The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:31:09 · Scott Galloway
[00:31:09] S2: I saw this.
00:31:10 · Anna Lembke
[00:31:10] S3: Yeah. So they did two things. They... Number one, they made a curfew. So at a certain point in that night, you know, kids couldn't... Late at night, young young kids couldn't go out. And number two, they built a whole bunch of gymnasiums and sports centers and organized sports teams, and they saw a really significant decrease in the number of kids both using and getting addicted to drugs and alcohol. Now this was many years ago, but, again, an embodied physical option where kids can get their dopamine, you know, and get that pleasure, but they pay for it up front by by moving their bodies and doing hard things, which is how we evolved. Right? We evolved to do a whole lot of work, to get a little bit of reward, not to do no work at all, to get a lot of reward, which is the world that we live in now. And, again, this whole embodied idea with, you know, also learning a craft, right, or learning a profession, We have all these industrial jobs that nobody fills. Like, it's not that the jobs are not out there. It's that young people do not have the basic skills to to weld, to to be an electrician, to be a plumber, to, like, use their hands and do real things. And I think a lot of people would enjoy that work and find it highly satisfying and a wonderful antidote to this virtual world. The other thing that's happened in the world that I think we've massively under underappreciated is the extent to which the digital media has proliferated bureaucracy that rolls downhill. So now it's like the consumer that needs to do all of these things that the bank used to do, but now we have to do, or for taxes, or for signing your kid up for anything at school. It's like this massive bureaucracy, and, like, we don't learn any... Kids don't learn anything in school about how to, like, navigate, how to pay your taxes, how to make sure you have car insurance, how to make sure you have health insurance, and navigate the insanity of the health care system. I mean, all of those... I mean, I I frankly barely have those skills. But those are the types of skills that that young people really need in order to navigate the modern environment. And, you know, especially kids who, like, tend toward ADHD or, you know, or impulsivity, Like these kids are gonna need really a lot of extra help with all of these layers of bureaucracy.
00:33:34 · Scott Galloway
[00:33:34] S2: I wanna give you the profile, and this sort of bleeds into what you talk about in your book Surrender. So a young man, early 20s, and I mean, this is the profile of the kid or the young man that I deal with. When I mentor a young man, I generally end up with a kid, and this is the profile, good kid, did okay in high school, not great, did okay. Parents put a lot of pressure on him to go to college. He goes to college, doesn't work out. And there's this shame that comes over the And it's a shame that is so ridiculous because two thirds of our kids aren't going to end up with a traditional BA. But we've decided in America, something's wrong. You have failed as a family and as a kid, And you know, the kid starts at a school and then everyone goes quiet and doesn't talk about it, but it's clear. And he moves home. He's in the basement or in the garage or spare bedroom. Has sort of a job, has sort of a thing. You know, gets maybe, you know, decent. Not, you know, he's not a bad kid. He gets a job, maybe takes a couple classes at community college thinking he's gonna go back to wherever next year. But it's clear college just probably isn't in the cards for him. And it's one, two years go by. And when I talk to these kids, what I see is not like full blown addiction, but mild addiction to video games, to online gambling, to Reddit and Discord, and never go outside. Right. Start to believe their parents are their enemy, you know, not their allies. And I can just start to see this kid, if this happens, if this goes on for another three or five years, and I hate to say this, I feel like they're unsavable. That if they don't get to a point as young men where they develop that muscle around life and leaving the house and negotiating friendships, and I I I... These kids, these young men, they are everywhere. And the parents don't know what to do. They don't know if they're enabling them, their natural inclination is to be patient and give them support. But the line between support and enablement is just such a weird it's not even a thin line. It's a giant line that's incredibly hazy that's
00:36:10 · Anna Lembke, Scott Galloway
[00:36:10] S3: hard to discern. Right? Yes. [00:36:12] S2: So how would you coach a coach or someone who wants to be a coach of young men? This is the profile I see everywhere. They're not meth addicts. They're not bad people. They're just... They're slowly but surely going invisible. Mhmm. Your thoughts.
00:36:34 · Anna Lembke
[00:36:34] S3: We see this all the time. This is our bread and butter in the clinic. You are absolutely right. This is a pandemic. And what I recommend or prescribe is number one, living in reality. Getting off of the digital devices and the Internet, leaving the house, going outside, interacting with the real world and the real people in it, and explicitly trying to mess up. So not like trying to, like, do the wrong thing, having a good intention, but welcoming mess ups, welcoming... Really a kind of a graded exposure therapy so that this young person can begin... Just at number one, can live in reality. So, you know, like, embrace uncertainty, go out there, and engage with the world. Because what has happened is that more and more young people, because they're spending so much time in this virtual space, which is essentially our brains turned inside out, so they're spending time in the equivalent of their own heads, is that they start to feel unreal in the world. They describe depersonalization that I'm not real, derealization that the world isn't real. They will endorse things like we're living in a simulation. And I know there are a lot of really smart scientists out there who speculate we might really be living in a simulation. I don't care. That's not an effective model for a good doesn't life. Help. Right? We need to feel tethered in the world. In order to feel tethered in the world, we need to get off of our devices, go out in the world, interact with other people, with nature, with things in the world to feel connected. And we need to do that knowing that we will be terrified that there's a lot of uncertainty there. Try to do something, you know, a hobby you've never done before that you're probably not gonna be good at. You know, don't be the constant optimizer. And and many of these folks have, like, opted out of optimizing. Right? They're sort of... They're they're not... They're they're, like, not even career maxing or relationship maxing. They're, like, scroll maxing or what have you. So it's getting them out, reengaging in the world very often, getting them to go to some kind of school where they can have an embodied experience, use their hands, use tools, build real things in the real world. So that's that's number one.
00:39:02 · Anna Lembke
Embrace uncertainty, get out into reality, and reconceptualize the digital space as an addictive drug that is disconnecting them from themselves, other people in the world. Number two, when it comes to parenting, and this is really key, we of course love our children and we want to help them, and when they're in distress, there's really nothing more distressing as a parent. And yet if you are dealing with an adult child living at home who is not launching, two things need to happen. Number one, you need to manage and get comfortable with your own anxiety and let your kid have their own experience. And this is this is Radical Surrender. Right? Like, you need to let your kid have their own life and not constantly tie your well-being to them being okay. So this is letting go. Right? Really radically surrounding said, you know, I've done what I can do. My child is an adult. My child needs to have their own life and make their own choices and deal with the consequences. And this, trust me, as a parent myself, I I can tell you, especially if you have a vulnerable child, super hard. Now this doesn't necessarily mean kicking your kid out of the house, but it does mean making a behavioral contract with your child that you have certain expectations, that it's not okay for them to sleep all day, stay up all night, be online, contribute not at all to the household, earn no money, not go to school, because that's what's happening. You sit down with your kid and say, well, we know we've been doing x, and that has have... That has to change. And maybe that has to start with you going to a rehab where you're not on your device for a month and then coming back, but we need to reset things. And then when you come back, or maybe just starting now, like, you cannot be on your device all night. We're gonna shut down the Wi Fi or whatever it takes. We're gonna take the devices away. You need to go out and look for a job, or you need to go to school. You need to participate in the household chores. Here is the list of things that you need to get done. So I mean... And and many of these kids are otherwise not mentally ill. Now if you're dealing with a kid who's severely mentally ill, depressed, what... I mean, maybe maybe it's a whole different level. Obviously, you're seeking out professional help. And by the way, again, a lot of time online makes kids depressed.