In this empowering episode of The Fresh Start Family Show, Wendy is joined by Dr. Susie Davies, a former clinical psychologist and trauma-informed parenting coach, for a timely and practical conversation about screen addiction and how it affects our kidsโ mental health, behavior, and development.
If youโve felt the tug-of-war over tablets, struggled to set consistent screen limits, or worried about your childโs emotional regulation after too much tech time, this episode is for you.
Dr. Susie shares five powerful strategies to help parents empower their kids to unplugโwithout shame, punishment, or power struggles. This isnโt about guilt or fearโitโs about healing the deeper nervous system needs that often fuel screen dependence, and building long-term habits that nurture connection, resilience, and self-regulation.
Whether youโre raising a toddler or a teen, this episode will leave you feeling more confident and equipped to create a tech-healthy homeโstarting today!
Raising A Strong Willed, Intense or Sensitive Child? If yes, I have a FREE gift for you!
This free bundle comes with an extensive learning guide & FREE workshop with me, where Iโll teach you ways to build connection & methods to work WITH your strong willed kids instead of trying to MAKE THEM change.
Youโll learn:
*Firm & kind strategies to navigate challenging behavior with firm kindness & connection (vs. fear, force, yelling, threats & bribery)
*Ways to build connection instead of pushing your child away w/ heavy handed โhand me down parenting tacticsโ
*How to work WITH your kids instead of forcing them to comply or trying to MAKE them change
Grab your FREE bundle now & start learning today!
Episode Highlights:
- Understanding screen dependency as a nervous system coping tool
- Why shame and control donโt workโand what to do instead
- The link between trauma, stress, and excessive screen use in kids
- How to start powerful, age-appropriate conversations with your kids about tech
- 5 game-changing strategies for empowering your kids to self-regulate and take tech breaks willingly
- Why parental modeling matters, and how to gently shift the culture in your home
Resources Mentioned:
- Find Dr. Susie & Papaya Parents on Instagram
- Papaya Parents website
- For our UK-based friends, grab a copy of her book The Healthy Selfie: How to Like Yourself in the Digital Age
- Catch the full episode on YouTube!
- Check out all our kid safe phones on this page
Unable to listen, or prefer to read along? Here’s the transcript!
00:02
Hey families, welcome to a new episode of the Fresh Start Family Show. We’re so happy you’re here. Today on the show, we have Dr. Susie Davies, who is talking to us about how we can shield our kids from screen addiction. And we’re gonna talk about five game changing strategies to empower
00:31
and unplug. Welcome to the show, Dr. Susie. Thanks so much for having me. Yes. I have been excited to interview you for a while. I know we had to shift around our times and our dates a few times. So thanks for your patience with us. But I think you were asking me before we started recording how I found you. And I’m pretty sure that I had run across a post of yours, or maybe you were tagged into somebody else’s post, around how the
01:00
amount of childhood injuries like broken foot, legs, cuts, whatever it may be, they’ve gone down significantly over the last 10 years and the mental health injuries has gone way up. And I just thought that as a coming from a doctor who is practicing and that was just such a significant data point to me that I was like, wow.
01:28
And I know just over the years, I have become so passionate about empowering parents with the concept of preventing addiction, preventing. So much of this is preventable when it comes to the decline in our children’s mental health that we’re seeing so much. So your work and what you’ve done with Papaya is so important. But would you tell us your story? Tell us all about you, your family, and how you became so passionate about
01:57
being a doctor, but also preventing screen addiction for children and the why behind the creation of papaya. Yes. So I’m Dr. Susie Davies. I’m a GP in Bristol. This is actually my surgery at work. So I’m a family doctor. And six years ago, I took up a job at Bristol University working with students. So I already had an interest in young people and in mental health. And I got invited to specialize in young people’s
02:26
mental health at Bristol University. And I guess my story was I was really shocked by the level of mental health problems that students were having in 2018. So every day, almost all of my patients that I was seeing were struggling with mental health problems, severe anxiety.
02:48
depression, insomnia, personality disorders, ADHD type symptoms at a much higher level than I was seeing in general practice in the general population. And I guess I just got really curious as to why this subset of students were so unhappy. And in case you don’t know, Bristol is quite an affluent university. It’s one of the top universities in the UK. So it tends to be, you know, really, it should be young people who are thriving and happy who get to go there.
03:16
And instead I was seeing the complete opposite story. So I got curious. I guess that’s what I do as a doctor. I just started asking them lots of questions. I was trying to work out what was happening for these young people in their lives that was making them so unhappy. And often I couldn’t find a trauma or I couldn’t find something awful that has happened to them. But I did start asking them about their tech use. And I started gathering this sort of history of young people
03:46
who had had lots of social media, who had access to of online gaming, who were spending lots of time comparing themselves to other people and feeling less good about themselves. And quite quickly, I just developed this inner sort of, inner sense that the problem for many of these students was their tech habits, both in adolescence, but also as students now. So I became really profoundly kind of worried about this, I guess, as an issue.
04:14
for society and at the same exact moment my daughter was 10 years old at the time. that’s at the end of our primary school system in the UK. I know it’s a bit different in different places, but it’s the age in the UK when a lot of teenagers, well, a lot of young people get their first smartphone. And I just had this epiphany moment. I thought, I don’t want her to have a smartphone. I don’t think it’s gonna be the best thing for her.
04:41
So at that moment, I thought, I don’t want her to be on her own. I don’t want her to be left out. So I met a couple of other parents and invited them to delay their daughter’s first smartphone too. And very quickly, we gathered other parents with us and we set up the charity fire to help educate and empower parents and young people about the dangers of tech. Wow. I love it that you got support when you reached out to parents because I did not.
05:10
I, so our girls, so how old is your little girl? Almost 17 now, like mine? Yeah, she’s 16 now. so she’s got the time since was good. So that is so interesting. So we have the same age girls and when, same here in Southern California. So that’s so interesting to hear over there that it’s the same thing. I was hoping that it was different, but it’s not. And everyone like, yeah, nine, 10 years old, they’re starting to get these devices. And I went to her closest group.
05:39
of friends, it was about six of them. And I said, hey, why don’t we create a pod that way all of our girls, you know, they’ll at least feel like they have each other. And basically everyone said no. They said we have to have our kids have a phone because we work. And I think at the time I wasn’t as prepared as I am now to advocate like, hey, there’s these other options if you want to be able to get in touch with your kids or whatever. And then a few, I think maybe one or two might have said sure. And within like six months, their kid had a phone.
06:08
It just failed. And Stella ended up to go on to be the massive rainbow unicorn. She was the only kid throughout middle school. And thank God, COVID was a bit of a blessing because we were just home for a long time, like a year and a half of that, which kind of helped as far as being an outcast. But every volleyball trip,
06:32
with her indoor team of they go in a van of 10 kids. She was the only one without a phone, you know? So I’m just really happy to hear that you had some people who said, heck yes, Dr. Susie, we value your expertise here and to go on to create papaya is so beautiful. And what do you guys do at papaya on a daily basis? What is your main stuff? Well, I think my mission is that I believe every young person
07:01
has a right to understand the negative impact that excessive screen time can have on their wellbeing. So really that’s our remit is education. And we do that by reaching out directly to young people. So we go into schools, we’re in schools every day across the UK and we run a screen intervention workshop and it’s not about telling young people what to do. I think it’s about asking powerful questions and helping them understand.
07:29
So really it’s meant to be a very thought provoking workshop where young people get to think about how long they might spend on the screen. You know, I get them to work out their daily average and then I say, okay, if you’re 10 now and the average life expectancy is 80, we work out how many years of their life they would spend on the screen. And I just asked them the question, you know, is that time well spent? If you…
07:53
If you do you really want to spend, you know, potentially 23 years of your life on a device or at this point in time, before you’ve spent that time, is there something else you want to do at that time instead? So, you we ask lots of questions. We want to empower them to understand about dopamine, give them top tips for getting a healthy balance and also really working with students to say, if you don’t have a phone, don’t ask for one. Let’s make it easier for your parents.
08:23
Let’s say, can you delay the smartphone for as long as possible now that you understand the risks of having one? So we work with students and then we also work with parents because I believe parent education is so important. We need to understand as parents that we’ve got options exactly that we are empowered, that you don’t just have to give your child social media or a smartphone, that actually we can do things differently. And if we do, our children will really, really benefit from it.
08:52
And so when it comes to the education you’re doing with kids, are you teaching them about what depression or anxiety or those anxious thoughts and feelings, what that kind of feels like? Because I know as a 10-year-old, it’s hard for kids to understand what that would be like. And I remember just so many tear-filled conversations with Stella and telling her, know this is hard to imagine, but you’ve got to trust me that you’re going to have some friends who are going to end up with
09:21
depression, self-harm, anxiety, suicidal thoughts. She’s lost last year. So my daughter’s a junior, so that’s 11th grade here. And her sophomore year, they lost three kids to suicide at her school in the matter of four months. And so I said, I hate this, but you’re going to start to see your… And sure enough, she’s got friends that self-harm, cut suicidal thoughts.
09:48
massive depression, massive addiction to the phones, can’t go to sleep without the phone. It is just prevalent, right? But how do you explain that to a 10-year-old, right? What are some things that you guys advocate for there? I mean, I think it’s all about being age appropriate. So really, our workshops are tailored to the age of the child. And the way we do it with our 10-year-olds is I just show them some little silent videos, actually, of people.
10:15
not being able to sleep or there’s one over young man looking a bit depressed and distressed and I just get them to describe what’s happening in the video and I say what do you think the link with the phone is? So I get them to do it in their own words because I think every cast is different and then every child is different so you want to be reaching them at their level rather than I don’t want to scare them but I want to empower them.
10:41
So really, what I’m hoping is that young people will just understand that there’s a link, that people who spend lots of times on screens might be less happy, partly because they’re missing out on the real world, they’re missing out on childhood. We talk a little bit about what people used to do before the internet, how did their parents play? Because I just want them to think as well about actually going to the park, playing out on the street, being with your friends after school. Those are all really good for wellbeing. But if you spend your whole
11:11
evening at home in your bedroom on your devices, you’re not connecting with people and you are going to feel more anxious. So we do it in lots of different ways, very much led by the child and very much in a way that doesn’t bring fear but actually is there to empower them that they have got a choice in this. Nice, I love that.
11:32
I can tell by the way you guys teach this that it’s engaging and it’s fun and it’s coming from them. I just saw a spot, I want to say it was Sunday morning. It’s a show we have in America here that I love so much, but Jane Pauly is the host. And they did a spot on school systems in Finland that are teaching children very young. They were more like, I think, 12, 13, 14, but they were teaching them about propaganda, how to sniff out false
11:59
propaganda lies in media and really do their own research to compare. Like, what is the truth? What isn’t the truth? How do you find the truth? Just because one media outsourcer or sorcerer. And it was the most fascinating piece. But basically, they were just educating kids young on, here’s how you do it. Here’s the alarming things. Here’s what can happen.
12:24
when people are led astray and made to believe certain things. And it was just so cool to see these kids work together in these teamwork environments to develop the skill set to be able to not like to challenge and debunk the false lies or the propaganda stuff. And so that’s what it sounds like you guys are just educating so young. And just the other day, my little guy, we had two instances of teaching here in town that were just awful. So one was my daughter in order to
12:53
to get a parking permit at her school, she had to go to this seminar and you had to bring a dad or your parent. And it was at night. So daddy went with her and it was around safety in the parking lot and driving. And we were like, this is so interesting. You have to go to a two hour thing to get this parking pass. And so sure enough, they show up. And it was basically they joked that it was a scared straight presentation about drugs and
13:21
alcohol and drunk driving, can we get educated? We love education around that stuff, right? But they, and Terry was there, so he heard it straight from his ears too. It was full of fear. It was full of like, oh my gosh, it was crazy. And Stella came home and she’s like, why would you think that would influence me? Like she’s like.
13:45
And so we just had this great conversation around it. And I suppose it is one way, but it just what both of my kids, because they’ve been raised in a different style of parenting, they’re just like, that is so weird. And then Taryn came home. He’s my almost 14-year-old. And he said something similar about a presentation they had at school. I forget what it was, but he was like, why did they come in and teach like that? Why don’t they have someone that can actually connect with the kids and the students? And I was like,
14:12
I don’t know, but the traditional way has been to scare the kids and tell them how bad it is and don’t, know, whether it’s technology or phones or drugs and alcohol. And the kids are just like, not really inspired by it. But I can tell them the way. Yeah, the kids love their phones. So the first thing I say to them is I promise I’m not going to tell you, you can’t have your phones on your Xbox.
14:40
Because, you know, we don’t want to disengage them before we’ve even started. We’ve got to find cracks in their armor. And so it’s all about trying to make them want something else. And I say, it’s not about taking your devices away from you. It’s actually about giving you something back. You know, I want to give these bits back each other. I want to give them back their friendship. I want to give them back play dates after school. I want to give them back baking with their parents, you know. And again, part of the workshop is how can we inspire them?
15:09
think about the things that they could do with their time, what could they do instead? You know, and even if they cut back on their screen time, 30 minutes a day, you know, that actually gives them a year and a half of their life back, if you work out the time, but also 30 minutes a day to connect with a parent or to do something in the park can be the difference between, you know, mental, you know, really poor mental health and a child who’s thriving. Now, ideally it’d be more than 30 minutes a day, but every day,
15:38
is a positive and again, it’s trying to help the children find something that they can achieve, something that they want to achieve and really inspiring them that they can do other things with their time. And they’re smart cookies. Once you educate them and tell them what to look out for, they start to realize like they are wise, wise, creatures. I was just gonna say about talking to a whole class as well, because you try and motivate the whole class. You say, look,
16:07
in the summer, you’ve got a park next door to the school, don’t just go home, you know, get your parents consent, but meet up, do something together, you know, connect with each other, or just encouraging them if you are meeting up, put the phones away, don’t spend your time at the park on your devices, be with each other. So there’s a power in numbers in reaching a whole class at one time, this can be really powerful. Yeah, man, and what a high degree of difficulty this all is, because it’s like I notice when
16:37
There was my son played a football game. We were all camping with all these boys and my son had a football game and we had to bring all the boys with us. They’re 13, 12 and 13. And Taryn was going to play the game. They were going to hang out in the bleachers, cheer him on supposedly, like hang out, be at this game. And I got there a little late because my husband and I had to do a switcheroo and I look up in the bleachers and I see, cause one kid has the device. And sure enough, they’re all just staring at the device, cracking up.
17:06
watching something, they’re tearing scoring goals. He, mean, it was one of the most exciting football games he’s ever played. They barely watched it. Like as soon as you bring in a device. And so to teach these kids from a young age how to have that self-control, like what a task we have ahead of us. But I do, I just, love that you guys are really looking at how do we teach from an engaging perspective. There’s a gentleman named Colin Karchner. I don’t know if you were ever aware of his work over there.
17:34
It’s so sad. He passed away from a heart attack at a very young age. was like, he might have been like 47 or something, probably two or three years ago, but he was doing this tremendous work here in America, touring the nation. And he would go speak in high schools. And he was so engaging to the kids. He would give away like Nike shoes. You know, he made it fun. And by the time, yeah, by the time he would end these presentations,
18:03
they were all just messaging him, because he would share these messages of, hey, I want you to know I went home and I deleted this social app. I feel so much better. I feel like my life has come back to me. My depression has gone away. I no longer am having suicidal thoughts. And he would just share, because he had a big platform. But the way he was teaching, the kids were responding. And that is something that I’ve always looked at. And I just.
18:32
you know, want to platform and put in front of my community, anybody who is tapping into that power, because that’s how we’re going to change. guess we’re going to talk about what we can do here, especially as parents too. And that’s important, but to inspire the youth is like such a task. anybody who’s trying to do that, I respect greatly. And it’s such an amazing thing to do exactly those moments where you get young people say, you know, Miss, I’m going to go home.
19:02
and I’m going to delete my social media. I just don’t want it anymore. Or sometimes when I get to go back into school, I’m hearing when they’ve tried something, like, so I had a class who were going to not use the Xboxes before school. So there’s a culture where often they were getting up at six in the morning and Xboxing before school. And this boy, turned around and said,
19:21
Miss, I feel joy this morning because I’ve slept in and I’ve had breakfast with my family, not been on the Xbox. And his teacher was like, oh my goodness, he is like a different child. And again, I think people don’t realize the negative impact tech is having on them because it becomes normal, doesn’t it? They don’t know how they would feel if they cut back. It’s just become the status quo. And I think it’s so powerful, isn’t it? When we give people the opportunity.
19:49
to have a challenge to cut back their screen time and to feel better than they want to do it. I deleted, I had the news app on my phone and two years ago for a New Year’s resolution, I deleted it and it’s because I had got into doom scrolling over COVID. And it’s the only resolution I’ve ever kept because I realized it was just so great not to have it because I wasn’t drawn. We have the BBC as our main news channel in the UK.
20:16
You know, it’s great, you can’t spend too long on the site. It’s got the basics. But you know, that’s perfect for my needs to know what’s going on. But I got rid of the news app, gave myself back that time, and I’ve never wanted it back again. And it’s just a little story, isn’t it? You don’t realize it’s affecting you till you make that positive change. And then you think, wow, I’m so much better off without it.
20:38
Yeah, oh my gosh. Well, let’s talk about that as far as our behavior as parents. So our number one point today, if we want to have, do what we can to prevent our children from having screen addiction as far as game changing strategies to empower and unplug. Number one is have healthy tech boundaries at home, especially no screens in room at night. And you may need to buy an alarm clock, right? And I will say that.
21:05
We’ve nailed it on the no screens at night 98 % of the time in the bedroom. let me, I’m just gonna be real real. This is, I am not modeling what I want yet. And it is wild that as a 47 year old woman who didn’t have this established into my neural pathways as a child, I did not have phones like this, right? But like I just started the phone habit. I think we were like 18 or 20 when the iPhones came along.
21:34
It’s for me to put my phone away at 5 o’clock at night in a separate room. And it’s like, I am flabbergasted about how hard this is. I suppose we can talk about not reaching perfection here. But like, it to me is so blaringly clear that I’ve got a lot of work to do around this because I’m still. And we also live in a day and age where everything.
22:01
It’s like you go to order groceries. You do it online here in America. Or you need to get back to your mom. And so you text her, right? Instead of back in the day, we had the phone call, like a phone on the wall. So it’s easy to make excuses that we have to, right? But I just know that it is something that I want so bad to get off of these devices after 5 PM at night.
22:27
Because I think I’m living, I’m swimming in that pond, so to speak, and I don’t even, I’m gonna feel so much better and it’s felt almost impossible. That’s how much the addiction has become for me as an entrepreneur running a business and just feeling like I have to. So what are your thoughts on this idea of creating the healthy tech boundaries? Your example of deleting the news app is a great example, but like, how do you address this with parents?
22:56
Yeah, I mean, think one of the things I do say to parents exactly is if you want to have children with healthy tech habits, it all starts with us. The reason they want a phone and the reason they want to be on their devices isn’t just because their friends are on their devices. They see the power the devices have over us as their parents. So I think we modeling good behavior is so important, but it is so hard. know, exactly our phones have become a mini computer in our pockets.
23:24
So much of our world happens on them. So to make it easier, I would say try and take things off the phone. So try and get work email back onto a laptop is really powerful. Get that alarm clock for a device. Treat yourself to buy the newspaper, rather than having it on your phone. I try and set boundaries for when I’m doing admin, just giving myself a sort of 30 minute slot a day when I try and condense the online banking, try and do everything.
23:54
so that I’m more free, but it is so difficult. And if it’s hard for us, how much harder it is for young people who are growing up with it. And I think it just shows how persuasive this design is. Again, and that’s what I want young people to understand. This tech is addictive. We are all vulnerable to overconsumption because of the dopamine pathways it taps into, because of the way that it’s become so necessary and so convenient.
24:21
You know, it’s really not a level playing field here against technology. So we need to fight back really, really hard, I think, to get our own youth under control so that we can feel better as parents and less stressed, you know, and so that we can help our kids and model good habits for them. Yeah.
24:38
Gosh, when I’m doing my parenting coaching, have to remember that. When everyone’s stressed out, it’s like, that should be our number one thing. Are we setting those devices down at nighttime, right? Because many of us, I know, are just, they’re everywhere. We go into the kitchen. We go into the bedroom. They just are with us. And our brain, I think, is responding to that. And that’s not helping our homes. And of course, it’s not.
25:05
So we have work to do there and we can take small steps. And I love that you have the no screens in rooms, especially at night. And for us, that has been one rule that has been intense, but we have kept it. Like the kids never have been allowed to have technology in their room. And it’s been tricky because over COVID, they had like a little desk set up. So we had to bend with parameters a little bit during the COVID, but still.
25:35
We have been pretty firm on no phones or even computers. really don’t encourage in the bedrooms. We live in a very small home. So they don’t always love it that they have to sit on the couch. we do let them go in our bedroom and relax in our bed. But in their bedrooms, it’s just a no tech zone. And that has really helped. And that’s always been the case since they were really, really little. So if it feels overwhelming, maybe just starting with that
26:05
one really firm can help, right? I think that is the most important change any family can make because the negative impact of tech is not happening around your kitchen table. That’s not where they’re watching the pornography. That’s not where the bullying is happening. It’s happening when they’re on their room at nighttime and that’s where their sleep is disturbed and we know good sleep is the foundation of good mental health. So if they can have that eight to 10 hour window,
26:31
apart from their screen, it will reduce their screen time, it helps their sleep, and it’s highly, highly protective against a lot of the most negative harms of technology. And it’s free, isn’t it? So many of the interventions people come up with are complicated, they cost money, you’ve got to spend time working out how to do it. But actually, you know, as a parent, you’re paying the phone bills, it’s your home, it’s not always popular, but I do think taking the devices out of the bedroom, making sure that that
27:01
in a safe communal space overnight is the most powerful change that you can make. And it’s the simplest. Yeah. We have like a little shelf outside of both of their rooms. And it’s funny, I still, because my daughter is my very, very, very strong-willed one. My little guy is a little bit more easygoing. But she’s the reason why I became a parenting coach and is just an angel in the world, because without her, I would not be where I am today.
27:30
because we’ve had to learn all these new ways to influence a human being because they don’t respond to just do it because I said so. And I still kind of pinch myself as I was going to bed last night. You can hear her her little vibrator like text thing, you know, it kind of buzzes a few times because she’s got friends like all of her friends. Again, they go to sleep with their phones like they are. They fall asleep to tick tock and you can hear the little text going off and and I still kind of pinch myself that Stella has honored this rule.
28:00
Right? Like, I’m just like, we did it. And so if we can do it with Stella, who is one of the most strongest will child owner and she she pushed back against this rule for so long. Right. And we just stayed firm with the what is the yes behind our no. Right. And so knowing that you are literally protecting your child’s mental health is the biggest gift you will ever give to them. So.
28:27
OK, number two, Dr. Susie, is use screen time to control usage. You can negotiate this and reduce it gradually to avoid withdrawal symptoms, reward any reduction. So this is funny because I am just being so real in this episode. I downloaded an app called, I think it’s called Screen Time. I think it’s called Screen Time. And two of my team members, so I have a staff of four women, and two of them use it really well.
28:54
And the rest of us just blew through it, and it’s off of our app, off of our phone. But the first six months, it was so lovely, because it would just stall. So every time you’d go to open Instagram, it would give you a message that was like, are you sure you want this? And then it would stall, and it would say, OK, you can have it in two minutes or 60 seconds. And it was just enough to make you go, what am I doing? This is a crazy
29:24
Yeah, this is a knee jerk reaction that I can choose a different pathway. But are there some things, because we do love to teach empowerment versus control here as parents, and especially because we have a lot of strong-willed kids in this community. And we know that they respond really well to being empowered and not controlled. They push back when there’s control. They respond when there’s empowerment. And so.
29:52
Is there some favorite apps that you like to teach them that self-control? Yes. So I mean, the one that I really like is called the Forest app. So that’s an app where children can set their own timer for how long they’re going to go without checking their phone. So again, it’s empowering them. They choose the time, 30 minutes, an hour, two hours. And in that time, it blocks all their apps and it has a little notification, you know, do you need to check me? But if they achieve that task,
30:18
they get points towards growing trees in the real world. So it’s really lovely. They can see their own tree grow by not checking their phone. So my daughter has just done some big exams and she used it as her study, as her sort of study timer. And she grew three trees revising for her exams. It’s just lovely. So I think the forest app is great. You obviously have to choose to set it. And as I think the danger with all these things is tech is just so addictive.
30:47
that actually sometimes as much as we want to be empowered, we are so disempowered by the addictive nature of tech that we need a helping hand. So I have screen time on my phone that just gives me an hour and then it cuts off. Now, unfortunately, I do know the password. Yes. But at least I know I’ve hit an hour and I think, well, an hour, that’s seven hours a week. That’s really adds up. And so I do think for children, a combination of using the forest app,
31:16
of having some screen time, because we can’t, I think screens are so addictive. It’s like we wouldn’t leave an alcoholic with all the alcohol right in front of them. We would be kind, wouldn’t we? We say, actually, we’re going to become alcohol-free as a family to help you. And I think tech is so addictive, that although I love the idea of young people having control over their tech use, and I think they can, I also think that we need a little, we need to fight fire with fire.
31:45
So I do think having some screen time controls, even if we give them quite a bit of time and they choose to take less is just a precautionary approach because I don’t think we can, because we’ve all talked about how addictive tech is. I think we need some extra, extra things, but I think App Block is a brilliant, I keep seeing the brick come up, which looks amazing. I can actually import it from America. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but it’s a little device.
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that actually turns your smartphone when you’re using it into a basic phone. So with that time, it of almost locks your phone, takes off all the smart features from it, and gives you as much time as you need. So I think I love the idea if I was going out with my family, you use it to actually disable all the apps, and you can just text and call if you need to. So reduce that distraction. Because again, just think tech is so addictive. It’s drawing us away from ourselves.
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all the time. But I love giving young people a challenge to have a family competition. Who can get their screen time down most this week? Who can come up with the most fun things to do instead? So again, I completely agree. We don’t want to just take away their screen time, ban it. We want to work with them to come up with challenges or things they want to do and how they want to achieve it.
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I love it. And the concept of if you’re going to download some apps for them, of being willing to do it for yourself too. I think kids respond so much better when you’re doing things as a family. It’s like you bring up alcohol. It’s like our daughter started to do a little bit here in America. Kids start drinking really young. I know about it over there. I I started drinking alcohol at 15. And by the time we were at 16, we were at keg parties. And so when Stella started to dabble, we were like, we want to teach you how to.
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be able to go to a party and not have to have alcohol. And we looked at ourselves and we were like, but we can’t go to a party and not have alcohol. And so Terry and I were like, it’s time. And so we decided to stop drinking. And here we are a year and a half later, we’ve never felt better. And we are modeling the same thing to our children that were the life skill that we’re trying to teach them. And we’ve been to weddings, we’ve been to vacations. And every time we’re like, we’re doing it. We had so much fun at that wedding and we did not have.
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five beers or four glasses of wine. We had nothing, right? And so the concept of if you’re going to put apps on your kid’s phone, go ahead and do it yourself too. So you can show them like, this is a human. This isn’t like you’re a kid and you’re having trouble. It’s like, no, we all need the help. Like this is a life skill. Even those of us in our thirties and forties and fifties are having to figure out you’re not alone. You’re not an alien.
34:34
And we know we’re going to feel better, you’re going to feel better, but let’s do it together. I kind of like that approach. I think it’s all about, yeah, togetherness as a family. Let’s do it together. Let’s tackle this together. And let’s all feel better as a family. Yeah. OK, number three, encourage your team to delete or hide apps off their home screen. And then we talked about the Forest app. And that’s great. So as far as that’s cool. that’s like maybe you tee it up as an experiment.
35:03
Like maybe just see what happens if it’s not on the first screen. Is that what you’re saying, Dr. Susie? Yeah, well, I say it’s like, if there’s a big piece of chocolate cake in front of you, it’s going to be tempting you all the time, isn’t it? I personally find it really hard to resist a lovely piece of chocolate cake. But if it’s not there or if it’s hidden away in the cupboard, if I can’t see it, I’m going to be Yep, mine’s front and center, Instagram. That’s my little advice. So I got to get that on like page four.
35:29
So exactly. I, so actually one of the challenges I set the kids in school is to, can they go 24 hours without their favorite app? And if they can’t, that’s a real sign they’ve got an unhealthy relationship with it. And so again, I think by trying to delete it and realize that they’re finding it hard, I want for them to realize the power that app has over them. So I really encourage young people to go 24 hours to delete their app, it once. And then I say, can you do that once a week? You know, can you go every,
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Saturday or Sunday without your favorite app to give your brain that break to reduce the detachment. And actually some of the students sent me the challenge and now I delete Instagram every weekend. I actually do 48 hours without it because actually Instagram exactly became my go-to app. I realized the power that it was having over me and that it was really unhealthy. It’s just so easy, isn’t it? Just to check. You just go on there for no mindlessly without even really thinking about it. So I think having
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know, time every week without your favorite app just helps you separate yourself from it. It reduces its addictive potential. But if you can’t do that, you know, you can hide at least on the, a folder on the second page so that it’s not the first thing you see when you, when you look at your phone. I love that. That’s a great concept. Yeah. Oh my goodness. I’m just laughing at myself right now because I’m like, I have work to do. And I think
36:52
Such a part that I just want to layer in this is, you we do so much work with parents to reduce shame, right? And so it can feel so defeating when you’re like, I can’t believe I’ve gotten myself to this place where I’m this addicted. And it’s and it’s just this is the design of these. don’t think anybody realized when they invented these. really I’m an optimist. So I don’t think there was some like, ha ha ha ha behind Apple. It is like a.
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apple with a bite out of it, which I think is kind of funny, but it’s like the forbidden fruit, right? Like, did they know? I couldn’t agree more the irony of the apple. I think it’s very, very interesting. That is odd. But let’s just say, I really don’t think anybody quite realized what was going to happen. And so it makes sense why this has happened. It makes sense why our kids struggle with this so much. So I think the more and I’m talking to myself here too.
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the more you can just offer compassion with yourself of like, oh, it makes sense why this is so hard. And you just don’t give up. You keep going towards what you want. OK, our last point, Dr. Susie, is if we want to protect our kids from screen addiction, we got to make more fun. So you mentioned cooking. You mentioned getting out there in the world. We got to get off our devices and actually make life fun with our kids. So what are some of your favorite tips for that?
38:16
Yeah, I think it’s just trying to give ourselves the time and the space and the permission to enjoy life. I mean, often as parents we’re busy, we’re stressed, trying to squeeze work into every hour of the day. But actually that’s not really how any of us want to live, is it? You know, I just love the idea of giving ourselves time and space to enjoy our children. So we used Gumtree, which is a secondhand site, just to buy a ping pong table.
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and we now play table tennis in the garden. It cost us next to nothing, but in the summer and the evenings, we go out as a family and we play a game. We live in a city, we’ve got a tiny sort of backyard. It is basically now a ping pong table, but we’ve got something that gets us outside, something to do. And I think it’s just trying to find the thing as a family that you can do together, whether it’s a board game, whether it’s trying to bake together. I got my son just to cook.
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supper with me the other evening because he wanted to just come home from school and watch telly but I was like actually no we’re going to cook together and we made it really fun it was a win-win you know he got to we got and he actually opened up he told me loads about his day and it was just a really lovely moment where the default was he would just go and watch tv for an hour and I would cook yeah but actually just that connection was really really special and it doesn’t have to cost money it can be going for a walk
39:38
You know, it can be things that can be free, but I think it’s about intentionality. And the thing I find that if I’m tired, I might think what I want to do is scroll, or I might think I want to watch TV, but what is actually life giving and what makes me feel better is when I’ve had a great time with my kids. You know, when I’ve connected with them or connected with friends or my partner, my husband, you know, that actually is what brings life. And I think we all can come under the lie, can’t we? That we’re too tired, that we’re too busy.
40:07
But actually, when we break out of that cycle, we all feel so much better and so much happier. I love that. And yeah, I think always having a book and magazines around can be helpful. I think a lot of our houses, we don’t have as much as that anymore because the device is just the go-to. If you flop down, and again, speaking about myself here, I’ll flop down on the couch after making dinner because Terry.
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um, cleans up. I cook, Terry cleans up and you know, I’ll just take 10 minutes and it feels so luxurious to just have 10 minutes on Instagram, but I’m going to challenge myself, um, to have, cause I have my book that I read before bed. That’s like a novel nonfiction, but I’m going to, um, challenge myself to have my books near like in the living room too, for a while. I couldn’t because our dog or husky, we have a husky who was chewing books up and I’m like,
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But now I think she’s old enough now. She’s almost four. I’m going to put my books back on my coffee table and see if that will help me just remember, oh, yeah, reading is actually more like soothing to my system than being on a device. So I love that reminder. Oh, my goodness. What a delight it has been to get to know you, Dr. Susie. To learn more about papaya, will you tell parents where they can come find you?
41:33
So what, how, is there a way to get Papaya resources and type of presentations into the school systems? We have parents all over the world and we have a lot in America. So how can they learn more and get those type of presentations going on in their school systems? So do look at our website, which is papayaparents.com and on there, if you contact me, I’m really happy to share resources or what I do is I run teacher training sessions.
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So if you’re a teacher and you wanted to have access to our resources to share with your students, I’d really happy, you we offer free teaching sessions and I can train you up in how to share the presentation and just to empower you to give that message to as many, you know, we want our aim is for as many children across the world to have access to this. So really anything we can do to help empower you to share that message, that’s great. So do get I love it.
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And what a great way to volunteer in a classroom, because a lot of parents want to do something, but they’re not sure what. And so to propose actually in your school system, and if you have the resource for like a little 20 minute teaching thing or something where they could come in or 30 minutes, whatever it may be, whether it’s we have something called the PTA or Parent Teacher Organization, or actually volunteering in the classroom. I know when Stella was in kindergarten.
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I would come in and teach social emotional stuff, but the teacher would just have one hour to grade or do whatever she wanted. Why I took the kids and taught them something. So I think most teachers are would love to have 45 minutes or an hour to just do a little something why a parent volunteers. So that’s wonderful. So listeners, viewers, make sure you go check out papaya’s resources and advocate in your school system for this type of education.
43:23
All right, well, thank you so much for being here, Dr. Susie. We just really appreciate what you are doing and advocating for in the world. It is so important. And we are really, really grateful. Brilliant. Thanks so much for having me. It’s been great to meet you. Take care.
