EP#29- A Conversation on Big Tech & Mental Health with Bob Wigley, Author of Born Digital: The Story of a Distracted Generation

[MUSIC PLAYING] I think we need to get better at controlling the technology rather than allowing it to control us. When I talk about neurological hijacking, it's based on an abusive dopamine. The likes, the pings, the buzzes, the vibrations. These machines are constantly vying for our attention every minute of the day. So we need to get better at understanding that and being more disciplined about how we use those devices. Welcome back to Everyday Indorfence. You just heard from Bob Wiggly. Bob is the author of Born Digital, the story of a distracted generation. In his book, he examines how our attention has become neurologically hijacked and presents a call to action, urging society to re-examine its relationship to technology. Bob has an incredible career. Aside from his book, he's the chairman of UK Finance and sits on the UK's Economic Crime Strategic Board, co-chared by the Chancellor and the Home Secretary. During 2016 and 2017, he chaired Victoria Beckham's fashion business and he spent a career in finance rising to be the EMEA Chairman of Merrill Lynch, and a member of the Board of the Bank of England during the 2008 financial crisis. In this episode, Bob and I talk about the increasing popularity of social media and how that's resulted in a decline in our mental health, especially among genders. Through a combination of mindfulness, education, responsible software design and regulation, Bob shares what we can do to control big tech rather than letting it control us. I am so excited for you all to hear this episode. This is a topic that I've been thinking a lot about recently because we've all seen how addicted we are to our phones. And if you've watched the social dilemma, then you especially know what I'm talking about. And Bob has incredible experience and his book is really amazing, so I encourage you all to check it out, especially after listening to this episode. Before we get into it, I have a brief message for my sponsor, Inker. (gentle piano music) - Hi, Bob, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. - Stella, thank you for having me. I'm very excited. - And congratulations. Yesterday you published your book, Born Digital, the story of a distracted generation. How does it feel now to have it out there in the public? - It's really exciting. And actually one of the things that's come out of writing the book is a new respect for authors. Now I understand what goes into writing a book. It's a mammoth exercise. - Oh, I'm sure. I actually interviewed a friend of mine at WashU who is in the process of publishing her own book. So she's talked a lot about how challenging it is and how much work and energy goes into doing it. So it's just amazing that it's out there now. And I'm so excited for everyone to get a copy and learn more about everything that you have to share around how we're living in such a distracted generation right now. - Thank you. Really appreciate your support. - Today we're here to really talk about how to engage with technology in a more mindful way or rather how technology has impacted ourselves for the better or for the worse. You talk about the importance of re-engineering our world so that we can give better attention to what matters. This is brought up in the book. And I'm curious, how do you envision this to look like? How can we re-engineer our world so that we can direct our attention with more intention? - So the whole thesis of the book is that we are as a society suffering what I call a distraction crisis because our attention is continually what I call neurologically hijacked by these weapons of mass distraction that we carry around with us, these super computers and world-class film studios that we carry in our pockets and have become almost like a prosthetic attached to our arms like a third hand. And ultimately what's happening is that our attention is being focused not on what we want to focus on but what big tech wants us to want to focus on. And I think for your generation, rather than mine, on the basis of weaker up in a time when we didn't have these devices, for your generation that is profoundly life-shaping. A couple of interesting stats is that 70% of parents are worried about how much time their children are spending on screen. I'll come back to that in a minute. And interestingly, 54% of Gen Z say their parents would be even more worried than they already are if they really knew what went on on social media. So those are a couple of interesting sort of opening stats. But I think my central concern in the book is this, that over the last 10 years as these technologies have become ubiquitous and we use them in every aspect of daily life, whether it be entertainment or connecting with our friends or shopping. So too have other things changed in society. And unfortunately, the rate of adolescent anxiety, unhappiness, loneliness, depression, and ultimately, self-harm and suicide has broadly speaking doubled over the last 10 years. Now, some of that you can put down to the fact that it's now easier to talk about mental health, maybe than it was 10 years ago. And some of it you can definitely put down to societal changes. I mean, I talk in the book a lot about the other things that have changed over the last 10 years. The decline of the nuclear family, the fact that we're eating less together, community-leading, which is a really important place to develop empathy. The changing nature of workplaces, the decline of religion, the decline of marriage, the different kinds of relationships that youngsters have with each other, what I call encounters, not relationships. So there's a lot going on here. But and the truth is, the academic research does not prove that there is a causality between the rise of technology and these negative factors that I've talked about. But I don't believe it's a coincidence. So I think we need to get better at controlling the technology rather than allowing it to control us. And in the book, I talk about the various ways we can do that. One is, of course, for your generation and for all of us, actually, just to be more aware of how our attention is grabbed by these devices in a very deliberate attempt to keep our attention. And when I talk about neurological hijacking, it's based on an abuse of dopamine, the likes, the pings, the buzzes, the vibrations. One big area is before sleep. So we know, don't we, that most youngsters, and I think quite a lot of adults, take their phones to the bedroom and probably the very last thing they do almost before they turn the line out to go to sleep, is to be on their devices. Oh, absolutely. I mean, even on my computer, I will watch Netflix or something on Hulu. And that's the last thing I do before going to bed and when I wake up, I look at my phone first thing, which I know is such a bad habit. And it's so hard to break. Probably less bad in the morning, but at night, what you're doing, of course, is sending blue light signals to your brain, which is telling you to wake up. It's basically the equivalent of inducing jet lag just before you try and go to sleep. Why is that a problem? Well, we know that youngsters complain in the surveys about lack of sleep. Interestingly, the World Health Organization before it became preoccupied with COVID had just put out a warning saying that we're suffering from a global sleep epidemic, or loss of sleep epidemic, more to the point. And your university of Michigan did a big study on this with similar conclusions. We know that 80% of people take their phones to the bedroom. And as I said, the last thing they do before they try and sleep is probably beyond a device. Now, why is that a problem? Well, apart from the fact that it makes people drowsy the following day because they haven't had enough sleep, many talk about how the devices and their addictions to them, stop them studying, and stop them conversing with their friends face to face. So this is not a trivial issue. So first of all, we need to get more disciplined. We need to understand what we're doing to ourselves and get better at it. I think parents need to be more disciplined with their children, just talking to them about the difference between an on and an offline relationship, and understanding some of the issues around online relationships and their relationship with the internet. I think educators could introduce courses in schools and colleges in what I call responsible internet use or what some people have called digital citizenship. Because we can't fool ourselves that we're not going to use the devices. The devices do everything for us. As I said, whether providing you with entertainment and the form of Netflix or a person with your friends through Snapchat or Instagram, or providing you with education, so we're going to use them or we're going to shop on them. It's just the way it is. But we have to be more disciplined about it. So educators can definitely help. But ultimately, what we really need is for the social media companies and the big tech and app designers to build safety in at the point of design. We need a more responsible software design industry to think about us rather than just making profit when they design these apps. And then finally, since I don't think we can rely on the big techs to reform themselves, I'm afraid, we just probably need more regulation. We need the regulators to come in and set some parameters around the design of these apps and platforms to try and help us wrestle back control of our attention. It's our attention. We own it. We need to kind of re-own it. Absolutely. And I mean, this reminds me a lot of the social dilemma where Tristan Harris realized how addicting these phones aren't and the way that technology is designed on the software engineering side. I think in the documentary, he talks about the slot machine effect. So the way in which these apps are built out is to cause this increase in anticipation and really relates to your point about dopamine. And so the release of dopamine signals pleasure. And actually, when there's increased anticipation, you really want it more. And so the way our phones are designed, never knowing if you're going to have a notification or never knowing what you're going to see if you're scrolling along Facebook or Instagram, that's really is what's keeping us hooked. It's even more than that because dopamine has less effect on the second and third dose. It's basically designed to be addicted in the sense that the second one gives you less of a less of a hit when the first the third one gives you less. So you need more and more just to stay still. Absolutely, and that's why we just constantly gravitate towards our phones. And as you mentioned, it is this double edged sword because technology can be so beneficial. It can help us connect with others across the world, and especially during the pandemic, when we're forced to be isolated, we've now turned to Zoom and FaceTime and other forms of digital communication to feel as if we're staying connected to other people. But ironic enough, it still feels like we're even more divided now. Well, so I think there is a very significant difference between connecting through messaging. And one of the things you know I note about your generation is that you basically prefer messaging to talking. Talking in my sense is literally meeting physically and talking face to face. Okay, your generation prefers literally messaging to talking. And indeed, there was a survey in America recently, which said if you had a choice between deleting one app from your phone, which is kind of the one you least want to use. And it was actually voice calling, right? The actually ability to talk to a human being through voice was the one that people would delete. That's really sad to think about. That is sad. Now the reason it's a particular problem, and maybe in one sense, COVID has been helpful here, is at least it's forcing people to connect face to face like we are now on on Zoom. Is that technology without necessarily doing this intentionally, systematically attacks all the place that my generation would have developed empathy? Now what do I mean by that? Well, if I start talking to you, Stella, and I start saying something that you don't like, you're going to start whincing or frowning or I will be I will tell immediately from the visual clues that your body language send me that you don't like what I'm saying or you don't agree with it. And that forces me to aim off. If I send you a message, I don't see that reaction. And this is why we often see conflict escalating online much more quickly than it would in an offline environment, because you're not getting those visual clues. And the question is, if you spread that right across a generation and say, this is the primary method of communication messaging, not talking, does that mean that we all have stunted empathy development? And then if that's true, which I fear it is, then the issue is since empathy is what ultimately stops society, it stops us all from killing each other. It's what forces us to put ourselves in someone else's shoes and see things from someone else's point of view. Is it any surprise that society delay is probably more polarized than it's had been in history? You talk a lot about in the book how social media abuses natural empathy. And so by abusing this natural empathy, then you feel inclined to use social media even more so. I agree with you. Empathy is like this fundamental quality that allows people to step inside other people's shoes and really understand their perspective and where they're coming from. And especially when you're communicating through your phone or through a digital device, it's very easy to misinterpret a message. And it's very easy to also catch on to the passive aggressive tones. And so that can also create conflict. And when you're not having that in person face-to-face communication, all those visual cues are in essence, they're gone, as you mentioned. But it's very shocking to hear how my generation would prefer to just delete the voice message app. That's really sad to me. And I think, I mean, hopefully now, as things start to come back to a bit more normalcy out of the pandemic, hopefully people now will value the importance of in-person interaction because we've been it's been taken away from us for so long. Let's hope so. I think that's that's really important. And maybe that maybe that is something at the end of COVID will be a benefit. Yeah. And you also talk about people going through digital detoxes, like through different case studies that you present in your book. These digital detoxes seem to be like someone being on Instagram and then feeling like their mental health is kind of plummeting. They're not really interested in using the app anymore. They're actually realizing how detrimental the app is to their overall wellbeing. So they delete it. And maybe they're on this detox for five to six months. But then ultimately, they experience a rebound. They just decide to download it again. And I've had this experience as well where I've deleted apps like Snapchat or Instagram for a period of time. But then I felt, okay, like I'm ready to go back onto the app. So I'm going to read downloaded again. While still knowing the negative effects it's going to have on my wellbeing. And so I'm really curious like, why is this something we see? Let's take the two parts separately. First of all, why is it negative? Why are the negative? Well, the reason is that negative emotions are just scientifically more engaging than positive ones. So and the neuroscientists to design the algorithms that drive social media notice. So they are in effect designed to be negative on balance, right? You know, bad news, travels further and faster on social media than it ever would do in real life. I read an interesting statistic when I was researching the book that said that 5% of people in the world only experience a truly moral misdeed at any point in their lives, right? But on social media, if one person experiences a truly moral misdeed, everyone experiences it five minutes later because it's out there where we want to see. So it's kind of set up to spread bad news. And as I said, the neuroscientists know that we're more engaged by negativity than we are sadly by positivity. One of the people I met in the course of researching the book was a girl called Maddie Freeman who is from Virginia, I think. She's now 16 and she's lost four friends to suicide in the last two years. And she puts this at least partly at the door of social media overuse. When I met her in actually a very interesting competition, which was organized to encourage Gen Z social entrepreneurs to come up with solutions to digital overload. And her idea was to have a no social media in November. So I don't know whether it's the same in the States, but in the UK every November, we have a thing called MoVember, which is where if you don't have a moustache, you grow one. And if you do have one, you shave it off for a month, right? And it's kind of all done to raise money for charity. So her idea was, well, forget the moustache. Let's just detox for a month and not go on social media. So I met her in the course of judging this competition. I thought her idea was brilliant. And I talked to her afterwards and she took me through what had happened with her friends. One of the most shocking aspects of which was the self-harm websites that several of them had been on, where, and just a quick kind of stat, the rate of self-harm in nine to 12 year olds in the UK in the last couple of years has doubled. Now honestly, when I was nine, I don't, if you'd said the word self-harm to me, I have, I don't think I'd have had any clue what you would thought I'd know idea what that would have meant. Yeah, there's like no concept for that at such a young age. And I certainly wouldn't have had any idea how to do it. What she showed me was, was self-harm websites, which are like, you know how on Instagram people compare their average self or their worst self with everyone else's best self. That's kind of the basis of Instagram. This is kind of like that. So this is a self-harm website where people would go and cut themselves. And they would then show themselves on this site. And it was almost like a badge of honor. The worst, the worst you've cut, the better it was. You know, these are teenage girls. I was deeply shot by that. And you know, unfortunately, in the case of some of her friends, this led to to worse. And these were the websites that her friends were were on at that time. Correct. And I'd become hooked on, yeah. Wow. And so that I mean that that perpetuates that desire to then engage in that sort of behavior. It's sort of a bit like gaming gaming addiction where you're learned into what the neuroscientist call a state of near continuous failure. As soon as you get better at the game, they just give you a harder game. That's the whole that's the whole basis on which sort of the gaming works, right? Right. And you talk about that, you know, in your book, you talk about video gaming and how it's incredibly addictive, just like gambling. There's now I, you know, I think there's opportunity to make, there's ethical decision making that can be made in terms of now creating better video games. Or video games that are actually good for someone's well-being except then how are these video gaming industries going to actually make money if they're not addicting? Of course they're addicting because they're designed by the very same people who've learned how the gambling industry works and they use precisely the same techniques. I think where you need to go is look at what's happened in the worst countries in the world for gaming. So Japan, China, South Korea have massive gaming addiction issues, which are quite widespread. They have gaming addiction clinics in these countries where they cheat, they treat not just children but adults who have the problem. But they also, in some cases, brought in laws. I think it's in Japan where it's actually illegal to a video game between midnight and six in the morning. They literally turn off the games during that time. So you cannot game in the night. It's a massive problem and if we're worried about where it might go in the States or in the UK, look at the worst places in the world and see what might happen and then work out whether we don't need to do something about it. Wow, I didn't even know that they have that regulation in Japan. Is that what you envisioned for when you earlier spoke about how we need to make, you know, we need to have more regulation on how we spend our time and attention towards these devices, like taking it one step further. Well, there's a concept of responsible design. So the software design industry could reform itself and say, look, we need to find a better balance between entertaining people, educating them and doing good for society and making money on the other hand. Okay, at the moment, it's very clear where the balance is, which is very much promoting making money. So we could, you know, these software designers could reform themselves and switch that that balance, that would require the big tech platforms to drive that change. I don't see these companies doing that. I look at the boards of these companies. They're basically very wealthy people. They don't have anybody young on them. I mean, just take Google, for example. I think I worked out, and I think I read that the average age of a Google employee is 29. When I look at the board, I think the average age is 62. The youngest person on the board is 47, and I had to look through who's on it. Every single one of them is either a tech founder or a billionaire with one exception, a microbiologist professor, a lady, which is great, but I don't know what she adds in relation to challenging the thinking around how this company has run. Where is the X-media regulator? Where is the child psychologist? Where is the parent? Where is the Gen Z representative? These companies, I think, seems to me anyway, are in denial. I don't think they have any intention of changing their focus. I don't think we can expect, sadly, the software industry to reform itself. I think in the end, we will need regulation. Yeah. I'm very curious to see how that could actually happen, because I can see this idea of closely regulating our social media use as something that could be very beneficial, but also still take away from the freedom to be on our devices and having our own autonomy and agency to engage with them, however we would like. That's fine if you're an adult. It's not fine if you're what we call in this country a minor. So think about it. You don't allow, you don't allow, you don't allow miners to go and buy alcohol without ID. You don't allow miners to go gambling without ID. You can't buy drugs without ID, but you can go onto the internet without ID. And the internet, I would argue, in part, is way more dangerous, potentially than any of those things. So I think the first thing we have to examine is is it okay to allow unfettered access to the internet to anybody who has a smartphone? And I think that's a mistake. Now the UK is leading the world in this area. The government is introducing a suite of legislation that starts with something called the online harms bill. And this is groundbreaking. So what this will do for the first time is create a statutory duty of care on the big tech platforms and app companies to assess whether their products and services are causing harm, particularly two youngsters. And if they are, they then have to take actions to mitigate those harms. And if and there's an organization you can go off-com it's on media regulator. And what that will do is then assess whether the company has taken sufficient action to mitigate the harms. And if not, it will find the companies. So this is the first time I think anywhere in the world that anything like this has been tried. And if it works, I think it could be a model for the rest of the world. It's there always has to be in any society a balance between liberty and the right to do what we want and protecting youngsters. And right now I don't think we have that balance right. The second issue around all that is age assurance. So the second thing the government is doing in the UK is introducing something called the age appropriate design code. Now that says to the app designers, you have to design your products and services with the age of the user in mind. In other words, you can't just allow unfettered access to under 13's to, for example, pornography. And you have to take actions to protect them from the worst kinds of cyberbullying hate speech or God forbid child grooming. So again, this is the first in the world I think to have anyone quite of this this sort other than countries in Asia which actually ban certain kinds of content from social media in the first place. But they tend to be what one might call totalitarian regime. So they're possibly doing it for a different reason. They're doing it in some cases because they don't want unhelpful news to the ruling regime being promulgated on social media. Okay, so question their motives. So they're the effect of what they do may be helpful to to children. So the UK I think is leading the world in this area and these are two examples of ways in which we could improve things. Now just on age assurance most of the platforms have a watershed of 13. So you have in theory you have to be 13 to be on many of these platforms. We know from all the surveys that many children under 13 are on these platforms. They have their own social media accounts. They are lying to the platforms about how old they are when they apply even worse many parents actually age in a bet. Now their children to get onto these platforms for the sake of their own peace by allowing their children to lie or indeed helping them by confirming that they're over 13. We know this from surveys people have knit this. So the industry will need to get better at working out your age. Now very interesting, I'm working with a company at the moment in Switzerland which has groundbreaking technology in this area. So what happens at the moment is if you apply to a platform they might ask you to send a picture and from your face they can estimate your age. That may lead them to question whether you are over under 13. They may ask you to send a short voice clip of you talking. The problem with those two things are the probability percentages of getting your age 100% correct from one picture or one voice clip is not very high. But using AI, what we can do is we can take both pictures, not a picture but several pictures and not a clip of your voice but several clips of your voice. And we can triangulate with AI between the two and end up with a probability of more than 90% of predicting your age very accurately indeed. This is called a multimodal dynamic age assurance. It's very exciting. The most exciting thing of all about the company I'm working with is that for the first time none of this data, so none of the pictures and none of the voice clips would end up with the big tech platform. They stay on your phone and the whole analysis is done within your phone. So there's no danger of any kind of privacy issue relating to pictures or voice clips of children ending up in the wrong place. So this is very exciting. Right, I was going to ask that could raise some issues with data privacy. But if it's staying within your own device then in theory it should be safe and you should have access to that data. I mean, I got a Facebook when I was nine years old. That's very young. And I just got it because it seemed cool and it seemed fun. And I wish I didn't have it then because there was no need for a nine-year-old to be on Facebook. So if technology like that was around back in 2008, 2009, that could potentially solve so many issues and had me not on Facebook at such a young age. And I mean, I saw it a lot amongst my friends as well, like a lot of my friends at that time were getting Facebooks. And I grew up with Instagram. It came out when I was maybe in 7/3 grade. And I agree. I don't think these platforms are designed for young children. No, I don't think in fairness, I don't think Facebook is the worst platform. I think it's has all sorts of good and bad aspects to Instagram is probably less good. Snapchat is probably less good. And Twitter, you know, is pretty bad, I would say, for youngsters. It has stuff on it that I I'm, you know, in the course of research in the book, I kind of looked at things I had no idea were on Twitter. The negativity, the abuse, the language, the imagery was shocking to me. And it's all there for anybody who has access to a Twitter account. I would say maybe the same with Reddit. I'm not even that familiar with the platform, but I know that's a very popular one as well. And I think it's similar kind of to Twitter. That's pretty interesting that you mentioned Reddit because it's worth it going back to why that exists. And one of the reasons it existed is a place where pretty much everyone has a fake profile. And that just causes us to stop from it and think about the concept of fakes on the internet. If you look back at the first quarter of last year, Facebook's own statistics show, that they took down 2.2 billion Facebook, sorry, fake Facebook profiles in a quarter. That is equivalent to their entire installed customer base, right? So in three months, they removed as many users as they have in total. It's a staggering statistic. Now the problem with fakes and not requiring people to identify themselves when they go onto a platform and in particular age verify through a documentary process is that people can entertain, sorry, people can get into these worst forms of behavior that I listed earlier, cyberbullying hate speech, child grooming, with no serious worry about being detected. And Reddit, of course, came out of the I think out of the culture of offense where it's quite difficult now online to express a view that's an outlying view. You kind of have to sing with the masses, right? And Reddit, I think, you know, one of the reasons it existed so people can say what the hell they like, but not be themselves. So it really goes to the heart of whether we should allow fakes on the internet now. It's important here to distinguish between fake profile and not having to identify yourself to the platforms. I actually have no problem with broadly speaking with people being able to call themselves something else, you know, if Stella wants to call herself Sigma 349 on Reddit fine, okay? But if you then use your profile to go and bully someone else or to indulge in hate speech or God forbid, as I said to groom a child, then when that user complains about you to the platform, if you're using a fake profile and you haven't had to identify yourself, the platform doesn't know who you are. So they can't report you to law enforcement. It's very difficult to follow up. If you had to identify yourself with the platform, not that you couldn't have a fake name on the platform, but at least the platform knew who you really were, I think that would cut out 80% of the bad behavior overnight. Because there's a possibility. There would be, There would be a possibility for this unacceptable behavior and I don't think any reasonable human being can have to having to identify themselves with the platform if they still have the right to use a fake name on their profile. So that's something I would be a big, big proponent of. The web libertarians will be gasping at the thought of this, but I'm sorry. As I said, there's a balance in society between freedom and liberty, and on the other hand protecting youngsters, and I don't think we've got that balance right. - Well, I'm really glad that you brought up the whole idea around fake profiles and bots. I mean, I recently watched this documentary. I think it was on Hulu called Fake Famous. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it was this experiment where normal average people were selected to become fake famous and become an influencer on Instagram. And so the researcher has purchased like thousands of bots of fake accounts to follow these average people and to watch kind of their reality transform just through the rise of fake bots following their profile and then becoming verified on Instagram. It really completely changed their mentality and their mindset and how they went about their day to day life. I mean, what we see on Instagram, the rise of influencers and these figures that, I think a lot of young people look up to for whatever reason because they happen to be famous on Instagram. A lot of it just isn't real. It arises from something that's just not reality. And so to see this experiment come to life and see how the rise of becoming fake famous can really shift your mentality and impact your own wellbeing because I mean, one of the participants wanted to drop out of the study because he just didn't like how it felt to become fake famous. - Really interesting point you raised. And of course, the whole basis of social media peer-to-peer comparison is, as I said, this unfortunate habit that we have of comparing average self or our worse self with everyone else's best self as presented in these glit-sea pictures that we see or video clips that we see on Instagram, everywhere is wearing the best clothes with the best makeup looking perfect in the most exciting places. Well, truth is, the real world, as we know, isn't like that. We are setting ourselves up to the real world to be almost permanently disappointing. And that's one of the reasons that self-esteem and lowering of self-esteem is such an issue around social media. - I think that's also why a lot of people, at least in my age and my generation, have done these digital detoxes 'cause they're starting to realize the effects that social media, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera, have on our self-esteem and our self-confidence because Instagram serves us like this highlight reel. You're seeing the best versions of everyone of themselves and it's not real. - One of the interesting features about Gen Z is that, as you say, when it comes to buying products and services, Gen Z is much more interested in what celebrities and influences think and their friends think, than they are in formal advertising in the traditional historic sense. But they also know that most of the influences are not authentic for the reasons you just outlined. And so they admit they know the influence was authentic, but they still are interested in what they have to say. So it's almost, they almost fall for it, knowing they're fall for it, but they still fall for it. - That's where this negative feedback loop comes into play as well, because we consciously understand we know that technology and social media isn't great for us in the way that these apps are designed, yet we're still hooked and despite knowing that this isn't actually good for us and despite knowing that these influencers are inauthentic, we still gravitate towards that. And so back to your earlier point around regulation, but also more importantly as well, like educating and providing digital literacy or digital education around how to engage with technology in a more mindful way. I think is so important. The earlier we can target younger people, the better, because my generation and generations to come are now growing up with this digital age. And in the social dilemma, they were talking about how our attention is the consumer essentially. Like we are-- - Tell me what age you think that we should be targeting to educate children about the dangers being online. - I think honestly, I think in elementary school, like starting around five or six. - So did you know that the majority of babies in the US watch 90 minutes of screen time a day, babies under one? And did you know that two to four year olds, most two to four year olds, watch more than two hours of screen time a day? - Wow, I did not know that. I did not know that. I mean, it's just more-- it's to your point about how invested we are in technology and how our attention is so divided. I mean, even the productivity cost of multitasking and having our attention be brought one place to the other, we might think we're more productive, but we're actually less productive because the time it takes to switch between tasks is-- - So two very interesting points around that. One is if you think about the way the world is developing and as AI becomes a bigger and bigger influence on work and the robots come. What's left for human beings is basically the most complex things that only human beings can do. So humans will have to move up the scale in terms of their ability to do the most difficult things. At the same time that that's the case, we are being taught by our technologies to multitask and actually lose the ability to do anything with focus and concentration. So now we can't have a conversation without being interrupted by our devices. So as I call that, we can't deeper tend or deep listen. We can't listen to music without also being on Snapchat or Instagram or doing a search. We can't be on Netflix without chatting at the same time. We can't deep watch, listen to tend, focus, concentrate anywhere. We're constantly multitasking what I call in the book digital bees, kind of snacking in grazing on multiple honeypots simultaneously. Is that good for society at a time when what we actually need to do is develop the really complex, cognitive skills are going to put us in a good position to be able to work when AI takes away the basic jobs. - Yeah, I mean, and that's a hard question because I think we're living this culture of wanting to maximize productivity, wanting to get a lot of tasks done and thinking that if we're constantly busy, we're doing it right. - And you mentioned distraction, which is what my book is about. I actually sat down and tried to work out what the productivity cost of distraction is. So if you just said that the average person in the UK works at 48 hour a week, right? And said if we could, and then the women were at work, we're distracted by our devices, right? From working to do other things, just to chat with our friends and our telephones or whatever. I worked out that if you could find a way of the average employee spending half an hour less a week on their devices during which time they worked, the GDP that you would add to the economy would be about 48 billion pounds a year. That by the way is about a third of the cost of the entire national health service in the UK. - Wow. - It's actually more than the annual education budget of the UK. So the productivity cost of distraction is enormous. - Wow, that's, I mean, and then imagine if there was no productivity cost, it would be a huge gain financially for countries, their economics and just, I guess, in a way we would have a more productive society if we weren't trying to multitask all the time. And another question that I have for you is, what got you so inspired to learn more about these topics and write this book coming from a background in finance and economics? How did that help prepare you to write this book? - I think three adolescent children who I've watched growing up and how their personalities develop and how they see the world and use technology, number one. Number two, I guess my own experience in technology, as a somewhat older person. And then thirdly, a couple of years ago, I adopted a New Year's resolution to meet 200 young generations, Ed Entrepreneurs, so over two years, I decided to meet one every day for two years, every business day, and I've, sorry, I've met a couple of hundred now. And really meeting them and talking to them about their aspirations, they're the way they look at the world, cemented the views that I've encapsulated in the book. So it's based on personal research from meeting and talking to lots of young entrepreneurs. - If you're having these conversations with people, maybe my age or a little bit older or a little bit younger, all the life experiences you've had up until, you know, this present day are shaped by the way in which the world was working at that time. And now we've seen this huge shift in how technology is kind of overtaking our world alongside other different cultural factors that you mentioned earlier. And so it makes sense that my reality or my, the way which I perceive the world or people in my generation is now going to be different. And so having these conversations is so important because it allows a deeper understanding on both ends from both sides of the coin. - The good news is that hour of the day that I spent with these young entrepreneurs was always the best hour of the day. And notwithstanding that I think my generation is bequeathing you a pretty miserable set of cards, right? I mean, we're, we're delivering you a damaged planet. You haven't known a time when there hasn't been a global war on terror. We're lumping you with a load of COVID debt. You know, that's not a great place to start, right? But incredibly, your generation seems to me to be very resilient, very thoughtful, have a very clear sense of social purpose, social conscience and purpose. And indeed, many of the ideas that were pitched to me in these conversations were not, as I would call them businesses, they were actually social enterprises. In other words, your generation is very keen Good, good. the capitalist society that we've grown up with develops a wider purpose than just making money. It needs to be contributing to solving the world's issues, whether it be climate change or anything else. And I think this is where the big tech companies really need to get in tune with what youngsters think because ultimately it is your digital wallets that will drive the businesses, profitability in the future. And I think, as I said, right now the balance between profit and social good is not in the right place. And I think that speaks to again the importance of really understanding how to take control of our own attention again and how to engage with these devices in a more mindful way so that we aren't subject to having these devices and technology and big tech really take control of our lives and our well-being and knowing that you actually have the power within yourself to create a more positive experience. And if you're an adult you have more of that autonomy, but if you're a younger adult or a child that needs to be kind of taught to you and you need to be guided throughout that process as well. So I really admire all the work that you have done and all the research that you've done in this book is just incredible and absolutely a must read. So I'm very excited for my listeners to grab a copy. Where can people find a copy of the book? Very easy. It's on Amazon, it's on Kindle, it's on Audible and all the other audio sites or it's available for my, if you want to sign copy you have to order it from my website. Or if you're not in a place where Amazon gives you free delivery there is a company called www.bookdepository.com which gives free worldwide delivery, it's actually part of Amazon but you wouldn't know that. www.bookdepository.com and you'll find it there with free worldwide delivery. One last question I would love to ask you and it's something that I ask all of my guests on the podcast is what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? Oh squash is my passion so every morning at seven o'clock outside Covid obviously. I'm down at the squash school playing squash and there's no better endorphin hit than a game of squash. Absolutely, I mean getting yourself moving first thing in the morning, potentially watching the sunrise or being out, you know, first thing in the morning, getting the fresh air is definitely an endorphin boost. I like to be outside and be very active in the mornings as well. And to your point about and the anticipatory nature of dopamine is actually anticipation of beating a 21 year old at squash which gets me going. Your children? No, none of them are beating me yet. I love that. Well thank you so much Bob, it was so wonderful to have you on the podcast. Stella, thank you so much for taking an interest in this really important subject and I do hope that some of your listeners will reach out and read the book because I think they will they will identify with a lot in it and hopefully they'll agree with some of my conclusions and maybe even learn some some some means to digital details. Oh absolutely, I mean as I was reading it so much just it was just everything was kind of clarified to me about how we really are just addicted to our phones and I mean I loved how the book really also investigated the role of robots in society and kind of offering different viewpoints on the the future of robots and how that may or may not take away from our actual empathetic connections with other people. So I mean this book touches on so many incredible topics. Just just to peak people's interest on the subject of robots. So I even go into the the new trend towards sex robots and if you want to know how that's all going to develop you should look at what's going on in Japan where 30% of the men under 30 are virgins, sorry 30% of 30 year old men are virgins and youngsters in Japan go on state sponsored courses to actually learn how to meet another human being. If you want to see how bad this get it's no criticisms in Japan because I love Japan everything about it but do do read that section of the book. It is it is thought-provoking about where we might be headed in the West. I will leave our listeners on that because I think that will definitely peak a lot of people's interest. Thank you again. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard please follow rate review every day and orphans on whichever listing platform that you use to stream my episodes. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.