Transcription:
Supporting Youth in Achieving Digital Wellness: Spiritual Health and Learning and Productivity, pt.3

Scott Webb (Host):  Emerson Hospital has teamed up with Turning Life On, a local grassroots movement to create a digital wellness program. Digital wellness is using technology with intention to achieve optimal physical, mental and spiritual health, enhance relationships, safety and privacy and increase our ability to learn and be productive. The goals of this partnership are to increase awareness of the many impacts that devices have on youth today and to provide research backed tips that empower families to make healthy choices about digital media use. Through this podcast, our guests will discuss the six pillars of digital wellness and how we can support our youth in balancing their device use to optimize their overall health and development.

This is the Healthworks Here Podcast from Emerson Hospital. I’m Scott Webb. This episode will feature Dr. Anthony Rao, Clinical Psychologist and author of the book “The Power of Agency: the 7 Principles to Conquer Obstacles, Make Effective Decisions, and Create Life on Your Own Terms.” And we’ll also be joined by Adrienne Principe of Turning Life On. Adrienne, it’s so great to have you back on. Which pillars are we talking about today?

Adrienne Principe (Guest):  So, today we’re talking about spiritual wellbeing and learning and productivity. Let’ start with spiritual health and wellbeing as it relates to digital wellness. If you’ve seen the social dilemma, you’re probably aware of persuasive design, that’s the way in which technology is designed to grab and hold our attention. In addition to persuasive design, youth also don’t have fully developed frontal lobes which is where impulse control lives. Here is what’s happening. Media is designed to hold our attention. To make matters worse, youth have an underdeveloped ability to resist the temptation to use media. We’re also really relying on media to get things done throughout the day.

What’s the result? We’re suffering from some serious information overload. And this is creating an incredible amount of noise in our lives. We’re missing out on the time we need to find purpose and peace to just be. We know this impacts relationships. It also creates confusion, loss of self-direction and stress. With so much information coming at us, we lose control. Dr. Rao, in your book, “The Power of Agency,” you address this very concept. You talk about how digital media use is filling our time and taking away from opportunities for downtime, moments of quiet and peace. This is a big concern, right?

Anthony Rao, Psy.D. (Guest):  Absolutely Adrienne. I can’t over emphasize how impactful living in a digital world is at this point. We are staring at our screens at this point, more that we’re staring into the faces of the people we love. I wonder, everyday what is this like in terms of all the opportunity costs? What are we missing out on? There’s some estimates, 100,000 words are reaching our eyes and ears every day. By the time our heads hit the pillows at night, upwards of 5000 or more advertisements sometimes try to get in, if you will, into our thinking. By all means, it is an era of digital overwhelm.

Adrienne:  That’s so interesting. And we know that kids in particular have a hard time distinguishing advertisements which must make it particularly difficult for them. And the amount of information too that’s coming at us is – it’s incredible. It’s hard to block out the distractions from the information that we actually need and it’s hard to find the time to connect with people when we’re constantly being overloaded with all of this information. And that connection with people is so important to not only our mental and our physical health but also our spiritual health. One of the things – when I talk to parents, one of the things that I encourage them to do is to think about their digital media use, their family’s digital media use through the lens of their family values. I think that’s one way to teach kids how to stop and think about how they’re behaving online and what they’re seeing, if they’re seeing so much information, how do they then evaluate the information that they’re seeing and share it appropriately. And to think about also the consequences of what they’re sharing and how they’re interacting with digital media.

I’ve heard stories of kids unknowingly sharing racists memes. How does all this impact diversity, equity, inclusivity and reinforce harmful stereotypes?

Dr. Rao:  Yeah, I’m so glad you tie it into all of that. While researching for this book, speaking of interviewing hundreds of people across the country to find out what is it that they do for their best practices to help themselves think more clearly, stay on devices less. We realized along the way that in fact, in general, we’re not really great thinkers. We tend to be in fact, sloppy thinkers because an overstimulated mind really can’t think for itself. Now when that happens, we end up then reverting mostly to biases, prejudices, assumptions and in fact, unless you’re more conscious and aware and thoughtful, and present; that means low digital stimulation coming in; you’re going to be really having superfast thinking which is automatic, highly emotional, shortcut thinking. This is where we are most susceptible to all the things you have just mentioned.

There is a direct relationship between how much stimulation we’re getting, not just the content coming through, the conspiracy theories, the memes, that kind of thing; not just the content but our inability to be able to think more logically, slowly and unbiasedly just simply because we’re overstimulated.

Adrienne:  That’s really interesting too because you’re right. I’ve heard that when we’re using digital media, I’ve heard this from a few different people; that when we’re using digital media or social media, that it’s designed to keep us in the emotional part of our brains versus the higher order thinking parts of our brains which is in line with what you’re talking about in terms of sloppy thinking, harder to be present, and then that inability to really evaluate what we’re seeing in terms of memes and racist comments and stopping ourselves from then forwarding those on. And that’s for adults. If you think about kids whose frontal lobes or that higher order thinking part of their brain isn’t fully developed, it must be even more difficult for them to stop themselves. So, when we talk about digital wellness as it relates to spiritual health and we’re talking about again, cultivating purpose, and meet it up through social activism or support; it’s also finding peace through balance and disconnection and committing to being good digital citizenships. So, what suggestions do you have for parents and kids as it relates to this pillar? You talked a little bit about that sloppy thinking. How do we get ourselves to slow down and think about what we’re seeing but then also how do we get ourselves to disconnect so that we’re able to find that balance and that peace and purpose that we need to be effective social activists and be able to provide the support for others?

Dr. Rao:  I firmly believe that we’re not going to be able to experience a spiritual moment until we are fully disconnected from digital devices for periods of time. With this other information coming in that’s stimulating those emotional centers of our mind, we’re connecting us to others that then we follow their lead and think more the way they think than for ourselves; we won’t have that needed time of quiet and reflection that is essential to having those moments that you get more in touch with your intuition and who you are and you just are living more in the moment, more peacefully, less judgmentally. And it’s under those types of mental states that people report feeling more of a spiritual touch with those parts of themselves. We’ve got to set up times during the classroom, during learning, during our home, during our office where we say look, everything is down. I want everyone to power down for a little bit. I want us all to just have a few moments of either silence or peace or be able to go off yourself. Without those spaces, the encroachment of all the digital information just assaulting us, we’re going to lose access to those moments that potentially can become more spiritual. I do a lot of work with camp organizations. Anecdotally, I can’t tell you how much I’m hearing particularly from teenagers and the counselors that when they’ve had spiritual moments in their lives, ones that really meant something, they tended to be in movement and outdoors or by themselves in a very peaceful state, maybe looking at a landscape or a lake or there was something about being out in nature.

And when you think about it, when we’re outside, we tend not to be on our screens. We tend to be less digital. We’re more analog and multisensory.

Adrienne:  I’ve heard a little bit about forest bathing which is what you’re talking about is being out in nature and taking in all the senses and breathing the fresh air and I think part of that too is when we’re outside, we recognize that the world is more than just who we are and whose on our tiny 2-D screen. It’s really this 3-D, not only is it a 3-D experience, but it’s also makes us feel – I don’t know if this is the right way to say it, but it makes us feel almost small in comparison to the rest of the world and makes us realize how big the world really is and I don’t know, if that has something to do with it.

Dr. Rao:  It does. I think it provides perspective. I think when we are outdoors, and we’re seeing a larger landscape, or our eyes are captured by ripples and waves or we feel the wind on your skin, or we hear sounds that are more nature based that remembering that we evolved in nature and not in interior spaces in front of screens. And the human brain then begins to relax, and it knows its place in the world in a good way. And seeing all that, there’s a sense of, there’s a larger scale thing happening here. I’m okay. I don’t have to control everything.

Now when you release, and you just give in to those really positive sorts of sensations and low stimulation; people then have more room for things like spirituality. I’m really glad you brought up forest bathing. It’s Japan’s response to at one point, an epidemic in depression and suicides and rather than think about it in the way that we do in America, which was we hit it more with therapies, some talking therapies but mostly psychopharmacology; we don’t think about the role of a natural setting as maybe the curative agent and they did. They realized that they had all these beautiful ancient forests, and they were however a very urban environment if you will, mostly large cities. And they were able to figure out how to get large groups of people regularly into these forests like national forests with pathways so that they could meditate and walk on a regular basis. The data coming out of that are tremendous. It’s helping with anxiety and depression in ways nobody really expected. And we’re also finding that it’s boosting people’s immune systems. So, time out in natural settings turns out to decrease adrenaline, and cortisol and there may be some other factors that boost the immune system. It’s a very curative, whole person way to be able to deal with all the stressors that we’re feeling right now.

Adrienne:  When we talk about the six pillars of digital wellness, they are all interrelated and here’s a perfect example of how taking time to develop your spiritual health by being in nature is also positively impacting your mental health and your physical health which are two of our other pillars. It’s interesting what you said about control and releasing when we’re in nature which is the complete opposite of what’s happening when we’re on our devices. Because when we’re on our devices, the algorithms are designed as I mentioned earlier with persuasive design, the algorithms are designed to keep us using them. It’s almost like we’re being controlled and it’s really hard for us to disconnect from our devices but when we’re out in nature, there’s no control except for the control that we have of our own bodies and minds. So, if we can learn to be able to as you said, release and take in nature and be able to take advantage of all the opportunities that it offers us for improved health. It’s a really easy solution because most of us are in a place where we can just step outside or we can open the window and take in some fresh air, look at some trees.

So, you also mentioned meditation which I have been working with some people who are in the meditation field and they are really convinced that meditating, it could be the answer to the amount of time that we’re spending online and it could be really helpful in giving us back the ability to resist the persuasive design and the persuasive nature of our digital devices. So, I’m glad that you brought that up. Because I do think that meditation is really important. So, let’s switch gears here. the other digital wellness pillar we want to discuss is learning and productivity. Technology in the classroom is a great way to enrich the learning experience and to also expand knowledge. For example, during COVID, my family used technology to listen to books by astronauts in space. We drew with Mo Williams. We found new recipes. We even looked for science experiments online. In addition to the physical impacts of too much screen time during the school day; which we hear quit often from parents; there’s also concern with overreliance on technology and how it can negatively impact knowledge acquisition, comprehension, and critical thinking skills. So, it’s again, about finding that balance. There are benefits and there are risks. So, this bring us back to that idea of information overload. What can you offer us in terms of some information about learning and productivity and information overload and balancing technology?

Dr. Rao:  Great question packed with a lot in there. Let me tackle it this way. We’ve moved because of COVID to more digitally assisted learning, virtual learning. Classrooms before that, have been really enticed into with some value at times, using more digital teaching and devices and ways to help people with adaptive learning and lot of exciting things on the horizon here, things that we would not have had available to us. But this is problematic if you think about it because our brain was designed to learn in a multisensory way. That would mean that we listen, we touch, we smell, we taste, we move about in three dimensional spaces and we were meant to learn in socially dynamic ways. When we are around others that are excited about learning, are sharing ideas, are not self-conscious; the learning of everyone improves.

And I’m not just talking about obtaining information. We don’t need information. We’ve got more information than we can use. It’s the information age. I’m talking about true developmental learning of kids and the more that we see classrooms or homes become more screen based and digital, it’s crowding out the way in which the human brain truly likes to learn. And people are realizing now since the pandemic, that there’s a lot of exhaustion and fatigue trying to stay in front of a screen for long periods of time. It’s not just the immobility of the body, which is a big part of it, just sitting for periods of time, 20 to 30 minutes, 40 minutes and up is really not healthy overall over time. But it’s this idea that you’re trying to learn something through a flat space. So you are looking at glass or you’re looking at a small dot, but you can’t see the real human face that you’re supposed to be responding to. It’s fatiguing the brain.

So, I really caution everyone that particularly when we’re out of this pandemic, and we are back more in classrooms full time; that we really think about learning at more of a human social and more flexible type of endeavor than programmatic one and this gets into the second issue you raised which is productivity. And we like productivity for a host of reasons. But we also like measurement and we like knowing that where we’re supposed to be right now and where will we be if we do X, Y and Z, oh my goodness, we’re falling behind. And we can measure that. So, we have this way of thinking doing more is better or reaching some higher ability to memorize certain things is better.

This productivity was really at a crazy rate in the United States within the last maybe ten to fifteen years, the sort of pushing and pushing to do more and more with children in particular at earlier ages of the development, stressing them out and for what at the end of the day? At the end of the day, they might be able to look productive or perform in certain situations but were they really learning all around. So, there’s a really interesting and deeper relationship between how we learn and what we define as productivity. But we’ve been focused so much on productivity I think that because of what’s happening with COVID, we may want to step back and take a look at that when the world, when things return back to at least some sense of normal and I do think some of the digital screens and virtual learning will continue but I think it’s an opportunity for us to stop and really think through like how are we teaching and how do we learn.

Adrienne:  It’s so interesting that you brought up this idea of the brain is designed to learn in multisensory ways. And I have a friend that works down at Yale School of Medicine and we often talk about this. He looks at functional MRIs of the brain and the different areas that are lighting up when people are involved in different kinds of learning and what does a brain of someone who has a learning disability look compared to somebody that doesn’t or someone has strong reading skills versus somebody who doesn’t. And it’s so interesting that we talk about how the plasticity of our brains and being able to adapt to new environments and learn new skills at really any stage of life. However, our brains have not evolved to learn in a 2-D world, to learn on computers, that our brains are still very much the way that they were in the past when someone would take a stick and draw in the sand. And that’s learning these multisensory ways are really still the best way for kids to learn.

Dr. Rao:  Absolutely. And the younger a child is, more of that and as they get a little bit older, they can certainly tolerate more digital use of devices to facilitate their learning and you know that there are schools that say no, not until middle school. We don’t want a screen in the classroom at all. Others are heh, let’s bring the learning into the outdoor world, where in fact the science, the chemistry, the biology, the physics even when you think about so much literature is written about natural things – we can do this outside where the real knowledge may be. Where the real learning might be able to take place or do more of it. So, to be able to breaking apart some of the models and assumptions that we do particularly in this country that’s more measurement based, test focused, productivity based, think a little bit more about what’s the process not just the product here.

Adrienne:  That’s interesting. Definitely and being outside goes in hand with what we talked about earlier in terms of your spiritual health too. So, if you are learning outside, and presumably your brain is open, or your brain is more relaxed then you are probably in a better position to learn anyway versus being inside sitting in front of a screen overstimulated with information. So, it’s great advice to think about layering as you said, thinking about layering the technology at the appropriate age and then also finding where is it the most affective. What technologies are the most affective. There’s also some studies out there that look at – and this kind of goes back to the way that our brains develop. So, there are some studies out there that look at hand writing notes versus typing notes and reading digitally versus reading a book and back to what you said about multisensory ways. Can you speak to that a little bit about the difference in terms of comprehension, and memory formation, knowledge acquisition between digital reading or not taking online and print reading and taking notes by hand?

Dr. Rao:  By all means there’s room for everyone customizing the way they learn and we all learn in different ways. And knowing how you learn is really important. We touch upon that in the book. like one of our principles that we believe gives people their sense of empowerment and human agency is their ability to position themselves as a learner and we asked them to think about and we present some models, some basic models of heh what kind of learner are you. Do you learn really well more by yourself versus with other people. Hands on in an apprenticeship model versus more of classroom and programmatic learning. So, by all means, I’d like to just start off by saying sure, there’s a lot of room here to do it in different ways and certainly experiment with it. But having said that, overall, if you were to write something down using a writing implement versus a keyboard, you will do it more slowly. It can aggravate people whose fine motor skills have not had that level of practice for all those years or kids with fine motor issues certainly, we want them then to keyboard and just let them move forward faster. We don’t want to frustrate people.

But by slowing your thinking down, people are reflecting on what they’re doing. They’re also focusing more and not multitasking. In order to be able to pull that off, people tend to shut everything else down and have their eyes just on paper and they begin to have a visual motor we call it in psychology, this idea that as my fingers move around, there’s this sort of and the way that my lips form in different shapes to produce words, there is sort of some memory happening also in my fingertips that’s associated with the movements of the thoughts I’m having. So, now more of the body is engaged. And we think and feel with our entire body, not just our brain. It’s all interconnected. Our state of health relates to our ability to feel certain feelings, how intense they are and our quality of thinking and decision making. That’s another thing that we learned while writing this book. So, I do want people to really be thinking about can I move this at times to more of an analog process. There’s nothing wrong with having a pad of paper out and a pen or pencil and at least it’s there and I can jot a note. I can doodle. I can put one word down that I’ve been thinking about that’s haunting me and I want to look at that word and for some reason, writing it down matters more than when I’ve been typing it and it’s here and then it’s immediately gone. There’s that sort of ephemeral problem with how fast we’re working, and I think we’re doing a lot of skimming on surface and we’re connecting things quickly but that we’re not really pausing and going more into depth. And things like reading on paper, and writing from time to time, extremely important to slow this process down, slow the thinking down.

Adrienne:  And I would think too with kids in younger grades, say obviously early elementary school but later in elementary school and middle school that we want to provide them with a multitude of different modalities in terms of writing, and typing, reading offline versus reading online, teaching. We do know from research as we said that when you read online, you’re more likely to skim and you’re reading more quickly, you’re distracted so deep thinking while you’re reading online is a little bit more difficult. So teaching kids how to read deeply online. And I think what you said about self-reflection is really important and that’s a key point that we’re giving students a lot of different opportunities to learn in many different ways and then asking them to self-reflect on it so that they can figure out what type of learner are they and what works best.

Last year in my son’s sixth grade math class I had been emailing his teacher because they were taking a lot of notes in math online and I said what do you think about this is what the research says, what do you think about having the students hand write their notes instead and so she went to the class and said what do you guys like better? Do you prefer to write them on the iPad, or do you prefer to hand write them and all of the kids in the class came back and said that they preferred to hand write their notes and so she bought everybody binders and they put all their notes in their binders. And they changed the way that they were learning. So, I thought that was a really great way for her as an educator to encourage the students to self-reflect and to figure out what their best learning tools were. I think we could definitely do more of that as parents and as educators. Are there any other suggestions that you have in terms of helping educators and youth and parents achieve digital wellness and learning and productivity?

Dr. Rao:  I think that people will decrease the amount that they emphasize in terms of digital learning and in terms of how much they want their kids on screens for school reasons if they step back and just ask this simple question which is what is the goal here? If the goal is to learn a lot of information, possibly some knowledge but a lot of information, then by all means, there’s the quickest way will be using digital devices. So, if it’s an efficiency issue, right, to the learning, okay I get it. But if we’re looking for helping kids think more deeply, moving from information into what is knowledge which is I actually have a deeper understanding of it. I spend some time with it. I’ve looked at different sources or checking in with different people about it and maybe that brings me into a new level of working knowledge which is now it’s in my mind and my memory banks. I actually own it. It’s now mine. I know can bring it places and I can utilize that knowledge. That eventually leads to expertise and down the road wisdom but if it’s just information like you just need to have this information available to you, then having it facilitated and speeding it up, having greater efficiency by digital devices does make sense.

But I think if we stopped and asked that question, I would think most people would say oh, actually I thought the goal was to move from just information. I don’t need to know information. I can have basic parts of it. I can go to any digital device. We have too much of it. But how much knowledge do I have? How much working knowledge do I have? How much expertise do I have? That’s different. And that is where I think we move away from digital learning and more toward a true sort of apprenticeship, hands on, interactive, social and some of the iLabs, I’ve had an opportunity to look at including the media lab at MIT and others across different schools. I’m amazed that how they work. They tend to be really messy. It’s about as analog as it can get. And people are interacting and that’s what’s in the center of everything. And then the computer parts tend to be pushed off to the sides or there to facilitate what people are trying to do when they’re creating and engineering and figuring out solutions. To me, that’s the best model, which is really get analog, do it with other people, make it multisensory, take time, get depth and then go to devices in order to do the research part or to facilitate something or to create something, some cog in some machine you may need.

Adrienne:  I mentioned my friend who is at Yale and he said the same thing that the grad students in the School of Medicine they do the same thing that they’re – and even the professors there that they’re hand writing notes, and it’s really messy with a lot of pieces of paper everywhere but then they’re going on to the technology to produce that final product. So, he said there too, doing that kind of messy analog work first and then transferring it onto the digital devices to bring it forth. So, what you said is perfectly in line with what we talk about in terms of achieving digital wellness as it relates to learning and productivity. So, we talk about enriching the learning experience by using these digital devices for kids that really need them and for also getting the information that’s out there because we are living in that information age and then in terms of expanding knowledge. I think the idea of developing those schemas and understanding the knowledge in our brains, having that be part of us, that deeper thinking definitely brings on that wisdom. I think it also impacts creativity. And then being able to focus on our work and cut out the noise which often happens on digital devices. That’s another way that we can support knowledge acquisition. This has been really great. I feel like I could talk to you all day long about this topic.

Dr. Rao:  Oh same here. Same here. It’s been really terrific.

Adrienne:  Is there anything else that you want to share with us?

Dr. Rao:  Yeah, there is one other thing which is be really cautious. We all have now a digital device buddy, friend, a best friend that we take everywhere with us, that we live with, we touch, we hold, we carry. If it falls, we panic. If we can’t find it, we go into separation anxiety. It is a remarkable thing our phones. People call them phones. They are anything but. They’re like NASA and college library and a television production studio all in one. They just do so much. They are absolutely amazing machines. Their proximity to you even when they are shut off, some of the research is showing is causing a decline in our cognitive functioning. Our basic skills to memorize, process, our efficiency and recall and using analysis skills. We wouldn’t think that it would matter if this small little flat object just happens to be maybe shut off and upside down but it’s just on our desk near us, would be tapping our mental energy while we’re trying to do something else. It turns out it does. We’re so conditioned by it, we’re so reliant upon it that our brain we think is sending signals constantly saying heh, you better check in on that, that thing might be saving your life, I don’t know if you really need it right now. And so, there’s interesting studies that show if you just have it shut off and you actually have it too close to you, your ability to carry out pretty basic cognitive tasks is lower than if you had put it in a drawer on the other side of the room or better yet, shut it off and put it in another room. So, just beware folks that just having it around you and your kids in particular, it ends up lowering their ability to think for themselves, their ability to socialize, their ability to move and it looks like now their ability to think.

Adrienne:  You’re right. I’ve actually seen those studies and there’s two graphs that we can put on the website, put on our webpage, our digital wellness webpage on Emerson Hospital website that show fluid intelligence and memory go down when the phone is on the desk compared to in a drawer or even better in another room. And there’s also data out there that shows the presence of a phone lowers empathy and trust in relationships as well. If you’re trying to have a conversation with somebody and your phone’s there that people report feeling less trust and less empathy from the other person which I think is really interesting. And of course, it’s impacting our sleep as well. So, we’re talking about our learning, our relationships, our sleep which is tied to our physical and our mental health and not only because of the blue light keeping us awake but that idea of what if somebody texts me in the middle of the night and I have to respond to them or I’m embarrassed to admit that last night I was up in the middle of the night and I looked at my phone and then I felt like it kept me up longer because I was thinking about something that I saw on my phone in the middle of the night. So, that’s really good advice. And when you first starting talking about our phone and how we take it everywhere and we hold it close and we are afraid when we drop it. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just treat each other that way, the way that we treat our phones. With that much care and love.

Dr. Rao:  Well said. Well said. I really like the way you just put that. I really like how you just said that. Yes. Wouldn’t that be nice if we treated each other as well as we treat our phones. Yeah.

Adrienne:  With that care and compassion. All right well we’ll leave it at that. Treat each other the way you treat your phones. Thanks so much for joining us. This was really great. I appreciate all your support Dr. Rao.

Dr. Rao:  Oh, thank you. It’s been real terrific to talk with you today.

Host:  Turning Life On and Emerson Hospital are working together to convene teams of parents, teens, clinicians and mental health professionals to discuss digital media use, challenges and best practices specific to our digital wellness pillars. This work will offer anecdotal evidence to further support our research based suggestions. And if you’re interested in getting involved with this project or learning more please visit www.emersonhospital.org/digitalwellness. And thanks for listening to Emerson’s Healthworks Here Podcast. I’m Scott Webb. And make sure to catch the next episode by subscribing to the Healthworks Here podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever podcasts can be heard.