Tech Diet

Perhaps we are in a transition period with the internet and this tech will fade into our backgrounds, but I doubt it.  The oft used promise of technology is that it will free us from manual and repetitive tasks and help us with tedious organization so that we will be free to do other things and be more productive. The PC (and later the tablet) was supposed to eliminate paperwork, not increase it. But in truth the “paperwork” has expanded since it's easier to store and retrieve data digitally, so it’s not less paperwork it’s a lot more data entry. Today millions of people spend the bulk of their work lives feeding databases - entering health, insurance, regulatory, financial, travel, and leisure data into machines. Nursing and medical care have increasing become data entry jobs more than direct care jobs. In the medical world if it's not documented in an electronic medical record it didn't happen, and if insurance won’t pay for it won’t happen. I've witnessed this f...

More thoughts and observations on Day 22. First, I wanted to share some thoughts on behavioral sequencing, and why trying to stop a negative behavior where and when it occurs, may not be the best strategy for changing a behavior.   Our actions and behaviors occur in contexts – environmental for example, or as a long sequence of antecedent and subsequent behaviors.   Take for example, a person who wants to start the habit of working out in the morning but finds they simply can’t get themselves organized or motivated to do it.   The starting point for this goal may well be the night before, and require us to go to bed earlier, in order to be able to get up earlier for the workout. Then you must consider all the behaviors that contribute to going to bed early and plan for them. So being successful at working out in the morning may mean no longer watching the 10:00 news the night before. My tech diet has highlighted this for me. Previously my wife would prompt me to...

So, I’m reading this book called The Cyber Effect (by Mary Aiken, published by Spiegel & Grau, 2016) which is part of my impetus to do a tech diet.   I routinely see teens in my office whose use of tech, particularly video games, is way out of control.   The cumulative amounts of time that teens and young adults spend on the internet and in video gaming are staggering: tens of thousands of hours by the time they reach 18.   Tech is far more influential than parents, teachers, coaches or pastors in the majority of children’s lives.   In my practice I’m seeing a dramatic increase in problems related to weak identity formation. It shows up in late adolescence and early adulthood. Such problems cannot be distilled to simplistic cause and effect relationships.   It would be unwise to simply say the internet or Tech is bad for us.   In the Cyber Effect Mary Aiken makes the case that we are involved in a massive social experiment with the rise of tech ...

I’m three days into this diet, and I’m noticing I’m generally more present.   The impulse to pick up my phone in every odd or spare moment is fading.   I’m not feeling any sort of “withdrawal.”   Perhaps the most difficult moments are those times when I’m simply waiting.   The desire to do something is strong.   But the benefit from simply being quiet and observing or doing something for a higher “nutritional” value such as reading a book pay off. I’m noticing that my brain is not so over-stimulated. It’s easier to listen and participate in family discussions. I’m really, really enjoying reading books   rather than the short attention span fluff on internet news sources.   The searching / looking-up impulse is still there but greatly diminished. I wonder where this will end up by the end of the month.   I hope to post soon on the Cyber Effect of searching behavior and on how it interacts with the neurotransmitter dopamine, to keep us using o...

I’ve always loved mechanical things and gadgets.   In my childhood I was fascinated by the mimeograph machine in my father’s church office.   I loved tape recorders (reel to reel and cassette), and movie projectors (16 mm).   I developed an interest and hobby in magic tricks and illusions but more for their mechanical gimmickry than for the story telling (I still have a trunk of magic tricks from my childhood moldering in the garage!).   I’ve always loved figuring out how things worked. So, I am a natural to be captivated and taken over by modern electronic tech. Enter the Internet Age where you can talk to your phone and computer, watch thousands of movies on your smart TV, and manage the heat in your house with a thermostat you control with a voice command driving home from work in your car.   And perhaps my favorite and still most personally mind boggling – a device you can ask to play any song or tune that happens to be in your head, and it will, righ...

I've been contemplating a diet from technology for some time. I've had a growing awareness that the tech that I love to use has been slowly capturing more of my attention and more of my time. At meals I find myself wanting to check my phone - not for messages, but for every little thought that crosses my mind: What's the weather, what's my schedule tomorrow, what's the latest news, is there anything new on Facebook, any new instant messages, what's the name of that movie, I wonder what the Radar map looks like, maybe a quick game of solitaire while i wait. On and on. It's distracting to my family and people around me at meals. According to studies detailed in the book The Cyber Effect , I'm not alone. It turns out, iPhones and iPhone Apps are designed to condition us to check them repeatedly. We get addicted to the constant electronic stimulation, and it becomes a new level of normal. Our brains get used to constant dopamine stimulation from the sc...