Read the full transcript of Episode 28 of the NAIS New View EDU podcast, which features psychiatrist, professor, and author Shimi Kang, who is an expert in the effects of technology on developing brains. She joins host Tim Fish to share her insights from years of research into how the new online world is affecting kids, and recommend common-sense strategies in homes and schools to help strike a healthier balance.
Tim Fish: I have been working in the ed tech space for almost 30 years, ever since I brought a little Mac LC home for the summer in 1992. I have believed that technology has the power to unlock huge potential in all of us. And yet at the same time, as a parent and an educator, I have concerns that maybe tech has gone too far.
In many ways, we have all become—I know I have—become addicted to our devices. I'm now at a place where I often ask myself, Are we really better off with all this stuff in our lives? Today we're going to explore this question with one of the world's leading experts on wellbeing. Dr. Shimi Kang is an award-winning medical doctor, researcher, and expert on the neuroscience of innovation, leadership, and motivation.
She provides science based solutions for health, happiness, and achievement. Dr. Kang is a clinical associate professor at the University of British Columbia, the author of the number one best seller, The Dolphin Parent and The Tech Solution. She is also the founder of Future Ready Minds, co-founder of Get Sparky app, and the host of the YouTube Show Mental Wealth with Dr. Shimi Kang. Dr. Kang, thank you so much for joining us today.
Shimi Kang: Thank you so much, Tim, and so grateful for you and your team for this incredible podcast. Learn so much from it.
Tim Fish: Well, we are so excited to have you, and as a psychiatrist, professor, author, and mom, you have a unique perspective on one of the biggest challenges facing all parents today. What does tech really do to our brains? How is it literally changing the way we are wired?
Shimi Kang: So we now know a lot more than when that first laptop came out that you mentioned, and the iPhone way back in 2008. We know that tech is changing our brain, especially the brain of young people. So there's something called myelin. And myelin is the insulation around the brain. And studies are showing, MRI scans, that we are actually seeing disruption, literal holes in that white matter, and in mostly younger kids.
So I can't over emphasize, as you said, as a psychiatrist, I'm used to looking at brain scans. This is my currency. We don't see holes in white matter in major head trauma. We don't see it in concussions or schizophrenia or severe bipolar or even extreme autism, but we're seeing it associated with tech.
It's associated, not causing, So there's a correlation. We don't know exactly what's going on. It could be the blue light, it could be the stress of sitting for hours and hours. It could be the content, the stress of bullying or comparing your life to others. All of that is now linked to some serious conditions, mental health wise. We know there are links to anxiety, depression, addiction. Gender, of course, is not binary, but we're seeing increase in body image disturbance among girls. But that's also going up in transgender and in boys. We're seeing disruption of the most basic social skills, including empathy. Rates going down, loneliness rates have skyrocketed. We're also seeing physical changes, things like back pain, we're seeing text neck nodules on the spine of younger people. And disruption in what we call metabolic pathways is a big area of research right now, meaning how our body's daily rhythm occurs, and that's linked to things like diabetes, obesity, and even heart disease.
And that's probably modulated through melatonin in the blue light aspect. So, so many areas, and I can go on. But tech is not all bad, like you said. But that's the current state of where we're at, and I haven't even talked about society, increased polarization, extremism and views, echo chamber. There's rise in conspiracy theories and that is, like, clearly linked to social media use and our connections and our choices, or not choices, what's being fed to us on tap.
Tim Fish: Wow, that's an awful lot. I mean, as I hear it, I'm like, I don't, I wanna throw this thing out the window. You know? I don't want that in my world and in my life, you know? What I'm curious about is this notion of addiction, and it's something that I know you really specialize in. Addiction outside of just tech and more addiction, addiction in general.
Can you explain addiction, sort of where it comes from, what, what's the neuroscience behind it? What neurochemicals are responsible for addiction and how we literally, many people are becoming addicted to their technology?
Shimi Kang: Yeah, so the best way, thank you for that question. I'm an addiction psychiatrist, actually, that's what my fellowship was in Boston, years and years ago, and I specialized in the adolescent brain. And what's really important in that brain is that there's more susceptibility or sensitivity to something called dopamine.
So dopamine is the neurochemical of addiction. We technically don't get addicted to a substance. Alcohol, cocaine. We can get addicted to gambling and social media. It's what's happening inside the brain based on our environment. And the best way to explain addiction is actually think about what we call the infectious disease model.
There's a host, the person, there's the virus or the bacteria, depending how potent that is. And then there's the environment around it. So in winter, we get stressed. We might get more of a flu. Addiction works the same. We all have different levels of susceptibility. There's genetics, but also a big one is mental health issues, so depression and anxiety and ADHD and spectrum, these are risk factors for addiction.
Now, that's the host. Then there is the virus or the bacteria. In this case it's technology, which is highly addictive because it's designed to be addictive. There's something called persuasive design, which is the purposeful manipulation of tech, whether it’s the algorithm or the visual, the three little dots on the text message, the use of the color red, the autoplay after a Netflix show. All of this is designed to make our dopamine levels go up and down.
The best analogy I use is sugar. Nothing wrong with a little bit of sugar. Dopamine's important in our lives, we get it when we challenge ourselves, we get it during entertainment. We get it when we eat sugar. But too much is not a good thing. And then there's the environment. That's the third factor. So in our world, where tech is everywhere, it is completely acceptable to be staring at your phone in a restaurant or at a bus stop, and the average teenager is checking their phone almost 200 times a day. It is a portal for education. It's really important in our education system. So now we have this perfect storm in this moment in time, in 2022 and heading in, where it's pervasive in our environment, our hosts are getting sicker, rising rates of stress, burnout, mental health, and we have this really powerful device and let's say virus.
Now we have an epidemic. Now we have a pandemic of addiction. I see it in my practice all the time, not just young people. Seniors are getting addicted. One of the most addictive games is Candy Crush. It's designed like a slot machine. Adults. Okay? None of us, you're not immune, Tim. I'm like, we all have it.
Tim Fish: I'm not immune.
Shimi Kang: Exactly. So that's the state of it. And it really is an important message. It is predicted to be one of the biggest health issues. I worked at the World Health Organization and the next health epidemic is actually trending and predicted to be loneliness. And that's connected to our devices. We're getting increasingly disconnected.
Tim Fish: Wow. You know, I'll tell you, last week, Shimi, I was talking with a head of school where at her school, they have a process in the upper school and the middle school where they've said, you know, no phones during the day. No sort of, you can't, can't be pulling it out when you're walking across campus. You can't have it out at lunch. You can have it put away, but you need to really be more focused. Right. And she was talking about how when they implemented that policy, how much of a super strong reaction there was from the student body. Like, this notion, like you have just taken away this like, it was not like anything she had ever seen before. And it, she talked about how it really worried her, because she said, what, where are we in this environment where we can't be away from these devices?
You know, I just had the privilege of going overseas with my family this summer. And one of the things was like, when you go overseas, you gotta like pay 10 bucks a day to keep your cellular service active. And I said to my kids, If you want it, you could pay for it, but I'm not paying for your sort of connection. And they all said, No, I don't need to pay for it. And it was amazing the first two or three days they were like, really, like, I, I might turn it on. I just, I feel like I might need to turn it on. And then they let go.
And by the end they were saying, I actually feel better. Like I, I love the fact that I didn't actually have that access when I was out in public. And do you find that to be true? Do you find that there actually is something, when we could disconnect, that we actually get relief from what it brings, even though dopamine is that, is the chemical that's so much at play?
Shimi Kang: Absolutely, and that's such a great story because I would agree with both. I would agree with this, like, really deep attachment, addiction to devices. I see it in my practice, where I'll ask a teenager or a 10 year old to shut their phone off, or what I started doing years ago is actually detach it from their body. It was really hard for them to put it on the desk in front of us. And in fact, many would say, Can I just sit on it? I just need to feel it connected to me. And so we really have to understand how powerful the attachment is. And again, it's designed to be that way. That's part of the whole purpose of how it came to be.
But like any addiction, just like sugar, just like alcohol, just like, you know, if we're gambling or, or overshopping, there's so many things we over consume. After a period of withdrawal, and that withdrawal is that need, that want, that urge, that craving. And for technology, I've seen it last anywhere from two days to one month. And if we look at the rehab centers around the world, it's just like the same pattern of any addiction, where we see about three months is required to kind of rewire the brain to understand life without it, depending on how embedded it is. But yeah, then you're like, Wow, I'm not a slave to this device anymore. I don't have to check my phone. I can check my phone. I choose to see what's going on, you know, on social media or the news. But I don't have to, I'm not compelled to.
The problem though, with the phones and tech, other than other addictions, is this whole idea of abstinence, being away from it is impossible, because tech is embedded. It's like air. We cannot live without it. It's, and in fact, if we teach children that it's a bad thing, I feel they'll be significantly disadvantaged. There are so many positives to tech. I called it the fire of our time when I opened in the first chapter of my book The Tech Solution. I say, we are dealing with the fire of our time. There was a moment when our ancestors learned to harness the power of fire. Those who did it well went further and farther than ever before. Those who didn't got burnt and burnt down the village. And that's exactly where we are with tech.
Tim Fish: That's, that's such a great point. I also love in the book the way you talk about a healthy tech diet, this idea that you can have balance. This notion of what you refer to as junk tech, right. The same as junk food. Can you tell me more about this notion of what, what a healthy tech diet might look like in a household or maybe in a school?
Shimi Kang: Yeah. So I have three kids. I have basically three teenagers. My daughter's almost 13, and two boys. And you know, when I wrote my first book, The Dolphin Parent, it was really a statement of understanding what are the 21st century skills required for a world of exponential growth and disruption and ultra fast paced and tech driven.
So I would always get the question, how much time is enough time? And which video games are okay to play? No matter where I was, I'd be in Hong Kong, I'd be in India, I'd be in New Zealand. And I realized the answers were really just not satisfying to myself or others, and they were actually impossible to implement in my home.
So I'm like, we need something else than just timing and this idea of screen time. So I started this metaphor of diet and I said, Well, all parents, all teachers, all people understand diet and consumption. Let's take something familiar and use that. I came up with the idea that there is healthy tech, and there is for sure healthy tech. Edu tech, this podcast, you know, community connection. There's self care on tech, mindfulness apps, master classes, robotics. It goes on and on. There is of course toxic tech. That's the opposite. That is tech that is stressful. That is the bullying. That's the hate, that's the fear of missing out. That's the comparing your life to others. That's the tech where after you spend five, 10 minutes, you feel terrible, you feel anxious, you feel angry. You wanna avoid that, just like toxic food, just like aspartame, just like spoiled milk.
And then there's the tech in the middle. Okay. And that's the snack tech or the junk food tech that you mentioned? This is the sugar of the diet. A little bit's okay. So a little bit of mindless scrolling on Instagram. A little bit of video gaming on a Friday night, you know, after whatever, you know, your, your dinner's done, a little bit of YouTube kind of silliness. It's just like the sugar. It's okay to have dessert. It's okay to have pizza and chips on a Friday night, but if that is all you are consuming, you will get sick. Your physical body will get sick. What we take in, whether it's physically or mentally, impacts our brain and body. So that's the premise of the tech diet, just like food diet, and just like that, it has to start early. It has to be repetitive. There's no quick fix. We fall off, we fall on. You know, this is a hard thing.
Anyone who's ever tried to keep a healthy diet, and I think with that metaphor, it really frees us up to make better choices and not get stuck in rigid timelines, which don't work anyway.
Tim Fish: Yeah. So let's think back on schools a little bit and how you create the context for healthy tech in the school. You know, one of the things schools do is when they have a cafeteria or a dining hall, they control what's on the line. They control how often there's dessert. They control whether or not they're serving chocolate milk. And I wonder about how a school can be intentional in its design around healthy tech. Let's go back to the head of school I was talking to who said, we're just going to limit phones during the academic day. We're just going to say, you just put 'em away. Just, we don't want that to be something that you are on during the academic day.
And I wonder if that's the right path, or I wonder if there might be another way to be thinking about this, right? Because to your point, this is the world we live in. We also have to be teaching folks how to be in this world, how to have that device close by, because they always will as an adult, and yet we want to create the space where they can find balance.
So I'm curious, any advice for parents or let's say school leaders about how you create the healthy tech environment in your school?
Shimi Kang: First of all, schools have done a, a good job with talking about toxic tech, right? Many schools have like a blocker in their wifi. You know, kids can't download pornography or extreme websites. So not a bad job.
However, especially in the senior years and junior years, they, kids know how to get around that. Okay. They're using incognito, they're using everything. So we can't just assume. So a good tech support, constant updates to those, kind of having your finger on the pulse of what's happening to kind of weed out that toxic tech.
What schools need a lot more help with is that junk tech, the dopamine, the stuff that looks harmless, you know, the Snapchat, the YouTube video, the sugar. And I do believe, and the research is showing, that we need limits and we need monitoring, especially in the younger years. But also, like you said, we need to scaffold that away starting in, I would say around grade nine, grade 10. Definitely grade 11, grade 12, you don't want to be, like, micromanaging these young people's tech use because they're going to be off and they have to self regulate. But just like we don't allow alcohol and drugs in the school, we can say that, you know, we have limits and boundaries.
Now, the entire country of France banned phones from the schools. And the research there was quite interesting. Around that time there was increased social connection, a better sense of wellbeing and togetherness. Teachers were happier because they didn't have to police this issue, it was set. Parents were happier, kids were more engaged. In my own kids' school at one point, they were in three different independent schools and one had a really robust tech policy. The other was not there yet. And the third, third school was, had zero. And I could see the difference as a parent and in my own kids. So I would like to see a day where there is policies that scaffold, that limit and monitor in the younger years, that let go, just like we need to, for the adolescent brain.
But is saying, I don't know any 12 year old, Tim, or any 14 year old, that can check Snapchat or Instagram in the hallway and then walk into a math or chemistry class and focus. There's just no way that the brain can switch like that. So all these amazing teachers and this great curriculum is going to be delivered to distracted kids if we don't get the phones out of the hallways, out of the lunch rooms.
Tim Fish: You know, one of the things I think about also as being a school leader and walking into a classroom, or walking into any space where tech is being used, or even as a parent, wondering. I love your notion, like it's not just about screen time. And you have this way of describing the characteristics of healthy tech. Right? This notion of creating or connecting. Can you tell us a little bit more about what your sort of simple way to understand, is the tech my child or the student's using healthy tech, helping them, or is it more junk food, or hopefully not, even toxic tech?
Shimi Kang: Yeah. So the three Cs of Healthy Tech—and people remember in three—is any tech that leads to creativity, self care, and community or connection. So these are three things that we're actually really missing in this generation now. Studies show that young people are losing creativity. There's something called a Torrance test of creativity. We're seeing less diverse answers, less robust answers. Like, what are all the things you can use a toothbrush for? Because of this quick fix, we're not thinking, we're not imagining, we're getting the answers right away. So tech that leads to creativity, whether that is edutech—learning is creativity. It's learning and building and growing. It is, like I said, robotics, coding. Photography, like, make your own pictures, not just look at others mindlessly. Create your own video, not just watch TikTok. So it's really endless there.
Community and connection. So tech that leads to meaningful social bonding. Not social likes, not social media, not even socializing. We have this really high risk of loneliness. I see it all the time in young people. So meaningful connection, looking at each other. FaceTime, video conferencing, podcasts like this, building community. Activism. Young people are passionate about so many things. You know, getting involved in their community. That's good tech. It releases oxytocin. The creativity releases serotonin. And then that third category is self care. So think of all the mindfulness apps. There's Calm, there's Head Space, that goes on and on. My team has created one for kids under the age of 10 called Get Sparky. And Sparky helps kids with gratitude practice and breathing and drawing out your feelings. So all that self care, the social emotional piece releases endorphins and leads to better health. Sleep apps and Fitbits and counting your steps. So there's so much that can be done on tech that is healthy.
And even music. With my teenage patients, I ask them to create playlists and spend time doing that. That's so much more beneficial than you know, just mindlessly scrolling, comparing your life to others, you know, feeling anxious and depressed that you're not the best superstar athlete or going to the Ivy League school. But you're working on your music that's special to you. So we need to guide young people towards the healthy tech. We need to absolutely help them avoid the toxic stuff. And we need to say just like sugar, you know, you don't wake up and eat a bag of chips or eat a bag of candy. It's not okay to wake up and start playing video games, let's say.
So limits and boundaries around the sugar, around the junk food tech.
Tim Fish: That's so fascinating, and it really helps me think about times when I have been engaged with tech in those ways. I walk away feeling better. I feel like it's an incredible creative outlet. I'm proud of what I've created or I'm proud of the connections I've made. And I love the notion of self care coming into that.
You know, also, in the book, you talk about this idea that girls are from Instagram and boys are from Xbox. Tell us more about what that actually means, and how social media is correlated with mental health in young people, and maybe particularly in how it might be different often in girls versus boys. Not absolute, but there may be some slightly different trends there.
Shimi Kang: Yeah, so this research is so interesting. And of course gender is not binary, and we know there's fluidity there. What the research is telling us is we are seeing tech use kind of fall in a bit of a dichotomy. So, and anyone like, you know, with kids at home or in the classroom can see this. So we are seeing boys gravitate more towards general video gaming. And when we think of brain evolution, let's think of hunting, right? There was hunters, gatherers. The human brain evolved over 80,000 years. We were, that was our way of life, let's say. Video gaming is very much like hunting. You get hits of dopamine. When you win, there's leveling up. There's even literally the hunting aspect of it. And in my practice, video game addiction and in fact, gaming disorder is now a medical diagnosis in Europe. And internet use disorder is a medical diagnosis. So you can actually go on disability for these conditions. And it will come in North America for sure in the next, I think, within the next three to five years we will see it here.
That's, and, and, and I hear stories about families who try to set limits on gaming. They take the Xbox away. You know, their son literally trashes his room, runs away from home, violence. This is not uncommon when we look across the world. Countries like Japan literally have declared an emergency in young men with gaming and a condition called Hikikomori, which is social, extreme social withdrawal, often connected to tech.
So then when we see the other side, we see social media, we see the gathering behaviors. Okay? So social media likes, followers, Instagram influencing, we see young girls tending to gravitate there. Comparing your life to others, there is a rise of perfectionism. And this is so important because we use this term perfectionism and the independent school system is, like, flooded with perfectionists.
And, you know, it's, it's almost rewarded, right? because it's so hard to get onto that team or get into that university or get the scholarship. But perfectionism is linked to anxiety, depression, and lower life achievement. And we're seeing girls burning out. So there definitely is that gender diversity. And we're seeing sadly, when we think of hate and bullying, we're seeing more of that. It increased in the pandemic. And LGBT community, transgender, we saw more anti-Asian, anti-women, anti-everybody, that rise in, during the pandemic as well. So there's all kinds of trends that are happening. But we are really at a place where we have to dive deep into this topic. Anyone who's been around a young person knows that there's no such thing as a generation gap anymore. It's, that was a gen—now it's about five to six years. And it's really tough for teachers and educators to keep up.
And that's where I think this diet metaphor, there's always going to be a new sugar. You don't have to know what the new video game is, is okay. I just know that, that this aspect is the sugar. So we're going to limit and monitor it.
Tim Fish: That is so powerful. You know, when you speak about that, one of the questions that comes to mind for me as a parent is, are my kids addicted? Right. They certainly enjoy tech, like you talked about, the sugar aspect of it, but are they addicted to it? Do you have sort of warning signs that a parent or a teacher or educator might see that might show that an enjoyment has tipped into an addiction?
Shimi Kang: Yeah, so we have some little cheat sheets in the world of addiction that I'll share with you. And they go back to the C's. There's lots of C's happening. So they are, think of cravings, is one aspect. So your child is in the middle of math class, middle of a family dinner, Christmas with grandma, and they're craving the game or they're craving their phone. So that's kind of a internal mental urge, a distraction.
Number two, the inability to cut down. Okay. You've set limits, you've talked to them. You're like, Okay, they agree, even they wanna get outside more, maybe get back to soccer, see their friends in real life. But it fails. And, you know, you tried over the weekend. Next thing you know, they're sneaking their phone, They're sneaking their PS five, what have you.
Third C is consequences. So it's now impacting their mental health, like all the things I mentioned. And physical health, sleep deprivation. Many parents are like, My kid's not showering, they're not eating well. That's extreme, but they're just not getting enough activity. So sitting is the new smoking. Kids are sitting a really long time. Even this crouched posture that we see all over our schools over a laptop or phone, that's a very stressful posture. That flexion of the spine.
Our nervous system is like, why are you crouching in a cave? Is there a hurricane? Is there a predator? And it'll fire cortisol, the stress hormone, just based on that crouched posture that, that we're seeing everywhere.
So the consequences, negative consequences, physical, mental, or social health, the inability to cut down. And cravings. Those are the three hallmarks of addiction. You have to watch for them. And that's where I would say you wanna get help. Because you know, with family, friends, involved with school, medical professionals, it's really serious. I've seen all kinds of bad outcomes. But on the other hand, kids' brains are what we call neuroplastic. They can learn and grow very rapidly. That's why, you know, they can learn languages. So kids also recover and get better and create new habits better and faster than adults can. So it's really hopeful on the other end.
Tim Fish: That is so helpful to think about. Those warning signs and those, those signs, and I think about it for myself as well, my own use of tech. And I'm wondering, am I seeing some of that? You know, the simple stuff that people do. Like you charge your phone at the, on the bedside table next to your, next to you when you're sleeping and when you wake up in the morning, you grab it and quickly go through email. Like those things for me, I'm going to go back now and really start thinking about where is that productive in my life and where is it not productive in my life? How can I actually separate more from this thing?
Because I imagine adults might be equally addicted, but their sugar might be email at work, where that's where they're getting their dopamine, as opposed to maybe scrolling through Snapchat. Is that true?
Shimi Kang: Absolutely. Yeah. Email, news, you know, I think I'm addicted to the news. I'll, like, check one channel, check the other channel, especially in the pandemic. You know, we were all addicted. What's the latest? And then we're stress eating with sugar and candy and we're just going from one dopamine hit to another. And then a glass of wine while we're checking the news on our phone at five.
So, yes. And then I was saying we're even seeing a rise in seniors. But I do wanna say something, Tim. There's a really important phenomenon called neurons that fire together, wire together. So you and I had the privilege of a childhood, ideally, generally without devices everywhere. I played outside for hours and hours. I read books. I, we had one TV and it had like three channels in my home. I fired and wired life, with real life. And those were the early beginnings of how my brain wired.
This generation is wiring and firing life with tech. At a very early age, you see babies swiping iPads. You go to an airport and I mean, not judging any parent, a diaper change is really hard, but the diaper change of my time, it was like a dance. You have to make eye contact with that baby to kind of get them to sit still. Now we're seeing parents hand the phone and have the diaper change. It works. But kids are being wired and fired. They're being fed in front of the TV and phone. And what's happening there is life and, and tech are getting intertwined.
In fact, so adults, our introduction of tech came a bit more healthy. Work, yeah, not so healthy, but still we’re learning and we’re productive. 90% of young people's intro to tech is through the junk, through that sugar, through either like babies and the silly little cartoons, which are highly addictive actually. SpongeBob and the, how rapidly they move, we're seeing increase in attention deficit in that age under eight. So it is a different introduction. Kids are wired from the crib and it's changing their brain architecture and their behaviors, brain, bodies, and behaviors like never before.
Tim Fish: That's so interesting. You know, I guess what I'm hearing from you is like, I remember in adolescence. I did get outside a lot. I played a lot. I was on sports teams, et cetera. But I also remember a bunch of days I was laying on the couch watching Gilligan's Island. You know, and that was, that was, that was total, But it was different, wasn't it? It was Gilligan's Island laying on the couch and just kind of passively watching. That was very different than scrolling through Instagram and I think, How was it different?
Shimi Kang: Yeah, it's such a great question. So we'll talk about Gilligan's Island, cause I remember that one too. It'd probably be canceled now, actually for some reason. But I love the show. So even sitting and watching a 40 minute show or 25 minutes. First of all, the pace of what you're watching, the people are moving in regular speed. They are talking in regular speed. And you generally, if you're sitting on the couch, you're not going to be flipping channels because it's a little bit far away.
Tim Fish: Right. Well, that was before remote controls, right? I would've had to actually get up to change channels, which I rarely did.
Shimi Kang: We were all too lazy. And even when the remotes came, there was maybe six or seven, initially, channels, and there wasn't great stuff on now.
So when you see the idea of scrolling, the attention span is changing in less than a second, right? And the max we're kind of seeing attention being held is like three seconds. So that in itself, our brain is having to reprocess that. So Gilligan's Island, one episode, you're seeing the same eight people. You can focus, you can process. Yeah. There's some stuff going on. But they're having real conversations versus scrolling Instagram, scrolling social media, going on YouTube. Even the YouTube video, if you're watching the same video, it's extremely fast paced. You know, these tubers are talking fast. They have imaging coming in, there's popups happening. So the distraction.
And that's where we're seeing poor difficulty with focus, with concentration. Kids can't sustain it. Adderall is like the number one drug on college campuses. The, you know, it's being called a study drug. Highly addictive. I see it all the time. ADHD is very real. I prescribe it too. But this is a real issue. I'm sure your teachers and educators are seeing this, and they're just like, What is going on? Why are all the kids having difficulty with focused concentration? Part of it is how media has changed. Like you said, they're not watching Gilligan's Island anymore.
Tim Fish: They're not watching Gilligan's. No, they don't watch TV at all.
So let's think together for a second about a dream school scenario. Right. Let's think about what K12 and Healthy Tech could look like in schools, and how parents could be partners to raise the CQ in their kids. But before we do that, let's even talk about what is CQ?
Shimi Kang: Yeah. Thank you. CQ stands for Consciousness Quotient. It is the 21st century or 22nd or future ready intelligence. Meaning in a world that's rapidly changing, there's no manual, there's no manual for the pandemic. We got robotics, we got AI coming, we got trends, disruption, and all of our industries.
A year ago, no one heard of NFTs. A couple years ago, cryptocurrency was unknown. Now it's here. So we are in a world that's constantly changing, and the intelligence, the skills needed to navigate that world are now different than the skills needed way back when the school system began. So I'll explain that for a moment. Back when the school system began, Prussian king or factory model of education, sitting at a row, IQ was really important. IQ, left brain skill, general technical knowledge, holding things in your, in your memory. Logic, really important.
And if you needed to know something back then, there was no Google. You had to go to a mentor or read it in a book somewhere. And so it was really important to hold that information. Then tech disrupted the world, and we could Google things, and knowing the right answer wasn't the key. It was asking the right question. We started to hear about EQ, empathy, social skills, that's kind of generally right brain, really important.
But then it was this false debate. Is it IQ? Is it EQ? What is it? What do we need? Well, what the future requires is the CQ. It is whole brain. Okay? So left brain, right brain, and in fact, body intelligence. We have intelligence in our gut. That's the self-care piece. When we're anxious and stressed, our gut fires. That's why kids get belly, tummy aches when, first day of school. We have intelligence in our heart. When we are connected with each other, our heart releases oxytocin. We literally have neurons in our heart that are learning based on social relationships.
So CQ is full body intelligence. It's made up of the five Cs. Your audience has heard these, the five Cs of the 21st century skills. Creativity. We mentioned that. Collaboration, being able to connect and inspire and work with people from diverse settings globally. Communication. So not just verbal or written, but an infograph, a video, you know, a tweet. Communication is changing, and key. What else do I have here? Critical thinking, asking the right question. Solving problems, finding the holes and really solving problems that didn't exist before. And the fifth c that I added in my first book, The Dolphin Parent, was contribution. In a world of increasing loneliness, increasing automation and outsourcing, your contribution to your team, your community, your value is really important.
So that's the CQ skills. Anyone who's writing applications for universities, if you go to indeed.com, those are the number one skills employers are looking for in the workplace, higher education. The problem is the young people, and I think the independent school system does a much better job because maybe resources, but we're seeing a deficiency in all of those skills, actually. We're seeing less communication. We're seeing more difficulty working together. We're seeing less creativity than we had, like I mentioned. So we're at this mismatch where what the world needs our children to become and, and what they, the skills they have, and the direction they're going in.
So anyway, that's a long explanation for that, but it's really important because we're all working so hard. Teachers are working hard, parents are working hard. But we are in a place of the mismatch. The world has changed faster than our parenting, our homes, and our schools are changing.
Tim Fish: I love that notion of CQ. I think it really gets at what we have been thinking about trying to do more and more in our schools, as we move to what we think will be a highly relevant experience for young people. It also makes me think about this idea, you know, we've been talking a lot about the purpose of school today. What is, why do we even have it? What's it fundamentally about? What does it need to do? And in a lot of our conversations, we've talked about the rise of student agency, we've talked about increasing self efficacy, and we've talked about pulling content acquisition out of the middle, like you talked about. Like that was the old Prussian model. That's, that's not what it's all about anymore. And if that's not, what is in the middle?
And what we've said is in the middle is fundamentally wellbeing, right? Wellbeing needs to be at the center, so the foundation on which we build everything else. And what I think is so important from this conversation, I think what's so important for me is if we, if we're shooting for developing CQ as you've described it, which was one of the best ways I've heard anyone describe left brain, right brain, whole brain and whole body, I never understood that the gut actually is part of your mind, that your heart actually has neurons. Fascinating concept. We could spend another hour on that whole thing about what truly whole brain mind looks like. What I'm curious about, what I'm taking away from this conversation, is that in order for us to put wellbeing at the center, we have to be really intentional about how we design tech in our schools.
We have to understand where we can be generating and supporting and encouraging healthy tech, and we have to have the courage to confront unhealthy tech, and particularly toxic tech. And like you said, you can't be scrolling through Instagram and then walk into a classroom and be fully present. That you can't switch neurologically, you can't switch back and forth that quickly.
So that for me is a fascinating concept, and it makes me think about this notion of the designed experience and how we need to be more intentional in this world at designing the experience that our students have when they come to our schools. I don't know. Is that, am I on base on that or do you think I'm wandering off in a way that maybe you could correct me?
Shimi Kang: I love it. It's giving me goosebumps because I see that future too. And, and we need it urgently. And it's so great to hear leaders talk about it. And, you know, wellbeing is this word that is at the core. However, it's actually kind of stigmatized, right? Like, I'll tell you, I, I've, I've gone all over the world talking about, well, but I'm, my background is a psychiatrist. However, when I'm giving a talk at a hypercompetitive high school or you know, university somewhere, I will use the word CQ, because suddenly people are like, Oh, I want that. But what they don't understand is you can't have creativity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, without wellbeing. And I'll explain.
Because when we are stressed, when we are sleep deprived, exhausted, overly competitive, angry, disconnected, the stress response puts us into something called freeze, fight or flight. And that is the only thing that's happening in the human brain. We freeze, we get anxious, we procrastinate, we get indecisive. Our freeze is also controlling behaviors like that little blue circle on the computer. You're stuck, you're obsessing. We fight. We get angry. We rage. And the flight is really important in nature. It's a bird flying away. We mentally fly away. We check our phones. We go shopping, we check the news. We distract ourselves. We eat sugar. Conspiracy theories and extreme views are actually flight behaviors, right? I'm going to think about how the world is flat, not what's happening in my household or, or how I'm going to deal with this stress.
So when we're stressed, when our children are sleep deprived because they're in too many activities, or it's, you know, they have to write their SATs or whatever it is, you know, we're stressing them out in whatever way, or they're on their devices too much, they're just cycling through anxiety, irritability, and distraction. And so many kids are cycling through that constantly. So many adults are. And that all sits in a very specific part of our brain, that amygdala area. The CQ skills, they are, they're elsewhere. They are in the cortical part of our brain. They're in the top part of our brain. And they need our heart to kick in. And our whole body intelligence.
So the way, the reason why I mentioned the whole stress thing is without wellbeing, there are no 21st century skills. Without basic self care, lifestyle, you know, routine, regular sleep, exercise, social connection. Without these fundamentals of wellbeing, there is no creativity. It's impossible. It just doesn't work biologically. And I think kids need to know that, parents need to know that, and we need to remind ourselves, because it's pervasive. I was in Geneva, Switzerland on the research that declared stress the number one health epidemic of the 21st century.
Tim Fish: Wow.
Shimi Kang: So we're not immune. Nobody's immune to that one either.
Tim Fish: And it is pervasive around the world as well. One of the things, I was talking with you earlier, we had the opportunity to connect the world in one of our episodes this year. We talked about wellbeing, stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness. These were things that are pervasive in, in independent schools around the world. And I think in, with all young people, and it's very, very concerning.
I also hear you on that wellbeing thing, and it kind of troubles me. This notion like as soon as you start talking about wellbeing, this notion like, Oh, that's soft stuff. Like now it's getting all fluffy. Now it's getting all touchy feely. Like, wait a minute. It is, like you said, there is no CQ, you cannot get to the desired outcome that we all have for our children in terms of what we might define as success, if we cannot create the foundation of wellbeing. And what I'm hearing from you also is that we need to design for wellbeing, right?
It needs to be part of our culture. It needs to be part of how we behave. It's part of the full designed experience. It's not a class that you take when you're a freshman, on wellbeing. This is part, it has to be threaded into everything we do in our schools.
This is so powerful. What a phenomenal conversation. You have given us an incredible masterclass in thinking about tech, in thinking about wellbeing, and thinking about designing for young people. There's been a lot, Shimi, that I've heard today, that worries me. That scares me, and it probably should. It probably should wake me up even more to the reality of what's taking place and with many of our young people and with ourselves.
What I'm curious about, as the last question, is what's your hope? What's your hope for young people? What's your hope for schools as we continue to head out into the next decade?
Shimi Kang: I'm really hopeful, actually. And I know we covered a lot and, and there is a lot of reason for a concern. You know, and I, I feel like I'm on my soapbox screaming, you know. However, we are at the precipice of change in education. Social, emotional, cognitive learning is what I call it, is on the rise. We finally are getting a deeper appreciation of how important this is. I use social, emotional, cognitive, because I talk about the three brains, right? Emotional regulation is the gut brain. You gotta regulate that. We gotta do the breathing, we gotta do the mindfulness to settle it, so we're not firing adrenaline in our classrooms.Start your classrooms with that. Start your staff meetings with a little bit, a nature screensaver, you know, birds chirping. All of that relaxes us, reduces that cortisol.
And then there's the social connection. So you know, really having that sense of togetherness, we're starting to understand how important that is, not taking it for granted anymore. And then the third brain are, are cognitive skills, are the CQ skills. So when we put it all together, we have social, emotional, cognitive learning, the new education, the new intelligence. This leads to those future ready skills of innovation, of connection, of resilience.
If we can just focus on that aspect of education, like you said, nothing wrong with content. And we are seeing leaders in education do this. I have a school in India that actually, we're disrupting how it's, it's, that's exactly what we're doing. We're teaching social, emotional, cognitive skills primarily, and embedding content in it. And you don't have to choose. It's not an either or. But if we don't have young people who are well, who are connected, who are not perfectionistic, who have that cognitive flexibility, now we have a generation that is caring, that has purpose, that has problem solving, that can help deal with their individual personal issues in life that come up. And also, you know, look at the state of the world in the future. They're facing things like climate change and food shortage. More polarization. So, so we need these young people to be healthy, to be connected and to be adaptable and innovative. And I think we can do it.
You know, our report cards are changing. In my house, I get my kids to highlight the cs. Where focus goes, neurons grow. I'll leave you with that rhyme. Put the focus on the positive. Put the focus on what we're doing well, what teachers are doing well, what parents and students are doing well. We will grow those behaviors. So highlight those Cs, put them in, in the report card. Tell your colleague teacher, how well they're doing. And with that it is definitely, our brains can always change. We can, we can combat and we can overcome what we're, what we're facing, right now.
Tim Fish: That's so great. Thank you so much for spending time today with us. I know that our listeners are really going to get a lot out of this episode and around how you've helped me really shape my understanding of what's really going on behind this tech phenomenon that we're seeing and how we set a pathway to wellbeing.
So thank you so much for spending some time with us today. This has been an incredible joy.
Shimi Kang: Thank you, Tim. This was a great example of healthy tech. We connected, we learned, we were creative, we solved some problems. You know, these kinds of activities, I just wanna end on that note, is exactly how we wanna be using tech. So be careful of your junk tech, okay? Not so much scrolling.
Tim Fish: Yes. I love that. You're right. I mean this, this wouldn't be possible. You're in, you're in Vancouver, British Columbia. I'm in Baltimore, Maryland. Go internet. Thank you so much for making this possible, right? Without the tech, we wouldn't have this. And that's so powerful.
And yet we also need to be careful about what we're, what we're doing. Stay away from the junk tech. Thank you so much. I will try to do that this weekend for sure.
Shimi Kang: And thank you to your team. Absolute pleasure to be on this podcast and for all the great content you're putting out there. Really important at this moment in time to have leadership like this. We need somewhere to go to learn the latest, greatest, and sort out our thoughts and ideas. So, very much appreciate and grateful for the opportunity.