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Science and parenting journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer joins us to discuss the real risks of social media and smartphones for kids (and all of us), what the popular book THE ANXIOUS GENERATION gets wrong about the science on teens and technology, the similarities in the discourse about tech and “ultraprocessed” food, diet culture in the parenting space, how to raise kids to have a healthy relationship with technology and smartphones, and more.
Melinda Wenner Moyer is a science, health and parenting journalist and is a regular contributor — and former columnist — at The New York Times. She writes the parenting Substack Is My Kid the Asshole?, which has more than 24,000 subscribers from 159 countries. Her first book, How To Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes, has been published in 13 languages and won a gold medal in the 2022 Living Now Book Awards. Her second book, Hello Cruel World: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times, will be published in the summer of 2025.
Resources and References
Contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, where I earn a small commission for any purchases made.
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Subscribe on Substack for extended interviews and more
Melinda’s website
Melinda’s Substack
Melinda’s first book, How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes
Melinda’s critique of The Anxious Generation
Autonomy-Supportive Parenting by Emily Edlynn
Melinda’s piece about how the guilt parents feel over technology can erode the parent-child relationship
The End of Bias by Jessica Nordell
Melinda’s piece “Mom, What’s a Calorie?”
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: So, Melinda, welcome to Rethinking Wellness. I'm so excited to talk with you.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Thank you, Christy. I am super excited to be here.
Christy Harrison: So we're going to talk today about the impact of social media and smartphones on kids and where that concern may be justified and where it might be overblown. And I want to get into your critiques of the book The Anxious Generation, which is like a huge bestseller at the moment. But first, I'd love to hear a little bit about your background. How did you come to do the work you do, which is writing about parenting with science and nuance, which I have to say, as a parent, I find so useful. And I'm really a fan of your newsletter.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Thank you so much. So I've been a journalist, a science journalist for 18 years now, which is kind of crazy to think about. So I have a background in cell and molecular biology, and I started out my journalism career really writing about hard life sciences like genetics and neuroscience and immunology. And that was really fun. But I tend to get bored easily. And I ended up shifting to social science maybe like ten or 15 years ago because I was really interested in understanding how science can help answer the really important social questions and help us solve social problems.
And around that same time, I had my first child, my son, who's now 13, which is crazy. He just turned 13. And I also realized that science could be a really helpful way to answer parenting questions, because throughout raising kids, there are so many questions you have, and then you go to Google and you get 50 different answers, or you ask your parents or your friends, and everybody says different things. And I was really frustrated by that. And I was like, maybe science can help answer some of these questions more definitively. I was pretty surprised at how much literature there was on child development and on parenting specifically. That really, at least at that point, was not being covered very much at all. And so I kind of moved into that. I wrote a parenting column for Slate for many years, and that was really all about science based parenting.
And then I wrote my first book in 2021, How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes. That was when I kind of pivoted to like, gosh, the most important thing is raising human beings. How do we do that? What does the science say? And now I have my Substack that I've been writing almost five years now, where again, I'm looking at parenting questions through the lens of science and really trying to add nuance to the conversation because there's just so many extremes as we will get into and so little nuance and so much stuff that really doesn't reflect what the evidence really suggests is most constructive. So I love my work because I'm answering my own questions a lot of the times. I go where my own brain goes and where my curiosity goes. And it's like I find it really helpful for me and reassuring for me sometimes, too. And so I'm happy to hear that you enjoy it and other people enjoy it.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, I think it's great. It just helps cut through all the noise. And like you said, there's so many different conflicting takes on any given parenting question and what to do for whatever you're going through. And my daughter is young, so some of the stuff that you write about for older kids doesn't apply to me yet. But I'm taking notes and thinking about how I'm gonna handle certain situations when things come along and just thinking about the people around me and what Google says and parenting websites say and stuff, it's also conflicting.
So it's nice to have someone who's thinking like I am. Cause if I had all the time in the world, if this was my job, if this was my beat, I would also be asking those questions and trying to answer them with science. So I appreciate that you're doing that and taking on that role for people who don't have the time or for whom that's not their expertise.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Well, I'm glad it's helpful. A lot of the things I talk about for older kids also really apply for little kids. So much of what I say is, like, talk to your kids, which is something I'm sure we're going to talk about today, too. And so I feel like a lot of the same themes. Yes, the situations get more complicated and different, but a lot of the times, the advice really is rooted in the same thing. Communicate with your kids, be warm and nurturing and set limits. It's all the same themes.
Christy Harrison: Yeah. And now my daughter is two. And I feel like that's all becoming very germane now. The warmth and empathy while also setting limits and walking that line, I think, is huge. And I love what you've written about the nuances of and the critiques of this gentle parenting movement and how people can get just so out in the weeds and not have any of that boundary setting side.
You interviewed someone who wrote a book called Why is My Child in Charge? And I think that is the feeling that I get from some parents my age or parents with kids my kids age. I'm actually an older parent, but parents with kids in this stage, I think people can start to feel like their child is totally in charge and they just are at their beck and call. So I think it's helpful to have this nuanced approach. Cause I think people can also feel like if they're setting any sort of limit or if they're making their kid upset in any way, that they're traumatizing their child. And I feel like your work has really helped me put that fear to rest.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yeah. Discomfort is really important for kids, actually. Like, really, really important, and we should let them feel that and work their way through it and learn how to deal with it. And, yeah, I totally agree. A lot of the positive parenting messages are really around protecting our kids from anything bad. And I think ultimately, in the long run, that really works against them.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, completely. I'm curious, before we get into more about the parenting stuff and the social media specifically and the tech in general, specifically, if you have any sort of relationship with wellness and diet culture, because this podcast deals a lot with those themes. And I know you're in the world with some anti-diet folks as well, a friend of Virginia Sole-Smith's, and you and I had connected at one of my events that I did with her a million years ago. So I'm just curious, your experience with all that and how it informs the work you do with parenting journalism.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yeah. I am a constant work in progress and trying to sort of extricate myself from diet culture. I certainly grew up with it in my home, and as it has for so many of us, just shaped my perspective and my beliefs throughout my life. And now I'm like, oh, my goodness, how do I pull myself out of that? And also, really, for the sake of my kids, how do I raise my kids in a way that really doesn't shame them for anything related to food or bodies? And so I've been trying to do a lot of work on that. And Virginia's and your Substacks, like Ragen Chastain, all of these people are so, you're so helpful for really shining a light on some of the sort of more insidious ways in which all of this can shape our decisions.
And I really see it in the parenting sphere as well, where there is so much moralization happening. Things are good, things are bad, there's overprotectiveness that is, I mean, we were just talking about there's this pressure to really protect our kids. And I think a lot of times what this ends up doing is it prevents us from being able to help our children develop skills. Ultimately, that's the goal, right? Is for our kids to develop skills so that they can take care of themselves and they can take care of others. And I think a lot of times, there's this pressure and I see it as very similar to a diet culture lens to raise our kids in a certain way and in doing so actually kind of hinder the development of skills.
I was thinking recently about Virginia's first book, The Eating Instinct, which I also loved. And she talks about how we really get in the way of kids. And it happens to all of us. Our ability to listen to our bodies and what our bodies are telling us about food. We take all these messages from culture about what's good and what's bad and what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing. And it gets in the way of the instinct that we all have to be able to listen to our bodies, know when we're full, know what we want to eat, know what we're craving. We do all these things that end up getting in the way of us being able to really develop that skill.
And I feel like in parenting, this happens all the time, too, where we're told to do things a certain way with our kids. And ultimately, when we do that, we are kind of robbing them of opportunities to hone their own skills and to figure out what works for them and what doesn't work for them and how they need to listen to themselves. And so I really do see a lot of parallels there between wellness culture, diet culture, and parenting culture.
Christy Harrison: That is so interesting. I think a lot about intuition in parenting and intuition in eating. I used to say back in the day when I was not quite as concerned with nuance, I'd be like, intuitive eating leads to intuitive everything, and you can be intuitive about everything in your life. And I don't think that anymore because I tried intuitive investing and that was not super helpful. I don't really know anything about investing. And so I made some mistakes because I wasn't coming from an educated place. And I think with intuitive eating, intuition is a nexus of education and practice and experience with just letting go and letting your instincts take over. And those instincts are informed by that education experience.
And I think with eating, if we all didn't have things in our way, diet culture, and messages from well meaning people interfering in our relationships with food, we could be out of our own way and we could listen to those instincts. And we are actually very well educated in a sense, because we've practiced eating and listening to those instincts we would have if nothing had interfered for a long time. And we have sort of an expertise. But when it comes to parenting, I think there's something similar where it's like there is sort of an instinct, or, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, actually, because I haven't quite articulated this for myself. I have this sense in my own parenting that if I just don't listen to a lot of what is said and I don't look at social media pretty much at all anymore, so I don't have that in my face.
But if I read newsletters like yours and Emily Osters and Jacqueline Nesi's and some others that I think are really science based and good, and then I know my kid and I trust my kid, and I empathize and I'm there and present with her and warm and also set the limits that feel appropriate to me. Just trust my instincts on how I want to do things, it feels like it turns out better than if I'm trying to do some sort of script or follow somebody else's rules. And I'm curious, just your thoughts on where intuition comes into play in parenting?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yeah, it's a really good question. And I do think that there is, to some degree, a balance where I do think that a lot of the messages if you spend a lot of time on parenting Instagram, which I force myself to do, so I understand what people are saying, but I really don't like it. It really fuels guilt and fear. It's so driven by, like, "Parents should be so scared of doing the wrong thing, because if you do the wrong thing ever, it's going to screw up your kids for life." There's a lot of that kind of fear mongering that I think is so unhelpful. And that to the degree that you can kind of not expose yourself to that, then that certainly helps. But I also think you're going to be exposed to a lot of that through other parents that you come in contact with, what your kids are saying.
I think about hearing about friends of mine who totally schedule their kids in seven different extracurriculars, and I don't do that because I know my kids temperaments. I don't think that they would do well in that. And I think a lot of it is a product of fear and this fear that our kids aren't going to succeed, but we still get exposed to it through hearing about what other parents are doing and whatnot and the kinds of questions they're asking. So it's hard to escape it totally.
And then, on the other hand, I do think that instincts sometimes aren't as helpful as we think they are because sometimes our instincts are rooted in our own biases and stereotypes and stuff. And so I think there are certain areas in which we can really learn from what the research says. And, I mean, I'm thinking about how, for instance, white parents tend to deal with talking or not talking, as the case may be, about race with their kids. And there's this idea that if you don't talk about it, your kids won't develop any kind of racial prejudice, and it's better to be, quote unquote, colorblind and not really see color. And we know from the research that actually that's not what's most helpful. And what's most helpful is really having these conversations about race, acknowledging that there are different skin colors, and really talking about the differences in some ways can be most helpful.
So it's really complicated. Yes, in some ways I think listening to your instincts a lot of the time and just paying attention to who your kid is and what works well for them, I think that's going to work most of the time. But then there are a few areas in which it does help to be educated. And it does help to, for instance, look at the research and see, oh, could some of these instincts sometimes be a little misguided because of our perceptions or our biases?
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I also think about our own histories and upbringings and sort of what we learned about parenting from our parents can inform how we instinctively parent in ways that maybe are unhelpful too. Like I became a parent for the first time at 40. Honestly, thank God. Because earlier in my life I don't think I would have had the skills or the emotion regulation or the presence to be the parent that I am now. And that's not to say that I would have been bad or wrong or to shame my past possible self if I had ever been a parent in my twenties or whatever.
But I just think I'm glad that I have the psychological skills that I have now from years and years of therapy, which is not accessible to everyone and it's a privilege to be able to have that. But I've unlearned a lot of the stuff from childhood that was unhelpful that I absorbed from my family of origin. And I'm trying now to do things differently with my own child. And I think thats a tricky thing too. Because you dont want to blame and shame parents. And I'm sure I'm making tons of mistakes, but there is that piece of it too, what you absorbed from your family that might feel instinctually right that actually is perhaps not the way you want to do things when you really think about your values.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yep, absolutely. That is another really big issue. What you kind of internalized from being parented and any other sort of psychological things you're working through that are going to show up in your parenting, that's going to happen. The good news is that I see mistakes in parenting as actually often a really valuable opportunity. So also we have to be careful not to believe that we have to be perfect parents. There's no such thing. Obviously.
I have a lot of child psychologist friends and they're like, "Oh my gosh, parenting is so hard. I don't know what I'm doing half the time." The experts think parenting is really hard and they're constantly making mistakes. And I really think that mistakes can be such rich opportunities for modeling apologies and repair and showing your kids that we are all works in progress all the time. I think that is so important because kids, I think sometimes they can feel such pressure on them to be perfect themselves and to know everything and to never be wrong. And I think the more they can see us illustrating to them that, oh, yeah, I'm constantly learning. I don't have the answers to everything. That's okay. That's part of life and that's normal and that's human. I think that's actually also really helpful. So certainly don't beat yourself up when you make mistakes, because they can be teaching opportunities.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that's so helpful. And I feel like I constantly am saying, like, oh, oops, mama did this, or, oh, that was silly and it actually feels kind of good to be able to be free like that and just not have to fit some sort of rigid idea of perfection or back yourself into a corner. Like, "I said this, so now we're going to do this, even though I've rethought it." So I want to talk about those solutions more in a moment. But first, just back to this question of the harms of tech.
Clearly, you're not arguing that having any concern about the impact of tech on kids is a baseless moral panic. Which I think is unfortunately the response to Jonathan Haidt's book, in some cases, and some sort of overblown, nuance free social media takes. But I want to hear about the critiques that you do have of the book and the nuances of it. What do you think it gets wrong or misses about kids relationships with smartphones and social media?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: It's really nuanced and I've been reading people critiquing the critiques of this book and saying, "They're saying that we shouldn't have any concerns about social media or tech or make any changes in policy." And that is not what the critiques are saying. So first, I'll start with what I kind of wish John Haidt had written, and what I would totally agree with. If he had written a book saying that, okay, the research looking at the impacts of tech and social media on kids is somewhat mixed. And there is evidence that some kids are negatively affected by it. And because of that, we should really take more steps at home, at school, in the government to make changes to ensure that kids who are most at risk stay safe. If he said that, we would not be having this conversation, because I 100% agree with all of that.
But that is not what he has said in his book. What he said is that the research clearly shows that phones and social media are the main cause of the rise in mental health woes among teens over the past 20 years. That is the big crux of his argument. And then he talks about what that means and whatnot. But that is not at all what the research says. And to me, I don't know whether he is misrepresenting the research knowingly or whether he really believes that that's what it says. But having dug into and looked at dozens and dozens of studies over the past few months, as I've been researching this myself for my next book, I don't know how he comes to that conclusion.
Most of the studies that we have, and there are hundreds of these kinds of studies, they're correlational studies. And that means they involve asking kids and teens and young adults how much they use their devices or how much time they spend on social media, and then also, at that same time, point, asking them about their mental health and wellbeing. And what these studies find overall is these small but positive associations between how much time people spend online and their mental health problems, meaning the more that kids and teens use tech and social media, the worse off their psychological health tends to be.
But two big buts here. First, these are correlational studies, so we really don't know if the tech use is causing the mental health problems, because, again, they're being measured at the same point in time. We do know from some research, too, that kids who have already some mental health issues tend to use social media more. So there's a lot of confusing stuff going on there. But I think, more importantly, even if these associations are causal, and we can say, yes, the social media and the tech is causing these mental health problems, the effect size that they are finding is so small, so that if the link was causal, and social media use is the stronger effect, social media use only accounts for at most, like, 3% of the overall variation in mental health among all teens. And I know that's kind of a weird way to put it, but that's kind of how you have to say it based on how the statistics work.
But, yeah, if you think of all of the variation you see in mental health among teens around the world, and social media likely accounts for less than 3% of that variation. So it looks like overall, on average, we're looking at a small effect, and it doesn't mean that there aren't big effects for certain teens. And I think there are. It also probably is likely that there are benefits for some teens that far outweigh the risks and the harms. Nevertheless, if he's saying that it's clear that the research shows that social media and tech are responsible for this huge rise in mental health woes, the research definitely doesn't show that.
I will also mention there have been some experimental studies done that are really trying to tease out cause and effect more than these association studies. And he talks a lot about those and says it's clear from these experimental studies that social media is dangerous. So I looked up all of the studies. To his credit, he and his colleagues have kept this collaborative Google Doc that's open to everybody, where they've included every single study that they've used to support their arguments.
So I looked up these experimental studies that he says are proof that social media is really harmful for teens. And there are 16 of these studies that find some kind of effect. There's a bunch, too, that really finds that there's no effect. And they're usually conducted by asking a group of people to stop using social media for a certain amount of time, and then seeing if their mental health improves over time compared to people who aren't asked to stop using social media or their devices.
The crazy thing about these studies is when I looked at them, I assume that these are studies that have looked at teens or tweens and have looked at what happens when they stop using Instagram or Snapchat or something like that, and seen that taking a break helps their mental health. And that's not at all what these studies have looked at. All but two of the studies involved adults, not adolescents. And so they were looking at adults and what happened when adults took breaks. Most of them involve Facebook, which is not what teens and tweens are using. And the two that did involve adolescents looked specifically at the impact of social media on body image, which is a very important question. But it's not the same thing as looking at overall mental health.
So to take two studies that look at the effects of taking a break from social media in teens on body image and then say, this is proof that tech is responsible for all the rise in mental health problems that we're seeing, it just doesn't make any sense. And there is a great piece in The Atlantic this week, actually, from Candice Odgers, who is a researcher who's been studying the relationship between social media and teen mental health for many, many years. And she makes this point, too. She's like, these experimental studies, they're not a smoking gun and he says they're a smoking gun, and they're just not.
So, again, this does not mean that we should not be thinking about the potential harms and taking steps and really thinking about how to keep our kids safe. Because even though the research doesn't point to a strong effect, on average, there can be, and there likely are groups of teens who are especially at risk and who are being harmed.
And so, again, this is not an argument to just say, like, "Oh, social media is fine and phones are fine. We shouldn't worry at all." But it really bothers me as a science communicator that Haidt really overstates the science here, because I really think honest and transparent science communication is crucial for maintaining public trust in science. And the minute we start bending the science and saying it says something, it doesn't say for our own interests and our own arguments, so many bad things happen. So it really bothers me.
And I also think it ends up causing a lot of panic. I've had so many parents call me up, find me on the school playground, and they're like, "Oh, my God. My husband just heard John Haidt on a podcast, and now he thinks we need to sneak into our kids room at night and take their phones and throw them in the Hudson river. And I don't know what to do. And I'm so freaked out." There's, there's so much fear and panic right now. And I know from the reporting I've done on mental health of parents that this is not helpful. It's not helpful when parents feel terror, when parents feel guilt. This in itself really harms parent child relationship. It really harms kids.
There was a study I covered in my newsletter a couple weeks ago that suggested that the guilt parents feel over how much screen time their kids get can erode the parent-child relationship more than screen use itself. And so I think we really have to think about the ways in which our feelings about tech and our perceptions of what's okay and what's not okay, how that then affects us and our kids and our relationship. And there's a whole field in media psychology that is related to this. And it really looks at how our social ideas about a particular thing, like technology, often have stronger impact impacts than the technology itself. And I find that totally fascinating. But I think it's something we should keep in mind, that if he's going to say this very alarmist stuff and freak so many parents out, is that ultimately, in the long run, going to help parents and kids? And I'm not sure it is.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, that's such a good point. I have found technology to be personally harmful to my mental health in certain ways. I've taken a huge step back from social media. I think I'm not really built for the kind of influence that I had on social media and the kind of communication that comes with that and the sort of always on constantly responding to comments, dealing with DM's, all of that stuff. It just doesn't work for me. And I know that is true for many people and have taken a huge step back from it and found relief.
And so I'm very receptive to these ideas about how harmful social media is for kids. And I've also looked into a lot of the research on how social media helps amplify disinformation and misinformation and how it tends to amplify moral outrage and spreads ideas that are really controversial and sensational and that that is having an impact on our health, on public health and people's relationship to wellness content online. And I think also in some ways is having an impact on our mental health itself, because having your or sense of moral outrage amped up all the time and getting so jacked up on those feelings cant be good for us. And I think that has personally been true for me. It was not good for me.
And I think even though part of me really sort of wants some of haidts arguments to be true, I'm also very sensitive to correlation versus causation and the fact that hes not basing his claims about causation on really solid evidence. You did mention that there are certain teens or certain teens for whom the harms might be more amplified and others perhaps for whom social media can actually be positive. I'm curious if you can elaborate on that a little bit.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: It's kind of the most crucial question. If we know that probably the effects of tech and social media are highly individualistic, then can we figure out who's most at risk? Can we figure out if there's certain personality traits or qualities or whatever it is that will put kids most at risk? And the research is still kind of in its infancy. I wish there was more we can say. But what we do know is impulsivity is a risk factor. So if you have kids who really struggle with impulse control, and this includes kids with ADHD, we know that they are at a higher risk of developing problems in terms of, of excessive use. And so that's something where if you know that's your kid, then you might want to really think about setting more limits, having more conversations, really, really trying to stay in conversation with them, observing them, that kind of thing, because they, they will be more at risk.
It's interesting because also, it depends on what kids are doing online, of course. And so there is some research. If kids are using social media mostly to connect to friends they have in real life, they tend to do better with social media than kids who are connecting mostly with strangers, although there are, of course, exceptions. We know, for instance, that among the kids who really benefit are kids with marginalized identities who are using social media to connect with people that they might not have in their own communities, who share their identities and values. And so, again, with all of these, there's nuances. And it's interesting, there's been some research suggesting that kids who post things themselves about what's going on in their life tend to do better than kids who passively scroll. But there's been other research that's kind of contradicted that, so it's hard to really know.
I will also point out age, which seems to be relevant. So Amy Orban, who's at the University of Oxford, she's done a lot of work in this area. She and her colleagues published a paper a couple of years ago where they really tried to identify windows of sensitivity to the negative effects of social media for kids. And they found that girls seemed to develop the most problems when they were using social media between the ages of eleven and 13, and also age 19, which is kind of random.
And then boys, their issues tended to be when they were a little older, 14 to 15, and then again, also 19. I don't know exactly what happens at 19, but I guess social media is maybe not great for 19 year olds. I don't know. So that's something to keep in mind. And when you're thinking about when to introduce social media to your kids, there's so many things that you have to weigh. Ideally, yes, if you can wait for girls past the age of 13 or boys past the age of 15, then that's wonderful. But obviously, if they feel like they're really missing out on important friend related things because they're not on social media, if it's causing social isolation, in other words, to not be on social media, then you do have to weigh that. There's benefits and risks to being on social media. And for some teens, there's benefits and risks to not being on social media. And so I think it's also just important to weigh those.
To the degree that you can kind of keep that in mind. I mean, my son, he does have a phone. He's 13, but he does not have social media right now. And I will be very happy if I can wait until he's 16 to give him social media. I don't know. Who knows what's in store for us over the next three years? I would like that to happen, but I also understand that it could get to the point where it's really socially isolating, and then we'll have to make a tough decision.
Christy Harrison: I mean, one of the things Haidt talks about in his book is changing social norms and having a norm that we all sort of collectively agree upon to be no social media until 16, I think he says. I think it's no smartphones until high school and no social media until 16, right?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: Yep.
Christy Harrison: What do you think about that approach?
Melinda Wenner Moyer: I certainly don't think that kids need to be on phones and have social media at a young age, except for the fact that their friends do and they feel left out. And sometimes there are conversations and inside jokes that happen, and they feel left out. If their friends were not on it, then it would be so much easier to delay. And, I mean, I'm grateful that in my community, my son was one of the last to get a phone at 13. But at the same time, I feel like there weren't a lot of kids who had them at, like, nine and 10. It sort of all happened, 11, 12, 13. And I was grateful for that because in some other communities, like my sister's community, I feel like kids all had phones by, like, age nine. And so I felt very, very fortunate.
And so, if you can, as a parent, band up with other parents and say, "You know what? Let's do this. Let's see if we can hold out until high school for phones and 16 for social media," and you can get enough parents on board, I think you really can make a difference in terms of being able to wait and not having those negative impacts of waiting affect your kids.
Christy Harrison: So I mentioned that part of me really wants Haidt's arguments to be true. And I think that's because it would be easier in some ways to have one thing to blame right, to blame it on technology, to blame it on social media, which is really similar in some ways to how, like, 15 to 20 years ago, I really bought into arguments about the food industry as being the root of all ills. You know, I was like obsessed with Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser and Marion Nestle and all those sort of food politics type of arguments.
And also the idea that the food industry was the cause of the, quote unquote, obesity epidemic, which I still believed in unquestioningly at the time. In fact, in critiques of tech, I do often see people blaming the food environment as well, and making parallels to how, quote unquote, big food creates foods that are supposedly so addictive. Johann Hari now has a book out about GLP-1s that's very pro in a lot of ways and sort of rah-rah and some critique, but I'm going to do a whole thing about that book on the newsletter, too.
But his previous book was about attention. It was called Stolen Focus. And he had a whole chapter in there about the food industry and how bad it was for our attention and focus and sort of connecting it to these arguments about tech. And I've seen that in other critiques of technology as well. I can't remember if its in The Social Dilemma or discourse around The Social Dilemma, the documentary, these parallels about big food and how food is so addictive. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on those rhetorical parallels and what might be the same or different about tech and "ultra-processed food," which I put in quotes because its a term often used in a really fear mongering way, and also because even the definition of that term is very shaky at this point.
Melinda Wenner Moyer: When I hear you talk about this, I zoom out a little bit and I'm thinking of just the propensity we have to find some monolithic thing to blame things on.
