The Truth about Kids and Tech

Before we dive into today's discussion, I think it would be really helpful for everyone in the audience to learn a little bit more about your background and the work that you do. So, Jean, why don't you start us off?

Sure. So I am a personality and social psychologist by training. I teach and do research at San Diego State, and I've been researching generational differences for about 25 years and published a number of books on that topic. And in the last year published a book called Igen about the generation born 1995 and later. So that got me interested in, in looking at some of the recent trends in mental health among teens and then realizing that they may be connected to the rise of technology, because Igen's the first generation to spend their entire adolescence with smartphones. And that's had big effects across many areas of their lives.

Nir, how about you?

Sure. My name is Nir Eyal and I write and research about habit forming techniques, technologies have performing products. A few years ago, I decided to enter this field because I saw that companies like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Slack and WhatsApp, that these products knew something about how to change consumer behavior in a really interesting way. And so what I did was try and understand the psychological code behind how they build their products and services. Not for their benefit. They already know these techniques. My idea was to help everyone else out there, small businesses, restaurant owners who have a website, government services trying to get people to change their behavior, anyone trying to build an app, a website, a technology that could help people live better lives, helping them exercise more, eat healthier, save money, be more connected to friends and loved ones, building apps and programs for mental health services as well, use the same techniques to engage users. And so I wrote a book called Hooked Habit how to Build Habit Forming Products. And I currently lecture, invest, and teach around this topic. I taught at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford and most recently at the design school at Stanford as well.

So clearly there is so much controversy around smartphones and digital media and really, if you think about it, how we engage with one another and the technology has changed so much since, since the advent of the smartphone. But that said, it's a complete norm now in our lives. But the interesting thing is I'm not sure that we hit the pause button to sort of say, well, how is this actually affecting us both in positive and negative ways? So, Jean, just starting off, can you help us define even the difference between digital and social media? Let's start there.

So digital media is an umbrella term. It really Means pretty much everything that you can do on a phone or a tablet or a gaming console. So it includes gaming, texting, going online, watching streaming video, although you have to distinguish that a little bit from tv. But that line is blurring as well as social media. So it's just a much broader term that captures more of the things that teens and everybody else is doing with their phones and tablets.

That's great, thanks. So what's your thinking on how digital media is actually impacting our well being? Share that with us.

So I think at this point, if we can get my slides up there, I'll share a little bit from my research about some of these time trends here in how things have changed. And that's my book Igen about this topic. So as I mentioned, I've been doing this research on generational differences for about 25 years and I got used to seeing generational shifts that were big but would take a decade or two to roll out. Then around 2011 or 2012 in these very large national data sets of teens and college students that I analyze, I started to notice changes that were bigger and more sudden. I had really never seen anything like it. So for example, more teens started to say that they felt left out. More started to say that they felt lonely. More started to say they felt like they couldn't do anything right or that their life wasn't useful or that they didn't enjoy life. And these are classic symptoms of depression. So these two were from the data sets that I usually work with. Then these trends started to show up in other data sets too. Big national government screening surveys. So this is major depressive episodes, that's clinical level depression. That really needs treatment. In the last year among 12 to 17 year olds was pretty much unchanged until 2011. And then by 2016, 60% more teens fit the criteria for having major depressive episode in the last year compared to just five years before. That's a pretty big shift in a very short period of time. For 18 to 24 year olds there was also a rise, but it was not as pronounced. The CDC recently released this data on emergency room visits for self harm, things like cutting or taking too many pills. And they found a pretty pronounced increase for girls in particular, that's 15 to 19 year olds. And then among 10 to 14 year old girls the rate of self harm tripled in just a six year period. This is a study that just came out in Pediatrics suicidal ideation. So thinking about suicide and suicide attempts for hospital admissions across the same time period. Also a pronounced increase for teens. And then, as has already been mentioned, the suicide rate for teens doubled over this time period. And it's important to note that the suicide rate overall has been on the increase for adults across all ages, but for a longer time, it's a longer standing increase, more like since about 2000, but for teens, it had actually been going down until about 2007, and then it began to go up. So I think in looking at these graphs, I think pretty much everyone who sees them has this question, what happened? That was certainly the question that I had. And at first, I really had no idea what could possibly be causing this. It didn't seem to be economic factors, because as you notice, many of those trends really didn't get going until about 2011, when the US economy was improving. So it didn't seem to be the Great Recession. And so I really puzzled over this for a very long time. What happened around 2011 or 2012 that might be at the root of this? And then I realized, well, what happened in that year? This happened. Sure enough, we know from polls from the Pew Research Center, 2012 is the year when the percentage of Americans who owned a smartphone crossed 50%. So at 2011, 2012, that's when smartphones became common. And we started to see scenes like this. You're in a public place and everybody's looking at their phones. When just a few years before this, say in 2009, you didn't see scenes like this, because what did people have back then? They had flip phones. You know, you remember those. They just weren't that interesting. People weren't doing this because you had to press the same button, you know, to get one letter on a text. You remember that? Or you could take a selfie, but you'd be like, is that me or is that my dog? Like, it just wasn't that good. And. And the technology wasn't there to draw people in. So you can see the time sequence here. Here's one of the studies on teen depression. Here's the ownership of smartphones. Here's the amount of time that teens say they spend online. And then what does not line up is, say, the unemployment rate, one indicator of the health of the US Economy, which is actually going down and getting better. It's not just digital media and smartphone use, though. It's also that that use of digital media has risen to such a high level among teens and arguably among adults as well, that it has displaced the time that teens used to spend doing other things like getting together with their friends face to face. So you saw that mentioned in the video and it's not just a perception, it's not just anecdote. The number of teens who get together with their friends face to face, there's the pattern that's among 12th graders, 10th graders and 8th graders. And that decline begins around 2000 with the Internet and then really accelerates in the age of the smartphone. And it shows up across pretty much any question you can ask about teens getting together with each other face to face. They also don't sleep enough. Teens in this age group need about nine hours of sleep, so less than seven is a significant amount of sleep deprivation. CDC data on 9th to 12th graders shows a big increase in the percentage who aren't sleeping enough. And the survey on 8th, 10th and 12th graders shows the same. This is also a trend that got going in the 90s, but then things actually improved during the 2000s. More awareness around the issue perhaps. But then around 2011, just like everything else, sleep deprivation goes up. And in both surveys it's at all time highs. So you could say, well, teens are spending their time in a different way. Does that matter? Here's the connection to suicide risk factors like depression or suicidal ideation. Those who spend three hours a day or more on electronic devices are about 35% more likely than those who spend less time than that to have at least one risk factor for suicide. TV has a smaller risk then other things that don't involve a screen tend to be potential protective factors. Sports and exercise, those who do that a lot versus less are less likely to have those risk factors as well as those who get enough sleep. So things on a screen tend to be associated with a higher risk. Things that are not on a screen, potential protective factors. So it is difficult to prove for sure that the rise in digital media and the popularity of the smartphone is at the root of this. But it is very, very suspicious that teen depression increased right at the time that smartphones became common. And that we know from this research on time use connected to mental health issues, that that pattern of time sure enough is associated with that. You could make the argument, well, maybe it's teens who are depressed and spend more time on screens, but there's longitudinal experimental studies suggesting at least some of the causation is clearly going from depression, sorry, from screens to depression rather than the other way around. And it is a difficult case to make. You can't do random controlled experiments and assign people to be born at different times. It's literally impossible. So random controlled trials are out of the question. You have to rely on the data that you have. But I do think from the data that we have, it is at least a plausible explanation for at least some of the increase in mental health issues, given that the time sequence lines up and given that this pattern of time use is associated with these issues.

So Nir, what's so beneficial, actually both of you, what's so beneficial having you both here is that you have divergent viewpoints on things. So let me go back to you, Nir, and ask about how do you think the digital media is impacting our well being?

Yeah. So maybe if we can bring up these slides. So it's so I have a 10 year old and I cannot imagine any more painful thing to go through than the loss of a child. And that's why I think it's so important that when we talk about mental health with our children that we really understand what might be causing some of this increase in suicide. The fact is, if we can just bring up the slide, please. Okay, terrific. So we just want to make sure that this is not some sort of foregone conclusion that we really understand what's going on. So the first point here is that suicide rates are increasing. We see that red line is the year that the Apple App store came online. We see that second red line, this point where cell phone penetration crossed the 50% mark. But we see that this trend has been increasing for quite a long time. In fact, if you go back even further than this, you see that rates were much higher in the 1990s. What's very important here to notice is that this is a US centric phenomenon, that when we see countries that have high penetration of cell phones, we do not see the same uptick in suicide rates. This is an American born problem. For some reason, which doesn't exactly make sense, these other countries have kids just like ours who have cell phones just like our kids do, who have social media just like our kids do. And yet we do not see the rise in suicide rates among teens that we see here in the United States of America. In fact, if, if there is some kind of causal relationship, we should see the countries with the highest cell phone penetration, the ones that got their cell phones first should have had higher teen suicide and depression rates first as well. But that didn't happen. Countries like Japan, Finland, Norway, Iceland have had stable, if not falling teen suicide rates. The nuance here is that the rise in teen suicide is not happening everywhere. And to everyone, a big factor of who is affected by the increase in teen suicide is where they are Located. The rise in teen suicide is coming primarily from small towns and rural areas, areas with less smartphone penetration in the early years and even today than big cities. You can see there there's almost no rise in the suicide rate among kids in big cities. And this leads to the point that Dr. Twenge mentioned that it's not only where you are, it's also how much you use. And the research shows, as Dr. Twenge said and reiterated here, that it's really about this overuse. It's three hours, four hours, five hours of use. UNICEF did a fantastic study that showed that there's this U curve, that actually a little bit of cell phone use is highly beneficial, that two hours and less is perfectly fine. There's no deleterious effects. It's when we get to three, four, five hours a day that we see these symptoms. But of course, that brings up the question, the point here, that an overuse of any analgesic is harmful. If we are doing something to escape discomfort, any overuse, three, four hours, five hours a day leads us to ask what else might be going on? What other comorbidity might be happening that might lead someone to seek escape, to disassociate from reality by using their cell phone that much every day? So these studies don't break down what these kids are doing for all these hours. And so the other potential culprits that I think we need to explore is exploring the kind of work that the Johnson Depression center does, right? Is there a lack of mental health services available? The decline of free play? Neighborhoods in America used to sing with the sound of children playing. That doesn't happen anymore. Lack of coping skills. New York is the first state to mandate coping skill education. This should be a nationwide program. Overemphasis on testing. Another thing that occurred during 2011, 2012, was this greater emphasis, this legislation that teachers must start teaching towards tests over restricted parenting, over scheduled kids, medicalization of normal feelings, using devices as eye nannies, decline of religious and civic groups. And this is something that I think you did a fantastic job in your book, emphasizing how this generation is, is less involved with civic and religious groups. And then we have lawnmower parents who are constantly removing pain from their children's lives and trying to protect them in a way that may not be building their resistance and their tolerance to uncomfortable situations. The point here is that tech is part of the problem, but it's not the only part of the problem that in fact, it's part of the solution. Because if you think about it, not only is this correlation part of how much you use, who uses the technology and what you're doing with the technology, an important factor here to answer this question of is this doing harm is what behaviors it is displacing. Because the fact is children are dying less, fewer kids today are dying than ever. There is not. Even with the rise in suicide rates, the rates of child deaths is decreasing. Now, what's going on here, part of what's happening is that more kids are in school, dropout rates are at an all time low, and fewer are in jail. I mean, take a look at these statistics. 70%, 80% decline in teen arrests. This was the generation of the super predator. They were supposed to be terrorizing us, and it never happened. There are prisons empty because kids never went to these jails. Well, part of the reason could very well be an upside to technology use. If you wanted to invent a machine that keeps kids off the streets, off the roads, safe from harming each other and committing acts of vandalism and getting into all kinds of stuff that past generations got into, you might invent something like the devices we have today. In fact, all the bad behavior that we used to do, that past generations used to do are on the decline. Teen alcohol use, teen pregnancy, way down, drug use, way down, smoking rates, all way, way down. So there may be. Of course, we don't know if this is a causation effect, but the same exact time that we're going to pin blame on technology for increasing anxiety and potentially suicide. There is a similar correlative effect to perhaps this displacement of all these unhealthy, very dangerous behaviors that kids used to do, that perhaps they're displacing elsewhere. So the conclusion here is that the answer to the question, is tech harmful? Is it depends. It depends on how we're using it, how much we're using it, who is using it, and what behaviors it's displacing. There's very clear evidence that tech is helping kids in many ways, that if you think about the resources that weren't available to past generations, Facebook groups for minorities, LGBT groups, apps, text hotlines for suicide help that we talked about earlier, all of these services have come online over the past few years enabled by these devices. Tech may provide kids with an outlet to meet unmet needs. When we talk about self determination, theory, mastery, autonomy, competence, there are healthier ways to use these devices than the past times of generations past. Now, that doesn't mean that I'm giving tech companies an excuse or that I'm Saying we should use tech more. Quite the opposite. I think part of the solution is learning ways to responsibly use these technology. I think we both agree that we could all benefit by using these products with intent as opposed to letting them control our behaviors. And there's a lot these companies should do. For example, I advocated four years ago in an article in the Atlantic for a use and abuse policy. These companies know how much we're using their products, and if they wanted to, they could reach out and say, hey, can we help? You're using this product to the extent that you may be overusing or abusing the product. There are new tools. Many of you have Apple devices. You all got an update to iOS 12, where now you have screen time that lets you moderate and monitor your use of your technology as well as your kids. These are great developments. What I do think, though, is that scapegoating and looking for simple answers to complex problems tends to backfire. And I think it's time we learned how to minimize a potential harm from use and overuse. And now is the time, not for another moral panic and to look for these simple solutions, but instead, it's time to truly study what's going on so we can truly help those in need so that no one feels alone.

Thank you.

So, Nir, you have done a tremendous amount of research on how we've gotten so hooked. I mean, just explain for us how have we gotten so hooked on technology?

Yeah. So these companies, let's be very honest, they have an incentive to keep you engaged. I mean, they have built these products using a lot of very sophisticated psychology to keep you checking and your kids checking for potentially hours a day. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, these companies, we want them to build products that we like. And if you would have told me when I was a kid that my device, this little device in my pocket, could do the things it could do, I'd say that's science fiction. But we do need to be aware of how these products work. So to answer your question, every one of these products has embedded into it what's called a hook. The hook has a trigger, an action, a reward, and an investment. And it's through successive cycles, through these hooks, trigger, action, reward, and investment, that these habits take hold. The good news is, once we understand these four basic steps, we can break these habits. So I wrote the book for these two reasons. One, to help companies building products that can help people. And I put my money where my mouth is. I invest in those type of Companies that build healthy habits, but also so that all of us understand this deeper psychology, these mechanisms, so we can understand it, so we can say, ah, that's a trigger. I know what they're doing to me or I see what they're doing here in the action phase to break these unwanted habits.

So what are some of the common triggers? Like what drives us to this technology?

Sure. So there's two types of triggers. There's internal triggers and external triggers. Internal triggers are these negative emotional states, right? It's typically boredom, loneliness, uncertainty, fatigue. It's some kind of negative sensation that we seek to escape through the use of a product. By the way, this is why we use all products, not just tech products. We all use products to escape some kind of uncomfortable emotional state. An external trigger are these pings, these dings, these notifications that we're constantly getting on our devices. That's what prompts us to action, to check our phones.

So Gene, let's call it out. I mean there's some really good stuff on that little phone, right? I mean our friends are out there, there's games, there's cool games, there's news, you name it, it's out there. So help us understand how do we moderate some of this usage? Because there's a lot of good stuff there.

So I have another set of slides. We can get my slides back up. So I'll get to that in a minute. I want to first just a couple of quick points of clarification. Although the suicide rates for teens haven't increased in other countries, there's good evidence that self harm and depression have increased in say in the UK and in other European countries. So I wonder if it might be because they have a national health care system and we don't. So perhaps there are more folks who are having these issues, but maybe they're getting the help they need before they get to that point of suicide. So that's a definite possibility for some of those differences. And then yes, I also, I think those other trends in terms of sexuality and alcohol use and safety among teens are really interesting. That's something I cover in Igen as well, that my conclusion is that we have a generation that is physically safer, probably the safest generation in history, yet is more mentally vulnerable. It's intriguing combination that suggests the ways in which we've had some success in protecting our children and then the ways in which them spending their time in their bedroom might keep them physically safe, but may not be the best for their mental health. So let's talk about that idea of moderation. So NIR just mentioned this about some of these studies showing this interesting pattern in digital technology use and well being. So this is from a couple of studies. And across the bottom there is hours per day on electronic devices or online. And we can look first at high levels of use, so five or more hours a day and see how those individuals differ from those spending less than an hour or an hour a day. And this, by the way, this population of spending five or more hours a day depends on the study. But it's 10% or 20% of teens. It's not 1%. So this is not like the far end of psychopathology. This is a fairly good number of kids. So those who are spending five or more hours a day compared to one are about 50% more likely to not sleep enough. They're about 70% more likely to have at least one of those risk factors for suicide. And they're twice as likely to say that they're unhappy. But then you notice the other piece here is that the teens who aren't using digital media at all are not necessarily the most well adjusted, that there's a little bit of a curve there. So that's partially probably who those teens are. There's probably some with special needs or are very disadvantaged. But I also think there's probably some in there whose parents took their phones away. So they're really mad, not very happy. But I think what this really points toward is limited use. That up to two hours a day or so doesn't have these consequences. It's really overuse or an excessive amount of use. That doesn't necessarily mean it's really a huge outlier because there are a fair number of teens who are spending three hours a day or more of their leisure time with screens. It's not a small percentage, but it does show that it's limited use where there's the best effects and that you don't. It just kind of steadily builds. So overall, I think what this research and many other studies suggest very similar to what the American Academy of Pediatrics says, that we should be limiting recreational screen time to two hours a day or less. And then what I think is the most important is the issues around sleep, because not getting enough sleep is a major risk factor for mental health issues as well as physical health issues. So too many teens have their phones in their bedroom, stay up late on them, wake up in the middle of the night and are on their phones. And almost every teen I talked to for the book said that their phone was the Last thing that they saw before they went to sleep at night. And this is not a good formula for mental health because the phones are psychologically stimulating. They're also physiologically stimulating because the blue light shines into your eyes keeps your brain from producing the melatonin, the sleep hormone that you need to get a good night's sleep. So this is not just for teens. This is good advice for everybody to make sure that that phone is as far away from your bedroom as you can get it. And if you're wondering, well, wait, that's my alarm clock. I have some quick advice for you. Buy an alarm clock.

Absolutely.

You know, in the end, I'm actually somewhat hopeful about this because when we think about the causes of depression, unhappiness, mental health issues, a long list of things that cause those issues, starting with genetic predisposition, trauma, poverty, abuse, discrimination, those are all things that are really difficult to solve, especially as individuals. We can't change the genes we were born with. We can't change the negative things that happened to us in the past. We're not going to solve poverty overnight, as much as we might like to, but we can control how we spend our leisure time, and we can get this message across to the young people that we care about. That, sure, use your phone for the things that it's good for, harness that technology. But get together with your friends face to face, have that emotional connection. That's what those teens talked about in the video. And they know that they're not oblivious to this. Those teens in the video are, in my experience, typical that they know that that's better. And to get enough sleep and go for a run or a swim, be present in the moment, enjoy the sunset, go for a hike in the mountains. If you're lucky enough to live here in Colorado, read a book. All of these things that we know from decades of research are key for mental health and happiness as human beings. Because smartphones are great. You know, this is great technology. We're not going to put the genie back in the bottle. They can do so many wonderful things for us, but they need to be a tool that we use and not a tool that uses us. And that's really the key. I got this from a high school teacher. It says, does your cell have bars? Are you sure you're not its prisoner? Thank you.

That's great. That's great. So those are some fantastic ideas for us on moderation. Nir, do you have anything else you wanted to add?

Yeah. So I absolutely agree. I mean, I loved your book. And I loved in particular the recommendations at the end of the book. And I was, uh huh, uh huh, yes, yes, yes. I am very much an advocate for making sure that we control these technologies so they don't control us. I think some things I would add is as parents, we need to look at ourselves in the mirror because we are setting an example. And so if we want our kids to change their behavior, we have to change our own. If we cannot sit at the dinner table with our family, with our friends, without watching the game, or without taking our phone every five minutes, then guess what? It's not the phone that's the problem. There's something inside us that we need to address to figure out why we can't be fully present in reality for that amount of time. So that's the first thing, is as parents, to look into ourselves. The next thing that I think, I would advise is to discuss this with our kids. Some parents hear our advice and they come home to their kids and they say, give me that video game and give me that cell phone. And we're limiting it. And I think that's a big mistake because you got to remember, part of the reason kids are turning to their devices is because it's one of the few outlets they have to get their psychological needs met. They are looking for mastery, autonomy and competence. Things that kids in school don't get very much of. A video game gives a kid that, social media gives a kid that. And so these things are not necessarily inherently evil. It's about how they're used and how much time is spent with them. So you start a conversation with kids at a very young age. Even five or six year olds can sit down with you and have a conversation about. Look, these products are designed to hook you. They are designed to, to eat up as much of your time as you will give them. What are you going to do about it? What do you think is a reasonable amount of time to spend with your device? When my daughter was five, we had that very conversation and I asked her this question. What do you think is a healthy amount of time to spend with your device? Because it comes at a cost. That cost is playing with your friends, it's spending time with us, it's reading a book, it's coming at a price. How much time would you like with your iPad? I thought she was going to say all day. She said 45 minutes. 45 minutes. That's what she said. It was her rule that she made up for herself. And we've enforced that rule for five years. Now she's 10 years old. Apple just made it easier because now we use screen time to automatically monitor. And after 45 minutes, she gets a little Bing. It's not me being the bad guy. It's her rule that she set on her iPad that says time's up. So I would think that the biggest piece of advice is to involve your children in the discussion. Don't just blanket make these rules and dictate the way your kids should use the device. Have the conversation.

That's great. Thank you. So there's so much heightened awareness around how technology and mental health intersect. How are you seeing Silicon Valley respond to that?

Yeah, I think we've definitely seen a lot of action taking place. I remember I had meetings with Facebook and Reddit and Snapchat and Instagram and all these companies advocating for this use and abuse policy years ago, three or four years ago, and I kind of heard crickets back then. I didn't get much of a response. But today, the world is a very different place. They are waking up to the fact that overuse and abuse harms users. And from a pure dollar and cents perspective, products that hurt people tend not to be bought and used all that much. Right. People are moderating their behavior. We're seeing already demographics on Facebook decreasing their time on the site. They noticed that thousands of new apps were built that are for sale. You can type in right now in the Apple App Store. If you type in distraction or help me quit using my phone, you'll find literally thousands of apps that help you disconnect from your technology. And the tech companies saw this, and they saw, wow, there's market demand here. People want tools to use our devices less, and if we don't give them their tools, they're going to find them elsewhere, and that's bad for business. So we've seen a real shift now for companies from a moral as well as from a business standpoint, kind of changing their tune.

Yeah. So, Jean, your research actually speaks to the fact that while we're just completely barraged with digital media, some may say that there's actually less connectivity with one another. Some may say that. Can you elaborate on that for us?

So I think it just all depends on what do we mean by connection. That, yes, we are able to communicate with people around the world in an instant, given this technology, that we can have lots of Facebook friends. We have to put friends in quotes. My arms immediately went up to do this when you're talking about friends online, because it's different. It's inherently different. The way we interact with each other on social media or. Or even just online or through texting, that it tends not to be in real time. With the exception of, say, using Skype or Facetime, we're not seeing each other's faces, spending more time on Facebook and less time seeing each other's faces. And I think that's the problem because our human brains evolved for social interaction to be in real time face to face, to be able to have touch and feel, feel and the look on someone's face and all of these other cues that are just much more emotionally fulfilling, that we might get the dopamine hit everybody talks about from seeing likes and followers and so on. So it does have that psychological impact. But what a lot of people say is in the end, they feel empty from that, that it's not a true deep human social connection. And at least among teens, we don't have great data on adults, at least not yet. They are spending less time with their friends face to face. And you know, I think actually even if you call the debate over technology and its effect on, well, being a neutral and just say, okay, we're just going to say it doesn't have an effect, positive or negative. It's a problem that teens are sleeping less and spending time with their friends face to face. I think that potentially that indirect effect is even bigger.

Nira, I don't know if you want to add anything else on the connection piece.

I would just add that it depends how we connect, that how we use technology is very, very important. We have studies that find that if you just consume, if you just scroll your feed and just read what other people are doing, your sense of well being decreases. However, if you participate, if you connect, if you comment, if you create, your sense of well being increases. So it really is about how we use these technologies, particularly with our kid. I think there's a lot of good that can be done when kids are making stuff as opposed to just mindlessly consuming and consuming.

So prior to the luncheon, we actually sent out a note to our audience to say, is there any questions that you'd want to ask today? And I think one that came up actually a few times is around someone mentioned, I find myself going online with a brief period of time. My intent is to stay there just for a little bit. And the next thing I know, I pick my head up and an hour has passed or an hour and a half has passed. I just got swallowed in the Internet. So how problematic do you actually find that? I think a lot of us Here can relate to that. How problematic is that?

You go first.

I, I became very acutely aware of this problem. I absolutely had this problem, especially around election time. Big problem. So I made a few rules for myself. One of the rules that I made for myself is that I do not consume articles on the web. I'll still consume them, but not on my desktop because this exact thing happened. You get sucked in and you see the one New York Times article and you've got another headline, another headline. Then 30 minutes later, you didn't do what you intended intended to do that morning. So I installed an app called Pocket. It's fantastic. It has a little chrome extension on your browser. Every time I see an article, I say, ooh, I want to read that. I click the chrome extension of Pocket. It gets sent to my cell phone, where on my phone. The reward for going to the gym is that I get to listen to those articles, see how that works. This actually uses a technique that psychologists call temptation bundling to make something that I want to do as the reward for something I really don't want to do. So that's a fantastic way to do it, is set rules for yourself, set these guidelines. And there's so many technologies. I mean, part of what I advocate for is let's use tech against tech. We can use better technology to do away with some of the bad aspects of the last generation of technology, like for example, using an app like Pocket.

Or the new screen time capability on iPhone. Android phones have some of these too. There's also third party apps. I wish I could remember the name of it, but there's an app that somebody told me about that you set a limit for yourself on how much time you want to spend on your phone. And if you go over it, then this little tree that you have that started to grow. Forest. Thank you. And then if you go over your limit, it starts to die.

Actually, if you pick up your phone.

Something like that, you plant the tree.

And if you pick up your phone and do anything with it in that time, the tree dies. So, yeah, it's great.

I'm pretty sure you're the go to guy for how we get our act together here, get healthy, right? So we're not all lost. Then the fact that we're on there for an hour or so every day getting lost, we gotta figure out reward systems to stay away from it. Pretty cool. So you both lead really busy lives, you both have families. I think one thing that's on our minds is how do you handle some boundaries within your Own home. You mentioned your daughter at age five, set the 45 minute limit. I'd love to see you come back in five more years when she's 15 and we'll see what the story is then. But we're really curious about how do you set boundaries in your own homes, not only for your kids, but also you've mentioned some about yourself. How do we, how do we guard against this incredible temptation?

Yeah.

So I have three kids. The oldest is almost 12, and I have a nine year old and a six year old. So obviously I've thought about this a lot. At one time they had individual Kindle fires. And then I realized that was really upping their screen time that they had their own device. So one of the graphs I made for the book that showed those correlations with screen time and non screen time. After I made the graph, I got it from my desk chair, took the Kindle fires and shoved them in the back of a desk drawer. True story. And I thought at first that they'd flip out and they didn't. They actually barely noticed. It was kind of surprising. So they just don't spend quite as much time on screens. They do still, you know, spend some time. My oldest has some dedicated time at night that she uses to watch videos, but it's half an hour and we have had that discussion. And she's actually seen my talk four times, which helps too. But we've had that discussion of, yeah, a little bit of this is fine and fun, but we're going to put it away. And my younger two can barely even remember a time before we had these limits. So for them it's easy. It's just like, okay, it's time to go play outside and they'll go do it. And it's really amazing what kids can come up with to amuse themselves at these ages when you just say, okay, we're done and we're not going to use that anymore. So one day my oldest set up an obstacle course in the backyard for her younger sisters and whispered to me, she said, it's an obstacle course, but I'm going to tell them it's superhero training. So I'm like, you're going to go into advertising, honey, good job. And they come up with creative things to spend their time, so it works.

So a few things I would add. One is social antibodies. So Paul Graham came up with this idea that societies, when there's a new technology, the societies need time to adapt to that technology by creating new manners, new norms around the technologies. And so the Example that I give is, you know, I was a child of the 80s, and I remember when I was growing up, we had ashtrays all over our house. Now, my parents didn't smoke, but the expectation was if someone came over to your house in 1982, they expected to be able to light up in your living room. Well, today, that's ridiculous. If somebody came over to my house and lit up, they're out the door, right? They would never. You're laughing at it, right? It sounds ridiculous. And so part of how we went from 40% of the US adult population smoking to 14% today, smoking is creating these new norms, these new manners around how, when and where it's appropriate to use these harmful technologies, be they cigarettes or our phones. So when you see someone at dinner using their device, what do you do? Do you call them out? That feels kind of uncomfortable. What do you do? Here's the trick. You ask them a question. And the question is, hey, is everything all right? It's amazing, right? If there really is a disaster, there's some kind of emergency, they'll say, I'm sorry, let me just go take care of this. Nine times out of 10, there's no big emergency, and they say, oh, I'm sorry, and they just need to be woken up from that bad habit. So I think instituting these new social norms in the boardroom, in the classroom, in social settings, we need to make it inappropriate to use these devices, just like we made smoking inappropriate in these social circumstances. The next quick tip, get rid of these external triggers, for God's sakes. Two thirds of people with a smartphone never change their notification settings. Do you hear that? Two thirds of people with a smartphone never take 10 minutes to change their notification settings. How can we say that this stuff is so addictive and hijacking our brain if we haven't even taken just a few minutes to turn off the notifications for all the apps that bug you and ping you throughout your day. So just do that. You'll gain so much more head space just by doing away with those external triggers for the apps that don't serve.

That's great. So another question for you, Nir, and I'm going to put this one to you. I know you're working on your next book and the title is Indistractable, right? Mastering the 21st century skill, which speaks to, you know, when our kids, like, for example, our college age kids, like, they don't remember a time when this thing wasn't in their hands. So when you're getting Pinged and dinged and everything else. You know, this sort of art of being present, you know, sort of lost. We see it as you mentioned, you know, in schools, we see it certainly at work. Can you sort of speak to what you've learned in some of your research for your next book?

Yeah. So the next book is coming out early next year and it's a four part model. And the idea is that to manage distraction, to become indistractable, first we have to deal with these internal triggers, right? These drivers, these uncomfortable emotional states that make us look for a distraction in the first place. Then we need to make traction more likely. Traction is the opposite of distraction. Traction are things we want to do. Distractions are things that are against our better interest that we don't want to do. To do that, a simple tip is to schedule time. We call this setting an implementation intention, which is just a fancy way of saying planning a time to do what you will do and when you will do it. It's amazing how many people I talk to and they say, oh, the world's so distracting, I can't get anything done. I can't concentrate, I can't focus. And I say, I'm really sorry about that. Can I see your calendar? Show me what you plan to do today. And they take out their phone, they show me their calendar, and it's white, it's blank, there's nothing on the calendar. So you can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. And the reality is if you don't plan your day, somebody else will. Your boss, your kids, your pets, the news, the president. Something is going to take that time and attention away from you. These companies have an incentive to do so. So we have to plan our day to make sure we get done the things we really want to get done, the important things. Then we remove those external triggers that we talked about earlier. And finally, we use pact. We use technology against itself. Apps like Forest that you mentioned earlier to make sure we stay in to the task that we're focused on.

That's great. So in summary, I know we could talk a lot longer. Nir said earlier, like, damn, I wish this was for two hours. So in summary, is there any other advice that you would want to share with us on how do we use technology in a more healthful manner? Anything else you want to add?

I don't know. I mean, I think I mentioned the two big things already. It's phones out of the bedroom and making sure that I'll get that good night's sleep and don't have technology interfere with that and just trying to cut down on use and I love all your practical suggestions to do that.

I kind of gave my greatest hits already but those are something quick have.

The conversation right and that's what we're really taking away from this. You know decide as a family how are we going to use technology within the home so that it doesn't disrupt our connection with one another for yourself.

For your family and also in the workplace. Oh my goodness are we distracted in the workplace or what? We're constantly connected. Part of that's just about this discussion. Nobody likes the situation. You know it turns out in the research I've done it's these organizations that can't talk about the problem that are the ones that are overusing technology.

Well thank you both so much for sharing your expertise and helping shine a light on the connection between mental health and technology. We so appreciate you being here. Thank you very much.

Sam.