Screens - Mind Matters podcast episode

Our obsession today with screens is often unintentionally taking us to places we regret

• We use these windows into the world for hours every day, often unaware how intentional content creators and app designers are in shaping our decisions and forming harmful habits.
• Thankfully, we can begin to go from unintentional with our screen use to intentional flipping that imbalance back into our favor, reclaiming our thought lives and living out our potential to positively impact people and the world around us.- Doug Smith, a popular speaker, mentor and author of the book unintentional, discusses how screens secretly shape your desires, and how you can break free.

How does this relate to our immersion in screens and content today?

• In the introduction to the book, you tell us it can be divided into three sections awaken, examine, and overcome.
• The main character in the book is Truman Burbank, the first baby ever adopted by a corporation, and they turn his life into a reality TV show
• He has fake parents, a manufactured childhood, and is married to an actress who is only pretending to be his wife
• As a result, we are seeing epidemics of anxiety and depression, and suicidality, even on people that are not screen addicts

Our lack of focus is really ruining our ability to think clearly at all, and if we can't think clearly, then who are we at the end of the day?

• Screen time can be linked to 2007 a year for, for me that lives in infamy
• 2007 was also the year that Facebook launched
• We have this perfect storm of the invention of social media and the and the internet connected device on every person
• By design, by design, these apps are designed to cause us to be distracted
• The dopamine pleasure cycles that these screens induce in us can induce similar to those who are taking serious drugs

The power we have as individuals to stop our screens from shaping our desires and forming harmful habits

• Edward Bernays, the nephew to Sigmund Freud, is considered the father of public relations
• Influenced women to buy more cigarettes from American Tobacco Company
• Hired fashion models to promote the spirit of women's liberation
• Pointed the focus of the campaign towards an addictive and deadly product like cigarettes
• This is manipulation and exploitation