Stephanie Lam – On Social Media, Technology and Calmness

A book that came my way at just the right time that I needed was Stephanie Lam’s Unfrazzle: The Easy Way To Reclaim Your Calm. The chapter on screen use and the effects of the phone on our brain was an eye-opening chapter for me and it inspired me to look deeper at not only my usage, but also the other routines in my life, such as my regular blogging and social media habits. Today, I am thrilled to have Stephanie on The Creator’s Roulette to share about screen usage and her journey to unfrazzle.

Stephanie Lam is an expert on calm, wellbeing and creativity. She’s a non-fiction author, a journalist and the back-page columnist for Breathe magazine. Her book was published in 2020. For twenty years she has also worked as a teacher alongside highly-stressed people held in immigration detention.

---

Stephanie, welcome to The Creator’s Roulette. How did your journey in mindfulness and unfrazzle begin?

Hi Kriti! And thank you so much for having me on your blog. 

If you’d told me five years ago that I was about to enter into a severe crisis, that it would tear my life apart, and yet at the same time rebuild it better than it had ever been before… well, I wouldn’t have had time to listen, because I was too busy running around, checking my phone for status updates and being a perfectionist. 

And just when I had no time for a crisis, it happened. My peak frazzle tipped over the edge, and I went from just-about-coping, to not coping at all. It made me realise that things had to fundamentally change if I wanted to be calmer and happier – not just on occasion, but on a regular basis.

Then I did a ton of research into neuroplasticity, and realised that my brain had become wired to seek out stress and adrenaline-inducing situations. To get out of it, I wanted a really guided plan that would give me specific, but easy, exercises I could do daily so that I could rewire it to seek calm instead. I couldn’t find such a book, however, and that’s how I ended up writing one instead. It’s the guide I wish I’d had before.

Recently, I was finding a lot of negative messages on book blogging in the twitter community – people accusing reviewers of plagiarism, authors not being considerate of readers, etc… It was quite disheartening and made me question why I was there in the first place when all I was seeing was my peers’ engagement to negative attitudes. I was angry and sad at the state of the community. You have seen the rise of phone and tablet screens and the Internet. When did you realize that it was affecting you in a negative manner? 

I’m so sorry to hear that. I love book bloggers, and am so grateful that you do what you do. But yes, I’m old enough to remember landlines and dial-up modems :), which meant I resisted getting a smartphone until my first novel came out in 2014. However, as soon as I did, it started affecting me negatively – posting and then checking anxiously for likes, pinwheel eyes after spending too long online – but it took me much longer to realise the extent of its negative effects. Even now, the more I learn about the effects of social media, in particular, on our brain, the more convinced I’m becoming that its drawbacks far outweigh its benefits.

I often find myself scrolling through images and feeds. It is something I just automatically do when I am on apps like Twitter and Instagram. Why do you think that happens and why do these mundane things and opinions capture our attention so easily?

It’s due to a neurotransmitter called dopamine. The human brain can’t get enough dopamine; we get it when we have a task to fulfil, it’s achievement-based, and it’s what gives us motivation. The digital world runs on dopamine, because computers in themselves are a bundle of tasks to be completed. 

The thing about dopamine is, our desire for it can lead to cravings, whereby each task completed leads to a dozen more boxes waiting to be ticked. Cravings that are never satisfied is basically addiction. Social media apps are highly addictive, and this is not an accident – they’ve been designed that way, to keep you scrolling and clicking. The shorter the ‘hit’ – a tweet, a photo, a 15-second video – the more dopamine is available. Social media is perfect for that.

These apps exist to keep us there, because that way their owners make money out of the advertising we see. This is not just my theory – many of the people who were responsible for designing these apps have openly stated that’s exactly what happened. 

How does screen time affect the brain?

The brain needs time to process all incoming information. Even in the pre-computer age there was an abundance of incoming stimuli for the brain to harvest. If you don’t give your brain significant time off to do that sorting and filing, it will become overloaded – you’ll feel strung out and frazzled. 

If you’re stimulating your brain right up until bedtime – by being online, checking status updates, and so on, this will severely impact your sleep. This is because the processing will happen during the night, when you’re supposed to be at rest. Many people know that blue light from screens in the evening impacts our sleep in the night, and that’s true, but perhaps even more significant is the fact that if you’re chronically overworking your brain until late, then even if you fall asleep, your neurons won’t be resting as they should. 

It’s why you might feel exhausted even after a night’s sleep – because your brain’s been working too hard in the daytime and evening.

With online education and learning from home due to the pandemic, people are spending more time on computers. Our web browsers with multiple apps and now technologically advanced computers that can run multiple applications at the same time give us the illusion of multitasking. What are your thoughts on that? How does that affect the brain?

Multitasking is a myth. The brain’s only able to cope with one task at a time, so if you’re constantly flipping back and forth between multiple apps, your brain will become tired out very easily. It also means the brain’s attention is divided between many things, rather than focusing on one thing at a time. And that will have a knock-on effect in many ways, but basically, you’ll end up more frazzled and less rested.

Because of dopamine, it’s really hard to avoid flipping back and forth, so if you can, stick to one task at a time when you’re online or using your computer.

How important is a routine or set purpose to use our phones?

Developing helpful routines and habits around phones is vital. It’s also essential to recognise what your particular addictive habits are for your phone use (there’s a free quiz on my website to help you work these out), and create new alternative routines to help you rewire your brain.

I’ve got plenty of ideas in the book based on what your particular phone habits are like, but if there’s one key thing that will help you, it’s to remove your phone from the bedroom at night, or turn it off until the next day and hide it in a drawer. Get an alarm clock to wake you up in the morning. It’s like, if you’re trying to give up smoking, why would you keep a packet of cigarettes by your bed?

What are some changes you have made in your lifestyle to reduce the effects of phones and social media on you?

I regularly switch my phone to ‘do not disturb’, which means I can get on with my day without being interrupted. I also tend to leave my phone in one place in the house, somewhere like the hallway, where I don’t spend too much time. If it’s in the kitchen I find myself picking it up. I also don’t even look at it after nine o’clock at night – and I’m not saying that’s easy, but repeating the habit over and over was how I rewired my brain so now it’s part of my routine.

With social media, I’ve uninstalled all my apps bar one – the least frazzling one. And even then all my notifications are disabled, and it’s in an app category I’ve called ‘time stealers’ to remind me that’s what it is. If I want to use any others, I do so online (without saving my passwords). This break is usually enough to persuade me not to do it right now.

If I find myself becoming frazzled because of other life stuff – which happens to everyone – I scale back my use of social media. For example, during this current pandemic I’ve massively cut down on anything frazzling that I don’t 100% need to do – such as posting online. And as I do so I find myself with more focus, brain space and capacity to relax. Stepping away from social media might not be so great for business, but personally it’s better for my health – and for me these days, nothing’s more important than that.

---

What’s your happy, calm place? Picture yourself there now. Close your eyes and take three relaxing breaths. Smile.

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Stephanie about finding calm. Connect with her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or her website where you can sign up for Stephanie’s Unfrazzle Club email list.