Jacqueline Nesi
Appearances
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Yeah, it's a great question. I think so. The first thing, of course, is to be aware, right? To know, like, think about, you know, when we're turning to our device, what exactly we're doing on there and when that's feeling like a problem to us, right?
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
So for many people, this is something like they're happy to use their phone for utilities, things like Google Maps to get directions somewhere, or they want to be able to make phone calls, things like that, that are more Even like they want to be able to listen to a podcast like this one or to music. So maybe those are things that they want to be able to do on their phone. They appreciate that.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
They don't feel like it's getting in the way. But then there are other activities they might start to recognize are sort of the culprits for things that are not making them feel as good. For many people, that's things like mindlessly scrolling social media or maybe automatically, you know, reflexively checking email or checking a news app. Those kinds of things tend to come up a lot.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
But there are also a lot of tools that you can use. You know, on the iPhone, there is the screen time setting. You can go into your screen time settings. You can set time limits on certain apps, or you can block apps at different times of day using settings like downtime. Android devices also have a similar feature through their digital well-being tools.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
And then the other thing I would say is just outside of the sort of like technical side of things, there are things you can do just in your day-to-day habits as well to try to reduce your mindless use if that's what you're looking to do. Yeah. You can try to set phone-free times of day, whether that's meals or other times. You can try to set phone-free locations of your house.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
So certain places where maybe you decide you're not going to use your phone, certain rooms or maybe on the couch or something like that. I think you can talk to your family and friends about what sort of the phone guidelines are going to be when you're spending time with each other. And that can go a long way.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
People do find it very hard to do this kind of thing. So in many of the studies that ask people to reduce their use of their phones or of social media, the compliance is somewhat low, meaning that it's hard to get people to do this. It's just tricky for a lot of people. But in most cases, they do find that when people stick to it, when people do it,
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
they do end up reporting improvements in mood and well-being and other factors. So it can certainly make a difference.
Something You Should Know
Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
The other thing I would note that can make a big difference in terms of well-being is trying to reduce phone use around sleep. We know that our device use can really interfere with sleep when it's keeping us awake at night. One thing that seems very simple but can make a big difference is charging phones outside of the bedroom when you go to sleep.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
And there is some evidence that that can improve both the length and the quality of people's sleep.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Well, I think when it's in the room, the problem is that there's too much temptation for many people to grab it. So, if you, you know, or maybe it's making noises in the middle of the night that's waking you up. Or, you know, if you can't fall asleep or you wake up in the middle of the night, you reflexively go to check it and then that keeps you awake longer.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
So, sort of having it out of sight, out of mind can make a big difference.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Yeah, so with video games, I think that where the research stands right now is that, unsurprisingly, it depends, right? It depends on who the kids are. Kids are affected in very different ways when they're using video games. It depends on what exactly is happening in those video games. Generally, you know, there was a big concern for a while about violence in video games.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Generally, the research does not support any long-term links between playing violent video games and, you know, violent or aggressive outcomes in the long term. So some of that concern, I think, has been somewhat overblown. That said, I think there's good reason for parents to be aware of the kinds of things that their kids are being exposed to in video games.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Yeah, so I think in terms of the actual technology and the effects, there's nothing specific about a phone or a tablet that's inherently worse than a TV, right? Like it's still a screen that's being watched and that's it. I think practically there are some differences. So with a tablet or a phone, obviously you're not having the same experience of with a TV, you turn it off,
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
and it's off, and that's sort of it. And then you get up and you walk away. With a tablet or a phone, of course, it often comes with you. And so that makes it just a different experience in terms of the ease of putting it away, of stopping to use it. The activities that you do on a phone versus or a tablet versus a TV also sometimes differ.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
You know, so you might be using more social media or other apps on a phone versus on a TV. Maybe you're watching more shows.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
you know with a with a tv show it tends to have more of a definitive end point right like an episode ends and that's kind of the end versus when you're scrolling on social media it sort of can continue on forever well it's a topic that is the subject of a lot of conversation and concern maybe especially for parents
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Alright, thank you so much, Mike.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Thank you so much for having me.
Something You Should Know
Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do think that there broadly is a very negative narrative when it comes to screen time. And I don't know if that is always warranted based on what we know from the research. What we actually know is that it's more of a mixed bag, right? Like the effects of screen time really depend on what's happening during that screen time. and on who the person is.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
You know, people have very different reactions to the same experience on their screens. So there's a lot that goes into it. But when it comes to thinking about the risks of screen time, I would say there's two broad categories of risks.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
One is just around the time spent and concerns that that time is getting in the way of other things that are important for our well-being, whether that's spending time in person with friends or family or spending time outside, being physically active. When screen time starts to really get in the way of those things, then I think that that certainly can be a risk.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
The other category I would say is around the content we're seeing on our screens. You know, we know that there's a lot happening. For example, when we're scrolling social media, there's a lot we see that maybe is not the best for our well-being, is maybe not making us feel our best. And so I think that's another risk as well.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Exactly. Or maybe you are, but you're not really totally present in whatever that other thing is that you're doing.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Yeah, you know, it's funny. There's actually in the research, psychologists have kind of come up with all these different names for that exact phenomenon because it is so common. So there's a word called technoference, meaning technology and interference. Typically that's used in like parenting work.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
You know, there was a big concern for a while about violence in video games. Generally, the research does not support any long-term links between playing violent video games and violent or aggressive outcomes in the long term.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
So where technology is really interfering with interactions that parents are having with their kids. And then there's another term that's kind of funny called fubbing, which is basically phone and snubbing. meaning typically used in more like partner and friend kind of research.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
So thinking about when we're on our phones and in the presence of friends or partners and that is in some ways, you know, we're snubbing them because we're not giving them our full attention.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
And there is some evidence that, unsurprisingly, that that experience can have negative impacts on the relationship, on our sense of connection and relationship quality, but also on our mood and our well-being. I think we often think that spending that time on our screens is going to make us feel better or less bored or whatever it might be.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
But actually, it does tend to have a more negative impact on our mood.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Yeah, there's an interesting study actually that came out last year, which I think really illustrates this, where it was with college students. And they essentially had college students in a waiting room, like waiting to what they thought was participate in the actual study. But half of the students, they had wait with their phones. and half of them, they had to wait without their phones.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
The students who didn't have their phones thought that they were going to feel worse, thought they were going to be bored, they thought it was going to be awkward, waiting around all these other students with no distraction of their phones. But actually in the end, unsurprisingly, they ended up feeling better.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
They ended up reporting better mood at the end of the study because they ended up socializing with the people around them and weren't as distracted by their devices. So I think that what we think is going to feel good is not always the thing that ends up actually making us feel good.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
No, yeah. So, they provided some kind of entertainment for those students if they wanted it. You know, I remember this particular detail of this study is that they had a giant Jenga game in the room in case students wanted to play and some other stuff around. But for the most part, they were just waiting with other students.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
So, I think it was more about the socializing where they ended up, you know, striking up conversations.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Yeah. You know, one of the things that we know about screen time and phone use is that, you know, as I said before, I think there are ways that it can be done where it can promote our well-being and ways where it can really interfere with our well-being. And part of that I think really comes down to the social aspects.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
So if we're using our phones to promote connection, social connection, whether that's we're sending a text to a friend to check in on how they're doing, maybe we're sending someone a message to make plans to meet up, those kinds of things obviously are going to be good, are going to make us feel better.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
But if we're using our phones in ways that are interfering with social connection, whether that's, you know, we're sitting on our phones scrolling and looking at how much fun everyone else is having on social media, or we're sitting on our phones when we should be interacting with the people around us, those kinds of activities are going to have a more negative impact.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
It's a good question. My sense from the research is that there's certainly a good portion of people, I think probably the majority of people, who feel like they spend too much time on their screens. I think that that's a pretty common experience. Of course, there are plenty of people out there who feel good about their screen use.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
But I do think it's common for people to feel like they are spending too much time and to not be happy about that.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Yeah, you know, I think that part of what makes us so challenging is that, you know, the screens that we're using right now, phones, in particular smartphones, in many cases the apps we're using on those smartphones, are really designed to attract our attention, like to be hard to put down. Right.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
Like we we know that there are features of our devices like notifications, which sort of ping and remind us to come back to them. Or if we're on social media, something like an endless scroll where there is a social media feed, there's no end to the feed. And so it makes us want to keep going. These kinds of things really make it so that we are inclined to use our devices more.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
And I thought, wow, look at her. That's so rare.
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
yeah i think a lot of our use is really yeah as you're saying really habitual really sort of mindless it's not necessarily a choice we're making always to pick up our phone or to do a certain activity on our phone it's really more um that it's just automatic at this point um we've sort of gotten in the habit of using it a certain way um that's one reason why i think that um
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Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
One thing, one first step we can take to try to improve our relationships with our devices is to think about using it more mindfully. Less mind, lessly, and more mindfully. Meaning just taking a step back and really trying to be aware of the times when we reach for our phones, that automatic unlocking behavior that so many of us do, and really trying to think about when we're using it and why.
Something You Should Know
Your Brain on Screens: Myths and Facts & How Your Body Keeps You Alive
What's the purpose?