Dr. Drew Pinsky on depressed teenagers, social media and smart phones

Hey, Dr. Drew Pinsky joins us now, board certified internist, addiction medicine specialist, host of Ask Dr. Drew, The Adam and Drew Show, Adam Carolla, of course, Dr. Drew After Dark. He's got a show on Rumble.

He's kind enough to give us a few minutes. Dr. Drew, welcome back. Hey, same here. I saw the cover of the New York Post and I thought this is so up your alley, sadly, and the cover is really disturbing, I think, even to people that aren't parents. Since the explosion of social media, 44% of teens, when asked this question, is my life useful, have answered no. They also use the term 48% of the time I do not enjoy my life and 49.5% I can't do anything right. This is almost the majority of teens in our country and they tie it back to the explosion of social media in 2012. Does Dr. Drew do that? Yeah, in fact, there's much more sort of serious data out there medically in terms of depression, anxiety, rumination around suicide.

The thoughts of suicide, particularly in young female at all time highs, and it can be correlated back directly to use of social media. Now, why this is happening, you know. Yeah, we're breaking up a little, Dr. Drew. I don't know if you're in that area or the problem is in California where you're at, not anything works anymore, thanks to Gavin Newsom.

Maybe the Internet's down or, you know, we dropped off, we'll get him back. So listen to this. I did not, this is, so you're talking about this generation. They say that on average, the average teen spends five hours, but as many as nine hours on their phone a day. So you are totally subjected to that world. How many times do you see kids sitting together, not talking to each other on their phones? And not talking to each other on their phones, which by the way, the ultimate insult.

Can you imagine seeing, and you probably live this life too. The person chooses to sit next to you, but not to talk to you. They'd rather get on the phone.

Now, it's different if you're in an emergency situation. But they also say depression isn't just about emotion, it's about cognition. It's about thinking. It's about how you see the world. It's about how you see life and you see it as negative.

Therefore, opportunities will be less because you're shutting down half the world because you expect nothing from it. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among young Americans. And while these phone users said parents should stave off smartphones and social media for as long as possible, they believe that radical solutions are needed, like raising the minimum social media age to 16. Is that indeed possible? So Dr. Drew is back with me.

Dr. Drew, is it possible? Do you think knowing the trends of where we're at right now, to have kids wait till 16 to get on social media? It is a little bit unrealistic to have zero contact. I was saying when I got cut out that we should be looking at screens the way we think about tobacco or vaping or any of these other things we've had campaigns against. I mean, this is a far more serious medical issue than something like vaping, which we've had sort of categorical hysteria around. This is something that is profoundly affecting mental health. It's increasing suicide.

It's increasing body image problems, anxiety, depression at all-time highs. And I have psychologist colleagues. I'm a physician, but I have plenty of colleagues that are psychologists.

And I have those that specialize in the complications of the screens, particularly in adolescent females. And in their own families, in their own kids, they typically limit the use to one or two hours a day, and that with tons of electronic monitoring. And it can be done. The problem is it's extremely difficult to do when there's not unanimity amongst the community. In other words, all the parents have to sign up for this. And it has been my experience when I was raising my own kids, as soon as you say, hey, guys, we need to form some sort of contract where we all agree that we are going to limit it to two hours a day, it's almost impossible.

It was unbelievable to me that I couldn't find a consensus among parents to do things like that. I was, for instance, trying to advocate for no alcohol. We all agree we're not going to serve alcohol in the home.

We're not going to allow alcohol in a party. And that's just what we're going to agree to. Nope, they wouldn't agree to that even. So they're going to continue to, they're willing to break the law even to not have to sort of form a consensus with their parent peers. It has to be a community level thing. If we don't, do you want our nanny state to step in yet again to do the parenting for us? It's too much.

But you can do it. But if you don't do it as a community, of course, the kids are then going to use their peers' phones, their friends' phones. They're going to be exposed to things all over the place.

And it's going to have little effect to limit your own kids to two hours a day. Do you remember drunk driving when we were growing up? People would be almost in movies, people having a few drinks, driving.

Remember Arthur, where you have Arthur drive on a curb, put his drink on the hood and go inside? We didn't think it was that big a deal. But now that would be unfathomable. You can't even get that first author out there on television because this whole generation grew up and it's not cool to drink and drive. And they just, and for the most part, they don't.

It's really an outlier that does. When I put on Social Dilemma with my family, my two daughters were ticked off because they see how they were being manipulated by these social media companies to basically get down that rabbit hole and continue to log on and take part. And they changed, to a degree, their behavior.

Plus, they got older. I think that if you educate people... Listen, maybe you've come up with a little strategy there as to spend some education time showing kids exactly what it's doing to them. You know, kids are, it's interesting, kids are not dumb. They're quite smart. And if you give them a relatable source, like someone who looks, you know, is their age relatively, give them some humor, maybe a little music as you sort of offer them this information, and show them stories about their peers and what has happened to them as a result of the use of, whether it's drugs or, you know, we did it with Teen Mom or we used to do it with Lovelight, which was just let the peers tell the story and let them hear it. They will adjust their behavior when they understand it's happening to their peers. It's a very powerful thing. And in your case, you said you've shown them they're being manipulated.

That's brilliant. Show them that too. So the other thing, we're talking to Dr. Drew about this, but for example, kids don't want to be depressed.

They don't want to have bad self-image. They don't want to be depressed? Suicidal?

Are you kidding? When you sit there in therapy, Dr. Drew, you go in therapy, those doors close and you listen to more than I ever will in my lifetime. Is it possible to explain to someone going through these emotions that, guys, that thing is part of it and this is part of what you do? This is unrealistic.

The world in which you're being sucked into through no fault of your own. Can you rationalize individuals to change that type of behavior when they close the door and leave your office and that hour's up? Well, behavior change is hard, right? And obviously, something I've dealt with for 20 years was helping people who have disturbances in their desire system with addictions. And to some extent, this is an addictive process too, right? It's a little bit of an overuse of the term to call it addiction per se. But the social media companies have learned to manipulate the same part of the brain. The same stuff is being utilized to get somebody's behavior to repeat, repeat, do it again, do it again. That's what addiction is.

It's a commandeering of the so-called, what I call the do it again part of the brain. And giving people education about it does not stop the behavior. It just doesn't. You have to provide a lot of other things.

And I would sort of throw those things into the category of sort of nourishment. First of all, I have to say you can't do this. There has to be some barrier that helps that person in some way, whether it's a law or a rule at home. It's hard. Parenting is hard. It's very difficult to get them off of this, particularly once they're used to it. But literally their life is dependent upon it.

And then you have to offer them other things. And this is the really important part. And at its core, those other things involved action, movement, and interpersonal relating. Doing things with other people. Other brains heal other brains. But nourishment comes from other people. And if you add into that, this may sound a little bit old-fashioned, but if you add in some sort of spiritual component, you add in service, my goodness, you're there. You're there. And it becomes, you're not really stopping the behavior of the phone use then.

You're doing something else that's more nourishing that becomes sustaining in and of itself. So Dr. Drew, our guest. Dr. Drew, the other thing that I found interesting, buried in this story, is four in ten American teens find our founding fathers to be villains.

Well, congratulations. Mission accomplished, teachers. That is, look, I don't actually even care if they want to contemplate that they were villains because they were of their time. But at least acknowledge the genius of what they were able to create. At least understand what that was.

Don't dismiss that as useless or worthless because you don't like how they led their lives. But do you think it's also a worry when TikTok becomes the number one app for 153 million users? It's created by China, and this week we find out our data being sent back to China confirmed that we all knew it, but now confirmed.

Why would China continue to promote and do anything positive about America? Oh, of course. But the fact, though, is the delivery of data is the smallest concern. Our data is, you know, we've lost that battle. But the concern you should have is that this is a fight for the minds and wellbeing of our next generation. That is what you're giving China control over. That's what concerns me. And whatever is happening, it is not turning out well. And is that some sort of conscious policy being delivered to us?

Well, if there was one, this is sure what it would look like. So, again, I'm very concerned, not so much about the data and the location and all the stuff that everybody's doing all the time, including our own government, but the fact that they have control over what is delivered to our kids. That's what should concern you. Yeah. How do you feel about phones being kept out of schools? You know, you put them into the bin. There's individual phone cases. They actually make slide drawers for that. Do you see that happening?

Do I see it? I haven't heard of that happening much, but I hope it is. I hope so. My God, that would be a place to start, at least. Dr. Drew, another thing that's unrelated before I let you go. RFK is going around talking about just tackling homeless. You've been tackling homeless best you can.

It's a psychological problem. It's not because people can't afford rent, as Gavin Newsom told Sean Hannity, which is nuts. How about the fact that he's now talking about vaccines and that we should be thinking twice before we give our kids vaccines, and he certainly was not for Operation Warp Speed and the COVID vaccine. I am an RFK fan. I think he is stirring the pot in very useful ways. I feel when he is explicit in his anti-vaccine stance, he is not doing us a favor. However, when he stays focused on this one element that he has uncovered as the area that we should be focusing our concern about corruption in our government, Vivek Ramaswamy is saying the same thing, which is that this cozy relationship that he has uncovered between the FDA and the regulators and the drug company. I had to chuckle when I saw Marjorie Taylor Greene ask Rochelle Walensky what drug company she's going to go work for when she leaves the CDC, but that's in fact what happens. And that relationship exists throughout our government, whether it's the military or the environment.

This capture by moneyed interest is the corruption of our day. And so when I hear RFK talk about that point, that pressure point, I feel like I'm listening to Teddy Roosevelt talking about monopolies and trust. And I think he may not be the man to do the job, but he's doing us a great service by pointing that out. He has generally said, as it pertains to vaccines, not so much that he feels vaccines are a problem. He feels that they've been inadequately tested and he'd like to see the proper testing done.

And he feels the inadequate testing came from a policy in the Reagan administration where they were given sort of this immunity and that it caused them to do less than adequate testing. And he'd like to see better testing. I can't argue with that.

I can't argue with that. More testing, better data. Certainly that's one thing we've learned during the pandemic, that data is capricious. It's difficult. It can be altered. People can bias it.

And we need to be very careful with medical data and show it all, show all of our work all the time and do not allow money to get in the way of people's well-being. Hey, Dr. Drew, when do we get to see your show? I always get notifications you're on Rumble. I mean, you have so many shows out there. How do we get to see it?

It's generally Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at 3 o'clock Pacific time. And I've been interviewing. I've interviewed RFK a couple of times.

I've got Vivek coming on next week. It's just been a great experience. I sort of naturally gravitate to things that I think are important. And when I see people getting cancelled, really extraordinarily high quality professionals being cancelled for their opinion, I immediately want to talk to them. I just want to hear what they have to say because I figure there's something there that's got to be useful.

And every single person I've talked to, whether it's Jay Bhattacharya or Peter McCullough or Paul Alexander, I don't agree with everything everybody says, but I always learn something very useful that I have not heard before. I know. Dr. Drew too, I remember you are the number one person on show on Headline News on CNN and they're trying to cancel you. You were one of the first people I said to myself, what are they doing?

And you know how crazy that experience is. Oh my God, it's awful. It's just awful. It affected my whole family. It's the modern guillotine. I made a prediction when I wrote a book on narcissism that there would be scapegoating.

I actually wanted to write a chapter on the pre-revolutionary France phenomenon, which was the only period in history I could find so much childhood trauma and narcissism. And I thought, well, what followed that was guillotine. So I guess, I don't know how that's going to happen. I did not know about cancellation in social media.

That became the modern guillotine. But scapegoating is sure well underway right now. I will never cancel you on my list. You'll always be welcome on this show.

Can I maintain my friendship with Greg Gutfeld and you still say that? You got to make a choice. I'm sorry, that's going to hit the road. Sorry. Sophie's choice. Dr. Drew, thanks so much.