Dr. Becky Kennedy, a New York City-based clinical psychologist who coaches parents through difficult moments with their kids, has created a booming business centered on the notion that kids are, essentially, good people. The idea sounds simple, but to Kennedy, it’s profound—the key to unlocking healthy parent-child relationships. And that insight, which Kennedy has developed into the Good Inside method, has turned “Dr. Becky” from prominent psychologist into a celebrity-status parenting guru. [Image: Dr. Becky] Early in her career, Kennedy embraced what she calls a “behavior-first, reward-and-punishment” approach to parenting. But she came to understand that the method, which emphasizes discipline and consequences, doesn’t help children develop the skills they need to handle complicated emotional situations. So, Kennedy came up with an entirely new framework. The basic idea of Good Inside is that children act out when they feel misunderstood or their needs aren’t being met—that their bad behavior doesn’t reflect their inherent character. And parents who approach them through this perspective are better able to set boundaries and develop healthy relationships with their children. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Kennedy joined Instagram to dispense advice to parents struggling with their suddenly trapped-at-home children. Dr. Becky soon became a social media sensation: She currently has more than 3 million Instagram followers and a growing presence on TikTok. In the meantime, she’s spun her Good Inside brand into a bestselling book, a podcast, and a subscription-based app, which launched last year and uses generative AI trained on Kennedy’s writing and videos to give parents personalized, specific advice to deal with situations in real time. The Good Inside app, which costs $276 a year, now counts more than 50,000 members. Fast Company spoke to Kennedy about her approach to empowering parents, using generative AI and social media to spread her message, and growing the Good Inside brand. What made you join Instagram in 2020? I started to see that we create issues in childhood and then we try to solve them in adulthood. When I noticed this, I couldn’t unthink it. I’m always focused on efficiency. I think what led me to Instagram was the thought that more people need to know this. More people need access to the type of education that you get in every other job. Parenting is the hardest job in the world, and we are sold this bullshit narrative that we should have a maternal instinct and that it should come naturally. The only thing that comes naturally in parenting is how you were parented. Technology is now being used to solve a lot of the world’s struggles and make certain things easier. Where’s the education and the technology for parents? I want parents to say, “I feel like I have the best parenting coach in the world in my pocket. I shouldn’t spiral after I yell at my kid. It shouldn’t be a mystery what to say when my kid comes home after getting in trouble at school.”  [Image: Dr. Becky] Is that why you developed the Good Inside app? We grew completely organically on Instagram. Parents have basically told us along the way what they want, and we’re just serving it up for them. They want education. They want access to experts and access to each other so they know they’re not alone. With that kind of insight we’re like, okay, we are going to create this ongoing experience. The app has a subscription model because if you’re a parent with kids, they are often living in your home for 18 years. We just want to be with people on their journey. We have more than 50,000 members in over 108 countries, even though we’re still just English-speaking. We heard from parents during [the pandemic] that they wanted longer content. But now they are on the go and need advice for very specific situations, so it needs to be personalized. So when someone only has five minutes, they can feel productive. This is really a digital product, just like Duolingo. We want parents to have a way to learn the language of parenting. Parents can type in a specific situation, and get practical advice on what they can do tailored to them using generative AI. They can also delve deeper and learn more if they want to. What is the overarching theory behind Good Inside, and how did you come to it? This all came together in my private practice. I’d work with adults, and I felt like there was one thing that was true about everyone, regardless of what they came to talk about. It’s that the patterns and the circuitry that were put in our bodies to protect us and help us adapt early on in life start to work against us in adulthood. A lot of our early childhood adaptations ironically become symptoms in adulthood. [People wonder], Why don’t I trust people? I’m so hypervigilant. I don’t think I was born that way. So what did I learn early on that made me untrusting? I used to tell adults that the circuits th