opening of the book. I think a lot of people relate with that and remember those days.

What has changed in 40 years? 

Tom: Screens. And that's really what the whole book is about. I mean, I think I'm forty nine and I can't believe I'm even saying that, you know, and I just think back when I reflect back to being a kid, I mean, we didn't have any money. My parents didn't have, you know, they had four kids by the time they were twenty five. Nobody cared about any of that. And all of my friends that I grew up with, my next door neighbors are still best friends to this day. And we were just outside all the time. And you know, the old adage, you know, it was basically my mom would shout out the front door before six p.m.. Tommy, Joey, Gary, Peggy, that was all of us. Time for dinner. And we had better be home for dinner.

And we were just like, you know, out here playing man hunt, playing wiffle ball riding our bikes. And, you know, we have to go home and have dinner together. But, you know, the moral of the story is we had, you know, unadulterated fun. We weren't immersed in some hypnotic trance from a little device. And it really just solidified us as social, emotional beings and so forth. 

Ginny: Yeah. One of my favorite lines from that paragraph is you said, “Nothing was planned out for us.” And I see that also as a big difference in childhood today where everything is planned out, from dawn to dusk. Kids have a really long school day. They have homework, you know, off and on for several hours, and then all these extracurriculars that are good things and are helpful and in different realms, but there's not that time for adventure.

Tom: Yeah, you know, I'm glad you brought that up, because I'm actually currently working on my next book, which comes out in February of 2023. I was just doing some writing this morning. It's really about the importance of developing social-emotional skills through childhood play. And the author that I'm referencing touches on helicopter parenting. And that's not just the parents that are constantly hovering. I mean, that's part of it. That’s also how parents orchestrate, you know, how they think their children should play and how that really can affect the kid's own instinctive capabilities.

And what the author says is that when children become highly sensitized to what their parents want to see while playing, they often suppress the most intrinsic play experience in order to gain approval from the parent who's trying to mold them. This can cause them to become skilled at pleasing adults and developing conformist behavior, which reduces their intrinsic motivations and authentic exuberance that is found on the playground. 

Ginny: Wow, that's powerful. You touch on that in that one sentence, “Nothing was planned out for us.” I love that phrase. That's easier than having to schedule, drive and pay expensive fees, you know, all these activities. So it's funny that we have chosen this more difficult route. Maybe it's not the best way.

Tom: Yeah, I know. You know, if you look at different polls that have come out in recent years, you know, different surveys, the majority of kids would prefer to be inside playing video games and stuff than they would prefer to be outside, you know, which is not really our natural habitat as human beings.

Ginny: You touch on that in the book. You know, so that's a big change, but partially maybe goes back to the fact that there were kids to play with in the neighborhood and so there was more motivation to get outdoors. 

Tom: Yeah, it's just unstructured. 

Ginny: So there is a phrase in your book that I actually never heard before, “Acquired Attention Deficit Disorder.” You say, “The more sound bites, the less patient we are with more complex, more meaningful information. You might lose the ability to analyze things, like any skill. If you don't have it, you lose it.”

Will you tell us about “Acquired Attention Deficit Disorder?” What are the implications? How can we avoid it? 

Tom: Yeah, so it's actually how I got into this topic of screen time. I'm a pioneer in this territory. I started lecturing on the topic of the dangers of too much screen time starting in 2009. 

At the time I was working at a public high school. I was a counselor and I ran a committee called the Intervention and Referral Services Committee. And we handled something known as 504 accommodations. So anybody listening right now if you've never heard of a 504 plan that they give the kids in school, it comes from Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of n1973, which is an anti-discrimination law that states if a kid has any kind of a disability that's affecting them academically, they may be eligible for specific accommodations.

So in September of 2008, we had our first parent meeting of the year. Parents would come in and request accommodations, and prior to that, it was always for physical disabilities likes Crohn's disease, diabetes. And this is the first time I had seen this in 2008 where we had a parent come in whose teenage son had just been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. And I remember thinking to myself, because a lot of people, you know, we hear ADHD all the time. And what people don't know is the facts about ADHD. ADHD is not something that you get when you catch. It's a neurological condition that you're born with.

So for a child, the average age of diagnosis is eight years old. And if you have a child that has ADHD, you can't not notice it by age five. So long story short, after that meeting and for the rest of that school year, literally every single request was for a teenager that had been diagnosed with ADHD. So that's what got my wheels spinning.

And I started researching what's going on here. And I came across all of this research on screen time and what it does to the brain neurologically. And one of the researchers had coined a term that referred to it as “Acquired Attention Deficit Disorder,” meaning that they estimated that roughly 70 percent of teenagers diagnosed with ADHD don't actually have it. They have the symptoms of it, but they don't have the neurological condition. Yet, they're being diagnosed and treated for that. So that's what got me going with the whole screen time and everything else about mental health, depression, anxiety and so forth. 

Ginny: I see. Super interesting. So my last year in the classroom was actually in 2006 because then in 2007 and 2008, I had an administrative role. So I wasn't in the classroom anymore. But 2006ish was when everyone had a BlackBerry, and so I was on front cusp of seeing those changes in kids. 2009 is when I think the iPhone came out. So I was right at the front end of it.

But I noticed that kids had them all the time. They were taking pictures of their tests and texting them to friends, you know, so like a final exam, they'd have their phone down in their shirt, maybe taking a picture of their test and sending it to other kids. And they were trying to hide them.

I kind of would have loved to be a fly on the wall to see that sort of progression of how that changed, because it was already starting to change so much in 2007 and then in 2008.

This timeline is interesting. You talked about how it can take a lot for the brain to change its wiring. Typically three or more hours per day of consistent, stimulating activity, and so I thought that was interesting because teens are on screens for way more than three hours a day. Do you see the most up to date findings is the average American teen spends nine hours per day or six hours per week immersed in electronic media, not including school related technology. So is this nine hours a day plus school related technology changing the brain? 

Tom: A hundred percent. So depending on the research you look at, the nine hours a day includes multitasking, so it's really more like somewhere between seven and eight hours a day, seven days a week. In fact, kids spend more time, more of their life on screens than they do other life activities, including sleep.

What you're referencing in the book is something known as neuroplasticity. So the term, and that's actually the greatest breakthrough in modern day psychology, which shows that the brain like plastic can be molded to any human brain that is engaged in anything that's considered highly stimulating for three hours or more per day, the brain will literally grow new neural pathways. So those little tree-branch-looking electrical impulses to assimilate and adapt to that environment. And we know that kids are spending not three hours a day, but seven or eight hours a day in the most highly stimulating world. So their brains have changed and adapted to this really intense, highly stimulating cyber world. 

So the ability to sit in the classroom and focus and listen to a teacher becomes very difficult because that brain is constantly looking for stimulation. So now you have a kid that has all the inattentiveness, lack of focus and is now diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. 

Ginny: It's really hard to even imagine, you know, we see these statistics. Six to seven hours a day. It doesn't include schoolwork. It's hard to wrap your head around and kids are onescreens late into the night. I mean, how does that even look in terms of a day?

What's interesting to me is that this time frame is also coming up for nature play. Three hours a day is actually a baseline recommendation for nature play. More when kids are younger, so something like five to eight hours when they're toddlers and preschoolers, but all the way through adolescence, I'm seeing things like three to four hours a day of outdoor play or just free play, but ideally outdoors. This free time in free play is really getting sucked up by screens. 

Tom: Oh, yeah. And that's why I love your movement. The Thousand Hours Outside Movement. Being outside and being part of nature is critically important for the entire development of children physically, mentally, emotionally, and for the whole family. And we have the majority of kids in our country that are really hunkered up in their bedrooms, isolated by themselves, you know, flipping them around on TikTok and going on YouTube and just, you know, just immersed in this superficiality. And they're missing reality. 

Ginny Yeah. And I think part of it is just bringing back a balance, you know. In our family our oldest just turned 13. If we're outside for three to four hours a day, there just isn't the time for screens. And so, you know, my kids, they love screens. They want to play all the things. They want to play the video games. They want to play online with their friends. They’re not on social media. And some of that's fun for them. And they've got friends that have moved to different states. And that's a cool way for them to connect. But we're trying to make it so that there's not that much time for it. You know, maybe there's an hour, maybe there's forty five minutes, maybe there's no time for it that day. And those are our best days.

So that's my goal as a mom. Because then you don't have the fight. You know, if you don't have the time, you don't have the time. 

Tom: Real quick bouncing off that. So up here I live in northern New Jersey. A lot of kids go to sleep away camp for the summer for seven weeks in this area. I'm not sure what it's like in other places, probably similar around the country. 

Ginny: I've actually not heard of that. 

Tom: Yeah, yeah, my kids did. But a lot of kids up in this area go to sleep away camp for seven weeks and there's no screens allowed. And what's interesting is when kids come back from the summer, kids that I see in my private practice, many of them I've asked, you know, “What was the best part of sleep away camp?” And they tell me not having your phone. So they actually crave that human connection and that social interaction, but they don't even know it until they're kind of forced to do it. And then when they return back from camp and so forth, they reflect back. And that is exactly what they inherently wanted. 

Ginny:  I think that those types of stories are popping up a lot. We've been doing a little bit with this Gabb Wireless company and they have non smartphones. That's their whole gig. They're a cool company. It looks like a smart phone so kids don't get made fun of, but they're saying these stories that the kids are mad initially but you know, within a couple of weeks they just come back and say thank you because it's opening a whole new world for them. I mean, they don't really know different, right? They've been immersed in technology since they were born and this is part of their world and they may not have experience of not being connected. 

Tom: We call them digital natives. I'm a digital immigrant, so I have the experience, you know, prior to screens. But kids don't you know, this is all. You only know what you know. 

Ginny: In the 80s it was different. There were only shows on Saturday morning till 11 and then they were over and, you know, there was nothing on TV on Sundays. I remember that. Except for, like WWF wrestling. That was it. I remember thinking, I wish I liked this. But I didn't like it. I didn't like the WWF. And so I had to go find something else to do. But for teenagers this is all they've known.

One of the things you said in your book I found was interesting, “very few took the necessary steps to change their children's media habits or their own.” And so I think this topic of media and social media and screens and being connected, I think that this is a pervasive topic. Parents are hearing about this often, but I would agree with you that few are making the necessary steps to change it, just kind of going along with it as a whole. Why do you think we're not taking those necessary steps? 

Tom: Well, the reason is that adults are just as addicted as the kids are to the screens. In fact, if you look at the research, adults are spending just as much time on their own devices and screens and kids are. So, you know, for a parent that sees that there's a problem with their own teenager or whatever, they need to kind of practice what they preach. So it really starts with us adults and being the example for the kids, which means we're home with our children, doing the best we can to put down our own computer screens, our own devices and so forth, and just having deep, meaningful communication and experiences with our children. So that's really the reason.

Tom: You talked about how Wyndham Hotel chain. They discovered that the average resort guest was bringing three devices to the pool and checking them 80 times a day. So they began to offer a pouch to lock their devices in and including perks for the guests to keep their phones locked up.

So this is actually really brilliant for this hotel chain. They would include perks for locking up your phone, like free snacks or prime spots around the pool. Or a 5% discount on their stay if they put their phones in a time lock box. And you say a growing number of hotel chains are doing the same thing where they're offering perks like free stuff or snorkeling or board games to guests who go for phone free because their mission is to promote wellness and relaxation and screens are getting in the way of their submission. Where did you come across all that information? 

Tom: It's just the research and it's kind of you know, it's interesting, but it's also sad. You know, like we can't even go to a nice resort on a vacation and enjoy the beautiful blue ocean and the perfect temperatures and the pool in front of us because we're distracting ourselves. We travel quite a bit. My wife and my kids have been all over the place. And I notice if we're at a resort, there's not too many kids near the pool. I think a lot of them are kind of cooped up in a hotel room. There are kids, but not as many as there should be at a family resort. And I've seen that. And, you know, unfortunately, I think a lot of kids would, you know, not all of them, but many would rather just be inside the hotel room, you know, on their screen maybe. And maybe they don’t know any different. 

Ginny: That's interesting that you bring that up, because that's exactly why I started writing about our outside experiences. When my kids were young, a friend told me that there was this educational philosopher, from the eighteen hundreds it turns out. She talked about kids being outside for four to six hours a day whenever the weather's tolerable. And I'd actually never heard anything like that before. I thought it was an absurd idea, but we started to do it and we tried it out and it sort of blew my mind because my really little kids couldn't concentrate on anything, any project, any craft I set out for them for more than ten or 15 minutes. Yet, they could be completely occupied in nature for these long spans of time.

And so that helped me as a mom. I got a breather. So for two years we were spending this four to six hours of time outside and sometimes more in the metro Detroit area which is really populated, lots of parks. And we never we never ran into another kid the whole time. You know, we're outside, not every single day but several days a week we were trying to get these large chunks of time and we were not running into other kids.

But what I learned is that this makes my parenting easier. In the long run, my kids are better able to occupy themselves. You know, they're more creative. And so I think maybe it's parents don't even know. The kids don't know, hey, if we went and sat around the pool, they're not going to bug you. They're not going to be in your hair. They're going to be finding things to do, especially the more that you do it right?

Tom: One hundred percent. Yeah, I read your website. I saw that. Right now you go to a playground or park and it's empty. What's going on here? 

Ginny: You talked about this company called Yonder. They make these phone cases that lock. So I thought I'll try and buy one for a give away. You can't even buy it. It's a whole system. You have to get the whole system for your organization or for your school. They say, “We create phone free spaces for artists, educators, organizations and individuals.” You're buying this system to put in your building or whatever where people come in. And it's really quite an eye opening product. 

Tom: And it's really a pretty cool idea. But when you really kind of think deeply about it, it just proves that we don't have control over these things anymore. They have control over us where we have to actually lock it in the case because we can't prevent ourselves from the temptations.

Ginny: Crazy. Yeah, it is. And then I guess to your point, like we talked about earlier, which is if it's a problem for us as adults, how much more is it a problem for the kids, you know, in that, you know, do they have these types of things in schools? You know, I mean, how hard is it for a kid to sit and listen to a lecture? 

Tom: Some schools have gotten them. 

Ginny: You talk about the risks. “Although smartphones appear to make our children fit in, I believe the risks are too great.” What are some of the main risks of smartphones for kids? 

Tom: So remember how I had mentioned earlier that in September of 2008, when I was working at the high school, we had our first kid with attention deficit disorder? In  2012 all of that changed. And literally ninety something percent of all the referrals that I committed were now for kids with anxiety disorders. 

So the original version of the book, which came out in 2017, I make a strong case as to how the smartphones and modern day technology are creating this epidemic of anxiety. Since then, all of the research that the researchers have done comes out to support everything that I talk about. Then why is that?

Well, it kind of starts like this. For a kid right now, the average age for first smartphone issuance is like 10 years old. OK, so as soon as a kid gets the smartphone, here's how anxiety is a huge component of this, because they get their smartphone and we want to believe that there are kids going to be OK. And before long, they're totally immersed in it and they're falling behind in school. It's causing conflict inside the household and it progresses where when I talk to teenagers, I've asked hundreds of teenagers the following question, “What time do you go to sleep at night during the school week?” in the privacy of my office. This is when I was at the high school. And just about every one of them told me that they go to sleep between one and four a.m. on school nights and that their parents don't know it because their phones are upstairs in their bedrooms with them.

So they're not getting enough sleep. That perpetuates anxiety. And then it's just sort of look at me, so now when you have social media and you have a vulnerable adolescent and just by the very definition of adolescence, adolescents are insecure, they're trying to figure out where they fit in and who they are and so forth. And now they have a front row movie ticket to the screen of everybody else's perfect, wonderful self, glorified life. And they're just bombarding their minds with all of these images and stuff of their peers. And it's actually stripping their self-esteem away, causing the anxieties, the depressions and everything else that we're seeing now. 

Ginny:  I think back on my own childhood experiences. I enjoyed most of school, but then I do remember certain times where, you know, like middle school, let’s say where we always had these girl things - like it's two up pitted against one. And I remember having these time periods where I really didn't want to go back, you know. But I did have a break. There was so much drama, you know, but at least you had this time period where you could leave it. You know, you got home at three o'clock and you could leave it until the next day or you had a weekend or you had a school break. And the kids can't leave it if they have the smartphone, right? 

Tom: Yeah, and it recruits other kids to join in on the ganging up basically. And it doesn't go away. 

Ginny: Yeah. One of the things you talked about in your book is lack of resilience. “Students are afraid to fail. They do not take risks and need to be certain about things. For many, failure is seen as catastrophic and unacceptable.” Do you think that that lack of resiliency is coming from smart phones? 

Tom:  Yeah, I think it's part of it. I think one of the issues is that if you look at kids today, you don't see too many kids walking to school. What I see by where I live, and I refer to this in the book, every street is actually a dead end. So you don't have all that far to walk. So if you take the bus, it might be a three minute walk. But what I've seen again and again, a lot of the stuff I do is based on my own eyes, what I see in the real world. And I would see all the, you know, the SUVs with the mom and the teenagers in the passenger seat or younger kids waiting for the bus. So it kind of perpetuates the sort of fear mentality where parents are actually afraid of letting their kids walk to school because they think there's a kidnapper, even though kidnappings are at an all time historic low.

And the reason for that, for this fear is because we're again, we're bombarded all day long. You know, it's just funnels right down to social media now, the news and everything. And it's just how scary and frightening and terrible the world is. One thing after the next, that's what sells. And that creates this sort of protective nature, you know, among parents. And as a result, we're kind of bailing our kids out of everything, afraid of letting them fail and afraid of letting them even just go out and walk to school on their own. So it certainly does affect their resilience. No question about it.

Ginny: It's interesting that you brought up the walking to school, because walking to school or being outdoors has gotten brought up a couple of different times on our podcast already this season. In the realm of resiliency, there was this mom who was saying I have my kids go outside in weather that's not ideal, which I think is a lot of times in the morning, actually depending on where you live. I remember we walked to school, too. It was a mile and we're in Michigan. And it was cold and my parents did not drive us. Everyone walked. They would walk with us sometimes depending on how old we were. But we walked and this mom that when her kids are outside in this uncomfortable weather, that is helping them develop resilience.

And then we had a doctor on talking about sleep and he said one of the best things that you can do for your sleep is to walk to school because you wake up and you go outside. You're exposed to that bright sun, even if it's kind of early, even if it's a cloudy day and then you're warming up your body through movement. And that sort of sets your curve for the day. That’s what he was talking about. So I think it's sort of like the whole theme is that we're trying to do the best for our kids, but we’re inadvertently misguided. 

Tom: I'll tell you a quick story while we're on the topic. So I remember when I was walking to school as a kid, like kindergarten, first second grade. I'd walk down my street to be a crossing guard and then make a left. And there was a railroad crossing. It was a freight train. And my mom was actually the crossing guard because there had to be a crossing guard at the railroad crossing.

So every so often the train would get stuck. You couldn't pass it. And what they would do is a police officer would arrive on the other side of the train and then the crossing guard, in this case my mother, would put each kid in between the train cars one. And you'd feel the train nudge every now and then, like trying to go. But there was no there was no danger whatsoever. But if that were to happen now and somebody took a video of it, you know, the town would be sued. The police officer and the crossing guard would be sued all over the news. And again, that's another fear. It's sort of a fear mongering thing. I mean, it sounds crazy, but really there was no danger.

Ginny: I bet it was a lot of fun.

Tom: There were ladders like that would help you pass to the other side.

Ginny: I would imagine as a kid, you would absolutely love that. Kids love trains. You get to kind of climb over.

Tom: You know, if you ever see a train, it starts at two miles per hour. Tt's not like a Tesla.

Ginny: I've been in a Tesla once and I was like, I feel a little motion sick.

OK, here's a really interesting tidbit that I got out of your book. This is one of the things that I'll think back on a whole lot. You talk about multitasking. So this is the day and age of multitasking. And you said  multitasking can cause fragmented thinking. IQ score declines similar to if the subject had smoked marijuana or stayed up all night. You said IQ drops off 15 points for multitasking.

Adults lowered their scores to the average range of an eight year old. And you said, “The next time you're writing your boss an email during a meeting, remember that your cognitive capacity is being diminished to the point that you might as well let an eight year old write it for you.” I thought that was something to kind of tuck in our memories. You know, we're trying to multitask and it’s really diminishing our capacity. So how does multitasking affect our IQ and our performance? 

Tom: So it's interesting about multitasking, which is task switching. It's moving from one platform to the next. So if somebody is watching TV, they're on a computer, they're looking at their phone, and you take kids listening to music, trying to do homework, checking their phone, going back and forth, the television is on... that's called multitasking.

And what people don't realize is that the brain can only do one thing at a time. So some of the research I came across, which is very compelling, is that the higher the level of multitasker in every case, if you ask somebody that does a lot of multitasking, they'll tell you that they're really good at it. And all the research shows that the higher the level the multitask, the more lousy you actually are at multitasking.

So it's pretty interesting. There was one researcher I referenced in the book by the name of Clifford Nass of Stanford. He did some experiments with students, high multitasking and low multitasking, and had him do this little experiment to see what was happening in their brain. And he had one group of high multitasking and the other group didn't really do much multitasking. And when the high multitasker is hooked up to a functional MRI device you could see the image of their brains and they were using 20 times more brain power than a little multitasker. But it was the wrong part of the brain, like during that experiment you are supposed to be using your executive functions. And the visual cortex of their brains was the part that was lighting up. So it actually changes the actual chemistry of the brain as well. 

Tom: Wow. I mean, that's something to remember. When you're trying to multitask it takes me down to the level of an eight year old. I’ll remember that. And it makes me think of kids in school, you know, the kids in school when we were trying to do these different things and they’ve got their phones out. You know, even way back when. That is actually affecting them.

You say if parents could simply delay the age they give their children smartphones and allow them to use social media, we would see different statistics. “Many parents around the country tell me the biggest mistake they made was getting their child the smartphone.” And this is a big statement. “I've never had one parent come up to me after a lecture or emailed to tell me getting their child a smartphone was the smartest or best thing they ever did.” But the opposite, right?

Tom: One hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, before covid, I was all over the country lecturing and they came up afterwards with the regrets. I talk about social conformity in the book. Really that's my favorite part of the whole book, how we as human beings, we just do what others do. 

Ginny: “The average age of a first smartphone is 10.3. Keep your children away from social media until late adolescence. They are not physiologically or emotionally ready to handle it.” What would delaying do for our society and for kids? 

Tom: Well, ideally, it would be late adolescence. My son was a freshman in college. And my daughter, well, they were the last kids to get phones. So my son didn't get a smartphone until after he graduated the eighth grade. He was 14 years old and it was my old phone. There was no social media. It was just really a means for him to be able to text and stuff. He didn't start using Snapchat until he was like almost seventeen. And at that age, he can handle that. When you're 12 and 13, you can't handle it because you're in a very critical stage of development where you compare yourself and so forth. So ideally late adolescence.

One question people always ask me at the lectures is what is the right age to get my child the smartphone? And the answer that I give that I stole from somewhere and I reference in the book is as follows, when you feel comfortable with your child watching pornography. 

Ginny: Yeah, I've heard that before and I read it in your book. It's a big statement. 

Tom: It is because that's what happens when our kids get the phones at a young age. They're exposed to things that no parent would want them to be exposed to and we can't really avoid it. 

Ginny: Yeah, that's a really good point. You know, so you talk about the dangers of smartphone use and talk about resiliency and neural wiring and pathways. And then there's this very real danger of pornography and other people that are grooming kids. And there's a lot of bullying. There's a lot in there.

So just delay or go with these companies like that Gabb Wireles, those that are coming out with non smartphones. What an awesome answer to a problem. You know, you want to be able to maybe connect with your kid at sports after school or things like that and here's a safe way. 

Tom: Yeah, I have one over here. They sent me one. Looks just like a smartphone and that's in fifth, sixth, seventh grade. That's begging their parents, you know, they could feel like they fit in, you know, because the kids won't be able to tell. They're not going to be caught with a flip phone. That's never going to happen. But you know, you don't have any Internet access. You could text you take some pictures and stuff, but you're not going to be about the dangers that come with the smartphone. 

Ginny: Yeah, it's a product that was needed, that's for sure. And so this has just been a fabulous book. And I do love how it came up a couple of times in there, how you said your daughter kept asking for a phone and you just say no. And I think it's important for parents to know that there are other people saying no and that everyone else is also getting bugged all the time, but that you can say no and like you said, wait until they are in high school before they're getting social media accounts.

Tom: Yes, because it is you know, it is their way of communicating. But we can start with the Gabb, they can text message their friends, you know what I mean? You know, it's up to us to be on top of their phone and realize that actually it's not even their fault. It's mine.

Giny: We have had Gabb Wireless on the podcast. They were talking about how in every other aspect of life we teach things progressively. Kids start on a tricycle or they start on a no pedal bike. And we have this progression of things, how do they cook and when do they get to use the stove and all of these things. But with technology, we're just handing them the final product right off the get go. And so, you know, why not also look at this as let's teach them good technology habits, teach them that we put it away at dinner.

Tom: And on the other end of it, too, is the big tech industry, which I talk about in the book. And I'm doing more research and writing about, as you know, they design their products and they use these algorithms and everything else so that they are addictive and they know that they're doing that.

I did a radio interview last week where Facebook, who owns Instagram, there was an investigative journalistic piece that showed that Facebook did their own internal research on the impact of of Instagram on young teenage girls that showed that teenage girls are more depressed, suffer from more anxiety, and are more likely to be suicidal because of Instagram. And they withheld that information from the general public until an investigative journalist came out and revealed it. And now they're kind of getting into a little bit of hot water right now. 

Ginny: Yeah, those are huge things. That's a really big deal. And like you said, you saw it starting in 2012. It’s really neat that you had that first hand experience of seeing this and comparing it to how it always was and then all of a sudden there's a change. You can trace that timeline back to the phone usage. 

I really, really enjoyed your book Disconnected, Tom. Disconnected, How to Protect Your Kids from the Harmful Effects of Device Dependency. You have another book coming out. Tell us about that.

Tom: Yeah, well, I'm in the middle of writing it and I have no idea what it's about yet. That's how writing goes. You have to put together a whole outline and chapter ideas and then you just kind of put things together. So it's not coming out until February of 2023. So it's like a year and a half away. But it's really going to focus specifically on all the hot bucket items that we're seeing with our children nowadays between mental health, childhood obesity, which has skyrocketed since covid. It's always been a problem and just social and emotional skills and all that. So I'm really going to really kind of dive deep into what our children are nowadays and how we can help them. 

Ginny: Yeah, that's great. So if people want to know more about you, if they want to know more about this book that is coming out, where can people find you and information about you and your books?

Tom: So my website, it's www.tomkersting.com. I don't really use social media. I'll be honest with you. You know, I actually use Facebook as more of my psychological laboratory where I actually look to see what people think. But you'll find me on TV. I do a lot of TV segments for the Today Show. I talk about parenting and mental health and all that stuff. And the book you can get anywhere books are sold.

Ginny: What's a favorite childhood memory of yours that was outside. 

Tom: What comes right to my mind every Thanksgiving morning, my dad would take us, all of us hiking right there. He was a police officer and the town right next to us was called Rockley, New Jersey. There was just woods that went on forever. And we would go hiking and we would call it the Rockley Woods. And we would look forward to that so much.

I'll share something else with you. About five years ago, we took our own kids on that trail, my brother and my sisters and I and my dad. And we totally forgot. We found a tree that we all had carved our names in. It said the Kersting Thanksgiving 1980 with our initials. We found that tree.

Ginny: Wow. Yeah, I love that story because how simple is that? That Thanksgiving tradition of hiking? I mean, that is really simple, but it's amazing how impactful that was for you and how much you remembered it and how it came full circle and you took your own kids. 

Tom: Yeah, it was really, really cool. I mean, we forgot about the tree. We see a big beech tree with the carvings and you know, when you carve something in a tree, years later, it gets whiter because the tree grows. But, you know, 1980, Thanksgiving, 1980,. I’m like, I'm that old. 

Ginny: Look how long those memories stick. I think that's an encouragement to parents. You know, that simple things can leave a lasting impact. And that's what we want to do. And we want to leave a lasting impact with our kids and people. 

Thank you, Tom, so much for your time. Disconnected. You can get it anywhere books are sold and keep a lookout because Tom's got another book coming out in a year and a half. Tom, I really appreciate it. 

Tom: Thank you. Take care.