Main Street
Strand on Youth Sports; Danduran on Youth and Social Media
(upbeat music) - Welcome to this Tuesday edition of Main Street. I'm your host, Craig Loomenschine. We have an interesting discussion in the second half of our show today. Alana Danderan, she's a psychotherapist from Bismarck visits about youth and social media in light of the surgeon general's most recent recommendations on social media. But we lead off today's show, re-airing a conversation we had with Dr. Brad Strand. He's a sport management professor at North Dakota State University, and he emphasizes the importance of coaches and parents, prioritizing physical, mental and social wellness over competition and winning in youth sports. I opened our conversation with Dr. Strand by asking him, what are the biggest challenges ahead for youth sports? - You know, I think first off, we got to look at the entities that are involved, and basically there's the community, there is the parents, there's the coaches and the kids. And what is the purpose of youth sport for each of those entities? And for the community, youth sport can sometimes be a source of pride, like in Fargo-Moorhead's team getting to the Little League World Series. It's an economic driver where you have a under 10 hockey tournament that draws teams from California. And so the community can view youth sports from that perspective. Parents view youth sports as sometimes leading vicariously through their kids, certainly giving their kids an advantage to learn skills and develop good social relationships. I think more recently, the fact that scholarships are such a thing available, the NIL licensing in college. So if your kid gets good enough, they're gonna get a college scholarship. Well, college scholarships are like chum when you're fishing. You know, they're throwing it out there as this is a good thing. And if you work hard, you can get it. Well, very few kids get college scholarships. Like 1% of all high school kids get a college scholarship. So that's the not starter. But for many parents, it is the starter. - Where their kids are at 10, 11, 12? - Exactly. And fair enough, for some parents, this might be the only way their kids are gonna go to college is by getting a scholarship. And so that becomes then their way out. So then for coaches, what's their real reason for doing this? And for most coaches, it's to help kids develop. It really is. You got those examples of coaches that are doing inappropriate things or saying inappropriate things. But for the most part, coaches are doing this for the right reasons and helping kids develop skills and helping them build character and value and being physical activity. And then what do the kids want? And for the most part, kids wanna have fun. That's why most kids play sports. - Does that change for kids at a certain age? - Over time, funny you ask that question because when you ask children, little kids, what do you play sports? The answer is to have fun. Fargo Public Schools does a survey of their high school kids and I brought a copy to show you. And the number one reason why high school kids play sports is to have fun. Winning is like 2% of the athletes say they play high school sports to win. - So when a school doesn't win, their coach is what? (laughing) - Chest eyes blamed something. But most of the kids, they're doing it to have fun, to improve my skills, to develop fitness, because I'm good at it. I like competition, to be on a team, yet winning becomes the driver. And most kids are going, well, I wanna hang with my friends. I wanna play 'cause my friends are playing. - So here we are in the youth sports world. And there are a lot of teams. Some of those teams are not available to everyone. Some of those teams are not available to kids who would love to play. What should be done differently? - That's the unfortunate thing. Economics has become an important part of being able to play youth sports. Ideally, if youth sports could go back to being run by parks and recreation departments and available for every kid in the community, we're better off. - Let me ask a quick question. Because you research this stuff. Why then have we started to worry so much about that 1% that you talked about just a moment ago? Instead of the 99% who probably would fit in that model, you just described? - I don't know the answer to that question, but I suppose it has something to do with the recognition that comes from winning. The pride the community gets, the bragging rights of parents, coaches being able to say I coached the championship team, although they're 10 years old, the chance to go to a state tournament when you're nine, to go to a national tournament when you're 10. Those kinds of things I think supersede thinking about having everybody participate. One of my guiding principles is to keep the talent pool as large as possible for as long as possible. Keep as many kids engaged for as long as you can, because youth sport rewards early developers. The kids that are the tallest, the fastest, the bigger one they're nine get to play. The late developers, late bloomers, well, if they stick with it, they're going to do okay, but they're not going to stick with it, because they're chosen last, they don't get on the travel teams, they don't make the all-star teams, they don't get as many at bat, they cut those kids and they say, come back and try again next year. Well, how do you get better when you have no place to play? Nobody helping you. Those systems set up just to reward those special kids that 1%. - And I would argue, correct me if I'm wrong, parents with means to support those kids who are the 1%. - Exactly right, 'cause what's it cost to buy the uniform now? You're on a travel team every weekend, you're going someplace to play, which means hotel room for you and your child and your children, and then you got to buy the uniforms and the bats and the gloves and for hockey, the equipment, and then you have to go to the camps. If you don't have the money, you are basically left out. - Are there solutions that can change that? Have you thought about that? - You know, I have thought about that, and how do you give more kids opportunities to play on travel teams when they're coming from situations that don't have money? Is there a way that you can do a reduced fee? Well, then somebody's still gonna have to pay so the team can participate in the league. A couple of years ago, I did a little project where I went out and raised money, I called it the soccer USA or something, and we raised money and purchased soccer balls for all the elementary school children and two elementary schools in Fargo. This advantaged schools, I went and found the schools that have the highest minority rates, and Title I free reduced lunches, and we gave everyone of those kids in those schools soccer balls, and then we provided them with some free soccer lessons and tried to give them a little bit of an advantage too. So I don't know the answer to that question exactly. Economics is the big thing, and how do you get around that? - So what advice, I guess, would I have you give to a parent who does have means, wants to either have their kid participate or even beyond that organize a team so their kid can participate? What would you tell a parent like that? - You know, Parks and Rec provides some programming, but those programmings in many cases become like hit and giggle, and it's more recreational. And if you want your kid to really develop sports skills, you're gonna have to get them on one of these. How do they do that? I don't know the answer to your question. Those are tough questions. Those that don't have certainly get left behind. You know, another one of my guiding principles is taking care of those on the margins. And I use that when I teach my coaching classes. You got certain kids that are on the margins, and as a coach, you better take care of those kids. You gotta gather them in somehow. You gotta make them feel like they're part of the team. They're sitting on the end of the bench, they're never getting any play in time. They're really marginalized, but you gotta bring them in. And how do we bring these kids in that don't have the means? Do schools then, can they share in this? I'm not gonna call it a responsibility, but in this effort to be more inclusive in a very thoughtful way. I think so. Fargo North has Spartan youth basketball, and they provide basketball practice and teams for, I suppose, I don't know what ages, they are nine through nine through 12, or something like that. And I think everybody can join in that. Now, the second thing gets to be, when you don't have the means, sometimes, how do you get to practice? Kids can't drive, if mom and dad can't drive them there, they can't take a single parent, family, where mom's a single parent, family, yes. And so, we need to structure practice time so that kids have an opportunity to get there, but that's another challenge. And then coaches get mad at kids not showing up on time when the kids have nothing to do with getting there on time, because they can't drive with mom and dad, bringing them there. And mom and dad have legitimate excuses. And the coaches then sometimes chastise the kids, and so, that's really welcoming, isn't it? - How important is youth sports for people that have been successful and have participated? And can that help us understand why folks in the margins should really be a part of this? - Well, without a doubt, you know, first off sport, youth sport today is a $20 billion. - $20 billion. - $20 billion is going to $70 billion by 2030. It's bigger than the NFL, so it's not going away. It's just gonna keep on getting bigger. However, the number of kids participating has gone down. So why are kids quitting when the industry is getting bigger? So that's something we gotta figure out. And some of the reasoning would be because of the early specialization, because of all the travel involved, because of the games that are on TV, the little kid games that are on TV, kids are just tired of so much of that that they're just pushing back. Now, sports like tennis and golf, numbers have increased, but team sports numbers have gone down for kids participating. - That in soccer, in volleyball, in basketball, in football, tackle football, lacrosse, things like that. - Are injury risks a part of that? - Yes, they are. And, you know, we certainly hear about the concussions in every sport, and so certain parents have said, you know, I'm not gonna let my kid play football, for example, because of the risk of concussions. - What do you think about that as somebody who's really vested in understanding youth sports and the benefits later? - I guess it may fall down to training of coaches, and training of youth sports leagues to talk about. - Yes, and I didn't answer your first question about one of the benefits of youth sports, but certainly being engaged in any kind of a team activity, a team sport, drama club music, whatever it is, you certainly learn to work with other people. You learn some responsibility. You learn leadership. One of the good things about being a multi-sport athlete is you learn different roles as an athlete, because in one sport, you might be the superstar leader. In another sport, you're the sixth man, or the tenth man, or the eleventh man, and you learn a different role there. And all that's important in terms of developing character and responsibility and self-efficacy and self-esteem and those kinds of things. - Is it your view that kids are specializing more today than they were two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago? - Much more, much more. I did an analysis one time where I look back to my high school. I'd counted how many kids played three or four sports, and I went down through the years, and the number of multi-sport athletes today is certainly down from what it was 10 years ago and 20 years ago, for sure. So the pressure to specialize because of the scholarship possibility, parents feel trapped. They gotta get their kid in there. They have to get them specializing. They have to get them the special coach. They have to get the travel team, because I call it entrapment, parent entrapment, because if I don't, I'm falling behind, or really my son and daughter's falling behind. But I say, I am 'cause I'm still connected with them. Here's to find this interesting. You talk to a parent and they say, we got a game today, and they say, who's we? They say, well, we, my daughter has a game. I said, it's not we. I said, your daughter has a game. But see, this is how invested we are. It's we, we, like we are playing. We're hitting with more power this year. I said, who's we? Well, my daughter is hitting with more power, I said, okay. Is this at all a urban rural issue in North Dakota, in your eyes, or is it pervasive everywhere? Yeah. Certainly the kids in rural North Dakota are more diversified in their sports. Schools have a limited number of athletes. Which you would say is a good thing. Which is a good thing, yes. And so, if you play football this season, Don, you play basketball this season. Don, you run track or do something. And the summertime, you probably are sometimes working on the farm, maybe playing baseball, who maybe go to a camp here and there. Now, at some point, you know, there's nothing wrong with specialization. And really, for kids that are like six to 13, we want them sampling a lot of things. Try a lot of things, play a lot of sports. Once you get to like 15, now maybe you're gonna start cutting back. So I played four sports in high school. And when I got into my sophomore year, it was down to two sports. And then I finished up playing two high school sports. And then at some point, you're investing in it. You're gonna sample a lot of things. Now I'm gonna pick these two and specialize and now you're gonna go full-board invest in this. But that's not until you're like 16, 17 years old. Were you now we're gonna hang your hat on something? If you were the king of youth sports in the country, would you eliminate travel teams for kids under a certain age and if so, what's that age? - Yes, I would. And you know, what's craziest, you got some hockey teams that are elite, you know, whatever elite means. You're 10 years old and you're elite. And you travel to Minneapolis to play teams and other teams from Fargo traveling to Minneapolis to play in that same tournament. And I'm thinking, why travel when you can play each other right here? This is kind of silly, you know, but they're doing it. If I was in charge, probably 12. Maybe like fifth or sixth grade. - Are national organizations looking at these and I'm thinking of like a USA soccer? - You're not the good question. AAU, amateur athletic union. They have national championships for every age group in many sports all across the country. So I would argue they're not looking out for the kids because it's all about winning a national championship at age nine or age 10 or age 12. One time I was walking through the airport and I saw a young boy, he might have been five or six years old, he had a big trophy. And I said, hey, what are you the trophy for? And dad comes over and dad a smile and he said, he was in a karate tournament in Washington DC. We're in the airport in Baltimore or someplace. And I said, oh, that's pretty cool. Is your son win that? Yeah, he did, he got first place. The trophy was as big as the kid, I kid you not. Now, how do you top that in your life? You'll never win another trophy bigger than you in your life. And why give a kid a trophy so big that it's bigger than him? But AAU was giving out awards and trophies and ad nauseam to try get people to come to these tournaments and claim they're the state champions, the national champions and whatever champions. The Little League Baseball has been doing the Little League World Series since '19, like '47. There have been less than 50 players that played Little League World Series that made it to the major leagues, that's all. And so what happened to the rest of them, they dropped out. We do know that research shows that when you specialize early, you are less likely to be active as an adult. Sometimes it's injuries, sometimes it's just, I'm tired of it, I've had enough. And if you wait and invest later on, you're more apt to be active for a lifetime. So that's pretty important. What have we learned about the mental health issues relative to youth sports? Well, you know, we are putting so much pressure on these young kids to perform, to meet up to the expectations that mom or dad or coach has for them. I mean, that's enough for them with their own expectations. And now you have to please mom or dad. You know, so the game goes on. The kids are looking over to the bleachers to see if mom and dad are watching, if mom and dad are saying anything. And the game ends, you get into the car and certainly dads more than moms, the research has shown, starts telling the kids what they did wrong. Mostly it's what they did wrong, how they can do it better. And this is gonna turn the kids off faster than anything else in the world. Just let them be. The game is over, go get ice cream and have fun. If they wanna talk about it, talk about it. But most kids don't. Talk about mental health issues. I mean, the state of America right now with mental health issues, due to social media, you're trying to keep up with everybody else. And then you got mom and dad pressure and you got coach pressure and wow, that's a lot. And so at some point, something gives. And then a stigma comes with that, right? If you get labeled that you have like a struggle, pretty soon there's a stigma and you got problems. - You couldn't keep up. - Couldn't keep up, you know, I've grown enough. You gotta have mental toughness. And we use the word mental toughness probably inappropriately 'cause most coaches talked about mental toughness, they're meaning that you can physically take it. If you can physically take it, you're mentally tough. Well, I could argue they're two separate things. - I wanna interject here. One of the most interesting pieces of literature that I read about this when my kids were growing up was the Methini Manifesto. And Mike Methini was a major league coach for the Cardinals. He was a catcher by trade. But he wrote a book called the Methini Manifesto. Essentially when he got fired as a coach, he had to go do something. And he was asked, I believe, it's been a while since I've read it to coach his local high school team. And he said, I'll do it, but this is the way I'm gonna do it. And he wrote the Methini Manifesto. You can go to MethiniManifesto.com, I think, and read a seven page summary of that. In my opinion, every parent in the country should be given that. And it talks about exactly what you just said. Once the game's over, what should a parent do? During the game, what should the parent do during practices? What should the parent do? It will come as a major surprise, I think, what Mike Methini writes about. - I think Mike Methini got away with that because his reputation as a professional baseball player. If it would've been you or me writing that manifesto and giving it to the parents, I'm not so sure they would've accepted it the same way. But what he said was spot on, back off. It's the kids' game. It's their time, it's not your time, it's their time. Let them experience it in the way they experience things. - Some advice I recall was, drop them off at practice, pick them up when practices finished, don't hover over practice. - Exactly. - Go to the game, clap a little bit, and then go get ice cream after the game. - Exactly, yep. The research that I've done with kids, I did a project called The Voice of Athletes, and we asked young kids, what were the positive things with your mom and dad at the game? What were some of the negative things? What was some of the positive things with the youth sport experience? What were your experiences with the coaches and so on? And so for the parents, positive things were being there. Be there, give me affirmation, cheer me on. Negative thing was not being there, unwelcome advice. What's number two? And then criticizing. So the kids want the parents there, but they want them there just to be supportive and giving affirmation. That's what the kids think. I think, when I think about youth sports, I think of Mad Love's hierarchy of need, if you remember what that was at all. - Way back in the psychology class somewhere. - Exactly. And so the bottom level of that is physiological needs, having food, having clothing, having sleep. The next level up was safety. And so when I teach coaching classes, we talk about what does safety mean to kids coming to baseball practice? What does safety mean? And if you're not safe, you're not gonna come back. So safe from ridicule, safe from getting hurt, safe from getting into fights, safe from a coach insulting you, safe from being picked on, okay? So if you're safe from those things, I'm coming back to practice tomorrow. If not, I'm not coming back. And then the next level up gets to be connections. And so you bought into it now, but if you don't connect with anybody, you're not coming back. And so the coach has to intentionally connect with the athlete and the athletes have to intentionally connect with each other. Well, if you're ostracized and if you're the marginalized kid, now I'm gonna go find something else to do and I'm gonna drop out. 70% of kids drop out by age 13. Kids that play youth sports. If we say youth sport does all these wonderful things for kids, well, a great portion of them aren't getting those wonderful things. So if something is a myth with what we're doing in our youth sport programs. What questions should youth sports leagues ask themselves at the end of every season? I would like to know, you know, what's your metric for measuring success? And one metric that I think is important is retention of kids. Nationally they use a word churn. Churn is how many kids, they play in one season and then drop out. So 40 to 50% of kids do that. Why are they dropping out? That's a huge issue. If you've got FM Athletics football in town and if they have 400 kids playing this year, well, what's the retention rate for next year? If it's 50%, I will argue that you guys didn't do a very good job. But I don't know what the retention rate is. I'm not even sure they measure it. But if it's 90% and you go, well, kids are coming back and something's good about this. They're having fun, they're connecting, coaches are good. So I would use the retention of kids coming back as a metric. One metric to measure success. Because if they come back, they're enjoying what's going on. There are many coaches I think who are well-meaning, like you said much earlier in the interview. They really want to serve their team well. Yes. But they have no training. They have no history of understanding what that means. How can they get support? If you're a high school coach, you have the state high school coaches conference that you can attend and get updates on coaching education. Well, let's just say if you're a parent, coaching my 14-year-old baseball team or whatever. I would like to see the youth board organizations invest in more coaching education with the coaches. Bring in people, perhaps like myself, who are, my job is coaching education. I can teach you what the appropriate practices are for a certain age. What the scope and sequence should be for teaching a certain age group of kids. I once watched a youth football coach. He was doing a drill. If you know football, they set out the dummies and the kids were supposed to step over the dummies. And these were 10-year-olds and they're struggling to do it. And the coach comes over and he's mad at the kids because nobody's trying and nobody can do it and blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, it's not that they can't do it. The dummies are too high up in the air. They can't lift their legs that high, they're stumbling. I said, put a rope on the ground and have them just step over the rope and said, every kid is going to have success. That's an appropriate practice. So sometimes it's just the coaches not recognizing scope and sequence and inappropriate and appropriate practices. And so that's where coaching education comes in. And I think where the associations could bring in people that could mentor them through some of these things. You know, so many of the youth league coaches played sports. And so if you play sports, obviously, you have an idea that you think you know how to coach sports. Different, but if you play in the coach, it's a different thing. And the biggest thing for me is the psychological way that the people treat children, they're not many adults. And you can't treat children like adults. What age should tackle football be allowed? Yeah, I wish that wasn't until junior high school. Dr. Brad Strand is a professor of department of health, nutrition, and exercise sciences at North Dakota State University. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. I appreciate your time. Coming after the break, Bismarck's Atlanta Danderan visits about the Surgeon Generals, most recent recommendations on social media and youth. Stay with us. Support for Prairie Public is provided by the Bush Foundation, investing in great ideas and the people who power them. Introducing the recipients of the 2024 Bush Fellowship. Learn more about the 2024 Fellows at bushfoundation.org/fellows. The FM Kickspan brings jazz to area parks. August 1st, 630 PM, Hanson Arts Park in Jamestown. August 3rd, 10 AM, Red River Market in Fargo. August 4th, noon to five FM Kickspan Jazz Festival, Gooseberry Park. Details at FMKickspan.com. The Kickspan receives funding from the arts partnership with support from the cities of Fargo, Morehead, and West Fargo. - Welcome back to Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Craig Blumenshine. The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has announced that he will push for a warning label on social media platforms advising parents that using the platforms might damage adolescents' mental health. Warning labels like those that appear on tobacco and alcohol products are one of the most powerful tools available to the nation's top health official, but Dr. Murthy cannot unilaterally require them. The action requires approval by Congress. This marks Alana Danderan, a psychotherapist joins Main Street to discuss how parents can use this information to navigate the challenging waters of teens and social media. Alana, welcome to Main Street. - Hi. - You have a masters of social work in your licensed clinical social worker, as I said in my introduction. And we wanna talk about the Surgeon General's recent report that was titled Social Media and Youth Mental Health, the U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory, going so far as to suggest warning labels on social media. But before we get to that, give us your background on what you do for youth. - As a licensed clinical social worker, that allows me to provide a service called psychotherapy, which is short for psychological therapy. And so I work primarily with children, so around ages eight and up to about 25, so those sort of developing years, and help them with things that are hard for them, maybe emotionally or mental health-wise. And we use the process of talk therapy to problem-solve and work through things and understand stuff about ourself and try to help those problems, have solutions and feel a little bit better. - You have an office in Bismarck and a virtual office in Fargo. - Yes, that's correct. - That is correct. - All right, let's get to the nuts and bolts of this. This is just such an interesting topic for me, and I've seen firsthand what social media can do to youth. It can be okay, but boy, it can be tragic. What was your first reaction when you saw the Surgeon General's report? - I was excited about that. I think that it's great, like it's good information. It's a great conversation. There's lots of conversation within it that needs to happen. And I think it's a really good starting spot. - And from your professional experience, have you observed direct correlation between social media usage and mental health issues in the youth that you've worked with? - Yes, absolutely, 100%. I think there can be lots of positives about social media and we definitely live in a world where it's not going anywhere. And there are definitely some harmful side effects that can come out of social media usage. And it's difficult, especially in that pre-teen teenager age where you're first getting introduced to it and first learning how to use it, it has a big impact and has a big potential for a big impact on mental health in a pretty negative way. We see just the rise of diagnosis of things like anxiety and depression in young people. And I would say social media is probably a big contributor as to why those rates are increasing so rapidly. - You're a parent. What is your advice or role going to be as a parent when your children become a age and maybe have a phone and maybe start thinking about social media? - Yeah, so my daughter is three. So we're a ways away from that yet. So I think parents need to one really understand the app. So I always recommend that parents have the same apps that their pre-teens and teens are wanting to use but they understand how to use the apps. And so they're a little bit familiar with what can all happen and how they can be used. And then too that they just are aware of what is all out there, what are the risks, what is all happening on social media and then how do you create a safety plan that includes lots of open dialogue, lots of conversation, lots of learning and teaching and kind of growing together in it. I will tell parents when their kids are asking for social media, I don't think it's a great idea to say no. If they're asking for it, they really, really want it, probably friends and peers have it. And the likelihood of maybe sneaking it is kind of high. And so I always think it's better to go ahead and say, yes, we can get social media. Let's get you set up. However, the contingency is we then are gonna be really open about it and we're gonna kind of use it together. And mom and dad or whatever caregiver, right? Could be grandparents, could be aunts, uncles, other family members, whoever is involved. We're gonna help you use this safely. - One thing I've recognized is that teens are experts. Hiding really what they do on social media. What should parents look for when their kids are of age, they're using a cell phone and they may or may not know if they're using social media? - I think we would wanna make sure that there's not a lot of cell phone usage happening in private. How much unrestricted access to the internet does your child have? And is that access and lack of restriction appropriate for their age? Sort of thinking different recommendations and different things to look out for for different ages. And I think then just kind of monitoring their cell phone time typically, especially in those earlier teen years, I'm gonna guess that's mostly parents paying for the phone. And so there's apps that you can put on your phone that allow you to track how often certain apps are being used on your child's phone, right? Help you monitor that usage. And so looking like, oh, they're using an app that I don't see on their phone a lot. Or there's usage and it's on the internet and it's at hours length at a time but I don't have any way of knowing what they're doing might just mean that we need to be having more conversation about what's going on? What are you doing on there? What are you talking to? - One of the things I've noticed too is, and I'm yelty this sometimes too. I'm a grandparent now and parents and others have their heads in their phones when their teens or youth are with them. They're learning from us. They're learning behavior from us, aren't they? - Yes, 100%. I think we need to model the adults, right? We're the ones responsible for this and we're the ones that need to be providing the solution for the impact that social media is having on adolescent mental health. And a big, big piece is we need to learn how to have healthy boundaries with phones and electronics and social media and all the things. And then we need to model how you have those healthy boundaries for the young people so that they can see, oh, okay, this is a good thing to have some, yeah, just boundary with it. - The Surgeon General has recommended that social media have warning labels. That's one of his recommendations. A, do you think those will be effective, but B, doesn't that tell you how serious he believes this issue is? - Yes, I mean, so I'll say B first, I agree, but definitely tells us how serious this is, which is great. A, I'm conflicted. I think the warning labels are great and I think that they'll be helpful in terms of conversation starting. And then hopefully that helps motivate just people to get thinking about this in a different way, get talking about it just more education on it. I don't know that warning labels necessarily are enough. I think it's a great starting place. And I think that definitely would help parents just know, okay, this is a serious thing, right? There's warning labels on music that has explicit lyrics in it. There's warning labels on movies, right? Like other kinds of things to let us know. There's content here that isn't appropriate for all ages. And so I think the warning label is gonna be great in just helping identify, oh, there's things about this. There's content here that isn't appropriate for all ages. And so it needs help from the adults to have good boundaries and appropriate usage for the young people. A warning label just by itself, I don't know that it's always a big deterrent. - We're enjoying our conversation with Alana Danderan. She holds a master of social work and is a licensed clinical social worker. And her practice is Alana Danderan psychotherapy services. Alana, besides warning labels, what should parents do if they think that their children really have an issue? In other words, give us some good advice on how to make that conversation productive and not defensive as you kind of talked about a little bit earlier. - What I recommend is if you know something, just tell your preteen, tell your teenager, you know it. Don't try to see if they'll lie to you. Don't try to see if they'll come forward and tell the truth. Just be blunt, be upfront, be open about it. Try not to use it as a threat. Like I'm gonna take this away or you're gonna lose this or this is gonna be kind of held over your head. Come at it as sort of supportive as you can. You know, create like an open safe environment of hate. You can tell me anything. And I wanna learn about this with you and I want you to have this and I want us to do this in a way that feels good for everybody and has just safety and positivity to it. And I'm not gonna take it away from you. I'm not gonna use this as a bartering tool with you. I just wanna talk about it really openly and the more openly we can talk about it, then the more liberties you can have with it or like the more freedom you can have with it. - Is there a time, Alana, that the parent may realize I can't deal with this by myself and need someone like your services to maybe help bridge that gap and give the teen more arrows in their quiver, if you will, or just more equipment to deal with this effectively? - Yeah, absolutely. I think if you're noticing really big behavior changes in your young person that go beyond what's kind of normal development, bigger mood swings or more isolating, spending lots of time alone, seeming withdrawn or seeming down more often, not enjoying things that they used to, more difficulty with peers maybe, more arguing or irritability at home, not wanting to do anything, not enjoying old hobbies, things like that. When our emotions have started to impact the way we interact with others, the way we see the world or just the way we can enjoy and live, that's when we know we need to go get some additional support. - The Surgeon General talked about age restrictions. In your eyes, give us some guidelines for parents and A, cell phones and B, social media. I'm old school. If I didn't have to deal with this when I was being a parent and I've wondered so often, when would we have allowed our kids to have a cell phone? And then when would we have allowed them to have apps like Facebook, Twitter, anything? What are the age guidelines we should be thinking about? - Oh gosh, that's a loaded question. As a, personally, as a parent, I think like, oh man, I would want my child to wait until high school. Even then, I think like developmentally, so much of this is so abstract and the risks there are so abstract and that part of brain development doesn't happen until our early 20s. And so in order to use this in a really healthy way, we need that brain development there, right? To do that independently. Now, professionally and just what I see, I think asking your child to wait to high school is probably gonna be too long from a social perspective, just normal social development. It's gonna make them feel like they're on the outside. They're gonna be the last ones to have it 'cause it just is happening so much earlier. And so I think if we could try to hold off on social media until year 12, 13, as we're approaching those teen years, that that would be ideal, that that would be the earliest. - Do schools have a role to play here in North Dakota relative to social media, even cell phones and youth? - Well, I do think that they could be a really great partner. I would love to see, this might be way too far, but I'd love to see where just maybe phones weren't allowed in the classroom. Or phones were sort of put away during the day and so that there just wasn't constant pulling the phone out in the middle of class 'cause I'm bored and I'm gonna go on social media. Or I need to text somebody or I need to be available and on call, if you will, all the time. And it's distracting from learning for one, and it's not giving a brain a break from electronics too. And that kind of stuff can interfere just in meeting new friends or talking to somebody different in a class where you don't know anybody. Instead of being like, oh, I'm in this class, I don't know anybody. I should try to talk to somebody new. A lot of times teens will just be like, I'm gonna get my phone out and I'm gonna go on social media and just talk to the people that I know. I feel uncomfortable and so the social media is kind of a use to soothe comfort. Yeah, I wanna say pacifier in a way, but it's like, oh, I'm uncomfortable and I don't want to do, I'll just distract myself. I'll just go on my phone and go on social media and I'll completely forget about all these hard feelings. The problem is, there's problems there with that. Alana, if I recognize that my child's being bullied on social media, what action should I take that would not be, oh my God, mom, you can't go to school or you can't go to their parents and you can't go to the kid, you're gonna make me look horrible. Yeah, the child's getting bullied. What should a parent do? They still have to do those things, you know, that the child on the surface is like, please don't do that, that's gonna be so embarrassing. I just want this to go away and then that child needs you to be the adult for them and make the hard decisions that they can't make. It's why we don't have young kids living out on their own and making all of their own decisions already 'cause they can't and so even though your child is gonna be maybe upset in the moment and they're saying, please don't do that, you still need to do that. If it's somebody at school bullying, the school needs to know and you can do it in a way that doesn't cause a big scene, but your child, their emotional self and their self-worth and their self-confidence, they need to see that they matter enough for you to go and have those hard conversations and say, my child being treated this way is absolutely unacceptable. Depending on the content of the bullying, you might even need to go to the police and those are really, really hard things to do. It's scary and we need to create a culture. I think people like myself, right, and other people in this community create a culture of like, that is okay. You're not overreacting. You need to do those things. This is serious. Please report this. Let's help make sure that this stops. - You can wave your magic wand to deal with this issue as we kind of sum up our conversation today. What would you do? - Oh gosh, if I could wave a magic wand and just have anything happen, I mean, a few different things. I would want there to be like a mass education for all the people and here's, you know, different levels, I guess, like right down to, here's how you download an app and use it and have all of us be a little bit more savvy on what's happening. I would love to see conversations that are teaching young people about what it looks like to maybe be manipulated and when something isn't really what it seems on social media or how to, you know, sort of be thinking like, oh, that's a red flag. That might not actually be a teenager who's behind that picture or that might not, they might not actually be who they say they are. People can lie, right? And that takes a lot of abstract thinking and it's a big risk for young people because that brain development isn't there yet. I would really love to see from the social media companies have a bit more requirement on them to make sure that accounts are verified a bit more. That we're looking for ways to prevent their from being these spam accounts and scam accounts and catfishing accounts. If we could find a way to eliminate some of those or have flags, that flag when those are happening and get those shut down, I know there's a little bit of that but I just don't think it's aggressive enough. - Have you thought about how artificial intelligence may also be entering into this? - Yeah, that feels scary. And I'm not sure I know enough but it seems worrisome to me just with... - One of the things that different chat bots can do is all of a sudden become conversational with people, perhaps with an agenda that the person isn't aware of. That scares me. - Yes. And the voice mimicking too of like taking another voice and being able to just use that voice to create original content, if you will, or original conversation. That's, yeah, that feels really scary. - How can folks get a hold of you? They wanna learn more. - If you can look me up on the internet, I have a website and so you can email me directly through my website or you can find me on Psychology Today and that would direct you to my website or would give you my phone number and you can give me a call. And I'm always open, if you will, in the sense of if you have questions or you're looking or you wanna get just pointed in the right direction, I wanna help everybody. And so people reach out and not everybody is always able for lots of different reasons to come to my clinics necessarily but I will still try to help you get where you need to go or find someone that would be a good fit for you or get you connected with resources or get you phone numbers or just a conversation and say, yeah, I think you need to go here or give you a recommendation. Anything I will try to help in any way that I can. - I appreciate that. The other thing I would strongly suggest is the Surgeon General's report about this is online and available for anyone to read just Google, Surgeon General and social media and mental health or Surgeon General's advisory and people will see that. - Alanna Danderan, she holds a master of social work is a licensed clinical social worker. She's a psychotherapist with Alanna Danderan psychotherapy services based in Bismarck. Thank you so much for joining us on Main Street. - Thank you for having me. - I'm Ira Plato. On Science Friday, we wonder about the secrets of nature and meet the scientists finding the keys to the universe like Blackhall Maven Jan 11. - I think it's really important as a scientist not to put a belief system first. The whole point is to explore the unknown. - Come explore with us. It's all on Science Friday from WNYC Studios. - Science Friday, listen every Friday evening at Seven Central, Six Mountain on Prairie Public. Support for Dakota Date Book is provided by Books on Broadway and Dakota Soda and Coffee Company of Williston featuring coffees and a wide variety of books for children and adults. Books on Broadway, the independent bookstore for independent minds. - This is Dakota Date Book for July 23rd. Located in Roulette County, St. John is one of the oldest towns in North Dakota dating back to its 1843 origins as a trading post. The 1880s saw towns springing up in that region as people gravitated to the area's trading post. Dunseath and Belcourt were organized in 1884 and the city of Roulette is a relative late-comer incorporated on the state in 1930. The city of Roulette is named for the county and the county is named for Joseph Roulette, an early fur trader. Roulette was born in 1820 in Prairie-Duchein of Michigan Territory. His father was a prominent French-Canadian fur trader employed by the American Fur Company. Young Joseph went to New York where he lived with relatives and was educated at a private school. By 1840, Roulette returned to the west. He worked in the fur trade and built a trading post at Pembina. In 1842, he began producing the Red River carts that made trade in the area more competitive. The two-wheeled carts diverted trade from the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada to St. Paul. The trade from Roulette helped St. Paul become a commercial center. Roulette embarked on a political career in 1851, elected to represent Pembina in Minnesota's territorial legislature. His first trip to the legislature took 18 days by dog sled. He made quite an entrance when he brought his dogs with him into the Capitol building. Roulette made a flamboyant contribution to Minnesota history in 1857. The legislature has to build to move the territory capital from St. Paul to St. Peter. The bill was passed to Roulette, who was supposed to deliver it to the governor. Once he had the bill in hand, Roulette disappeared. Sergeant at Arms was sent to look for him. It seems Roulette, aided by local citizens, absconded with the bill to prevent the capital from leaving St. Paul. Roulette was eventually found in the bill returned, but a judge ruled it unconstitutional in the capital state put. When Minnesota became a state, Roulette returned to Pembina, which was now outside the new state in an unorganized territory, soon to become Dakota territory. He died in 1871, now remembered by the county and city, named for him. Today's Dakota Datebook, written by Dr. Carol Butcher. I'm Annalquist. Dakota Datebook is produced in cooperation with the State Historical Society of North Dakota, with funding by Humanities North Dakota. (upbeat music) - Arts programming on Prairie Public is supported in part by the North Dakota Council on the Arts, a state agency developing, promoting, and supporting the arts in North Dakota. (upbeat music) - And that's a wrap for today's episode of Main Street. We're delighted that you've spent time with us. Tomorrow, we'll get a preview of two events that are happening in North Dakota this weekend. The Fargo Air Show returns to North Dakota this Saturday and Sunday, and we'll get an update from the show's Chairman Darren Hall. And our friend, Jill Reese, joins us again on Main Street to discuss the details of the 12th Annual Bluegrass Goes Pink. It's an event held at Cross Ranch State Park, and it's in partnership with the Bismarck Cancer Center Foundation. We hope you can join us again tomorrow on Main Street. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)