Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #58 Phone Companion
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: This is the Heavy Family's podcast with doctor Justin Coilson,
- 0:08Speaker 1: where Luke and Suzi and this is the podcast for
- 0:10Speaker 1: the time poor parent who just wants answers.
- 0:12Speaker 2: Now, what a privilege that I have to be in
- 0:14Speaker 2: a studio with you on a regular basis. Yes, it's
- 0:17Speaker 2: an amazing my wife, you know, and just beautiful, but
- 0:21Speaker 2: I do sometimes. You know, I've got my phone here
- 0:24Speaker 2: as well. I was just great because then I've got
- 0:26Speaker 2: two for while I've got the two closest people in
- 0:29Speaker 2: some interesting research and I say interesting, almost interesting, sad
- 0:33Speaker 2: about how important our smartphones are and it maybe you
- 0:36Speaker 2: might be usurped pretty soon.
- 0:38Speaker 1: Well, this is the thing, Aldi Mobile are the ones
- 0:41Speaker 1: you've come out with this research revealing that almost nine
- 0:44Speaker 1: in ten Australians get that in your head, almost nine
- 0:48Speaker 1: in ten Australians. Nearly ninety percent of people are saying
- 0:51Speaker 1: that their smartphone is their number one companion, ahead of
- 0:56Speaker 1: their parents, their pets, and their friends. Justin Coulson, this
- 1:01Speaker 1: is this is significant research and it kind of breaks
- 1:05Speaker 1: my heart.
- 1:06Speaker 3: A little bit. Have you seen The Lord of the Rings?
- 1:08Speaker 3: I've not seen part Okay, well you know who.
- 1:11Speaker 4: Golum is, right, Golum loses the ring. Bilbo Baggins ends
- 1:15Speaker 4: up with the ring, and you remember what Golum calls
- 1:17Speaker 4: the ring.
- 1:18Speaker 3: Precious, precious, precious. The Wicked Hobbits is, I've taken that precious.
- 1:23Speaker 4: Have you ever tried to take a device off somebody?
- 1:26Speaker 4: I was going to say, of one of your children,
- 1:27Speaker 4: But even if you're you.
- 1:29Speaker 1: It does not work. It's not a good idea.
- 1:32Speaker 3: Loke Luke becomes Golum. The wicked wife says, they taken
- 1:36Speaker 3: the precious.
- 1:36Speaker 4: I must have the precious, and we actually we treat
- 1:40Speaker 4: our devices as if they are the precious, and we
- 1:44Speaker 4: will cross heaven and Earth to get to keep our
- 1:48Speaker 4: devices close to us. I do this activity because I
- 1:51Speaker 4: speak in schools all around the country and in corporations
- 1:53Speaker 4: all around the country, and I teach people how to
- 1:55Speaker 4: have a healthy digital diet and specifically how to have
- 1:58Speaker 4: a healthy relationship with their part because I think most
- 2:02Speaker 4: of us have unhealthy relationships with our phone.
- 2:04Speaker 1: And we deceive ourselves into believing that our relationship with
- 2:07Speaker 1: our phone is still a relationship with people because we're
- 2:09Speaker 1: on social media and we're well occasionally using it for
- 2:13Speaker 1: actual phone calls.
- 2:14Speaker 3: Yeah, it's that's so much more than a phone. Now
- 2:15Speaker 3: is that It's not is it?
- 2:16Speaker 1: It's it's not that.
- 2:17Speaker 3: But I do this activity where I get to.
- 2:19Speaker 4: Take their phone out, unlock it, and then hand it
- 2:21Speaker 4: to the person next to them.
- 2:23Speaker 3: You want to watch people.
- 2:24Speaker 4: I'm not just talking about teenagers here, I'm talking about adults.
- 2:27Speaker 2: That's exactly how I feel. Susie goes, oh, hey, can
- 2:30Speaker 2: I have your phone? And I'm like, where's yours. She's like,
- 2:33Speaker 2: it's in the other room.
- 2:34Speaker 5: I go get it.
- 2:36Speaker 2: And there's no reason, there's absolutely no reason why I
- 2:39Speaker 2: should hesitate.
- 2:41Speaker 1: Just give me your phone.
- 2:42Speaker 2: The end. But I feel that exactly what you just describe.
- 2:46Speaker 4: We actually it's been it's been scientifically shown that people
- 2:50Speaker 4: experience separation anxiety from their phone.
- 2:53Speaker 2: That's what I'm feeling.
- 2:54Speaker 4: Soon the heart starts to race, the sweat lands starts
- 2:58Speaker 4: to release a little bit of extra more yeah, and
- 3:01Speaker 4: we begin to feel really, really uncomfortable with it. You know,
- 3:04Speaker 4: there's been some great studies published in the last few years,
- 3:07Speaker 4: and and by the way we are going through, we're
- 3:10Speaker 4: going through a massive experiment right now. Technology has never
- 3:13Speaker 4: been pervasive like this. And rather than waiting until a
- 3:16Speaker 4: bit of data is in to see how it's going
- 3:17Speaker 4: to affect us as a culture. We have just gone
- 3:20Speaker 4: I love this, and we've given it a great, big
- 3:22Speaker 4: bear hug and we've consumed it whole is bowlus without
- 3:26Speaker 4: knowing what it's doing to us. But the data that
- 3:28Speaker 4: is coming through, and it is still early days. Really
- 3:32Speaker 4: the data is I think providing us with some fairly
- 3:35Speaker 4: ominous warning signs that we've got to do something about it.
- 3:40Speaker 1: It is the Happy Famili's podcast, with all too many
- 3:43Speaker 1: people these days saying their phone is their best friend.
- 3:47Speaker 1: Doctor Justin Colson speaking on this a little bit more
- 3:49Speaker 1: up next.
- 3:50Speaker 5: Everyone wants their family to be happy, but so much
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- 4:28Speaker 1: It's The Happy Family's Podcast with doctor Justin Coulson, Luke
- 4:31Speaker 1: and Susie with you here as well and Justin. We
- 4:33Speaker 1: are talking about this statistic that's come out talking about
- 4:37Speaker 1: the very high proportion of people who call their phone
- 4:40Speaker 1: their best companion. What do we do to actually go
- 4:44Speaker 1: about battling this addiction that we have, this obsession that
- 4:49Speaker 1: we have with our phones.
- 4:50Speaker 4: Well, let me define it in the negative. Let's focus
- 4:52Speaker 4: about what we shouldn't do first. Okay, Number one, we
- 4:56Speaker 4: shouldn't be waking up in the morning and the first
- 4:58Speaker 4: thing that we look at being ou phone, especially before
- 5:01Speaker 4: we look at our spouse or you know, our partner,
- 5:04Speaker 4: our husband, our wife or our kids. I mean, and
- 5:07Speaker 4: if and if the phone is the first thing that
- 5:08Speaker 4: really gets your quality attention in the mornings, if the
- 5:11Speaker 4: phone has become your early morning coffee, I mean, coffee
- 5:14Speaker 4: is bad enough for you anyway, right, But now now
- 5:16Speaker 4: we're doing this psychological thing. We're going full into our
- 5:19Speaker 4: brain and bang and we're hitting it with all of this.
- 5:21Speaker 4: It's it's not actually a very good way to wake
- 5:24Speaker 4: up as bad if your brain. Similarly, if it's the
- 5:26Speaker 4: last thing you look at at night, you're not setting
- 5:29Speaker 4: yourself yourself up for a successful physical night of sleep
- 5:34Speaker 4: or mental night either. It's just not good preparation or
- 5:37Speaker 4: follow up from from sleep. But what it shows more
- 5:40Speaker 4: than anything is that we've got this compulsion to be
- 5:42Speaker 4: close to it. We sleep within our room, you know,
- 5:44Speaker 4: sometimes we'll wake up because we'll become aware that somebody
- 5:46Speaker 4: send it us a message, and even though we're on
- 5:47Speaker 4: silent mode, the room has just become illuminated with that.
- 5:50Speaker 3: Soft glow of the phone, you know, and there it is.
- 5:54Speaker 3: There's that glow, and you're like, oh, it's morning. Oh no,
- 5:56Speaker 3: it's not. It's somebody think and one in the morning somebody. Yeah,
- 6:02Speaker 3: that's right. But there's a handful of other things. Look,
- 6:04Speaker 3: let's go to the healthy digital diet question.
- 6:06Speaker 4: Specifically, when we're eating and consuming food and drink, there's
- 6:12Speaker 4: a food pyramid that indicates that some foods should be
- 6:15Speaker 4: consumed a lot, and some should be minimized and even avoided.
- 6:20Speaker 4: And it's the same with our device. A lot of
- 6:22Speaker 4: people say to me, how much screen time should my
- 6:24Speaker 4: kids be allowed to have? Well, there are some guidelines,
- 6:27Speaker 4: like for kids that are under two, the answer is zero,
- 6:30Speaker 4: and for kids who are a bit over to maybe
- 6:32Speaker 4: up to four or five, the answer is as little
- 6:34Speaker 4: as possible and hopefully no more than half to an
- 6:36Speaker 4: hour a day. Minimize it for the little kids especially,
- 6:40Speaker 4: and Australians typically completely ignore those guidelines in a significant
- 6:44Speaker 4: and serious and damaging way. But how much isn't really
- 6:48Speaker 4: the right question. I think what kind matters more. It's
- 6:51Speaker 4: kind of like saying to a dietitian, how much food
- 6:53Speaker 4: should I eat every day? The dietitian is going to say, well,
- 6:56Speaker 4: it's not about how much, it's about what kind Exactly
- 7:00Speaker 4: what are we doing on our devices. If we've got
- 7:01Speaker 4: a digital junk food diet, then that's terribly unhealthy. If
- 7:06Speaker 4: we've got a really nutritional digital diet where we're using
- 7:10Speaker 4: our devices and our screens wisely to work and to
- 7:13Speaker 4: contribute and to learn and develop and grow, and if
- 7:17Speaker 4: our children are doing the same, then I think a
- 7:19Speaker 4: little bit more time isn't going to hurt at all.
- 7:22Speaker 4: In fact, it might be beneficial with a couple of
- 7:25Speaker 4: other really important things. You've got to make sure that
- 7:28Speaker 4: you and your kids are getting the physical activity that
- 7:32Speaker 4: you need. You know, I said to my kids when
- 7:33Speaker 4: they want to be on their screens, of course you can.
- 7:35Speaker 4: Once you've had a swim, once you've jumped on the trampoline,
- 7:38Speaker 4: once you've been for a bike ride, once you've done
- 7:41Speaker 4: something outside. And then they say, okay, I've done that.
- 7:45Speaker 4: Six minutes later, can I do something?
- 7:47Speaker 3: Can I get to my screens?
- 7:48Speaker 4: And I'll say, well, have you caught up with a friend,
- 7:50Speaker 4: have you spent some time face to face with somebody,
- 7:53Speaker 4: Have you done your chores, have you done any relevant schoolwork,
- 7:56Speaker 4: have you read a real book? And once your kids
- 7:59Speaker 4: have done all. See, we want to kids to have
- 8:00Speaker 4: a whole life, and we need to do the same thing.
- 8:03Speaker 4: By the way, yes, but I challenge you, by the way,
- 8:06Speaker 4: before I give you the challenge, I've got a good
- 8:09Speaker 4: challenge for you. But I think that you know, when
- 8:11Speaker 4: you're with people and they're staring at their phones. Research
- 8:15Speaker 4: shows at the more time we're staring at screens, the
- 8:17Speaker 4: poorer our social and emotional intelligence. It also shows that
- 8:20Speaker 4: our relationships deteriorate the phones actually make us dumb socially
- 8:26Speaker 4: and emotionally. Next, next time you're with people, just put
- 8:31Speaker 4: your phone away and keep it away. Actually try and
- 8:34Speaker 4: do that. It's really, really tough. I have this thing
- 8:37Speaker 4: when I'm out with friends, we get our phones and
- 8:39Speaker 4: we put them down on the table, face down, first
- 8:42Speaker 4: person to look at their phone pace for the lunch.
- 8:46Speaker 3: And it guarantees that everybody has a really great time.
- 8:49Speaker 4: You know, Studies have been shown that even the mere
- 8:51Speaker 4: presence of a phone decreases the quality of the interaction,
- 8:54Speaker 4: the quality of the trust, the quality of the emotional connection.
- 8:57Speaker 3: So here's my challenge for you this week.
- 9:00Speaker 4: Go to bed every night and make sure that in
- 9:03Speaker 4: at least the thirty minutes prior to going to bed, you.
- 9:06Speaker 3: Don't look at your device, brilliant.
- 9:09Speaker 4: And when you wake up, make sure that at least
- 9:11Speaker 4: the first thirty minutes no device, brilliant.
- 9:15Speaker 5: I love you.
- 9:16Speaker 2: I can handle the first thirty minutes. The last I've
- 9:20Speaker 2: got into a habit, and this is just strange. Just
- 9:23Speaker 2: as I get into bed, dimm the light on my
- 9:25Speaker 2: phone and I play a couple of hands of solitaire,
- 9:27Speaker 2: and that's the last thing I do, and I get
- 9:29Speaker 2: little bit sleeping. I get right, that's enough. The phone
- 9:31Speaker 2: goes down, and it's just become this little it's my
- 9:34Speaker 2: little got to sleep routine, and I'm going to struggle.
- 9:38Speaker 4: Justin just before, just before my I won't say who,
- 9:42Speaker 4: it was, a family member, just before she divorced her husband.
- 9:46Speaker 3: I remember her. I remember him saying to.
- 9:47Speaker 4: Her one day, you know, there's nobody I'd rather lay
- 9:53Speaker 4: in bed next to while they stare at their phone
- 9:56Speaker 4: than you.
- 9:58Speaker 3: Ouch. Look, they get in the way. I think that.
- 10:01Speaker 3: I think that in the way that's smoking.
- 10:03Speaker 4: You know when you walk past people who are smoking
- 10:05Speaker 4: now and everyone sort of looks at them and goes, oh,
- 10:07Speaker 4: nobody does that around here anymore. I know that some
- 10:09Speaker 4: people are still smoke, and I want to be sensitive
- 10:11Speaker 4: to the fact that some people actually want to do it,
- 10:13Speaker 4: and that's fine. But as a community, as a society,
- 10:17Speaker 4: we've kind of looked at people who smoked now and said,
- 10:20Speaker 4: don't do that around here.
- 10:20Speaker 3: It's not considerate.
- 10:22Speaker 4: And I think that where in the next maybe ten
- 10:24Speaker 4: or fifteen years, we're going to get to a point
- 10:26Speaker 4: like that with devices where people are going to be like, oh, really,
- 10:30Speaker 4: you've brought it to the restaurant.
- 10:32Speaker 3: Take that outside. If you're going to be on your phone,
- 10:34Speaker 3: take it outside, do it away from other people. It's
- 10:36Speaker 3: so rude, but.
- 10:37Speaker 2: I think it's a I think can you to me?
- 10:39Speaker 2: I will still defend the social nature of technology and
- 10:43Speaker 2: devices when you're not in the space with other people.
- 10:46Speaker 2: When I traveled overseas, videos and photo sharing and I
- 10:50Speaker 2: could share the experience, Susie was at home and I
- 10:53Speaker 2: felt more connected because of technology with someone I cared
- 10:56Speaker 2: about because of it. But when you're in the room
- 10:58Speaker 2: with the person, with somebody, and I have it as
- 11:01Speaker 2: a rule, when I'm in a meeting or at a
- 11:02Speaker 2: coffee with anybody, that phone goes off, they go, oh
- 11:06Speaker 2: you take it? No, no, no, I'm here with you, right,
- 11:09Speaker 2: So you put it away?
- 11:12Speaker 3: Spot on.
- 11:13Speaker 4: We send this message, don't we. When we're looking at
- 11:14Speaker 4: the phone, we're saying you don't matter as much as this.
- 11:18Speaker 4: It's funny one that you mentioned as well, though looked
- 11:19Speaker 4: just just briefly on that whole sharing experiences. The social
- 11:24Speaker 4: media aspect of being able to share the great things
- 11:25Speaker 4: that you're doing is wonderful. And again what type versus
- 11:29Speaker 4: how much? But this much, I will say that there's
- 11:32Speaker 4: a couple of studies and I've experienced it myself where
- 11:35Speaker 4: researchers have found that when we live life through the lens,
- 11:39Speaker 4: we tend not to enjoy life as.
- 11:40Speaker 3: Much and we actually miss out on stuff. I went
- 11:43Speaker 3: to a big bike race.
- 11:44Speaker 4: I'm a pretty obsessed cyclist.
- 11:47Speaker 3: I love writing my pushy and I used.
- 11:50Speaker 4: To race competitively, but with six kids in a business
- 11:52Speaker 4: that makes me travel a lot, I've stopped the competition.
- 11:55Speaker 4: But I still love to see a really great bike race.
- 11:57Speaker 4: I went to this bike race. I got there early.
- 12:00Speaker 4: I was right on the finish line, and I was
- 12:02Speaker 4: looking down the street so I could see the cyclist
- 12:05Speaker 4: as they came down the finishing straight, and they were
- 12:07Speaker 4: sprinting at like seventy k's an hour. They were giving
- 12:09Speaker 4: it everything, and I was looking through my phone and
- 12:11Speaker 4: videoing it so that I could share it with everybody,
- 12:15Speaker 4: because you know, he's the bike race here I am,
- 12:17Speaker 4: and I actually once they'd crossed the finish line, it
- 12:20Speaker 4: occurred to me that because I was trying so intently
- 12:22Speaker 4: to film it, I had no idea who'd won.
- 12:25Speaker 3: All I saw was a blur of bikes.
- 12:27Speaker 4: If i'd been there and if i'd really been in
- 12:29Speaker 4: the moment, I would have had a very different outcome.
- 12:31Speaker 4: It's all about mindfulness and the devices take us away
- 12:36Speaker 4: from the moment.
- 12:38Speaker 2: Now, just to recap on what type versus how much
- 12:41Speaker 2: listening to the Happy Families podcast compared to playing Candy Crush,
- 12:46Speaker 2: they're not a comparison.
- 12:48Speaker 4: A plus, you're going to have a lot more fun
- 12:51Speaker 4: and you're going to level up a lot faster.
- 12:54Speaker 3: No, I'm not finished as a parent. You're going to
- 12:57Speaker 3: level up a lot faster as a parent as a
- 13:01Speaker 3: parent when you're off.
- 13:03Speaker 4: Candy on the Hatty Families podcast.
- 13:06Speaker 2: Because it's very clear that there are things we can
- 13:09Speaker 2: do with our devices which which help us to grow
- 13:11Speaker 2: and nurture it and even some of the fun stuff
- 13:14Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with it.
- 13:15Speaker 3: Every now and again we sit down as a family.
- 13:17Speaker 4: I have a daughter who's discovered this comedy troupe from
- 13:20Speaker 4: the US called Studio c. She thinks they're the funniest
- 13:24Speaker 4: people ever. And there's there are some really really funny gags.
- 13:29Speaker 4: There's this go to It. There's there's some really funny
- 13:31Speaker 4: gags on Studio See. Most of it I find pretty juvenile,
- 13:35Speaker 4: but there's a couple of really good ones, and as
- 13:37Speaker 4: a family, we'll sit down and we'll just watch YouTube
- 13:39Speaker 4: clips of Studio.
- 13:40Speaker 3: C for fifteen or twenty minutes every now and again.
- 13:42Speaker 4: Or you know, we'll laugh at something that's in somebody's
- 13:44Speaker 4: Facebook timeline, or there's nothing the matter with a little
- 13:47Speaker 4: bit of junk food now on there.
- 13:49Speaker 3: That's fun.
- 13:49Speaker 1: We've the kids and I've started watching a series called
- 13:52Speaker 1: Brain Games, and it's teaching you about different elements of
- 13:56Speaker 1: the brain. But it shows all these really cool there's
- 13:58Speaker 1: a little in the middle of the show. There's the
- 14:00Speaker 1: things that you can do like put your hand above
- 14:02Speaker 1: your head and close your eyes and then with your
- 14:04Speaker 1: other hand try and find your thumb and your finger.
- 14:06Speaker 1: And it's teaching things about the brain.
- 14:08Speaker 3: But we love it.
- 14:09Speaker 1: We love watching it together. So there is some good
- 14:12Speaker 1: stuff out there.
- 14:12Speaker 3: They just got to make the choice. Yeah.
- 14:14Speaker 4: I don't think that we should ever ever say that
- 14:18Speaker 4: technology is bad.
- 14:20Speaker 3: Technology is neither good nor bad. Is what we do
- 14:21Speaker 3: with it that matters.
- 14:23Speaker 4: But to go right back full circle to where you
- 14:25Speaker 4: started this conversation, if we're saying that we prize our
- 14:30Speaker 4: phones as precious above our other relationships, then we have
- 14:33Speaker 4: a problem and we need to make sure that we
- 14:36Speaker 4: prioritize people ahead.
- 14:38Speaker 3: Of plasma or whatever they're made out of.
- 14:41Speaker 4: I'm just trying to keep the alliteration going.
- 14:45Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel poetic.
- 14:47Speaker 1: If your phone is your number one companion, like nine
- 14:50Speaker 1: out of ten other Australians, maybe it's time for change.
- 14:54Speaker 2: The difference between so you and my phone suits is
- 14:56Speaker 2: once I've worked out my phone, Hell, let's don't do
- 14:59Speaker 2: an update. I have know what to do with it forever.
- 15:04Speaker 1: I keep you on your toes.
- 15:06Speaker 4: You do do and I just thought of something else
- 15:09Speaker 4: as well. You know, the survey says it's nine out
- 15:10Speaker 4: of ten people you know in love with their phones.
- 15:14Speaker 3: They prioritize the people. So at least that means you're
- 15:16Speaker 3: not alone? Or are you?
- 15:19Speaker 2: Oh? Lass Swings Rson, thank you so much.
- 15:26Speaker 1: Loads of resources are available to help build your family
- 15:29Speaker 1: into a happy family, including the great book twenty one
- 15:32Speaker 1: Days to a Happier Family. You can find more details
- 15:35Speaker 1: at happy families dot com, dodau, books, resources, online courses.
- 15:39Speaker 1: That's happy families dot com dodau. And if you think
- 15:42Speaker 1: doctor Justin Coulson might be a great fit for your event,
- 15:45Speaker 1: your community group, or your school to come and speak.
- 15:47Speaker 1: You can find out more about how you can book
- 15:49Speaker 1: him to come along at Justinculson dot com