Thanks for joining us today. Professor Baroness Susan Greenfield, eminent neuroscientist, is joining us today, which is a great pleasure. Susan Greenfield is a Senior Professorial Fellow at Oxford University and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at The University of Melbourne. And I'm delighted, Susan, that you are able to join us today. Thank you for spending your time with us. >> It's great to be here Susan. And we can just call each other by the same name, makes life easier. >> Absolutely, absolutely. As you've been very engaged and know so well, much of the commentary around digital technologies is, if you like, decidedly utopian. >> Of course. >> Almost unreservedly, enthusiastically embracing social media as a powerful good in terms of social connections, opportunities for entertainment through gaming, democratising access to knowledge across the world. And I think certainly at a personal and professional level we can all appreciate many of those advantages in our own lives. >> Indeed. >> But as a neuroscientist, you have some decidedly provocative views about the transformative power of social media in the lives of young people, but not necessarily as a force for good. >> Sure. >> Are you able to share a little bit more of those views today? >> Why, I'd be delighted to. I think probably my stance is best conjured up by that wonderful statement, for every complex situation, there's always a simple answer. And it's always wrong. And I think that people do want to have simple answers. Either computers are good, computers are bad. Social networking is great, or you're joining the Amish, as I'm often prosecuted of being. You're a sort of Luddite, and that's me written off, yeah? However, I think that's not doing justice to the question. It's certainly not helping our young people, if we're trying to design an environment for them and shape a world that's going to bring out the best in them. Okay, so my concerns as a neuroscientist specifically, and I do share, again, your enthusiasm for not having to go to libraries and being able to access references at the touch of a button, of course, I do shopping on the Internet, of course. However, my concerns as a neuroscientist, especially for young people, is the so-called plasticity of the brain. Now, as you'll know, the human brain has the wonderful evolutionary mandate to adapt to any environment in which it's placed. And that's why we occupy more ecological niches than any other species on the planet. We don't run fast or see well, we're not strong. But because we learn, and because we are able to interact with the world in a way that let's say, goldfish, cannot, we have personalities in a way a goldfish does not. So every moment you're alive, whatever you're doing is going to leave its mark on your brain. It's going to change your brain, going to change how you think and feel. Enough said. Enter now an environment that is, I would argue, unprecedented in that it only stimulates two senses. That's hearing and vision, it's two-dimensional. And therefore if you are excessively engaged in that environment at the expense of the three-dimensional one, it follows, your brain will have to change in a different way perhaps than we have seen in previous generations. Now whether that's good or bad, that's what we need to unpack. And that's what I do in my book, Mind Change. So I think no neuroscientist would challenge what I have said, up to that point. What we need to sort out and what I've tried to do is to just present all the data that's there. That makes us see what's good, what's bad. And how we can therefore harness the technology and minimise the threat so that we can have the best possible outcome. >> Interesting, one of the issues you raise is concerns about, in a sense, identity development. And if I have it right, those concerns that for young people who are very engaged in what is, you argue, a highly superficial feedback loop, Dopamine-driven feedback loop, in terms of shaping, perhaps, young people's responses in ways that tend to be very narrowing and potentially quite limiting in terms of young people's true identities or private selves, I understand that this is a particular area of concern for you. Obviously, as an adolescent physician, we know that adolescent identity formation is an incredibly powerful and an important time. Can you tell us more about those concerns? >> Yeah, let's try and unpack that a bit. because I think it's a really interesting area. Let's leave screen technology aside for one minute, and just talk about identity and how we developed identity anyway. So then we'll bring in the screens. When you and I were growing up, we'd say to our friends, let's play a game. Let's make up a game, and you be cowboy and I'll be an Indian. Or you be a fairy princess and I'll be a witch. And this narrative, this very rich narrative came from inside you. If anything was prompted by a cardboard box, it was the castle. Or, by some low-grade kind of doll that was just, didn't do anything. Or, by a stick that was a sword. The whole point was that you were making up a story. And then, the tree didn't ask you to climb it. And the drawing pad didn't ask you to draw in it. And the dolls didn't do anything. So the three-dimensional world in which you were moving was driven by you. You were controlling. And my suggestion to you, and perhaps you'll chime in on this as a medic, is that this is an important part of establishing identity. Because it's something that's derived internally. It interacts with the outside world, but the prime mover is something from inside. It's a narrative coming from inside. Which as we grow, becomes an inner narrative that gives us a sense of who we are and a continuity, a past, a present, and a future, a story, a narrative, a life story. That's what I would argue identity is all about. Now think of a world where you are driven from external influences. Where you have a fixed menu. Where you are passively responding to someone else's imagination shown on a screen. It would follow that perhaps your inner narrative, that normally would have developed as the driving force, is now a much weaker commodity. And that perhaps what's happening now is you're overly dependant. Or, like an infant is dependent on the incessant feedback, and the reassurance, and the approval of an external audience. And what I feel might be the case with heavy Internet use and social networking sites, especially in someone who doesn't have a history or a robust childhood of three-dimensional, real relationships, that what might be happening is that now your identity is an external thing. Now if it's an external thing, that raises very interesting questions about privacy. Because I think perhaps some young people don't quite understand or value privacy in a way that older generations do. So let's think about privacy, because I think it's very closely tied in with identity. The very word privacy or privation, depriving, is excluding something. So if you want to be private, you'll close the curtains, you'll lock the door. You'll go somewhere, where no one else can hear you or see you. So the whole point about privacy is an exclusion of something, whatever it is, to retain and treasure something that not everyone can access. So if you are having an identity where every moment is downloaded and shared, every thought, every cake you eat is incessantly shared with others, what is shut out? What is shut out, nothing is shut out. And if shutting something out is what we call privacy, then if you're not shutting anything out you're not private anymore. And I think therefore that privacy and identity are closely related concepts. And I'm concerned with social networking. This inner narrative, this robust narrative that is you which helps you withstand criticisms, which helps you retain a continuity and resilience if people will oppose it. Perhaps that's not so well developed and therefore, what will happen is you will overreact to people that are challenging you or you feel are challenging you or your views and you'll be less secure. It will be more low self esteem. >> As an idea, I think it's a fascinating idea. Do we have evidence for that? >> Yes, we do. I should stress about evidence because it's something that is a mantra both professionally and in the lay public, people are saying what's the evidence? It's a quick and easy thing to say, it's easy to say but it's harder to produce when we say evidence. As you'll know, evidence isn't like a pregnancy test or a litmus test. Evidence is within a very specified paradigm. You have data that is then challenged and questioned by your peers and then it's revisited and reinterpreted. Different people will see it in different ways. It's not a universal consensus, and most science is provisional, it's very rarely conclusive. You zigzag forward to try and get progress. When I say there's evidence, I don't mean there's conclusive evidence. It's not evidence that everyone would buy into but there is sufficient objective peer reviewed data out there to make us question and think about where we are. Yes, there's one that actually shows yes, low self esteem and increased narcissism and so on. I do stress, it's not that the jury's still out but as with all science, obviously, the more we have, the stronger view we have but there's sufficient there that I think should make us talk and think about it, because we don't have time to wait for the glorious and impossible time when all the definitive evidence is conclusively established because by that time, we'll all be dead. Also, the millennials now, let's say some born in 2000, they're still at school and when you think about it, Facebook has only been going for seven years. We can't hang around, so much has happened in seven years. We need to move and look at where we are, so that we can anticipate what might be coming in the future. >> Some critics might suggest that in terms of your concerns about the pace of change in relationship to contemporary digital technologies and social media, that you're harking back to a romantic bygone era, and that overvaluing face to face traditional forms of more intimate communication. How would you respond to that? >> [LAUGH] Apart from laughing? They're welcome to their own views but they're not welcome to their own facts and it's just not true. I'm a baby boomer, I remember being sent to my very cold bedroom as a punishment with scratchy blankets and a flabby hot water bottle. This is England we are talking about, of course, in the 50s and 60s, where it was a place of punishment. It certainly wasn't a haven, you didn't choose to go there. You just wanted to be unconscious as quickly as possible. That was what bedrooms did in those days, a place to be unconscious in. I remember the old Enid Blyton books. I don't know how many people around the world watching this will have read this slightly syrupy, magic childhood where you were always catching smugglers with your sandwiches and so on and we didn't go home until the evening and everyone was very well off and had gardens and tea. Of course, I've never said let's go back to that because, of course, it never was that and in a way it wasn't particularly a pleasant place to live because I was there. It was a physically uncomfortable place and things took time, when nowadays, they don't have to which saves time. That criticism is rather a silly one because it's personal to me and what I feel and even if I did want to go back to an Enid Blyton catching smugglers world that would make no difference whatsoever to the papers that are published either way. How would the concerns that you have differ to perhaps the concerns that people had in terms of when television first came on the market? I think that was in the 60s here in Australia. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Where there have always been decriers of the latest technology in relationship of what will it do to our children, for example. >> Indeed, and up to a point, you've got a point. While one could question anything and say, what's this doing? I don't want to decry the fact that people might, and it's a healthy thing to do, rather than unconditionally say everything is wonderful. I think that's not a very smart approach to stuff. I remember the television, I remember the cold bedrooms, and the television in the old days was the catalyst of family interaction. It was like the Victorian piano, much more than televisions are now, you only had one to a house. Our family certainly would interact and sit around with our rather revolting TV diners and metal dishes watching and talking about the program. The same as you might be singing together in the old days around the piano. The way it was used was very different and what I'd like to suggest is that technology, up until now, has been to improve or help or change or make worse whatever you want to it, the three dimensional world in which we live. The old accusation of square eyes and all this, it was very much embedded and embodied in a three dimensional world. Now, what is the case? Is it someone could wake up, they can work, they can study, they can shop, they can play games, they can go dating, all the things that you do in the three dimensional world but in a parallel cyber universe. What I'm concerned about and I really am concerned, is not for some renaissance person who incorporates this technology into a rich portfolio of existing activities and experiences and so on but for someone who escapes from the real world into this cyber world and that's never been possible with other technology. >> You describe the paradox of connectivity, that in a sense the more connected and the more online that young people are, the more lonely they actually feel inside. Can you share more of that with us? >> I think that's a fascinating and concerning thought given the number of hours that young people are online. >> It is, I said I can't claim credit for introducing it. Ashanka Sherry Turkle among others, she's a psychologist at MIT, some time ago now wrote a book called Alone Together. Which posits just that hypothesis and argues that hypothesis that what happens, I gather, and I'm sure you as a paediatrician would have seen this first hand more than me, is that you want to attract a large audience. Friends, of course, but for me, they're more of an audience because this gives you status, it makes you feel very good. You also want to talk about yourself a lot because human beings like doing that. There's a lovely study that I cite in the book from Harvard that you might be familiar with, where subjects actually chose as an alternative to monetary reward, they chose the opportunity to talk about themselves. This is something that's wired into our very basic mindset that we like. >> So, it’s not just academics. [LAUGH] >> At the bar, I don't know, and it's not just men, actually, because you often think it might be just men. People love talking about themselves but normally in real life, you have a hand brake, and that hand brake is body language. If you are wanting to talk about yourself, and someone's looking away or they're yawning, or they're averting your eyes, then you're going to slow down. Certainly, you're not going to confide in someone who's frowning and shaking their head and so on. Or certainly, someone who starts in interrupting and shouting at you, you're not going to do that. You will confide in someone who's nodding, whose body is open, who perhaps reassuringly touches you on the arm, who smiles as you're talking and nods in a reflective way. That's how nature as I see it has devised a mechanism which constrains or makes appropriate the times that you talk about yourself and the time for which you talk about yourself. In normal face to face conversation, I don't know, you'll know. We have a very short tolerance limit for when we want to say something. [LAUGH] If someone rambles on for too long, you really start to feel uncomfortable, yeah. So, we know that face to face interaction is vital for establishing interpersonal communication and for understanding how other people are feeling. And also, it's a way of ensuring that you're only going to open up about yourself, in a relatively secure, psychologically secure space. Now, of course, with social networking sites, none of those things apply. Off you go, rattling about yourself, talking about yourself. There's no one shaking their head. There's no one frowning. There's no one sitting forward. There's no one smiling or doing anything. Off you go, you know, chocolate cake, I like this. I like that. Rather like a small child. And what you do, possibly, because it's a monologue, and you're talking about yourself especially, if you haven't had much experience of life. What will you talk about? I like this, I like that like a small child. I have a hamster. My favourite colour's red. I hate sausages. And you use the word hate in a very devalued way. Because you don't truly understand, you've never said to someone I hate you and seen their reaction. And it's only when you do that, that you realise how powerful that word is for example, and the effects it can have. So if you're not rehearsing any of those things, then you're going to end up in a world where you have to really overkill what you're selling. So you sell a glamorous lifestyle. You sell someone who's very pretty or handsome. Someone has lots of girlfriends or boyfriends. You exaggerate, because you want people to like you. And you're not going to have people like you, if you're depressed, if you're fed up, if you're lonely, if you're sad, if you've have just had a real reversal in life. But that's when you need friends. You see, you need friends to be there for you all night. You need friends to be there when you failed an exam. You need friends to be there for you when your parents are split up. When you haven't got that support, that confidence that someone likes you, no matter what. They only like you, because you're living a crazy life, and you've got all these smiley faces. Then, the real you, the real you, at the expense of this artificial, is going to get even more withdrawn and lonely and sad, and I would suggest have psychiatric issues. And then, of course, you'll try and compensate by doing more, the more exaggerated one. >> So finally, how have young people responded to these ideas? >> It's very interesting, because I work with young people. Depends on how you define young, of course. But I work with people in their 20s and 30s. And I use them as my focus group actually. I think, they find me, sometimes, quite funny when I'm endlessly chastising the use of the phone all the time. And this of things, but there is a sort of backlash coming now. I was talking to a 19 year old quite recently who fessed up that, he knew his video game lifestyle was not a healthy lifestyle. He said, it's my haven, I realise. And this same individual was frightened to take the driving test. And I said, why are you frightened? In case I fail. And that's why they like the video games, because the risk is an artificial risk. Actions don't have consequences. And the very notion, the experience of failing was so aversive, was so horrible, he wouldn't do it. News, real life is all about that. It's all about facing up to feeling horrible. It's all about facing up to actions having consequences. Until you recognise that and embrace that, you're going to have an endless problem. And we're going to see that increasing. As you all know, there was a study recently on stress in Australia. And they showed that the biggest group at risk of stress and depression is actually the 18 to 25s. And I think that's not because there's these external problems such as climate change and money problems and job problems. Human beings have always had problems. And sadly we can't wave a wand and make those problems go away, but what we can do is help people cope with those problems and deal with those problems which is what you did. And in the past, I suggest people have had a more robust defence mechanism of good friends and strong sense of who they are, that perhaps is being threatened now. Anyways, back to your question about how young people, how young people see this. Some, of course, think I'm an honorary paid up member of the Amish. They're welcome to think that. And if it makes life easier for them to think that, well, okay. Well, there's nothing I can do. But, I would hope that a lot of young people are realising that they're missing out in a way. That there's things they're missing out on. And if they want to really push themselves as individuals and stretch, then, we need to think and talk about this. And certainly on my website, in which incidentally people are, I'd be delighted if you wanted to contact me that way. I get virtually no hostile comments at all. But it's a mixture either of ones that are agreeing or expressing concerns or just curious and asking more questions. And I just run by saying if people want to contact me on my website then please do. >> We'll make that available. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much Susan- >> My pleasure. >> For joining us today and I'm sure there'll be lots of discussion online that comes as a result of- >> I hope so. >> These ideas. >> That is the whole point I'm trying to make- >> We must get you online as well maybe to come and look and see what >> People say- >> Then we'll have a healthy society. >> Exactly, so thank you for joining us. >> My pleasure, Susan.
