← The JOMOcast with Christina Crook
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- [00:02]
A
In this series we explore the landscape of students, smartphones and social media, asking global experts to explain the hard truths about the mental health decline among youth on campuses around the world and inspire us with the evidence based strategies that will turn the tide. Thank you for being here. I'm sitting in my childhood home in British Columbia, Canada and I'm actually sitting in my childhood bedroom recording this episode today and it's having me think a
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lot about what it was like to
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be a teen, to be a kid growing up and some of my earliest Internet memories. Yeah, it's amazing how space can shift our thinking and draw us into particular memories and I've had that during my whole time I've been here in greater Vancouver and that kind of leads into the conversation I'm about to have today. Really what we're trying to explore in the conversation is what are the right strategies to protect and help you thrive
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in the digital age?
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These are the questions on every educator and parents mind today. And I am a mother of three children. They're now ages 1012 and soon to be 14. Really in those transitional periods where we're asking big questions about the role technology should be playing in their lives and really wanting to prepare them and resource them and teach them well as they head into their high school and college years well. Dr. Michael Rich is an Associate professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Associate professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. chan School of Public Health and Practices Adolescent Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. Pediatrician, child health researcher, father and filmmaker. Dr. Rich is the founder and Director of the Digital Wellness Lab as well as the first evidence based medical program addressing physical, mental and social health issues
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associated with digital technology use.
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The Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet disorders Dr. Rich offers research based, actionable and practical answers to parents, educators and clinicians questions about children's and adolescents media use and the positive and negative implications for their health and development. Dr. Rich spent his first career as a filmmaker before transitioning to medicine. What a multifaceted individual. His experience and expertise in medicine and media synergize in his health research and clinical work over two decades. Dr. Rich was the Director and Principal Investigator of the Video Intervention Prevention Assessment Project which explored the illness experience of children from the inside out through patient created video diaries. In 2002, he founded the center on Media and Child Health as an academic research center focused on media and technology as a powerful environmental health influence. The center evolved into the Digital wellness lab in 2021 with an expanded scope to ensure that research is translated into actionable guidance to help caregivers, educators, and clinicians foster the digital wellness of young people, while also advising technology companies on the most impactful ways to build young people's wellness into the design of their products and services. And he does that on a very active basis, him and his team. The clinic on interactive media and Internet disorders, which Dr. Rich leads, has seen a 250% growth in visits in recent years between young people the ages of 6 to 24. Dr. Rich's innovative child health research has been featured in national and international press, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, npr, BBC, among others. Cognizant of the potency of the image and the primacy of electronic and print media as a source of information and influence, Dr. Rich studies media as a force that powerfully affects child health and behavior and uses media technologies as tools for medical research, education, healthcare policy, and patient empowerment. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Michael Rich.
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B
Well, I am extremely grateful for you making the time. This for me was the most important conversation to have around youth and mental health, especially as it pertains to resourcing educators and serving students on campuses sort of around America, but also, you know, beyond that and the digital wellness lab, of course, being sort of the epicenter of the leading edge on research. So again, thank you for making the time.
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C
Well, thank you for giving us voice. You closed the circle for us, which is Good.
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B
So welcome. Dr. Ridge. So how did you come to work on digital wellness and why does it matter to you?
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C
Part of it is the fact that I'm a parent, I'm a pediatrician, and I'm a child health researcher who brings to the table a 12 year history in the film industry as a screenwriter and filmmaker prior to having a midlife crisis and going into medicine. But really recognizing really from the beginning of my pediatric career how critical and how powerful screens were in the lives and health of children. Originally it was television. We were concerned about the couch potato phenomenon becoming fat, stupid and violent in front of the television. And I worked with the AAP, the American Academy of Pediatrics, for about 10 years developing practice policies, but actually got to a place where I realized that what was missing was a good database of real research on exactly how we are changed by the screens we use and how we use them. And rather than simply advocating for fewer screens and less time on screens, really understanding how we can live well in both senses of that word in a screen saturated environment, I did not see screens disappearing. And so we developed into the center on Media and Child Health, which is a sort of a more traditional center of excellence at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical school. And after 20 years of doing that, I realized that we were still in a situation where we have a sort of societal stalemate between those who are concerned about kids and those who are in the tech and entertainment industry and concerned about freedom of expression. And I did not see them as mutually exclusive. I felt that first of all, there were people in the tech and film industries that have kids and have concerns. And yet this sort of polarization was not allowing people to work together. So that led to the evolution of the Digital Wellness Lab, which is admitted, admittedly sort of audaciously contrarian because I'm saying, can't we play well with each other? That sounds like a pediatrician, doesn't it? But can we create a space built on good data that puts a pediatrician next to a software engineer next to a neuroscientist next to a screenwriter next to a teenager and said, how can we bring our respective skill sets and perspectives to frankly, an issue that we all share? How can we learn to deal with this environment that kids move seamlessly in and out of the physical and the digital and help them and all of us learn to live in it in ways that are healthy, smart and kind to each other?
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B
So good. Okay, I must know. For those not watching but just listening, we do have a cat present. Who is this cat?
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C
This is Orion.
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B
Orion.
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C
And he sees it as his duty to be my editor and things like this. He, he feels it's important to keep a leash on me because he knows I'll talk forever if you let me.
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B
You know, this is the Jomo cast. We talk about, you know, the joy of missing out and the things that bring us joy. It looks to me like, well, Orion brings you a lot of joy and yes, vice versa. Okay, well, we'll keep going, but I just want to just speak to that because it's just beautif beautiful. I've got two cats of my own, a big cat lover from your perspective. And. Well, I think I didn't send this question in advance, but I would like to talk about it because I was reading more about the clinic on interactive media and Internet disorders. And I'll just talk about that a little bit and then I've got a question for you specifically about that. So you co founded the clinic and it's the only hospital based clinic focused on problematic media use in the United States States. The clinic addresses problematic media use behaviors for young people, ages 6 to 24. And your clinic says that you've experienced a 250% growth in visits. My question for you is what are the most consistent and concerning cases you're seeing at the clinic?
- [09:48]
C
One of the concerns that we have sort of in terms of the medical response to it, is that this is a situation that has been or a condition that has been identified and researched since the mid-90s. But everybody's been in their own little silos. There are over 100 different names for what's going on, because it looks to everyone like it's a problem of what they're studying. So if they're studying smartphones, it's a smartphone problem. If they're studying social media, it's a social media problem. What we see is a couple of really interesting things. Number one is, despite the DSM 5, the psychiatric diagnostic manual, saying Internet gaming disorder is a potential condition that needs further study, we see much more than gaming in terms of problematic use. We see problematic use of social media, of pornography, and of what we're calling information binging, which is sort of the endless Reddit, Quora, YouTube videos, and some interesting things. Number one is that there's a lot of crossover between them. So kids whose parents get frustrated with them and take away their PlayStation, just go online and watch other people game. So it really is not the gaming or the social media per se. It is the interactivity. It's the fact that they have easy access to an arena, if you will, where they can interact with other people, where they can interact with games, where they can interact with bots. And so what we are calling this is actually problematic interactive media use because it is not the device that's doing it. It is not the platform or the software that's doing it. It's what we're doing with it. As that old cartoon character Pogo once said, we have met the enemy and he is us. And it's what we do with this that can either be incredibly positive or can go down some very dark rabbit holes that can really consume these kids. The other thing we've seen is that we have yet to see in the hundreds of kids we. We have yet to see one that didn't have an underlying psychological issue or condition that we already know about and treat that is driving these behaviors. And these behaviors are an attempt to self soothe or self medicate, if you will, for things like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Autism spectrum disorder, anxiety disorders of various kinds. So we actually see Pai Mu, as we call it, problematic interactive media use. As a syndrome, not a diagnosis. In other words, it is like we knew AIDS before we knew HIV caused it. AIDS was an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. We didn't know what was causing it. So we see this again as a syndrome, much like AIDS was to hiv. And frankly, when we treat those underlying issues, these behaviors dissipate and sometimes disappear altogether, but certainly become very accessible to behavioral modifications.
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B
Hmm. Can you speak a little bit more about the interactivity piece? Because my understanding, and I'm a. I'm a parent too. My kids are now 10, 12 and almost 14. And you know, what I've learned through my own research, but also just through, you know, the active. Being a parent is the difference between what I thought to be a difference between passive and active media use. So just consuming passively, you know, versus like actively, you know, gaming with a friend or watching movie with your family. Could you speak a little bit to this interactivity piece and does it have anything to do with this passive versus active engagement with media?
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C
Well, I think first of all, passive engagement is more than just watching a movie or a television show. It's also doom scrolling now. Right. It is also passively entering spaces that are interactive, but lurking instead of truly
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B
interacting with the space itself is interactive. I understand.
- [14:02]
C
Okay, exactly. Exactly. And so while we actually know a fair amount about the effects of passive watching of television, movies, and also, frankly, sometimes passive watching of, say, social media, which we can extrapolate from the television and film research, what really engages these kids is either that they are interacting and being responded to, or that they are hesitant about, scared to, shy of interacting because it seems like everyone else is happier, more successful, more fulfilled than they are. And that's kind of the hook in social media, which is, unfortunately, I think most of us are using social media much the way that corporations do. We use it to market ourselves to the world, to show all the good things about our lives, what a great vacation we went on, or my, you know, dad's new sports car, my hot new boyfriend. People come to that space saying, I want to connect, I want to feel good, I want to have a friend. And everybody they see seems better than they are, happier than they are, because the people are putting up only half of their story. And the observer is bringing to it the full reality of her or his life, which is, I have fears, I have concerns, I have weaknesses. And so one of the things that we truly are trying to help these kids with is can we move the sort of lingua franca of social media to authenticity, to Being true to each other and true to ourselves. And to think about the fact that our most valued, meaningful, sustained relationships are with those people who know our limitations, know our fears, know our weaknesses, and love us, not just anyway, but because of them in some ways, because we complement each other and because we accept them with their limitations. So my fondest hope is that if we can learn to use social media in an authentic, honest, truthful way, it can be an instrument of peace. Because we'll have a kid in Ukraine and a kid in Russia on social media with each other, and their respective governments say, go to war with each other. And they will say, well, actually, I know that kid better than I know you, my leader. And we can actually build a stronger, kinder, more survivable world by being true to each other.
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B
I've never heard someone say those words before. I'm going to say them again. Social media can be an instrument of peace. Wow. What a vision. Absolutely. You know, I write a lot about how our needs bring us closer to one another, and I know that to be true in my own life. But every, you know, just like you were saying, every person that I care enough to be close to, I want to be closer to people that are vulnerable because you. There's something instinctively in us that rises up to want, to help, to support. We see ourselves in those needs and in those hurts and in those longings. It does take, speaking of vulnerability, a huge amount of courage and vulnerability to bring that kind of authenticity into a space. And you actually said the term half the story. Of course, we know Larissa May, you know, and, you know, she's always out there, and she, you know, she's doing a ton and. And she can put a brave face on, But I have specifically noticed moments where she's been incredibly vulnerable online, and I think there's an incredible power in that. Maybe she's been encouraged and mentored by you to do more of that in that space. But, yeah, I absolutely believe that to be true, that social media can be an instrument of peace. And I think about the educators listening, the public health educators on campuses. I was mentioning earlier our work with Virginia Tech, and we, you know, speaking to leaders in the, you know, in the Greek world, on campus, and, you know, we look at sororities in particular, and it is not a place where authenticity is encouraged on social media. It is directly a marketing tool. Right. For. To recruit new members, and they have a particular Persona that each of them are trying to portray. And is that a place of peace? No. In fact, it's not right. It's extremely performative. And so kind of dovetailing back to this being, you know, a conversation about campus mental health. From your perspective, let's kind of shift into specifically more into the college space. What is the biggest digital challenge facing, I would say, specifically college students today from your perspective?
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C
Orion is restarting my. By lying on the keyboard. Sorry. I think actually the biggest challenge is finding truth. Finding truth within themselves in what they create, finding truth in what they read or expose to. And I think there's a whole nother layer of that that has been introduced by generative AI. And I actually think that what's going to happen over time, I don't think it'll happen directly is I think that we are going to actually see a tide change in education. If you think of education now, basically, it's a very Machiavellian competitive environment where you try to get the best grades you can so that you can get to the best college you can, so that you can get to the best graduate school you can, et cetera. Now, with ChatGPT and other generative AI, we know that you can pass the medical boards, you can pass the legal bar exams. You aren't going to do a stellar job, but you're going to get over the hurdle. And in this current sort of Machiavellian environment, there's always the tendency and there's always a subgroup of people, sometimes larger, sometimes less large, that will get Cliff's Notes instead of reading Hamlet. Right. And we'll find the path of least resistance. I think that we will see a whole subgroup going through that does just that with generative AI. And what I don't want to see is professors wasting a whole lot of time trying to sleuth out those who are cheating. Right? I mean, that's a huge waste of their time. But what's going to happen is that we will graduate out of probably some of our best colleges and graduate schools. People who don't know a thing because they've never needed to learn it.
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B
Right.
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They've never needed to collect those Lego blocks of thinking to put. I mean, because already you're hearing kids in high school saying, I don't need to understand photosynthesis. I can just Google it. I don't need to read this poem. I can just Google it.
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I don't need to learn grammar because I have Grammarly. Yeah, exactly.
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Or spelling, because autospell will fix it. So I think that what we're going to eventually see, and this is again, optimistic thinking, I'll Cop to that is that instead of trying to figure your way past each hurdle, if you will, in education, that students will demand to be worked hard so that they actually get that knowledge, get those capabilities, get those basically instincts to get to the truth and also to think the new. Because all that AI can do for you is regurgitate the most commonly used knowledge out there, whether it's correct or incorrect, right.
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Or guess at the right answer and make wildly incorrect information.
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Yeah, sure, you know, but even when, even when it's good, all it's doing is mathematical probability of things that have been said before and thought before. So it would essentially stalemate and make stale all of our inquiry, all of our new thinking
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B
in terms of schools. So I'm thinking again, wellness departments, but also specifically, you know, professors, right in the classroom. What can schools, colleges specifically do to support students digital wellness?
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C
I think that the more that they can overtly acknowledge and teach both media literacy, which is the ability to deconstruct the information that's coming to us in audio, visual formats, much the way we deconstruct the printed word and have been learning to do that for centuries now, so that we are actually able to discern our truth. Now, there are many truths out there, as we learned from my mentor, Akira Kurosawa and Rashomon. There are many ways of seeing the truth, but how to do it in a way that is aware of, respectful of the other truths that are out there, you know, so that we don't descend into tribalism, which we have unfortunately done in many ways, in part powered by using social media. Wrong. But I think that then also teaching digital literacy, which I really define as something slightly different, it's not about deconstructing what's coming at us. It is constructing what we are transmitting. It is learning and knowing how to use these powerful digital tools in ways that are true to the information, but are also cognizant of the fact that those receivers who are coming to it are going to hear it through different filters. So have it be sensitive to different cultures, to different languages, to different religions, so that your core ideas are transmitted and it doesn't trigger a reaction that is unintended or it really derails the conversation.
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B
Just even more practically, I'm thinking about, and we'll get into a few of these tips and suggestions you have in a few minutes. But very, just very practically. So a student arrives on a Harvard campus, a Virginia Tech campus, a Georgia Tech, Stanford. You know, they walk on campus, they're coming out of COVID Right. They've maybe been fairly socially isolated. You know, we're reading these reports on loneliness, Right. So probably don't have a lot of great digital habits sort of coming in on day one, just very practically, like I hear you on the media literacy and digital literacy, incredibly important and, you know, that can be put in through first year experience streams on college campuses. There's lots of ways that can be taught. You know, coming back to the example of Virginia Tech and the work we've been doing there, we look at things like the Grant study, right. And the impact of warm relationships and prioritizing warm relationships. So building in, you know, putting some friction back, let's say, into the weeks of welcome orientation experiences where maybe phones are taken away. You know, they're adults, they have an option to choose. But strongly encouraging students to put their phone to the side. They do this still in the sororities and fraternities in terms of like frosh week, these types of things, putting their phones away and going across that, getting across that threshold of effort, you know, to be comfortable with the discomfort of meeting someone new and making a friend and how important that is in the early weeks and months of the college experience, like very practically, things like that. What are some things that colleges should.
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You would.
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You would strongly encourage college campuses to be doing to sort of set students up for success for digital wellness on campus?
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C
Well, for starters, I would clarify a little bit of, of what I think of digital literacy as. And part of that is understanding that smartphones and tablets and laptops are power tools. They are not toys, and they are not our only way of connecting with the world. They are things that connect us with certain aspects of the world, certain bits of information, but not everything. And that one of the things they do not transmit is intimacy, in the most important sense of seeing, hearing, feeling another person, which is very risky. And a lot of people use their devices to distance and avoid. But as I say to my adolescent patients, you can't make out with a smartphone. And so I think that, you know, from a very practical standpoint, it actually kind of arrests human development if we stick in that environment. For example, social media can be a really useful transition zone for tentatively reaching out to see if someone's interested in you romantically or as a friend or just to get together. But you don't want to get stuck there, you don't want to keep it there, you want to move beyond it. And that feels quite risky to people. In fact, there was a recent study out of Australia that showed that a lot of Gen Z was very nervous about, anxious about and avoidant of voice calls.
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B
Right.
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C
Because they were so used to texting and texting felt safer to them, felt less intimate, less awkward.
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B
Right. So you would say, I love, I love that line that you can't make it with your smartphone. People are like, but I could try.
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C
Good luck to you.
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B
Good luck to you there. Yeah. So you would say, okay, so encouraging, let's say through ras, right through, you know, these types of things to kind of close the gap in terms of intimacy. You know, I always encourage people to, you know, media literally means in between. So like anytime we can kind of reduce that in between. Right. Make it more intimate. So you start, you know, you start commenting in someone's post and you slide into their dms, then maybe you're emailing. Then, oh, you figure out you're close to each other. Like, can you meet face to face? Just like, like trying to make that connection more and more direct ultimately does build those warm relationships that, you know, leads to longevity and health and well being and all of these things.
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C
I, one of the things if I don't, if you don't mind me interrupting, I, I warned you I would. Is that I encourage kids to, when they're thinking of connecting with someone, to upgrade by 1. So instead of tweeting, text, instead of texting, call. Better yet, video call. But, but best of all, get together in person. So it's not about restricting them from doing something, it's about upgrading. And everybody likes an upgrade.
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B
I love that phrasing. That's awesome. That might actually dovetail right into what I was about to ask you, which is the four filters for digital wellness. Could you talk to us about those?
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C
Okay, yeah. These are sort of filters to consider when you are either reaching out or responding to or receiving something. And these are just four questions to ask yourself. Am I being mindful of what I'm doing here? In other words, am I doing this purposefully? Am I doing this with a goal in mind? Am I using the right tool for this job? The second one is healthy, which is obvious. Sort of like, is this good for me and is this good for the person I'm reaching out to? Or am I being a little snarky? Or am I joking and teasing? But maybe they will receive it as snarky and mean because they're receiving it two hours later and they're in a whole different headspace. The third is constructive. Am I being constructive here? Even if I am criticizing, is it constructive criticism that gives them the opportunity to better themselves. And finally, and probably most importantly, am I being kind? Can I be a random act of kindness here? Because God knows the world needs a whole lot more of that.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. I love this. This kind of copped a little bit from Barbara Coloroso. Do you remember? She was like, is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? I think that was one of the things she taught in terms of like kids even just speaking directly to one another. You know, we used to, you know, grow up with, maybe I'm dating myself a little bit, but sticks and stones, right? Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Except that they do, but I love that. So mindful, healthy, constructive and kind. The four filters for digital wellness. You know, you see a lot of studies. This is the work that you do. One of my questions for you is, what's one study related to digital wellness that you think everybody should know about, but a lot of educators, you know, senior administrators that'll be listening to this, this episode, Just what's one study, maybe it doesn't have to be totally recent, but that you kind of like use very consistently in your work or something that's kind of tweaked for you recently?
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C
I think that's an impossible question to answer because this is such a multifaceted, three dimensional issue that first of all, I think our relationship with the digital ecosystem is and always will be a work in progress. We will always be moving toward the better. We will never get there. There is no single answer. And that's why I push back against the idea of a key study. And it's actually one of the reasons why we at the Digital Wellness Lab are actually working in kind of a different way than academic research has happened before in the sense of coming up with a study idea, writing a grant, getting the grant, doing the study, publishing it in peer review. It's way too slow for being able to respond in useful ways to what's going on. By the time you've gone through that entire process, you're three or four generations beyond it. So one of the things that we are doing is regular pulse surveys. Literally like a doctor putting her fingers on your wrist and taking your pulse. But. But about very specific issues. We started them during COVID and the lockdown because we were really concerned about how kids were weathering this. But we're doing them three or four times a year on very specific areas. Our most recent one is around social media and specific types of spaces in social media. Not naming platforms, although the platforms are there. But Saying, how do you we interact with a short video format or how do we interact with a chat format? And what are the ways that this can be healthier or less healthy? So I don't mean to sidestep your question so much as to say this is a complex situation, and it is one that is changing and always will be. Because, in fact, what we realize is that we are following three moving targets. One being the developing human from infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood. The second being a constantly evolving digital ecosystem that is both affecting that development, but also reflecting that development, because those who are developing are posting all the time and interacting all the time. And the third is the transformation in all of our behavior because of the screens we have in virtually every built environment, the screens we have in our pockets, on our wrists, on our desks. And we do behave differently when we have phones. And that's why your question about what can colleges do to change this? I think the idea of putting phones down, not taking them away, but actually incentivizing them to put them down. For example, we're having a party. Leave your phones at home. You will not get into the party if you have a phone with you sort of thing. So make it a voluntary act and actually bring it into, you know, sort of common behavior to say phones are actually coming between us rather than connecting us.
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B
Later this season, I'll be talking to the Buxton School and light phone. Have you heard of this campus that went. Yeah, so, yeah, quite incredible in terms of changing the digital culture on that campus, shifting to, you know, a more. More minimal technology, and the fact that it was not just students, but it was, in fact, faculty and administration.
- [34:59]
C
Absolutely. Actually, one of the things you should also look at is France. France has no phones up through middle school, no phones at all in school. And I think this goes back to our approach of saying, think of this as a powerful tool. Is this tool really useful in this environment? Is it part of the task of teaching and learning, or is it a distraction from it? And beyond that, beyond the fact that I think that 99.9% of what's on a smartphone is all distraction, at least from the task at hand, the other thing that we're seeing happening in schools is it doesn't allow the young people, particularly on the younger end of the spectrum, it doesn't allow them. Them to actually perform one of the critical learning tasks of school, which is social, emotional learning, and realizing that they are, for the first time in their lives in an environment where they are an individual, where they are able to exercise their individuality, decide what they like, what they don't like, who they like, why they don't like them, who they don't like, how to negotiate all of that stuff. If they have a phone with mom calling in saying, how did you do on that midterm? Or is that kid still being mean to you in the lunchroom? On and on and on. And unfortunately, a lot of parents do that because they feel that that's taking care of their child. That child never gets to be an individual and figure out that key task of how do I navigate this world? How do I build this kind of society I want to live in, how do I deal with problems in it, how do I solve problems by myself, not by asking mom or dad to fix it.
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B
And think about all the other influences as well. You know, I, I like to joke with peers of mine that I'm like a vanilla version of myself on the Internet. Because you're just like, like you said, like constantly making choices about what you present. And then for those students, you know, those kids that are constantly on media, how do you even know which are your actual opinions and choices and preferences when you're being fed right through the people you follow all of these and concepts and tastes and, you know, opinions, you know, how do you kind of sort out what is yours and what, you know is coming from someone else? And of course, we get that through our peers. We know we start to like the color pink because our friend likes the color pink. Like, I've got a son who's like really into fuchsia. I'm pretty sure that came all by his, by himself. But it's, you know, we are influenced. But what's sort of the long term impact of someone, like you were just saying, not developing that sort of independence early on? Like, what's, what are some of the long term impacts of that?
- [37:46]
C
Well, first of all, I think that that is a very normative thing, which is I sort of describe growing up as looking at a lot of pictures of the world and pictures of the way people are and taking the bits of them as mosaic tiles and saying, I want that to be me. Also looking at some of those mosaic tiles and saying, I don't ever want to do that. So that's how we form the big picture, that is us, is by what we're exposed to and what we're not. And so oftentimes, particularly with the teenagers I take care of, they will change personal almost as frequently as they change clothes. You know, they're, you Know, a jock one week, and then they get cut from the team and then they're a goth, you know, and, and then somebody, you know, says, hey, have you checked out punk? And they will form these cliques, but they're very fluid and they'll move between them and it's almost like they're shopping for their self. So I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing unless it becomes confusing. And where it becomes confusing sometimes is kids who are on different servers as different personalities. And they do that, but it's sort of hard to main. It's like sort of maintaining your lie, right? Maintaining your story. Even though all of those personalities might be a part of them, it sometimes can get very confusing for them. I don't see that necessarily the idea of, of trying out different selves necessarily as a problematic thing unless they get stuck in it. And it really causes true confusion. You know, I don't. And, and that's where, you know, kids get into very anxious places like, who am I in this environment?
- [39:27]
B
Right, yeah. Trying to manage. And of course we've done that, you know, pre Internet. Right. Who am I with? This group of friends. This group of friends. That kind of brings me back to something you said, right, the beginning of this conversation, which is the biggest challenge you think on campuses, but really for all of us is finding truth and being consistent in what is actually true. And what we know is you can't actually build a relationship if you don't know what's really real, right? If you can't trust that what someone says to you is true, if what you see in front of you, you can't trust that that is true, that that is real, then how do we actually build relationship? And so I think about college campuses and yeah, just building on. I mean, they're physically in time and space, in a shared environment, often a very beautiful environment. I know at Virginia Tech, one of, you know, one of the pre existing campaigns they had at VT was experience vt, really encouraging students to experience all that that campus had to offer. They're paying a premium to be there. They've, you know, dreamed of their college years, you know, really encouraging them sort of sink in deeply into that experience, that real lived experience, that truthful experience. The person that's sitting in a class next to you, turning to your neighbor, having that conversation, maybe finding your next best friend or your study partner. You know, they talk about like, you know, the magical thinking around, like building, you know, meeting your next best friend
- [40:55]
A
or the person that's going to be
- [40:56]
B
the best man at your wedding. You know, these are the potential in relationships that are all around them physically on campus. And I think, you know, for my own kids and for the people that I coach and teach, yeah, I'm always encouraging people to lean more deeply into relationship because that is where we make meaning. Right. That's where we know that we find success and well, being ultimately in our lives. So I guess I want to just kind of. Oh, yeah, go. Go ahead.
- [41:22]
C
And you're just sparking some ideas. I apologize.
- [41:25]
B
No, please.
- [41:26]
C
It's also about reaching out to that person that doesn't seem to have anybody. You know, I hate to bring this up, but Virginia Tech is also the site of one of the greatest tragedies on a campus ever experienced.
- [41:41]
B
Absolutely.
- [41:41]
C
In part because someone felt terribly alone, terribly misunderstood, and came to the conclusion that the whole world hated him. And so I think this juxtaposition of this incredibly beautiful campus and all this potential in term of human potential, not only in terms of what they will generate, but how they can connect and synergize with each other, I think it becomes kind of a metaphor for what we're all struggling with, which is how do I meet my needs, my vulnerabilities, but also how can I do that for and with someone else? I mean, one of the really interesting things you see time and again in kids is that even when they cannot choose healthy things for themselves, they will do it for someone else before they do it for themselves. They don't have that insight onto themselves, but when they see someone else, they will reach out. So how can we motivate that? How can we tweak that. That into existence to get over our shyness of each other, put our phones down, look at someone in the eye and say, how about a cup of coffee? Or was. Wasn't the professor obscure? I didn't understand a thing that he said. Right. Can you help me?
- [43:05]
B
I know that you're doing a lot of advocacy directly into, you know, the platform and companies that are creating the technology. And that's beautiful and important work. Obviously, a lot of this comes down to our personal technology use. And so my final question for you today is, what is one action a young person can take to meaningfully transform their digital life today? We've talked about a few of them, but just sort of one more really, really practical step a young person can take.
- [43:40]
C
Observe a digital Sabbath. It is crazy making for people at the beginning, right. They look at me like I'm not. They say, what, you want me to turn off all my devices for 24 hours. So I will confess that the vast majority of people I recommend this to ignore me completely thinking I'm crazy. The people who are most likely to try it it are people in the tech industry and people in the entertainment industry because they know the back end, they know what's there and they will come back and say, you know, I did that. The first time I did it, it was excruciating. I kept feeling phantom vibrations in my leg even though my phone wasn't in my pocket. And you know, I felt like, what am I missing out on? You know, what's going on out there? And you know, in fact, one of the things that's really interesting about this is I think, think our problem is not just FOMO fear of missing out, but faux blow fear of being left out, fear that things are going forward and for kids that's even more acute than for adults. But they come back and they say the second time I did it it was liberating. I didn't feel like I was on call to the rest of the world at all times. I went in the backyard and threw a football back and forth with my kid and had a conversation or you know, I had a mom say we went for a walk and my husband held my hand. I think for the first time in 20 years, you know, sort of thing like discovering the small simple things within us and close around us that get drowned out by the hyper stimulation of constant connection.
- [45:25]
B
That's perfect. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
- [45:29]
C
Well, thank you for letting me ramble.
- [45:33]
D
Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review it or share it with a friend. You're the key to spreading Jomo. The Internet is not what it used to be. You need a roadmap to thrive in the digital age. I've created a new free Jomo guide and it's available now now@christinacrook.com Jomo is the joy of missing out on the right things. But sometimes it's difficult to know what those right things are. I'll guide you through a simple four step digital house cleaning process to clear away your digital clutter and make it easier to get at what really matters. That's the joy of missing out. Get your get your free Jomo guide today@christinacrook.com.