Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Weybody you know need you knows hevy.
Speaker 4: Oh you sir severy time.
Speaker 2: Yes, welcome back to the Weekend Collective. I'm Tim Beverage.
Speaker 5: By the way, if you missed any of Politics Hour,
Speaker 5: we had a chat with Peter Dunn just about Winston
Speaker 5: saying that Chris Laxon should talk to him first before
Speaker 5: he goes and talk to these other world leaders, and
Speaker 5: you can listen to the discussion that unfolded there. And
Speaker 5: also we talked to former local government minister David Carter
Speaker 5: around how much we rely on people's name, recognition and
Speaker 5: celebrity when we choose our mayors and our counselors. You
Speaker 5: can listen to that on News Talk, SEB, dot co,
Speaker 5: dot m Z. Look for the Weekend Collective on iHeartRadio
Speaker 5: as well. That's another way to do it. But right
Speaker 5: now this is it's time for the Health Hub and
Speaker 5: we're gonna have a chat about the effects of technology
Speaker 5: on I mean not just our mental well being on
Speaker 5: the whole, but in particular our sleep because technology. This
Speaker 5: should not be the first time you've heard that that
Speaker 5: if you're checking your phone at all hours of the
Speaker 5: day and night, then it is actually not good for
Speaker 5: your sleep. But do we really know how bad it is?
Speaker 5: And we have a new guest on our show. He
Speaker 5: has a partner with Amazon Kindle and found that kiwis
Speaker 5: are checking for notifications up to fifty times an hour,
Speaker 5: a major contributed a major contributor to eighty six percent
Speaker 5: of us feeling stressed by bedtime. But what can we
Speaker 5: do to manage it? We want your calls on this
Speaker 5: as well, and if you've got any questions for our
Speaker 5: guest as well as to just how well do you
Speaker 5: monitor your device use and are you aware of the
Speaker 5: effect that it's having on you, because if you're addicted
Speaker 5: to it, you might well be away.
Speaker 2: You know, I shouldn't check my phone. I shouldn't check
Speaker 2: my phone.
Speaker 5: I just once, oh, well check this notification before you
Speaker 5: know it will wait for another hour or wake up
Speaker 5: in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 5: Our new guest is neuroscientist Dr Mark Williams, and he's
Speaker 5: with me.
Speaker 2: Now could I marquee gaing?
Speaker 4: Hi? Tim?
Speaker 2: How are you good? Good?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 5: Just let's tell us a bit about yourself. How long
Speaker 5: you've been involved with neuroscience.
Speaker 4: Do I have to say that, Okay, twenty five plus years.
Speaker 5: Let's say you could have gone twenty plus years and
Speaker 5: saved yourself and us doing an extra calculation, What did
Speaker 5: you How did you end up becoming a neuroscientist?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question. I actually was doing a
Speaker 4: Bachelor of Science and I was doing a couple of
Speaker 4: different courses and I did an amazing lecture from a
Speaker 4: guy who was talking about neurophysiology, so how our brain
Speaker 4: works and how brain creates this illusion that we perceive,
Speaker 4: and I just fell in love with it. From then on,
Speaker 4: I just just completely I had a bit of an
Speaker 4: existential crisis at the time as a result of it,
Speaker 4: and then just I wanted to learn more and I
Speaker 4: was lucky. I was at the start of the cognitive
Speaker 4: neuroscience revolution and all these new technologies that we can
Speaker 4: use to look at the brain. So it was a
Speaker 4: fascinating time to be involved.
Speaker 5: In crisis of did you say crisis of something confidence
Speaker 5: or something that.
Speaker 4: Was existential crisis I think I had.
Speaker 5: And was that just about what you were studying versus
Speaker 5: what you were suddenly becoming really interested in it? And
Speaker 5: where the hell is it going to take me? And
Speaker 5: what's all about? And am I wasting my time? And
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: No, it was more about the fact that our perception
Speaker 4: isn't real, right, this video that we think we see
Speaker 4: isn't actually what we're perceiving, and we're creating this based
Speaker 4: on our memories and not what's actually out there, and
Speaker 4: that there's actually like no noise in the world and
Speaker 4: there's no Yeah. So that's what really threw me and
Speaker 4: made me go, Wow, what's actually going on here? And
Speaker 4: how can I to the bottom of how our brains
Speaker 4: are actually creating this amazing illusion that we all perceive constantly.
Speaker 5: You were responding there when you just went yeah, because
Speaker 5: my jaw dropped open at your description of the reality.
Speaker 2: So what I'm seeing this? Because this could go quite deep.
Speaker 2: We maybe we'll dig into that, Maybe we'll dig into
Speaker 2: that beyond out at the topic we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: But tell us about what is from your perspective, How
Speaker 2: would you describe the work you do in neuroscience? What
Speaker 2: do you do?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm a cognitive neuroscientist. There's lots of different
Speaker 4: disciplines in neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience just means that we're looking
Speaker 4: at alive way humans and how they actually think and
Speaker 4: perceive and do all the amazing things that us humans do.
Speaker 4: So it's very much at the global, the whole body
Speaker 4: or whole brain level, rather than being into the chemicals
Speaker 4: or into the neurotransmitters or all of the all En
Speaker 4: animals and all those things, which are other amazing disciplines
Speaker 4: within neuroscience.
Speaker 5: Okay, so you've done some you've done some work on
Speaker 5: the whole sleep thing and devices. Tell us a bit
Speaker 5: about tell us a bit about the work and what's
Speaker 5: gone into it and what's it revealed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I was lucky enough to be at MIT.
Speaker 4: I went to MOTE and worked at MIT in the
Speaker 4: US for a number of years, And I was at
Speaker 4: MOT when the first iPhone came out, which was a
Speaker 4: fascinating place to be given the MIT is where the
Speaker 4: Internet started. There's two offices at MOT where the Internet.
Speaker 5: You guys would have been your own subjects.
Speaker 4: Everybody was fascinated right by the fact that we had
Speaker 4: this new technology. And at the same time, Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 4: was across the road at Harvard University setting up Facebook.
Speaker 4: So I was a fascinating time to be in that, Yeah,
Speaker 4: right in the middle of what was going on and
Speaker 4: what was changing. And then I came back to Australia
Speaker 4: and I had kids, and that really made me hang on,
Speaker 4: is this actually good for us? And is this actually
Speaker 4: something that's going to push our species forwards or is
Speaker 4: it going to drag us backwards? And so that made
Speaker 4: me really interested in how the devices are impacting us
Speaker 4: and how the devices have been used to manipulate us
Speaker 4: in failing negative ways in a lot of cases. And
Speaker 4: I'm fascinated by technology because I'm a neuroscientist and technology
Speaker 4: is my go to right It's what enabled us to
Speaker 4: look inside brains.
Speaker 5: Which fast It's a tool, isn't it. At the same time,
Speaker 5: it is gosh that I mean, that's a fairly big question,
Speaker 5: isn't it. Because as soon as you said, as you know,
Speaker 5: you're questioning the thing as the technology that we're doing
Speaker 5: is dragging our species forward and backwards? What do you reckon?
Speaker 5: Not quite what we're talking about, But I just had
Speaker 5: to ask you. I mean, you would have concerns about it, obviously,
Speaker 5: wouldn't you.
Speaker 4: Well, since the iPhones come out and since Facebook and
Speaker 4: social media has started, our IQ has dropped, right, Our
Speaker 4: general IQ across population has dropped, and that's the first
Speaker 4: time in our recorded history that's actually happened. So we
Speaker 4: used to have what we call a flint effect, where
Speaker 4: every year our average IQ was getting greater and greater
Speaker 4: because we were getting more educated, and we were doing
Speaker 4: more fascinating things, and we were getting more advanced. But
Speaker 4: in the last ten years that's actually gone in reverse,
Speaker 4: So that really scares me and really worries me. The
Speaker 4: other thing is that we've got this huge increase in
Speaker 4: early onset dementia. That's people around the age of twenty
Speaker 4: five to thirty five who were getting dementia, which we
Speaker 4: haven't seen before, and that's tripled the number of people
Speaker 4: with dementia in the last two years in that young
Speaker 4: age with the twenty five to thirty five and for
Speaker 4: the first time, we've now seen someone under the age
Speaker 4: of twenty who's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's with dementia. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: those are two things that really worry me about how
Speaker 4: we're using these divine and if the way we're using
Speaker 4: them is actually what we want to be doing.
Speaker 5: Is it what you've talked about with the younger. Is
Speaker 5: it because simply devices enable us to access so much
Speaker 5: information in the course of a minute, an hour a day.
Speaker 5: Are we scrambling our brains a bit that we're losing
Speaker 5: the ability to work things out in a logical at
Speaker 5: a pace where we can our brains can understand information
Speaker 5: better as opposed to we're just bombard and we're scrambling
Speaker 5: our brains and by the time we're in our twenties
Speaker 5: or thirties, we're stuffed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it, but
Speaker 4: I think it's actually the opposite that we're not actually
Speaker 4: using our brains, so it's not getting stronger. So we
Speaker 4: know our brains that use it or lose it basic paradigm,
Speaker 4: just like any other muscle. But you've got to exercise
Speaker 4: it to make it actually stronger. But when you're doom scrolling,
Speaker 4: you're not actually exercising your brain because you brain doesn't
Speaker 4: have to do anything. It's just mindlessly looking at pictures
Speaker 4: as they come up, or when you google something. You know,
Speaker 4: when was the last time you went to out for
Speaker 4: dinner or a pub and someone asked a question or
Speaker 4: said something and someone else said, oh no, that's not true,
Speaker 4: it was two years earlier. So and so won another football,
Speaker 4: you know, in this year, and no, no, no, what
Speaker 4: happened the year before? And then you spend the next
Speaker 4: hour and a half actually arguing about when that actually
Speaker 4: happened nowadays instead of doing that, which is really good
Speaker 4: for our brains, and we're actually pulling out all this
Speaker 4: information where we google it, and so we don't actually
Speaker 4: do all that exercise for our brain that we normally
Speaker 4: would have done. So having all this access means that
Speaker 4: we're not actually using our brains in a way that
Speaker 4: actually exercises them, which makes them actually stronger, so that
Speaker 4: we can actually do more things later on.
Speaker 5: BlimE me, it's quite freaking when you think of it
Speaker 5: like that, because I was literally thinking, of course, we
Speaker 5: don't have arguments in Marcusin. Someone just goes, let's google it.
Speaker 5: Let's just ask a hey, chet GPT blah blah blah,
Speaker 5: what's the story are there?
Speaker 2: We go.
Speaker 5: What does it mean for our because we going to
Speaker 5: dig into things around sleep as well. I mean, everything overlaps,
Speaker 5: doesn't it? But how does that? Is the blue light thing?
Speaker 5: I've heard somebody say to me that the blue light
Speaker 5: thinks nonsense, it's just the fact of using your device
Speaker 5: and accessing all this information. How do devices and technology
Speaker 5: impact our sleep?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there are multiple aspects to it. The blue
Speaker 4: light is one of the aspects to it. So blue
Speaker 4: light is because a lot of people say behind on
Speaker 4: these blue light coming from the sun, so we're always
Speaker 4: subjected to blue light, so that's not really a problem.
Speaker 4: But blue light is really high energy. I won't get
Speaker 4: into all this physics behind it, but it's really high energy,
Speaker 4: so it scatters a lot, which means it doesn't actually
Speaker 4: get into your retina and so therefore it doesn't affect
Speaker 4: you in the normal way. But when you've got a
Speaker 4: screen close to you, it's giving off blue light that
Speaker 4: does go straight into your eyeball and therefore straight into
Speaker 4: your retina. And we've seen an increase in people with
Speaker 4: eye issues and i damage, which is why now over
Speaker 4: in China they've actually banned iPhones from kids under thirteen
Speaker 4: because of the big increase in eye damage that's been
Speaker 4: caused by the phones. So it is causing damage, and
Speaker 4: that high energy actually affects your malatonin levels and melotone
Speaker 4: is really important for us to go into sleep. So
Speaker 4: there's that aspect to it, the blue light which we
Speaker 4: need to get rid of, which you can do on phones.
Speaker 4: You you can turn them off where you can make
Speaker 4: them gray scale, which is great. But then there's also
Speaker 4: the fact that we're constantly being We become stressed when
Speaker 4: we're on devices because of all the stuff that we
Speaker 4: do on the devices. So you know, you have your
Speaker 4: email on the device, and you do your work on
Speaker 4: your devices and all these sorts of things. So as
Speaker 4: soon as we open a laptop or pull out our phones,
Speaker 4: our cortisol levels increase, which is an indication of stress.
Speaker 4: And that happens automatically when any of us increases, and
Speaker 4: of course if you're stressed, it's up to sleep.
Speaker 5: Is that the bigger factor in a way, the fact
Speaker 5: that the information we're getting as opposed to the light
Speaker 5: is because I speaking, I guess sometimes I look at
Speaker 5: the arm I watch a bit of Netflix or something
Speaker 5: for ten minutes, but I'll turn if I'm reading anything,
Speaker 5: I'll turn the light right down. But I have a
Speaker 5: suspicion that I probably shouldn't be reading anything on the
Speaker 5: internet late at night anyway, because it's what you're talking
Speaker 5: about with the cortisol levels and stress and reacting to
Speaker 5: something on Twitter and then being.
Speaker 4: Ah, especially at the moment. I mean, there's just this
Speaker 4: constant feed of yeah stuff which is scaring everybody. But
Speaker 4: we also the algorithms that run in the background, especially
Speaker 4: if you're using social media, they bias our feeds towards
Speaker 4: more dramatic and more violent and more scary stuff because
Speaker 4: we know that we attend to that more because it's
Speaker 4: a warning signal, right, We're worried that it's something that
Speaker 4: we need to actually attend to. So those algorithms are
Speaker 4: also biased towards that information. So we're getting fed information
Speaker 4: that it gets us excited and get us as stressed
Speaker 4: as well, which also impact on our stress levels.
Speaker 5: Because one of the things we I mean, these these
Speaker 5: conversations that we're having, I mean, there is conversation around
Speaker 5: going on in the you know, amongst people about kids
Speaker 5: and phones, and I think most people would think, I
Speaker 5: really need to put off giving my kid a phone.
Speaker 5: But are we in danger of ignoring the effect it
Speaker 5: has on us adults, the grown ups, you know, regardless
Speaker 5: of our age, Because obviously, yes, we should be concerned
Speaker 5: about children, but in focusing on that, we think but
Speaker 5: you know, put down your phone, love and off the bed,
Speaker 5: and then I'm on my phone myself, not thinking about
Speaker 5: the potential of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, I think it's it's something that we all
Speaker 4: need to think about because it is really affecting a
Speaker 4: lot of us in really negative ways, and so we
Speaker 4: need to be aware for ourselves so that we can
Speaker 4: actually use it in a way which is better for
Speaker 4: our brains and so we don't end up getting because Alzheimers,
Speaker 4: even in the older age groups is increasing and has
Speaker 4: been increasing pretty dramatically over the last few years. So
Speaker 4: we want to be doing things that are actually going
Speaker 4: to be good for our brains and good for us
Speaker 4: and good for our stress levels and all those sorts
Speaker 4: of things roman things that we know are negative. Plus
Speaker 4: we want to demonstrate to the younger generation what's a
Speaker 4: good way to live? Right, It's you can't tell a
Speaker 4: teenager what to do. You've got to show them what
Speaker 4: to do by actually showing them is what you do.
Speaker 5: Is there a difference between and may've got the kindles
Speaker 5: and cobos, which I mean the one I've got to
Speaker 5: black and white thing and it's got the setting. The
Speaker 5: later it gets, the more orange it gets in fact,
Speaker 5: it gets so orange it's like staring at the reflection
Speaker 5: of Donald Trump. But anyway, but are those devices safer
Speaker 5: because they are I don't look, I don't have the
Speaker 5: latest Kindle or Cobo. I know some of them you
Speaker 5: can get the full color experience, but many of them
Speaker 5: they're just that black and white. Is that slightly is
Speaker 5: that slightly more much safer?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a lot better for our brains because we're
Speaker 4: not getting all those notifications. The notifications are really the killer, right,
Speaker 4: because you get a thing or whatever from your email
Speaker 4: or from social media and all those sorts of things
Speaker 4: that will actually then make you automatically, through habitual training,
Speaker 4: automatically open it and have a look at it. Whereas
Speaker 4: if you're on a kindle, there's no social media, and
Speaker 4: there's your email is not on there on all those things,
Speaker 4: so therefore you're not being constantly distracted by those things,
Speaker 4: and you can just do what you've gone there to do,
Speaker 4: which is just to re read a book. And even
Speaker 4: the color one now you can put into it that
Speaker 4: will go black and white at night so that you
Speaker 4: don't have that blue light just before you go to sleep.
Speaker 2: So what do you do?
Speaker 5: Are you concerned about devices in your own life from
Speaker 5: the point of view of your I don't know what
Speaker 5: I want to list the some priority, but what's the
Speaker 5: major issue would be for most people and including yourself.
Speaker 5: Is it about the effect on your cortisol levels and
Speaker 5: stress or is it for you just simply if it
Speaker 5: affects sleep, that's the first part of the slippery slope.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to me, it is the cortisole levels, because we
Speaker 4: know cortisole's quite toxic for your body if you have
Speaker 4: it for a long periods of time. So it's not
Speaker 4: only going to affect your brain in negative ways, it's
Speaker 4: going to affect your body in negative ways as well.
Speaker 4: And I want to stay healthy, right, I want to
Speaker 4: keep surfing into my sixties and seventies hopefully, and so
Speaker 4: therefore that concerns me a lot. And also the way
Speaker 4: I interact with other people when I'm stressed. Right, when
Speaker 4: we're stressed, we actually interact with the loved ones around
Speaker 4: us and all those differently than we would normally, and
Speaker 4: so that concerns me as well. So I try to
Speaker 4: limit the amount of time I'm on the devices when
Speaker 4: I'm at home and when I'm not working, and so
Speaker 4: young ones.
Speaker 5: A lot of my people have heard on my show
Speaker 5: I say this sometimes I like to ask the dumb
Speaker 5: questions or the lay person's question based on instinct. I
Speaker 5: almost wonder when I look at my daughters and look
Speaker 5: they and sound's busy with a whole lot of things.
Speaker 5: Our younger people in a way going to learn to
Speaker 5: handle their devices in a way better because they've grown
Speaker 5: up with them.
Speaker 2: Because I watch the.
Speaker 5: Way my daughters don't seem to be as attached to
Speaker 5: their devices as much as I thought they'd be. Mind you,
Speaker 5: but they're not on Facebook or Instagram, so there's no notifications.
Speaker 5: But is there something where we could be mildly hopeful
Speaker 5: that they might evolve to be able to cope with
Speaker 5: the stuff better simply because they've had to deal with
Speaker 5: it from a younger age.
Speaker 2: Or is it all bad news?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Great question. The problem is that our brains haven't
Speaker 4: really evolved, haven't really changed in the last ten thousand years,
Speaker 4: and so you can't change. You can't evolve that quickly.
Speaker 4: It takes thousands of years to actually change in a way,
Speaker 4: which could mean that it's actually positive for us. And
Speaker 4: there is a generation who got iPhones and so on
Speaker 4: at the end of their teenage years. So they've already
Speaker 4: developed their ability to control our attention and so on,
Speaker 4: and they've seen the negative impact of it, and so
Speaker 4: they treat it differently. We've now got a younger group
Speaker 4: who have grown up with it from basically birth or
Speaker 4: from very early on, and because it's affecting their attention,
Speaker 4: they're not developing a normal attentional net network. So therefore
Speaker 4: they can't control their attention and they can't stop themselves
Speaker 4: from being addicted to these devices. And we're also seeing
Speaker 4: that the younger a child is given a device, the
Speaker 4: more likely they have abnormal development of the white matter
Speaker 4: tracts areas of their brain, and the more likely they'll
Speaker 4: have ADHD symptoms or be diagnosed with ADHD. So it
Speaker 4: seems as though there was this really lucky group that
Speaker 4: got it in their late teens, and they'd already developed
Speaker 4: their attentional networks, and so therefore they were able to go, oh,
Speaker 4: this is a bit silly, and I'm not going to
Speaker 4: spend too much time on it. But the younger group
Speaker 4: that are now going into their teens and hitting the
Speaker 4: twenties seem to be really affected by it. And that's
Speaker 4: going to be a real problem in the future.
Speaker 2: So what do we do about it?
Speaker 4: We have more controls. I think one of the big
Speaker 4: problems is that there's a whole bunch of tech guys
Speaker 4: over in the US who are making billions of dollars
Speaker 4: out of our attention, and we're not making and we're
Speaker 4: losing our time. I have a colleague who did calculations
Speaker 4: recently and they looked at how much time a kid
Speaker 4: spends on a device, both in school and at home,
Speaker 4: and then how that will project into the future, and
Speaker 4: it's something like thirty years they'll spend on a screen, right,
Speaker 4: And that's really sad that they're going to lose it.
Speaker 4: That much of their time on a screen, and that's
Speaker 4: just doom scrolling doing those things. It's not actually working.
Speaker 2: So that's a high level.
Speaker 5: That's like eight hours a day, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Well, if you look at it, a lot of the
Speaker 4: kids are spending up to six hours a day on
Speaker 4: a device right on a screen, either gaming or social
Speaker 4: media or doing all those things. Most teenagers these days
Speaker 4: will be spending at least six hours a day on
Speaker 4: a device outside of school time, which is just horrendous.
Speaker 4: I think because they're not doing the things that we
Speaker 4: actually need to do. We look at places like the
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley, there's a whole bunch of schools of Waldorf
Speaker 4: schools over there where they have no devices in any
Speaker 4: of their schools. That the tech gurus who send their
Speaker 4: kids that actually have to sign a form saying they
Speaker 4: won't give their kids a device until they're eighteen, until
Speaker 4: they leave school, because they know that attention is going
Speaker 4: to be the most valued asset that we're going to
Speaker 4: have in the future, and you get that by not
Speaker 4: using technology. If you look at Mark Zuckerberg, as soon
Speaker 4: as he had his first job, he took all the
Speaker 4: devices out of his home, and now when you go
Speaker 4: and visit Mark, you've got to leave your phone in
Speaker 4: your car in order to take him time because he
Speaker 4: doesn't want his kids around devices. Because he knows that
Speaker 4: the most important asset we're going to have in the
Speaker 4: future our ability to attend and control our attention, and
Speaker 4: that's been destroyed by devices. So we really need to
Speaker 4: have a rethink both. You know, New Zealand and Australia
Speaker 4: have a huge number of devices in schools as well,
Speaker 4: So I mean that's another conversation that needs to have
Speaker 4: had about why we do that.
Speaker 2: Gosh, that's gosh.
Speaker 5: That does tend to make Mark Zuckerberg look like the
Speaker 5: biggest hypocrite in the world, isn't it. He makes a
Speaker 5: fortune through commanding our attention and yet in his own.
Speaker 2: Life keep the devices. I don't know, I've got a
Speaker 2: certain reaction to that.
Speaker 4: Well, Bill Gates and Steve job said they did the
Speaker 4: same things with their teenagers, So it's not just Mark, Gosh.
Speaker 5: We need Look, we need to take a break. We're
Speaker 5: going to be back in just a moment. I'm with
Speaker 5: our new guest on the show, as neuroscientist doctor Mark Williams.
Speaker 5: I think I look, if you've got any questions for Mark,
Speaker 5: if you're concerned about the device use and your family,
Speaker 5: your own device use, give us a call and let's
Speaker 5: have a chat about it and what you think you
Speaker 5: can change. But I do you?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 2: I think that there are a couple of questions.
Speaker 5: One is a bit of a it's a bit of
Speaker 5: a it's a big question is whether you think that
Speaker 5: devices are ultimately making us dumber and if what Mark
Speaker 5: says is right. What Mark says is that the IQ
Speaker 5: levels have been declining. If it's because of devices, then
Speaker 5: they probably are. Are you concerned about them making us dumber?
Speaker 5: But are you worried about your own device use? And
Speaker 5: how do you control it? There's so many questions around it,
Speaker 5: but we're going to dig into a bit more with
Speaker 5: Mark Williams, Doctor Mark Williams. In just a moment, this
Speaker 5: is the health Ub on News Talks. He'd be it's
Speaker 5: twenty nine past four.
Speaker 3: Daunting American enough said.
Speaker 2: Crazy, Are you going to meet me? Yes? Welcome back
Speaker 2: to the Weekend Collective. This is the Health Hub.
Speaker 5: My guest is doctor Mark Williams is a neuroscientist and surfer.
Speaker 5: As he dropped in there, I was just like, but
Speaker 5: that's not what we're talking about. Surf and we're talking
Speaker 5: about well, he might have been a surf when it
Speaker 5: comes to the Internet, but we're talking about devices and
Speaker 5: the negative effect has on our well being. And just
Speaker 5: before we go to the calls, Mark, I.
Speaker 2: Gather you've got kids. Yes, what are your rules in
Speaker 2: your house?
Speaker 6: Then?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great question, Tim. A lot of people
Speaker 4: ask me that. In fact, I have two teenagers once thirteen,
Speaker 4: one sixteen, a girl and a boy. They often ask
Speaker 4: me that too, because they want to know if there's
Speaker 4: any difference between the two. They have mobile phones because
Speaker 4: they travel on the bus in the morning to school
Speaker 4: and then they often go to exercise and stuff early
Speaker 4: and those sorts of things, so they have the phone
Speaker 4: so that they can do those things. They don't have
Speaker 4: any social media, and they know they're not going to
Speaker 4: have any social media until they turn eighteen, because it's
Speaker 4: just there's so much evidence that it's really really bad
Speaker 4: for teenagers, both boys and girls for different reasons, but
Speaker 4: very bad. And then in our house, we have an
Speaker 4: area in a common area where all of our phones,
Speaker 4: including my wife's and mine, go when we actually arrive home,
Speaker 4: and we plug them in there, and if we want
Speaker 4: to use them, then we've got to go and stand
Speaker 4: there like the old days when the phone was plugged
Speaker 4: into the wall, so that you don't use it for
Speaker 4: very long, because pretty uncomfortable to standing there looking at
Speaker 4: your phone. So that actually decreases the amount of time
Speaker 4: any of us spend on the phone when we're at
Speaker 4: home and we actually sit and talk to each other
Speaker 4: and play games and do those sorts of things.
Speaker 5: How hard is it to get into that habit because
Speaker 5: that would sound even for me because I read the
Speaker 5: news all the time, and I use my phone to
Speaker 5: read the news because I'm in the talkback business, and so.
Speaker 2: It be think.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure I go and stand there for that long.
Speaker 5: But how did you go with implementing those rules.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So when I'm at work, which you know, I look,
Speaker 4: that's when I look at the news and do all
Speaker 4: those sorts of things because I like to keep up
Speaker 4: with what's actually going on and so on. But when
Speaker 4: I'm at home, I don't do those sorts of things
Speaker 4: so that I can actually interact with the family. So
Speaker 4: I think something is work and home life is really
Speaker 4: crept into each other. Especially work's crept into our home lives.
Speaker 4: Our home life hasn't really crept into our work, and
Speaker 4: so I think we need to start separating those things
Speaker 4: again and say, once I'm home, and then I'm home,
Speaker 4: and that's time for the family. And then when I
Speaker 4: go to work or if I need to spend time
Speaker 4: doing something for work, then I remove myself from the
Speaker 4: situation and do that and then come back to do it.
Speaker 4: But it's not it's not easy, and occasionally one of
Speaker 4: the teenagers will be caught, you know, sneak in the
Speaker 4: phone into the landring or you know, we'll what's the
Speaker 4: consequence on the couch. It's usually they have to do
Speaker 4: some sort of chores. So they've both got chores that
Speaker 4: they have to do normally, and then we'll add a
Speaker 4: chore for that week that they don't like as a
Speaker 4: consequence for it. We don't want to then restrict the
Speaker 4: own more because then it's then that makes them want
Speaker 4: the phone more, right, so you give them something else
Speaker 4: as the punish.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the difficult thing about it as well.
Speaker 5: You mentioned they've had them at school, because you know,
Speaker 5: most there is trying to balance that question around not
Speaker 5: having social isolation as well when every other kid is
Speaker 5: doing the techtok thing and all that. And I mean,
Speaker 5: our kids don't have social media and where my wife
Speaker 5: and I'll be continue to have discussions around that how
Speaker 5: we manage that, because we've got to try and manage
Speaker 5: the kids' expectations, like don't get ahead of yourself. You know,
Speaker 5: you're not getting an Instagram account. And yet there is
Speaker 5: that question of what are their peers doing? And while
Speaker 5: you might not we might not care what their peers
Speaker 5: are doing to peer, the peers matter, and how do
Speaker 5: you manage how you managed that over the course of
Speaker 5: your parenthood.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, well, we've got to reframe it. And
Speaker 4: the tech guys, I mean, these gurus, they don't become
Speaker 4: billionaires because they're done right. And they called it social
Speaker 4: media for a reason, but it's not social. I think
Speaker 4: social about social media. Social media is advertising and you're
Speaker 4: either advertising a business or an organization or an event,
Speaker 4: or you're advertising yourself. And that's what teenagers do on
Speaker 4: social media. They advertise themselves. And that's an awful way
Speaker 4: to grow up to think that you get friends and
Speaker 4: people like you because of the way you advertise yourself.
Speaker 4: And that's why we've got so many problems in this area.
Speaker 4: And so, you know, my kids are very very social
Speaker 4: and they have friends, you know, but they'll text their
Speaker 4: friends and say, hey, let's my son loves basketball. Let's
Speaker 4: go to the basketball courts down the road. And they
Speaker 4: meet up at the basketball courts and play basketball together.
Speaker 4: My daughter is surfboat and heavily involved in surf life saving,
Speaker 4: and so she's down the beach all the time, and
Speaker 4: you know, her phone's not waterproof, So what's the point
Speaker 4: in taking it down there, and.
Speaker 2: It's very suspicious when she gets that waterproof cover. It's like,
Speaker 2: what's happening for.
Speaker 5: Look, there's so much I want to dig into it.
Speaker 5: Let's take some calls, Sue, Hello, and doctor mart.
Speaker 7: Look, it's good to hear you talk about things like
Speaker 7: blue lights and gudgets. I did sewing for many, many years,
Speaker 7: even overnight, very often with fluescent lights close are very
Speaker 7: close above. I remember well into the seventies. Now I
Speaker 7: can't even look at a screen. It's just a blur.
Speaker 7: And personally, I can see an issue in the future
Speaker 7: with the young people spending so much time on screens
Speaker 7: because well, when it does affect you and there's a
Speaker 7: very little endo about it, you know, you can't be
Speaker 7: in any digital world because you can't look at a screen,
Speaker 7: you know, and people don't even give that a thought.
Speaker 7: No wonder the people that make them don't let they
Speaker 7: could use them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got effects of phones.
Speaker 5: I think there is something about this close quarter looking
Speaker 5: at something that's not quite your area of expertise.
Speaker 2: But no doubt you've learned a bit about that mark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there is so our when we're actually our brain,
Speaker 4: our brain when our eye develops, it actually changes shape
Speaker 4: to actually accommodate for things that are far away and
Speaker 4: close to us. But that doesn't happen when we're always
Speaker 4: looking at things close to us, which is why now
Speaker 4: we've seen a lot of people needing glasses from a
Speaker 4: very young age because they're not looking into the distance
Speaker 4: as much as they need to be to actually develop
Speaker 4: the eyeball in the right way, which is a pretty
Speaker 4: scary thing. And why countries like China are banning the
Speaker 4: smartphones from young kids and devices from young kids because
Speaker 4: they know that it's causing such an issue for the
Speaker 4: health industry over there.
Speaker 5: So in terms of I mean with kids and access
Speaker 5: to I mean there's a messaging app called WhatsApp, which
Speaker 5: is convenient for kids, for teams and all that sort
Speaker 5: of stuff, and for circles of friends. I guess in
Speaker 5: the context of but there's still a social connection there
Speaker 5: Are those apps such a problem? Or is it really
Speaker 5: the things like the Instagram, the tektok constantly gained and
Speaker 5: notifications how many views have I got on my latest
Speaker 5: silly video?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I don't have such I know some
Speaker 4: people do have issues with the WhatsApp because they can
Speaker 4: create groups on those things, and as apparent, you probably
Speaker 4: want to monitor those just to make sure that they're
Speaker 4: not saying anything, you know, any bullyings going on or anything.
Speaker 4: But they are good ways for them to actually text
Speaker 4: each other and keep in contact and to the normal
Speaker 4: messaging services and so on. The real issue is the
Speaker 4: algorithms and so on running in the background of the
Speaker 4: social media apps and Google and these things that cause problems.
Speaker 5: How do we so, I mean, New Zealand and Australia
Speaker 5: at least have done something. Schools and schools in New
Speaker 5: Zealand you can't take phones and the school My girls
Speaker 5: were going to have that rule anyway, But now, I mean,
Speaker 5: that seems to be the no brainer. I don't think
Speaker 5: there's anyone who thinks that policy was a bad idea.
Speaker 5: In fact, it's funny, isn't it, Because normally sort of
Speaker 5: thing there'll be a lot of arguments. So this is
Speaker 5: government overreach. But it seems to me that most of
Speaker 5: the adults I know are like, this is fantastic. Is
Speaker 5: there room do you think for more laws which don't Okay,
Speaker 5: we don't want to be too paternalistic to ours two individuals,
Speaker 5: but is there room for us to legislate more on
Speaker 5: issues around social media? I think, what is it that
Speaker 5: you're in an election right now? Isn't alb and easy
Speaker 5: talking about some politicians talking about all they have? I
Speaker 5: can't keep up with it. Actually banning social media above
Speaker 5: below the age of sixteen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so in Australia it's been banned for below sixteenth.
Speaker 4: I was heavily involved in that whole yeah talk fest
Speaker 4: that we had over the last six months and in
Speaker 4: every state and so on, which is fantastic. I would
Speaker 4: have preferred it to be eighteen. I think it's just
Speaker 4: as addictive. It is just as addictive as smoking and alcohol.
Speaker 4: So why we decided sixteen rather than eighteen, I'm not sure,
Speaker 4: but yeah, I mean that's going to make the social
Speaker 4: media companies more aware of the fact that people are
Speaker 4: aware of the issues behind them, So I think that's
Speaker 4: really important. But I mean, one of the easiest things
Speaker 4: we could do is simply require the social media companies
Speaker 4: to take identification when people actually sign up to social media,
Speaker 4: and then we would know who the people actually are,
Speaker 4: and then you would get rid of the bullying, you
Speaker 4: get rid of the sextortion, you get rid of cyber crimes,
Speaker 4: you get rid of a huge number of issues that
Speaker 4: we have on social media currently because they would know
Speaker 4: who the people are who are actually causing all those
Speaker 4: issues that we see, and we could turn that around
Speaker 4: very very easily and very quickly. But at the moment
Speaker 4: that your governments aren't willing.
Speaker 2: To actually do that, I'm not just create an email
Speaker 2: and the way you go is that.
Speaker 4: It yeah, yeah, exactly, just anybody can do it and
Speaker 4: they can then do whatever they want, and that I
Speaker 4: think is what causes a lot of the issues that
Speaker 4: we actually see.
Speaker 2: Right, let's take some more calls.
Speaker 6: Carl gooday, how are you mate?
Speaker 2: Good? Thanks?
Speaker 5: Actually, Carl, just stand there for a time. Bank, just
Speaker 5: hold it because actually I've just realized we've got to
Speaker 5: come back in a couple of minutes. Just give us
Speaker 5: a moment. It's seventeen minutes to five. Y's welcome back
Speaker 5: to the Weekend Collective.
Speaker 2: Tim Beverage with you.
Speaker 5: We're talking with Mark Williams, is a neuroscientist on the
Speaker 5: danger for our well our wellbeing and our sleeper of
Speaker 5: devices and taking.
Speaker 2: Your calls as well. Carl, gooday, how am I good? Thanks?
Speaker 6: Okay, I've got a little thing to put forward, and
Speaker 6: this is okay. I might be a dinosaur or whatever,
Speaker 6: but I find it very frustrating over my working career,
Speaker 6: and I've washed it a role that young fellows I'm
Speaker 6: larra interested in looking at their phones then they are
Speaker 6: and actually learning how to do the job.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 6: To me, I look at it and you can't say
Speaker 6: to them, no, you can't have your phone on you
Speaker 6: on site. But I've worked with guys my age and
Speaker 6: I'm fifty six that have got some sort of Facebook account.
Speaker 6: And the problem I find was when I know, when
Speaker 6: I go to work, I leave my phone in the
Speaker 6: car and I check it at smoko and I check
Speaker 6: it at lunch time, and no, No, what it is
Speaker 6: is I walk around site so many times and certain
Speaker 6: guys are supposed to be paid good money to do
Speaker 6: a job, and is he checking their phones?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean I'm talking about lost production as a
Speaker 6: society as a nation. Yeah, I think about those numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, Look, it's just part of the scale of
Speaker 2: the problem, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Mark. Yeah. Absolutely, we know that we're less productive as
Speaker 4: individuals today than we were before we had phones, and
Speaker 4: a lot of that has to do with this distraction
Speaker 4: that Carl's talking about that we're constantly.
Speaker 5: Are all devices created equal? So for instance, you know
Speaker 5: there's one thing too, I mean most kids, most schools,
Speaker 5: you know, there's a little bit of handwriting, but a
Speaker 5: lot of the homework has done through teams and through
Speaker 5: various apps where they're submitting their homework. Are those things
Speaker 5: as much of a problem or is there a subtle
Speaker 5: difference between you know, checking your phone every thirty seconds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, there's very little difference.
Speaker 2: Oh helping it'd say, no. No.
Speaker 4: We know a lot of countries now going the opposite way,
Speaker 4: are actually getting rid of all the devices and going
Speaker 4: back to textbooks, and the OECD have done huge amounts
Speaker 4: of research showing that the devices in schools are actually
Speaker 4: causing a huge amount of harm not only mental health
Speaker 4: and well being, but also to learning outcomes. And Australia
Speaker 4: and New Zealand both have a lot of device use
Speaker 4: in schools and we're both pretty doing pretty badly when
Speaker 4: it comes to outcomes and also behavioral problems in schools.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think both Australia and New Zealand need
Speaker 4: to have a think about how they're using the devices
Speaker 4: in the schools because a lot of it, especially Scandinavian countries,
Speaker 4: are going the opposite way and getting rid of the
Speaker 4: devices because they've seen a slip in their outcomes and
Speaker 4: a slip in the behavior in the schools. And there's
Speaker 4: spending millions to put the old textbooks back in because
Speaker 4: we know they're better for learning.
Speaker 5: What about are there things that can mitigate it? For instance,
Speaker 5: you know kids who have an active lifestyle, Okay, they've
Speaker 5: got phones, they're not on them all the time, but
Speaker 5: you know, how does it make these things more important?
Speaker 5: The fact that you mentioned your daughters into the surf
Speaker 5: life saving and my daughters into hockey and netball and
Speaker 5: dance and ballet, and does the extracurricular stuff, well, I
Speaker 5: guess it's time they're not on their phone.
Speaker 2: At least that all separate.
Speaker 4: Now, Well, there was actually a study just recently came
Speaker 4: out in I think was Frontiers in Human Neuroscience where
Speaker 4: they've shown that the kids that the more active kids,
Speaker 4: it's a less of an impact on their mental health
Speaker 4: and well being. So the more active kids are and
Speaker 4: the more extracurricular things they do, it seems to be
Speaker 4: the less impact it has and the less likely they
Speaker 4: are to get addicted to the social media.
Speaker 5: That's always so those things, I mean, obviously they're good
Speaker 5: for physical activity and sports and all that. That's good
Speaker 5: for you, But is it also a useful tool Because
Speaker 5: the more kids develop joy and other things, the less
Speaker 5: of an enticement it is. It's a useful tool to
Speaker 5: get them off that sor.
Speaker 4: And also one of the big problems with the social media,
Speaker 4: in the gaming and the other things on these apps
Speaker 4: and programs is that you're constantly getting hit with dopamine,
Speaker 4: So you don't actually have to work for the dopamine.
Speaker 4: You don't have to work for that high for that feeling,
Speaker 4: whereas when you're doing sport, you've actually got to work
Speaker 4: to get the serotonin and multitasting, which are really good
Speaker 4: for us and make us feel good. So it's also
Speaker 4: that that they actually learn that working hard for something
Speaker 4: actually results in a bigger high than actually just these
Speaker 4: short term goals that we have when we're gaming or
Speaker 4: when we're on social media. So that's also real positive
Speaker 4: for these.
Speaker 5: Kids out all right, well, we need to take another
Speaker 5: quick break, so I lift the brakes a little bit
Speaker 5: la so and thrilled in our conversation, So back in
Speaker 5: just a moment. It's eight minutes to five news talks.
Speaker 5: He'd be welcome back to the health of my guest.
Speaker 5: As doctor Mark Williams is a neuroscientists. He's done some
Speaker 5: work on basically the effective devices on our life. I
Speaker 5: hope Mark, We've only got about a minute and a
Speaker 5: half to go.
Speaker 2: Time flies.
Speaker 5: Where do people go if they want to find out
Speaker 5: more about the research you've done and more information about devices?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they go to my website, which is just www
Speaker 4: dot Dr Mark Williams dot com. Nice and easy. I
Speaker 4: have a whole bunch of blogs and stuff on there
Speaker 4: they can read, and they all have links to different things.
Speaker 4: And I've been on a couple of documentaries as well
Speaker 4: on ABC and so on over here, so they all
Speaker 4: talk about a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 2: Are you on the dread of Twitter as well?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: Sorry, just quickly. I mean I grew up as a kid.
Speaker 5: I grew up watching probably too much Telly, But there
Speaker 5: are no such things as other devices. I mean watching
Speaker 5: a movie and a bit of television and things like that.
Speaker 5: Is that a different cup of tea that we shouldn't
Speaker 5: stress about? Or what do you reckon?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The difference is when you're on a device,
Speaker 4: you've been fed information based on algorithms, plus you're getting
Speaker 4: likes and all of these things that are all yeah,
Speaker 4: it's all addictive stuff. Yeah, whereas when you're watching a
Speaker 4: TV program, it's not. None of that's actually going on,
Speaker 4: And especially if you have the TV along way away,
Speaker 4: then you're also not getting the blue light as well.
Speaker 4: So yeah, watch TV as much as you like.
Speaker 5: I really appreciate your time today. I hope we get
Speaker 5: a chat another time. I think there's a few bit
Speaker 5: more ground for us to cover a bit. I really
Speaker 5: appreciate your time today, Mark, Thanks so much.
Speaker 4: No it wors Thanks Tim, Thanks a lot anytime.
Speaker 2: Cheers.
Speaker 5: That was the health up duck Dr Mark Williams dot com.
Speaker 5: Just look for im a newer scientist and you can.
Speaker 2: Check out more information.
Speaker 5: But I think there's a lot more we could dig
Speaker 5: into on another occasion, hopefully anyway. Up next it is
Speaker 5: Smart Money with Max As Next, it's three Minutes to
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