What Every Parent Needs To Hear About Smartphones

**Jake** (0:02)
Hi there, welcome along to another episode of High Performance. And this is one of the Wednesday episodes where myself and Damian look back on some of the guests who've joined us over the past few years. We delve deep into a specific topic, and today's specific topic is the use of smartphones. So if you've got a teenager in your life, if you've got a younger person in your life, if you yourself are struggling with your phone use or your use of social media, if you feel that it's stealing life from you, then you need to listen to this episode because we are going to be talking the truth about social media, the truth about being online too much, the harm that it causes. We're going to be hearing from high profile people, we're going to be hearing from experts, and we're going to be giving our instant reaction to the band that's been announced that comes into place in December 2027 Your initial reaction to Sir Keir Starmer's announcement, Damian?

**Damian** (0:50)
Absolutely right. I think you can't have been in the seats that we've been lucky enough to be in for the last six years, opposite some of the finest minds on the planet that have explored the impacts of social media, especially on young people, have not come away with a sense of alarm about what it's doing and what we're sort of allowing to happen unchecked. So to see somebody draw a line and to not take away social media, but to give back the life, the opportunities, the fun that we grew up experiencing, that to me just leaves me with a lot of the things that I said.

**Jake** (1:24)
And it's exactly the point that Sukir Stammer made when he announced this. He said, it's not about us taking something away. It's about us giving you something back. And actually what he's giving people back is the single most important thing that we can give them, which is life, which is exploration, which is human connection.
We're going to hear from a number of guests. And actually it's alarming for me how often we sit and have a conversation on high performance. And we speak to high achieving people who aren't very happy. And actually when you think about it, so often it's linked to the fact that they have social media in their lives. So a long time ago we spoke to Eddie Hearn, the boxing promoter, who told us he doesn't really feel much joy anymore after one of his big boxing events, because he goes straight on to social media. And everyone tells him that his boxing event was shit. We actually have a podcast episode coming out this coming Monday with Liam Lawson. And we asked him, didn't we? We said, what's the one thing that you've had to sacrifice or give up to pursue being a Formula One driver? And his answer was happiness. And Liam is one of the drivers that I think gets the most criticism in Formula One. And I don't think it's a coincidence that he feels he's given up happiness at the same time that he is sucking up so much online abuse. And I know that we're talking here about high profile people. But the evidence is clear that it's not just about social media criticism or abuse. It's just being online. And I think one of the most startling bits of data was from Meta's own research, right? Because I think the argument here is devastating, right? Social media companies didn't just accidentally harm childhoods in my opinion. They designed products specifically to capture young people's attention, right? And the evidence of anxiety, of depression, of addiction, of the loss of sleep, I think is absolutely devastating. I met his own data. One in three teen girls said Instagram made their body image issues worse. Now, we both have girls.
You have a 10-year-old, I have a 13-year-old.
And I guess really we've been asked a really simple question. If something knowingly harms millions of children, why have we been treating it like harmless entertainment for so long?

**Damian** (3:32)
Well, we're going to go back and listen later on in this episode.
The interview that we did with Alex Greenwood, one of the inspirational England ILSs. And we're going to hear how, at 15 years of age, she was being subjected to comments about her body shape and size and the impact that that had on her. Now, some of those examples you just offered there, Jake, whether it's Liam Lawson, whether it's Eddie Hearn, we're talking about adults here. And yet, what we know is your brain doesn't reach full maturity until you get to about 25 years of age. So, these are people that are still at full maturity and they're still talking about the damage, the hurt, and the isolation that follows from it. You amplify that to a kid that's 15 that's receiving that kind of abuse in their own community.