Hillary Wilkinson: (00:00)

Once a 12-hour-a-day gamer, my guest today knows firsthand how easy it is to get lost in technology. As a dad of two, he now helps youth and adults reclaim focus and build healthier digital habits. We're gonna learn how he combines powerful storytelling and teaching developed with certified addiction specialists, doctors and marriage and family therapists, as well as uses compelling data and an action plan designed to change people's approach to technology. We have many, many parents who come to us with concerns about video game overuse, and I cannot wait to learn more from someone who has lived it. Welcome to Healthy Screen Habits, Ian McCrady.

Ian McCready: (01:19)

Thank you, Hilary. Glad to be here.

Hillary Wilkinson: (01:22)

Excellent. So, Ian, how did you get to the place you are now? Like, what, what's your story of origin? What started you with gaming?

Ian McCready: (01:32)

Well, I'd have to take you back to the first video game console that I got. It was, uh, a Sony PlayStation. I remember it very clearly in the Christmas of 1999 and the same year for Christmas. My best friend down the street, Owen, got a Nintendo 64. Oh. So between the two of us, we had the, the best you could have, I have so many fond memories of playing video games growing up, and I want all of your listeners and parents to know that, because it's, I, I'm not here to say that we should never let our kids ever play video games because they're the most dangerous thing ever. We need healthy screen habits around them. So, as I continued on into middle school and high school, and even into college, if you would've asked me, Ian, what is your dream job?

Ian McCready: (02:28)

What do you want to do? I would've told you I wanna make video games. And specifically I wanted to make video games and work for a company called Blizzard Entertainment down in Irvine, California, close to where I grew up, where they made our, basically my favorite games. They made some of the top games. And for those who aren't familiar with it, it's essentially one of the largest video gaming companies in the world. They got acquired by Microsoft only a few years ago. Uh, they own the Candy Crush series. They own the Call of Duty series. They own a lot of the top games that you would've heard of, but they also made a game called World of Warcraft.

Hillary Wilkinson: (03:05)

And so, just for some background, all of those games that you have listed tend to be top on the list of dopamine producers, , which Yeah. Which, which

Ian McCready: (03:19)

We'll call them engaging, some people might call them addictive, uh, but they are, um, yes, they're employing all the, the tricks in the toolbox to essentially keep people on them and continue to play them. And it worked. And I feel like my, my generation was in kind of the Guinea pig phase mm-hmm . Of what a lot of modern video game tactics employ today. Um, they used to call World of Warcraft, world of war crack mm-hmm . Um, as a kind of crude analogy to the, the drug, uh, based on just how many people it hooked out of the number of people who played it. Like you had a lot higher chance getting hooked to that game than you did playing some of the other games that most kids were playing at the time. And I started playing it freshman year, and I feel like I had a pretty healthy, uh, approach to games in high school.

Ian McCready: (04:14)

My parents didn't have a ton of rules for me. Once I, when I continued to do well in school, I got good grades and I didn't get in trouble. And so those were the two markers that I think most of us as parents are like, Hey, do I need to intervene? Well, they're not getting in trouble at school and they're getting good grades, I guess I don't need to intervene. Uh, so I wasn't, you know, I wasn't getting in trouble. I wasn't doing anything they didn't want me to do. My older brother and sister did that for me. They got in trouble, and I learned from it, and I was like, all right. I followed the rules. Um, but I didn't really build any self-control around video games for myself. And when I went off to college, I got completely hooked into World of Warcraft, and I was playing 12 to 14 hours a day, like you mentioned in the intro.

Ian McCready: (04:58)

And fortunately in that experience, I was able to get out of that. Like, I recognized how dangerous it was, and family and friends did intervene. I still remember conversations with my sister and my mom saying like, Hey, you're playing that game a lot. Are you okay? I'm like, I, I'm fine. And then I would go home and Google video game addiction because I'm like, am I fine? Is this okay? Um, and I was turning down, hanging out with my friends on a Friday night. And fortunately I quit that game, but it took me kind of missing out on a big item that I was supposed to get and wanted. And it just, it took actually a pretty negative impact for me to actually walk away from it. Mm-hmm . And recognize how much of my time I had spent. Now in retrospect, wasting mm-hmm . And I would argue for a long time, video games were not a waste of time.

Ian McCready: (05:48)

I enjoyed them. I had fun. And as your kids play video games, they're not gonna view it as a waste of time. They are enjoying them, they're having fun. And kids need to realize and get to a point where they themselves understand what opportunity cost means, like what, what they could be doing instead. Because at a certain point, and I have known the guys in their late twenties, early thirties who hit depression at that stage of life because their friends are getting married, their friends are buying houses, they progressed in their careers, they've done things and invested in themselves and maybe played video games in a more balanced, healthy way. Or, or maybe they've kind of stopped playing them all together, but they're still playing and they're, they haven't cashed in on essentially some of the things that they've done. Yeah. I quit World of Warcraft.

Ian McCready: (06:36)

I still continued gaming. It caused problems for me in my career, in my marriage, and finally in my parenting, when my daughter was born and I, uh, went to a retreat and speaker was talking about priorities, and I was like, I don't have any problem with priorities. Um, everyone usually says the same things, right? They say like, family or faith, if they have faith at the top, like family, friends, work, fitness, then way down here like everything else, right? Mm-hmm . Scrolling, watching YouTube, Netflix playing video games. And I recognized that as fun as video games were for me, I wanted to play them all the time. And that wasn't, I recognized that that was not healthy. Like, if I want to play video games instead of hanging out with my wife who I love, uh, what is that doing to my brain? Like, why is that the case?

Ian McCready: (07:28)

Because I know it's only a matter of time before I regret that, right? Because I know it, like, in the short term, I want that, but I know in the long term, that's not what I want. That's not what I as a human want. And I think that's so much of the trade off we make for video games and screen timing in general, is the short term enjoyment, the dopamine that we get from it at the expense of the long term. Mm-hmm. And so I made a decision there. I'm gonna quit all video games. And so self-control was born outta that. So that's how we got started. Hillary. It's, uh, it was me walking away from something, a problem in my own life and recognizing everybody needs help

Hillary Wilkinson: (09:39)

With this. Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, the, the thing about your story that sticks out to me is that you have a wife. I mean, many of the young men who we talk to have, have, um, really virtually isolated themselves. Yes. And we know, we know about the loneliness epidemic. I mean, former surgeon general, Dr. Murphy, you know, wrote a whole paper on it. We know the social anxiety that so many kids and young adults are experiencing. And many parents will come to us and tell us that the only place that they see their child experiencing happiness Yeah. Is online or that I can't pull him off of the games. And I'm, I'm using a gendered pronoun because it, it does typically, um, trend towards boys struggling with video games. Girls, uh, typically struggle with social media, but they, they tell us we can't pull him offline because that's where his friends are.

Hillary Wilkinson: (10:48)

And I've also talked to young adults who truly value their friend groups, and they have very real relationships that have been made via, or i, I don't know whether I, it's so, it feels weird to say relationships, but they have very real support groups made via online gaming. Yeah. And so I'm just, you know, I feel like I'm, you know, I'm the healthy screen habits lady. I'm definitely in your camp, but I wanna give voice to you. What advice do you have? I'm trying to learn from you mm-hmm . For parents who are fearing for, you know, ripping that, that connection away from their kid or, or even their mental health if they pull 'em offline.

Ian McCready: (11:33)

Yeah. Uh, it's not easy. I'm gonna lead with that, and I can't give a blanket statement that is gonna work for all situations. So I'm just gonna caveat with that upfront. I think an analogy to any other problem is the best way to try to understand it. Because if your child was getting extremely obsessed over a specific topic, right? And it, it's a little hard to understand with sports, but people do get obsessed with sports and they say like, Hey, this is me. I am going to go professional in this sport.

Ian McCready: (13:34)

And it's all they think about, all they focus on. Now, we generally are like, great, there's a career in that. You're getting exercise, you have community there. Um, but we also know the problem that comes from people who put their identity in something like that. And they put all their eggs in one basket, for lack of a better term.  With video games, I do see the risks outweigh the benefits of letting them go, essentially doing what you think is right and in their best interest in the long term for what you know, and just your gut feeling as a parent isn't working. And so I would recommend essentially making sure you don't ignore the warning signs and the risk that comes with, we, we look at, there's a two to 3% addiction risk, and some studies show it's up to seven to 8% for adolescents of getting addicted to video games.

Ian McCready: (14:50)

You can't ignore that as a risk in your child's life. And kids do need some adversity in their life, and they do need to build the social skills that come from in-person real life interactions. And adolescence is the time to do that. It's the hardest time to do that, it feels like. But it needs to happen then, because the habit pathways that form in the brain during adolescence, they don't cement, but they harden into plastic Yeah. At that point of their life. And it will be more difficult for them if they ignore everybody else and are only playing video games during the adolescent years for them to make positive, real and in-person relationships during their twenties. And I'm working with the kids in their twenties who unfortunately had the bad set of cards to, is be isolated during the pandemic. Now they're in their twenties and they are struggling, so mm-hmm . It's not easy. And I'm not saying you need to pull 'em back completely, but you don't need to give them full range and give into whatever they think is appropriate that is healthy for them, or what their friends have access to when it comes to how much video game time they get. They need to learn what healthy boundaries look like.

Hillary Wilkinson: (16:02)

Okay. When we come back, we're gonna talk about some of those steps that Ian recommends taking to change habits around gaming. 

—-----------

Ad Break : Self-Ctrl information

—---------------

I'm speaking with Ian McCready, the founder of Self-Control, a nonprofit helping people redeem time from technology for doing good instead, and Ian, I know you have a series of steps towards attaining self-control, which honestly kind of flies in the face of what we've heard from so many social scientists that say, due to persuasive design, the lack of prefrontal cortex development that, you know, doesn't gonna, isn't gonna mature until their mid twenties, addictive features they like. I mean, they're, the argument is, is that relying upon self-control is asking the impossible. And this is part of the reason why I wanted to talk to you, because I, I also recognize that we cannot wait until our kids are in their mid twenties when that prefrontal cortex matures to start teaching these healthy screen habits. I wonder if you could share with us what things or strategies do you recommend families employ to help create balance in self-control around gaming, hopefully without sparking major conflict, because that's what we're balancing, right? It's very tricky mm-hmm . 

Ian McCready: (17:54)

Yeah. Uh, not easy again, because it is, I think, flying in the face, not just of what, um, to your point, the neuroscience of when we're really able to make good decisions on our own. But the alternative is completely isolate. And you can't completely isolate your child once they turn 18. Um, I mean, I, I've talked to parents who did that, and the kids went metaphorically off the deep end with screen time or video games, um, when they got their, essentially their own independence or freedom. And whether that happens at 18 or 21, uh, or whatever it is, while they are in those adolescent years, like we talked about, of building those pathways in the brain, just because their prefrontal cortex is not fully developed, it is still the majority of the way developed. Most of that growth in the brain happened in zero to five.

Ian McCready: (18:45)

It is. And the essentially puberty period of 13 to 18 is a super important period. Uh, but that doesn't mean they can't learn anything. And some of the most meaningful conversations with my parents, some of the most meaningful things that were just cemented into yet, this is how this works and is in my best interest. I remember were from those time periods. Mm-hmm . So as difficult as that time period can be, it's also I think, one of the most important things for us to do as parents to make sure that's when we're really in the game. But what we share with people is essentially, uh, the first step is, you gotta understand how we get addicted to these things, because I got one right next to me. Like I, I usually always know where it is. And, uh, even though I try to keep my own screen time down to under 90 minutes per day, uh, I still, it is still an in, in integral part of my life.

Ian McCready: (19:41)

Like, can't, can't deny that. So I have to build the self-control for myself. And I talk to most times when I talk to parents, these seven steps are for you to apply. And if you think they work, then teach it to your kid, then, then model it for your kid. So we do have to understand how we get addicted. And, and dopamine is behind essentially substances like alcohol or drugs. It's the same thing that drives, uh, addicts to those substances. And to seek them out, even though they're not good for them in the medium to long term or even short term, they are gonna do it anyway because their brain gets such a spike from the enjoyment and, and what it does to their body that their brain says, give me more of that. And the brain is essentially pushing a child when they come home from school or they wake up on a summer day, their brain's gonna say like, what are we gonna do today?

Ian McCready: (20:32)

Let's have fun. And dopamine is gonna release  and it's gonna motivate the child's behavior towards those activities. It's Hartford, uh, Harvard, Stanford research, neuroscience, like this has been proven time and time again that dopamine drives our behavior. So the first thing, the second step we gotta do as parents is apply that to ourselves. Identify where, and the, I mean, the most common thing I hear from kids is, my mom's worse than I am. My dad's worse than I am you need to make the same decisions about how to be healthy with your own device and your own screens and teach those to your kids. Like this is your chance to do that and set a trajectory for the rest of their lives about how they view what healthy screen time looks like.

Ian McCready: (22:06)

And then as a parent, you need to create an environment for success that is in alignment with those principles. So that does mean you do need some rules, especially when the kids are under the age of 12. Um, they need rules. They need to understand the boundaries. They're gonna push those boundaries. They're gonna push on screen time 'cause they're getting that dopamine that makes them want it. Um, setting up those rules. And then what, what we share is kinda depending on the maturity of your kid, age 13 to 18 is increasing levels of responsibility. And this is a concept taken from Jonathan Haidts book, the Anxious Generation. But it's kind of this idea of like a ladder, like as the kid learns more is responsible with one thing, you give 'em some more responsibility. If they're responsible with the rules that you put on their, their phone, you give them more responsibility and see if they're self-controlled with that.

Ian McCready: (22:53)

If they push the boundaries, you put, uh, essentially penalties in place. And if they want to continue to learn, they will. Now, some people are continually disappointed in their kids' ability to do that. And that's where I do think you need to continue to emphasize the why of why you're doing this, why you have these boundaries in place. And that does start with educating your own child on how screens can be addictive and what the dangers are, just like you would with alcohol or any other topic that is dangerous and you recognize can be dangerous for them. So with that, after, when you're creating an environment for success, you gotta have visibility. So you do need to make sure you have access to your router. And I know, um, you all hear it at the healthy screen time habits that you guys do. I, I also endorse, uh, bark and Gab and some other products that I have been proven to be designed for parents and help parents gain visibility. But that visibility is just so you can see when your kids are behaving and when they aren't and expect them to fail. Expect with how difficult and how addicting and how much of their culture and their peers and their friends are pushing them to spend more and more time online. They are going to fail and not be ready to blow up on 'em when they do, but be ready to have those crucial, meaningful, impactful conversations with them when they do.

Hillary Wilkinson: (24:22)

And it's, it's similar to when your child is learning to walk. You don't expect a crawler to stand up on two feet and start running hurdles, you know? And so it's, it's very analogous that teen time and toddler time are very analogous, both in the ways that the brain is super plastic, super lots of neurons firing, wiring, all of this stuff and the development that's occurring. So I I I really embrace what you're saying about that. Recognize that, you know, what we're, what we're calling failure is actually just a stumbling block forward. Absolutely. It's all forward movement, but we don't, we just need to recognize and not, um, have so much of our own ego invested in when kids do stumble that we're taking it personally. Right? Yeah. And we just go, oh, yep. So this happened. Well, what's the next co next course of action?

Ian McCready: (25:27)

Yeah. And just to encourage all your listeners in that, I have talked to a lot of extremely engaged parents, and I don't remember one off the top of my head who didn't have a story about, yeah, we had to change the rules when our kids did this. And like, it's every single one of them, every single kid pushed up against the boundaries at some point. Yeah.

Hillary Wilkinson: (25:50)

That's called growth .

Ian McCready: (25:52)

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Hillary Wilkinson: (25:54)

So, okay. So I, you had said there would be seven steps. I think I'm at five 'cause I've got, number one is dopamine awareness. Yes. I've got two is identifying problematic behaviors for yourself. I've been taking notes. See. Oh, thank you. Um, three, creating the environment for success. Four, increasing levels of responsibility through like chores and work. Mm-hmm . Five, educating how screens can be addictive. Am I, am I up with you? Am I catching up with you or

Ian McCready: (26:26)

Am I Yeah, absolutely. We are on step five and I usually talk through kind of step four. Step five is you need to set up the visibility in your home to understand how the internet's being used, but only for the purpose of being ready for those crucial conversations.

Hillary Wilkinson: (26:41)

Sure.

Ian McCready: (26:41)

Because you can't have the conversations if you don't know that your kid is breaking the rules. Right. Um, so that leads into essentially just a reminder of the goal of parenting. We are conditioned, especially I believe, in American society to raise kids who get good grades and don't get in trouble, just like I mentioned, uh, my, my upbringing. And that is the marker of success or whatever college our kids get into. And I don't believe that's the case that any of us actually really believe that we want a kid with strong character. We want them to be kind, we want them to be, uh, joyful. We want them to be able to be resilient, whatever set of character qualities you are tried to, when your baby was born, you're like, this is the child we're gonna create. But at some point, academics, sports, other markers of success in the world kind of can take over.

Ian McCready: (27:34)

And I just wanna remind us as parents, I think the point of those, these conversations around screen time need to be centered, not just around, well, it's getting in the way of your homework, it's getting in the way of this, well, it's causing this problem. You're, you're, you're blowing up at me. It's what type of person do you want to be? Mm-hmm . Like, I need to send you off into the world. You gotta be able to make these decisions on your own. And it's getting whatever I work with an actual, like a teen or even a 21-year-old or older still at home child, um, I have to get them to take agency over their own lives. And that's the goal is they build the self-control themselves before they leave your house. Otherwise they'll be like me where I didn't have a problem in mom and dad's house, but two years into college I was in trouble mm-hmm .

Ian McCready: (28:20)

Because I just, I didn't even know what the dangers were. And I don't blame my parents. They didn't know the dangers around video games at that point. They didn't understand that a, a video game that came out the last year I was in high school was gonna be so addictive when I started in college. Like, I, I don't blame them. So I do just, if all of your listeners, your parents could just take a deep breath, like just forgive yourself for whatever you think were past failings. Like, you gotta stay in the game. You gotta stay in the game on behalf of your child and don't beat yourself up about, well, we gave him a tablet too early, it's all ruined. We're we, we we can't recover. Yes, you can. And the last step I do think is just remembering that it's going to be hard to expect resistance even from your in-laws or your preschool or like where you take your kid to school or your kid's school itself.

Ian McCready: (29:12)

Like my kid is in a summer camp and during summer camp they had essentially screen time, time where she got to play Minecraft. And I'm like, she never, she doesn't play Minecraft at home. Like, and so we're talking through that. I'm, I'm okay with it and we're gonna talk through it and understand, but I recognize, you know what, I'm gonna play Minecraft with her at our house so we can walk through and she can understand how she's playing the game and work through that in my own home. There's an 85 year long Harvard study that measures essentially year over year what's keeping people alive longer and what's making them happier. And for 85 years running, it's been connections. Mm-hmm . It's been people, nobody gets to their deathbed and say, you know what? I had a pretty awesome rank in that video game, or that company, or I hit this dollar amount in my bank account. They talk about people always, we have to remind ourself of the value of people and screens have nothing in their design that will point us to that. They'll give us facades of it, they'll give us some connection. But I haven't found any study or anything that has reinforced that in-person activity isn't more valuable than online activity. It's not that online activity is invaluable and has no redeemable qualities. In certain circumstances it does, but we can't ignore those in-person social connections and making sure our children are building that skillset.

Hillary Wilkinson: (32:19)

That's a perfect place to, I'm sorry, but take a short break. , I feel like I just want people to sit and think about that. And when we come back, I'm gonna ask Ian for his healthy screen habit.

—--------------------------------

HSH Presentations - school

—--------------------------------

I am speaking with Ian McCready, founder of Self-Contrl, Ian, on every episode of the Healthy Screen Habits podcast, I ask for a healthy screen habit. And this is gonna be a tip or takeaway that listeners can put into practice in their own home, preferably right away. Okay. Yeah. What is yours?

Ian McCready: (33:14)

I implemented this for my own life and the number of people at the talks that I give or whenever I, I share information on this that have implemented this and not other habits, and I'm okay with that. This has been the one that I've gotten feedback that has been most implemented, and it's the, the phone cannot charge by my bed.

Hillary Wilkinson: (33:34)

Mm-hmm .

Ian McCready: (33:35)

That has various, you know, uh, spiderwebs of, well, what other, what other habits does that lead to? But for me, the charger is in the kitchen and, uh, my wife has picked up this habit as well. Our phones charge next to each other when our kids, uh, get phones, they will charge right there. That is where they're gonna charge. And there will be nothing that gets that phone in bed with me when it's time for me to wind down and fall asleep. And what that does, like the, the point of that is sleep.

Hillary Wilkinson: (34:06)

Mm-hmm

Ian McCready: (34:07)

. And Hillary, I had stomach problems for most of my life for like two decades. I just had stomach problems and I thought I just had, like, that was just, I had a bad intestinal fortitude and I, I, I just had problems. When I quit video games and put the phone over there and really started thinking about how I was using technology, the stomach problems went away and I can very clearly attribute it to I got the rest that I needed. Like we, I believe are in a sleep epidemic. And if you look at what screen time is actually robbing kids of the most, and you can look at, there's articles that are trying to make this case that the, um, essentially NAEP scores or academic scores are continuing to go down since 2019. And they, I mean, there's a lot of conjecture, whatever it is, but anecdotally from the kids that I've talked to and the parents sleep is what's getting robbed by screen time.

Hillary Wilkinson: (35:06)

Uhhuh, ,

Ian McCready: (35:07)

It's so easy to give a little bit weight of time to that. So that's my healthy screen time habit to protect my sleep. The phone does not come in with me to bed and it charges in the kitchen.

Hillary Wilkinson: (35:18)

Excellent. Yes, we have five core healthy screen habits and giving your phone a curfew and and charging it outside of your bedroom. No technology in the bedroom is, um, those are two of our top five. I love it. We actually, and, uh, recognizing that, um, I have young adults and teenagers at my house. Um, we have actually implemented not charging it in the kitchen, but we recommend charging it in the primary bathroom. And that is because we have many, many very resourceful, creative thinking teens who will go and at 2:00 AM you're finding them in the kitchen. And it's not for snacks. So that's by putting it in the primary bathroom. Or even some people have big fancy houses with walk-in closets that have charging. They can set up a charging station in their Sure.

Hillary Wilkinson: (36:19)

In their closet. I do not have one of those, but I hear they exist . And, um, yeah. So that's, but that just underlines everything that you say and I could not agree with you more. And, um, thank you so much for being here today. As always, for anybody listening can find a complete transcript of this show and a link to the Selfctrl website by visiting the show notes for this episode. You do this by going to healthy screen habits.org. Click the podcast button and find this episode. And again, like I said, Ian, thank you for being here today for helping people everywhere gain control of their online lives.

Ian McCready: (37:01)

Thank you for having me, Hillary. It's my pleasure.