Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Urich, I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I'm thrilled and honored to have Melanie Hempi back with us today. Yesterday you heard from her boys, and today you're going to hear from the mom. The mean mom, Jenny. The wonderful mom. The boys were fantastic. And actually, the thing that really was most intriguing to me, and you said it to me,

we were at a conference together, you said it to me, and it was so intriguing. The boys had just gone off to college. Maybe they were in their first year. They'd just gone away, their twins. Off they go. And one of the things that they had told you was that all the girls were the same as each other. Yes. And I just thought, wow, there are so many unintended consequences of this excessive screen use that people don't know. You know, there's a few at the top, like myopia. And there's the ones that some people have, I would say most people have heard of. But then there is, there are a lot that you wouldn't really think of until someone brings it up. And so it's a fantastic

conversation with their boys. We're following up today because through Screenstrong, you have

your own curriculum. So you have curriculum that you could do at home with your family. You have

curriculum for schools. And you also just came out with this book that's for younger kids called

The Adventures of Superbrain. So we have a lot to talk about, Melanie. Thanks for being here. Yeah, and I want to just start off by talking about that comment that was made by by Andrew, one of my boys. And one of the first things he said, you know, we were at home after a few months of school and everything. He goes, Mom, all the girls are the same. Just, just like you said. And he said, you know what? I want to find and marry one of a kind. I'm like, wow. He's like, but they all dress alike. They all talk alike. They're all doing the same thing on their Instagram. Their heads are down all the time. Like they're just cookie cutter and I thought well I don't know that that was really eye-opening for me Jenny we've

got to raise kids that are unique and different and all the time like they're just cookie cutter. And I thought, well, I don't know. That was really eye-opening for me, Jenny.

We've got to raise kids that are unique and different,

that have their own personalities and that don't look like and act like and dress like

and talk like everybody else.

They have to have interest.

We have to make our kids interesting.

And I think this is, you know, there's a lot of mental health problems with this issue, right? We already know that. There's a lot of anxiety and

depression. There's a lot of physical problems. There's all these problems, but I think that we

forget about one of the biggest problems is we're kind of raising robots. And I, and I, and I refuse to do that. You know, after I kind of,

you know, our story, you know, my oldest son was addicted to video games so badly that he dropped

out of college. And we were just stunned. We had no idea. This was a thing. This was a decade ago.

And nobody even knew that there was a thing like a disc screen addiction like

how could you be addicted to activity like nobody figured that out until it hit us and of course

a lot of other people right that were going through this and nobody had any words around it we

didn't know what to call it and when that happened I just thought you know we you know, we're going to do something different. And I'm a nurse. I went to Emory University. I have all these degrees. I'm like, hey, I can figure this out. So I went all over the country and I started interviewing people. I went to all these conferences. You know, even back then they had conferences for internet addiction. I don't know if you knew that. But I started going to all this stuff. I'm like, what the heck? This is changing their brain. It's a drug. Why are we doing this? And so it's kind of the trailblazer, I guess, you know, kind of lone voice in the wilderness. And like my boy said, yeah, mom, everybody thought you were a little crazy. But they said, whenever they had a problem, they called you.

Yeah.

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