🔊 Podcast transcripts: The Internet and your wellbeing

This podcast is part of the UCIL Digital Society course from the University of Manchester. The story it relates to is hosted on Medium and can be found here.

In this podcast Charlotte and Mark discuss the topic ‘The Internet and your wellbeing’.

Chapter 1

Charlotte: Hello Digital Society students. In this podcast we will be having a discussion around the topic of wellbeing, and how wellbeing is impacted by the reality of living in this modern age of technology. We’ll be looking at three themes in particular during the podcast. But there’s obviously so much you could say about this topic, so it’s not exhaustive. We’re just going to kind of explore a few themes.

The first thing we’ll be looking at is digital wellbeing for young people. So looking in particular at, uh, the modern attention economy and how the internet has impacted on our attention span, then we’ll move to thinking about how adults are impacted by the rise of the internet in terms of the workplace.

And then finally, we’ll explore the experience of older adults and the retired and how their wellbeing might be impacted by the ways that services have moved to embracing digital communication as the norm.

So we’ll be drawing on some new sources and articles in podcasts, as well as our own experience. Obviously, neither of us are experts on this topic, but we’re just offering our own responses to what’s out there. And hopefully this discussion will both pose some questions for you and inspire you to reflect and ask some of your own.

Mark: So the first thing we’re going to talk about is teenagers, social media, and the impact the internet has on attention span. So an alarming development in our modern digital world is the commodification of our attention span. The digital world we find ourselves in, particularly the apps we’re using in our downtime, is now being referred to by companies as the attention economy. So the attention economy is this idea that human attention is a resource that companies, politicians, et cetera, can use to their own advantage and for profit.

So in the attention economy, companies offer products such as apps and games for free. And the way that they make their money is by collecting this data from us, from their customers on how we engage with the app. So they then sell that data to businesses, so they can sell those products based on unique preferences and habits.

So this is what we call the attention economy. To kind of sum this up, Justin Rosenstein, Google and Facebook’s former chief engineer, famously said if you aren’t paying for a product, then you are the product. So it’s something to bear in mind when using free apps that you get from online. And the effect this commodification, this attention economy, has had on teenagers has perhaps been the most discussed.

So a couple of examples: a legal case from 2023 has claimed that Facebook and Instagram have been deliberately designed to be addictive to children — so specifically targeting teenagers, younger children, younger customers. And what’s particularly alarming is the amount of time spent by adolescents and young adults using this electronic media. So the number of hours daily is as high as over 11 hours a day on social media for 11 to 18 year olds. Users that are slightly older, such as late adolescents and emerging adults, are lower, averaging approximately 30 minutes daily for things like Facebook, but that doesn’t necessarily calculate the time spent on all social media networks.

And the amount of time spent on social media has obviously had negative impacts. Social media use has been linked to addiction-style behaviour amongst children and teenagers: things like neglect of other activities, lying about how much time is spent online, and an inability to control use. So similar behaviour as you’d see in gambling addicts and other sort of addiction.

It’s not necessarily to say that it’s all bad, of course. The same study as the above has said that teenagers with heavy, but not problematic, use of social media do record and communicate stronger social connections and peer support.

In terms of attention span, from a kind of a personal perspective, I do find that my attention span has plummeted in the past few years. I’ve always been a huge fan of reading. I used to be able to sit and read for hours. Now I do find it harder to sit down and read a book, find it hard to write, even find it hard to watch a film at home. I have questions that end up picking up your phone, scrolling away, going on social media, not even doing anything really.

And I do think most of us are aware of being marketed to this way, this attention economy. But social media use has become so normalized that I don’t think everyone really grasps the extent to which it shapes our daily life and to which it’s kind of targeted to each individual person. I for one was a little bit horrified reading the McCann article on RTE, which is linked, about how social media use, companies use the same techniques as gambling companies to actually promote these behavioural addictions that we have seen in kind of teenagers.

Charlotte: Mmm. It’s pretty scary or it feels kind of ridiculous to me, but I now have technology apps on my phone to limit my use of my phone, which seems kind of, yeah, topsy turvy. So I have an app called StayFocused, which I use to set limits on my social media use and to kind of block certain apps for me during the work day — and in the evening so that I can actually go to sleep. So it’s kind of, I’m actually having to outsource, because these things are so addictive, I’m outsourcing almost my kind of willpower to another app to do that for me. I also think it’s very telling when you read about sort of like the engineers who were instrumental in kind of creating these apps. So we had the quote earlier, obviously by the Google chief engineer, and I’ve also read plenty of things about how these engineers don’t actually allow their own children to use social media, which I guess is a bit of a testament to…people who are in the know, kind of know how dangerous and potentially addictive these things are.

I would say, on the other side of things, just so we have a bit of a balance, I’ve also experienced the positive benefits of social media sites in the way that they can open up community spaces, which you wouldn’t have access to otherwise. So I wrote poetry and I’ve found lots of events on social media and that’s connected me to sort of a community of like-minded people, which has been kind of a source of inspiration. So that’s been kind of a positive experience that I’ve had through social media.

Chapter 2

Charlotte: Okay, so we’ve talked a little bit about using the internet in our private lives by engaging with things like social media — particularly looked at how that might impact young people. But the fact is that the internet is now woven through every aspect of our lives. It isn’t just contained in the social sphere. So what about the workplace and the impacts technology has on the way that we work and how that might influence our wellbeing at work? So over the sort of the last couple of decades, there’s been a shift from maybe a more trade based economy to the knowledge economy and the internet has been obviously instrumental in this shift.

And what we understand as the knowledge economy is an economy which relies on the acquisition and application of human intelligence and information to create growth. In the economy that we’re living in now, there’s less focus on physical resources and inputs. It’s more kind of intangible inputs and resources that are being used. And workers are kind of constantly having to, to sort of update and be innovative in order to kind of stay afloat in this economy. In the research on this podcast, I had a look at Grammarly’s report on business communication in the U. S., and they’ve reported that 80 percent of the worker’s week is now spent communicating across sort of more channels than ever.

Digital Ethics Professor and Theorist, Cal Newport, who has also written one of the other articles that will be linked — Cal Newport defines deep work as work, which stretches an individual’s skills, ultimately kind of fostering growth and providing a sense of satisfaction. So it seems as if constant connection that we’re having to engage with at work across all these different channels, constantly communicating with each other, might be leading to less fulfilling work.

Another article that we’ll link below from Indico highlights that workers are being expected to use more tools and channels than ever before. And there’s also kind of a lack of training on these different channels. So the training hasn’t really caught up to all the different things that we’re supposed to be using. And that means obviously more communication, less training, an increase in poor communication.

And this is leading to more stress and burnout. So again, in Grammarly’s report, they cited that 51 percent of workers have seen an increase in stress. And 41 percent say that they experience lower productivity as a result of this kind of overcommunication. So if you think there’s more poor communication, less training, that leads to more confusion, overwhelm, and then that will also contribute to burnout. And if we’re also not getting that experience of kind of deep work and the satisfaction, that’s obviously going to impact on wellbeing as well.

However, not to just focus on the negative. It’s important to recognize the positives of kind of working in a digital economy as well. Digital communication obviously allowed businesses to adapt and stay afloat during COVID, which allowed kind of more people to stay employed during COVID. Working in a knowledge economy also affords more flexibility, which supports workers to work in the best way for them. And it can also support those whose needs might have been marginalized before. So potentially those who have, um, kind of caring responsibilities that mean that working from home is, you know, is a real plus for them.

So in terms of my own personal experience, I can definitely see sort of both positive and negative sides kind of reflected. During the pandemic, our team had to adapt pretty fast to using Microsoft Teams predominantly for doing all our work. This was without any kind of time for training and thinking about best practice about how to sort of set that up properly. So this really like multiplied the number of different places that you need to look for information and updates, but also for different ways in which people can contact you. And I’ve often felt overwhelmed, and still do, to be honest with teams, with the amount of information that’s there and, you know, worry about missing particular updates that I was supposed to see. So that’s something that I’ve definitely experienced.

And when I first heard Cal Newport speak about knowledge workers and their increased risk of burnout it was on a podcast that I listened to, which is Rangan Chatterjee’s Feel Better, Live More, which was episode 466. And that struck a chord with me when I listened to it, because I could definitely see in myself that sort of this idea of deep work and the fact that focusing too much on communicating about our work has maybe meant that there isn’t as much of a chance nowadays for me to kind of engage in that sort of work.

So I know that, you know, personally, I get a greater sense of achievement from that kind of work — so things like creating new workshops or resources for students — but I also know now that I’m more likely to kind of procrastinate over this type of work because it’s harder and obviously requires more concentration and, you know, the fear of failure is more present and obviously it’s all too easy to opt for the kind of quick dopamine hit of sending another Team message or doing something, you know, procrastinating by doing something else that’s easier to do.

On the other side of things as well, kind of the positive side, I’m neurodivergent and I really appreciate the opportunity to work from home more often. And I feel that the flexibility the knowledge economy has obviously afforded us, I can see the benefits there. And I find it easier to concentrate on that sort of stuff that is deep work by having the opportunity to work from home. We also don’t need to answer phone calls at work anymore, which I always hated. So that’s great.

[laughter]

Mark: I do agree with that about the phone calls and about the sudden switch to Teams. It was a very sudden lurch in kind of a lot of jobs. And there’s been no discussion on how it worked, the best way to use it, like you say, best practice.

I also find with Teams at work, it sometimes does have the same sort of pitfalls social media does. There’s a pressure to comment or react back to posts people make. Are you communicating the right thing over teams, channels? No one reacts or kind of comments back. But it tends to be kind of multiplied more, the kind of anxiety about things like that because it’s a work environment.

So you think kind of it maybe kind of matters more. And there is this pressure to be constantly available, but I do think it’s important to set your own boundaries. I don’t have my Teams or my work email available on my phone, because I don’t really want to be getting updates in the evening, lunch, or at weekends. That’s really kind of set to work times. As you say though, there are a lot of positives. I do love being able to work from home and we hot desk as well, so teams really helps lend itself to that. And it does make it easy to collaborate on certain projects, so we can talk over teams, we can share files, Google docs, et cetera. And it does remove the need for constant meetings, which I think everybody likes.

Chapter 3

Mark: So now we’ve kind of talked about the internet and the effects it has on people’s work, we’re going to talk about elderly people and the effect that internet use and social media and things has on loneliness and social connection.

So what we kind of looked at is that increasingly, we do live in a world where a mobile phone — so by extension the internet — is a necessity for everyday life. Things that used to be done physically, such as paying taxes, paying bills, ordering food, paying for parking tickets, et cetera — it is now all done online.

And while the younger generation kind of can get used to this — even though I don’t like it. I don’t like having to use apps to order food and drink, and I’ll be more used to using things like that, and I also don’t like having to download new apps for every purchase or subscription I make. It feels really invasive. I am more used to it, so it’s not a huge hurdle. Whereas it is a particular problem for older people who wouldn’t have necessarily grown up with this technology, so it’s a lot more of a barrier to those.

It does make elderly people feel more isolated. They’re not used to the technology, for one thing; that’s one barrier. It also removes a person that they can speak to as well. So, for example, self-service checkouts: you’re not actually speaking to a human being. When you ring someone up to pay a bill, you’re not speaking to a human anymore. So it can be really isolating, particularly for elderly people where loneliness is a problem anyway.

And it’s a problem that we can see only really getting worse. So some examples from the end of 2025, all houses are going to require internet connection for a functioning phone line, which again would be another barrier for elderly people who might just use a landline and don’t have an internet connection. 42 percent of people aged over 75 don’t use the internet at all. 45 percent of over 65s don’t use a smartphone. So these are huge numbers already. Obviously, the population is aging and it is aging quite rapidly. In the EU, 18 percent of people are over 65. So this is the problem kind of we can only see growing.

And we can see it happening already. I used to work in public libraries and we had just so many elderly people coming in for help with things that were only online now. So help paying with bills, blue badge forms. The more things move online, the more this is a barrier for elderly people, and the more we can kind of see this loneliness problem growing.

It’s not to say that it’s all negative, though. As ever, studies tend to only focus on the negatives of the internet and the issues it has with kind of loneliness. But there are also some positives when it comes to elderly people and internet use. Things like social media, message boards, interest groups can all help in combating loneliness.

Charlotte already mentioned earlier in regards to poetry groups online, how that can help forge connections. So that, that is a positive there. And although it is a barrier in certain respects, it can also be a positive to everyday tasks. Things like online shopping can be useful to elderly people who might not be able to make it to the shops. They can use Uber to easily order a, a taxi to get around. There’s voice activated technology maybe for people with mobility issues. So it is not all negative.

I think that one of the main things to realize is that the internet’s maybe not always bad or good. But it is just a tool, a tool that we have to use properly and responsibly, and people do have to be trained in its use. But as to who that responsibility falls on to do the training, I think that question kind of does still need to be answered.

Charlotte: Yeah, I think this discussion about the elderly, it raises an important question really about the right to disconnect or opt out of digital communication. Because of the way that the internet has taken over every aspect of life, it’s making it increasingly difficult for people to be able to make that decision without having to opt out of public life in general if they’re not using their phone. Is that really fair or ethical?

Hearing these stories about the elderly does worry me as I know that sort of businesses often see implementing technology as an easy way to cut costs. It’s obviously easier or cheaper to maintain websites and systems than physical buildings and face-to-face services, but being able to speak to someone face to face is obviously such an important lifeline. Maybe for elderly people who might be feeling lonely in general and then that’s been kind of taken away from them.

By doing so, they’re becoming more and more disconnected from the needs of users, that’s businesses. So those who struggle to engage with those services in that way are becoming increasingly invisible, because if people kind of can’t use the forms, they can’t engage with the website. Then maybe, you know, businesses aren’t even hearing about their experiences and don’t even know that there’s a whole group of people that they aren’t serving. They become further alienated.

Mark: Okay, great. I think that kind of wraps up our discussion of looking at the internet and wellbeing. Hope you found it interesting. Um, we’re going to post links to the various studies that we’ve talked about and some extra ones that will be accessible to everybody. But I hope it’s given you kind of things to think about. It’d be really interesting to hear what you think, people’s comments and thoughts, if you’ve got anything extra to add. Hope you’ve enjoyed listening.

Charlotte: Thanks for listening.

Mark: Cheers, everyone.

Charlotte: Bye.