YouSaid · the spoken record

Dr. Anna Lembke

lines on the record: 51
first: 2026-03-03
most recent: 2026-03-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No. Get help from a mental health provider if it's too much for your family or for you to handle a loan, but get in there. Don't just give up and say it's too late for my kid or there's nothing I can do. Get in there, fight at your school, get ed tech out of schools, fight for these guardrails on a legislative level, hold corporations accountable. Let's energize. You know, we can do it.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree. And I also want to say to parents, take a deep breath, okay, and stay hopeful. This is a problem that is insidious and typically develops over days to weeks to months. It's going to take days and weeks to months to get out of it, right? It's not going to be a snap of the fingers.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Breakfast, we know that, yeah, we know that. So we need these guardrails. And, you know, I applaud Australia and I applaud other countries like South Korea that have gotten smartphones out of schools. I applaud states here in the United States that are moving to create these guardrails. We have to try things out. We have to. And we also importantly have to hold the corporations that make and profit from these digital drugs accountable, right? They are deploying a harmful product for kids. And that shouldn't be allowed. That shouldn't be okay.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we need to do just that, right? Like, we don't let kids be cut real. Yeah, kids don't, they're not allowed to buy cigarettes or alcohol or go into casinos and gamble. We recognize that the developing brain is especially vulnerable.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because learning occurs in that moment of friction and delayed gratification. It is the not knowing that allows our brains to create new synapses, which is the definition of learning something, right? And so again, we have to get back to having slow tech spaces in the schools where kids can experience frustration tolerance. And have to actually have enough time and space to have a thought and learn how to express it and write it down on their own.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reading ability is decreasing mathematical ability is decreasing. And even in the creative realm, kids are doing worse. This, I think, we really have to look at and say, okay, you know, we all kind of thought, you know, getting technology and cool screens and pads and things would make our kids, digitally literate, ready for the 21st century, but actually it's going in the opposite direction. And what we're creating is a generation of distracted kids who don't know how to learn.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I agree with everything that Sophie said. I think this is really important work. There are some glimmers of hope in that I and many others have been talking for more than a decade now about getting smartphones out of schools K through 12 so that kids don't have little slot machines in their pockets so that they can actually Attend to learn, and teachers can teach. And we are seeing more and more schools around the world banning smartphones from school. So I think that's really good news. But still what we have is this idea that integrating technology into the way that we teach will make the teaching better. And yet all of the data even beyond our parental instincts, all of the data are showing that”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a real thing. Right. Yeah. And kids can get incredibly isolated. They're up all night playing video games, watching YouTube, you know, sleeping during the day, getting suicidal. So, I mean, I have had lots of patients where they actually have to stop out of school, come home, and really get some very intensive treatment. And I have no idea what your circumstance is, so no way to make any specific recommendations. But just to give you a sense of kind of the range of issues that occur.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“College becomes this kind of opening to the world. But if your child is, if they're having the opposite experience, I think you the alarm bells should be ringing and you should really be thinking about, oh, wow, how can we help? And in some instances, I had a friend who's so...”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sitting down with your son, a really transparent discussion about what you're observing that's different from before he went away to college, talking about does he observe the same thing, offering him help. I mean, if he has depression and anxiety and he's not getting help for that, strongly recommend you hook him up with either your own resources for mental health or school most colleges have very good mental health resources. I would again get in there and not just sort of assume that it's going to get better naturally on its own. And Kelly, the reason that I would especially emphasize this is because We do see some kids who, when they go off to college and all of a sudden are surrounded by the wonderful opportunities and the new friends groups, they actually get off their devices. They're on their devices less.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, you're not alone. You're not alone. And then if you couple that with a child who's prone to anxiety and depression, what's very clear from the data is that the more time a child spends online consuming digital media, social media, the higher their risk of becoming depressed and anxious. And if they already have depression and anxiety, that depression and anxiety will get worse. So we really have a causal phenomenon where the consumption of digital media and social media drives the depression and the anxiety. This is really important concept. Back to some of my earlier advice.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we see this quite often. Kids who, while they're still living at home with the container in the guardrails that parents provide are able to manage their relationship with technology, but when they go off to college and all of a sudden those guardrails are gone, some of these kids will very quickly fall into a kind of a 24-7 online, you know, digital habit.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are really dealing with a more serious situation, and then we're going to take you to see a mental health care professional. We're going to consider to actually taking the device away.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and this is key. Thinking about a family as something that requires a mutual investment of all members of the family who must abide by the family expectations and rules. So, you know, even if you're not going to take the phone away, you could say, but we still expect you to do X, Y, and Z to show up, to talk with us, with respect. And then you could even use what we call contingency management. Contingency management is well known in the addiction field to be a potential way to treat. It's essentially using punishments and rewards to shape behaviors. So the way that we'll often use contingency management in this situation is say, if you can meet certain expectations, we expect you to go to school. We expect you to do these chores. We expect you to speak to us with respect to not have the device in the bedroom, to not use the device. And we'll give you a month to do that. And if you're not able to do that, then we are.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing, you know, Catherine, you as the parent could always step in and say we're going to take the fun away. Like what we talked about with Edith, you could do that. And again, depending upon the severity of his behaviors and I might even recommend that you do that. So I'm not saying you never do that, but I don't like to just talk about taking the devices away because some parents are just simply not in a circumstance where they're going to be able to do that. So that's where I think at least opening up the dialogue, again, identifying what you see that's distressing, eliciting from him what he thinks is problematic.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He probably will say that. But at least you've identified that you see a problem, what you're observing. You've made the offer of help. Maybe he doesn't want help now, but maybe he doesn't.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What you used to And then, you know, and elicit from him what he's, again, this is a sort of, we were saying that, and then the offer of help, would you like to get some help with this problem that we're observing? Would you like to see a mental health counselor was?”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is the kind of antisocial traits that come out in kids where they basically are rude, right? They treat parents badly, they manipulate, they're very self-involved. Now some of that is characteristic of being a teenager anyway, but it's really much, much worse when kids get caught up in this world. Parents often talk about losing like that child that they knew and this being a person that they don't recognize. And that's true also with many other types of addictions. So I would reflect back to your son in particular the specific unacceptable behaviors, his rudeness, his lateness, his not doing his chores, his lying, his disrespecting. And talk about how it very well may be linked to his overdependence slash addictive use of digital media. And what you can then do is, again, advise him, you know.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you're contributing, we're all contributing to the whole. Yeah, that's right. We're all equal partners. You sit around the table, you get the whole families. And again, it starts with observation. Here is what I am seeing. And one of the things that is most notable and most distressing with tech addiction”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay. So once you've entered these teenage years where you've sort of got these, they're like living off living their own lives, this is where open dialogue really becomes core. Having, again, and I emphasize with this with Ida, but sitting down with him again a time you're not dysregulated, he's not dysregulated, even schedule on the calendar. We want to have a family meeting. I like to call it a family meeting because it's like we're a family.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take the device away because kids are manipulative, sneaky, you know, one of the telltale signs of addiction is lying about our use, whatever the drug is. If we take the device away, they'll often go and get another device or pay for one themselves or what have you. Yeah, have friends. Yeah. Easier to get in there and 10”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I mean, I think this is really an important point that we blame ourselves often as parents with these issues. And yet, even like the perfect parent with all of the time in the world, it's still really, really hard. And then if on top of that, let's say you're a single parent or you have cancer or you're working at double jobs or whatever's going on, then you have a whole added layer where it's just, I just want to acknowledge really, really tough for parents, even very heart, you know, well-intentioned parents who really care. So your son, he's 13 is that cusp where it just starts to get really, really hard to”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Oh gosh, so much there. And I wish I had better answers for you because what you're describing is really tough and what a lot of us are dealing with. First of all, I do want to comment on your struggles with cancer and how that meant you were more preoccupied, less able to be in there the way you wanted to.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's always hope. I just want to say that's a message I really want to convey. There's always hope at every stage of life. But you as a parent.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I don't like to diagnose people who are not my patients, but what you're describing is similar to the types of addiction to digital media that I do see in clinical care.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other thing, Ida, is you don't want to just take something away without replacing it with something that's better. So of course your daughter is exhausted at the end of the day. It's exhausting to be a 10-year-old, right? But when she comes home and she legitimately needs to relax, you all need to come up with a healthy way for her to do that. Maybe it's spending time talking with you or doing crafts. Maybe it's joining a sports team and decompressing by being physically active. Movement is medicine, right? Dopamine is not only important for reward, pleasure, and motivation, it's also important for movement. And we need to integrate those things. So you need to give her healthier alternatives at the same time that you're going to try to take away the iPad.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That there's a problem, right? And that's the other piece. Actually, one more thing I have to say is so important, Oprah for Eda.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, tech free pods. A lot of young people now are embracing older tech. They're getting film phone cameras, right? They're playing vinyl records. This is much of this is coming from Gen Zers who themselves are recognizing.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You also need to change the environment. We cannot rely on willpower alone when we have an environment that is constantly inviting us to use our drug of choice, whatever that may be. So if you've got screens in every house, devices in every bedroom, you need to change that. You absolutely. And you might even need to think about limiting Wi-Fi to the house, right? So these are structural and environmental changes. You can't just say, and not that you would say this, my kid's spoiled or something's wrong with my kid. The disease process of addiction that we're facing in the world today lives in the space between our brains and the environment that we've created. So we need to recognize that biopsychosocial interactive peace. We can't expect ourselves to stop the behavior when”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's all about cultivating a digital etiquette in the home. So what are the appropriate times and places for you to be on your device? For me to be on my device, like not at the dinner table, not when we have guests over, not in the bedroom, not late at night. It's hard, but again, with a 10-year-old, you can get in there. And here's the other important thing, Edith. If you feel you can't do it, it's just too overwhelming. Get some professional help, right? Get a mental health care provider. And there are more and more of them, thank goodness, responding to the call, who have expertise in this area who can come into the home and help you make a behavioral plan. And then finally, I just want to add, you know, apropos, Oprah, you're talking about Eda needing to model.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This should involve your partner if you're raising her together with a partner. It could even involve the three year old. I mean, it's amazing what kids can understand. So get the whole family together, sit down and say, hey, we care about each other. Our use of digital media is problematic for our family individually and collectively. Each person can go around and say what they're observing, including asking your daughter. What do you think? Do you think this is a problem?”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You can sit down with a 10-year-old when you're not dysregulated and they're not disregulated, you know, you're not screaming at them to get off the iPad and say, you know what, we need to talk about this as a family. This is a problem. And you can describe what you see the way she gets dysregulated, the way she kind of uses it as this transitional object, which by the way is a Freudian term to talk about how we do use an object to kind of get us through emotional bumpy patches. But I would just really have a very open and transparent discussion. And you can even bring in your own struggles with limiting your digital media use because we're all struggling. And I think it's good for parents to be transparent.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that somehow a tablet is. Or even that they know what their kid is doing or what the internet because the internet will push to your child stuff that they're not even looking for and haven't even considered. That's one thing. Second thing is we always need to think of the age of the child. 10 years old is still within a frame, an age range when you do have control as a parent and can do more. And what I would recommend first, and by the way, I'm contrasting that to older teenagers where they're out in the world. But with a 10-year-old, here's what I recommend.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, great. Well, thank you for being willing to share something about your experiences. You're certainly not alone. I think most parents are struggling with this in some form or another. I was interested that initially you sort of framed giving your daughter an iPad as if it were maybe less addictive than the phone. But I would say that's not really the case. Any device that gives that child that kind of visual and audio stimulation and has access to the internet where they can see an infinite number of videos, including by the way, videos that you probably would be horrified to know she was watching. Okay, so I think this is a really important piece that people think.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're always releasing dopamine at a baseline tonic level in our reward pathway when we eat something or smoke something or drink something or go on digital media, that temporarily increases dopamine firing above baseline, along with other chemical changes. You go back to normal, yeah. Right. Well, yes. We always want to go back to our set point, right? Or our homeostatic baseline. But what happens is that through that process of the brain adapting to that temporary increase in dopamine firing, that essentially what can happen with addiction is that the brain overadapts, overcompensates, and ends up in a chronic dopamine deficit state. So now we have below healthy levels of dopamine firing in the reward pathway. And when we get into that state, now we need to keep using our drug not to get high, but just to bring those.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A comment that says something flattering to you. Right. Or just watching short form video, right? Watching those short form videos that absolutely lights up that reward pathway, releases dopamine. And the difference between things that are addictive for a given individual is that they release a lot of dopamine all at once.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Yes. Exercise is a super healthy source of dopamine. And it also importantly reintegrates the function of dopamine for movement as the function of dopamine to go and get our rewards.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it's probably no coincidence that the same molecule that's important for getting our rewards that we need to survive is also important for movement because, you know, for most of our existence, we had to move our bodies to go get a berry bush or get me.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But tell us what dopamine is. Okay, great. So dopamine is a chemical that we make in our brains. It is what's called a neurotransmitter. And neurotransmitters are the molecules that bridge the gap between neurons. So neurons are these long spindly cells. They're like wires in our brains that conduct these electrical circuits that make us who we are. And those neurons don't actually touch end-to-end. There's a little gap between them, and that gap is called the synapse. Neurotransmitters are the molecules that bridge that gap that allow for fine-tuned control of those electrical circuits. Dopamine is one of many brain neurotransmitters. It's essential for the experience of pleasure, reward, and motivation. It's also, as I mentioned before, very important to movement.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, they're in withdrawal, right? I mean, they're in withdrawal. They're afraid Because now they've basically become dependent on this. That's right. In order to manage their everyday lives, right, to manage anxiety or depression or loneliness, but even separate from that, once our brains are repeatedly exposed to any reinforcing substance or behavior, we essentially adapt to that reinforcer such that over time we need more in order to feel the same response. And when we're not getting it, we are literally in withdrawal. And the universal symptoms of withdrawal from any substance or behavior are anxiety. Irritability, insomnia, depression, and craving for that drug. So again, I see these kids and I really feel like they're not spoilers. They're not spoiled. That's the point.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“young adults. When you expose a child's brain to a digital drug that is incredibly reinforcing It is inevitable that that child will get into this loop of addiction where They get into a state of craving and withdrawal when they don't have their drug. So when I see these kids and the extent to which they're emotionally dysregulated when they don't...”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out of control use, craving, compulsive use, and continued use despite consequences. But it's a very recognizable behavior when we see it, especially in its most extreme forms. And we're living in an addictogenic world where not only do we have more access to drugs that have been around for thousands of years, but we have drugs that never existed before, right? All of the digital drugs, drugified food, right? We have a food supply with the addition of fat, salt, sugar, flavorance, processed food. Not only are we getting calories when we eat, we're getting hits of dopamine that make it very difficult to stop even when we've reached our natural satiety point. And that's true for almost everything now, including, importantly, for this discussion digital media.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's the continued compulsive use of a substance or behavior despite harm to self and or others. And importantly, sometimes we can see the harm and sometimes we can't. And it is a brain disease. I think that's really important to communicate to folks the disease model of addiction. We're not at a place yet where we can use brain scans or blood tests to diagnose addiction. We base the diagnosis on phenomenology or patterns of behavior, often what we call the four C's.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are living in an unprecedented time of overwhelming abundance where we've drugified almost every human experience, the food we eat, the games we play, the way that we connect with other people. And as such, we've all become more vulnerable to this problem of addiction. And I always like to sort of upfront define addiction for folks. Please do.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, or you get the likes or the friends or the followers, you know, the comments, it's like this. This trance like state that we can get in where it just feels so good like with any drug. But afterwards, there's this come down, and over the long run, we're not really pursuing our goals, which with social media is nominally to connect with other humans”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be conflict, there's frustration, but digital media and social media in particular removes all of that. So it's just this seamless experience where we feel like we're connected.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think this idea that we're sort of entertaining ourselves to death, and there's in fact a famous older book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Really does capture it well. It's very subtle and insidious. It seems harmless in the moment it feels good, but it's the cumulative effect over time that really adversely impacts our well-being, our mental health, and truly our ability to connect to other people. I mean, social media in particular essentially takes our innate need and desire to connect with other people and distills it down to its most addictive elements so that for very little upfront work, all we have to do is swipe right, swipe left, and it creates this illusion of connection even when real connection is not happening. Because real connection with other humans is effortful, right? We have to go out and find the humans. We have to compromise. There's give and take.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. To really conceptualize digital media as a potent drug. And to think about protecting their child from it, I think a good analogy for digital media is actually processed food. So, for example, most parents would not feed their kid ice cream for breakfast, and yet many parents are fine letting their kid, even a very young child, hold the phone at the breakfast table. I think when we think about it that way, there are occasions when you would give your child ice cream or chocolate cake or what have you, but you wouldn't just let them have it whenever they want it all day long.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when we encounter whatever that digital drug is, it's just we are very susceptible to getting caught in that compulsive overconsumption loop.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really is a drug. It's incredibly reinforcing for our brains. It activates the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. And for people who are uniquely vulnerable to digital drugs, it can really lead to life-threatening addictions. And I think this is really important point that I want to make up front that we're all wired a little bit differently. And so each person has a different potential drug of choice, right? Based on their unique worries for some people, it's food. Mine was food. Okay. For some people, it's romance novels. That was mine. And that sounds silly, but I actually did develop a, you know, a kind of addiction to this genre. For some people, it's alcohol cannabis. And for some people, it really is social media, online shopping, adult content, video games, whatever it is.”
2026-03-03 · The Oprah Podcast · When Your Kids Won’t Put Their Phones Down, with Oprah & Addiction Specialist Dr. Anna Lembke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT