[Music]
I'm a mental health and substance use
clinician and my clients are often
coming to me looking for help dealing
with stress they come in feeling
stressed about finances their jobs and
their relationships and sometimes
they're hesitant about working on this
with me I'm so young what do I know
about stress well I've been surrounded
by the internet and computers for most
of my life technology exists to make our
lives easier more automated and less
stressful but does it who better to
address the impact of technology on
stress than a digital native we tend to
think of stress itself as a problem but
it's actually a mechanism to help us
deal with problems just as inflammation
is a mechanism that helps the body
eliminate a threat like infection stress
is a mechanism that helps the body cope
with a threat like a predator the stress
response has evolved over hundreds of
thousands of years and it's activated
when we feel threatened or we're faced
with a situation that exceeds our
ability to cope in a time when we were
spending our days hunting and gathering
sweating helped to cool us down an
increasing heart rate helped the blood
carry glucose and oxygen to the muscles
quickly shutting down digestion allowed
us to redirect that energy to our
muscles to make us stronger and it all
made sense for us back then making us
more likely to survive and reproduce and
pass that response on to future
generations I don't know about you guys
but a pounding heart and sweating really
helped me solve my problems I've never
had to kill my own food but I have been
to plenty of meetings and interviews
where being a sweaty red tomato was just
not very helpful thousands of years ago
human stressors were largely physical
but now we have medicine agriculture law
and relatively few predators the reason
we're still so stressed despite all of
these adaptations is that our
environment has changed quickly and our
body's evolution is nowhere near
catching up in fact you could say we're
maladapted because we're not fit for our
environment in evolutionary terms
Fitness refers to how well suited an
organism is for its environment so for
example I'm not fit to survive
underwater because of the lack of gills
and fins
but a fish is so we're stuck with an
ancient stress response in this modern
environment the way humans survive in
the modern day is by engaging in social
relationships
that's your workplaces schools families
so when our survival in well-being is
dependent upon this environment of
social relationships it makes sense that
those are the problems that cause our
stress response to activate the stress
response has evolved over hundreds of
thousands of years because it made an
organism more likely to survive and then
reproduce and that allowed them to pass
that response on to their offspring
so money dating friendships
relationships these are common problems
that threaten our ability to excel in
social settings and so social threats
are now the Predators of today we engage
in social interactions all the time so
we go to work and we chat with our
colleagues and our customers and and
then we come home and we spend time with
our families but recently a new type of
social interaction has been introduced
into our daily lives social media now
even when we're physically alone we can
be having social interactions social
media is a good thing it allows us to
connect with friends and family who are
far away or find opportunities for
events but sometimes we use social media
when we're avoiding loneliness or
boredom or we're unhappy with our other
relationships social media can also help
us to satisfy major psychological needs
like autonomy belonging and competence
we can easily feel that we belong to a
community online that may not be as
easily reached in real life like my
beloved border collie group on reddit we
also feel a sense of autonomy and our
ability to portray ourselves as
intelligent attractive and popular and
that appeals to our need to feel
competent but when everybody's
displaying unrealistically perfect
versions of themselves and we view that
for hours each day there are some
negative psychological consequences
let's call it a facetune effect after
the popular image editing app we engage
in social comparison all the time we
evaluate ourselves and our abilities to
those of others in order to evaluate
ourselves to be as fit as possible for
our environment we have to evaluate our
performance and then strives to improve
upward social comparison is when we
compare ourselves to someone who's at a
higher level when I compare myself to a
fitness model my evaluation indicates
that I'm at a lower level of ability and
that can result in a lowering of
self-esteem for others that mode that
comparison could be motivating if they
feel that they could reach that level of
ability so it's up to each of us to know
how comparison affects us and adjusts
the content we consume accordingly
another negative effect of social media
use is FOMO the fear of missing out
social media shows us all the fun and
exciting things every one of our friends
is doing like hiking Everest and getting
married and climbing the ranks at work
we're presented with more opportunities
than a person can possibly take on all
at once in real life we're fearing that
others are having experiences we're
missing out on a high level of FOMO is
associated with low mood low life
satisfaction and negative physical
health outcomes those high in FOMO also
experience more physical symptoms of
stress and spend more time online ironic
how our fear of missing out on things
causes us to spend more time on our
phones missing out on things the new
type of stress is digital stress this is
the sense of dread you feel when you've
got a hundred and thirty unread emails
five missed calls 15 facebook
notifications and 27 snapchats it
becomes a burden plus all those unread
notifications stoke the FOMO fire there
are ways to use social media and lessen
the associated stress use it actively
rather than passively so instead of only
scrolling and hitting the occasional
like post things share and comment
unfollow accounts that make you feel
badly compare yourself in realistic ways
not to celebrities with teams to make
them appear perfect turn off
non-essential notifications
and set boundaries on what you share on
your social media
an obvious internet boundary is not
sending your credit card number to the
shady characters that show up in your
junk mail folder but not so obvious is
that your online friends don't need to
know about a fight with your partner a
boundary rule that I implement with
clients is turning off apps or people
whose texts and calls make you feel
stressed and then checking them when you
feel ready ultimately share what you
want to share you have the right to use
social media on your own terms so what
happens in the future if we don't change
our habits in our lifetime will
experience more FOMO which is associated
with anxiety depression negative
physical health outcomes and low life
satisfaction we'll engage in social
comparison which can affect our social
self-esteem and we'll have unrealistic
ideas about what goes on in the real
world because of the skewed
representations online in the longer
term will be passing these habits on to
the next generation what if when we
first discovered fire we liked that it
was warm so we kept jumping in it we
don't have to get burned by social media
but we do have to change our habits it's
impossible to predict how the body will
evolve but at least we can show the next
generation how to survive and thrive in
the digital world it's time to get a
handle on the way we're using technology
we're increasingly surrounded by and
reliant on computers and if that's our
environment we'll have the drive to be
as fit for it as possible if we feel
unfit we'll experience stress so we can
stay up-to-date with technology or we
can change our expectations and
environments I get it
change is hard and you're probably
thinking is this millennial kid really
telling me to get off my phone yeah I am
you're using social media more than you
think no one is immune and it's not only
social media that's wreaking havoc it's
email news sites blogs and games they're
stressing you out their worsening your
mental
physical health and your relationships
but they don't have to thanks
[Applause]