Should I Delete That? - Is Screen Time the Enemy? with Dr Elaine Kasket

Episode Date: August 25, 2024

In this week's episode, Em and Alex are joined by cyberpsychologist Dr Elaine Kasket! After discussing the uptake in consistent negativity and hate online, the girls decided they wanted to talk to an expert about what was happening. Elaine's expertise, however, ended up pointing them in an unexpected direction. She shares her thoughts on restricting screen time, limiting social media and online vitriol. The answers may look a little different to what you thought...You can get Dr Elaine Kasket's book, RESET: Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life, here: https://eandtbooks.com/books/reset/Vote for us in the British Podcast Awards Listener's Choice category here: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingFollow us on Instagram @shouldideletethatEmail us at [e-mail] by Daisy GrantMusic by Alex Andrew Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There was no indication whatsoever that Facebook had any negative effect on well-being and that in fact it seemed to have a slightly positive effect. But then people see that and they're thinking, surely that can't be true because that's not how I feel. Hello and welcome back. Should I delete that? I'm Mike's Light. I'm them Clarkson. How are you? I'm good. We're under the bright lights of our students. studio. I feel flashy and fab. What? Ew. That's unusual. I know. Well, I'm happy for you. That's nice. Thank you. How are you? I'm good. I'm going to get my awkward out the way immediately. I went to Taylor Swift on Saturday. Oh my God. Best time. Is that you're good as well?

Of course. It's my good. Okay. It was so amazing. I know. I'm so sorry. I want to experience a Taylor Swift concert. We did an episode about three months ago where you literally went to on for 40 minutes behind you didn't understand the hype and you just you've never really got it and no la la la la la so no one was going to invite you no one was going to be like i'll tell you who deserves to come to this oh a hundred percent i would be i would be taking a much much wanted see yeah no fair okay still got phomo i i completely understand i had the best time wow it was amazing it was just so cool you know and yeah i went with i went with well we went with elmus which was unreal.

I have literally never done a trip like this in my life. Unreal. It was so cool. They gave you a pejeweled sick bag. They gave me a perjeweled sick bag. I genuinely,

because I was feeling I really wasn't well on Saturday morning and I don't go out. I do know. So hard to kind of show the honesty of HG and stuff and like my day to day life at the moment because I just,

I don't want to bang on about it all the time but I'm kind of learning to live with it and it's just, I don't want to talk about it all the time. But I just, I basically don't do anything in the evenings. Like I put all out to bed and then I go to bed.

Like I have it. I don't eat, I can't go out. Like, I just haven't been doing it. When we were in France, I went to bed every night. Like, it's just, I've got to rest. Anyway, so, and Saturday morning, I was so poorly. Kept throwing up. I was like, I don't think I can go.

And then my brother was like, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Love that. It was like, what song are you're looking forward to the most? Shake it out. Bad blood. Like, 22. I was like, oh my God, you're right. These are anthems.

Does she do them all? All of them. That's a lot. Three and a half hour she plays for. Anyway, I know. Sorry. So I wasn't feeling well. Okay.

got me my heel shakes because I was nervous. I was like, I'm not going to be able to make my dinner. And then, and I'd forgotten, anyway, I was panicking, but they got me my heel shakes, which I didn't even tell them about them. They must have seen it on my Instagram, my two favorite flavors. That's so sweet. I know, and the Bajil sick bag and everything. It was amazing.

So we had such a nice time and everyone was so nice. Did you stay at a hotel that night? I didn't because I still have only left Arlo once, but I was invited to, which was so nice, but I just couldn't, I didn't want to leave her. And I'm just, I'm not well, and I just, I don't know, I just, I wanted to be with my baby. so I went home but it was so amazing anyway so that's my good

yeah three and a half hour she plays for is she alright like that is ridiculously impressive and my specific good was that there was a little girl in front of me who was like seven and she was with her mom and she was standing up she was like at the sort of back row of like the first bit of standing like before the blocks

and she was like the very back standing it was really good view and she was losing her mind and every time Taylor's head even like turned to towards us. She would wave like frantically. And I swear I watched the whole gig in the reflection of her mom's eyes because her mom was just like filled with tears. Oh, obviously just so ecstatic that she could make her daughter this happy. And they just hugged and screamed and danced together this whole time. And then the security guards saw them and they took them down to the front at like

halfway through the gig. I was like, oh my God. Every time I looked at her, I solved. Like I literally described the whole time when I was looking at her and her mom. I know. I took a photo of them and And then I was like, no, because I wanted to send it to them if they came back and been like, oh, I've took a photo of you. But then I was like, no, that's two, then they went to the front. I was like, I'm never going to see you again. And now I've have a photo of a child that isn't mine. So I need to be quick.

Yeah, it's gone. Anyway, so that was nice. That was my good. It was just, I know. I was seeing what she means to people, man. It's just so special. She means so much to people. And it was so cool.

Anyway, we can talk about all of this at another time. Imagine being her. I'm crazy. Absolutely not. Wow. I was tired watching it. I don't know how she did it. The expectations.

I'm like, I can't do lunch and dinner. I don't know what she's doing. Three and a half hours every night. Anyway, my awkward. I arrived at the, I arrived to meet everybody at the Elamis group. Yeah. They were all dressed up spectacularly.

I mean, like, these women were stunning. Okay. They were all beauty bloggers and like, oh, they're just like, oh, glitter, glitter, glitter, just. Cowboy hats that went on for days with cowboy boots, cowboy hats. So I was like, fuck. Butterflies. I'm in love with all of you.

Yeah, you're amazing. I arrived in my like black dress because getting dressed when you're pregnant is hard. And I, and I, so basically what happened is I tried on almost sparkly dresses from the tour. A few of them I got in, but I'm going to be honest, I looked ridiculous. Like I literally looked like I had stuffed the disco ball up me. And there is just something really, I don't know if it's the right word anyway, but I tried to explain myself. I met this woman and she was like, oh, what, what era are you? Because we were all dressed as different eras.

And I was like, obviously I'm tortured poet because like there's nothing to my outfit. So it's going to be basic, whatever. like, you know, I just, I haven't met the brief. And then I tried to explain it. And I was like, I tried all my dresses on. I said, the problem is, it's just, you know, the pregnant women, or I just, as a pregnant woman, I just ended up looking really like, I just ended up looking really trashy in all that I tried on. No, I looked really trashy in all the sequence. And she went, well, I've got enough sequence for both of us. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't mean you. I meant me. I meant specifically the baby bump. There's something

about it that's like, I don't know, bejewling it. It just felt like a lot. I was like, I didn't, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean you. And then, but then I overcompensated because I don't think it was that big a deal to her. But I kept going and I was like,

because I love sequins. Everything I have a sequence. I got secret trousers. I've got three sequins. No, four sequen dresses. Georgie, how many sequels do it? You should have seen me earlier.

I was trying on my earlier. I was trying to do it. Oh, and then I got a blue one as well, also a secret. Oh, and then they got a pink two piece sequence. And I was like really trying to show her that I love all sequels. Yeah, I was literally like, and then look at my vagina

because it's all glittery too. no I was really panicking and she was literally looking at me like get fucked and don't give a shit it was over this conversation like I didn't even want to be having it but I just as I was digging I was like I hate myself because I knew what I meant

like there's just something about like it's quite easy to dress a bump pot wrong it's not but within the constraints of society and how demure we want pregnant women to be and how we want them hidden away and hiding their butts all of that you know I'm carrying a lot of like misogynistic baggage okay when I get dressed remember that so I felt love that yeah I felt a bit self-aware queen yes thank you yes so

no this is my shit I you know it was my I didn't look trashy but I felt it and that's and that's what I should have articulated better to her and then I didn't so it was awful she talked to you again no no of course she didn't really far away from me on the bus and everything oh surprise so I can see like I don't think I covered myself in glitter why do you think I covered myself in glitter like I'm over you're like dancing in her face like look I love it this baby's going to come out with like a glitter cannon. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you had a good time.

I did have FOMO, but I'm really glad you had a good time. Do you have anything good from your own week? That weren't me. Yes, I'm sure I do. No, I do. I do. I'm only going to do good and awkward this week because I have had a bad week. I don't want to talk about it.

It's been stressful. It's all like health related. I'm just over the whole thing. So can we skip over that part, please? Okay, so good and bads. Good and awkward. You can't help yourself. My awkward is a bioproxy awkward.

Oh, is it my husband's awkward? Shall I play the voice note? I'd love that. I haven't even heard it yet. I couldn't handle it. When you said, ha, ha, ha, this is so awkward. I thought, I don't need to hear this. Okay, I'm going to play the voice note.

I was just in the cafe, as you both know, working away in the corner quietly, had my AirPods on. The guy came over to me and said, by the way, there's a table of nine coming into my favorite noisy. I said, fine. Look back down to my laptops, worked away for a bit longer, then looked back up. He'd boxed me in with about 14, six-year-olds. It was a birthday party. I was literally, my table was in the middle of a birthday party, and I was just sitting there drinking my coffee. It was the most embarrassing thing. I just had to get up and leave, and I had to move like three tables so I could get out. It was awful. And he followed up with also, I just realized I was on the Love Honey website at the

That's the worst part. Not for us, I want to stress. I don't even know why. I think for you, this is like, this is such a fun part of my marriage now so that he could stay on love, honey. I know,

for all these other women. And I'm like, I don't even know. I don't even know who these are going to. I know. But he's like, he's my manager now. I know.

Obviously like, we have to talk about stuff like that. Me and him, and I'm like, oh, you don't want to. It's unusual. It's unusual. It is.

It is quite unusual. Yeah, it's hard. People don't normally have to talk to their managers. about like dildo preference but I hear you I love that that was incredibly uncomfortable

that he was just sat in the middle of a birthday party my good is that I was in oh oh okay okay my good my good I had to go to the hospital for a scan my mum was back from I am going to bring this round to a good my mum was back from Cyprus

so she was like I will look after Tommy while Dave takes you to the scan this is why bleeding by the way I don't want it to sound all like Oh, mysterious. You're putting up there. The bleeding that I've, like, talked about forever. I'll look after Tommy, while you go for the scan,

why don't you go for a quick, like, late lunch beforehand, just you two? And I was like, oh my God, that would be really nice. That's, we haven't done that, apart from at your birthday party, and we didn't spend any time together. Yeah. You know, so I was like, that would be really nice just to go, just us, like, just for an hour. It'd be so nice. So we went to Pizza Express because it was the quickest.

Right, Prince Andrew. We only had an hour, and yeah, I'm a Prince Andrew fan. So we went to pick Pizza Express and like gobbled this food down and it was great. And then at the end, the waiter, we had such a nice waiter. He was being really nice the whole time. And at the end, I went up to pay because we had to run out. So I went up to town and I was like, sorry, can I, can I pay quickly? And he was like, yeah.

And he was just like, do you have a podcast? And I was like, yeah. And it was like, it's on YouTube, isn't it? I was like, no, but it is on, it is on. Everything else. Yeah, and I was like, but we do have a podcast. We're getting around for YouTube, buddy. he could just back off.

And he just smiled and walked away. And you didn't pay? No, no, I paid. No, no, I paid. I had already paid. Oh, sorry. So it's not back. Do you have a pocket?

Do you have a pocket? But how mysterious? He was like, he did, like, I've never, ever met a man. Who listens to our show? Who listens to our show? Never on their own. We've only ever met men who have been dragged to the shows by their partners. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or being introduced to the show, like through their partners. Yeah. But it was just, it was a really strange interaction. I needed to know more, but it just, it just didn't feel like it just didn't feel like we were getting to a place where it was going to be more

I don't know I just had no choice but to walk away but I wanted to be like how do you know like do you listen to it Maybe he was just like Do you have a podcast Maybe maybe

Yeah maybe Maybe this isn't good Maybe it's bad I take it all back Oh that's nice I know Well he was nice to me the whole time So I'm guessing

I don't know So hi if you're listening I doubt you are I just don't see it But yeah Yeah okay that was really cool That's nice

Not that A man A man Some men here Do you know what If there are any men here We email us I've actually got quite

I've got loads of men I have quite high Male following on Instagram Do you they listen I don't know But I'm actually always really grateful Like whenever I get shit Like I got a stupid comment

From a man last night Obviously I get stupid comments For men all the time But I always Whenever I put up messages Like abusive messages I get from men I always without fail

Get really nice messages From men saying That's great So, you know, I follow you and I really listen to what you have to say and I really like you and I'm really sorry I have to put up with this. That's great. I know, really cool. Love that.

Pretty cool. Yeah, there are some great men out there. My bad, before we get into our interview, I will have a bad this week, which actually I don't really want to dwell on because it's really frustrating in the context of like how bad all the news has been. But after leaving Taylor Swift, I had such a horrible experience getting home. I tried to get a taxi from the hotel that I wasn't going to stay in with everybody else. And I was being followed by this man for so long.

And I got rejected by four cabs. You're joking. Because they wouldn't go my way. they were all going like out of London the other way and I needed to go south and they just wouldn't take me and I was literally being followed by this man and it was so horrible and I just wanted to cry not even with scared because I wasn't that scared because I could just run back into the hotel I knew the security guard was there and like I was on a main road I was like I know I'm okay but I hate that this is happening to me yeah that's really horrible this happening all the time

and I think I just like I haven't left after dark and I just like haven't gone out so like I'm still reading about all this stuff and I don't know maybe it's because I've got like my baby girls and whatever but and also people don't like cackle you so much when you're pregnant and like when you got your baby and stuff so like it hasn't really been part of my like life for a while but it was just and I'm visibly pregnant now as well and he was like just following

me that's really gross and I actually think that's why I got rejected from a lot of the cabs I think they thought we were together I was like no I'm not fucking with him I just want to go it was horrible that's really horrible yeah and I just hated it and I just got so frustrated and I got home I because I was talking to Alex about it and I just hate like I just hate this

is the world that like oh raising our girls in but I literally feel more in danger for being a pregnant woman right now than I ever have before like I feel more in danger for being pregnant than for not being like an 11 year old vulnerable well yeah but also

I'm like these men are hating women to such a point now that it's like I don't think you're even seeing us as humans like you're stabbing kids like you're killing kids you're killing little girls like yeah anyway so that's not really cheery sorry everyone but like I just I don't I want to acknowledge it

yeah for sure for sure it's important Because, yeah. But we have a really interesting episode today. So interesting. We wanted to speak to a psychologist. We wanted to speak initially about all the hate on the internet. But yeah, this guest, Dr. Elaine Caskett, she specialises in technology.

She's a cyber psychologist. How cool is that? Super interesting. So a lot of the conversation ended up being about technology, screen time, the, you know, cyberspace and like our roles within it. Crazy fascinating. Could have spoken to her for us. and we really hope you guys like this conversation and get something from it.

If anything, just don't be terrified of your screen time. Oh, thank God. I felt so much better. I found my phone for like 18 hours yesterday. I was like, whoa, Elaine said it's a good thing. I was like, fuck off, Dave. This is connection. I'm working, Dave.

All right, guys, I hope you enjoy it and we love you loads. Hello, Elaine. Thanks so much for coming in today. Thank you for having me. It is such perfect timing. We had a conversation in an episode a couple of weeks ago, Alex and I, about a concern from one of our listeners about like the state of the internet basically

and how negative everything had got how toxic comment sections how become how kind of like instinctively negativity kind of came to people now in a way that maybe it didn't feel like it always was before even like for Alex and I we try and create really like positive spaces online and even within

that it's like you can't do anything positive on the internet anymore and obviously this was kind of in the context of the fact we've had these like horrendous riots the last couple of weeks in the UK and there's so much misinformation, there's so much anger and animosity. And we said we really want to talk to a psychologist about the state of the internet.

And then there you were. This is such a perfectly timed episode and we do want to talk about all of that, but we also have so much else we want to talk to you about because you are an expert on so much of how we are using the internet and what that kind of means for our future. And it's a bit scared.

This feels like Turkey's champion in Christmas. Yeah, and not just the internet per se, but also our relationships with our devices, the devices that contain in the internet, and our relationships that as we conduct them through technology, through our devices and via the internet. So, yeah, I'm interested in pretty much every single scrapping corner of this territory. So let's talk about anything. I want to talk about screen time, because I feel like it's like the unspoken thing that like everybody, I don't think anyone's house or anyone on their screen time. because I get the thing from Apple every Monday morning telling me what my screen time is. And I'm always really ashamed of it. I don't think mine's right because it comes back like, oh, it's 21 hours a day.

So I don't think it's right. No, it's right. I think that is right. I'm really interested in the shame around screen time. Is it based just on the number that you're seeing? Yeah, so I get really proud of myself because mine says like you're up 8% or you're down 4% or whatever it is. And I get really proud of myself when it says that my screen time's down. from one week to the next.

Okay, so let me ask you about that. Let's say that screen time that you'd been engaging in for more than that. So you're proud about a low number. But let's say it were a high number. But what you were doing during that high number was a bunch of stuff that felt really good, that was creative, that was generative, that was connecting, that was aligned with everything that you value. Would you still feel the shame about the number?

Well, this is the thing. Yes, because everything that I do do on my phone is connected. Like, I'm really quite proud of what I use my phone for, like, because I do it for my job. And then I use it to play my daughter's favorite song 50 times on repeat every time. And then I use it to listen to podcasts and speak to my friends. There's nothing I don't, I'm not really like a doom scroller. I'm not, I've got quite healthy, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I'm doing in my head.

I'm like, screens bad. Yeah. And I think that that's how we've been inculcated to think about it, that too much, it's just too much. And we are comparing ourselves against one another or some sort of random. ideal number who knows what. And we're not paying attention to what we really need to be paying attention to, which is that there are going to be uses of that screen time that feel good, that feel fantastic, that feel connecting, that allow us to do all sorts of work that we really love and to genuinely connect with other people. But then somehow we're still managing to feel shame about it

because this arbitrary number, we're thinking about screen time all wrong, especially since and we worry about teens in screen time, but the best research that we have available to us from the Oxford Internet Institute shows that actually screen time, whatever has a negligible effect on teen well-being. We have all these stereotypes, we have all these worries about it, that depends completely on what a person is doing with that screen time. Even Zoom fatigue.

Everybody was talking about Zoom fatigue during the lockdown. I've never had Zoom fatigue in my life. One of the reasons for that is, Every time I show up to meeting somebody on Zoom, I show up with the intention of relating as deeply and meaningfully as I possibly can. That's my work, you know? I do therapy. I'm coach, all that stuff.

Or I'm meeting with family and friends that I love. If I show up with that intent, I don't get Zoom fatigue. Zoom fatigue is really probably more about people realizing that they do hate that committee meeting on Monday mornings or maybe they aren't loving their job or whatever it is. But it's not the tech itself. That's actually so refreshing to hear that, isn't it? because it's like we are, there is so much negativity around screen time. And it can, you know, our jobs, I mean, most people's jobs really live in the screen on

some kind of device now. Without a device, we wouldn't have a job. Everything, I mean, everything operates within, within the realms of this tiny little screen. So it's like, screen time is inevitable. Like, it's, it's an absolute must. So it's actually really refreshing to hear that, like, screen time's okay. It's just how you, like, what the screen time is and, like, how you're using your device. I like that. Yeah, I mean, my best friend lives in the United States, and I try to have a walk every day, and it's around the same time that he has a walk, his morning, my early afternoon.

And so my screen time will reflect that for an hour I was on the phone while I was walking. But that'll be a really lovely, beautiful, fantastic, mutually supportive conversation that adds to my day. It's connection. It's connection. Yeah. Absolutely. And we can still get, you know, the feel good.

social hormone oxytocin, everybody, sometimes people call it the cuddle hormone and we associate with physical contact or parent-child contact and all that stuff. You can also get hits of oxytocin from relating deeply in a trusting, loving kind of way with somebody that you really care about online. Whether it'll be the same amount of hit, I don't know, I don't know. But the point is, is that that's possible. I like that because I think we often associate our phones with dopamine, with dopamine hits rather than oxytocin, I don't know. I don't know if dopamine has been like demonized. I'm not, do you think it has?

Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because dopamine is associated with addiction. We throw that word around a lot with phones and technology addiction, even though I've got some issues with classifying it like that precisely because there are so many benefits and good things as well as potentially unhelpful behaviors that can engage in. But yeah, dopamine has gotten a bit of a bad name like what people are scared, despite the fact, you know, it's associated with most of the peak experiences of our life. Right. Let's not knock it too bad. I know that I try and limit the like the amount of dopamine

inducing like experiences in my life because I don't think it's, I mean, I've got an addictive personality anyway, but it's good to know that the screen time and being on our phones, actually that can induce oxytocin as well, which is obviously like a much, I don't know how to say it. I'm not a psychologist, but like not a better hormone, but it's a, you know, it's a, it's connecting. It's the connect. Yeah. It is connecting. So people talk about social media or connections that you might make online as somehow, A, not being in real life or not being face to face, being not as good as, it's less than or whatever. But I think these narratives don't really help us out. Because if we think that that's just true, that it's going to be

inferior, we'll then judge what we do online more harshly automatically. But there's so much of this that is up to us and our attitudes and beliefs and behaviors. Like I said, I show up with the intent thinking, how can I make this technology facilitate the deepest possible connection here? That's what I'm always interested in having, whether I'm on my device or off my device. And the fact that I can use technology and service of having that with people all around the world that ordinarily I'd be more distant from. See, that's an amazing, that's an amazing thing. But that's a very mindful, deliberate, chosen, reflective position. And a lot of times people go into automatic pilot. They're not connecting with themselves and asking how is something

feeling to me right now. Once I saw a woman on the tube and she was scrolling through Instagram, and even when she would look up and look around, her thumb kept scrolling like it had some kind of tick. And it just kept going like that. And then every once in a while, she looked down. And that's just like the digital equivalent of eating bag after bag of Doritos or something. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's like numbing out, isn't it? Yeah. Just numbing out. On that, on the addiction point that you made before, I'm really interested in this because this is something again that I'm like, oh my God, am I a phone addict? Like, am I addicted to technology? Invariably, I must be because of how much time I spend on it. But then I, but yeah, like you say, then I think about it. And I'm like, but

I can't do my job. As a responsible parent, if I've got the option of being in contact or not being in contact, you're like, if I don't have, because when I think about it now, I'm like, oh, I'd love to go out for a day without my phone. Tough. Like, you're a mom. If someone rings me to say, and I've had it actually since I had a dog, I've thought, I need to have my phone because if she goes missing, I need someone to be able to ring me. And I've always kind of justified it to myself. But is that, but I don't need to do that anymore. Is that right? So, As with most disorders in the big book, which is the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders or even, yet there's another book that lists all the disorders and diseases that you could have, including mental health ones. And there's always this qualifier where they describe all the different elements of the problem.

And then there's usually something that says it causes significant impairment in social functioning, occupational functioning, work, educational functioning. And so it causes impairment in that functioning. What I hear you telling me is that a lot of your phone use might facilitate your occupational functioning, facilitate your social functioning. You know, a lot of people are talking about getting feature phones or dumb phones or thinking, oh, this is a problem with my smartphone, my screen time's a problem, so I just need to get a dumb phone. Basically what that does is it takes you into a position that one in 10 households, in the UK still have, which is digital poverty, some form of digital poverty, which means

you cannot fully participate in society, that you are disadvantaged potentially in terms of health care, goods, services, information, that you may not be able to do your banking, you might not be able to apply for the same jobs as everybody else, that your children might not be able to participate in education to the same degree. And you're going to have to do an awful lot of work to find other solutions to navigating through. society that other people are doing efficiently on their phones, that's going to take a huge amount of work. And so people, it's a really actually quite luxurious, almost privileged thing to be like worried about, oh gosh, am I spending too much time on my phone. You're on the

connected side of the digital divide. Think about what it's like to not be at a time when the United Nations is saying digital access is a human right. Such a good reframe. But I think within that, there must be patterns that we identify in ourselves that are negative that do make us feel like that. And you were saying before, like the social function and stuff, is there in the statistics and in that, is there an indication that we are or young people or that mental health is being affected in any way by screen time? See, that's really interesting because although there are statistics that seem to indicate that certain mental health difficulties are on the rise amongst young people, there's an awful lot of potential explanations for that or compound

explanations for that. And let's face it, part of it might have to do with technology because news from around the globe and things, you know, very difficult things that are happening in the world and conflicts and climate and all sorts of things that I know when I was a kid, there was the threat of the Cold War and we did these nuclear bomb tests where we'd have to. go pointlessly underneath our desks like that was going to help anything. But I remember really experiencing that as an existential threat and being really worried about that. That was pretty much the one thing. Think about how much more young people might have to be concerned

about their fate, the fate of the planet or whatever. And it's constantly coming at them partially because the technology delivers us this incredible shed loads and shed loads of information every day. The overwhelm of that is insane. So there's, that's one potential explanation that is sort of related to screens, but it's not screen time per se. And, you know, and young people are just as likely, in fact, probably more likely to experience social support and connecting with their tribes and all of those good things. The bad things that gain a lot of the press in terms of the, if it bleeds, it leads kind of thing that the media is always had. It still has. We're going to get more info about the bad stuff and it's going to make

us feel like that's the likelier thing. But the majority of teens are probably experiencing positive benefits from screens, not negative. This is incredible to hear, isn't it? I'm actually really shocked. I thought this was, this conversation was going to go in a completely different direction. I thought we were going to just learn about just how detrimental screens are to our, to our well-being. And they can be depending on what's happening. Do you know what I mean? Don't get me wrong. I'm not sort of an apologist for the whole thing. My main point always is A, the nuance and B, the particular situation. Let's say a parent comes to me and says, as they do, and says, I'm worried about my kid and screens. And the first thing I say is not how much time is your kid spending

on screens or what, you know, I say, tell me about your kid. How are they? You know, when one was telling me about her daughter, he said, oh, she's doing great. And I said, oh, how's school? And she's doing well. She's got friends. How are grades? Grades fine. What else does she do? She does this. She plays this sport, whatever. I said, oh, any significant behavioral changes recently that you're worried about or giving you pause? Oh, no, nothing like that. I said, okay. So what are you asking me? And so, and I said, what has made you worried? What has it been something you observed in your daughter or is it something else? She said, no, it's the stuff I read. So we're often scared by the effects of all of this stuff because we hear about things. Other people say stuff. We're

judging ourselves. We feel judged. We read the stuff. Read all sorts of should articles about 10 ways and digital detox and all that kind of stuff. But then we're not looking at our situation or our family or our relationships and thinking, okay, what am I problematizing? So sometimes when I have those conversations, people think, well, actually kind of like what you were saying, you said, I love all my things that I am doing online. And yet you're somehow managing to feel bad on Monday morning about the statistic that Apple sends. Yeah, it's a real paradox because I feel guilty that I haven't replied to everyone. I haven't been on my phone enough. I haven't done enough work. I haven't done all of those things.

And then still, when the number comes up, I'm like, I spent too much time on my phone. And we are holding ourselves to impossible standards. But I suppose then with the, like, articles that you're describing that are fear mongering us. Do you know why they're doing that? Oh, it's been that way. If you look at newspapers from 100, 150 years ago, you'll see the same thing, basically. It is just there's so much more of it now. And one of the problems is that there will be a piece of research.

It might be a proper piece of academic research. It might be small scale, might be biased even in terms of how the researchers have constructed it. And researchers always like to play up their findings a little bit to make a bit of a splash with a finding. So sometimes they're kind of motivated to position something in a certain way. Then a journalist who's not a researcher comes and looks at that and then extract some kind of headline from it. Then people lay people read it. And so it gets distilled, distilled. And sometimes when you go back to the original research, you're thinking, well, there's

no there, there's nothing here. And then when there are articles like there have been recently, late last year, there was an article, again, coming from the Oxford Internet Institute that said, we've done this massive study of millions of Facebook users over a very long period of time, years and years, I think from 2009 up to, you know, not too many years ago, with data that Facebook gave them. And they looked at all of this stuff of well-being, and they found globally that there was no indication whatsoever that Facebook had any negative effect on well-being, and then in fact it seemed to have a slightly positive effect. But then people see that, and they're thinking, surely that can't be true, because that's not how I feel. I feel like that can't be true.

I feel like that mustn't be true. But that's just an example of emotional reasoning. And they dismiss one of the best designed, most solid pieces of research that we've ever had on this subject. And so people don't, you know, fair enough, not everybody's required to know how to be able to evaluate research. But this is what Ben Goldiker talks about in books like bad science, where science can be bad to begin with, then it gets filtered through journalists and our impressions, and we don't really know what we're talking about.

Okay, okay, this is super interesting. I guess, okay, so fundamentally then, we screen time is okay. what you recommend is an intentional, mindful approach to how we use our devices, basically. Yeah, basically. Mindful, intentional, deliberate use of your screens and thinking, do I stand by this use? And is the use that I am engaging in here, aligning with what matters to me? Where is it helping me? And where is it hindering me? And fine, where it's hindering you. And it can be really important to be honest about that. Because one of the things that we can do, for example, is we can pay more attention to our devices than the people who are physically

co-present in our households with us. I mean, our households are like many attention economies, right? We've got a big attention economy that's trying to harvest our attention at every second possible that I think of my household as a sort of microcosm attention economy where there are people that are around me, my cats, the guinea pigs, my daughter, my husband, you know, that are there. And how are we balancing our attention between those people and the others out there because our phones are a portal to other people, other worlds beyond our house? And how does it feel to be ignored or play second fiddle to a device? How is that negotiated? How is that navigated? And I think that sometimes people use devices as a, as a barrier

when there are things that are difficult or things that they find difficult to speak about or there's issues in a relationship, people can start using their devices as a barrier to intimacy and as a barrier to time together and they can get comfortable with that kind of strategy, which means that there's no scope for improvement in the relationship. So I'm really interested in that how people, you know, so that's an example of how phone use can hinder intimacy and can hinder close relationships. Maybe while fostering close relationships with others. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. It's like the, it's like a meme, isn't it, of a couple in bed and they're both turned away from each other, each on their

phones. Yeah. Absolutely. There's no one I'd rather lie in bed with and watch your phones separately for two hours with. Yeah. I think that's a really common, I think that's a really common scenario. And as somebody who also does couples counseling, I'm aware that it takes really a lot, a lot of courage to have difficult conversations if you're feeling unhappy or if you're feeling that you're drifting or if there's anything that you want to bring up that's difficult with your partner, especially if you don't necessarily have a really well-established history of being able to easily talk about things and all that stuff. People will often do work rounds. Like I've seen lots of people who found out that there was something going on with their partner because

they didn't have a conversation or they didn't actually catch them at something. They were worried that something was wrong and they hacked into their phones or they hacked into their accounts because people would rather check to see if something is wrong and not broach the conversation and not do that difficult thing. They just want to check. But then the problem is then you find out something and then you've got to confront, you know, and they know that there's been this trust breach as well. Or there's nothing to find, but maybe there's kind of ambiguous stuff and you're not sure if it's something and there's this pattern of let me just see if something's okay. It's just, it's really, really unhelpful behavior, but a lot of people do it.

And then they don't learn the communication skills with each other they need to learn. There's so much within relationships and technology that I hadn't even considered. And it's such, I have, I've got like guilt now for all the times I've scrolled in bed next to Alex. It's just like waiting for me to stop. And it's, but it's such an interesting thing that we're trying to juggle, like these worlds and these people and all of this access. But I really want to talk about the relationship specific, what you're saying, with people going on each other's phones. I guess trust is something that the internet, I just exacerbate, because you say you work with couples. Do you think, in your experience, trust issues are exacerbated by our phones or?

It's really interesting. I connect it to attachment styles, and a lot of people have at least a passing knowledge of attachment styles, and there's a few major ones. There's the secure attachment style where you have a foundational inclination to trust, and, you know, you can be flexible with your partner and, like, not be overly worried or anxious about. It's losing them. There's an anxious attachment style where you're looking for reassurance a lot and you're worried about potential loss and you're always trying to establish contact and check everything's okay. There's an avoidant attachment style where you might find that kind of intimacy overwhelming and you might seek to put up barriers or obstacles in the way of it.

And then there's a disorganized attachment style where you're kind of all over the place. And I think that, you know, we talk about attachment styles is something that you have. within yourself that's been like a consistent pattern of how you feel across relationships over time. But I think that situations can really have a powerful effect on it and even a securely attached person, if they're in a particular kind of relationship or a particular kind of situation can come to feel insecure. And I'm so interested in how people particularly with insecure attachment styles use phones. Because there's so much capacity to check, to mom. monitor to look to see if the red receipt is coming through from the WhatsApp thing to be

tracking a partner perhaps and seeing where they are or you're not where you said you were or whatever, where are you, hacking into devices or accounts because you're worried about something. And then if you get that classic combination of anxious attachment style and avoid an attachment style, which is a really annoying thing that seems to happen more than you'd expect that the avoided person might be using the phone as a barrier so you're trying to talk you're trying to make contact or whatever and the person's just not looking or the person's actually picking up the phone and going on to the phone because they're overwhelmed because they're trying to regulate down and so so there's there's ways that we pull our phones into service trying

to manage our attachment styles and unless we and we i think that's really helpful for couples to be aware of that guys i wonder if anyone stays together really really, isn't it? If you think about it like that. But the trust question. That's a chaos. But you asked a question about trust particularly. I mean, I think that it's, it's, there was this piece of research that was really interesting where they looked at jealousy or kind of lack of trust and they were talking about how is it different if somebody's ignoring you in favor of a newspaper versus ignoring you in favor of a phone. And so the

phone was always the condition that elicited more anxiety and more feelings of inferiority and more feelings of worry because it's a portal to a whole world of potential virtual others connections with people out there whereas the newspaper was this was the static thing it's never good to be ignored or not be paid attention to or whatever it is but with a phone it takes more meaning on there was this other study where they had people in a coffee shop and they asked observers to rate how intimate is that relationship or that conversation over there. And in some conditions, there was a phone on the table. And in some conditions, there wasn't a phone on the table.

And people rated the condition without the phone as being more intimate as whatever. And all the phone was, it was just sitting there. So even the presence of a phone can change the perception of how intimate an interaction is. We really want to talk to you about the negativity online, particularly on social media, because, like M said, this was a question that we had a couple of weeks ago. And we kind of got to a dead end with it ourselves because we're not experts in this. And we're not psychologists. And we don't really understand the psychology behind it,

behind why people have become so desensitized and so detached from what they say online. Like M said, it's like every comment section is just, it's. a hot mess now. It's just an absolutely like dumpster fire. Yeah. It's, it's horrendous. And like, people are saying things that guaranteed they would never say in real life to people, but there is this, but there is this detachment. And it would be good to talk about that if, if you're up for that. Like, why? Why are we so, why are we so mean now? What is it? What's going on? Well, number one, quick caveat. One of the things that's really hard to ascertain these days is how many of those comments or posts constitute actual people versus bots because yeah there's a lot of there is a lot

of bot action that is happening and of course those bots are programmed on or trained on actual kinds of communications right but we're always making an assumption that these constitute actual people and you know you can't you can't necessarily safely make that assumption because you know when we're talking especially in certain kinds of realms like politics or you know public figures or something like that. If there's a, if there's a motivation for a take down or sort of skewing a public opinion in a particular direction around an issue or around a candidate, you can't necessarily assume that all of those people constitute actual living, breathing human beings. So a party will orchestrate that. Well, exactly. See, this is the thing that can be orchestrated

to try to disadvantage your opponent or to try to skew an issue in a particular kind of way. So we can't always assume that it's persons because there are strings being pulled to try to influence public opinion on issues and individuals. And so that's part of it. There's a lot about reform this election, about how they'd basically funded accounts, support. I think there was even something about how some of the reformed candidates weren't even real. They were made, they were literally, they were also orchestrated. And people were voting on the ballot for them. And so it's like, Yeah, it's nuts. I keep thinking that when I see all this because it's been,

this conversation for us has been on the back of the riots because I'm seeing so much more overt racism than I've ever seen online before. And I have no doubt that a lot of it is real. But there are some comments. I just think this surely must be being paid for for it to be getting this leverage. You know, this like momentum. Yeah. And it's designed to get momentum or it's designed to get leverage because we are

social creatures and we are influenced by our, by what we're exposed to, of course, especially when we have some kind of identification or something and we see someone who we relate to in some kind of way or they seem like us or they belong to the same political party or they hold the same ideals or whatever. And then, you know, and again, might not even be real, but yet we, you know, so you get this feedback between what could be orchestrated, could be funded, could be a deliberate attempt to stoke unrest to some kind of purpose and yeah then real humans will end up being influenced by that potentially uh and so there's a thing called the touring test the touring test refers to uh one's ability to ascertain which is the computer which is the bot and which is the human and even with

video even with video chat by it's becoming increasingly hard to figure this out so even with you can imagine how easy it is with static accounts like posts and comments and things like that to plausibly present as actual persons. And so you've always got to hold that with a grain of salt. But still, we've got to be concerned about the impact, right? I mean, the thing about our brains is, and I'm talking about all our brains, not just like individuals' brains,

is that we've got an inherent inbuilt negativity bias. And the negativity bias is super strong. It's super strong for evolutionary reasons because we're wired to be alert to, danger as much as possible so that we can survive. So that we'll be make sure not to miss signs of threat. And so that we'll be more likely to keep ourselves safe. So the fact that our brains, after all these millennia, still have that inbuilt negativity bias, despite the fact that our world that we live in is a lot safer than, you know, this old hard wiring or

whatever tells us. We still, our threat systems, our threat are very, very easy. easily engaged. And unless we really work to offset that negativity bias or to kind of regulate it down, it will carry us away with it. And we're not just sensitive to physical threat. We experience assaults on our identity or our way of thinking or our lifestyle or judgment or downward social comparisons where somebody's putting us down. Our threat system get going at that almost as though we were under physical attack or whatever. We can really feel that viscerally, right? And so we aren't always good at stepping aside from that and defusing from that.

To think, is there actually a real threat to me here? What kind of story am I now telling myself or what kind of narrative is getting going that's making me feel like I'm genuinely under attack? So I think it's harder for us sometimes to differentiate from I am in danger versus I feel like I'm in danger. And so sometimes when people are feeling disadvantaged, inferior, on the outside, marginalized, marginalized, some people are going to come and puff themselves up and be attacking and be negative and be powerful online. but because they're feeling like that's fighting back, you know, and that that's necessary to fight back because they're afraid of being on, you know,

being on the margins. Okay, okay. That's really interesting. That's a really long answer, but it's just there's so much to it. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things I'm so interested in all the time is people say, oh, technology has caused X, Y, or Z. technology has caused our attention spans to suffer

or technology has caused us to be more negative or technology has caused whatever. It's more complicated than that because our brains naturally jump around all over the place. We even take in the world through these quick sacadic eye movement that's hard to see the naked eye. We're just always jumping, jumping, jumping. Our brains are super distractible.

Our environment used to slow us down. You know what I mean? Because it was sluggish relative to our minds jumping around. Our minds might have been jumping around from thought to thought or question to question. But we couldn't follow the thread of every single thought or question that we had by looking something up or acting on it straight away or whatever it is. We couldn't. You'd have to get in the car and go to the library and look in the car catalog or something. If you wanted to go down some rabbit hole, you'd do it in the library stacks, you know.

So our environment used to slow us down. The problem isn't so much that technology has changed something about how our brains work. It's that it mirrors it too closely. It doesn't slow it down. It doesn't automatically counteract our negativity bias. It reflects our existing negativity bias because it is us. The large language models are trained on us, human beings who might have 90%, you know, 75%. I can't remember exactly what the percentage is, but it's high.

high. Negative thoughts compared to positive ones. God, it's that high. Oh, yeah. That's that's normal. That's normal. Oh, no. I thought it was the internet to brain. It's just it reflects us. It reflects our natural human tendencies very closely. Okay. But it's super concentrated as well, right? Because you would never have a comment section in real, you wouldn't have people surrounding you in real life saying negative things around you. Like, it would be like on, you know, here and there. Like, yeah. Just the occasion. thing or they sit behind your back and you catch them. But like it's concentrated, right? Because we're, we're getting instant feedback and like negative feedback. Back in the 1980s, in terms

of our informational landscape, there was about the equivalent with television and magazines and newspapers and billboards and whatever, the equivalent of about 80 newspapers worth of information coming at us every day. Right. Around the time that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube came out, the mid-2000s, it had increased to 176 newspapers' worth of information per day. 2006, think about where we are now in the informational landscape with smartphones, you know, because smartphones didn't come out until quite a lot after. And imagine how, they don't even try to calculate anymore how much, in newspaper terms, how much information is coming at us.

It's a lot. It's like a fight. It's like trying to drink from a fire hose. so you're right you're not we didn't used to in our environment be walking around with this constant swirl of voices comments people completely out of context out of time out of space who we didn't know who we didn't recognize those people didn't have access to us we didn't have access to them you know the phrase keeping up with the Joneses because of course the internet is a festival of social comparison right you know and we've had the first

keeping up with the Joneses for a really long time. And the Joneses were essentially the people in your street. You know, you determined how happy you were by comparing yourself to your near others, you're the people in your neighborhood. And if you were the smallest house in the neighborhood, and then you moved to another place where you were the biggest house in the neighborhood, a voila, you suddenly feel a lot better about yourself, just like that, because we would link our happiness and contentment to how we stuck ourselves up against other people, at home, work, family, whatever. But now we're trying to keep up with a Joneses with literally everybody in the world, like unfair comparisons with people who are presenting a certain way on Instagram,

you know, who just, and just one angle snapshots of their life carefully curated to actually incite our envy and jealousy or whatever it is, living their best life. We are keeping up with every single Jones there is in the entire world. And that's a lot. lot if you let yourself if you let yourself right well this is the thing and I think I think like you say social media is like a breeding ground for comparison and it's something that people really do struggle with and I think it's the average person now that they're not just comparing themselves to like a supermodel on a billboard it's like people their friends and family online who are like altering their images or like posing and so whatever but I think it would be really

good if you could if you don't mind giving us like some like practice advice for people who struggle with comparison on social media because I know that that will be you know that will that will unfortunately apply for a lot of our our listeners and us as well you know it's it's really hard not to compare yourself on social media so yeah do you have any like any good like actionable tips that people can take away well the thing is and again this is a it's a I think the people don't do enough reflection about their personal drivers and their experience and their reactions because every single answer to that question has to be based in what's going on for that individual because, you know, person A, B, C, D, E, it might be completely different in

terms of their reaction response and reasons for being there. You know, for me, when I consider myself an Instagram, for example, I mean, this is terrible. You know, my publisher hates this, everybody, like my speaking agency hates this. I don't, I just don't care. I just don't do social media very much because I was just thinking, okay, I know that this would serve. me, but I can't find my genuine voice and my genuine groove on that. So I don't go on there. And I make myself a kind of target for a social comparison for other people. I start feeling bad, almost instantaneously stacking myself up against, I don't know, other authors or other people who are like doing social media really well. And so I just thought, you know, what do I really

need this? What do I want it for? How is it serving me? How is it not serving me? And I basically came to the conclusion that I didn't really know why or I didn't have enough of a compelling reason to be spending much time there. And that was the end result of my reflection. And that's kind of what I did. I stopped using Facebook after a conversation with my daughter when she was nine, where she told me how she'd always hate how I use social media to keep in touch with people far away and posting things about her and photographs and things like that. And she asked me never to share anything again, take all the stuff down. And when I asked her why she hadn't shared something before about it, why she hadn't said more, she told me because I didn't think he would

stop. And it was such a penny-dropping moment for me where I realized actually how do I impact not just myself, but other people unintentionally through how I'm using my accounts. And I got real values aligned on it and thought, what's most important to me? I've gone on automatic pilot here, and I've overridden my own parenting instincts and used this to gain social capital. And I don't feel comfortable with that. I don't feel good about that. I think that so for me, it's not about shoulds or rules or arbitrary numbers or screen time. All those kinds of things.

We focus on that so much. Instead of saying, A, what matters to me. B, let me pause. how am I feeling? Like, how am I really feeling? What, what am I getting out of this right now? What is this for? What is this really for? If I'm not just going along with the herd or going along with the really powerful influences all around me, because we are social and we are tribal, and we will fall into lockstep with other people around us. If we don't do that reflection, there's really no substitute for that reflection, you know? So I,

So I think the answer is different for everybody. It's not a cop-out response. It's like trying to get people to pay attention to say, am I asking the right questions of myself? Can I just jump back away from the comparison to the story you just told about your daughter? For so many children now, they are growing up completely unintentionally online with their parents sharing so much about them, whether that be like mum fluences or family influences or just regular people

on Facebook or whatever, sharing photos with their family. Is there any, like, evidence or information or statistics showing the impact that that may be having or is having on children at the moment? Well, about a year or two ago, there was an article that came out in Rolling Stone talking about how the Truman baby, the Truman Generation, you know, the Truman Show film where from infancy, he was owned by this corporation, it was observed and filmed and presented for entertainment. And those sort of Truman era babies are coming of age now, you know, you know, they're teens and so forth. And while there isn't a whole lot of hard and fast

research, one of the statistics that really bugs me is this study that shows that the younger you are, the more likely you are to just accept that things like cyberstalking is part of normal dating culture, you just have to accept it. Or that people, people monitoring or tracking you, well, that's just something that means that they care about you or they love you or they're in a close relationship with you. But, you know, with me, with my daughter, I thought, you know, the lesson that I have unintentionally been teaching her, which is the opposite of any lesson I want to teach to any kid in the digital era, is that she didn't have the right to define her own informational and

privacy boundaries. And that I, because I was her mom or because I, you know, wanted the social capital or because whatever that I could decide that and I was going to override any discomfort or protest she might show as well like no you are going to stand on the doorstep on the first day of school and I am going to take this picture of you in your uniform and I am going to post it because everybody else is doing it like that overriding somebody saying no I want to decide my own privacy boundaries that's not a lesson that we should be teaching our children And as far as commercial share-inters go,

which is one phrase for the people who are family influencers, mum-influencers, whatever, commercial share-inters. Sherenting is just the sharing of kids' information online. It's pretty good. It's really good. But commercial share-inting are those for whom it's so sometimes that is the parent's livelihood. Can you imagine then the kid, the teen, or whatever, who wants to stop participating in that?

Well, the parent is really heavily motivated to try to convince them to still be the means of production, right? And yet it's not regulated under child labor laws. Actors, child actors are regulated under child labor laws. Why are the children of commercial charinters not subject to the same protections as child actors are? Why? Or child models. Why? Yeah.

Why? Why? Because they're parents. it's their parents. Why should that make a difference? Why should that actually make a difference in terms of those children's human rights? It's so true that this is just a reflect,

everything that we're dealing with, and it's so obvious when you say it, but here we are, that everything online is just a reflection of where we are and who we are as people and the issues that we have and the flawed nature of everything, of ourselves, of our inner,

of our insecurities, of our failings as parents, as are whatever, it's all just bigger. Yeah, none of it's new. None of it's new. Like parental pride, wanting to show off your kids, wanting to pre-educate. Is this new? No.

No. The negativity bias of the brain, is it new? No. Warlike tribal, aggressive behavior towards others or outsiders, you know, inside or outsider, in-group, out-group thinking? New? No. Bullying?

New? No. So it's everything that we are and have been, but it's on steroids. The way our brains are wired, does it work that the more that gets tested, the more immune we become to negativity? Or do we still have time and time again, no matter how many times the negativity bias is engaged or within ourselves, do we still have the exact same response? At some point do we not become immune, you know, as well.

what I'm thinking, like, is everyone going to get immune to the negativity on social media that they receive? Is it just going to become, like, a normal part of life? And it doesn't really, it doesn't provoke us anymore. You're asking for yourself? Asking for a friend. No, I'm just, I'm just wondering if we're all going to become quite numb with it. And it's going to be more commonplace to just throw out the negativity because it just

doesn't have an effect anymore. I just wondering what the future of that might look like. I'm really curious, though, about what is personally driving the question. for you. So is there something that you feel like you are aware of in yourself that's underpinning the question? Probably, yeah. Probably in that post you had that went viral last week. Yeah. Like that's going to take an effect. Yeah. Yeah. I did a post about the Olympics last week about how the, you know, the athletes were all different shapes and sizes and then the post went viral. And ultimately it was a lot of people that turned it on me and how I looked and my body, you know,

and it was a lot of negativity and the jobs that we do as influencers. Like we do have to deal with a lot of negativity and I think we're both quite sensitive to it. Are you saying that you want to be more immune to the negativity? Yes. But I think we are having done some, having been exposed to a lot of it, a lot of the negativity, I think we are. So I wonder if that continues, you know, at what point. Does it does not get triggered anymore? But I think that's for us. Like there's still stuff that triggers.

So I think we are really good at taking, that we are sensitive, yes, but we're still sensitive to the stuff that we're unsure on. So when people come for us on the things that we're triggered, but I think we've got pretty good at like handling most criticism when we're sure of ourselves. Yeah, like body stuff. If people say things like a body or appearance,

like that doesn't trigger us anymore. It's, yeah, I'm just intrigued as to how the brain, I think it's fascinating. Yeah. Though we still have this bias when we just don't need it, you know? Yeah. It's like grow up, brain. Like, get with the times.

I think that any time you're going to take a risk or be vulnerable in any context, I mean, there have been a few times when a random troll has come for me online. There was a piece that I put on Medium that was on the medium landing page or whatever for a bit. That was about something that happened when I was breastfeeding, you know, And it was interpreted by some kind of anti-breastfeeding piece or whatever, which was a very nuanced, because everything I do is so nuanced, but it was a very nuanced article. It was about my experience of having been breast is best, you know, that had happened. But actually, I had a physical condition that I kept telling people about that might cause problems and everybody ignored it because of the rule, because of the breast is best. And then she was starving, had to go to the hospital and was very ill.

all this stuff because she wasn't, you know, and I was really, I was basically talking about this, this pressure and this in curiosity about how different women might be in different situations that happened to me. But a lot of people interpreted it a different way and really came for me. And I was really super affected by that. But I also would have been super affected by it if I'd talked about it at a conference and people reacted to me or if I had had had a good friend and they'd come from, you know, and they'd said something to me that really hurt me. or if somebody, it would have all been, it would have all, I still would have felt the same,

maybe even worse if it happened or even more mortified if it happened in a physically co-present situation. But, you know, again, it's the amplification. It's the amplification online and the coming at you thick and fast. And they're not being able to be any dialogue. You know you can't really have any meaningful dialogue. The decision about, well, how do I strategy, about this and it sticks there. The comment sticks there. You have an interaction, you know,

face to face with somebody in public, for example, and it's relatively ephemeral. It just doesn't sit there and it doesn't cascade with other people reacting to the comments or whether it's piling on or whether it's defending you. It mushrooms and mushrooms and sticks. So there's a longevity and a stickiness of online stuff that isn't characteristic of the offline world. And I I think that that can get and stay under our skin in a different kind of way. And so just reminding oneself of the nature of these things and being really self-aware and self-compassionate with oneself about like, okay, like what's the real essence of what's getting to me here and how can I understand my reaction to this?

And, you know, you guys, you know, when you go into being in the position that you guys are in, you know, this does come with a territory and it will continue to come with the territory for as long as you're engaged in it. But again, it's the situation that I was saying before of the internet didn't cause this tendency. It didn't create the negativity. It didn't create the aggression. But does it provide a sort of perfectly calibrated forum for it that mirrors the worst, it mirrors both the best and the worst of us? And the negativity bias means, is that people have more bad and negative thoughts than they have good ones.

And the internet is going to be a reflection of that. It's going to be because that's us. That's who we are. Well, that's a fucking depressing ending. I know. Can we please ends it on some other notes? No, I think it's perfect. It's perfect.

Oh, well. It's also like a perfect, like, nuanced note to end on because I feel like that's the crux of this conversation is that crux of the conversation around technology, and social media is that it is nuanced. Yeah. And that's what I've got from this conversation that I think has been super, super interesting.

Offline, if we want to balance the negativity bias with positivity, we've got to work at it. Online, if we want to balance the negativity bias with positivity, we got to work at it. And there's a role for us as individuals, and there's also a role for how algorithms are written. There's also, you know, it would be amazing if there were more built in, deliberately built in,

to the internet to counteract deliberately the inevitable negativity bias that is going to reflect. That would be amazing. That's a very clear possibility and partial solution to help offset it. If it's mirroring our monkey minds and negative minds and all that kind of stuff too closely, okay, fine. We can do something about that. Start making a positive loop rather than a negative one. Yeah.

Change the something about the mirror, alter something about the mirror. So it reflects more positive than negative, for example. It can be done. Love that. Okay. See, we're ending on a good positive, like, practical notes. Yeah. It felt too desperate otherwise, had to do it.

Well, you are very clever, and I could listen to you all day. I'm fascinated. I've got so many questions. But we've got to let you go. Thank you so much for coming in. This has just been incredibly interesting. We've loved having you on Elaine. Thank you.

Shout out to your book. Yes. Can you tell us about it, please? Yeah. So my book is coming out in paperback. As we're sitting here, it's August. And later in August, 2024, the paperback is coming out. It's called Reset, Rethinking Your Digital World for a Happier Life.

And it goes through the whole of the human lifespan from digital gestation, because our online identities, thanks to our parents, begin before. we arrive on the scene all the way to digital afterlives because we stick around for longer than we physically stick around. And the dead is part of our online. They are part of our online society. But I go, we talk about, I talk about pretty much everything we've talked about today and more. And it's all full of stuff that you can take to your next dinner party or water cooler conversation, be like, oh my God, this phrase, this idea. So yeah, I really hope that people pick it up. Amazing. We're going to put the link in the show notes. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Should I delete that is part of the ACAS creator network.