225. Teens and Screens, Part 2: The Case Against Moral Panic with Dr. Will Dobud

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This is Part Two of Teens and Screens, and it’s the counterweight. Last episode, Dr. Johann D’Souza made the case for keeping toxic screens out of your teenager’s hands entirely. Today I’m joined again by Dr. Will Dobud — social worker, researcher, and co-author of Kids These Days — who thinks the story we tell ourselves about phones and youth mental health is far bigger than the evidence behind it.

I open by naming my own bias: I work with the families where it went wrong. Porn addiction, gaming addiction, failure to launch, daughters pulled into dark corners of social media. Will names his: he’s oppositional by temperament, and he wrote a book making fun of how adults talk about kids.

We get into why the meta-analytic effects between screen use and youth mental health are so small they’re arguably not worth publishing, what a third variable does to correlational data, and why Australia’s social media ban is failing six months in. I push back repeatedly — on whether “do what feels right” is useful advice to parents who don’t know what modern pornography even is, on the candy-bin problem of unregulated access, and on whether calling the phone a symptom of family dysfunction slides into blaming parents.

Then Will gets on his soapbox about school, and the conversation turns somewhere I didn’t expect: youth self-harm and ER data that tracks the school calendar. Up during term, down during holidays. Highest on Mondays. What if we’ve been pointing at the wrong thing?

Books mentioned in this episode:

• Kids These Days — Dr. Will Dobud, with co-author Nevin

• The Anxious Generation — Jonathan Haidt

Dr. Will Dobud is a social worker, researcher, and educator who has worked with adolescents and families in the United States, Australia, and Norway. Will is from Washington, D.C., and divides his time between the United States and Australia each year. He is an award-winning researcher and educator recognized for excellence in research, teaching, and crime prevention. Dr. Dobud is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Charles Sturt University, Australia’s largest social work school. His research focuses on improving therapy outcomes for teenagers and promoting safe, ethical practices. He has investigated and written about America’s Troubled Teen Industry, especially wilderness therapy. He has worked alongside advocates, survivors, researchers, and clinicians to protect youth from institutionalization and harm. Will is the co-author of the award-winning book, Kids These Days: Understanding and Supporting Youth Mental Health (2025).

Links

• 🌐 Website: www.willdobud.com

• 📖 Book site: www.kidsthesedaysbook.com

• 📘 Facebook: @WillDobudPhD

• 🐦 X (Twitter): @WillDobud

• 📸 Instagram: @WillDobud / @Kids_These_Days_Book

• 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-dobud-5209ab74/

• ✍️ Substack: https://substack.com/@willdobud

• Previous appearance: Episode 202, “Label Mania: How Diagnosing Every Kid Is Backfiring on a Generation”

• Candice Odgers TED Talk

  {{chapters}}
  [00:00:00] Start
  [00:02:51] Where the Screen Narrative Outruns the Evidence
  [00:06:40] Australia’s Failing Social Media Ban
  [00:12:15] The Third Variable Behind Rising Diagnoses
  [00:16:26] What Violent Video Games Got Wrong
  [00:20:24] Is There a Case for Teens on Social Media?
  [00:24:09] Pushback: Most Parents Don’t Know the Risks
  [00:32:29] Advice for Parents of Kids Six, Eight, and Ten
  [00:38:45] Designed to Be Addictive: Netflix, Books, Phones
  [00:41:31] The Meta Trial and the Word Addiction
  [00:49:46] Is the Phone a Symptom or the Cause?
  [00:53:41] The Candy Bin and the Endless Buffet
  [01:05:31] Forty Years of Scaring Parents
  [01:09:19] Measuring Youth Mental Health at Scale
  [01:16:36] Autism Diagnoses, Funding, and Toxins
  [01:22:45] Will’s Soapbox on School
  [01:26:56] Suicide Rates Follow the School Calendar
  [01:35:56] Why the Youngest Kid Gets Diagnosed

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