 Hi, welcome. I'm Peter Diaz and this is Emmy Golding and we are co-directors of the WMHI. Now, we're not just co-directors, we're also happened to be married over a decade now. And the reason why we want to talk to you today is because we have a confession to make. And the confession is that there is this psychopathic element that has infiltrated itself into our marriage, trying to separate us. It has introduced itself into our family and it's trying to separate our kids from us. It's trying to separate our friends from us. It's trying to be more important than anybody else. And you probably know it, this individual. And you probably carry this individual in your pocket. It's this one. You know that, right? It's what they usually call a smartphone. I call it a stupid phone because it doesn't do anything I don't want it to do. But it has been decided in such a way that it keeps us addicted. And the confession that we have to make is that very early on we decided not to have a TV in our bedroom because we wanted to have the end of the day to be about each other, to give attention to each other. But somehow the stupid phone made it into the room and sometimes it refuses to get out. The stupid phone. And we need to talk to you about this because the stupid phone has made itself indispensable. Remember the days if you're old enough when a mobile phone could only make phone calls? I remember those days. And then it could barely make text. Now this thing does everything for me. It's my bank. It's my personal assistant. It does my calendar. It does my banking. It gets my emails. It makes pictures. I can make videos here of such a cinematic quality. It's unbelievable. It's my photo editor. It's my photo copy machine. This thing is very hard to put down. And then it has got these little apps that I call Facebook and Instagram. You may be familiar with those. And they keep not giving me notifications. And every time I open them, it gives me a dopamine hit because somebody has like something I've said. And it feels so good. So guess what? I'm freaking addicted to this thing. And I know it. But guess what? It's still hard to put down. And I have to limit myself with it. And it's difficult because we know as mental health experts, as psychologists, we know the data. We know the research. In the beginning when these things first came out, it was like, oh, we wonder what the impact is going to be. Well, it's very, very clear now. And yet it's still something that as humans, we grapple with on a day to day basis, not just for us and for our relationship with each other, but also for our son. We have a 10 year old boy. So we've recently been having a lot of conversations about what do we do about technology in this household? How are we going to manage it so that it doesn't run our lives? And the conversation hasn't just been about how do we limit our sons watching of the screen itself, not just social media. He hasn't got a social media account, but he's still addicted to games, to be mostly games and YouTube for kids. He can't wait to get to it. But it's not him only the problem. It's also us. I mean, we've had this conversation sometimes. It's like, how do we get each other's attention when Mr. Stupidphone is in the bedroom and getting your attention and getting my attention. So that's been the question. Do we ban them from the bedroom? Do we ban them from the bedroom? And guess what? Sometimes we're so addicted that we say, oh, but maybe I just keep it in the bedroom because of the alarm because it's also an alarm. So somehow it creeps into the room. But we're aware of it and we're working and we have limited. So our solution has been to have a dedicated hour for us just for us to... Having said that, the phone is on silent and it cannot be looked at, but it's for ourselves. But here's the thing, these devices, social media, they're just a tool at the end of the day. There are positives to some of these apps. They do give us a lot of benefits and we'll talk about that in a minute. But like any other tool, it's how you use it that makes a difference. So the reason we wanted to share this with you in relation to mental health particularly is because so often people ask us in training and in interviews and things like that, so what do we do for our mental health? How can we all improve our wellbeing? And the typical answers we usually don't want to hear. The basics, the foundations are have a good diet, look after your nutrition, get some movement or some exercise, get some good sleep and everyone knows that whether we want to do it or not is another thing. But this is something that is forgotten. This is something that people don't really focus on. Because we don't see the damage sometimes they can do. For example, one of the most important things for people in a relationship in terms of their mental health, it's how intimate they are with each other. And that includes everything, including sex. But obviously the conversations that they have with each other, the honesty of those conversations, the frankness and the lovingness and the touching and the hugging, all that stuff goes together in the intimacy. And to be honest, in therapy and also in conversations when other guys have kind of talking to me, they've asked me one question, Pepita, how do I compete with the phone? When my wife is in the phone, I don't exist. And I can't seduce my wife. I can't become more important, more interesting. It's just, it's almost impossible to be more interesting than the phone phone. Than the soundtracks and everything that's built into it. And the notifications. Now that doesn't mean that this is only a woman problem. It's also a guy's problem because we are really good at focusing on one thing and not being able to hear anything that happens around us. So I have been with the phone sometimes and you have said, I've told you this thing three times. You know what I said? No, I have no idea. I have no idea because I was so focused on that. So it's not only a woman problem, but does that mean we have a problem? Yes, it does. And this is the, this is the idea we do. This is the idea of addiction. So that's the first thing. Can it become an addiction? And let's have a look at, I've got some of the stats here on how much people are using phones because it is a huge part of our modern life. So 70% of adults use social media. So we're talking about social media specifically up to 95% of teens, which is pretty much everyone, 40% of kids aged 8 to 12. This is sort of looking globally on average. This is just social media. This is just one aspect of it. Yeah. On average, adults are using social media two to two and a half hours a day. I think that's very literal. I think people are using that more. This is an average. There are people more, there are people less obviously. But think about that two hours a day, seven days a week, that's 14 hours. That's like two work days. And everyone's stressed with so much work to do and not enough time, but that's two, almost two full working days on social media. On average, we have 7.1 different social media accounts. It used to be just one. And then now it's the average is seven, seven different ones. When you look at high school students, the average is 3.5 hours a day. If you were using any other thing that often, we would typically class it as an addiction. And let's look at some of those signs. Feeling like you need to use it regularly, like daily. Absolutely. Yes. Spending a lot of time on it or thinking about it. Feeling an urge to use it more and more. Absolutely. We see that in social media. Artificially created, by the way. Yes. They have teams of psychologists making these applications more addictive for the kids and for grown-ups. This is so unethical. But they have it. Withdrawing from others and isolating yourself. And I think that's a really interesting one because it's called social media. And you could argue that, well, it actually brings me in contact with people, people overseas that I wouldn't otherwise be in touch with. It does allow me to speak with my friends from school. And at the same time, what we're seeing is that they're very shallow connections. It's not allowing for the deeper. Well, we're having the birthday party. Look at this birthday party last weekend. Yes. You know, I mean, what did you notice? Well, that's the birthday party. So here's the thing. When we go to a birthday, a kid's birthday party or an event like that, I'm always thinking, yes, excellent. Here's an opportunity for him not to be on devices. Here's an opportunity to be out and running and playing. And to be fair, they, yeah, I mean, that's good. To be fair, they did do that. So it was at a jumping place. They were jumping on trampolines and having a great time. As soon as that segment finished and it was time for everyone to come and eat, I would say half of, there are probably about 12 mostly boys in the group, half of them pulled out their phones and sat down. And it was shocking to me as a parent. And I know a few other parents were looking at this, you know, quite surprised. It was just a strange thing to see. By the way, just so the audience knows, they were nine years old. We're not talking about teenagers. And half of them had their own phone at the birthday party, which they took out. And the moment that they took out the phone, they disconnected from everybody else. Well, what I noticed was then others, some, but not all, came and sort of flocked around and stood together. So in my head, I'm thinking, well, oh, at least they're looking at it together. But it was, you know, it was just an odd thing. And I'm not sure exactly how I felt about it. At least for a while, the running and the playing stopped. Yeah. And this is the problem. Because kids that age are supposed to be running, are supposed to be climbing trees, are supposed to be breaking bones. They're supposed to be doing stuff. They're supposed to be using the energy. If they're sitting down together and eating a meal, just the eye contact and the, you know, it's a different experience. So there is that kind of element of your attention is directed here, not to the human beings that are physically present in the room. So the impact that it has on those social skills, you know, look at me, not look at the device. That's why it should be. Look at me, not the device. Not meeting other obligations because of it, losing interest in other activities. We've seen this too. There was a period of time where we saw, and again, speaking about our son, where we saw him stop eating. Like I'm not hungry anymore. You've had two bites. You've got to be hungry. This is not normal for you. You know, I'm not eating because he's desperate to get back to whatever game he's playing or that sort of thing. Because the rule is, while he's eating, there's no device. Right. So he can't wait to stop eating in order to look at the device. Which is a problem? So these are all signs of addiction. If it was any other drug, we'd say there's a problem here. You know, restless or troubled if you stop using it or you're not allowed to use it. Absolutely. Trying to cut down without success, having withdrawal when you try to stop. These are all things we're saying for this. So like it or not, there's definitely a huge potential for addiction here. Now there is one more thing I just want to come back to, which you can insert in later. One of the really negative impacts that I'm seeing and I'm really concerned about this one is the negative impact it has on our ability to focus and to concentrate for an extended period of time. Because the way these things are designed to be strolling from, you know, dopamine hit to dopamine hit to quick, quick, quick, fast. A couple of seconds and people move on. And I've seen some young people go so fast. I can't even keep up with how they're even comprehending this this quickly. But what we're also seeing is that people are not able to pay attention. Like kids who can't sit through a full movie at an age where they should be able to, where they always have been able to. In grownups. We used to have trainings and workshops that went for three, four days and people used to be like, yeah, no worries. We've dealt with them. Now they can't even handle one day. Can we have it in half a day? What about if, can we have all this training in one hour? What? How can you get all this in one hour? So even our ability as grownups, supposedly grown up, we are losing the ability to sit with something for long enough to be of value. Yes. Exactly. Because you cannot have a quality relationship just by giving quality time. Yeah. And it's become really popular. Yeah. I have quality time with my kids. Five minutes every day. Five minutes. It's not enough. You need to have a little bit more quantity, you know, to get the things in. You need quantity and quality. Exactly, right? Quality and quantity. And the same thing with training, the same thing with adults. We have seen that with adults. You know, we become bored a lot easier than we used to. Yeah. Even with good things. And we used to associate that with children. And now adults are behaving like children. Psychologies are infantilized, which is a problem, isn't it? Yeah. And that, that one really concerns me. I really worry where that's going. And by the way, I mean addiction has got different degrees to it. Yes. You know, you can have people slightly addicted to something and before it becomes a problem or a huge problem as the addiction grows. But the separation between people, the damage that quietly, this disconnect. Yeah. And most people don't realize it. So when they did study in the States, only 20% of people said that it impacts their well-being negatively. Right. 30% said, oh no, it doesn't affect me at all. Denial much. 10% said it helps me. I feel better using it. So again, like someone who might have a problem with alcohol or a heroin or, oh no, it's, I can control this. It doesn't impact me. I've got a grip on it. But you know, people can feel good doing something really bad for them. Yeah. We know this. People can feel really good doing something that is in the long term really bad for them. So when we look at the psychology of this, when we look at these devices, these apps that have been designed to get more and more of our attention and to put us in context with people that think in a certain way with us. Yes. Okay. Because I remember as a kid, we didn't have devices. We only had one TV for the whole family. The whole family used to watch the same thing all together. We didn't have influencers telling me, oh my god, you're such a great woman. You'll go, girlfriend. Or you need to work harder in your business and have a Bugatti, whatever it is that these algorithms are pushing us to do. It's influencing how we think. Oh yeah. And we're becoming more separated, not just emotionally and psychologically in terms of attention, but we're also becoming more separated in terms of ideology. Yes. So if you end up listening to certain influencers and either certainly to influence, I put the commas in influencers, because the algorithm is pushing that, we could literally become intellectually separated. Yeah, definitely. Well, we're seeing that such a big divide between, in so many different areas and topics. And this is happening in politics as well, not just in the family. Yeah. Right. The Biden supporters think that everything that Trump says is right. The Trump supporters that say, think that everything that Biden says, there's a huge divide and it's very much influenced by the algorithms that people are watching. Politically, racially, gender, we're seeing all of these massive separations, which are not, I mean, personal story, we had years ago, a conversation online with a very dear friend of ours around something to do with the pandemic. I don't even remember exactly what it was. And there were different perspectives. And what happened, as so often you see happen, is other people start jumping in with their opinions and stoking the fire and creating conflict and creating disagreement to the point where we had to stop the conversation online, because it was becoming very nasty. And I remember saying to Peter at the time, if we were having this discussion around a dinner table, this is our good friend, it would be an enjoyable, interesting debate conversation. But it turned really ugly to the point where we weren't even in contact for a few years. And eventually, we're able to reconnect offline and everything was fine. They acknowledged, I know you, you're a good person. I don't know how we got to this point. But we've seen a lot of friendships and family relationships disintegrate through that sort of conflict. Yeah, and there's something that has crept in in the last few years that didn't exist before is this idea that if you don't think exactly like me in a certain area, you must be a really, really evil person. There's no there's no in between. And I can't have you in my life. And I can't have you. That's it. I have to catch you off because a good person would never I cannot have that. So that kind of approach is dividing society and it's dividing families and it's dividing people. How does that impact their mental health? We're seeing anxiety has increased in the last three, four years. Anxiety has gone through the roof. People are more irritable. We have a shorter fuse. This is impacting, right? Well, and people are more willing to, you know, be nasty and say things online that you wouldn't say face to face to another human being. And another story, a good friend of ours advertised his car for sale online. You know, that sounds like that's a very, you know, non-emotional, easy thing to do, good use of the technology to advertise. Immediately got people saying, Oh, what a piece of junk that car is you're asking for too much. Why would you have that car? Like things that was completely no need for strangers. Why? Why do people feel so that I'm thinking now, this is very similar to what happens to people with cars. When they're getting the car, they're likely to express anger that they wouldn't. If it was, if they didn't have the barrier of the capsule of the car and we call that road rage. I wonder if we should have a new term, social media rage. People are willing to say things that they wouldn't say in person. They're rude, but they wouldn't do that in person. And then the other aspect of, I think we can come up, we can workshop that name, but anyway. But the other aspect was his response to it, like a real loss of faith in humanity, which I think a lot of us have experienced like, how come one person, you know, just mean for no reason to another. And that is one of the impacts. And I know the research is showing that people have, what was it? 67% of people feel a dip in self-esteem when they've been on social media. Well, that's very high. Particularly that comparison, because remember, we're comparing to everyone else's filtered highlights of their amazing lives. And what I noticed a few years ago was, you know, because I'm a human being too, and I naturally fall to the same process you compare. I'm not just comparing against one person's life. I'm expecting myself to achieve all of the achievements of everybody's life. And for me, it's like the professional comparison, because it's not just, you know, people always talk about beauty and lifestyle and things like that, but it's also the professional achievements. That person's won an award in that. That person's published a book. That person's done this retreat. That person's done this presentation. And you go, I need to do all of those things to be equal. Their post has got so many, so many more likes of mine, right? And it was about a dog. And it was about a dog. It wasn't even that important. Knowing this can help keep some perspective. So knowing this can help keep some perspective, but it still impacts our well-being. So those comparisons, fear of missing out. One of the interesting ones, you know, the consequences that we see of this is the emotional regulation skills. And this is one that I think is really important because... What do you mean by that? So that ability to be able to manage our own emotions. And what we do and we log on to this is we give away some of that control over our own emotions because it's designed to keep us excited, to put us in a state of fear, to keep us constantly moving from one thing to another so that we buy because it's all about advertising at the end of the day. And it's very hard to combat that psychologically. We can develop some skill in that area, but you've got to be really onto it all the time. You know the difficult thing with what you say is that in the beginning it doesn't feel like that. When you open Facebook, it doesn't feel emotional. When you're opening Instagram, it doesn't feel emotional. It feels nice. There's lots of visual stuff. We don't have to spend a lot of time in each post because they're very little and it moves quickly. But then all of a sudden you end up two and a half hours, three hours later, and you've looked at thousands of little things that were not taken any time at all. And you haven't been able to pull away because the next post is even more interesting than the last one. And the next one is even more interesting. And what happens is you've been sitting down building up this energy that hasn't gone anywhere. As human beings, we're designed to move. Our bodies are designed to move. If we don't move, energy gets stored up. Where does this energy go? Most people say, oh my God, I'm so exhausted right now. I better lie down so they collect even more energy. If that energy hasn't got anywhere to go, that turns into anxiety because the body's going to tell you, hey, we need to move. We need to move to use this energy to use our body. It doesn't say those words, but this is what it's trying to say. It's limitless. And it gives you anxiety so you move. And then you look at the content, if it's people say, oh, it's news related because I want to be informed. Well, most news is negative and fear inducing and depressing about the state of the world. So no wonder you feel depressed after two and a half hours. And there's no limit to it. I think about it as well. Remember when you used to go to the post box to get your mail that was delivered once a day, if you're lucky, you'd go out and you'd go, oh, I've got three pieces. Or even if it's 10 pieces, you've got 10 pieces of mail. Once they're open, that's it. No more. You've got to wait until tomorrow for any more. I used to get even happy with the promotional material. Really? Because there's nothing else to read. It's terrible. I don't even know what to say about that. The catalogue. That was an event. So it's playing with our emotions. But the time spent, like what you say, the time spent on it, I think there's sort of different categories of these negative impacts that what else could you be doing with that time? You could be exercising. You could be outdoors in nature, both things that are good for your mental health. You could be with your partner, connecting, being intimate with your kids, talking to them, finding out about their day, playing with them. You could be studying. You could be developing yourself in some way. You could be learning a language. You could be doing all these other things. And that's where you lose out in mental health as well. So it's not just the impact that it has in a negative. It's that indirect what you're missing out on. Yeah, that's a good point, because you are missing out. And if you're missing out in the good stuff of mental health, eventually that will catch up with you. Because we call that normally self-care. So self-care is not happening. If maintenance is not happening, what do they say? If you don't use it, you lose it. So if you don't use your good mental health, you lose your good mental health. So for all of these reasons, some of the statistics out there are those who use social media for that average amount a day, two to three hours. You've got twice the risk of having poor mental health. So depression and anxiety are the main ones. Are there any positives? So what are we saying then? Get rid of it completely? Well, first of all, you get a nice dopamine hit and that feels nice. Was that kind of a positive? But if you get too many of those, you become addicted. Also, what I have noticed, for example, on social media, yes, it has put me in contact with people. It has allowed me to maintain contact with some very dear friends that because we live in different parts of the world, we'll have lost touch. So that's nice. That is nice. The ability to put photos up off my trip and share with my loved ones and my friends in one go. It's also quite nice. So there are benefits. It's entertaining. That's also a benefit. There are certain apps and resources and things out there that can be helpful for people. I mean, there's even therapy apps out there, not all created equal. Well, we use our phones quite a lot to be able to work remotely, check emails, check messages, which before we couldn't do that, we had to be receiving the mail, for example, or emails. So definitely, there are some benefits. And we don't want to lose those. I also think that it's simply unrealistic to suggest to people that just get rid of your phone completely or don't have social media. Very tempting sometimes, though. We all know people who don't have social media, and they seem to be fine, normal human beings. But in this day and age, with it so pervasive, I think it's difficult to say don't use it at all. I think it's got to be about setting those realistic limits around it, putting some restrictions into it. Whatever works for you, whether it's a certain number of hours a day, whether it's a day of the week that's technology-free, making sure that certain meal times are sacred and we don't have it at the table. Leave your phone behind sometimes as a family. And what would happen if you went to the beach for half a day and you didn't take a phone? Well, not a single one. That would feel terrifying, wouldn't it? But that was life before. That's how we used to go to the beach. There was no phones. Nobody was freaking out just in case somebody needs to call me. So we have lost that ability. That used to be a strength. What we're saying is that we don't need to get rid of the stupid phone. What we need to do is give it the importance that it deserves. And also know when to make sure that it doesn't creep in our lives. So one of the things that we said in the beginning that we have done is come up with one hour that is dedicated, completely dedicated to each other. No kids, no TV. This is completely about each other every day. Why every day? Because we're married. We love each other. We enjoy each other's company. Why wouldn't it be every day? Can we get more time with each other? Yes, throughout the day we can get more time with each other. It's not limited to one hour. But at least having that hour guarantees that regardless of how busy we are, we're going to come together, which I love. Coming together I love every day. And I think that's important. Couples, we live busy lives. There's so much to do with kids and work, etc. It's so important because I'm seeing so many couples really struggling with their relationships. I mean the levels of separation and divorce now are higher than ever before. This is one part of it that I think is underestimated how big an impact it has. And if you want a 100% guarantee that you are going to become depressed, keep at neglecting your relationship. You will be 100% guaranteed one day. They're a huge part of our mental health. A huge part of suicide, huge part of anxiety. When we're not connected with another human being at a deep intimate level, we suffer. And this expands out also to another sort of strategy more generally, which is to make sure you have your goals in life. Make sure you have other activities that you're focused on. So when your life is full of real life, real world activities, there is less time available for the social media scrolling. That's true. Because you've driven, you've got a target, you've got a purpose. Yeah, absolutely. It makes you an interesting person to have other hobbies except social media. And also teach all this to your kids. They're moving into a world that we don't know what it's going to look like. So starting off with some awareness around how it works, how the algorithms work. If you notice some of these things happening, it's not a surprise. We need to be more savvy around this. But that alone is not enough. It then has to be the action. And for kids, you have a right to put restrictions in as a parent. They may need to be weaned off. They may need to be a gradual weaning. But 100% correct. But I think the more important than teaching this to your kids is role model this to your kids. Because if you're telling your kids, don't be on the phone. And you're on the phone. I'm guilty as charged. Yeah. If I'm telling my kids not be on the phone, but if at every minute that kid sees me on the phone, what do you think they're going to do? Yeah. They're going to think the phone is the most important thing. So let's role model. Don't forget. It's easy to tell other people, yes, you wish you'd be doing this. But the real masters are the ones that do it. So role model that for your kids. Even if it's not for yourself, do it for your kids. Great. So hopefully you have enjoyed this discussion. I told you we're going to be opening up about our own experience with it. We're not perfect. We're working on this every day. We I know that I have got when it comes to dopamine hits, I love dopamine hits and they have an addictive personality towards it. But I also love my wife. I love my son. I love my friends and I love you guys. So I'm willing to do what it takes to handle this. So with that in mind, are we going to do a challenge like a two week challenge? No phones in the bedroom? I mean, okay, I want to know if anyone else is in. I'd be curious to see. Tell us in the comments if you're going to do the challenge. Who's going to do the challenge? And then we can talk about how it went later on. Okay, but how what's that going to be like? We're going to start in when two weeks or starting now. Why wait? Because we don't know when this is published. Okay, so let's start now when it's published. Okay, whenever you see this, you go two weeks and tell us how we know no phones in the bedroom. No phones in the bedroom. So we're going to have to think about what are the potential obstacles to that. We still need an alarm. So how are we going to, but that should not be a big enough excuse to stop it happening. This is the thing with any goal. You set a goal and then you've got to figure out, all right, how am I going to make this happen? Problem solved. Let's do that. All right. Okay. We'll see you in the comments. Hi, I'm Amy Golding, Director of Psychology for the Workplace Mental Health Institute. We hope you liked the video. If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. We have more and more videos being released each week. So when you subscribe, you'll get a notification letting you know when a new one's just been published. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and don't miss out on this vital information for yourself, your colleagues and your loved ones.