You hear a lot today about how our ample screentime is affecting our mental health. But how is it affecting our bodies, and how is that impact on our bodies affecting, well, our mental health?

My guest today will unpack the ways that digital technology is sapping our vitality, and offer a simple protocol to get it back. Her name is Manoush Zomorodi, and she’s the host of the TED Radio Hour and the author of Body Electric. In our conversation, Manoush explains why a day spent sitting in front of screens can leave you exhausted, even though you haven’t really done anything, and how small bouts of movement throughout the day can counteract that drain and keep you feeling energized and focused. She shares how much activity you need to offset periods of being sedentary, and how to realistically incorporate these movement breaks into your routine. We also get into the specific effects digital technology is having on our eyes and ears — and what you can do to prevent the damage.

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Transcript

Brett McKay:

Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AoM podcast. You hear a lot today about how ample screen time is affecting our mental health, but how is it affecting our bodies and how’s that impact on our bodies affecting our mental health? My guest today will unpack the ways that our digital technology is sapping our vitality and offers simple protocol to get it back. Her name is Manoush Zomorodi and she’s the host of the TED Radio Hour and the author of Body Electric. Manoush explains why a day spent sitting in front of screens can leave you exhausted even though you haven’t really done anything, and how small bouts of movement throughout the day can counteract that drain, keep you feeling energized and focused. She shares how much activity you need to offset periods of being sedentary and how to realistically incorporate these movement breaks into your routine. We also get into the specific effects digital technologies having on our eyes and ears what you can do to prevent the damage. After the show is over, check at our show notes at aom.is/bodyelectric. All right, Manoush, welcome back to the show.

Manoush Zomorodi:

It is so great to be back. It’s been a while, Brett.

Brett McKay:

It has — 2017 was the last time we talked. It’s been nine years and it was about your book about boredom, Bored and Brilliant, about how boredom can be good for us. You got a new book out called Body Electric: The Hidden Health Cost of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Wellbeing. And yeah, you’re exploring the health cost of always being on our screen sitting down looking at iPads. What led you to explore this beat for the past few years?

Manoush Zomorodi:

Yeah, so I’ve been a journalist for 30 years, but my sort of specialty about 15 years ago became tech and business and everyone was talking about upgrading and valuations and all those things, but I was looking around and seeing that my technology, this sounds so quaint now, but my new iPhone was changing the way I did everything. It was changing the way I parented. I could be at the playground and on a call at the same time. Is that good? We don’t have to debate that right now, but for me, it was becoming really a anthropological experiment that was happening on us. And one of the things I noticed was that I started to think differently. So in terms of the first book, I would notice that I was having trouble sort of being more creative than I used to be. And I sort of looked around and thought, what is different now?

And the difference was that whenever I had a crack in my day, a spare moment, waiting in line for coffee, waiting for the subway, I could be productive. I could look at my phone, I could check the headlines, the weather, ping my husband, you name it. And it made me wonder what were the effects of never being bored? And as a Gen Xer, I was told, oh, only boring people get bored. But what if being bored was actually a good thing, this thing that we thought was terrible and to be avoided at all costs. So that led me down this road to understanding the neuroscience of boredom or what really cognitive neuroscientists call mind wandering. So boredom as a gateway to mind wandering, which activates a particular network in the brain that is responsible for our most original thinking, problem solving and something called autobiographical planning.

This is telling ourselves the story of our life, creating a narrative, and that helps us then set goals and work towards those goals. So to me, mind-blown. Okay, so I need to get more boredom in my life. That w...