218: is social media causing the mental health crisis?! (probably not) feat. dr. emily weinstein
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Today’s guest is Dr. Emily Weinstein— a psychologist, author, educator, parent, and longtime tech researcher who co-founded the Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has spent over a decade researching the ways today’s technologies are shaping and reshaping adolescents’ lives.
In this episode, we discuss:
+ how technology & social media affect people differently
+ common cognitive distortions caused by social media
+ whether social media is causing the Gen Z mental health crisis
+ what parents should know about Gen Z social media use
+ social media use in high school & college
+ if Gen Z really is the “anxious generation”
+ “grind culture” & how that negatively impacts Gen Z
+ how social media causes us to compare ourselves to others
+ transitioning from high school to college
+ the relationship between social media & body image
+ using technology in school & how that impacts our educations
+ what Gen Z should know about social media & technology
+ so much more!
Mentioned In The Episode…
+ Center for Digital Thriving’s Website
+ Center for Digital Thriving’s Instagram
SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC
About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)
After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.
a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!
Sadie: [00:00:00] Welcome to She Persisted, the Gen Z Mental Health Podcast. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton. Let's get into it.
Emily: one of the things that feels. Really important to me is to create enough space for us to talk about our different experiences with tech and to create enough space for the reality that you might be having some really toxic experiences. And it is helpful if we can name them and you have language to talk about them.
And someone else might be having those same experiences or they might not. So creating enough space for that in our conversations, which we do with so many other parts of teens lives, but for some reason not consistently with tech.
Sadie:. Hello, hello and welcome back to She Persisted. I am so excited you guys are here today.
We are talking about one of the hottest topics in the mental health space, specifically for Gen Z, which is tech and social media and phones, and how that relates to mental health. And we have an expert in this area. On the show today we have Dr. Emily Weinstein. She's a principal investigator at Project Zero.
A lecturer at Harvard Graduate School [00:01:00] of Education and the co-director of the New Center for Digital Thriving. She studies how phones and social media and.
All of these digital experiences impact mental health, our social dynamics, all these different things, which I think we have a lot of questions about, about how these things impact our mental health, how they impact our lives, positive, negative, et cetera. And what's really incredibly cool about Dr. Weinstein's work is that a lot of her projects and research involve youth voice and youth perspective. So she works really closely with young adults and adolescents and teens to understand what their experiences are with social media and what's challenging about these new contexts and I think this conversation is just such an incredible way to approach this new environment that we're in and be really curious and collaborative about what the potential consequences or benefits are of social media, especially in this specific demographic. And so if you have ever wondered how social media impacts mental health, what the [00:02:00] experience of New Tech for teens and young adults, and how we're trying to answer those questions from a research perspective, this episode is for you, truly relevant to everyone, and I hope you really enjoy.
So without further ado, let's dive in.
Sadie: Well, Emily, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm super persisted. I'm so incredibly excited to have you on on. We ran into each other at A BCT and this has been a long time coming and I'm really excited to continue to pick your brain and talk about one of the biggest hot topics in the mental health space.
Emily: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Sadie: Of course. To get things started, I would love to hear about your background from you, how you went into, , this, like psychology, communications area, how you decided to focus on tech specifically, because you've been at this for a while and it's like only gaining attention as the days go on.
, and your background there.
Emily: Okay. So I'm a social scientist. , I study teens and technology. I am extremely interested in teens [00:03:00] experiences with new technologies. So for the last dozen or so years I've been studying social media and now our team is also studying generative ai. And I'm really fascinated in what teens experience, what their perspectives are, and making sure that we do a much better job of elevating their voices in the research space and in rooms where decisions are being made, around tech and, teenagers.
, my background is in human development and education, and I started studying tech, I think because I got to Harvard to start a doctoral program in 2011, and I. 2011 is a really interesting sort of inflection point in a lot of the mental health graphs that we look at and in a lot of the debates that are going on.
And, one of the things that we know is it was also right around the time when we really had a rise in social media and social technologies. , so Instagram launched in 2010. Mm-hmm. And then it was [00:04:00] purchased by. Facebook now meta in 2012. Snapchat came out in 2011, so this, there was this shift in the landscape and I landed at Harvard ready to study adolescent, which we all hope
Sadie: one day we could do, let's manifest that.
Emily: I, I got to Harvard, , to study adolescent development and I was really interested in adolescent's perspectives on their own lives and what they had to say and what they felt like they really wanted adults to be hearing, talking about and studying. And it was like, I couldn't get four minutes into a conversation it felt like, without something about tech coming up, whether it was texting or eventually social media and.
It just felt like there were so many questions that from a research perspective, you're like, oh, well what does friendship look and feel like in this context? What does more like, how does moral reasoning play out? How do we think about identity issues? what is it like to think about your civic and political participation?
And so I was really lucky I got to work with some researchers at Harvard who [00:05:00] were studying those questions. And then one of the things that happened was tech kept changing. So yeah, it was like every time we finished a study, there was just naturally another question to ask or we would have to go back and kind of redo, our approaches and, repeat the interviews because we'd be wondering already what changed in such a short period of time.
Sadie: A hundred percent. And there's so many different areas that I wanna get your opinion on and different ways of approaching this to kind of explore and the different platforms and how this impacts mental health and education. Like you mentioned, there's just really so many ways to go at this, and it really truly is ever changing.
Like even last week, we think about generative AI and how images just got insanely better. you can literally tell BT to take a selfie of your friends on a certain iPhone camera and like, it's wild. and so I'm excited to kind of get your perspective on how all of these things are evolving and changing and shifting and affecting adolescents lives, and especially mental health.
Because I think this is one of, I don't [00:06:00] know if I would say like leading theories, but it's definitely a question that's being pushed a lot and I think one of the main. Points that I hear really consistently for why this is like a valid reasoning for why we've seen adolescent mental health continue to worsen is like if you ask a teen if their phone helps their mental health, they'll say no.
Like, no, it's not great., but I really struggle with that because we could be like, does your AP chem class help your mental health? No. Does your relationship with your parents help your mental health? We not. Does eating McDonald's help your physical health? No. But does that mean that we wipe out like all fast food and is there a direct correlation between like the physical health in America?
Not necessarily. And so I'm really curious your thoughts there, because that is one of the most prominent conversations that's happening right now. I don't know if you even refer to it as research with all the anxious generation stuff that was done. , but like.
Books being published about this topic and these theories [00:07:00] being promoted to audiences. So what are your thoughts there when people are like, the Gen Z mental health crisis is because of the phone?
Emily: , so I love that you asked this question and. I actually, I think this question is a little bit of a distraction.
Sadie: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Because I think that's something that's happened is we've gotten so focused on the debate over what research methods can and can't tell us, and what the data do and don't say about these broader trends that I think in some cases it, it can be a really big distraction from us having conversations about the specific experiences we have with tech that Yeah.
Are hard for our mental health or in some cases that help our mental health. Mm-hmm. One of the things that I've been really interested in is the reality that we just don't, we're missing a lot of language to talk about different experiences we have with technology. And so, , we, and in some cases teenagers just make language themselves, but I think it's, and we have so many different examples of that.
I'm so passionate about the idea of just a, talking [00:08:00] openly about some of the hard stuff in more detail than these like broad strokes of like, tech is good or bad. one thing that I really believe that my research has shown me again and again, and that I think is substantiated across a lot of studies is that teens have really different experiences with tech.
We're having different experiences in general, and we show up to whatever technologies we're using with all of our strengths and vulnerabilities. we're in the context of digital spaces that in some ways intersect with whatever our offline lives are. Like. In some ways they're very different because we've opted into online communities that are very different, but related to who we are or what we care about.
and so one of the things that feels. Really important to me is to create enough space for us to talk about our different experiences with tech and to create enough space for the reality that you might be having some really toxic experiences. And it is helpful if we can name them and it is helpful if we can acknowledge them and you have language to talk about them.
And someone else might be having those same experiences or they might not. [00:09:00] And so creating enough space for that in our conversations, which we do with so many other parts of teens lives, but for some reason not consistently with tech.
Sadie: Yeah, I think that's incredibly important. And you're right, it absolutely gets missed.
Like I know the way I show up with tech is completely different. Like we're having a really intelligent and nuanced conversation and like tonight I'll be doom scrolling on TikTok and turning nothing new. So it's like the way that we approach these things is really different. And I think just painting this like X on this thing as a whole that is so nuanced and different for each person is challenging.
Like we could say It's the education system. We're now seeing data that like it's really helping girls, girls have better GPAs and work better in that educational style and are matriculating at a faster rate to college and grad school. And we can't necessarily say the same for young boys, but we don't necessarily say the whole education system's failure.
It's a to blame for all of these challenges. We say people have different needs and how can we kind of adjust and meet those needs so that we can like meet the [00:10:00] population at large and support this ongoing objective and agenda of educating young adults. And so I think you're absolutely right that all of that nuance gets missed when we say the mental health problems are a result of the phone and all the things that we don't think about when we just attach a cause or even a correlational at best relationship to these devices.
Emily: And there are things that are really hard about phones and there are things that are hard for whole groups of people. And there are things that are hard for, for many, if not all of us, around the way technologies are designed. one of the things that our research team does is we try to really listen to teens.
We ask them questions about what's hard for them. And one of the things we're interested in is trying to connect the dots. So instead of just feeling like this is all so new and different, we have no idea how to help, we can actually trace the lines to different interventions and evidence-based practices that might be actually really helpful in the context of whatever's coming up around tech.
and this feels [00:11:00] especially important because. As we know, it takes time to do really rigorous, , RCTs and other kinds of, investigations and studies that would help us feel like something is extremely evidence-based for sure, and tech for changing really fast. So if we're constantly trying to, , tailor every single intervention to this particulars of a technology, , it can feel like we're just constantly behind.
Yeah. And. We don't, we can't afford to have no ideas about how to help. , so an example of listening and then sort of connecting the dots is, a few years ago when, , my colleague Carrie James and I were working on our book Behind their Screens, we, one of the things that we heard was, , about the experience of being left on red.
Yes. Like, you the worst or unopened if you're on sound, whatever. Mm-hmm. You send a message and my
Sadie: siblings have this phrase in our family where they'll say, left unheard. So we have a big family, there's four kids. So at dinner everyone's like talking at each other and friends will like make a joke. It just is completely flat.
And we'll be like, left unheard chronically, left unheard. And it's like the funniest thing [00:12:00] ever. but it's like, anyways, I just had to say that. 'cause I think it's one of the best adaptations of like, teen lingo to real life.
Emily: Totally. , yeah. So I mean we, and it's also, that's a great illustration of the reality that by the way, this kind of experience can happen.
When you're not on your phone. But it's also the case that there are some really specific design features of technology that can amplify the experience because you literally can see like, oh, this message was opened and the person read it and they haven't responded. Yeah. And so one of the things we started hearing, and this I don't think will be a huge shock to you or anyone listening, it was how that can just pull you into this kind of anxious thinking spiral.
Mm-hmm. Like you see that someone's read your message and they haven't responded, and you're like, what should I not have said that? Are they mad at me? Was that not funny? Like, am I an idiot? Whatever your kind of like your own brand of the anxious thinking spiral looks like. Yeah. But one of the things that was really [00:13:00] interesting for us was, , as we were kind of sitting down alongside teens and listening to them, give voice to this, and by the way, resonating with it ourselves, because I think most adults have had an experience it, even if it's not specifically being left on Reddi, it's like you sent an email and then been like, should I have, did I first?
You're like, I think, or you like text someone and you see them in real life. Like, did I send that? Did I send shoot, did I send that to the wrong person? And then you're like, why didn't they reply? And actually when you listen to what people described, you're like, oh, this is actually, this is really familiar for most people I think who have a psych background in that.
It sounds a lot like familiar cognitive distortions.
Sadie: Yeah.
Emily: Like that whole process of going like, oh, they didn't, oh they didn't respond. They must be mad at me. , they must think I'm an idiot. That is. A pretty classic example or version of mind reading. Which is a cognitive distortion that is super well studied and widely discussed where we just think we know what someone else is thinking about us.
We assume that it's bad. We give it sort of a whole negative, , spin. And [00:14:00] so I, for context, I am not a clinical psychologist and I, but I very quickly started to feel as we were listening to teens, like, oh, this would be a really interesting, , interdisciplinary project. We could work with teens and with clinical psychologists and potentially with some educators and try and co-create basically a glossary of different cognitive distortions.
, we actually call them thinking traps in the glossary we created. Mm-hmm. Which was sort of like teen led language. But we could, we could name some of the thinking traps or distortions that, come up around tech. Things that weren't created by tech, like all or nothing thinking or catastrophizing or shoulds where you feel like, Ugh, I like I should get more likes, or I shouldn't be a person who cares about this kind of thing.
And while tech did not create these sorts of distortions, one of the things that we hear when we really listen to teens is that there are a lot of ways that tech is designed that [00:15:00] make social media in particular so ripe for these kinds of distortions. Yeah. And. When we start talking about them, I think that takes some of the power out of them, but also connecting the dots to, oh, like this sounds like a cognitive distortion.
And we have a lot of evidence-based practice that we can draw on to then think about how we help people shift their self-talk, reframe their thoughts, think about like the cognitive restructuring activities that they might do.
Sadie: Yeah, I love that. And I love the detail of the way that you're exploring this.
Remember you gave an example, , when I heard you speak, where you were like, we hear teens talk about it's not the phone, it's not social media, it's not Snapchat. It's the fact that you can see after your message has been delivered, their SNAP score. So you know, if they're talking to other people and you're explaining this like pattern that people are reporting with B, I'll check the snap score and the snap, so it's going up and I'm anxious, and then the cognitive distortions happen.
And I don't think that's a conversation I. That we are having generally, and we're also [00:16:00] not internally thinking about it in that respect of like, okay, like this is a behavior that also could occur in real life. Which, like you see someone talking to someone else, you're like, they're avoiding me. They know I'm here, but they're still not engaging and it's ineffective to continue.
The interpretations aren't accurate, and how can we combat that and how can we be more effective and constructive? And I think that is something that can get really lost in these larger philosophical debates about like, is this the reason for mental health problems?
Emily: Yeah. And I'm, I think it's important that people are having those conversations and I think.
I also want us to be having conversations about what we do for the person who is like monitoring someone's snap score today and feeling really crummy about it. And, , one of the realities about, about tech and social media is to, to your point is there is so much social information that you could be monitoring and checking.
Yeah. And so you're like, okay, now I'm looking at Venmo. Now I'm [00:17:00] looking at like this person's Venmo Street. And we do that
Sadie: like
Emily: even with politicians now, like it's insane. And yeah, like what do you think about, so how do you feel about that? What do you think about that?
Sadie: It's challenging because I think your argument that like, these aren't things that don't happen in the real world.
Like you could see what someone is potentially like, they have a new thing, they're engaging with this person. This dynamic isn't something you've experienced before. And I think what you're talking about with like. The mechanism that occurs of it's a cognitive distortion or there's rumination or there's co rumination with friends freaking out about this.
Again, I don't think this is new. I think it's really foreign and uncomfortable and we don't have the skills or the language or the ability to be like, oh, I've done this before and I've got this and here's how I can respond. And so I think that makes teens more overwhelmed, but also adults and older generations freak out to like the nth degree.
Emily: Totally. [00:18:00] Because I, I can't even tell you how many times I feel like I've had a version of a conversation with a parent, and I should say like, I am a parent. I have two kids. , my kids are not at the middle school stage right now, but I, I relate so deeply to just feeling the feeling That this is new and feels stressful and different and we want to protect our kids, right?
Yeah. We, we don't want their lives to be harder than they need to be. , and it can feel like there is this like new complexity that's just like slamming, you know, crashing, like a wave crashing down on them. , but I've had so many conversations where it feels like parents have this feeling that this is so new and different that they have nothing to offer and or like they just have no idea what to do.
Yeah. And it can lead extremes in our thinking where we either, like, we wanna just completely ban everything because we feel really like, worried about it and we feel unsure what to do or to just sort of go to the other extreme where you like, hold, hold off, hold off, hold off.
And then you just kind of open the flood [00:19:00] gates. Yes. And. Both of those put teens in hard positions. And one of the things that we hear a lot from teens is like, you know, you do, there is hard as you start using whatever technology, and by the way, it can even happen through like Google Docs. Like we, you know,
Sadie: stories of people like yes.
That's how I communicated with my parents when I was in treatment was Google Docs and we would be like setting boundaries back and forth contact. Like literally just typing on a document.
Emily: Yeah. So I mean it just, the idea that we would just ban a certain technology and then solve all of our issues, I think can overlook the reality that there are so many different contacts and ways where we're now like interacting with and through technology and there is so much new social information.
Like if you're, if you're talking to your mom in a Google doc, actually that's such an interesting example. 'cause like you could go in and see the history and see that she like started typing something one way and then she went out, went and revised it or, . It's fascinating. So I have a question for you, which is Yes. , what's something that [00:20:00] you wish adults understood about what it feels like to be in college with social media?
Sadie: You know, it's really interesting because I wouldn't say that like social media ads.
That much of a layer to the college experience. I would say it's more like these underlying dynamics that have been there forever that are exacerbated or even like interact with the presence of technology. I would say that one thing that I feel with the, like the way that social media has changed things that I kind of think is happening is the Gen Z and young adult feeling of agency.
So like the belief that our actions will a meaningful outcome. And I talked about this on the podcast a couple of times and we have like this really interesting thing that we see happening, which I'm sure you'll speak to it like online communities versus in person , but our like immediate direct connection circles that have evolved to be able to thrive because of and lean on others and connect and [00:21:00] offer support and feel needed by those.
We're not as directly connected to those anymore. We have less relationships, we're less community based. But then on the other side of things, our larger network is like so blown out of proportion and exploded to the nth degree that like communities that you could be exposed to by posting a single video are truly endless.
And so I think the belief that your actions will have a meaningful outcome, whether it's on that direct level where those relationships aren't as established and solidified and maintained, but also on a larger scale, like how can I make a difference in the world, is something that gets really disrupted.
And I think that gets exacerbated by social media and the messaging that we're now exposed to and the things that we see play out on a larger scale. And I think this shows up in things like politics. Like can we make a difference with everything that's happening? Like it shows up with things like climate change, like.
And what I'm doing is that [00:22:00] making a difference as a generation, can we solve this problem that we're being told is being handed down to us? I think it has to do with mental health as well. Like we talked about, we don't have the verbiage or the training or I don't even know if media literacy would be the correct term to like navigate this new era that we step into mental health wise.
Do we feel like we can cope with our own mental health, but also like what does it mean when we're told that we're the most sensitive, depressed, anxious generation to ever exist? And so I think that's something that has really been disrupted and shifted by social media, like the messaging we're exposed to, but also the feeling of almost like competency and really that that agency thing that shows up that gets completely changed when you a, have less immediate relationships and like an exponential shift in your larger network.
Emily: Yeah. Well, I'm wondering, it's really interesting that you were talking about the sort of narrative applied to your generation and there's this both macro and micro [00:23:00] level to what you're describing, right? Yeah. There are these big, broad messages and these looming issues and there's this kind of grappling with the personal, like, how much agency do I have or don't I have?
Yeah. Is it more than, I think, is it less than I think, and trying to right size that, which I think is actually sort of a big part of being a young adult is figuring out like, where, where is my agency and what can I do to help the things that I care about? And what is, you know, what is my purpose and what is my role in, , in the world and in moving the needle on these things?
I'm curious, like, what do you think about the, , framing of your generation as the most anxious generation?
Sadie: I hate it. I think it's the dumbest thing. , I think that Gen Z is absolutely the most vulnerable. I think we're more open to discussing these things, not only in our immediate relationships, but more broadly.
And I think that takes an incredible amount of strength. I think we're more assertive and we will speak up in ways that I think maybe socially wasn't as acceptable in the past. It can make us a bit like have [00:24:00] a bad rep at times. , but I also think the ability to set boundaries is really incredible and important.
I think that we, like objectively are seeing an increase in mental health challenges. , but I don't necessarily think that the messaging surrounding that is. Effective and it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like I remember from my treatment days when I would do occupational therapy and we'd do our group and it would bank, let's draw our identities.
Like who are we trying to like undepressed, these young adults and all these people in the circle were like, I am depressed, I'm anxious. Like, that was the identity. It wasn't like I feel depressed or I feel anxious. And so I think we do see that as a larger scale when we here, like Gen Z is so polarizing and aggressive and , with their beliefs and so anxious and depressed and struggling in all these areas, I think it's a challenging thing to grapple with and then have to like [00:25:00] fight that norm that feels like you're almost like subscribed to without your, your permission.
And then when you do struggle, it's like. Almost so much more normalized to a negative degree that it's like, this is just what being Gen Z is and this is how all my friends feel, and this is what I've heard from people who are older than me and not like, okay, but this doesn't have to be your norm and here's how we can shift that experience.
Emily: I wonder in some ways, if sometimes I've wondered if adults pointing the finger specifically at tech is sort of a way to let ourselves off the hook on addressing some of the other reasons why your generation is struggling and Yeah. And when you're struggling, and I, first of all, I, I just, I really, I so appreciate your perspective on this and, , I, I have wondered about this too.
I, I remember, , when the book, the Anxious Generation came out, I, . I did an interview with, , John Height, the author, and I remember asking him about [00:26:00] the title because I had this wonder too, like, what do teens think about this idea of being the, the ancient generation? Yeah. And it feels, you know, the things we were just talking as an intervention about how powerful naming things Yeah.
Me. And I think the words we use and the labels we apply, like they, they really matter. And, , yeah, so, so I wonder about that. your comment also though has me thinking about this study that I worked on last fall, , that our team got to work on with some colleagues at Indiana University and common sense that was around the idea of productivity, culture, or grind culture.
Sadie: Yeah.
Emily: And. It's really interesting. And I know you've talked about burnout and you've talked about some of these ideas on the podcast before. But one of the things that came up was we had set out a couple of years ago to work on this study around trying to think about digital wellbeing, like the intersections of wellbeing and technology.
And we were doing some listening sessions with our teen advisors and they basically told us, if you really wanna understand the way tech impacts mental health, you need to [00:27:00] come at it differently. Like you need to widen your lens and you need to start by looking at our mental health more broadly and all of the different sort of things going on and how tech is actually intersecting with those things.
Yeah. Not just that it's the root, but that there are other roots that are really important to talk about here. And one of those roots, one of the ideas that came up in , one of those sessions was this idea of one team called it grind culture. she described it as this feeling that you always have to be productive and striving and doing something.
Mm-hmm. And we started kind of unpacking this idea with teens, and we heard that not everyone, but a lot of people resonated with this idea that it's not okay to rest. That you, there's pressure to feel like you always have to be doing something, , and showing that you're doing something.
And then when we started listening more, we actually heard that it wasn't just like productivity around work or grinding around work, but there were actually all these different grinds that people were describing. , and I'll tell you what they were and I'm curious like, which ones stand out to you.
Okay. So one of them I'll say [00:28:00] is the, is like an activism type grind or this feeling of I need to be doing something related to the issues and the things that I care about. So you kind of named that one, and, and I think that's a really interesting example of one where we can see how social media can really sort of turn up the volume on that.
Yeah. And also, yeah. We can see how maybe it's there even when you're not looking at social media. , So we did all this qualitative work and then we ended up doing a national survey to try and understand a little bit more about how relevant these pressures were for teens, , in different places than across the us.
And the two most common pressures actually that we ended up seeing across the national data sort of go hand in hand, but they were actually different. So one was achievement pressure, but that actually went along with what was even more prevalent, which we ended up calling game plan pressure.
And it was described initially as this idea of needing to have a set plan for your life. Like I am supposed to know what I am going to do, what my path is, and I should [00:29:00] already be on that path. Yeah. And I hear this come up when I'm like talking to a sophomore or junior in college and they're like, you know, I, I was talking to someone recently who was like, I feel like I was very late to join LinkedIn.
And I said, I said to the person like, wow. That's, that's so interesting. I believe you, that you feel, I really believe you, that you feel that way. And like that's fascinating to me that you feel that way because you haven't even had a job yet. Like you haven't, you've barely even had internships, like what makes you feel like you're late to join LinkedIn?
But there was this idea that, they were behind already and that they should be curating this, , professional identity. And I think that, I'm giving you an example of how I think tech intersects with it, but I'm curious about what your experience of this is and whether you think tech is playing a role or how it's playing a role.
Yeah,
Sadie: yeah. I like, I absolutely agree and I side note when people are like, what's the most toxic social media, LinkedIn? It's not the short form videos, it's LinkedIn like, oh my [00:30:00] God, , I never opened that app. , but I think it's something that is very real and I think about my own experiences and even like how I add to that.
Like I did an episode where I was talking about like my goals and my plans for going into psychology and what steps I would take to get there and my advice for someone else would wanna go through the same field. But I do have that very articulated plan and that kind of hierarchy gives me more day-to-day piece of okay, but like I'm on, even if something's not happening right now, like generally I'm moving in that direction.
And I'm a teaching assistant for high schoolers right now, , for Grit Lab. And so we're teaching them about passionate and perseverance and goal setting. And literally the assignment we had them do last week or the week before was like, what are their top level goals? What is their career A, B, and C that they could potentially pursue?
And originally we, this was a college course and I took it last semester and. It was really helpful for us to do those career A, B, and Cs 'cause we're applying to jobs and we have to decide do we need the training? Do we need to go to grad school? But thinking about that from a high school [00:31:00] perspective and being like, okay, so like what is the career?
What steps are you gonna take? What do you have to do Now is just such an incredible amount of pressure and I've seen my younger siblings go through it as they approach the college application process of not only like what's your GPA? What's your SAT score, but what's the narrative that's being created?
How have you quantified all these experiences you've had so far? And really that like agency piece of how have you made a difference? And I think the internet makes that so much. Again, we have more insight into what other people are doing. People post their like college application results. Mm-hmm. And their essays.
And their resumes and LinkedIn. But also like the scale in which you can make a change. Like I remember reading an article about this one kid who got into Harvard for like making the website that tracked COVID outbreaks in high school. Like what, 50 years ago? you never could have done something on that scale, which is so incredibly cool that we're now equipped and able to do that.
But [00:32:00] the pressure that that is then extended to younger generations and the competition that exists as a result, because so many of us have these goals that require this next step of higher education is really daunting and challenging. Again, I think it's like that Agency peace and self-confidence and, and self-esteem of like, do I believe that the things I do will get me where I wanna go?
And when you aren't sure that's gonna be really demoralizing and overwhelming. And then when you see everyone else seemingly do that, it's a really challenging experience to navigate.
Emily: And I think there is so much value in goal setting and in identifying different possible paths. Yeah. And alongside it, we wanna have a recognition that actually there are a lot of different possible paths and mm-hmm.
There are a lot of paths to happiness and fulfillment and enough economic success and impact on the things we care about. There. There are so many different ways to get there, and I think that one of the things that can be hard to hold [00:33:00] onto when you start seeing everyone else's stats and scores and also in a context where college admissions is so competitive, it, it can, and grad school admissions, right?
Like, and there are layers upon layers of, . Of, I think things that contribute to this. Yeah. And it's easy to lose track of the reality that actually there are a lot of paths to a happy life. And, , I, I remember after I finished, , grad school, the period right after I finished grad school.
It was actually one of my most anxious periods. I think I had been really singularly focused on my dissertation for a long time. And it was so much work that it kept me really busy. And then there was something about the transition afterwards that was just a more vulnerable period for me. And I remember feeling more anxious.
And I also, because I think because I had just done this whole dissertation and was so interested in psychology, I remember this experience of feeling really anxious and then like going to check out. A textbook from the library about anxiety because I was like, I'll just read this [00:34:00] textbook over the weekend.
Yeah. Figure out, figure out what's going on here. Yeah. it's like, so, so interesting. Amazingly, you know, understanding the mechanisms in a really deep way doesn't, doesn't inoculate you from feeling anxious yourself. , but I remember during that period coming across this quote that I love that is, the idea is basically don't sacrifice all your joy for an idea that you used to have about yourself.
That isn't true anymore. I think it's Sheryl Strad and I think that there is something that we want to be able to hold alongside these goal setting activities and making a plan, and yes, grit and yes, resilience. I mean, these things really matter. And also we wanna have enough sort of. Cognitive flexibility in the ways we think about our identities and our goals.
That we can update information as we have more information and that we can start down a path and realize, oh, there's new information now and actually [00:35:00] this thing that I thought was a good path for me maybe is not. Or maybe there's a detour or there's something else to do, and. I don't know. For me, hearing a lot of teens talk about the way that the game plan pressure could feel negative and not just motivating, but actually sort of overwhelming and disempowering even.
, it's made me really want to understand more about how we create a real belief that actually if you don't have a game plan or if you think you have a game plan and then you realize it's not the right one, it's, it's really okay. That's actually, yeah, that's actually most of us. Yeah.
Sadie: And I, you, you mentioned like what do I think is challenging about being in college and I think you also mentioned how are we setting kids up for success?
This is one way we fail because especially I think. I've seen this so many times online on TikTok where people were like, how did I do my high school schedule of like waking up at what time and being in classes for how many hours and doing how many extracurriculars and getting how much sleep. [00:36:00] And I think it's parallel to that experience that you had in grad school where you're working so hard towards a certain goal and then you get there and you're kind of lost.
And I think we really do that to a negative degree when people transition to college. Like they truly are working ins insane amount in high school with course loads and applications and test prep and extracurriculars and friendships and slave schedules that aren't what they should be. Then you get to college and you are not at all prepared because you have, I like to say it's optimized for avoidance.
Like you have classes a few hours a week, no one is making you do anything. your meals are like totally up to you. You don't have friends, you family's not there. Like everything has to be built from the ground up. And I think when you have met that sub goal and now you're like, what do I do? Like I applied for this major, but I don't know what the next step is.
You feel really lost and you never built those skills as far as maintaining your mental health on a day-to-day basis. And so it really, all comes crumbling down and [00:37:00] we really haven't set teens up for success when it comes to making that transition. And I know there's also all this messaging where high school students will be like, this would never fly in college.
And then you get to college and it's like so lax with all the things you're like, it's flying. Yeah, it's flying and it's actually encouraged. and so. As far as making that transition, I think that's a really, really common experience that people have. , and any of those problems that exist in high school get exacerbated.
And you also talked about what does technology do that kind of reflects the issues already going on. And I would love to get your thoughts here, but I think either avoiding or coping with using tech as that outlet and whether it's social media or TV shows or gaming, these different ways that people avoid emotions or cope with stressors that arise.
I don't know if we're necessarily viewing young adult consumption through that lens, but I think it's something that really happens at large. And this is one thing John High [00:38:00] talks about is Sometimes they'll get this criticism as like that teen pregnancy rates are lower, like drinking rates are lower, or Gen Z isn't doing as many drugs, like these external markers that traditionally showed people were struggling are no longer there.
And I think that's one thing that we're seeing, right, is like this way of coping is not only there but so effective. I'm using air coins because it could be ineffective. , but in the way that people would look to those other sources to numb an emotion or avoid experiencing something doom scrolling for a couple of hours plays that similar role.
Emily: I mean, I think tech is also just so obviously designed to optimize for our attention. So we're living in an attention economy, not an agency economy, not a wellbeing economy. So, , the tech companies are right, their entire revenue model is based off of being able to capture and hold and, , retain our attention, keep us scrolling or coming back for more logging in every day.
, and so we actually have this design [00:39:00] pull that can make it really hard for us to act in our own best interests in some of these moments. And one of the things I've been really interested in is I think when we, when we look across the sort of social media research, one of the things that feels to me like a fairly clear sort of finding is around social comparison.
And specifically when we do the sort of, . Upward comparisons that make us feel like, ugh, that person, everyone is better than me or has more friends. Hello LinkedIn doing better. , and social media is really right. It's ripe for that in a lot of ways. It can feel like there is so much in, I mean, there is a lot of doom and gloom.
Absolutely. Like doom scrolling, content. And there is a lot of content that can evoke comparison. So you have this sort of, almost like this emotional whiplash of going from this. Yeah. , really upsetting, disturbing content, , that makes you feel really sad to this content that makes you feel sort of potentially sad in another way.
And a couple of really interesting things about comparison I think are worth us [00:40:00] just acknowledging and knowing. So one is that just dispositionally, some of us are more inclined to comparison than others, right? Yeah. So you might, I might be someone who just tends to compare myself more than you are.
Also developmentally, there are periods and adolescence is one of them. When we're sort of more inclined in that direction, like we are, we're doing more comparisons as we're figuring out who we are and how we fit into the social world. So we're kind of more vulnerable to doing that sort of thinking anyway.
Transitions can also be another time when we get more vulnerable to comparisons because we're sort of assessing so much new information and the transition to college is a huge transition. So in a lot of ways I actually think that The transition to college is a moment when we should absolutely expect that we're going to be more vulnerable to go into that sort of comparison quicksand trap, where, , we start feeling like, ugh, like everyone's happier than me, or everyone's having better lives, or I'm doing this wrong, I'm doing this transition wrong.
Yeah. , and social media can give us what feels like a lot of [00:41:00] data to support that evidence, but of course it's completely flawed data. Yeah. And so I think being able to also just know that, and for me it means like knowing when I am in a period for myself when I'm just a little more vulnerable for whatever reason, to the kinds of comparisons that social media is gonna enable.
And sometimes that might be LinkedIn and sometimes it might be Instagram, right? Because like Totally sometimes you're in a phase of life where like I was just talking to, One of my sisters about this that like, sometimes you're in a phase of life where like it's wedding content, that is the comparison stuff.
And at other times it's job stuff and at other times it's something totally different. And so, one of the kind of areas of mindfulness that I think can really serve us well is tuning into for ourselves a, noticing when we're going down that sort of comparison trap. But b, starting to notice.
Oh, I'm like, I'm in a period where I am just, I am doing more of that kind of thinking on this particular platform and I need to just, I need to know that and I need to be a little [00:42:00] more intentional. I need to maybe like not do that right before bed when I'm tired, so I'm already more inclined to, yeah, that kind of more vulnerable way of thinking or whatever it is.
And it doesn't mean that you never turn to your phone in those moments, but if you do find that you need a mindless distraction, maybe it's like. The New York Times game app instead of Yes. Your LinkedIn feed.
Sadie: Yeah. I have to ask you about like the young adult body image thing, because this is another one of these things that just blew up and became like almost the poster child of the, the tech and mental health movement, which is that, , in a certain amount of posts you would see like eating disorder related content and teenage girls are really impacted by these comparisons between themselves online versus themselves in person or editing or not feeling good enough because of like an online perception or version of themselves that they're portraying.
What are your thoughts there? It's like accurate, the data supports that we should all be concerned and [00:43:00] addressing it, or it's again, like this is something that happens in real life as well. It's just kind of way overexposed when we have so much like input and stimuli that we're interacting with.
Emily: Yeah, so Sophie Tus Bradley is the researcher whose work in this area has probably been most influential to my thinking.
And she has this paper about the sort of the perfect storm that happens for adolescent girls with social media, with body image, and mm-hmm. I, I kind of continue to go back. She has empirical data and theoretical work in this area. And,
I think that this is one of the areas where, on the one hand, I, I feel like several years ago, let's say like maybe five-ish years ago, I, I feel like I was having conversations with teens where I was able to see that this was really something that was happening. It was really relevant for some of them, and there was real variation in their experiences.
Like some were just finding that they weren't seeing as much of that con, or at least were saying that they weren't seeing as much of that content, or that they had really kind of intentionally curated for more body positivity or whatever it was on their feeds. [00:44:00] I don't know. This, I, I don't have data to back this up, but it feels like to me, based on the conversations I'm having with teens, that the algorithm has gotten worse around this,
In recent years, and I kind of see this on my own feed, it feels like it's the, the pull to content that is in some ways oriented towards body image. , first of all, it's not just weight, interestingly, right? Like there, there is the weight side and there's of course there's the explicitly sort of pro Anna Thin spoke content that's, that's now it's called Skinny Talk,
Sadie: which is an exciting new
Emily: development.
Okay. I didn't even know that. Okay. So there's, there's the very explicitly, you know, the content that encourages completely maladaptive behavior. Yeah. That's like, that's kind of one position on this. Then there's like the kind of pro dieting stuff, the diet culture. Then there's the like encouraging of healthy lifestyle.
And then I would put like Fitz bow sort of like related to that, that is maybe in this [00:45:00] like more ambiguous area, but it feels like you can end up very quickly in a situation where the volume of that content you see just does create Yeah. What Sophie would describe as this perfect storm. , and then I think there are so many other kinds of content that just interact with our sense of our own sort of body esteem and our bodies in ways that are much more subtle mm-hmm.
That maybe we're not even realizing. We're seeing content that is. You know, giving us a sense that we sh we should look different from how we do, or that, I don't know. somehow there's something wrong with us that we should be fixing. Yeah. , and then filters, of course, like another layer of that.
Yeah. And then on top of that, I can't even believe, I, I am now getting targeted ads for gen AI tools that will everything from like scan my face and recommend a better makeup routine for me. Which by the way, I'm, I could definitely use on some level, but I'm not doing that at this point. , but it, it feels to me like we're, , [00:46:00] like half step away from that app that's telling me that I should put my mascara on differently to that app telling me like, I would look better if my lips had a little filler or like my nose was a little different.
And so I'm feeling very curious. I don't know. This is just a wonderful,
Sadie: but I, again, we go back to, this happens without ai. Like I have come across this account multiple times on TikTok where this girl will Photoshop people with either changes they can make non-surgically, and then changes they could make surgically and like recommend adjustments.
That can be, or people will be, tell me what I need to do differently. And all the comments are like, dye your hair this color, do your hair this way. So it happens with people also, like again, it's like this isn't a new phenomenon, but it can be very rapidly accelerated. in more isolating when there's the ability for tech to do that.
Emily: And I think there's something also about being able to look back at the posts and the content and the metrics that can facilitate the sort of obsessing and ruminating and Totally. , but, but I don't, I don't know. I mean, I [00:47:00] think one of the things that I would say that is, would be a reasonable takeaway from this conversation is I have as many questions, I have more questions than answers at this point.
Yeah. And I feel like those of us who are close to young people's experiences and who are paying attention, we have a lot of questions because the tech is changing really fast. And we have studies that tell us like, these are really important mechanisms. These are things we need to be paying attention to.
And sometimes they play out differently for different teams or at different points in time. And the technologies themselves are changing so fast that it feels like we have to keep an eye on, , on what we might expect developmentally. And then we have to be listening to what young people are telling us they're experiencing.
, and I think we have to be. Looking for the things that maybe they don't even know to name. Yeah. That are coming up.
Sadie: I am totally gonna pivot and talk about like two other areas that I think are really relevant, but less mental health related.
We talked about the achievement pressure, which I think is something that. So many of us experience in [00:48:00] school, but the other area that gets a lot of attention is like phones in school, tech. In school, I remember getting a laptop that we had at all times and can take home in fifth grade, , which like, people are like, oh, the phone's the problems.
I was watching Disney Channel, YouTube, in class, like not paying attention, but not because of a smartphone. I remember one time the entire school downloaded this like chat app and we were all messaging and like finally tech support figured out and was like, it's banned. It's done.
You guys can't do this. So it's like people will find a way, like, people used to pass notes, now you're like texting under the desk. , but what if you heard and what are your thoughts around tech and education and how that shows up?
Emily: Yeah, so we're in a really interesting moment where we're having.
Big society-wide debates on what the right tech policies are in school. And, , should we have, first of all, if we have phone bans, what type of phone bans should we have? Should it be just a band during class hours? Should it be a sort of bell to bell ban? Is there a difference between what we should have as the rules in middle school?
Maybe more inclination, I think for more [00:49:00] people would be, is, is, , full band in middle school and, some kinds of partial bands during high school where yeah, there's no phones during, , during classes, but then either free periods are different or for students who eat lunch off campus, they can use their phones for those periods.
, so there's obviously, this is a big conversation right now, I think. . A lot of us are, are watching to see what happens. And a lot of people are pointing to anecdotal data, , and to reports of individual schools and teachers who are saying, this is going really well and I'm listening to those, I wanna take that seriously.
And I think there are people who are saying, you know, we have data from this place and maybe it's helping with certain outcomes, but not the mental health outcome. So, you know, it might not be a panacea, it might not be, , a magic bullet for all of our issues. It feels to me like, I think most of us can probably agree that we don't, like I have been in classes where there is a phone out on the desk buzzing in the middle of class time and that's pretty disruptive.
Not only to your learning, but also to the learning of the people around you. Totally. And [00:50:00] I don't think we need a million studies or a lot of data to tell us that that's the case. I also know, and I hear from teachers, and we do have data from teachers that managing phones. Feels like a burden to them. So what should we do about it? I think we have to be talking about this. We do need boundaries around tech. That feels very obvious to me. I think one of the reasons that I have been, in a camp of like more curious and trying to understand what implementation looks like is, , one, I don't want just another implementation burden on the teachers.
Like, I think that enforce the question of how this gets enforced and do the teachers have enough support from the administration? Have we just like put yet another kind of thing on their to-do list that they're having to constantly be like yelling at students about? , again, I think that's like very addressable, but that's, that's one piece.
The other thing is I am really curious, I want us to make sure that as we think about putting boundaries around phones in schools, which I think we need to do, I want us to make sure that we are also sort of attending to the roots. [00:51:00] Of what we are trying to address and why. And for me that means like I really want school to be an engaging place for learning.
Totally. I want students to have access to learning experiences that feel really meaningful, that they frankly would feel like they were cheating themselves to be missing out on.
Sadie: Mm-hmm.
Emily: I also think when we think about spaces like, you know, recess or like lunch periods, we have not solved the problem. If what happens is we get rid of the phones, but we walk into a cafeteria and everyone has like a Chromebook out or a laptop out and they figured out how to just like stream Netflix or YouTube, and so they're still not talking to each other.
So And that is not an argument to say we should just allow the phones because we're not doing this effectively at all. I just want us , to make sure that as we are paying attention to the tech, We were really trying to address for, for teens and for our students and why, , and making sure that we're actually creating interventions and policies that are getting us all closer to our goals.
Yeah. Rather than [00:52:00] just. Serving as a distraction. So we feel like we've done something without actually improving the outcomes in terms of students' learning or their, , emotional wellbeing or their socialization. What do you think? Yeah,
Sadie: no, I, I think you really hit the nail on the head and like all these different areas where I'm have curiosities around like cyber bullying, , and video game usage increasing, , and using AI in schools.
Like all of these politics and political messaging directed at young adults. I think we keep coming back to this premise that like these are not happenings and mechanisms and dynamics that don't already exist. They're just existing in a different context. And I think you're right. Understanding like, okay, what is the goal here?
What is the outcome and adjustments that we make with tech? Does that truly serve that outcome? And then what is the lived experience of the populations that this is actually impacting? And I think when we focus on these other random metrics like screen time or [00:53:00] phone bans or like a certain age for social media, it almost is like.
A bandaid on a bullet hole or pushing off the inevitable and not addressing this idea of like equipping kids with the skills they need to navigate this more effectively to do it themselves. Because if they just have external factors doing it for them, at some point get to the point where they're independent and then that all collapses and there's really negative outcomes if they can't suddenly regulate those behaviors and emotions independently.
And I think that is something that I'm sure you also, share the belief on, like, we need more education and support and messaging around for young adults so they do feel like they can navigate this effectively and feel supported in doing so.
Emily: Yes. And the design pulls are so strong that I think it's also okay for us to acknowledge that we might just need boundaries, because relying on our own self-regulation, oh, the worst thing we can do is so impossible, right?
Yes. Like it is so the social [00:54:00] norm of like, this is a space where we don't use tech. I think we all need more spaces like that in our lives. And the idea that school is one of them feels reasonable to me. And I think that totally it might be the case that we see that there are some metrics that we see really positive impacts, like maybe cyber bullying, I think is a good example, which is, something that I've seen in some of, the studies around this.
And if we ever a reduction in cyber bullying, that's really meaningful. Yeah. And I think that it may or may not be, that we have improvements on every single metric that people are saying that this will help with. So I think we'll see. The other thing that I wanna say is just that , I've been hearing.
From educators who are really worried about, , students streaming and recording fights at school. Yeah, and I think that this is an area. That is, is really on my radar right now as we think about the reality that it's not only this distraction issue, but the idea of the ways that recording a fight can amplify the complexity of those social dynamics for the people involved, for the people around, and really impact your sense of [00:55:00] safety and community at your school.
That feels really important to me. And that's an example of something where if phones are not accessible to record a fight in school, you have had a pretty direct, right, like you have had a pretty direct intervention. No one's
Sadie: gonna bring out the Polaroid and be like, it happened. It's here
Emily: shaking the tape.
Like, and even if they do, by the way, even if they have a polar, if they, if they end up with like a Polaroid of fight, I, I, that feels so different in terms of the impact it will have on the teens. So, that's a long-winded way of saying I am really here for the conversations about phones in school.
I don't feel like I have yet seen the data that makes me feel like, , it's so obvious that this has impacted all of these different, , metrics and exactly the ways that we thought it would. , I also think that the details really matter, like what is the nature of the rule?
How is it implemented? , and making sure that we have enough kind of, that we're, we're, we have enough of an ear to the ground that we're thinking about. What's going on in different communities as we do this so we know if we're getting it wrong and we can adjust. Yeah.
Sadie: Last question. , knowing [00:56:00] how bad our ability to regulate and this is not meant to be like in a rude, shaming way for humans in general, but like our willpower's horrible, right?
Like we are designed as species to be lazy and conserve energy and these apps are designed to capture that attention and keep it so knowing that this is an uphill battle and it's okay for it to feel challenging and difficult, and it's meant to be hard to shift your relationship with these devices because they're designed to keep you on them.
If you could like wave a magic wand for Gen Z and there was like some piece of awareness that they had some piece of education, maybe they all got that, like CBT education around labeling these patterns that take place. Or maybe everyone gets a phone box and there's a certain amount of time of day that they're not having access.
Like what would that. First step B, , to kind of help supplement this beyond just like, okay, let's be more mindful and aware and continue to stay curious, but also we can take steps. And even though it's challenging, , there are ways we can work to build more healthier [00:57:00] relationships.
Emily: So the, the first thing that came to mind for me when you were asking this, and I feel like I should say to people that you did not give me this question in advance, so I'm actually answering this on this, guys, I'm sorry I'm not setting us up for success here.
I wish that people, I wish that everyone in Gen Z, but frankly everyone had more of a feeling that they could opt out. Yeah,
Sadie: yeah. Of these different
Emily: things when they need to and that it would be okay. And I also wish that we had more practices that normalized opting out in different ways and for different periods so that, because all of the things we were talking about, about recognizing that you might be in a more vulnerable moment, or this might not be serving you or whatever it is, , those, those things, you can have those realizations but feel so much social pressure or design pull or whatever it is that you don't actually ultimately feel like or have the agency to actually opt [00:58:00] out in the moments when you know that that might serve you well.
, and I wish we all had a whole bunch of different kind of times and spaces in our lives where we. We're opting in and out of different technologies where we were, modulating our use so that we could get the benefits and reduce some of the negatives. And I wish that we were existing. I would wave my wand to put Gen Z frankly, in a system where it wasn't just on each of your shoulders to have to develop coping skills and have willpower.
Totally. I would put, put you in a system where this was just much easier to do as a society.
Sadie: I completely agree, and I think this is again, why I love Gen Z, is that I think this idea of opting out is so much more common and normalized and. Obviously like comparison is challenging. Social dynamics can be difficult.
We compare, there's self-esteem tied up in it, but like the frequency at which I hear people being like, oh, like I don't have Instagram right now, I deleted it. Or like, I'm moffit for finals. Or [00:59:00] like, I gave up TikTok for whatever amount of period of time. , where like he doesn't have social media green flag.
That's great. We'd love to see it. Like these little things where this is now more normalized and it's acceptable. , I think is really great. And I think we have this awareness that these are things we can strive for and that we would like to do, and it's not as demonized and villainized and , there's the fear, right?
But I think hopefully we can build relationships that. We're surrounded by people that support us if we wanna make those decisions and make those choices. And I also agree with you, , like I had Grit Lab last semester and it was like absolutely no tech whatsoever. Like you are on your phone, you lose participation points, like no technology allowed, and that's a rarity in college.
But it makes such a difference to truly be unplugged and not have that be something that's even in your vicinity for that period of time. And so hopefully we'll get to that point. And even, I think that opting in piece is so important because again, if you [01:00:00] are just putting kids in schools where they don't have phones, but then they go to college and it's like free for all, they never learn the skills to regulate.
But like if you're going to like a certain cafe or a restaurant, no phones, they do that at concerts sometimes or tapings for like television shows. Like where do you wanna show up and truly be unplugged? And when you go there, you can be held accountable and given the resources to do that. So I absolutely love that and I hope we see a shift in that direction.
Emily: Oh, my other thing, since I have a wand. I would give everyone a sense of mattering that they matter. Yeah. And also a sense of what matters to them. Mm-hmm. I think one of the things that's really interesting is like the opting out is more helpful if we know what we're trying to optimize for. If we know what we're trying to align our values with and towards, and.
I think that there is a lot of noise that can make it feel like our, our mattering is tied to all these external sort of indicators like what we were talking about, about [01:01:00] grind, you know, the grind and achievement pressure and yeah. , all these external metrics and also that there isn't a lot of space to be thinking about, like, what are my values and what really matters to me?
And I love, I love the opportunity and we actually, the Center for Digital Thriving actually has a whole resource around tech and values that is, , it's totally free and it's a value sort and it invites you to think about what your values are and then to specifically think about how tech hurts or helps or both with those different values or neither.
Yeah.
Sadie: , so, ugh, I love that. And I think it's such an important piece of the equation where it's like. If we're taking away these phones, if people are on phones for a reason, right? they're bored, they're spending their time doing it, or maybe they're avoiding something.
Real life is challenging. It's a way to escape. And so we see this in the data where when people are really struggling with severe mental health challenges, taking away their phones makes it worse. So it's like, what are we doing to also make sure, yeah, that this lived experience outside of that is fulfilling, and you have that sense of matter and you feel needed.
You have that sense of purpose [01:02:00] and you can be really clear on how tech either is helping or hurting that, and then creating more time for that as well. Sadie, thanks so much for having me. Thank you for coming on. And if people want to learn all about your research, get your book, check out The Center for Digital Thriving, where can they do that?
Emily: They can visit us at center for digital thriving.org. We would love to have you check out The Thinking Traps glossary that Sadie and I were talking about. Yeah, the value source. Stay connected, read about our grind research. We have a newsletter. , you can also find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and we just joined Blue Sky.
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