The Search for Digital Wellness in the Screentime Era

The Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital conducts rigorous, multi-method research to understand how interactive media impacts the mental, social, and emotional health of children and teens. When it comes to the tech and media industry, the Lab aims to embed what it's learning into the decisions leaders are making every day about product, policy, and user supports to ensure young people’s social, emotional, and mental wellbeing and overall health are at the forefront. 

Dr. Keneisha Sinclair-McBride, Associate Chief of Integrated Behavioral Health at Boston Children's Hospital and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, discusses the impact of social media on adolescent minds with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. You're listening to Bloomberg
Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hey this week in our weekly BusinessWeek Women's Health segment,
where we focus on key issues in developing technologies impacting
the present and future of women's health around the world,
we wanted to tackle the issue of kind of everybody's
health when it comes to a digital world.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Tim, Yeah, we've gotten with us the doctor and psychologist
Canisius and Claire McBride. She's Associate Chief of Integrated Behavioral
Health at Boston Children's Hospital. She's also an assistant professor
of psychology at Harvard and Medical School. She also does
work for Boston's Children Boston Children's Hospital Digital Wellness Lab.
She joins us from Boston. Doctor, welcome to the program.
I just want to understand when you think about overall

(00:51):
health to what extent is screen time a part of
that conversation.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, thank you guys so much for having me and
health and screen time are really connected. Well, we think
about mental health care and physical health care as a
whole child approach, and so when it comes to social
media and screen time, we are concerned about the connections
with mood suppression, anxiety, body image, experiences of bullying or harassment,

(01:22):
and then on the physical side of things, concerns about sleep,
impact on physical activity and getting things done during your day.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
So what's the right conversation to have with parents? I
think about this a lot, and I you know, we
were kind of strict with her daughter. She's twenty two now.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
But it was a different world done.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, it's amazing twenty right, that many years ago. But
having said that, increasingly as she got older, I mean
everything even school work and assignments and interaction with teachers,
it all happened digitally and so she had to be
on those platforms. But how do we in a you know, society.
I love what this Weekend essay by cat Page Jeffrey about,

(02:01):
you know, learning how to have the right digital conversation
with your kids. How do you advise parents on all
of this?

Speaker 3 (02:09):
So that's the number one thing I really love the
idea of, like, we're not going to be able to
create the childhoods of the past. We live in a
digital world, so the focus can't really be on limiting
or having kids not use screens, is what you're doing
the content, how you're viewing it, how can you be critical?
And so I teach families to really just ask some

(02:29):
faultful questions to their kids about like what are you
looking at? How does it make you feel? Do you
feel happier, more stressed? And who's made this content? What
are they trying to sell you? What does it do
to put your attention here? So those like sort of
thoughtful pieces of kind of how is this impacting me,
how is this connected to my mood and why? As

(02:51):
well as thinking about what is real and how do
you figure out what are good sources and how to
analyze what you're looking at?

Speaker 1 (03:00):
I think that is going to increasingly become such a
bigger part of our world. And what is the right
way for parents to approach this? I mean, Adam Assari
was from Instagram was on stage here it's screen time,
essentially saying we have to teach our kids that what
you see on the screen is not necessarily what's happening
in real life. What is the right way for us
to talk to our kids about this?

Speaker 3 (03:20):
I think that we should start off kind of keeping
things light because parents get so stressed out and nervous
about this, so I say, you know, first of all,
just ask a fun question like what's the best or
funniest or most interesting thing you've seen on social media lately?
And then from there the parents can ask more questions
about frequency of use, what platforms your child uses, what
content they consume, So that gives you the kind of

(03:41):
an opening, and then you can get a little bit
more serious in terms of, you know, what would you
do if you saw something that was upsetting? Kind of listen,
non judgmentally, be open and let them know that they
can come to you and talk to you if they
aren't have any concerns.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
You know, I find it interesting this. You know, did
a wellness lab, and I am so curious about I
know you're involved in it and may not know all
the work that they are doing, but give us some
insight into some of the projects that they're working with
or some of the concerns that they have, and maybe
there's also some you know, I don't want to be
all negative, right, I live on this too, and I

(04:19):
find it super helpful. I'm curious about some of the
work that you guys are doing there.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
So I'm a consultant for the lab, and there's so
much cool things happening, and when it comes to advocacy,
new research and working directly with youth, I think that's
one of the most exciting things is the kind of
youth Advisory Board is kind of talking to different different
different companies in this space and letting them know how
kids really experience them. And then we're doing very big

(04:45):
surveys where we're finding out kind of what does this
look like in the real world, what are kids saying,
what are parents saying, what are they concerned about? And
kind of on your topic of is there some positive
stuff here? And the answer is, you guess. Kids can
find connection, they can find community, they can find and resources.
So it's like figuring out what is that positive content
and what is the thing that kind of make you

(05:05):
feel not as good? And the people we need to
listen to the most about this our teenagers, our kids.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
What is the right way for schools to deal with
this technology. I was actually pretty dismayed to find my
first grader came home just a few weeks ago with
the way that the assignments were working this year. Yeah,
and he had an app, a website that he was
supposed to go to for math homework a couple times
a week, and I was like, why are we already
doing this on screens?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Touch it starts?

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Is it a better way?

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Like?

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Is he getting the information in a better way than
he would on paper. I'm not a light eite, but
it just feels like why should a first grader be
using a screen for this?

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Well, like multi modal learning is so important for society
right now, so you know, I'm hoping that your first
grader is also getting time to like manipulate the math
concepts in the classroom and that the app is more
of a reinforcement. Again, that's a positive piece of content.
That's something that's something that's going to add to his
life versus kind of passively sitting and taking in something

(06:02):
that may not be as healthy for him. So practicing
your math skills at home on an app that feels
like one of those things that we want to kind
of go in the right direction, even though it does
be like here they come again, my kid is only six,
Why do they have technology? It's kind of putting all
the pieces.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Together, Doctor Sinclair. One thing I think about is people
who have seats at the table on this or who
want to have a seat at the table, and we
certainly see the big tech leaders at the White House.
They're concerned about regulatory oversight or burdens or access to markets.
We see that in a big way. Are tech leaders
getting involved? And the reason I bring this up I

(06:38):
remember doing a panel at least ten years ago with
a bunch of tech folks who said, yeah, my kid,
I don't let them go on a laptop. There's no
screen time for them. So I'm wondering if tech leaders
are also involved in this discussion. Yes.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
And actually, one of the things that's been so exciting
about my work with the Digital Wellness Labs, I've gotten
to be a part of some of these discussions with
some of the main tech companies where we're kind of
giving our insights. As Boston Children's this place where we're
doing all kinds of research and clinical work on kids'
behavioral health, we're able to offer that to them in
terms of this is what we're concerned about, this is
what we're seeing. How can you guys think about this

(07:16):
as you're developing new technologies?

Speaker 2 (07:19):
All right, We're going to leave it on that note.
So glad we could bring this in because we just
think as we look at all the content generation that
we're hearing, and all the work that folks are doing
when it comes to media, sports, gaming, This is something
we think about a lot. Doctor Canisiu Sinclair mcgrid. She's
Associate Chief of Integrated Behavioral Health at Boston Children's Hospital,
also Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School