Smartphone activism as a psychologist in private practice with Dr Erin Carroll

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast. One of the biggest fears I hear from psychologists and therapists leaving the NHS for independent practice is that they'll lose their connection to the bigger picture, to public health, and that they'll spend all their time working in a silo, working one-to-one, and lose their impact on wider society. But today's guest is proof that being in private practice can actually be the perfect springboard for grassroots activism and community leadership. I'm joined by Dr Erin Carroll, a clinical psychologist who has taken her expertise in emotional development out of the consulting room and into the heart of her community. Erin's been a driving force in the Smartphone Free Childhood movement in our combined hometown of Tunbridge Wells, and she's helped to achieve something really remarkable; getting all of the local secondary head teachers to sign a joint letter supporting brick only phone policies for younger students, something that Erin really believes in. So today we're talking about how we as psychologists can use our training to lead cultural change, and why finding a cause that really lights a fire in your belly is the best antidote to that isolation that we can often feel in private practice.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links:

Erin: www.erincarrollpsychologist.co.uk

Smartphone Free Childhood

Health Professionals for Safer Screens

The Amazing Generation by Jonathan Haidt & Catherine Price, illustrated by Cynthia Yuan Cheng

Links for Rosie:

Substack: substack.com/@drrosie

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@drrosiegilderthorp

The highlights

• Erin tells us about her professional life up to the point that she became involved in Smartphone Free Childhood, and what led you down that path 01:45
• Erin talks about the role of screens and emotional regulation 11:56
• We discuss online harms and safeguarding concerns 18:49
• We look at the addictive aspect of smartphones 27:05
• Erin talks about the Smartphone Free Childhood parent Pact, and schools taking action 32:44
• I ask Erin about her plans going forward, in her activist role 48:56
• Erin tells us how to get in touch with her and connect with the Smartphone Free Childhood community 54:14

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Speakers:

Rosie Gildrethorp, Erin Carroll

Welcome back to the Business of Psychology podcast. I'm your host, Dr Rosie Gilderthorp. One of the biggest fears I hear from psychologists and therapists leaving the NHS for independent practice is that they'll lose their connection to the bigger picture, to public health, and that they'll spend all their time working in a silo, working one-to-one, and lose their impact on wider society.

But today's guest is proof that being in private practice can actually be the perfect springboard for grassroots activism and community leadership. I'm joined by Dr Erin Carroll, a clinical psychologist who has taken her expertise in emotional development out of the consulting room and into the heart of her community.

Erin's been a driving force in the Smartphone Free Childhood movement in our combined hometown of Tunbridge Wells, and she's helped to achieve something really remarkable; getting all of the local secondary head teachers to sign a joint letter supporting brick only phone policies for younger students, something that Erin really believes in.

So today we're talking about how we as psychologists can use our training to lead cultural change, and why finding a cause that really lights a fire in your belly is the best antidote to that isolation that we can often feel in private practice. So I'm really delighted to welcome Erin to the show.

So welcome to the show, Erin. It's lovely to have you here.

Thank you very much. Thanks for inviting me.

So today we're gonna talk a bit about your journey into the kind of smartphone free childhood arena, but just for a bit of context, could you tell us a little bit about your professional life up to that point and what sort of led you down that path?

So thinking about my professional life, I mean, at the moment now I work in private practice in Tunbridge Wells. So I work with adults with a range of difficulties. I've been working with adults in general mental health in secondary care for sort of 20 years and moved over into private practice just before COVID actually.

And in some ways, I think I see things a little differently now because I'm doing a lot of work around or learning about screens and how they affect kids. And I realised that when I was training there was this massive upsurge in referrals to CAMHS and things like that, and I didn't really have much sort of opinion on it or thoughts about it really.

Obviously, I sort of see it slightly differently now, but I sort of stayed away from child work really, and preferred working with adults. And, you know, sort of have always obviously been interested in how we manage our emotions. And I think that for me, I've always found it quite fascinating and slightly alarming how we've adapted to using screens to do that, quite often as adults, you know, I was sort of mainly thinking about. And then I had my own children and became, whether I wanted to or not, had to become quite interested in screens with two boys who were very keen to be in front of a screen wherever possible. And just sort of noticing how different it is to be in front of a screen now, compared to when I was growing up. You know, our five channel TV where there was only a little bit on that you were only ever interested in.

So yeah, I got more and more interested then as my oldest was getting older and towards the point where it was considered normal to have a phone. I, y'know, these things are quite serendipitous, aren't they? So I sort of, I was invited to do, to talk to teenagers about their screen use through the local library, and so I started looking into it. And you know, the general sort of message from that researcher is, oh, you know, it's fine as long as it's not getting in the way of other things. And I sort of thought, Hmm. And then I sort of started looking a bit more, and was realising that actually what people were seeing, what these kids were seeing could often be the kinds of stuff that then I might be treating them for later in life.

So yeah, I started to become a bit alarmed really when I started to see the stats, how much time kids were spending on phones on average, you know, four to six hours a day as a teenager, and just thought, I'm not sure I want that for my kids. I'm not sure I want them to have that kind of a life. I think there's other things that I think they benefit from doing. And it sort of just continued from there. I met another psychologist locally who'd been very involved, Hannah O'Brien, in the smartphone movement and we got chatting and it sort of evolved from there.

It's so interesting that it was that connection that you could see between a phenomena that people were talking about as quite discreet in some ways. Like, oh, we've got this alarming rise in anxiety in children, and you know, what you see in the consulting room when you work with adults. And it was that connection between the two that you were able to make. And I think that's really valuable and sometimes gets lost a little bit in the way that NHS services are structured.

You know, I often wonder if we had more of a lifespan approach, if we'd have picked up sooner that perhaps our relationship with screens was, you know, leading to some of the problems that we would then end up seeing in adulthood. You know, if as colleagues we were seeing each other and able to chat about these things more, maybe that would've made its way into policy a bit sooner than it has.

Because it does feel like, you know, people like you are spotting this quite a while back, but the government have only just woken up to it as a, as a potential issue.

Yeah. But I think it is tricky because, you know, screens, particularly our phones, which is obviously the issue we're talking about today, although I am interested more broadly in screens, but you know, particularly with phones, they just so quickly become basically man's best friend, replacing the poor dog, I think. And it's happened so quickly and we've all been so drawn in by them because of course they're helpful, and of course they've given us as adults opportunities to communicate, you know, professionally and create these community kind of connections, which would be so much harder if we were just relying on in person stuff.

So they've really drawn us in and I think it's only actually as the technology changes and develops that it's become clearer how, you know, potentially toxic these technologies can be for us. You know, I feel as if the conversation between me and other adults about our own phone use has changed quite dramatically in the last couple of years as we're all becoming, I think, more and more reliant on them. And, you know, for kids as well. The technology's changed, you know, the sort of infinite scroll and things like this that, you know, are designed to keep us absolutely plugged in to our phones. I think as adults we can then sort of take a step back and, and think about our own use and think about what that means.

So I suppose what I'm saying is I don't think necessarily that I had a particularly better insight than anyone else through my clinical practice. I think it's actually realising yourself that you are engaging in behaviors that you wouldn't recommend to anyone that you're working with that actually does it.

But I think saying that I don't work with children and I know that another group that I'm involved with, Health Professionals for Safer Screens, they're all over it. You know, they, they're going into sort of looking at the early years stuff and understanding these new sort of findings that kids are, again, you know, you hear this in the media, kids aren't ready for school when they start school, they're not being able to do the basic sort of things and alarmingly, you know, speech and language problems. People not being, you know, kids not being able to speak properly when they start school. And, you know, starting to understand the relationships between screen use and those things. You know, research in America actually, you know, being able to notice that the more kids use screens, the less the quality of their synaptic connections between neurons are. So it's, it's kind of all gathering pace, I think, in terms of our knowledge. And I think Jonathan Haidt, who's a social psychologist, wrote The Anxious Generation, amazing book obviously, but you know, he talks about on his substack about how, you know, we can all have knowledge, but then it's when we, you know, start to share that knowledge. And then everyone knows that everyone knows, and then that's when things start to change. So I think it, to be fair on everyone, it's taken us a while to, to make sense of it ourselves and then start talking about it and then, you know, it goes round.

And there's a lot that I think we need research to help us disentangle as well, because for every negative you can think of, you know, I want to ask you more about emotional regulation because I know that that is something that kind of brought you into this thinking about how adults are using phones to regulate. For every negative, there's also a positive, and I think, you know, something that I've talked about on the pod before and that I think about quite a lot is how we make sure that technology is serving us rather than us becoming slaves to it.

Because, you know, I think I've probably mentioned on here before that in our household, we don't limit screen time, and that's because my autistic children find it incredibly useful for regulation. But I do think carefully about the quality of what they're doing on their screens, and I'm desperate for more research to help me kind of navigate that, because I don't think the answer for them is shaming or hard limits around screens, but I do think educating them so that they're using the bits which are helpful and steering away from the bits, which, like you mentioned, the infinite scroll. You know, I've read a lot about why that was designed and how it was designed, and it was not designed to serve us. It wasn't, it was designed to serve somebody else's intentions, which were not about public health, put it that way, and was a lot like that. And our kids are facing an onslaught of it, and I think you're completely right, they are not in a position to make informed decisions. Whereas I think probably the privilege of our training, I think maybe you, you mentioned it that way in your, in the conversation we had before this, is that we are in a position where we can step back, we can look at the research and we can make these kind of more informed choices now we've become aware of the potential pitfalls. But could you tell me a little bit more about the role of screens and emotional regulation? Because I know that you've read much more about this than I have.

Well, I think, you know, I'm sort of coming at it from, you know, the position of my sort of training and my clinical experience where I'm spending a lot of time trying to help people find other ways of managing their inner world, because the ways that they'd learned to manage until coming to see me have, for whatever reason, stopped serving them in the same way. So, I'm sort of thinking about it from that aspect. So ie. our relationship with screens rather than screens per se. And I think that touches on what you are sort of saying. And you know, I think a big part of the Smartphone Free Childhood movement is respecting that families have their own ways of doing things and that families need to find their own way, whether that's, you know, in my house, I do find it helpful to limit screen time because I've found that then actually my two will spend more time doing joint things together in that case, and more creative things. So for me, I've noticed that relationship, so that sort of guides me and I think every family has to do that.

But in terms of thinking about emotional regulation, I think my concern is, and I know that there's a researcher in Australia, Dr Einstein, who's I think informed, not the original one, her work has informed the, the sort of the social media ban in Australia, and she just talks about how actually the screens are really not helping us to tolerate uncertainty. So, you know, particularly the way screens are now, you know, Jonathan Haidt calls them behavioral training devices, they're completely, you know, manipulable, we don't just have to sit and watch whatever's coming. And I noticed that with my kids, you know, that it's much nicer for them to sit on an iPad because they can get to flip around and... Butessentially whether we're talking about that or we're talking about, you know, we have a, we have an emotion and it's not great, and we go to our phone and it takes us into a different world. So, I think sometimes it's not emotional regulation. I think sometimes it's really just trying to hit a snooze button. It's distraction, you know, so again, trying to understand how we are using these things is important to understand, yes, whether we are getting something really out of them or whether they are, you know, we are just contributing to the attention economy, obviously in the case of social media.

But I do think it's really important because of what's coming, or what's here already, you know, these AI chatbots who are becoming increasingly important in children's lives as companions, then I think, you know, we're, we are risking having our, you know, attachment systems really hijacked by, by technology. And so I think the more we can think about screen use and think about what we are using it for, and also realistically keep kids safe while using screens, then I think we'll be better served to approach what's coming.

Yeah, absolutely. And it is quite overwhelming, isn't it, as a parent because the, the pace of change is so fast that I feel I'm quite lucky, my children are still young enough that there's no social elements yet, nothing that they have is connected to the internet. And so I feel it's quite easy to control what's happening, and it's mostly graphic design and creative projects that they do on their screens and they do them together. So, you know, there's a lot that I really like, but I'm petrified of the abyss of the internet because I don't feel skilled to know necessarily what programs are good, what might be really bad, and the idea of the AI chat bot really frightens me and for all the reasons you said, you know, attachment and, I mean, my relationship with AI, I use it a lot for business, but it does just tell me what I want to hear. It tells me I'm great, which has its uses, but is really sinister in a lot of ways. And I think it would be quite easy for a young person who struggles socially to choose that over the more challenging relationships with humans who can be difficult.

Exactly. And I think we are seeing more and more that there's plenty of adults who are struggling with that.

Mm-hmm.

And so, yeah, for kids who haven't yet learned that sometimes things go that way, sometimes we don't get on with everyone, sometimes it's difficult, sometimes it's awkward, sometimes it's uncomfortable. You know, for kids who, you know, haven't quite learned that it's okay that you can have a difficult social interaction, but actually it can be okay again, I think that's, yeah, if you could, if we could choose not to learn that lesson and just have a different kind of life online, we might all choose that. But the reality is it's not always a very nice life online, and in fact, it's becoming increasingly unpleasant online for a lot of people, and you know, we are obviously noticing relationships between, you know, social media and mental health as well as other things. And obviously that's now what the government is, is starting to, to wake up to and start to think about regulating. But it's difficult because, you know, big tech, just like you know, big tobacco many, many years ago, is a powerful force and, you know, will focus on the benefits, but unfortunately the costs are sort of mounting up.

Yeah, and like anything really that involves new technology, it's very difficult for us to... get strong data because we haven't had this for long enough. You know, the people that were born into the smartphone revolution, are only just reaching the kind of age where we can start to look at longer term outcomes.

Yeah.

And we weren't measuring them from the beginning. So it's really, it's really tricky to compete with, I think, the big budget and the big marketing campaigns of the, you know, big tech companies, there's a lot of big stuff and some small voices who are, are trying to counter it.

And also, yeah, there's this sort of, it is difficult, you know, I, I come from an academic background, I used to, you know, be a neuroscientist and I, I appreciate the value of research and how important it is and, you know, pure research where you are trying to, you know, really control variables in order to get to the truth. But actually, you know, as I went into clinical work, I, and part of the reason why I did do that is because it wasn't, it's too reductionist in my view, that kind of research and actually again, what I appreciate about the Health Professionals for Safer Screens Organisation is that they are taking clinical experience and they are sort of assimilating that as a kind of evidence that I think is really, really important, and should be counted, and as I sort of have said to you previously, I think this, this is a public health issue, and I think the, you know, the tech companies try to make it and turn it into a civil liberties issue. And I think that causes, you know, a lot of concern and certainly conversations that I've had, you know, whether it's about the Online Safety Act, or whether it's about Smartphone Free Childhood can often, you know, result in people feeling as if you are infringing on, on their rights rather than trying to educate people about how many harms there are by allowing your kids sort of unfettered access to, to essentially, you know, the adult world. You know, 60% of internet traffic is porn, you know, and it's, it's a serious issue, you know, when 11 to 13 year olds, 50 odd percent of them have seen beheading videos.

Oh my goodness.

It's incredibly frightening. And, you know, what's been quite interesting for me is I'm, you know, I've obviously get to see quite a lot of research, quite a lot of stuff that's disseminated publicly, but as part of the movement, I've been talking to parents in schools and then more and more I've been hearing from parents and head teachers about the issues that are the stats on my talk that shock everyone, and you know, I think some people can feel is scaremongering, and then you can have a head teacher stand up and say, well, you know, it's really interesting to see those stats because I can say that every one of those stats is being realised in our school at this moment. There are safeguarding concerns about all of these things, live right now and going on.

So you, you start to realise that this is happening.

And it's so easy as a parent not to know, because, you know, you say 60% of the online traffic is porn. I've never seen, I've never ever been served up anything that would come under that category.

Yeah.

Ever. And so it's really easy for me not to know that. And I've never seen anything violent. I've never seen a beheading. My algorithm knows, I think that I probably don't wanna see that, and I don't go on platforms where that's, you know, normal material. But of course when they get a fresh child, I mean, maybe technically they're over 13, but they don't know anything about them, and so the algorithm could do anything, couldn't it?

Well, I mean, they're not over 13 and I think that's the, you know, one of the issues about, you know, this ban as it's called. In Australia, all it's doing is not allowing kids who are under the limit, the age limit to make accounts. And obviously they've increased it to 16. But you know, there aren't really any age checks. You've just got to put in a date of birth and all of that. But also what I think, what's important to understand is that, you know, if people think back to their own adolescence, we are curious, we are interested in the world, we don't know ourselves very well yet. We don't know what's good for us, you know, what we enjoy, we don't know what's frightening. And so, you know, someone compared it to me the other day, you know, we used to look up swear words in the dictionary. Now you look up swear words on the dictionary, which is the internet, and you will be served more than you could ever imagine. And you know kids have to try things before they know. And so we are saying, look, try everything, try, you know, everything that's ever been imagined in the world of pornography or the world of violence, and put it into a context like social media where, you know, the platform is interested in keeping you engaged for as long as possible. It's got to keep showing you things that take it that bit further. And it's just a very different world that our kids are growing up in. And you are right. You know, my WhatsApp, there's nothing frightening on my WhatsApp, of course. Well, sometimes there is now that I'm involved in this, but before that, there wasn't. But you know, kids are not able to, you know, regulate themselves fully. They're not able to realise if I send this picture to an entire WhatsApp group that some people might be upset, some people might not want to see it, that some people might not find it funny. These are all things that we've all painstakingly worked out in the real world, and still some of us behave abysmally on the internet, you know. But you know, we're taking away all of that real world experience and just saying, here you go, navigate everything all at once without too much safety net.

Yeah, so I mean, just recapping, there are lots of sort of separate issues that come together within this little smartphone that fits in your pocket. So you've got the kind of using screens to avoid emotions and maybe not learning emotional regulation skills outside of that, and my husband and I both recognise in ourselves, even if we're watching something a bit tense on telly, we'll both look down at our phones at the same moment to try and avoid it. So we see that in action in adults and children, but it's denying children some learning. Then we've also got the kind of content that they might be exposed to, that they would, for understandable reasons, maybe look for, without understanding how, you know, how deep it's gonna go, how frightening it could be, all of those possibilities. And then not know, you know, how to seek our help with processing or dealing with it because they know they've seen something they shouldn't have seen probably. So there's that side. So there's the kinda emotional regulation, there's the content they could be exposed to, but you've also touched there on the social world and how even in these kind of closed social medias, like WhatsApp, where you may be, I mean, I might be naive about this, but at the moment, at the version of WhatsApp I have, I wouldn't be concerned that a stranger could contact my child, they could end up in these kind of groups of peers or groups of, you know, other people that they've consented to be in a group with, but suddenly like, they could be contacted at any time, at any moment, they haven't been taught how to share information in a way that feels safe for them, and they haven't kind of learned the rules of social interactions in the real world. And then, my sense anyway, from what my friends who are parents of teenagers tell me, is that everything is just heightened and exaggerated by those groups. So if you've got bullying at school, it's gonna really blow off in Snapchat or WhatsApp in a way that we were protected from. I physically remember coming home from school, shutting the front door and being like, thank God for that. Our children have lost their ability to do that.

Or at least, you know. Until now, we've, we've given it away.

But actually, I think this is what, you know, the movement is about is trying to change these norms. Trying to sort of change this rather, sort of apathetic position of, oh, well the, you know, the horse has bolted now we've had it. It's like, no, no, we can. We can actually think about this, we can actually think about, you know, whether we could delay giving them smartphones.

So, you know, as you touched on there, the phone in our pocket. And I think that is an, a really important aspect, which is the addictive aspect. Because it's one thing to be, you know, looking at harmful content on a family computer, and oh God, and panicking and feeling shame, which is, I think the reason why then kids don't want to talk to their parents because they're feeling shame and as you know, shame makes us sort of not want to be seen. So, you know, it's one thing for them to sort of stumble across something, it's another thing for them to have something in their pocket, which they keep going back to it because they're wanting a bit more positive reinforcement. And so it goes on. I think the addictive nature of it is, is a really big problem, and I think that's the problem for adults, even if it's not distressing content.

Oh, a hundred percent and, and I think adults because of shame will also play down the struggle that we have with addiction to the phone. And also, you know, when I bring it up in therapy, my clients are mostly perinatal, most of them will tell me they actually do feel harmed by the content they're looking at. And they've just not been asked that question before. And so maybe they've not interrogated that in their own mind. But when I ask the question, do you think you're seeing anything harmful on social media that harmed you, not maybe that you think would harm other people, but that is actually harming your mental wellbeing? I can't think of a client I've had in the last couple of years who hasn't said yes to that.

Yeah, and this frightening thing is that when you ask them, most teenagers would say the same.

Mm.

You know, they would say that they feel that they are being harmed by their phone use, their social media use. Half of them, you know, say they're addicted. That's a problem. That's not something that needs to be. There's so much else that we need to learn to navigate, we don't need to be at the mercy of an addiction. Something that essentially just gets in the way of us doing these other things. But it's, it's really hard. And obviously now I'm involved in this, my kids are very happy to tell me when they're noticing me on the phone or, you know, if they're trying to get my attention and I'm, you know, responding to a WhatsApp message or whatever it might be. But it's not just that is it? Work is on our phone. Everything is on our phone.

Yeah, I get criticized actually quite a bit for not being responsive enough to messages. Because I think, and I'm sure other parents will relate to this, sometimes I am averse to my phone. I will, I think, feel like this is dysregulating me and I don't want any more incoming information, so sometimes I'm accused of living in the nineties because I'll put my phone upstairs somewhere and I won't interact with it for hours.

I guarantee when I come back to it, I will be in trouble with somebody in my life for not having responded to something important, whether it is the school, because, you know, we might receive 12 emails in a day and you know, I'm supposed to reply to one of them or do something with one of them, but more often it's a social thing. So it'll be a friend or a family member that wanted an immediate response. And again, it's that kind of, we've been trained to think responses should be immediate and to feel like something is lacking if we are not getting that immediate feedback from people all the time. And so it's really complicated and I think shame is a, is a big part of the problem. I think when I talk about this with people, I tend to come at it from the angle of, you have to remember that the tech companies have an agenda, and it is not to support and nurture you. It is, it's to enrich themselves. And so, in way we can kind of take the shame out of it by naming the business models that we're working with, and that actually, it is not your fault that you've become addicted to this thing, it's not a personal failing, it's not a lack of discipline, it's that they wanted you to become addicted to it, and they're very, very wealthy and they're very, very clever. And so I think sometimes when we approach from that, just like with any, any of the work we do, it's that compassionate approach, isn't it? Like you didn't get to choose this environment that we are in, but now we can empower ourselves to do something different about it. And I think that's, that's possibly the message that needs to cut through more to the public, because often when I hear people talking about Smartphone Free Childhood, they won't engage with it because they feel like it's shaming them because they haven't done it yet. And like, well, of course you haven't done it yet, we didn't know what we needed to know, but now we're kind of getting there. So I love that you know, people like you are involved in it because I think that's where this more kind of compassionate message will start to come through. And I know that that's the message that you put out. It hasn't always been there.

Yeah, no it hasn't. And I think, you know, we're all learning, aren't we? Were all sort of learning about, certainly when you know, Facebook started out, not for a million years did any of us think that there was this agenda behind it really. But now I think it's, it's quite well established that they just want our attention so that they can sell advertising space, essentially. That's it. It's a very simple model. But in order to keep our attention for longer and for more of us, then it needs to be, you know, their methods get sort of more Machiavellian really in order to to keep our attention.

But you are right about, you know, I think people do have reactions, and certainly, you know, even though I was very interested in Smartphone Free Childhood, it took me a long time to sign the Parent Pact, you know, which is just this social contract where we say, we are going to delay giving our kid a smartphone until 14. It took me a long time to make that leap because for me, if I made it, then it was because I meant it. And I wasn't entirely sure. But it's obviously as I've got more involved, now to me it's a no-brainer. But it did take me a while to get there. And, you know, in my talks we do, we talk about the dangers, but we also talk about you know, how come we are all addicted, that this is the design, and also why our kids are more susceptible, why they need more protection, that it's not just about, well, they, this is the world and, and they need to sort of get with the world as soon as possible. But actually no, no, their brains aren't developed enough to make the decisions that we can make around our use, and that you know, we need to help them, you know, we need to be their parents. But of course there's also an understanding that that's easier for some of us than others. Some of us live very privileged lives and we can make these choices, and we can deal with the consequences of that, and that's just not the same for everybody. And I think that's something that, that I've been reminded of going through this process that what started off really as, you know, a psychologically informed, but essentially personal decision about, you know, what I wanted for my kids, has become actually, you know, much more about, hmm, how can we keep kids safer, whose parents can't make that choice for whatever reason? And there are a number of reasons. That's when I got interested actually in schools taking action because I do see schools as having a really important role in our kids' lives. And so even though I think it's really important to focus on parents and parents who can make different choices if they're concerned about phones, into actually schools who can make decisions that are essentially, I think, safeguarding kids at least while they're at school.

Yeah. And I think it's education as well. Like, my children already, I kind of can't believe this, and if you knew them, it's kind of incongruous, but they can detect what's an AI generated image. And they'll go, that's AI generated rubbish, that's not real. And that's because they've been taught that at school as part of their history lessons, as part of their geography lessons. They're already, at the ages of seven and nine, being shown examples of improbable and wrong information and being told, if you just type this into the internet, you might see this and it's wrong, and they're being taught to think in that critical way. Which to me, that just needs to be underpinning all of our education now. It shouldn't be a separate standalone PSHE lesson. It should be like it is at my kids' school, and I'm just so happy to hear about it, embedded into your subject teaching. Because the reality is when I want to learn about something, I do go to the internet and I look it up. That's unlikely to change, but because I didn't grow up with the internet, I do probably have a more natural skepticism than somebody who it's always been there as a best friend. So we do need to teach our children that, and I think they are receptive when, when we do teach them, they're interested in the world, like you said, and so they're kind of interested if you educate them about the business models of these tech companies and what their agendas might be. Children are smart and they will take that on board and take it into their adult life as well.

But I'm also interested in government regulation beyond schools, because to me it seems kind of bonkers that governments allow big tech firms to just ride roughshod over law. And it's like, no, hold on, we can, we can legislate to protect children. We've done it with tobacco, we've done it to a limited extent and could go further, but we do do it with food. You can't just give people any old thing and call it food. So I think there isn't the political will, but there should be the political will to regulate further in this area because you are quite right, a lot of the families that I work with and that I meet in my life as a send parent, they can't be expected to be interrogating and thinking critically about every piece of technology, every software, every website that their children visit, because not everybody has the capability to do that.

No, and it's also, you know, not a great way to relate with your kids, you know, to be just constantly having these conversations. And I think that's, you know, one of the reasons why just not giving them a phone till a bit later takes away a huge amount of that discussion, which, you know, I would be grateful for.

But yes, I think it's, it's interesting at the governmental level, obviously things are shifting. I mean, when I got, you know, involved in this for the first time, giving a talk at my son's school a year ago, people have been involved for, you know, longer and Smartphone Free Child has been going for two years, but when I first gave that talk, I, you know, as you talked about the vulnerability, you know, even though I knew that a lot of my thinking was embedded in my training and that was helping me, I also did feel like a bit of a mad fringe women, you know, going, oh no, look, this is, don't do, you know, like that sort of hippie stereotype of, not that anyone would accuse me of that, I don't think, but just this idea that, you know, maybe, maybe you are a bit, a bit bonkers thinking that there's another way, whereas fast forward a year and, you know, most of the adults that I talk to have done some kind of thinking about this and do have concerns and are trying to, to think about how best to approach it with their kids. So I think the conversation's moved on hugely, but obviously governments are slower.

There's a lot going on at the moment. You know, there's a, the vote in the Lords, which obviously everyone was very excited about in the SFC community, although of course now it's coming to the commons, they're not quite so excited. This consultation has been announced, which on the one hand sounds really exciting, but on the other hand could be just the way of slowing things down and allowing the tech companies to lobby a bit more. But I think there's this, also, this extra element, which is, you know, in terms of them legislating is, you know, the ubiquitousness of screens that, you know, these, the government local authorities have signed huge contracts for ed tech, you know, for having screens embedded in our schools. There's proposals about exams now being done on screens. It's really difficult.

Oh yeah. That's happening, isn't it? I've, yes, I've heard about that.

It's difficult to sort of separate these things out, and I think it creates this idea that it's a juggernaut, it's just happened and we've just gotta go with it, rather than trying to put the brakes on and just look, just have a look and just have a see at what's happening.

But yes, it's always, and I think that's where the Smartphone Free Childhood movement really comes in, it's saying we've all got to do our bit, the parents who can need to, the schools that can need to, and then the governments need to really. But I think the parents have some kids who are, you know, 11, 12, 13, they're worried that the government legislation's gonna be way too slow to have any sort of benefit for their kids because some of them are already hugely worried about their kids, you know, spending every moment that they can on a screen.

And it's such a tough call for people. I think, you know, parents of older children that I talk to feel very, very trapped, and, and that's where I feel that you know, our institutions need to help because if parents are worrying about this, but they're feeling pushed into it, they're feeling pressurized into buying a very expensive item they don't actually want their child to have, but they feel like, oh, because our infrastructure's so poor, I mean, gosh, I could go on a rant, but you know, most parents I know, they're like, well, the bus frequently just doesn't show up. And then what's she gonna do? She's got to be able to call me, or I want to be able to track her. Or, you know, the trains don't run, and then my daughter gets stranded in the next town over and she doesn't know what to do. And especially most of the parents that I speak to have children who are more vulnerable. And so they want to be able to track them. They want that easy communication, and they might also have a child who won't speak on the phone, but can type a message. And so they feel trapped into buying the iPhone or the sort of latest Android, because that's what's marketed to them really heavily.

And I guess, you know, I know from researching through your links actually, that there are other things available and that, you know, you can get phones that have those core safety features in them, but they're not marketed very much and so I don't think they come to your awareness unless you know somebody who can kind of connect you to the right places.

And I think there's also a sort of an element that if, if enough people say no, then you know, capitalism always finds a way. There will be a product that's designed so that kids can, you know, do all the things they need to do, without being exposed to the dangers. You know, it's just at the moment it's all in one.

Yeah.

But, and I think this is what I've really appreciated about, you know, being, if you wanna call it an activist, is this kind of just seeing how everything can work together. So, you know, my headmaster of the school, the primary school for my kids, you know, put out something after watching the program Adolescence, and that spurred him to put something in the newsletter and I'd been sort of sitting and thinking, Hmm, you know, could I, could I do a parent talk? And then seeing that in his letter, then thought, yes, I could. So approaching him and him welcoming that, and then he and the deputy being really on board with it and really promoting it within school. And then, you know, him inviting me to go and talk to head teachers in Tunbridge Wells about it. And me taking on a colleague who's worked with other schools in Kent and her presenting to those teachers who were already clearly concerned and wanting to do something different and not sure if they could, and actually now clubbing together, all the secondary schools in Tunbridge Wells have said, brick only for Year Seven and we're gonna be increasing it. And as soon as that happens, then it does create an opportunity for all those parents whose kids are coming up to delay, to genuinely say, actually, there isn't much value is there in me buying this expensive piece of kit that they're not allowed to take to school. And yes, that is gonna present challenges, and if I do need to track, and I have all sorts of thoughts about that, but if I do need to track, then there are ways of tracking without a smartphone, you know, these air tags and, and actually they can still have a phone, they can still text, they can still call, but they're not going to be seeing things that upset them on the way to school. They're not going to be sitting on a school journey just focused on a screen rather than learning how to interact with strangers, how to manage that, how to problem solve when they find themselves stranded somewhere. You know, it's, it just means that there's, there's more chance that those of us who want to can choose something different. Because not everyone's going to want to, and that's absolutely fine. But actually for those of us who do think there could be another way, when we all work together like this, then it's, it's gonna make it so much easier for us.

Yeah, and I think another way in which we're quite well placed as psychologists to help with this is in that a loss of parents will really struggle to have those conversations. Like it's quite difficult to explain to your child, this isn't something that we want for you, without that becoming really adversarial. And I think, you know, without shaming the child as well, especially if you know, you're, you're trying to kind of put the horse back in its box after it's bolted potentially, and sort of say, look, this isn't, I don't think that this is doing good things for you, so we're gonna try and reduce it. I think having that kind of compassionate and de- shaming approach to it, will really help a lot of parents who are feeling trapped and feel like, oh God, I just, I really don't want the relationship with my child to break down over this.

And it is tough, isn't it, when you know you've got somebody, a child who's already, you know, heavily engaged in these things and, you know, we're arguing that those, they're addictive things, they're addicted to these things. So of course then you try to limit that as a parent, and you are taking away something that the child really believes that they need, and of course it's going to cause a rupture in the relationship. So, you know, it is good to try and talk about these things I think from the point of view of, you know, this is what I understand and this is why I'm doing this. And you know, Jonathan Haidt's brought out a book aimed at pre-teens now, so, you know, eight to 12 year olds, I'd say eight is a bit young, but, and it's sort of part graphic novel, and it's lovely. It really talks about, you know, all of the things we've been talking about, but in an age appropriate way. And certainly my eldest really enjoyed reading it, and he really understands now the business model of social media, he has his own thoughts about it. And of course he's not been in that world yet and it's gonna be different when, when he's, you know, exposed to that. But as you were talking about before, having that sort of education before adolescence, before the time when, you know, parents and what they say is no longer very interesting or important, and peers are where people go to for their, for their guidance.

That's brilliant. I'll try and get the link for that and put it in the show notes. Because I didn't know that there was a book for kids talking about this stuff. That's really useful. So I guess one thing I'm curious about is what your role is going to look like, your activist role, which I will call it that because it is, going forward, you know, what are your plans?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, at the moment I'm continuing to you know, tout my services to go around and talk to primary schools. And now we're starting to go into secondary schools as well as, as part of moving over to this brick phone policy. And I'm sort of, it's interesting 'cause I'm sort of hoping that I might be able to retire soon. You know, if all the schools are going brick free and the government really do do something about social media, that maybe I'll be able to relax a little bit and not do it. But at the same time, I think, you know, technology's going to change and evolve. So I could, I can also see another parallel universe where I keep going and I keep talking about these things and I do, you know, become, you know, more adept at thinking about them in the consulting room as well.

And certainly it comes up a lot with, 'cause I work with adults and often they're parents of adolescents and teenagers and, and these conversations are coming up more and more really. But yes, so I don't know, in answer to your question, sometimes I feel like I need a break from it because it can be quite consuming, and sometimes I feel like, particularly when we get a win, like hearing about the a brave Tunbridge Wells secondary heads taking a stand, then you feel like, oh yeah, I could, I could keep going, 'cause this feels like we're all working together. And that's such a great feeling to have, and I think particularly in private practice, I don't have that, you know, sense that I'm working together, apart with my clients, obviously, which you know, is the main part, but I don't have colleagues, I don't have people working on a shared purpose. So from that point of view, this sense of being within a community and people, y'know, I get to work with some really quite impressive people on these, on these projects who give up so much of their time and their skills, and it's a great feeling working together and then achieving something.

So, yeah, I don't know, in answer to your question, I'm gonna sort of see how it feels going forward and, and what feels important.

Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more issues that kind of keep you in the game. I guess something I'm really interested in is the adult side of it, because I do wonder if there's an element, a bit like if you're from a smoking family or much more likely to smoke, where if we could get a grip of ourselves and model to our children using these things in a safe and productive way and not getting, you know, sucked into the tech company's agendas. I, you know, I do wonder if, if that would go a long way to, to helping with what the future looks like for our young people. Because I do feel with the, the kind of generation that got their phones in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, when smartphones were first kind of hitting the, the market, their parents couldn't guide them because we didn't have a clue. And I wonder how that would look different if, you know, if the technology had rolled out to parents first and then they'd be able to introduce their children. It just wasn't that way. You know, young people got it before their parents a lot of the time.

I think you are right, but I think it's also, again, being impassionate, we are at the mercy of addictive processes. So it is very hard for us, and I think it's helpful sometimes when I feel a bit low about the situation, I might think, but actually the work we are doing now for these kids is making a generation of people who will be able to make choices, who won't be blindly walking into situations like we have done both as adults, but also as parents. So trying to think about the long game. As you were saying about, you know, the AI being able to differentiate, that just the kids, if we can, we can help with their education and give them a bit of time before they're exposed to all of these things, then hopefully they will be the generation who can, as adults, pick and choose what, what they use, and know fully well why they're doing that.

I think that's a really hopeful message and a good place to kind of end our discussion, I suppose. But thank you so much. I think that you've really shown us today that if you've got an urge in private practice to do more than therapy, it doesn't always have to be about, you know, online courses or products. It can be this, it can be about using our voices and our training to do something to really help our communities. And I'm really grateful because I live in Tunbridge Wells too. So I directly benefit from what you've, you've done here. And I'm sure that there are lots of people who'll be really inspired by what you've been talking about today. So I really recommend, if you're interested in this stuff, do go and have a look at the Smartphone Free Childhood website. We'll obviously have the link for that and the Health Professionals for Safer Screens, because they sound like a really interesting organisation as well. But where should people go if they want to connect with you or find out more about you Erin?

Well, they can go to my website. It doesn't actually at the moment say very much about smartphones, and I've been sort of, and I think this is something we didn't quite get to touch on, but does feel a little bit separate for me at the moment. But obviously you can reach me on there. I'm happy to talk about these things. But also within your community, whoever is listening, there will be Smartphone Free Childhood groups. There's WhatsApp groups that you can join, and you know, I'm in the West Kent one and the Tunbridge Wells one, and, you know, so there are ways of being able to connect with this stuff, you know, in every community. So I just encourage people if they're interested to, you know, to look on their website to find out, you know, as much as you can about it really, and, and what's happening in your community.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much, Rosie.