Jonathan Haidt has been on Joe Rogan, featured in articles in the New Yorker and has seen his book The Anxious Generation sky rocket to #1 on the NY Times best selling list. Jonathan outlines a few solutions to the struggles of this generation which to my mind are only band-aid solutions.

Preventing kids from accessing social media and smart phones until a reasonable age feels appropriate – but where is the incentive for the overworked, burnt out and constantly distracted parent to implement these restrictions? The excuse from these parents is understandable – if they don’t see behavioural issues with their children, then why implement these boundaries? Instead, social reform with social media and smart phones should start with broad education to parents and kids. We must look beyond these short-term fixes and teach people, both kids and parents, how to build better relationships with technology – not just pretend it doesn’t exist until they are “old enough”.

Whenever we use our device, there is always something we need to attend to. A notification we need to check, a product we need to order, or boredom that needs to be relieved. It feels as if sometimes our phones are a means to an ends. But what end exactly? Is it simply the end when we reach the end of the road as well? Or will we get to choose when we've had enough of our phones, emails and social media and get to put our phones down for the last time on our terms?

30 years ago it wasn't standard practice for people to go to the gym or eat healthy. You could eat cereal for breakfast and that was a 'good start to the day'. Now, gyms are everywhere and the ability to access information about eating right and exercising is easy than ever.

In this weeks podcast, I give you my reasons why I think Digital Wellbeing is just like dieting and fitness was 30-years ago.

We are so used to a perfect UI/UX experience with our devices, we tend to take the same expectations to our relationships. I've noticed this more and more in consumer services where now even supermarkets are making announcements to remind people to be kind to staff and treat them with respect.

Here's what happens when you apply the same expectations you have for the perfect technology around you to the imperfect people in your lives.

Sometimes we justify screen time by putting educational content in front of our kids. But as you'll come to know, the video transfer deficit means that kids, toddlers in particular, aren't learning how we would expect them to when viewing learning tools.

We are often told that screen based technology helps people learn better, quicker and with greater ease.

But what if the reality lags behind the promise? Expect to learn how you can independently verify if technology is benefitting students, and where we should be focusing our time, efforts and money instead.

We all dream about the day when AI takes over, everyone has robots to do everything for us and everything is fully automated. The day when convenience has reached it's highest possible level.

What will you do on that day? What will you do with all your free time?

This week I give you my thoughts around what a society that is fully automated would actually look like, and how it might not actually be something you want.

When you think about it objectively, it’s pretty odd behaviour. If we did other things that involved communicating with people – write a letter, paint a picture, write lyrics to a song – at a lunch, coffee or other social setting, we’d be called out by our friends pretty quickly.

So why do we let our friends and family get away with pulling their phones out in these same settings?

In this week’s podcast I give you my thoughts on what pulling your phone out in social settings says about you as a person and also the signal it gives to others around you.