Interview with Jocelyn Brewer - Nir&Far

Hi, I'm Nir Eyal, and this is the near and Far Podcast. This podcast is about business, behavior and the brain.

On this show, I do a few things.

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Okay, so, yeah, I figured we'd just start recording and we'll see where it takes us, if that's okay with you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Awesome. So, Jocelyn Brewer. So we have known each other for years now. We first met when I was visiting Sydney, and I've been a devoted fan of yours. I subscribe to your newsletter. I love your work. I follow your Instagram Instagram account, one of the few people I follow. And I just. I just love what you're working on. And it's one of those areas that is not my main focus of work, but is super important. And it's something I get so many questions around. I just thought it'd be fun to. To. To talk to you and try and answer many of these questions that I feel like, you know, people ask me some questions and I'll refer them to what I wrote in indistractable. But oftentimes I'm like, oh, you know what? Who would be way better at answering this question? You should check out Jocelyn Brewer's work. Can I send them instead? But yeah. So maybe we can start with. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background for folks who aren't familiar with you, and then we can dive into some questions.

Absolutely. Look, I'm somebody who wanted to be a vet when they were a kid, and I didn't think I was smart enough to get the marks to get into uni. So I kind of went into the wilderness and was actually a social science teacher. I'm a geographer, really. I guess I love humans and their environment and exploring what we do. So I was teaching high school, and then I retrained to be a school counselor. So in the state in Australia I live in, that's basically a school psychologist. And as I was training into this role, I had to do a research project. And I was like, what should I do? And my principal said to me, you should work out what's going on when we hand out laptops to every kid in Australia in year nine. And it was a part of a thing we called the digital education revolution in 2009, where we literally handed out laptops, but teachers hadn't gotten any really professional development on how to use technology well. And even now, look, we're in the middle of a lockdown in Sydney. This is our eighth week, and it's probably going to go on for at least another couple of months. I'm getting lots of reports of schools where teachers still, I think, are grappling with how do we use technology and learning. Don't think we've still kind of really innovated that. So my work came out of that and I just kind of remained really interested as I guess all of the other technology then sort of started becoming in our pockets and in our faces, in every crevice of our life that I just kept reading and asking questions and noticing my own behaviors. So digital nutrition was something that popped out of my mouth in a radio interview when I was talking about digital detoxing and going, hold on, this actually doesn't sound right. Because we know from diet culture that detoxing really doesn't work. We need sustainable habits and we need to think about what underpins those habits. So much like indestructible changed my world in 2019 when you forwarded me that copy because I suddenly had this model to understand why I was getting things wrong with my actions. Just going off in the wrong direction.

Absolutely. And you've been quoted and appeared on many radio shows as well as television. I've seen you on all over YouTube and it's awesome to see the impact you're having. But I think what's interesting about your take is that you have a very empowering perspective, I think, for parents. And I'd love to start with, what do you think parents get wrong about technology and kids?

Look, that's a really great and big question because I think parents obviously never purposely get it wrong. They're doing the absolute best they can with sometimes too much information, I guess, that there's so much of a push from the media to say, oh, big scary things are going to happen in this new sort of digital playground that we didn't grow up with. And in any generation there's something new that we necessarily didn't grow up with. And some parents who are very cautious about exploring that, curious with curiosity with their kids, I guess. So I think what often happens is that parents are not necessarily as Conscious as they could be about some of the things that they put in front of their kids. Now we could talk about in the 80s, after my swimming training, on a Saturday morning, my mum would take me to McDonald's. That probably wouldn't be something that happened these days as often or as carefree nurse with as much carefree kind of. Yeah. So I think what happens is we sort of haven't asked those questions proactively and then we found that there have been problems. Whereas if we set things up, I guess, and really empower kids and have shoulder to shoulder conversations about where tech sits in our families, things turn out quite differently. So, yeah.

It'S a big one.

Yeah, it is a big one. But one of the tools that you've put out there that I find is super interesting is this family agreement that you propose. Can you walk us through kind of what that's about and why we should have one with our kids?

Yeah, absolutely. Look, most people are quite surprised when I say kids really love rules. They actually quite enjoy anything that's consistent and clear. Because one of the big things that kids will kind of complain about is the hypocrisy of parents or the injustice of what happens, say, between siblings or between households and things like that. So when we actually set out to have an agreement and this is not rules, this is not kind of even necessarily guidelines, though there's some element of that. It's really about collaboration. So I would actually say this is about co designing a family tech agreement by sitting down and talking about where does technology fit? What's the good stuff, what's the not so good stuff? And rather than it being all about technology, it's actually all about our goals and our intentions and it actually sort of does some sneaky, indestructible stuff here by saying, what is this stuff that we can build traction with and focusing on those things and then acknowledging where technology becomes distraction as well. So I've updated the workbook and one of the extra activities is to actually delve into your indestructible models. So even for kids, I use that in my therapy space here when kids are, you know, struggling with some stuff. Just that model, really. You should see the lights going in people's brains. We should do some reaction videos. Yeah, because it sums it up so beautifully. So people come to my workshop thinking that I'm going to teach them how to, you know, ban devices or set time limits and actually I say it's all about goals and they're like, oh, phew, this is a Lot easier than I thought it would be. But it's about having conversations, right? It's actually about communicating what's going on rather than telling kids what to do, which is quite a game changer from the people, according to the people who have done it.

And as a father of a 13 year old, I've always felt that the easy route is just to tell kids what to do, right? Like just, just put it away, right? Or stop eating this or you're doing too much of that, or turn off a TV or put away the iPad. It's just so easy as a default state to do that, especially if you were raised that way. It's kind of what our, you know, our gut reaction is to just boss our kids around and tell them what to do. And we kind of forget that. Wait a minute. They're also sentient beings with their own choices. And in fact, when we tell them what to do, that often backfires. You know, one of my favorite psychological phenomenon is psychological reactance, how when we are told what to do, we naturally rebel. Of course we do. It doesn't matter what we do. It's like that, that meme that's going around where there's the kid who is about to do dishes and he says, and then the parent tells them to do dishes and you're like, yeah, I was going to do dishes. I wanted to do the dishes until you told me to do it. Now I don't want to do it anymore. Exactly.

And this is the very premise behind why I don't believe in banning smartphones in schools. Because I don't believe in using the language that indicates something is banned. I don't think we should have a free for all. But I think when we empower young people to have a say in where technology sits and explain to them and kind of pull back the curtain on some of the things that are used to keep them scrolling, then they make very, very different choices. So a lot of my work is about semantics. Like digital detoxing can be useful. Having time away can be useful if you look at why you're doing it. But digital nutrition puts a whole different spin to say, how do we empower, empower ourselves. So I think from that perspective, you know, I'm not some tech apologist, I'm not kind of ignoring some of the very significant problems. I sit in this room and deal with families all the time to try and help them cope with that. But I think we, you know, we're quite similar with our work. You know, the technology that sits in Our skull is really underutilized when it comes to solving some of these problems. And understanding our cognitive biases really then helps build better strategies to get to the root of why we behave the way we do.

One of my favorite social engineering campaigns was from the anti smoking campaign that we had here in the States. I'm not sure if you had this in Australia. I wouldn't imagine you did. But the most successful effort that they found, they did all kinds of studies on what was the best way to help teens not start smoking. And the number one most effective strategy was to show them what was called the truth campaign, where they showed kids basically that there's an industry out there who wants to get you addicted to cigarettes. And that elicited reactance in a good way. Right. So that it was. The cigarette industry wants you to do this. And they leverage the natural rebelliousness that we all have, especially teenagers have to say, well, I don't want to do it. If they want me to do that, then that's exactly what I don't want to do. Right. As opposed to, you know, as parents, it's a good lesson for us that, you know, if, if we, if we say, look, absolutely, there is an industry out there that wants to, to get you hooked. Right? I know better than anyone, I wrote the book. I know all their tricks about how they get you hooked. But that it doesn't mean we're powerless, that we actually, you know, just like with cigarettes, we don't have to start smoking. And just like with, with technology use, there are certain things we, we can moderate in terms of our behavior, but maybe, maybe we can dive more into kind of the nuts and bolts of how would I.

Sorry.

That's okay. No problem.

Meant to make that noise.

We can edit that out. Which reminds me, I should mute my phone too, so thanks for the reminder. So maybe we can get into kind of the nuts and bolts of what we as parents can do specifically with this. I really like this agreement. Can you walk us through kind of. How would we start with the agreement? Walk us through kind of some of the steps, if you don't mind.

Yeah, absolutely. So, look, the first thing is that you need to have a plan. So you can't just, you know, boulder into a conversation because you're angry and fed up with kids looking at screens. So if you don't have a plan for what they should be doing, otherwise you can't just say, turn it off and put it down. We're not going to go and climb trees and ride our bikes and Play cricket in the street and those nostalgic sort of things that we grew up with. Right. So you have to have a plan. And part of that plan is to get to the nuts and bolts of what are your family's values and how do you activate those values? Are you actually walking the talk then you need to make a plan to actually meet and you need to sit down and dedicate some time to actually talking through the things that I set up in the workbook, which is really like, what are the great things about technology and what do we notice are the not so great things? How's it getting in the way we talk then about what are our goals? Short, medium and long term goals and not boring goals. Right. It's not about what mark you get in high school or what university course you want to do. It's how do you want to feel, what do you want your life to feel like. Do you want to feel in control of your life? Do you feel like you want to feel like you maybe don't have so many choices? So there is this kind of whole get together, sit down and have a conversation and yes, that's going to be a little bit awkward or a little bit unusual. And some kids would say cringy to begin with.

Sorry, sorry to interrupt. What age do you think we can do this?

So I've pitched the work from about 8 to 18. So if you've got quite, you know, again, you'd have to change the language a little bit for younger ones, but I think definitely they're able to have conversations about feelings. This is all about emotional intelligence and awareness of those emotions. So it might be. And again, there's different resources that I throw in along the way that you need to start by talking about what emotions are and you know, there are some happier emotions and then there's some emotions that don't feel as comfortable. And what we actually want to do is get people to feel more comfortable sitting with the yuck stuff rather than always trying to push it away in some sort of, you know, good vibes only, toxic positivity theme. So the big chunk of the course is really how to have those conversations. And I structure a lot of that for you so that you can sit down and work out what is this going to look like. And I use a model that's about beyond screen time. So we're not just looking at minutes, we're looking at the content of what we're consuming, the context that that can happen in the cognitions or the thoughts and feelings that are going on with that and the function. So we sort of dig into where technology can sit and some of the sort of, I guess, guardrails around it. So technology out of bedrooms or at least away from arm's reach. So there's not that impact on sleep. There's, you know, looking at Dan Siegel's model of the healthy mind platter, which is about, you know, having time to sleep, have time to move, have time to reflect, have time to connect. All of those sorts of things need to be part of our daily lives. And then technology sort of fits into the gaps rather than it always being a focus on tech, tech, tech, tech, tech. So you have this big meeting, you come up with some agreements and then you try it and then you need to review it because few families are going to be able to come up with an agreement and it work first go. We really then need to reflect on what works, what didn't work, what were the challenges to it not working, tweak and then repeat. So that's basically the model. And it can be a model that families use like I think maybe fortnightly, those fortnightly check ins. We all have meetings for work, probably too many meetings for work. But where do we have those meetings in our family? Just to kind of check in and see where we're at, see where we want to go. So setting a little bit of a habit around those conversations is really again one of the goals. It's not necessarily about technology all the time, it's about the conversation that helps us stay on track.

So is the artifact that you're making like a written something, I mean, or is it like a schedule or what do you come out with that? What does it mean actually look like?

Yeah, it is a bit of a choose your own adventure. What it absolutely doesn't look like is a big long contract with lots of you must do this, sign here and you must sign here. Because I think again, everyone signs there. We all agree to terms and conditions online that we don't read. But this is, this is actually probably, you know, you're getting a big sheet of paper and lots of texters and there's some like. What I, what I suggest is there's a family agreement, there's something that everyone in the family signs up to, including as parents. I think we so need to really step in to show kids how we manage our own behaviors and are willing to take on challenges. And then there's individual things. So if you've got, you know, a 13 year old girl but a 16 year old boy, they're more likely to have very different kind of digital diets. They're interested in different stuff and the demands of technology and the things that they should actually be accessing at those developmental ages are quite different as well. So there's having some general principles and then particular things. So it might be a visual. If you've got an eight year old, it might be a very clear visual. If you've got a 16 year old, it might be a timetable. There might be some general principles around sleep, around connection, around movement, all those kinds of things. So again there's some frameworks in the document, document that I provide to give you some ideas. But every family is different. So trying to come up with a one size fits all or a contract that you sign I think isn't worth the paper that it's printed on. If you still have a printer and newspaper, it just becomes this thing that's forgotten. So it's really about the conversation and the kind of commitment or the pact and the accountability that you have with one another by declaring some of these things.

Yeah. And how do you make these the trade offs salient for a kid where it's, you know, I like the model of look, you know, time spent on your device is time that you're not spending playing with your friends or going outside or doing other things that you love. But how do you make those costs salient where they say look, that's what I like to do. That's where I am spending my time. And I don't personally have a problem with that.

That's a really tricky one.

Right.

Because ultimately we need to at some point have some consequences around things. So it's about, I believe it's about connecting into those feelings. So are you really feeling as good doing that thing for X amount of time? And usually it's about the length of kids being online rather than short snacks online. It's about anchoring in how you really feel when you are connecting with your friends or you do do the thing that might feel uncomfortable when you think about it but actually feels really good when you do it. Just like exercise. Part of that is learning and practice and sometimes it's about failing. So it's about saying, okay, well I chose to be online for four hours today and actually at the end felt rubbish. And I'm going to take that feeling and I'm going to remind myself of how I feel at other times. And this is where the conversation I think is really, really helpful because we're trying to anchor in the good feeling we're trying to connect with those feelings and then notice when we fail that that's okay because tomorrow is another day and we're going to make different choices. But a lot of it, Sorry, a lot of this is for teenagers, I guess, especially like, yeah, probably 14 and up. That wiring of the brain comes from rehearsal, it comes from practicing, it comes from feeling, experiencing it, and then trying to shift doesn't come from avoiding it or never having to make those choices. And I think sometimes parents try to, you know, pave the road for the child rather than prepare the child for the road. And that sometimes means that they don't have that feeling of that they then need to manage and choose differently around.

Yeah, but it sounds like we should give kids a sandbox online to play in. But. But that sandbox also needs constraints. Like, are there any hard and fast rules that you would say, look, these are just like hygiene features. These are things we've got to get in place for kids. Protecting them from inappropriate content, et cetera. How do we do that? But also make sure that they do have those guardrails. And what happens if we started down one path and now we need to switch and say, look, I need your phone. Cause I have to install this content blocker because there's some stuff I really, really, really don't want you to see. But there's lots of stuff you can go and be free and explore. How do we do that?

Again, really great question. And I jump between the sandbox analogy and the learning to ride a bike or drive a car analogy, where, you know, obviously when we first got cars, there were no seatbelts, there were no road rules. And we've put those things in place to protect us. And certainly in Australia, when you learn to drive, we've got all of these rules for P platers or provisional license holders so that young people stay safe on road. So part of it is proactively. So before the device comes out of the box or you go to the shop, get the device, that there's conversations about what kind of monitoring and what kind of oversight parents can have. Again, very different if you're hopefully not getting your first smartphone, but you know, your first own device versus an upgrade. And sometimes it is about taking back control and saying, you know what, you've had free rein, we need to walk the bolted horse back into the stable. And how you manage that change is obviously quite tricky. But again, it's about those conversations. What are the concerns of parents? What are some of things that are happening in those online Spaces that you might need parental controls to put some filters on.

It's a bit of a wild west and again, depending on your child, they're kind of online proclivities I guess, and the trust that you have with them as well. So sometimes trust gets eroded quite quickly if parents do things to sort of spy on their kids out of again, good intentions, but shows up really badly and feels like a bit of a blight on their privacy.

So look, to answer your actual question, some of the main principles I think are around protecting sleep. That's a really big one, how we do that. Again, there's some wiggle room because I know for some young people with anxiety, using some of the evidence based apps for that can be really useful at bedtime. But we might need to make sure that the wi fi shuts down so all the good stuff can be used. But you don't have a cheeky scroll on Instagram after you do your mindfulness meditation. There's things like making sure we're getting enough movement and obviously, you know, screen time guidelines are there simply because phone use is offsetting our movement, which is sedentary.

And then developmental stuff. So I really recommend people push back on having like their kids on social media before they're 13, which is a big ask because that's about eighth grade and we're seeing the kids in year five and six getting their own devices. So this is again where packs come in. And I think parents need pacts to support one another because we don't want to be the uncool parent, not letting your kid do something. But at the same time we actually need to all band together to have better conversations as parents about the struggles that we're having and how hard it is sometimes to say no to kids on this.

I mean that, that is I think the.

Place we have to start. We have to start stop being hypocrites as parents and say, you know, get off your device, meanwhile we're scrolling or you need to have a bedtime and meanwhile we're watching tv. I mean, what message does that send to a kid when you say sleep is super important, you need to get to bed. But why aren't you going to bed? You're watching tv, what's going on? So I think there is a lot to be said about leading by example, especially when it comes to kids. Because kids, they come built in with these hypocrisy detection devices. They love to see where you screw up and they are very, very aware of your behaviors. And so leading by example is going to be incredibly important, which is not easy. That we need to get our own house in order and figure out ways a minute. Why, why am I having trouble doing what I say I'm going to do? And so that's why it's, you know, it's so super important to become indistractable yourself if you want to raise kids that do this as well. So yeah, totally echo that advice. And I think the sleep stuff is super important. The nice thing is that it's. It seems like the technology is allowing us more ways to customize. Right. I used to give advice that says, you know, nothing that beeps or boops in the bedroom. Bedroom. Like just as a rule. I don't care if it's radio or a record player or an old phone. Like nothing that could interrupt sleep because sleep is so important for all of us, but especially when it comes to kids development.

And so, you know, now that I'm more flexible around that kind of stuff because yeah, you can, you know, some families now have old devices that they wipe out and they use only for the meditation app. Right. So instead of throwing away the phone or selling it for, you know, $10 on eBay, after it's been used for a few years, it becomes, becomes the meditation phone. No Internet connection, no, you know, no WI fi, just for helping me fall asleep or white noise or something. So it seems like the technology is becoming more flexible if we know how to use it. Yeah.

And I think even the iOS is going to have a new section within screen time called Focus where we'll be able to do a lot more within that. So, you know, there's some listening happening within those, you know, big fruit tech companies.

And certainly, you know, like even things like the advice around, get an old analog alarm clock. Do you remember those things? Like they blare at you. You can't like, you know, update them.

And have one right here.

There you go, you know, Right. You have to change that. What about Sunday when you don't want it to go off? Species who interrupt us sleep with alarms.

I'm very lucky that today my alarm clock, who is my child actually hadn't gone off when I left the house. She had this massive sleep in. So I live this kind of sl where I have the flexibility around that on most days. But for many people, you know, we need alarm clocks. We need all of these things and that devolution, as you say, going back to some older devices. My kid's iPad is a second generation iPad from 2013. It does very little and she still thinks it's amazing.

That's fine.

I'm holding off on that as long as possible. Right. So, yeah, we are, we are starting to really, I guess, hack where it sits and think more creatively around. We don't have to have the shiniest vest thing with all the bells and whistles. In fact, the old clunky thing is sometimes a lot more functional for what we need for some people.

And it's cool to see how the price for that stuff has gone down precipitously. That. Yeah, you know, what does a second generation iPad even sell for? Probably not much anymore, right? You can get a used one that works just fine. It just can't do everything. But it can do at least one or two things really well. One thing you touched on that I think is underappreciated, that I've been harping on is no social media before 13. And not only do I think from, like, it's great to hear you as a psychologist, just be able to prescribe that as something parents want to stay away from, but also just from like, you know, the tech companies themselves tell parents, at least in the United States, the law is these apps are not meant to be used for anyone under 13. And in fact, it seems like Instagram now has some great new technologies they're implementing to find kids who cheat and go on these apps, even if they're underage. So I think as parents, parents, I don't think many parents got the memo that, you know, your kid really should not be using social media before 13. Personally, I'd like to see that wait even longer. I think middle school is tough enough, you know, the hours when you're at school, let alone to have middle school drama follow you around all day long. Every day seems to be too much. So I would recommend even waiting well into high school, but would love to hear your thoughts as well.

Yeah, look, I would love for us to do more work on friendship and friendship skills offline and on, because some of those interpersonal dramas, as you say, about enough face to face in an analog kind of way, but that digital space then amplifies that because of the digital disinhibition effect.

We'Re not looking at one another often when we're smacking little messages into our phone late at night, our prefrontal corporation cortex has probably clocked off and gone to sleep by then. So some of those things that are playing out are playing out very differently because we're not face to face with one another. We're not kind of Empathetic to the other human. And another aspect of it, I guess too is that we can kind of curate and construct our responses a lot more carefully. If you put, you know, two 12 year olds in a playground and face them off, they probably wouldn't say half the nasty things to each other, you know, as they do when they sit down and they can construct some of those messages. And sometimes, sometimes it's as easy as removing somebody from a group chat or starting a new group chat without them. So these are some of the things I think need explicit teaching. They're things that we hope many people just pick up, but we need to kind of call out and explain a little bit better rather than just hoping for the best.

Absolutely, yeah. And I think there's something to be said about. Okay, what are we talking about exactly when we talk about social media? I think a WhatsApp group group, we call WhatsApp social media, but it really isn't. It's group chat. Right. So that's very different from, you know, what you posted on TikTok or, or Instagram. Like there's very. Social networks are different and it's. I think it's really important for parents to understand that they're not all alike, that they're. And they can, you know, I think a WhatsApp group for kids of a certain age, if it's, you know, contained with a small group of friends, can be very helpful. It can be. Especially during these times when kids are so physically disconnected, it could be a great way for them to keep in touch.

Yeah. And having some netiquette around that, like having agreements around what is posted in WhatsApp groups. And I talk to mom about this all the time. They like really love the WhatsApp group. It's really helpful for netball or soccer or whatever's going on. And then one person decides that they want to share a meme in it and then we all get overloaded and it kind of, we don't have that agreement anymore. And again, you know, with kids, they're going to talk about certain things. It's great if it's around study or it's around a particular topic, but it only takes a few little messages for it to splinter off and then become quite, I guess, just, you know, tentacles climb out into other areas. So absolutely, what you're saying around social media like that is such a broad term. It's like, you know, what do you do on your phone? We do a million things on our phone. So getting beyond this notion of screen time and looking at the screen Gnome. Like our genome, our actual, you know, way that we use things is much more important because again, even looking at, if you're scrolling through, through a social media platform that's quite visual, who you follow and how you fed the algorithm is really going to be different child to child or you know, human to human that I ask parents, what are your kids doing online? And I say, oh, watching YouTube. Okay, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube, a lot of which is porn and really horrible stuff. What are they watching? Who are they following? So being able to kind of understand that a little bit more would be really useful and, and just more nuanced conversations and the ability to kind of understand that a little bit more. You don't have to be a massive social media maven, you don't have to be a cyber security expert to kind of keep your kids safe. You just need to know how to have a conversation about risks and about what's happening, I think.

So how can we do that without feeling like we're spying?

Curiosity I think is the key word. Like hey, I'm really curious about that. Like, hey, what's happening? And again it's, I think it's leaning into your relationship with your kid as well and sort of it not feeling like you have an agenda except to understand them better and empower them as opposed to, yeah, kind of creepy in unwanted. And then put rules around things out of fear and sometimes misguided fear or miss, you know, I mean there's lots of risks, I guess that can show up, but there's lots of risks in real life, in real life relationships, you know, how many times did I get my heart broken as a teenager? That was real. I didn't need the Internet, you know, like Internet or no Internet, there's still a risk there. So part of this is just those conversations and the wiring of being able to make decisions and critical and creative thought. Like how do I spot when somebody is maybe not who they say they are? How do I tune into when I'm feeling like this is a little bit creepy or I don't feel comfortable around my friends or I feel like I'm being excluded or whatever those different behaviors might be.

Do you recommend turning on like this, the kid control feature or the safe safe search features and all those?

Look, I think filtering some search terms is useful especially for younger kids because once you've seen some online content, it's very hard to unsee it. And if, again, if your kid has seen that and doesn't tell you that they're trying to manage that and process that without the help and the guidance of somebody who can make sense of those experiences. So often it's exposure to porn, but it can be exposure to violence where that sense of seeing something that they feel and know is not right. It's their true ashamed to then say, I've seen something online that wasn't great. So I think sometimes again, if you've got younger kids who are online and you're not able to supervise them and who can necessarily be right there all the time, it's useful to filter out some key things that might come up up. But if you search, you know, Barbie doing the splits, very maybe naive thing to search, you're going to get certain content that, you know, net nannies aren't necessarily going to think about. For older kids, if those things are on there and they really aren't managing why they're going on. I guess we find some very good white hat hackers being able to disable pretty much all of those bits of software. I lurk in a lot of parenting forums and I don't think I've seen any of the software where somebody hasn't said help, my kid is hacked, insert the name of the software. And now I can't get onto my work laptop and finish the annual report or you know, our entire house's WI fi has been disabled and now we're all kicked off. So I think there's again, it's a conversation and a negotiation based on the trust, based on, you know, how old the kid is, how necessarily they might find being on Discord and talking to their friends and playing whatever game is so a time and a place, all very contextual.

Yeah. Do you think it's a good idea to go back and look through search histories or especially I'm thinking on YouTube, you know, you can turn, I think turning on those, the kids Safe features on YouTube is a great idea. But even then like, ooh, I wonder if is a good idea to see like what, what is my kid watching? Or would you say that's a bad idea?

I think if you side by side say, hey, let's look at what you've been watching, that's very different to let me go through your browser history while you're late. And I spoke to a parent the other day and I, and I said, well, if they know that you're going to do that, then wouldn't they just clear their browser history? And she said yes, but then that is basically demonstrating guilt. And I was like, okay, but, you know, kids are pretty savvy. If you've just watched 10 minutes of something that you shouldn't, you can clear the last half an hour of your browser history and you can then just like throw a few other things in there. Again, none of these things are foolproof, but.

You know, and many people will use different, different tactics. My tactic is always about transparency and trust. If you're going to be a little bit manipulative, you're eroding that trust. And then when the proverbial. If the proverbial hits the fan, kids are unlikely to come to us when that's happening. And that's the real concern. Right. And I've had kids who say, oh, I didn't want to go and tell mum about that because I swore in a message. And it's like, honey, we don't care that you're telling, you know, the potential predator to go F off. We care that you're not meeting up with that potential predator. And it was a situation where it was moving towards something that was pretty dodgy. So their little minds, again, really great example, awful example, but an example of how the brain works that this kid was really stuck on. Oh, no, I've sworn in something and wasn't seeing the big picture of what was actually playing out. So we need young people to connect in with us even when those little ripples happen, and not feel judged and not feel like we're going to invalidate them or worst thing, take away the phone as soon as something happens online. That's their biggest fear. Like their phones are more important to them than the family pet. It's just.

Yeah, it is there it is their connection. Yeah. So it sounds like the big takeaway way is giving them the line of connection to know that when they see something that makes them feel strange, that they're not sure about, that they can talk to you about it without feeling like they're going to be reprimanded or judged for it, but that you can have a conversation and grow from it as opposed to any kind of punitive measures, perhaps.

Absolutely. Definitely.

Yeah. Interesting. What about gaming? I get a lot of questions around Fortnite and whatever. The addictive game To Shore. And I say addictive in air quotes here so that it's, you know, it's. There's lots of controversy around what is really an addiction versus what's just. I like it a lot, but I'm sure that's something you get asked quite a bit about.

Absolutely. It's where my work actually started out. Was looking at games. And again, talking about games is like talking about social media. What games? There is the hot chips, I call them the hot chips of the french fries of gaming. Like the Fortnite's, Roblox, Minecraft. They're the really big games that everyone's playing and there's lots of different modifications of those. So the first thing I'll say to a or what mod are they playing or what kind of, you know, what are they doing in Roblox? Roadblocks is a platform, not necessarily a game. Oh, right. So just having a little bit of an understanding of that. Again, you don't have to be expert at it. My home play for parents is log on, go and work out what your kid is so brilliant at and has needed you for. Zero instruction around.

I try and get people to really diversify the gaming diet. So rather than getting stuck on big long chunks of time in one particular game to go and find alternative games. And the fantastic database that was created by Andy Robertson over in the UK during lockdown last year is called the Taming gaming database. So taminggaming.com he basically has pulled together this amazing search engine where you can filter by age, by platform, by accessibility, by type of game, like the contents of the game, this incredible database so that you can go and find some more digitally, nutritiously, games to play and to really develop different kinds of skills. So we know that the research shows there's a lot of collaboration, a lot of problem solving, a lot of skill building that happens in games. But we really want that to be across a variety of topics, not just can I shoot everything that moves or can I do that grinding kind of behavior. So again, thinking about time spent is one factor and how you can break that up into small snacks and how that can sort of supplement other activities once you've done everything else that you need to.

There's a great friend of mine, Andrew Kintz, who runs a program called Game Aware and that's trying to help kids take their program from. And you know Andrew too, don't you? Yeah, taking gaming from habit to hobby so that we can enjoy the best bits of technology and finding that sweet spot. Um, so yeah, that's a, that's a tricky one, I guess. And that one can happen very quickly, especially in things like lockdown. So I've got lots of clients at the moment who are struggling with pulling themselves back out of games and re engaging with school post lockdown. A lot of school avoidance happening at the moment. Huge rise in kids not getting Back to school.

Yeah. Yeah. W. With so much craziness and disruption in their routines, it's. It's a challenge. Yeah. I found that the argument that the Andrew presents with game awareness of look, if you want to be a game a better gamer, right. If you want to improve your skill, you have to game on a schedule. You have to game in a way that you're not burning yourself out that in fact you could be a better gamer when you make time for it in the right way in your day. And that kind of, that becomes the gateway for figuring out well, what else do I want in my life? How do I restore balance and live out my values in other ways. And you're right. I think even a 10, 11, 12 year old can, can figure some of that stuff out. Fantastic. Yeah. Any other advice that you think for parents would be great in closing for.

Folks to remember just to kind of back yourselves a little bit and really, I mean one of my biggest bits of advice is put the curiosity cap on. See whether you can get out of the gear of fear and worry of your kids future, which I totally get. Right. It's not about not caring. It's about activating a part of your brain that's curious to explore and understand rather than act out of fear. Fear because that part that acts out of fear isn't creative, can't solve problems and isn't going to connect with your kid. So really kind of just doing a gear shift into curiosity I think opens a little up a lot more space for parents to kind of feel a bit more confident, breathe out, have a conversation and then keep going.

Yeah. I'm curious just on that note, how do you as a facilitator here for these conversations between parents and kids, how do you get them to a place where they can see and discuss and feel comfortable about the deeper issues? Right. Oftentimes the excessive use we're not talking about one or two hours a day but really the excessive use, you know as well as I do there's typically something else that's not being addressed. How do you get to that?

Yeah, look, I can pick it pretty quickly. I can pick it usually from an interview with a parent about how it's summed up. And then when I meet the kid I definitely get a sense of things and usually it's not necessarily gaming. The game is taking the role of sometimes the parent or the confidant or all different things. It's actually helping manage the anxiety that they have. So it is about quality family therapy and it is about Approaching the parent and being able to work with the parent where they can look at their own stuff too. Because often it is about an attachment issue and it's about their own busyness. Sometimes it's about the owner space, the space that they've been able to make to do the side by side parenting of kids. I think sometimes we think because kids can operate devices and feed themselves, they don't need us. What they need us for is that deep connection and sort of modeling and just sitting. I think we don't maybe sit on the couch and watch a TV show together the way that we maybe did a generation ago, that just that kind of, it's not even bonding, it's just the living side by side. We're kind of living past one another. And so that is disconnects us. And for little ones where they can't, you know, 13, 14 year old boys, often they can't necessarily say, hey, I just want to like hang out with my dad. I know work is really busy and I'm watching dad do all of these things that they do kind of retreat and they don't go back and ask for the help that they need because they're not necessarily get it. So it's complex and it's, you know, it's really about getting families to the point, I guess in the stages of change model where they're, where they're able to contemplate taking steps to make change and that they can see everyone's contribution in a family dynamic to making it better.

It's tough.

It's really courageous for many families.

Yeah. It just reminds me how many of these issues are, are not new. Right. That you know, underlying issues that a family might have.

Will and have always been problems no matter what the latest technology trends might be. And it also reminds me kind of of the, the, the risks of kind of living our own lives independently. Right. And I think when I grew up, you know, dad worked outside the home, mom worked in the home, we went to school and we didn't actually get that much time together. Ironically, what actually bonded us together was television. Like in a weird way, like TV time was family time. In a way we would have dinner together. That was very important, my family, to have dinner together when my, when my dad was in town. But that, that, that many times the fact that we all watched whatever stupid TV show we were watching watching gave us something to laugh about together, something to have inside jokes together. And in a way there's a risk of, because you know, you can, you know, the child can go watch Netflix in their room and the parents can go, you know, read a Kindle or you know, go on social media in a different room. There isn't that same bonded experience. But if we played a game together, if we watched a movie together, in a way the technology can bond us together or at least give us a shared, a shared joy to help us.

Exactly. And you know, one of the bits that I do in the course is really about rituals and thinking about what is your family ritual? Is it Taco Tuesday? Is it that on Thursday night you watch this one show and you rotate through the people in the family around what you choose? Is it that, you know, you have a night where you're going to try and gain together, but it's that, as I say, not even bonding. Not like the over the top cringy like, oh, let's be like best friends here. It's just the shared experience. It's just not going down our own rabbit hole into our own kind of digital world. But actually even when we do that, coming back out and saying, do you know what I just saw? Do you know what I just read? And having that sort of shared conversation. Absolutely. Those little rituals I think are super overlooked.

Yeah. I can't tell you how many Monty Python jokes my daughter and I share from like we watched that movie and the Holy Grail and it's amazing. Like it's one of the few that like we have that we can, we can laugh about together.

And I'm discovering Pokemon with my 4 year old who is the best. And you know that 13 years worth of content, we don't need to watch another thing for a while. But absolutely, you know, you find a little thing, you have your little in joke. That's beautiful. Love it.

Very cool. Awesome. Well, tell us where we can find more about you and your work.

Really simply jocelynbrewer.com you'll find all of my digital nutrition work under there and links out to all the different events and courses and different bits and bobs that I own offer. It's quite an array of offerings, I'm told so. Dawsonbrewer.com thank you.

Fantastic. And subscribe to your to the newsletter as well. It's a great resource. There's all sorts of wonderful content and articles that you curate. So absolutely. Check out jocelynbrewer.com and subscribe to the newsletter as well. Thank you so much for being here, Jocelyn. It's great to see you. Thank you.

It's always bad to talk.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of.

The near and Far podcast. You can always find more at my blog, nearandfar.com and don't forget, if you have a question you'd like me to explore in a future episode, leave me your question. The former review for the podcast on itunes.