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Dr. Michael Rich
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Dr. Michael Rich
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Dr. Michael Rich
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Alison Shafer
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ACAST Powers the World's Best Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend.
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Minouche Zamorodi
Go Touch grass. You have probably heard this phrase, maybe you have even said it. But beneath the sort of light hearted nature of this meme is something very real and important. A growing sense that staying in touch with our humanity and being present in our bodies matters more than ever in today's digital world. My name is Minouche Zamorodi and I am taking over as host of TED Talks Daily this week to explore what technology is actually doing to your body and mind. In special interviews with scientists, doctors, parents, artists and more, we're going to dig into your physical and mental health on tech how we think about our bodies differently now, how we relate to new innovations that are amazing but also a little scary, and how we can live a healthier life in this high tech era. Tune in on TED Talks daily. Wherever you listen to podcasts,
- [01:57]
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ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
- [02:10]
Alison Shafer (Podcast Host)
Hi, welcome to Parenting the Adlerian Way. I'm your host, Adlerian family counselor and parenting expert Alison Shafer. Each week I answer your burning parenting questions to help reduce the stress of parenting one tip at a time. We'll explore Adlerian psychology together and learn methods of child guidance for raising a happy, confident, capable, resilient child.
- [02:35]
Alison Shafer
Hi, it's Alison. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to have another guest interview today and today I am having a return visitor who I had on the first time at the beginning of the pandemic. So it's going to be great to get caught up now. But it is Dr. Michael Rich and he is the Associate professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and he's the director of the Digital Wellness Lab and practices adolescent medicine at Boston's Children's Hospital. Dr. Rich is the founding director of the first evidence based medical program addressing physical, mental and social health issues associated with digital technology, the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders. As the and I'm putting air quotes, but maybe it should be trademarked. The media attrition. Do you understand? That's like a play on pediatrician, but he's the mediatrician. Dr. Rich offers research based, balanced and practical answers to parents, teachers, clinicians, questions about children's media use and the positive and negative implications for their health and development. Understanding the power of screens to engage, connect and change us all. He's bringing together pediatricians and software engineers, educators and designers, psychologists and screenwriters into the Digital Wellness Lab to synergize in researching, responding to and innovating a digital environment in which we can raise healthy, smart, productive and kind children. Michael, thank you for being back.
- [04:06]
Dr. Michael Rich
Thank you for having me.
- [04:08]
Alison Shafer
I was so excited when I got your email announcing the initiatives that you've taken off during the pandemic. I mean, it was enough to just deal with the surging mental health crisis that happened with adolescents, let alone taking on this initiative. So can you bring our parents up to speed on what you've just launched?
- [04:26]
Dr. Michael Rich
Well, the Digital Wellness Lab is an outgrowth of the center on Media and Child Health, which we've had for nearly 20 years, Boston Children's Hospital. The goal of it was really to build an evidence base of how we all, but children in particular, are affected by the screens we use and how we use them and really looking at the evidence, look at affecting how we, our physical, mental and social health are influenced by these screens and particularly about the way we use them. But after nearly 20 years, as I say, building this evidence base, it really felt like we were still all in our silos. We were still, the academics were working on academic issues, the tech world was building their products and basically beta testing them on the world. The academics would then say, whoa, wait a second, here's some things to be worried about. Of course, in the meantime, the Facebook papers happened in Congress and all of this public upheaval around really revealed that not only was there a vacuum in the middle between the folks who were for kids and protecting kids and helping kids and those who are developing the, developing the content for that technology, I felt that after decades of us criticizing each other, that maybe we should take the contrarian and audacious move of synergizing with each other. The Digital Wellness Lab is in some ways, for those who know it, akin to the MIT Media Lab in the sense that what we are trying to do is bring together smart, innovative, out of the box thinkers from all of the stakeholders in the digital ecosystem and put them in a room together effectively and work the problem. The idea is to put a pediatrician next to a software engineer next to a neuroscientist next to a screenwriter and see what happens when they all focus on the fact that we are living in this digital ecosystem together, many of us are raising children or teaching children or caring for children in that environment, and we need to all bring our skill sets to bear on building an ecosystem that is kinder and friendlier to children, that really focuses on a second bottom line and that is the wellness of individuals and of the society they form. And so that's what the Digital Wellness Lab is all about.
- [07:11]
Alison Shafer
And so I'm so interested. Michael, are people getting along? I love the idea of having all the different stakeholders that have different opinions, but I mean, is there literally any there saying, let's ruin the mental health of children? I want to make a dollar on my app. I mean, when, when does, when you're all in the same room and you're talking, what becomes the contrary position? What becomes the tension point?
- [07:33]
Dr. Michael Rich
The tension point really is that the way that they have been doing business to date, whether they are, you know, making movies for the theater or whether they are building apps or devices, has been based on the metric of profit. However that's defined, whether it's tickets sold, devices sold, or eyeballs on screen. And it's become eminently clear that that is not the only bottom line we should have, that there are other effects on both individuals and society that are unintended. And I mean that quite seriously. In other words, I think that we are going down the wrong road if we are pointing fingers at tech and saying this is big Tobacco, as was done in Congress, tobacco is a product that is toxic when used as directed. These screens are not necessarily toxic when used as directed, but when they are used mindlessly, they can be harmful. What we do can be harmful with them. What we are hoping to do is find like minded individuals, often, frankly people in the business who have kids themselves and are having second thoughts. Everybody knows that Steve Jobs never let his kids have an iPad. And taking that Luddite approach is also not realistic or practical. This is a you know a technology, these are devices that kids need to learn to use and use well in the 21st century to learn, etc. Go ahead.
- [09:19]
Alison Shafer
Well, and I heard to your point about, you know, why we, you know, need to be in conversation together. I heard the gentleman who invented the like button had no idea the ramifications that that was going to have down the road. And in hindsight said, let's end in Canada. They did do testing on the positive impacts of taking that down. And so again, not going in with malicious intent, but only realizing through evidence based research that the outcomes of what we design doesn't always have the, the impact that we want. And so, so long as we're in communication and we all have this sort of ethical through line and we work together, then, you know, we get to emphasize the positive of tech while downgrading and mitigating some of these negative factors.
- [10:04]
Dr. Michael Rich
That's precisely the goal of the Digital Wellness Lab, which is to say this digital ecosystem is here to stay. It is morphing and evolving all the time. And instead of the companies who are creating it either pretending that there aren't bad outcomes or playing defense with publicists and attorneys, we're hoping that they will invest in really understanding what's going on and taking those findings not as criticism of their products after the fact, after they're out there, but baking them into the earliest stages of R and D and really saying we are focusing on keeping our users, our consumers well and helping them to live a better life, to be the best they can be. I think that that is really the difference between tobacco and the tech companies, which is we are finding that there at least are individuals within those companies that see the problem and see the problem also as a business problem, which is how do they sustain their success if people don't trust them, if people don't use them? The idea is, can we get in a room? Can we be essentially constantly tinkering with this and making it better, making it more supportive of children, and really allowing it to be the power tool that it is for good at the same time to avoid the pitfalls.
- [11:48]
Alison Shafer
Yeah. Like nuclear medicine versus nuclear warfare. Right.
- [11:52]
Dr. Michael Rich
I mean, or nuclear power generation versus nuclear warfare.
- [11:58]
Wayfair Advertiser
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- [11:59]
Dr. Michael Rich
You know, I think, you know, this is not, you know, not something to be approached with fear or with hubris. Right. I think this is something that we need to approach quite seriously as a reality of our lives. We have to have the information and strategies at hand for managing it, and we really need to become adept at it and adept at parenting. In the digital space. I think the other thing that has happened, of course, is that because kids are facile with this, they've grown up with it, they know it well. A lot of parents say, I just can't go there. I'm checking out. As long as they're not having sex and selling drugs, I'm okay. I think that we need to parent them in the digital space. And in fact, we need to parent them 360, 360 degrees, understanding that for them there is no difference between reality and virtual reality. There is no online and offline. It is one seamless space that they move in and out of. And we need to be there for them as parents, as teachers, as leaders of society, to give them the skills to navigate that much larger digital and natural environment in ways that are consistent with who they are, who they want to be, what they want to learn, what they want to do.
- [13:37]
Alison Shafer
Yeah. This is what I love about the resources that you've put together. It's a multifaceted. This is the Digital Wellness Lab has things not only for parents, but also researchers and clinicians like me. So let's talk about what the parents can find there. Although I don't want to miss circling back and talking about the other pieces. What can the parents find if they go to the site?
- [14:00]
Dr. Michael Rich
Well, one of the things that we actually did the first edition of just before or just when the pandemic was hitting, and have done one since and are about to release the third edition, the next normal edition is something called the Digital Wellness Guide. I flippantly call it Dr. Spock for Mr. Spock, that it's following the child through the developmental stages, from newborns through to young adults, to really look at the developmental tasks of those periods of life, the ways that the interactive media world interfaces with that, and how we can optimize their well being at each of those stages. So it is everything from here are the great opportunities in this space, here are the things to watch out for and even how to talk to your kids about these things. Because that's another thing that parents often feel uncomfortable with is how do I bring it up to my kid that I'm really not happy that they're playing Grand Theft Auto or even how do I tell my own parents, the grandparents of my child, not to plop them down in front of the television all day? It really is helpful in ways that are very practical to help parents in a knowledgeable and confident way, do their parenting, guide their children, and learn with and from their children about this Rapidly evolving ecosystem, how to be the best humans they can be.
- [15:50]
Alison Shafer
One of the things I appreciated about the design of it, yes that it's in the developmental steps, but within each developmental step you talked about all the kind of major milestones. So there's things in, in the early infancy, for example toddler that is, is about the importance of movement or fine motor skills or gross motor skills. And, and it may or may not intersect with technology but you're making sure that everybody has this continuing guideline of all the important major developmental steps and where it may or may not be impacted by technology. And you certainly see how it infuses. You might not, you know, it may not have crossed your mind the research on the difference between a parent reading a story with a child on their lap and how to point out the different words and pictures and make those connections versus grammar, reading on Facetime or something. And so it was very comprehensive and really informative and robust. I thought it was fantastic.
- [16:51]
Dr. Michael Rich
We're trying to make it as practical as possible, right. So it's something that parents can refer to if they have questions but also to open their eyes to some things. For example that there are a number of quote baby videos that imply either by their name or with a label on it that they are going to make your baby smarter and there is no evidence that they work. And in fact there's some evidence that kids who spend a lot of time with them are actually delayed in things like language acquisition which is such an important thing in the early years of life. I think that we are trying to look in as clear eyed a way as possible about exactly what is happening for the child, what is happening in that interaction between the child and the screen and how parents can be present in their child's world. It also talks about the parents use of their devices too, which is a concern that there is good evidence that less interaction from a parent leads to more problems for the child both in learning and mental health down the road. A parent who is staring at their smartphone while with their child is not available to that child, is not there to enjoy the child, observe the child, play with the child, teach the child and just be with each other. One of the things that I have been known to say is instead of searching for killer apps, we should be searching for killer bees. Why would we search for killer bees? Well, they are be balanced in our online and offline lives. Be mindful, use these power tools for what they do well but also turn them off when they don't do everything well. Note, make Them the default position. And perhaps most important, be present. Be present for your child. Don't take devices to the dinner table. Do not be staring at your. Your tablet or your laptop while you are with your kids. You are not going to do the work you're trying to do well, because they will want to distract you and you're not there for them. Remember why we had kids in the first place. We wanted to enjoy these new humans.
- [19:26]
Alison Shafer
I often think that when I see people walking down the street pushing a stroller on their phones, and I think, well, the baby might not be squawking and the baby might not be complaining and fussing, but that there is magic that happens developmentally when we just share a gaze and mimic each other's facial expressions. And you'd probably point out, look at the tree. There'd be other things that you would be doing if that phone wasn't there. We might not be noticing that we're denying them a developmental moment.
- [19:54]
Monica Reinagle
But.
- [19:54]
Alison Shafer
But we are.
- [19:55]
Dr. Michael Rich
We are. Absolutely. And, you know, we learned a lot when the fall of the Ceausescu regime in Romania happened, and we went the orphanages where these kids had had minimal stimulation. Basically, they were warehoused, and they didn't make a noise because they learned very early on that making a noise made no difference. And so they were in a state of high stress but low interaction with people. And we're finding that their brains develop differently. They have a lot of not just emotional and behavioral problems, but actually intellectual problems because of that lack of stimulation. I worry about that when I see parents pushing a swing on the playground while checking their email and things of that nature. I think it's a really important opportunity to be with your child when, frankly, this moment is fleeting. You know, they're born one day, and next day thing, you know, you're sending them off to college never to see them in the same way again.
- [21:11]
Acast Announcer
Right.
- [21:11]
Dr. Michael Rich
And so let's. Let's enjoy our children. Let's participate with our children. Let's be with them.
- [21:18]
Monica Reinagle
Yeah.
- [21:19]
Alison Shafer
Including as you get into the older developmental stages, you talk about the importance of Coldplay.
- [21:25]
Dr. Michael Rich
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, instead of telling your kid, you hate this video game or whatever, sit down next to your kid and play it with them. Now, you will never have a chance of beating them, but you're doing something very important there, which is saying, I love you, I respect you. I want to understand why this engages you. I want to be part of that world with you. And then when you finally figure out the 47 different moves you have to make to steal a car in grand theft auto. And you turn to your child and you say, now I finally figured out how to steal cars. Let's talk a little bit about why you might want to practice that over and over and over again. We can't expect them to have the executive functions of impulse control future thinking that they will not get fully until their mid to late 20s. But what we can do is scaffold the development of those executive functions. We can set an example for them and lead by example with how we use these tools, but also how we are present in their lives. One of the dangers, of course, is that if we allow kids sort of free rein in the online space and don't have any involvement with them, it can become like rock and roll, which is. I like it even more because mom and dad don't understand it and don't like it. And what we're losing here is a real opportunity to both be with them, but also to guide them through what can be a confusing and sometimes scary place on the Internet. They can end up in places that they don't understand or are frightened by. But if you're not present for them, they don't see you as their support, as their advocate so much as a cop who's trying to get them to turn it off.
- [23:26]
Alison Shafer
Yeah, can you speak to. Just because you brought up the grand theft auto. And so what do we know about the impact on our older kids that are exposed to that kind of, Whether it's in gaming or social media around values that are violence derogatory to women. You know, what does the research say in terms of how fearful parents should be? That if they're playing this and enjoying it and it goes against the family values, is it making them more violent? Is it making them have lower opinions about women?
- [24:03]
Dr. Michael Rich
Frankly, we don't know for sure. But what the evidence indicates is not so much that it's teaching kids to take a gun to school and shoot up their school so much. It's not so much about copycat behavior as it shifting the center. It's shifting the likelihood that an argument will evolve into a fight, a physical fight, that the way we talk to each other is coarsened and is not empathetic. And so it's really more that it may normalize misogyny, it may normalize racism. It may normalize those things where kids don't even recognize that they are committing little microaggressions all day long. And so I think what we have to understand is that these interactive media are Arguably the best educational technology we have out there in the sense that a video game sets a set of conditions and environment and a set of rules. You are punished for doing things wrong, you are rewarded for doing things right. Now that may be playing soccer and it may be shooting people. And so I think we just have to be very respectful of the fact that for children, every moment is a teachable moment. And we need to not let them go rogue essentially with these games or devices, but have a presence in their lives that can give them some guardrails, you know, let them drive, but they need guardrails on that road.
- [25:51]
Alison Shafer
Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. So this guide, which is comprehensive, easy to read, lots of bullet points, lots of examples, you've got, you know, you've got research in there, you've got parents, typical questions, scripts for how to respond to things. It's, it's, every parent should go on. There's a PDF version, there's an online version. We're going to put all, all of these in the show notes. But the other thing I was impressed with that you also had, which I recommend to all my parents, if you're going to sit down and hand over devices to your kids at whatever age that might be, you know, a hand me down tablet when your kid is interested in paw patrol, all the way up to a fully wi fi enabled Internet device, smartphone for a kid. But you've got an opportunity for parents to have a structure to talk about if you're going to have devices. We need to have an understanding about responsibilities and a bunch of other things that parents need to cover. So can you talk about your media plan by age that's on your site as well?
- [26:49]
Dr. Michael Rich
Sure. I mean, and I will say with a caveat that every child is not the same. So these are not hard and fast rules of what you do at what age. You know, it's not like on your 13th birthday, you magically become capable of what you weren't capable of 24 hours ago. So I think the most important thing is for parents who do know this child better than anyone on the face of the earth, who also understand that their different children are different and that one child might be ready to go on social media and behave themselves at age 10 and one may not be able to do it yet at age 20. So I think the first thing is to really know your child and observe your child and like with the very young ones, to observe what their attention span is, while it's very easy to plop them down in front of a Television and say, oh, it's Sesame Street. It's good stuff. It is good stuff. But children have a limited attention span. And you will see that attention will wander off at a certain period of time. And sometimes it's just a matter of a few minutes with the very early children, and that's your cue to move to something else. You know, so turn off the tablet and get blocks or read a book or, you know, take. Put them in the sandbox. The kids learn all the time. We need to be aware of how they learn and how to have the learning materials available to them when they are most open to them. So that being said, you know, one of the things that we hear a lot is, when should I give my kid a smartphone? And the wireless companies have done a really good job of scaring parents into believing that their child needs to have a cell phone with them at all times, just in case, you know, things get bad. What ends up happening, of course, is that that phone is a distraction from the business at hand, whether that be listening to a teacher in a classroom or just being with friends. We are forgetting a little bit that one of the great learning curves of childhood is that you are on your own as an individual in school. You don't have mom or dad there with you. Unfortunately, having phones means that there are some parents who helicopter in regularly during the day and never let their child explore being on their own. So they are not allowing their child to make mistakes and learn. They're not allowing their child to build their confidence in managing themselves in the world. And so I think that particularly there are some sort of hard and fast rules. Like there's a group called wait until 8 that says, only in 8th grade do they get phones. Again, 8th grade is not a magical marker of being able to handle a smartphone. But when a child asks for a phone and they will, I say sit down with the child and ask them what they need it for, what they will use it for. And if their answer is, I need it, because everyone else has one, that's not thinking of it as a tool. That is, you know, that is thinking of it as a status symbol. And I think that when they can articulate how they're going to use it, that's when you, before they even get the phone, you say, okay, here are the things you can use it for. Here are the things you are not to use it for. I am going to have access to your phone. I'm going to have access to your passwords. Not just be your friend on social media, but actually have access to your passwords because you are venturing into a world alone otherwise. And I want to be there for you. It's not to police them so much as to be a teacher, a mentor, a guide. And let's not make it rock and roll. Let's not make it something you have to hide from your parents. Let's face facts. When kids who are 10, 12, 13, 14, and they talk, I want my privacy as they do. Privacy to them means so mom and dad can't see it doesn't mean the rest of the world, they could care less because the rest of the world doesn't have, you know, that, you know, palpable reality to them. And so, you know, and they can't understand the concept that what they post today may affect them a decade later when they apply for a job or apply to college or something of that nature. And so we need to be present for them and we need to have them feel that they can be responsible. And we also need to have them determine in that conversation where we talk about what you're using it for, what you're not using it for, have them determine the consequences. Should they go over that guardrail, you know that you know, and that's when they will say because they want the phone, they say, well, you can take it away for a week or a month or whatever it is, but have them have ownership with, of their phone use of their device use, and have them have ownership of the plan for using it. So it's not about you being a police officer so much as you supporting their success.
- [32:30]
Alison Shafer
And what I loved about that guideline then to your point, you don't have to tick off every box or whatever, but it gives parents a scaffolding of like, what are those vital conversations? What agreements do we need to have up front at this age? Age. And they do change by age. It is, it is different. The, the amount of, of how tight the guardrails are for a six year old is going to be different than the guardrails are for, for an eight year old. But you might not have thought of all these things. And one thing I talk about parents is just simply the cost. I mean, if you've got a kid who still can't bring home a pair of mittens, do you really want to buy him a 600 phone? Like I'm just like, you know, Exactly. And if they break it and you replace it, you know they're going to break it every time there's a new upgrade because you're probably going to not want to move them from an iPhone 8 to a 12, but if it's broken, why would you go back to the old model? So, you know, we have to have agreements about just the responsibility of caring keeping of an actually expensive piece of property.
- [33:29]
Chase Sapphire Preferred Advertiser
Right?
- [33:29]
Dr. Michael Rich
And kids hate this. But there's nothing wrong with starting with a flip phone. There's nothing wrong with starting with, you know, a phone that will, you know, voice, have voice communication, have text communication, but doesn't have access to the whole Internet to, you know, play Candy Crush or, you know, buy shoes or whatever you can. I mean, you can do anything online. So I think that it's very important to help them learn to use these devices and platforms much the way we help them learn to drive a car. We don't throw the car keys to a four year old and say have at it. You know, we don't give them a power just because they asked for it. We introduce it at a time when they need that tool, at a time when they, to your best judgment, can handle it responsibly and respectfully of both others and of themselves. And then you sit white knuckled in that front seat while they drive a few times, you do it with them, both to guide them, but also to observe them and see how well they're handling it, how effectively they are using this tool and respecting this tool.
- [34:46]
Alison Shafer
And also, I just want to add a little caveat there too, which is, I know this is a quote from my friend Paul Rasmussen that says if you expect your teenager to be a perfect adult, you're going to be disappointed. But if you expect your teen to be a perfect teen, you'll be okay. I mean, when we're looking at digital citizenship, and we do need to train them about how to be a good online citizen, but we also have to remember that we didn't, you know, sit down and join our children's sleepover while they were telling silly jokes. And you know, if my parents heard every single thing I said, I mean, I've gone back and read my diaries and we made up lyrics that were like, you know, not harming people.
- [35:26]
Dr. Michael Rich
Omg.
- [35:29]
Alison Shafer
I mean, come on. I mean, kids are gonna whatever, say dead baby jokes and make whatever, they're gonna go there. And so if we scrutinize every single text, every single interaction without, you know, keeping it in proportion. Yes, yes, learning opportunity when they cross the line. But we can't expect adult perfection in behavior as they're navigating these things either.
- [35:55]
Dr. Michael Rich
And if we try to, you know, kind of be over their shoulder the whole time. They will never learn to self discipline. I mean, part of parenting is moving discipline from outside into inside out. And if they know that you're there hovering over them, their whole motivation is going to be to subvert that as best as possible to get around it, to develop workarounds. But if you give them a little bit of freedom and essentially expect responsibility with that freedom, and if they stumble, then you pull back a little bit on the freedom. It's sort of like walking a dog. And how much leash you give the dog, right? The dog wants to go, go, go, and you let them go, go, go, until they growl at another dog or they do something that is less useful and you pull the leash back a little bit. And the same thing with, with kids. And I do want to address that issue of perfect adult, perfect teen and say that neither of them actually exists.
- [37:06]
Alison Shafer
Good point.
- [37:07]
Dr. Michael Rich
Humans are imperfect, right? And we parents are imperfect. So one of the things that I really encourage parents to do is to first of all, expect that they will be imperfect as parents. It is more of an art than a science. It can be supported by and guided by science. But the reality is we are making hundreds of risk benefit analyses on behalf of our children every day. And sometimes we'll make the right decision, sometimes we won't. And we will learn that only after the fact. So first of all, expect that we will be imperfect, forgive ourselves in advance, and keep trying to perfect ourselves. That, I think, is a really important thing to keep in mind because I think parents feel a lot of guilt, right? They. And, you know, they feel guilt about putting their kid in front of the tv. You know, they feel guilt about, you know, whatever that is. Wasted energy. You know, if we feel guilty, if we, you know, spend a lot of angst on all of that, we're not using that energy to help our children. We're using it to torture ourselves. And so I encourage parents not to enter into this world of digital parenting with fear, but with confidence and with the expectation that we will manage it imperfectly. We will treat it as an ongoing work in progress, which frankly, parenting is anyway. Let's learn from our kids who are incredibly facile with these tools, and let's respect their voices in it, but let's keep them safe and healthy and nurtured to be the best humans they can be.
- [38:57]
Alison Shafer
Yeah, and most. I think most parents are doing better than they know, and they need to maybe hear that from people like you, that vote of confidence, like, it will be okay. You're Doing fine. It's good enough. It's good enough parenting.
- [39:11]
Dr. Michael Rich
Yeah. And kids are amazingly resilient. And here's another thing that I want to throw out there that I thought about when we were talking about parents pushing strollers and looking at their phones. I think we teach kids that boredom is a bad thing. Boredom is something to be avoided. Boredom is something that we fill with memes online or emails or cooking shows or whatever. Boredom should be a child's friend. Boredom is where creativity and imagination happen. And if we fill that space with whatever drivel is coming over online, we never exercise those muscles of reflection and thinking and thinking the new. And boredom is the seed of creativity. Not just because it creates some empty space to fill, but because that empty space is a little uncomfortable. And so we want to fill it with. I mean, when was the last time you saw kids lying on their back in the grass making shapes out of the clouds? Doesn't happen anymore. It used to happen all the time. And so when my kids say, I'm bored, I say, excellent. Right. I think we need to bring back and embrace boredom because otherwise we will end up in these echo chambers that we enter online, and we will never break out of them and create something new.
- [40:43]
Alison Shafer
Yeah.
- [40:44]
Dr. Michael Rich
Beautiful.
- [40:44]
Alison Shafer
And I know you have an artistic background. I come from, you know, my mother was an art teacher. But also because artificial intelligence is going to take take away all those other responsibilities. If there's one quality that we know humans do better than machines, it's being creative. We need to really hold on to that capacity.
- [41:01]
Dr. Michael Rich
Absolutely. Absolutely. And we also have to remember that even AI is created by humans. And if we don't keep our imagination and creativity, AI will be similarly stunted. And so we need to understand that this tool is not a replacement for us, but as an extension of us. And can we use it to do those busy work things that will free us up? I mean, I think one of the great ironies is when the personal computer came about, when the smartphone came about, it was always think about how much more efficient we're going to be and how much more free time we will have. And what did it do? It turned us in exactly the opposite direction into people who work 24 7.
- [41:51]
Acast Announcer
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- [41:52]
Dr. Michael Rich
And so I think we have to take a step back and say, what do we want from ourselves? What do we want from life? What do we want from our children? And let's remember to enjoy the process, not just be productive.
- [42:08]
Alison Shafer
There's a. There's. That's my. That is my quote of the week. Right there. I love that. Liz, I want to be mindful of your time here. So we know at. At the if people. I'm going to put up the links. So if people visit the digital Wellness Lab, they're going to get, not only that, the wellness guide, the media plan, the opportunity to ask a media attrition. You've people can submit questions there as well. But there is also that database of research that, you know, you are the hub of. If people are saying, what does the research show? You've got that hub in the Pulse reports. And then the last thing, which I know we could probably do an entire other podcast on, but you also are focusing in on something called problematic interactive media use. P I M U. And you even teach courses to people like me, who's a clinician, because this comes up in my practice all the time. But could you just say, can you give the definition of what a problematic interactive media use is and, and how parents can get support for that?
- [43:12]
Dr. Michael Rich
Sure. And there'll be a little bit of a backstory here in that since the mid-90s, there has been concern about video game addiction or Internet addiction. And you know, it was originally proposed, in fact, as a satire on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And yet people said, but I have this problem, which is I can't break away from the Internet. An Internet addiction disorder is an identified diagnosis. In China and in Korea, we are seeing a fair number of kids who go down the rabbit hole, if you will, to the point where they are not sleeping properly, they're not getting up for school, some of them are dropping out of school. We've even had some kids who have attempted suicide because their parents took the router out or something of that nature. It's quite serious in a small group of kids. The problem is that we have gone down the wrong angle. When we go down the addiction angle. This is not an addiction, as we would think of, to cocaine or opioids or nicotine or alcohol, in large part because the goal here is not to abstain from this behavior, but to self regulate, to be able to use it effectively. Kids need interactive media to learn, to work, eventually to entertain themselves, to have a social life. We learned that in great detail during the pandemic and lockdown, when that was the only connection we had to the outside world. And so we've also seen a number of kids, you know, go off the rails with this, you know, with a year of remote learning, etc. A couple of things that we have discovered, first of all, that the Addiction model doesn't work in a number of reasons, for a number of reasons. One being that it doesn't have a biologically reproducible effect on us when using and especially when withdrawing, the way true addictions do. Also, the word addict and addiction are stigmatizing in our society. We think of it as something. As a character flaw or something that needs to be punished rather than something that needs to be healed. I think that that keeps a lot of kids and parents from care early on in the process when it's much easier to redirect. It's only when they really go down the tubes that they end up showing up at our clinic. One of the things we're trying to do with this clinic is to characterize what's going on so that we can feed that back into the system so that pediatricians at school, guidance counselors, and teachers who see early signs can call it out and we can correct it when it's easier to correct. Also to be able to prevent it for most kids, because many kids use these devices and platforms very effectively and don't get in trouble. But I think that the other piece of this that is really we're misguided or to the idea of Maslow's Law, of the instrument. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. There are over 80 different terms for this. Everything from smartphone disorder to video game addiction, et cetera, et cetera. What we are finding is that first of all, it's not just gaming, which the DSM 5, the statistical manual, and actually the World Health Organization pointing fingers at gaming disorder. It is the interactivity that draws us in and the variable reward system built into it. But interestingly, we don't even think that this is actually a diagnosis, but maybe a syndrome. In other words, a collection of symptoms of underlying issues that are playing themselves out in the interactive space. Because we have yet to find a young person who doesn't have some underlying psychological struggle that is driving these behaviors. ADHD is huge in the kids who have gaming problems. Anxiety huge in the kids who have social media problems. What we have found is that if we can identify and treat that underlying driver of these behaviors, then the behavioral modification improves. Another fun thing about Pai Mu problematic interactive media use is you can write it with two Greek letters.
- [48:11]
Alison Shafer
Pai Mutter.
- [48:13]
Dr. Michael Rich
Isn't that awesome?
- [48:15]
Alison Shafer
I like it. That's amazing. Listen, I know you've got to get off and keep doing your important work there on site. Thank you so much for all you've shared, for the ongoing work that you're doing. I know this is you've, you've launched, but it's, it's meant to be a growing, continuing body of knowledge and resources for parents. So I'm going to encourage everyone to go visit all the links and hopefully we'll have you back as you've got new things coming to report to us.
- [48:39]
Dr. Michael Rich
Absolutely. Yeah. Please use our materials and also tell us what you need that's not there. Right. Tell us what your questions are. Your concerns are that we can hopefully
- [48:50]
Alison Shafer
answer and keep developing materials to address it as it grows and changes. Wonderful. Well, thank you for all you do. Take care. Until the next time.
- [48:59]
Dr. Michael Rich
Okay, be well. Take care. Bye bye.
- [49:04]
Alison Shafer
As you know, it takes a village
- [49:06]
Alison Shafer (Podcast Host)
to make a podcast. So thanks to my team including Max Cot, my editor and technician, as well as the crew at H2O Digital. This podcast was recorded in Toronto, Canada. We acknowledge the land we are meeting on is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabek, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat people, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Metis. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.
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Alison Shafer
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Alison Shafer
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Alison Shafer
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Alison Shafer
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Monica Reinagle
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