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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. To end the show today, we'll take your calls about how you protect your attention span from social media platforms. TikTok, in particular, its algorithm being so good at getting you to keep scrolling when your attention is literally the product sold to generate ad revenue on all these apps, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera, that can be really hard to do. How do you protect your attention span?

How do you keep your attention span from getting shorter and shorter when short-form, fast-paced video on TikTok, say, it can be so addictive, it'll keep you glued to your phone for hours?

Call us and tell us how you protect your attention span at 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. You can do it with a short attention span in 240 characters [chuckles] telling us how you protect your attention span the rest of the time. 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Also, how do you protect your kid's attention spans from TikTok, et cetera? I'm sure parents listening right now are struggling with this. How do you protect your kid's attention spans from TikTok in particular with its very sticky algorithm and other social media platforms too?

John Hutton, pediatrician and director of the Reading and Literacy Discovery Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital told the Wall Street Journal last year, "TikTok is a dopamine machine." Dopamine, the neurotransmitter that gets released in the brain when it's expecting a reward as that article defines it. Another expert in that story told the reporter, "It's like we've made kids live in a candy store." That story, by the way, to give credit TikTok brain explained why some kids seem hooked on social video feeds by Julie Jargon in the Wall Street journalist April.

Have you developed your own best practices, parents, for your kids or for yourself? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. What do you do to keep your children from spending too much time on social media, mainly, TikTok? What do you do to boost your children's attention spans? Are there positive attention span practices too, not just limiting the things that will shorten it? 212-433-9692. This conversation today happens to come as Congress is weighing a ban on TikTok and as several states and cities, and even the federal government have banned the app on government devices, that's mostly over security concerns having to do with the Chinese government.

There are really these two big TikTok questions in our society right now, one is China, the other is attention. TikTok CEO is preparing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee at a hearing about the app's privacy and data security practices, its impact on young users as well, and its relationship to the Chinese Communist Party that reporting on that coming testimony from CNN.

For today, we want to hear about what you do to resist the addictive, overstimulating, attention-grabbing, dopamine-producing nature of it if you or your children are getting maybe a little too much enjoyment from TikTok, and some of the fun or enlightening things for that matter that you can shout out, that you see on that or other similar apps. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer and we'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls on how you protect your attention span from the very addictive algorithm on TikTok and other social media apps. Linda, in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hi, Linda.

Linda: Hi, Brian. Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good.

Linda: One of the things I had to do was I realized that late at night that I was looking at YouTube with a lot of TikTok content in the same fashion with the short. It was like picking all the cashews out of the nut dish. I was just having such a delicious time and I had to stop doing it. I thought about my relationship with my phone in years past, I'm 72. I started to do something where I would physically leave my phone on the dining room table, on my placemat, and not go to it as often as I had in the past to resist the beeps and boops.

At night, I do the same thing, I put it within physically across the room at least. If I'm having a really rough night where I can't sleep, then maybe I'll put on a podcast with a sleep switch. Then the other thing I did was to start to read non-fiction again, and that wasn't easy. For a while, I really felt like I was shocked. That's all I'm going to say, but I was patient with it and so it began to work. Now, I do have some days when I notice that the phone uses up a little bit, but not this aimless, crazy thing that I was doing before, so I feel better.

Brian Lehrer: That's so interesting. I think the CEO of TikTok, if he's listening before going in to testify before Congress, is jumping up and down with joy thinking, "I knew we got the 12-year-olds, we're getting the 72-year-olds too.

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Brian Lehrer: What for you were the cashews, as you describe it, that you were picking out in the nut bowl? What kind of content?

Linda: Oh, for me, because I'm in a certain age, I liked looking at kids. This is ridiculous, kids and dogs, cats, sometimes the cake, I don't know why, and the realistic cakes. I think this is ridiculous, why am I in this swamp? They just got to be so silly. Then, of course, occasionally the royal family. I had to ban Harry and Megan from my phone too. No more Harry and Megan, no, no, no, no. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Linda, thank you very much. Yes, very fair at that. Linda, thank you very much for sharing and maybe that's helpful to people as well. Beverly in Savannah, Georgia, you're on WNYC. Hi, Beverly.

Beverly: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me on the show. I just want to share that there is so much really great value online. When I find an entity that I'm interested in, I just invite them back to an email address and it's really easy to call your emails and get information that way. I'm not online as much, but when I do find something interesting and good, I can invite them back to my emails.

Brian Lehrer: You join mailing lists and you use that as a filter, which still puts you in the sharing ecosystem, which doesn't mean that's a bad thing, but not just scrolling and browsing and things like that. Interesting. James in Mountain Lakes in Jersey, you're on WNYC.

James: Oh, hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, James.

James: Hey. When my kids were really, really little, we had a blanket rule, no electronic toys. We didn't want kids who were going to have ADD when they got older. Everybody knew if they wanted to give a birthday present, no electronic sounds, they were all old fashioned, they could have books. Then as they got older, sure, they were allowed to have phones but no TikTok. None of my kids have ADD or anything like that, they're all great students so maybe there's something to it.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. I wonder if this is different for people who are digital natives. For some of you who are maybe in your 20s right now, or your 30s who really grew up with the internet from moment one, it was really interesting to hear Linda from Parks Slope at 72, and how this has become so integrated in her life. When she was a kid, if she's 72, there was no internet, but how about if you grew up with it, is it harder? Is it easier in a way because you're like, "Uh, all of that?"

Is it just so much a part of your day-to-day life from as long back as you can remember that it's harder to protect your attention span? 212-433-WNYC. I wonder if this is different by age. 212-433-9692. Someone's coming in on Twitter. Listener writes, "A friend of mine has invented a physical key called Zendo to block phone use. He puts it in his car, it works better than a key, you can unlock on the phone." Someone else, I think that this person thinks we frame this too narrowly. "Attention span by itself does not take into account the uncomfortable transition into a task. If you can get the transition underway, it leads to focus on the new task." Who else? How about Stefan in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stefan.

Stefan: Hi, how are you? My method is treating my phone like it's my other woman, basically. I've been married for 30 years. I treat it like I'm spending too much time with social media. That's what I call her. When I spend too much time with social media, I need to spend more time with my real wife and my real life.

Brian Lehrer: Social Media for Stefan in Flatbush, his other girlfriend. Alana in Bed-Stuy are on WNYC. Hi, Alana.

Alana: Hi, Brian. How I have been dealing with social media recently is I have been using this app called Bhopal that allows me to block the ads, otherwise, I just compulsively-- I will open the app 50 times a day, and it'll say it's blocked so I know how much I'm opening it. It helps me with those impulses.

Brian Lehrer: Alana, thank you very much. Don in Spotswood, you're on WNYC. Hi, Don.

Don: Good morning, Brian. First of all, thanks for everything you do. I love, love, love your show.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Don: When I feel my attention span shrinking as I do from time to time, usually about once a year, I know I have to exercise that muscle so I break out Melville, I read Moby-Dick.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] How much can you get through in a sitting now compared to before your attention span started in decline? Is that a relevant question?

Don: [chuckles] Yes, it is. I'd have to say that it takes me a while to work up to sitting down for long stretches, but it's like anything else. When you use the muscle, it gets stronger. I might start off reading a couple of chapters and then get down to reading a couple of hours at a time.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Don. Another one from Twitter a listener writes, "I'm 29, I didn't have internet at home till early teens, and my attention span is definitely worse the last few years. I'm aware of it and can get over it, though, and with some willpower definitely a struggle though." All right, one more. Harvick in New Brunswick. Hi, Harvick, we have 30 seconds for you.

Harvick: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking me in. I just want to say one thing is that with the Instagram and Facebook lite, I use the website version in my phone, like using the browser and not the app, and the website versions are not so addictive so you can have some control there. They don't really update their website as they do their apps.

Brian Lehrer: If you use it on the browser rather than the app, it's less addictive. That's an interesting tip. Thank you, Harvick. All right. We're out of time. Thank you for your calls on preserving your attention span and hopefully, that'll help some others. Brian Lehrer Show produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Carl Boisrond, Esperanza Rosenbaum, and Shweta Watwe, today Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our daily politics podcast, and we had Shayna Sengstock at the audio controls. I'm Brian Lehrer.

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