What Adults Need to Know About How to Help Us Teens

Reel after reel. Short after short. Post after post. Hours upon hours in social isolation in a dark room. Losing our sense of purpose. Losing our sense of self and self-worth. No longer mindful. No longer grateful. 

We have normalized using toxic chemicals on our skin, hair and bodies and eating foods with ingredients that destroy our bodies from the inside out, stuffing whatever our hearts desire into our mouths, overconsuming processed artificial foods, staying up late at night and doomscrolling mindlessly, making us numb to reality.

Our Sad Reality

Currently, more than half of U.S. teens are spending an average of seven hours and 22 minutes of daily screen time, equivalent to a 40-hour workweek. According to the Mayo Clinic, using social media more than three times a day can predict poor mental health for teens. We do have the power to change our current reality. This is where we need you. 

Parents and Other Adults Can Help Change Our Current Reality

There is so much we can do every day to take back control of the health of our mind, body and soul. We need to stop this cycle; we need a teen health revolution.

Commitment to Health

The hardest part of becoming healthier is that you have to create a commitment to it. Many people are only healthy at home, where it’s more boring and stricter. When they go out to parties or on vacations, they have some of the worst diets. What they’re doing is associating junk food with fun food. Are all the artificial colors, ingredients, seed oils and GMOs okay to eat when we are having fun? Why would any teen want to eat real food when it is just boring?

Show Us that Real Food is Fun Food

Provide us with real food options at celebrations, holidays and when we are traveling. Stock our pantries with real food. Take us grocery shopping, help us build our own gardens, take us to farmers markets, ask us to cook with you.

Role-Model Health Habits for Us 

We know you are busy, but please put down your phone at dinnertime and have conversations with us. Talk to us; look at us eye to eye. Ask us about our day like you really care. Listen to learn, not listen to respond. Spend time in nature with us, practice gratitude, meditate and deep breathe with us, help us read labels on everything. Be kind to one another. Show us that you prioritize your health and your company so we can prioritize our health and our company.

At the end of the day, you gave us that smartphone, you are buying all those artificial foods for us, you are stocking our fridge and pantry, you are buying our polyester clothes … and then you complain when we are addicted to junk food, screen dopamine hits, and our brains and bodies don’t work the way they should. But it is not too late; the time to start is now.

The Time to Start Is Now

We go to school for years on end, for what? To get a great education, a great job, a great house, a great life, but what happens to those dreams if we get sick? Without health, nothing else matters.

We teens want freedom, but today we are running into the hands of corporations that don’t have our health in mind and are only worried about creating a generation of consumers. 

We are those consumers, blindingly following without thinking about where we are headed, and they have succeeded.

Why are we just sitting around and allowing others to control our bodies, minds, souls and choices?

It is time to wake up and look up from our phones. We are the future leaders, engineers, politicians, doctors, musicians, teachers, influencers, cooks, mothers and fathers.

This is what our mom did for us. Now we are taking it to the world. It is harder for us to do this without you. We were that drop in the ocean, just four kids, but now we are creating that ripple effect in our home, in our communities and our world.

Abdullah, Zain, Emaad and Qasim Ansari—known as The Holistic Kids—are the hosts of The Holistic Kids’ Show Podcast, ranked in the top 2 percent of podcasts worldwide with more than 200 episodes. They are national speakers and co-authors of the bestselling book 
The Teen Health Revolution: Lifestyle Secrets to Optimize Your Mind, Body, and Soul. 

They have been the first youth speakers at major integrative and functional medicine conferences—leading podcasts, appeared on TV and received the 2025 Up and Comer Award from the Health Business Growth Collective. They are guided by their mother, Dr. Madiha Saeed, M.D., an integrative holistic family medicine physician, author of nine books and based in Chicago at HolisticMomMD. Learn more at TheHolisticKidsShow.com.