The digital challenges of modern parenting. Episode 85

Monika Rachtan
Hi Monika Rachtan, I welcome you very warmly to the next episode of the programme. First of all, the patient. Are you aware that as many as 83% Polish children between the ages of 7 and 14 own a mobile phone and are probably also active on social media? We will be discussing whether this is good or bad today with Dr Magdalena Skotnicka Chaberek, who is a child and adolescent psychotherapist. Good morning, and a warm welcome to you doctor.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Welcome. Is it good or bad?

Monika Rachtan
That's right.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
This is the kind of question that is very difficult to answer, because we would have to attribute. Does the fact of having a mobile phone already mean something to a child, how did they obtain it? What kind of child is it, what does it think, where does it visit, what does it use it for?

Monika Rachtan
Well, let's start from the beginning. Why is it that parents who, for various reasons, may want to buy their child a mobile phone, for example, to be able to contact their child when they come home from school on their own. And that is very ok. But we also see that children very often, for example in restaurants, I see a situation where a family is sitting, mum, dad and a child. And this child is sitting on the phone all the time. These parents are talking to each other and this child is just on the phone. The phone. The phone. Phone. Phone. Phone. And there it is.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Well, and now you would have to think about it. If we look at it globally, we would say it's a pity that he doesn't talk to his parents and it's probably a pity that he doesn't participate, doesn't take part in the conversation, doesn't learn a little bit to be bored, doesn't learn a little bit that not all his needs will always be met immediately. But here again there will be that little asterisk, because we might have to deal with a child who would not be able to sit down in such a situation because, for example, he is hyperactive, hyperactive and then this family would not be able to go to the restaurant. So looking from that perspective, is the phone good or bad. Is the use of social media good or bad? One has to consider what it does to that particular person. That is, we need to look at such our responsibility as parents, educators, adults. Are we using the phone consciously? Do we know what it is for? We know why, what it is used for. Because if we use it consciously, we will teach the child automatically and the children. Through modelling, through children imitate adults. It's such a characteristic of our species. And not only ours, that it's good to watch what the big ones do.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
If the big ones take the phone and scroll, they won't teach the little one not to do it. But if the big ones say listen, I can see that you find it very difficult to sit down, let's talk to me now too, let's get on with something. But when I see you can't stand it, now you can use the tools you need. It will be two different situations.

Monika Rachtan
Are parents in Poland aware enough to carry out such an analysis and have a conversation with their child? Because I have the impression, and this is my subjective opinion, that often this phone ends up in the hands of children because parents give it to them to have peace of mind.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Of course. And then it's going to be something that not phoning is bad. When we grow up, I'm a cognitive behavioural psychotherapist and in cognitive behavioural therapy we talk about these sensitive periods when a person is building a self-image. Is he important, does he see himself as a person worth loving, worth the attention of others? Does his or her opinion count? Does he have an impact on reality? Does he have the power to change things? If my loved ones don't want to talk to me and give me a phone call, I will try to build all these beliefs of mine on some kind of base and foundation. If I'm a young child, the most important thing in building myself will be my relationships with the people most important to me - my mum, my dad, my loved ones, my adults. And now, if those relationships are going to be about play yourself, because I don't have time for you, then I'm not going to build them, I'm not going to build relationships, I'm not going to be able to see myself as someone important, That is, in the future I'm more likely to get depressed, I'm more likely to have all sorts of mental difficulties as a result of thinking about myself, that my needs, my opinion are unimportant and don't count.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
In a while I will get attached to this phone, because it will become the source of what I need. It won't be the loved ones who will be that source, but my phone. Consequently, at some point, my relatives will realise that, gosh, my child spends all his time on his mobile phone. He's on some Facebook all the time, I'm scrolling on TikTok all the time. Except that's when they're going to take that phone away from him.

Monika Rachtan
It will be too late.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
It will go on to think that it is even less important because they are taking away what has become the source of building its identity. So instead of thinking if the phone is given too soon, we should be thinking why are we doing this? Why am I giving my child a phone? What are the reasons? What do I want to achieve? I'm thinking about pandemic time like this. Mhm. It was like that, all of a sudden children found themselves locked in their homes, in four walls, sometimes with their families, where it was difficult. They were not supposed to go outside for a certain period of time. Generally the network moved into our homes a lot at that time and you could use it in different ways. My son's teacher used the network as a tool to bring children together in a class that was just forming. They ate meals together, they talked together, they spent time playing, not playing. They were playing different games that were happening in their homes, and they were connecting through screens. They had their own channel. If someone was sad, they called their friends. Networking in this way didn't isolate them from each other, it just made sure that when they went back to school they were a group and built relationships.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
We have patients like that for whom the network is the first relationship with people and then it's not the network that's the problem, it's all the other relationships with people that they've had that are very bad, very weak, that have made them not believe in themselves and we need a lot of work to make them see themselves as valuable individuals. Because when we start thinking about ourselves that we can't do it, that we're not important, nobody loves us, then we try as people to do something at all costs to change that. When we're little, we look for support, we look for people to be important. That's where we get the whole fascination of young people with youtubers. And yet, when they throw a cautionary tantrum and write something, then we have high-profile scandals because these are kids who have run out of adults, so they need adults and they pick the wrong ones. But we also have another bit.

Monika Rachtan
And I would still like to come back to these phones, because I wonder about the fact that we as parents are often not aware that with this one move of ours of giving a phone we are shaping the future of our child, which will be 20 years from now. That this is very long term, because the moment that child. What the doctor said that later such a child. If the phone is a substitute for the feelings of the parent, he or she is more likely to have mental problems, to have depression, to have anxiety disorders, and all this happens, let's say, well not the moment they get the phone in their hand, but it happens the moment all these problems start to cascade in such a way We, and we are completely unaware that we are doing it irresponsibly. I'm not saying inappropriate, just irresponsible. By giving a child a phone, we are deciding what kind of teenager they will be.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Yes, but what we decide in the first place is not even the phone itself, but whether we will spend time with it. Are we prepared to sit with him when he has his mobile phone in his hand and know what he is doing there? For me as a therapist, it is frightening to have the parents of a teenager come in and say that he plays games all day. I ask them what he is playing.

Monika Rachtan
And they say I don't know, in the game.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
They say don't know.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Shooter. And the problem isn't that he's playing the game, although at some point he is too. But the problem is that no one has taken an interest in it. The most frightening thing about phones is the access to content that shouldn't be accessible at all, or in a way under adult supervision and explanation. Because we are talking, for example, about the exposure to pornography of seven, eight-year-olds, who do not have any cognitive sense yet that not everything that is seen is fact and that it can be an illusion, a game. They then begin to form their picture of the world based on what they see. Depending on what they click on, the algorithm will suggest relevant content. And what's troublesome is that as they grow, i.e. when they start to be 10 years old, the adult influence on them decreases exponentially. Colleagues start to matter.

Monika Rachtan
Doctor, do you have the impression that we are not yet ready and that, as a society, we do not even know what our society will look like in 20 years' time and what mental problems it will have to deal with, that we are not in a position today, looking at how inattentive we are, not focused on our loved ones, focused more on ourselves and on having peace and quiet. What we don't realise is that people in 20 years' time, if they're living the kind of life they're living today, they'll be out on the street and they'll be unpunished. They will be able to knock someone down, they will be able to murder someone. These things are already happening.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
No, I do not think so. I have this sense that humanity generally copes quite well with change of various types. This is such a piece of it, we are adapting. And, of course, all sorts of black scenarios can happen, but we also anticipated these when, for example, the first machines, cars, were created. It scares us, because it is new and we have to learn it from scratch. What worries me more is that a child will sometimes be able to get more support if they write a sentence to AI Sorry, I'm a child, I feel lonely. Do you like me? And he will reply yes, I will be happy to talk to you and listen to you when others around me are not listening.

Monika Rachtan
Well, but we're also the ones who have to teach those people who are using these phones to sort of properly access the content that's out there. And we're not doing that.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
We have to teach young children. Well, that's right, because adults, sorry to say, a little too late.

Monika Rachtan
We are already written off, no?

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
He had to start showing his own sense and they have to start thinking why am I doing this? Why am I picking up this phone right now? What is my purpose in me wanting to run something at this moment? We have to learn to live consciously and make choices, which is not always easy. Well, because it's a bit like the last 10 years were a great time. You could believe that the world was good. I mean the last 10, not the last 20 years, the last 10 don't teach that anymore. And suddenly the generation that grew up believing that we finally had freedom, good things were happening in the world. The European Union, the Soviet Union fell. It was all a generation of huge belief that the world had changed. Suddenly it landed in a world that is scary, with terrible things happening right next to us. It's no longer possible to pretend they're somewhere far away, because they're happening next door. And we start using the phone as a tool to avoid, to avoid emotions, to avoid experiencing. And we teach our children the same thing.

Monika Rachtan
And have there been any goblins over the good 20 years that have been plotting this whole situation on us that is today and someone just planned it well and prepared it, And we were a bit, our vigilance was dormant.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
No, I think that we as a people want to believe that things will be good and we want good things to happen. Whereas we are human beings with all the vices that humanity has, with the need to dominate as much inscribed as the need to cooperate. And it will always be the case that in society there will be people who want to win at the expense of others and there will be people who want to cooperate. And so we will have different children who will grow up with these mechanisms. And we as a people have to try to be more and more aware. That's the answer, I think, what's going to happen to us in 20 years' time? We will see, We will certainly be more digitised than we are. Certainly in 20 years' time we will be communicating more often with the machine and with differences that no, no, I don't believe that. I don't believe we will stop communicating with each other, but I think we will humanise machines more.

Monika Rachtan
And do you get that impression from your doctor? Because I'm also on social media myself because of my job mainly, because to be honest, so privately a little less. On the other hand, I very often have the feeling that I'm scrolling through Facebook and I'm thinking, I'm looking at Funeral, photos, holidays, photos, birthdays, mum's photos, promotion at work, photos and in general all my colleagues call me. I already know everything, she's already shown me everything on social media. What's going on with her. She had a baby, she was on leave, she was on maternity leave. Then when she went back to work, she got a beautiful bouquet of flowers, so I guess she's happy that they appreciate her there. Then I saw that they were on holiday in warm countries. First holiday with the baby and I already know all this. Why should I call her? What happened to us?

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
It's a question of why she needs to show it. Because how I see it may or may not interest me. But why does someone need to show other people more events from their life, often to strangers, not just friends or a large circle of acquaintances? Why do we collect likes, admiring approval? What are we missing that we have to click on it to see. I'm thinking to myself that there are all sorts of posts, because what is also a risk of the media is that we have an awful lot of specialists who are not specialists, but they make statements as if they know themselves very well, and because they speak very well and have a lot of likes, they are often more willing to be listened to than someone who has sound knowledge.

Monika Rachtan
They build such an artificial authority based on who they are on social media.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
And the value becomes not what is really fact, verified information, but what is myth. It's just that, come to think of it, people have always chosen myths over facts. Would we look at a medieval man or would we look at today's man? Myths are easier to accept. It is easier to accept that the moronic death was brought about by this or that event and the bad neighbour we want to get rid of, than to look at the fact that, well, maybe some factors that involve travel do affect it. We have not changed very much. Hundreds of years have passed and we are still the same, only.

Monika Rachtan
They gave us a phone, dressed us in different clothes.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Scarier tools that allow us to control the human mind much better, because we also have a better knowledge of the human mind. And that, which is also very important. For me, such an interesting phenomenon is with the phone, Facebook and different things, that my little patients don't know the option of the off button. They know the mute button. And when I tell them sometimes Listen, don't text me because I just don't answer the phone at these times, It's then when you pick up the phone, you'll see what came in. Mhm. And I look at them, I say But I've got it switched off. What do you mean it's switched off? How do you go offline? It's like coming out of life. And it's a change that's ahead of us, because it has pros and cons. I'm going to be a bit like that again, that it's both good and bad. Because if five boys make an appointment to play football and suddenly one of them writes I can't play today, I got sick, I have a fever, then four of them can go play, but they can also do something else.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Then let's join together and play Minecraft. Now again, this could have all sorts of repercussions, because they won't play footsie and they won't see each other.

Monika Rachtan
They don't move and they will be in front of computers again.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
But also, on the other hand, they will be with a friend who is ill, they will accompany him. I, for one, have had such a parenting, surprising experience. My child lost an important buddy, his cat, and I came home from the vet with the thought of how much time I would have to spend with him. And I found my child and six friends chatting and playing pictures of the cat telling each other about the illness. I walked into the room. I heard Mum, they can't come to me now because it's late. But you know what, you go, because I have my mates now. They are going to sit with me. When they go to bed, I'll come to you. And for the first moment I thought No disease. The computer chose instead of me. Except that he didn't choose the computer. He chose the people who accompanied him. And I think all these aspects will somehow add up. In the past, if someone moved to the other side of the world, letters could come. And now?

Monika Rachtan
Well. On the one hand, social media is good, because these examples that you gave I even thought of such a situation when, let's say, a mother is ill, she has severe cancer. This happens and she is in such a situation that she cannot receive people from outside, guests, thus she cannot receive her children as well. The fact that she and her child will be able to join together on her birthday and see each other. And to say I love you. Or to hear I love you mum. It may be more important to her than a hundred bouquets of beautiful flowers.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
She doesn't have to bond on his birthday. She can read him a bedtime story every night. And I think to myself that we as humans need to remember one thing Nothing can absolve us of responsibility for our actions, not even our beliefs. Even when we are tired sometimes and wish we were more comfortable, we get a little used to being comfortable.

Monika Rachtan
We like. Everyone likes to be comfortable. Me too. When I had uncomfortable chairs, I preferred to choose comfortable chairs to make it more comfortable.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Sometimes it is the case that somehow this comfort becomes a value, that we don't know how to tolerate discomfort. Well, and now in a family like this, where everyone is set on not tolerating discomfort, because comfort, wellbeing becomes the main value. A small child is born. One little walking discomfort. Even if one has previously read so much about miracle babies and what a wonderful parent one will be at 2.30 at night all these illusions take vivid shape.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
And this living shape no longer disappears from life. Only then do its demands grow. If we don't know how to stand up with ourselves and look at our situation with common sense, what thoughts help me survive. What feelings do I have? What can I do about it?

Monika Rachtan
Doctor, and don't you feel that this society and this generation that was, let's say, before us, these people who are now in charge of what's happening in the world of 30 40 year olds, that those people there were so closed to their needs and so rarely expressed them. Because it wasn't allowed, because it wasn't appropriate, for example, to say to your mum Listen mum, I'm not going to come to your house on Sunday for lunch today because I know you've made a super effort.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
That says a bit about my generation. Our parents didn't interfere in our affairs. Children's and adult affairs were separate matters. A parent knew that you were somewhere in an unspecified backyard, but also assumed that certain things would happen automatically. I don't know if it was a failure to take care of needs or a different translation of the burden of one's own values. I think to myself, again, there is responsibility here.

Monika Rachtan
But I also mean that the generation of, let's say, today's 50-year-olds often had it that they didn't decide for themselves. For example, their parents told them go to university because it was the right thing to do. Yes. And they didn't want to go to university, for example. They thought university was boring. But they went to these studies because in Poland everyone was told that they had to have a university degree.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
I don't know, I haven't seen it. Yeah. I rather saw us as a generation of 50-year-olds, that adults had very little influence on what we were doing. It shows beautifully how people are different and how much depends on the places you grew up in. I think a lot less today than in the past. I grew up in small towns.

Monika Rachtan
And do I think that these children we are talking about today, it's as if we already know everything about them and we're about to move on to that. It's just that I see the situation today, for example, that my generation has the courage not to baptise their children and it doesn't cause a family tragedy. That my generation has the right not to get married in church and they are still considered married and in general, like my mother told me, if she only got married civilly, then probably half the village she would live in would say that they are living in some strange relationship, well not before God. And today we are allowed. It turns out that suddenly we're allowed as children to say to our parents Listen, I'm in such a Christmas and New Year's season now that I don't want to go to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. It used to be that you had to, because the whole family went, because everyone was told to go. And that I mean that we kind of just have more courage today to think a little bit, to say no, I'm giving my child a phone because all the children in the class have one.

Monika Rachtan
I just think that my Tom can't handle the phone, because he's very sensitive and someone might hurt him. And I can stop and think that this generation of people who are now, let's say, 50 or 60 years old, have very often done something because it's the right thing to do.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
I think it also depended on a lot of places, above all where you lived and what the environment was like. The role of local society was much greater than it is now. We are much more isolated. People used to live in more larger clusters. This has advantages because, in turn, no mum had to run after her child because all she had to do was have one in the yard or peek out of the window. And today every mum is running after her little bombshell. I mean there are things that have pluses and minuses and bring. On the other hand, there is certainly something to the fact that the 50-something generation was much more likely to place duty as a value and acting for the community as a greater value than acting for oneself. This is true, but I would nastily say that as far back as antiquity, back when it was first established, and thy neighbour as thyself. Whether an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth were compatible principles, it was known that cooperation between people had to be based on balancing what I was doing for someone and what I was doing for myself. And now any shift too far to the right or left causes me to either focus excessively on myself, in which case I'm happy to give a call, or to focus excessively on others.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
That's when I can give the phone a call, too, because I have a lot of needs to fulfil. My child is managing somehow. Nothing relieves us of the need to think and to have critical thinking and to have an informed approach to reality. And no president-elect, no authority will change the fact that an adult is responsible for the child that is entrusted to him and how he shapes him will either make him do better or worse, or limit him, or give him wings, or push him in such a way that he won't lift.

Monika Rachtan
And why do children end up in the psychotherapist's office? In the context of just social media, In the context of phones and the internet? What is the most common problem?

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
That they sit too much and that they don't cooperate. Whereas they actually, when we squat afterwards, the phone is a symptom, and a whole lot of stuff boils underneath. It's simmering underneath. Often depression and the phone is the source of that, so that we don't suffer and survive until the morning. And then we have to be very careful when we take it away, because we have to. In cognitive behavioural therapy we do something like conceptualisation, which means we sit down with the problem, we take all the participants of the problem mum, dad, child, sometimes even the school and we sit down and look at how it happened. And sometimes we discover that we are dealing with a person who has been going through grief for many months or sees no prospect of getting out of it for many years. He sees no desire to live. Sometimes he's 8 years old and sometimes he's 10 years old and he's left alone, because he doesn't really know how to tell an adult either, because no parent is ready for a young child to tell him that he doesn't see any chance for his life and he doesn't see any point. And the parent sometimes only sees the symptom. The fact that it is shouting, that it is unbearable, that it is unpleasant, or then the fact that it is scrolling, scrolling all the time, so that it doesn't feel.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
And until we build up this image, this conceptualisation, this reflection, every intervention we make can be a bullet in the wall. Something that seems good Let's take the phone away can result in a suicide attempt, because I won't be able to text Kaśka Kaśka, I'm about to kill myself. Kaśka will text me at 3:30 pulling out her phone don't do it, please don't do it. And sometimes that is enough for the other person to survive. Of course, social media is also about accessing how-to-kill-yourself, how-to-slim As best you can. But this is where adult responsibility and responding to the existence of such sites comes in again, and fighting social media publishers with the creators so that certain content is taken down as soon as it is caught.

Monika Rachtan
Doctor, but are there still social workers who browse these media, who catch this, who report it? Because I, for example, when I browse some social media and I see charlatans on the internet, health charlatans, I always try to react and write to the relevant cells so that such information is taken off the internet. At first they laughed at me, they said Ms Editor, you're crazy, you're reading this, you're concerned, you, we'll take it off your hands and they'll produce 10 others. And so I kind of doubted my mission. I thought to myself why should I do this? And on the other hand, I wonder, because it's the parents who should know what's on this network in the first place. They should be very aware that there are just pages of how to kill yourself well, how to kill yourself quickly, Where to buy drugs to kill yourself? How to get the means to commit suicide? There are also pages about how to allow in yourself a process like anorexia. How to start being a bulimic? There are also sites where children can watch pornography, and the kind of pornography that would make us sick if we watched it ourselves.

Monika Rachtan
Only now the question is whether we, the generation of 30, 40 year olds who are now parents in this world that is so fast-paced, even stand up for a moment, reflect and say Oh shit!

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Perhaps it's a matter of each of us accessing social media and coming across by chance, reporting every single thing that's online. And for us as a people to expect and demand from the big concerns, because that's what we're talking about. We are not talking about small, local social media under the title Voice of Strzelce Opolskie. We're just talking about big companies that deal with gigantic amounts of data and have very clever algorithms to create the world in such a way that it's profitable for them and that they want to run algorithms that capture such fragments. And it is usually the case that some of these media are reviewing their content. We don't capture everything, we don't capture all things. We haven't had that kind of skill as humanity Ever. It's always eluded us somehow. Some inquisition got away from us and burned women. All sorts of things that were counter-productive to humanity slipped through our fingers. The Crusaders got away from us on different sides of different things.

Monika Rachtan
But we can't let social media slip away.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
We need to keep a closer eye on this. And I don't know what the solution is. When I heard about Australia and the ban, on the one hand I thought it was right, but on the other hand I immediately had the thought good, good, if we ban people.

Monika Rachtan
They are the ones who want even more.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
So what are we going to trigger with this? We're going to bring up the fact that ban A is going to be circumvented, B we're about to create a black market for calls to the network. OK, they'll monitor it on their phones. And if I connect through Tor? Or how will I connect through some medium where we don't monitor, or through my mum's phone? Well, that's right. And why should we create a situation where someone absolves other people of responsibility for what they do? Maybe it's a bit like how behavioural rules teach. There are rules and there are situations, there are our actions and there are short and long-term consequences.

Monika Rachtan
But I also think that banning social media altogether is taking away people's ability to make decisions, it is like throwing them into a sort of You're stupid, you can't use it, I'm taking it away from you. And when the decision-making process also involves some learning, because if I burn myself once, I won't touch the hot kettle again later. So it seems to me that completely cutting us off from social media, or those children up to, say, 18 or 16, is not a good thing, because they will get into social media at some age and won't know how to use them at all.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
They will enter in a grey area, they will enter in such a way that no one will know from the adults. Instead of getting the effect of even more surveillance, we may get not so at all. I also thought of one more thing that it depends on how temperamentally and how culturally aligned we have a society, rather subject to authority, rather not subject to authority. Then you would have to look at whether the same ban imposed in Poland would have the same consequences as in Australia.

Monika Rachtan
I mean, a Pole can always work it out for himself.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
I wanted to say that in our How to Deceive the State is a bit of a way of life, so we have to be vigilant about that too.

Monika Rachtan
Well, that's right, because if, for example, social media were taken away, say in Switzerland, then maybe it would.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Everyone was watching.

Monika Rachtan
Then maybe they would all watch. Or Ordnung in Germany. By the way, the Germans are actually already doing research into whether these social media should be targeted at children and adolescents, and in Germany it might work, but in Poland, if not through the window, then through the chimney.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
In theory, an account can be from the age of 13 on Facebook. Theoretically. Practically. What is the situation?

Monika Rachtan
Well no well if you can set up a Facebook account for your dog, then.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
But it's just that we talk a bit about the fact that we, as people, would sometimes like someone to solve the problem for us. And I think to myself that even when we look at it from the perspective of any state policy, we would like it not to be the case that the rates of depression in children and mental disorders, for example, are constantly rising, and that suicide attempts in children are now the second cause of death. Now the war has shifted a bit again. I do not know if it is not on the third, but we are desperately looking for different ways as a world globally and as Europe to curb this trend, because we have more and more really seriously ill children.

Monika Rachtan
And how many children in Poland have depression? And I'm not asking what the Ministry of Health states, I'm asking for estimates. Doctor.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
I don't know, to be honest. I think to myself, it's the research that shows. That is, you would have to do a methodical population study. You would just have to take a few tens of thousands of children as a sample and check. But not the ones that end up in the care system, just. Do a population study, because that's how we know who ends up in the care system after three years, after four years. But I think it's about 10 to 20%. It's not somehow that all children, because we've also learned to say depression for any situation that involves loss of hope and sadness and experiencing emotions, it can be a very different disorder. But the scary thing is something that was a discovery for me as a therapist, that younger and younger children don't see opportunities for themselves, they don't see ways to solve their problems. And I think to myself that here in promoting health, that you can go somewhere. We're the ones who have a huge task here as adults, just through social media, to tip-toe around, to keep an eye out for appropriate social campaigns, but not boring campaigns under the title of a million children already.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Sorry, I will refer to the advertising campaign without giving too many details. A million kids are already playing our game on Roblox. Great, it's only going to be watched by a few adults who throw the game to the kids. That's not how kids start playing the game.

Monika Rachtan
And how should this be done?

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
You have to make it so that children find out about it by chance from their peers. Ideally, because kids follow what other kids are doing, not what adults are doing. At that age, when they're playing Roblox, you can really find documentally anything there. Just like in life. From black masses to learning how to become a volunteer at Doctors Without Borders or running a restaurant in Roblox. All sorts of things children do. It's up to us adults to know what they do or don't do in Roblox. Which games are they playing? Whether or not we know how Roblox works. It's up to us adults to sit down and ask Listen, is what you're watching how you think about it? Why is it important to you? What is important about it? Will we be able as adults today to teach them that what they think is important? That their opinion matters, but not because they said so, so they will get it straight away. I want the best phone, otherwise Mum, you don't love me.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Well, manna doesn't fall from the sky. Maybe if you earn it. One of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiators. He once said that he would rather negotiate further than come to his own with his daughters. And he says there is a beautiful parental phrase that a parent needs to learn. Not to say no, but to say listen, once you grow up and start to see these things, then maybe we'll look at the content together. I for one think the whole development of computing is something that will exceed our ability to comprehend. I so have in the back of my mind several series or science fiction books about a big network controlling life from the Matrix and various others, to a vision of a caring AI that makes sure people are well. Me thinks that's not going to happen. I think humans are humans and they're going to try to make their way in all conditions, like humans, to make good things happen and bad things happen, so that they can survive.

Monika Rachtan
Doctor, how do you introduce a phone to a child? How do you do it responsibly and wisely? If our listeners have listened to our talk and don't quite know what questions to ask themselves in order to make a decision, what questions should they ask themselves?

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Why am I buying a phone? What is my purpose? What is its purpose? What objections do we see to him having it? How do we want him to use it? What kind of child do we have? Do we have the kind of child that if we give him a phone and put restrictions on it at the same time, he will comply, or the opposite? We will make it so that he will have only one vision of the phone and every restriction we put on it will make his desire to have it bigger and bigger. We need to think very carefully about what we would like and how we would like it. What content we would want it to watch. Then it's fun to sit in it and post a few times, hoping that its algorithm will learn quite quickly. Because knowing the algorithms also allows us to get the content right. It's important that we follow along with it what you're watching, why you're watching it.

Monika Rachtan
Sometimes they threw in something cool. And have you watched it? Because I've been interested in it recently.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Sometimes they have looked at quite a lot themselves first and searched for things that might interest my child. But before we do, before we buy a phone, let's ask ourselves why? Is this the moment that he has to have his own? Because you Mum has one, Dad has one and Frankie has one? Or is it first Hmm. We're already doing well. When do children have to have a pet? It's often the parents who already have great ideas. Listen, it's you show me that you get up in the morning, you go out and take care. And that's how it usually ends up. Sometimes that the parents move out, but they've often got people. Great ideas. How to prepare a child for having a pet. It's the same principle. You know what, I'm going to lend you a phone it's not going to be yours, it's going to be borrowed And how are you going to convince me that you know how to handle a borrowed one. For me, the most important rule I taught my child when using all kinds of things was no amount of time. Maybe that's wrong, but I taught him that he has to switch off and that our most important rule is that when other important things in life come along, you just switch it off without saying a word.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
And the condition for you to be able to use it is to be able to switch it off. Then, when the phrase lessons falls, dog.

Monika Rachtan
Lunch, dinner, meeting the family.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Exit somewhere colleagues, you are the one who knows how to press the power button and unsubscribe from the system. If you don't know how to do that, then we recognise that you need to learn how to do that. And if you can do that, then you know the most important thing, but that's every parent. None of us will tell any parent a ready-made recipe. It is important for every child to know how to walk away from the phone. It's important that we know what he or she is doing there. It is important that we don't say do you prefer me to the phone? You prefer the phone to me. I'm sorry the other way around, but it's also important that we understand why it's there. And to ask it sometimes why are you sitting there now and scrolling? What's going on like that? Because I'm bored, because I don't have an idea or because I'm really bad and I can't cope anymore and I need to calm down. And then we don't rip out the phone either and say this is bad, this is bad. They said there on the podcast that it's wrong for you to do that, we just sit down and think about it.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Why is he unwell and at what point can we do to make it better for him. Because maybe we need to take him, sit next to him and say I'll sit here with a cuppa while you scrub yourself?

Monika Rachtan
Or say maybe you fancy watching a series with me?

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Or sit back and watch. Show me what's funny about what you watch in your videos. Because first we have to. Once they're out there on that internet, first we have to step into their shoes, get behind them so we can lead them out, Because it's a bit like going looking for someone in the bush, standing on the bank and saying hello! Maybe he'll hear Ey, I'm an adult here. That's where you need to go in. That's where you have to see. I learned a great many things about the web from my mentees of all kinds. Not all of them were things that delighted me. Often they showed things that adults had no idea their children knew such things about life.

Monika Rachtan
What kind of things were they?

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
From terrible pornography To the ability to bypass the security of various companies and institutions. To knowledge of the cruelty of the world and the harm that is done. To whales that need to be rescued and children are children. Toys are just a type of toy. The scary thing is that the one they are using now has so much reach. It's not small and limited, because if I use the ball a bit too much, well it wears out. Well it's going to wear out a bit. I get physically tired, and I have access to an amount of knowledge that nobody can grasp today, and it's a bit up to us what we do with that amount of knowledge. I mean our responsibility as adults everyone is that we often know better what children should do, instead of asking them what they would like to do and why they would like to do it. And look if I can learn something from this desire of theirs, Because most children, if we ask them what they are looking for on Facebook, will say colleagues and recognition. It's not going to be very different from kids a hundred years ago.

Monika Rachtan
And from ourselves.

Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek
Well, I keep coming back to the fact that modelling is one of the most powerful things. If my child sees me start nervously scrolling instead of crying about how hard it is for me, chances are they will do the same.

Monika Rachtan
That I repeat the mechanism. Well. It turns out that it's not our children who have a problem with social media. It's just that it's us who have a problem teaching these children to use these social media. Doctor, thank you very much for our conversation today. Ladies and gentlemen, my guest, but above all your guest, was Dr Magdalena Skotnicka-Chaberek. This was the programme First Patient. My name is Monika Rachtan and I invite you to visit my social media. See you there.