Dr. Faye Begetti

to the medication.

And it's very similar in technology.

We all have ups and downs with our mood and our anxiety, but if at the same time you feel that you have really problematic habits that you cannot control and the media is constantly telling you that this is going to do you harm, that situation is being played out in your mind and it's creating a vicious cycle.

Yes, absolutely.

And certainly in my waiting room, when I go call patients in, there will be many people on their phones.

I mean, we hardly have magazines around anymore.

But firstly, they're trying to fill the time and they're trying to do that with content that's

relevant to them because I remember the old days with the magazines and they were outdated magazines that I had no interest in reading.

So it's not necessarily that picking up a magazine would be a better use of my time in that situation.

The second thing is that even though people are in a waiting room and waiting to see a clinician, they still feel the need to be productive.

And part of that is due to work and life pressures.

A lot of people actually bring their laptops into hospital when they're admitted and are taking meetings and are answering emails.

And how much of that is it external pressure that they don't

we have created a workforce that we are not allowing people to rest and recover.

So there is that external pressure, the filling the time, but also coping with difficult emotions, because our phones have really become coping tools.

And when you're anxious or frustrated in a waiting room, and you maybe will be waiting to hear something that's not so pleasant,

you can use your phone as a form of digital distraction.

This is actually termed, we all have sort of emotion regulation and using our phone is part of external emotion regulation when we use

mechanisms outside our own brain to manage our emotions.

And a lot of those people may well be texting a friend.