Mindflex- Dr. Eli Shapiro- "Are we HAPPIER with Technology in our lives?"

good evening i'm dr ali shapiro and i'm thrilled to be speaking to you tonight on behalf of project inspire and torah anytime on a very important topic particularly in this era of covid with so much uncertainty and so much turmoil the topic of happiness and it's happiness not just in the general sense that we all experience but it's happiness in the era of technology technology is transforming our lives in so many ways and understanding the role that it plays in our happiness in our existential well-being is a critical topic and i am pleased to be able to discuss that with you tonight so uh let's start with the fundamental question of what is happiness there's a lot of research exploring the topic a lot of definitions and i think that we can sum it up in two simple words and that is contentment and meaning finding contentment in life overall satisfaction in life and meaning and purpose that we have a function that we have a role to play and that we are contributing in a meaningful way and i think that's where happiness comes from uh when the uh when the researchers wanted to know what contributes to being the most happiest person in america there was a study done uh by the gallup foundation it was actually published in the new york times in 2011 and uh normally i don't read when i uh when i present but this uh is just too good not to read the new york times uh published the study by the gallup poll who wanted to know if they came up with a statistical composite for the happiest person in america what would that look like just so you know as a presenter i often bring statistics and data into my presentations um many people feel that i have too much data and statistics in my presentations actually about 72 percent of people feel that there's too much data and statistics but nonetheless i think it's important to utilize that information uh and so the gallup poll did this statistical composite of the happiest person in america and uh they used variables for example uh men tend to be happier than women older people people tend to be happier than middle-aged people and so on and so in putting all these statistical variables together they found that the happiest person in america must be a tall asian-american observant jew who is at least 65 and married has children lives in hawaii runs his own business and has a household income of more than 120 000 a year so these are the statistical criteria does such a person exist as it turns out alvin wong of uh honolulu hawaii is a 5 foot 10 69 year old chinese american kosher observing jew who is married with children and runs his own health care management business and earns more than 000 a year so these criteria these variables contribute to being the happiest person in america but for those of us that don't meet those criteria that are not alvin wong how is it that we find happiness in our uh daily living and so i think a fundamental question that comes up uh and my colleague david rosmarin is an expert on this uh he posits that we live in the wealthiest most privileged society in the history of the world if we look at throughout history the way people live the way people function uh we are so fortunate to be living in the time that we live in with the amount of wealth and privilege that we have i'm not going to go into all the examples of of what we have available to us but it's quite remarkable every time i turn the faucet on in my house and the water comes in and it's just amazing to think that a hundred years ago you would have to uh you know go to the local well and fill up buckets of water to bring back to your house so just simple things like that we live in amazing amazing wonderful times yet um our overall rates of anxiety and depression are incredibly high and it seems to contradict one another if we live in the wealthiest most privileged society how is it that our rates of depression and anxiety are so incredibly high furthermore uh does technology play a role in all this is technology making us happier or is technology making us miserable and these are the fundamental questions i hope to address tonight with you um but first before we begin i i have a confession to make and that confession is i love technology if you love technology you can just raise your hand with me in solidarity uh technology is amazing it gives us such wonderful opportunity in so many ways including my ability to speak to you tonight so technology is just this medium that is so so fantastic and wonderful in fact i don't think i'm alone in this uh a study by the un found that 6 billion out of the world's seven billion people uh own a mobile phone yet only four and a half billion have a toilet so when we think about the priorities that we have um certainly owning a mobile phone is a high priority and a toilet uh seems to be a close second and so when we think about where our priorities are and our existential experiences technology plays an incredibly important and prominent role it offers us a tremendous amount i like to say that uh we currently live in the best of times and we live in the worst of times uh i think someone may have said that a few years earlier but uh the best of times the worst of times uh the age of wisdom the age of foolishness technology offers us a tremendous amount it gives us accessibility it gives us productivity information at our fingertips connectivity in so many ways and i think cobit really underscored so many of the advantages uh that technology gives us just imagine what isolation and quarantine would look like if we did not have technology if we did not have uh sites like torah anytime to connect for information uh to communicate with family we have so many opportunities and so technology is amazing and it's wonderful it offers us these amazing amazing opportunities yet at the same time it's not just the best of times it's not just the age of wisdom it's also the worst of times and it's the age of foolishness technology impacts us in so many ways negatively socially behaviorally psychologically day-to-day these areas uh social behavioral psychologically certain certainly uh are impacting our ability to function and maximize our own experiences in the realm of contentment and meaning specifically so if we define a contentment and meaning uh you know to be related to happiness is technology uh giving us more contentment and more meaning or is technology uh taking away from that and what's really interesting is i don't believe that there's one correct answer for that and i think as individuals what we find is that on certain days technology is providing us with more contentment and meaning and more happiness and other days it's not so when we look at its impact and its relationship with psychological functioning and social functioning we have to ask ourselves a fundamental question and i think this question is something we have to ask ourselves every day is is technology serving as an enhancement in our lives or is it serving as an intrusion in our lives and that is a question that may change day to day certainly uh different personality types and different people are going to have different relationships with technology some people are going to have more functional more healthy relationships with technology other people are going to have more dysfunctional more unhealthy relationships with technology but all of that impacts our our psychological functioning our social functioning and ultimately our our happiness and so it's critical for us to think in terms of on a daily basis sort of taking our own assessment was technology enhancing my day today or did it serve as an intrusion today when we look at the relationship between technology and our psychological functioning we see connections between overall general anxiety we see uh relationships with depression isolation certainly self-regulation how we regulate our technology use uh impacts how we feel about ourselves uh you know so for example you know if we ever forgot our phone at home we had that initial reaction that oh oh my gosh i forgot my phone at home what am i going to do and we panic right it's like uh i forgot my phone at home no one can get in touch with me what am i going to do and those of us that are moderately well adjusted it goes from that panic that anxiety to oh my gosh i forgot my cell phone at home no one can get in touch with me and then a certain calm comes over us a certain uh peace comes over us that we actually have some time where we're not going to be disturbed we're not going to be tethered to everybody else and so that piece of it we can really relate to how technology is impacting our our overall anxiety and the self-regulation piece how often do we say okay i'm gonna put the phone away and uh and and leave it on the side or are we going back to it do we go back to it and we we check and did i miss a text did i miss that idea to be able to self-regulate how many times do we add instagram to our phones and get rid of instagram when it's intruding and so that idea of being able to self-regulate if we can't self-regulate if we can't be in control it also has a negative impact on our overall well-being and happiness numerous research studies have been done uh in looking at teenagers uh and their relationships with technology obviously teenagers say technology enhances um my lifestyle having a smartphone it's my connection to my social experience etc and what's really interesting is that when we study uh technology and one's relationship with technology the more they rely on technology and the more importance they place on technology the higher their levels of anxiety tend to be and the lower their levels of subjective well-being overall happiness tends to be as well as academic performance and in the work environment work productivity all of that relates to an individual's relationship with technology interesting study um most people will check their phone close to 80 times a day and never put it down for more than 10 minutes at a time but we know that in order for someone to become immersed in a task it takes about 20 minutes to be firing on all cylinders and be focused on that test so if we are checking our devices every 10 minutes we are never fully achieving our maximum capability as it relates to productivity and and basically contributing meaningful work and our sense of um contribution and functioning and maximizing our own abilities is really diminished when we are distracted by our phones uh and that idea can be carried over into so many areas of our lives where phones are serving or technology as a whole is serving as a as a distraction not too long ago i had the opportunity to have a meeting with the new york mets um with uh their baseball team here in new york in case you haven't heard of them uh and the uh people i was meeting with over at the mets organization were sharing with me about a certain ball player who was taking frequent bathroom breaks during the game now uh the collective bargaining agreement in baseball you are not allowed to have phones in in the dugout but in the clubhouse uh people do have phones and initially when this player kept on taking bathroom breaks they thought he uh maybe there was a medical issue that they were concerned about but as it turned out he was updating his instagram feed in the middle of uh of baseball games when you think about that if you were to go to work and you know 40 000 people were coming out to to watch you work uh well it's the met so maybe 10 000 people uh you know we're coming out to watch you work the dependence that you have on the device to go back into uh your office and check your device during that time really speaks to how uh how dependent we come on on our devices and that dependence and that inability to self-regulate and focus on the task at hand also contributes to lower levels of happiness i would be remiss if i didn't mention uh one of the things that we're seeing with kids today and for those of you that are parents out there is that we are literally creating dependence on devices uh from an early age and we are not allowing kids to learn the ability to self-regulate or uh to be able to be regulated by their parents so for example when kids go for their inoculations and vaccines um they go to the doctor they get the shot they start crying what do many parents do today they give the child their phone and so what we're teaching children at a very young age is this idea that i can't self-regulate but the phone can calm me down the technology can calm me down and what that does is it creates a really bad precedent um in these formative years for kids where the dependence on technology becomes that much greater and so it's important to think uh not only in our own behavior our own experiences with technology how we relate to it but in what we're giving over to children as well are we teaching them skills of resilience and the ability to manage adversity and challenges or even physical pain without technology or are we teaching them that technology is the solution for that so that's just a side point that i think is important to keep in mind when we think about uh technology and its impact on psychological functioning i like to talk about a study that was done by peterson and seligman that was called the positive journaling study and the positive journaling study took two groups one was an experimental group one was a control group and one group at the end of the day would write down five things that they were grateful for at the end of the day and one group did nothing and what the study found was that people that would express gratitude and that would write down five things that they were grateful for had elevated levels of subjective well-being they were happier people overall and not only that their love their elevated levels of happiness continued for up to three months after they stopped writing down uh these positive things the flip side of that study is that uh when we do negative when we write down negative things the group that did nothing there they maintained an average level of subjective well-being but if we are to write down negative things and focus on negative things and share negative things we are literally uh bringing down our levels of subjective well-being and creating levels of unhappiness for ourselves and we're partaking in that process and so when it comes to technology uh are we more likely to post positive things and share positive things that could elevate our levels of happiness and subjective well-being or are we more likely to post negative things and uh share negative things so there have been a number of studies on this uh one study uh looked at hashtags on twitter and compared positive hashtags to negative hashtags uh so positive hashtags would have been success hashtag i love hashtag best while negative hashtags would be fail hashtag i hate hashtag worst and what the study found was that uh for every positive hashtag there were two negative hashtags so people were twice as likely to share and post negative things than they were to share and post positive things when we think about that it really makes sense when we fly from one place to another are we more likely to say um great job delta you got me there on time with my bags or um are we more likely when delta is delayed and our bags end up elsewhere to complain about it so when we think about it in those terms we are more likely to post negative than we are to post-positive and as a result we're only feeding in to our negative uh negative paradigm uh and it creates feelings of of uh lower levels of of subjective well-being and and generally make us a little more miserable similarly they found that news stories that are negative are spread twice as far twice as fast and news stories that are positive so we think about when we see a news story about someone who gave a charitable contribution to an organization are we more likely to share that or are we more likely to share the story about someone who embezzled money from a charitable organization and the answer is we're more likely to share and focus on on the negative and so what that is uh the effect that that's having on us is that it's creating a negative schema for us we're looking at things more negatively as a result of technology so it doesn't have to be that technology is causing this our default is that technology is causing lower levels of subjective well-being but if we focus on sharing positive if we focus on posting positive then that's an opportunity to utilize technology to elevate our well-being and happiness and so technology is very much in that realm where we can choose to be thoughtful and deliberative in how we use technology and use it as a mechanism to be happier and to focus on positivity or if we are not focused on that we default to a negative area of technology so uh that's in the psychological realm and part of overall contentment and meaning in life is also our social experiences so how are our social experiences being impacted by technology as we said best of times worst of times there are so many positive opportunities i think that um when we experienced isolation and we weren't able to visit family members the ability to connect with them and communicate with them in a digital way whether it's through video chat etc is amazing it's a wonderful opportunity but there is also a negative uh social impact as well when it comes to technology and our social experience and the quality of our social experiences very much uh contribute to contentment and meaning and overall happiness in life so what we're finding is that again if we're not being thoughtful and deliberative with technology uh we are finding that uh we have digital distraction we're distracted by our devices we have dependence on them within social settings online aggression uh otherwise calm well-meaning well-intentioned people uh somehow lose their minds uh when uh contributing to a political discussion uh online and so online aggression miscommunication uh we've all been there where we sent a digital communication where the person completely misunderstood what we were talking about and that or vice versa where we received something completely misunderstood because it's missing a lot of the paraverbal piece of communication and that also elevates uh the um negative well-being uh when we are not communicating effectively and so when we think in terms of this um i often uh refer to our relationship with technology uh as a regression to parallel play in preschoolers you see kids playing next to each other uh but not with each other uh often and uh as adults we often find ourselves sitting with our phones around other people and not connecting uh with them as well so it's a regression to parallel play they did a fascinating study on middle schoolers where they um assessed their ability to read facial expressions and social cues and they got a baseline and then they sent them to sleepaway camp without any technology and they measured them again this was a study done in 2014 by ucla and what they found was that after only five days of being without technology their ability to read facial expressions and social cues and form meaningful connections with their peers vastly improved and so it's fascinating because what this tells us is really so important uh on the one hand it tells us that technology is having a negative impact on our our social connectivity on the quality of our social interactions technology is having a negative impact but what it also teaches us is that by stepping away from technology we can improve those social interactions and we can gain back that quality uh social interactions and i uh feel very fortunate as someone who is sabbath observant that opportunity once a week to spend 25 hours without the distraction of technology it becomes so meaningful in my ability to connect with my family and my friends and that idea of adding meaning and contentment to our lives by separating from technology um is is really it's so so important uh we have the opportunity to uh host in our home uh on shabbos um observant friends non-observant friends and and most often from non-observant friends we uh get the pushback where they're concerned about their child how's my child gonna sit for two hours uh without any technology right it's it's something that is foreign to a lot of people to really spend an ex an excessive amount of time without technology and uh it's almost always the same their kids get through it not only do they get through it they flourish they thrive and it's an amazing experience that they carry with them and so that opportunity uh to separate from technology you know you can do a social media search and look at influencers uh that often will take a break from technology as well um you know uh the singer katy perry comes to mind uh where she takes a sabbath break from social media just to recharge and reflect and so that idea that opportunity to separate from technology will enhance our social experience with friends but also with our family as well so finding those opportunities in my own home we do something called going dark for dinner whenever we have family dinner a couple times a week there's no technology at the table and even in that environment it so enhances our experience and to be able to find out um what our spouse how their day's been our children how their day has been and the the quality of that social interaction is that much greater uh research finds that um adults are making eye contact about thirty to sixty percent uh of time during an average conversation with a lot of time being taken up by checking cell phones or general distraction um and ideally in order for people to create a meaningful connection uh you need to be making eye contact about 60 to 70 percent of the time more than that a little creepy someone's staring you 100 of the time uh yeah that's a little creepy but in order to do that as adults uh another example uh in not just going dark for dinner i have friends uh that we go out to dinner with fairly frequently and what we do is it's a group of us we stack our phones in the middle of the table and whoever grabs their phone first has to pay for dinner and so it's a challenge amongst yourselves amongst your friends and the quality of the connection uh is really good what i would recommend though is you should do what i do um we always invite one guy that's completely addicted to his smartphone and so uh he's been paying for dinner for years and he hasn't picked up on it so it's a it's a win-win for everybody uh so that idea of of uh of artificially creating opportunities for ourselves by putting the devices away whether it's whether it's with friends with families with co-workers um finding that opportunity uh to connect in a meaningful way is so important and so critical to um to contentment and meaning and ultimately finding happiness so the social piece um is uh is is really important in this realm finding quality social interactions finding the opportunities for it and again that's not just with friends with family and the psychological piece our relationship with the technology the anxiety or the depression that it could be causing based on what we are saying how we are sharing what we are looking at all contributes to our overall functioning um i had not too long ago um an experience that i i thought was interesting in the realm of technology uh a colleague of mine took a new position it popped up on my linkedin page and um i actually knew about the position i had spoken to the individual when they were taking the position but of course it popped up on linkedin and it linked and said you know wish so and so congratulations on their new position so i clicked the button uh i clicked the button that said congrats on the new role they responded uh with a thanks which means they had you know three options in front of them to select um how they wanted to respond and then i had on my end the opportunity i could click a you're welcome a thumbs up or how are you were my options and i really thought to myself this is pretty crazy this uh technology is defining how i connect and how i communicate with other people that can't be good for my overall functioning and in so many ways the idea of connecting with people it can't be defined by what the technology is suggesting to us it has to be something that's thoughtful and it's uh and that's really where the human connection piece comes from and that's where happiness comes from and so if something is important for example when someone passes away just making a comment uh online you'll rest in peace or uh barak dayan ms is is not necessarily sufficient to enhance the relationship and the connectivity with the other person and so there's so much more that can be done through a phone call or even if it is a an appropriate texting situation uh to do more than just the standard or the click here to respond i remember there was an episode of seinfeld a number of years ago at some point i think in the late 90s where the question came up is it appropriate to make a condolence call on a cell phone or did it have to be from a landline and i think that that question rings true today as well what is the appropriate behavior when it comes to technology based on the situation and then the question is what can it do to enhance my relationship with that person my connectivity with that person and as a result my overall happiness and so when we think about technology and we think about how technology uh is part of our lives and whether it's uh it's it's uh impacting our happiness one way or another it really boils down to a fundamental question of what is our relationship with technology and as mentioned before many of us have a functional healthy relationship with technology many of us have an unhealthy dysfunctional relationship with technology and many of us have days where we are doing well with our technology and many of us have days um you know where we're not doing well with our technology and i think a fundamental question that we need to ask ourselves on a daily basis is did technology today serve as an enhancement in my life or an intrusion in my life whether it's an enhancement or an intrusion and that's going to change on a day-to-day basis and it's also going to be different for each one of us because our relationship our personalities our dependencies are going to influence as well whether it's serving as an enhancement or an intrusion but it's something that we need to ask ourselves on a regular basis to determine uh whether the technology is contributing to our happiness or whether it is uh it is a impediment to our happiness so in understanding the relationship that technology has uh both socially psychologically our day-to-day functioning i think there are six suggestions that i'd like to give you i'd like to give over in finding success with technology and the first suggestion is you have to understand your relationship with technology each person is going to be different each person's relationship's going to be different i think we all have a sense of whether technolo whether technology is uh is good for us or bad for us but as i said before it can change on a daily basis and really shifting our behaviors to under based on our relationships with technology i was working with a a business not too long ago on exploring how technology was impacting workforce well-being and productivity and what's really interesting is you find different values placed on technology engagement um in many different ways but certainly generationally um baby boomers versus uh generation x versus millennials all have different attitudes as it relates to technology and each one is going to approach it differently so i was doing a professional development workshop at a business on this topic and someone came over to me after the workshop and said look i'm really concerned about my relationship with technology i don't i don't think it's it's healthy and functional so i asked him you know what's the first thing you do in the morning and of course it is to check his phone and so i made the following suggestion that before he checks his phone in the morning just go to the bathroom first then check your phone really what you're doing there is you're delaying checking the phone by maybe a minute but what you're really doing is you are promoting your own ability to self-regulate with technology and that is the dynamic that is the differential that you experience between the technology controlling you and relating to unhappiness or you controlling the technology whether it's serving as an intrusion or whether it's serving as an enhancement and since for most of us technology often is a compulsion where we check when we check our devices um whether we get a notification or not um the other suggestion that i made for him was to put a little rubber band around his phone so that when he reaches into his pocket to check if uh he got any messages then he feels the rubber band and he can make a decision whether he is going to check it or not being thoughtful and deliberative in your behaviors with technology is critical in impacting your relationship to be one that's more productive so understanding your relationship with technology is the first suggestion the second suggestion is having tech free time going dark for dinner it's so important that we build into our schedule opportunities to uh be free from technology even if it's 20 minutes going dark for dinner or even if it's postponing going on your phone for a minute before going to the bathroom before uh going to the bathroom first and then checking your phone this idea of self-regulating being in control um having time without technology is critical in our ability to find uh happiness um excuse me suggestion number three is having personal and family rules when we have rules and guidelines we are we have a barometer to measure whether we are succeeding or whether we are not succeeding with our technology approach so for example it could be going dark for dinner is a rule in your house or it could be that there's no technology the first hour home when everybody is at home or it could be that no technology half hour before bedtime this is for adults and kids as well the research is very clear that um screens uh and screen engagement uh impact sleep cycles negatively harvard university did a study where they measured um they had people read from a book at bedtime and people read from an e-reader at bedtime and what they found was that you don't have to have gone to harvard to uh to guess this when you read from a book at bedtime what happens you fall asleep uh and when you read from an e-reader at bedtime what they found was that it actually uh it made it more difficult to fall asleep and the quality of the sleep was different as well and so having rules whether it's you know again going for dinner uh postponing technology engagement um an hour before when people get home a half hour before bedtime whatever the rules are what you're doing is you're finding the ability to control and regulate technology and that's going to have a positive impact on your well-being and happiness that's uh suggestion number three suggestion number four and it directly relates to number three uh is following the rules that you make all often times we'll set rules and guidelines for ourselves and within our family and um that's all they they are and we're uh you know just post new year's now we find that uh you know people make new year's commitments and they generally uh fall off within the month and so following them following the commitments following the resolutions following the rules uh is uh rule number four it's a suggestion number four and uh probably one of the harder uh pieces of uh of uh technology policies uh suggestion number five uh is using technology to express gratitude we talked about the peterson and seligman study and the importance of expressing gratitude in general and our default with technology is to be negative and so if we utilize technology to express gratitude to share positivity that is going to have a positive impact on our well-being on our happiness and we should look for opportunities to express that gratitude so even if your flight arrives on time and your luggage is there there's an opportunity to thank delta um for that and uh suggestion number six is to be thoughtful and deliberative when it comes to technology most of our behaviors with technology are uh fall into compulsions we check it even though we don't get notification uh the minute we have uh a minute of free time our phones come out we're looking at it it's a distraction in many ways um it's an intrusion in many ways we're often missing what's going on around us we're not connecting with other people and so if we take an approach when it comes to technology to be thoughtful and deliberative and decisive with how we approach uh technology in our day-to-day lives then what we're going to find is is that technology is going to be serving more as an enhancement in our lives rather than an intrusion so putting this all together happiness is something that is uh is certainly a challenge in times of uncertainty uh there are many things that we can do to utilize technology uh in a positive way to increase our happiness and increase our levels of subjective well-being six suggestions that we just had um and that idea of being thoughtful and deliberative when it comes to our technology will allow technology to enhance our existence and help us achieve higher levels of happiness and subjective well-being thank you very much have a great evening