All right, let's do some questions of our own. Some deep questions of our own, Jessie. I have two in a row that are about children. So I figure we'll do, we'll start off our questions today with a child question block. Our first one comes from Sarah. Sarah says, "I'm particularly fascinated "in digital minimalism from a parent's perspective.

"I'm really concerned about how my children, "the oldest of which is currently nine." Sarah, by the way, my oldest is also nine. So this is relevant. "I'm particularly concerned about how my children "will navigate the digital world as they reach the age "when they and their peers are likely "to first obtain smartphones.

"Here in the UK where we live, "this is generally as they start secondary school at age 11. "I'm equally concerned how they will navigate adolescence "in the digital world we live now. "I'd really appreciate any information or advice "you may have directed towards parents on this topic." Well, Sarah, I do have some thoughts.

These are the thoughts that makes me very unpopular among a lot of young adolescents, but I will give them to you nonetheless. Here's my TL;DR summary of digital engagement and kids. "I would worry about giving unrestricted smartphone access "to anyone under the age of, let's say, 16 or 17." In other words, 16 or 17 is probably the appropriate earliest age to give unrestricted smartphone access to a kid, certainly not 11.

There's a couple issues here that are relevant. "I believe the evidence is becoming increasingly clear "that social media use during early adolescence "and during puberty or pre-puberty "is really potentially psychologically quite damaging." Now, your kid might be fine, but there's a big chance that they won't be. This is a danger zone.

Early adolescent girls in particular who do heavy social media use, there's some real scary signals there, but forget the debates about the research literature. Social psycho-literature is very difficult. It's very difficult to get clear signals on anything. Just look at the target audience itself and see what they self-report.

I hear this again and again from young adolescents. This is a source of anxiety. This is a source of feelings of self-harm. This is ruining my life. All occasions pointing towards heavy social media use on their phone. There's other issues with unrestricted smartphone use as well. Excessive video game playing is a big deal.

These games are very addictive, especially those that are massively multiplayer online style games. Give, for example, a young adolescent male unrestricted access to games on their phone, and you might get six, seven plus hours of playing. They'll play them into the night. They'll show addictive tendencies where they can act out with anger or rage if the screen is trying to be taken away from them.

Their brains are not ready for that. I think that is really damaging. The other issue is pornography. You give unrestricted smartphone use to a 12 or 13 year old, you are going to potentially generate some real issues with their developing sexuality. You might also develop some real issues in how they actually relate to or treat with respect or not the opposite sex.

These are real issues. And we shrug our shoulders at it and say, yeah, but the other kids are doing it. And I don't think that's a strong enough rationale. I don't think that's a strong enough rationale. So what should you do instead? At the appropriate age, get them a phone with text messaging, but does not have the standard OS that can run social media apps and unrestricted web browsing.

Get them a dumber phone, a feature phone that has text messaging. Sure, that's useful. That's very useful. Text me when you're done with practice and you want to be picked up. Let me text my friend and say, I'm coming over now. I think that's fine. I'm completely fine with that modern convenience.

I mean, when I was in high school, it was all about pay phones and we had a calling card numbers. We had memorized and quarters, and you would try to call and hope that your parent was there. And if not, you waited. And that's not great from a convenience standpoint.

So texting is fine, but not unrestricted access to the web or standard apps. What you also have to do instead is help encourage and guide your child so that they can find a social community aimed at some sort of common objective or goal, whether this is a theater troupe or a sports group or a band or a small fledgling teenage company, or they're in the first robotics club and in some sort of STEM style gathering, whatever it is, but something that they can be with other people and build up their skills and feel the sting of defeat and enjoy the camaraderie of success when they do well and let this be the core of their social experience.

If you have successfully a group like this, but you don't use social media, you'll be fine. You're like, yeah, I have my buddies from the track team and they kind of rag on me because I'm not on TikTok or whatever, or I'm not on Snapchat or whatever, but we have this bond and we do these things and it's just like a quirk and you will be fine.

What you would want to avoid, of course, is someone whose entire social identity is based just off of this digital world. That's no good. And if you're in that situation and take away that digital world, you're isolated. Yes, so we need alternatives. And I think that's really the key to making it palatable for a 12, 13, 14, 15, maybe 16 year old not to have access to these phones is that they are entrenched in things that matter to them, that connect them to other people and give them meaning and forward drive.

That's what we're wired for. That can satisfy it. They will survive without it. The only other point I want to say, Sarah, is I picked up a strong current during my digital minimalism book tour. I picked up a strong current from contemporary adolescents of a backlash against these companies.

In the last few years, I've seen this major social media backlash. This is media backlash against social media. Mark Zuckerberg has been transformed into a devil style character. Twitter is raked through the coals. This is all out there in the zeitgeist. I don't think these apps have the same atmosphere of countercultural cool that they used to.

Now the countercultural move is perhaps to say, I don't use any of these things. Forget you, Mark Zuckerberg. I'm not going to use your app. Forget you, ByteDance. Good for you for getting a billion users to TikTok in only four years. I don't want to be a part of your attention mining factory.

There is a growing countercultural street cred in being someone who knows what you're about and you're 14 and you're not on those things and you're killing it somewhere else and people like you. That thread was definitely one that was growing. And I think it's getting easier and easier to be one of those younger people who doesn't use these services.

It's not seen as square, I think as much as it might be seen as forward looking. So this is all going to get easier, Sarah. So resist getting them a phone for now. Hopefully by the time your nine-year-old is 11, it'll be considered quite standard the fact that you are not giving them a smartphone.

And even if it's not, you should resist. - I have a quick two questions actually. So in terms of getting the appropriate phone for just text messaging, when do you think that should be? - I mean, I guess it's regional. So around here, I don't know, it could be pretty early.

Like around here, I know nine and 10-year-olds where they don't give them a phone yet, but they give them these watches and the watches allows them, there's three numbers programmed into it that they can call. So like this is typically their parents, right? And then you can do text messaging on the phone, but I think it's pre-programmed text, like a mom, my wife, or you're talking to it or something like this.

But again, you can only talk to a small number of people on it. And it can also be a GPS tracker that your parents can use. And like around here, these watches will sometimes be used to allow, like to give more freedom to like a nine and 10-year-old. Like you can walk to school and back or go to the stores because like if you have some issue, you can just like press the button and it'll call me and I can come get you or something like that.

So there's these transitional things that I think are good in these close in city environments where people are otherwise worried to have their kids be completely free. I don't know, I mean, to me, text message available phone, I mean, I'm thinking middle school. I don't know if that sounds reasonable to you.

I mean, the kids you coach are older, right? They're high school. - Yeah, they are. - They're all plugged into the matrix, right? - One other question though, in terms of computers, like getting kids on computers and doing that sort of thing, is there a crossover or? - Yeah, but I think, the next question is gonna be relevant to this.

I think it's good for kids to have access to computers but it should be in public. Here is the family computer. It's in the middle of everything. As we go about our business, preparing dinner, this or that, we see what you're doing. Don't have a computer in the room, at least until, - In their room.

- Yeah, you're 17 and you're a hacker and you're gonna go to MIT the next year and like, fine. You can go do your computer hacking but you're 12, 13, 14 years old. Hey, you wanna go on like the Minecraft forum or whatever and that's fine, but I'm gonna, it's out here and we're gonna see what you're up to.

- Yeah, that's a good idea. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)