Austin Scholar #79: The negative impacts of social media on your teen (it’s not what you think)
& introducing my new ChatBot, Ask Austin
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: Introducing my new ChatBot, Ask Austin
The negative impacts of social media on your teen (it’s not what you think)
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been reading this week
This was the second week of school, and things are really picking up. Alpha High kids have taken everything we’ve learned in orientation-competition week and put it into practice: deep work in the morning on academics, and spending our afternoons practicing pitching and public speaking, creating MVPs and project demos, and building an audience.
The sheer amount of drive and motivation in this high school building is insane. Everyone’s ready to work. The lesson I learned this week: who you surround yourself with really matters. All of the energy at Alpha High is giving me lots of momentum to work on my own stuff :)
Austin’s Anecdote: Introducing my new ChatBot, Ask Austin
I’m so incredibly excited to announce the launch of a new Austin Scholar product: Ask Austin.
Y’all, of course, know how much I love AI, so it really is about time I created an AI of my own. Ask Austin is an AI ChatBot that has every single Austin Scholar newsletter downloaded onto it–plus every piece of information in my second brain (basically all my notes, resources, and musings that haven’t yet made it into a newsletter).
This means that Ask Austin can give you completely personalized advice, whenever you need it.
It’s basically like you’re talking directly to me.
Here’s how you use it:
Ask Austin will greet you with a question:
You can ask the ChatBot any question you have, or explain any scenario you want advice on. You’ll want to add as much context as you can–the more details you share, the more the bot can personalize its advice.
The answers are instantaneous. The second you click submit, Ask Austin will use my newsletters and second brain to create an answer for you.
Here are some examples (and how Ask Austin responded):
“I’m a parent to a 12-year-old boy. He just doesn’t want to talk to me. Whenever I ask him about his day, he just ignores me and goes to play video games. What should I do?”
“How can I get my kid (15-year-old girl) to do her schoolwork? She just isn’t motivated.”
So cool, right? It’s like Ask Austin took the words right out of my mouth :)
And even cooler, the more questions you ask, the better trained Ask Austin will get at answering, so it’s only going to get better over time. Every new newsletter I write and article I read will get loaded up onto the bot, so it will always be up-to-date.
Later today, I'll be sharing the link to the ChatBot–but only to my paid subscribers!
If you've been on the fence about purchasing a paid subscription, I'd be honored if you considered subscribing (and checked out the new bot!).
I’m super excited to hear what y’all think of Ask Austin! And I’d love your feedback as my AI ChatBot takes its first steps.
Also, the idea for this ChatBot was directly inspired by my sister’s teen dating advice ChatBot, Ask Elle. You should check that out too!
The negative impacts of social media on your teen (it’s not what you think)
We’re a couple of weeks past the “back to school” frenzy, and now the “TikTok teen kit” (as I call it) is all the rage.
What is the TikTok teen kit? Good question. Basically, all the kids in high school–and even in middle school–convinced their parents to load them up with all of the TikTok product trends for school. That full slew of products is the “TikTok teen kit.”
And because the TikTok teen kit is synonymous with being cool, when kids see a new product that they don’t have, they don’t just feel like they’re missing out–they feel inadequate.
I’m sure some of these sound familiar:
Drunk Elephant Bronzing Drops (they’ve been sold out in every Sephora for months)
North Face backpack (this year’s backpack for popular kids)
Stanley water bottle (this one’s a little old, but definitely relevant)
Sol de Janeiro body spray (everyone wants to smell like they’re cool enough to wear it)
Lululemon tops (a staple in every girl’s closet)
Parents: I’m not going to lie, y’all have done a fantastic job coaching your kids about not comparing themselves to the models they see on Instagram. We can all recite the speech, word-for-word. Even if they still struggle with it, the “body image social media issue” is well-known enough for kids to know to keep their mouths shut. I haven’t heard someone say “I wish I looked like that girl on Instagram” in years, for fear of receiving another “all photos are edited” and “you’re beautiful” lecture.
On the flip side, the “TikTok teen kit issue” is the opposite. Schools are full of kids talking about the latest skincare and makeup trends, with devious smiles on their faces as they plot how they’re going to convince their parents to buy the new “it product” for them.
I went around and talked to a lot of my friends, and while most of them said their parents hadn’t talked about the “TikTok teen kit issue,” they realized it probably wasn’t great for them. In fact, when asked “who is your most TikTok teen kit-obsessed friend and what would you say to them,” they had some great insights.
The TikTok culture makes kids feel inadequate or not good enough when they’re not “in” on the newest trend. Each new addition to the “TikTok teen kit” triggers that feeling of inadequacy.
A few of my friends and I sat together this week to talk about why we like to buy the things we see are popular on TikTok. When we were actually honest with ourselves, it was pretty easy to categorize our answers into three categories:
A lack of self-control (I want everything I see)
Envy (I feel jealous of what others have and want it)
Feeling empty (I have a hole in my life I am trying to fill with this purchase)
Somehow, naming the feelings triggered by the “TikTok teen kit issue” made them clear and harder to be captured by. Later in the week, when a new moisturizer went viral on TikTok, we were reminded of what we’d said, making it a bit harder to want to buy it. It seemed a little tainted, somehow. This consequently dulled the feeling of inadequacy since we realized deep down we didn't actually want the thing–which meant we certainly didn't need it to be good enough, or happy.
Of course, you can have this discussion with your kid if you feel like it would have a positive impact. But, what’s better than lecturing them is encouraging your kid to take the initiative and have this conversation with their friends. Feel free to forward this newsletter to them to see if it prompts the discussion. As a side note, when Ask Austin is fully trained up, this is the kind of thing you can talk to the bot about.
If none of that works, ask your kid to verbalize why they want a specific thing. Sometimes, the reasoning will seem so ridiculous that they’ll realize they don’t actually want to buy it.
This comparison–the “TikTok teen kit issue”–is just as (if not more) prominent in today’s culture than body image comparison. Make sure your kid is prepared to deal with it.
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been reading this week
I cannot tell you how obsessed I am with this podcast. I’m normally not a podcast listener because I just get so distracted, but How I Write is just incredible. Even if you’re not a writer, this is just such an incredible look into the great minds and writers of our time.
Tell your kid to go through this list and pick out which of the nine sources of advantage they want to focus on. It will be a great way to shift their perspective on achievement and how they see their abilities.
This is another fantastic article by Ethan Mollick on AI and how you can use it to get ahead. Definitely worth a read.
Thanks for reading. Go crush the week! See y'all on Sunday.