The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Good Screens and Bad Screens

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

The pandemic has us all glued to our smartphones, tablets, laptops and TVs - they give us important information, vital social contact and much needed distraction. But Catherine Price (founder of Screen/Life Balance and author of How To Break Up With Your Phone) shares her tips on how to make sure our new screen habits improve our lockdown lives rather than exacerbate our problems and anxieties. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. Welcome to a special set of episodes of The Happiness Lab. The now global spread of coronavirus is affecting all of us. This disease has brought a host of medical, economic, and political problems. But it's also given us a ton of uncertainty and anxiety, which are beginning to have an enormous negative impact on our collective well-being. But whenever I'm confused or fearful,

I remember that looking for answers in evidence-based science is always the best way to go. And that's where I'm hoping this podcast can help. For the past month, screens have been the lifeblood of my social connection. They've allowed me to see my family, chat with friends and colleagues, run my lab meetings, and even conduct the podcast interviews you've heard over the past few weeks. Screens have also been my key to entertainment, news, and even exercise while I'm stuck inside the house. But if I'm being honest, staring at a screen all day over the past few weeks has also made me more depleted than usual. Just yesterday, I realized I'd been sitting in the same chair for over six straight hours of Zoom meetings, which made my brain and my body feel kind of gross. The lockdown has also upped the amount of time I spend looking at scary news on Twitter, or apathetically scrolling through a sea of Netflix options, or peeking at Reddit when I should be chatting with my husband.

I started to realize that surviving this lockdown with my mental health intact requires taking a good hard look at my own screen time. So I decided to put a call out to an expert, Katherine Price. Katherine is a science journalist who wrote a book called How to Break Up With Your Phone. Ironically enough, the only way we could connect during the lockdown was over Zoom. Sweet. So once you hit record, let me know and then we can get started. I have hit record. So Catherine, I feel like I've spent pretty much the entire last three weeks just staring at a screen. I mean, is this just me or is this something you can relate to? I certainly can relate to it personally. And I can tell you for sure you're not alone in terms

of the general population, because I've been hearing from lots and lots of people about how they feel that their screen life balance has gone out the window since all of our work life is now even more on screens and our personal life has shifted onto screens and our leisure time is in large part spent on screens. So yeah, it's something everyone's struggling with. And so you've argued that screen life balance is important in general, but talk about why it's really essential during this time of COVID-19. Well, I think it's even more important to think about screen life balance during COVID-19, specifically because we're spending so much time on screens. So to be clear, I think we need to

realize that there's nothing inherently wrong about this. I hear from a lot of people who are talking about, oh, I should spend less time on screens or I should do this. You know, what we should be doing right now is social distancing and like washing our hands. That's what we should be doing. When it comes to our screens, we don't need to be critical of ourselves or restrictive just for the sake of being critical or restrictive. What's really important is to ask yourself, okay, well, since I am spending so much time on my screens, how can I make sure the time I am spending on them is making me feel productive? Which part is necessary and which part is actually making me feel good or connected to other people. Because those are the parts you want to keep. That's the

beauty of technology is that we are able to stay connected and be productive during a time like this. But there's also lots of uses of screens that are making us not feel so great, like getting sucked into endless cycles of checking the news over and over again, or getting into social media spirals that go beyond just kind of a pleasant distraction and more into mind numbing kind of self medicating territory. I think this is really critical because your argument isn't that it's the amount of time we're spending on screens that's a problem. It's not that we need to reduce our screen time generally. It's just that we need to start paying attention to how these screens are making us feel.

Yeah, you need to be intentional about your screen time is what I keep coming back to. So I wouldn't get hung up on the number of hours that your iPhone is telling you that you've spent on it per week, because it's very likely to be higher than normal. But I think you instead can just ask yourself, okay, well, which parts of that screen time felt good and which parts didn't. And that's the place to start to get curious about it. And I think also it's a really useful skill to develop that you will be able to take with you after this, because if you start to just pay attention to how you feel in the moment when you're engaging with a particular behavior, whether it's on or off a screen, you'll be able to make more intelligent choices about just how to spend your time. So it can actually be just really helpful. And if you just have a little

trigger in the back of your mind to be like, huh, how am I feeling right now? Does this feel nourishing and good or productive or helpful? Or is this making me feel anxious or upset or depressed or scared or sad or even more of those things? And if you do have a choice in that moment, then just simply consider taking the other fork in that path. Yeah, I think that's lovely. You also use this wonderful analogy in one of your recent articles that the way we think about screens should be kind of the way we think about food and nutritious eating. Do you want to just explain that analogy a bit? Yeah, I've been thinking about screen time in terms of food in the sense that there's many different types of food. So when people say, oh, I spend too much time on my screens,

that's the same as just saying, oh, well, I eat too much food, right? But there's different types of food. And you also, well, in the case of food, you do need some of it, but some of our screen time is necessary for our careers or what have you. So I like to instead say, well, what are your kind of food groups for screen time? You know, how can you break it down to think about which parts are the good for you foods, the kale and the vegetables, whatever, which parts of the total junk foods that maybe do comfort you and make you feel better in small quantities, but then make you feel really gross. You know, how can you actually take care of yourself and nourish yourself with screen time with a similar approach that you take towards food? And for me, that's been really helpful because it's been able to like break, you know, have a visual in my head,

kind of like one of those food pyramids of the different types of screen time that gives me a tool with which to just make smarter choices for myself. And I love that analogy because I feel that too. I feel like the nutritiousness of my panic scrolling on Twitter is just like, you know, that's just like the most gross thing, especially if I do a ton of time. But like a Zoom call with my mom or like doing an online yoga class with friends, like that's the kale. Like I need more of that in my life, especially during COVID-19. Or that's like kale doesn't seem as pleasant enough for what you just described. It's like, I don't know, some kind of...

Yeah, it's really, it's like a nice acai bowl, the yoga classes with friends. Oh my God, quinoa is definitely involved in like a really tasty way. So one of the other things about noticing how we're feeling online is that, you know, what we experience online in terms of our emotions can enter our real life, too. I mean, I noticed this myself when, you know, I'm just scrolling on Twitter and I see some scary article about some 20 year old who's caught the virus and in the hospital. Now I'm anxious and panicked. And then I walk into the room with my husband and I'm transmitting all that anxiety and that panic to him when, you know, I didn't really need to do

that. And so talk a little bit about how the kind of the stuff we catch online can become part of our normal lives in a way that we might not anticipate. I think we need to be very conscious about what we're exposing ourselves to in general, because just as exposing yourself to a virus can make you physically sick, exposing yourself to stressful or anxiety-produ producing content can really have an effect on your mental state. And that in turn can be transmitted to the other people that you're self-isolating with right now. And if you do have a choice of exposing yourself to content that makes you feel calm versus Twitter, then maybe we could choose the calm content. It's kind of like a person making a movie who's choosing where to turn their camera. There's a lot of different maybe we could choose the calm content. It's kind of like a person making a

movie who's choosing where to turn their camera. There's a lot of different things we could be choosing to put that camera on right now, whether it's on our screens or off of our screens. And it's up to us to choose where that focus is going to be. So the goal isn't just to reduce our screen time generally or just for the sake of it. It's actually to use our mindfulness muscles to make sure we're strategically using screens in a way that's going to boost our well-being rather than hurt it. And so when we get back from the break, I'm going to have Catherine dive into some more specific tips about how we can all do that. The Happiness Lab will be right back. Ugh, we're so done with New Year, New You.

This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble.

So I wanted to dig into some of your specific tips for how we can achieve some screen life balance during this challenging time, because our screens aren't going away. I mean, in some sense, we need them even more now to work and connect with the people we care about and maybe even to just enjoy some Netflix comedies. But we also need to use all this screen time a little bit more nutritiously. And so one of the first tips you've mentioned before is to set up a set of goals and principles for how we're using our screen time, almost like a daily screen time budget. In my normal non-pandemic life, I like to think about screen time in terms of a budget in the same way that I think about money as having a budget, with the idea being that there's lots of powerful interests, i.e. a lot of the companies behind these apps who really want to take our time and attention from us because it is how they make money. And so just as you'd protect your actual money from thieves, you should protect your time and attention from people who want to

take it from you. But right now, I think that there's an extra element of necessity here because it's having such an emotional impact on you. For my own screen time, I've been thinking about it in terms of three C's, the consumption, creation, and connection. So consumption being just taking stuff in that could be reading the news, which for me is never a good idea, or watching something or reading something from someone else. And then creation, what can you actually create? And for that, some people may be like,

I don't have any energy for creation. You have to be kidding me. That is ridiculous to even suggest that I create something during such a stressful time. But there are other people, myself included, for which that's actually a self-soothing mechanism. My brain needs to do something. So if I can do something creative, it makes me feel better.

And then connection, I think everyone can relate to because we're all desperate for human connection right now. And so if you're using your screen in a way that's bringing you closer to someone else in a way that feels good, I think that's a beautiful use of screens. I love these tips for figuring out which of the different parts you're using and maybe to even balance them over time. Because I could imagine even for me, the connection part, if I do that too much, you know, it gets to kind of be a lot.

You know, even the most healthy stuff eaten like in excess can be a little bit too much. I think it's interesting to realize, like you just pointed out, that you can have something positive in excess. You know, there's so many like Zoom happy hours happening now. My husband and I, our social calendar is like packed because we've got all these people stranded at home with this desire to connect. So we've been trying to make a point of actually deliberately taking breaks from our screens. For example, just going for a socially isolated walk without your phone and just trying to be present in whatever surroundings you're in just to take a break from this subconscious feeling of needing to respond and be available.

One thing I really love is like taking a whole night where you turn off all of your screens and actually just be with the people that you're with. You might decide that maybe you don't want to do like full on no screens at all. Maybe you want to put away your individual devices and do something together, like watch a movie where everyone is actually sitting together watching the movie instead of everyone checking Twitter while watching the movie, which are very different experiences. And I personally highly recommend not checking the news after a certain point each night. If you're exposing yourself to endless stories about coronavirus right before bed, of course you're not going to sleep well. And also you can't do

anything with that information. It's not going to change any behavior that you would have had from 6 p.m. to midnight. I am willing to bet. This has been a huge one for me. Just during the time of coronavirus, I finally started doing the tip that I've given to everyone, which is to put your phone to bed at a certain time. My phone now goes to bed around 730 where I like shut it off and stick it away. And I only do physical stuff like read physical books or do yoga or whatever. And it's been huge for my sleep. Like I can't even express how much better my sleep has been just like not checking my phone right before I go to bed. I think that's an interesting point and consequence of what we're living through right now is that this contrast between screen activities and off screen activities is becoming very dramatic. It's really clarifying

things to people, I think, because you suddenly realize there's a real difference in how you feel doing one versus the other. And there's nothing wrong with reading a book on your Kindle or your phone, but it's interesting that because we're having such huge exposure to screen time right now, it's becoming easier to see the difference in how off-screen things make us feel. And I think it's really important to recognize that we're not just heads on top of bodies, you know, we actually are creatures who have physical bodies also. And those bodies need to be nurtured, you know, which is simple as like taking a bath. Like I haven't taken a bath in I don't know how long and I dug in a

bathtub the other day. I'm like, where has this been my whole life? Like, this is delightful. I love that tip. And in your your idea of taking the bath when you haven't taken one in a long time leads me to one of your other tips, which I love, which is to explicitly write down a list of non screen time activities that you actually love to do so that you'll remember them when the urge to kind of pop on the screen mindlessly comes up. Yeah, I strongly encourage that people take a few minutes to write down a list of non-screen activities that make them feel good. And the reason I say that is because when we're stressed out, the part of our brain that's in charge of rational decision-making, the prefrontal cortex, goes out the window. It's like, see you later, like exactly the moment when you need it the most.

And instead, we tend to go to things that provide quick fixes. So whether that's checking the news, even though it doesn't make you feel good, it's still a quick fix of information or getting a drink or doing something that's like not really that good for yourself. And you know, it's not good for you, but you don't really have the ability in that moment of stress to make a rational decision. So you want to make it as easy as possible to choose activities that actually are good for you or that feel good or that nourish you. And one of the best ways to do that is just make a list of activities ahead of time so that when you do have a moment of downtime, instead of instinctively reaching

for your phone, which for many of us is that quick fix, you have alternatives at the ready. So it could be taking a bath. It could be listening to a podcast, which, yeah, that would be using your phone, but it's for a different purpose. Doing a bit of stretching or meditation. I mean, the choices are endless and it's very up to the particular person. There's no right answer here. I love this tip because if I look at my own social media use, it tends to be just in exactly those moments where it's like I finish some other task. I have this kind of twinge of like boredom or I'm not sure what to do next. And I'm like, that's when I pull out Twitter. You know, that's when I do a quick check. And there's so many other things I would enjoy more than doing that quick check. It's just the Twitter feels like a habit.

It feels like this really low startup cost, but it's a huge opportunity cost of other stuff in my life that I could be doing that would make me feel better. There is a huge opportunity cost. I think we don't often really recognize that because your time is finite and it's zero sum. You can't spend time or your attention on two things at once. So for every moment that you're spending in the black hole of Twitter, you're not spending it on something else. And I think it's also a great opportunity for people to experiment with some of the general screen life balance kind of like hygiene tips that I and others always recommend, but that can be hard to kind of motivate to do in your daily life. Like if you know that you're having a habit of just going on Twitter and you're really

aware right now that that's making you feel bad, maybe this is the time to experiment with taking Twitter off your phone for a couple of days. I really recommend people take news apps off their phones right now. I mean, why? Why have those on your phones? You won't forget to check the news. You just won't forget to check the news right now. Then if you take it off of your phone, you're essentially doing what psychiatrists would call reducing your ease of access to the problematic substance. So, of course, if you have access to Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and 16 different news sources on your phone and you're stressed out, you're going to go to those things. Another thing I know you've talked about is that the screen life balance that we need in our lives isn't just for us,

you know, the adults in our family. We also need to think about how to balance screen time for our kids too, right? And I don't want to sound like some schoolmarm. I mean, my own child is literally watching Daniel Tiger as we were having this conversation because it's a rainy day. But I also think there's, you know, there's just a lot of other stuff to do. I mean, you can get very creative about it, especially with little kids. Like, we've been looking for worms a lot, Lori. We've been going on worm hunts and we just go out and she pulls up moss and tries to find worms. And then that's been entertaining her for quite a long time. So I think a lot of parents are really stressed out about how their kids are possibly going to quote unquote catch up in school once they go back to school.

And I think it's a really interesting concern because if you think critically about what typically happens in school and what is or is not accomplished or how much time is wasted just trying to manage classrooms, there's a lot of time that's not actually used that efficiently. What do you actually want them to be able to do or have learned at the end of this pandemic that you think they're going to miss in school? And if you start from that outcome, then you can come up with creative ways to achieve the same results, whether it's on or off a screen. So I personally, I think it's interesting that everyone's kind of going to the let's just lecture to kids online. And that's just seems so boring and kind of fruitless as

opposed to saying, okay, well, maybe you could say these are the skills or the types of questions I want kids to be able to answer at the end our screen time and the rules around screen time are making us feel. If it's making us feel kind of good, then that's okay. But if it's making us feel judged and feel overwhelmed and like we're a bad parent, then we need to listen to that too. Yes. I think the same rules apply for kids as they do with adults, which is that it's not necessarily the amount of screen time that matters. It's what we're doing with it, what we're getting out of it and how it's making us feel. So we should be intentional about our children's screen time in the same way that we are for our own. So we should not just default to screens for the sake of defaulting to screens, but actually ask, is that useful? Is it giving the

kids something? Is it making them feel good? What's the opportunity cost of all the time on the screen? I also always recommend actually having a conversation with your child. If they're older than like five, you actually can have a conversation about this and say, let's figure out like what we use our screens for. Let's come up with a list of ideas for off-screen activities that we could do together or individually, involve them in that process, and then give them a bit more of a sense of control over figuring out a schedule that works for them. Because I think a lot of the tension comes from parents trying to control the kids without allowing the kids to have any kind of input into it. So I think making it into a family conversation can be really helpful. And again, goes to the idea that there is an opportunity here to develop some structures and templates for

conversations that really can be helpful after this passes, after we go back to normal, both in terms of children's screen time and parents' screen time and listening to what your kids have to say about you too. I think that's part of the final tip I wanted to get into, which is your idea that we should do as much as we can right now to set boundaries on the kind of information we're consuming, especially the stuff that we don't enjoy consuming that much. So you gave this one wonderful concrete suggestion about shutting off notifications and maybe taking apps off your phone to create boundaries. But are there other ways we can do it, especially for those of us who are listening who might be kind of hesitant to take, you know, Twitter and Facebook off their phone?

Well, first of all, I would say you can do it, guys. Like you could literally delete that app and then in 30 seconds say that woman I just listened to is an idiot. I want it back on my phone and just put it back on. No one's stopping you. So just just get curious about it it. Experiment. See what it's like. And it could differ by the day. But I think in general, we need boundaries in all areas of our life right now because so many of us are working from home. So we don't have any boundaries between work and normal life. We don't have any boundaries between kid care and our own personal time. No boundaries. There's no boundaries. No boundaries between the news. No boundaries with screens. We're just like in the state of

uncertainty and anxiety with no boundaries. And when you think about it in that context, it makes sense that a lot of us are feeling pretty crazy right now. So I think having as a guiding principle, as you think about your life, the idea of what boundaries would make me feel better? How could I create lines and divisions between these parts of my life? But for example, figuring out how you can create a ritual that shows that you're starting your workday versus ending your workday, you know, rituals that mark when you are not interacting with screens or in what ways, like maybe you have, if you have multiple devices, maybe you use one for one purpose and then another for another purpose.

Maybe don't check your news from your phone, but you check it from the desktop. Don't answer emails from your phone because, again, that's really not efficient. Instead, do that from your computer. Get actual physical distance between things. For example, create a charging station for your phone that is not in your bedroom so that you're not instinctively reaching for your phone right before bed and going into a Twitter spiral. If you're worried about people being able to call you, you can always create a group of VIP contacts and then turn the do not disturb on in general, but allow those calls to come in and turn your ringer on. And now you've created a way to keep a physical boundary between yourself and your phone, but you're not worried about missing a call from somebody that you want to hear from. But just keep in mind the idea of which parts of your life seem to be blending together

in ways that don't feel healthy. And then what rituals or practices could you experiment with that might enable you to feel a bit more organized in your mental world? That's awesome. And so if your listeners want to hear more tips, you've actually set up a resource that they can go to during this time of COVID-19, right? Yeah, I have a website, screenlifebalance.com, and you can sign up for my newsletter. And I've basically been trying to send out newsletters once or twice a week that contain

suggestions for some of these things, how to maintain screen life balance and sanity during this time. And I've really been trying to make the newsletters as much as I can, like self-contained. So it's not just another list of 35 links that you now feel that you have to click on and just seeing the email stresses you out, but really trying to help people think more intentionally about their screen time in ways that will make them feel a little bit more calm and less anxious and maybe even inspired during this time. I, for one, plan to take Catherine's advice to heart. I've already tried to institute a few new lockdown habits to help balance my technology time. For me, that's been online yoga with friends, dinner with my family over Zoom, and an awesome podcast every morning. I've also tried to find a few more screen-free things that feel good,

taking a few minutes to stare at the dogwood trees outside my house and playing some games in real life with my husband. I hope that you'll be able to find a bit more screen-life balance during this challenging time. And I hope that at least one of your feel-good screen-time choices will be to come back for the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is a Pushkin podcast. It's co-written and produced by Ryan Dilley and mastered by Evan Viola. Our original music is written by Zachary Silver.

Special thanks to Ben Davis, Heather Fane, Carly Migliore, Julia Barton, Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, and the rest of the Pushkin crew. Ugh, we're so done with New Year, New You. This year, it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists especially that one filled with show tunes more of you finding gemini's because you know you always like them more of you dating with intention because you know what you want and you know what we love that for you someone else will too be more you this year and find them on bumble