Lisa Damour: Adolescência não é assim tão simples | vídeo

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Hello and welcome to a new episode of the it’s not that simple podcast from the Francisco Manuel Santos Foundation it’s a pleasure to have you on board for a conversation that I anticipate will be absolutely fascinating today’s topic is adolescence and we’re going to be discussing it with an expert Dr Lisa

Deore a clinical psychologist author of three New York Times Best Sellers untangled under pressure and the emotional lives of teenagers she co-hosts the ask Lisa podcast Works in collaboration with UNICEF and serves as a senior advisor to the Schubert Center for Child Services at Case Western Reserve University as well Lisa it’s an

Absolute pleasure to have you on the show uh this is a topic that obviously is so pertinent to anyone who has been or will be a parent as well adolescence um to set the scene for us please I wanted you to um really break down on

What it’s like to be a teenager in the Western World these days and really why it’s not that simple at all well I’m honored to be with you thank you so much for having me join you and of course anyone who wants to talk about teenagers I am thrilled to have

This conversation because it’s such an important topic and one that it hits so close to home for so many of us so it has never been easy to be a teenager we remember this ourselves when we think back about our own adolescent years and that is still true but what I can say

Now is that there are many more complexities that surround teenagers than when we were growing up and I think probably the best way to summarize this is to say that teenagers are dealing with much more input these days and also they have expectations of much more

Output these days so compared to when we were teenagers of course our teenagers are living in a digital environment they have access all day every day to a huge range of peers a huge number of headlines social media all that comes with it so they are working to take in

And I would say even metabolize so much more information than we ever were and then on top of that what we ask of teenagers is more certainly in the US but I think not just here when I think about what the expectations are about what they will

Accomplish in high school or what the expectations are for what they’re going to say on their college applications if they are applying to college it is so much more than was asked of me as a teenager probably asked of you as a teenager and so the demands on them

We’re sort of getting them coming and going and all of this is layered on top of the fact that being a teenager is a time of enormous change and that by its nature change brings about stress so our teenagers are dealing with a huge amount it’s interesting because I’ve heard you

Say that if you put a 12-year-old and an 18-year-old side to side right the same person and you look at them they’re not they’re they don’t look like they’re from the same species right so much change has happened in in those years and then you have all this noise that is

Present in teenager societies like you said because of Technology because of social media so the conflicts are are daily right internal conflicts external conflicts and then trying to figure out who you are in the middle of all this noise yeah no it’s a huge amount and it

Can feel overwhelming to think about it can definitely feel overwhelming for the teenager and for the adults around the teenager but I do want to actually early in this conversation bring in some hope and some Direction so that we don’t feel overwhelmed by thinking about teenagers or trying to raise them and

What I want people to know is that we have studied adolescence for a very long time and we know that the single most powerful force for adolescent mental health is strong relationships with caring adults so as much as there’s a lot going on around teenagers the adults

In their environment have real power to support them to cultivate their mental health to protect their mental health and so I don’t want anyone to come out of this conversation feeling overwhelmed and helpless about what it means to be or raise a teenager right now of course and and hopefully hopefully you you’ll

Definitely help in in that aspect let’s break down the main causes of anxiety that you have identified in the extens of work that you’ve done as as a professional and in the books that you’ve written as well how would you how would you pinpoint those what are the main challenges that teenagers are

Facing specifically so we can break it down a little bit developmentally so early in adolescence what is happening is that if everything is going as it should teenagers are loosening their ties a bit to family at home and strengthening their ties to Piers this is what we

Expect to see this can be very anxiety-provoking as they loosen their ties at home they become very anxious about who they’re going to be with will they have friends will they have enough friends will they have a strong sense of belonging will they feel included so early in adolescence I would say around

121 13 that’s really what’s top of mind and then once that’s resolved and hopefully it gets resolved pretty readily teenagers often start to think about what’s the future hold for me what am I going to do with myself what am I about and get anxious about performing

In the ways that we ask them to either academically or in terms of their vocational interest but we do as teenagers become 13 14 15 start to impress upon them the importance of thinking ahead and making choices and then putting out good work and learning how to do good work I think

As teenagers move into later adolescence they can have bigger broader questions about how am I going to make my mark on the world how am I going to navigate a world that is changing really fast around me and also how do I navigate Big over whelming threats that are certainly

We’re all facing but teenagers that mean something different to them such as climate crisis or Global Wars or you know certainly in the US you know teenagers worry a lot about guns and gun violence so their their world opens up and with that comes both opportunity but

Also a broader awareness of how many challenges they are inheriting from us it’s interesting you mentioned the violence aspect and the gun aspect I I know personally a very ious families who have actually left the United States because they just couldn’t handle with the their kids going through gun gun

Drills at school right and and you can’t imagine adding that to everything else that that’s already going on um flipping this for for the parents um what are the anxieties that parents are having uh trying to deal with these teenagers in a completely different environment and you said earlier that it’s it’s perhaps

Tougher for them these days than it was in my time my in my time or your time I was born in in in 1975 I’d like to say that you know I was exposed to information from my parents from my school teachers and from my classmates

And friends but that was pretty much it I wasn’t bombarded with everything else that’s going on and all these pressures and you mentioned the friends uh and then there’s the followers and then there’s the engagement and then there’s the likes and what are parents trying to

Do to be able to adapt to this because it’s certainly something that I think about for my future trying to deal with in the future with a teenage girl how to deal with them in such a different modern digital environment it really is different so in terms of what parents worry about I

Think you had the nail on the head parents worry a lot about social media and its impact on their teenagers and they’re given Good Reason by the media there are near daily headlines about how harmful social media can be for teenagers the truth is it’s a pretty

Complex story right it’s not that simple as you would say yeah that we have research showing that social media can be helpful to kids and enhance their lives we have some research showing that it can do harm and undermine their overall mental health we have some research that comes up with a neutral

Finding and what I think what is really happening is that there’s not a kid on the planet for whom social media is not simultaneously a positive and negative experience and so we get very confusing research findings but I would say to parents who are anxious about this is do

Everything you can to go slow that kids will start to lobby for social media access of course they will they will often start to lobby for this at ages eight nine 10 depending on where you are in your community or what the values are around you and what I want parents to

Know is you don’t actually have to hand it over then and you certain certainly don’t have to hand it over all at once it really matters to take a developmental View of digital technology with kids and I can tell you there are completely reasonable ways to provide a 10-year-old

With an iPhone if that is something that the child wants and that the parent wants and sometimes the parent wants it too but that iPhone should not have a browser does not need social media apps and I would say probably the greatest thing you can do at that moment is say

To your kid this never goes in your bedroom that rule alone is incredibly powerful at keeping some guard rail around digital technology and later social media and the Beautiful Thing is your 10-year-old will agree to it they are so excited to get that device that they will agree in that moment and it’s

Actually a pretty easy rule to maintain and enforce if you start out with that it’s a harder rule to put in place once a teenager has taken a phone into their room so think about it much more as a stepwise process and all along the way

You get to see how your kid is managing so if your teenager if you’re young teen has texting which they often do and I consider that a very good sort of beginner version of social media handle it well they stay in good touch with the people they know they use it to build

Their friendships you can feel more confident later on allowing some social media if they end up in the meanest text thread ever what they are basically skywriting is that they’re not ready for social media so I want to reassure parents there will probably come a point late in adolescence where a teenager is

On social media is deeply engaged with it and that’s a big part of their life it’s much better for that to happen later in development than earlier because as teenagers age they also become more skeptical skepticism is a very good thing to have on board if you’re going to be engaged with social

Media and so go slow give them texting maybe give them one app that you’re monitoring closely see how it goes but push full engagement as far down the line as possible I would say I want to see kids 14 15 or older before they’re really um deep in okay very interesting

Um how do you see the the development of of adjusting to to anxiety and and Technology between teenage girls which you’ve written extensively about especially in your book under pressure and the anxiety that that’s there and teenage boys and how how does that differ in the way that they deal with

All these factors and in how they can be coached to to deal with them better so we do see differences by gender in terms of how kids engage the digital environment girls are more likely to be engaged socially to maintain their friendships and you know stay up to date

On what’s Happening socially over social media platforms than boys are boys are more likely to be engaged in gaming um and use that often as a basis for their social interactions we also see that girls can find themselves um losing confidence if they spend a lot of time on social media

Environments that are very appearance oriented or perfectionism oriented that said we are seeing many more boys who are engaged in worrying about their bodies Ultra Fitness um as a result I think of time spent online the other thing that we’re seeing at least in the US and this is anecdotal but I’m hearing

It enough that I’m willing to share it is that boys can sometimes find themselves much more engaged in hate environments online and so one of the things that parents need to be really really attentive to regardless of the gender of their teenager is that the algorithms that drive social media

Platforms will pay very close attention to what a kid is interested in or even what a kid kind of glances at or expresses a minor interest in and then serve them a lot more of that content so if your kid is using social media to look at Sports Clips or cat videos you

Probably don’t need to worry too much if your kid is using social media to look at diet advice or online hateful content you should definitely be aware and you’ll want to intervene overall uh Lisa um I I wanted you to help us understand how much the

Life of a teenager has changed from our time to current time and I I certainly remember spending a lot more time outside uh having I don’t want to call them real experiences because digital experiences are real too but certainly more social interactions do you think that the fact that that teenagers lives

Sometimes are in at least in the in the Western World in developed Societies in abundant societies are just a lot more how shall I say easier softer because they don’t have more real experiences they’re not thrown around like we used to be maybe a little bit more outside

And is that unfair to say we want to be careful how we talk about teenagers both because I love them and also because they are listening and the truth about teenagers is they live up to expectations and down to them too so if we talk about teenagers as though they

Are fragile or incapable we run the risk of actually having teenagers meet us where we are right talking about them and thinking about them in that way one thing I can say about where teenagers are with regard to emotion right now is they are picking up the messages that

Everyone in our culture is getting that negative emotions are bad that you’re supposed to feel happy and calm and relaxed adults are getting this message kids are getting this message it’s not a very helpful message it’s not a very accurate message um I think it’s often well-meaning but not useful and so

Teenagers like their parents are often more frightened of negative emotions than Generations past right when you and I were growing up you know if we were upset our parents would likely like you’ll get over it right and would help us to do so we’re in a whole environment

Adults and kids that are much more anxious about negative emotions than we used to be and that has a downstream effect the thing I will say though that is really different and that we want to be attentive to is what you’re describing it used to be the reality

That with teenagers you’re almost trying to rain them in right that they were wanting to be out more they were wanting to go do things they were wanting to be out in the world and like can my Cur possibly be today’s teenagers do stay closer to home and part of it is that

They can interact from home with so many people part of it is that the pandemic terrified everybody and teenagers were held home a lot and that has made them more anxious about going out but one of the things I am helping families with far more than in the past is that their

Teenagers are avoidant rather than sort of chomping at the bit to see how much they can be out and about in the world parents were often feeling like they’re needing to push their kid out of the nest a little bit and that I would say is especially accelerated in the

Pandemic when we were all so close to home for so long something you’ve talked about uh extensively that I’ve that I’ve heard and I wanted to get into a little bit is how do you gauge when to engage with a teenager or not right when they’re maybe not feeling themselves or not acting

Themselves when do you try to pry when do you give them space when can you make something worse how can you make something better you know and it it’s it’s it’s so difficult and especially as you said now I mean the topic of mental health is so present in

Everyday life and obviously that’s positive but then you don’t want to feed into the negative emotions too much at the same time and then you don’t want to ignore them as well and think oh this will go this will be F she’ll be fine tomorrow how do you navigate that when

You talk to teenagers what do they tell you that they want well what they want is empathy I can tell you that over not judgment I guess they don’t want to be judged right they don’t want to be judged when a teenager comes home and tells you about

Their bad day you cannot go wrong if you just say oh man that stinks or I’m sorry or I wish that hadn’t happened that’s what they want that’s what they deserve that’s usually all they need but actually one of the things that can be very helpful and strangely

Reassuring is to know exactly when you should be worried about your teenager right right there’s their emotions are so big and powerful so let me tell you when I want people to be worried about their teenagers I want people to worry if a teenager’s mood goes to a dark or

Concerning or Paralyzed by anxiety place and stays there for 24 to 36 hours even is a long time in the life of a teenager normal mood and teenager goes up and down up and down all day we expect to see that so I want you to worry if their

Mood doesn’t go up and down and just stays down I also want adults and caregivers to worry if a teenager is using what I call costly coping so they’re managing their feelings but in a way that’s going to come with a price tag so they’re upset and then they go

Get drunk or they’re upset and they come home and they act awful to everybody else so that if I’m unhappy we’re all going to be unhappy I’m not doing this alone right it may give them company but it makes everybody miserable or they’re upset and they collapse in on themselves

You know why do all bad things happen to be nothing’s ever going to go my way you know in a language that starts to sound depressive that’s when I want you to worry about your teenager if you’re not seeing that if you’re seeing a kid whose mood is all over the place sometimes

They’re happy sometimes they’re down they want to play with their friends they want to hide in their room a little while to recover from a bad day that is almost always the rich and spicy business that is just being a typically developing teenager and not necessarily grounds for

Concern that that hopefully that helps some of the parents out there who are struggling with this because it’s difficult you don’t want to do anything that that that hurts but then you don’t want to leave them alone and we all draw on our own experiences too and you know

I I keep thinking about and we we discussed it when we spoke before the the interview but there’s there’s this clip on on on social media that I’ve seen a bunch of times where you see how a kid reacts to bumping against the wall

If they were born in the 70s and the 80s and the ’90s and the 2000s you know ranging from the guy in the 70s that just bumps and kind of moves on to the kid nowadays that bumps makes a big scene shoots themsel on social media reacting and and then you just don’t

Know how seriously to take to take certain things um when it talks to when it comes to talking about uh what what kids are consuming and and the way they the way they see the world and and I wanted to mention extremism as well and and some some studies show that young

People today are less tolerant uh they’re more in favor of of cancellation what explains the attraction to extremism these days in your view well one thing I would say is it’s not just kids right we are watching OPP environment where the adults can be incredibly impatient with one another um incredibly interested

In scoring points by pointing out other people’s shortcomings as opposed to to looking for shared solutions that our teenagers are very much growing up in a universe we have created and so they don’t act that differently from the adults at times when they are engaged in pretty um abrupt and

Unempathic responses to one another they look like a lot of the grown-ups but I will say for the teenagers and this is something that’s fascinating to me they spend more time talking with or being near people who don’t share their views than most adults do as adults we have our friends we have

Our circles we tend to be surrounded by people who think the way we think when teenagers go to school often they are in class with or sharing a locker with or eating lunch with or in a lab partner group with somebody who sees the world very very differently than they do and

They have to make it work a huge amount of the time and they do make it work a huge amount of the time and so it’s fascinating to me that we can sometimes train our attention on how um harsh teenagers can be with one another I

Think that is what we see I think we don’t as often see how much time they spend accommodating and making room for people who see the world quite differently than they do and of course their their parents see the world very differently than they do as well adding

On to the colleagues and and and and Friends what’s what’s the best advice that or the advice that you think works best that you uh give young people on on how to navigate all these different expectations all these different um standards that are around them and and

And be honest not only with themselves but with their environment because from my experience what I’ve seen anyway and what scares me when I think about uh uh my daughter one day is I want to know what’s going on right I just want to know what’s going on whether it’s good

Or bad I want to know what’s going on on regardless of the expectations that she thinks I have for her I I want to know if she’s failing them because then I can help her right and friends it’s the same thing you want to know if they’re doing

If people are doing well or not regardless of of what your expectations are for them so H what kind of advice do you give teenagers on how to deal with other people’s expectations and not be scared to let them down uh and and be honest with themselves and their environment

Um so one thing I can say is that we want to help teenagers develop a strong moral compass and a strong sense of self and part of how we do that is really by modeling you know teenagers watch us and they watch how we make decisions and

They watch how we think about the kinds of questions you’re asking so a very powerful thing we can do is open you know sort of pull back the veil you know when we’re having exactly the same kind of challenges that you’re talking about in our own lives which we do maybe a

Colleague who says something that we find disagreeable maybe somebody who holds us to a standard that feels unfair those are times actually in family life where we should talk about how we’re navigating that ourselves how it makes us feel how it makes us want to act how

Upon reflection we decide to act instead um one of my favorite thesis of parenting advice that I ever found was not actually meant to be parenting advice but it was on the inside of a chocolate wrap and it said don’t talk about it be about

It so all the things we want for our kids need to be how we’re living our lives in front of them now you raised another question about how do we help kids be honest with us about what’s really happening you know good or bad and I will tell you

There’s actually a secret trick here and I’m really glad you’re asking and I’m really excited that you have a young person who will soon be a teenager because they really are well not too soon but soon enough be a te soon enough yeah teenagers do something very clever to

Decide whether or not they want to share close to home information with us which is they talk about dicey information involving their classmates so they will come home and they will say so you know I heard that so and so was smoking back behind the

School or so I heard that so and so was having sex you know at this particular you know concerning and then they will watch our reaction and if we say what oh my goodness like that is terrible like what’s wrong with that child they are taking that in and thinking if I do

Something you’re not gonna like this is not going to go well if we say that’s so interesting like what do you think about that you know in a gentle way and get them to tell us what’s on their mind hold our judgment make it clear that we understand that what they’re sharing is

Important but actually hold our judgment um and then say gosh you know like I worry that that kid isn’t taking great care of themselves I wonder what’s getting the way of them caring for themselves you are in real time creating an environment that basically has the rules of I’m interested in kids I

Understand that kids do things they should not do I will withhold judgment and not make it about character or some you know immutable aspect of that kid and I’m here to help so the first time your kid starts talking about what other kids are up to that is your golden

Opportunity to tell the story of how it will go when your kid shares things that you may not want to hear about themselves yeah never thought about that thanks so much for sharing that as well um as always we uh end all our um conversations and interviews with some

Quickfire uh questions to everyone I’m going to add one here on the fly to you to kind of make a link into these what’s the thing that’s that inspires you the most about today’s teenagers that maybe you didn’t see it in in in your time what’s the most inspirational Behavior or aspect of

Teenagers today that surprises you or impresses you the most so as much as we can be anxious about social media and digital technology and what it means for teenagers it also means they are so much more broadly engaged with the world aware of what’s Happening argumentation at very sophisticated levels that like

Were nowhere near where we were when we were in high school right I mean they are way ahead of us so they are aware they were engaged they are sophisticated often in their assessment of situations and they are hopeful often about what can be done to try to make things

Better okay perfect uh way for us to uh link into our um quickfire question so just one word or one sentence to answer answer these please so what is one personality trait that in your opinion a good leader could really benefit from having humility humility okay what is the biggest challenge that Humanity

Faces today in your view and why empathy for one another and why I mean we have just come to a place where people are very entrenched in their Viewpoint and really are struggling to see things from somebody else’s position H if you could change one thing by Magic uh in your

Environment what would that be I worry about the climate I would magically F the climate yeah that that comes up a lot it’s a it’s a good sign because people are thinking about it it’s a bad sign because it it’s bad and and and Magic yeah yeah um and finally

What is the most important learning of your life and career that most of the time you get the outcomes you want through effort not through luck not through hope but through work um Lisa look I absolutely uh loved this this conversation I’ve certainly learned so much um thank you for sharing

Your experience your Insight with us um and and I’m sure that that that that parents in Portugal and beyond that listen to this conversation will also get a lot of content here go back and take notes because I think it’s the kind of thing that that is needed it it’s not

Easy but you broke down so much that doesn’t seem that simple uh uh into terms that I think can be digested and appreciated so thank you so much for your time and for your uh knowledge sharing as well thank you for having me a real honor uh an absolute pleasure

Pleasure to speak with Lisa deore and and so much to take away from this conversation really hope that you enjoyed it as much as as I did and it’s not easy to be a parent overall uh teenage years comes up all the time as perhaps the toughest period uh to be

Able to navigate so hopefully there’s uh some some some tools here that that we can all use to to make it easier it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you uh following another episode see you again soon a