#278: More Children Than Ever Are Addicted to Videogames w. Dr. Kanojia

Jul 22, 2024 | The Gabby Reece Show, WOMENS HEALTH

Listen: Apple | iHeart | Spotify

My guest today, Dr. Kanojia, is the founder of Healthy Gamer, an online platform that helps children and young adults form better video game habits, which is why I wanted to have him on the show. Dr. K argues that the line between video game addiction and healthy gaming has never been so blurred, leading to all sorts of confusion for parents who don’t know whether video games are causing their children’s depression or are helping them, if you can believe it, make new lifelong friends.

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Time Stamps:

00:00 Introduction to Dr. K and Healthy Gamer
05:00 Dr. K’s Personal Journey
15:01 The Neuroscience of Addiction
25:00 Impact of Technology on Mental Health
00:35:01 Practical Strategies for Parents

Show Transcript:

Hi, Dr. Kanojia. Welcome to the show. Hey, Gabby. How are you? Good. And for your, uh, for ease and for actually what you go by, you go by Dr. K. Yes. So I have to tell you, I, uh, I usually, you know, I read all the books I have how to raise a healthy gamer right here. You, I can go in so many different directions with you.

And so what I thought I would do is I want to sort of talk about you and probably the things that most human beings are navigating. And then I’d love to get into the, into the gaming part of this. So in a, in a background kind of catch up you had, is it, is it safe to say you had a, some, a bumpy time in college, which your dad suggested that you go to India.

[00:03:30] Dr. K: yeah, I mean, I think

[00:03:31] Gabby: it’s learn some new things. Yeah,

[00:03:33] Dr. K: it’s safe to say that I was so addicted to video games that I failed out of college. I appreciate your attempt to soften that blow, but that’s what it is. Um, right. So I was playing 16, 18, 20 hours a day. Seven days a week, not going to class, literally like Fs on my transcript.

And um, my parents tried everything. So they tried being like really supportive and really loving, and then they also tried like tough love. And that didn’t seem, nothing seemed to work. So my dad was kind of at his wits end, and so he was like, You gotta go to India. And I was like, What for? And he was like, I don’t know, but nothing else is working.

So I, I did end up going to India when I was, 21 years old and stayed at a monastery for about three months. And that was a pretty transformative period of time for me.

[00:04:23] Gabby: I get this impression on a lot of the things that you share that in a way, that was your dad’s moment of genius, because it also feels like, because you come from this, seemingly pretty traditional home that there was, I won’t say tough love, but that love of like, uh, you know, this is the expectation in this house.

We’re going to perform, we’re going to be professionals. And in that way, like kind of not this wiggle room, but it was also for me, it really jumped out that it was his suggestion to go to India that it was like, Oh, and here’s this other side that he showed. Yeah,

[00:04:54] Dr. K: absolutely. That that’s such an astute Read.

Um, so, you know, when I was, I remember when I was nine years old, my dad pulled my brother and I aside. We were throwing out, we were throwing a football around in the backyard and after throwing around the ball for about 45 minutes, which is maybe like a once and a quarter occurrence for us, he pulled us aside and he said, one of y’all is going to be a doctor and one of y’all is going to be a lawyer.

Um, and then when I was interviewing for med school many, many years later, you know, they would ask me, why are you here? And I would tell them this story and then I would say, my brother was older and he chose law school. So here I am. Ha ha ha. And, and so, yeah, I mean, super high expectations. Both of my parents were physicians.

Um, you know, there was just this assumption of, of success. And I, I think you’re absolutely right that that was a moment of, of brilliance and also, like, to a certain degree, humility. Cause I, I think he recognized, he’s like, this is not working, I’m not sure quite what to do. Um, but he was a, a really good dad and sort of recognized maybe something of what I needed.

It was interesting cause he had recently rediscovered that side too. Uh, so he was an oncologist and, and sort of like late in his career realized that, like, we’re missing something in Western science. So he started studying a lot of like spirituality and alternative medicine for his cancer patients.

[00:06:13] Gabby: Yeah. And I, I, like I said, I think as a parent, you, you haven’t, you have so many opportunities to do it different than the way that you’re comfortable doing or the way you’ve done it. And that really, uh, jumped out at me because I thought, oh, then he also helped participate in you starting off on this, this, uh, Adventure that helps so many people.

So did you go there for 10 years? Like during the summers? Is that right? Seven

[00:06:37] Dr. K: years and I would spend summer usually the summers there. So I would go to a particular monastery I would learn a set of techniques and then My teachers told me that I needed to like finish school and stuff. I couldn’t peace out on life So I tried to become a monk and take my vows at 21 and they said you have to do it when you’re 30 You So, so they, they said, you can’t like escape from life.

So you have to finish what you’re doing. And then like, you also don’t have anything worth giving up. So being a monk is about giving up your life, but you have nothing worth giving up. So they said, go finish things, get a doctoral degree. It doesn’t matter what kind, and then give up, build something worth giving up and then give it up if you want to.

But in the meantime, they were kind enough to continue teaching me every summer in terms of like spiritual techniques.

[00:07:25] Gabby: So as far as I, I’m going to assume that you played games in high, the video games in high school. And then it just progressed. And do you think that it was? Do you think stress because you move into college and it’s like maybe you’re thinking what am I supposed to be doing?

Um, you’re on your own, whatever these things are. Do you think it was a stress reaction to dive deeper into the video games? What, what in you was, was sort of like why you were sinking your teeth for hours? Yeah,

[00:07:54] Dr. K: absolutely. So I, I think, I think you once again hit on a big part of it. So what, what, what we, when you, when we use this term stress, From a neuroscience perspective, that’s a lot of different things.

So specifically, what was really important for me was anytime you play a video game, or you use social media, or you binge watch a show, or you drink alcohol, or you smoke marijuana, or whatever, If you look at all of these addictions, whether they’re behavioral or substance based, what they do is suppress our negative emotional circuitry.

So what happened with me is, I was somewhat probably immature and overwhelmed by college to begin with. I didn’t have enough self discipline to like, wake up on time. You know, I had to be, in my senior year of high school, like, I was in a routine and a lot of structure. But in college, like, you can skip a day.

You know, and it’s not the end of the world. Like, so I would skip one day and then I would skip two and then I would skip three. And then I really got stuck in this cycle because the more I skip, the more behind I become, the more behind I become, the more negative emotions I experience. I experienced a lot of shame, a lot of guilt.

I didn’t realize this at the time. You know, even fear, like what’s going to happen? What’s am I ruining my life? I am ruining my life and I didn’t know how to fix it. And so the more negative emotions, the more the negative emotional circuitry in my brain activated, the more I became dependent on video games.

To make that pain go away. So video games, and then the more I play video games, the more I fail my classes, which then enhances the emotions, which then reinforces the gaming behavior. So it was just this terrible cycle of, you know, creating problems in my life, avoiding those problems, having those problems get worse, avoiding them even more.

And that was really basically what was happening.

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When you would come back from India, like, like say, fresh out of the discipline, the learning, the meditation practice, the environment, that that really also supports all those things. Well, well, I guess first. How are you different? How are you the same? And, and how are you different when you first came back?

And, and then also what I’m so fascinated by is what were the things that you were doing to try your best to recreate that opportunity now you’re dealing with? And I put it in quotes, real life, regular life, routine stressors, things like that. So

[00:14:44] Dr. K: I, I’d say that, you know, that it’s such a beautiful question because I think the biggest difference is I didn’t really understand who I was.

Before India, and I started to understand who I was after India. And I don’t even mean like in an ego conception, like I used to think of myself as a loser, but I don’t think of myself as a winner today. I think what I really understood was that all of that is ego. So if you really look at it, like technically and scientifically, I cannot X ray you or biopsy you and find a loser or a winner, it is literally the concept of being a loser or being a winner.

Is created by our mind. It’s an abstraction. It’s not a real thing in nature So sort of this fundamental realization that because once I started to think that i’m a loser and I can’t fix my problems Then the interesting thing about those kinds of thoughts is those kinds of thoughts will shape your destiny And there are lots of studies about you know mindset performance mindset growth mindset that kind of bear this out But basically what I discovered is that i’m just a bundle of experience.

I’m just like a normal guy You It doesn’t matter when I eat a burrito, I can be a loser. I can be a winner. I can be a successful, I can be unsuccessful. Eating a burrito is just eating a burrito. And so I used to really think about life as a series of like goals that I have to achieve. Right. And this was instilled.

My dad was like. You have to be a doctor at age nine. And, and so I was trying to live up to all these mental expectations. And in trying to achieve those goals, it became overwhelming. And so then what I really learned is just focusing on like the present. Like you can’t, I can’t control whether I become a doctor, but what I can control is whether I study today.

And so, the, the big irony is I used to have huge ambitions to go to Harvard Medical School because that’s what Indian kids did. And then, like, kind of completely gave that up. I was like, I don’t really, you know, I’m going to try to learn about medicine just because I want to understand people. That was my goal.

It’s not to achieve anything. And the big irony is when I devoted myself To like a very genuine pursuit instead of like some kind of accomplishment My performance went through the roof and then I ended up there which was like hilarious and ironic.

[00:17:04] Gabby: Are your parents alive?

[00:17:05] Dr. K: I’m, sorry, uh, my mom is alive

[00:17:09] Gabby: And did your dad watch you go through your, these changes?

[00:17:14] Dr. K: Some. So I remember there was a really like, so it took me many years to get into medical school. Um, you know, I, I applied to med school, like over 120 med schools and finally got into one over the course of three years. So he definitely watched some of the, he was there for, you know, the start of the change and kind of shepherded me through most of it.

Um, so it took me about five and a half years to graduate from college. And then it took me three years to start med school, or, uh, get into med school. So, uh, he was alive long enough to see me get into med school, and I remember the day that I got in and I, I gave him the news, like, he was so relieved, because he was like, you’re gonna do awesome, like, you know, I know that you feel like you’re behind and all this kind of stuff, but, like, all you needed is one opportunity, and the person that you are today, Will excel and you’ll be amazed at what you will be able to accomplish and it’s amazing how right he was Um, and then he passed away later that year and so from a karmic perspective I was kind of like, okay, he did his duty and then he could leave so i’m grateful for that

[00:18:19] Gabby: You said that you got to know yourself It’s such an interesting idea of getting to know ourselves, right?

Because I think the deeper you go into these practices and you realize how much ego is just fighting and kicking and screaming to keep us and driving us. And so it’s this combination of we are what, you know, our vibration, our antenna, our thoughts, our feelings, but then also simultaneously how we, Try not to over identify, right?

Like this weird push and pull. So where within that for you is a sweet spot? Because in one hand you’re saying, Hey, I, I got to know myself. And then on the other hand, there is sort of this thing of releasing of ego. I always find this such an interesting back and forth.

[00:19:08] Dr. K: It’s such, it’s such a great question.

So I would say, and I know my answer is going to be kind of weird. So I, I’m not, there is no balance for me. There’s actually, I’m completely at one end of the spectrum, which is what I think the real answer is, which is all, there’s no balance. I am completely empty. I’m nothing. So if you really stop and understand, I know that sounds kind of weird, but if you stop and look at your experience of life, all you really are is like a television screen that shows things.

So you are the thing that experiences your life. So my body changes over the course of my life. And I’ve had patients that have lost the limb. I’ve worked with women who have required hysterectomies, right? So the removal of the uterus means they can know, and these are young women, so they can no longer have children.

So their body changes, their identity changes, your emotions change, your thoughts change. So if we really look at what are we. Our body can change, our thoughts can change, our sense of identity can change. I can think I’m a loser today, I can think I’m a winner tomorrow. The only thing that doesn’t change throughout your entire life is that you are the one who’s experiencing it.

So the only thing that is constant is that you experience the ups, you experience the downs. There are going to be ups and there are going to be downs. Your body will change, your mind will change, your career will change, everything will change. Except for the fact that no one else can experience your life and you can’t experience anyone else’s.

And so the, the analogy that I use is the discovery that see, most of the time, if we like watch a movie on a TV screen, the TV screen is different from the movie. The TV screen is what displays all of the variability of the different movies that we watch. So what we are in life is where the screen. And if you really look at the screen, the screen is actually empty.

It requires something else to be played on there, which is temporary. So now we’re playing a comedy today. We’re having fun tomorrow We’re watching some kind of drama or tragedy and i’m, you know in couples counseling with my my spouse And that’s what really life is. You’re just the experiencer of life And that’s not, that’s not an identity.

It’s not a man. It’s not a woman. It’s not good. It’s not bad. I’m just that which experiences this life.

[00:21:23] Gabby: It’s such an interesting point of view because when you’re trying to do that also, it’s this, it’s this, um, you know, I have three daughters. I think you have two daughters. Am I right? So it’s, and they’re the ones who really, uh, I learned this from, as you know, you learn so much from them.

Um, how am I, How am I present? How am I involved? How am I emotionally kind of out on the limb? Um, but that yet somehow, um, not putting all my stuff on it. Like it’s, it’s such an interesting thing because the neutrality, I’m always interested in that, uh, ability to observe and stay curious, but still, especially for the people we’re close to sort of say, Hey, I’m, A minute, you know, like I’m, I, I, you mean something to me.

I feel, you know, I, it’s different if you’re not around. I, you know, a warm hug, whatever that is. So I’m always, I’m always personally, cause I can observe pretty well. And I think sports really taught me to observe because you weren’t allowed so much room and time to dive into your feelings. You had to perform.

Right. So. Then for me, I’m always trying to find that next place of just that love, just of, you know, the neutral space, but then love. And I’m, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. No, I, I just saw that you were to say something. So I was wondering if when you went to, when you, your time in India, and maybe the tool of meditation, which also changes you physiologically, um, if there was, And something else there that, uh, has really helped you with this.

[00:23:03] Dr. K: Yeah. So I, I, I think like, let’s talk about like sports for a second. So I, I think if we’re trying to understand, you know, how to live life. If you’re kind of neutral, right? Because we don’t have passions. We are maybe get confusing around passions and goals and stuff. If we’re sort of like this empty screen kind of thing.

So if you look at sports, so I think sports is a great example because in sports, while you were playing, you don’t have room for ego, right? So, so sports is really beautiful because if you really look at like real athletes, we’ll talk about things like the flow state. All you’re really doing is existing.

And ideally perfectly responding to your environment. So what did you play? If you don’t mind me asking,

[00:23:47] Gabby: um, I played a professional beach volleyball.

[00:23:50] Dr. K: So like when you’re playing volleyball and let’s say you’re, you’re going to spike, right? And like when you’re, when you’re going for a spike, you don’t, you’re not the best or the worst.

Or if you start to think that way, oh my God, this person is better than I am. The spike won’t work. That will actually reduce your performance. That’s ego, right? It’s some sense. Or if you all of these people, they’re, they suck. I’m gonna, I’m gonna dumpster them. You know, that’ll reduce your performance too.

The best way to play is to focus on, Okay, at this moment, in this moment in time, I need to spike this ball, and that’s all I’m focused on. I don’t think I’m better than someone else. I don’t think I’m worse than someone else. So the really interesting thing is that the more ego you remove from the equation, The more that you can respond perfectly to your environment.

And this is something that I learned kind of in my early years of, of psychiatry training. So I once had a patient who came into my office one day and said, I asked, uh, you know, how’s your day today? And they said, well, my dad just passed away. And then I said, oh my god, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry to hear that.

And they’re like, what do you mean? I’m celebrating. And I was like, what do you mean you’re celebrating? They’re like, they were abusive. They were terrible. I’m glad that I never have to speak to them again. And so if you kind of think about in that moment when someone says, my dad passed away and I say, I’m sorry, I’m actually adding my own experience.

I’m coloring the world based on what is in my mind instead of seeing it how it is. So in therapy, we get trained to remove our biases from the equation. So if someone asks, says, now if someone says, my, my dad passed away, I’ll say, what’s that like for you? Right? So I’m not going to make any assumptions.

And so if we sort of look at this process of ego removal, the ego is what adds all of our assumptions. I’m better than you. I’m worse than you. This thing is good. This thing is bad. Right. We add the, we, we pre judge things in our mind, and then that prevents us from perfectly responding to the world. Maybe we give people too much credit because we like them and then they end up taking advantage of us, or we give people not enough credit.

Because we don’t like them. And then we don’t realize what they’re truly capable of. So in both of those cases, those are non ideal. So the more that you remove your ego and preconceptions, and, and respond to the environment, I think sports is such a beautiful example. Because if people play sports, they know.

That all you have to do is be in that moment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re 15 years old or 16 years old or 20 years old or 25. You know, if you’re playing beach volleyball, the experience of beach volleyball is exactly the same. You may get a slightly different signal from your knees as you get older or something like that.

But, and that’s just a signal to integrate, right? So you can be 16 years old and have a knee injury, or you can be 36 and have a knee injury. And so the interesting thing you mentioned love. So the, the really fascinating thing is that. The more that you remove yourself from the equation, I think the more naturally compassion flows.

So as we become more and more neutral, people think like, does that mean that you’re apathetic to life? Actually quite the opposite. And we can go into detail of this on a spiritual or neuroscientific perspective. But the more neutral we become, the more actually like love and compassion naturally flows forth from us.

And so that’s it being neutral and empty on the inside. It doesn’t mean you retreat from life. It means that now your cup is empty so you can fully receive life. What keeps us from living life is that we can’t receive it because we’re already full to the brim. We have our own thoughts in our mind. If someone’s having a hard day, and we’re having a hard day, we don’t have space for them.

So interestingly enough, the more empty you become, the more that you can receive what life has to give. and respond to it in the appropriate way.

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You’re a husband and a father and you are busy. And your wife is busy. You, you have a, you guys are doing a lot of things and you make it look easy, but if someone pays just five minutes attention, you can see that you’re, you know, doing a lot. What, what are your practices that help you sort of keep that emptiness?

Because it does, sometimes it can just sneak up on you. And, uh, before you know it, you have a tired kid that’s screaming in the backseat and you can feel yourself responding. So I’m just curious because it’s, I’m always. Interested in when people study something, practice something, support other people through the journey.

What’s their best shot at how they do it themselves?

[00:32:36] Dr. K: What a great question and I think the beautiful thing is that the answer is already in the question So I I love your questions Gabby So I know it sounds weird, but people focus on practices and you said that it sneaks up on you So the most important practice that I have is actually watchfulness So it’s not something that I do.

It’s that You You know, even in this interview, for example, when I mentioned Harvard medical school. So if I’m not careful, I, my ego will want everyone to know, Oh, I went to Harvard. Oh my God, look at this. He’s so smart and he’s so capable and all of these things. So what I really do is pay attention to anything that comes out of my mouth.

You know, how will, why am I doing this? Am I doing this to be loved? Am I doing this to be respected? Because that, that seed of desire for approval is still there. It’s been baked into me based on my upbringing. And so to really just pay attention to your internal signals. And so, you know, the more that I pay attention to that and the more that I pay attention to myself, that’s the most important practice.

And, and you kind of said, you know, we’re, we’re doing a lot. We are doing a lot. We have a research division. We, you know, have a service that we provide. We make educational materials. We write books. We do, we do all kinds of stuff. Um, and sometimes we’ll consult with, with different, like, you know, organizations like the world health organization or something like that.

So we have a ton of different stuff going on. And the most important thing is to pay attention. So is this too much? Right. So to really lean into, is this too much, um, I oftentimes will work six or seven days a week, but also like, there’ll be times where, you know, I take a day off and, and really intentionally because I’m listening to my body.

Uh, I, I think we are, people are pretty, I mean, I, I think we do work a lot, but I don’t think it’s like excessive. I know it sounds weird, but you have to kind of enjoy what you do. And what really makes work excessive, we’ve done a lot of work on burnout too. Is like when you push yourself beyond your signals.

So it’s not the absolute amount of work, right? So if I ask you, okay, like, you know, how many slices of pizza do you want to eat? And you know, the main, the most important thing is it’s not like two slices or four slices. The important thing is like, what is your body telling you? Like when you’ve had that third slice and your tongue wants more, but your stomach is like, this is enough.

Do you ignore a part of yourself? So the most important thing that I would say I do is pay attention to, you know, what’s my ego doing? You If I’m not careful, it’s gonna sneak up on me and it’ll start getting really, it’ll start, like, taking credit for everything that I’ve done, but that’s not me, right? I, it’s not You know, there’s a certain amount of intelligence that’s required to become a doctor.

I’m not responsible for that. I didn’t fix my genes. I didn’t It’s not my hard work that means that I didn’t I wasn’t born with cerebral palsy or something like that, right? So, like, there’s so much in life that our ego likes to take credit for, which I don’t think is really I can’t take credit for that.

I had parents that could send me to India. I had parents that could pay for 120 applications to medical school, which are not cheap. So even all of my success, like, did I work hard? Sure, but I’ve seen this as a psychiatrist. I have patients who work really, really hard every single day. And they don’t see the same level of success.

And that’s because of karma. It’s not, I can’t take credit for my success.

[00:36:01] Gabby: Yeah. I always think that we’re, we’re portals and we’re, if we do our job, we just shine, whatever it is through the portal. And, and, uh, and, and I all, I also believe, and maybe this is the strategic part of my personality, that if we are really good, diligent stewards, we’ll get to do it more.

Yeah. You know, like if we really do a good job, then we’ll, or we’ll get moved to the next space and we get to be a different kind of portal. Um, I, I always think that, um, so a lot of what you talk about and I’m, I’m oversimplifying it, but just for the sake of conversation is kind of, let’s call it happiness or peace, um, and that, You know, I was born in 1970.

So there’s an expression. You don’t live in the world that you’re born to. Right? So I think, um, it was easier, right? I was a teenager in the 80s. I went to college on an athletic scholarship. I had a very different easy path. I bought up my first house very young, you know, and it feels and I’m not as Tapped into it, even though I do have three, um, young adult, two young adult daughters and a teenage daughter that in some way the world is harder.

It just is so because when you watch it and everyone’s talking about their feelings and I feel triggered and I feel trauma and I had a micro that was a microaggression and it’s all this stuff. Maybe you can guide. The conversation about what you think is happening besides technology that is really kicking everyone’s butt.

[00:37:44] Dr. K: It’s such a great question. So let’s go through a couple of different angles. So the first is like, is life getting harder or does it just seem like it’s getting harder? So I think what we’re seeing is that, um, so human beings used to not have security around survival. So, so sort of, you know, happiness was a luxury.

So I remember like talking to my grandmother. You know, I remember talking to her. So she was in india my my dad and grandparents grew up incredibly poor So they were like there were eight of them living in an eight by ten room So every day there was literally not enough floor space for all of them to sleep So three of them would sleep on in the stairwell of their building and and so, you know I remember just talking to her about like rationing.

So there was like rationing in india when she was growing up So this is like, you know, we have this idea that okay like If I need sugar, I just need to be able to afford it. I can go to a grocery store, and I can buy sugar. But in, when she was growing up, there, there, there was nowhere to buy it. It just wasn’t there.

It didn’t exist. So what she would really have to do is be like super careful about, you know, if someone’s birthday is coming up next month, she would really have to like plan. And, and she would put a little bit less sugar in the morning tea. For like three weeks, so that she had a little bit more sugar to make some kind of sweet for like someone’s birthday.

And it’s just a completely foreign world. So her challenges were such, she had a, a, a child that, you know, passed away from congenital heart disease. And so her challenges were such that, It was about survival. So the, the, you know, there was no room for happiness. And then, so what people learn how to do is they, they learn how to derive happiness from a very like meager life.

And so you have these spiritual traditions that, you know, really teach you about happiness is not from material things. It’s from the way that we receive the world, the way that we interpret the world, the way that we respond to the world. And that’s why those traditions sort of existed there because India, you know, Is I mean in some ways it’s it’s very wealthy and very rich, but in other ways there are disadvantages there Um, and so that’s kind of the world we used to live in Then what happened is we all now survival no longer became an issue So in my grandmother’s time a lot of people died of malnourishment or starvation In today’s day and age more people die of obesity.

So something has changed Where we used to be human beings fighting for survival. And that’s the way we measured success. But once survival became basically guaranteed, now we’re playing a different game, right? It’s a different game. So what we’re seeing, do you think, yeah,

[00:40:38] Gabby: sorry. Do you think, I often just wonder.

If one is certainly not one’s better than the other, but one seems more in conflict with our biology, like the way we live now feels in a much more direct conflict with our biology versus it’s not pretty, but at least, you know, surviving felt more aligned with something in our biology.

[00:41:01] Dr. K: Very well put. So, so, and that’s what we see with starvation and obesity.

So even if we look at signals of hunger and satiety. Why is it that Twinkies taste delicious? It’s because Twinkies take advantage of our biology. So we evolved in scenarios of caloric rarity. Calories weren’t easily available. So our biology adapted to the circumstances that human beings and mammals have existed in for thousands of years.

And now the circumstances have changed. So what we’re seeing is now that the circumstances have changed, we’re seeing a rise in mental illness. We’re seeing a rise in the suicide rate. We’re seeing a rise in depression, a rise in anxiety. The U S surgeon general just came out earlier this year with like this, um, uh, thing on like this paper on loneliness.

So there’s like an epidemic of loneliness now. So Now the battles that we’re primarily fighting are in our mind. We’ve conquered the body We figured out we can literally if your heart stops working We can take it out of you and stick in a new one. Like that’s insane The one thing that we can’t do is a mind transplant.

So this is what’s going on You kind of mentioned like what’s like everyone’s getting kind of triggered now So what i’ve noticed is this is somewhat related to technology But we have become completely intolerant of discomfort So, our society now, if I want to eat something, I can have it delivered. If I want to, if I need groceries, I can have them delivered.

Um, if I want to read a book, it’s like instant purchase on my e reader. It’s next day shipping. There’s no need for patience, and there’s no tolerance of discomfort. And so, I, I don’t know if this kind of makes sense, but, you know, if I take the elevator every day, and I stop taking the stairs, I Over time, the stairs will become harder and harder to climb as I decondition my body.

So what’s happening right now is a whole scale deconditioning of our mind. Everything is instant access. Everything is like dopamine at my fingertips. Everything, I don’t have to wait for anything. I don’t have to tolerate any discomfort. I do not have to be in a room with people that I don’t like to be in.

Right? So I can select a community on the internet that agrees with me 100%. And if there’s even a 98 percent disagreement, there’s 8 billion people in the world, I’m gonna find the 10 people in the world that agree with me 100%. So there’s, uh, there’s, we’re seeing increased, like, intolerance of different political views, increased intolerance of religious views that are differing.

We’re just seeing an increase in intolerance and an increase in the tolerance of dis, uh, of discomfort. So I, I think we’re seeing a whole scale deconditioning.

[00:43:56] Gabby: Well, and it’s, what is amazing is how quickly it’s happening, right? So, you know, if, if the smartphone was 2007 and social media is. Social media is 2007 and the smartphone’s only been around for so long.

I think the speed. So what is it? I mean, no offense. I mean, the medical, for me, the medical industry is, you know, okay, we’ll throw a pill at something and we’ll give you an SSRI. Um, you don’t have to change your lifestyle habits, all these things, you know, I don’t think they’re going to be able to keep up with what’s going on.

And hence, even the offshoot of people like you who are, I mean, you’re on Twitch to helping gamers to get control of themselves so they can navigate and live life and do. And, you know, play their games, right? You’re, you’re talking to them in one of the places that they’re living. Right. So I guess if you had a magic wand.

And, you know, I’m going to assume a little bit of exercise, get in nature, you know, try to eat real food. But if you had a magic wand, what would you put in all young people’s pockets to help them armor up? Because for somebody like me, and again, it’s my, I’m in touch with this because I do this work. And also I have.

It also feels, you just go, it also, it almost feels fake, right? Like you go, you guys are freaking out. What, what’s going on? Like, what are you freaking out about?

[00:45:29] Dr. K: So, so two things. One is the freaking out and the fakeness. So, so let’s start with there and then I’ll, I’ll go to the magic wand. So I think this is what’s so confusing for a lot of parents to understand.

And this is why we kind of try to lay this out. In the book is see a lot of parents when we let’s just take the example of video game addiction. So first of all, we use this term game and when we use the term game a game is recreation, right? It’s something that you do on the side, but now we have esports, right?

So I had a group of parents come to me and say Hey, my 16 year old is playing video games all day long. We don’t know how to get him to stop. And then we talked to the kid, and the kid is like, Yeah, I’m playing, and my parents want me to stop. And I say, Why do they want you to stop? And the parents are like, Well, you need to like, you know, do well in school so you can get a good job.

And he’s like, This is my job. So I, I, you know, I met a guy, really fascinating kid, Um, was 15 years old. Had been playing, so he moved to the United States, I think when he was 8 or 9. Maybe a little bit younger. Started playing this game, really didn’t make friends, is an immigrant. Playing this game all day long, all day long, all day long.

I’m, I, I guarantee you that if a psychiatrist saw him at the age of 13 or 14, they would have said, this kid is addicted, you know, this is bad. Two weeks after his 16th birthday, he wins a 15 million dollar tournament, right? This is crazy. And so at that point, is it an addiction? I don’t know. So, so what, what parents really need to understand, and this is where, like, you know, it’s hard, right, because I, I mean, I was born in the 80s, but, you know, growing up in the 80s and 90s, like, games were like recreation.

There was, you play your Nintendo at home, and then you go out onto the street, and then you, like, play with your friends. Socialization and playing video games were separate. Career and playing video games were separate. That’s changing now. So now what’s happening is that a lot of parents don’t realize that this is your child’s source of socialization.

This is their sense of identity. Because they look at themselves in the mirror and they see, I’m a 16 year old kid who’s super scrawny. I’ve got a ton of acne, my voice is breaking, I don’t know how to talk to girls. And like when I was 16, I had to learn how to socialize because I didn’t have any other choice.

But now what’s going on is you have a generation of kids that doesn’t need to learn how to socialize. Because we have this online variant, which is easier to do. So it’s so much more comfortable to socialize when people don’t see my face. So this is what’s confusing for a lot of parents. They don’t realize and we lay this out and how to raise a healthy gamer.

And like, this is also why we wrote the book, because I realized that if my parents had known this, there was no shortage of love. There was no shortage of discipline. There was no shortage of intelligence or capability, but they were just outgunned. They didn’t understand what was going on. And we’re up against billion, multi billion dollar corporations that are employing behavioral economists, neuroscientists, programmers, psychologists to try to figure out how to get you and your kid to spend five more minutes on the device or app or whatever.

That’s their job. They’re spending billions of dollars, so parents are outgunned because they don’t understand this, and that’s why it’s so confusing for them. They’re like, I don’t understand. How does my kid not realize that this is a problem? You know?

[00:48:57] Gabby: But Dr. K, what’s the endgame on all this? If, and I appreciate that the kid wins a 15 million dollar competition, but what about life?

What about The other parts of your screen because we’re not there yet. We’re not heads in a jar with no bodies right now yet. We might get there. I’m not saying we won’t. I, I, I’m sure we’re going to merge with technology if, you know, if, if we go long enough, but you as a parents, and I’d love to also know the difference kind of between male and females, if there’s different patterns with games.

Um, You know, it sounds so old fashioned, but life, um, you know, handholding a relationship, the, at least the possibility or the option of if you decide to be in a relationship, whatever that is, what is the end game on this? And if As a parent, how do you support a kid in the reality they live in with trying to at least guide them?

Yeah.

[00:50:01] Dr. K: So it’s such a challenging thing. So when you talk about what is the end game, I think we’re kind of there. I think we’re already seeing like the first phase of the apocalypse, right? So we are seeing just overarching problems in mental health. So like, this is kind of crazy to think about, but you know, science has been advancing, right?

Like we can send people in the space. We can take your heart outside of your body. We can stick in someone else’s heart. We can have a machine breathe for you. We can have machine filter your blood. We have dialysis. We can basically, like, replace organs. We’re even doing stool transplants now. We have devices that can take us into space.

We have some, uh, desalination technology. We can directly take power from the sun. Despite all of our technological advances, there is one part of medicine that we’re losing the war on. That’s mental health. Every other thing we’re getting better at fighting cancer, better at heart disease, better at obesity, better at arthritis, better at pregnancies, better at diabetes.

Right? Even conceiving in IVF, the one area we’re losing the war on is in the mind. And so what we’re sort of seeing is endgame here and now. And I think the crazy thing is like, so what’s the endgame? The problem here is that technology gives us a shadow of what the real world gives us. So I can create a virtual avatar that has all these fancy cosmetics that people will play pay hundreds Or even thousands there’s this particular game called star citizen where you can buy a ship in star citizen for like fifty thousand dollars People are paying fifty thousand dollars for a virtual ship And then when they fly it around everyone is like wow look at that person because they’ve got a fifty thousand dollar ship It’s the same as if someone’s driving a bentley or something like right like that same that same part of our brain Gets activated When we’re in the virtual world so that the end game though The the problem is that I can talk to a million people on the internet, but I can never get oxytocin Or from the hug that I get in real life.

I can have a virtual AI girlfriend, but I, it’s not the same. So this is what the internet does or technology does is we figured out how to partially activate some of these very, very important parts of the brain. We have certain neuroscience and psychological needs, which game developers, and this is what we kind of lay out in the book, we’ll explain this stuff in a very simple way.

Like what are the course neuroscience and psychological needs that the game is fulfilling within you? Okay. And the technology gives us a shadow of it and this creates a real problem because if it gives us Half of what we need very easily, but getting the full thing is very hard Then the brain defaults especially a young and vulnerable brain will default to the easy road We always take the human beings are fundamentally lazy Right?

That’s an efficiency play. We’re designed to be that way. So, why would I go through all the trouble of social anxiety, putting myself out there, getting rejected a thousand times, when I can just get an AI girlfriend and get some shadow of the real thing? And so we’re sort of seeing that endgame here and now.

We’re seeing, you know, uh, 50 percent of people under the age of 30 in the United States are still living at home. There’s all kinds of weird macroeconomic forces. Young men are entering the workplace at the lowest rate they have in the history of humanity. Um, we’re seeing a lot of problems like, you know, I think South Korea, I think, has a point, or Japan has a 67 birth rate.

So that, that’s

[00:53:42] Gabby: Well, 30, 30 percent of people under 30 in Japan are virgins. So,

[00:53:46] Dr. K: so there’s all kinds of problems. Right and and people don’t know what to do because technology is actually Giving us things so easily that we’re seeing an atrophy Of certain core like human skills like socialization. How do I date?

How do I flirt? All right. Sometimes I’ll teach people we’ll do like a flirting class and so I’ll go on to twitch and I’ll take a bunch of gamers and it’s like, okay guys, like let’s learn how to flirt and, and You know, it’s, it’s fun. Did your

[00:54:18] Gabby: wife laugh? Did your wife laugh that you’re teaching flirting?

[00:54:22] Dr. K: She likes to think that, she likes to think that I’m not good at it, but I think everybody knows I’m very good at it.

[00:54:30] Gabby: Well, obviously I, I saw something where she said that she basically met you almost right when you went to India. So right when you’re considering like, I’m going to become a monk, you meet the woman that you’re going to end up marrying.

Of course. Um, Okay, so I think the fact that you talk to gamers, which maybe is the most vulnerable group, because I would also think that sometimes some of these groups There’s also maybe something hyper intelligent about some of these people, which also maybe makes them more socially kind of less fluid.

Let’s just say it’s maybe that’s too much of an assumption, but it’s just an observation. So, what do you what do you like? What do you say? What’s the invitation to this crew? And how do you get, because you’re overriding these impulses with this invitation, how are you, how are you getting them?

[00:55:22] Dr. K: Yeah, so it’s, it’s a great question.

So I think the key thing to understand is even the kids who are addicted to technology, they don’t want to be right. So if you’re a parent and you’ve got kids, like you’ve got three daughters, right? Even your adult daughters, teenage daughters, you just ask them a simple question. Are you happy with how much time you spend on your phone?

I have never gotten A single person to say yes to that question. Everyone’s like, you know, the average amount of cell phone use I think per day in the United States is like four hours and 37 minutes People like a couple hours like it’s fun. Like every moment on your phone is okay But four hours and 37 minutes per day is like too much like I don’t need to be doing that So the really shocking thing and and we teach this in the book is how to talk to your kids to You Open up their natural desire for a healthier relationship with technology.

And this is what we did on Twitch, right? So we showed up, you asked, how did we connect with them? And then I just asked them, I said, Hey, are y’all happy with how much you play video games? You know, the, if the answer is yes, go for it, right? There are lots of people who don’t watch us on Twitch, but we were also the fastest growing stream on Twitch for a period of about three months.

And someone showed up and I was like, if y’all want to play less And you want to do things like go on dates, maybe get laid. You know, if you want to do this, you guys tell me what y’all want. I will be a resource for you. So I’ve studied in India for seven years. I’m a psychiatrist. You know, i’m in a relationship.

I have kids, you know, so I know something about huh?

[00:57:04] Gabby: And you still play games a little bit

[00:57:06] Dr. K: right and i’ll i’ll dumpster you guys like in a game like let’s go So so or i’ll get dumpster, but that’s okay And and so so it’s really about making yourself a resource and and putting yourself at the you kind of mentioned this earlier when you’re Like we’re a portal right?

And we reflect what the universe has and then we kind of go to a new plateau. That’s what happened with me I became personally successful and then I realized You I had this like private practice in, in, in Boston and I was working with a bunch of CEOs and things like that and focusing on performance and all this good stuff.

And then I realized that there’s like this whole army of like young people out there that don’t have access to these skills. So that’s what I’m gonna really focus on. And what I find is that they want to play less too. Right. The problem is that they don’t know how and when you have a human being who doesn’t know how to fix their problems, what do you expect them to do?

They’re going to do the same thing day in and day out. So I think for a lot of parents, it seems so unbelievable that your child can naturally restrain themselves because that’s what we shoot for. So our approach is not restriction because at some point your kid is going to have to deal with technology.

So in the same way that if we kind of think about how do you teach your child to be safe when they cross the road, you don’t keep them in the house, you teach them the skills, learn, look both ways before you cross the street. You have to teach them how to handle the problem, not keep them away from it.

So

[00:58:36] Gabby: well, that’s, that’s an interesting combination because we also are a generation, my generation and then obviously the younger generations. They’re also a very, they’re really hovering, right? So it’s, it’s coupled with like my, your parents and my parents. They, not that they ignored us, but they didn’t, we had a lot of freedom.

And so it’s just also this combination of a set of parents with technology where we’re on top of our kids. So, and somebody, uh, corrected me on something I used to say to my girls. Like, I don’t, I never track my girls on their phones. I’m like, you’re going to tell me where you are. And. I’m not gonna if you lie, we’ll figure that out, but I don’t track them.

Um, but I used to say to them, Hey, I’m not going to be in your pocket. And so you’ve got to learn to control yourself. I cause I’m not going to be there. And then someone corrected me in that nuance, which is manage. You have to learn to manage yourself because control has another whole set of problems.

Right. So I thought it’s so interesting and it is so scary for parents, but it’s like, there is no other way. But to sort of believe. In them and give them the freedom to figure out how to do this, but then also, you know, maybe create the, especially when they’re younger. Okay. Healthy guardrails. Um, things like that.

But when someone, let’s say you have a young adult male and maybe he’s figured out the way to, he, it’s part of his job and he’s doing it. How do you, how are you helping that guy? Because he’s in almost in a way left alone.

[01:00:10] Dr. K: Yeah. So I mean, I would say that’s the most traditional member of our audience is a young man who is underperforming in one dimension of their life, at least.

So in the worst cases, this is like, I’m a 32 year old who’s still living in my parents basement, doesn’t have a job. But what’s much more common is like, I graduated from college, I’m actually a developer at Google. And I don’t know how to date because dating is a whole mess with apps and stuff. Or it’s someone who’s even like, I’m in a healthy relationship.

I have a successful career, but I feel empty inside. I did everything right, but I’m still not happy. So I think the way that we help them, and this is what we sort of teach some, there’s some really good evidence based techniques. That we kind of go into and really lay out. And there’s, it’s really just some really solid bread and butter stuff.

That’s all about behavioral change. So what are some conversational techniques that for example, parents can use with their kids to encourage them to. Restrain their own technologies. And that’s exactly what we do with these people. So what we do with these people is not teach them What we do is bring out What is already within them and help them work through it?

So if you don’t have a job and you’ve never had a job and you’re 31 What gets in the way what’s made it hard for you, right? And then they’ll come up with all kinds of answers and then let’s understand that well things have never really worked out Well, how do you understand that? It’s not why did they work out?

What did you do wrong? Let’s just understand what your experience of life is And oftentimes what’s going on, and we see this a lot in technology addiction is most people who are addicted to technology are very isolated and lonely in some way. And this is really confusing for parents because you’re always around as a parent.

But we don’t realize as parents that some of the language that we use shuts off our kids. We also have a big uphill battle because this generation of kids is not as good at communicating. So even if you’re not making a mistake as a parent, Your parenting communication you said this beautifully earlier like, you know, or I don’t know if it was you I’m, sorry, you didn’t say this, but I heard this earlier someone mentioned to me that you know, your grandparents Actually determine your upbringing quite a bit because your grandparents raise your kids and your their kids Will raise you right and so your parents were raised by these grandparents So their parenting style is what your parents know And so what a lot of parents don’t realize is that the level of parenting Skill That my parents and your parents needed was actually lower than what we need today because there’s this whole Emoji stuff like literally like the way that their brain communicates I saw this really hilarious short about I guess thumbs up is like a really mean thing to send kids Or something, I don’t understand it, but like, it’s just a great example of their, their communication rules are different.

Communication has changed. There’s no walking up to someone, you know, now, like, it’s really confusing. I, I work with a lot of dudes, young men, who are really confused about how to approach women. Because they’re like, I see all this stuff about, you know, if a woman is working out at the gym, like, don’t try to hit her up for her number.

If someone, don’t try to do this, don’t, and they don’t know, because, and it’s like, we don’t know, they don’t know anymore. Like, when is it okay to ask? Someone out. We don’t know. And so then what happens is we’ve got these dating apps, and the more that we use dating apps, the less we figure out some of these like unspoken rules of what’s okay or what’s not okay.

Now parents are running into this problem too because your kids are communicating based on a whole different set of rules. And so there are certain adaptations we have to make as parents to be able to connect to our kids given the handicap of their social social atrophy.

[01:04:10] Gabby: How do we learn it by asking them?

How do we? Yeah, so

[01:04:13] Dr. K: we actually have a whole, you know, part of the book that lays out some really strong evidence based techniques. So these are the things that I use when I’m doing addiction psychiatry. So when someone is addicted to a substance, There are parts of their brain and parts of their body that do not want to release it.

So what are the techniques that we use to take someone who literally has a life and death dependence on alcohol? Because if you withdraw from alcohol, it can be fatal. So every cell in their body is screaming, unless we get alcohol, we can die. And the body understands that. You can literally have a seizure and your heart muscle can seize too, and you can enter a period of asystole, which can be fatal.

So, when someone has that strong of a biological drive to drink, what are the words you can use to get them to be sober? So those are the techniques that we actually teach. And there are a couple of really simple things. The first is something called open ended questions. So instead of suggesting things just ask What do you like about games?

It’s not I don’t understand why you play so many games. I don’t get it That’s not the way to talk to your kids, right? It’s the normal parental way But if they’re addicted to games or you want to really understand what their experience is just say hey What do you like about this? You know, what does it mean to you?

What’s hard? What do you dislike about going to school? What’s hard about school and then there’s another really interesting technique, which is if you ask too many open ended questions It feels like an interrogation. What do you like about this? Then what what do you dislike about? So what what do you want to do?

What do you want to do? What do you want to eat? What do you want? So it feels like an interrogation. So then the other beautiful thing that we do a lot Is something called reflective listening. So that’s also where, when they say something, what I like about games is that I really enjoy them. Right. So then you can ask, okay, well, what do you enjoy about them?

And it’s like, I don’t know. They’re just a lot of fun. So it sounds like, and then reflective listening is where you make a statement that repeats back what they said. So you will say something like, it sounds like you just really enjoy playing in them and there’s something just intrinsically fun about it.

That’s not a question. If you use this technique, something beautiful will happen. After you say that, your child will open up more. So even without asking a question, your child will say, Well, yeah, like, it’s really great. I like it because I get to play with my friends. So you really enjoy games because you get to play with your friends.

Yeah, I like it. Well, my friends are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there are a couple of these really simple techniques. That have really been shown through tons and tons of studies to be very effective at connecting with someone, at building trust, really building that alliance. And what we tend to find is that once a parent and a child, and you can use this with your husband or wife or spouse or sibling or parents, you can use these communication techniques with anyone.

That’s how you really get on the same team. And then once y’all are on the same team, usually when it comes to tech addiction, it’s a completely different ballgame. Because right now the basic problem is you want them to play less. And they want to play more. Y’all aren’t on the same team.

[01:07:21] Gabby: When you talk about those techniques, I have learned the hard way that those are good regardless of That’s good for life.

[01:07:29] Dr. K: Absolutely

[01:07:29] Gabby: And that’s good for parenting period. Uh, i i’ve learned that certainly the hard way, you know blowing it more with the first Getting it a little better with the second and then finally, you know, everyone’s going to move out and I’ll be like, but wait, I think I understand it. It is. It’s a, it’s an education on both sides.

So male and female. Um, because there’s really there is and people, they don’t realize there is a social component to gaming that is positive and boys kind of get it there. So is there sort of a different practice? Or mostly it shows up in the male and females and boys and girls.

[01:08:04] Dr. K: There are a lot of gender based differences when it comes to technology usage.

So the first is, um, there’s a group at University of Toronto that does a personality based analysis. And what we find is if you look at games nowadays, there are all kinds of games. Like I can be a space trucker, whatever that is. There are farming games. There are like combat games, like Fortnite, where I’m like, you know, surviving in an arena, I can try to survive a zombie apocalypse.

There’s all kinds of stuff. So what we, what we know is that there are different kinds of personalities and there are different kinds of entertainments for those personalities. So some people play games, like I play games to explore and figure things out, like I’m a tinkerer. So I like to play games that involve a lot of exploration.

Other people are highly competitive and they play games to win and they play games to beat other people. And then one of the things that we know is that women, for example, are more likely to get addicted to games that have a strong community aspect. Um, and then boys tend to get a little bit more addictive to competitive games.

So there’s absolutely like differences between personality. And then there are some gender based differences as well.

[01:09:14] Gabby: There’s, there can be educational components.

[01:09:18] Dr. K: Absolutely. So, so I think this is a super cool story. So when I was, I was taking a class at Harvard business school, okay. And, um, it was my first class.

And we had this case where we have to sort of figure out, this was a class for doctors at HBS. And we had to figure out how to improve efficiency in a doctor’s office. So the case is about like, it’s this 30 page. Case where they give us a lot of information and they basically ask us, how are you going to improve efficiency?

So they basically give us the information that we need. So I did something really interesting I was pretty busy that day because I was also in residency And so I went to my gamer buddies that i’ve been playing games with for 15 20 years Um, some of whom are like they stock grocery shelves Even we’ve been playing together for 20 years and I was like, Hey, do y’all want to take a look at this and see what you can figure out?

And so they actually came up with like some of the best answers So the next day I go into to class and I you know, the professor asked and I raised my hand I was like I do this this and this and they’re like those are fantastic. Like help me understand why right? Let’s go through it together And so if you really look at what games do there’s a new game and it forces you to problem solve And the united states department of defense in 2015 did a study that showed that there’s soldiers who play games You Our 20 percent have a fluid IQ, which is our problem solving IQ, that is 20 percent higher than soldiers who don’t play games.

There are studies that show that, um, surgeons who play video games are less likely to make medical errors or surgical errors because their hand eye coordination is better. So there are absolutely benefits. There’s even one video game called Akili that is an FDA approved treatment for ADHD. So, so there’s, it’s really fascinating, but games can absolutely be like positive as well.

[01:11:07] Gabby: That actually leads me to a part that I was really curious about. You said ADHD, I think because you know, everything we don’t, we’re not even bored ever, right? Like we, we don’t, we don’t sit around and get bored. And so we were consuming things at very fast clips. I think that has led to us having this.

young people, again, they have this vernacular of things that I never heard about until I was an adult of, Oh, ADHD. Can we, can we just sort of talk about, um, not debunking what it is, but it feels like everybody thinks they have it, but that’s actually not the case.

[01:11:45] Dr. K: Yeah. So I think we’re seeing a couple of things with ADHD and it’s, it’s a new, it’s a beautifully nuanced state, Gabby.

So the first is that ADHD is on the rise from an objective standpoint. Um, so there are a couple of reasons why it’s on the rise. The first is we’re probably getting better at detecting it and catching it. So, so if you look at the rates of ADHD diagnosis between boys and girls, three to four boys gets diagnosed with ADHD for every girl that gets diagnosed.

But if you look at men and women, it’s one to one. So chances are that we’re just missing ADHD. In girls, but once you go through puberty and stuff like that, it becomes more even. Um, so it’s definitely on the rise. But the other thing that’s happening is our attention span is getting deconditioned. So if you look at the content on the internet, it’s out now all short form.

And if you get bored with something, Your brain doesn’t have to sit with being bored. It can immediately scroll, right? And if you look at app developers, they understand this very well. They understand that if you’re bored with something, we want to make it super easy. For you to be less bored very quickly, because if you’re bored on our app, you are going to do the worst thing possible, which is switch to a competitor’s app.

So what’s happening is we are not, are we’re not training our attention to focus. We’re actually like doing, taking that cognitive load away. So it used to be that, you know, I had to force my mind to focus. And when I force my mind to focus, that’s when it actually like strengthens. It’s almost like doing a wrap of weights.

And now what’s happening is things get more and more entertaining, brighter, louder, more engaging. Our brain doesn’t have to try to focus. And as we get deconditioned, our attention is decreasing. So this is what we’re seeing on a societal level. This is not just ADHD, but we are seeing more people with non clinical ADHD develop some symptoms of ADHD that are related to technology use.

[01:13:51] Gabby: It’s so, it’s so interesting. That’s what maybe seems so daunting today with a few principles and practices could really be made so exponentially easier. Um, you talk a lot about, you know, how to find happiness or how to think your way to happiness or, um, you know, learning to be happy through hard times and basically like almost how to make life easy.

And I think when people hear someone like that talk, I understand that because, uh, like I said, I think coming through sports and it’s just a natural personality trait. I, I’ve always learned how to kind of create space, right? We, we talk about, uh, stimulus and response, stimulus response. How, how can I increase the length of that, that runway, right?

And maybe we could just sort of finish up on your principles of I don’t want to say think your way to happiness and people have to understand happiness is some it’s just flowing It’s not something we land on Um, because you really talk about it like hey something could be hard that’s happening But i’m still finding the way to be sort of okay.

[01:15:03] Dr. K: Yeah So I I think if we want to talk about happiness for a second You know, I think there’s a big misunderstanding in the world That you need to change to be successful or happy, right? So when I look at my life You And I was a loser, had never been on a date, was 19 years old, was trying to join a fraternity, was failing out of college, playing too many video games.

And then you look at me now, I have arguably a successful career, you know, I, we just got back from a trip from the White House, like it’s a super wild, right? So we’ve got this like YouTube channel and stuff.

[01:15:42] Gabby: And you have a, and you have a spicy wife. I

[01:15:44] Dr. K: have a great wife. Right. So I’m, I’m, I’m arguably, you’d have to ask her, but I, as far as I can tell, I’m happily married with two kids.

So what’s the difference between these two people? And someone may say like, okay, you have to like transform, right? Like I want to become a better person. That’s not what I think is going on. So what I learned in India is I didn’t change. I just started to understand the rules of life. So if you look at someone who’s a good volleyball player versus a bad volleyball player, there may be some amount of intrinsic talent.

But one person knows how to play and the other person doesn’t know how to play. It is a lack of knowledge and understanding about the principles. If you understand physics and if you understand even medicine, everyone thinks medicine is so complex. It’s not. It’s one of the simplest things on the planet.

It’s so beautifully put together. There’s no exceptions. It’s not like the English language where half the time the letter has this meaning and half the time, no, everything, the body works based on a scientific principle. So if we understand the scientific principles of happiness, then we can be happy. So one really simple example of this.

Is that if I chase my desires, I will never be happy. And this is rooted in science. So everyone thinks, okay, like if something makes me feel good, I should do it again. But our brain has this very simple principle of dopaminergic tolerance. So the first cookie I eat, I love it. It’s so delicious. Oh my god.

The second cookie I eat, I enjoy a little bit less. The third cookie I eat, I enjoy a little bit less. And then you counter that argument, but you say, ah, that’s because your stomach is filling up. You Fair enough. So tomorrow, when your stomach is empty and you eat the same cookie, you’re going to enjoy it less than the first day.

And if you eat one cookie every day for 10 years, that 10, 000th cookie that you eat is not going to be as tasty as the first one. So anytime we get a dopamine related happiness, The more we engage in that signal, the more the happiness will decrease. So this is not, there’s just no neuroscientific way that chasing your desires.

And I’ve worked with some of these people, people who are even like, you know, royalty out of like the UAE and, and they’re, they’re people who can have all of their material desires and it’s just not good enough. So we know that there’s there are other dimensions of happiness that involve things like we know that there are kind of four things that determine long lasting happiness.

Self determination, self expression, importance, and effort. So if we really look at like the science of happiness, are you doing what you want to be doing? Are you, is it, do you have some degree of self determination, right? Is it hard? Because the more that you work towards something, The more, the greater the payoff is.

So if something is super easy, it’s not fun. Like, you don’t, you don’t play chess against a goat. Because it’s not fun. You can win 100 percent of the time. Oh my God, this goat doesn’t even know how to play. I’m winning all the time. So effort increases our, our happiness. This is what something that video game developers have, have really figured out very well.

Because if you think about a video game. If it’s too easy, it’s boring and people go away. If it’s too hard, they’ll give up. So what game developers actually do is they titrate to the perfect amount of effort required. And so these are the kinds of things where once you understand these principles about what happiness really is and where it comes from, then you can cultivate a life to be more happy.

And it doesn’t require you to be married to a particular person or have a particular job or have a particular car. Material things are fine. I’m not against them in any way. Um, but, you know, I think it’s important to understand what they can do and what they can’t.

[01:19:36] Gabby: Yeah, I think, I think that it just felt so important for people to realize that it is within our, our realm of control.

Whatever that word means because stuff is always going to be happening in life. So we have these tools that can, you know, sort of help us so that we can navigate. And, um, you really, you really point that out. Okay. Last two questions. What’s the most valuable thing you have learned as a dad that surprised you

[01:20:04] Dr. K: most valuable thing that I’ve,

[01:20:06] Gabby: or, or surprised you that showed just as a dad, something that maybe you didn’t know before you were a dad.

And all of a sudden you thought, that I didn’t see that coming.

[01:20:16] Dr. K: Yeah, so I think one of the biggest lessons that I learned, um, so I don’t know if it’s the most valuable thing, but I think it was the most shocking thing. So one day I was trying to force my daughter to give me a hug. I really wanted a hug.

And she was like, two. And I was like, can I have a hug? Can I please have a hug? Please give me a hug. Give me a hug. What do I have to do to get a hug? And my wife pulled me aside and she’s like, I just really think about what you’re doing. Do you want your daughter to understand that? You know, do you want her?

I don’t even know how to say this because she said it so well and I learned a lesson but like, You know, you should be careful about teaching her that she has to give in to someone who wants a hug You know, you need to like recognize and this is because i’m a dude so it was never an issue for me But like, you know, she’s gonna grow up where she needs to learn that It’s okay to say no, which I had never like that thought had never crossed my mind just growing up as a man You know like that that like I have to be super careful.

So now i’m like really careful about You What kind of pressure am I putting on my kids to satisfy my needs? And do I want to raise them in a household where they learn it is okay to give physical affection to someone because they’re asking you 15 times, because they’re more powerful than you, even because you love them.

Right? That, that I have to be kind of careful about that. So I think it’s like, it really opened my eyes to, I think this is the most valuable thing that I’ve learned, just how different human beings experiences are. And then I have this assumption about what life is like, but that’s because I walk through it as a man.

And

[01:21:53] Gabby: yeah, I think that that’s so beautiful. I think this idea we call baseline manners, but always honor yourself. I was telling the girls baseline manners, but honor yourself all the way. And I will say this always harder to parent that way. But in the end, the end product is better. That’s what you want.

Yeah.

[01:22:09] Dr. K: I think you brought up a really good point, which is that sometimes the hardest thing about parenting is not what’s right. But that doing what’s right is so much harder.

[01:22:18] Gabby: Listen, I have an, I have non compliant daughters. Thank God they’re going to go in the world questioning, asking, and they’ll throw up boundaries as the parent.

You’re like, Oh my God. I wish you were more compliant, but they’re not. Okay. How do you work with your partner? You guys work together. It’s what’s the, how do you do that?

[01:22:35] Dr. K: Yeah. So I think a lot of people think it’s hard, right?

[01:22:38] Gabby: No, well, I work with my husband, but I’m just curious. You guys look like you’re dancing.

[01:22:43] Dr. K: So, um, I think a lot, a lot of people think it’s hard to work with your partner because there’s kind of this conflict of interest and there’s like, you know, but I actually find that it’s very great. I, I love it because. There’s never an issue of like work life balance. Like I never have to explain to my spouse why I have to work late.

And so it’s really great to be able to really blend our household responsibilities and work responsibilities. So we both know that the kids have to be taken care of. We both sort of know like, okay, this is too much at work right now because what are we going to do about the kids? So we, we, we recently came out with a, uh, up with a rule, which is.

Both of us are not going to travel without our kids for at least one year. We were doing that too much, leaving them with grandparents and stuff like that. So now we’re going to like, take them with us and we’ll figure something out or one of us will stay home. So I think we actually like do a pretty good job.

I mean, I think it’s challenging in a lot of ways, but it’s, it’s really great. Um, you know, I think it’s, I find it very relieving. Like, you know how you’re like on the same team with your spouse and there’s a lot of relief to that. So it’s really nice to, To be on the same team at home and be on the same team at work.

And so therefore there’s less of a conflict between work and home. And I think part of the reason that people are so anti working with their spouse is because we just haven’t done it for a while. So we’ve gotten not very good at it. And so if, if we as a society start getting better at it and teaching people how to do it, it may be much more possible.

[01:24:17] Gabby: Yeah, it’s that cooperation. Absolutely. It’s how we, it’s actually how we thrive, I think, is through cooperation. So your program that you have online deals with the physiology, the emotions, relationships, the clinical part, the spiritual part around trauma and, um, You know that you have a lot of useful tools, tons of free videos.

Your book is How to Raise a Healthy Gamer. Can you just remind people all the places that they can find you, Dr. K? Yeah,

[01:24:45] Dr. K: so I would say if they’re interested, just go to healthygamer. gg. So we have different, like, educational courses on things like trauma and ADHD. Um, these are also built based on the community.

So, like, we ask them, what do y’all want? And they’ve done incredibly well. Um, we, so, so Healthy Gamer GG, if they want to know, like, if they liked my answers, you can go to my YouTube channel, which is also Healthy Gamer GG, and you’ll see all, various kinds of click baity titles about this, these principles.

And then what we really tried to do in How to Raise a Healthy Gamer is take sort of everything that I learned growing up with technology addiction, living through it myself, and tried to, I, I tried to ask myself one question, which is, if I could, if I could write a book for my, my parents, So that they could have helped me.

What would have been in that book? And it sort of assembles everything that I’ve learned from studying from seven years of becoming a monk. Psychiatrist training and faculty at Harvard Medical School to doing this work and helping your kids So the parents parents are not really our core audience. My core audience is your children So we’ve written a book for you to help you understand the neuroscience the psychology as well as the practical techniques To connect with your child as well as set boundaries in a way that minimize resistance and fights That’s really what we’ve tried to do.

And the reason I wrote this book is because I’m thinking about you were asking like, you know, like if I could wave a magic wand, what would I do? What I would do is equip this generation of parents With the skills to protect their children from the invasive damage of technology And that’s why we wrote the book.

It’s kind of weird but that’s why we wrote it because it was our publisher was like Why don’t you write something more for your core audience? And I was like, this is the book that needs to be written because if this book doesn’t get written This next generation of kids is going to be screwed.

[01:26:37] Gabby: I think it’s all hands on deck, right?

It really is It’s Everybody getting involved but also learning and getting new tools because the parents today Uh, we need new tools. So I dr. K. I just Really appreciate all that you’re doing and you have fit in a lot of life in your, um, short life so far that is, is benefiting a lot of people. And I just want to end, um, with, you said something in one of your interviews where a lot of, you know, some of unhappiness things, pain starts with, I have to do better.

The internal, you know, mantra, it’s like, I’m not enough. I’m not good enough. I’m not whatever the million things are. And, and I really appreciated that you highlighted that because I think it’s a very human, it’s, it’s probably connected to what keeps us surviving, right? I have to stay in the tribe. I have to be liked, I have to be all these things, but just to remind people that, you know, wherever we are, even in this moment, even if we, we’re always going to have work to do, um, We don’t have to do better.

We might have to do different for our own sake, but we don’t have to, we don’t have to, we don’t have to do and be better. So I just thank you so much.

[01:27:43] Dr. K: Thank you for having me, Gabby. This has been an absolute pleasure.

About Dr. Kanojia

Alok Kanojia, MD, MPH, also known as “Dr. K,” is a graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine and did his psychiatric residency at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and McLean Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A former Harvard Medical School instructor specializing in mental health for the gaming community, he is the president and cofounder of Healthy Gamer, a mental health platform that provides content, coaching, and community resources to help young people take control of their mental health and their lives. A highly sought-after speaker and media expert, he and his wife live in Texas with their two gamer daughters.