keywords

technology, parenting, child development, mental health, iOS Grow, neurodiversity, anxiety, impulsivity, behavior modification, digital stimulation

summary

In this conversation, Mark and Dr. Adam Pletter discuss the significant impact of technology on parenting and child development. They explore the challenges parents face in managing their children's technology use, the importance of scaffolding in introducing technology, and the responsibility of tech companies to create safer environments for children. Adam shares insights on the neuroscience behind impulsivity and anxiety in youth, offering strategies for parents to help their children navigate the digital world. The discussion culminates in Adam's grassroots movement called iOS Grow—a health-first iPhone experience designed with families in mind. Think of your child’s first phone like a learner’s permit: features are unlocked over time, not all switched on by default. The idea is to start with safety, not restriction—plus age-based check-ins and even a ‘co-parent mode’ to help two-household families stay consistent and reduce conflict.

 iOS Grow: A Health-First iPhone Experience for Families

What if your child’s first iPhone supported their mental health and development?

iOS Grow is a guided iPhone experience that helps kids grow into technology—not just grow up on it. Grounded in developmental science, it evolves as children mature and as families build trust.

• Developmental Defaults: App access, notifications, and time settings calibrated to a child’s age and stage.
• Digital Milestones: Built-in check-ins at key ages (8, 11, 13) prompt families to review and adjust settings together.
• Healthy Rhythms: Screen time synced with sleep, school, and Apple Health data.
• Co-Parent Mode: Shared limit-setting and visibility across two households—reducing conflict and promoting consistency.
• Flexible Access: Offered as either a dedicated Starter iPhone or a downloadable Grow Mode for hand-me-downs.

Why it matters:

Today, 88 % of U.S. teens own or have access to a smartphone (Pew Research Center, 2023), and most own iPhones. Families are forced to work backward—full access first, restrictions later. iOS Grow flips that script: parents unlock autonomy as kids demonstrate readiness.is resonates with you, please add your voice. It takes 60 seconds to give Apple direct feedback through his campaign at iParent101.com/applefeedback. Now, let’s get started.”

takeaways

• Technology is a significant parenting challenge today.
• Scaffolding technology use is essential for child development.
• Tech companies have a responsibility to create safer environments for children.
• Anxiety is a natural part of human survival and development.
• Children's brains are still developing, impacting their decision-making.
• Parents need to understand the reference points of their children regarding technology.
• Impulse control can be taught and practiced.
• Balance in technology use is a constant adjustment.
• The iOS Grow initiative aims to help parents manage technology use.
• Collaboration between parents and tech companies is crucial for child safety.

titles

• Navigating Parenting in the Digital Age
• The Role of Technology in Child Development

Sound Bites

• "Pressure's on to just be you."
• "Every teenager grew up with YouTube."
• "I'm eager to work with Apple."

Chapters

00:00

Introduction and Setting the Scene

02:51

Understanding Technology's Impact on Parenting

05:29

The Convergence of Personal Experience and Professional Insight

08:04

Scaffolding Technology Use for Children

10:39

The Speed of Technology and Its Implications

13:17

Neuroscience of Child Development and Technology

16:06

Addressing Parental Concerns About Technology Use

18:47

Building Capacity Instead of Restricting Access

21:43

The Future of Human Development in a Digital Age

30:36

Understanding Anxiety and Emotional Responses

33:36

Strategies for Coping and Resetting

35:53

Empathy in Therapy and Understanding Neurodiversity

39:49

The Need for a New Approach to Technology

44:59

iOS Grow: A New Paradigm for Child Technology Use

50:10

The Future of Technology and Mental Health

https://iparent101.com/

https://iparent101.com/smarter-first-iphone-lets-give-apple-our-feedback/

• @iparent101 Youtube-1 minute truths with Dr. Pletter

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I want to welcome Adam Pletter. Thank you so much for coming today. it's great to have you back on the show and, I'm excited to talk to you It's a great subject and I'm excited for people to hear what you have to say.

Thank you. Pleasure.

Great.

And ⁓ so just to remind our audience about who it is you are, could you just give us a quick little background about yourself before we dive in? Thanks.

Sure. Yeah,

absolutely. So I'm Dr. Adam Pletter. I'm a clinical psychologist ⁓ in private practice here in DC Metro, Bethesda, Maryland. I've been in private practice for 25 years, working primarily with children, families, adolescents, and their parents. About 15 years ago, convergence of a couple of things came together, my own parenthood.

trying to figure out how to parent my own kids as the digital explosion, digital stimulation, check over our families in very positive ways in terms of enhancements that hopefully we will talk about today, the amazing enhancements that we do get from the technology and the concerns and the difficulties and the challenges that I was feeling both personally.

in my own family trying to figure this out as a parent, but also in my practice all day long. Families I was working with, parents were coming in, pulling their hair out, trying to figure out. I'm talking about 15 years ago when the iPhone was relatively new and iPads and iPod touches, everything got much more portable. So I developed this side project called EyeParent 101 and it sort of took off from there.

⁓ So that's who I am. I'm a clinical psychologist ⁓ in private practice full-time and I speak around the country and talk to tech companies and trying to help them with their design to meet ⁓ modern families' needs and minimize the concerns.

okay, so it was born out of both.

Yes, it was a convergence of my own questions and struggles. And even though I believe, again, we're talking 15 or so years ago now, as a parent, I was really trying to figure out how to set parental controls and what was available at the time just did not work. And I would spend a lot of time, hours on the phone with Apple.

in other companies just as a parent, as a customer, trying to understand at the time what the offerings were and why it wasn't working. When I was trying to follow specifically what they were telling me to do, it just did not work. And so I was sort of constantly trying to give them feedback and then I was offering that to the families in my office.

on a pretty consistent basis, both how to do it, but being aware that it likely will not work as designed. And Apple at least kept telling me that they were working on it. And I spoke to some really nice engineers at the time and they were aware that it just wasn't working as well as it needed to. And it improved a lot. It has improved a lot.

Right.

Yeah, it almost seems, it has.

Okay. Yeah. It seems almost the responsibility of these companies to understand, the difference between a child and an adult and that something like this should be scaffolded. Right. So you talk about the idea of treating the iPhone like a learner's permit and, this rite of passage. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, you so I'll start really basic. It's not just phones. Like, again, that's what I'm focused on right now, but it's, you know, as a parenting challenge, we could look at lots of parenting challenges. And most things in our lives, as in families and in our society, ⁓ are scaffolded, that there's gradual ⁓ access offered as you develop, as you can handle more and more of whatever the privilege or access is.

You go to an amusement park and you have to be so high or so tall to ride this ride or any number of developmentally based aspects of our society is set up this way. Learning to drive a car is the easiest example and most readily available for most people in our society, families.

because it is kind of a rite of passage. It's a milestone that you have to be a certain age, run by whatever state you live in, usually 15, 16 years old. It doesn't matter how awesome you are at 13, you're not allowed to drive a car legally, at least on a public road. And you shouldn't, in my opinion, just to be clear.

All right.

Right.

Some people who have licenses that shouldn't be driving. Yes, exactly.

Well, that's a whole different issue, but at least you're allowed to. And by the time

you've gotten that license, you've been through a state regulated, know, clearly defined set of rules and regulations that requires literally supervision and hours where you're supposed to even keep track hours of practice and lesson and trial and error learning

to literally get a good feel for this is how the brakes work. This is how the steering wheel. This is this way you need to watch out for if it's raining. Like there's different situations that teenagers at a certain age go through and they learn in a gradual scaffolded as you. was a great word you used. I love that word. I use it all the time. Scaffolded way that it's not all or nothing. It's not, you know, here are the keys. Good luck.

Hahaha

There's a process of learning. And yes, to jump ahead here, my big piece of what I teach families, which is, to be honest, based in behavior modification. Really, what my iParent 101 program at its core is based on is my psychology background leaning in on using the tenets of behavior modification where, as the child,

no matter the age, and we could talk about young kids as well, and with special needs, but really I'm talking about all kids, all developing humans, all developing future adult humans, because that's who we're talking about, future adults in this world. Learn by doing, that's how we learn, we learn by doing primarily with practice. So... ⁓

Having a scaffolded program where the child is learning and changing their behavior as they're learning what works, what doesn't work. As they change their behavior, they get more of what they want. In this case, more access to fill in the blank with the device.

Right. first off, know, scaffolding, that's my one big word and idea for the podcast. So I got one. it occurs to me like the speed of technology, how quickly things are developing. Do you think that's lent towards the kind of ignorance in a sense of

Definitely.

the audience itself? Is it just a matter of pushing out the technology, getting it out there, that they've ignored specific modifications such as you're talking about? Do you think that lends towards it at all? Does that make sense? You know, because it's constantly changing and And I feel like, in a capitalistic sense, you was it just a matter of pushing these things out that they didn't really... the thought of children's access to such technology wasn't really a priority.

the speed of the...

Walk this line carefully ⁓ because I intend to collaborate as much as I can with all tech companies because I'm starting by saying that because I do intend to collaborate with all companies. had a very nice series of conversations with Apple this summer. They have a whole new health team and it sounds and is very well intentioned. To your question,

Okay. ⁓

Yeah, and I'm not asking you to put them down. I'm just curious about the idea of it.

try not to be overly cynical, you know me, and I can get cynical on this topic. I can, and I'm trying not to. ⁓ The short answer is yes, that there isn't as much thought about how these technologies and the enhancements of the technologies are impacting all of us, including adults with fully developed prefrontal cortex from part of our thinking brain.

Mm-hmm. And it's fair.

regulatory system of our brain. Even adults are highly impacted by technology of all kinds. And so yes, there hasn't been, in my opinion, professional opinion and personal opinion, but I will stay professional. There hasn't been as much thought by some companies, at least in terms of how things have been rolled out and the speed to which.

in a negative turn here, but so much death and trauma that there was enough public outcry that laws were changed. And the auto industry was both held accountable and supported in a different way for them to make changes in their offerings. And therefore seat belts changed and analog brakes and airbags and all the rest. And millions of lives have been saved.

Okay, we'll brighten it up.

through that process. So at its core, our technology and these phones are really about sharing information and the speed and the efficiency at an AI and strap in the speed and efficiency of how we are sharing information, both good information and social information for our kids and information that often is

not good and wrong and inaccurate or purposely deceptive. Yet information's information. And if this is all you have, that's the news of the day. That's all you're going on. You're in this sort of echo chamber, which often happens, especially with teens. the concerns clearly, without being cynical at all, the concerns go up. And that's part of why we're in a mental health crisis right now.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah, I think the echo chamber is really important because it's it really is for kids but for adults too. I mean, politically too. It's how this country is so divided, right? ⁓ So can you explain why so many parents describe their child's phone use as impulsive or out of control when they come to talk to you and what goes into the brain development at these young ages

⁓ yeah. yeah.

to be clear

that I'm a clinical psychologist. I did not go to medical school. So anything I'm about to say is a pretty watered down version. But I do that on purpose because I get into neuroscience with a lot of my teenage patients. And I try to explain in my own way, since I didn't go to medical school, in a more basic way what's happening and as a way of giving them information, again, hopefully good information.

where they have power over their lives and how they're making changes. My patients are here to make changes. That's ultimately what my job is to help. All therapy should be based on trying to help the client or the patient make changes.

Well, I think it's...

Right, well I think that approach, bringing it down to a level that we can all understand, most of us aren't doctors and things like that and trained in it. So, thank you.

Right. I wanted to be clear. I wanted to be clear for your listeners.

What I'm about to say is not based on any major research or, again, I'm a full-time clinician. I'm not in a lab. You know, there's other experts out there that could answer these questions in a very different, more precise way. That's not what I'm going for. So I just want to have that caveat clear.

Sure,

So part of your question there was asking when parents are coming to me with their concerns, because that's generally how I meet the family, that the parents are the ones calling me, not the 13-year-old or even the 16-year-old typically. And so I just wanna very quickly start there and say that even for young parents, parents who 10 years ago may have been in high school,

Sounds good.

do the math here, and they had an iPhone in their family. They have a very different reference point, and I talk about reference points a lot because it's an important starting place to sort of know where you're coming from, both as an individual person, but in this case as a parent. And that generally speaking, all parents on this planet right now, regardless if you're a young parent or old parent, did not grow up, did not have any, even 10 years ago, with an iPhone.

didn't have the modern world and the modern internet with all of the trappings and stimulation and design to pull us in that these new phones and computers add in AI again and strap in have. And I ⁓ start with an acknowledgement that each parent sitting in front of me has a very different reference point than their kid.

⁓ you know is fully aware of you too and

So it's a very different reference point than the parents trying to manage this world. So in terms of the neuroscience and what's happening, I often talk about a three-part recipe for our kids. And it applies to even adults, but it's specific in the second part of the recipe. It's specific in terms of the first part of the recipe is that all kids

have a developing braking system, like going back to the car analogy. If your brakes are relatively weak, it's hard to slow down and then make good safe turns. Turns being decisions, right? Right, left. So if your prefrontal cortex, which is the front part of our brains here for those watching on YouTube, you could see I'm pointing on my forehead, ⁓ That is developing.

You know, depending on who you ask and what research you read, that is fully developed for most, for most, developing humans around 25 to 30 years old. So that's after college and I'm talking normal, perfectly healthy human development. So that's the regulatory system, the breaking system of our brains, being able to slow down, to make turns, to make choices, judgment.

⁓ regulation, all of that is still fully developing in development all through high school, all through college. And I say that slowly so that sinks in.

Yeah, that explains a lot.

Yeah, it does.

Second part also explains a lot in that the emotional part of our brain, part two of this recipe, is that it's overactive. Our emotions and the emotional parts of our brain are overactive, and that's also by design. The weak-breaking, overactive emotion encourages young children, young humans, young animals on this planet to go out and learn about their world.

to do trial and error learning, to try this out, to take risks. If a 10-year-old is really anxious and is afraid to do things, that's going to hamper their learning. And that does play out at times. That's why it's a clinical disorder. Clinical anxiety gets in the way of learning. It's not just learning disabilities that I see. ⁓

Right.

And so part two here, if you have an overactive emotional part of your brain and you're go, go, go, it's like you're having a really hot accelerator in the car and you're going at a high speed and that's healthy for a young kid. But you put that together with weak braking and just those two parts are dangerous and concerning. You add in part three, which is...

a never-ending on-demand supply of tailor-made stimulation to their interests, literally, again, with AI strap in, ⁓ even more so tailored and more efficient in terms of serving up their specific content that they want, each individual kid from kindergarten up or even younger. And it's obviously the putting those three together and that is...

Literally. Yeah.

highly concerning. So we have these compulsion loops that get created. And it's very difficult for adults to get out of that doom scrolling where you're just being fed, ⁓ learning, you're learning. ⁓ I learned this. I learned that. and it's difficult to decipher what's good information, bad information. And it just continues to pull us in like a slot machine. What's next? What's next? Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, pulling us in, rewarding us.

Yeah.

for seeking out this information.

Wow, that's heavy. my goodness. I'm trying to imagine a child's brain at this point, like constant, constant, constant, and getting what they want all the time, right?

Any child.

Yes. Right.

And you and I don't have that reference point, as, certainly as kids growing up, I'm assuming, I don't know if I'm older than you, but growing up mostly in the 80s and 90s, didn't have that reference point at all. And even as adults and college students and parents, again, even as a parent, I didn't have quite that reference point that parents now, you know, I have two older kids now.

Right.

One's just about to leave high school and the other one's about to leave college. So, you know, even though I've been through the trenches these last 20 plus years as a parent, it's a very different reference point than what younger families and parents are going through now.

my gosh, I don't even know that I begin to comprehend.

I think about that a lot these days, how different, I almost feel like I'm living in the future and I'm living in a world that I don't belong in anymore because it seems like it's just gotten way ahead of me and my reference points are so different. I want to call them almost simple, Just that there was an innocence to our lives when we were younger because we didn't have all this information all the time. We always had to kind of create things, but now you don't even have to do that, Everything gets created for us. And so what kind of population of human beings are we creating?

Yes.

at this point? Give me the answer. ⁓

I'm assuming that's rhetorical. That's a great question.

you know, it's a different, we will be a different species in X amount of years. can't say, depending on what happens with climate change and other major forces that might also interrupt or deter human development and evolution. I think about that as well. This is another inconvenient truth.

that families and humans on this planet, including families who work at tech companies, most of the people I've talked to at name the company, I'm not here to pick on Apple, I am eager to work with Apple as I have, but they have families, they go, those engineers, those doctors that I spoke to on the health team go home to their kids as well. And so.

You know, this isn't, none of us are immune to this. None of us are without these challenges. And that's again, what I come to, no matter how much technology and AI and all of these pieces will enhance human functioning. And it does, and it will. It also is changing what it means to be a human and how we're developing. Add in art, add in music, add in

Right.

Yeah.

what we're doing and how we're spending our time and how we're not spending our time. And it does create challenges, different challenges for parents. I was left on my own in 1984. You know, I'm sure my mom and dad would go and check on me once in a while, but like, but it wasn't like I wasn't off on some, in some portal talking to a bunch of strangers if I was home.

Right.

different. Very different.

gosh, absolutely.

⁓ you know, and now, and I'm not trying to sound scary when I say that that's literally what's happening. yes, kids are talking, not always in a dangerous way, but sometimes in a dangerous way, they're talking to strangers and playing games and, all of these different platforms, roadblocks, discord, ⁓ you know, Xbox live again, it doesn't have to be some dark corner of the internet. This is just part of.

These are realities.

Right, but just...

Right. Yeah.

our world and part of our children's world for sure and that parents are not really aware of even.

Yeah, there are bad actors everywhere. So of course they're gonna infiltrate even the most innocent of places,

I think about when I said innocence of my youth, we didn't have the incoming information constantly. So the stress levels and the anxiety levels, I believe it feels like to me are even greater among younger kids now than it ever was because it's constant and they know too much almost before they're even allowed to develop their own ideas about the world. And so those stresses to me have caused

It's incredible anxiety. mean, I'm meeting more more younger people who have these anxieties. And you never heard about the word anxiety. didn't even exist when I was young, practically. You didn't hear about that stuff. We also didn't talk about a lot of things the way things are talked about today. But do you see a direct connection between the two, between the technology and the stresses and the anxieties of children these days?

Well, there has to be at least a correlation because it's our world. So yes, our technology is everywhere, including in almost every aspect of school, even down to preschool, to full entertainment, to socializing, to

a better question is how do you...

approach that when you have young people come to you and you see these stresses? How do you approach it in dealing with the technology? Because, people tell parents to just set limits with their kids. And as we were just referring to, know, parents are a little bit behind because they don't necessarily know exactly what's going on with their kids and can't relate because the references are different. So what does that look like building a capacity instead of

just restricting, how do you approach that? Maybe that's a better question than what I asked.

Well, I go

back to that all of this technology is ever-present and in some really positive enhancing ways to our functioning. And it's not going away, even though there are concerns and interference that also comes up, as you were just talking about, know, higher rates of anxiety and depression and attention problems. So

know, part of what I do is sort of this two-prong approach, which is, at the underbelly of my iParent 101 program, where it's focused on parents and giving them a different way, a more nuanced way. It's not all or nothing. It's a scaffolded ladder system of offering access through stages as the child at any age is demonstrating appropriate use as they handle it.

they get more access over time in very specific ways. So it's really, it's a model of, I guess I could word it as readiness is more of a growth process. It's not a, ⁓ you know, we're ready for this, just like I know some 16 year olds who are not ready to learn to drive a car for whatever set of reasons. And maybe in another six months they will be.

as they develop and practice. So it's a readiness model. And instead of just saying no, it's to your question of it's not just about restriction, it's about building of capacity. To access all of this technology on a daily, hour by hour basis, I want to build skills. I want kids, children, adolescents.

and young adults to have a skill building at the core of how they're managing their lives. And, you know, as I was talking about the prefrontal cortex earlier, something that your audience probably is very familiar with as a neuroscience phrase is the executive functioning system. And executive functions are not some elusive set of brain functions that we don't know about anymore. It is...

⁓ know, to how we develop as humans. and so, the main one that I will talk about, we could talk about regulation and regulatory skills, but the main one that I see impacting and what I help kids and teenagers really focus on is prioritizing. Because so much of our world now pulls us and almost requires us to multitask almost constantly.

that we have to constantly be doing multiple things at once because the technology can and does. The technology, you could have multiple apps open all at the same time, yet the human brain doesn't work that way. The human brain has to prioritize one thought, one action at a time. It's very difficult for the human brain to chew gum and do something else at the same time. I don't mean that literally. You can chew gum and do something else, but

⁓

I did it a couple of times, it's not 100%.

Well, my point is that it's very difficult. really what's happening is our brains when we're multi-tasking are shifting attention back and forth from one priority to the next. And sometimes it feels like you're multi-tasking because you are shifting so quickly and kids compared to you and I can shift much, much faster because they've practiced shifting.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

back and forth on the iPad, you've seen the infants knowing exactly where to go on that iPad or tablet. ⁓ And they, they're practicing, yes, almost, you know, yes, they're in diapers and they know exactly where to go on that iPad. And so again, it's just a matter of practice. They are practicing shifting, therefore their brain pathways and the reward.

It's it's from me.

almost like a given at birth.

pathways are stronger and stronger and stronger by the time they're 15, 16, they're very good at multitasking, quote unquote. Yet, it's shifting attention. So I encourage both them, both parents and kids in my office, to really try to slow down and think about what is their priority in any given moment. And I teach kids a lot how to reset their nervous system.

Because back to neuroscience, what often gets created, we talked about anxiety a few minutes ago, anxiety is an absolutely healthy required part of our development that keeps us alive. It is part of the fight or flight. If you're being chased by a bear, I hope you're anxious and really scared and not thinking carefully about what you're doing. Quite literally, if you're being chased by a bear, you don't wanna think carefully.

Why? Because that's slow. If you think carefully, you're going to have a harder time getting away. So you want your emotional part of your brain to take over and get out of there or hopefully run away because you'll have a higher probability of survival if you get away from the bear versus fighting the bear. But I use that as a metaphor because I want kids to imagine being chased.

and they're really in danger. You don't want to think carefully and therefore you want your emotional part of your brain, your impulsivity, if you will, to take over. You want weak ⁓ impulse control in those moments and you want your impulses to survive to take over so you do. In day-to-day life, in almost every person I talk to, with a very few exceptions, and those are really tragic and scary,

But for the most part, most people I'm talking to are not under bear attack. They do have at least a few seconds to slow down and think and consider what they're doing. And that's what I try to teach often ⁓ as the first step of coping differently. Something is really stressful. I'm not minimizing that. Something is really difficult to deal with. And yet they're gonna be better equipped if they can have a set of skills, a set of different.

Mm-hmm.

things to do, strategies, tactics, to slow themselves down and reset. So they could then think about, what do I do now? And I go really basic stuff. I'm not a big meditator, but being intentional with your breathing, yawning on purpose, sometimes chewing gum, doing things, or if you have a teabag in your pocket, I know it sounds weird, or where you're doing homework.

Mm-hmm.

taking a smell of something, using your five senses to kick your brain into a different gear, because that's how we operate. And so anything that you would do, or anything that you wouldn't do if you were being chased by a bear, because if you were being chased by a bear, you're not stopping to smell something, you're not going to chew anything, you're not eating, because that's what gum, your brain thinks you're eating, if you're chewing gum.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

you're sipping some cold water, warm water, taking a hot shower, any of these things. And there's a whole list of them that I go through often with my patients to add with the goal of resetting and slowing down so they could then think.

Thank you for answering that question that was coming. How do you do it? What are some of the strategies that you offer these kids and how do you lead them to these places? Do you find that kids are open to these things? How is it getting through to them do you find these kids come to you because their parents have put them in front of you and it's harder, they don't want to... I mean, they're so set in their ways when it comes to the technology, I think from an early place.

Well,

I'm not a teacher, so it's different. I'm not in a classroom. Some of that could be used in a classroom in a slightly different setup. Most of the people that are in my office that I'm working with ⁓ either have been through something, because I'm known for working with technology at this point. So something has happened online. There's something that

Mm-hmm.

you know, has overwhelmed the family or overwhelmed the individual. And so I'm there to help them, navigate forward. It's always forward differently. That's where the changes come in, in terms of coping, in terms of judgment. Some of that is understanding how whatever the thing happened came to be, what was in their control, not about blaming, but it's important to understand where their choices led them.

could be a learning disability where they're feeling off and feeling behind and feeling different in some way.

neurodivergence in some way where they are feeling different. And so often I begin, and I encourage your audience, even teachers and parents to lead with empathy. I don't start off assuming I understand what's going on. I start off with the premise that I don't understand and I'm playing catch up as quickly as I can. There are sometimes where I could jump ahead based on the little information depending on what the goals are.

because I've heard a lot of versions of what I hear often, but I really try to lean in with empathy and understanding the story of how they got here and, you know, even what does it mean to have ADHD? And is that only a bad thing? Is that only a vulnerability or does that also help them in some ways and make them go faster? They can really flip around that iPad fast because they're taking information quickly.

and ultimately trying to help them slow down and consider their choices. I play a lot of games in my office. Chess, Othello, Mancala, old school strategy games, because those are executive functioning practice arenas. Chess being at the top of the list, it's because it's a little bit more complicated because the pieces do different things compared to Othello and Mancala and Checkers where the pieces are all the same.

They're stable.

But the goal

is to think about if I do this, what's gonna happen? And can I think ahead one step, two steps? And I frustrate a lot of my patients when I play chess with them in particular, because I encourage them to take their moves back. And they think that's cheating or they're not allowed to do that. I'm like, well, I'm not your chess teacher. Like, we're here to practice this. I want you to slow down and reconsider. Get your thinking brain involved. Did you make that move impulsively?

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. Right.

I was going fast on purpose, which I often tell them I'm gonna do. I'm gonna play really fast. You go slow. Don't keep up with me. Slow yourself down. And the goal is not to get to the end of this game with a winner or a loser. Like, yeah, we'll finish. I'm not gonna not finish on purpose, but that's not why we're playing this game. And so I really encourage kids to think about their choices and what they didn't choose.

Right.

and what is the impact and the consequence of their choices? Because that easily then can translate into what's going on online, because it's so impulsively driven online because it's designed that way.

right, really.

right.

Right? putting into them the idea of self-control and self-regulation. Having to teach it. Yeah, having to teach it. Having to practice it. Yeah. Right.

Yeah, well, practice.

teach themselves because

it's just a game and it doesn't matter and they're just in the safety of my office where, you know, even though they care and they want to beat me ⁓ often, I've worked with lot of competitive, you know, elite athletes and competitive kids. I'm in Washington DC Metro, some pretty competitive families around here. You might hear on the news. But,

That's not the point of what we're doing here. We're here to do the opposite, to actually slow down and be aware of how we're prioritizing our time.

Right, and

making choices and making decisions, right? Yes, right.

Get back to the steering. If you're going

too fast, it's difficult to steer. If you're in a car, difficult to steer. That's one of the learning things early when you're learning to drive a car. You got to go slower into the turns, otherwise you're out of control. Dangerous.

Yeah.

Right.

It's really interesting that the old school games are the things that can help manage what's happening today. I'm sure too, but I'm just saying, you're right, because it's a slower process and unless I'm playing chess against you, you need to teach me how to play chess. I've been wanting to learn how to play chess. Yeah. I'm excited to talk to you about

I'm sure there's some online games that do the same. Yeah.

great game.

your iOS Grow, the starter phone. The whole idea of it to me is, it's the solution to what we were talking about as far as the scaffolding. So I would love to hear all about that.

Yeah, so again, this is not a pitch. This is not a product that I have. This is a, my opinion, we are somewhere, I don't want to say at the very beginning, because that makes me feel depressed and frustrated, but we're somewhere at the beginning of this process where we are in a public health crisis moment. And as I said earlier,

you know, how families introduce technology, not just phones, but phones get a lot of the focus because that's the child or the teenager's first sort of personal device. Often it's a tablet, often it's a hand-me-down phone from the parents, but ultimately when that child gets their own phone and that their Apple, if it's an iPhone, and again, 88 % of teenagers have iPhones, and I think that's even a low number.

but that's the stat that I see online. That's a pretty high number. So when those young teenagers or whatever age, the average age for a smartphone right now is about 11, and I think it's getting younger and younger, I'm not condoning that, I'm not encouraging that for parts of your audience that prefer a phone-free childhood. I'm in full support.

I was going to ask you how young are these kids getting it? And do you have an idea in your mind, like when an age would be appropriate to start these things? Yeah, we'll come to that. So go ahead. Absolutely.

Let's come back to that. ⁓ That's a

more nuanced answer that we could talk about. But in terms of this pitch for iOS Grow, this is something that I did speak directly to Apple about this summer. I was fortunate enough to climb the rankings, and I did speak to a clinical psychologist that works directly for Apple for their health team this summer.

Sure.

And we discussed a lot of these aspects and ultimately what I am asking for, what I am almost desperately trying to understand why this is not a thing in 2025. I'm really trying and I asked her this very directly. Why out of the box are the phones being handed to our kids our adult devices?

When there's so much research, the science is clear that these devices are designed to access and to tap into our reward centers in such a way that it is encouraging and demanding of our kids to somehow fight against it by sheer willpower. And as the Surgeon General a couple of years ago, I remember watching on CNN,

Talked about it's just not a fair fight. It's just not it's just not possible for our kids even adults, but for our kids to be able to resist the design of these technologies So my basic premise I call it iOS grow iOS being the operating system and I do understand that for this to work Well, it's not just about having parental controls layered on top of the current iOS that ultimately

how this would work best so kids can't just easily get around it as they will because they know more than us very quickly, us as adults, that the iOS, the operating system would need to be altered slightly by design. And the design that I'm going for is basically that features and the access would be turned on by the parents.

opposed to how it is now where out of the box, everything's on and then parents need to scramble, struggle, and often fail, if not always fail, often fail to set certain restrictions to limit what their young kids and teenagers are able to do on their phones. So basically, iOS Grow, which is what I call it, is leaning into this developmental process where we're...

introducing technology in a staged gradual way where just like learning to drive a car or you have to be this tall to get on this ride that there's certain limits that parents can feel confident that they're offering their child this access and not everything because these devices are all in one devices out of the box and even with parental control screen times asked to buy all of these things that sound good

often do not work and or the children very quickly learn how to get around all of it, even if they worked by design. And often the technology limits just do not work as well as Apple would at least think and claim.

when you're saying that, what's coming to my mind is having something that the parents already can have set for them, in a sense. Is that what you're talking about? Because I almost feel like, could there be more simple phones that don't have the abilities of the full iPhone? Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Yes, and there

are. There's a growing industry of smartphones that are Android based. There's multiple really well-intentioned companies out there who, you know, I don't think what I'm describing here is that unique or brilliant. Other companies have taken the lead on this. And I can mention some of them. Bark down in, out of Georgia, really lovely, well-intentioned company.

There's a gab phone, there's a light phone, there's a growing industry. The concern and the reason I'm not just saying excellent, we're done, is because, as I said earlier, 88 % of teenagers have iPhones. And as far as I hear around the country, not just in DC Metro, where I live and work, but when I travel the country and online and like I...

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. It's curious.

If I just stay really basic I don't understand how these basic things, and I have a whole list of aspects that I've thought through after 25 years of working with families through this evolution, through this technology explosion in our world, that

could be easily implemented and reduce anxiety, depression, and suicide rates, like pretty directly. I know it's a big claim, but I really believe that, that technology is such a least part of the correlation that is contributing. And so really what I'm going for here is a different nuanced approach. It's not all or nothing. I'm not saying for families, we could talk about schools too.

Yeah.

in terms of phone policies that are also increasing, thankfully. But I'm talking about at home and families and what parents are offering their kids is more a concept of building capacity. It's instead of parental control, it's parental care. So we are building skills that this is how gradually we are growing with the technology is growing more access. We're growing.

Right, finally saying no.

as the child is developing and can handle more instead of here's the full adult phone, we've tried to set up some parental controls and limit you, you'll get around them as soon as you decide you want to. And we're gonna be keep scrapping and playing whack-a-mole and we're just, everyone feels helpless and overwhelmed and it's a fire hose of information in our pockets constantly that we just can't manage.

Right, right. And you're coming from a place of humanity through your work. mean, That's what we're doing. So what a pitch, know? The technology that's actually coming from the human component. I wanna take care of you and nurture your growth. And we can be the leader in that. I mean, to me, that's a win. I don't know. I don't know how it would be seen as, yeah.

I'm confused.

Again, I'm not trying to be cynical. I'm literally confused.

Yeah, I mean if others are doing it too, they see that it's existing, you'd almost want to think that they want to be ahead of the game as the company, No, I know you're not. I'm like hoping we can encourage them.

I'm not here to vilify. Again, I plead, I'm

here ⁓ offering to collaborate and point out obvious things. We're talking about their customers and their future customers from a business point of view.

Right, exactly.

think it's an amazing business pitch.

You know, that the phone, you know, I have a health app on my iPhone. Like, easily could be integrated through this iOS Grow, through this whatever you want to call it, ⁓ starter iPhone, that not just screen time and the hours, but that data could be integrated into the child's understanding of how they're managing. That these phones are not going away. Whether Apple is going to be the leader in innovation,

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

for the next 10 to 20 years as they have been, or it's another company, or it's another whatever, that technology, I'm assuming, is not going away, that it's gonna be more more integrated into our lives in very, very positive ways, as I've said several times, and obviously concerning interfering ways, both, and...

Of course.

And in the reality, at least in terms of what I see as a full-time clinician, I'm not a researcher, I'm not a public policy expert at all, I'm not claiming to be, yet what I see around the country in workshops that I give and keynote addresses and in my office working with individual families is that these phones are not just gadgets, they're not just toys that we hand our little kids. This is the entry.

Mm-hmm.

into something that's gonna be part of their functioning, part of their lives forever. And so being thoughtful about how we're handing over our phones to them, this device that is gonna be part of their lives forever in some way, maybe with new technology, who knows, it'll be built in, I don't know. ⁓ Not just strapped to our wrists, but...

⁓ you know, integrated in, in more and more ways. At least that's what I read that that's what's coming. Sounds kind of futuristic, but here we are. you know, I've been, I've been referring to our generation and certainly our kids generation as the first generation of cyborgs for years. ⁓ I know that sounds weird and scary, but I lean on that because it helps me understand where we are right now. And I said that probably 10 years ago as well.

Right, but here we are,

Hmm.

And we're in a different place now than we were 10 years ago. But yet that the technology is enhancing our functioning quite literally. yeah, and it helps. If anybody hasn't played around with Chat Cheap BT or any of these AI models, they're predictive models, but they're using billions of billions points of data that helps us function.

Right, we're closer to that concept than we've ever been. And moving fast.

It has helped me do lots of things. work, I use it even in session with patients now. You know, getting them to use some of these skills because it's not going away and it can be helpful. And the efficiency of it also is taking away aspects of our humanity. It's aspects of our humanity and you add in music and art and you know, what's what at this point. And yet so

Absolutely. ⁓ my...

Yeah.

Absolutely, I find such benefit from it.

Yeah, I know.

To your earlier question, yes, as humans we are evolving and things are going to be different in the next X amount of years as they are right now. But I can't say necessarily bad. I know some people might say way bad, but I see it as beneficial if we can make better compromises. And that's where, again, I go back to the early 1970s as my reference point and the auto industry that I do believe.

that public policy needs to look at this as a health crisis, because it is.

Agreed. Agreed. I'll wrap this up so you can get going. I was going to ask if you had any final thoughts, but that sounds like a perfect final thought. I'd like to know how... Go ahead. Yeah.

I could say a few more things if

Yeah, if you have any final thoughts, anything you'd like to leave, any other impressions you'd like to leave of the audience would be great.

Well, We didn't talk much about specifically neurodiverse or I touched on it a little bit.

yeah, anything you have to say about that would be helpful.

So.

The term neurodiverse is not a phrase that I love, but it captures, in I guess a somewhat neutral way, ⁓ less derogatory way in terms of ⁓ focusing on people's weaknesses or vulnerabilities, that ⁓ there's a difference there. The diversity, the neurodiverse, opposed to neurotypical.

⁓ that there's a highlighting that there is a difference. And part of that difference is that the digital stimulation, as we pull in technology in this conversation, for lack of a better phrase, sort of just hits different, that there's a vulnerability to many of my patients who I would consider, or they even identify themselves as being neurodiverse, whether on the autism spectrum or having,

clinical anxiety or ADHD where that they are thinking differently, they perceive the world differently. so, handing them a never-ending supply of stimulation and online world is both amazing in terms of finding community and finding interests that they like. Research is never-ending. They can get tremendous

sense of connectedness through the technology. There's tremendous positives that I see every day in working with this population and shocker, not shocker, ⁓ major, major concerns where some of that sanctuary that they find in the safety of the technology.

⁓ also creates barriers and misperceptions and echo chambers that leaves them more and more isolated. But generally speaking, I see patients of mine and students who are more classified as neurodiverse as being more vulnerable than the typical population

to these concerns, but everyone, as we've been talking about, believe are, especially kids, vulnerable to all of this.

Yeah, is the susceptibility of the youth, And I agree as far as your distinction with neurodivergent and labeling in a sense, but we're all just people, right? And we're all different. So we deal with this group one way, we deal with this group another way, and we're all just human beings. So obviously, everybody's.

Right, but again,

typically, to be clear, someone on the autism spectrum disorder, for example, almost by definition, and it's a very wide spectrum now, so it's difficult to say this clearly, but in terms of what is being stimulated and their reward pathways, there might be more, literally, more of a vulnerability

and more vulnerability to being overstimulated. know, phrase sensory integration often comes up where, you know, through the five senses, often auditory, even visually, tactile, like that the amount of information coming at them can overwhelm them somewhat more easily than, again, the neurotypical population.

For sure, no, I

see that, I agree with that. I'm just saying that the distinction is that we're just human beings dealing with our own different things, right? But there's a specific sensitivity amongst this population and it varies, for sure.

Yes.

Right.

So one of the last things that I will say, because I often talk about this in my ⁓ workshops and keynote addresses, is that this concept of developing skills and, as I talked about earlier, prioritizing and shifting attention, the word balance often comes up, or more specifically, people feeling off balance.

And so I try to remind people of obvious things that balance as a concept ⁓ is really not a destination or a goal. It's not something that we can sort of achieve and then just sort of be balanced. That balance is a constant state of adjustment. That it's a set of skills and a set of ⁓ adjustments that we are, if you're on a balancing beam, like you're not just perfectly straight or if you're riding a bike, as I often say,

you know, the balance comes through the adjustment. And so from a parenting point of view, from a student point of view, from a teacher point of view, I really encourage everyone, you know, again, I'm stating the obvious here, everyone knows this, but to try to acknowledge that we are in a constant state of adjusting and balancing as a skill, not as something that we need to somehow achieve. And it's sort of this elusive balance that we just need to somehow

regain, that it's fleeting, that at any moment we could be off balance and regain balance for the next moment. And so when you have such a dramatic, intentionally designed set of technologies that are aimed to get us off balance, so we then focus on

whatever that stimulation is, that is how a lot of these platforms work, where we're feeling less regulated, less balanced, and therefore we focus on what is being offered to us. ⁓ It's part of the reward system that we seek out, getting that information, because then we feel safer, we feel nourished in some way. The underpinning of dopamine.

is survival, that we are rewarded to do things that help us survive and help us feel safe. You know, back to caveman time, you know, that is, it wasn't just that reward that dopamine feels good, that the dopamine is encouraging and reinforcing certain types of behaviors. Certain types of behaviors have released more dopamine than other types of behaviors. And therefore we're encouraged to do certain things more and more. And that's part of the compulsion loop.

that I was talking about earlier because these devices are designed, social media is designed brilliantly like a slot machine where the more you play, the more you're there, the more it feels good and it's hard to get off, to leave it. You add in a live game designed to hook you and designed to keep you playing and there's this social component where you're playing with your friends.

and you're feeling connected and you're feeling included and it's really enticing and feels good and keeps us there. And so I encourage us, reminding us as a society, including people who work for technology companies to seek out this balance, but make sure that we're adjusting as we go. again, in terms of innovation, like again, I'm confused because it seems so obvious to me.

But I encourage tech companies to continue to seek out that balance and innovate for humanity, for our development and enhancements while minimizing the very obvious, very clear, again, the science is in. We don't have to wait. Just like climate change, we're aware. We understand how the science is playing out now.

And there's a mental health crisis that I would love to continue to mitigate.

Yeah, it's so beautifully stated and your empathy just pours through in that your mission is incredible. I really think it's such an important mission. I think it's almost central to development at this point because this thing that's attached to my hand that I swore would never be attached to my hand, I said, I'm never gonna be that person. And I'm like, I'm going to the kitchen, it's five feet away, let me bring the phone. going back to the living room, five feet away, let me get the phone.

Anyway, do you work with people remotely or is it just in your, you do work with people remotely? So how can people connect with you, to work with you and also to support this? Because I feel like if we can get people behind this, we can get parents behind this to really encourage Apple to do something, how can we do that? And how can they reach you?

So again, iparent101.com, iparent101.com, I don't know if it'll be in the show notes, but ⁓ is my website. ⁓ So easily people can reach out through there. Info at iparent101.com is an email address that I read. ⁓ Right on the front of that website, iparent101.com, I do have this Apple campaign. As I said earlier, when I spoke to them this summer,

It will be in the show notes.

had multiple lovely conversations, and then ⁓ again, in a confusing, somewhat jarring way, I was ⁓ encouraged to give more public feedback, opposed to working with them more directly, their health team. ⁓ So I took that, ⁓ and ⁓ in a confusing way, but I took it, and again, I'm not a tech expert, but I created a website.

It's right, the link is right on the front of my, and you could probably have it in the show notes too, where I made it very simple for families and educators and policymakers to give Apple the feedback that they're asking for. Because they basically said, this sounds great. We would love to hear more from ⁓ our customers. Here's the link for our feedback page. We read all the messages is what they told me. They've told me this for years. I've used this link for years. Maybe they do.

You know, things have gotten better. Screen time has improved over the years. So I'm going to take them at their word. I do. I want to collaborate. And so I have a little blurb that I wrote. You could alter it, but you can copy and paste it. The link is right there. And so if we can give Apple a couple of thousand messages, they might take notice of what their customers are asking for.

Doesn't have to be specifically what I've laid out there, but I just think this is really basic to flip the script of turning things on instead of turning things off on these phones. Seems pretty basic to me. to give parents that level of control. More nuanced than just banning.

So that's what I would ask and encourage parents to do. In terms of working with me, you can certainly reach out with questions. Iparent101.com, as I said. I'm a clinical psychologist full time here in Bethesda, Maryland. I do consulting online. But I have to be careful in terms of my license and all of that, of who I'm working with outside of the state of Maryland.

Certainly eager to talk and support families around the world.

It's wonderful and I'm eager to support your mission here too. So first off, forgive if anybody's hearing lawnmowers or leaf blowers in the background at the end of this. I've been blocking it out the whole time, but I would love if there's anything I can do through the podcast to continue building this momentum. I would be glad to mention it every podcast moving forward, because I think it's so important. So we can talk about that. Okay.

again, I think that's valid and I appreciate you offering that Mark, because

And just very quickly, in terms of schools, and I've been pushing for schools to have clear protocols for years. I've testified in front of the Board of Education here many years ago, asking for clear guidelines and protocols. And I'm thrilled to see across the world, but certainly across the country, more and more

clearly stated policies and there's a wide range of those policies, but again, the science is in. Having phones out in school does disrupt education and having clear policies around that, in my opinion, is essential. It's not the focus of my work, because I don't work in a school, but I just want to be clear that I'm thrilled that

books like The Anxious Generation and Jonathan Haidt's work and others, other colleagues who have really been out there pushing to get this into the mainstream dialogue has been amazing and I'm really grateful to those dialogues. My approach is more nuanced based on what I see in my office and what I hear in the reality of families. So I'm not one pushing for bans and

phone free childhoods, because that's just not what I'm asked about and what I see. But the more we can delay and lean in on the not yet in reality, the better for development.

Well, thank you for taking up on this mission because you didn't have to do this. You saw something and a lot of people see things and they don't do anything about it. major props to you for picking up this mission. It's such a pleasure to see you again. It's such a pleasure to have you on the show and to talk about such an incredible subject matter. I really hope it makes a difference for people and I really hope Apple's listening. And you're a great guy and I want to have you back as things develop and we see the future. Yeah. So thanks for taking the time today,

Thank you.

Great. Happy to be back. Wonderful.

Absolutely. Yep. Appreciate it. Thank you.

I know you're a very busy, very busy dude. So, all right, stay

All right, man, have a great day. Thanks for everything.