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I've been wondering: how do we teach kids about addiction (substances, gambling, phone/internet) and its consequences? Theoretical explanation is not effectiv

I've been wondering: how do we teach kids about addiction (substances, gambling, phone/internet) and its consequences? Theoretical explanation is not effective. Letting them experience it first hand might be too destructive, because of the nature of the addiction. Can any parent chime in what worked and what didn't?

dghlsakjg 3y ago
Let them play monopoly with allowance money? /s In all reality the most effective drug and vice talks I ever got were in High School. The first was from our school's substance counselor who was a former crack addict, and mother of one of our fellow students. She just told her story, and talked about all the horrible shit she saw, but never once told us drug war lies. The other was from my English teacher a few weeks before graduation. The gist of it was: "there's nothing I can say that will stop you from experimenting with drugs. A little bit of drugs probably won't ruin your lives, and might be fun, but pay attention to the people who don't moderate, and the people who do. The results speak for themselves." What it came down to was it was the two people that were honest with us who got heard. Some DARE cop lecturing us from a DEA handout about how marijuana addiction would ruin our lives didn't work, because kids aren't stupid, and they know BS when they hear it.
- jdougan 3y ago
  "Drugs will make you feel awesome. Never trust _anything_ that makes you feel like that"
  - vacuity 3y ago
    Also, it's a whole lot more difficult getting out of addiction than getting in. If you just have a shovel you can dig deep, but climbing back up is a different story.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  That sounds like the right way to do it. I would have welcomed that down to earth honesty at my school. We only got half the info we needed, the half they wanted us to hear, and at that point I lost trust in them.
- et-al 3y ago
  Fentanyl has changed things, though. Coke wasn't a big deal as an occasional party drug, but now we hear stories of tainted coke and overdosing. Gotta teach kids about testing all their drugs now.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > Let them play monopoly with allowance money? Calm down, Satan. In my experience there is nothing what would stop a kid from doing the stupid things. What somewhat mattered is trying to explaing, honestly, the consequences. Sadly, this doesn't work good enough, but sometimes it helps when instead of panicking they panic but remember what to do in the case of emergency.
jxramos 3y ago
I've been day dreaming about as more social data goes public on the internet how can that enable us to peer into the lives of folks who post material and leak details of their lives online. Can sociological studies be made where these bad choices can be reviewed in accelerated form where the individuals who picked the wrong path show the fruits of their choices visually and the decline is evident just looking at them and hearing the things they talk about. Not sure how feasible it is, but I think with all the photo and video data we now have on hand what sort of longitudinal studies we can produce from imagery alone with the occasional detail and context self professed by the individuals involved.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  People can disregard fucking anything they don't want to hear. Still, perhaps, might work. > where these bad choices drugs = bad choice, always? There can be good sides too.
em-bee 3y ago
what works is living by example. and letting the kids grow up in an environment where nobody does drugs. showing them the bad outcome that others suffering from addiction experience may also be instructive. but generally kids do as the parents do. if you have a good relationship with your kids so that they are not trying to take drugs out of protest, then they won't be tempted to try.
- pineaux 3y ago
  I think this is bad advice.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  I think you'll end up with drug-naive kids, which may be a similar risk. You've just shifted the risk to an older period of their life. Kids need information, not naivete enforced through ignorance.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    living by example doesn't mean don't talk to your kids about drugs. there are only two options: kids learn about drugs by others telling them about it, or they learn by trying them. the latter is dangerous, so the former is the only option. everything else is the environment. my parents never talked to me about drugs or alcohol. we did talk about it in school though. i simply grew up in a family where alcohol or drugs did not exist, in an environment where kids didn't have easy access to alcohol and where we were generally educated in school to avoid that stuff. so noone did drugs or got drunk at school. maybe a few kids were drinking outside of school but it was never a big thing. i remember a classmate from middleschool saying that he refused to get cigarettes or beer for his dad because it's unhealthy. that's the kind of environment i grew up in. tell me how does that make me drug-naive and put me at risk? later as a student many of my peers frequently drank alcohol with meals, etc, i never did, and was never interested, because that's how i grew up. of course if that is not your environment then you have to be more proactive about making sure your kids are aware of the dangers, but in general, what has the most value is the example you give as parents. if you drink, you will have a much harder time to convince your kids to not drink. and for drugs it is my understanding that those who have experience with alcohol are more likely to try harder drugs too. (even just a small percentage) but more important the reverse, those that do not drink alcohol also are unlikely to try harder drugs. my interpretation of that is that if i want my kids to avoid drugs i can do that by not drinking alcohol and showing them that they need not join their peers when they drink. this is not to say that anyone drinking is putting their kids at risk, but that not drinking is very helpful to reduce that risk.
chasd00 3y ago
my kids aren't old enough to comprehend these things yet but family friends take their kids to volunteer at homeless shelters, food pantries, etc. Seeing addiction and what it does to lives first hand is a good motivator to not let it happen to you.
pineaux 3y ago
This was already a solved problem. Just get the kids use all the stuff away from parents when they are between 14 and 18. Yes it will do a little bit of brain damage, but getting pissdrunk at that age and having your parents nurse you back to normal is a great experience for a kid. I know this from first hand experience, when I was 14 (it was sorta normal in the Netherlands at that time). I was a lot more carefully with any substances afterwards. As for addiction: kids are getting addicted to their phones and games all the time.
- vacuity 3y ago
  I don't know about the Netherlands, but I'm definitely not doing that in the US if I have kids. Also, that might work most of the time, but it's going to hurt when a portion are addicted and can't easily recover.
  - pineaux 3y ago
    Its not possible anymore in the Netherlands either and its showing. More abuse of drugs and alcohol. A big portion of people is going to get addicted anyways. The America has a far higher amount of addicts of all drugs and alcohol compared to the Netherlands. That is mostly policy and some cultural aspects.
plasticchris 3y ago
I watched requiem for a dream when I was a preteen. It was super effective.
dror 3y ago
- Lead by example. Be responsible about your own use and be honest about it. - Help them engage in constructive risk taking behavior. Sports are a common example, and there's plenty of research showing that they reduce harmful behavior. Teens, specifically males explore risky behavior. They have these new magnificent bodies and they want to test their limits. - Be present, available and engaged with them. Some of the time, they'll want you out of their face. That's fine, but try and keep routines like family meals, and talk to them, if they're willing. - Try to maintain the family. Sometimes a divorce/separation is the right thing, but for the kids, most of the time, keeping the family together in a dual-parent family is very important.
- Two4 3y ago
  While your comment addresses the most common factors contributing to addiction, it doesn't really answer the question of how to let children experience the consequences of addiction in a way that's low stakes and not irreversible.
  - whythre 3y ago
    I am not sure it’s possible. Part of what defines addiction is that overpowers the will, which isn’t safe. It also is typically a long term decent, a series of poor decisions in the grip of a disease. Not easy to model.
fatnoah 3y ago
> I've been wondering: how do we teach kids about addiction (substances, gambling, phone/internet) and its consequences? I can't speak to device addiction, but I from ages 4-12, we raised our child in a major US city. In that environment, one comes across the direct results of drug addiction occasionally. While we do talk about addiction and related things, but ultimately it's his experiences that shape his views more than words from dad. One of those was taking a trip to the park for a play dare and being late because we stopped to check on (and call 911 for) a man along the way who was passed out with a needle still stuck in his arm.
Aerbil313 3y ago
I'm 18. My parents did not moderate my smartphone usage, they just told me the harms that will result from phone addiction: life spent wastefully, especially in the critical years of middle and high school, bad grades, cognitive decay, vision decay, etc. I wised up and never get addicted to my phone ever, nor have used it for time-wasting distractions like social media. I hate those parents who restrict their kids' phone usage forcefully, they can't learn to use them safely. What happens when they grow up and be introduced to the world of unrestricted phone usage? Just kidding. I was an addict just like almost all other classmates of mine. I'm currently curing my myopia which is 4+ diopters in one eye thanks to using my iPhone 5 cms away my eyes, laying in bed countless nights. I was ~155 IQ (can't remember because of poor memory), now down to 150. My memory was the best I know among people, I used to never forget anything which I can classify as 'timelessly relevant info', so I would remember everything in a science book I read once three years ago (but not the yesterday's lunch). People would frequently comment about my memory and comprehension. Not so much, I wasn't able to remember things from the textbook the teacher is going to ask in late high school. Now my brain is still foggy, but I'm recovering. I'm very unfit, confirmed by a doctor, again recovering from that. I was in %0.5 in my country's university exam alhamdulillah, and I wonder how would it be if I have ever stopped looking at my phone and actually studied. After many years, what saved me was that I made some custom software that can block my iPhone all by myself, using the Odyseus' trick [1], using your present self's willpower on your future self[2]. Because my parents refused to put a password for Screen Time and said that good ol' phrase: "Can't you stop yourself? Just stop looking it, it's that easy!" I firmly believe no one person can fight trillion dollar corporations spending tens of millions of man-hours reverse engineering biological reward circuits in your brain. Everyone I see around me is as addicted as their rest of lives allows them to be, except grandpas who still have those dumb phones. I saw the transformation of my beloved relatives after they got their first smartphone, for the worse. They're not the same person anymore. My life goal for this world is to put and end to this shit. I'll inshaAllah sell that phone that is restricted, make that Linux distro, browser, applications and all things that restricts you from harming your wellbeing and wasting your life, all while being fully functional for things one really need (think messaging, finance apps, government service websites etc.). Thankfully Transformer models came just in time. Human brains are not designed nor meant to be able to handle current smartphone technology, the current smartphone technology is designed to exploit human brain for profit. See the entire catalogue of research at: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/ https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/ 1: https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Odysseus-and-the-Sirens https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Odysseus-and-the-S... 2: https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock

dghlsakjg 3y ago

Let them play monopoly with allowance money? /s In all reality the most effective drug and vice talks I ever got were in High School. The first was from our school's substance counselor who was a former crack addict, and mother of one of our fellow students. She just told her story, and talked about all the horrible shit she saw, but never once told us drug war lies. The other was from my English teacher a few weeks before graduation. The gist of it was: "there's nothing I can say that will stop you from experimenting with drugs. A little bit of drugs probably won't ruin your lives, and might be fun, but pay attention to the people who don't moderate, and the people who do. The results speak for themselves." What it came down to was it was the two people that were honest with us who got heard. Some DARE cop lecturing us from a DEA handout about how marijuana addiction would ruin our lives didn't work, because kids aren't stupid, and they know BS when they hear it.

jdougan 3y ago
"Drugs will make you feel awesome. Never trust _anything_ that makes you feel like that"
- vacuity 3y ago
  Also, it's a whole lot more difficult getting out of addiction than getting in. If you just have a shovel you can dig deep, but climbing back up is a different story.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
That sounds like the right way to do it. I would have welcomed that down to earth honesty at my school. We only got half the info we needed, the half they wanted us to hear, and at that point I lost trust in them.
et-al 3y ago
Fentanyl has changed things, though. Coke wasn't a big deal as an occasional party drug, but now we hear stories of tainted coke and overdosing. Gotta teach kids about testing all their drugs now.
justsomehnguy 3y ago
> Let them play monopoly with allowance money? Calm down, Satan. In my experience there is nothing what would stop a kid from doing the stupid things. What somewhat mattered is trying to explaing, honestly, the consequences. Sadly, this doesn't work good enough, but sometimes it helps when instead of panicking they panic but remember what to do in the case of emergency.

jxramos 3y ago

I've been day dreaming about as more social data goes public on the internet how can that enable us to peer into the lives of folks who post material and leak details of their lives online. Can sociological studies be made where these bad choices can be reviewed in accelerated form where the individuals who picked the wrong path show the fruits of their choices visually and the decline is evident just looking at them and hearing the things they talk about. Not sure how feasible it is, but I think with all the photo and video data we now have on hand what sort of longitudinal studies we can produce from imagery alone with the occasional detail and context self professed by the individuals involved.

_a_a_a_ 3y ago
People can disregard fucking anything they don't want to hear. Still, perhaps, might work. > where these bad choices drugs = bad choice, always? There can be good sides too.

em-bee 3y ago

what works is living by example. and letting the kids grow up in an environment where nobody does drugs. showing them the bad outcome that others suffering from addiction experience may also be instructive. but generally kids do as the parents do. if you have a good relationship with your kids so that they are not trying to take drugs out of protest, then they won't be tempted to try.

pineaux 3y ago
I think this is bad advice.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
I think you'll end up with drug-naive kids, which may be a similar risk. You've just shifted the risk to an older period of their life. Kids need information, not naivete enforced through ignorance.
- em-bee 3y ago
  living by example doesn't mean don't talk to your kids about drugs. there are only two options: kids learn about drugs by others telling them about it, or they learn by trying them. the latter is dangerous, so the former is the only option. everything else is the environment. my parents never talked to me about drugs or alcohol. we did talk about it in school though. i simply grew up in a family where alcohol or drugs did not exist, in an environment where kids didn't have easy access to alcohol and where we were generally educated in school to avoid that stuff. so noone did drugs or got drunk at school. maybe a few kids were drinking outside of school but it was never a big thing. i remember a classmate from middleschool saying that he refused to get cigarettes or beer for his dad because it's unhealthy. that's the kind of environment i grew up in. tell me how does that make me drug-naive and put me at risk? later as a student many of my peers frequently drank alcohol with meals, etc, i never did, and was never interested, because that's how i grew up. of course if that is not your environment then you have to be more proactive about making sure your kids are aware of the dangers, but in general, what has the most value is the example you give as parents. if you drink, you will have a much harder time to convince your kids to not drink. and for drugs it is my understanding that those who have experience with alcohol are more likely to try harder drugs too. (even just a small percentage) but more important the reverse, those that do not drink alcohol also are unlikely to try harder drugs. my interpretation of that is that if i want my kids to avoid drugs i can do that by not drinking alcohol and showing them that they need not join their peers when they drink. this is not to say that anyone drinking is putting their kids at risk, but that not drinking is very helpful to reduce that risk.

chasd00 3y ago

my kids aren't old enough to comprehend these things yet but family friends take their kids to volunteer at homeless shelters, food pantries, etc. Seeing addiction and what it does to lives first hand is a good motivator to not let it happen to you.

pineaux 3y ago

This was already a solved problem. Just get the kids use all the stuff away from parents when they are between 14 and 18. Yes it will do a little bit of brain damage, but getting pissdrunk at that age and having your parents nurse you back to normal is a great experience for a kid. I know this from first hand experience, when I was 14 (it was sorta normal in the Netherlands at that time). I was a lot more carefully with any substances afterwards. As for addiction: kids are getting addicted to their phones and games all the time.

vacuity 3y ago
I don't know about the Netherlands, but I'm definitely not doing that in the US if I have kids. Also, that might work most of the time, but it's going to hurt when a portion are addicted and can't easily recover.
- pineaux 3y ago
  Its not possible anymore in the Netherlands either and its showing. More abuse of drugs and alcohol. A big portion of people is going to get addicted anyways. The America has a far higher amount of addicts of all drugs and alcohol compared to the Netherlands. That is mostly policy and some cultural aspects.

plasticchris 3y ago

I watched requiem for a dream when I was a preteen. It was super effective.

dror 3y ago

- Lead by example. Be responsible about your own use and be honest about it. - Help them engage in constructive risk taking behavior. Sports are a common example, and there's plenty of research showing that they reduce harmful behavior. Teens, specifically males explore risky behavior. They have these new magnificent bodies and they want to test their limits. - Be present, available and engaged with them. Some of the time, they'll want you out of their face. That's fine, but try and keep routines like family meals, and talk to them, if they're willing. - Try to maintain the family. Sometimes a divorce/separation is the right thing, but for the kids, most of the time, keeping the family together in a dual-parent family is very important.

Two4 3y ago
While your comment addresses the most common factors contributing to addiction, it doesn't really answer the question of how to let children experience the consequences of addiction in a way that's low stakes and not irreversible.
- whythre 3y ago
  I am not sure it’s possible. Part of what defines addiction is that overpowers the will, which isn’t safe. It also is typically a long term decent, a series of poor decisions in the grip of a disease. Not easy to model.

fatnoah 3y ago

> I've been wondering: how do we teach kids about addiction (substances, gambling, phone/internet) and its consequences? I can't speak to device addiction, but I from ages 4-12, we raised our child in a major US city. In that environment, one comes across the direct results of drug addiction occasionally. While we do talk about addiction and related things, but ultimately it's his experiences that shape his views more than words from dad. One of those was taking a trip to the park for a play dare and being late because we stopped to check on (and call 911 for) a man along the way who was passed out with a needle still stuck in his arm.

Aerbil313 3y ago

I'm 18. My parents did not moderate my smartphone usage, they just told me the harms that will result from phone addiction: life spent wastefully, especially in the critical years of middle and high school, bad grades, cognitive decay, vision decay, etc. I wised up and never get addicted to my phone ever, nor have used it for time-wasting distractions like social media. I hate those parents who restrict their kids' phone usage forcefully, they can't learn to use them safely. What happens when they grow up and be introduced to the world of unrestricted phone usage? Just kidding. I was an addict just like almost all other classmates of mine. I'm currently curing my myopia which is 4+ diopters in one eye thanks to using my iPhone 5 cms away my eyes, laying in bed countless nights. I was ~155 IQ (can't remember because of poor memory), now down to 150. My memory was the best I know among people, I used to never forget anything which I can classify as 'timelessly relevant info', so I would remember everything in a science book I read once three years ago (but not the yesterday's lunch). People would frequently comment about my memory and comprehension. Not so much, I wasn't able to remember things from the textbook the teacher is going to ask in late high school. Now my brain is still foggy, but I'm recovering. I'm very unfit, confirmed by a doctor, again recovering from that. I was in %0.5 in my country's university exam alhamdulillah, and I wonder how would it be if I have ever stopped looking at my phone and actually studied. After many years, what saved me was that I made some custom software that can block my iPhone all by myself, using the Odyseus' trick [1], using your present self's willpower on your future self[2]. Because my parents refused to put a password for Screen Time and said that good ol' phrase: "Can't you stop yourself? Just stop looking it, it's that easy!" I firmly believe no one person can fight trillion dollar corporations spending tens of millions of man-hours reverse engineering biological reward circuits in your brain. Everyone I see around me is as addicted as their rest of lives allows them to be, except grandpas who still have those dumb phones. I saw the transformation of my beloved relatives after they got their first smartphone, for the worse. They're not the same person anymore. My life goal for this world is to put and end to this shit. I'll inshaAllah sell that phone that is restricted, make that Linux distro, browser, applications and all things that restricts you from harming your wellbeing and wasting your life, all while being fully functional for things one really need (think messaging, finance apps, government service websites etc.). Thankfully Transformer models came just in time. Human brains are not designed nor meant to be able to handle current smartphone technology, the current smartphone technology is designed to exploit human brain for profit. See the entire catalogue of research at: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/ https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/ 1: https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Odysseus-and-the-Sirens https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Odysseus-and-the-S... 2: https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock