Digital Nutrition: How to Use Tech Without Letting It Control Your Mind | Jocelyn Brewer

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Digital Nutrition – balancing technology use for mental health and wellbeing.

00:00 – Introduction to technology addiction and digital habits

00:45 – Introducing psychologist Jocelyn Brewer

02:00 – What “Digital Nutrition” means

03:00 – How social media algorithms influence attention

05:00 – Why AI systems rely on pattern recognition

07:00 – The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT in daily life

08:00 – How technology is affecting therapy and mental health care

10:00 – “Banter with a bot, heal with a human” concept

11:30 – AI guardrails and mental health concerns

12:30 – Discussion of a teen influenced by AI chatbot responses

13:30 – Parenting challenges in the digital world

15:00 – Online risks vs real-world protection

16:00 – Smartphones and rising youth mental health concerns

17:30 – Toxic algorithms and online rabbit holes

18:20 – Early exposure to pornography and digital content

19:00 – The smartphone as a “Swiss Army knife”

20:10 – Practical ways to reduce digital distractions

21:30 – Apps and tools to limit screen use

22:40 – The concept of a “Digital Sunset”

Digital Nutrition: How to Use Tech Without Letting It Control Your Mind | Jocelyn Brewer

Dr Ron Ehrlich (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich.

Now, we have, over the last few weeks, explored the theme of addiction. We’ve done that before, but I think as you walk around the streets, as you go into public spaces, as you sit on buses, look anywhere, you will see that we are all into our own devices and we are all guilty of it to some degree or other. And so with

Some of my guests love to get some of my guests back on a regular basis because I believe we need an annual checkup on these ideas that we cover. Covering them just once is not enough. We need constant reminders. And so it is with great pleasure that I welcome back psychologist Jocelyn Brewer. Now Jocelyn is a leading voice in digital wellbeing. She coined the term digital nutrition, and she calls

And what she calls tech with intention, and in this world of AI, as our lives become increasingly mediated by screens, dopamine-driven devices. And as I said, AI companionship, I mean, she comes up with this great concept, banter with a bot, but heal with the human. The question isn’t whether technology is good or bad. Let’s face it. It’s here to stay.

But the challenge for us all is how do we relate to it? How do we control it, and how do we control ourselves or in relation to the technology? Today, we explore how to use tech less and better in a way that supports mental fitness, mental health, a greater and growing problem, and human connection. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Jocelyn Brewer.

Welcome back, Jocelyn.

Jocelyn Drewer (02:01)

Thank you for having me. What is this, number three?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (02:04)

I think it is number three, you know, there are some of my guests that I’d like to get back on a regular basis, almost like an annual checkup. And when we’re talking about technology and our relationship with it, as you love to coin it, digital nutrition, you know, I think it’s a timely conversation for us to have on a regular basis. 

I mean, I think the longest study on human health and longevity is in Harvard, and it talks about the importance of relationships as being the greatest predictor. So I guess it’s fair to say we’re addicted to each other. We’re addicted to relationships and people, but these devices that we carry around with us give us perhaps a false sense of security or a false sense of relationships. How does it fit into relationships? What are we really craving when we use this technology?

Jocelyn Drewer (02:57)

Yeah, and I guess it’s really important to kind of frame up what technology we’re talking about. Often when we’re talking about sort of addictive natures of things, it’s got to do with smartphones, it’s got to do with social media and that ubiquity of the technology, the pervasive design and the persuasiveness of, you know, some of the features within it, that it just becomes really, really quick and dirty almost to pick up and to be using to fill all of the different gaps. So.

Where it might’ve started off purely as more social media and we were collecting friends, we were collecting networks, we were communicating, we were sharing. For many of us, some of the main social media platforms that we might be scrolling through now are actually just ads. And the algorithm has really shifted within the last couple of years, but particularly on meta platforms with a new update called Andromeda, which really uses AI to predict really quickly what

You are most likely to continue watching. They’re not really interested in what might fit into your wheelhouse or what your true interests are, but actually what will peak and maintain your attention. So this is where I guess, yeah, it does look like an addiction because I think as hunters and gatherers, we are now hunting and gathering for information and for these little dopamine treats, kind of like pack.

Fan going around, snapping up all the traits because of this, like I’ve been on Facebook for 20 years this December. All right. So before that was on my space, I wonder how I’ll celebrate, you know, like we, now have decades of information and of our own experiences of how this technology is changing and shaping us.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (04:41)

I mean, think Yuval Noah Harari, know, who’s written that wonderful book, many wonderful books, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind and all of those other ones. So it makes the point that technology, the devices that we use in those algorithms know us better than we know ourselves. And that’s a kind of frightening place to be, isn’t it?

Jocelyn Drewer (05:05)

Well, it’s just data, right? I think we really have to remember that the algorithm and artificial intelligence, I refuse to use AI. It’s machine learning. It’s a machine that can predict patterns on scale. It was a marketing ploy to call it artificial intelligence because it kind of makes it seem like it’s really clever and wants to help us. So I think what we need to do is remember that it’s just really good at pattern recognition.

And we are the ones with the most complex piece of technology under our skull. And when we deploy that using critical thinking and using some of the things that machines can’t mimic, ⁓ that’s where we’re going to kind of, I think the new frontier of media literacy is AI literacy and understanding, you know, how to ethically use it, I guess, ⁓ but not to mistake it for, you know, a sentient, helpful being.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (05:57)

Well, well for you and for you particularly, and I as well, would include myself in exploring the benefits and the dangers of this. You know, that, sounds very reasonable, very sensible. Jocelyn, well done you for not using AI and recognizing that we need literacy. But of course, the tsunami of commercial interests and drives that just throw it in our faces is very hard to resist, isn’t it?

Jocelyn Drewer (06:27)

Yeah. Look, the lack of choice sometimes is really tricky and I will absolutely come clean. I do use AI. I use AI in my practice notes with permission where clients are okay with that. That’s been an absolute game changer for me not putting my prices up in terms of therapy because I’m actually, you know, to some degree saving time and certainly, you know, ⁓ high level of, you know, compliance with my notes in the last couple of years. 

But I think we are all jumping in the deep end without knowing how to swim. And there’s so many things that we’re repeating here with the use of large language models and that commercial availability of chat GPT or Claude or whichever model that you want to be using and sometimes forced to using, you know, I’m hearing all sorts of stories of people really being expected to use it. And then what happens as a result of that, because.

It’s creating velocity of information and then humans still need to have that oversight. We still need to have those checks and many people aren’t stopping and pausing to think about the impacts of, I mean, we don’t know what impact it’s having on our critical thinking, but the impact it’s having on being able to do things at such speed when it does require human oversight still. So it adds to our brain squeeze. I think a lot of the time it’s not necessarily in certain contexts taking away from that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (07:51)

Because you have, you know, you’ve coined this term. don’t know whether it was yours originally digital nutrition, it’s certainly a term. It was yours. Yes, I thought it was. So you definitely own this space, but you are a clinical psychologist as well. you, are you particularly dealing with a wide range of people or is it children or is it families? What’s your area of expert, you know, specialty? know you’re.

Jocelyn Drewer (08:18)

Yeah, so I’m, yeah, I’m a generally registered psych, so I don’t have that clinical endorsement, but, and I came through school counseling. So my, in my private practice, I see high schoolers to baby boomers and that is, you know, a beautiful kind of wide group of people. And they find me usually because they can kind of vibe with, you know, my branding and who I am. So while there’s not one particular niche that I go into.

Lots of the people that I do work with kind of range between later adolescents, uni students and people in their 20s and 30s. And many people are, you know, really embedded into their technology, in technology and to whatever degree. And it’s one of the first things that I actually check in with people apart from sleep and movement. I’ll say, well, what are you doing with screens?

Halfway through 2025, I had a new client present and as I would say to most people, what brings you to therapy? And for the first time, somebody said, chat GPT told me it was time to talk to somebody. And I was like, okay, we are there. We are at this point in human history. And in that instance, it’s really great that a chat GPT or whichever large language model is saying, Hey, it sounds like you need more help in many cases.

It won’t do that. will, it’s actually quite sycophantic and it’ll just tell you how great you are and how you shouldn’t worry because you’re the best person on the planet. But in this case actually directed that person, you know, to, seek help. think between the cost of living crisis and the use of AI for, you know, for these kind of filling the gaps, being there at two o’clock in the morning. I think, like my practice has had a downturn. If somebody wants to come and see me at the moment, I’ve got availability, surprisingly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:08)

distrusting

Jocelyn Drewer (10:08)

And I think, I think what’s going on there too, yeah, it’s just filling that gap. And I’m going out with some marketing that says, you know, banter with a bot, but come and heal with the human because while it might be able to like interpret texts from your ex or talk you through a panic attack or, know, those kinds of things, it actually isn’t just going to hold space for big feelings in the way I can and other therapists can.

when you have somebody actually sitting there holding your story.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (10:40)

Wow. I am surprised. I would have thought that you would be busier than ever, but this throws a different perspective on AI. And I know that people, this is exactly what I’m saying. We are aware of its potential benefits and hazards, but people are drawn into it and it’s sycophantic nature. I believe you can adjust that setting. Yes, you can adjust that setting, but it is default wise. ⁓

Jocelyn, what a great question. I love where you’re coming from on this Jocelyn. It’s so good.

Jocelyn Drewer (11:14)

Yeah. And if, if you’ve never been taught to prompt engineer, if you don’t know that you can actually set up a kind of tone of voice and, you know, even the depth of the thinking on paid models, I can, I use the deep thinking mode, especially when I’m, you know, using it for research purposes or qualitative data purposes. But if we don’t know how to actually then put the guardrails in to use it somewhat more safely.

Um, that can be tricky. know now that conversations about mental health, suicidality and self harm automatically reroute you in a different way to, you know, about six or nine months ago. So there are some of those safety features there, but again, we’re jumping in without those lessons, which, know, I find wild.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (11:59)

There was, and I think in case our listener may not have heard it, there was a case of a young boy, 14, I think in America. Uh, you must be very familiar with that story. you show us?

Jocelyn Drewer (12:12)

A little bit of the story. And my understanding. Yeah. Look, and this is broad brush strokes. So apologies if the example isn’t perfect, but my understanding was he was really seeking that support from a model, from a chat board. There was a certain number of times he made references to suicidality and asked questions about ending his life. And a proportion of those times, let’s say it was 70 times.

40 times it said, no, you need to be alive and you need to get other sources and help and things like that. And for some of those other times, it actually agreed with him that that was a good idea. And he ended up taking his own life from that case. believe Chachapi T then took the decision to put better guard rails in place and to program in all of the associations then and the different ways we use language to talk about suicidal ideation and preparation. So, ⁓ you know, a 14 year old seeking that kind of therapy and support probably speaks quite volumes to where some parts of society are.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (13:25)

And I think I know that I sometimes listen to the center for humane technologies, know, Tristan Harris, here I am doing a plug for their podcast, but it is a great podcast. It’s great. And one of the things that I recently heard was that the competition, who is AI competing with? Well, mom and dad actually, not any other commercial interests. They’re competing for your parents. And they didn’t even know he was on there.

Jocelyn Drewer (13:57)

That’s the thing, right? And this is where I do, I guess, agree with Jonathan Haidt’s sort of hypothesis that we have protected kids from the physical world much more than we have from the online world. So the online world comes with lots of risks and harms as well, especially if you don’t know what kids are, you know, like jump between the driving analogy or the swimming pool analogy.

You know, they’re in a Ferrari and they’ve never had a driving lesson, but they’ve watched mom and dad drive a car or they’re thrown in the deep end and you know, they really don’t have some of the skills to swim in rough seas. I think, you know, without blaming parents, parents really need to be aware of these technologies and aware of some of the risks because we often operate in parenting from a, my kid wouldn’t do that. 

My kid wouldn’t need that. My kid can totally come and talk to me about anything, even though maybe there’s a whole bunch of like other signals that you’re giving that that’s actually not true. And when the proverbial hits the fan, we sort of have a very different outlook about things and what should be done rather than what we could have done as, you know, informed consumers from the get go. It’s a massive wild west where I think

The need for that companionship and that belonging and where our communities have fallen apart is really something for societies to examine because this has been happening for 20, 25 years, right? That bowling alone hypothesis when folks started stopping going to some former church or, you know, community institutions, we, and the nuclearization of family really then disconnected us from how we were supposed to live in a village.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (15:40)

Well, I think the reference Jonathan Hayton, I know he’s written many books and one of them was the Coddling of the American Mind where he talked about 2007, I think being a turning point. was the turning point where iPhones were invented and smartphones were invented and Facebook was invented or launched. And there was a significant upturn in mental health issues, particularly amongst young girls.

Is that the case was that your reading of it?

Jocelyn Drewer (16:12)

We could get into, so Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haight have books around this and a lot of the research is contested because we know correlation isn’t causation. There’s a range of other things that have been happening with the launch of smartphones and social media as well. And we know that there’s multitudes of ways of using technology.

And that we all have sort of different digital diets when it comes to what we consume. think some of these conversations have shifted, not even from when they sort of were using, you know, really huge data sets to talk about the early years, but probably in the last two to three years has shifted more because of the algorithm basically really becoming more toxic and us not being able to have transparency across it. 

It’s kind of like KFC’s seven herbs and spices. Like we don’t know what they are, but we can probably take our best guess at mimicking it. So there’s a lot of questions and even kind of campaigns about letting people have more oversight over algorithms so that we can not be pushed down, you know, rabbit holes and dark paths towards extreme content. The manosphere has become a word that’s in common kind of parlance and this idea not just of toxic masculinity, but actually what is healthy masculinity. And men, especially young boys needing that sense of belonging so that they’re not kind of radicalized into some of these incel networks that we see happening.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:43)

mean, the ubiquitous nature of the technology is the biggest challenge. I mean, people kind of dismiss this whole conversation as being Luddite. You’re a Luddite. They used to think the printing press or television would do this, but there are, this is a unique period in human history where we literally carry around in the palm of our hands, the world access to the world.

And you talk about toxic masculinity, I mean, the ubiquitous nature of pornography has got to be a major problem for young people relating to each other.

Jocelyn Drewer (18:20)

That’s another aspect of it as well because, you know, the average exposure to porn in Australia, I believe, is sitting around the 13 mark, but some kids in primary school come across it.

They know it kind of makes them feel weird and it’s a bit icky, but there’s sometimes a compulsion then to go looking for that. think when we consider phones as well, they’re really the Swiss army knife that allowed us to have so many things in one place. So, know, lots of people say to me, when could it, when should my kid get a smartphone? And there’s a rise in the idea of dumb phones as well, like having literally a Nokia brick. 

And it’s really thinking about what are some of the aspects of that’s with Salmi Knife that are helpful like Google Maps, enjoying your banking and you know, being able to listen to podcasts like this while you take your walk versus then some of the spaces that are just genuinely not designed for young people. In fact, they’re probably not designed for fully developed brains. I didn’t get a smartphone until I was 32 and was really having issues with being able to put some boundaries in place so I guess I’m my own guinea pig for some of this work as well. 

So, ⁓ you know, I guess we need to really dig in through this idea of what it is and how we use it. Because to some degree from COVID, having to check in with a QR code to most places meant there, there was even less opportunity for us to leave our phones at home. ⁓ and, and what I tend to do is just take off aspects of that Swiss Army knife that I know are not helpful to me. And I use hilariously and ironically an app to then kick me out of certain spaces. So I’m not using really important cognitive resources in the middle of the day to be scrolling instead of, you know, writing blogs and new presentations and things like that.

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Dr Ron Ehrlich (20:59)

Well, well now that’s an interesting one, Jocelyn, because here you are coining the phrase digital nutrition and you’ve come up, you’ve, what is the app and what kind of functionality does it offer you?

Jocelyn Drewer (21:37)

So there’s a few different ones around. There are some that are one brand and I am not paid by either of these brands to mention them. One’s called Brick and it’s basically a thing that you put on wherever you fridge, a lot of people pop it on and you will tap onto the brick and it will turn your phone into a brick, right? So you can say, I want it to block my email, these three social media platforms and newspapers, because I don’t want to get sucked into the news and you can tap it on and tap it off.

I use one called Freedom and Freedom again is an app on my phone, but it’s also on my desktop. So if I am inclined to go and spend some really valuable time on LinkedIn as a positive distraction, it will actually kick me off that. So I can set that up.

I have a digital sunset, so every night I can’t really touch my email, check the news or my social media from 9 30 PM to 8 30 in the morning, but you can tailor your, ⁓ block lists and you know, however you want to use it. So you’ve got a lot of flexibility within that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (22:41)

Digital sunset sounds appealing to, mean, they all do, but is that an app that is used or is that just a feature on?

Jocelyn Drewer (22:49)

It’s just the concepts. Yeah. That’s.

You’re coming up with a digital.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (22:56)

digital nutrition, digital sunset. love this banter with a bot and heal with a human. mean, you really should be in marketing and that, you you come up with all these phrases.

Jocelyn Drewer (23:07)

Yeah, but you know, here I am like going, Hey, if you want some clients, it’s kind of like when you win a Academy Awards. So a lot of people who win Academy Awards then don’t work. Right. So it’s like, I’m, everyone thinks that I’m so busy and you know, I am busy, but I would prefer to do much more work with humans than write blogs or whatever. yeah, look, it’s just different ways, I guess, that I’m always, I’m going to have to compete with these platforms to get into people’s brains to help them think, yeah.

My phone actually should go to bed, right? I should put that away and get, you know, some space that’s purely just for me to help this incredible technology then do what it’s designed to do, which is not to think about like a million different things.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (23:54)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we talk about, hope that, ⁓ government’s perhaps, I think that’s probably a good place to start have some form of regulation where the companies that are trying to sell things. I’ve heard it said that if it’s free, then you are the product. You are the product. ⁓ but, but regulations, but we are really chasing so far. The horse has well and truly bolted it with social media.

And now the government in Australia at least has made an effort to do that. Can you just share with us what that government regulation is and how you think it’s worked the passes and minuses of it?

Jocelyn Drewer (24:37)

Yeah. So without going too deep into the politics behind all of this, and they are quite rich and juicy. Ultimately, what we’ve ended up with in Australia is that 10 of the social media platforms that meet the criteria for an age restricted platform and that definition, you know, you can go and read really is about the messaging function and things like that. 10 platforms have been designated a part of this and that those platforms have to take reasonable steps to make sure that any user on the platform is over 16. 

Now, there’s another piece of the legislation that didn’t quite make it in that we’re hoping will make into the revision in two years time, which is called the digital duty of care. So how I would sort of describe this situation is what we’ve done is banned under 16s from driving in 10 types of cars rather than saying,

All cars on the road must have these safety features like seat belts for any user in order for them to be safe. So that’s my interpretation of how that legislation is working. And you can imagine, well, we’re a couple of months into that legislation and most parents that I’ve interviewed and the research that I’ve seen is that it’s had minimal effect based on the fact that the age verification technology is not working.

And we kind of knew that already. knew that from some of the trials, it was probably only about 85 % effective, but depending on how you present, whether or not you chucked on a mustache or you, you know, did certain things, many kids have either been kicked out and signed back up and gotten in or not been kicked out or, you know, there’s a, there’s a whole range of different ways that that’s working, but the impact over summer has mostly been negligible.

Um, unless you have parents who are willing to actually enforce it and make sure that kids are not then platform hopping. The other thing that happened unsurprisingly was that a whole bunch of new platforms that didn’t work captured in the legislation popped up and that kids jumped into. So Yope, which I think is hilariously named Yope instead of Nope, like yes, off you go. And another one called Covers Star at one point were like second and first and second on the charts, the app store charts for new downloads. ⁓ yeah, that’s it in a nutshell without being too political about it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (27:06)

I mean, it’s almost really, this is kind of one could argue window dressing or a very reactive knee jerk reaction and naive. mean, really, but I think education would have to be the key. have to perhaps introduce digital nutrition, digital education at preschool, preschool.

Jocelyn Drewer (27:33)

Absolutely, and I have courses. run, I actually have an accredited course that early childcare providers can do, screen seedlings where we actually start teaching some of the skills that you need in order to have these safety conversations. Just the way that when a little person gets into the car, we buckle them in and we say, not going to your seat belts on. We need to do the same thing with the little ones and we’re promised education every time when New South Wales banned smartphones in schools, we were promised education. 

Were promised as a part of this, that media literacy, digital literacy, digital citizenship, all of these terms would be delivered. I know the Alana and Madeleine foundation who’ve been in this space for a really long time doing great stuff, received some funding to do that. But this is not just about the kids. This is about what parents model and even what grandparents are modeling. ⁓

We don’t have enough data on, you know, broadly boomers, but you know, over 65s around how they’re using technology. And in the age of AI, the rising scams and financial and love scams of a group of the Australian population that actually has money. So there’s actually money in super and shares and all of that stuff to scam out of. There’s a huge issue around that as well. So this is not like. ⁓

And, know, it kind of annoys me a lot that we’ve focused so much on, you know, saving their children rather than actually making some meaningful change to our own behaviors and thinking about how we can take more control of those safety behaviors ourselves.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (29:08)

Hmm. No, I can just imagine because I mean, although my mother was 92 when she died 10 years ago, last five years or so of her life. we’re talking 10 to 15 years ago, number of times she was scammed and we had to just on the phone, we had to cancel credit cards. Well, it’s become a hell of a lot more sophisticated than that. mean, AI can literally do anything visually.

And voice-wise, mean, this is, my God. I can only imagine what a problem this is going to be.

Jocelyn Drewer (29:44)

Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s kind of not unfathomable, but it’s everywhere. It’s almost every keystroke we need to be really conscious of. And we need to update and up-level our skills and our understanding of how scams work. mean, ultimately it’s behavioral engineering. There are particular things that they’re going to take you through. It’s just the technology is changing and it’s harder to spot because of the ability of AI to deep fake certain things. Yeah.

It’s and there’s so much of it too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:16)

Yes. And as you say, not just about children, but through our through across all generations, it’s probably worth reminding our listener too about your wonderful or was it now? And we’ve made

Jocelyn Drewer (30:29)

You were my inspiration for the fourth

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:33)

Okay, go on. hadn’t forgotten. I was testing you then. I was testing you.

Jocelyn Drewer (30:37)

I don’t know. You’re accredited. know, I hate it when people rip off digital nutrition. So I’m definitely giving in.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (30:45)

I you with digital nutrition too. Beautiful. go on, us the four M’s.

Jocelyn Drewer (30:50)

So the forums, I get people to think about just before you go online, it’s like putting your digital sunscreen on. So you want to be mindful, so really switched on and aware of what you’re doing, not kind of getting into this slipstream of just spending time, and before you know it, you’ve wasted a bunch. Meaningful, so what you’re consuming is aligned to the stuff that really matters. There’s lots of great research that shows when you’re actually

curating who you follow and following information and issues that matter to you. You have more positive mental health outcomes that you moderate what you’re doing online, both in yes, the amount of time that you spend because it’s displacing sleep and movement, but also we moderate how we show up.

knowing that there’s a thing called the digital disinhibition effect, where we all say and do things through our keyboard in a very different way than we would if we were standing face to face with somebody and being asked to provide them with that feedback. it kind of encourages bullying in some ways because we’re basically making eye contact. Eye contact, say, kickstarts kindness. And then that final one that you’re attributed to is modeled because we really need models for

how to behave well, what are good habits look like, what is the netiquette, so to speak. And this again, like it’s digital natives, we hear a lot, but they weren’t digital natives, they’re digital orphans. They’ve grown up without a generation above them showing them how to act and behave online. So we all collectively need to set this up and model the kind of behaviors that we want to see. They’re the forums.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich (32:28)

They are the forums. I must say the only reason I mentioned and brought that modeling up was because I recognized, you know, my own behavior, my, my, you know, I’ve got grandchildren, so they’re looking at me and I’m telling them not to do this and I’m doing it, you know, so it’s, it’s a, it’s a bit of a problem. We do you think we’re losing the skill of being bored? Is that part of the problem too?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (17:43)

Yes, I think we’re losing the skill. It’s a little bit different. Like we say, as soon as we’re not stimulated or overstimulated, we’re bored. And boredom is really that feeling of kicking in when the sort of dopamine treats, I guess, and that feeding, feeding your dopamine is trickling down. 

And so you don’t have that same like snack you know, going on. So I think we have to be careful about boredom because boredom doesn’t necessarily make everyone super creative. If you leave a bunch of teenage boys to be bored, they’ll probably get into mischief and then we call them juvenile delinquents. 

So we have to scaffold boredom and positively shape boredom so that we can be alone with our thoughts and that we’re not always seeking that next big stimulation that we get used to sort of being in that default mode network of the brain, that daydreaming brain which is really then useful for sort of what I’d call joining the dots, Thinking through all of the bits of our life and how that kind of makes meaning and purpose.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (33:56)

You mentioned default mode network and we’ve covered that in some episodes we’ve done on psychedelic therapy, maybe another word instead of using the word boredom, which has other connotations. What about what happens developmentally to kids that never experience unstructured time? Unstructured time might be another word that we could say downtime.

Jocelyn Drewer (34:22)

Yeah. And, and Dan Siegel, who many people might be familiar with from the whole brain child, he has a healthy brain, healthy mind platter, a kind of way of thinking about, ⁓ I guess all of the different activities that we could be doing. And one of those things as well as, you know, your time to sleep and time to focus and learn and time to play is downtime and time to do nothing as beautiful book by Jenny O’Dell called How to 

Do Nothing, we’ve forgotten how to do nothing. And that is incredibly important for the rest and recovery that our physical bodies need, but as well as our brains. So an example that I can give you of this, I drove to Queensland and went to the Woodford Folk Festival for the first time in 18 years over this summer. And my resting heart rate went from 68 to 58 and my heart rate variability skyrocketed purely because I think I was touching grass and I was really grounded, but I was also not doing a million different things. My job was to go and enjoy the festival and my nervous system literally exhaled and relaxed when I was doing that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (35:33)

Wow. Jocelyn, I think the last time I actually spoke at the Woodford Festival would have been 18 to 20 years ago. So it was a long time ago, but it’s a, it’s a great festival. And actually I’m heading off soon to go to the grounded festival down in Victoria, Matthew Evans and Laura. That’s a whole other story, but interesting that you mentioned heart rate variability and the, and heart rate and grounding because.

There are two aspects to this whole digital world in which we live. One is the psychological distractions, social media part. But the other one is the physiological bathing ourselves in electromagnetic radiation. We demonize the sun, which literally gives us life. But apparently these devices, which we literally bathe ourselves in a no problem at all. I don’t buy it. What do you think?

Jocelyn Drewer (36:30)

I’m not an expert in this one, but I have read a lot of people, you know, have talked about EMF and you know, there’s a whole range of those different things. I have, I have a little bit of a hippie side, I guess. And I do have an organ solar thing on the back of my phone that’s supposed to dissipate those just in case that does exist. Right.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (36:50)

Titanium disc as well.

Jocelyn Drewer (36:52)

Yeah, I’ve got a few, look, don’t have my phone within arm’s reach, but I could show you. And I’ve got a few bits like that, know, the copper figure eights and things like that, that you can do just for general electromagnetic stuff around your house. And I know there’s grounding sheets and things, but I’m not an expert in that one so much. There are a few other folks around, think maybe even, have you talked to Alex Stewart from Low Tox Life?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (37:14)

years ago, but I will get her back. But I do, I do regularly, I do regularly catch up with Jalal Khan, who is a dentist who’s very much focused on quantum biology. So we do try and keep that current as well. I think you also mentioned, the, fact that people behave in a way online that they wouldn’t otherwise. 

And I guess another analogy is car rage, isn’t it? We’ve all said things in our car that we may not be proud of, but we would never do that in front of other people. But the digital world gives us that same opportunity, doesn’t it?

Jocelyn Drewer (37:52)

Yeah, look, it’s very, very similar, right? You’re not face to face with the person that you’re yelling at. And as you drive past the person that you’re yelling at and you see that they’re either a little old lady or a very ⁓ big, scary dude, you may rethink that if it was face to face. So really great example and it reminds me to curb my road rage. ⁓ Yeah, it’s totally, totally similar. you know, hilariously, the-

The people who have been the most rude, I wouldn’t call it bullying, but just obtuse to me online. When I see them face to face, they’re different people. And I always want to remind them of how rude they actually are in online spaces. And I’m always flabbergasted that they show up like they’ve never told me that, you know, they think I’m an absolute whatever. It’s really, really fascinating. And something again, that we just.

I think apart from experiencing it, but the theory of some of these things just doesn’t cut it in the same way as having to go through a horrible experience to get the lesson. That’s, I guess, still some of human nature.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (38:56)

Hmm. Listen, if you had to change just finishing up, because we’re going to have links that we always do to your nutritional websites and all that. But if you could change one thing about how society approaches our digital wellbeing, what would you Jocelyn Brewer, a psychologist, a founder of digital nutrition and so many wonderful courses, but what would be one thing you would do to,

Jocelyn Drewer (39:21)

Yeah, look, I think at this point, if I really could, a lot of my work has been about, what can an individual do? And I wasn’t really like a Tristan Harris trying to take on big tech, but I think that’s what we need to do. We need to pressure our governments to improve ⁓ that digital duty of care and make sure that we’re basically mandating safety by design, saying that you cannot put a tech product on our digital road, so to speak, on the information super highway without these features built into it, not tacked on, but built into it. 

And that would be a huge revolution because we know they have a lot of power, but you know, if I could do something, if I could wave a magic wand that wasn’t a pen and just fix things, I think it would be, ⁓ yeah, to really tackle big tech, the algorithm and have more control over the algorithm and some of those features.

But we need to understand that capitalism drives and profit still drives that all of the people that I meet that work in trust and safety for these big corporations are amazing people with great ethical standards who want to do awesome work, but they are trying to move a piano with a toothpick when it comes to trust and safety and building these features in. So there has to be an economic imperative for companies to do that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (40:39)

Yeah. I think part of the problem is that incentives often Trump and I use that word at definitely advisable incentives often Trump intentions and the people that are in these places are very, very nice people, very well-meaning people, but the incentives always Trump intentions. Yeah. Yeah. Go on.

Jocelyn Drewer (40:59)

right. million.

I was just going to say $50 million is the fine for companies not abiding by the social media ⁓ age restrictions. That would be the equivalent of, you know, an average Australian paying a $30 or $40 fine. So even where there are those disincentives and fines, those fines compared to the income of these corporations are so small that where’s the imperative?

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:26)

Yeah. Well, that’s why I love to get you back on a regular basis for our annual reminder. No, this is, this is really important. We’ve done a whole series on addiction and, know, it’s been on gambling and alcohol, but this is a very real thing that touches us all. And thank you for all of the work that you do in this space and continue to do. Thank you so much for sharing that with us today again.

Jocelyn Drewer (41:49)

You’re welcome. And thank you for always, you know, being such an open ear and open arms to have me on really appreciate it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich (41:56)

Well, as I said at the beginning of the program, I think there are some messages that we cannot hear often enough, and arguably, we really should replay this episode. You and I should both replay this episode on a weekly basis, just to remind ourselves of the importance of it, or at least approach our technology mindfully. 

Look, we’ll have links to Jocelyn’s website, where she has some great online courses for the whole family. And it’s interesting to see that her model, mindful, moderate, and meaningful, has morphed since our last conversation to add a fourth, and that is modeling. And I would argue possibly the most important, as I watch myself and my daughter’s model behavior for my grandchildren and see the challenges that are ahead. 

Look, I would also encourage you, well, hey, leave a review. I’ve have to remind you to do that on Spotify or on Apple podcasts because reviews pushes up the rankings, and that’s a good thing. But I would also encourage you to join the unstressed health community monthly live Q and A’s. The first to this year is on mental fitness appropriately. So I look out for that one. It will be a live.

short webinar followed by Q and A for about 45 minutes. There are healthy bites, which are members only. There are courses available in mental fitness for members only. So I’d encourage you to join the community and let’s support each other and human connection on this journey we call our modern world. I hope this finds you well until next time. This is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Be well.

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