00:02:56.640Yeah, that's what I need. That's what I need. I just because...
00:02:59.880You know, these questions come up all day, every day, when I'm doing interviews, when I'm mindlessly scrolling my phone.
00:03:07.480And yeah, I mean, and I don't know what to believe.
00:03:11.120Again, much like social media, when you try to search for actual good information about what social media and phones are doing to us, most of that information is created by companies that are also funded by people who make these things themselves.
00:03:29.880To put a point on it, when you try and dig into the scientific literature, it often doesn't get simpler, right?
00:03:38.640If anything gets more complicated with conflicting reports and really important, and we can talk about this or not, you know, a lot of times people, if something isn't found, right?
00:03:53.640So people in the academic world publish things that are interesting, that are rewarded for that. And so if you do a study and spend money doing that and you don't find anything, those things don't get published because they're not worth the time to write up. And so that results in a bias of the literature that kind of amplifies scary things.
00:04:14.360right so i don't know if that's totally obvious but it's it's a real problem in the scientific
00:04:20.760literature that kind of amplifies all the other problems it's crazy to me that that's a problem
00:04:27.420in scientific literature because it is the exact problem in you know pop culture and general media
00:04:35.060it's that the most salacious things the sexiest things the most clickable things
00:04:40.240Those get the most resources put behind them. And so those are also usually the only things that we get to see in mainstream media, too.
00:04:49.540It is exactly all of the same incentives and dynamics that you know well in mainstream media are in play in the academic literature.
00:05:00.720I want to take a hot second to let what Brett said sink in.
00:05:06.200We do see a lot of doom and gloom and terrifying headlines about screens and social media.
00:05:13.140But is that just because those ones are the most clickable?
00:05:18.380Maybe, much like truly excellent reporting on very important news that might be slightly boring,
00:05:25.180the studies that aren't sexy don't get talked about.
00:05:55.400Yes. Well, before we hopped on today, you sent me a quiz. Can you tell the audience about this quiz that you sent me? What are these questions supposed to figure out?
00:06:07.780sure so so as many people know right people are concerned about um you know social media use
00:06:19.540internet phone use what is just part of everyday modern life what is you know problematic behavior
00:06:26.300and you know outside of us you know judging that people are having dinner with and poking at them
00:06:31.740to put down their phone, you actually need tools to assess that. And so people, very surprisingly
00:06:39.600to me, because this isn't a space I work in, but not surprisingly at all, people have developed
00:06:44.700these kinds of tools with very sophisticated statistical frameworks that both develop them
00:06:54.760and then make sure that, for example, if you test a person on day one and then test them a week
00:07:01.000later that there's some strong relationship, this test-retest reliability. So yeah, I sent you
00:07:08.340one of these that is not perfect. It's not going to say yes, no with 100% accuracy. But what they
00:07:18.000did is ask some people questions, had those hundreds of people interviewed by psychiatrists
00:07:25.820who are familiar with problem behaviors and built a classifier.
00:07:31.100And what they found, which is in line with kind of other tools,
00:07:35.300is about 25% of people in their study were identified by this task
00:07:43.180and by the interviewing psychiatrists as having a problem behavior, an addiction.
00:07:49.160Um, and so, yeah, uh, surprisingly or not surprisingly, you and I both, uh, fall in
00:12:48.600But there are other things we can talk about that I think speak to that and reinforce this idea that looking at screens and engaging in social media for many, many hours a day is altering our brains, altering our attention, which is also, again, not surprising, right?
00:13:16.440Like everything we do changes how we think, but actually seeing data and just puts a different kind of point on it for me.
00:13:31.580Right, right. And so we know that our brains are being altered. How else? Like, what else do we know? Our brains are definitely being altered, but like you said, everything alters our brains, right?
00:13:41.560Like, brains were probably altered when television was introduced.
00:13:49.880And so I think, you know, the sort of taking a step back, and I want to go through some of, you know, again, the structural differences between high and low users, that's just a snapshot in time.
00:14:05.340But some of these, you know, longitudinal studies or things that follow people over time are pretty interesting. So we can talk about that. But I think, you know, the boring takeaway at the highest level is be careful what you consume, be careful how much of it you consume, and have, you know, do everything good in moderation, right?
00:14:29.160Okay, we are going to take a quick break here. But I mean, I do like reminding myself about
00:14:37.020doing all things in moderation because it is so simple and yet so hard. So hard when it comes to
00:14:44.020most things in life. Y'all remember that news story? And I use the word news lightly here
00:14:50.600from years ago when Jennifer Aniston said she can only eat one potato chip at a time,
00:14:56.820that she's like able to just like grab a potato chip and eat it and then walk away from the bag
00:15:01.940and people lost their minds because who can only eat one potato chip? Probably someone who1.00
00:15:08.160understands moderation. Although I would argue that moderation in terms of potato chip consumption
00:15:13.560is like 20 or 30 chips, give or take. Snack on that, friends. Okay, break time. And when we get
00:15:23.460back, we're going to talk to Brett about all those studies that say that social media is increasing
00:15:28.100anxiety. I want to date with Rawls, Carty says. Rawls? Rucka asks. This is the love story of real
00:15:40.020hinge couple Carty and Rucka. Written and read by me, Nicola Dynan. Listen to the free audiobook now.
00:15:53.460Are there studies that show social media is increasing our anxiety?
00:16:01.240So, yeah, so the quick answer is, from what I've seen, which is certainly a small, narrow part of that universe of research.
00:16:15.600this that that real you know so um i would say a quick answer is not as much as is said in the
00:16:27.600news right okay interesting interesting for for example there is a paper that looked at you know
00:16:34.380data from hundreds of thousands of kids and tried to estimate the proportion of you know
00:16:41.260the risk for depressive symptoms, what proportion of that could be explained by social media
00:16:47.220exposure, right? And there was a relationship there. And so 0.36% of the risk could be attributed
00:16:58.980or estimated as social media related. But what that means is that more than 99.5% of that risk
00:17:07.220had nothing at all to do with social media use. Right. And so one of the sort of commentators in
00:17:14.460the popular media who who called out that study and actually said, you know, it's fine to kind
00:17:21.040of make this statistical relationship, but it's basically the same kind of effect related to
00:17:28.080eating potatoes, you know. Oh. And so I think that's another. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. Oh,
00:17:34.300So it's not causing us anxiety, or it is, but not nearly as much as the media wants us to believe?
00:17:42.460What I would say and what I've seen is, yes, on a population level, it's probably overblown in terms of what, you know, what is actually being caused by this.
00:17:59.700Um, and that for certain individuals, there is, and particularly I imagine those being bullied, there's no doubt an enormous amount of anxiety that's, uh, you know, tied to social media.
00:18:20.740All right. Tell me, tell me what else, tell me what else you've learned. I want, I want all the studies. I want all the info.
00:18:25.000What else have I learned? Well, so following up on this kind of tie in between what can be known from brain imaging studies and those reward centers of the brain. So a different outside of looking at structure, what you can actually do is look at, you know, how different brain regions are activated in synchrony or not.
00:18:51.800And this is called connectivity, if that makes sense, right?
00:18:55.660So if two brain regions in these imaging paradigms light up at the same time, that's interpreted as them being functionally connected, okay?
00:19:07.660And so what was seen is that in heavy users, there was an increased connectivity between this ventral striatum, this nucleus accumbens that is involved in reward processing, all the things we talked about before,
00:19:27.120and parts of the newer, more human, you know, the evolutionarily newer parts of the brain,
00:19:35.760the prefrontal cortex that are involved in reward. So those connections were strengthened.
00:19:42.320I could interpret it and probably over interpret it. But another finding there was actually those
00:19:51.980parts of the prefrontal cortex involved in executive function and sort of behavioral
00:19:59.460control is another way, I guess, of saying that. Those connections to the reward center in the
00:20:06.620evolutionarily older part of the brain were weakened, right? And so a kind of flashy title
00:20:15.740might be that in those individuals who were consuming a ton of, you know, Instagram,
00:20:22.700you have, they're more responsive to, you know, the rewarding stimulus and less ability to kind
00:20:31.680of regulate that intake. So, and again, like pretty reproducible findings that a variety of
00:20:42.400of labs I've seen. But I think, you know, most interesting maybe are when you take people,
00:20:49.340basically either prescribe them a digital diet or have them be abstinent and then look at the
00:20:58.260effects on that. And that was really fascinating. Wait, so have those studies been done?
00:21:03.540There have been studies like that. Yeah. Yeah. I want this study done on my brain.
00:21:08.260i do i do i want someone to take a snapshot of my brain right now at this moment in time
00:21:16.180where i've been using social media more than i ever have before because i've been a book
00:21:21.080marketing monster and then and then i want to stop what what's the name of that book again
00:21:28.400just for oh yeah it's the sicilian inheritance it's the book of the summer and that's what i
00:21:34.700here everyone yeah no i mean people are talking about it and everyone listening should go and
00:21:40.200buy a copy for themselves and nine of their friends it's an awesome housewarming gift like
00:21:45.220if you're gonna go visit someone uh this summer that bring this instead of flowers because no
00:21:50.680one wants flowers and everyone wants the book of the summer it's true i i read it i loved it
00:21:55.620it's a great well thank you for allowing me allowing me that moment right i just i appreciate
00:22:00.900it. I really do. But no, I would like to quit for a while. I would like to quit for two weeks or a
00:22:08.120month and then have pictures of my brain taken afterwards. What might it look like? What do we
00:22:13.760know? I think those kinds, and this is, again, not really my space, but looking at any one
00:22:23.020individual in isolation is really hard because of all of the noise, right? Your brain's doing
00:22:28.600all kinds of things, an enormous amount of change in real time. So what you need is groups. And
00:22:37.520generally, some of the best studies are those that have the biggest numbers of people, because you
00:22:44.380can basically subtract out noise and enhance signal that may be there. And that's what's so
00:22:52.580challenging about this, right, is, you know, on a population scale, the impact on individuals
00:22:59.380is maybe pretty modest. But for those individuals who are at particular risk, and there's literature
00:23:06.380that says that those people exist, right? So for them, or for those people who just get caught up
00:23:14.100in, you know, an environment where, you know, social media is being weaponized against them,
00:23:20.720Or perhaps they're caught in it from, you know, just a work perspective, right? Some of us really have to engage and promote in that way. And so the consequences that, you know, you're basically in the soup, right?
00:23:40.280I live in the soup. I live in the soup and I don't like it here. So what are the consequences for someone like me?
00:23:47.440well so this is this i think is really interesting um and then we can shift i think all of the
00:23:56.140kinds of ways that it can be beneficial but a study i found um had it was clinical trial right
00:24:04.160and so they took uh people that came into the emergency room with concussion and they said
00:24:11.520you know, try to stay off your phone for the next, you know, 48 hours. Just take a break,
00:24:18.18048 hours. So, and doing that, those, and this was, you know, every clinical study that's run
00:24:27.760in an appropriate fashion is registered on this government database, clinicaltrials.gov.
00:24:34.460And I only mention that to say that this was very well done, formal kind of work that one might do to evaluate the benefit of a new medication, right?
00:24:46.840Okay, so like good study. This is a good study. We feel good about this. Yeah, good study.
00:24:51.120Right. Yeah. And that 48 hour break, like halved the amount of time to get on average. Right.
00:24:59.700So this is a group group comparisons. But that 48 hour break from screen time.
00:25:06.740Halved the amount of time required for recovery. Right.
00:25:12.320Wow. From a concussion. From a concussion. Yeah. Yeah.
00:25:17.520um the and so related and i think kind of and this is this is not speaking to yours of like
00:25:25.760what do i do but you know other well this is the other side of it um so there there's this whole
00:25:35.480emerging field now of what are called digital therapeutics and so quite the opposite people
00:25:42.720can be prescribed an intervention and designed specifically to influence, exercise, modulate
00:25:53.980those brain regions and pathways that are maybe compromised in some condition, right?
00:26:00.740And another one of these very well-designed, you know, randomized double-blind trials looked
00:26:08.540at the effect of a gamified screen presented intervention on attention in individuals and
00:26:17.720children with ADHD. And they see clear, significant change in those who were prescribed this digital
00:26:26.980therapeutic. So explain to me what the digital therapeutic is exactly. Sure. Well, therapeutic
00:26:36.320is just any kind of intervention, right?
00:26:43.980but rather the treatment was being exposed to a video game
00:26:55.160designed specifically to improve attention in individuals with ADHD.
00:27:06.320does does that make sense yes that does make sense that does right and so it's so again i
00:27:12.860mean it's yet another example that it's the flip side yeah that there's a there could be a benefit
00:27:17.320to this exactly and you know another version right like another example of where engaging
00:27:26.600with a screen in a kind of a productive way is a literature around language learning
00:27:35.340or kind of brain training. So pretty, pretty controversial. But there's also evidence there
00:27:43.800that looks good that says, you know, if you engage in some of these language learning
00:27:52.000apps, that can actually have benefit outside of the language. It'll teach you Spanish,
00:28:03.680but it can also actually improve elements of cognition, which is super interesting
00:28:10.540because there's this very well-established effect that bilingual people are protected
00:28:18.560in some way from dementia right oh wow interesting interesting so more duolingo
00:28:25.200more duolingo maybe less instagram for me more duolingo less instagram yeah more duolingo
00:28:33.060less instagram so you want to hear one of my latest stay off instagram hacks yeah i i set
00:28:40.140time limits for myself but i always ignore them because it gives you the option to ignore them
00:28:45.080Would you like to ignore the limit for today? And I'm like, yes, I would. Thank you very much.
00:28:50.100Again, and I keep telling myself and maybe I'm lying to myself that Instagram at this point is
00:28:56.180similar to an email inbox for me because I'm fielding so many inbound inquiries about the
00:29:01.800book, blah, blah, blah. I could still check it once a day. OK, like I don't have to do it more
00:29:06.200than that, but maybe twice, maybe twice. That said, it for me, at least it's very addicting.
00:29:12.860but so i tell myself you can ignore your limit if you do the duolingo oh wow i know i know
00:29:22.700so maybe i'm canceling out the bad stuff from social media or maybe
00:29:27.740i just continue to lie to myself because i'm an addict
00:29:30.760it's really it's really tough right i mean i of course don't know really tough
00:29:36.900Maybe the study needs done, but it's not necessarily the case that this is all bad, and it's absolutely clear that we need these tools in order to engage with one another and live our lives and carry out our work.
00:30:00.200But but how to do that in a way that isn't going to harm us or our kids is a lot more nuanced.
00:30:08.900I agree. And I think that's where it gets tricky because it's it's easy to say everything in moderation.
00:30:20.940We've been talking a lot about screen time.
00:30:23.220What specific studies have been done? Have specific studies been done on just social media and just Instagram?
00:30:31.920Yeah, these, I mean, everything I've been talking, well, so the sort of the problematic usage scale I sent you, that was really just about phone engagement, smartphone engagement, right?
00:30:46.540So not social. There are other scales I found later that actually are social media specific. But outside of that, everything we've been talking about, you know, the structural differences between heavy users and light users, the functional connectivity differences that have been observed, all these things are social media specific, right?
00:31:08.800And actually, interestingly, in one of these studies that we haven't talked about, but if you put someone in a scanner that's able to look at what lights up while they're in that scanner and then show them photos of themselves with lots of likes, you know, those same reward centers are what are activated, right?
00:31:33.780And in fact, if a person, and these are group differences, right, but those people that are asked to like an image in the scanner, again, it's those same reward-related brain structures and circuits that are triggered by that activity.
00:31:54.680And it, you know, it ties into this whole other literature, whereas sort of social reward and social rejection are really perceived as painful. Right? You know, our physiology is sort of set up.
00:32:11.840And this is, you know, my read on this was that, oh, these things that we take as, you know, just being in the world and interacting with our network or our community, they're actually, you know, really modulating the way we feel, which is, of course, totally obvious, but also interesting to see it in kind of black and white, right?
00:32:40.300yeah no absolutely absolutely okay time for one more quick break here and when we get back
00:32:48.380i'm gonna ask brett about whether the expectation gap created by fake social media you know all the
00:32:54.280ways that we make real life look less real sometimes less dirty and what actually happens
00:33:01.920to us in real life is screwing with our brains be right back
00:33:06.960you want to impress them on a first date but also play it cool so what do you do i'm roofie thorpe
00:33:18.040and i wrote and read a real love story about a hinge couple that navigated exactly that
00:33:22.860listen to the free audiobook now chew on this bold question from dentine gum
00:33:27.840is it ever okay to compliment a millennial on their skinny jeans in 2026
00:33:36.560i'm working on a new book right now i'm finally saying that out loud uh and it's a non-fiction
00:33:52.660book thank you who knows if my agents will be excited about it uh i should probably start
00:33:59.520telling them things before i announce them on my podcast uh but uh i haven't written a non-fiction
00:34:06.020book in a while, I think, since How to Be Married. But I've been learning so much during this
00:34:12.780podcast. And I have such great access to experts. And I've done a thousand interviews at this point
00:34:20.820that I want to dig into something. And one of the things is, if so many of us believe
00:34:30.720that being on social media, being online so much is worse for us. And, you know, I feel like if I
00:34:38.720asked 10 people, at least eight of them would say yes. It comes up all the time. Like what is
00:34:45.860causing that? And one of the things that I'm interested in is what I like to call the
00:34:51.320expectation gap. That the internet shows us a lot of images of life that are not at all like
00:35:01.960reality. We see images of motherhood that are ridiculously beautiful and perfect and completely
00:35:08.920stripped of labor. We see pictures of travel destinations that have had the trash and the
00:35:16.440crowds removed that look picture perfect so that when we get there, we're inevitably disappointed.
00:35:22.480And so what I worry is that social media is creating this expectation gap in almost all
00:35:28.480aspects of our life and creating disappointment and breeding anxiety. From a neuroscience
00:35:34.640perspective, is there anything to that? I think that makes a ton of sense. I'm sure it is the case.
00:35:46.440That all of these structures and circuits that are being co-opted and shaped by the way we engage with our machines are influencing the way we see the world.
00:36:05.520Literally, there can't be any question to that.
00:36:09.020I think what is most scary to me, and this was something that kind of crystallized over doing some of this reading ahead of this, is that our physiology, we don't really have much of a choice in the way that we respond to this stuff.
00:36:29.480And it's now for, you know, whether it's people trying to sell us stuff or people trying to shape, you know, elections, our physiology is being kind of algorithmically co-opted to drive those outcomes.
00:36:49.640Explain to me in different words what that means.
00:36:57.220I was like, in different words, please.
00:36:59.480Sure. So if we, you know, in some ways, at the most basic level, the way our brain, our physiology, our bodies respond to things is just biology, right?
00:37:23.760So if you put your hand near a stove, um, you, you draw it away because that's going
00:37:30.080to be painful if you touch it to the burner.
00:37:32.500Um, and in the same way, like it, it would seem based on the research that's out there
00:37:38.000that, you know, likes and, and time on social media shapes our ways and shapes our brains
00:37:46.140and the way we process information and walk about in the world in pretty specific and
00:37:53.160predictable ways, right? And so if you layer that against the idea that companies are
00:38:03.960designing these interfaces to make us engage more and drive those brain circuits that want us to do
00:38:16.520that and are spending an enormous amount of money to optimize that engagement, it's really
00:38:26.160like it's our brains that are being co-opted to buy people's stuff.
00:38:58.420It's the thinking that I think is more dangerous.
00:39:00.820I mean, we've been programmed for so long by our wonderful consumerist capitalist culture to buy, buy, buy.
00:39:10.540But I think I genuinely believe that being programmed to think things is actually more dangerous.0.82
00:39:19.440There's all this debate now about TikTok and, you know, whether, you know, whether a Chinese-owned company, to what extent does that put Americans at risk?0.98
00:39:33.160Um, but I think if, if you, if there's a thumb on the scale and this is not my idea, but, but Scott Galloway's right. He talks a lot about, you know, if China wants to put their thumb on the scale and show, you know, shift what is being served up in someone's feed, that is no doubt going to have an impact on what they think.
00:40:01.480And so if there are people with agendas, as all of us are, the implications are pretty profound, right?
00:40:12.940Yeah, absolutely. And we know that there are people with agendas and that these companies are, I mean, TikTok, but also Meta.
00:40:22.720these companies are driven by various interests.
00:40:26.420Some of them may be political, geopolitical.
00:40:30.100All of them are certainly out to make money.
00:40:33.320And so that does mean that if there is an actor
00:40:37.020who is willing to pay lots and lots of money
00:41:17.020And we so when a message is tailored specifically for us, when it does seem, you know, it's not just a basic go by tide or go vote Democrat, but it seems like it's really meant for us using all of these things that they know we like.
00:41:34.420Does our brain tend to take that in more?
00:41:43.240But I do think that there is definitely literature around repetition, right? So if you're being served up a message over and over and over again, it's going to stick. It's going to stick, especially when the counter message is not really ever on your radar.
00:42:10.960And I think that not from not knowing the literature, I think that's the big worry about the social media and the siloing of information.
00:42:24.040I think there's an equally problematic sort of all sides-ism kind of stuff that happens when some things should be very clear and are presented as both sides.
00:42:37.400but if all a person is being served up is one point of view and it's not necessarily
00:42:46.380you know a neutral point of view really problematic and that is all we have for today
00:42:53.400but we're gonna have Brett back I promise I promise he is our resident UTI neuroscientist
00:42:59.840and I want to hear all of your questions DM them to me email them to me send them to me
00:43:06.880by carrier pigeon. Do those still exist? We're easing our way into summer, friends, and I hope
00:43:13.120that you are trying to slow down just a little bit. I'm trying. I really, really am. I'm working
00:43:20.160on limiting my work hours during the day, and when I have a Sicilian inheritance event at night,
00:43:26.380which is most nights at this point, I'm attempting to rest and work out and just kind of laze a
00:43:33.740little bit during the day, even though that is not easy. That is not easy because it's so ingrained
00:43:39.040in me that day is for work and night is for recreation. And so if I'm doing an event at night,
00:43:46.420it seems like it's just bonus time, but it's not. It's not. And that is how I burnt out. And that
00:43:50.440is why I got so, so sick last week. It is. Keep spreading the word about the book, my friends.
00:43:56.180We were just on the Us Weekly Best Mystery Reads list and the New York Post Best Beach Reads list.
00:44:00.640so if you haven't gotten a copy of the sicilian inheritance grab one today and also buy one for a
00:44:06.140friend and if you love this podcast share it give us a review we get some one-star reviews we do we
00:44:13.700do from people who tell me i'm too judgmental and you know what i am go do something nice for yourself