Glowface Digital Wellbeing

Jonathan Haidt has been on Joe Rogan, featured in articles in the New Yorker and has seen his book The Anxious Generation sky rocket to #1 on the NY Times best selling list. Jonathan outlines a few solutions to the struggles of this generation which to my mind are only band-aid solutions. Preventing kids from accessing social media and smart phones until a reasonable age feels appropriate – but where is the incentive for the overworked, burnt out and constantly distracted parent to implement these restrictions? The excuse from these parents is understandable – if they don’t see behavioural issues with their children, then why implement these boundaries? Instead, social reform with social media and smart phones should start with broad education to parents and kids. We must look beyond these short-term fixes and teach people, both kids and parents, how to build better relationships with technology – not just pretend it doesn’t exist until they are “old enough”.

Whenever we use our device, there is always something we need to attend to. A notification we need to check, a product we need to order, or boredom that needs to be relieved. It feels as if sometimes our phones are a means to an ends. But what end exactly? Is it simply the end when we reach the end of the road as well? Or will we get to choose when we've had enough of our phones, emails and social media and get to put our phones down for the last time on our terms?

30 years ago it wasn't standard practice for people to go to the gym or eat healthy. You could eat cereal for breakfast and that was a 'good start to the day'. Now, gyms are everywhere and the ability to access information about eating right and exercising is easy than ever. In this weeks podcast, I give you my reasons why I think Digital Wellbeing is just like dieting and fitness was 30-years ago.

We are so used to a perfect UI/UX experience with our devices, we tend to take the same expectations to our relationships. I've noticed this more and more in consumer services where now even supermarkets are making announcements to remind people to be kind to staff and treat them with respect. Here's what happens when you apply the same expectations you have for the perfect technology around you to the imperfect people in your lives.

Sometimes we justify screen time by putting educational content in front of our kids. But as you'll come to know, the video transfer deficit means that kids, toddlers in particular, aren't learning how we would expect them to when viewing learning tools.

We are often told that screen based technology helps people learn better, quicker and with greater ease. But what if the reality lags behind the promise? Expect to learn how you can independently verify if technology is benefitting students, and where we should be focusing our time, efforts and money instead.

We all dream about the day when AI takes over, everyone has robots to do everything for us and everything is fully automated. The day when convenience has reached it's highest possible level. What will you do on that day? What will you do with all your free time? This week I give you my thoughts around what a society that is fully automated would actually look like, and how it might not actually be something you want.

When you think about it objectively, it’s pretty odd behaviour. If we did other things that involved communicating with people – write a letter, paint a picture, write lyrics to a song – at a lunch, coffee or other social setting, we’d be called out by our friends pretty quickly. So why do we let our friends and family get away with pulling their phones out in these same settings? In this week’s podcast I give you my thoughts on what pulling your phone out in social settings says about you as a person and also the signal it gives to others around you.

Dopamine, novelty and variable scheduled reward - these are the three things that keep us addicted and compelled to use our devices. In this weeks podcast I go in detail on these three ideas.

Did you know that physical wellbeing and digital wellbeing are related? In this weeks podcast I give my reasons as to why exercise has exploded in popularity in the last 20-years and how this relates to digital wellbeing

The world has a problem with productivity - knowledge workers are providing less output with the same time spent working. This week I review a recent report from The Economist titled "In search of lost focus" which examines the impact of distractions on companies and economies and provides some interesting ideas on how to manage.

Sometimes we think the internet is a good place to have difficult conversations about really challenging topics. In this weeks podcast, I give you my reasons why I don't the internet or social media is a great place for really deep and difficult conversations

In this week’s podcast I listen back to a recent podcast conversation between Chris Williamson and Dr Andrew Huberman on the Modern Wisdom podcast (episode 700). This is the second of two parts to their conversation where I provide my take on their thoughts on Digital Wellbeing. This week covers why phone use is a compulsion not an addiction, the benefits of solitude and the real loss to humanity from all this screen time.

In this week’s podcast I listen back to a recent podcast conversation between Chris Williamson and Dr Andrew Huberman on the Modern Wisdom podcast (episode 700). This is the first of two parts to their conversation where I provide my take on their thoughts on Digital Wellbeing. This week covers adult ADHD, how shifting your attention inhibits focus and why scrolling is so dangerous.

In many areas of our lives we look to those most in the know about something for guidance. What can we learn about digital wellbeing from those most in the know about the technology industry?

The world of screens encourages us to think it short, shallow interactions, teaching us to consume information in ways that change our brain. It turns out we are also naturally inclined to do this! But this is an option, a better, more difficult option, to pursue deep thinking.

George Orwell wrote a book called 1984 where he predicted a future where we will be controlled by the things we hate. Aldous Huxley wrote a book called Brave New World where he predicted a world where we will be controlled by the things we love. In this podcast, David provides an introduction to the conversation started by Neil Postman who argues that Huxley, not Orwell, was right and how this relates to our modern world with screens.

Today I give you an insight as to what has motivated me to bring zero-cost content to consumers interested in reducing their screen time and changing their relationship with their devices.