MAP IT
A guide to breaking free from the addictive and destructive powers of social media and apps, with Jillian Tucker, licensed clinical social worker in private practice, adjunct professor of clinical social work at Columbia University
Profs and Pints DC presents: “Digital Device Detox,” a guide to breaking free from the addictive and destructive powers of social media and apps, with Jillian Tucker, licensed clinical social worker in private practice, adjunct professor of clinical social work at Columbia University and New York University, and therapist with nearly 15 years of experience in addiction treatment and behavioral change.
Many of us have had the same experience: We’re trying to get things done and stay focused on the positive in our lives, but we can’t stop looking at a cell phone that tells us that we live in troubled times, that everyone else is better looking and having more fun, and that escape awaits in the worlds of Candy Crush or Pokémon Go.
Maybe it’s time to find effective ways to loosen the grip of that cell phone and rediscover the happiness that comes with using digital devices less.
Join Jillian Tucker, who previously has given several excellent Profs and Pints talks related to mental health, for a crash course on how to restore balance in your relationship with digital devices to ensure they’re simply tools you use rather than instruments through which other people use you.
She’ll start by discussing social and mental-health trends connected to the use of digital devices. We’ll delve into the specific ways that their overuse can be biologically and psychologically harmful and leads to division, depression, anxiety and anguish on an individual and societal level.
Professor Tucker also will look at why digital habits are hard to break, citing neuroscience and what we know about behavioral addiction. You’ll learn the many ways in which devices and apps are deliberately designed to be hard to stop using.
You won’t be urged to just chuck your cell phone, though. After all, such devices can keep you socially connected, be sources of joy and learning, and even save your life if you need to summon help in an emergency.
Instead, we’ll look at effective strategies for reducing digital device use, considering approaches that treat the overuse of such devices as “addiction” but moving beyond them to consider more nuanced ones as well. We’ll explore how to find our core motivation to change and how to carry out a change plan. We’ll consider how those who failed in past attempts to reduce digital-device use can overcome impasses in their effort to change their behavior.
We’ll discuss ways to minimize the feelings of inconvenience and withdrawal that might come with reducing digital-device use, and we’ll discuss strategies for regaining the social skills and reviving the in-person strategies that our device use had compromised. You’ll learn how the same conditioning and power of habit that got us using our devices so much more also can be harnessed to help us use them much less.
You’ll learn how to curate and enhance the positive aspects of digital devices, to help maintain them as a source of connection, joy, humor and learning and keep them from causing you unhappiness or stress. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Photo by Japanexperterna (Creative Commons).
