147: The Impact of Screen Time on Young Minds with Dr. Alison Yeung

Motherhood Meets Medicine

What do you do as a family medicine physician when more and more children and young adults are coming to you for anxiety and depression that isn’t made better by medications? You dig deeper. That’s exactly what Dr. Alison Yeung did and what her patients shared with her was astounding.

Kids these days are spending an untold amount of time on their phones and its impacting their lives in severely detrimental ways.

Dr. Yeung is a practicing family physician in Ontario, Canada. She has been practicing for the past decade and over that time has become increasingly aware of the mental health crisis facing children and teens. She is hoping to raise awareness about this topic by educating parents and providing strategies to reduce the harm caused by social media and video games.

Listen in to learn more about the research that’s being done in this field and what parents need to know about screens and children.

In this episode, we discuss:

What the research is saying about social media use.

When is a good time for parents to let children have phones or use social media.

How to talk with your kids about establishing their sense of self.

Resources:

Dr. Yeung’s IG: @‌thesmartphoneeffect

https://protectyoungeyes.com/

https://www.betterscreentime.com/

John Haidt Substack is an amazing resource for studies/data - https://substack.com/@jonathanhaidt

Books: iGen, Dopamine nation, The Collapse of Parenting , The Anxious Generation (currently on preorder)

Connect with Dr. Yeung:

Dr. Yeung’s IG: @‌thesmartphoneeffect

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Questions:

When do I feel a child is ready for social media?

Suggested boundaries around social media use. (applies to all screens really)

Why is there a lot of correlational data on social media and mental health, but not much causational data?

What have I learned from talking to parents who have kids struggling with smartphone overuse?

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