The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
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What is the main topic of this episode?
What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Hope you are doing so great. Hey, on today's show, we have a special episode. All things social media, screens, the internets, all of it. If you're like me... You know that this, and you're reading, you read Jonathan Hyatt's book, The Anxious Generation. You are paying attention to what's out in the world with the TikTok bans and the social media stuff and the insane rise in mental health challenges, especially with young teen girls. But I think it's actually in boys too. It just manifests itself differently. Everybody's concerned about it, social media, and they've gamified human connection. it is hard to get off.
It's hard to even, like, it's just, the whole thing's chaotic. And if you pull your kids off of it, then they're crying in their bedrooms that they're missing out on friendships and birthday parties. It's just, the whole thing's a mess. So, I've got a buddy here in Nashville. His name is Carlos Whitaker. And Carlos wrote a book. He is an author and a speaker. He's here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I invited him. We went and had lunch. And I was like, man, you need to come on the show. And I want to talk about your new book. But more importantly, I want to talk about your experience as you unwound this thing. And this is one of the most important conversations I think I've had on this show. And I hope you will not just scroll past it. because this isn't us talking about the science.
You can hear about the neuroscience of social media and the dopamine, all that stuff. And it's not a couple of guys just complaining and ranting and raving. I think this is the most honest conversation I've had on this particular topic about all of us and screens and real life and meals and family time and friends and what we can actually do about it. So I'm super excited to have this conversation with my friend, Carlos Whitaker. Check it out. Pass this episode along to your friends. I think it's a really important conversation. And it's one that the moment it was over, I changed my life. My life's different now. So I hope yours will be too. Check it out. My conversation with Carlos Whitaker. I'm super grateful that you're here.
You have tapped into something that's haunted me for a decade. And... I often, I don't say this lightly, and I'm super selective about who's here. Yes. And it's always somebody that has a direct impact on how I'm seeing the world or experiencing or somebody, I'm going to do something different in my life because. And so to paint you a picture, in 2009 or 10, I was working at a university that was a beta campus for this new little product called Gmail. And they were also a beta campus for this new little thing called, hey, we got this new thing, we're gonna call it an iPhone. And so they shipped them to the university and overnight they passed them out to every student and said, we're gonna follow it and see what happens. And we think this is gonna change everything. And so I was working in student affairs, which is like student mental health, student crisis care, drug use, where they live, all that kind of stuff.
And I saw in real time the unwinding of what Jonathan Haidt's writing about now. I watched it just in real time. And it was wild. And then it was, let's fix it with this new thing called an iPad. Let's fix it with. And as I left, then I began working with students. I've been working with students forever, but I've been working with different kinds of students. And my 20-year higher ed career went from, hey, I think I wanna do this job, to, hey, me and my mom are struggling, or to, I don't wanna be alive anymore. And that arc went so fast, right? The second thing, and I've talked about this to the people who check this show out. I had no social media when I took this job. And I remember a couple years ago, I was in my closet.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic of this episode?
0:29–5:14
2
How can a technology detox change your brain?
5:14–10:37
3
What did Carlos experience during his detox?
10:37–13:05
4
How do screens affect our memory and relationships?
13:05–18:02
5
What lessons can we learn from the Amish about community?
18:02–24:39
6
How can families improve their meal times?
24:39–31:19
7
What are practical steps to reduce screen time?
31:19–1:10:01