Latest / Millennial Mental Health Channel / Welcome to Dr. Justin's TEDx Talk "Smartphone Addiction: It's Time to Confront Our Global Addiction"

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Welcome to Dr. Justin's TEDx Talk "Smartphone Addiction: It's Time to Confront Our Global Addiction" · Millennial Mental Health Channel

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So if you've got a topic that you're passionate about and want to share it
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and have the platform of TED, you could probably apply to a TEDx event
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in your area. This is Millennial Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin Romano,
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a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry fellow, and I'm Eddie Creo, a licensed
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clinical therapist. Our podcast is here because we wanted to start a much needed
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conversation about mental health. Our goal is to teach you as much as we
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can by sharing our own experiences and interviewing experts in the mental health field.
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We will discuss topics like mood disorders, psychotic disorders, substance use, personality
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disorders, and many more. Millennial Mental Health Channel buy Millennials for everyone.
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We hope you enjoyed today's episode. MMHC is a production of Spreaker from iHeartMedia
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and welcome back. It's Millennial Mental Health Channel. I'm here with Eddie Kreo,
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the TV star. How are you doing, Eddie, I'm fine,
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I'm not a TV star. Well as someone who's now been on TV twice
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in the past two months. I'm sure that you're that you're you know,
1:12
just people are recognizing you left and right, the Kardashians are gonna have you
1:18
on their next season. It's gonna be pretty impressive. I'd rather not I'll
1:22
pass on the Kardashians. I will say I'm gonna be honest. Um,
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when Kevin and I go to the gym, they have a lot of the
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TVs have like the news on it, and they do have the channel that
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I was on, and a couple of times of like, look, just
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like, come on, I think gonna rerun that they have not So no
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no recognizing in the streets. But my place of employment, my school has
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been very supportive and it has been pretty cool that some of the students have
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seen it and they've like come up to me like, oh, I saw
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you my teacher. My teacher played the video. So that's been cool,
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very cool. And for those of you guys who check out our social media,
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Eddie got to go on the Portland KOI N news station and talk about
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mental health. He did a fantastic job. If you guys are interested in
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hearing. It was mostly in regard to mass shootings. I believe. Yeah,
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yeah, it was not the happiest one, but I thought it was
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cool. I really appreciated the chance to just feel like a like an expert.
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That's the other thing is that I didn't know this, but after they
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do things like that, like segments like that, they'll make basically an article
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where they just take quotes that I put and like put in fill the words.
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And the last two times I've done a segment with them, they refer
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to me as a mental health expert. And I know one time we had
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a moment on the show where we're like we are mental health experts. I'm
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like, shit, you're right. And so it's just cool. It's it's
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cool to see it. It's cool to see my name in an article,
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my face on the TV, at least on the video recording after I watch
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it. So yeah, it's a cool experience. I appreciate them the second
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time they reached out to me because I'd already done the one, so that
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that felt pretty cool. That's a good sign. That's a good sign.
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So we wanted to give a quick shout out to Eddie for his amazing television
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performance. We also want to give a big shout out to our audience for
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sticking with us hanging out. I wanted to give you guys a quick reminder
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please subscribe to the show. If you listen, or if listen to a
3:23
couple episodes and you really want to help us out and support us, do
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it right now. Pick up your phone and subscribe, because I know every
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time I hear that on a podcast and I try and oh, do it
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at the end of the podcast, I never do it. So just do
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it right now. That would help us tremendously. When you said pick up
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the phone I think of like the old infomercials like pick up the phone now
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for four easy payments of two nine dollars, like goddamn good thing. You
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had to be eighteen or older, because I've been I have been paid for
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dumb stuff. I know. Man. Do you remember any old phone numbers
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from commercials back in the day? Yeah, six seven, eight, triple
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nine eight two one two? Mmm. Do you know what number that is?
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It's the number and kiss me through the phone by Soldier Boy. That's
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not a commercial. But do you remember any numbers? I remember the eight
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hundred nine eight three hundred Empire today? Oh, I thought it was today.
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I just thought it was a whamp. We're gonna have to look it
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up later. It's fine, all right, Without further ado I'm gonna take
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this part because it's Justin's turn to get showered and love and support. We've
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been waiting very patiently. I've sent enough angry emile emails to Ted X omaha
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of like, when the hell is this ship coming out? And it finally
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released. If you saw on our Instagram, if you're friends with us in
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real life and follow us on Instagram and the Facebook, you've seen it there.
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Justin's Ted X finally dropped. It was amazing. I have been flexing
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on my coworker is that I have a friend that has done this. I've
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shared it with the health class. If they want to share it with the
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students, it's up to There's a little bit of provocative topic. I think
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the students can handle it, but it is very good, very inta formative.
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Justin's Ted Talk is here. We're gonna talk all about Ted Talks Ted
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X, the history of it, how Justin prepared, what it was like,
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everything in between. So that's what we're focusing on today. And I
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found this out right before we started recording. Justin was able to get the
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audio for it, So it's going to be at the end of the episode.
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We're gonna get to listen to it. If you keep listening towards that,
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we'll finish up and then Justin will take over with his ted x audio.
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Justin doesn't want you all to know that the video of it is he
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feels is better. I thought the video is really cool, so feel free
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to check it out on YouTube after it already has like almost a thousand views,
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which is super cool considering that it's like a fifteen minute video and having
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that many views. So, without further ado, we are here welcome to
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Justine's ted x talk. And we always like to start off with the story
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time too, so give you a little bit of background of my history with
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Ted. But TED talks have been a huge part of my life for a
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long time. I used to just put them on auto play and watch TED
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talks for hours. They've taught me so many valuable lessons and helped shape my
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ideas about life, at people, in psychology, the universe, biking education,
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like I've learned and grown so much from Ted Talks, So I couldn't
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think of anything more important to me to be a part of because they've been
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such an influence in my life. So way back when we had Jeff Coterba
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on the artist on the show, he was talking about how he gave it
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ted Talk and because he had done one about his own experience with Terette's,
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so he put in a good word for me, and then I actually had
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to apply for it. So in most ted X and so the difference between
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ted X and regular TED is that ted X tend to be more independently organized,
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but you can usually apply to those. So if you've got a topic
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that you're passionate about and want to share it and have the platform of TED,
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you could probably apply to a TEDx event in your area. So I
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had to send in a written application with a kind of a broad idea of
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what I wanted to do. Then I had to make a three minute video
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of what I wanted to do. So you have to have some tech skills
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be able to record these things, piece it all together, and then I
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actually had to do a live five minute interview over zoom and present a mini
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presentation on what I was thinking what I wanted to do, And that was
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a little stressful too. But a couple of months went by as they sorted
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through all the applications. They actually said they had hundreds of applicants from all
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over the world because a lot of people want to do TED talks, even
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in areas they don't live close to, but it's like one of their dreams
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to do a TED talk. So they we get people from Europe, all
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over the place, and so it took them a couple of months to get
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through all of it. But then around June, and just to kind of
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give you a timeline, that TED Talk was in November, so quite a
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bit of time. So I got accepted in June and they released all the
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TED speakers, so I had about five months to prepare, which is a
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long time to prepare for a fifteen minute speech. In July, we started
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getting together for workshops with all the speakers. Then the workshops were actually held
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with professional public speaking coaches to get us in the right mindset, what's our
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purpose, what's our through line? What do we want to get across?
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Actually had a coach that was assigned and she's got a very unique, awesome
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name. Her name's Strawberry Blue Olive and she was, I know, such
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a cool name. So I want to give her a huge shout out because
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it was just awesome working with her, and she gave me so much good
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feedback, and she actually has the license for Ted x Oma, so she
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runs the whole show. She's kind of a badass, so it was an
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absolute honor to work with her. And she's just got a lovely English accent
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as well, which is just so fun. We know how we feel about
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the English accents on this show. So huge plus a huge plus. So
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I worked my butt off. I was practicing, especially towards the end there
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that last month, I was practicing every day. I was meeting with a
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Strawberry a couple of times a week to run through it, practice it.
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She'd give me a formal feedback and I'd have to rewrite it, and rewrite
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it, and rewrite it, and rewrite it. But it was it was
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such a good process for learning how to do that public speaking, the type
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of refinement that you need to do to get there. And it got to
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the point where I was even obsessing a little bit about doing the Ted Talk.
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There were a few times where my wife actually like woke up in the
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middle of the night and found me like rehearsing in front of the bathroom mirror,
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but obsessing. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop going through in my
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head and I even found myself almost hang out on it. I've been working
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with a lot of people with OCD recently because I've been in an eating disorders
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cleaning, but even I found myself like having to run through it at least
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one complete time without any mistakes before I was able to fall asleep by a
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little bit about side. But you know, healthier and without the insight.
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I have to just say this, when you said that a couple of times,
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like Dana would find you like rehearsing in front of the mirror. I
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think of the meme where it's like when you're looking for the person to blame,
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and it's the person like pointing in the mirror to themselves. Yeah,
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I'm the problems. Are we okay with Taylor Swift here? I don't know.
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I feel like there's been controversy over the years. I don't really know
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what the controversy is. That's how easily swayed I am. I just yeah,
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she's controversial. I don't know why. I actually recently just saw she
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did an e cigarette advertisement a couple of years ago, and so she's she's
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a little bit on my shit list for that. But she's teetering. She's
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in between okay and not okay. Anyway, before before you asked the question,
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I also again, I'm gonna take this time to just shout justin out
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like it was super cool to watch. I have to say, I'm watching
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it and being like, I know this guy, I work with, this
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man, he's one of my good friends, one of like the best co
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host sorry, every other co host possible, the best cost possible. Like,
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it's fucking cool to see. So you get another few seconds of love.
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You deserve it, dude, that shit is so cool. Please seriously,
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if you haven't seen it, this is what you need to do.
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If you're listening, listen to the whole audio on this episode, then go
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watch it again because it was that good. It is so cool to watch.
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So shout out again to you, my friend. Well, thank you
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so much. Sometimes I feel a little awkward when accepting praise, but man,
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I work so hard on this that it feels good to have that feedback.
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If people told me that they really enjoyed it, that it really helped
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them think about smartphone addiction in a different way, I guess we haven't talked
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about what it's actually about, you know, it's just watch it. I
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don't even care. Just watch the thing. Tell us what it's about.
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It's about smartphone addiction. I'll talk a little bit about the topic later,
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but first, Eddie, tell me about some important TED talks in your life
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and something that made an impact on you. Yeah. Two of them came
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to mind in preparation for this episode. The first one is by doctor Meg
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j. She's a clinical psychologist. She wrote one of my all time favorite
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books called The Defining Decade. A mentor, Yeah, a mentor. She
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used to be an advisor for a club that I was I was president of
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in college. She gave it to me and just said, I read this
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book. I really like it. And it was all about basically your twenties
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and like the awkward phases you go through in your twenties in relation to work,
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money, love, all everything in between. And it was just so
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informative and like such a good read, and I really appreciated like her perspective
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and how much it felt like normal to be in this weird twenties phase.
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So I really like it. I recommend it to all my When I was
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working in like a communiments of health clinic and at the hospital, I recommend
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it to anybody that's going into like their eighteen nineties in their twenties. I
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really think it's a great book. The second one, this was one that
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I saw when I was in grad school. It was a woman by the
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name of Eleanor Longden, and she we watched it in My Psychopathology, and
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she talks about her experience of going to college and then almost directly after the
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development of her symptoms of schizophrenia. She talks about how one day she was
14:11
like leaving a room, she heard a voice in her head, and then
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she went on to share how from that moment the voice would just kind of
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increase and they would talk to her about emotions, they would comment on her
14:22
daily life, almost just someone like watching her life unfold each day and would
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comment as she's going through her day. She even mentioned like after a certain
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point that the voices became almost comforting, like she had somebody a partner basically,
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to go through life with her. She eventually shared that she told her
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symptoms and what was going on to a friend she started to reach out for
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help. She eventually was hospitalized multiple times because of what happened afterwards. You
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know, after you experience psychosis and have these hallucinations, sometimes suicidal thoughts,
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potential harm to yourself. Those are symptoms that come about afterwards. So really
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just talked about her her journey going through all of it, and I don't
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need to go through all the details. You are the more important part today,
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justin but really it was it was very impactful to be in a psychopathology
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class to learn about someone's first hand experience was really impactful. One of the
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quotes, I put a couple couple quotes from it because I rewatched it before
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this episode, because it was just that important to me. She said,
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her psychiatrist said, Eleanor, you'd be better off with cancer because cancer is
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easier to cure than schizophrenia. And that was pretty early on in her in
15:31
her treatment journey and learning what was going on and what she'd have to do
15:35
to get better. She was able to eventually make a positive recovery. She
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shared how she was able to improve, and one of her really good quotes
15:45
about just psychiatry and mental health in general, was an important question in psychiatrist
15:48
shouldn't be what's wrong with you, but rather what's happened to you? Really
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talks about and we've We've mentioned it a few times, but just the importance
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of how trauma and just impacts of events have on our life and they could
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eventually lead to But thankfully for Eleanor, she's really made a positive recovery.
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She's gone on to be an advocate for those who are working through schizophrenia and
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she ended up getting her mastress and has done a lot of work as a
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researcher and as part of the Hearing Voices network that helps to empower those that
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deal with mental distress. So really cool TED talk. Really recommend it for
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anyone, not just anyone that's in the field, but just a really cool,
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really cool Ted talk to hear her experience. I think I've actually seen
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that one too, and it is so cool. I do or credit those
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Ted talks and a lot of TED talks for teaching me about mental health issues,
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allowing me to actually see people with schizophrenia and talk about it, and
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that in and of itself was so useful for me in my own career and
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personal development and growth. So tell us, how did you get to the
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topic? Did? How did we get here? We still have been to
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missing what the title is, but tell us, let's hear it. So
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the title is Smartphones Colon, It's time to address our global addiction. Because
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we actually did a whole episode on phone addiction and diving into some of the
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data on phone addiction gave me a great springboard for the TED talk. The
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episode had a lot of downloads and it's showed that people were really interested in
17:22
this topic. Although I do think a lot of people have denial or are
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in denial about smartphone addiction because they don't want to address their addiction, which
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is a really bad part of addictions. I was thinking to myself, like,
17:37
what would be the most important topic I could do that people really need
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to hear, And this just became so clear in my mind that I needed
17:44
to do this. Honestly, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills to quote
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Zoolander, because no one seems to be talking about phone addiction right now.
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No one in the mental health world is taking it really seriously. No one
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in politics, not really in schools either one's putting the resources into studying this
18:02
that we really need right now to try and get in front of this.
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It's not happening. And that shocked me because it is becoming such a global
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pandemic of addiction, but we as a society, as a world, have
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not even really admitted that it's a problem yet. So the new DSM five,
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and I know, we talked a lot about the DSM, the Diagnostic
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and Statistical Manual on the show. That's where we get all of our diagnoses
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in mental health. That's like our bible, our structure. So the new
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TR came out, which stands for Text Revision, and I was so excited
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because I thought, for sure they've got to put smartphone or something about social
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media addiction in there. They've just got to because it's such a huge problem,
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and there was nothing. There was absolutely nothing in there. And it
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just really feels like so many things in our society, like smartphones, the
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obesity epidemic, the smoking epidemic, are major corporations preying on the addictions of
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children, you know, but no one's really doing anything about it, and
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that's so upsetting to me. I've seen lots of young people become addicted to
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their phones, especially because now I'm so much more aware of it. I'm
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asking more kids about their social media used, their screen times. I've had
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patients in my clinic who are up to twelve hours a day of screen time.
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I even had one kid that was on twelve hours, and that was
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with restrictions this parents cut off at twelve hours. So it's bad that there
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are kids addicted to this. And if you're on your phone for twelve hours,
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half of your entire existence is on your phone, and that's including sleep.
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Yeah, I feel like my eyes hurt thinking about twelve hours of screen
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time. Like my goodness, I will say real quick. I wanted to
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add as I was watching your Ted talk and it's obviously because we talk so
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much, but there's so many points in it that I use in my presentation
20:04
when I go to the health class and talk about like internet use, social
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media, internet safety, that it's like you have also ingrained in me,
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which is really helpful, just the importance of it. And I tell the
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kids like I have to like understand like school is centered around technology. In
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your computer. Everybody gets a chromebook when you come back on the first day
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of school. Everybody has online portals and that's how you check your grades and
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that's how you submit assignments. Like I can't just sit here and say stop
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using screens. Not possible, but it's just important that we're mindful of it,
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and there were good consumers of the Internet, of technology, of our
20:45
smartphones. We we have to be in moderation as much as possible, but
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just wanted to throw that out there. I know in schools just not talked
20:53
about enough, but at least at one school for the tenth grade class,
21:00
they are getting some information. I think it's so funny when I hear you
21:06
talk, especially like when you do your TV stuff too. I'm like,
21:07
man, like, we have so many points and so many things that we've
21:11
grown with together though like, okay, we have little pieces of each other
21:15
inside of us. That's yeah. I like that anyway, the bromance lives,
21:23
it does. It's strong of the One of the things I noticed with
21:29
this kids who are on their phone for like twelve hours a day. They
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don't have hobbies, who are interests. They don't want to spend time with
21:34
their family because their phones are giving them so much dopamine and their phones are
21:38
so exciting that everything else by comparison, is really boring. So family dinners,
21:44
spending time with the family, board games, anything else, They're just
21:48
like, man, I just don't even want to do it. I just
21:49
want to be on my phone all the time, which I find so interesting.
21:53
It's it's not just changing the way they interact with technology, it's changing
21:59
their entire perception of the world. And a lot of them even say They'll
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say, oh, I understand that the world is where I want to be,
22:07
but I just can't pull away from that phone, which also sounds like
22:11
addiction. I've seen young people admitted to the hospital with suicidal thoughts and homicidal
22:18
thoughts after their phones were taken away. And I'm talking about serious events in
22:22
which kids needed like shots of antipsychotics to calm down. I've seen kids coming
22:26
to the hospital demanding to be diagnosed with autism ADHD and bipolar disorder because they
22:32
saw a TikTok video from an influencer telling them that they had it. I
22:37
know kids who get multiple messages per day telling them that they're worthless and that
22:41
they should go kill themselves. I've seen boys and girls who refuse to go
22:45
back to school after nudes were leaked to the entire school. There appears to
22:49
be a rise and this is a data driven point. There appears to be
22:53
a rise in eating disorders as a result of social media. Kids are being
22:57
sent to the psychiatrist for ADHD evaluations because they quote unquote can't focus because they're
23:03
on their phones the entire time they're at school. And despite all of this
23:08
happening right before my eyes, no one seemed to be talking about this.
23:15
It just seems so obvious to me that we have a huge problem on our
23:18
hands and no one's doing anything about it. So I wanted to use that
23:22
platform that Ted gave me to raise awareness to this issue, to get people
23:26
thinking about it first so we can start talking about it. And I wanted
23:30
to question what we could do on a personal level, on a society level,
23:34
on a systems level, on a medical level, and even on a
23:37
political level to try and understand this and reverse this. Well, again I'm
23:51
biased, but I was looking at the ones that were like uploaded around the
23:53
same time, and like, yours definitely has a lot more views, and
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I think it's like, yeah, the topic is, it's there's a bunch
24:00
of pieces to it. There's maybe people don't want to admit that that's an
24:04
issue. Maybe people are interested in hearing what you have to say, but
24:08
may have a hard time because they they're like, oh, man, like
24:11
I'm i may be part of the problem. And as I was telling students,
24:15
was it last week a couple weeks ago, when I was giving the
24:18
presentation again about like internet use telling them and like being honest, Like you
24:22
know, when when I had my summer break this last summer, this is
24:25
the first summer I've had off in years, Like it's been so long.
24:27
I didn't know what to do some days, and my screen time would be
24:30
so high and it was not good, and it's just like I don't know.
24:34
But but like now you hear certain things and you get more information,
24:38
you start to like be able to make the most informed decision for yourself.
24:44
And I think that's really important. Part of this show is never to tell
24:48
you this is what you need to do, this is bad for you,
24:48
to stop doing this. The biggest one of the biggest part of the shows
24:52
is to give you information so that you can make the best decision for yourself,
24:56
the most informed decision. And at least if you're doing that, like
24:59
you're you've got a pretty good shot to be making the right decision. I
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hear you. When I have more free time, my screen time creeps up
25:07
too. It's so hard not to these days and That's one of the major
25:12
points I wanted to make on the TED Talk, as I share that usually
25:15
my screen time report is three to five hours per day, and that's so
25:19
much time just wasted. Most of that is Facebook in social media and YouTube
25:26
and just stuff that's not really that important. But I just so we always
25:32
like to say, just because we're the experts on this stuff, we're on
25:34
mental health issues, that we still struggle with this too. This is a
25:40
global problem, and I don't think we have a lot of the answers.
25:42
I give some suggestions for trying to cut down on your screen time in the
25:45
TED Talk, which you'll have to listen to it to find out, but
25:51
there is there is no data and evidence driven solutions to try and stop this
25:56
or reverse this. We're not even to that stage yet as a society.
26:00
Yeah, I'll give you guys a couple of things that I've only I've done
26:03
for myself to try to help. Recently, I put like a work focus
26:08
at work, so the only texts that come through are like specific people and
26:14
other than that, I don't get I don't see someone's text, and I
26:15
think that's helped a ton because I don't get the vibration on my wrist from
26:19
my watch, I don't get the lineup of the screen on my phone,
26:23
and I think and i've I think this week, I saw when I got
26:27
my report that my screen time was trending downwards. So yeah, just just
26:33
little stuff from there. But before we bless you all with the audio,
26:38
again, you need to see the video. But before we bless you with
26:41
the audio, we do want to give you some history of Ted Talks,
26:45
and then we also want Justin to answer a couple of questions for us.
26:48
But if you don't know so Ted, and if you've gone this whole episode
26:52
and have never heard of like Ted Talks, you're probably confused. You're like,
26:56
what the hell is TED Talks. So we'll give you some information.
26:59
But if you don't Ted it is a nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually
27:03
in talks that are about eighteen minutes or less. So if you look at
27:07
the website, like all of them are pretty consumable videos or ones that don't
27:11
take like two hours, Like eighteen minutes is a pretty good and I think
27:15
yours Justin was about fifteen minutes. Like they're in pretty good chunks of time
27:18
that you don't have to devote a lot of time too. But you can
27:22
get a lot of information out of TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design
27:26
and it was created in nineteen eighty four. They spoke about CDs, E
27:30
readers and computer graphics from Lucas Arts, and their first event, this is
27:34
a good tidbit, lost money, so there's that. In nineteen ninety the
27:41
TED Conference became an annual event in Monterey, California. Fun fact, when
27:47
my plane got rerouted, do we talk about this? I ended up in
27:49
Monerate, so that doesn't matter. It became a nonprofit in two thousand and
27:55
one with the aim of funding the most interesting people and letting them communicate their
27:59
path. The first TED talks were posted online in two thousand and six.
28:03
I think that's actually around the year that YouTube was created, and in the
28:06
views just started to pour in. In two thousand and nine, ted X
28:10
launched, which is an independent TED event created to inspire local communities and spread
28:14
big ideas. If you are what do I want to say? As to
28:18
say, if you are a person, you've probably seen ted X. I
28:22
know and my old high school that they've had it. I've seen at local
28:26
universities, like TED x is something that they do come up a good amount,
28:29
which is cool. There's a lot of different communities that want to spread
28:32
information, that want to talk about things that are going on and give people
28:36
the platform to do so. Like that's really cool, like the fact that
28:38
I mean, we have our platform here with our podcast, but that was
28:41
something that we took a while to create. Like these are big events that
28:45
can come up and give someone who maybe not have the platform to share this
28:48
information, give them an audience, give them the opportunity to do that.
28:52
In twenty and twelve, Ted hit a billion views online, which the song
28:57
Baby by Justin Bieber also has over a billion views. So like really Ted,
29:03
Justin Bieber like same, same, and I wanted to share. I
29:10
wanted to share this lasted bit of information besides Justin, which he is the
29:15
most important here. One of the TED talks that I've seen that actually does
29:18
hit pretty close to home is won by a former student at the high school
29:21
that I work at. Her name is Hailey Hardcastle. She talked about the
29:25
importance of mental health days in school. What's really cool is because of her
29:29
work and this work of other students in the state of Oregon. It was
29:32
a officially passed into law in twenty nineteen that students in Oregon are allowed five
29:37
excuse absences in a three month period and they can either be a sick day
29:41
or a mental health day. So on our attendance thing, you can identify
29:48
that it was a mental health day and you're not penalized in any way.
29:49
And I think that's really cool. That's so cool a Ted talk that influenced
29:53
some policy and got something done that was so important for young people. Yeah,
29:59
it's cool, it's it's and I think, I mean, part of
30:02
the reason why we like working with teens and young people so much is they
30:04
do have a lot of possibility to influence a lot of power that they can
30:10
spread their word. They can really influence a lot of change. So before
30:14
we wrap up again and give you all the audio, have a couple of
30:18
questions for justin the First one is, my friend, how much did you
30:21
push yourself? And was it all worth it? I pushed hard, Like
30:26
I said earlier, I kind of obsessed and I rewrote it so many different
30:32
times, and I refined it, and I talked to so many people about
30:34
it, and I got feedback from friends I got feedback from family, I
30:37
got feedback from my wife, just to try and make the absolute best talk
30:41
that I could possibly make, which I'm so glad I did. I put
30:45
one hundred percent of myself into it, and it was worth it. But
30:51
I think there's so many things in this society that people are afraid to be
30:56
vulnerable. People are afraid to do things that they don't are not automatically good
31:00
at. So I always try and encourage people to push yourself, do things
31:06
that maybe you're a little uncomfortable with, but something that's going to teach you
31:10
and help you grow a lot, because that's what life is all about.
31:14
And those are some of the most important things that you can do in life,
31:18
are the things that push you, the things that make you grow,
31:22
and then the things that you can reflect on and say, oh my gosh,
31:25
that was so worth it. One example I'll give personally is our podcast.
31:30
I was nervous as fucking I think I told you justin like it.
31:33
And I'm not saying we're like these big name people by any means, but
31:37
I mean we have a channel and a show that we're really proud of,
31:41
and I know in the beginning our humble beginnings. I think about now with
31:45
the way my setup looks now compared to when we first started. I had
31:48
a small desk that I could put over my lap in my bed with like
31:53
this microphone that sucked just my computer, and like now it's like we do
32:00
so much more with it. So absolutely, like when you get the chance
32:04
trying to push yourself, trying to get out of your comfort soon, and
32:06
I think it can be tough, but I think some really good things can
32:08
come from it. Absolutely. Yeah. This one is one that I think
32:14
is is probably on people's mind, and I think I would I would probably
32:19
get it. But did you have any stage fright when you were doing this?
32:22
It's so funny because that tends to be the first question that people ask,
32:25
like were you nervous? Did you have stage fright? And I went
32:29
into it thinking like, I'm not gonna have stage fright. I don't get
32:31
stage fright. Like I use this as an example, but I played the
32:37
saxophone growing up, so I was and I was the ten or one,
32:40
so I usually had like all the solos. I was very comfortable with performing
32:45
in front of people that kind of stuff. But oh my god, was
32:47
I wrong getting up in front of an auditorium where it's just you on stage
32:53
and everyone's looking at you, and you've been preparing for months and everyone's going
33:00
to be scrutinizing it. I'm going to be scrutinizing it. Like it got
33:04
to a point where I was like, Okay, I'm a little nervous,
33:07
but I also kind of love that adrenaline feeling that you get before going up
33:12
on stage, and like it's just it's it focuses you and it makes you
33:16
feel so good for the fifteenth time today and very biased, but it seems
33:22
flawless when you did it, so I appreciate you the normalizing of the stage.
33:29
Fright, Well, I've talked too much. I want to give Justin's
33:36
Ted X the floor. We're gonna wrap this baby up. We're head into
33:39
it. The audio is coming right after this, but before we get to
33:43
it, we want to remind you all. Well, first we want to
33:45
tell it. We want to tell you thank you, but we want to
33:46
remind you. Whatever podcast streaming platform you use, please like, subscribe,
33:52
share, send it to your friends, send it to two friends. Send
33:54
it to someone you're not friends with but you think they need some help.
33:57
Send it to anybody and we'd appreciate it. If you use the Apple podcast
34:00
app, feel free to leave us a five star review. If you use
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Spotify, you can leave us a five star review. But going back to
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Apple Podcasts, you can also leave us a comment and we'd love to read
34:10
it. On social media, you can find us on TikTok, Twitter,
34:14
Instagram, and their YouTube at Millennial MHC. That is enough of me.
34:17
Here's some more of justin Thank you all for listening, thank you all for
34:21
subscribing, Thank you all for being a follower a supporter. We love you,
34:24
and with all that, remember take cary all mentals. Let's start with
34:32
a dirty word, shall we pandemic? As we transition out of the last
34:38
pandemic, we're entering a new pandemic of addiction that might be the most pervasive
34:45
addiction in human history. Scary part is the world has yet to even acknowledge
34:51
that this addiction exists, despite it being all around us and fueling our current
34:57
mental health crisis. But today we turned the tide on this new addiction.
35:02
What if I were to tell you that in two thousand and seven, a
35:06
new addictive drug came out and it took the world by storm. In less
35:10
than fifteen years, over half of the world's population was using this drug daily,
35:15
was causing a rise in depression, anxiety, and suicide in all age
35:21
ranges, but especially in young girls, and it was accounting for three thousand
35:25
traffic deaths per year in the United States from impaired driving. If this were
35:30
happening, wouldn't there be an outrage. Wouldn't the government and society as a
35:37
whole be trying to fix this. Wouldn't we be draft in class action lawsuits
35:42
and demanding justice. Well, check your pockets, because I'm guessing you have
35:49
this drug on you right now and it's your smartphone. When you think about
35:55
addiction, what comes to mind substances like drugs and alcohol, maybe sex,
36:01
gambling, You think about computer code, apps, algorithms. As a child
36:09
adolescent psychiatry fellow, I am here to advocate for my patients, who are
36:15
mostly kids age five to nineteen, who I am seeing become addicted to their
36:19
phones in mass And the purpose of this talk is to shift your perception of
36:23
addiction, because we must start viewing smartphones, technology, and social media in
36:30
the context of addiction if we want to reverse our current mental health crisis.
36:37
What we know about addictions neurologically is that all addictive things, including your smartphone,
36:43
increase dopamine in your brain at the levels of the tech mental ventral,
36:46
tech mental area, and the nucleus accumbents. Dopamine makes you feel good,
36:52
satisfied, but also increases your drive. That drive is important because it's the
36:59
drive that makes you do things over and over again. For example, in
37:02
Caveman times, if you will find a new food source that helped you survive,
37:08
say a big bush of wild blueberries, your brain would release a ton
37:13
of dopamine to make you feel good about your find and increase that drive to
37:17
do it again. In today's world, there are endless apps that are trying
37:22
to trick your brain into releasing dopamine without being fundamentally good for you. App
37:30
developers have found a way to hack a reward and addiction pathway, and they
37:34
did it without a substance. They did it with computer code. Addiction in
37:38
twenty twenty two has become nothing more than zeros and ones. Typically, we
37:45
define addiction by these signs. Play along and see how many you have,
37:50
Like hazardous use, using while driving or when it's dangerous impaired social functioning like
37:55
isolating yourself or giving up on your social roles, having withdrawal from your phone,
38:01
cravings for your phone, increased tolerance like your screen time creeping up,
38:07
trying to cut down on your use and being unable to spending more time using
38:10
than you initially anticipated, and giving up your hobbies and interests to use.
38:16
How many of you have that, oh crap, that's me a feeling?
38:22
And if you don't see it in yourself, how many people around you do
38:24
you see these signs? In so for seeing everyone become addicted to their phone,
38:30
you'd think that the mental health community would be doing something about this,
38:32
right, But this addiction came on so fast that academia has yet to catch
38:39
up, and as of now, none of the top mental health associations in
38:44
the world have even recognized this as a real diagnosis. The DSM five,
38:50
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Psychiatry's Bible, has no official diagnosis for phone addiction.
38:57
The ICD ten and eleven International billing and coding system we use in America
39:02
now there is a code for getting sucked up into a jet engine and requiring
39:07
medical care, but there's no code for phone addiction. If there's no code,
39:14
it makes an incredibly difficult to diagnose, bill for and track. We
39:19
have to come to a consensus on a diagnosis and a code, because right
39:22
now, without an official diagnosis, the world has yet to even admit that
39:27
this is a real problem. And you don't have to be a psychiatrist to
39:30
know that the first step in treating an addiction is admitting that you have a
39:35
problem. How pervasive is this issue, well, to compare it to smoking.
39:40
At the peak of the tobacco industry in nineteen fifty four, only forty
39:45
five percent of American smoked. Right now, ninety seven percent of Americans have
39:51
a smartphone, and surveys indicate about half of them feel addicted to them already.
39:57
Here's why your smartphone is a super addiction. It places multiple addictive elements
40:01
into one device. Video games, pornography, sports, gambling, shopping,
40:08
social media, instant messaging. By placing these all into one device that lives
40:14
in your pocket, you're walking around with an addiction ticking time bomb that you
40:17
have unlimited access to. Your phone is programmed to buzz and ding you at
40:23
just the right rate to make sure that you're constantly thinking about your phone and
40:28
your screen time creeps up. Now, the phones are specifically designed to be
40:32
addictive, but there are so many other reasons why this is a superaddiction,
40:37
like rapid acceptance. Remember, smartphones have only been around for the past fifteen
40:43
years. The iPhone was released in two thousand and seven, and in twenty
40:47
twenty two, ninety five percent of American teens have a smartphone and use them
40:52
on average up to nine hours per day. The original telephone took over one
41:00
hundred years to democratize where everyone has access to it. The smartphone did it
41:05
in less than a fifth of the time. Smartphones have revolutionized a very sexy
41:09
topic in twenty twenty two, supply chains. Most addictions have to be planted,
41:16
grown, process shipped, package prepared, and consumed. Smartphones eliminate almost
41:22
all of these steps and allow app developers to deliver free, legal, addictive
41:28
content to anyone anywhere instantly. Imagine if there was a physical drug that was
41:35
free, legal, addictive, and put right in your pocket whenever you craved
41:37
it, how many people would be using it. Smartphones will continue to evolve
41:45
at the pace of the Internet age, quickly and continuously. Look how fast
41:51
TikTok was able to take over for an entire young generation. That's because it
41:54
was specifically designed to be more addictive, designed to be harder to put down.
42:00
This will keep on happening, where every few weeks, newer, more
42:05
addictive apps will come out to replace their water down predecessors. But perhaps the
42:10
most important reason why smartphones are a super addiction is because it's socially acceptable.
42:17
It's typically frowned upon to give your kids smokes, booze, and porn,
42:22
but giving your kids the new iPhone for Christmas makes you a good parent,
42:28
right at least that's the commercials tell us. I would argue that the phone
42:32
is worse, but society doesn't see it that way, and that's why we've
42:37
all been caught up in this current of addiction with little or no resistance from
42:42
us. So I hope by now I've convinced you that your smartphone might be
42:46
just a little bit addictive. The thing that worries me the most as a
42:51
mental health provider is addictions have what we call comorbidities or other mental health problems
42:57
that go with the addiction. Depression, anxiety, substance use, obsessive,
43:01
compulsive, disorder have all been studied and found linked two excessive smartphone use.
43:08
Not to mention the social problems that are coming as a result, as I
43:13
know lots of kids who get two to three messages per day telling them that
43:15
they're worthless and that they should go kill themselves. Kids face constant judgment from
43:22
online and social media, which I think might be making social anxiety worse.
43:28
Sexual predation is rampant and psychologically scarring an entire generation. You want to know
43:35
how bad this problem is, ask any teenage girl how many times she's been
43:37
pressured for nudes. The longer we let smartphone addiction go on, the worst
43:44
these issues will become, especially in this next generation who's growing up with an
43:49
addiction, because when your brain develops with an addiction, the changes to brain,
43:53
physiology, and personality can be dramatic. And I'm not just talking about
43:59
the very young, as brain development is complete in the early twenties for females
44:04
and the mid twenties for males. Addiction literally rewires your brain. We've all
44:09
heard the stories about someone addicted to metemphetamine or heroine who lies, cheats,
44:14
and steals from their family to support their drug addiction and ruins their relationships in
44:19
the process. I've met young people who impulsively steal credit cards from anyone they
44:24
can to support their online video game addiction, similarly ruining their relationship and trust
44:30
with their family. When your brain develops with an addiction, everything else comes
44:37
second. The rates of those comorbidities I mentioned go up, academic performance goes
44:43
down. Imagine how much creativity, empathy, productivity, and connectivity we will
44:50
lose if everyone in society is on their phone for nine hours every day.
44:57
My training as a child psychiatrist has taught me that in the very young brain
45:00
development is dependent upon those daily interactions with caregivers and babies these days are having
45:07
to compete with smartphones for the attention of their parents. Let's face it,
45:13
screens have fundamentally changed parenting directly and how much kids are on their screens,
45:17
and indirectly by how much their parents are on their screens. I wonder as
45:23
to how many collective hours of that brain development, of that interaction we have
45:29
lost because parents are spending hours a day on their phone just scrolling. This
45:37
is a topic of personal interest to me, as I'm going to be a
45:39
first time father in twenty twenty three. Thank you. Right now, my
45:46
screen time app tells me I'm on my phone from three to five hours per
45:51
day, and I'm curious as to how that will change me as a person
45:54
and as a parent. I think it's safe to say that cutting back on
45:59
my phone use would give me more of that interaction time with my child would
46:02
make me a better parent. But to be honest with you, I don't
46:06
know if I can, because I've tried before and I failed. But I'm
46:13
going to keep on trying because we all have a social obligation to make a
46:16
world that we want my son, your children, your grandchildren to grow up
46:22
in a world where a gift can go back to being a kid, where
46:25
two year olds aren't handed an addiction that consumes a third of their entire existence,
46:31
a world with less depression, anxiety, and suicide. We have to
46:37
take a hard look at our relationships with our phones because honestly, and you
46:45
might not believe this, I'm not saying that smartphones are a bad thing.
46:49
They're a wonderful tool in many cases, and getting rid of them altogether is
46:53
just not realistic. I'm saying that we have to have a healthy balance with
46:58
our phones. Before we all too deeply into this addiction. So what do
47:05
we do about it? Here are four things you can do to reduce problematic
47:09
use in young people. Number one, set screen time limiting apps and set
47:14
a password. Kids aren't dumb, they'll just turn them off and they do
47:17
all the time. Number two, take their phone away at night. Sleep
47:22
is imperative to mental health and brain development, and too many kids these days
47:28
are staying up all night on their phone when they should be sleeping. Number
47:31
three talk to your kids about this. Education is an important piece. If
47:37
kids know it's addictive and it's not very good for them, they're less likely
47:39
to start. And number four take a look in the mirror. We have
47:46
to set a good example for our young people. We cannot expect them to
47:51
make a change if we ourselves are unwilling to make a change. Those are
47:57
some of the individual things you can do to stop the bleeding if you will
48:00
on this addiction. The mental health community in the medical community have some work
48:05
to do too. Like I mentioned earlier, got to come to a consensus
48:08
on that code and the diagnosis. We have to start raising awareness about this.
48:14
We have to start being diligent about asking our patients about their digital media
48:17
consumption and screening for signs of addiction. But perhaps the most important thing we
48:23
can all do as a society is hold the tech companies accountable for what they're
48:30
doing, because if we don't, they're just going to keep on doing it.
48:36
Good news is we were able to hold the tobacco companies accountable and that
48:40
helped turn the tide in the smoking epidemic. We can do the same thing
48:45
now. And I don't want to villainize the tech industry too much because I
48:50
think there's a real wonderful opportunity for collaboration moving forward. Imagine a world in
48:55
which the tech industry shares their data with resers so that we can understand this
49:00
addiction and reverse it. And what if we're also able to use that data
49:07
to be able to identify people at the beginning stages of depression, anxiety,
49:13
ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia to make sure that those people get the right
49:20
help sooner. The tech companies would go from being a part of a problem
49:24
to being a part of the broader solution. What a redemption. Okay,
49:31
I know this is a little overwhelming, and it's supposed to be. We're
49:37
nowhere near those long term, research driven solutions. Today's journey starts with raising
49:44
awareness to an issue that's been right in front of our eyes for the past
49:47
fifteen years, that smartphone addiction is real, and turning the tide on this
49:53
new pandemic starts right now