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July 12, 2024 50 mins

On this episode of The Middle we're asking you: are you addicted to your phone? And if you are - what are you doing about it? We're joined by Stanford University psychiatrist Anna Lembke, author of Dopamine Nation, and journalist Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well as Jeremy takes calls from around the country. #phone #iphone #tiktok #socialmedia #screentime #phoneaddiction

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Middle is supported by Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit
organization striving to increase the sustainability of local journalism by
building connections between donors and news organizations. More information on
how you can support the Middle at Listen toothmiddle dot com.
Welcome to the Middle of Jeremy Hobson, joined by our

(00:21):
house DJ Tolliver, who I can tell you right now
is definitely addicted to his phone, but so am I Tolliver,
and I honestly don't know very many people who are
not addicted to you.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, when I saw that this was the topic, I
was like, Oh, this is a personal attack.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Jerem is personally attacking to me.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Well, you know, I just went on vacation for a
week and I took all the social media apps off
my phone, and first of all, I read two books
and maybe six or seven magazines. But also my screen
time went down by a lot more than I would
care to tell you. So that's what we're talking about
this hour and one. Recent survey found the average American
spends four and a half hours a day on their smartphone,

(00:59):
and Americans in Generation Z are over six hours a
day on average, and here's the thing. More than forty
percent of those surveys surveyed want to cut down on
screen time this year. So our question this hour, are
you addicted to your phone? And if so, what are
you doing about it? Tolliver, Unfortunately we have to use

(01:20):
phones for people to communicate with us. But what is
the number for people to call in?

Speaker 2 (01:24):
It's eight four four four Middle that's eight four four
four six four three three five three or right to
us to listen to the Middle dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Before we introduce our panel. People are still talking about
the presidential debate that happened a couple weeks ago, and
our show right after the debate brought in more calls
than any show we've done. So here are a few
more of the voicemails that you left us.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Hey, my name is Robert Schwabel. I live in Acreage, Alaska.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
Hi.

Speaker 5 (01:47):
My name is Veil.

Speaker 6 (01:48):
I'm from Chicago.

Speaker 7 (01:50):
Hello.

Speaker 8 (01:51):
My name is Adam Burke, live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Speaker 9 (01:54):
My name is Helen from Ohio.

Speaker 10 (01:56):
Biden's handlers and his folks at quote so prepped him
for this debate completely screwed up.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
I see no reason to change my plan to vote
for Biden. The man I saw was an elderly man
out after nine pm. I thought he handled himself as
well as he could.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
I feel like agism in this country is a problem.

Speaker 11 (02:20):
I have been a big supporter of Biden, but I.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
Do have to say that his performance made me think
that it wasn't just a matter of agism.

Speaker 8 (02:29):
We are now at a point in our politics where
personal jobs are more important than the lives of everyday Americans.
With two wars going on, the presidents have nothing better
than to comment on their golf swing.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Well, thanks to everyone who called in. I'd almost forgotten,
given all the news about the debate that they did
talk about their golf swings, and that was really weird
when it happened. But you can listen to our post
debate show anytime because The Middle is available as a
podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts on the iHeart app
or wherever you listen to podcasts. So now to our
topic this hour. Are you addicted to your phone and
if so, what are you doing about it? Let's meet

(03:05):
our panel. Doctor An A. Lemke is professor of psychiatry
and addiction at Stanford University and author of Dopamine nation
finding balance in the age of indulgence. On a Lemke,
Welcome to the Middle.

Speaker 12 (03:17):
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
And also joining us is journalist Johann Harry, who's author
of many books including Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay
Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. Johan Harry, Welcome
to you.

Speaker 13 (03:30):
Hey Jeremy, I should just warn everyone. It is two
am in London and I've drunk enough caffeine to kill
a whole field of cout It is possible I will
die during this into you. I'm glad my last words
will be recorded for posterity.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Performance enhancing drugs I guess are allowed on the Middle.
Before we get to the phones on a Lemke, do
you think that what we're dealing with when it comes
to phone usage is an addiction the way people get
addicted to alcohol or drugs.

Speaker 12 (03:55):
I think it's really reasonable and science based to think
of digital media as a drug. It lights up the
same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. It releases dopamine,
our reward neurotransmitter, just like with alcohol. The majority of
people who use social media and digital media will not
develop a severe, life threatening addiction. But I can tell

(04:18):
you that in clinical care, we do see the subset
of individuals, including very young people, who present with life
threatening addiction to digital media of all kinds.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
And Johann Hary, do you think it's an addiction and
what are the consequences for society of a phone addiction?

Speaker 13 (04:37):
Well, we're living in a huge crisis of attention and focus.
The average worker now focuses on only one task for
less than one minute. And for every one child who
has identified with serious attention problems when I was seven
years old, there's now one hundred children who've been identified
with this problem. And there's some ways in which it's
like an addiction. The core of that problem is, I

(04:59):
would say anyone listening, think about anything you've ever achieved
in your life that you're proud of, whether it's starting
a business, being a good parent, learning to play the guitar,
whatever it is. That thing that you're proud of required
a huge amount of sustained focus and attention. And when
your ability to pay focus, your ability to focus and
pay attention breaks down, your ability to achieve your goals diminishes,

(05:20):
your ability to solve your problems diminishes. You feel worse
about yourself because you actually are less competent. And what
I learned in the research from my book Stolen Focus,
you know, researched it over three years. I went on
a big journey all over the world, from Moscow to
Miami to Melbourne, not just the cities that beginning the
letter M. I don't know why I just did that,
And what I learned is there's scientific evidence for twelve

(05:41):
factors that can make your attention better or can make
your attention worse. And loads of the factors that can
make your attention worse have been hugely increasing in recent years.
Some of them are in our technology. They actually range
pretty widely. The food we eat is really affecting our attention,
Our lack of sleep something I can relate to right now,
and the way our offices work, the way our kids'

(06:02):
schools work. There's a really broad range of factors. But
the key thing when you understand these causes is both
if you're struggling to focus and pay attention, as I
was when I started working on the book, it's really
important to understand this isn't your fault, this isn't your
child's fault. There's nothing wrong with you, there's something wrong
with the way we're living. But once we understand these
twelve factors that are harming our attention, we can begin

(06:25):
to defend ourselves and take on the forces that are
doing this to us.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
So an a lunky, how did we get here? Because
I'm a millennial, I grew up in a time when
we weren't there weren't even smartphones, We didn't do this,
and then all of a sudden, now we all spend
so much of our day looking at these devices.

Speaker 12 (06:44):
Well, these devices are very cognitively adherent, and by that
I mean that our brains collectively invented them, and they
are engineered to be attention grabbing, to be reinforcing, So
you would be merely mortal if in engaging with these
devices you found it difficult to moderate your consumption. One

(07:08):
of the interesting things for me is I feel like,
as a society, we have a lot more compassion now
for people who have addiction to drugs and alcohol, possibly
in part because we see ourselves getting addicted to devices
in a way that we othered before and now we're
experiencing it ourselves. This kind of inability to cut back,

(07:31):
a compulsive desire to use against our wishes, a degree
of involuntariness and narrowing of our focus, and most importantly,
a continue use despite consequences. And it's just pervaded every
aspect of our lives. I think, you know, you know,
twenty five thirty years ago, we were only talking about

(07:53):
the advantages of the technology. We were not considering the
dark sides. So the good news is that we're having
the discussion now.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
It's interesting, though, I did see a Gallup survey that
found even in the last couple of years, most Americans
think that they get more benefit than negative out of
their usage of their phone, which is kind of interesting.
Let's see what some of our listeners think. Joy is
calling from Atlanta, Georgia. Joy, Welcome to the Middle. Are
you addicted to your phone? Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 9 (08:21):
I absolutely am addicted to my phone. And it started gradually,
but with Twitter actually, because you just keep going back
and back and I had to take the app off
of my phone. But now I find myself unable to
disconnect from my phone, from my emails. But largely it's

(08:44):
like Instagram. I'll go on Instagram and say, oh, I'll
be on there for five minutes, and I literally half
an hour later, I'll still be on Instagram, and I
just don't know where the time went.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
And what do you think is the is like, how
did this start for you? Why? Why? Why have you gotten?
And I'm not saying you a lot of people are
in the exact same boat, but why do you think
that it happened for you?

Speaker 14 (09:09):
Well?

Speaker 9 (09:10):
I I disconnected. I was watching a lot of cable news.

Speaker 15 (09:15):
I'm kind of a news junkie to begin with, and.

Speaker 9 (09:18):
I cut the cord a few years ago, and so
from my perspective, the only source of that news addiction.

Speaker 15 (09:27):
That I had was through my cell phone, through checking
that Washington Post apps, and through checking the New York
Times and reading these articles and listening to them, and
then going on Instagram.

Speaker 9 (09:39):
For funny clips and that kind of thing, and it
just it builds over.

Speaker 15 (09:45):
Time, and then you're you end.

Speaker 9 (09:46):
Up spending five hours a day just interspersed and trying
to get your work done. But it's you know, it's
very difficult because I've never been addicted to anything else before,
and so this is a new experience for me, and
I don't know how to get help for it.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah, thank you, Yeah, go ahead, yahan.

Speaker 13 (10:06):
Yeah, I really feel for you. I was in a
very similar position when I started working on my book,
and I spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley
interviewing the people who designed the apps that you're obsessed
with that I was obsessed with. And one of the
things that most struck me is how absolutely sick with
guilt they feel. They're really ashamed of what they've done.
One of them is a guy called Dr James Williams,

(10:26):
who've been at the heart of designing these apps. And
one day he was speaking at a conference where the
audience was literally the people who designed the stuff everyone
who's listening to your kids are using today, and he
said to them, if there's anyone here who wants to
live in the world that we're creating, please put up
your hand, and nobody put up their hand. Not long
afterwards he quit. He's like, I can't take this anymore.

(10:48):
So for all of the twelve factors that are harming
our attention obvious, there's some aspects of our phones that
I'm sure we're going to go into that are doing
this to us. There are sort of two levels of
which we've got to deal with it in a very
practical way. I think of them as defense and offense.
There are loads of things that you can do immediately
to defend yourself and your kids.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Joe.

Speaker 13 (11:05):
So I give you a quick example of two, although
I go through many in my book. First thing I
would say is you should go online and order something
called a K safe. It's just a letter K, and
then say, it's very simple. It's a plastic safe. You
take off the lid you put in your phone, You
put on the lid, you turn the dial at the top,
and it locks your phone away for anything between five
minutes and a whole day, however long you tell it to.

(11:25):
And once you locked it, you can't get in right.
I use that three hours a day to do my writing.
I would never have finished my book if I didn't
add one. Another thing I would recommend is that you
immediately download an app called Freedom. It's very simple app.
It sinks to both your laptop and your phone if
you want it to, and it will cut you off
from either specific websites or the whole Internet. So you
mentioned Instagram and Twitter, you can just say to Freedom,

(11:46):
do not let me use Instagram and Twitter for the
next save five minutes, two hours, and the minute you've
done that. If you try to use it, it just.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Whoe like you right, you can't get to some more
We're going to get to some more solutions. But I
do want it to say, Talliver, it's hard to talk
about phone addiction without talking about the iPhone.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Mm hmm, yeah, that's right. Back in two thousand and seven,
when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he promised to revolutionize
the way we interact with our phones.

Speaker 16 (12:11):
These are not three separate devices. This is one device,
and we are calling it iPhone today. Today, Apple is
going to reinvent the phone.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Seemed like a good idea at the time, Tolliver will.
By the way, if you are listening to this or
you are looking at your iPhone, you can go on
the podcast app and rate The Middle podcast at the
highest level and give us a nice review. That would
be nice. Yeah, we'll be right back with more of
the Middle. This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. If

(12:54):
you're just tuning, in the Middle is a national call
in show. We are focused on elevating voices from the
middle geograph graphically, politically, philosophically, or maybe you just want
to meet in the middle. This hour we're asking you,
are you addicted to your phone? And if so, what
are you doing about it? Tolliver, what is the number
of people to call it?

Speaker 2 (13:11):
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four
four six four and three three five three. You can
also write to us to listen to the Middle dot
com or on social media.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
I'm joined by doctor Anna Lemkey, professor of psychiatry and
addiction and author of Dopamine Nation, and journalist Johann Hari,
author of Stolen Focus. Before we get back to the phones,
let's talk about some more solutions. Johann, you mentioned some,
but an a Lemkey, what about things like using a
dumb phone, a flip phone, or making your smartphone gray
scale taking away some of those dopamine triggers.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (13:41):
I think those are all great things to experiment with.
I like to think of those of self binding strategies
that allow us to just press the pause button between
desire and consumption, giving us just a little bit of
a break to reevaluate whether or not we want to
continue to use. Joy mentioned that she down and she

(14:03):
took the apps off her phone. Johan talked about using
a kitchen safe where you lock it away. These are
all different strategies gray scales making the phone black and white,
so it's not so potent on the visual system. What
I find is that people are different and they really
need to experiment with different types of self binding strategies.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
I saw that Kevin Russ, who writes about tech for
the New York Times, did something where he changed his
lock screen to ask himself three questions every time he
unlocked his phone. What for? Why now? What else? Which
is great, great from Kevin Ruth. Let's get let's get
back to the phones. And Brian, who's in Denver, Colorado. Brian,

(14:48):
welcome to the middle.

Speaker 17 (14:49):
Go ahead, warning, I'm not in the middle. Actually, okay,
what was the other end?

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Okay? What about your phone addiction? Are you addicted to
your phone?

Speaker 17 (15:00):
I don't believe I'm addicted to the phone to my phone.
I believe I'm dependent on the use of my phone
because it's technology and I need it for communication. And
I think there's a As.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
A social psychologist, we would argue there's a.

Speaker 17 (15:13):
Big difference between dependency and addiction. So, yes, addiction does
create neurological situations, you know, dopamine and dependency also creates
situations with dopamine. But if I was addicted to alcohol,
I would do everything in my power and seek everything

(15:34):
in my power to get any type of alcohol fix
because I can't do without it. But if my phone
gets lost, I manage and I live and I until
I get a new communication tool. But I don't go
out and seek it and go out and just use
any type Like I have an iPhone, which you guys
made fun of. I won't go and get a small

(15:56):
flip phone or a burner phone to use like I
would go and get any kind of little bit of
alcohol to drink. If I have a giftion to it,
I will I have. You know, I'll take time and
I'll not use the phone until I get an iPhone
that I use because me because of my communications tool.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Yeah, okay, Brian, thank you for that. Johann, go ahead.
Dependency versus addiction.

Speaker 13 (16:20):
I think these things are a continuum, and it's about
knowing that even for someone like Brian, who may not
be as far gone as some of us have been,
there's going to be a cost there. I'll give you
some examples. Professor Michael Posner, who's at the University of
Oregon discovered something I think about every day. It's very simple.
If you're interrupted by something as small as a text message,
it takes you, on average twenty three minutes to get

(16:42):
back to the level of focus you had before. So
I could look at my text now right. My phone
is the other side of my laptop. You think it'd
take me five seconds to look at my phone and
reply right, But bear in mind it takes you five
seconds plus the twenty three minutes it takes you to
refocus your mind. But most of us never get twenty
three minutes without being interrupted.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Right.

Speaker 13 (17:00):
Another person who helped me to think about this, I
went to interview one of the leading neuroscientists in the world,
an amazing guy named Professor Earl Miller. He said to me, look,
there's one thing you need to understand about the human
brain more than anything else. You can only consciously think
about one or two things at a time. That's it.
This is a fundamental limitation of the human brain. The
human brain has not changed significantly in forty thousand years.

(17:21):
It ain't going to change on any timescale we're going
to see. But the average teenager now believes they can
follow seven forms of media at the same time. So
people like Professor Miller. They get people into labs, not
just kids, older people too, and get them to think
they're doing more than one thing at a time, and
what they discover is always the same. You can do
more than one thing at a time. What you do
is you juggle very rapidly between tasks. You're like, what

(17:42):
did Jeremy just ask me? What is it say on
the TV there about President Biden's messages at NATO? What
is this message on what'sapp? What does it say on Facebook? Wait, Jeremy,
what did you ask me? Again? And it turns out
that juggling comes with a really big cost. The technical
term for that cost is the switch cost effect. When
you switch between tasks, it comes with a cost. You're
much less creative, you remember much less of what you do,

(18:04):
you make more mistakes. So, yeah, Brian may not be
totally far. God is not the equivalent of someone in
a dive bar in North Las Vegas who just can't
get through the next ten minutes without vodka. But you
will be if you're using your phone very heavily incurring
those costs throughout the day.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Tolliver, I know that some messages are coming in online
at listen to the miiddle dot com. We got a
lot of them.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Alisa from Northeast Ohio says, even though I'm not addicted,
I feel badly for people who are on their touchscreen
phones too much. I don't have one. Too many friends
seem to have lost a sense of social obligation or
basic courtesy. This wasn't acceptable before two thousand and five.
Stephanie from Birmingham, Alabama, where we're traveling soon, said, we
need to push for regulation of social media and other
added addictive apps to keep them from using addictive mechanisms

(18:47):
such as auto refreshing the feed, displaying posts out of order,
and with holding posts during busy times it would be
easier to put them down.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, on a lemke. You know, we've been talking a
little bit about the dopamine triggers, and we just heard
there that comment about that sort of never ending flow
of information that makes you stay there and keep looking
for more. How much control do we as individuals have
over this versus these phone companies and tech companies that

(19:17):
benefit that make money the more time that we spend
on these devices.

Speaker 12 (19:23):
Yeah, you're you're raising a really important point, which is
that we can have the subjective experience that we are
choosing how and when and how much to interact online
without perceiving the engineering, the invisible engineering behind the digital
media that is really designed to hijack our reward pathways

(19:45):
and keep us there beyond utility or even desire or
joy in what we're doing. And those are things like
auto play notifications, the endless scroll just to incredible vivid
imagery with music paired with narrative, the algorithms that follow

(20:07):
us and learn what we've liked before and then push
to us ever more potent versions of the same, which,
of course is how we then accelerate the addiction narrative,
including things like tolerance needing more potent forms of the
digital media to get the same effect, which you could
argue contributes to the kind of polarization we're seeing in

(20:28):
public discourse today.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
I do want to go, do you think that contributes
to the polarization?

Speaker 12 (20:34):
I do think so. You know, this kind of intolerance
for inability, and intolerance for complex, nuanced discussions coming up
with complex solutions, the desire to really just want to
get a hit of dopamine and see a more extreme video,

(20:55):
a more polarized political debate rather than really engaging with
the ideas.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Let's go to Jaya, who is in Baltimore, Maryland. Jaya,
welcome to the middle go ahead.

Speaker 18 (21:09):
Thank you.

Speaker 7 (21:12):
I am definitely not addicted to my phone. I am
actually someone who loves to be observant. I love to
people watch and what I see out there, not just
in the US, but also globally, I find to be
very disturbing. Our society has changed to a very large extent.

(21:37):
I grew up in the eighties and I remember being
told to always, you know, fit away from the television,
keep yourself at a distance. And I think it's so
ironic that now we've all become so accustomed to looking
at a screen that's just two inches from our faith.
So I don't know how we got to this point,

(21:58):
but it's very and I I find that, you know,
we're we're not considering our own safety, We're not considering
the safety of others when we're using our phones. Many
people take meetings from their car. I think if we
if we knew that that was going to be a

(22:19):
behavior that was coming in the future, I think a
lot of us would have denied it, you know, because
it's it's it's it's somewhat absurd to me that we're
multitasking in the ways that we are. I've been in
public restrooms and I've been in a stall and have
heard the person next to me, you know, taking a

(22:42):
call on the phone, coming more and more content. So
there's no boundaries. There's no boundaries. I wasn't sorry.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, let me let go ahead, Jay, let me let
me take that to Johann Harry. Thank you so much
for that call. Very interesting.

Speaker 13 (22:59):
Ye what a lot of people in your so right,
Jay are The bathroom thing really grosses me out as well,
But you're totally right. What a lot of people who've
been at the heart of the machine in Selicon Valley
explained to me when I was researching my books, doll
and focus is why what you're describing is happening. And
it's more fixable than you might think when you understand
this dynamic. So if you open TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

(23:20):
now please don't. But if you did, those companies begin
to make money out of you immediately in two ways.
The first way is really obvious. You see advertising, Okay,
we all know how that works. The second way is
much more important. Everything you ever do on these apps,
including in your so called private messages, is scanned and
sordid by these artificial intelligence algorithms to figure out who

(23:43):
you are, to figure out what makes you happy, what
makes you angry, what makes you horny. And it's figuring
that out for a very simple reason. It's figuring out
what to show you next that will keep you scrolling,
because every time you open the app and begin to scroll,
these companies begin to make money because you see ads.
The longer you scroll, the more money they make. Every

(24:03):
time you or your kid closes the app, that revenue
stream disappears. So all of this genius in Silicon Valley
or this AI, all these algorithms, is geared towards one thing,
and one thing only, figuring out how do we get
you and your kids to open the app as often
as possible and scroll as long as possible. And I
remember when the people at the heart of it were
explaining this to me. I kept saying, Ah, that sounds

(24:25):
too simple. It can be so obvious, And they kept
saying to me, Look, the head of KFC is I'm
sure a very nice man or woman, but all he
or she cares about in their professional capacity is how
often did you go to KFC this week? And how
big was the bucket you bought? Right, that's it. That's
all they care about. In the same way, all these
companies care about is how good did we get undermining

(24:46):
your attention and hoovering up as much of it as
we can. And as my friend Tristan Harris says, you know,
you can try having self control, but every time you do,
there are ten thousand engineers on the other side of
the screen working very hard to undermine your self control.
And when you first hear that, it can be like,
oh my god, well we're just trapped in the matrix.
Then we're just screwed. But the key thing to understand
is social media doesn't have to work that way At

(25:08):
the moment. It works on that model. The longer you scroll,
the more money they make. But there are other ways
it can work, and we can regulate these companies to
get to that point.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
We can, but haven't so far. Let's go to Kelly,
who's in Charlotte, North Carolina. Kelly, go ahead, Yeah.

Speaker 10 (25:25):
I love that intro and the gentleman who is just speaking,
I'm totally picking up what you're putting down. So I'm
a full time working mom and I use the phone.
I think it's interesting when you say you're addicted to
your phone. Is it really your phone or is it
the apps? So like for me, when I'm commuting in
the morning or in the evening, I use my phone
as like text to do something. So, hey, Siri texts

(25:49):
so and so, and it helps me kind of keep
up with my mom, like my mom's stuff while I'm
going to and from work. My kids, though, I want
to set an example for my kids, and so I
need to regulate my use of the phone and the
use of the apps to be a model for them.

(26:10):
And I think it's important totally what the gentleman was
just saying, I have developed. I'm I'm not gonna tell
me you can't use this, you have downtime. I want
them to learn why and self regulate or learn why
to self regulate because of and teach them how these
apps work and that they are after the money. All

(26:32):
they want to do is have your advertisement your eyeballs
and inform them so they can be like, hey, you
know what, this is interesting. But I don't want to
be watched. I don't want to be I go through
their apps, and I say, hey, do you see this
location setting in your apps? Turn that off? And they
get it. The reason why I want them to learn
and be able to make an informed decision going through. Now,

(26:53):
another thing is my daughter has ADHD. She actually relaxes
and unwines when she watches and does apps. So after
a full day at school, the way she can totally decompress,
and she needs to decompress having ADHD is by just
zoning out inside of these apps. So we allow her
to do that for a period of time. But at

(27:15):
the end of the day, you're done, you're going to
play soccer, you're going outside, whatever. You know, but.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
We've got it. Let me, let me, let me actually
just bring in our guests of it. Thank you for
that call. You brought up an interesting point, and Anna Lemke,
you know you take that where you will. But I
will just say we think so often about how this
is a problem of the young and the young people
are addicted to their friends. We're all addicted to It's
not just young people.

Speaker 12 (27:42):
Oh, it's so true. In fact, I would say that
among the elderly, we're seeing more and more consumption of
digital media and being online more broadly, which is increasing
social isolation among the elderly as well. You know, I
think I think that Kelly brings up a really important
point about parents needing to model what they want their

(28:04):
kids to do. Often in clinical care, we'll see families
that come in very concerned about their kids consumption of
digital media, but then in the middle of the session,
they themselves will be texting or taking a call. So
it really is true that our kids will you know,
they really will mimic our behaviors more than they'll listen

(28:27):
to what we say. The other interesting thing that Kelly
brought up, which is supported by the history of warnings
about addiction, was that when kids feel like you're telling
them that it's a drug and it's dangerous for them,
they're not as likely to change their behavior than if

(28:47):
you tell them, hey, this was made by corporations who
are profiting off of you and trying to control you.
So she's really smart and intuitive to use that message
with her own kids.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
I'm speaking of it.

Speaker 13 (29:00):
Oh sure, thank you, as Kelly. I totally agree with
what Professor Lemkey just said and everything she says, But
the I just think as Kelly was speaking as well,
she was talking about self regulation and teaching that to
her kids, and it sounds like she's doing that in
a really wise way. And it was actually real worry
about the young people in my life that led me
to write Stolen Focus. But I was think there's another
level of regulation it's really important for us to think

(29:22):
about if we want to solve this problem. I think
there's an analogy something moms like Kelly did not that
long ago. I think she'd really guide us now. So
when we were kids, I think you're about to say
age as me, Jeremy. The only form of gasoline you
could buy in the United States with leaded gasoline, right,
And it was discovered by scientists exposure to lead was

(29:43):
really bad for people's brains, and particularly bad for children's
ability to focus and pay attention. And if it's in
the gasoline, it was in the air because it gets
in fumes. Everyone was breathing in huge amounts of lead.
So what happened was a group of ordinary moms what
at the time was called housewives, banded together and said,
why are we allowing this? Why are we allowing these
for profit companies to screw up our kids' brains? Important

(30:04):
to notice what they didn't say. They didn't say, so,
let's ban gasoline. Let's ban cause right, they got rid
of the specific woman gasoline that was harming our kids' brains.
As a result, the average American child is five.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
IQ points higher than they would have been.

Speaker 13 (30:15):
We can do the same with tech. I can explain how.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
You know, Tlliver. We've actually heard a lot of news
recently about governors trying to limit screen time for young
people in schools.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, and that's so on both the left and the right.
This is actually Florida's Republican governor Ronda Santis and New
York's Democratic governor King Sorry Kathy Hokeel with their thoughts
on taking phones out of the classroom.

Speaker 18 (30:35):
I think that they have every right to say, kids,
come in, just check your phone at the beginning, at
the front of the room, leave it there, learn, and
then grab your phone and then go after that. We
don't want the kids on the phone the whole time
while the teachers are trying to teach.

Speaker 14 (30:50):
I've been sitting with teenagers in classrooms and in community centers,
and I have seen firsthand the addiction that is going on.
Our kids are being hold in to a place that
is often very.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
Dark bipartisan compromise. Imagine that Tolliver Ray, you know in Florida,
they've actually done the band in schools. In New York,
it's so far just a proposal. We've also heard about
California thinking about this as well. I imagine in the
next several years a lot of states are going to
do the same thing and make it so that students
aren't able to use their phones in schools. We will

(31:25):
be right back with more of the middle. This is
the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobbson this hour, we're asking you,
are you addicted to your phone? And if so, what
are you doing about it? You can call us at
eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four four
six four three three five three. I'm joined by doctor
on A Lum lum Keith, professor of psychiatry and addiction
at Stanford and author of Dopamine Nation, and Johann Hari,

(31:48):
author of the book Stolen Focus. Before we go back
to the phones, I spoke earlier with a man named Thomas,
who won't use his last name because he is part
of a group called Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous, which
there's a twelve step program to help people with their
digital addictions. I asked him how much he was using
his devices before he sought help.

Speaker 19 (32:08):
So I found that they first of all, found their
way into every empty space in my life. On the train,
when I was in line, it was really hard for
me to be in silence. But I also would regularly,
sometimes more than once a week, even fall into binges
where I was using all night up until dawn. You know,

(32:30):
I'd wake up the next morning, feel awful about it,
and then start again, and I would ask myself why
am I doing this? And I just didn't understand.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
So you decided to get into something called Internet and
Technology Addicts Anonymous. What did they do for you?

Speaker 19 (32:47):
I think the first thing they did was help me
come out of isolation. I felt a lot of shame
and embarrassment that I wasn't able to control my behaviors
around my phone, in my devices. In addition, I think
what has been really powerful about this community is that

(33:07):
it's helped me look at all of the underlying patterns, emotions, traumas,
stresses that I was just not dealing with. Technology was
a tool for numbing escape, changing my emotions, feeling things
I wanted to feel, or not feeling things I didn't
want to feel. Now it's a tool for living in

(33:31):
alignment with my values, working on things that matter to me,
connecting with people I love, and ultimately helping me live
a more positive, flourishing life. So we're having this conversation
because of technology, but what I don't do anymore is
all of those behaviors, the games, the social media, the

(33:52):
endless videos, the porn that really left me feeling awful afterwards.
There's a lot of causes for suffering in this world,
and technology doesn't have to be one of them. And
if we're suffering because of our devices, that can change.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
Tomas, thank you so much.

Speaker 19 (34:11):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Okay, so that's Tamasa's story. An a Lemke, what do
you make of that?

Speaker 12 (34:17):
Well, just what a wonderful testimonial and even sort of
the cadence of Thomas's voice for me was quite calming,
and I think speaks to somebody who is not in
this constant reactive mode so to get into when we're
constantly reacting to these external stimuli. It's also true that

(34:43):
many times in clinical care, people will come in not
for help with addiction to digital media and their phones,
but rather for depression and anxiety, and we find that
it's their consumption of digital media that's contributing to these symptoms.
And when take a break from certain types of apps
and reduce their overall time spent online, in some cases

(35:07):
depression and anxiety improves without our having to do any
other intervention. So one of the soft signs of the
harm of these devices is the insidious way they can
contribute to anhedonia or our inability to experience joy in
anything at all.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Well, I hate to go to the phones on a
show about phone addiction, but all the phone lines are full,
So we're going to kay Is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Hi, K,
welcome to the middle Go ahead, Hi.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
My ability and money, his ability to fight their addiction
is severe. Fighting your addictions has become a privilege. I
am required by work as many people to use two
factor authentication as soon as I can't use a flip phone.
Secure two factor authentication these days are eliminating the ability

(36:04):
to send just the text message. I have to have
the app. I not ever less people, but me and
many others have to have slacked or something where teams
on their phones so their boss can contact them anyway.
Going even further, I can't install these I can't install
these addiction help apps, for example, going to gray Scale

(36:26):
limiting feed, limiting feed because my company requires a mobile
device manager. So and god forbid trying to go to
an addiction clinic because okay, that's my job. So how
do you tell your employer or how do we get
employers to let people be healthy when they mandate your

(36:50):
connection to your phone? K?

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, go ahead, Johann. And by the way, Johanna, I'll
just say I imagine that the pandemic made this a
lot worse as people were working remotely and having to
be in contact in ways they were not before with
their devices.

Speaker 13 (37:05):
Yeah, Kay, you're so, you're right, Jeremy, and Kay is
so right. And this is something I investigated a lot,
and there's several things we can do about this, and
I went to places that had done it. So the
first thing I would explain is what happened in France.
So in France they were having a huge crisis of
what they called lur burnout, which I don't think I
need to translate, and French government under pressure from LABY
unions really important would never happened if Laby unions hadn't

(37:27):
fought for it, set up a government inquiry to figure
out why is everyone so burned out, and they discovered
one of the key factors was that forty percent of
French workers felt they could never stop checking their phone
while they were awake, never because their boss could messaged
them at any time of the day or night, like
you're describing on slack or text, and if they didn't answer,
they'd be in trouble. Right, this is really recent when

(37:47):
we were kids. I mean I don't remember my parents
ever being contacted at home when they came home. Right,
You were at work and then you went home. Right.
The only people who were contacted at home when we
were kids were doctors and the president, and even doctors
on call all the time. Right, So this inevitably completely
exhausts people in the way you're describing. So again, under
pressure from Laby unions, the French government introduced a very

(38:09):
simple solution that has worked incredibly well. They introduced a
law giving every French worker what is called the right
to disconnect. Very simple. Your workhouse have to be written
down and when your workouts are over, unless you're being
paid over time, you don't have to look at your phone. Right,
very simple, massively improve people's attention. What you'll notice, they're

(38:30):
kay is that didn't happen because people went to their
boss and said, hey, be nice to me. It happened
because laby unions banned together and fought for it. Now,
the truth is what your bosses are doing is bad
for you and bad for them. There was a study
by Hewlett Packard, the printer company. They got a scientist
and to study their workers, and he split them into
two groups. The first group was told, get on with
your task, whatever it is. You're not going to be

(38:50):
interrupted by things like slack. The second group was told,
get on with your task, whatever it is, but at
the same time, you've got to answer a heavy load
of email and phone calls. That was interrupted did scored
ten IQ points worse than the people who weren't, which
is incredible. That's twice the effect of smoking cannabis. Right.
So it's really bad for them and bad for you.

(39:10):
But you can make that case to your boss. But
the truth is you're most likely to make them do
it if you form a labor union with your colleagues
and you demand they do it. You fight together. You're
not very powerful on your own, but you're very powerful
when you stand with your other workers.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Let's go to Eli, who's in Lexington, Kentucky. Hi, Eli,
welcome to the middle. What about you? Are you addicted
to your phone?

Speaker 11 (39:31):
I do not carry your cell phone. I haven't carried
a cell phone since they invented the cell phone?

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Wow? How do you get how do you get by
in life in that way?

Speaker 19 (39:42):
Very good?

Speaker 11 (39:43):
I have a landline phone, I have a computer, I
have a voicemail. As a matter of fact, I'm a
business consultant and all my clients. No, I do not
carry your cell phone. I think the cell phone is
very damaging psychologically, emotional, mentally, and physically.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Eli. Thank you. That's a very interesting perspective on a lemke.
Do you come across a lot of people who are
like Eli and don't carry a cell phone? Even in
twenty twenty.

Speaker 12 (40:13):
Four, not a lot many people, for their jobs, as
k was describing, are mandated to carry some version of
a mobile digital device, if only for two step authentication.
But there's a lot of wisdom in not having a
phone at all, or leaving it off as a default mode,

(40:34):
because the truth is, once it's on our person, and
it's transmitting. Part of our psyche is occupied thinking about
what's going out and what's coming in. And if we
were to analogize to drugs and alcohol, what's really interesting
when we treat people with alcohol addiction is that if
we give them a medication called antibuse, which is a deterrent,

(40:56):
they can't drink once they've taken the pill because they
will get violently in ill. They say that the craving
entirely disappears. Now, this is a drug that doesn't directly
target craving in any neurobiological way, but just taking away
the option means that they're not mentally preoccupied with having
to think about whether or not they're going to use.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Let's go to Jim, who's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hi, Jim,
welcome to the middle. What about you?

Speaker 6 (41:25):
Oh, I am not addicted to my thought now. I'm blind,
so a touch screen is little or no use to me,
and I refuse to share my personal information with people
using voice commands. And of course that's a security issue too.
I'm an IT professional. I have access to a number
of secure systems and have to deal with this dual

(41:47):
authentication problem. All the time.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
So what do you think about all the people who
can see and have become addicted to their smartphones.

Speaker 6 (41:58):
Oh, I think it's very sad. I mean, I'm surrounded
by him right in the IT world. Everybody's looking on
their phone and stuff. They can't pay attention. They don't
have any courtesy even like was mentioned earlier at meetings
or other times, to pay attention to what's going on.
It's really a terrible situation, I think.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, Jim, thanks for calling in. Johann Hari, what about
the rudeness that he just brought up there, that people
You'll just be sitting at a dinner table and somebody
just pull out their phone when they're bored by the
conversation and checket.

Speaker 13 (42:35):
Yeah, well that's people who are being manipulated and trained
to crave this kind of feedback. But I think it's
connected actually, the kind of lack of courtesy to something
that both that dotr Lenka and some of the people
who texted brought up. You talked about the band on
schools having cell phones is really interesting when they did
that in Spain. The areas in Spain that did it
sor twenty percent fall in school bullying and I think

(42:58):
it connects. Lots of things have been coming up in
this show, so it goes back to Remember I was
explaining before, these apps they're designed to keep you scrolling, right,
Their machines designed to keep you scrolling. All they care
about is how long you scroll, because they make more
money the longer you scroll. They don't care about what
they show you. They just care about the fact that
you keep scrolling. So that all these algorithms are monitoring

(43:20):
you the whole time figure out what keeps people scrolling,
and they discovered an underlying human truth. It's been known
about for a long time that people will stare longer
at things that make us angry and upset than we
will at things that make us feel good. If you've
ever seen a car crash on the highway, you know
what I mean, right, You stare longer at the car
accident than you did at the pretty flowers on the
other side of the street. This has always been part

(43:41):
of human nature, but when it combines with algorithms that
learns what makes you angry, it has a terrible effect.
So picture two teenage girls who go to the same
party and go home on the same bus, and they
both open TikTok to make videos, and one of them
does a video going we had a great night. We
danced all night to Ariana Grande.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
I loved it.

Speaker 13 (43:58):
Right, the algorithms, we'll pick up that video and it
will put it into a few people's feeds. Now, picture
another girl who goes Karen was a skank at that
party out of kids still use the word skank, but
just denounces all the other kids at the party, says
they're awful, horrible. It'll put that video into far more
people's feeds because if it's enraging, it's engaging. You'll go,
what do you mean she's a skank. You're a skank
that'll have a fight. Right now, that's bad enough at

(44:20):
the level of two teenage girls on a bus. We
all know what's happened to teenage girls mental health. But
now imagine a whole country where the mean people, the
cruel people, are given a megaphone and push to the front,
and the kind, decent people are muffled and pushed to
the back. Except you don't have to imagine it, because
we're living it right right now. That is not sustainable
over the long term for the mental health of all

(44:41):
of us. But also for the survival of democracy, right,
we cannot have a model premised on algorithms that privilege
and promote rage and anger. And don't take my word
for it, Facebook themselves their own data scientists discover that
they were actively promoting anti democratic and rage making forces.
But it doesn't have to work that way. We can
regulate these companies so they work in a different way.

(45:02):
That's one of the big finds we've got to have.

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Now, let's go to Gab, who's in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hi, Gab,
Welcome to the middle. What about you. Are you addicted
to your phone?

Speaker 5 (45:14):
I can't say that necessarily that I'm addicted to my
phone or not. I certainly spend a lot of time
using it all day. But what I wanted to add
to the conversation is that, you know, you guys were
talking about how when our attention is diluted, it can
kind of, you know, really affect our cognitive abilities in
negative ways. But on the flip side of that, there's

(45:34):
you know, a tremendous tool, you know, a tool for learning.
If we can figure out how to focus our attention,
we can do amazing things that we were never able
to do before. So like in my example, I was
able to learn Spanish to affluent degree within three years
just by focusing my attention and using the tools that
are in my cell phone.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Yeah, I learned. I learned from Greek. I learned from Greek,
methanoel Lenicas duolingo. Okay, so like my phone.

Speaker 13 (46:02):
Now, don't be great, you'll make me too excited. But
that's a really good example.

Speaker 1 (46:05):
Duo Lingo.

Speaker 13 (46:07):
It's a great example, Gab because Duo Lingo or those
other apps are not designed around commercial algorithms that are
designed to keep you scrolling. There in fact based on
a different business model, right, which is one of the
reasons why they have such amazing and productive effects for us.
We can actually redesign the whole of social media so
it works on the kind of algorithms that are used
for Duo Lingo, and then they have much more productive purposes.

(46:29):
That's the equivalent of getting the lead out of the
leaded pet gasoline.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Right.

Speaker 13 (46:33):
We can do that if we want to. Countries that
have begun to push back on these social media companies
demanding regulation, places like Australia have one. Because we are
so much more powerful than these companies but to get there,
to get to the point where we fight and push
back against these companies and get to the positive effects
that you're completely accurately describing, it requires a shift in psychology.

(46:55):
We need to stop getting angry with ourselves and with
our kids, and we need to start being angry with
the forces that are doing this to us. And we
need to realize we are not medieval peasants begging at
the table of King Musk and King Zuckerberg for a
few little crumbs of attention from their table. We are
the free citizens of democracies, and we own our own minds,
and we can take them back if we want to.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
An alem Key, I'm going to give you the last
word here as the hour runs out and ask you
if somebody's listening to this and say, you know what,
I Am going to cut back on my phone usage.
What should they do?

Speaker 12 (47:28):
I would say, the first thing is, as Thomas said,
come out of isolation. Talk to another human being about
the behavior that you want to change. By giving it words,
you will get more information and more awareness than you
had before. And then I would say, create a very
specific plan for what apps you're going to delete or
what websites you're no longer going to visit, make some

(47:51):
contingencies for how you can still do your work, communicate
with friends and family, generally, enjoy your life, and then
I do recommend giving that app or that website or
whatever that digital media is up for four weeks. Four
weeks is usually the amount of time it takes to
reset reward pathways and come out of that addiction for
tapes in that state of craving, so that if you

(48:14):
decide to re enter into using that particular form of
digital media, you can do so with the clearer sensorium Tolliver.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
We have time for a very short quiz for our guests.
Go ahead, I'll be quick.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Okay, what percentage of Americans have their phone on them
all the time? Eighty sixty four percent or fifty five percent?
Jump in when you're ready.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
I can't have too much silence or all this stations
will go out. We're supposed to guess to answer, yeah.

Speaker 12 (48:45):
Oh yeah, they got highest one the eighty My guest.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
It's sixty four.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
We're better than we have.

Speaker 13 (48:54):
I don't think people are being honest.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
Well, I want to thank my guest. Doctor Anna Lemke,
Professor of psychiatry and addiction at Stanford. Her book is
called Dopamine Nation. And Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus,
Why You Can't Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again,
thanks so much to both of you.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Oh well a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Thank you, Mike, Twise, thank you and Tolliver. Next week
is the Republican National Convention, and.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
We're doing a special show about what it means to
be a Republican in twenty twenty four. If you're listening
in your Republican we want you to call us a
SAP at eight four four four Middle that's eight four
four four six four through through five to three and
leave us a message about what it means to you
to be a Republican in twenty twenty four. Because of
the schedule of the convention, next week's show won't be live,
so we need to hear from you now in advance.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Eight four four four Middle. The Middle is brought to
you by Long Nook Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media
and Urbana Illinois and produced by joe Ane Jennings, Harrison Patino,
Danny Alexander, John Barth and Tonight, Sam Burmas Dawes. Our
intern is an Akadessler. Our technical director is Jason Kroft.
Our theme music was composed by Andrew Haigh. Thanks also
to Nashville Public Radio, iHeartMedia, and the more than four

(50:03):
hundred and ten public radio stations making it possible for
people across the country to listen to the Middle, I'm
Jeremy Hobson and I will talk to you next week.
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