(847) 579- 9317 support@copingpartners.com

Dr. Lisa NovakDr. Lisa Novak is the Co-founder and Clinical Director of Illuminate Psychological Assessments. As a licensed clinical psychologist, she specializes in neuropsychological assessments for children, adolescents, and young adults and supervises other licensed and pre-licensed clinicians in their assessment work. Her areas of expertise include learning disabilities, ADHD, and the interplay between physical and mental health concerns. Dr. Novak earned her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [3:18] Dr. Lisa Novak talks about the anxious generation
  • [6:49] The four main harms of consistent smartphone and social media use in children
  • [19:33] The challenges of delaying smartphone and social media use in communities with prior access
  • [33:29] What can parents do to model healthy phone use for their kids?
  • [46:22] Forming a collective approach to delaying smartphone and social media access
  • [50:40] Must-read resources for parents worried about kids and screens

In this episode…

In today’s digital age, many parents find themselves struggling to balance their children’s screen time with their emotional well-being. With smartphones dominating daily life, how can we help kids develop resilience, strong social skills, and healthy habits both online and offline?

According to clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Novak, the secret is mindful technology use. She explains that excessive smartphone use, especially in younger children, has been linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and social isolation. She highlights that over-parenting in real life while under-parenting online creates a dangerous gap, where children are overprotected in person but left vulnerable to the addictive nature of social media. If remained unchecked, this balance can lead to impaired attention, sleep deprivation, and difficulty building real-world connections.

In this episode of The Coping Podcast, Dr. Leigh Weisz speaks with Dr. Lisa Novak, Co-founder and Clinical Director of Illuminate Psychological Assessments, about the challenges of balancing tech and childhood. Together, they explore how smartphones and social media impact emotional development, how delaying screen time can improve resilience, and how parents can model healthier tech habits. Dr. Novak also gives advice on creating screen-free environments at home and fostering real-world independence.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Special Mentions

Related Episodes

Quotable Moments

  • “It’s a community problem which requires a collective action solution.”
  • “We are over-parenting our children in the real world and under-parenting our children online.”
  • “Sleep is really and truly one of the most important things for our health as kids through adulthood.”
  • “We moved from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood.”
  • “Modeling good phone use for our kids… they’re going to see our actions and not just hear our words.”

Action Steps

  1. Model healthy phone use: Limiting your screen time and being mindful of when you use your phone can set a positive example for children. This helps address the challenge of children imitating unhealthy phone habits and reinforces the importance of face-to-face interactions.
  2. Implement phone-free zones and times: Designating specific areas and times, like dinner or car rides, as phone-free can foster genuine communication. This action addresses the social deprivation issue by encouraging more direct interaction and connection with family and peers.
  3. Set up structured screen time limits: Using parental controls to limit the amount of time children spend on social media and other apps can help balance their digital and real-world experiences. This tackles the problem of attention fragmentation by allowing kids to focus longer on tasks without digital distractions.
  4. Create a community agreement: Joining or forming groups with other parents to agree on delaying smartphone and social media access helps ensure children are not isolated. This addresses the issue of children feeling left out if they are the only ones without devices, promoting a collective approach to healthier digital habits.
  5. Encourage unsupervised play: Allowing children more freedom to engage in unstructured play and independent activities can build resilience and problem-solving skills. This counters the over-parenting trend and gives children the opportunity to develop autonomy and social skills without constant adult supervision.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners.

Coping Partners is a mental health practice dedicated to helping children, adolescents, and adults manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems and much more in the Chicago suburbs.

Our practitioners are devoted to building on our clients’ strengths and bolstering weaknesses.

To gain insight and tools for getting unstuck check out our website at CopingPartners.com, email us at support@copingpartners.com.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 00:00

Welcome to The Coping Podcast, where we share strategies for coping with the stressors of life, especially the difficulties of parenting. And here is your host, Dr. Leigh Weisz.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 00:15

This is Dr. Leigh Weisz. I am the host of The Coping Podcast, where I feature top experts on topics such as raising healthy children, parenting, and so much more. Past guests include Dr. Eli Lebowitz, therapist Ben Kessler, and many more. Just a quick disclaimer. The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only. This is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a client therapist relationship. The information provided is not a replacement for being assessed and evaluated by a licensed professional, and is not intended to replace mental health or medical advice. This episode is brought to you by Coping Partners. Coping Partners is a mental health practice in the Chicago suburbs dedicated to helping children, adolescents and adults. We help manage various challenges including anxiety, divorce, behavioral issues, relationship problems, and much more. Check out more episodes of our podcast and our website at copingpartners.com, and you can contact us with any questions you have. Before we dive into today’s topic, I wanted to introduce our guest, who is our go to neuropsychologist when we refer children and teens for neuropsych testing. She is also on the CATCH board, which is a wonderful community organization for parents whose mission is to help parents raise resilient and emotionally healthy kids. Dr. Lisa Novak is a Co-founder of Illuminate Psychological Assessments. She earned her Doctorate in clinical psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Personal Psychology. She specializes in neuropsychological assessments for children, adolescents, and young adults. Dr. Novak’s areas of specialty include learning disabilities, ADHD, and the interplay between physical and mental health concerns. Not only is Dr. Novak an incredible psychologist, she is also a mother of two young boys, so both Lisa and I are very invested in today’s topic, not only as professionals working with kids, but also because we have our own kiddos. So this is a topic near and dear to both of us. So thank you Dr. Novak, for being here as a repeat guest on our podcast. We could usually talk for hours on end on these topics, but you and I have been talking a lot lately about Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, and both of us have been talking in mommy circles and professional circles alike about it. So I’m thrilled we can talk more about this topic. And I know you recently gave a wonderful talk for the CATCH parent audience on this very topic. So I’m going to show the book to our parent audience. And I’m going to ask you a very general question, which is what is Haidt referring to when he talks about this anxious generation?

Dr. Lisa Novak 03:18

It’s a great question. And before I answer that, I will say, thank you so much for having me back on your podcast. I’m very excited to be here. And this is a topic that I have been discussing a lot of the time at work and through the volunteer work that I do, and honestly, with the parents of my children’s friends and just the community in general, and trying to raise as much awareness about this as we can, I think something really special about this topic, and what Haidt refers to, is that it’s a community problem which requires a collective action solution. And so the more of us that are talking about this, the better. So you asked a great question. Yeah. You asked a great question about what is he talking about when he refers to the anxious generation. And the idea is simple and also extremely complicated. The simplest version of that is that when we look at statistics and research about the levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicide in our youngsters, in our pre-teens and our teenagers in particular, we see that in roughly a the years 2010 to 2015, there is a major increase in the prevalence of each of those disorders for both boys and girls. Some affect girls more, some affect boys more. And the question really becomes, why? Why are we seeing that all of a sudden at this time period, there’s this incredible surge of mental illness and the answer that hype proposes, which I’m a really big proponent of, is that there are really two factors coming into play at the same time. One is that we as parents are over parenting our children in the real world. And then the second is that we are under parenting our children online. And the reason for that time period in particular is because that’s when iPhones are introduced. And, and a lot of the apps are introduced, not the first generations of iPhones, but the ones that have reverse cameras. So we are suddenly taking selfies, though, the apps that have access to like buttons and sharing. And suddenly this over concern of how we’re presenting ourselves on online forums. And with our exposure to that, we are just seeing incredible changes in what’s happening in the brains and minds of our youngsters.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 05:51

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that if you have any experience with teenagers, you know, you see that like, the phone is attached to the arm, it doesn’t leave your side, you know. And the selfies and the videos, it’s just it’s something that we did not experience as as teenagers at all. Obviously we didn’t have the phones, but even just looking in the mirror and just the whole kind of obsession with the self.

Dr. Lisa Novak 06:14

Exactly. Obsession with the self and obsession with how those around us are perceiving that self. Right. And and that image of, you know, needing to constantly portray that perfect image and get more likes and get more people to follow us. And it’s really it’s changed the dynamic tremendously.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 06:33

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I guess I’m curious if you can delve into some of the problems. I know there are many, but some of the bigger problems with smartphones and social media for this age group.

Dr. Lisa Novak 06:49

Absolutely. So Haidt talks about four main harms that consistent use of smartphones and social media is causing for our kids. And the way that he distinguishes there is that he starts with the first one being the social harm. So this idea of social deprivation and what he’s referring to is that the amount of time that people are spending on their phones is taking up time away from different things they used to do. One of those for the social deprivation is actual face to face interactions and communication with people. And there was a statistic that the amount of time that teens spent with their peers has gone down so tremendously from day to day. So in 2003, research suggested that on average, teens were spending about 2.5 hours a day with their friends. And that is outside of time spent, like sitting in the classroom at school. And that number dropped by 2019 to only 40 minutes a day. So from 2.5 hours to 40 minutes a day. And when we think about social interactions, some people will say, but aren’t we all hyper connected? Now we’re talking, you know, to our friends 24 over seven. But there is something to be said about real face to face interactions, not only being able to read the facial expressions and body language of those around us, but truly feeling connected and see that we see that harm. Because despite this constant connection that these smartphones are providing us, the percentage of people that are endorsing feelings of pretty extreme loneliness is going up and up and up as the years go by, with more access to to these devices.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 08:40

And it looks different to be on a group chat. Right. And kind of like in what he calls the asynchronous communication. Right? So someone responds and then, you know, an hour later, someone else might chime in versus a one on one, face to face synchronous in real time. You know communication. It’s and it feels different. It feels emptier. The the first one versus the latter. So I think that you’re right. The teenagers are well and preteens even anyone with access to the social media now they’re on it a lot. They’re with people, but they’re not really experiencing the the filling nature of the connections.

Dr. Lisa Novak 09:17

I think you make a great point. And I would add to that, that there are also skills, real social skills that we need to be building, that we can’t build when these when these interactions are only asynchronous. So your perfect example of somebody sends you a text and you have a chance to read it and think about it, maybe you’re emotional about what the person said. You don’t have to respond right away. A couple hours later, you can come back to it. That doesn’t work in real time when you’re actually interacting with others. And so there isn’t as much true social problem solving that’s happening. There aren’t as many opportunities for that. We’re not learning how to reconcile issues with friends. We’re not learning how to actually work through a problem. We’re maybe ignoring our problem or canceling somebody on social media instead of actually facing it the way we used to have to. Right? And that’s really, I think, having a very big impact on social dynamics in, in much broader strokes.

Dr. Leigh Weisz 10:18

No, that makes a lot of sense. So harm one social deprivation. That’s super helpful. And I think you’re absolutely right. And obviously Haidt excuse me Jonathan Haidt is absolutely right. What would be a second main harm of social media.

Dr. Lisa Novak 10:35

So the second one he talks about is sleep deprivation. And I can speak from the the neuropsychological standpoint on this one that sleep is really and truly one of the most important things for our health as kids through to adulthood, for our physical health, for our emotional health, and to really help with regulation. How do I regulate my emotions? How do I regulate my mood and my attention? And what’s happening is that people are getting significantly less sleep because of these smartphones. They are often being charged in people’s bedrooms. They are keeping people awake for longer at night, and the lack of limits and parameters around those things is is making it a lot harder for people to get the sleep they need in order to function effectively? The next day I was going to.

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