there's a massive panic around tiktok as well as other social media apps
because there's this narrative that it's gravely affecting the mental health of
young people and in this video we're about to debunk a lot of that so if
you're a parent make sure you watch this if you're a kid make sure your parents
watch this and if you ever plan on having kids watch this video and please
save it what is up everybody this is Chris from the rewired soul where we
talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel
my channel is all about mental health and what I like to do is take different
topics going on and you know the world and try to see what we can learn from it
to improve our own mental and emotional well-being and I don't discriminate I'm
gonna help parents and kids and everybody in between so if you're into
that stuff make sure you subscribe and bring that notification bell and if
you're not yet follow me over on Instagram and Twitter at the rewired
soul all right so let's jump into this thing yeah I got the idea for this video
for a few reasons but I really wanted to make it cuz when I was in California
last week in my hotel room during vid summit I was watchin like Good Morning
America and I had my wife SATA forever and this is a huge huge show but they
were talking about the dangers of tiktok right and there's a website called
common sense mediacom and anyways they were talking about all these crazy
things about tick tock and I'm like we need to talk about this so some of the
main concerns are predators on the platform as well as explicit content and
we're going to address those things later in this video but first we're
gonna discuss the research and before I dive into this and start debunking stuff
left and right I want to make it very clear all right there are many issues
with social media platforms and I've done videos about this in the past about
how they're designed to get us hooked and everything like that and they can
affect mental health but here's the issue all right when people are panicked
and making huge deals out of the wrong things we're never gonna be able to help
anybody right so my goal with this video is to explain the truth what the studies
and the research say so we can help our kids in a much better way so one of the
reasons all of this panic about social media started was because of this book
right here called ijen by dr. jeanne 20 alright so in this book she cites a lot
of research about how mental health of young people has been negatively
affected by the age of social media you're always hearing about screen time
and everything like that but here's what a lot of people are starting to realize
many of these studies were wrong or they were inflated or they were just very
small sample groups so anyways a lot of these studies in the book have been
debunked by some amazing amazing people such as the psychologist Sarah Rose
Cavanaugh the psychologist Jonathan hight and the best-selling author near I
all all right so each of these authors they have books which I'll link down in
the description below the book from Sarah Cavanaugh is called hive mind it's
brand-new and it is oh oh so good all right Jonathan Hite he is one of my
favorite authors he's a psychologist and the book I'll be referencing is the
coddling of the American mind and near I all he recently just released his latest
book which is called indestructible all right
so anyways silicon awe is an amazing psychologist and she does a ton of
research so something that Sarah wanted to do was understand why some people get
PTSD and other people don't for example I believe in her book hive mind she
discusses 9/11 right so how come there were some people who got PTSD from 9/11
even people from across the country who weren't even near the Twin Towers all
right how come some of them got PTSD whereas there are other people who are
actually there who didn't all right so a lot of her research has been discussing
our understanding different vulnerable population
all right and this kind of leads into the social media conversation because
Sarah Cavanaugh wanted to understand why some people are negatively affected by
social media and some people aren't something that Sarah and near both
discuss in their books which is something that I really hope people
learn more about is that when kids are acting up in any way parents are often
looking for anything to blame alright so obviously in this day and age we want to
point our fingers at screens like video games and social media apps like tic toc
and Instagram and Facebook and everything like that but here's the
thing this is a natural thing that parents do because like I'm a parent
alright like a lot of us don't want to look at
ourselves and think that we're doing anything wrong so it must be those dang
video games or the social media apps or whatever like did you know did you know
that even the the idea that sugar makes kids go crazy and act up is a myth I
believe it was in Sarah Calvados book but anyways they did a study where they
they told parents that they gave kids sugar and the parents were they told
they gave kids sugar too reported that their kids were being more rambunctious
irritating annoying running around at all these other things but they didn't
actually give those kids sugar all right so they've done a lot of
studies on this and this is just a psychological effect that parents have
and they want to blame something but the kid that was actually just acting normal
so aside from parents looking for things to point their fingers at Jonathan hight
in his book the coddling of the American mind he discusses how a lot of us have
become so overprotective as parents and like I think too many of us think of
this in extremes right and we think of like overprotecting as I helicopter
parenting but there's something like right below helicopter parenting where
you're not that bad but it's still pretty bad alright so
somebody that Jonathan height has done a lot of work with is this woman right
here Lynne or scan Daisy and she's the author of
free range kids all right and that book there's been you know a lot of
discussion about it but it's basically like you know we gotta let kids do their
thing and learn and grow and become resilient because Jonathan height as a
college professor and seeing just kind of like the outraged culture and
everything like that he he kind of sees how since we've been you know over
protecting our kids these they've lacked this resiliency so as they get older
they get really upset about really trivial things all right so to sum it up
all right no matter what generation you're in okay that's watching this just
know that the generation before you was freaking out about certain things all
right this is something that has happened throughout history something
that each of these very well educated people discusses is this and it's so
important kids need to be social okay this is part of the growing process like
I want you to look back at your childhood all right and think about how
you were social okay like I grew up I grew up in this weird time like right
when the internet kind of became a thing I'm like AOL came out and everything but
anyways I look at it and like I used to go to friends houses like when I was in
elementary school I would walk or ride my bike sometimes 1 2 miles away from
home and guess what this was before cell phones right when I got to middle school
I think we had pagers and everything like that but as a parent I look back
like how was I being socialized a kid how protective were my parents right and
like this affects us too because as I've gotten older and we've kind of been
flooded with this idea that kids are just perpetually in danger like I
remember I got to a point where I was like I can't believe my dad let me just
do those things but this is just something that's happened throughout
history like as technology has advanced and as
world has become a safer place than ever before we've become more protective and
it's absolutely bananas because today the thing is is that we're so concerned
we're so concerned about kids just even going outside and playing right and
trust me like I can be guilty of this too but we have to be self-aware and
recognize that we're doing this all right so we need to understand that when
we're keeping kids indoors and they have this biological need to be social with
others that can't go outside guess what they're going to be social inside all
right and that is what apps like tik-tok and other social media apps are doing so
my son he's 10 and he hasn't really gone into social media at all yet but the way
that he's social is through video games right
he plays minecraft he plays fortnight with a ton of friends I look at that I'm
like oh my god like this is modern-day playing right now one of the arguments
against that is that kids aren't being physically active and things like that
well here's the thing like last weekend for example my son and I we took a break
from playing video games together and everything like that and we went to the
gym okay in my opinion it's about finding this balance so let's circle
this back - tik-tok okay so tick-tock one of the arguments is the Predators
who are on there like we tick-tock was first blowing up I remember I kept
seeing videos about this dude right here who was pretty creepy on tick-tock all
right but we need to understand that when we see these things we freak out
about it okay so tick-tock curly has about 1
billion monthly active users 1 billion okay so let's let's pretend in a
scenario that the FBI did this massive sweep and they caught 500 child
predators right 500 of them okay so they caught 500 do you know what percentage
that is of the monthly active users on tik-tok
it is point zero zero zero zero four nine percent okay it is a fraction of
one percent so I want to I want you to ask yourself is that something to
justifiably freak out about something less than one percent right I think
about all of our other irrational fears that you have right like the fear of you
know sharks in the ocean even though like chances of getting hurt are more
likely just driving to the store you know what I mean so we need to recognize
that now as far as the explicit content on Tech Talk
I like trust me like there's some balance that we need to find but again I
look back in my own childhood and I'm just gonna be real with you guys like
when I was a kid like I was you know sneaking around and watching rated R
movies like when my dad was at work I was doing that thing because you know
there's before internet and I was like going under his bed and finding his
playboys and things like that like this these are things that kids are naturally
going to do and just like sheltering them and shielding them isn't gonna
solve anything right so here are some of the solutions
and suggestions that I have from a young age I've just kept conversations open
with my son and I can make more in-depth videos about this but we just need to
have our kids understand that we need to have conversations about these things
and because I let my son try things out on his own like he comes to me with a
lot of things right like I might be an ignorant parent but my son comes to me
for just about anything or questions and all that kind of stuff but the last
thing I want to talk about when it comes to being social and everything like
Jonathan height and so many others are talking about is like if we over protect
our kids and we don't let them have these experiences like we're really
doing them a disservice so this last little story I want to share like my son
he's been really into Minecraft that's been blowing up well you jumped
back in the fortnight since chapter 2 came out anyway so it was one day cuz
he'll be playing Minecraft with his friends and they're just building these
epics things right and it's cool like I love it I love watching I might do a
video on this to where you know I love watching how creative they get to be in
there and stuff like that and anyways I'm not sure how minecraft servers work
but they spent hours building this thing my son kept showing me and it was so
proud of it and everything and some like friend of a friend came in the server
and he like blew up like this huge portion of everything they built and my
son told me about it and he was so upset right so upset and like like any parent
I wanted to find that kid who did that and just you know you know what I mean
but anyways I talked to him about it I talked to him about you know how on
YouTube when I make these videos sometimes like my computer crashes and
the thing I worked on for hours you know it got messed up and dead it up and I
told him I know I'm like sometimes you know when I go back and remake it it
comes out better you know and seriously like maybe an hour later my son was just
so excited and brought me in the room and him and his friend got together and
they just rebuilt it and like they added all these new things and because of the
explosion they were able to put these other cool things in there like little
Batcave that they made and stuff like that right so what I'm getting at is I
wanted to be very protective of my son I wanted to coddle him because he was
upset but this was an experience that he got to go through and become more
resilient from you know what I'm saying so again just recognize you know what
the actual studies and the research say I'm probably gonna do more videos citing
some of Sarah Cavanaugh's work understanding vulnerable populations on
social media to kind of explain that a little bit more but anyways like I said
make sure that if you're a kid watching this share this with your parents if
you're gonna be a parent at any time in the future hold on to this video check
out some of the books all the books that I cited I'll be linking down to the
script blow alright anyways that's all I got
for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new
make sure you subscribe and bring that notification bell and a huge huge thank
you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon as always everybody who
supports the channel bye bye my mental health books and merchants all that
other good stuff alright thanks again for watching I'll see you next time