--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. A couple weeks ago, I heard a professor from NYU say that you and I are going to spend 20 years of our life on our phone. 20 years. And when I heard him say that, it scared the hell out of me. I wanted to figure out what I could do to change that, because I don't want 20 years to go by and I've just wasted it scrolling on social media.
--:-- So I reached out to Dr. K, who is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. He has a massive following on YouTube and also on Twitch. He has hopped on a plane and he is here today in our Boston studios to talk to you about how technology is changing your brain, your relationships, and your identity. The fact is, technology is not going anywhere. So it's not a matter of getting rid of technology. That's just not even realistic. It's about you understanding why you need to get control of your relationship with it and what to do about it.
--:-- I tracked down Dr. K because I read his new book and it has changed my relationship with technology. It has changed my habits with my phone. It's changed how I talk to my kids and my loved ones about it. I absolutely cannot wait for him to open your mind and open your eyes to the reality of what is happening when you use it.
--:-- Today, you're going to learn all about what technology is doing to your brain, how your technology use, particularly in the morning, is trashing your dopamine levels. You'll learn about the shocking impact that looking at your phone has on your attention span. You'll also learn how to tell whether or not you truly have a problem with technology, whether it's social media, your phone, gaming. You'll also understand why you don't want to do anything after spending time binging social media. He has tips for increasing your attention span, how to maximize dopamine. He's also going to give you the exact scripts that you can use when you want to talk to somebody you love whose use of the phone or video gaming is concerning you. And these are scripts that actually work so that they listen.
--:-- I am so excited to be able to share this episode with you because I know it's going to change your life. It's going to change how you think about this very important topic, but it's also going to be a resource that you're going to want to share with everyone that you know and love. Alrighty, let's jump into this with Dr. K.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm so glad you're here with me today. It is always such an honor to spend some time together, and I really want to acknowledge you for choosing to listen to something that will help you create a better life. I mean, I just think it's really cool that you're taking time for yourself, and I just love spending that time with you.
--:-- If you are a brand new listener to the Mel Robbins Podcast, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm on a mission to empower and inspire you with resources that will help you create a more meaningful life. I am so thrilled to be able to introduce you to the one and only Dr. Alok Kanojia. He also is known by millions of people online as Dr. K. Dr. K is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist specializing in modern mental health and the impact that technology is having on your brain.
--:-- Now, Dr. K has a really impressive and diverse skillset, which was why I was so excited when he said, "Yes, I will come to Boston, Mel. Let's do this." First of all, he did his medical and psychiatric training at Harvard here in Boston. He has been studying integrative health for over 20 years. He was a researcher at Osher Research Center at the Harvard Medical School and Tufts, and he has designed resilience programs for Mass General Brigham. He is also the co-founder of Healthy Gamer, which is a huge mental health platform and training company with over 175 employees dedicated to helping people overcome addictions to technology, and they also train clinicians in Dr. K's methodology. His YouTube channel, Healthy Gamer GG, has over 2 million followers, and he's the author of the brand new bestselling book, *How to Raise a Healthy Gamer*.
--:-- I cannot wait to dig in. Dr. K, thank you for jumping on a plane. Thank you for being here in Boston. I have been dying to talk to you and I cannot wait to dig into all things brain and neuroscience and gaming and addiction and what tech is doing to us. But I want to start by saying, could you tell the person that's listening right now what they might experience in terms of a change in their life if they really take to heart everything you're about to teach us today?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So I think the biggest thing that they're going to learn is how to stop letting technology shape you. Technology is shaping all of us, whether we like it or not. If you're using technology, it is shaping the way that you think. It is shaping the way that you perceive the world. It is shaping your sense of identity. It is shaping what you want, all without your knowledge or consent. In order to turn yourself into the person that you want to be, you have to be aware of how technology is shaping you and counteract that influence. If you want to be that way, then go for it. But all of this is happening without our knowledge or awareness. That's what we really need to change.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, my. I'm really in now. It's crazy. So, I mean, there are research studies on something called the attention marketplace. People have started to realize that your thoughts in your mind are a commodity to be bought and sold. There's research on something called neuroeconomics, which is shaping things like purchasing behavior, what you want to buy. It's not even advertising; it's gone deeper than that because we're doing brain scans. People are literally studying and competing for your attention. All of the big platforms are fighting for your attention because the more of your attention they get, the more money they make. The problem is, it doesn't matter which platform wins. The one person who always loses is you, because you don't have control of your attention.
--:-- Holy cow. I want to try to extrapolate this for somebody who maybe has never thought about the way that technology is controlling your life and shaping you and your brain and grabbing your attention. I think a lot of us are aware that there was a lot of science around the way a retail store is laid out. When you walk in, a lot of stores use fragrance. There are a lot of ways that things are displayed, all in order to get you to stay in the store longer and to get you to feel enticed to buy something. You're going to show us today how technology, and particularly a lot of the big social media platforms, are being actively designed to shape and control the way that you think, to shape and control how much time you're spending on it, and to grab your attention because they can sell you something and make money off of the amount of time that you are mindlessly giving to these platforms.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Absolutely. The stories are wild. One thing just pops into my head. People don't realize this. There are allegations that one stock trading app changed the game. It used to be that if you wanted to buy or sell a stock, you had to do it during trading hours. But now you can buy or sell a stock 24 hours a day. What we know about the human brain is that the human brain gets fatigued the later on in the day that you go. This is why people have trouble with midnight snacking, because you run out of willpower at 11 p.m., midnight, 1 a.m. So now, you can buy stock at 1 a.m. when you're not thinking clearly. There were allegations that one trading house basically had a strategy: anyone who buys a stock at 1 a.m., we're going to take the opposite side of the bet, because people are not thinking clearly. They made so much money by just taking the opposite side of the bet of anyone who is mentally fatigued and chooses to buy stock. There's all kinds of stuff going on that people are just not even remotely aware of about technology and how it's shaping us. It's scary.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. K, you've already mentioned this big word, neuroeconomics. One of the reasons I was so excited that you were willing to fly here and spend some time with me today is because your work is this amazing overlap of neuroscience and psychiatry. You also lecture at Harvard Medical School. You have a big practice. You are also looking at the effect of technology on the brain. You have an incredible story for how you became fascinated with this and in helping us take control back. Can you tell us a little bit about your story?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yeah. I was born here in the United States. Growing up, I used to play a lot of video games. I didn't realize this until later, but I was one year ahead. I skipped a grade. In my school, and in many schools, your social status is based on your athletic ability. But I was like a five-year-old competing against six-year-olds or seven-year-olds. I was just getting crushed. The only way that I could compete with my peers was through video games. So I started playing a lot of video games. It really became a problem in high school. I was very addicted to video games. I played a bunch of games, basically failed out of college. I would play for 16, 18, 20 hours a day. I was on academic probation after my freshman year for having less than a 2.0 GPA. The best grade I got all semester was a C, and I got a couple of D's and F's.
--:-- My parents tried everything. They tried tough love. They tried supportive love. But they're both doctors. Even back then, games were not nearly as addictive, and I was still so addicted. They had no idea what to do. Most parents don't know what to do. It's incredibly frustrating for them. They just don't know how to get their kid to stop. My dad finally was like, "You got to go to India." I was like, "For what?" He said, "You just have to go." So I went to an ashram, or monastery, where I spent three months studying yoga and meditation. At the end of that summer, when I was 21, I decided to become a monk. I tried to take my vows. My teachers wouldn't have me right away.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: It's really fascinating. One of them said, I was like, "I'm ready to give up my life." And he said, "What are you giving up? You have nothing worth giving up." He turned me down. He said, "You can come back when you're 30, but you need to go back, finish your education, get a doctoral degree. Then if you still want to take your vows, you can take your vows when you're 30 years old." In the meantime, they were kind enough. I basically visited every summer, stayed there every summer, learned more advanced meditation techniques and things like that for about seven years. After about seven years, I decided to give that up. My teachers were super wise. I met my wife, so the whole celibacy thing wasn't going to work out. It was a struggle for a while, but then ultimately I decided to become a doctor, a medical doctor.
--:-- The big irony there was that I was pre-med, but I really didn't care about it. Then I decided that I was going to become a doctor, and that was actually part of my spiritual practice. My teacher had also told me that anything that you do in the material world will be easier than what you have to do in the spiritual realm. So set a high target. Unless you can meet it, you're going to fail spiritually. I was like, "Okay, fine." I really took that to heart. Ended up going to medical school, became a psychiatrist, and I trained at Mass General where I was faculty for a little while, and then started focusing on technology addiction.
--:-- When I was in residency, I went to some of my mentors. These are brilliant people, leaders in the field of psychiatry. I asked them, "Hey, what do you all think about tech addiction, like video game addiction?" This was back in 2015. I had my first conversation. That's when I sort of realized they were like, "Oh, it seems like it's a problem, but we don't really know too much about it." That's changed a lot in the last 10 years. It hit me that most of the leaders of fields—if you look at medicine, the chief of psychiatry is going to be in their 50s, 60s, or 70s. It's no shortcoming on their part. They're amazing humans and have studied a lot, but they just don't know what it's like to play a video game. I had struggled with this, started to get interested in it clinically, and then really started working with gamers. Then I expanded to social media and all these other challenges that people face. I really focused on combining the great training I had in neuroscience and clinical experience in addiction with spirituality. Now what I try to do is help people develop healthy relationships with technology.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I think that's a really interesting way to look at it. First of all, we don't understand how much technology is taking control of our brains and our lives. We need to understand that. The second piece is nobody's going to get rid of it completely. So we have to understand how to have a healthy relationship with it. I absolutely am going to dive deeper into the nuances around what to do when somebody is addicted to gaming or social media, how to talk to somebody who is like that—all of those specific things. But I want to stay a little bit more broad because I think it's fascinating that back in 2015, you had the insight to say tech addiction is a thing. I'd be curious, Dr. K, what exactly is modern technology doing to our brains?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: The short answer is a lot. The first thing we have to understand is that when we look at most addictions, we tend to think about substance use disorders. These are things like alcohol or opiates or marijuana. This is a discrete biological chemical which travels to various parts of the brain and activates usually one kind of receptor. We have the GABA receptor for alcohol, we have opioid receptors. It's a very targeted effect. The thing with technology is, if we look at the evolution of technology, technology used to activate just one part of our brain. Originally with video games, you would activate the dopaminergic circuitry, which is what gives us pleasure. But over time, people are adding more features to technology.
--:-- Facebook used to be a way to stay in touch with people. But then with the like button, you could get some social validation. It's not just about an advanced form of a contact list. Now my identity is becoming virtual. My profession is becoming virtual. My relationships are becoming virtual. So many other parts of the brain are now being affected. It's basically a whole brain effect at this point. It affects our sense of identity. It affects our sense of pleasure. It regulates our emotions. It alters our attention span. It does everything. What developers are discovering is that the more of the brain that I can affect, the more people will engage with me, because now I'm not just activating this one circuit. Now you can use technology for everything and your whole brain can get into it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think one takeaway so far, Dr. K, that's already super helpful is that even just the reference to Facebook, when it first launched on the scene, it was a way to stay in touch with people. It was clearly the Facebook from college. It was a way to share pictures with people, a way to stay connected to your high school friends, to your first cousins, to your family members. When you started to tick off all the ways that these platforms are now in our life... The like button makes it part of your identity. Do people like me? Do they not like me? The number of followers says something about you. It is a huge part of your professional life, being on LinkedIn or on Zoom, or if you are an entrepreneur or trying to launch some sort of business, it becomes a marketing platform. Everybody's on these dating apps, which are basically social media networks as well. Our lives have slowly started to become wildly intertwined with the technology. This is why our knee-jerk response is just delete the app. "Oh, just do this. Oh, just stop playing the thing." I think the genie's already out of the bottle on this.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: I think so. That's the challenge. It dawned on me that technology is kind of like introducing an invasive species in a new environment where there's no natural checks and balances, and then the species just explodes. Technology is like an invasive species for our brain. It starts to colonize different parts of our brain. You'll see this if you've struggled with technology or you know someone who is struggling with technology. It's just always literally where their mind goes. It's what they think about when they wake up in the morning. The first thing that we do is we pull out our phone, we browse Reddit or Instagram or whatever. It's the last thing that we do before we go to bed. We're thinking about it. If we're in the elevator, we're doing it. If we're sitting in a cab, we're doing it. If we're on the toilet, we're doing it. It's really invaded every corner of our life. It's really scary.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That is a very interesting point. If you're ever standing in line at any kind of store, look around. Everybody is filling that time by looking at their phone. You've focused a lot of your earlier career as a psychiatrist on gaming addiction, but this is really about how it has invaded our brains and our lives in every single way. What I would be curious about is, as a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, when I look at somebody who is spending hours just filing through videos and surfing online, they look like they're numbing. Is that a thing?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: That is literally what is happening, in both cases. A lot of studies show that one of the major effects on the brain is the suppression of our amygdala and our limbic system. These are the negative emotional circuits of the brain. Everyone is kind of hung up on dopamine, and dopamine is there. But I think a lot of the addictive qualities are about pushing the negativity away. When you're scrolling on your short form platform of choice—TikTok, YouTube, whatever—if you're having a bad day and you start scrolling, what happens?
--:-- Mel Robbins: You feel relaxed.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Sometimes it can be relaxing. That is actually good. But oftentimes what it does is distract us from the negativity. It is a relief from your anxiety, but I would not quite call it relaxing. It can be, because I think about relaxation as a positive emotional thing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's true.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: What we really see is a lot of emotional numbing. Then we get stuck in this cycle because when we use technology to suppress our emotions, our brain does not process emotions. Some of this is supported in science. Some of it is just my conjecture. Human beings used to have a lot of idle time in our brains. For the majority of evolution, we did rote tasks. We did things like churn butter or make rope. The mind is relatively free. As I'm going throughout the day, I get worried about something. I go hunting with a buddy of mine. I miss my arrow. He hits his arrow. I feel inferior. We walk two hours back to camp. Over the course of that walking, my brain has time to process.
--:-- Now, if you look at what goes on with our attention, we have zero idle time in the brain. The problem is that chances are our brain has evolved to use that idle time. We know, for example, even with dreams, that the emotional content of dreams has to do with the emotional content of your life. As we interfere with dreaming, as we have these different medications that will affect our sleep stages, the restfulness that we get changes. Your brain is actually, even when you're not thinking about something, doing a ton of work. But now what we've stopped doing is giving our brains time to process information, process emotions, because we're constantly externalizing our attention. The more that we externalize our attention, we reduce process times, emotional processing in the brain. As we reduce emotional processing in the brain, what do we see? A rise in just about every mental illness characteristic.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. K, as I'm sitting here listening to you, I had asked you about this numbing effect that being on a short form platform or playing a video game is having on our brains. I said, "Oh, well, it can be relaxing." Here's what I just realized in listening to you. I definitely see that I've got this busyness throughout the day. My brain is always engaged. I'm running from one thing to the next. Scrolling on social media is a lever that I pull to turn the busyness off. But as I'm listening to you, I will be very honest, it's not relaxing. When I go outside for a walk and I don't have my phone on me, that is a very different state in my brain. Even calling it "relaxing" is me kind of succumbing to what's happening with tech addiction and the casual numbing that you're doing all day long.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: All day long.
--:-- Mel Robbins: All day long.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: It's beautifully said. This is where there's a difference between numbing our negativity and relaxing. That's what technology is really good at. There are some times where you're on technology and you do get some positive. If I'm watching cat videos, I can genuinely laugh. It does release dopamine. There can be some amount of relaxation. I'm not anti-technology, by the way. I think we just need to understand what effect it's having so that we can compensate.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: This is what we see: a lot of numbing. Then what happens is people who use technology have difficulty going to bed at night, because once you stop the technology, what happens? There's a flood of mental activity. There's a flood of emotion. Then I have difficulty going to sleep. Since I'm not sleeping because my mind is running a mile a minute, what do I do? I pull out my phone. Once I pull out my phone, now my mind is relaxed a little bit. At least it's focused. It's not running in a thousand different directions, solving a thousand different problems that I can't actually solve right now anyway, because it's 10 p.m. at night. What am I going to do? So I hop on my phone for half an hour and I wait till my exhaustion becomes so profound that it overcomes that emotional flooding before I go to bed.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Holy smokes. You just described every person that's listening. It's crazy. I think we've all had that experience. I will get a little bit later in our conversation. There are so many foundational things I want to cover. I promise we will get to your recommendation for what the evening routine should look like. But I personally understand exactly what you're saying. You turn off the laptop, you put your phone away, and there is that flooding of activity in your brain. Then it never fails. You calm yourself down by just scrolling back at your phone.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Absolutely. I don't know if people are like this. I do this a lot. Even if I watch TV before bed, I will turn off the TV and then I'll pull out my phone.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: I'll even sometimes pull out my phone while I'm watching TV. Then it's like, "Well, hold on a second. What are we doing here? What's the point of this? Am I trying to enjoy this show? What's happening?"
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. K, what is happening? What is happening in that moment? I do feel like there are so many of us that don't want to turn over two hours a night or more just to mindlessly scrolling. We were talking with Professor Adam Alter, who is saying that we're going to spend 20 years of our life on our phone. When we hear that, we go, "We want to stop." But what's actually happening in your mind? Is this a sign that you're addicted?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Let's define a couple of terms. First, what do we mean by addiction? Generally speaking, when we use the clinical term of addiction, we're talking about something that impairs your function. When we say that someone is an alcoholic, how do I know if I have a problem? Basically, if it is causing problems in your professional life, in your personal life, social life, mental health, or physical health, that's when we really think about this as an addiction. The challenge right now is that we absolutely have things that are addicting, which have not quite reached a threshold for many people of impairment to function. Everyone struggles with addiction to their phone, but they're not quite failing out of college or getting reprimanded at their job. They're able to have relationships. That's what we're starting to see: technology is squeezing itself in. If there's actually a really negative consequence, it's easier to stop. There's all kinds of stuff that's going on. It's absolutely shaping our behavior and taking control away from us. There are all kinds of innovations that are designed to do that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like what?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Biometrics or Face ID. This is really important to understand. When I was in college, this was early 2000s. I was studying. I would get distracted when I was reading a textbook, and my distraction would last maybe two minutes. Since I didn't have a phone at the time, that distraction only cost me two minutes. My mind wanders away and then it focuses back on the task at hand. Right now, if you get distracted, it will cost you an hour. All you have to do is catch that impulse. If you just look at your phone and you have Face ID enabled, boom. When you have that impulse, app developers are reducing the barrier between impulse and action. They know that once you look at one post, you're stuck for 45 minutes. You will scroll. So now what they're trying to do is figure out how, if this person has a single impulse, how can I get them to the first video? Because then we've got them hooked. The fish has taken the bait. They're on the line now. What we're seeing is that the price of an impulse of distraction is becoming way higher.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think teenagers spend somewhere between four and six hours a day on their cell phone. It's crazy.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: How do you think? Even more, honestly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How does that happen?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: It's because they hook you for a few minutes and then you lose an hour.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you know if you're addicted? I say that because I can stand there as a parent, Dr. K, and look at my 25, 24, and 19 year old, all of whom have their phones in their hands, all of whom are cranked down with their neck scrolling. As I'm yelling, "Guys, get off your phone," I got my phone in my hand.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: In a weird way, I'd say it's the wrong question. I think we get caught up in whether we're addicted or not.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you know? What's the right question?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Are you intentionally using technology in the way that you want to? That's the question. At the end of your day or at the end of your week, if you look back and you look at all of your technology use, are you happy with how that's working? Are you like, "Man, I'm so glad that I spent two hours and 10 minutes scrolling on TikTok at 11 p.m. on a Thursday"?
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, I'm not happy.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So the question is, do you want to change? Are you happy with your technology use? We can answer that question. If it impairs function, if it's interfering with something, we'll talk about all those negative effects. It is doing things like shortening our attention span. We're seeing a rise in the diagnosis of ADHD. A lot of people, even if they don't have a diagnosis, they identify with having ADHD. Why is that? It's because technology does the attentional work for you. When I'm reading a textbook, I have to force my mind to pay attention, which means that I'm actually strengthening this capability in the mind. The mind, whatever you stretch and whatever you exercise, is what gets better. The more we practice focusing our attention, the better we will be at focusing. Now what happens is with things like short form content, they do all the hard work for you. Because if something doesn't hold your attention for 15 seconds, you scroll past it.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So everyone is engineering content so that you are just like you're sitting and someone else is driving. And so you don't have to focus on your phone. You don't have to force yourself to focus. It does all the focusing for you. So what started to happen with our attention is instead of taking the stairs, we're taking the elevator all the time. So we are deconditioning our minds and then it becomes harder to focus. Which is why you will stand in a grocery store line and instead of just enjoying a moment where you're not doing anything, you have to look at your phone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Because your brain is being programmed and conditioned to need attention, to need something, to need stimulation. And it's happening to you in real time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you're sitting here and you're contemplating the question, because you just said, don't ask if you're addicted. Ask, am I satisfied and happy with the way that I'm using technology? That's the main question. Dr. K, my head is spinning because as I'm listening to you, I'm not only learning about what I need to do, but there are about five people that come to mind immediately that I want to share this episode with like right now. And so let's take a quick break so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. Because of their support, we can give you Dr. K at zero cost and all this life-changing information. And please take a minute and share this. Share this with your kids. Share this with your partner. Share this with family members. Share this with absolutely everybody because we all need to understand this and we need to know what to do about it. And don't go anywhere because Dr. K and I are gonna be waiting for you after a short break. There is so much more we're going to dig into and you're going to want to be here for it. So we'll see you then.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your buddy, Mel. And you and I are here today with Dr. K. He is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. He is known and loved by millions of followers online at Healthy Gamer GG on YouTube. And we are digging into technology and its impact on your brain. What are some of your top habits or strategies, Dr. K, to take control of the amount of time you are spending on your phone or gaming or on social media?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Great question. So I think there's two approaches.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So a lot of people will say just uninstall.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Oftentimes people have this experience where it's like, okay, I uninstalled YouTube and then I installed TikTok the next day. Right? So like people will just swap out apps. So this is what I've sort of found is that there are underlying drivers of behavior and then there are kind of environmental things. Let's talk about the environmental things first. The first thing that I would recommend is that you don't use your cell phone for the first or any technology for the first hour when you wake up. Now, this is really important to understand. What a lot of people don't realize is that you have a certain capacity for pleasure and behavioral reinforcement when you wake up in the morning. You have only a certain number of units of pleasure and behavioral reinforcement.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it. So if I have a cup of capacity for both pleasure and behavioral reinforcement, you're saying that when you wake up, that one cup is already full?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So our dopaminergic circuitry in the brain, in this part called the nucleus accumbens, basically this is what gives us a sense of pleasure and also reinforces our behavior. So the problem with dopamine is we wake up in the morning and our dopaminergic stores are full. So what happens is we have a reserve of dopamine. And if you want something with delayed gratification and your dopamine stores are high, you can work a lot. But then when you get the payoff, since you have a bunch of dopamine, you get a strong dopamine release and then you feel really good. So the way that this works is like I want you all to think about this. Let's say I wake up first thing in the morning and then I work for four hours. And then what is the reward, the subjective reward that I feel after four hours of work?
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's really positive.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yeah. Then if I use technology for four hours, it's kind of whatever. But if I use technology for the first four hours of the day and then I try to go and do work.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're not going to.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: You're not going to. And even if you finish the same amount of work, you will not experience the same level of pleasure because your dopamine has literally been depleted.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So the way that I kind of describe this is imagine that you have a lemon that is full of juice.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So at the very beginning, when it's full of juice, a small squeeze gets you a lot of juice. But by the end, you have to squeeze a lot to get very little juice. This is how dopamine is in our brain.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So in other words, if you tap into technology and it invades your circuitry in your brain, it literally is like squeezing most of the juice out of the lemon first thing in the morning.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: First thing in the morning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And then that means it's also going to impact your ability to do the work or to focus or to feel joy and all those things that normally, if you did those things first, you'd feel a sense of reward and joy for.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes. So technology is like a hard squeeze. So if we use it first thing in the morning, we squeeze the lemon really hard and we get all the juice out. And then you have nothing left to feel good about because all of your dopamine stores have been depleted.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So is this also leading to this intense rise in what we're seeing and what so many experts have come on to talk about, which is this chronic feeling of being disconnected from yourself, this feeling of autopilot, this feeling of stress in your day-to-day life that, you know, the fact that you are squeezing the juice from your brain first thing in the morning, it leaves you with no reserves?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So all of those things are true and each one has a separate neuroscientific mechanism. So let's do one at a time. I'm gonna try to keep it concise.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think we can do that.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Okay. So first, let's remember with the dopamine, the issue is that if you engage in a dopaminergic activity at the beginning of the day, you don't have as much dopamine to reinforce and feel pleasure for other activities. That's like just how it works, right? So we're emptying our lemon at the very beginning. So then working on your resume or finishing your resume, there's nothing left. So you don't reinforce the behavior.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Gotcha.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: This is what gets people so confused about why they're not motivated. And even when they move in the right direction, their brain is not getting a positive reinforcement to repeat that behavior because the brain is empty. There's no pleasure left to feel. And that's what will happen if you are on technology for eight hours a day, you start working at 4 p.m. You won't feel exhilarated by 8 p.m. even if you do the same amount of work.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I think this happens even if you spend 10 to 15 minutes in the morning.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes, that's because technology is a vice of a squeeze, right? So you get a lot of juice. You empty your lemon very quickly with technologies. Now let's talk about disconnection from the self.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So this is fascinating. So if you look at disruptions in our sense of identity, what we know from studies on trauma is that when someone gets traumatized, there's this part of our brain called the corpus callosum, which connects our right hemisphere and our left hemisphere. And people who get traumatized will dissociate. So they will feel disconnected to themselves. What we know is that dissociation happens in part because there is a decreased connection between the right and left hemisphere. So our left brain is logical, our right brain is emotional. That's somewhat true, actually. And so what happens is we divorce our emotion from our logic. So when someone is being, let's say, like abused or something like that, they will feel emotionally numb through the whole experience. That is a defensive mechanism. So the emotions are overwhelming. So we're dispassionately, this negative thing is happening. I don't feel anything. So they feel numb. So anytime you numb your emotions, your sense of identity goes with it. So this is what's really interesting is you can look at studies of people who have gender identity difficulties and even autism spectrum. And it's been hypothesized that one of the reasons why people on the autism spectrum are much more likely to be non-binary is because they actually have less emotional connection to themselves. So our sense of self is formed by emotional experiences. So if I ask you, Mel, who are you? What would you say?
--:-- Mel Robbins: God, I don't know. Tell me about yourself.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Well, geez, you're so smart. I'm embarrassed to, like, get the wrong answer.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Tell me about myself. I am a 56-year-old married woman with three adult kids. My favorite thing in the world to do is to empower and inspire people. I love learning. I'm a super positive person. I'm curious about how to squeeze the most juice from my life.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Great. So we can pause right there. So what I want you to pay attention to, and everyone who's listening, is the statements that you made are about your emotional experience. So you mentioned that you're married, sure, is demographic, but I would venture that your marriage is a strong emotional part of your life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, my relationship with Chris is the most important thing in my life.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And then you talk about curiosity, you talk about love. If we go further, we'll hear about trials and tribulations.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Right? So if you literally look at the way that your sense of identity is built, it's a string of emotional experiences. Like my story is failing out of college, addiction, going to India, rising in some ways to the top of my field, right? So these are all emotional experiences. So our sense of identity, literally, if you ask people, who are you? It's our emotional moments that matter. That when I went through that divorce, that made me who I am. When I survived cancer, that made me who I am. When I ordered chicken salad for the seventh day in the row, that didn't make me who I am.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There's no emotion.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes, I get this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And so basically, you see as a psychiatrist and an expert in gaming addiction and that since tech and social media makes us numb, that is an experience lacking this emotional connection, which is what you need for a sense of identity.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Absolutely. When I work with these like gamers who are 26, what have you been doing with your life? Well, since I was 18, I've been sitting at home playing video games. There's one element of emotion to that, which is "I'm a loser." So that becomes their identity because they have no span of emotional experiences because the technology is literally numbing them out.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And so once you don't have that emotional experience, like think about it, like when your life is a haze of technology use, you don't become a person.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I think that's what most people are, honestly. Like you wake up, you sleep with your phone, you look at your phone, you commute with your phone, you sit down at work, you're on Zoom, you're on email, you're constantly staring at a screen, you look at your phone when you leave, you sit at a table with your family and half the people I see in restaurants are staring at their phones instead of talking to the people that are sitting there with them. You're sitting down in front of the TV, you're looking at a screen, you're also looking at your phone, you go to bed with your phone. I feel like there's a massive, massive state of disconnection that people are feeling right now, they're not calling it that, but that's what I'm sensing profoundly in my bones.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes. So let's understand that because you mentioned autopilot and identity. So now this is where autopilot comes in. So once I'm not connected with myself, what prompts my behavior? What prompts my motivation?
--:-- Mel Robbins: More numbing. Like the same thing. You're just sort of on this like...
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Absolutely.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So that's why we become autopilot. Why do we become autopilot? Oh my God, I just got something. And then on top of it, because you need some level of force or some action to be able to take a different type of action, put the phone down, get outside and go for a walk. Because you have allowed technology to invade your brain and squeeze all the dopamine juice out of your brain, you don't actually have that will within you.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Absolutely. To take the action.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Perfect, right?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So what happens, we numb ourselves to our identity and what is it that prompts us to do something with our lives? It is our sense of identity. I want to be a doctor. I want to be a good person. I want to empower other people. I want this, right? So we lose connection with our internal self. So then what happens is normally what happens in a healthy identity is I have internal drivers and that gets balanced with the outside world. The world expects this of me. This is what I want to do. There's a healthy conflict there. Now what's going on is we are numbing ourselves to the internal. There is no internal anymore, which means we become autopilot. What does autopilot mean? This means that my actions, my behaviors, my desires, my goals are actually being conditioned in my mind. I watch this kind of social media. I think I need a thigh gap. I watch this kind of thing. I need to get this kind of thing. I need to have a side hustle, right? I need to do this now. So now what happens, and then we feel like we're not in control of our lives because we have all of these goals that social media is feeding us. And then we get super confused. Should I do this or should I do this or should I do this? The reason you're confused is because none of it is coming from you. One day, this person is telling you this thing. The next day, someone is telling you this thing. Everyone's saying, get this bag today. Use the supplement tomorrow, right? This is what autopilot means because we are not driving anymore. We are being driven.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love you. I can feel the person listening right now, like literally either sitting in their car or they've put the dishes down that they've loaded or they've stepped off the treadmill at the gym and they're like, "I don't wanna do this to myself anymore." So Dr. K, now that we sort of see the implication and the fact that technology is moving faster than our brains can catch up and it is now designed to put you in this state because when you are in this state and you're on your phone all the time, other people are making money off of that attention. The longer that you stay on your phone, the more money people make. And when you understand this, you now have a choice about how you're going to use technology instead of being used by it. And I want to get into a couple like tactical things. So you just gave us all a massive wake up call. And so here's what I want you to do as you're listening. There are people in your life that spend too much time on their phone. There are people in your life that you're really worried about. Please let Dr. K explain this to them. Let Dr. K do the heavy lifting. Let him explain to the people that you love why this matters so much. Because I think when you hear him talk about this, like it makes you want to do something different. And so please take a moment, share this episode with the people in your life who really need to hear it, which is everybody. And don't go anywhere. There is so much more we're going to cover. We will be waiting for you after a very short break with our sponsors. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel. You and I are here today with Dr. K and he's got my head spinning. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to share this information and this episode as a resource with people in your life. Now let's jump back into it. Dr. K, I have another question for you. What do I do right now?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Right now.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right now.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So the first thing is that remove all of the things that make it easy for you to access your phone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Like what?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So remove face ID, remove biometrics. You have to use your little login, whatever, every single time. Make it hard for you to access.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So what we want to do is increase the time between an impulse to use your phone and access to your phone.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So practically what I'll also tell people is don't carry your phone around. I know it sounds crazy, but when I go home, I set it in a different room. I don't keep it near me.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So create space.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Second thing is no access to addicting apps on your home screen. Go to the app section of your app, open up your whole panel of 800 apps and find it that way. Reduce access.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So if you reduce access, there's a chance you can ride out the impulse. And what basically happens is the, see, anytime we give our brain instant gratification, it reinforces the behavior more. So you want to make it difficult for you to access. If you want to uninstall apps, go for it. So there's even stuff like you could save your logins in a browser, but don't have the native app. So if you really need to use the thing, use the web app, and it's going to be annoying and frustrating.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, that's the point.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So make it hard to access.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. And by the way, I want you to consider that it's not just you're making it hard for you to access it. I want you to really absorb what Dr. K is saying. You want to make it hard for all of the social media apps to access you.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Well said. Brilliant. I knew you were going there and that's exactly it, right? So what we want to do is see these apps are not designed to have you have a healthy relationship with them. They're designed to increase your unhealthy relationship with them. So whatever game they want to play, we want to try to tug of war in the opposite direction. So first thing is remove your impulsive access to whatever the stuff is. So this is also where like I won't keep a lot of stuff on my phone. I'll keep it like logged into my desktop.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I like that idea a lot.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So here's another thing that I think will really get people insane. So I try to work minimally on my phone and try to almost never work on my phone at all. So there's a huge problem where everyone's like, okay, we're checking email on our phone. We're doing this, we're doing this. The problem is once you're in your phone, how many times do you just do work and don't do anything else?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Never.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So this creates a problem because now you have a good reason to be on your phone. But the good reason then turns into bad reason because it's easy to switch from your email to something like TikTok, so easy. So that's where like work is for work and fun is for fun and separate those two things.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Great.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Now, a lot of people will push back and they'll say, but I need my phone for work. Right, I'm in real estate. I'm in this, I'm in that, I'm the other thing. If you need it, then that's a different story. But oftentimes it is convenient, is different. Like you can sit your ass at your computer and check your email like four times a day. And like, you can probably be okay there. You don't need it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, here's another thing you could do. If you truly have a job that you are tethered to your phone because people need to text you, email you and call you, great, have a work phone and don't have any social media apps on it.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes, you know, your spouse may be paranoid because now you've got two phones, but that's a separate bridge that we can get. Just don't put a password on it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, fair enough. Then they can look at any time they want.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So I think that's great, having a second phone. So we want to reduce our impulsive access to technology. That's kind of short term. Medium term is some of these other things, like we want to be super careful about using it an hour after we wake up and an hour before bed.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, let's talk about that. Dr. K, what is your morning routine that you recommend if I really want to get control of my use of technology and not allow social media and all these apps and everything on it to get access to me? What is the morning routine that you would recommend?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: What I would recommend is for the first hour, just no technology. So this starts with even things like an alarm where, you know, so I'll sometimes set an alarm, but I tend to find that my biological clock, and this comes with meditation, you just wake up when you tell your mind when to wake up and it can wake up. And so, you know, but if you have to start with an alarm, that's fine. So one thing I would say is like keep your phone like at distance from you.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And then do because here's the thing. We have a lot of stuff to do, right, that we never get around to. Just do all that stuff. Take out the trash. Just wake up, make your cup of coffee and then do whatever else you need to do. So I'll meditate in the morning, for example, for about 21 minutes. So I'll do all of that kind of stuff. And then like I'll shower and I'll get ready in an hour gets eaten up very quickly. You'll also find that like your day starts way better, right? Because you don't waste that 28 minutes and then 12 minutes on the toilet and then five minutes here. So just start off trying to avoid using your phone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So neurologically speaking, what will you likely experience if you take control of the first hour of your day and you do not let technology consume and enter your mind?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: The enemy that you need to conquer is boredom. This is really important to understand. A lot of people don't understand what boredom is. Boredom is your brain's way of punishing you for not giving it dopamine. So we have to understand this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does that mean? I don't know what that means. It punishes you for-
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes, 100%. So let's understand this. So if I'm addicted to opiates and I don't get opiates-
--:-- Mel Robbins: I have withdrawal.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yeah. And do you know what that withdrawal feels like? So we get hypersensitivity of our nociceptors, which is our pain receptors. So our brain and our body punish us. They say, hey, we need this stuff. I'm going to punish you as a signal to give me what I want. This is true of opiates. This is also true of calories and hydration. Hunger and thirst are negative experiences that are used to drive behavior. So our body punishes us all the time if we are not doing good things.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Now, the problem is that this gets hijacked by things like Twinkies, where the hunger signal was evolved when we didn't have Twinkies, when we had like roots and tubers that we had to eat. And in the same way, boredom has all kinds of healthy reasons why we have it, but now it's gotten hijacked by technology. So when our brain is craving dopamine, it will make you feel bored. And your antidote to boredom is to give it what it needs. It's like it's jonesing for this, right? It's kind of crazy. So we have to understand that boredom is not like something to be avoided. Boredom is your brain's way of taking control of you. Because then, oh, like I'm bored. So what do you do? You reach for your phone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely, right?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And then the brain is satisfied. It's like, yeah, thanks for giving me a hit of this. By the way, dumbass, you only did this for 15 minutes. And now you have this thought, oh, I have stuff to do. So you close the phone and then your brain is like, uh-uh, I'm bored. I don't want to do that. Pull out the phone again. So the main thing that you have to tolerate is boredom. You don't have to conquer it. You just have to tolerate it. Because eventually, if you don't give in to the thing, that signal will subside. So our brain has this principle of homeostasis where it never sends us signals forever. So even if you're hungry, right? You missed lunch. You feel hungry for a while and then your brain acclimatizes to the signal. You stop feeling hungry for an hour or two and then the brain reminds you again, same thing will happen.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's true.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So what we wanna do with technology, we don't need to conquer anything. We need endurance. We need actually to lean into inaction. We don't have to be positive. We don't have to be motivated. We don't have to work on our resume. All we need to do is endurance. Just tolerate the negativity, tolerate the boredom. That's going to be your main enemy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, great. So put the phone out of reach, fill the first hour with all the kinds of things you can't get to. It'll go super fast. You will notice a boost in your mood.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: No, no, no. What are you going to notice?
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, you're going to suffer.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: You're going to suffer.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, at the beginning you will suffer.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So I'll give you just a great example. So if you're listening to this right now, no cell phones in the bathroom. Because what do you need yourself in the bathroom for?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't know. It's the alleviation of boredom, right?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: That's true. And it's like, do you really need stimulation for the five minutes that you're taking a dump in the morning? Like, can you not live without five minutes of like, I don't know, looking at cat videos? Just leave it outside. And if you can't, you need to take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror and be like, this is insane. That would be a sign that you got a problem and you need to get control of your relationship with technology.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely, absolutely. Right? Because there's nothing to lose, right? It's not like that's a productive time. Everyone thinks it's very productive. I don't know what's happening in your bowels, but it's very productive. There's all kinds of, yeah.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Right. So we just let, let it go automatically and we stay there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But I get your point, which is, you know, I have this, I have a habit here when I'm at work, I leave my phone on my desk. It's not on my person.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Very good.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Ever. And I've noticed my tolerance for being away from my phone is pretty big because I exercise this all the time. I don't sleep with it next to me. So that way I don't reach for it. I don't have it on my person the second that I'm done with work for the day and I'm down cooking in the kitchen.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So something beautiful. So at the beginning, it will be tough.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well said.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So then something beautiful happens. So if I am craving Twinkies and I don't eat Twinkies, then my body will eventually be satisfied with a salad. Does that make sense?
--:-- Mel Robbins: It does, because I used to eat at McDonald's every day in high school. I freaking loved it. I love their shakes. I love dipping the fries in the chocolate shakes. I love the Big Mac. And then I don't know what happened. Oh, there wasn't a McDonald's where I went to college. And so I didn't have it. And then I stopped craving it. And I can't even think of like why I would pull into a drive-thru. Like it doesn't even occur to me.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So now we get to phase two, which is once you tolerate the boredom for a while, I don't know if you're familiar with this concept of shower thoughts, but a lot of people have very profound thoughts in the shower.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And the question is why? The only reason is because this is the time where you are with yourself. It's the one last bastion that is protected from technology because water is damaging the technology. So it's the only time we're with ourselves. And when we with ourselves, remember that the problem with technology is it numbs us out to ourselves. The other mechanism it uses is it literally externalizes my attention. So what my mind is thinking about is what I see, what I hear, instead of like what I feel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, out there.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes. Which is why the FOMO and the constant comparison is so amplified.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's terrible.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Because technology has trained you to have an external focus. And if you're never allowing yourself to be alone with your own thoughts, alone with your own feelings, moments of boredom, idleness, stillness, to allow your mind to wander, to feel connected to yourself, of course, you're going to think all the answers are out there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Right. So we have a huge problem of externalizing our attention. So if I take a human being and I stick them on an island for a day and I'm like, just like there's food and stuff right, like they'd be okay. Like you can experience your life on a given day and most people's lives are not that bad thankfully. I mean maybe they can be. But the moment that you externalize your attention, you are not paying attention to the positive and negative signals in here, then you lose touch with yourself. So after the boredom comes something super cool. So one of the things that I strongly recommend people do is if you're feeling bored, pace.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you mean? Like walk around?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes. So I do this all the time where when I take a break, I will pace, I will go for walks. And then what you'll notice is that there is this like flooding of mental activity. But if you do that throughout the day, that's your brain like processing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I actually dare you as you're listening to Dr. K to do this today.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I dare you to put your phone in your kitchen or in your car or somewhere off your person. And I dare you to simply literally either pace around or even better, go for a walk for 10 minutes. And you will notice the flooding of the brain. And yes, so there's all kinds of suppressed stuff that will come up.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yeah. It's not gonna be productive at the beginning, but then over time you will notice that your mind will settle down and you will feel calmer. So like when we give our brain idle time, it's kind of like sorting through the mail. Like we have all this mail that's piled up that we haven't dealt with and we keep pushing it away, keep pushing it away, keep pushing it away. So your brain needs time for it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Another question, nighttime. What is your recommendation if, you know, we're listening, we're like, I have to do this. I hear often hear people say an hour beforehand, no screens. What do you recommend, Dr. K?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah. So I don't recommend screens an hour before bed as well. So I think that's good. So and that's where like, you know, we have to structure our environment. So like I will keep my phone usually not within like hand distance. You can like in that to people like an hour can feel like a really long time, but I find that if I just don't accompany my, if I don't let my phone accompany me, when I just do the things that I'm supposed to do, I'll even be on my computer. So sometimes I'll like, you know, look at like my schedule for the next day or things like that. But I try to use my computer a lot more than my phone. Well, there's a very different experience. Yes. Like you're basically intaking versus giving your attention. Well, there's a boundary. There's a boundary, right? So you're, we don't want our phone to invade the other corners of our life. We want to have technology be where it belongs and not have it be anywhere else.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Okay, so you want me to, so I'm going to ask if you are someone who is worried about a person in your life that is playing video games or is on social media, but you know, your work really has focused on video games. How do you A, know it's a problem, especially if you have a kid or a partner whose social life is really about gaming and they're really good at it. So they feel good about themselves when they're doing. So how do you know it's a problem? And two, how do you help the person other than sending them this episode to listen to?
--:-- Mel Robbins: So oftentimes we all struggle with technology, but oftentimes we'll have people in our lives who struggle more than we do. And we can really see the impact in their lives. And the challenge that a lot of people face that you may face is that when you try to do something about it, you get pushback. Yes. Right. You can see it's a problem, but for whatever reason, they're like their head is in the sand. They're in denial, whatever. So the first question is, how do you know if it's a problem?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So if there's an impairment of function, it's impacting their professional career, their academic life, social life, which includes family relationships, mental health or physical health. That's usually what we're looking for for the threshold of addiction. Okay. Second thing, though, is that I'd say, especially for parents or loved ones, trust your instinct. Because I think that half the problem that we're facing in the world today is we're saying, if it's an addiction, we should do something about it. And if it's not an addiction, then it's okay. That's absurd. Right? So even if it isn't a problem, or even if their life isn't falling apart.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you kind of know. You're like, my instinct, this is bothering me, and I don't know what to do about it.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes. So I would say for most parents, I'll tell them, I mean, even if they're not addicted. I don't think that that's important. The main thing is trust your instinct if you think it's a problem, right? And it could get better. And that's the thing is I don't want to set a standard that is, okay, your life isn't falling apart. There are so many people that I work with who have loved ones who are just like kind of stuck in neutral.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: They go to their nine to five job. They're not really in really engaging relationships. You know, they'll go to birthday parties and stuff. They kind of show up for life, but they don't live life. So I don't like this emphasis on impairment of function and it being addiction for us to intervene. We should be living fulfilling lives. And if someone that you know is not living a fulfilling life, you should absolutely intervene.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what is the opening line? Because it is human nature when somebody comes to you and says, I'm worried about you. Push back. I'm fine. Like, block it out. I'm not listening. So we're going to give you a couple of opening lines that make assumptions. So the first thing is, hey, I'm concerned about your technology use. So just own what you're concerned about. Second line is, I'm sorry for judging you. And I recognize that I've been pushy without really understanding. And like, I'm going to take a step back. So acknowledge your concern. Oftentimes apologize because this is not the first time you're having this conversation, right, where you've tried to explain to them, convince them, whatever. So you want to open them up to it. If you kind of open up by saying, hey, I'm sorry for judging you or whatever, that goes a long way in terms of their cognitive flexibility and their willingness to listen. Third thing is help me understand what you think about technology or whatever the thing is. So help me understand, like, can you just tell me about your social media use? Can you tell me a little bit? Help me understand. Because if we don't say that first line, let's like unpack a little bit. Oftentimes what people will do is they'll detect that I really have these views and you're not really just asking an open-ended question. They're going to feel like you're trying to trap them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So you want to own that apology and own, like, I know I've been concerned in the past. I realize, like, I've been pushing you and that's not fair to you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: I'm sorry for that. Thank you. Help me understand.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: You know, like, how do you see this? Because, like, I see this and it's a problem to me, but, like, anytime I talk to you about it, it doesn't seem to go well. So help me understand. How do you feel about it?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Right.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And that's when they'll, sometimes they'll say, oh, you know, it's not a problem or something like that. And that's where we also want to use the second technique. And we lay these out. There's a ton of sample dialogue and how to raise a healthy gamer, which, by the way, has been useful for not people who are parents, but just anyone who wants to have a conversation with someone about changing their behavior. So we see a lot of benefit from spouses. So we have a lot of husbands who game too much. I'm guilty of that. You know, so there's a lot of really useful conversations. Even people have used the book for conversations with their parents. So it's just a really solid set of evidence-based, like, conversational techniques.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And the next thing that we want to do is something called reflectively listen. So if we start with a question, but then I ask you, you say something, and then I ask you another question, I ask you another question, it's going to feel like an interrogation. So we don't want to do that. You start with one question, and then after whatever they say, they say, oh, it's fine. Like, I don't think it's a problem. What you actually want to do is repeat back to them what they said, meet them where they're at. You could say, okay, that's totally fine. So I'm hearing you say that it's not a problem. So I guess the conversation is over.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Not really you say that yeah sure and then what do they say i don't know i guess they would well you know what's it i'm thinking about how i would use this with my daughters and tiktok yeah and i think if i were to say what do you think about this they'd probably say i spend too much time on it okay right so so that that's that's what so a couple of things one is if someone doesn't want to have the conversation you can acknowledge that and exit the conversation the first thing that it'll do is it'll confuse them so instead of going into this pattern.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Oh, right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And they're like, what the what just happened? I said I didn't want to talk about it. And this person did not nag. This person did not push. Maybe this is different. So then you can say like, oh, so like, is it OK if I ask you like more questions about it or do you want this conversation to be over and respect their space? And then if they say I want it to be over, then I would say one last thing, which is like, is it OK if I like just think about it a little bit and bring it up with you again? Now, if you're respecting their space, it's very hard to say if you're saying, okay, I'm done talking, you want to be done, I'm done. Thank you for at least humoring me. Is it okay if I bring it up again? I've never heard a single person say, how dare you respect my boundaries?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So we want to flip the way that we're approaching the conversation, really create space for them. And it works wonders because now they're confused. You've turned over a new leaf, which means through like empathic emotional mirroring, it will prompt them to turn over a new leaf. I love this. The best way to get your spouse to say, I'm sorry is to say I'm sorry first. No one wants to say I'm sorry first, but it's very easy to say second. See, these are principles of human nature that we just ignore because we get so caught up with our egos. So you want to just say, hey, is it OK if we talk a little bit more about it? I'd like to understand more. And then whatever they say back, just reflect it back.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Dr. K, I am sitting here with my jaw on the floor because there were three major things that you said today that I will never forget that are going to change the way that I go about my day-to-day life. The first one is using that image of technology and the engineering and software development and app development as being invasive to your brain. And the fact that the addiction to technology that we are all struggling with right now is so different than any other addiction because it is activating so many different aspects of your brain and it is intertwined with so much of your life and that the 99% of us have to figure out how to have a different relationship with technology.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And so thinking about it that way elevated how imperative this is because the fact is apps are not going anywhere. The software development and the sophistication of the way that apps and technology is designed to suck your attention from you is only going to increase, which means having a reality check with yourself now and realizing that this isn't about you resisting them. It's about you controlling the access that apps and that technology platforms have to you. And when you realize that you actually are in control when you see it that way, but you have to take this seriously in terms of the impact on the brain. And you also kind of highlighted boredom in a way that I think is super important because this little addiction and invasion in our minds takes over in a five second window of boredom.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: You're standing in the elevator, you look at your phone. You feel the flood of activity in your brain, you look at your phone. And that's where you're gonna battle this. And there's so many downstream effects, right? Because right now the problem is five seconds of boredom costs you an hour. Imagine if you could invert that. You could get an hour back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, absolutely.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And this is where everyone's like, oh, I don't have time for anything.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, that's because we spend an average of four to six hours a day on our cell phone.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Right?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: We're literally losing the best hours of our day. You have to work, you have to sleep, you have to eat, you have to shower, hopefully, boop, whatever. And then it's all the other time that makes us who we are, that allows us to connect with ourselves. We're forgetting ourselves. We're losing ourselves to this thing. Because when I get disconnected from myself, there's no internal driver. So I become a blank slate for external things to fill in my values. I should be doing this. I should be doing this. I hear the word should so much nowadays. What about what you want? Should comes from the outside. It's about what society wants from you. And then we struggle to do the things that we should do. Why? Because you don't want to do them. Operate from in here. Then you'll have a ton of motivation.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: And you can't operate from in here when you've handed everything over to what's in your hand. Literally the content of your mind is based on what is outside of you. It is not about what is within you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So Dr. K, speaking directly to the person listening, if there were one thing that you would want them to take away as an imperative, like something to do from this, other than forwarding this conversation to everybody that they know and love, because every person needs to hear exactly how you just framed this. What do you want the person listening to act on today?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: The most important thing for them to do is nothing. So when it comes to technology, if you want to get control of your technology, what you need to learn how to do is nothing. Technology can only invade your life if you let it by acting, by picking up the phone, by taking it to the bathroom, by pulling it out in the elevator. Do nothing. Get better at doing absolutely nothing. Pace, sit, get bored. We have this great exercise we do in our community that is transformative for about half of the people who do it, which is stare at a blank wall for one hour.
--:-- Mel Robbins: One hour?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: One hour, absolutely.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my God, one hour.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: We spend four to six hours a day on our cell phone doing absolutely nothing. One hour, it's like shocking. Everyone's like, oh my God, one hour. That's even the junior version. The senior version is take a flight without any entertainment, without anything to distract your mind. Just take a flight and be bored for six hours. Go for it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what happens when somebody takes this invitation and just sits in a room and stares at a wall for an hour?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: So some people will have catharsis. Like all kinds, they'll get bored for the first 15 minutes. Their mind will start to think about things. They'll sometimes engage with their thoughts. Sometimes people start crying. There's just so much suppressed emotion that everything starts coming up. Some people are just bored for an hour and their mind wanders and it's like not that big of a cathartic journey. But even then, that's a win because now you've tolerated boredom for an hour. You are increasing your resistance to boredom. It is your resistance to boredom that will allow you to resist technology. Because what does technology offer you? It offers you an instant relief of boredom.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What are your parting words, Dr. K?
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: The only reason we're losing this war is because we haven't been fighting it. So a lot of people will look at this and think, oh, my God, like everything we're saying, it's going to get more invasive. Everything is getting worse. Everything is getting worse. But we haven't been concertedly fighting it. I'm not talking about regulation and Congress and like all that stuff is great. You should do that. But, you know, I'm a clinician. So my target is one person. And how do I help this person? And what I found is once you start trying to fight this and you equip yourself with some knowledge of how it works, you will be amazed at how easy it is, actually. It'll be difficult for a while, but then you will get good at it. The problem is that we've been fighting this war with our blindfolds on. We don't know how our brains work. We don't know how technology, we don't know how any of this stuff works. So there's a lot of hope. And we just need to start fighting it in relatively the right way. You don't have to do it perfect. And you'll be amazed at how much things can cascade in the right direction.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I feel, Dr. K, this might be one of the most important conversations we have had ever on the Mel Robbins podcast because it impacts absolutely every single human being and you have so eloquently and visually painted the war we're actually fighting and why it matters. I cannot thank you enough for being here. Thank you so much for having me.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: I mean, I think it's high praise coming from such a high impact podcast where you guys have some so much impactful stuff.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, it's it's this impacts. Absolutely. If you've got a phone in your hand, it is changing your brain and it is time to take control of this relationship with technology. Thank you for teaching us how and why. Thank you so much.
--:-- Dr. Alok Kanojia: Thank you for having me.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You're welcome. And thank you for being here with us today. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to tell you that I love you. I believe in you. And this really matters. I do not want this to be an episode that you kind of watch and then you forget. This really will change the rest of your life. It'll change your brain. It'll change how meaningful your life could be. If you struggle with putting yourself first, if you feel disconnected, this is actually the solution that you need to take first and take it seriously. Alrighty, I will talk to you in a few days.
--:-- [End of conversation. Audio continues with outtakes and legal disclaimer.]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, great. I got this. Okay. Okay. I love this. I think that's awesome. That's really cute. Okay. Okay. What will you learn? What will you learn? Yeah, you're right. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Understood. Okay. Got you. Got you. Sorry about that. Did you like that ending or do you want something? Oh, okay, great. So good. Okay, great. Yeah, absolutely. So good. Holy cow, wow.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language you know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
