Are Your Parents Addicted to Their Screens?

You don't go, you're spending too much time on the phone. Instead, perhaps ask, what are you watching on your phone? What apps are you into? This is what I do with my phone. You could use their phone, use as a conversation starter, as a way to meet them where they are, as a way to perhaps enter their world rather than expecting them to jump straight into your world. And it can just be the basis of strengthening connection rather than breaking it. I'm Charlie Worsell and this is Galaxy Brain. About a year ago around the holidays, I began to hear a similar complaint. People were heading home, often with their kids in tow, to be with family. It was there that they noticed that their parents or grandparents or older relatives were behaving differently. Broadly, the complaint was that their older loved ones seemed consumed by their devices. Constantly on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook watching vertical real videos, sometimes they said they found it hard to hold a conversation. In multiple instances, people reported that some of these adults seemed to not pay much attention to their grandchildren. Most of the people that I spoke to recognized it pretty quickly. It was the same thing they'd seen in their own kids. A screen time problem. So naturally, I was curious. I wanted to get a sense of the scale of this. So I asked around on social media. I got dozens of responses over the year. From young people, from older people, lots of people. Some older folks wrote in to tell me that they felt bad about how much time they were beginning to spend on social media. Others told me they'd found joy in the process and that there was no problem and I was overhyping it. But many confirmed the anecdotes. Some feared that their loved ones were growing depressed or anxious as a result of a problematic relationship with their screens. Others worried about older relatives falling victim to scams. Almost all of them though stressed that this felt like an emergent phenomenon. Something that had popped up since the pandemic. I heard stories like this one from Josh. It's super interesting to watch my kids and my dad interact in the same space. With my kids, they love screens. They'll spend an hour and most mornings watching Blueleaf or Sesame Street or something. But when it's off, they generally switch gears. They'll go bike, they'll do gymnastics, they'll buy port games, they engage with the world around them. My dad, on the other hand, is constantly good to his screen. He's reading the news, he's scrolling through his email. With my dad, there is no off switch. When we look at photos from his trips to CS, they show the kids engaging with their grandma, playing games, being silly, balled grandpa's in the background, playing the game as I've had. Or this one from Kim. I'm 55. I have twin, twin girls. I worry a lot and spend a lot of time controlling their screen time. And it's kind of a joke. Because if they saw the amount of screen time that I have in a day, it is way more. Kyle worries about what his parents are seeing. It's really tricky to talk to my parents about anything news related. My parents are both, you know, they're very intelligent, they're thoughtful people, but media literacy is a problem for them in a way that it isn't for my teenage kids, who were kind of raised with an understanding of the dynamics of digital content. I mean, we all spend our days staring at screens, but the screens that my parents are staring at is this really toxic combination of Facebook and Fox News. So it gives them these distorted views of things, you know, like Portland is violent, New York City is super dangerous, immigrants are selling fentanyl to school kids. Isn't mom Donnie anti-Semitic, you know, that kind of thing. And it's hard to break through that information bubble. I'll call my mom out sometimes for sharing disinformation online, but like, how do you tell your mom she's participating in a Russian disinformation campaign? I sound like the crazy person in that conversation. But perhaps the most affecting one came from a nurse in the United Kingdom, who told me what she sees in her ward. I'm in our son in the UK working in an impatient ward. Most of our patients are in the 50 plus age group and the majority have smart phones or iPads. When you're stuck as a patient in the hospital, a lot of the time you're bored or lonely or both. That can mean loads of really excessive screen time. It's probably the 50 to 75 age group I'm most worried about because they're tech savvy enough to be where they want to be online, but they're not necessarily media literate. They might not recognize harms or understand how algorithms funnel consumption in certain directions. Some of it is fairly benign like being obsessed with fake AI animal stuff or compilation videos of babies. And sometimes it's actually been pretty funny like when folk end up in an autoclake old desak of Chinese language videos. But I do think the negative effects of excessive schooling are bleeding through more, mostly in the anti-immigration stuff we hear and the conspiracy thinking medical distrust too. These testimonies struck me in part because they sound quite a lot like the concerns voiced for years by parents about children and devices. In the last decade plus there have been endless panics. Many warranted and others less borne out by the evidence about children and screens. That their young minds are being influenced or warped by devices designed to take advantage of them. In most cases screenpanics position children as defenseless even agentless. They're confronting this force that's powerful enough to cause problematic behaviors among their underdeveloped minds. But now it seems the problem exists on the opposite side of the age spectrum. Data suggests there's a reason people might be noticing this more now because more people are aging into a retirement era with more fluency with smartphones and tablets and social media. On YouTube for example older people are among the platforms fastest growing demographic. And it's possible that the pandemic and the attendant isolation accelerated all this adoption from rideshare apps to zoom. The confluence here seems very real. Older individuals may have extra time and they may be more socially isolated than other demographics. And they're seeing their retirement era just collide with this extremely powerful algorithmic world of social networks apps on demand streaming services and even the arrival of generative AI. These are things that can found people of all age groups. But older people are not by any means a monolith. And technological tools are very clearly lifelines for aging people as well as tools that can bring great joy information help them live full and creative lives. This is really complicated issues and so I wanted to speak with an expert and find the perfect guest here. Dr. Ipsit Vahia is the chief of geriatric psychiatry at mass general's Maclean hospital. He's the director of its technology and aging laboratory and he's been studying this phenomenon and more importantly working with patients in clinical settings. He joins me now to talk about all this. But first, a quick break. Dr. Vahia, welcome to Galaxy Brain. Thank you for having me delighted to be here. So you head up the technology and aging laboratory at Maclean hospital. Can you tell me what you all do there? Sure. So it's a clinical research laboratory that's focused on understanding the way older adults use technology and then also leveraging technology in a clinical setting with older adults with dementia or other mental health challenges. So we have a broad broad range of areas in which we do research. This includes early diagnostics, technologies for monitoring and supporting clinical decision making but also developing interventions using tech. So how did you get into this line of work, especially working with people on the the furthest side of the of the age spectrum there? There's actually an origin story there. When I was a trainee, it was when smartphones first came about. And I remember this incident very specifically. It was the year 2009. I was a trainee in California. And my wife and I were out for dinner with friends and we had a four-year-old child in tow. And he was doing what four-year-olds do. He was boy stress. And I saw a simple thing. Again, this is circa 2009. So this is quite common now. But in 2009, I had never seen this before. My friend took out his smartphone and gave it to his child. And the child was engaged with it. And we didn't hear a peep from him. We made it to four courses of dinner, glass of wine, even. It was very, very common now. Now it's now it's default. But back then, the the theme that it really made me think about was that if this engagement with the screen could sort of stabilize the behavior of a child, could it do the same for someone that was functioning at the level of a child, which is to say someone with dementia, could we use these devices to engage them, could we use these devices to reduce agitation? A little after that, when iPads came out, there was a different incident. So when I was working on the inpatient unit, we had a routine. And the routine would be that every morning started out with everyone gathering in the community area. And we would just read from the newspaper. And this was intended to sort of create the sense of community, a shared activity that brought everyone together. It also let us assess how people did in that group setting because it's a predictor of how they might do when they were on the outside. Now, on the morning that I was supposed to leave the meeting, the newspaper never showed up. It was stolen, lost, we don't know. But this was when iPads had just come out. And I happened to have a person iPad with me. And an interesting thing happened that morning, where in the absence of the newspaper, I was able to pull out the newspaper's website on the iPad. And we kind of went through the same exercise, but now it was digital. And what happened was someone raised their hand and asked me, can you access only the San Diego Union Tribune, I was training at UC San Diego. So that was the local paper. And I said, well, no, I can access any newspaper that has a website. Now, this was a Monday morning. And it was a very specific question. He said, I'm from Pittsburgh. Can you tell me what they're saying about the Steelers game last evening? And so I did, I was able to pull up the column. And we talked about that when this happened, another person raised their hand. And he's like, well, that's great. I'm from St. Louis. Can you find out what they're saying about the Rams last evening? And so I was able to do that. And now suddenly, everyone was asking not for this one size with Saul newspaper reading. But they were able to get what was most important to them. And that was sort of the other big moment where I realized that you could, you know, with this device that we already had figured out, engages people, we could also personalize the intervention. And in many ways, it was not about the tech at all. It was about what the tech made possible. And there's a difference because I think to this day, some of the way we think about this is about the tech, but I've always thought about technology as a conduit to problem solving and an intervention. So as a clinician, the thing that we anchor our work around is what is the patient need or what is the clinical problem? And then think about is the technology we have before us able to solve some of these? And that served us well. I think that served us well. So tell me a little bit about you work with this elderly population. You're working on these types of interventions. You're also deeply attuned to the way that they use and interact with technology. Broadly speaking, how would you classify how people on this side of the age spectrum are using technology? Are they a monolith? Are they extremely different and varied? How would you describe the elderlies interactions with technology? Thanks for that question. I think that's the question that really gets up the heart of it all. So I think if our listeners learn exactly one thing from this entire podcast, it should be that older adults are probably the most heterogeneous group of all the age groups. And we don't always think of it that way. We think of the elderly as this one monolithic entity. I love your use of that word. And nothing could be farther from the truth. So if you pause and just think about this for a second, we think of everyone over 65 as part of this one block. We have infants and then we have toddlers and then we have pre-k kids and then we have elementary school and we're quite sophisticated in the way we compartmentalize people across the age span. But then we get to age about 65 and they're all seen as this one block. So in the elderly group, if we consider people in their 90s and people in their 60s, these people are 30 years apart. And if you've seen and understood one older adults use of technology, you've really seen and understood one older adults use of technology. And I think this over-generalization does not serve us well, which is not to say that there is not truth in the data. I think older adults as a whole do use less technology. But it varies quite a bit by age cohort. So 80-year-olds may not be quite as digitally illiterate around apps or mobile phones, but 60-year-olds assuredly are very proficient as a group. Now there's exceptions obviously on both hands. Well, that makes a lot of sense, right? You would expect that between a 65-year-old and a 95-year-old, there's 30 years there. There's a lot of life and context experience. And I think you're right that we we do paint people in a lot of age brackets, but especially the elderly in with this really broad brush. But I am curious from what you are seeing. And this will contextualize a little bit of what I want to dig into in this conversation. But do you notice that there is a different effect on older generations in terms of the way that they are using technology, than say younger generations. If you were taking the bucket of 0 to 10 versus 75 to 85, do older generations use, does the effective technology different than what you see on younger generations? It is. Again, with the understanding that one size does not be at all, older adults as a whole, they are slower to take up new technology and they're much more methodical about it. So I think older adults as a whole are less likely to just experiment or play with tech. They adopt technology when it serves a clear and defined purpose in their lives on the whole. So a great example was sort of what we found during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, right? Where among older adults being tech proficient actually predicted better mental health. And that's because most of them use technology or newly adopted technology to stay connected. I'll give you an example from our own work. We like most healthcare systems sort of had this on mass migration to telemedicine through Zoom or whatever. And we found that most of our patients were not already using this technology. And so we had to train them on how to use it. And an interesting thing happened that we found that off the people, you know, who were the majority that figured out how to use telemedicine through phones, etc. The ones who did best were the ones that learned Zoom not to keep their doctors appointments. But it was because their church started doing services virtually or their family started having gatherings virtually. And then once they learned it, they were using it way better and way more regularly and effectively than say younger populations. So the data are fascinating because they find that high technology use in teenagers and adolescents is associated with worse mental health and is a predictor of sort of more isolation and loneliness even depression. Whereas in older adults, engaging in technology seems to be protecting them from isolation and loneliness and it seems to be enhancing connectivity. Now this finding might evolve over time. But broadly, I think tech use and tech engagement is a positive for older adults when broadly it's a more of a negative for younger adults. So that's really fascinating and I think helpful in grounding what I want to get into here because there is a, I guess you call it like a meme right online. But this is really just a whole bunch of anecdotal evidence that suggests that I'll put it this way. I have done a lot of reporting talking to different people about elderly people and screen time use and a lot of what I've seen is these anecdotes from younger people. They go home for the holidays. They see that they're loved ones who are older are kind of deeply engaged with their phones, with their iPads, with social media in a way that younger people are recognizing as potentially problematic or at least it makes them uncomfortable, right? They come home. They say, I brought my kids over. Grandma and grandpa or mom and dad weren't paying as much attention, right? They were just kind of stuck in their devices. This is really worrisome. And I have so many of these anecdotes that have piled up or you go on places like Reddit and you see this help my, my mom or dad has this screen time problem. And there is this developing feeling. I think you're starting to see some news articles and things like that that say, we associate screen time problems with younger generations. We're always worried about adolescents and what they're seeing. But perhaps there is also this problem on the other side of the age spectrum. I am curious what your reaction is to all of that anecdotal evidence. Are you seeing this to this idea that there are also technology may be beneficial, but are you seeing a screen time problem forming generationally? So that is so interesting because I think the answer is yes and I think we are seeing increased screen time among older adults as a whole. I think this is definitely true. But there's a lot of nuance there because I'll preface it by saying that younger generations people are more similar to each other in the routines of their lives than not. It's everyone goes to school. So there are sort of these activities and routines that extend across the community. And then once we get older, elementary school kids are more like each other than middle school kids and middle school kids are probably a little bit more like each other than high school kids and college kids are not quite as like each other. And then you just continue to separate out. So as you get into late life, people have just had like unique life experiences. And while there are similarities, I think there's also a lot of differences in that life experience. So I think why that is relevant is we have fewer sort of ways to determine what constitutes problematic screen use. So yes, there is increased in screen time. There is increased in screen use. But when that becomes problematic, you really kind of need to get into the weeds with each person to sort of decide if this is a good thing, if it is just what it is, or if it is a problem. To the example of people seeing their older loved ones at the holidays and finding out that the older one that they are spending a lot more time with their phone they used to. So I hear that story in my clinic. I actually see that in my family like that that's probably familiar to a lot of people. And the way I think about it is is I mean, yes, you observe it when you meet them during the holidays. The problem is you're not there the rest of the time. And what are they doing with their lives the rest of their time? And is this a habit that formed because they just didn't have all that much going on? And so now their life is running more through their phone. Through their perspective, is it possible that they have a nice routine? Their phone is a big part of it for better or worse. And your arrival is actually the disruption. That's so important though, right? Because there is this idea that you are dropping in to getting this window into their lives, right? And when we talk about some of the you know, the issues especially with people who are who are much older, being isolated, being untethered from reality or real life, right? Like civic life, right? If you can't drive, if you know, if you're in a rural or remote location. And I think that's a really helpful observation that this influx of people around the holidays or something is actually like, aberrant is abnormal. And the rest of the time these devices could be serving a really smart purpose or really a really helpful purpose rather. I wonder though, when it comes to some of what is being seen, this is the this is a separate part of this. It's not just that when I hear these anecdotes that are reported that I am or that they're coming home and watching their loved ones be deeply embedded in their devices, a lot of the worry too is around what they are looking at, right? This notion that they are scrolling on Facebook, you know, what would me and my colleagues are calling like real slop, right? Like R-E-E-L, where they're seeing these AI generated videos of things that are either, you know, misinforming them or just strange and kind of detached from reality and like really low quality, right? Like these aren't the mitigations that you are talking about where, you know, it's allowing someone to play puzzle games that are sort of, you know, keeping their brain elastic. This is like kind of tuning everything out and just being like washed over with low quality slop content. Is that a a worry this idea that the phones are helpful but and and the connection is helpful and the tether is helpful but what they're seeing is potentially harmful because it's really low quality. It is a worry and I think it's it's it's a it's a so it's real and it's consequential. So, you know, the dark side to all of this screen news has a few different dimensions. I actually think the the biggest one is that as older adults are spending more time on the phone, it's getting easier for scammers to target them and I think the the the screen-based scamp targeting older adults, I think that is a real problem and a real threat and with AI it's becoming even more sophisticated because sometimes these scams tools can be really quite hard to distinguish from from humans especially when the AI is talking to people. So, I think that's a risk. The slop the slop is a risk too much has been said and written about misinformation in general and and older adults I think do tend to be a little bit more trusting of the technology that they adopt. I think that that in its skepticism isn't always there and again, it the devil's always in the details right if someone's just scrolling through a social media feed where they're watching a video after the other that's a little bit different than two people forwarding content to each other or on a chat group where there's also communication and correspondence. I think one of those things is neither of them is great but one of those is slightly better than the other because one of them involves interaction and communication and the other one is just much more passive which is which is less ideal. If you talk to younger people about their phones and by younger people I mean all the way up to you know let's say let's say 55 right they'll tend to complain about the use they'll talk about their doom scrolling or I want to get off this or it's not helping me live my best life but what are you hearing from older people that you meet with in terms of self-reporting are they worried about the time that they're spending on their devices are they okay with it how do people seem to feel about it. In preparation for this conversation I kind of pulled my colleagues I work in a team with nine other aging and mental health specialists and I just bold our team that had you seen this has anyone brought this up and and the answer surprised me that no one's actually had any of their patients here we see we see several hundred people no one could really acknowledge or remember someone coming to them with problematic screen use as something to address I think they were there for other things and you sometimes I've covered a lot of screen use but unlike say you know substance use or alcohol use or even things like gambling we haven't we haven't come across yet the issue of too much screen time as a bona fide problem that requires a mental health professional others may have so I think I'd be I'll be watching the response to this to see if anyone can can share a story but we are seeing clear reports of more time being spent on the screen so so where my head's at is is we are seeing people spending more time on their phone but it's not necessarily being thought of as a problem and and that's interesting isn't it because if you're spending way too much time doing something you usually know when it's a problem versus when it's not and I see that as a signal that that it's probably got at least some benefits or some positives but do you think there's also a a literacy quality there and what I mean by that is something I see from from especially people in a younger generation than me Gen Z Gen Alpha there is a real understanding innately having grown up around this technology that they know they're being manipulated at all times right they know they're being pushed by these algorithms into this thing and there's there's a frustration there I think because of the like just the understanding of the technology being so innate do you feel like maybe a little of this the maybe the lack of what you're hearing on the end of the older people comes from maybe not having that same like media literacy like understanding of the ways that the technologies work I do I I do think that that's a part of it but I also think it's it's specific to this moment in time in that digital literacy just takes time to trickle up the lifespan so I think we are starting to see see this shift but it's always like these things are always going to start at the younger more hyper connected more tech literature generations and then and then trickle up the age span there's also the the kinds of tech that older adults you adults use are they tend to trust more mature more settled technologies rather than latest greatest things so you know most people are still happier about something like Facebook which at this point counts as mature technologies the mature platform and they're less prone to whatever the newest ones are Snapchat we're paying attention to Chachi Pt and the sort of the new uh uh generative AI models uh this is this is I think a lot of people have their eyes on this because every now and then we kind of see these these leaps in tech adoption so older adults historically were less prone to using computers but I mean by computers I mean the classic desktops and then they were also they used laptops a little bit more but they were behind when cell phones emerged they were not as quick to adopt cell phones they were also slower to adopt smartphones um and then the tablets arrived and that just seemed to mark like this whole on mass onboarding of the technology because uh it's that Goldilocks phenomenon iPads were just right I think this green was larger um the the keys were larger so just easier to type for people with sensory impairment or visual impairment uh but also they were so easy to use you didn't need to upload software you didn't need to download software it was all kind of right there you had to tap it it was easy so I think you see these generational leaps around ease and efficiency of use um and and a lot of us believe that as these generative AI has gotten more you know as we move from typing to speaking that's marking a shift it's just so easy now where you have a device and you tap it and something is talking to you while it talks back and you can have a conversation so I think you have these like leaps every few generations of technology and just simplicity of use um so I think we're on the threshold of seeing a lot of change as these voice based AI's uh become commonplace are you seeing a lot of just anecdotally a lot of adoption of the voice based AI? we are we are and and and you know it's it's anxiety provoking because I think it it really brings all the things that we talked about to our head that I think it creates huge opportunities but it also creates massive risks right we uh we recently had uh catch me hill a new york times reporter on the podcast uh who's done a lot of reporting around the what people are informally calling like a isicosis that's not a medical definition obviously but this idea of problematic behaviors with chatbots and something that she has noted in the reporting that we talked a lot about was this idea of the ways that these chatbots are so engaging right it's not just that they mimic the human nature and and that that conversing which I think with someone who may be more isolated in general or or feeling like that is that is extremely um attractive as a as a proposition but also this idea that they are they are prompting you to continue to engage right they are they are also sort of asking questions at the at the end of it wanting you to to go further and the more that people do engage the higher the likelihood that you start to lose touch with what it is your and this goes to people who are you know younger too this is happening sort of everywhere it the the sooner you might lose touch with oh I'm talking to a large language model not a person not a thing um are you seeing any problematic examples of those interactions with chatbots with some of the the people that you know you're seeing in in clinic uh so personally not yet but it's matter of time um because um you know the the the the thing that the thing that um I'm nervous about is that uh bots it's it's that validation function they they they rarely they rarely contradict uh during conversation it's more it's what you said like they're designed to be facilitating but they're also designed to be validating so bot will not say no a bot will say yes but also um if it wants to contradict and I think I think there's a real risk there that um um if someone is if someone has a question about something and it's risky like uh uh I I'll make up a ridiculous example but but uh see if an older adult were to ask their daughter um should I send my bank account information to this Nigerian prince that doctor would be no a bot might say well that's an interesting question here's what you should know about this that there is a scam like this that maybe you should do this maybe you should do this maybe you should do that and there's a difference qualitatively because one puts an end to a risky conversation and the other may not put quite as sorry uh one puts an end to the risky conversation and the other may continue that conversation because it is designed to engage and and um I think that is risky because that that validation function right the bot the bot rarely makes you feel bad by telling you you're wrong uh even when it tells you you're wrong it offers alternatives or other ways to continue the discussion well and I think we should you know should be clear here for these the the purposes that's hypothetical you know this possible these chat bots will or or that in some cases when you prompt them you know won't uh won't we'll caution people again setting body to this you know the theoretical Nigerian prince but I get what you're saying um something you said earlier too I think is very striking to this phenomenon you know I mentioned this like you know short form video slop stuff that is historically been very prevalent on on Facebook and also Instagram you mentioned that older people tend to adopt these more mature technologies right like a Facebook and I think what's interesting as a technology reporter is that some of these younger newer social platforms they struggle with all kinds of emergent problems but they're also iterating out of them a little bit faster right there they're sort of pushing the boundaries a little bit it's interesting to me that you have these people who are on a platform like Facebook that isn't updating in the same way right like it is it is happy to kind of keep that engagement uh to to not have those rules against you know these types of fake you know AI slop images and it it feels to me like a like a danger that is not talked about enough potentially that that by not sort of evolving out of the platforms like a you know a Gen Z person might do or being on the newest latest greatest thing that there is actually a little bit of this like there is a danger of using a an older platform that is not evolving in the same ways because then they get trapped with the lower quality content and I think that's super fascinating one of the things that you've brought up here that I think is one of the most salient points for people listening at home who may be dealing with uh an elderly relative or a loved one who they feel as a problematic relationship with some of their technology is this idea that it can be really positive that we should stop pause think about what role this is serving in their life you're in clinic with people you're using this technology is this technology in a way that um you know it's supposed to have positive interventions talk to me about some of the positives you're seeing here with you know elders and technologies so there's many levels of it right um uh the one thing I really try and emphasize is that you don't have to always be using the most state of the art high tech uh uh uh uh you know fresh of the lab tech uh there's a strong case to be made for just teaching people to use well established stuff properly um a very simple example is uh uh I have I have people on our team whose job is to teach older adults how to use Uber and Lyft why because because I so many of them don't drive many of them are isolated um they're used to calling a car service or they're used to calling for the ride and of course these are these are uh benefits not not things they pay for uh but I mean if I had a dollar for every time we showed someone how easy it is to call a car service that will take you anywhere um it can transform it can transform lives food deliveries and other examples so you know is it or is it not technology to teach someone how to use a widespread app I would argue it is because you are enhancing digital literacy but you're doing it around specific function so some of it is just people's mood improves people's anxiety goes down if you can simplify everyday functions that may be a challenge for them um using what what about what about in general I mean like there's those those those apps that that help but I think you know are you seeing positive effects with the social media use we we can uh but it depends on which social media you so so a big one is just text messaging or or things like WhatsApp or uh you know the messenger apps why because if people social media uses anchored around interaction and communication rather than just the passive consumption of content that's a different thing it's it's sort of what I alluded to earlier that that in my family I have people that uh it's actually quite specific to WhatsApp that there are people on multiple WhatsApp groups just forwarding what you might consider Slop uh but it's one thing to screw and you know buy yourself in your room to watch watch Slop and it's another thing to forwardslop to each other and then talk about that Slop whether it be is this real or or this is so stupid what do you think so um uh there is almost almost always value and interaction and communication I think in person's better but but in person is always not always an option and so you know Slop when consumed in isolation I think is almost universally a problem Slop as giving people a common thing to talk about that might not have too many common things to talk about now that's that's a little more nuanced isn't it that's a little more positive we know art therapy works we know music therapy works but very few people can play an instrument or drop but if you give them an app that is now letting that's equalize autistic talent or musical skill that's a positive so it's not really about the tech it's about how you use it and how you apply it and I think the art of digital medicine lies in that the art of digital medicine the art of digitally based psychiatry the art of AI use lies in that I'll give you an example from an ongoing study where we have a project where we are comparing a human geriatric care manager versus an app that is trained on working with caregivers and this is all specific to dementia which is it's a very simple question we we we generated how caregivers you know a list of common caregiver questions and we asked the same question to an AI chatbot and to a human geriatric care manager and then we did a third thing we gave the human care manager access to the bar to see if they could come up with a hybrid answer and we compared how you know we compared differences but before we even get into what we found the biggest finding was that it took our human six weeks to answer all the questions and compose their responses it took the about 13 minutes and and a lot of us sort of picked up on the fact that even even though we were not really questioned that you want a human resource you want you want someone to help really work through whatever it is that ails you the truth is our human is not going to be available for a three hour conversation at 11 30 in the night a is a is and and a is is close enough to the it's not perfect but there is something to be said for efficiency and access I'm not saying it's right but I think you can't discount it and I all that is is so conflicting to me right because it what says I was I was kind of laughing earlier because of this this notion of you know art therapy music therapy and then slop therapy right like sending it around to others and being connected and and I think that yeah I know and I think that that's important because it adds a rub to you know we look at somebody uh sort of canonically there's this I don't know if you've heard of shrimp Jesus have you heard of shrimp Jesus I don't think I heard of shrimp okay it's it's an AI slop representation of this you know Christ like figure but it's it's a shrimp and it was it was it was a it was a very popular like one of the early versions of AI slop that was very popular and and it's it seemed like it was not fooling but sort of bill-wildering a lot of elderly you know Facebook users something like that anyway those things are always presented as awful right that they are you know there's somebody that they're like brain rotting instead of you know read instead of generative in any way and I think that we have reflexively especially someone like myself a technology reporter has classified something like slop as bad right there's you're not gaining anything from it and yet you know what you're asking people to consider is that just as a as a meme as a as a like a a thing to trade back and forth a building block of conversation however you know silly it may be or you know is in general if it's fostering that kind of tether and that connection I think that it's important and so so that's that's kind of confounding to think about and something I wanted to ask you is I feel like there is this idea that the technology is very very helpful to people when it tethers them to reality right isolation loneliness but I think what we're also seeing at the same time is some of this tech some of what they're consuming is actually distancing them from reality is blurring the lines of what is real so you have this thing it feels like two things are happening at once right at almost at the exact yeah at the exact same time and do you do you agree with that I do I do and you know it's it's it's I think that that that conflict that you're feeling that confusion that asking of well which is it is it good or is it bad I know that's actually the appropriate response because nobody knows um nobody knows but I think there is there are some guardrails to this because the the real answer is not nobody knows but the real answer is it depends it depends on the person it depends on the situation it depends on the circumstance uh I get asked all the time you know we now have therapy chatbox and I get asked all the time that am I worried that it that these things are going to take away human jobs and and I don't think so in fact I think it's really sharpening the the human effect and I think it's very close to what you said that on the one hand it it uh people value technology that tolerance them to reality but there's also an untaddering and that's exactly right isn't it I think that the human function there is to then fight the tethering and to prevent that disconnection and a confusion um and sometimes it's as simple as acknowledging the confusion to begin with we we we react poorly to ambiguity I think there is this this preference for clarity and sometimes all we have to do is help people hold their ambiguity but then do it do it while giving them some tools around um how to then how to then remain remain connected so so brain rock slop I think no one would argue that that's probably not a good thing but if talking of if brain rock slop is giving you something to talk to people preferably in the same room and face to face and if you're older if it's giving you something to laugh at or something to at least make sure that everyone else is just as puzzled by it as you are and then maybe it gives you an excuse to call up your grandchild and say well what the hell is this thing it makes no sense then then something positive has sprouted from that slop and I think I think in many ways I think there is a certain collective responsibility not to be absorbed by all of this but to absorb it instead and and assimilate AI as a piece that can promote and then this is all very polyanna I'm not saying this is easy I'm not saying this is how it's going to go this is messy complicated stuff uh but there is a reality where this can all be sort of leveraged into a collective positive yeah my my concern having covered this for for a long time with the social platforms is that this I think I think you're right and I and I just want to say that like I don't want to paint with too broad a brush on this and there could be the that these positive externalities from even the lowest quality type of content I think that that's something we all need to keep in mind I think where I where I worry where I break a little bit is from from from you rather where I break a little bit from you is that these companies are generally very poor stewards of the regulations and the rules and the looking out for and they do optimize for this engagement and if you have a segment of the population be it 11 year olds or be it you know 84 year olds who are showing signs of deeper and deeper engagement with a certain type of thing the chances are it's going to be fed to them at higher and higher rates right and and that that to me is the concern and that's not on you or that's not on you know the people who are using this technology that is a very simple you know people who are in charge of building and designing these platforms not serving their users properly and that and that's distinct from you know any kind of user behavior what I wanted to sort of end on here is this episode is going to come out during the holiday season people are going to be at home people are probably going to be experiencing this we'll call it a phenomenon but just this experience of maybe seeing an older loved one immersed in a device maybe feeling a sense of concern how do you suggest that people breach those conversations and and what should they be saying to someone if they do feel this way? Such a great question I would say I would say first if you feel distressed see if you can hold it within you and and resist the temptation to jump to a conclusion about it so so don't be your don't don't go you're spending too much time on the phone instead perhaps ask what are you watching on your phone what apps are you into this is what I do with my phone you could use their phone use as a conversation starter as a way to meet them where they are as a way to perhaps enter their world rather than expecting them to to jump straight into your world and you know it can just be the basis of strengthening connection rather than breaking it but you know who among us responds well to being told whatever it is we're enjoying is wrong like like no one enjoys that so so don't do that if it bothers you fair game but but keep an open mind and inquire and learn and assess what's going on rather than declaring it good or bad I think it's so smart that if we are talking about a behavior that seems to be isolating somebody or seems to be drawing a human disconnect that the appropriate way to respond to it is to connect with them right not to disengage or shame them in some way that may draw them further into their device or further away from the loved ones in their life would they feel like they're judging I think there's something rather lovely about using this as an opportunity to foster the kind of connection that they may not be feeling and that may be you know drawing them into into into that device yeah it could be it could be a reason to bond them a reason to separate because we all bond over things we say are in common for better our words too much phone use is something we all share in common these days might as well use it I think that's a great place to end it Dr. Vahia thank you so much for coming on Galaxy Brain such a pleasure thank you for having me Charlie and and for for this on this it matters this episode is brought to you by Vanta security and compliance done wrong is a headache done right you build trust and grow faster that's Vanta for startups Vanta acts as your first security higher using AI to get you compliant fast for enterprises it's your AI powered hub for compliance risk and automating workflows from startups like cursor to enterprises like snowflake top companies choose Vanta do security and compliance right get started today at vanta dot com that's it for us here thank you again to my guest Dr. Vahia if you liked what you saw here new episodes of Galaxy Brain drop every Friday and you can subscribe in the Atlantic's YouTube page you're on Apple or Spotify or wherever it is you get your podcasts and if you enjoyed this remember you can support our work in the work of all the journalists at the Atlantic by subscribing to the publication at the Atlantic dot com slash listener that's the Atlantic dot com slash listener thanks so much and I'll see you on the internet this episode of Galaxy Brain was produced by Nathaniel from and edited by Claudine Abade it was engineered by Dave Grine our theme music is by Rob smersiac Claudine Abade is the executive producer of Atlantic audio and Andrea valdez is our managing editor hi i'm van newkirk senior editor at the Atlantic when i publish a story my hope is that it's illuminating enough that you want to share it with others because i know that when i read a great article i want to give that experience to someone else that's the spirit behind the Atlantic's new premium plus subscription which includes unlimited access for you and three other people maybe they're family maybe they're friends wherever they are you can now share all of our journalism with them for less than four dollars a week for a limited time you'll also get the beautiful Atlantic scrapbook and a special tote bag subscribe to premium plus today at the Atlantic dot com slash plus that's p l u s