Dr. Anna Lembke

To really conceptualize digital media as a potent drug and to think about, you know, protecting their child from it.

I think a good analogy for digital media is actually processed food.

So, for example, most parents would not feed their kid ice cream for breakfast, and yet many parents are fine letting their kid, even a very young child, hold the phone at the breakfast table.

I think when we think about it that way, there are occasions when you would give your child ice cream or chocolate cake or what have you, but you wouldn't just let them have it whenever they wanted it all day long.

I think this idea that we're sort of entertaining ourselves to death and there's in fact a famous older book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman is really does capture it well.

It's very subtle and insidious.

It seems harmless.

In the moment it feels good, but it's the cumulative effect over time that really adversely impacts our wellbeing, our mental health,

and truly our ability to connect to other people.

I mean, social media in particular essentially takes our innate need and desire to connect with other people and distills it down to its most addictive elements so that for very little upfront work, all we have to do is swipe right, swipe left,

And it creates this illusion of connection, even when real connection is not happening.

Because real connection with other humans is effortful, right?

We have to go out and find the humans.

We have to, you know, compromise.

There's give and take, there's gonna be conflict, there's frustration.

But digital media and social media in particular removes all of that.

So it's just this seamless experience where we feel

feel like we're connecting.

Or you get the likes or the friends or the followers, you know, the comments.

It's like this trance-like state that we can get in where it just feels so good, like with any drug.