Jackson Countywide PD, The Adolescent Brain, 10/20/2025

001because of these lights, but it's just nature to the beast. So, it's what it is. So, and there'll be opportunities. This this is the attendance, but there'll be opportunities. You, like I said, the sheets are up here or um I can show this to you at the end. Um we're supposed to go until 11:30. So, I will be very thoughtful that 11:30 is when lunch starts and everybody likes to be in line appropriately at lunch. So, I will be very thoughtful of your time as far as getting you out of here on time. All right. So, adolescence and risky behavior. Um, one of the things or just the adolescent brain is the other title for this, which is just really thinking about the neurology of adolescence. uh the unique experiences of adolescent neurological development. It's

002not quite as boring as it sounds. It's actually, I think, a very interesting thing to consider. This is one of my favorite things to talk about these days is the idea of how our better understanding of adolescent neurology will help us to be more effective in the uh interventions we have, the perceptions we have um and considering it. So, I I think this is important. One thing I did want to mention too as well, while I'm here, I've got this I've got this session, then there's a break, and then I have, of course, there's lunch, and then there's another break, and I present at the end. Um, while I'm here, if there's anything I can do to help, um, I work for you today, so if there's questions you have or anything like that, don't

003hesitate to ask or or uh, you know, let me know if there's anything I can do to help. Um, I always tell people, don't hesitate to do so while I'm here working with you. Um, I always tell people the adolescent brain is a scary place to go alone. That's why I like this picture. Um, is because if you think to your adolescence, it's a really tough time. Um, and and I think when you remember what it was like to be an adolescent, especially like as we get older, we think of adolescent issues as sometimes less than like that's, you know, it's kid issues. But when you were that age, they were it was a big deal. You know, it was a really big deal. So, I want to talk a little bit about that. that,

004you know, I've already in the um in the keynote, we already talked about the the ideas of, you know, adolescent development or at least the the better question of what's wrong with kids these days versus what do kids need these days. Same thing goes with this. We're still thinking about that acceptance and growth continuum, right? We're still thinking about understanding unique differences of of that kid, but then also pushing that kid to be a better version of themselves. We're always keeping that acceptance and growth uh side of things. This presentation, the reason why I think it's can be very relevant is because it helps improve our acceptance understanding of kids, but also helps us understand what are the key developmental tasks of adolescence from a neurological standpoint. What are the key things that kids need

005to be doing through adolescence to get themselves prepared for adulthood? Um so that's a lot of what we're going to talk about. So the first thing we start to get into is this concept of even what is adolescence like what do we how do we even define such a thing um and I think there's three components that we want to consider and one is physical maturity the second is economic independence or psychological independence and the last is economic independence. So physical maturity now what makes physical maturity tricky is uh these these different ideas is early maturation is a is a thing we're seeing kids enter into puberty at earlier and earlier ages. So what it used to be is a little bit more tight as far as the age range of when puberty would have

006onset. But now what we're starting to see is that kids are this is actually quite interesting. We're seeing that some kids are hitting early and some kids are having late onset. So what we're seeing is a big range. So it used to be kind of packed kind of tight and now we're starting to see that range kind of widen. So we're having kids hit it earlier but also kids having late onset as well. And then people always will say like why? And that's one of those questions I think that doesn't have a answer. It has multiple answers. So I think there's a lot of things that can be contributing to early onset and late onset. Um the big things you see in the research are going to be obesity, nutrition issues, exposure to chemicals, so

007on and so those are going to be but we don't people can't say it's that thing and someone that it's kind of like always I do a lot of work around autism. You can't say it's a thing like it's just it's not just wrong. So there's multiple things that that u can contribute to a certain pattern of behaviors or neurological profile that we see. And the same thing goes with early maturation. I think what makes it tricky though is we're having younger and younger kids reach sexual maturity, but they're neurology as far as we can tell and their maturity level from a psychological standpoint is not hitting earlier. They're still always always makes me nervous is they're, you know, little kids driving Corvettes and and it's scary. They got lots of horsepower but no handling.

008And I think they're they're walking in bodies that their minds really don't. um aren't ready to drive yet. So, you know, looking at and these other two things that we look at is psychological independence and economic independence um is tricky because of the independent skills needed. So, let me talk about these two real quick. Psychological independence is the ability to solve problems psychologically that is develop within a developmentally appropriate way. So, what do I mean by that? Um, I worked with, I changed things around, of course, when I talk about specific clients that I worked with, but um, I had a young lady that I worked with. She was really high achieving academically, scored 30ome on her ACTs, had a 4 whatever GPA, but um, she couldn't schedule a doctor's appointment because she would say,

009"My anxiety is too bad. I can't schedule a doctor's appointment." Now, that's a legitimate that's a real issue for me because she may be academically capable and quite quite people in that way. But if if the proxy of her independent skills is she can't even schedule a doctor's appointment, that's going to limit her ability to express her intellect. So if I have a kid and I'm seeing more and more young I work on a college campus so I I see a lot of this is I see a lot of academically capable young people who are psychologically immature and so that that concerns me and what what we talk about is how do we help kids develop those skills you know how do we help kids to u be able to solve problems schedule a doctor's

010appointment order their own food you know those kinds of things which seems kind of trivial but I'm sure those of you that work adolescence know that we're having more and more kids where they're struggling with what we would call basic independent living skills and and we got to figure out ways to help kids develop those skills. Um I had a kid I was working with one time and I was talking to him and his mom and I I did the I can question like what can he do? And they're like what do you mean? And so I asked some questions and one of the questions I asked is can he order his own food at a restaurant? And the mom said, "Well, he can, but he gets real nervous, so it's just easier if I

011order for him." And I said, "Okay." I said, "Here's here's the challenge." Because I met this kid and knew this kid well enough to tell that he was cognitively capable of ordering his own food. It wasn't because he couldn't. It was because she didn't want him to be uncomfortable. So, I said to her, "He can order his own food. I from my clinical assessment, he is capable of ordering his own food." I said, "Here's my worry. That if he doesn't order his own food, then he's going to continue to be dependent on you to order his own food. And at some point, that's going to be an issue for him for independence." Now, some people might say, "Well, well, how do you deal with that?" Well, I'm not saying that I'm going to drag this

012kid to McDonald's and go, "Order your food. You can do it." No, no, no. I have to consider, all right, this kid has autism, so he's probably got a social communication def for certain just to have that diagnosis. is a is a social communication deficit. So, what am I going to do? I'm going to take from an acceptance perspective and say he probably needs scripts. He needs to practice. He needs to work with me and his mom separate from being in the game, so to speak. He needs more practice before it's time to go in the game. So, I'm not just saying pull kids up by their bootstraps kind of thing. What I'm saying is understanding what he needs to do to develop that psychological independence, economic independence. So that's one that I think is

013really tricky these days. Now I don't want to step on any toes but I want to mention that there can be an overcorrection when it comes to economic independence. Economic independence is the ability at a commensurate age to handle your financial responsibilities. So a young adult I would say things like uh to pay rent. uh in adolescence I would say their ability to manage a bank account to uh save money to spend money to know how much money they have which is much easier now with apps and so on and so forth but so the ability to have economic independence that's developmentally appropriate here's the thing I think we got to be careful of um especially for parents of young adults is I see more and more people using economic security as a hindrance toward

014independent living advancement what I mean by that keeping kids in the house longer into early adulthood and saying it's better if you just stay here and save your money at the expense of here's here's what worries me now are there reasons why some young people cannot leave their home because of a disability because of mental health challenge and things like that are those situations of course there are of course there are but I do see sometimes where we are holding kids in the house in the in the spirit of economic ic independence, but at the expense of independent living independence. Now, are there kids that can pull this off and develop adulthood in their childhood home? Yes, I do have kids that I've worked with that have been able to do that, but there it's

015it's more difficult than easy, I would say, because I always say this when I talk to parents about this. It's hard I use a male as an example. It's hard to learn how to be a man in a house where you're a boy. Can't have a 21-year-old with a LeBron James poster in their childhood bedroom eating Lucky Charms with their mom at 20 at 8 in the morning. It's hard to develop you when you're still that seven-year-old self eating Lucky Charms in the kitchen with your mom or your dad. And and one of the things that I say and and I don't like I said, this isn't a must, but I want people to really think about this. And the reason why I want to really think about this is there may be times where

016we take on some economic risk because we need to develop independence. Because I always tell I tell Jake this all the time. He's my 18-year-old. In your early adulthood years, prioritize experience over money. Because experience will pay you in the future. The money you're going to make when you're 18 to 20 some years old is nothing compared to what you can make whenever you actually have something to offer. So in the early parts of your career, in the early parts of your life, you prioritize experience over money because that experience builds the person that can make the most money later. So, if I'm telling this kid, save your rent money by living in the basement, but they don't develop independent living skills, then they're going to be delayed in their social emotional development, which means

017they're not going to be able to they're going to be delayed in their ability to execute, to lead, to do those kinds of things. And I just want that that I this one is a tricky one. I see now, especially with middle and upper class families, I see this to be um a real challenge, but something to think about. But again, are there kids that pull it off? Yep. I got a friend of mine, they got a son and he's very independent, does his own thing, but he's always kind of been that guy. Um, and so it's tough to think about, you know, and this is what we see also with the independent skills. You know, there is an increased social complexity. Um, now job skill requirement. This is a shift I'm noticing now, which

018is encouraging. Um, you know, back in the day, my my dad, I give you a s sense of my family's background. My mom was a school teacher for 32 years. High school teacher. Uh my dad um well my great-grandfather was a boiler maker on the Harris side in Virginia. My grandfather worked in the steel mill for 32 years. My dad worked in that same steel mill um until like the 80s and then he got laid off because the mills were all shutting down where we where I lived. And then he became a gymnastics instructor which is real common for men to leave steel and go right into gymnastics. Um it's a true story. That's actually what he did. It's long story better told in the bar. But um but so very kind of bluecollarish kind

019of idea about the way things went. Um but my dad uh one of the big things with and some of you may have been raised in in in this but because my dad had such a bad sense of of of fact of working in the mill because he got laid off. Um he it was always like like me growing up get your degree get your degree. You can't count on um being able to work in the steel mill. You can't count on this. It was all like get a degree because that was going to guarantee economic security. Now, I would say I tell kids all the time when we start looking at a higher ed is I tell kids, are you sure you want to go to college and I'm not that I mean I

020work for a university. What I tell kids is you're in a better landscape now than I was coming out of school because of the trades having a reemergence and that we know that career and tech um now we have kids going into career and tech and getting certification and lure who are companies are coming to our career career and tech ed uh places to recruit kids out of the programs early because we need more workers. Um, and on the other side of that, the thing I challenge about higher ed is higher ed can be so expensive sometimes. I tell kids, be careful graduating with a bachelor's degree in history with $150,000 worth of student loan debt. And you're really not employable because that degree in nothing against a degree in history unless you got a

021teaching degree. You're not employable because a degree in history or psychology, for example, doesn't really qualify you to do anything. Um, so I tell kids now is actually a really interesting economy where you can really explore what you want to do because there's more options than there were in a previous. So I tell you when you're talking to adolescence especially when it comes to job requirements is it's not just college or bust there's all kinds of good options now and I think the economy um hopefully is going to maintain that that we can have that as well. And I just talked about increased family control. And and I think this is one of the big things we need to be talking about is um how much of our um how much developmental opportunities are we

022compromising in late adolescence and especially early adulthood by the increased surveillance of kids? I'm use the word surveillance like the FBI, right? I mean, and again, I'm I'm just trying to get people thinking. I'm not trying to be controversial or or or upset anybody, but I look at, you know, people that still can tell how fast their 23 year old kid drove to work today. Like, is that really like, do we really need to know that our 23-y old kid went 36 and a 35 on his way to work this morning? You know, really thinking about I think there's an element of safety, which is using things like fine me or whatever it might be. But then there comes an element where we're where we're in the spirit of safety we've moved into surveillance and

023now we've got you know imagine what it's like there's certain things we use that a kid constantly a kid adult constantly has someone looking over their shoulder. So I think thinking about at what at what point are we starting to compromise the development of independence because we have increased surveillance and control which I've got a 23 24 year old who doesn't really know what it's like to be in charge of themselves and or to have a hey I know she went kind of fast on the highway today you got to be thinking about your safety on their way to their job as an attorney right or something like that something think about so what happens in adolescence it's these these things, right? I start to figure out who I am, trying to get a sense

024of who I am in society, trying to consider these things based on skills. This one thing I tell kids all the time, society pays you by what value you can add. Society pays you based on what it is you contribute. So your job as an adolescent is to develop something that someone will want to pay for later. Your job in school, your job in career in tech, your job is to develop skills and I and things that someone will see valuable enough to pay you for later. And being a being handsome or being whatever is all fine and good, but people don't, unless you're a model, don't pay for that stuff. So, what do we find is what our job is goes back to that I can idea. In adolescence, we need to develop their

025sense of the I can statement because self-content self-concept is based on content. What things have I accomplished? And it's also based on challenge and we talk about the you know always kind of things like there's only certain theories that that apply to a lot of things and progressive overload is the way that a muscle develops which is you stress it just a little bit outside of its range and then it rests and it grows. You stress it a little bit outside of its range and it rests and it grows. And then the other con the concept we commonly know in education is zone of proximal development or scaffolding which is Vodsky's ideas, right? Which is this idea that we push you, we support you but we push you just outside your range and you grow

026and you learn and we push you just outside your range and you grow and you learn. So we look at we have to be pushing kids. Now, the thing I'm always thoughtful of is I've got to push kids in areas where they can have some success in order to de develop that sense of what we talked about earlier, that rational optimism, which is my behavior matters. Because if I'm just pushing a kid in an area where they're weak and they're continuing to fail, well, I'm now I'm building the psychology of my behavior doesn't matter because I don't create those outcomes. And also, and I'll talk a lot about this in just a minute, it's also based on relationships. It's also based on the sense of who I am and the relationships I have with other

027people. So here's the neurology of when we look at the human brain in a very very simple way that it's a very much a work in progress. So if you think about a lizard when a lizard is born it hatches from the egg it's ready to do lizardly things right it doesn't have to go to like a preschool where it learns like claws are not for scratching and these are the bugs we eat or anything like that. When a lizard is born, it's its brain is basically it's a small it's a it's a small adult lizard is the best way to think about it. It can do all the things it needs to do because its brain is pretty much fixed. It doesn't change much through its life. Now think about a ba a human

028baby. Human babies are basically good at nothing. That's no offense to babies, but they're not good at anything except upsetting us. Like I always say, babies are designed to control and upset you. And that's not a mean thing. It's because when a baby's born, it can cry. And that's the primary driver of its survival. It cries, which the cry draws you in, which helps you meet their needs. So the only thing a human baby can do well in the beginning is basic autonomic functions and cry in order to get their needs met. And because it takes a human brain so long to develop, some would argue an independent human brain can be anywhere from 13 to 17 years old as far as like basic care for themselves. Um that's that's a long long time in

029the animal kingdom. Takes a really really long time to develop that kind that brain in that in that situation. The two developmental uh principles of the human brain that are important to remember one is learning and growth takes place in the context of relationships which I talked about earlier. So human like for example babies develop language by people talking to them. If you don't talk to a child they will not develop language. It's called an experience expectant experience. So we know that they take place in the pattern and it's it's also in the idea of the brain is a pattern seeking device. I think I've got it like so I think about the brain being a pattern seeking device is this sequence of things. Think of it like this. The brain looks at like a

030baby watches something. Let's just give us a sense. It says A plus B equals C. A plus B equals C. And then what starts to happen is the baby starts to anticipate. Why is pattern recognition so important? Pattern recognition is so important because my ability to recognize patterns means I can start to predict the future. And the brain's job is to keep me alive. So how does it keep me alive? It helps me anticipate what's coming next. So A plus B equals C is just my way of finding a pattern. And then if I see A, B, C, A, B, C, and then later I see A and B, I can anticipate C and prepare myself physically and emotionally for what I need to do in order to to deal with C. So the brain

031is a pattern seeking device. Whether it's a kindergartener learning primary colors or a a senior learning physics, there's just pattern recognition. All I'm doing is learning patterns. So these two components are the most optim are the key elements of neurological development which is pattern recognition and the context of relationships. And I showed you this last time and this is a little different picture but the idea of that learning takes place in the context of relationships goes back to that idea of risk takingaking is a function of learning. So when I look at how young people develop their sense of learning or how they learn, it's that risk takingaking but the risk takingaking within the context of relationships. Now if you're working with adolescence, especially those you assume most people in here are middle school, high

032school folks, one of the things that we know is we have to really work hard with this ability to build relationships because naturally adolescence start to push away a little bit and I'll talk about why in just a minute. they naturally start to push away in those uh especially 712 range they because and I'll I'll mention I'll talk about that more later. So the two main things that are happening just to kind of be a little to get into the neur neurology for just a second during this period of adolescence during this period of puberty is these two main concepts. It's more than just a bunch of hormones. Okay? There's other things happening. So the best way I can teach you is like this. You guys have like a closet where all your stuff goes?

033Anybody got like a closet that's got too much stuff in it and like you're like, I need to organize that closet. Right? If you're going to organize that closet, what's the first thing you have to do to get started? What's the first thing you have to do? Take it all out. Right? You answer, right? So, we're going to take it all out. So, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to open that closet. You're going to take it all out. You're going to lay it all out. All your stuff. And then you're going to start looking at all the stuff. You're gonna start deciding if you're going to keep it or you're gonna get rid of it. And whether you keep it or get rid of it is based on do you

034does this apply to you anymore. So you might look and say, "Oh, there's roller blades. I'm probably never going to rollerblade again. I could probably get rid of those." Or that jacket. Probably never going to wear that jacket again. Right? So what you do is you slowly kind of go through your stuff and you get rid of the things that don't apply to you anymore. Okay. What that is from a neurological standpoint when an adolescent is in puberty or in that developmental burst the brain kind of comes apart in a way kind of way of thinking about it. And so synaptic pruning which is the pruning or like you prune a tree the trimming of networks that I don't need anymore which is the same way of like getting rid of my rollerblades. I don't

035need this connection anymore because I'm not using it anymore. And I want the brain to become more efficient. So the second thing you do then is you put everything back in in a more efficient way so it's faster to get to it. Now what the brain does is what's called myionization. So myionization is there's this cable right here. You see this this cord? This cord has a like a rubber coating on it. Okay. Okay, the brain, the same way goes with our neurons and the communication between the axons, there's there's a a a cord basically or a channel and that channel uh gets wrapped with fat and that fat is called myelin. And myelin as it thickens the the electrical communication inside that myelin becomes faster. So what happens in adolescence is I start to

036get rid of the stuff I don't use and get faster at the things I do. This is also why experiencing trauma at this point in life is very very uh difficult or can be very very disruptive because the brain is open in a way and that when it's open it's vulnerable. So if I experience trauma during this period of time the same way it happens in early childhood there's also an opening period in early childhood is that can really disrupt the way my brain comes back together from a neurological standpoint. So that's why wow it's really important you know things like bullying or things like trauma sexual abuse um domestic violence those kinds of things can really affect the the neurology of an adolescent for the rest of their life um if we if it

037happens during this period of synaptic grooming and myization. So that's why it's really important that we're really supporting kids during this time. So that's what's really happening at this time. It's not just a bunch of hor kids in their hormones. Hormones are important, but the hormones are really kind of what are catalysts for other things. And I'll talk about that more as we go. So when we're looking at the adolescent brain, the goal is these two sides of things. And always think about this. Think of the brain as an orchestra. Okay? And what we want is what's called integration and differentiation. Integration is just like it sounds. It's the way the brain plays together. But in order for the brain to play together well, you have to have what's called differentiation, which is in order

038for an orchestra to sound great, each person has to be able to play their instrument really well. And then you have to have a conductor who helps with the timing and the integration of the different sounds of the different instruments. So if I look at what adolescent brains are trying to do or human brains in general is I want the separate regions to be strong but also play together which is what creates behavior. I'll show you in just a minute what part of the brain does that. But at this point in the goal of adolescent development, what I'm trying to create is impulse balance. The ability to think but not always do. the way to um regulate my feelings and my emotions. I'm balancing my impulses. I'm mad at this adult, but I know if

039I talk back to this adult, there'll be consequences for me later. So, I don't say something back to this adult. I go to do I go to my job at Subway, not because I love being a sandwich artist, but because I love the money that they give me every two weeks. So, I start to delay and I start to work on my impulses. I learn about flexibility in thinking. And some of the disorders that we work with in mental health that are really important that we address are a lack of flexibility. Like if I work with a kid with autism, sometimes kids with autism, one of the things they struggle with is they can be inflexible, meaning it's black or white. So one of the things I'm really working with a kid like that is

040is to try to expand the gray. But being flexible in thought a lot of times in adolescence is is showing maturity to understand that I may believe this but somebody else may not believe this because of difference in their experiences. So I start looking at that flexibility they start looking at I really think this is important to really challenge adolescence to start thinking about what ethics and rules are. How like we start really considering rules. It's like you should listen to authority figures, but not all the time. There's certain people who might present themselves as an authority figure that you shouldn't listen to. Or like a six-year-old, you should listen to authority figure. Seems like a pretty basic idea, but if I've got a 15-year-old, then I want that 15-year-old considering who is the authority

041figure and whether I really want to listen to this person or whether it's safe to listen to this person. So I want kids to start being um or even things putting them thinking about moral dilemmas. You know people will say lying is bad but are there situations where some might somebody might lie um for a greater good? Those are things we challenge kids to think about and to consider. Uh complexity of thought and also too this is a big thing we spend a lot of time talking to kids about is just the concept of goals. You know, it amazes me how much time we don't spend uh helping kids even consider what goal setting is. How do we set goals? How do we consider goals? How do we explore goals? I'll talk about that a

042little bit more as we go. But we get so fixated on whatever kind of outcome academically we're moving toward. We're not helping kid helping a kid understand how this fits into their goals. I'll give you a quick example. I had a kid I was working with one time and he was failing a few of his classes as a freshman. And we know that if you fail, obviously when you start failing classes of freshman, your chances of having a very negative academic outcome are high. Okay. Two things we we know that are big negative indicators for high school kids are how if they if they've been suspended and failing grades their freshman year. That's why when I go into schools, I really want people to focus on like uh suspensions and uh detentions and things like

043that because we know that kids are sus that are suspended at a high rate are exponentially more likely to uh drop out or at least low perform. And the other one, you know, we look at we know is that kids who fail a lot their freshman year, that track record's hard to get out of that hole. It also shows not just a grade issue, but probably some sort of soft skill issue or skill issue when it comes to studying and things like that. So helping kids create goals. So I had this kid. He was filming a bunch of classes and I he was and I said, "Listen, you know, you're going to be short on credits." And he, you know, kind of I don't care. Duh. And I said, "You're gonna have to take this

044class. You're have to take these two classes over again next year." And I said, "And you're going to be in a class with freshman and you're going to be a sophomore." And what was weird about it is he goes, "So I got to take this over again." I said, "Yes, you will have to take this over again because they didn't they they were they didn't have a credit recovery for summer." And I'm like, "Yes, you're gonna have to take the class over again, and you're going to be the only sophomore with a bunch of freshmen." And he goes, "Well, I want to do that. I don't want to look stupid." I'm like, "Okay, what do you want to do about it?" So, his goal, I wasn't going to be like, "Don't you want to graduate

045with that?" He just, if his goal was, I don't want to look stupid because I don't want to be the only sophomore in the freshman class. We're going to work from there. that's where I'm going to work with because and he was like I don't want people think so that's where I'm going to work from that's how I'm going to consider one of the big things we come into in adolescence is this ability to make decisions now here's an important fact to consider 15 to 25 years old is the your your peak time to die from an accident. Okay, makes sense, right? Makes sense why that's the peak time because that's when you do the most dumb stuff, right? It's when you it's I it's actually when you're supposed to do most of your dumb

046stuff is 15 to 25. It's not abnormal. It's actually quite normal. Um now, do I want people to say, you know, it's and and what's interesting about this is what's really strange is this is actually risk-taking behavior in adolescence is actually down. Let me give you examples. things like car accidents and promiscuous sexual behavior is actually down. Why? How's that possible? How's that possible? How's that? How's how are those indicators that we would see as risk taking behavior down? >> Yep. That's one. Yeah. Yes. You're both exact. You both it exactly. It's a lack of pro-social engagement outside of the home environment. And when we talk about cars, fewer and fewer kids are getting their license at 16. Have you noticed that? Has anybody else noticed that? Yeah. If you listen to reasons why they

047say they don't get their license, everybody's re it's at least a top three reason depending on who you're reading. It could be one or three. One through three is one of the main reasons why those 16-year-olds are saying they're not getting their license is their anxiety. They're nervous. Now, are there reasons why, again, nothing's black and white. Are there kids that I genuinely believe they have a neurological difference that we have to be thoughtful in how we teach them how to drive? Especially when I work with kids with autism or kids with certain clinical disorders, I do think we have to think about how we teach them differently. But I still want them to learn. But then if I have a kid who's quote unquote neurotypical, who's not getting their license because they just rather

048stay in the room and their parents can take them wherever and so on and so forth, that worries me because if I don't have my license, that's a huge first step in independence, which is a venturing away from the home. And then again, if I don't venture away from the home, then I'm not gaining those developmental experiences, which means I'm going to not have I'm going to struggle with work. I'm going to struggle with pro-social. I'm not going to go out on dates. I'm not going to do this thing. So, my world is small and I'm not experiencing the world, which means I'm going to be socially emotionally delayed. And I don't mean that in like a I mean that literally. I will have experiences that I missed out on which delay my development of

049what I'm supposed to be at 18. So, what I see a lot of are 19, 20 year olds who are socially emotionally 16, but they're in college, but they not they're not ready for the independent living side of things. And I think that's one side. And the other side is I'm not outdoing things. Now, am I like saying like we should be like rooting kids on for sexually promiscuous behavior? No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying there's some of that that is just the natural progression of adolescence. We still should be very thoughtful of educating kids on safe and appropriate sexual behavior, risk takingaking and stuff like that, but there's an element of I should I should want kids to be kind of exploring things within their their realm of exper within their realm

050of comfort there. You're going to have some kids and this is probably true for different people in different environments. Some there might have been some folks that are a little more wild than others. And there might have been some kids that really didn't want to go do the cake party in the in the field, but it's it's the opportunity to explore and try things out which then expands and weighs that risk because I was, you know, I want kids to make mistakes when the stakes are low. I want them to, and I'll talk about this more about relationships in just a minute. I want kids to kind of try on some of these different things and do some risk takingaking while the stakes are low and there's mentoring relationships involved. I want those kind of

051things to occur. Now, what's interesting is this is from a a a weird neurological standpoint is we know that adolescence ab actually can weigh risk. It's like they're just not thinking about it. Kids actually can weigh risk. It's but the difference is I always think about this. Um, there's one kid I can think in my mind that was a skateboarding kid and he taught me about risk and I'm like, "Do you know what could happen if you don't land don't land that? Like you can break your collar bone, break your wrist and all this kind of stuff." He goes, "Yeah, yeah, I know." And he goes, "What if I landed?" And I think that's the difference in understanding adolescence is it's not always that they can't weigh risk. It's just it's that they over or

052they overvalue the pro-social element of what if I do it and now they can record it. So, not only do I land it, but someone records it and then we post it and now look at all this um social currency I'm gaining from this thing that I did. So it's not such a that kids just don't understand risk-taking. It's they understand risk-taking but they overvalue the reward of landing it so to speak. So I think that's something that we kind of think and they have a a peak sensitivity to dopamine which I'll talk about dopamine more later when I talk about different apps and uh Tik Tok and all that kind of stuff. I'll kind of unpack that more as I go. But looking at this idea that they especially value social reward and risk

053takingaking and one of the things we do know also when we look at risk takingaking and personality and belonging you'll even have kids that they will compromise elements of their personality in order to belong. We'll talk about that more as we go. But I think one of the things to consider is human beings are social creatures which means we run in groups. If we go to the animal world and kind of study that a little more closely, anything that runs in groups like pack animals or her animals. If you get separated from the group, you're in danger. If you whether it's a wolf or a horse or whatever, when you separate from the group, you're you're in danger. Okay? And I'll talk about that more as I go, but you will have kids that that

054you have to understand that that is a basic evolutionary concept in our neurology. We also know that they're going to seek stuff, go try new things. I think this is critically important. Um, a slight aside if we we talk about like kids should develop grit. One of the things we don't think about when we talk about the development of grit, Angela Duckworth's book, which I really encourage people to read, which is titled Grit, one of the things that she talks about, which I think is critically important, is exposing kids to lots of activities early in life. Exposing kids to different things. I really and I'm a I'm a I've been a coach and I'm I love athletics and I'm a I'm a has been athlete, but one of the things I think we got to

055be really careful about that I see a trend that's really affecting kids is early specialization in athletics. You know, we got eight and nine year olds who are committing to a sport at eight or nine. And what happens is why I think that's so tricky or so uh complicated is because at eight or nine, we're picking a path for a kid and they're doing that thing and that and the and the all the family currency, sometimes even financial currency, but especially time currency starts to become invested in travel this or travel that and we're spending our weekends and hotels on and I'm not saying that's necessarily all bad, but what I'm saying is we have to be careful that we don't pre that we don't predispose or or presuppose an identity on kid at eight

056or nine and then by the time they're 10 or 12 or whatever, the whole family identity is connected to this kid doing this thing that even if he wanted to stop doing it, he couldn't or she couldn't because so much of our family's identity is connected to this thing. And what Duckworth talks about is importance, especially in the elementary and early middle, moving into early high school, is exposing kids to all different types of activities because that gives them an opportunity to explore things that they might like and to create diversity in their personality as opposed to that thing. And and it it really is a and I don't, you know, I'm writing an article on it right now, but I think there it is tricky and I understand how can be kind of brought

057into it because for parents it becomes tricky because it starts to be you're not being a good parent to your kid. If your if your kid shows any semblance of talent in some area and you don't automatically dump $15,000 a year in that kid doing their specialized activity at 9, 10 or 12 years old, there there's just like this pressure of well, if you really want your kid to be a D1 athlete, blah blah blah, whatever, you know, then then I've got to start investing in them at this age. And so part of the problem that runs into that is the kid never gets to try new stuff. So their personality becomes very narrow and singular. Now, is that altogether a bad thing? Have I seen kids that have done that before and come out

058to be very high achieving, capable young people? Absolutely. I've seen kids I know kids that have been able to do that. I just want people to be thoughtful in the decisions they're making to see, am I developing a a a person who will be an adult at some point with a more complete psychology because you can only play sports for so long or you can only do things for so long. and and and I think uh it's it's something that that I see as a real tricky complicated thing and a lot of times it's chasing I don't know I'll get off that trail but peer interaction so this is what I was talking about earlier about the pack animal idea and this idea of belonging to the group okay here's this is one investing in

059the future why is peer interaction investing in the future and this is sounds morbid but it's because like the our parent your parents are going to die first in a in a general situation. So you got to go find a new group. You got to go find people to build a life with because you can't build a life with someone that's going to not be there or even if they're there are not capable of participating with you in your life fully. So what you do is you go build a social group, go have relationships, you date people, you have friends, those kinds of things. And what's interesting about this is research indicates that our brains react to social exclusion similar to the threat of phys to our physical health. Isn't that interesting? So, if we

060have a a young lady who is being pushed out on Instagram, one examples of it was a young lady I worked with several years back, but um she was having some trouble with her friends and one of the things that they would do to each other is they would freeze each other out. So, they would tell like if they're being doing kind of mean girl things to each other. They'd say like don't like any of her stuff and they would tell all the kids don't like her stuff. So like if she post anything don't like don't like her stuff. So they would freeze her out is the way that they would say that. And if you scan her brain as she was being frozen out, her brain would look at that similar as if she's

061being physically threatened. Now why is that the case? You go back to the evolutionary principle that being pushed out of the group is um in an animal kingdom is dangerous because now you're you're susceptible to predators and other sit and the elements. When we're people, sorry, when we're people and we get pushed out of the group, now we're in danger. And that's why belonging to a group can actually create a sense of safety. And that's why an adolescent will compromise elements of their personality sometimes to belong and do things that may not be consistent with their personality or their values because they want to belong because belonging creates safety. I remember some of you guys might be old enough to remember this. Remember when emo was a big thing? You guys remember emo where like

062there's a whole big I used to do a lot of therapy with kids that were big into emo and they'd walk in it'd be like 100 degrees outside and they'd walk in with like black coat and a hoodie and come in like dripping sweat and I'd be like you have to be miserable and sometimes if I had a good relationship with the kid be like I'm so hot right like but what would happen is they would wear this outfit in a way. And now I'm not saying that it was a complete fake or front. What I'm saying is they might have agreed with elements of it, but there might be times where they kind of do the things in order to belong because now I have my group and athletes do the same thing. Performing

063arts kids do the same thing. It's the primary driver that makes gangs so appealing to kids because what do we create? We create safety and belonging. And for some kids, the reason why gangs can be so effective, they can create a sense of family and they can create a sense of you can we will protect you. But these are the compromises you're going to have to make to show that you want you will belong to our group because and for some kids and some kids I've worked with that it was legitimately a way to protect themselves physically was to compromise certain elements of their ethical values to belong to this group that would protect them in the environment that they live in. And that's a very real sense of how that responds. Here's an interesting

064thing. You guys ever heard of Grand Theft Auto? Remember the game Grand Theft Auto? Grand Theft Auto. They did a a research station several years back and they put a 15-year-old in a room and they had him play a level on Grand Theft Auto. But Grand Theft Auto is a game where you can go around and do various things of different moral uh expressions. But one of the things you can do is tasks. So, you have to steal this car, which obviously starts off not as the most pro-social thing you can do. steal a car, do this mission, and then you get points for uh uh completing the mission. So, they have 15-year-old do this mission. They do the mission, and then they measure their risk takingaking based when they played by themselves. And then

065they would put them on a similar level, but put uh three of their friends in the room with them and have them play the similar level of complication and have them play Grand Theft Grand Theft Auto again. And they found that their risk level went up the different kids up to a third to a half if people were watching, if their buddies were watching them. So what that shows you is by themselves they might take a certain level of risk, but you get people looking over my shoulder, especially my buddies, I will do things that I typically wouldn't do by myself. Now, here's where that gets tricky. When you start thinking about technology and apps and things like that, kids are constantly publicly presenting themselves. So, I will present things on Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok

066that really I wouldn't typically do because I'm trying to present myself a certain way to my social group. And that's uh there's a there's a concept with influencers that they call audience capture. Has anybody ever heard that term before? Audience capture. It's where I will present things to the audience and if they respond to certain types of posts or certain content, I will lean toward more of that content because that's what people are responding to. And that's where you'll see uh posts become more promiscuous or more risktaking. It's because the audience starts to capture me and I start to become what the audience wants me to be based on what reinforcers they give me. That's something that you kind of think about. Um, and also they're highly responsive to oxytocin. Oxytocin, um, easiest way to

067think about it, if they call it the moral molecule, but the thing with oxytocin, what what creates o, what can facilitate oxytocin is, um, it's creates bonding. So, kids are highly susceptible to dopamine, which is kind of the feel-good chemical, and then oxytocin, which is like the bonding chemical. And the things that trigger high levels of oxytocin are physical touch and cont and and um focus or uh how should I say it intent. The highest levels of oxytocin you can find in the human body is a mother and a baby immediately after birth. Highest levels of oxytocin you can find. So you do a blood draw on a baby. You do a blood draw on a mom right after she's given birth. Oxytocin will be through the roof. Like when a baby's first born, where

068do they want to put the baby? What's ideally where do you put the baby? chest, skin to skin, right? Because the two things that trigger oxytocin, which also has a painkiller in it, which is dopamine, is physical touch, skin-to-skin contact, and intent. So, as soon as that baby's born, I want that baby on that mom's chest. I want skin-to-skin contact, and I want that mom making eye contact. I want oxytocin through the roof because through the roof, it facilitates bonding and has a painkiller in it. And I've never given birth, but I was right there. It looked rough. um look like I'd want a painkiller at that time, right? Um especially the natural stuff, the chemical stuff, load them up, right? So when you look at that, that's what they're trying to facilitate. But oxytocin

069and adolescence, they're hyper sensitive to it. So they're hyper sensitive to physical touch and intent. That's why relationships for adolescence can feel very, very intense. especially early sexual behaviors or early sexual relationships can have very strong emotional content because of the flooding of oxytocin. That's why when you'll see kids that you know their first time, you know, the first time they have sex with someone, it can create a very strong bond um be even if it's a, you know, even a potentially sketchy social situation, but it creates a very because of the bonding and the level of oxytocin. But it's just stuff to think about. Um I I I think this is something I I added into this that I think is relevant and this is one of the things I think want you to

070think about for adolescence especially your middle school high school kids. I was thinking about this is I was watch walking into our high school football game the other day and I was walking by and the band the the drum line was warming up and those kids were all together and they're warming up and they're very focused and you could tell that um they they were really getting ready to participate. They were in their element and I went into the game and I was looking at the line because my son plays on the line and lineman mind look over and I look at the lineman and they're focused and they're getting ready and they're going to participate and I look I go sit down and my mom was a cheerleading coach for years and years. So

071I have I know more about cheerleading than you would think weirdly. Um so I'm watching the I also taught tumbling as a kid because my dad again was a gymnastics instructor. So it's a family business. It's what I did in high school. I taught gymnastics. But I'd see the cheerleaders warming up. They're dialed in. are getting ready and I think about I'm like this is they're they found they found their thing and they found their people. And I think when we look at adolescence, I want you to really think about what we're doing to help kids find their thing and their people. Now, here's the thing that's tricky. I'm not telling you find their thing for their life. I'm find a thing. Like it doesn't matter what the thing is necessarily or that like oh

072you're doing robotics so that must mean you're going to be an engineer. No, it could be I'm doing robotics because I'm 15 and I think it's cool to do robotics. But robotics becomes the vehicle where I learn how to focus on something, work hard at something, collaborate and create. For me, I always tell people like because and again I was talking about sports. I don't want to be negative about sports at all because athletics was the vehicle for me where I learned how to work hard. I didn't become a professional athlete. Even when I played in college, it was still I played at Morehead State University. I didn't go to Alabama, right? I was a I was I played at a 1A school that, you know, it was a regular little school place to play

073football. But sports was something that I learned that I was someone that would show up at 6:00 in the morning and lift weights or on the day after Christmas to lift weights. And like that pattern is something that I transferred to other things in my life. The same thing go with the arts can go with the arts. Doesn't mean a kid's going to play that instrument the rest of their life, but maybe that instrument is the thing that teaches them how to work hard of helping kids find people that are simple people. But if they just find their thing, there are some kids who can help facilitate that best. They just have to work with numerous kids with bigger and there's more pe high school to survive that because high school can be rough. You

074got to be around people you don't want to be around every day and as we get older we we we we can kind of separate from that. But understanding that these are two things I would ask people to really think about because they're protective factors. If you look at the uh positive childhood experiences research from 2019, one of the things we know is there are certain things that protect us psychologically and the positive childhood experiences are looking at things that help protect and just give you a few off top of my head. Um having uh being belonging in high school is a protective factor. Participating in community activities is a protective factor. um having a a a non-family member, at least two adults that are not family members that I could share a problem or

075or struggle with. When you do school threat evaluations, this coming out of the stuff from the Secret Service and the FBI, one of the things you'll ask a kid in a threat evaluation is you'll ask a kid about you'll ask for their pro-social engagement. You won't say it that way, but you'll say things like, "Tell me about your friend group." And what you're looking for is do they have a friend group? And if so, is that friend group pro-social? Just because a kid has a friend group does not mean that they that won't increase their risk for violence at the school. If I have if they have a friend group, but that friend group is antisocial, that makes them higher risk. An example, you know, a lot of you guys remember Coline. Um Dylan Cleel

076and Eric Harris had friend groups, but they had a friend group of antisocial kids, kids that were anarchists who wanted to watch the world burn, all that kind of stuff. So just because the kid has a friend group does not necessarily mean it's pro-social. The second question I'll ask kids, do you do you have an adult that you feel like you can share a problem or struggle with? At least one. The more that they have, the better. What's your friend group? Do you have a relationship with an adult in in this environment? One one of the things I'm sure you guys schools have done this before, but I love it is they do the dot activity where they like put kids names and pictures up on a wall and teachers take dot like little stickers

077and they put a dot by kids that they feel like they have a good relationship with. Now, if you got a gigantic school, which it appears this might be one of those, um it can be a little bit more complicated, but what they do is they put a dot and then what you do is you look for kids that don't have any dots. you go those are the kids we got to figure out how to connect with those kids because we don't none none of our staff feel like we have a good relationship with that kid with that specific kid and the last question I would ask is do you participate in any extracurricular activities or participate in school uh school functions so what am I looking for do they play sports are they in

078the band do they do performing arts are they in robotics even other than that is uh do you go to football games do you go to school dances do you Um, I had one kid that would tell me when I was doing a school threat evaluation, he wouldn't even wear clothes with the school's name on. It's like I don't want anything. I don't want to be associated with that school. So, why is that important from a safety standpoint? Because what makes people dangerous for one group to the other is when the other group becomes them. That's what makes people dangerous. Uh, because of us, you are less likely to perpetrate violence against us. But if you can create a them, you're much more likely to perpetrate violence on them. If you study history, it's it's

079it's proven time and time again. You look at the Holocaust. You look at American slavery or any slavery for that matter. You look at the way Native Americans were treated. It's different because the group, the power group, viewed the nonpower group as so different that whatever violence or or negativity that they perpetrated against that group didn't involve them because they were because it was a them. So if you want to create safer schools, create bigger us. And if a building's gigantic, you you it's hard when you have like, let's say, 4,000 students in a school. You have to create almost like micro communities inside that school. You have to find ways to create micro communities. All right. So, I'm going to go through here. I know we got folks coming in from the other sessions

080that were in the other session are coming into this one. This is something I I I will teach I'm going to teach you like I would teach an adolescence about their brain. So I help kids be able to understand this. So the first thing I tell adolescence I do a lecture for kids called um three things you need to know about being a teenager. And this is one of the first things I teach them which is be careful of your monkey brain. So let's talk about monkey brain real quick. That's a that's not an actual scan of a brain. I drew that on my iPad with Doodle Buddy. because I mean I could have searched Google images and found a brain like anybody else but I think it's it's it's more useful if you don't

081have the other parts to distract you. Um the deep limbic system which I refer to as your monkey brain. Um nothing wrong with your monkey brain. People try to demonize the deep limbic system because a lot of emotion and all that stuff. Listen, the deep lyic system is is useful. It's good. Right? Here's what the deep lyic system does for us. Um, it's emotional. It's reactive. It's about right here, right now. Passion, energy, creativity. We want this part of our brain. It's what makes things excited. It's what gives us focus, right? It can really help us. We'll actually trick our bodies into tr into the monkey brain being activated. Think about what a roller coaster is. A roller coaster is you pay someone money to strap you into a device and scare and trick your

082body into thinking you're going to die. Your body goes into fight or flight and we love it because of how those chemicals feel, right? We love the idea of giving away some of that control. Or think about watching a scary movie. We love watching a scary movie. Why? Because it it creates in us this safe terror. that triggers. And now here's the thing. If you are watching a scary movie or you're riding a roller coaster, you can't think of anything else in the world but right here, right now. And that's why we like them. Because they're a distraction. That's why we like this stuff because it's a distraction. But we we can't demonize the monkey brain because the monkey brain's useful. But what happens though is all things seek balance, equilibrium, right? In order to

083counter the monkey brain, we can't just be right here right now all the time because there's a future us we have to be thoughtful of. So we have what's called the PFC or the prefrontal cortex or what I call is your Einstein. So there's the monkey brain which is right here right now. And then there's the Einstein which is take making sure to take care of future you. So the Einstein does is logical. It's calculated. It thinks of consequences. Thinks of long term. Now, here's the thing, though. Your prefrontal cortex, PFC, or your Einstein doesn't finish developing until your early to mid20s. So, yes, you're right. For guys, it's even longer. Yes, it's actually true. Adolescent or female brains on average develop faster. Females in general develop faster. Um, but there is a period of

084immaturity that that males can can actually be longer. You can see that especially in high schools you see that more so than anything else. But anywhere usually by 25 you're pretty wired up. Now here's the thing though I I will say this is important. This is also an experience expectant neurology. What that means is is your prefrontal cortex connects faster and more efficiently if you are in environments that facilitate this type of uh thinking. If you're in environments with regulated adults, if you're in environments where adults um control their emotions and solve problems or learn to think and talk things through, your prefrontal cortex will develop quicker. If you're in environments that are emotional and reactive and uncontrolled and undisiplined, your prefrontal cortex does not have to develop. And that's why there's a book called

085Parenting from the Inside Out written by Dan Seagull. And he talks about parents who are were in environments where there wasn't good regulatory adults. There wasn't adults that t taught delayed gratification, impulse control, emotional regulation. They don't develop that prefrontal cortex and they don't get that connection between the PFC and the deep lyic system. So it means their ability to solve problems becomes compromised. So, a lot of times when we're working with a parent and we're trying to help parents, especially that didn't have a a a ideal upbringing, one of the things that I have to really work with that parent on is when your child is in crisis, you are not in crisis. What I mean by that is if I've got a three-year-old who's flipping out because they don't want to brush their

086teeth, I have to look at that three-year-old and go, "They are in crisis. I am not in crisis." So, the adult who isn't as effective is when the three-year-old goes into crisis, they escalate with the kid. And then now we're both in crisis and now the adult is solving the problem with emotion and not with logic and not looking at the kid and go, he's going to be fine. He just doesn't want to brush his teeth because he doesn't want to go to bed. And that's a very typical three-year-old kind of thing to do. So, all my job is is to stay steady and understand that I'm going to continue. I'm going to state the expectation. I'm going to stay in a very even place and go from there. Now, some of you guys might

087be like, "Well, yeah, I teach high school, though." But how many times have you seen an adult escalate with a kid in adolescence where they're both escalating with the kid and fire with fire with fire because the adult isn't regulated? And I think that's also an example of that we can't give what we don't have. And sometimes it's the harder thing that kids need us to do. I'll give you a quick example. This is one of the ones that can be especially tough when you work with kids with challenging behavior. A kid has a rough day and the kid comes back the next day. One of the things I know has a huge impact on relationships with kids is adults that holds grudges. Adults that hold grudges. If I had a kid that had a

088tough day yesterday, he had his consequences. We're trying to start a new day, but that walks in the building and I say, "Hope we're going to have a better day today." How many times you hear somebody say something like that? What that is, that's the adult not having regulation. Now, I can say that exact same thing in a different way that feels supported. Have a kid come in. Hey, come here. Let's talk about what a good day is going to look like today. Let's talk about what what if if we're going to have a good day today, what's that going to look like? Let's talk about what success looks like today. Let's get that in your head now. Let's start working on what success is going to look like today. Let's talk about what a

089good day is going to look like today. Is different than I hope we're going to have a good day today. But who's that about? That's the immaturity of the adult. Often times that need to be right. That need to I want my pound of flesh kind of thing. I need you I I want I want you to apologize for me to me because you hurt my feelings. Now, do I have a problem with kids apologizing? No, I don't have a problem with you apologizing. But I think I want to think about this is one of the things I always tell people. I never make kids apologize. And people say, "What? I don't make kids apologize because I don't want to teach kids to lie." Because what starts to happen with some kids is they start

090learning that if I just apologize, even if I don't mean it, it's the magic words. And so if I have a kid apologize to me for something that they've done, I always acknowledge that they apologize. I'll say, "I appreciate the words that you had to say. I appreciate you saying that." But apologies have two parts. It's what you say and what you do different. And to me, the more powerful thing is what you do differently. So, I appreciate the words. I look forward to what you'll do differently. If you need more information about what it would look like to do to do it differently, I I'm happy to coach you up. I'm happy to give you that information, but I appreciate the words because otherwise, if all we do is you have to apologize, we're

091teaching kids to lie. And I think that's something to think about sometimes. It just gives you an example of uh blue the darker the colors. This is from the National Institute of Drug Abuse. You can just see that as the brain the cooler colors show more neurological development. You can see where that starts to come into play. Really interesting. So where are places we have to be extra careful of monkey of our monkey brain? social, sexual, and substance. These areas or these circumstances are high monkey brain situations. And it's because of these things. Social fear, which I've already dissected for you, sexual flooding, which is the neurological and chemical experience of sexual arousal, and substance dumbing. which is how certain substances decrease neural activity in problem solving. Alcohol being a perfect example. Alcohol is a

092central nervous system depressant. I have kids tell me sometimes that doesn't make sense. When I say it's a central nervous system depressant, like why do people get happy when they drink? Well, for a period they can because the first thing that the alcohol does is it shuts off the prefrontal cortex which is a no stop don't part of your brain. That's why they call it happy hour, right? Because alcohol takes offline the worrying part of your mind. Now, here's the thing. If you continue to drink at an accelerated rate, it will shut off all of your mind, which is called a blackout or passing out. But there's that sweet spot where people will like that feeling of what stress, right? So the idea is these three things. Now if you think about a party for

093example, that's where we got to be careful, right? Because there can be social fear, sexual flooding, and substance dumbing in certain circumstances, which means the likelihood of making a profoundly poor decision are really high. So these are the things I teach kids about how to analyze environments and look for these types of things that might be occurring. And here are some of the short-term consequences or long-term consequences for shortterm circumstances. I always tell kids like I've never worked with a kid that was just told they were, you know, positive for chlamyia. I've never worked with a kid that they went, you know what? I knew he had chlamydia, but he it was he was just so handsome. I just couldn't help myself. Never had anybody willingly get an STD. It's usually it's they get caught

094up in a moment, they make a poor choice, and then that's a consequence of it. I always I have the handcuffs there. I had a group of kids that uh it was a public case that I was involved in back home. And uh bunch of guys together on a sleepover thinking they're pranking their buddy. They'd all been drinking. And uh the first guy falls asleep kind of thing. And they start messing with this kid um while he's asleep, but they're recording it. And then the things they're doing to him they think is just messing with him, but actually the things they're doing to him are a felony because they're sexual misconduct that they're doing to the kid. And they've now posted on social media. So just publish the evidence toward their felony convictions. And one

095kid was 18 and the other two were under 18. Um and they all were charged with felonies. Now here's the thing that came out afterwards. But they're good kids. I've seen lots of good kids in courtrooms, but the problem is is if a good kid does this sexual behavior to another person and and it's published, then that good kid still has a felony. And I think, you know, that's an example of of social, sexual, and there was one of the kids I talked to that were involved in the group and the kids's like, I knew it was wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I just was so afraid that if I did too much that they'd turn on me. There's a lot of situations where that can be the case where they'll go with

096something, but they they're afraid that the kids will turn on them. And even if I just do the monkey brain side and all I do is play video games and don't do the harder thing ever, I always I used to talk to kids be like, especially the young guys that want relationships, I'll be like, "Listen, back when World of Warcraft was big, if you guys remember World of Warcraft, I'll be like, "Listen, man. I know you're like a 70s something death knight and that's pretty fantastic and and wow, but There's not a lot of girls walking through the neighborhoods knocking on doors thinking like I really am looking for a 75 death knight living in their parents' basement because that's who I want to settle down with. It's like probably not the case. So, you

097got to think about those things. And you know, one thing I always pose to people is um did we ever make bad decisions because of one or all of these things? Did you ever let social fear, sexual flooding, or substance dumbing get yourself in a in a in a not so great situation? And I think that helps us to develop some empathy. I tell you, I don't know about you guys, but you do you have ever you ever have memories of yourself that you remember something you did and just thinking about it makes you cringe? You have that you don't have to say it out loud. Just think in your head. You're like, "Oh man." Right? Anytime my kid does something stupid, I still will tell him he did something stupid. Don't get me wrong.

098And I don't go, I did stupid stuff, get after it, buddy. I don't say that. But I also understand that I did stupid stuff, too. So, I've got to keep the focus on the learning. And sometimes consequences are part of learning. Sometimes I got to say, you did something stupid. Here's the consequence when you do stupid stuff. But tomorrow, we'll hopefully do not stupid stuff tomorrow. That's the goal is minimize stupidity moving forward, right? But understanding that it's not because they're some broken person. And I tell here's the things we teach kids to do. Avoid monkey brain situations if we can within reason. Make smart policies. What I mean by policies, I teach kids this all the time. What are your policies? I think why don't we don't do this in classes. Blows my mind.

099But like sit down with kids and saying let's start your let's start working on your policy and procedure manual as a person. Let's start thinking about the decisions you'll make and when you'll make them. I'll give you sometimes policies you make for yourself. Sometimes other people help you make your policies. Like I'll give you one example where other people help me make a policy. Um when I was a kid, like I remember we were walking into the mall and we're walking in with my mom and my dad. Um might have been like my parents got abortion when I was like I think in sixth grade. So I was probably maybe eight, nine years old when this happened. I'm walking into the mall and I stepped in front of my mom to go in the store

100and my dad bounced my head off the door frame, which I don't suggest as a parenting strategy, but he said, "Son, step in front of your mother. You hold the door for your mother." And I was like, "Understood." But now even today if I'm walking to a door and there's a a lady walking to the door, I have to hold that door. Like and sometime I had one lady, it's funny, she goes, "You don't have to hold that door." And I'm like, "You don't understand. I have to hold that door. I have post-traumatic stress about this. It's I mean, I appreciate I know you can open this door, but this is about me right now, and I need to open that door or else this is going to be a problem. And it's so my

101dad helped me make that policy that that I hold the door and it's not just for women. That was what I was taught earlier. I hold the door for other people too. Don't get me wrong. Another one I one I made for myself was I don't litter. It's a weird one. But the reason why I remember I was 16 years old. I was driving behind a red S10 truck. I'll never forget this on 52. Red F10 truck and and S10 truck. And this guy throws an entire bag of McDonald's out the window. trash on the road. And I thought, what a jerk. Like, what makes this guy think that he gets to throw his trash out? Like, what kind of entitled I don't want to cuss. What kind of entitled person thinks that they get

102that they should be able to just throw their trash out on the road? I'm like, I don't I can't stand people litter. In my head, I'm like, I don't litter. What's what's what what we teach kids about our policies is a policy is what you do because you've decided about ahead of time. And it doesn't matter who's there or what the circumstances are because it's your policy. So I start teaching kids about the policy. I give you a quick example. I was doing a a group with young adolescent females and I said, "You need to start thinking about what your sexual policies are, what you will or won't do in what circumstances. Because if you don't make your policy now and you wait till you're in that sexual situation, I can promise you that the

103person you're with is not going to have your interest in mind. So you need to decide now what you know back in the day they used to talk about bases, right? What what are you what what what element of your personality and your self-respect are you willing to do and in what circumstance or situation that is an expression of how you value yourself in the decisions you make when it comes to making sexual decisions and helping kids understand and make those policies and also recruiting help you know having those conversations with kids and and kind of bringing that about one of the things we know that's affecting adolescent development at a high rate. Um, as we know, sleep is one of the most important things they could have. Um, like I I do a lot

104of work with athletes too and I always tell tell kids there's three legs to the stool. There's training, nutrition, and sleep. Stress, feed, rest. And the same thing goes with any kid. Learning is stressful. Got to feed them. We got to rest. And I not have to be too far on this on the soap box of of you know stress is we know how to do that. That's teaching that's training. That's that kind of stuff. Feeding I'll be a slight aside. Um adolescent nutrition is terrible. Terrible. I don't mean to be like but the the one of the things I just if you have adolescence is you you influence and you're talking to them. One of the biggest things we're seeing with adolescence right now is they don't eat enough protein. They eat a crap

105ton of terrible carbs and and they don't have enough protein. And the problem with that is why that's so relevant is their body are developing at a very very accelerated pace. And and if they don't have protein, they don't have the building blocks for the main things which is your neur neurology and your um muscles all based on protein. If I don't have enough protein, I just I just can't build it. It's just not there. Um so I think that's something, you know, I don't know how we solve that problem. I struggle with that. my own kid. Um, you know, Jake is my 18-year-old and we, you know, I had to send extra protein with him because, you know, if he just ate the school lunch, and I'm not I'm not being negative about school

106lunch, but you look at a school lunch and you're lucky if there's 15 grams of protein on a school lunch. So, figuring out ways, especially back home, we have a lot of kids who have real social economic disadvantages and protein's expensive. You're trying to get kids to have more protein, but it's really expensive and it's often times perishable. You know, we got to figure like figuring out how to get these kids better nutrition. I mean, we give a lot of our boys back home. A lot of our boys eat a lot of peanut butter, right? Because peanut butter is cheap. It stays on a shelf a long time and I can make a sandwich out of it and I can give that to a kid. But thinking about some of those things uh and getting

107kids to think about that in a way. Sleep. Gosh, kids need anywhere from depending on who stuff you read. Matthew Walker is the best guy to read on this. um minimum seven, eight to nine if they can get it. What are the things that are interfering with this? We see the most of um kids sleeping with their phones. This is not popular to talk about, especially adolescence. They will they will key my car if they hear that I'm talking about this. Um I'm tell one of the main things and this is one of the best things to do to protect a kid is that the phone goes gets charged in a different room. It's so hard. It is so hard when you ask a 16-year-old to put a phone by their bed and say, "Don't

108check that. They're they're not they're helpless. They can't do it." Most kids can't do it. There's always exception to the rule, but most kids can't do it because it's just too much. It's the same reason why I don't keep cookies in my pocket, right? I can't be trusted. you get me at a rough point of day, I'm gonna have a cookie. Right? So, the same thing goes if I put that beside this kid while he's while he's sleeping and they see that light going off or they hear that buzz. Have you ever go to an adolescent and just say, "Can I just hold your phone on vibrate? I want your notifications on vibrate. Can I just put your phone in my pocket?" And you will be amazed by the amount of notifications that they get

109in an hour. You'd be amazed. I don't know if Has anybody ever done that? Have you ever felt a teenager's phone? Is it? Yeah. It's unbelievably anxiety producing. Here's here's an interesting thing. I'll tell you a quick quick research study they did that was really really interesting. They took folks psychologists oftentimes will tell you they're studying one thing, but they're studying something else. You got to watch psychologists. They're tricky. Um, so they put them in a chair, okay, and they hook them up to this this this monitoring system that looks at heart rate, sweat, um, focus, and they give them a game to play. What they tell them they're doing is we're studying your performance on this game, and as the game gets harder, we're looking to see what your stress response is to the

110difficulty of the game. They're lying. Got to watch them. And then they said, but what they're really studying is they tell they take the research student and they put them in the or the the subject, put them in the seat, give them the game, and then they say, "You have to stay in this chair because the way measure your heart rate is with this system, and if you get out of the chair, it throws off the instrument, and we have to take your phone from you because it'll interfere with our um our our instruments. But we'll set it right over here." That way that way you know where your phone is. So they get the the subject to start playing the game. Start playing the game and then they start texting their phone and the

111phone they can hear the phone and the notifications going and they watch this person's heart rate increase. They start to sweat and their performance on the game starts to drop because what is their brain thinking about? What's going on with my phone? You ever see that in a meeting? You ever see somebody Now, here's here's what's even more interesting. Another version of this same study is you let them keep their phone and the researcher on purpose but looking accidental leaves their phone on the same table and starts to their phone starts to get notifications. What do you start what do you think starts to happen in the subject's body? Same response. Their anxiety goes up, their heart rate goes up, their performance on the thing goes down. So when not it's not even just your

112phone, it's other people's phone. Have you ever been in a meeting and someone's phone's like going off and you're like, "Do you need to get that?" When it's probably just like a Kohl's coupon or the person that has their notifications go off on every email. That wears me out. I'm like, "Really? You have a bell for emails?" Um, so we really got to think about what are we doing in regards to that is how is that disrupting sleep and we can study that stuff? We can see that stuff. Um, and the other one is video games like letting kids play games late into the night. Um, that's another area where we see disrupting sleep. So that's a big one. All right, let's talk about relationships. Here's my advice to relationships for kids is do not

113be a relationship blob. What do I mean by that? I said kids jobs in adolescence is develop their identity. Here's the problem with that. In order to develop my identity, I have to get myself concept of content. So, I got to figure out what I'm like, what do I like to do? Um, you know, um, what music do I like? What decisions do I make? That kind of stuff. The thing that worries me sometimes is when we have these adolescent relationships that are like many marriages. Now, is it possible for adolescence to have a relationship that is very functional and long-term in late adolescence and early adulthood? Yes. But what I see that worries me sometimes are some of these relationships where they're they're too imshed. Like they're too integrated. Like Tommy and Tammy. Tommy

114and Tammy have been dating since they're freshman. And now Tommy, what's your favorite color? It's Tammy's favorite color. Tammy, what's your favorite color? It's Tommy's favorite color, right? And all this stuff where where they become imshed where they don't really know who they are without the other person. Now, the problem with that is I call it the Jerry Magcguire myth is that whole you complete me. That's actually very psychologically unstable to say to somebody because you completely you complete me means I'm incomplete without you. Which if you think about it from a business standpoint, do you want two failing businesses to combine or do you want two strong industries to combine? So I don't want like two dysfunctional people creating because it doesn't create a functional union. It actually creates a more exaggerated dysfunction. When

115adolescence, what I got to be careful about is if we become too imshed, it compromises the development of my identity. How can you tell that's the case? Well, there's some element when I worked with some young people, they develop such a dependence on relationships. Here's one of those indicators. They can't ever not they can't ever be single. So, the f as soon as they break up with someone, they got to find someone else to date because they're so uncomfortable with the idea of not being in a relationship. You ever see a kid like that? And what that signal is is I'm not enough by myself, which that psychology is very dangerous. So I want to really think about that. Well, where do adults play into this? I think this is something I'm seeing more and

116more that I think we need to think about is as adults, we have to be careful that we're not pushing relationships in a more accelerated way. So for example, I this I promise you when I say this, it's not as mean as it sounds. I treat my son's girlfriends like stray dogs. I pro there's more to it. I love dogs, but if you have a stray, you don't get to keep them. So, don't get too attached because you're not going to keep them. So, generally speaking, my son's girlfriends are more than likely not going to be the people they marry. So, I am kind and polite and and all that, but I am not treating them like they're my kid. We are not going on vacation together. We're not going to have blankets made with

117them in love together on them. Like, we're not doing all that. Because here's what happens. Here's the danger of that. That's the reason why I feel this way so strongly about it is it's hard enough as an adolescent to try to to try to navigate a relationship and it's good practice for them. But what I don't want to create is this sense of a family unity where now I'm best friends with her parents and we do everything together and we go on vacation together and we do X, Y, and Z together. Because now if my son wants to break up with that girl, not only is he breaking up with the girl, he's he's breaking up families or the girl is breaking up families, which adds a layer that should not be there for an

118adolescent. But have you seen these relationships that the families actually accelerate it even more so the kid? Am I am I delusional or does that happen? It happens. Okay, just making sure I'm not the and and so what we want to think about is I want the adolescent relationship to be what it is, which is an opportunity to learn about relationships and what I like and what I don't like and what kind of person I want to share my life with. Now, if I always think of it this way, if my son ends up marrying the girl he's dating, I have plenty of time to get to know her. I'll get to know her later, right? I I I'll I'll appreciate it and she's great and all that kind of stuff, but I I don't

119want to create unnecessary burden on that kid at a time when it's not what that's for. That's so I think that's something to help kids think about or help adults think about that we're not perpetuating that moving forward. And I tell you what freaks me out even more than that is when I see it in the elementary ages and I'm seeing some of that. I see like young young kids and and these acceleration of oh, they're going to get married. Do not say stuff like that. That is ridiculous. You know, really allowing kids to explore that idea. It really worries me. It's funny. On average, 2 to 10% of high school relationships last. Listen, I But there is a percentage. Can you marry your high school sweetheart and be happily after ever after? Absolutely. Absolutely

120that can happen. I'm not telling anybody that can't happen. It absolutely can happen. It's just highly unlikely. I'll never forget I was speaking at a school in Wheeling, West Virginia. They had their whole student body in there, like 1,200 kids in a, you know, place like this, real big, a little bit bigger than this actually. And I'm I show this statistic and there's a couples sitting in front of me clearly very close. I mean, they were like connected. And uh and this slide comes up and I watch the girl grab his leg in a very aggressive way and say look point at the slide and goes that's going to be us and he was terrified. I always wonder what happened to that kid. Um, one thing I will say is I I I think it's

121when it does work is when both people can um be in a relationship but also develop their sense of self. I think that's when it works. I worked with I'll never forget I learned so much from the people I worked with at the time. I had a lady that I worked with clinically and she she when I was doing therapy with her, she was 42 and her and her husband had gotten married at like right after high school and her entire life was supporting him like and and she came to me and she was like they got divorced because he had a relationship with another person and so on and so forth. And she came in therapy and she goes, "I need your help. I don't know who I am. I have no idea who

122I am." She goes, "I have I've never went toward a career. I've never um I don't I don't have any friends other than what I did with like I don't have any idea of who I am because all I've ever been is his wife and now I have no idea what who I am. And it was a really really difficult thing because her personality was so imshed with his his personality that I think a real healthy thing is to have that um uni it's a mutual support and respect but also some level of separation and support. So it's something to think about. Um, when will kids do some of the craziest stuff you'll ever see them do? It's after they break up. I've seen some of the craziest stuff kids will do after this. Um,

123and I always tell kids, this is my best advice. If you have a kid who's just broke up with someone, um, the worst thing you can say to them is, um, or the worst thing you can try to do is move past it. The one thing you want to do is acknowledge their feel. Don't say like, "What about that nice boy from church camp? Won't you call him?" They don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear it. You know, sometimes, you know what they want to hear? This sucks. And it's going to suck for a little while. And some days it's going to suck more than other days. If you think back to like even your own I don't know about you guys but like you ever have a breakup like when you're

124a teenager that just completely rocked your world and like you're driving down the road and like open arms comes over and you got comes on you got to pull the car over, right? You don't know what opens arms are. You probably like you're under 40 probably. Um, but you you just you couldn't imagine, you know, you you can't go forward because it was just this person. You probably prayed to God at night that I remember one time, this is embarrassing to say, but I'm grown man now, so it's okay. I remember one night I was like, gosh, I was probably 16 and me and my girlfriend had been dating for a long time, broke up and I remember thinking like I said, all right, I promise God I will be a good person for the

125rest of my life if we'll just get back together. And I'm like, can't make those kind of promises at 16. But like the only thing that you're thinking of is I just want to not be uncomfortable. Like this hurts so bad that you just want it to be over. So the best thing you can do with a kid is just kind of get in it with them. Just kind of say like this is going to suck. And maybe there be a day where it'll suck a little less and then if you need to talk about it, that's fine. But I always and I had a boy I'll never forget. I'm from a very rural community and I had this big kid. They brought the mom brought him in to me. They we we had a

126familiarity with the family or whatever and they bring and they said uh he didn't want to come to therapy but they told him that it was like a this guy that does therapy blah blah blah and uh we're worried they were worried about it and uh him and his girlfriend just broke up. And so they bring him in and this kid I mean he's bigger than me. He's like 6'4 270 big football star kid. He comes in. He's got the camo hat on and he's got the fishing hook thing on it. He's like, "Just big burly looking kid." And he sits down and he goes, "I don't want to be here." I said, "That's completely okay, buddy." And I said, "But you're here and uh one of the cool things about the place being with

127me is you can say things as long as you're not going to hurt yourself or somebody else. Everything's confidential in here. If you got anything on your head, sometimes people find that talking to me can be helpful and I might be able to help uh give you some insight." And he goes, he said, "But you come here if you're crazy." And I'm like, "Nope, not if you're crazy. Come here just to help work things out. And sometimes, you know, you can't talk things with your parents, whatever it might be." And he says, "Uh, all right." He looks at me, he goes, "If I tell you something, you got to promise you won't laugh." And I said, "Nope." He said, "What?" And I said, "I don't know what you're going to say, buddy. And I'm not

128going to lie to you because you might say something I think is funny, and I might laugh, and I'm I'm just not going to lie to you." And he goes, "Oh, well." He goes, "Well, I want to tell you something that happened." He goes, "Me and my girlfriend broke up the other day." I said, "That's what I heard." I said, "Uh" I said, "I heard been pretty rough on you." He says, "Yeah." He goes, "I think I'm going crazy." I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, this is like this time of year, right before deer season." And he goes, "Well, we were dating and like I never had a girlfriend. Like we dated for like six months and I've never dated anybody that long." And he goes, "I, you know, we I really

129like her a bunch." And he goes, "We were dating and she said we had to have a song." And he said, "Uh," he said, "I didn't really care if we had a song, but she said we had to have a song." You guys remember the Taylor Swift song? Our song. You know what I'm talking about? Okay. He was like, "So that was our song." And he goes, "I thought it was stupid." He goes, "But whatever. She wanted us to have a song, we'd have a song." And he goes, "I'm at Walmart the other day and and I'm standing in the hunt hunting section trying to get my stuff ready for deer season and that stupid song came on." And he goes, I started crying. I said, but he goes, "Look at me, man. I can't

130be crying in the hunting section at Walmart. What is wrong with me, man?" This kid's like a all state line. I mean, we're talking. And I said, "Dude, I'm gonna tell you right now." I said, "I know it make you uncomfortable, but I I would love to give you a hug. I'm not going to hug you. Don't worry." And I said, "It just it sucks. It sucks." And he said, "I'm going to break someone." And I'm like because she was had a new boyfriend. He goes, "I'm gonna I'm gonna break him." I'm like, "You can't break people, buddy. You just can't. We're not going to break people." But you validate that you feel that upset. I get where you're coming from. And I think, you know, I always tell kids like this idea that it's

131it's hard and all these elements that come into it. But this is one thing I have to teach kids especially. There's a fine line between I miss you and I'm hiding in the bushes in your front yard. Right. And I think what we have to do is help kids validate their feelings but monitor their behaviors because I've seen kids do some really not good stuff when they're because their emotions are high, right? And their their decision- making is low. So really help kids out in this situation. So I hope that's just something I want you to think about and help kids. Let's talk about technology. And this will probably take us to the end. Um the big thing about technology is two elements of technology that are critically important these days. One is experiential deprivation.

132The other one is content impact. So let's talk about experiential deprivation for just a minute. What are these kids not doing? What are they not doing? Talking. What else? Interacting. Teenagers would argue with you and say they are interacting. They could be. Well, here's the thing that's I think it's interesting. I even if they would argue with me, even if a teenager would say, "We are talking to each other. We're texting, snapping, whatever it is, we're actually interacting with each other." I would argue though, but they're not interacting with each other at the fullest social capacity. So, if we think of a full social experience is 100%, they're they're interacting at 40% of social capacity. So that's that could be the argument that would that I would make in that situation. And they're not really

133interacting except that one kid's kind of creeping on the girl's phone beside him. That's he's that guy, right? But one of the things that we're seeing here is it's it's when I talk about technology, I'm not necessarily in the beginning, we're not just talking about um what apps they're using. We're talking about what they're not doing while they're on their phones all the time or on technology all the time. similar thing about they're not going to social situations. So I can have kids who are socially emotionally delayed because of the experiences that they're not participating. Does that make sense? So all those things I said earlier, risk-taking, novelty seeeking, relationship building, all that stuff, they're not doing those things in adolescence when it's the time that they're supposed to be doing that stuff, which means

134they're behind when they go into adulthood because they haven't been fully experiencing socially the situations that they're supposed to be in. So this is that's number one. That's why we want kids out and doing things and interacting. That's why we got to help them find their people and their thing because when they're doing their doing their thing, they're participating more. I will say this, let me make this point real clear. I think this is important. A lot of this stuff has to do with what what expectations we place on kids and do we give give kids opportunities to interact and opportunities to be social. I found that kids actually when we create the I mean I've worked with a lot of schools um in Michigan, Virginia, all over um that schools that have created policies

135that restrict cell phone use or actually eliminate cell phone use. Um every school that I've worked with that have restricted or eliminated cell phone use have all reported positive outcomes when it comes to the increase in social engagement of students. I do some work up in um old Mount Pleasant up by CMU and their middle school got rid of cell phones. And what was interesting about that is they said it was amazing to them how the kids came alive in the hallways like kids were talking to each other. Um, in classrooms at the end when there was time like downtime, they actually had to tell kids to quiet down some because they were socializing with each other and and the relationships between the teachers and the kids improved because the kids were now more social

136and lunchtime became a social environment again and not just catching up on all my socials. And and I think when we create that space, I'm amazed by how kids will actually um now that doesn't mean they're always pumped about it. But what I found is they will adjust to it if we create the space for them to be social. So I don't think kids are necessarily a lost cause. I think we got to create circumstances for success and development. I think that's a real powerful thing. I'll I'll get ahead of myself just slightly and give you an example of one that is a little simple one we did at the family level is if we we decided if you're in the car and It's an under under 30 minutes. No AirPods. We're not going to

137have AirPods yet. We're going to do weird stuff like talk to each other. I remember I was picking up the boys from before JK's license. I was picking up the boys from practice and Jake gets in the car and his buddy gets in the car behind him, Ethan. And Ethan gets in and Jake knew the rule of under 30 minutes no AirPods. So Ethan sit behind Jake and Ethan goes these AirPods out. And I go, Ethan, uh, here's the thing. You're going to ride home with me. Here's the weird thing about it. We're gonna, we don't, no AirPods. We're going to talk on the way home. Just talk. Ask every day. That kind of stuff. Ethan's a great kid. Sounds good. Puts his AirPods away. Little while later, another kid goes right home with us.

138John. So, so I can't see John. He's behind me. Okay. So, we get in the car. Jake jumps in. Ethan hops in. John jumps in and I hear and I can't see John, but I hear Ethan go, "John, no. Hey, no AirPods on the way home. We're going to talk about our feelings." Now, what's crazy about this is the boys, I mean, I'm literally like they just got in the car and knew that's what we're going to do. And it was amazing how that's Now, were there days that more quiet than others? Sure, there were. Were there days where they weren't? But I wanted But when you create that space, it's amazing how they'll jump into it. All right, let's talk about different um social media platforms and the impact we're seeing from the neurological.

139If you haven't read the book um the anxious generation by Jonathan height, I encourage you to do so. Really powerful book. Really powerful book. Um I think there's two books that I would put together. Read Jonathan Height's book, The Anxious Generation. And if you want to go into a deep dive into the neurology of uh certain addictive behaviors, read Dopamine Nation by Anna Lindy. Lke uh Anna Lindy, she's a a psychiatrist out of um Stanford. So we're going to talk about each one of these. One thing I love to remind people, especially teenagers, is if you aren't paying for it, you're the product being sold. like to stir up adolescence resistance to that and tell them like you know why Snapchat's free is because they're selling you. You know why Tik Tok is free? It's

140because they're selling you. What is being sold with these apps are is our attention. They are selling our attention to marketing people. So we can't like that doesn't mean I you should delete it off from your phone and never use it. You should just be know you should know that that's what's happening that that that your your attention is what's being sold and that the systems that govern it have no conscience. The algorithm behind like Tik Tok for example, what its job is is to increase the duration and intensity of your interaction with with Tik Tok. So it wants you to use Tik Tok more and interact at it. When we talk about intensity, what's intensity? Intensity is liking, commenting, sharing. That's why on YouTube they'll say like, subscribe, and comment because there's monetary increase

141by the amount of interaction that that video gets. So there's a viewbased element and then on the other side there is the um the intensity based element. So as you watch the Tik Tok, as you watch Tik Tok, that video behind it, if you can imagine, has all these tags behind it. Is there a cat? Do people fall down? Um, all this stuff. And then what happens is that computer, the algorithm, the artificial intelligence is collecting as you watch it, the the tags of the video, how long you watch it, and with what intensity you interact with that video. And then it starts to distill. It's amazing how fast it can do this. Distill what kind of videos you're more likely to watch. And then it starts to feed you what you eat. And it's

142doing it at such a fast rate that you don't even realize it that it starts to move that way. So that's what that's what it does. So what happens is this element of dopamine starts to come in. When I talk about digital dopamine, dopamine is, of course, we talked about it earlier. Um, it's a neurotransmitter. It's involved in pleasure and movement. That's what it does. Um, you actually have a tonic level, like there's a baseline level of dopamine that most people have. Some people are have lower baseline dopamine, some people have higher baseline dopamine. There is some connection to that and depression and likelihood for addiction. um it has a biological element but that baseline can be reset because one thing we know is what goes up must come down. So when you have high

143levels of dopamine so if I do something like eat a cookie which gives me high levels of dopamine I will have a um a seesaw effect I should say like this it'll go up but then it goes down in a proportionate amount. That's why like after you get get done doing something really fun you kind of have that dip because what goes up must come down. So there's that seesaw effect that comes in. There's an example. Now, what's tricky though is if you do something like use a drug, the first time you use it, you might get a really high peak and then it troughs. And if you use it again, it'll go up, but it won't go as high as it did last time. And then it goes down and then it goes high,

144which is what we're call which is the development of tolerance, which then means my dopamine baseline can drop. I'll show you how that works with specific things. But here's the thing to remember. Substances or experiences with low effort and high dopamineergic or reward response can be highly addictive. So if it's easy to get but has a big reward, it's more likely to be addictive. It's like for example cocaine. I don't know how easy it is to purchase cocaine. I'm not a regular purchaser of cocaine. However, the use of cocaine is easy. If you use cocaine, you get a huge dopamineergic burst. So the effort is low, but the but the reward is high. Which means cocaine is highly addictive. But people don't get like addicted to doctoral degrees, right? Because they're hard to get. It

145takes a long time. So you don't get addicted to those things because the interval is too large. So think of things that are easy to get but hard. That's why food can be so rewarding is because it can be easy to get. It has a real dopamineergic response. So, it can be you can actually develop an addiction. Let's talk about Tik Tok first. Let me tell you what, Tik Tok is for real. Tik Tok is super wicked smart and super strong. I my I remember as a couple Christmases ago, Jake was like, "Hey, Dad, you got to check out Tik Tok." I'm like, "Well, it's mainly just like dances and stuff, right?" He's like, "No, no, no." He's like, "It'll feed you what you eat." So, I remember it's like beginning of uh of the

146holiday break, Christmas break was like December whatever, 15, 16, something like that. And uh so I download on my phone and start messing around with it. Next thing I know, it's like January 6th. I don't even know what anybody got for Christmas, right? Slightly joking, but but it's amazing. I found myself and this is something when I know I I don't want I don't need this thing in in my life on at all typically or or not much at all is I'll say when I'm doing it and as I'm doing it I'm asking myself why am I doing this because I've worked with enough people that with addiction to know that's a common psychology of people that when you're when they're no someone will be buying the drug or using the drug and while they're

147buying it or using it asking themselves Why am I doing this? So when I found myself interacting with Tik Tok in that way and saying to myself, why am I doing this? I'm like, this is not something I want on my phone because it's smarter than me. I'm I'm perfectly comfortable admitting that. It is smart. It if I let my brain play with that thing, my brain will lose. I don't like where it puts me. I don't like what it creates in my psychology. And it's it's easy to shame people. It's easy to like shame people that develop addiction. It's easy to do that kind of stuff. But if you really think about it, um it it makes sense. Like have you ever been like you ever been like tired and hungry after a long

148day at work because you haven't eaten or anything? And as you're ordering food for McDonald's, you're like, "This is going to be terrible." And then you're like, "And give me a large chocolate shake." Right? You know better. you know, you're going to feel like crap, but you're like, you know what? I'm in it for the dopamine. Let's do this. Right? And I think that's one of the things that you start looking at. Imagine I used to work with uh when opioid we used to have opioid addiction is still a significant issue. It used to be a gigantic issue where I'm from, but um imagine though having withdrawal symptoms and knowing exactly what you can do to get rid of them. Imagine being sick as you've ever been, gastro distress, headache, all that kind of stuff.

149And you know that if you just get 30 milligrams of this thing, you will feel completely fine and and how overwhelming that must be. Um, so I call it dumb scrolling. A lot of people call it doom scrolling. I call it dumb scrolling because no one ever scrolling on TikTok has ever looked brilliant and intellectual. Um, but the the slow manipulation of thought, you know, it is what we see kind of thing. Pornography. People don't like talking about pornography because it makes them uncomfortable, but it is wrecking the neurology of adolescent males. Do females use visual based pornography? Yes. I'm not saying that females don't use it. What I'm saying is it disproportionately affects males. We can still have statistics. When I be like, well, but no, there are differences in the fact of how

150an adolescent male is more likely to use image based pornography. Females are more likely to use what we call literary based pornography. I always tell people, don't follow the social debate, follow the money. Who bought Shades of Gray? Was it who who the primary person that brought Shades of Gray were middle-aged women wasn't big country guys walking out of Walmart with their shades of gray. I can't wait to read this one. This is going to be great. Right? I don't want to see pictures. I want to make them in my mind. Right. That's that's not how it worked. Right. That's true. That's You're laughing because it's true. Uh here's here's the thing. And I have had females who were addicted to pornography. Um but more likely it's been males. And so it's disproportionately affects males.

151This is why it's so addictive. Significant dopanergic response. Easily assessed. It's the cocaine effect, right? And now if you think about now versus times before, right? Um it used to be access to pornography was much more complicated because there was one computer in one central location in the house and now everybody's computers in their pocket and the protections are they have clicked they're 18 years old in their in a 10 12 year old can do that. So what we're seeing is this high potential for addiction. This is the part we'll get a little scientific here for just a minute, but I want you to hang with me on this. What also starts to affect their motivational systems is as a as a young person uses pornography, they'll have a dopamine isn't just about reward, it's

152about pursuit of a reward. So, as you pursue a reward, it you get dopamine along the way. So as a person is uh in using pornography for the sake of climax when they use it their dopamine starts rising and rising and rising and then at the point of climax it peaks okay and then but what comes up must come down. So then it comes down and then does what we call troughing which think about a trough it dips really low. But a second element that is especially negative about the use of pornography is human beings as an experience of mating, right? Is they're supposed to have sex and then bond with the person they mated with because that's really the purpose of mating was to procreate and bond and raise a kid. Like that if

153you look at the very basic chemistry of it or the evolutionary principle of it. So at the point of climax the body and and the male releases prolactin. Everybody knows about prolactin things. So prolactin actually will blunt testosterone and actually cause a calming and and to facilitate pair bonding. So I want to blunt testosterone because I don't want, you know, I don't want all the things that come with testosterone at that point. I want this male to now settle and connect. Now here's the problem. If this is a 15-year-old kid and he's just used visual based or video based pornography and he's had this doperic climb and now prolactin's kicking in. So now not only is he troughing but his brain is trying to connect and there's no one to connect with. So now I'm

154extra lonely and I feel like crap. So if you study that post response after climax in an adolescent, what starts to happen is they feel like a pile of crap afterwards. Now, we also know that remember peak and it goes down, peaks and it goes down. So, now the problem I'm running into is I'm now developing tolerance for pornography. So, that's where this starts to come in because I've developed tolerance. What used to work doesn't work anymore. A six-pack's a case. A case is, you know, liquor. And a liquor is now I've got a whole handle of vodka in order to just do anything. So, what we're seeing is Adolescence who are using pornography at an earlier point in life, by the time they're probably 15, 16, 17 years old, they are so habituated or

155have such a tolerance to pornography, they're getting into very extreme versions of pornography by the time that they're early adolescence or late adolescence. And so we start looking at these things where um the the the fastest growing types of pornography are very extreme versions. Aggressionbased pornography, multiple partner pornography, incestbased pornography. Now, that one's a little bit tricky because incestbased pornography is the big rise they see as in like stepparent pornography and taboo based pornography that's about relationships that shouldn't happen but they somehow happen or whatever it might be. So we're seeing because what's happening is what you know intimate partner uh sexual interactions might have worked in the beginning but now they're habituated to it or tolerant to it. So now it doesn't even work anymore. It's not enough. And now they're also starting to

156find where actual real life sexual encounters are not causing them to have any arousal in that situation because it's not enough because their brain's not calibrated for it. And I've wor talked with young ladies who have also said like they've got they're they're having these early sexual experiences and the guys been watching this these these distorted senses of sexual encounters. Unless you've seen one of these videos lately. Don't raise your hand if you have. But they're usually not very realistic and long and drawn out. It's like, "Hey, I hear your TV's broken." And there they go. Right? And when you think about what a real a real appropriate sexual uh uh relationship starts with is it's connection and then um boundary formation and con and refusal and uh all this kind of this dance that

157occurs which is where you learn to respect the other person. You learn to respect the other person's boundaries so on and so forth. It's not I'm here to fix the pipe or whatever kind of thing. And what happens also too is now you've got young ladies feeling this pressure to participate in more extreme sexual behaviors because that's what the guys used to watching. And it goes both ways. It's not just guys, but but you can see where that would come into play. And if you look at if you follow the money, which is always important, follow the money. One of the big groups that uh these companies are starting to target with um you know, Viagra type products are males in their early 20s. It used to be like the old man playing golf commercial,

158right? Remember that? Like the old man playing golf. But now it's they're targeting because they're having early onset erectile dysfunction with adolescent or early teens, early 20s. I mean, it's craziness. Think about it. And why we don't talk about it is because it makes us uncomfortable, but we need to be talking about that. Snapchat. Uh, one thing we know about Snapchat is, uh, Snapchat streaks can actually increase excessive compulsive tendencies. You guys are aware of streaks, right? You know what streaks are, right? Um, kids can get really, really fired up about streaks. Streaks become social currency. It's like my streak with this person is evidence of of our relationship. I've had kids who will hire other kids to keep their streaks when they lose their phone and they will hire other kids and give them

159their loginins in order to keep their streaks going. I've had kids whose parents would keep their streaks going while they're off at camp. Um, I had a girl, uh, this was a while back, I had a parent call me. Her daughter had charged 400 and almost, I think it's like $490 some dollars on their credit card because Snapchat created this thing where you could buy your streaks back and this girl spent almost $500 on her stole her mom's credit card in order to keep her streaks. Like unbelievable. But it creates obsessive compulsive tendencies. I'm obsessing about my streak. My compulsion is to And the one thing that also is tricky about streaks is they're about quantity, not quality. Um, they're taking pictures of the ceiling or taking pictures of the side of their head, whatever.

160It's not really a connection thing. It's just it's a quantity thing. It's numbers. It's not really that it's that big of a thing with you and I. It's just the fact that we've got this thing going. Um, they find that, this is from Heights work, they find that um, image-based uh, social media disproportionately affects females. um perfect environment for relational bullying, relational aggression. Um adolescent males are more likely to be physically aggressive. Adolescent females are more likely to be relationally aggressive. That's where we get the term mean girls from. Um so that is what you're looking at is uh I mentioned the young lady earlier about they freeze they freeze them each other out or they say like don't like her stuff or unfriend her or whatever it might be is a way that relational

161aggression. Males will do this as well. It's not just females but majority. There's also the FOMO element of it, fear of missing out, which is in the past you might not have known if you're cool, but now if you have evidence of all the things you're not doing, you get to see all the stuff you're not invited to, which kind of deepens that cut and creates that. The unrealistic beauty standards always cracks me up. I'm 45 years old. This is not just a kid thing. And it always cracks me up when people my age post pictures of them and their child and their face is as smooth as their child's face who's 15 and I always think like who are you fooling like we are not 15 right I think there's this but what it's

162a social pressure it's a social pressure of uh the highlight reel of your life is your is your pictures that you post um here's one of the things I think is really interesting is a distorted sense of social value I had a young lady I knew great girl person um she's in college now but she she said to me one time she goes all right behaving boy, come answer this question for me. She was in high school and she said, um, I she she was a debate person. She did debate. She goes, I posted a picture of myself with my debate award on SN or Instagram. This is a few years back on Instagram. She goes, I got 75 likes on my post. A girl in my grade posted a picture of herself in a

163yellow bikini in the snow and she got like 390 likes. What am I supposed to do with that? I said, "Wow, that's a good question." Because it is a good question because that's the reality that she's living in. And I said, "I guess my answer to that would be, how much of your value and identity do you place on the difference between 75 and 390? And who is the 75 and who is a 390?" And I said, and I'm not saying that's an easy question to answer, but I'm saying that's the only logical way I think you can get through this kind of thing with a with a intact sense of self. And she's a real bright girl. She had already answered the question. herself before she asked me. She was had a good support

164network. She's unbelievably brilliant person, but she had already answered that. But I worry about kids that don't have people around them to help them answer those kinds of questions. And you know what? I think it's not about demonizing the girl that took the picture of herself in a snug. I worry about her. I worry about what element of her psychology leads her to believe that that is the way that she needs to create social value for herself because because I think that's um she needs support and she needs conversations. Um because I don't I don't know if that's I don't want to shame her but at the same time I want her to feel like she's making decisions that are for her. And the real challenging thing here is um every time you post your

165valuation is is up for debate. So that's stuff to think about. Here's an interesting but terrifying uh statistic. This is um if you look at this, this is nonfatal hospitalizations for self harm. These are boys. You can look at the the trend lines pretty even from 2001 to 2015. Introduction of the iPhone would have been with the forward facing camera would have been around here. Here's females. This hype brings this up, but the highest rise, the group that had the highest rise in non-fatal self harm hospitalizations is 10 to 14 year old girls. They had 189% increase in non fatal self harm hospitalizations. This is my theory and there's some good stuff that would support where this theory might come from is I think we have younger and younger girls being exposed to stuff intellectually

166that they developmentally can't handle. They're seeing stuff at a younger age and it's just more. It's a 10 pound idea and a five pound brain. I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean it in like a developmental way. They're seeing 10 pound standards of beauty and all that and they've got a five pound brain and they're just not ready for it and it's overloading them and they just can't. Huh. Yeah. I think it's even worse. I haven't seen the JAMAMA the newest JAMAMA research and what they've released but I'm I'm sure it's wor. And one of the things we start to see now what's interesting is 20 to 24 year olds are pretty stable because um they've already kind of sense the self. But I worry about the generations that have been exposed

167to this since they were in elementary school. Like what do those 10 to 14 year olds look like now? You know, what does that what does that consider look like? So, you have to it's at least a dramatic thing to consider. Um I'll mention AI real quick. I can talk about AI for hours. I don't want to talk about it for hours. What I will say is um we just need to start thinking about um how AI changes the way we think. I'm not saying AI is the devil. I'm just saying AI is changing will change the way we think and interact with each other and the way we solve problems. I think being aware of that is important. I think considering what that comes into one thing that I'm seeing that really worries me

168at the college level that I'm I think we're going to see more of is artificial companionship which is where they uh kids who are struggling to build meaningful relationships with real people will develop artificial chat bots that they develop romantic relationships with a chatbot. And this isn't like a this isn't like a may may happen. This is a is happening thing. We have more and more young people who are developing an intimate relationship with artificial intelligence because it's the way that they feel comfortable interacting. It's like you ever seen the movie Her? You ever seen the movie Her? Watch that movie. It'll scare the hell out of because we have I have I know I have a kid right now that I know in his early 20s at the university who will tell you his

169girlfriend is of a persona he created in chat GBT and he'll tell you that's who it is that that that he doesn't believe in human investment because humans don't understand him enough that he you that that his AI understands him better than any human could that's pretty scary idea so I don't know maybe you know and also the danger and the inaccuracy of information I think also if you're getting kids ready to go into the work world is think about how that goes video games really trick is just it's a time feat and it can create an avatar that kids um will disinvest from reality and invest more heavily in their uh video game self especially for male males are more likely to go into the YouTube video game side of it as well. But

170what the video games do is give them a sense of accomplishment within the avatar of the video games. So it's things to think about. All right. So, we'll show you the thing. There's uh the QR codes are up here if you want to see those. I want to I'll I'll there's that if people need to see that as well. Um you know, if I had to tell you the my takeaway point for this is to stay curious. Um the whole Ted Lasso thing, be curious, not judgmental. I think with adolescence and the environment that kids are living in these days, one of the best ways I know to build a relationship with kids is to let them Matthew McConn said this the other day. I really liked it. He said, uh, don't ask kids, "How

171are you?" Ask kids, "What's it like being a teenager these days?" And you'll be amazed by how much more willing they are to talk to you when you say, "What is it like being a teenager these days?" versus the intensity of, "How are you?" Um, and I think being curious about what kids need these days, like I mentioned in the keynote, um, and helping kids navigate this really complicated world that none of us really know what we're getting into with the emergence of AI, Tik Tok, all that kind of stuff. I think it's things to think about. Um, if you like, if you want a handout or anything like that, you can um, email me there or you can go QR code, you contact me there and I'm happy to help anyway and I'm here

172the rest of the day if you need. All right, take care. Go to lunch.