← INSPINAR
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, I am Dr. Nidhi Gupta, pediatric endocrinologist and digital wellness coach in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome to Inspinar. It's not too often that you come across a physician, pediatrician in particular, who is as passionate about screen time as you are. I'm honored to have Dr. Michael Rich on Inspenar today. Dr. Rich has a unique combination of experience and expertise in medicine and media which synergize in his health research and clinical work. I'm fascinated by the work that Dr. Rich is doing at Boston Children's Digital Wellness Lab. Dr. Rich, welcome to Inspinar.
- [01:15]
B
Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
- [01:17]
A
Thank you for being here. You have spent 12 years in filmmaking before you decided to move to medicine. What led to that move?
- [01:29]
B
Well, I had the honor and privilege of working as an apprentice as an assistant director to Akira Kurosawa, the great filmmaker who made Rashomon Seven Samurai. And when I came back to Hollywood after two years of that, was not happy with the quality of the work I was being asked to do. So I had an early midlife crisis and went back to college for pre med and then medical school. And as I was interviewing for medical school, many, many of the doctors who interviewed me said, why would you give up that glamorous life for this? And the through line for me is that both of these are very technical skills that require that you learn a lot in a lot of different parts of your brain. Your right brain for the creative stuff, left brain for the technical stuff. But ultimately it's all in service of getting close to what it means to be human, to understand the human condition. And I also, I got a little older and I realized that I felt more comfortable putting my head on the pillow at night, knowing that I had helped one or two people rather than made a big splash in the world.
- [02:43]
A
Being able to utilize the right part of the brain and the left part of the brain and getting closer to the human health is what led to the transition. So beautiful. And along that journey, Dr. Rich, how did the idea of Digital Wellness Lab come about? Knowing that the center of Excellence at Boston Children's was formed 20 years ago when there were no smartphones or iPads in existence back then. The first smartphone was launched close to 2007.
- [03:14]
B
Yes. But I had been working since the early 90s with the American Academy of Pediatrics to develop policy statements around screen use, how that affects kids, physical and mental and social health. Then of course, television. And that is what led to the center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's the sort of predecessor of the Digital Wellness Lab, which worked as a traditional center of academic excellence doing research and education. But what we found was that there's a very adversarial atmosphere out there between those who are for screens, the tech industry, the entertainment industry, and those who are for kids, as if they can't both be compatible. And from my experience in the media world, where I tried to create stories and characters that helped improve our hearts and minds, I didn't feel they were mutually exclusive. But I also felt frustrated, quite frankly, that it seemed that the rest of the world did. And so, after probably 10 of those 20 years running the center on Media and Child Health, I was being put on panels with representatives from the tech industry or the entertainment industry so they could watch us argue. And I would always argue with them that they should stop talking about Internet safety, which kind of knocked them back on their heels because they felt like they were being the good guys here or trying to be the good guys. And I said, when you talk about Internet safety, it presumes the Internet is unsafe, which means that we need to enter it on the defensive. This is not going to help people. The Internet is here. It's not going away. We need to be talking to kids about Internet mastery and so helping them use this powerful tool, much the way we teach them to use the powerful tool of the automobile, not from fear saying, don't hit that tree. Don't run over people, but to master the tool and use it when it's the best tool for the job, but also in that mastery, knowing when it's not the best tool for the job and turning it off, helping the kids
- [05:40]
A
learn to use Internet as a tool and mastering when it is not being used as a tool and to be able to turn it off. Over the last 20 years of working in this field, Dr. Rich, do you feel that Internet has evolved some for good, some not for very good reasons, that we are now needing to have this conversation on a daily basis of keeping our kids safe on the Internet?
- [06:11]
B
Absolutely. And that's kind of the beginning of the transformation of the center on Media and Child Health into the Digital Wellness Lab. And that really came about because feeling frustrated that we were not moving the ball by, you know, arguing with each other, I had a conversation with a leader of the tech industry who said, I wish you'd stop telling us to talk. Stop talking about Internet safety. This is a business that is intensely competitive, intensely secretive, and utterly convinced they're the smartest person in the room. And so I had kind of a eureka moment. And I said, what about instead of just talking to each other about the shared risk, what about we all roll up our sleeves and come to the table together on top of the evidence and work the problem from our respective skill sets? What would happen if we put a pediatrician next to a neuroscientist next to a screenwriter next to a an educator and all of them bring their skill sets to bear on what is frankly an environment that we all share and need to raise young people in?
- [07:23]
A
How do we, in your vision, create that environment in which we can still continue to raise young people in the presence of Internet and keep them using it as a tool? What do you feel needs to happen in homes? What needs to happen in schools and in communities in general to achieve that vision of that environment?
- [07:48]
B
Well, I approach it from the parents point of view first, because the parents are your first and best teachers. But then extend the same skill sets to educators, to counselors, et cetera. And that is to apply what I call the three plus two M's. The three M's of raising a child to be healthy and digitally well are model the behavior with screens that you wish them to see and wish them to do, be the change you want to see. The second is to mentor them with those devices, platforms and applications, sit beside them just as we do when they learn to drive a car and explore the Internet together, starting a dialogue that is going to continue with them as we parent them in the digital space. And the third M is monitor. Have their usernames and passwords. And this is the one parents and kids push back against the most because the parents say I don't have the time to monitor her as long as she's online. And the kids say I want my privacy. But what happens when the parents have usernames and passwords that are able to monitor the kids? The kids behavior improves much the way, for example, random drug testing changes the behavior of workers. Then the goodies are the plus two M's that you gain first from mastery. You get that mastery of these tools, you use them effectively to explore the world, to connect with people you otherwise wouldn't be in contact with, and to live in a larger, more diverse, more inclusive world. And the best one perhaps is making memories. I don't remember anything I do online, but I remember the times I've gone for a walk in the woods with my children, or kicked a soccer ball around the backyard, or watched ants build an anthill. It's our real life direct connection with each other in the Most intimate and friendly, awkward ways that really build the connections and give us a sense of belonging.
- [10:02]
A
Building connections, giving us a sense of belonging. And I strongly feel that's where a sense of empathy, a sense of resilience in life comes about. Because I feel with how busy our lives are, how chaotic things are around learning, empathy and resilience has now become more important for our younger generation than ever before. What makes that so crucial for our kids?
- [10:31]
B
I think we lost a lot when friend became a verb and we started going on social media of various kinds and connecting with people in many ways just to rack up the score of how many people we friended. But how many of those friends are there for you at three in the morning to cry on their shoulder? How many of those friends are really, you know, there as true friends? And the other thing that we've done is off base is that we've used social media the same way that corporations do to market ourselves to the world, to show the great vacation I went on, or my dad's new sports car or the my hot new boyfriend. And what happens then is that people go online seeking genuine connection and then compare and despair because they know their flaws, they know their fears, they know their limitations, and they don't, you know, match up against the. The things they're seeing. So they feel less than it's compare and despair, as they say. And so I think we need to take a step back and first of all, not expect the connections we made through text or tweet or, you know, social media to be the same kind of sustaining relations that we have when we're together with real people. And secondly, that we should learn to use these tools in ways that are authentic, in ways that don't just show the great vacation we've been on, but also talk about the things that scare us, the things that upset us, the things that make us feel weak. Because if you think about it, our great relationships with other human beings are with those people who know our flaws and love us, not despite those flaws, but in many ways because of them. Because we complete each other, because we are able to compensate for each other's weaknesses with our strengths, rather than just being competitive for how happy, rich, successful we are.
- [12:45]
A
We lost a lot when friend became a verb. And social media is by all means a superfluous representation of real life. It's filtered fantasy. We only get to see the good, we never get to see the bad. But our little ones are not smart enough to understand that what they are seeing is not a real representation of real life. So share with us, Dr. Rich, what is some of the work that Digital Wellness Lab is doing to elevate what I call the collective consciousness of youth and families and maybe even healthcare professionals?
- [13:21]
B
We're doing a number of things. One of them is we do regular pulse surveys where we essentially take the pulse of the digital ecosystem and kids within it with a certain focus, whether it's on what kinds of social media spaces lead to what kinds of health outcomes through things like we have a social gaming study going on right now where we actually go online with 9 to 14 year olds and have them show us their lives on Fortnite and on Roblox and Minecraft. And we do a lot around figuring out when we can bring digital literacy into children's lives and how we can do it. Many people ask me, what's the most protective software for, you know, your child online? And I say it sits between your child's ears. And that is to teach them to see, to be critical viewers, critical thinkers from the beginning, from when they first start using media, when and they're sitting on your lap and watching Sesame Street. How do you think that made Elmo feel, etc. So I think that we really have to work on both ends of this, which is, yes, we need in our clinic for interactive media and Internet disorders to be able to treat the young people who have had harm, have encountered harm online and help them get back to a healthier place. But we also need to be doing prevention all the time, really helping kids recognize and actually helping their parents recognize that they live in a seamless, digital physical world that they move in and out of. We can't even measure screen time anymore, let alone limit it because of the way we use screens. So what this is more about is helping all of us to see and hear and use these media in ways that make us healthier, smarter and kinder to each other and also to build that empathy and resilience so that we can offer empathy to others, but also have the resilience not to get knocked down by social comparison.
- [15:46]
A
Gaining a mastery about how we use Internet, how we use screens so that we can give empathy to others and build a resilience so that we are not knocked down by what we see online. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Dr. Rish. Thank you for taking the time to be on inspire. Fascinating conversation. Thank you.
- [16:07]
B
Thank you. Let's do it again.
- [16:09]
A
Absolutely, absolutely. The conversation of digital wellness is going to be a never ending one. And I think we have finally started to make a dent in the issue, which is encouraging. So thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Let's reconnect with the real world. Let's reconnect with health, joy and efficiency. Let's reclaim our time and attention. Let's ungrip devices and grip life. I will see you next time. Thank you.