Moment 164: AVOID These 3 Phone Habits That Are Hurting Your Brain! The Mental Health Doctor: Dr Aditi Nerurkar

**Steven Bartlett** (0:03)
If I wanted to be really, really stressed and really, really anxious, right? And I want to maybe throw in some depression. If I wanted stress and anxiety, how should I live?

**Dr Aditi Nerurkar** (0:15)
That's a great question. Get on your phone, make sure it's on high brightness and scroll through every social media platform, every news platform, watch graphic content of videos of horrible, terrible things happening in the world at midnight. Keep doing that off and on until 4, 5 a.m. Your cortisol spike usually happens around 6 a.m. You know, give or take for people. That cortisol spike is a natural thing that happens. It's part of your circadian rhythm. It's what prompts you to get up out of bed. Of course, make sure that you are, you know, you check your phone right away, right when you get up out of bed and continue scrolling. This is a really fun exercise of what not to do rather than what to do.
It doesn't always happen. It like, it won't be one day because you do have some reserves. But if you did this for one month, I would say instead of like one day, let's do it for one month, 30 days, 30 day plan to maximize anxiety and stress.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:21)
I want to talk about social media. And in your book, you use this term popcorn brain, which I, for a second, when I read what popcorn brain meant, started to think maybe I now have a popcorn brain. What is a popcorn brain?

**Dr Aditi Nerurkar** (1:36)
Many people, most people have popcorn brain. Popcorn brain is a biological phenomenon, a real biological phenomenon coined by a man named Dr. Levi, a psychologist. And it is essentially your brain circuitry starting to pop based on overstimulation. So it's not like your brain is actually popping, but it's that sensation of popcorning because of spending too much time online. It is hard to disengage from what's happening online because there's a constant information stream. And it is difficult to live fully offline where life moves at a decidedly slower pace. Popcorn brain is an affliction that nearly every single person has right now. Think about what you do when you're waiting in line at the grocery store. You're not just like letting your brain wander, pondering things. You are on your phone. What are you doing at the bank on your phone? At a car wash, at a traffic light, pedestrians walking across the street. They're not looking up at the light. In fact, it's like one of the hazards, a public health hazard of, you know, pedestrians having near-miss accidents because they're looking down on your phone. I see it in Boston all the time. A busy street and people are looking at their phone.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:48)
Most people listening now will be like on a tube somewhere on a train, on a plane, looking at their phone. Well, they're listening to this, but...

**Dr Aditi Nerurkar** (2:55)
We rarely give our brains a moment of rest. So popcorn brain is different. A lot of people will ask me, is popcorn brain intranet addiction? No. Intranet addiction is a real, it's called intranet addiction disorder. It's a DSM-IV criteria and it means that's our diagnostic criteria in medicine. And it's a real disorder, but what really defines intranet addiction and popcorn brain is that intranet addiction interferes with your life, where you're unable to do certain things. Popcorn brain, on the other hand, is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. It is what defines modern life. Those two are very different things. And when we are feeling a sense of stress, we are especially prone to popcorn brain. Why? Because when we feel stress, we talked about the amygdala, right? Like that part of our brain that is focused on survival and self-preservation.
Back evolutionarily, when we were all cave people, there was a night watch person. And that person would sit by the fire, the tribe would sleep, and that person would scan for danger to keep the tribe safe. In modern times, we have all become that night watch person. And we scroll incessantly when we feel a sense of stress because it is our primal urge. It is the way our amygdala feels a sense of safety because we are scanning for danger. We are no longer in a tribe. We're not cave people anymore. So what do we do? We scroll. That is how we are scanning for danger, especially when we are feeling stressed. In recent times, there has been a lot of bad news. In fact, it feels like the onslaught of bad news, one thing after another, whether it's a climate disaster or a conflict in a certain part of the world, or something or the other is always happening now. The information stream, it is rapid and unprecedented. And so we are constantly scrolling and scanning for danger. And it's that primal urge to scroll. So how do we, the goal is really not to limit our social media use or media use because we know studies have shown that it is not about abstinence because that actually doesn't have an impact, a positive impact on our mental health or our well-being. But what does have an impact on our mental health and well-being is decreasing our reliance to our phones. You know, most of us check our phones 2,600 times a day. That is a statistic, 2,617 times a day is the average number of times a person looks at their phone. Think about that, right? The other thing you want to think about is when you're thinking about like, huh, do I have a reliance on my phone? It's like the goal here is to reconsider your relationship with your phone. It is not about abstinence. We're not trying to become digital monks here. It's about creating digital boundaries. In every relationship in your life, you have boundaries. You have a boundary with your partner, with your children, with your colleagues, because relationships need boundaries, right? To thrive. Why don't we have a boundary when it comes to the relationship we have with our phone? There is no boundary. It is simply porous. We check in the morning. We check at night. What's the first thing you do when you wake up before your second eye is even open? You are scrolling.