Social media and mental health || Youth Los Angeles

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
शक्ती है, यह भगवान की दिव्यशक्ती है, यह भगवान की दिव्यशक्ती है, यह भगवान की दिव्यशक्ती है, यह भगवान की दिव्यशक्ती है, यह भगवान की दिव्यशक्ती है, यह भगवान की दिव्यशक्ती है, यह भगवान की दिव्यशक्ती है, यह भगव है अंशा पर । अंशा या अंशा चेते बापं nivepressure है, हन्दे ही अंशा है, श�्क्ती है वो दिव्यशक्ती है औये, अंशा या आपको अपसन के लगेगी या वाल्ड़ या तरीक Self-image, yes.
We often compare ourselves with others and especially when people put images of themselves, they haven’t put the best images or you could say the best doctored images. So then it causes a lot of insecurity at one level. Yeah, so we can keep us sleepless.
It’s constant. Messages keep coming. Yeah, everyone knows the word.
Yeah, it’s not this word, is it? So I was giving a talk in Australia and there, this one student had just come from, I don’t know, India and he didn’t know the meaning of four. And he felt very nervous and everybody said the meaning. He said, okay, I had fear of missing out about not knowing the meaning of fear of missing out.
It can become a cycle in itself. Okay, so in one sense, the excessive usage, it has been correlated with depression. It’s depressing.
We’ll talk about it a little bit more, why it happens. But it is true that greater social media usage has generally been correlated with greater amount of depression, especially among teenagers. Do you have some comment? Yes, I disagree with the use of the word disagreement, because I would say it’s much more than that.
It’s almost polarisation. See, normally, if you’re talking with someone face to face, you all have a certain level of courtesy that we maintain in our speech. But when the other person is just an avatar on social media, we don’t know who is there.
And people also, if we are doing it anonymously, people don’t know who we are. Then often it brings out the worst in people. So and just for a few cheap thrills, so it is just disagreement is there.
It can become especially nasty in a way that face to face does not become. Or at least it will take a lot more time to become, we will take a lot more time to become that discourteous on face to face interactions. That’s true.
Yes, please. Yeah, it’s a good point. So it can be addictive.
And we just look for quick information for everything. And then sometimes, as you say in the introduction, that a certain level of deeper thinking can be impeded. Yeah, thank you.
It’s quite a comprehensive list. I was not prepared for this talk. So you gave me material love.
Thank you. So let’s explore this. As I said, I’ll take the talk in three broad parts.
I will first talk about the concerns. Then I’ll talk about the concept. I will be drawing on a model of our inner world from an Eastern tradition to make sense of what happens in our inner world.
And then finally, what happens because of the use of social media. And then finally, we’ll talk about cure the solutions. So most of you have already mentioned the concerns.
I’ll just phrase them in a particular way. Three main concerns are there many, but they can be broadly categorised in three. One is excessive.
You talk about overstimulation. Our mind and our senses are not designed, are not meant for so much stimulation. When there is excessive stimulation, there is a overload and it is a sort of deadening that happens.
So when there is, when this, OK, I read this here, I watched this there, I saw this there, I typed this there. There’s just so much going on. The pace of the mind becomes very fast.
And you may think, OK, we live a fast life and it’s good. I like to think fast. But there is one thing just thinking fast and one is hasty thinking, hasty speaking.
So when our mind goes in an overdrive, it just doesn’t calm down. So when the stimuli are excessive, that often leaves us feeling strained. Strained because the mind is on overdrive.
A machine can function fast for some time, but it’s constantly at a high speed. If you are running physically, if you are running in a sprint, we can run for some time very fast. But if you had to run on sprint speed for a marathon, we will just collapse.
So our mind goes in an overdrive and that’s why we just, after some time, just mentally we can start becoming, either our functioning becomes impeded or we can become even dysfunctional to some extent. So it’s like we are going on sprint speed throughout life. And that just is not sustainable.
It can initially seem very exciting. Oh, I can watch this. I can read this.
I can do that. But it just becomes excessive after some time. So that’s the first problem.
Now, the second is what someone mentioned is often it’s exaggerated. Exaggerated means that whatever comes up in social media, it’s, for example, if you consider Twitter or X, that is a place for very calm, reasoned, thoughtful, respectful discussions. Is it? It’s the opposite of that.
So everybody goes on, everybody’s trying to get more and more views. Everybody’s trying to get more and more likes. And then things become exaggerated.
So one bad thing might have happened. But that same thing gets recycled. And as it is being transmitted, sometimes we have this whole game of whispers where things become worse.
And this exaggeration, it is, it could be intentional at one level, because some people might just spin a story to their advantage. That’s how sometimes biases and hate speech and violence can occur. But sometimes it may not be intentional.
It might just be mechanical. Mechanical means it might happen because of the way the algorithm is designed. Let’s say if I read on a particular issue from one perspective, one article, and then what happens is the algorithm says, OK, this person is interested in this kind of stuff.
They’ll show ten more articles from the same perspective. And we read ten more articles and think, hey, so many people think like this. Then we may get ten more articles.
Now we may not read any of them very seriously, but just read so many people thinking like this. Basically, have any of you heard of this term echo chamber? Echo chamber or echo bowl, you know what it is? What is it? Yes. Yes.
So thank you. So literally, if we go into a chamber and sometimes some places you speak loudly and your own sound comes back to you after some time. That’s the physical meaning of echo chamber.
But in social media, echo chamber means basically we just hear our own view amplified and returned to us. And then basically we all will, by the nature of life, have disagreements. But in general, if you think, oh, so many people think in the same way or that this person thinks like this, this person thinks like this.
Now, there are many people who think from other perspective. But when we get caught in that echo chamber, we are fed articles from the same direction. And then we start thinking that anybody who disagrees disagreements are inevitable.
But when there are disagreements. So how we see the disagreements is very important for our relationships. So at a basic level, we could say that there’s a disagreement.
Maybe at a positive side, maybe they have another perspective. Maybe I don’t know enough. So maybe there’s something for me to learn from the other person’s perspective.
That could be more on the positive side. But if we become convinced that my is the only right thing, then what happens is we come to the level of negatives, start seeing everybody negatively. So this person is uninformed.
And that is the most charitable explanation. This person doesn’t know. But what can be worse is this person is foolish.
That means they have poor judgement. It’s not just lacking information. They have the information, but they don’t have the intelligence to judge things properly.
But what is worst is that we start thinking this person is malicious. This person is evil. And that’s where disagreements degenerate to polarisation.
So here, basically, it’s like when we go deeper into a person, when he’s uninformed, we just say that, OK, they don’t have the data. But they’re foolish. They just don’t have the intelligence.
And we think they’re malicious. Their intention itself is bad. So when we go to this level, when we start thinking somebody has bad intentions, then it’s very difficult to have any kind of connection with that person.
So that’s how, while social media was meant to bring people closer to each other, basically as a social, to have people become more social. And I don’t want to pile on social media. There’s a lot of good that can also be done.
And people do connect. But the dangers, the vulnerabilities are very much there. And because of this, when there are polarizations, whether they be racial polarizations, religious polarizations, political polarizations, they just become sharper and sharper.
So this is often things are exaggerated. Now, exaggerated also, we mentioned this earlier. So when things are exaggerated, what happens is, as I talked here, we become, when it’s excessive, we become strained.
When things are exaggerated, we become agitated, we become worried. We become hateful. Hateful is probably an extreme thing, but we become anxious, we become worried.
So here, another way things are exaggerated, which you mentioned, is that often people just highlight the best moments of their life. And when they highlight the best moments of their life, we start thinking, hey, my life is not enjoyable enough. My life is, oh, this person looks good, so good.
This person has such a nice relationship. This person has such a nice time. And I don’t have that.
And often when we compare ourselves with others, to some extent, comparison is unavoidable in life. We live in a competitive world. So comparison can be at two levels.
One is functional. Functional means that at a functional level, OK, if we are to have a musical band, then who should lead that band? OK, this person is a better singer. Let them lead the band.
We are going to cook food. Who is good at cooking? Whatever event we are going to do at a functional level, evaluation, which involves comparison is required. But from that functional level comparison, it can become compulsive.
Compulsive means that we just can’t stop comparing. So this is where it becomes a comparing mentality. When we are constantly comparing ourselves with others.
I have seen this myself. I have been sharing spiritual wisdom for almost 25 years now. I became a monk about 30-35 years ago.
So in the last 10 years, social media has become big. Some of my content is also put online. So whenever any content goes there, the mind goes first, OK, how much is this viewed? How much is this appreciated? And I have my peers.
How much is theirs appreciated? Now we are all trying to share wisdom for the service of humanity. It really doesn’t matter if somebody else gets more views. It just means that more people are being reached with the message.
But that, I have seen that it’s such a toxic thing. Comparison, especially in terms of comparing mentality, this is often the thief of happiness. There is practically nothing that can so easily rob us of happiness.
There are many things which can rob us of happiness. Say, if we lose our health, we lose our job, something bad happens to us. But these are all events that when they happen, they rob us of happiness.
But when our mind becomes excessively comparative, when we get hooked with a trap or when we become compulsively comparative, then nothing really bad has to happen. But suddenly we get overwhelmed by bad things. We might have had a wonderful, we might go for outing, we might go for a picnic and then we had a wonderful time there.
But we come back and say, we post our pictures and we have friend went for a picnic. And say that friend’s pictures have got more views than ours. Now we had a wonderful time.
Nothing bad happened. But just the fact that maybe they got more likes, that makes us feel terrible. So this way, there is not only a unnecessary comparison, there is also unhealthy comparison that happens.
And this leads to a lot of, as I said, anxiety, insecurity. And to some extent, because the numbers are so easily evident in social media. So comparing becomes far, not just easier, but comparing becomes far more difficult to avoid.
So that’s why this is one of this exaggerated, distorted picture of reality that comes up. That causes a huge amount of problems. So when this insecurity comes up, all of us, I’ll come back to this point a little later, but all of us, we face loss in life.
Loss, failure, setback, but that is more like an event that happens. But how we experience that event, that varies from person to person. I’ll explain what happens when we talk about the concept of our inner world.
But this is the second part that there is often a negative experience, even when the event might be a small negative. OK, that’s not negative. The event might be a small negative, but the experience can be hugely negative.
So let’s see, we’ll talk about how this might happen, but this is the second part of it. So I was going to talk about the concerns with social media in terms of three things. All three are X. What are the first X? Does anyone remember? Excessive.
Yes, correct. Have I given you excessive information? OK. What is the second X? Exaggerated.
Yes, thank you. The third X is exploitative. Now, what I mean by exploitative is that quite often when we are searching for something on social media, our vision is, OK, I’m surfing for information, I’m in charge and I’m looking.
So we could say that, we are fishing and the fish to be caught is some data, some information. It could be, OK, I want to look for some entertainment, some break. And that’s fair enough.
We all need a break in life. But when these algorithms, the way they work is they note what our likes are. And once they note what our likes are, they keep feeding us the same things again and again.
Now, that can affect us in terms of opinions, but an even more negative effect can be in terms of the addictive effect that comes up. When we are, OK, I see one video, maybe I see one InstaReel, I see one YouTube shot and immediately there are five more. And then I watch them and I watch them and I watch them.
And I think I’m going there for just five minutes to watch and five hours are gone. I don’t even realise it. And at the end of it, somebody asks, OK, what did you watch? Hey, what did I watch? I watched a lot of things.
I don’t even remember what I watched. So essentially what is happening is we think we are fishing and the fish is the information. But actually it’s like the algorithm is there and our mind is the fish that is being caught.
And generally when a fish is to be caught, there is a bait. So now imagine if there is a situation where a fishing person has gone into a place for fishing and they know exactly which fish likes which kind of food, which kind of bait. And they provide exactly that bait.
So once that bait is provided, the fish just rushes there and gets caught. So that’s exactly what’s happening to us. Not only are we given a bait, but it’s a bait customised according to our likes, according to our mind.
And that’s why it’s so easy to get caught. You watch one thing and a dozen other things, a dozen other things, a dozen other things. And when this happens, because it’s designed to be exploitative, the result of this is we end up becoming addicted.
And quite often we may think, sometimes we may waste a lot of time on social media. We decide, I don’t want to waste such time. We make a resolve, I’ll keep this up.
And I decrease it. But then again we relapse. And when we start relapsing, then the result is we start thinking, you know, I’m a terrible person.
So basically, when there is this social media addiction. Now, addiction is a strong word and I’m using it in a non-technical sense over here. But we may have two unhealthy responses to it.
One is nonchalance. It’s no big deal. I can give up whenever I want.
And I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I have done it over a hundred times. So now I gave up smoking, but smoking didn’t give me up.
So sometimes when we are nonchalant, it’s easy to give it up, but we find out that nonchalance is deceptive. It doesn’t work. But then from that nonchalance, we go to the other extreme of the pendulum.
And then sometimes people end up with self-loathing. Self-loathing is, you know, I am such a weak-willed person. I resolved I won’t do this.
Why did I do this again? I am worthless and useless. And if nonchalance is unhealthy, self-loathing is even more unhealthy. Self-loathing can also come because of, as I said earlier, image consciousness.
But just the compulsive use of something, even if it is not harming us immediately, here I am not going too much into the neurological aspects. That’s a more technical subject, but I’m here talking simply from the psychological aspect over here, that when we resolve to do something and when we are not able to do it, then our self-worth takes a beating at that time. And when the self-worth takes a beating, then that is very damaging.
So when we talk about addiction, the harm of addiction is not only just the physical cost of it. Maybe it’s harmful for health or maybe we have to spend a lot of money on it. We spend a lot of time on it.
We waste a lot of time on it. So there are some drugs which could be very harmful in terms of their addictive effect. So addiction, it has a physical side to it.
The problem with social media is that the physical is very visible. So, for example, if somebody abuses alcohol a lot or abuses drugs, then it takes a toll on them physically over a period of time. So that’s very easily visible.
But with respect to social media, there could be some physical effect. But a much more effect is the psychological. And the psychological is when we keep doing something which we know we should, not only we know we don’t want to do, but we keep doing it, then what happens is our sense of self-esteem or self-worth, it goes plummeting down.
And this is quite damaging. So in this way, there are three aspects. The excessive, the exaggerated and the, what is the third? Exploitative.
These three, they lead to stress. They can lead to insecurity and addiction. Now, insecurity itself, it leads to either anxiety or depression.
So basically, if we consider the spectrum of mental health problems that we have, these mental health problems have been existing for quite some time now. But the severity, the severity increases much more. The likelihood of a person succumbing to it is much more.
Normally, if somebody is going to abuse drugs or abuse alcohol, they have to go to a particular place. They have to come out of that place. And the effects are visible.
But in this case, it’s not that visible. So you probably know this. This is called a SAD.
People become sad, stressed, anxious and depressed. So now, if you add this, it’s S-A-D-A. Now, this is a SAD-A.
I come from India. In Sanskrit, this means constant, perpetual. So the idea is that this is a threat that is perpetual for us.
For most other threats that we have for mental health, they are not perpetual. We are not as vulnerable to them as constantly as we are with respect to this. So before I move forward, any comments or questions? Any reflections? Yes, please.
Good question. Thank you. So the key difference is each one of us is an individual.
And as an individual, we all have different gifts. We all have our different shortcomings or limitations. Now, generally, say, if I consider this as an individual, or let’s put it, this is our experience.
This is actually nice segue to the next part we are going to discuss. So now, in our experience of life, based on our individuality, say, we have our social skills, how we talk with people. We have our, maybe our musical ability.
We have maybe how we manage little things. So we may have our looks. We may have our IQ.
So there are many aspects, this is just a short list, there are many aspects to our personality, our individuality. Now, generally, when there is comparison, it’s just natural. Okay, this person is better at music, this person has a higher IQ.
That’s just natural. And that is not only natural, as I said, it’s functional, sometimes necessary. Who should do what, based on how good they are at it.
But among these various things that we have, we often identify more with some things than others. So each one of us, we may identify, say, if somebody is very much into music, music is one part of their life, but they may think of themselves primarily, I’m a musician, I’m a budding, a prospective musician. We may identify a lot with our looks.
We may identify with our IQ. I’m a smart student. I’m this and that.
So now, so that means we have our features and we have our identity. So now, in one sense, our identity comes from our features, but it’s like generally our identity arises. Ideally speaking, our identity should be a combination of various features.
That is, our identity is a composite. But quite often, our identity comes from what we identify with. So if you consider money, for example, everybody needs money in life.
But some people, they become so fixated with money that their net worth basically becomes equal to their self-worth. The money is one part of who they are, but that becomes their identity itself. The same way, for somebody, say, their social media following might become their identity.
So basically, when one small part of us or one part of us, you can say, that becomes our identity. And then on that one small of that has become identity and basis of this, we start comparing. And we are not just comparing it.
OK, this person is better than music, better at music than me. But by that we start thinking, OK, this person is better than me. So when it becomes our identity itself, then it takes us on an emotional roller coaster.
So comparison is not just a functional observation. Comparison is not just a positive motivation at that time. Like you said, OK, this person has done so well in this field, I also want to do it.
This person has learned so much, I also want to learn. But then there is a sense, OK, this is something which I can learn. But when you say, I can learn this, that itself, this is a feature and I am at a distance, I can learn this.
But when it becomes my identity, if I don’t know this, I am worthless. Now, it may seem, it may seem that, you know, this identifying is, it may seem a little complex or psychological, but it is, it is actually very tragic when it happens. I was, I come from India, which is an educationally competitive country.
And sometimes students, if they don’t do well in the exam, they sometimes become suicidal. Now, OK, not doing exams, well, exams is not a good thing. But it’s certainly not the end of the world.
But when a person identifies their entire self-worth with their marks, with their grades, then they think that if I don’t do this, if I have not done well in this exam, I am worthless. So, basically, then the negative comparison, if it’s a negative comparison, that becomes our entire identity. That is when it becomes problematic.
If it’s an objective observation, OK, this is what happened. OK, this person is better at this. This is an area where I am good at.
Let me focus on this. OK, actually, I am so good in this area. Let me work on this.
So, as long as we have a sense of perspective, that this is a part of me I can improve. But when it becomes our identity, that is when it becomes a problem. Is this point of our identity and what we identify with, is that clear to some extent? Say, we may identify with our height.
We may identify with our weight. We may identify with the car that we drive. We identify with various things.
But when that identification becomes excessive, it becomes defining for us. And then comparison in that case just becomes unbearable. Especially if we come out, if we are negative in that comparison.
I hope I addressed your question. Thank you. So, let me move on to the second part.
You want to comment something? So, I said first I’ll talk about the issues of concerns. Then now I’ll talk about the concept. So, what exactly is happening when social media starts affecting us negatively? What exactly happens? I’ll especially talk about this point about self-loathing.
Say, when we want to do something, I won’t spend so much time on social media. And then we seem to relapse into it. So, why exactly does that happen? So, I’ll talk about a model of the self that can help us to understand ourselves better.
And also thereby be kinder to ourselves. So, this model of the self, it is a yoga model. That means, how many of you have heard the word yoga? Okay.
Thank you. So, yoga is a physical exercise to help us become fitter. But it is much more than that.
Yoga is a part of a philosophy and a way of looking at the world. So, from the yoga world view, I am drawing this model. So, basically, the self, this is a model of the self.
You see, the self is three level. There is the body, the mind and what can be soul or you can call it the consciousness. So, we have three aspects to our being.
And this can be compared to a computer system wherein we have the hardware, the software and the user. So, the hardware is like our physical side, the body. The software is like the mind.
And the user is who we are. So, now, we could say, in our world today, there has been enormous progress at the level of the hardware, at the level of the body. We have through technological advancement an incredible amount of comforts and utilities.
We have air travel, we have air conditioning, we have so many things which were unimaginable even for royalty, just possibly even 50 years ago. We have those. And yet we find that there is software seems to be getting corrupted.
A lot of people are having mental health problems. So, basically, we have a situation where the physical comforts are improving, but the mind seems to be regressing. It’s almost as if you could say today, people, you could say that we are comfortably unhappy.
We are comfortable at the physical level, but somehow we are distressed. We are unhappy at the mental level. So, before I move ahead, I just try to give a sense of this model.
Basically, we may say that, OK, there’s something inside me, but what is this idea of consciousness and mind or soul and mind? What exactly is that? But the mind is not the same as the brain. With this model, the brain is a part of the physical body. We can point to a location in our physical body where the brain is.
But the mind is something subtler. Just like in a phone, we can’t really point out where the software is. We can say the software is stored in this area.
But that area is not the software. It’s subtler. The mind is subtler like that.
But to get a sense of this, let’s do a thought exercise about this. There are these two levels being inside us. Just to make the sense of thought exercise, I’ll first explain this model and then we’ll see how social media affects it.
So just how do we process things? Let’s keep this a slight distance. So if you consider the soul, mind, body and say here we have the outer world. Now from the consciousness comes out.
So this is consciousness. When consciousness comes out from the spiritual side of us, say that’s like if I have this phone now. Now here you will see this is the battery.
Now from this light source, light is streaming outwards. Light is streaming outwards. So this light source is like the soul and the light streaming out of it is like consciousness.
Now if I shut this, can you see the light now? So this shutter now if it’s okay. Now can you see something? A little bit. Now a little bit more.
Now it’s fully there. So basically you could say our mind acts like a shutter. The consciousness comes out from the soul, the mind acts like a shutter.
But it’s not just a shutter, it’s also here the light gets blocked completely. But imagine if there were a coloured screen over here, then the light would come out would be of a particular colour. So like that whatever is the consciousness coming from our core that goes through the mind to the outer world.
And what we perceive in the outer world that we take in, it comes to the mind and the mind is like a screen on which it is displayed and can be observed. So right now for example when you are hearing me, you are watching that. So that information is being integrated and it’s presented to you on the mind which is like an inner screen for you.
Inner screen, what you observe, you process that. So let’s do a short thought exercise. So wherever you are seated, just try to relax your hands, legs and try to close your eyes.
So we’ll do three deep breaths and then we’ll do guided meditation, guided thought exercise wherein you can just try to follow what I am suggesting. So first let’s have three deep breaths. And as you breathe in, take in the freshness of the atmosphere and let all the lethargy or tiredness or apathy just go out, negativity just go out.
So one deep breath. One, two, three. Now you can try to continue breathing deeply.
And while you are breathing deeply, you try to look ahead. Because your eyes are closed, you cannot see what is in front of you. But if you keep looking straight ahead, it’s almost as if there is some kind of screen inside of you in front of you.
And on that screen, you might see the projected image over here. You might see the replica of this room. You might see the face of your favourite friend.
You might see your home. Or you might see just a dull haze of colours. Or you might just see various images coming and going.
But whatever it is that you see, you see that on some kind of screen inside you. Now while you are looking at that screen, try to take a step backward and catch sight of the person who is looking at that screen. You are looking at the screen, but now you want to look at the seer who is looking at the screen.
Continue deep breathing and try to take a step back. Now whenever you take a step back, you will find that the seer seems to take a step back with you. What you are looking for is what you are looking with.
Try once again, try to take a step back while you are looking at the inner screen and try to see who is it that is looking at the screen. Whatever you try to do, it’s as if the seer steps back with you. As I said, what we are looking for is what we are looking with.
So that screen inside you is your mind. And that seer is you, the spiritual essence of who you are, the soul. Take one deep breath and then slowly open your eyes.
So basically, this inner screen, this is our mind. And whatever this mysterious thing is, that seer, the inner seer, that is the core of who we are, core of our identity. So now, why am I talking about this model? This model can be a very useful tool to both understand how social media affects us and how we can protect ourselves from it.
I give this example of a shutter. Now if the shutter were actually a red coloured screen, red coloured film, then the light you would see would be red. Now would willpower make a difference? No, don’t see the red colour, see the white colour.
It’s a white light. Will you see it as white? We may know it is white, but we see it because it’s a real film over there. So the mind, this mind is a real thing.
And the mind has within it impressions. Impressions are, is it visible? Red, yellow is another colour. There are impressions within it.
Impression means that just like the covering film could become coloured, so that the mind becomes coloured. And when it becomes coloured, it becomes impressed in particular ways. And that leads to our perceiving things in particular ways.
Let me make this a little simpler. Have any of you heard of this thing? We are right in the middle of that itself. Suppose somebody has visited a particular website called Hollywood.com. And they visited 10 times, 20 times, maybe 100 times.
And now they have a friend who stays in some place which is called holiday. Now they want to go to that place. They want to know what is that place.
So now they want to type holiday. But as soon as they type H in their computer browser, in their phone browser, what will come? Hollywood. Now did they want to visit Hollywood.com? Doesn’t matter.
They didn’t want to. But just because they visited that previously, that history is stored in their browser and that will come as an autocomplete. So the browser history is a real thing stored in the history.
And that browser history gives us particular autocompletes, autosuggestions. So now with respect to our browser, we can change the history and we can say delete the history. We just delete the browser itself.
We can format our entire phone. Our mind is like a browser. But with no delete features.
Because there are no delete features, everything that we do, it gets stored in the mind as an impression. And especially if you do something repeatedly, that gets stored as an impression. Let’s say if somebody had to visit Hollywood.com for the first time, then they have to type 9 letters, which requires some effort.
But afterwards, they just type H and they go there. If they visited a hundred times or thousand times, Hollywood.com may even become their homepage. So they don’t even have to do anything.
Just touch their browser and they are on Hollywood.com. So like that, for us, with respect to our mind, the choices that we make, they get stored as impressions in the mind. And from every impression, we get a proposition. A proposition is like an autocomplete.
And that proposition impels us to action. And that action creates an impression. So this is how, OK, if I have used, if say for one month, I’ve used social media excessively.
Spent a lot of time on TikTok or Instagram or whatever. And now my, OK, that was vacation. I had time.
Now my school is starting. My work is starting. I don’t want to spend so much time.
OK, now I won’t do it. But what has happened is during that one month, if you spend hours and hours on that particular thing, that social media, it’s created an impression in our mind. And that impression will lead to propositions.
And so, as I said, typing nine letters to go to Hollywood.com as compared to just clicking H and going there. It requires far less effort. So like that, once the impressions are stored in the mind, repeating the same behaviour becomes incredibly easy.
And now in this case, it becomes not only incredibly easy, it often becomes harmfully easy. Undesirably or harmfully easy. So what the impressions do is they make repetition dangerously easy for us.
So quite often we focus on willpower. No, I won’t do this again. But if I open my browser and type H, you know, I don’t want Hollywood.com to come over there.
Well, willpower is not really relevant over there. It’s relevant, but Hollywood.com is going to come over there. So then we focus too much on willpower.
Then sometimes we beat ourselves up for things that are not presently in our control. There are real, this is the browser history is a real thing, like the impressions in the mind are real things. And those impressions are there.
We will be prompted to particular kinds of behaviour. So whenever we just have a few moments of a break and we, OK, what should I do? Maybe we could talk with a friend. We could go for a walk.
But the impression comes, pick up your phone, pick up the phone, go to this. And even without thinking, just go there. Sometimes it’s required to go there, but it’s not necessary all the time.
So here, if we understand that the mind is a real domain of its own and the mind is actually affected, transformed by the way we function. So the mind will always be given impressions, but through social media we are given especially stimulating, agitating, consuming impressions. Say we meet hundreds of people.
We may forget most of the people whom we meet. But if somebody is extraordinary, maybe very tall, very short, very good looking, whatever, then they create an impression. And we remember that.
Now in social media, the things are designed in such a way that everybody is trying to create, every stimuli is trying to create maximum pleasure. And that’s how we tend to get hooked on to it. This is a real thing.
There is a real effect that has happened on the mind. Now, why am I emphasising so much that there is a real effect? So a mental impression, it is similar to a physical injury. Suppose, say, we had a fracture.
And if I have fracture and before the fracture, maybe I was lifting a lot of weights. But now with a fractured hand, if I try to lift weight, what is going to happen? I just won’t be able to do it. Just have willpower, come on, lift it.
No, it’s not going to work. If I have fracture and if I try to lift a weight, soon I will become a weight which somebody else has to lift on a stretcher. Isn’t it? So this is a physical injury is a real thing.
A mental impression is also a real thing. So physical injury and mental impression, both can impose some limitations on us. And we need to acknowledge the limitations.
This is going to lead us to the solution part. If there is a physical injury, if there is a fracture, say, now when there is a fracture, if we want the fracture to heal, third part was the, I talked about the concept, now I am going to move towards the cure. If there is a fracture and I want to heal from it, there are two phases.
The first phase is that I put my hand on a string and stop motion. Ok, don’t move your hand. And then after that resume slow motion and do it gradually.
Now if you see these two are in one sense opposite things. First the same doctor will tell, don’t move your hand. Minimise it.
Avoid all movement completely. They might put a string or they might even put a cast so that there is no movement. Now when people are small, children are small, sometimes you put signs on there or make symbols of the cast.
And kids will know I have got something special over here. Now it’s actually a restriction. But we try to encourage the children.
Ok, this is special, you preserve this. So basically the idea is the first thing the same doctor will say, don’t engage yourself in this. Don’t move your hand.
But after sometime, maybe two weeks, three weeks, the doctor will say, now start moving. Hey, Mr. Doctor, make up your mind. First you told me not to move, now you want me to move.
Yeah, this is a different phase of healing. Just as there is a process required for healing the physical injury. Similarly, there is a process required for changing the impressions within us.
And just as fracture recovery, it is, it’s not a matter of simply raw willpower. I will lift the weight no matter what happens. You cannot recover a fracture simply by raw willpower.
What we need is a process. Now following the process requires willpower. But you could say it’s refined willpower.
Refined willpower means willpower educated to do particular things. Willpower is what? Don’t move your arms. Afterward, start moving your arms.
So, we understand the need for refined or guided willpower with respect to physical injuries. Say, if I’ve got cough, then I won’t say that raw willpower, I’ll not cough, I’ll not cough, I’ll not cough. That’s not work.
That’s not going to work at all. If somebody has got a digestive disorder, you cannot use raw willpower at that time. Now, willpower is required.
If I’ve got cough, if I’ve got stomach upset, willpower is, okay, don’t eat any food that will further increase the agitation. Maybe take some simple soup, regulate your food. So, willpower is required, but it is refined or guided willpower.
So, same way, if we want to recover our sense of control on our lives, to whatever extent it has been whittled away by social media, we need refined willpower. Not just raw willpower. Raw willpower will inevitably lead us towards self-loathing, which is not what we want.
Now, raw willpower, what it does is, with respect to mental issues, it makes us oscillate like a sine wave. See, we are sometimes wise and we are sometimes otherwise. What do you mean by otherwise? Sometimes we may also speak, you know, social media is terrible.
We may tell others also, don’t do this, don’t get involved in this, it’s bad. And sometimes when we give advice, we may think, hey, such pearls of wisdom are coming from my mouth. Maybe I should write a book on this topic.
Maybe I should write some articles. Maybe I should become a life coach. And then after sometime when we ourselves are provoked, what did I do? So, we keep oscillating.
So, raw willpower is not enough. So, now, what does this refined willpower mean? And how do we use this refined willpower? That’s the key thing. So, you remember, we did an experiment of like looking at the inner screen.
So, now, let’s consider that feature once again. See, what happens is, if this is me, the soul, and this is the mind. Now, we consider the mind to be like our phone.
Now, on the phone, there are, if our phone, phone screen, there may be maybe 100 notifications. Now, what may need to be noticed, maybe only 10 need to be noticed. Notifications will keep popping up.
And sometimes some notifications cannot be disabled. We just come and we have to, we don’t, the notification has come, we don’t notice it. We focus on what we want to notice.
So, like that, you can say on our mind, lots of notifications will keep popping up. Lots of notifications will keep popping up. Now, that’s like on the inner screen, hundreds of images keep coming.
Not everything that comes on the inner screen needs to be noticed. And we understand this normally. I will use one word and I use the word thought in two different ways.
If you can try to tell me whether the meaning is different and if yes, what is the difference? So, I just got a thought. And I have given this a lot of thought. I just got a thought.
I have given this a lot of thought. Can anyone say what is the difference between these two meanings? Yes, please. Yes.
So, here effort is there. Here it is almost involuntary, just come. Anything else? How many of you agree that there is a difference? How many of you think the difference doesn’t make any difference? So, the point is that when we have a thought, I just got a thought.
That’s like, you can say, it’s like a notification popping up on our phone. It’s a thought pops up within us. It almost comes on its own.
Not everything that pops up inside us needs to be noticed by us. Not every thought requires to be thought about. I have given this a lot of thought means, OK, this particular issue, I have consciously contemplated on it.
So, almost put it this way, that here I just got a thought means like I am here and this is the screen. So, it’s almost as if that thought is popping up and coming towards us. But when I have given this a lot of thought, what it means is that I have focused on it.
The directions are opposite. So, why does this matter? See, by the impressions that have been created in our mind because of our past actions, because of our, say, use of social media, many thoughts will pop up within us. So, OK, whenever we have a few free moments, immediately, I want to watch this, I want to do this.
That kind of thoughts will come up. But just because that thought has come up does not mean we have to act on it. And willpower also does not mean that the thought should not come up.
When we set ourselves to an unrealistically high standard, you know, I will not even think about this. I am never going to do this again. But the thoughts will pop up.
Just like I may want to go to holiday.com. But as a type H, hollywood.com will come. Doesn’t matter. Let it come.
I don’t have to go there. So basically, this is, I’m going to talk about two strategies for dealing with the mind or for healing the mind that has been afflicted with too much social media usage. The first strategy, we’re talking about cures.
The first is distance. Distance basically means create a distance between us and our mind. Try to increase this distance.
Understand that there is something inside me which is actually different from me. So now how can I do this? There are various tools for it. One of the tools could simply be introspection.
That maybe every day we just spend a few moments and think of the times when we just acted impulsively. What exactly happened? At that time that thought came up. Let me read this.
Let me watch this. Maybe I didn’t have actuality. So it’s like we can, if we become more introspective, we can start noticing these bubbles coming inside us.
These thought bubbles coming up, like pop-ups coming up. And hey, when the pop-up came, I really didn’t have to go in that direction. Another way to do this is also through journaling.
So by this, what will happen is we journal. Now journaling is best not done in a judgemental way. What a fool, you plan you’re not going to waste your time and you wasted so much time.
No, just try to, whenever we do introspection or journaling, do it in a mood of curiosity. Let me understand how my mind works. Let me understand myself better.
We want an attitude of curiosity, not an attitude of judgement. We don’t want to be judgemental and harsh towards ourselves. Then I understand, say, there are particular times when this pop-up comes up and I go off in that direction.
Say, if I have an important assignment to do, say another deadline is just tomorrow. And then the pop-up comes up. Hey, let’s see what is, what is there on Instagram.
OK, not now. But maybe we are a bit tired and bored. And then the pop-up comes up.
That’s the time you just go in that direction. So try to understand patterns, create a distance between, creating a distance. It helps us to understand the patterns when we are more vulnerable.
So the impressions are there. So, for example, if I understand, OK, whenever I type H, that’s when the Hollywood.com comes. And if I’m not careful, I press enter, it just goes to Hollywood.com, even if I didn’t want to.
So then whenever H is going to come, that’s the time when I need to be careful. So basically for us, this distance helps us to discern patterns. Patterns.
So earlier I talked about how we feel strange, we feel stressed, we feel insecure. So look back, what are the times when I feel insecure? Whenever I go on Instagram and look at this kind of profile or this kind of picture, that’s what happens. So try to discern some patterns.
If we discern patterns, then we can protect ourselves. We can protect ourselves better. Generally, so this pop-up, sometimes people feel when I succumb to something, I just don’t have any willpower.
But that’s not true. We all have willpower. It’s just that sometimes our willpower becomes weak.
If we had no willpower, all of us would be dead by now. There are so many ways in which self-destructive urges can come upon us. So we all have willpower.
What are the patterns? When our willpower weakens. And then when that is happening, we need to be protecting ourselves. Generally, you may have heard this, that there are some typical situations when we may feel, when we may succumb more to our temptations.
So there’s an acronym used, HALT. Does anyone know this full form of HALT? So when I’m hungry, when I’m angry, when I’m lonely, when I’m tired. So quite often these are the times we become more vulnerable.
So if you understand, this is just an example, but we understand patterns for ourselves. These are the times when the pop-up comes and I succumb. So it’s not a matter that my willpower is weak.
I have good willpower. But those are the times when I’m weak. So once we understand this distance, then for such situations, maybe we can create boundaries for ourselves.
So if we can create boundaries, what could the boundaries be? So maybe when I’m hungry and I won’t keep my phone next to me. If I want to do something else, maybe I’ll read something. Otherwise, what happens is we are hungry and we are eating on one side and we are watching.
We don’t keep track of how much we are eating. Just get lost. So various things can happen like that.
So once we acknowledge our weakness, when we recognise the areas where we are weak, then we can create boundaries. So this is distance. The distance is we are creating a distance, first of all, between us and our mind.
And then by that we can create an outer distance between the things or the situations where we become weak. Say, for example, if somebody is recovering from alcoholism, then if they are staying right next to a bar, then maybe they need to relocate. They are really serious about recovering.
And because we all will have moments of weakness. What do you mean by moments of weakness? The pop-up comes and there is a tendency for auto-complete immediately. So when that happens, OK, OK, I have moments of weakness in the bar right next door.
Some people have a bar next to their house. Some people have a bar in their house. And they will say, oh, this is not for me.
This is only for my guests. Well, a guest will come in. That guest is our own impression, our own alcoholism.
There will be no bar to go to the bar. So create some distance. The distance is both, as I said, the distance is both internal and external.
Internal is between the soul and the mind. External is between us and the situations or the objects that weaken us. So this is the first part of the cure.
And the second part of the cure, I’ll conclude with this. Now, if say, going back to the example of the browser, what were the two words we had discussed? Hollywood and holiday. Now, suppose somebody just visits holiday.com once.
At that time they may have to type all the seven letters. And for somebody it may feel like seven letters typing is like climbing a mountain. But somehow they do it once, they do it twice, they do it thrice.
Then after some time when they type H, Hollywood.com may still come as autocomplete. But holiday will also come as autocomplete. Maybe it comes lower, but it will come.
Now, if they keep going to holiday.com, they keep typing holiday.com, after some time it will come as the first autocomplete. So here is the second part is diligence. Diligence means just do desired activity repeatedly.
So whatever it is, so the willpower quite often we focus on what I will not do. And that doesn’t work. I may decide, OK, I’m not going to visit Hollywood.com, but that Hollywood.com is already stored in the browser history.
So instead, what will I do? So instead of saying that, OK, I won’t spend so much time on social media. Now, think of what do I want to do? Now, what is really of importance for me? And once we focus on that, OK, this is important. And we just try to do that.
Try to do that diligently. Now, OK, I have to study, I have work to do. But you know, all that becomes tiring.
How much can I do it? It’s OK. This is where desired activity means. What are we trying to do? If you consider two things, there are things we feel good doing.
And then the things that are good for us. So if you consider food, for example, there is food that is tasty and there is food that is healthy. Now, if these two circles were identical, life would be so easy.
But that doesn’t mean that there is no overlap between these two circles. There is some overlap. Now, there might be some food which we like also and it’s also healthy.
So you find that if you eat that food, it won’t be an assignment. It won’t be an austerity. You can do that.
So like that, when we are trying to do diligence, try to find out something which is in the intersection of these two activities. What is it? Something that I like to do and something that is good for me. So if you can find that, then doing that repeatedly will be relatively easier.
It will be relatively easier. So, for example, say, instead of just surfing on social media and looking at people’s photos, maybe I say, maybe I like to hear nice music. So there are various kinds of music, but maybe there is calming music, maybe there is spiritual music.
That flips my mood. So whenever I have the situation of halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, at that time the urge is, OK, let me visit TikTok, let me visit Instagram. But maybe I keep in my phone some nice soothing music and I turn it on and hear it.
Sometimes we may just go off on social media afterwards and realise, hey, I shouldn’t have done that. OK. Whenever you realise, come back.
See the browser, in one sense, all that it cares for is how often do you repeat. Somebody visits holiday repeatedly, holiday will come in autocomplete. So I started talking about refined willpower.
Refined willpower means don’t focus so much on what we want to give up. Focus on what we want to take, what we want to do. And if you’re just diligent in doing that, we’ll find that diligence, our diligent focus, just keep repeating what we want to give up versus what we want to take up.
So quite often we feel my willpower doesn’t work because our whole focus is what we want to give up. We just shift the focus to what we want to take up. Then that will create fresh impressions in our mind.
And once those impressions are created, then from within we’ll be prompted in that direction. So now each one of us can do some inventory. What would fall in this particular circle? What is good for me and what I feel good doing? Now, many ancient traditions had something called rituals.
And the word ritual often has a negative connotation. But it’s especially when the negative connotation is for ritualistic. That means something is done mindlessly.
But rituals are basically time tested means or time tested practises. They tap the power of repetition. You see, nowadays there are many self-help books, CEOs three morning routine, morning rituals or my daily morning rituals.
So we could make our own rituals. Maybe as soon as I complete one activity at the end of the day, before I just pick up my phone, I’ll just take a few deep breaths. I’ll just maybe scan my body, relax my body.
Maybe in my particular tradition we chant mantras. Maybe I’ll just chant some mantras. Maybe I’ll read some affirmations.
So we find things that we can do and we make them our personal rituals. So once we make these as our rituals, they will become like our shields. So they will protect us.
They will protect us while they are also changing us from within. So whatever be the particular way our mental health has been impacted by social media, if we can adopt this distance and diligence, just don’t be impatient with yourself. One person might say have visited Hollywood.com. Again, I talk about comparing mentality.
Comparison can affect us even in our attempt to change ourselves for the better. Somebody may have visited Hollywood.com 50 times and just go five times or 10 times to Hollywood.com and then that becomes their first autocomplete. They change it.
But you know, maybe somebody else has visited Hollywood.com 5000 times and they do five times Hollywood.com and still Hollywood.com remains autocomplete. I’m worthless. No, you’re not worthless.
It’s just that it will take some time. So be patient and be diligent. Don’t get caught with the hope for immediate results.
Results will be there. Every time we are being diligent, the change is happening. The impressions are changing.
So what diligence does is, this is my mind. There are these unhealthy impressions inside. But what I can do is, I can overwrite them with healthier impressions.
When I overwrite them with healthier, we cannot delete, I said, but we can overwrite. And with time, so what we overwrite, with time, we’ll overwrite. We overwrite past impressions.
And with time, what they will do is override. Override means that, OK, the first autocomplete was earlier Hollywood. But if I visit Hollywood repeatedly, then Hollywood will become the first autocomplete.
So like that, from within itself, for us, we will get this tendency. Overwrite. Proposition from within will work for us instead of against us.
And that is the state where we actually become internally empowered by our mind instead of being disempowered by our mind. Then we can use social media constructively to connect with others and to act purposefully. When the past impressions are overridden, then we are empowered by our mind.
Why empowered? Because our mind itself is prompting us towards healthy things, not disempowered by our mind. So I’ll summarise what I discussed today. So since you are going to get some assessment for this, so this is the summary like a cheat sheet now.
Everything that I’ve spoken here, that will be over here. So I talked about this in three broad parts. Does anyone remember the three parts? The first was concerns.
We talked about three concerns with social media usage. Oh, excellent. So excessive is too much stimuli that leads us to us feeling strained or stressed.
Then exaggerated. That leads us to feeling insecure, worried. And then exploitative.
That it’s like we think we are going fishing, but it is our mind that is the fish that is being caught that leaves us addicted. And then quite often what happens is with respect to social media overuse, we often have two unhealthy attitudes. One is nonchalance.
I can give it any time. And the other is self-loathing. What a fool I am.
Why can’t I give it up? I have no willpower. But in between when you want to go, it’s not that we don’t have any willpower. It’s more like we need refined willpower.
So what is refined willpower mean for that? I talked about this model of the self. That there is three levels. The body, the mind and the soul.
So the mind basically in it impressions are formed. And those impressions, they lead us to a vicious cycle. Impressions lead to propositions.
Just like Hollywood.com leads to anywhere H is typed, automatically that comes up. Propositions lead us to actions. And actions reinforce the impressions.
And in that way, we tend to get trapped. So getting out the same behaviour becomes dangerously easy. So the mind with impressions, it is akin to a body with injury.
The whole point of discussing this model was that don’t expect that just by our willpower everything will change. Why do we need refined willpower, guided or directed willpower? That’s why we discuss this whole model of the self. So this was the concept.
The last part was cures. We talked about two main cures. You remember the two parts? Yes, distance.
Distance means basically we try to learn to observe our mind to discern patterns within it. So we can create a distance by introspection, by journaling. So basically, by such introspection, we discern patterns.
Patterns about when am I weak? So for example, you talk about say halt. The times when we might find ourselves weak. And for those situations, we can create boundaries for ourselves.
So other than depending on willpower, we are creating boundaries. And what is the second part? Diligence. Now, so here we discuss that there are certain pop ups that are going to come up because there are impressions.
So we can decide which pop ups to focus on when the pop ups come up. But then we want to rewrite the impressions in the mind. So what we do is diligence means we find out, we basically try to overwrite the impressions.
So as we overwrite them in due course, they will overwrite. And to help us overwrite, what we can do is, we can look at things that fall in the intersection. That the things which feel good and are good.
So if we can find out something, then here we tap power of repetition. We can make rituals for ourselves, our personalised, customised rituals. So social media might have its customised beats for us.
We can have our customised rituals, which can protect us from social media. And then we will be empowered by our mind rather than being disempowered. And thus, we can move forward in using social media constructively for fulfilling our life’s higher purposes.
Thank you very much. Thank you so much. It was a very enlightening and insightful talk personally for me.
And I’m sure all of you agree because social media is impacting all of us one way or the other. It doesn’t discriminate in terms of age, gender, colour, nationality. It’s completely open and we are all vulnerable here.
So do all of you agree with me? We open up for about 10 minutes for questions and answers here. If anybody wants to ask a question, please go ahead. And for those who came from Bio 333, Bio 428, before you leave and after you’ve had your lunch, please give me your names so you can get the extra credit.
But right now, we’ll open questions here. I don’t really have questions. It’s more just a thought.
As we were speaking, an example is I have a cousin, a younger cousin, who sounded like he was depressed because he wasn’t getting enough attention or likes. And I tried to reassure him that social media is not a place to compare it. You have to see it as more of a place to just unwind and just use it as a positive.
So not to go there. Just use it for entertainment and that’s it. It’s not real life.
I felt like he needed to hear that. I felt like a lot of people needed to hear that. It isn’t probably people over happiness.
I think what happens is that there’s a part of us which knows that, but we need reminders. And this kind of reminders can be helpful. And especially if we can sit down with somebody, if we find somebody who is really too much into social media, it’s hurting them.
Then we can sit down, spend some time with them and help them discover this intersection of what feels good and what is good. Because telling somebody, don’t go there, okay, what should I do? Because when we say we all are busy, but we also need something to fall back on when we need some relaxation. So sometimes the person can take responsibility to find out some healthier replacement.
But if they can’t find that, then sometimes those who are wanting to help them, they can sit with them. And initially in diligence, a little push is required. That developing a new habit, like I said, visiting holiday.com, it requires a certain number of letters to be typed.
Otherwise they just click, click, enter. So that initial little push is required. So if we want to help others, that’s the first thing.
Help them discover what could be a replacement. And just give them a little push in actually being diligent in adopting the replacement. And that will definitely help them.
You talked about willpower and that’s kind of creating boundaries, right? I think setting myself 10 minute boundaries, let’s say, and finding what’s more important. Right now at school, assignments that we have to do, or reading a book, or just talking to somebody is very important. And everyone’s kind of doing that social aspect too.
That’s pretty sad, but I mean, I’m setting these boundaries myself so I don’t fall into social media hype. See, what boundaries does is, it doesn’t get us caught in zero-one kind of logic. That I won’t do this ever, or I just give myself completely.
Boundaries give us a sense of perspective. Or rather, it gives us a sense of negotiability in our life. And sometimes we set boundaries and we may not stick to those boundaries.
We may fall. We don’t have to beat ourselves up on that also. Okay, maybe this particular boundary at my level might be too difficult for me.
Maybe I need some other one. It’s like if somebody goes to a gym and first tries to lift weights. They might think, okay, I can lift this huge weight.
And then after some time, hey, this is too much for me. Okay, find a lighter weight. So we need to sometimes negotiate with ourselves to find out what boundaries work best for us.
Thank you. Of course, of course, of course. Nowhere, I also mentioned that I don’t want to pile on social media.
I didn’t say social media is a problem. The three aspects that I said, excessive, exaggerated and expert, that is the problem. We cannot be Luddites who just turn away from the world.
We have to, we will have to engage. And there are people who are very dystopian about things. Every new technology has had come, has come with its alarmists.
When the car was developed, when the plane was developed, when the computer was developed, even when the calculator was developed. When the calculator was developed, there was an alarm that people will lose all maths ability. Now, has that happened? Well, yes, we have become a little dependent.
But not that people have lost maths ability. So we are not being alarmists here in the sense that, oh, give it up completely. We want to be not alarmists, but we want to be aware.
So now what would be healthy amount? Again, that will depend on individual to individual. Some people, their very nature of their job or profession or studies requires, so even requires some amount of engagement. So we could also decide that in social media, maybe this particular media, I need more.
So somebody will say, I need internet access, but I don’t need to be on this particular social media. So we have to find out what is healthy for us. So it was mentioned that you spoke at Google.
What is it that you spoke about? Oh, I have spoken three times at Google. Generally, it has been associated with mental health itself. I think the first time I spoke on the topic of mental health and spirituality.
And there I talked about how spiritual practises can, you know, science is the study of matter. Spirituality is the study of what matters. So both are important.
Science is the study of matter. But science itself does not tell us what is really important for us. That is where spiritual growth helps us become more self-aware and understand what matters for us.
So when we have a complement of both of these, the study of matter, the study of matter can improve our outer world. The study of what matters can improve our inner world. And we focus our attention, energy and things that are important for us.
And they can be complemented. So I think one time I spoke on spirituality, mental health from this particular perspective. A couple of other times also I spoke.
You had a comment or question in the session? Did you have a comment in the session? No. What’s your perspective on the use of iPads in elementary schools? Because a lot of these kids, especially our son is Monday through Friday. I feel that, you know, we just can’t turn back the clock.
Technology is like a juggernaut. It’s going to move forward. But what we can do is rather than turn back the clock, we try to turn on the compass.
Turn on the compass means equip people more and more with a sense of direction. So in general, in small pockets of some areas, turning back the clock might be possible. That means maybe in some specific educational settings, in some special schools run by certain forums, maybe we can go back and avoid using technology.
But what needs to be done is turn on the compass. Help people connect with their own innermost self. By which? Now we say kids, how can they do that? Well, that’s difficult, no doubt.
But it’s, see, while kids are becoming more and more distracted, in the age of distraction, but it’s also true that actually kids’ IQ is increasing with every generation. If you see the kind of, say, video games people play, they’re very complex. And a sheer amount of factors that they have to take in and process.
It’s difficult for us. So it’s not that everything is doom and gloom. So if we can focus on turning on the compass, then that’s the best way.
Because even if we say in teenage, now many schools do that, they give them iPad. But there are a lot of sites which are blocked and they can’t really go about everywhere. So that kind of restrictions are good.
But I think we as an individual, we really can’t go against the whole way in which society and technology are going. So we just need to focus on turning on our compass. Thank you.
So shall we stop? Thank you all for your participation. And if you have any questions for him, you can directly email me and I can direct the question to him.