ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Hannah Chidekel is a clinical research coordinator at the Digital Wellness Lab, a nonprofit research center studying healthy digital media use from infancy through young adulthood.

Dr. Linda Charmaraman has studied social media, smartphones, gaming, and AI for nearly 20 years. She co-wrote the APA's guidance on teen social media use and submitted testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on protecting kids online.

IN THIS EPISODE

(02:50) The Digital Wellness Lab's balanced approach to kids and media

(04:47) Why Dr. Charmaraman bet on social media research early

(07:20) Design problem or developmental problem?

(09:54) Does social media replace friendships or add to them?

(12:13) Three kinds of heavy users, and when screen use signals something deeper

(15:34) The middle school brain and the "imaginary audience"

(17:14) The high school brain: guardrails instead of lockdowns

(19:31) Why digital literacy belongs in every teacher's training

(21:52) Phone policies work better when students help write them

(23:37) The "learning to drive" mindset

(25:35) Teaching teen girls to take control of their algorithms

(27:55) What age-based social media bans miss

(29:48) Why there's no "magic age" for a first phone

(31:48) What real progress could look like in five years

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Kids with strong offline friendships are more likely to feel they belong online too.

Watch for what screen time crowds out: sleep, homework, and friends.

Middle schoolers feel like everyone is watching, so online drama hits hard.

Teens need guardrails, not lockdowns, to practice self-regulation.

Students accept phone policies more when they help create them.

There's no magic age. Readiness depends on the kid and the family.

The goal is balance, not zero tech or unlimited tech.

FAMILY HOMEWORK: DRIVER'S ED FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

Family screen time check: everyone guesses their number, then checks the real one.

Conversation starters for the car.

48-hour challenge: parents turn off their own notifications.

FOR TEACHERS: "WHO'S DRIVING YOUR BRAIN?"

Students try the Ding Challenge, focusing while the teacher interrupts with silly questions, then redesign an app to be good for their brains and pitch it Shark Tank style.

RESOURCES

Digital Wellness Lab: digitalwellnesslab.org

Youth Media and Wellbeing Research Lab: youthmediawellbeing.org

Instagram: @youthmediawellbeing

Hosts: Cristine Davis and Elicia

The Copy Paste Generation, Episode 5

If this episode helped you, share it with a parent or teacher who needs it.

About Our Guest

Dr. Clifford Sussman is a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Washington, D.C., who has specialized in treating internet and video game addiction since 2008, a decade before the World Health Organization formally recognized gaming disorder. He was a gamer and programmer before going into psychiatry, so he understands both the appeal of virtual worlds and the risks.

In This Episode

• (01:56) How a lifelong gamer became a psychiatrist specializing in screen addiction
• (03:40) What made excessive gaming look like the addictions he saw in training, and the brain imaging research behind it
• (05:27) Using motivational interviewing to help teens become their own authority figure
• (06:42) Why every teen is torn about changing, even the ones who say "I'm fine"
• (08:46) How kids have changed over the past decade
• (09:39) Dopamine as the "get what we want when we want it" chemical, and why screens are shortcut machines
• (12:39) How instant rewards overpower inhibitory control, especially in teens
• (14:11) Online escapism: why games level the social playing field, and why kids still need balance
• (19:02) Dopamine receptor downregulation, tolerance, and whether it's reversible
• (22:12) Why kids with ADHD and autism are more vulnerable, and how their reasons differ
• (24:20) Why kids get so irritable when the screen goes off: withdrawal and "reward deficiency syndrome"
• (26:38) How to talk to kids without it turning into a lecture
• (29:25) Systems that avoid the "five more minutes" standoff
• (31:07) How screen overuse affects working memory, impulse control, and planning
• (33:31) AI and chatbots: what's exciting and what's worrying
• (36:12) What parents and teachers can do now
• (38:22) Setting up home and classroom environments: low-dopamine and high-dopamine zones

Key Takeaways

• Speed matters more than reward. Screens don't necessarily give kids something better. They give it faster, which is what makes them so hard to put down.
• Meltdowns aren't just defiance. When a binge ends, kids can go through a real dopamine low that leaves them bored, irritable, and unfocused, sometimes for days.
• The brain can recover. Dopamine receptors lost to overstimulation can come back with time.
• Validate the feeling, keep the limit. You can acknowledge that your child is upset without giving up the rule.
• Watch the cues. Phones by the bed, devices at the dinner table, and Chromebooks on desks all signal the brain that it's time for screens. Create screen-free zones.
• Add low-dopamine structure. Off-screen activities that require reading social cues help balance things out.

This Week's Homework:

• Dr. Sussman's website: cliffordsussmanmd.com
• Fast Rewards for Your Brain
• Parent Homework

Can't remember your own kid's phone number, but you still know your childhood best friend's by heart? That's the Google effect at work. In episode 3, we talk with Dr. Brittany Harman, a cognitive psychologist at Wilson College who studies digital amnesia, about why our brains stop bothering to store information we expect to find again later, how this "fear" actually goes back to Socrates, and what her own research reveals about memory, motivation, and the classroom. We also get into the surprising "photo-taking impairment effect" (why photographing something can make you remember it worse than just looking at it), what AI means for all of this, and how teachers and parents can design habits and assignments that build memory rather than bypass it. We close with this week's homework: beating the Google effect at home and in the classroom.

Guest: Dr. Brittany Harman, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Wilson College

Hosts: Alicia Dunk and Christine Davis

• 00:14 – Welcome and what this show is about
• 01:31 – Setting up today's topic: the Google effect
• 02:21 – Meet Dr. Brittany Harman
• 03:08 – What is digital amnesia, and why the fear is thousands of years old
• 05:51 – What the Google effect actually means (and how it's different from digital amnesia)
• 09:16 – Do we forget, or do we just never fully learn it?
• 12:44 – How this connects to executive functioning skills
• 15:50 – The photo-taking impairment effect: why photos can hurt memory
• 19:03 – The cell phone reliance scale she helped develop
• 21:17 – Would this effect look different in younger kids?
• 24:11 – Designing assignments that use technology without bypassing memory
• 26:28 – Does AI supercharge digital amnesia?
• 29:10 – What gives her hope about this generation
• 32:41 – Hosts' recap: proving the Google effect in real time
• 33:44 – This week's tool: homework for parents and teachers

• Dr. Brittany Harman's faculty page, Wilson College Psychology: wilson.edu/psychology-faculty
• Google Scholar (for the primary research on digital amnesia and the Google effect, as Dr. Harman recommends): scholar.google.com
• Sparrow, Liu & Wegner (2011), "Google Effects on Memory," the original study that named the Google effect, published in Science
• Henkel (2014), "Point-and-Shoot Memories," the study behind the photo-taking impairment effect, published in Psychological Science
• This week's homework and the middle/high school lesson plan: thecopypastegeneration.com

Parents: Beat the Google Effect. A parent-and-kid activity — notice when you're offloading a memory task to a device out of habit rather than necessity, and practice holding on to information a little longer before reaching for your phone.

Middle and high school teachers: A lesson plan designed to open students' eyes to how outsourcing memory is affecting them.

Find both at thecopypastegeneration.com.

What exactly are "executive functions," and is technology helping or hurting kids' ability to build them? In episode 2, we talk with Dr. Adele Diamond, a leading researcher on executive functions at the University of British Columbia, about what these skills actually are (inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility), why she considers them more important than IQ, and how stress, joy, and our own expectations shape whether kids develop them. Then pediatric occupational therapist Brittni Winslow joins us to talk about what she's seeing hands-on with kids: fine motor changes, difficulty transitioning away from screens, and the everyday habits that help. We close with this week's homework: the Task Breakdown Challenge for parents and a matching classroom lesson plan for teachers.

Guests:

• Dr. Adele Diamond, Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, University of British Columbia
• Brittni Winslow, MS, OTR/L, pediatric occupational therapist and Executive Director at Emerge Pediatric Therapy

• 00:14 – Welcome and what this show is about
• 01:26 – Setting up today's topic: executive functioning skills
• 02:23 – Meet Dr. Adele Diamond
• 03:39 – What are executive functions, and why more important than IQ?
• 08:48 – "Lazy" or struggling? Rethinking how we read kids' behavior
• 10:17 – Does executive function look different at home vs. school?
• 11:12 – How well-meaning adults can undermine executive function
• 13:03 – Why joy and emotional investment matter for building these skills
• 15:50 – The age range when executive function is most under construction
• 18:41 – Why some activities (like martial arts) build these skills better than others
• 22:22 – Constant notifications, AI, and the impact on kids
• 23:44 – Dr. Diamond's advice for parents and teachers
• 27:13 – Meet Brittni Winslow
• 27:59 – What technology has changed in kids' fine motor and behavioral skills
• 30:10 – What Brittni actively teaches now that she didn't before
• 31:46 – The technology fears parents bring her, and which ones are overblown
• 32:29 – Apps and tools she recommends
• 34:24 – Exercises for building executive functioning skills
• 36:23 – Practical tips for screen time at home
• 39:34 – Hosts' recap
• 39:55 – This week's tool: homework for parents and teachers

• Dr. Adele Diamond's research and lab: devcogneuro.com
• Emerge Pediatric Therapy (Brittni Winslow's practice, locations in Durham, Chapel Hill/Carrboro, and Cary): emergepediatrictherapy.com
• Nex Playground (the AI motion-tracking game system Brittni uses in therapy sessions): nexplayground.com
• Korro (the AI-powered occupational therapy app Brittni mentioned): korro.ai — search "Korro" on the App Store
• Full episode resources, including this week's homework: thecopypastegeneration.com

Parents: The Task Breakdown Challenge. Spend about 15 minutes with your kid picking one real task on their plate and turning it into a simple, ordered list of steps together.

Teachers: A full classroom lesson plan built around the same skill — breaking big tasks into small ones — complete with a warm-up, guided practice, and printable activity slips.

Grab both at thecopypastegeneration.com.

Ed tech didn't start with iPads. In our first episode, we talk with writer and historian Audrey Watters about the hundred-year history of technology in the classroom, from Sidney Pressey's 1920s typewriter-based "teaching machine" to B.F. Skinner's behaviorist devices, the first computer labs, Maine's statewide laptop program, and today's AI chatbots. Audrey explains why the same promises of saved time, personalization, and "the future" keep coming back, why the claim that "it's inevitable" should make us skeptical, and what she'd rather see in every classroom (hint: it's a window). We finish with this week's homework for parents and teachers.

Guest: Audrey Watters, author of Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning and writer of the Second Breakfast newsletter and the long-running Hack Education blog.

Hosts: Alicia Dunk and Christine Davis

Timestamps

• 00:14 – Welcome and what this show is about
• 02:16 – Meet Audrey Watters
• 05:29 – The 1920s teaching machine and its promise to save teachers time
• 10:24 – Why "ed tech is inevitable" is a story worth questioning
• 14:07 – Gadgets, household automation, and Cory Doctorow's "enshittification"
• 17:30 – What would Skinner think of a 2026 classroom?
• 19:17 – The 1980s: from Logo and Seymour Papert's vision to the computer lab
• 22:47 – The sales pitch: "the future" and personalized learning
• 26:58 – The laptop era and Maine's one-to-one program
• 30:44 – How AI compares
• 33:13 – Audrey's favorite education technology
• 34:48 – Lightning round
• 39:49 – Hosts' recap
• 40:28 – This week's tool: homework for parents and teachers

Links and resources

• Audrey Watters' website: audreywatters.com
• Second Breakfast (her newsletter on ed-tech criticism and AI): 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com, also linked from her website. Some posts are subscriber-only.
• Hack Education (her long-running blog on the politics and business of ed tech): hackeducation.com
• Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning (MIT Press): mitpress.mit.edu/books/teaching-machines

Also mentioned in this episode (no links needed, but handy for curious listeners):

• Sidney Pressey and B.F. Skinner's teaching machines
• Seymour Papert and Logo
• Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA chatbot (1960s) and his book Computer Power and Human Reason
• Cory Doctorow's term "enshittification"
• Historian Ellen Condliffe Lagemann's summary of American education: "Dewey lost, Thorndike won"

This week's tool

Parents: Cook or bake something with your kid. Have them read the recipe, follow the steps in order, measure everything by hand, and keep time with a real clock or kitchen timer instead of a phone.

Teachers: Plan a homemade applesauce lesson. Give students mismatched measuring cups and let them work out how to make a half cup from what they have.