The Science Of Screen Addiction & How To Stop - Dr K Healthy Gamer

What we're starting to see is that, like, individuals are losing control of themselves, and they don't even realize that it's happening. All they really see is that, like, this is not exactly what I wanna be doing on a day-to-day basis. I have goals, I have aspirations, I have things that I should be doing, but I can't seem to get away from a screen.

Dr. K, welcome to the show.

It's an honor to be here, Chris.

It's been very requested. You are one of the most requested guests that I've had on the show. Really, really looking forward to this.

I'm looking forward to it too. I, I love your podcast, love the, you know, blend of science and sort of, like, personal experience that you really put forward here, so huge fan. And-

Thank you.

... honored to be here.

What- what do you say when you meet somebody at a cocktail party and they say, "What do you do?"

(laughs) Uh, so, you know, my stock answer's actually, like, "I'm a physician by training," or, um, or I say, "I work in digital mental health." So I, I-

Digital mental health.

Yeah.

I ima- imagin- I imagine that everybody knows what that is.

Well, so that's the thing, right, is it's l- it's, like, enough buzzwords to where it kind of, like, people don't usually ask questions after that. So I think it kinda depends on, okay, what am I really looking for? Like, do I wanna talk about myself right now? Um, sometimes I'll just say, "I'm a psychiatrist." That's true.

But you've updated yourself. You are a, uh, clinically trained psychiatrist who has brought himself into the 21st century.

I guess you could say that. (laughs) I th- I think maybe the, the 21st century has brought me into it, is maybe a better way to put it. But yeah, I, I think we're both kind of evolving together at the frontier.

Yes. So you spend an awful lot of time working with gamers, people that use screens a lot in a variety of capacities, getting them to improve their mental health, getting them to better understand what it is that their motivations are, why their brain works the way that it does, challenges they're facing, uh, explanations about mindfulness. From an outsider's perspective, what is it that most people don't understand about gamers and screens and mental health and the relationship of how that all works together?

Yeah. So I, I think let's start actually with, like, screens and technology. So if we look at technology, technology tries to engage us, right? But if we look at which organ does technology interact with, primarily it interacts with the mind. And so what I, I think, uh, what a lot of people don't understand is that our mind is being accessed or activated or triggered basically constantly all day every day in a way that we just haven't evolved to deal with. So if you sort of look at, like, the natural environment in which the human brain evolved, it's like a low stimulation environment, like go for a walk somewhere, right? And that's actually the baseline that we grew up in, that we evolved in. And so all of this high stimulation is, uh, is working on us in some way. And the thing about our, our, our minds is that if you really think about this principle of engagement, what does engagement mean? What are they engaging? They're engaging your mind. And as platforms get better and better at this, as video games get better and better at this, what we're starting to see is that, like, individuals are losing control of themselves, and they don't even realize that it's happening. All they really see is that, like, this is not exactly what I wanna be doing on a day-to-day basis. I have goals, I have aspirations, I have things that I should be doing, but I can't seem to get away from a screen.