A year into the pandemic, when kids and teenagers all over the world were spending extra time on screens, pediatrician Dr Michael Rich knew parents needed more than just opinions about the impact of all that time online to their mental health.
He founded The Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, giving parents unbiased research information about the physical, mental and social health issues associated with technology.
“What we have to realise is that the phones are not doing anything to our children or to us, it is what we are doing with the phones that really makes a difference in our physical, mental and social health,” Rich tells Jesse Mulligan.
“In other words, we can use these phones for very powerful tools for connection, for changing things in positive ways and yet many of us are using them actually to come between us, to text someone instead of getting together with them in person, with all of the misunderstandings and loss of nuance.”
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It’s difficult to measure the impact smart phones have had on our wellness over time, Rich says.
“I really see technology, whether it be smart phones or social media platforms or specific applications, more as enablers of human behaviour and particularly with adolescents, which is the population I mostly work with, anxiety and depression and impulsivity are part and parcel of the developmental process at this stage in life.
“What smart phones and social media can do is accelerate and amplify what are actually normative changes and behaviours in young people.”
The brain, from birth to the mid to late 20s, is incredibly plastic and develops in a variety of sequential ways, he says.
“One of the last areas to develop is the prefrontal cortex wherein lives executive function such as impulse control and future thinking...I think we have to be very conscious of the fact of what’s going on in the young person’s brain and also be aware of the fact that this plasticity can also end up creating new pathways that could be either positive or less so depending on the choices made.”
Tiktok, he says, has unique capabilities that make it more concerning than other platforms.
“The greatest in my mind is the challenges. The challenges that really hook into the adolescent sensation seeking, risk taking sense that they are bulletproof and can walk on water and takes it to an extreme in a competitive way.
“Just as there’s a competition of how many people you can friend, there’s also a competition to how well you can do the cinnamon challenge, or you name it.”
Rich says the concept of screen time limits is obsolete when there are screens in virtually every built environment – in our pockets and on our wrists.
It comes down to using these platforms in a mindful way with an awareness of the potential outcomes of what you’re doing, he says.
“And also, with a sense of respect for oneself and for others, so that you are compassionate and empathetic in your view toward those to whom you are broadcasting whatever you’re broadcasting.”
He thinks we lost a lot when the word friend became a verb.
“Because then it became a statistic to collect, how many people have you friended. In many ways that became a competition for popularity, so it became about me, not my connection with others,” he says.
“I think the mistakes we make with friending and with use of social media now is that we use social media the same way that corporations do. We use them to market ourselves to the world, to show this beautiful new outfit I got or my hot new boyfriend or the great vacation I went on.
“When people who are seeking connection with others, who may be have some level of social anxiety which makes this feel like a safe place than meeting people IRL – in real life – that they come to it, and it appears that everyone is happier, more successful, richer, more fulfilled than they are.”
Does Rich think kids understand the way algorithms can manipulate or how they can get sucked into overusing apps?
They are, for the most part, ignorant about things behind the scenes, he says.
“When you inform them and educate them, they will become the greatest activists to push back against it.”
In a sense, this is stymied in social media because most people see themselves as the consumers getting something for free, whereas companies see them as a product, delivering information to advertisers.
“I think that’s the big learning curve that young people need to make so that they are conscious and aware of what they are giving away for free, including the fact that they’re giving away their attention which corporations pay billions of dollars to grab and yet they think they’re just killing time or having fun.”
Rich thinks we need to change our attitudes towards phones and social media.
“Instead of thinking of them as a great new convenience, or as a toy or as entertainment, we have to see them as the power tools they are. We have to remember that in these tools are a computer that is more than 100,000 times more powerful than the computer that landed man on the moon and has more than a million times the memory of that computer.
“That it can reach virtually anywhere and any person in the world instantaneously and that means that anyone anywhere in the world can instantaneously reach you.
“Is that necessary a bad thing, absolutely not, but it is a powerful tool that can be used for learning, for connecting and should be used in those situations where it is the best tool for the job.”