Close
SPEAKERS
Chris Bagley, Xand Van Tulleken, Ella Gregory, Rochelle Burgess
TRANSCRIPT
Xand Van Tulleken
Hello and welcome to Public Health Disrupted with me Xand Van Tulleken…
Rochelle Burgess
…and me Rochelle Burgess. Xand is a doctor, writer & TV presenter, and I’m a community health psychologist and Associate Professor at the UCL Institute for Global Health.
Xand Van Tulleken
This podcast is about public health, but more importantly, it’s about the systems that need disrupting to make public health better. Join us each month as we challenge the status quo of the public health field, asking what needs to change, why and how to get there.
Rochelle Burgess
In today’s episode, we’re exploring the impact of social media, specifically on children and teenagers. Social media is a big part of our lives but growing fears around the way it affects our mental health is fuelling the debate that it is bad for our children. It can lead to anxiety, depression, lack of social skills, body dysmorphia, low confidence and there are very real risks relating to children’s safety.
Xand Van Tulleken
But how much of this is true? The trouble with all this is that social media is still a relatively new phenomenon, so we have limited research to call upon to help us understand its impact. The evidence base is somewhat convoluted and inconclusive, and many studies are subject to confirmation bias and methodological pitfalls, which makes it difficult to accurately ascertain the relationships between social media and young people’s mental health. Here to help guide us through all this are Dr Chris Bagley, and Ella Gregory…
Rochelle Burgess
Dr Bagley is an Educational Psychologist. He’s a lecturer, tutor, and doctorate research supervisor at the UCL Institute of Education. He also works for South Gloucestershire Council. His core motivation is to co-develop psychologically healthy education systems alongside young people, families, professionals and creative thinkers. You can find an article he wrote called ‘How Technology Is Changing Society and Manipulating Our Children’ (2019), in the psychology and mental health journal, Psychreg. Chris is also the Director of Research at States of Mind, an organisation that provides young people with the psychological skills, knowledge and self-awareness that is required for them to thrive in the world. He works with an innovative team of practitioners dedicated to gaining young people's insights about education and placing their voices at the centre of reform.
Xand Van Tulleken
Our second guest is Ella Gregory, Ella has personal experience with child and adolescent mental health services, and as a result is dedicated to reforming approaches towards mental health along with Chris Bagley. Ella is also involved with the organisation states of mind and in her role as the organization's Social Development Lead she's co created an online wellbeing curriculum, she's assisted in its implementation in schools and housing groups. She's interested in the intersections of wellbeing, spirituality, religion, and nature and spends much of our time in community growing spaces. Ella believes that transforming how we talk about and view our minds and feelings can influence the rest of our lives by helping us to connect, solve problems and thrive and she's written a brilliant essay, which is on the states of mind website. Ella, can I start with you because I found your essay. So kind of interesting to get the interior view of the experience of health and health care? How much should we be worrying about the impact of social media on our children? Is it that bad? Do you think in some extent that the ways in which parents and schools reacts to their children's use of social media tend to create more anxiety and moral panic? And I should say I have a 13 year old son I feel very muddled about his use of social media and my interactions with him on it.
Ella Gregory
Yeah. Okay. So I want to start off by just putting it sort of laying out there that yeah, I'm coming into this podcast from a very sort of lay perspective on social media, have the perspective of someone who has used it who no longer uses it, who knows many people who use it, and was born in 2000 I was going to just forgot when I was born that. So I've grown up on Instagram probably started using Instagram when I was about 13 or 14, if anybody should understand it, it should be my generation we are the primary users. And yeah, I completely agree that I feel muddled. Always about it. I have read so many articles, I've watched the social dilemma I've Yes, seen all of the kind of hysteria about how you no need to be terrified about social media. And then I've also seen the other side of it that says that we are sort of not making a big deal out of nothing but that this hysteria isn't necessarily founded on genuine evidence and experience. And that actually, there are some groups of young people who find social media immensely helpful. For one example, I'm mixed race. And one of the ways in which that helps is that there are organisations online, specifically for groups of people who are of mixed heritage, so that we can navigate the confusing world of belonging to two different races of feeling polarised of not knowing quite where we belong. But in my personal experience, it's very difficult because I don't want to make a definitive statement. Because, yeah, social media is it's not one thing or the other. I think the easiest way for me to describe it is it's reflective of the time that we live in now. And in that sense, there's some stuff about social media that is beautiful, like things I've just mentioned. And there are other parts of social media that are why I left. Because eventually, I just felt utterly overwhelmed with sort of daily news of what I didn't feel was a true reflection of people's lives, and a feeling of needing to know measure up to a standard that just wasn't true. And eventually, I thought, I don't want to do that anymore. I don't, I don't want to engage in something that feels ultimately performative. It's a really hard decision to make, actually, to disconnect from something that every single other person I know, my age is on
Rochelle Burgess
What an opening thought, first of all, I mean, there's so much in there and incredibly profound, there's one thing you said that really also embodies the way I feel about social media sometimes and it it's this imperfect mess, that actually reflects the imperfectness of society, in a lot of ways. So I can totally feel you're like hesitant to say it's all one thing or another. And that's definitely just how the world is. So it becomes a reflection of our our times, but also somehow, a false reflection of it. So it just sort of amplifies certain aspects of, of life, of personhood of, of society. That can make it really heavy and hard for people. I mean, I very much have found social media to be a place that is uplifting, but also can be so violent. I definitely connect to this idea of online safety and the need to create safety because it does feel very unsafe at times, how have we not figured it out yet? How are we you know, why are we still struggling with making online spaces safe for people? Chris, what do you think?
Chris Bagley
I think one of the reasons might be the unbelievable amplification of what would ordinarily be defined historically as normal human behaviour. And you guys have touched on this already. So it would not be the case, generally speaking, looking back through history that you would have 1000s of people with potentially completely wildly differing opinions, commenting on the same person's statement. If you think about the level of intensity that comes with that, that would never have existed, even when I was growing up, and I'm 39 and owning that and 40 in June. So I'm definitely not a digital native in inverted commas like Ella is who was born into a world where there were phones. But I think even when when I was growing up, there was no opportunity and I'm sure everyone else would agree with this who is a bit older than Ella maybe, for you to sit on a screen or in a space and react alongside 1000s of people come from completely different headspace, different backgrounds, different countries, different ethnicities, different political beliefs and ideologies on the same statement made by another human being. And that, to my mind is a psychologist that brings out huge complexity around the impact on the person who maybe made an original comment. And we have things like Twitter pylons, that's become a word hasn't it used in common parlance, about social media, which could never have existed. And we have also opportunities for people to, as Ella said, flip that around and develop really unbelievably beautiful, diverse communities that were never possible before. And things like the me too movement, for example, and Black Lives Matters, I think, arguably, and I certainly see evidence of this group to such an extent. And were able to have the impact they did because of social media. So it's great that we've started with this, because I think this is probably the most complex part of it actually, is the binary that's potentially created by social media and the fact that it recreates humanity in a different space. And that's probably why we haven't figured it out yet. Because it seems very, very complex. And it might be one of those things that takes generations to figure out because this is like a it's like an alien life forms, in my view, and something that it's going to take a long time to get to grips with. And that's why the research evidence is so muddled. And that's why people's conceptions of is so muddled to I think,
Ella Gregory
I think that the conversation could maybe be less about whether or not social media is good or bad and more about how can we have insightful and deep connections and conversations using this new form, exactly as we do in, you know, magazines and books and journals and how we can also have maybe, I think sometimes when we talk about social media, it's very easy to just think about trying to think of the sort of, I guess, Instagram, Snapchat Tiktok now isn't tech, not tech talks, the new big one. Facebook, you know, we we've read, zoom in on the big players. And actually, there's room I think, to also talk about different forms decentralised social medias that are out there, maybe less used or definitely less used. But they offer different ways of having conversations. There's one that's all about coming together over books, and writing, and things like Tumblr, there's just as much more room for nuance in the conversation than it feels like we have.
Chris Bagley
I think it's really important what Ella said there around, particularly with young people, which is obviously the focus of today that we actually sit down and talk with them and have an honest, genuine open conversation about how they're interacting with social media and digital technology.
One of the things we've done it states of mind and one of the things I did a few years ago with about 400 Young people in primary and secondary schools, is just sat down with them and said, There's this thing social media, let's talk about it. And what we find when we do that is actually, young people I've certainly met. And I think Ella would probably agree with this tend to have a very nuanced conception of social media and having a lot of the thoughts Ella is having because they've had a decade think about this, since they started using their phones at 12/13/14. They can recognise, in my experience working with hundreds of young people explicitly, that young people who are vulnerable offline, tend to be vulnerable online, that's really key. And the vast majority of them are highly aware of what the possible impacts of social media can be if you overuse it, or use it in the wrong way. And for me, I think the conversation around safety going back to the thing you said a minute ago, guys, is more around some of the external operators who are working in and around social media who are attempting to convert our attention into dollar signs and Sterling's. Rather than being at risk of being online groomed or anything like that. And when you speak to young people about that, almost exclusively, they'll rather than roll their eyes at you and go, Well, I just block them bruv I'm not stupid. So I think, for me in terms of safety, that's my angle in terms of helping and thinking with young people about it. And that tends to be in those conversations, something I add in, because it's not always something that part that the young people are as familiar with, whereas they are very knowledgeable about how to block people.
Rochelle Burgess
While you were talking, Chris, something that just really struck me that I think about a lot in the work I do with young people, is there always a huge underestimation of young people's agency, right, their agency and their power, their ability to understand how to navigate their world. If we were to drive our efforts to sort of make social media safer space with young people's agency at the forefront? I mean, I'd love to hear from Ella as well on this what, what does that look like? How does it sort of change? Maybe how social media is organised? Or how, how we think about this notion of policing it I'm doing air quotes, you know, this idea that, do we even have to? Or do we need to enable environments differently?
Chris Bagley
I can say what our approaches are states of mind, actually here, and Ella can build on this. And I think what we tend to do is, when we're conducting research, we would always use a participatory action research approach, which positions young people as active co researchers, and whatever we're doing that never positioned as subjects or objects of the study. And they co create everything with generally myself and usually another doctorate student who's on the educational psychology degree at IOE. And we're really hoping over the next few years to do something around social media and to answer your question Rochelle, what does it look like? Well, we certainly perceive that if you want to have an impact on another human beings capacity to feel able to act in the world and to have agency and to behave with autonomy in a space that is of ever increasing complexity, because of the internet age, that that's best moderated through human relationships, and not through didactic direct instruction. So the moment schools will stand in front of children, and they will tell them these are all the things that are bad about social media, social media leads to x y z completely non evidence based and the young people roll their eyes shrug their shoulders and ignore it because they know it's absurd. But if you sit down and provide space for young people in an education environment and have the confidence to be vulnerable, and let them speak and let them explain how the social media world impacts upon them, they will then be able to learn together they'll feel legitimised in speaking their mind, and they're more likely to share things when they are going badly. They will negatively for the more vulnerable children who are vulnerable, off and online. And then you can co construct ways of working as an educational institution and as a group of human beings, adults and young people, that allow people to interact with these systems and these media forms in a way that is pro social, and really helps them to get the best out of it. And for it to be a positive experience that helps them to flourish as a person. And I think we've got to get away from as a society generally, telling children who to be how to think and what they are. Because, particularly with something like social media, and we're all teenagers, Ella still is a teenager. You know, if an adult tells you to do something, you're not going to do it, you know, you're very likely to then do the opposite thing. If you talk to someone about something, then you might get somewhere. So I guess, if I was to summarise in a sentence, it's really about talking and listening, and being together and thinking together rather than telling. And I think social media conversations and helping people to think about it. That's the best approach, I think. But I think Ella would agree with me here as well, we would argue it states of mind that that's probably the best approach to solving any problems.
Ella Gregory
Yeah, really. I mean, I think you said it, quite perfectly Chris. But it's this sort of, you know, this little piffy pithy slogan of like doing with not to, you know, rather than trying to also almost solve social media for young people. You know, when we're not going to be able to do that without working with young people and asking them, well, what do you need? What would make this a good experience for you? And I think something that we do have to be careful with, which I definitely have noticed in the sort of few bits of research that I have read around social media is how the questions are framed. And often they are framed in a very negative way. And I think that's, that's something that's really important to kind of pick up on is, what questions are we asking? And what answers are we expecting? And how can we step back from the answers that we're expecting, and just allow the people who use social media the most, to tell us what they actually use it for?
So there was a UNICEF report on and it gets, specifically health and social media. And I went into it really, with my own assumptions that for most of the youth, interviewed in this report that it was going to have a negative experience on their mental health. And actually, the biggest thing that they pulled up across the board was disinformation. That was the biggest worry, it wasn't. And I do think part of this is our conception of mental health is so very limited and constrained, then almost becomes meaningless. Because you can't isolate Well, I don't believe you can isolate, you know, how you feel in your mind from how you feel in your body from what you consume, as well, your diet? You know, I believe that that includes what we consume on social media that includes our, our doom scrolling, which is a strange new word. Yeah, that another new word that's become, you know, common parlance, especially over the COVID pandemic. And I think there's something really interesting here about Yeah, what questions are we asking as well? And how can we go into these conversations with young people with other social media users, without letting our biases and this is something that I have to do, because my personal bias is quite anti social media, I don't use it anymore. I don't like it, I didn't have a great experience with it. But you know, if I'm going in and I'm talking to other young people, then I'm not trying to push my own agenda. And Chris touched on this as that this is what the companies are doing. The companies behind social media are pushing an agenda. And that agenda is that our attention is monetizable. It's hard to know what is kind of, you know, what's really grounded, and what is sort of hysteria. But that for me, that's what scares me. And that, in my view, that's not social media. That's new liberalism. And that's capitalism. And that's going to find a way to do whatever it does on whatever medium we have. We can't sort of just try and you know, stick a little plaster over a much bigger problem. And that much bigger problem is that profit is put over people. And that affects all areas of our public health. And of course, it seeps into our social, it can't not seep into social media. I think we're just seeing it as we mentioned, right at the beginning, in a magnified and really intense way, actually.
Rochelle Burgess
Look, Ella, can I just say that you're a genius, please put that in the podcast. I mean, look, I'm now fangirling over you so just hopefully it doesn't make you too uncomfortable. But I just love when Anybody can just sort of say, say it as it is the problem with social media, the problem with everything, I'm just gonna say it is capitalism, capitalism is going to do its thing, it's always going to do its thing, it's always going to find its space, its way to monetize and marketized, our daily experience. So ultimately, that changes the relationship that becomes the sort of the vector and the process through which our relationship to anything in society becomes mediated. I think this hysteria about sort of the negativity within social media is actually a reflection of what the monetization of social media has led to actually, like the things that get amplified get amplified. Because an algorithm is driving it in a certain direction, right. And these algorithms work and exist, because they're on a path to trying to sort of make money or drive the production or consumption of things through the existence of this algorithm. Right? So we need to spend a lot more time and I think this is Chris, what you were saying, talking about that relationship, as well call it what it is like, call a spade a spade. This is the bad side of capitalism.
Chris Bagley
There's a counter argument to that though, Rochelle, and I, as part of my work, I've spoken to people at Google, and YouTube, and Facebook about the algorithm. And their perception of it. And I'm not necessarily saying I agree with this, is that the purpose of the algorithm is to increase people's capacity to access content that they find desirable and interesting. And that would be their counter argument.
Xand Van Tulleken
as someone who's listening to this conversation with an immediate, practical problem in several ways, I think a lot about my son who's 13, I think about the way because I make children's television that we use social media to promote the show to get messages about the show. And that as someone who young people might have an interest in through the show what my endorsement or just being present on certain platform means. I feel like you've both taken me on a very particular and very useful journey. So let me see if I've sort of got got the shape of what you're saying. I think I came into this thinking, I don't want my son to get groomed on the internet. I don't want to him to lose money. I don't want him to get publicly shamed or disgraced. And very much my conversations with him have been to sit him down and go look, I have many more followers on Twitter than you let me tell you how this works. Let me tell you what happens. Let me tell you the scams let me tell you, who's going to interact and why Some of them are sort of interesting anecdotes, and he, he pays a little bit of attention. I think, in general, he regards me the way most 13 year olds regard their parents, which is sort of as some, you know, benignly, but that I am a kind of blundering Wally, who doesn't really know exactly how the world works. And I remember that feeling with the lectures on drugs at school, we all knew people who were taking drugs, and then we get these lectures where it was like, you'll die the instant you take a pill, and we're like, that's just obviously not true. And so at that point, we stopped listening to the information altogether, because you could tell but it had an element of, of moral panic. So it feels like you're saying, if you sit and listen, you will understand what people's concerns and problems are, which is hugely important. That sounds obvious. But as a parent, and often as a sort of an adult, it's difficult to deal with younger people. And secondly, this very beautiful idea that there is this huge distraction around the conversations on social media that missed the point that you are being exploited a strong word, but I think it's not unreasonable to say you're a vehicle to make money over my brother has a friend who uses the phrase, strip mining the human body for coin. And if you're talking to people about public health issues, the issue of exploitation saying a large company is making a lot of money out of your, your problem or your your interaction with this thing that as a conversation becomes a very different way of engaging compared to just going, here's a warning, here's a way it might harm you. It feels to me like I would literally sit down in front of a school children or in front of my own child, or indeed in my own head and think about this differently. If I captured a bit of what you're trying to say,
Chris Bagley
I think so Xand yeah. and the only thing I'd probably say is it's and what I was trying to convey to Rochelle maybe not very well, but is it's not just exploitative. It's also allows you to self actualize, as well, you know, the internet and social media, you can use it in a way that really benefits you. It's not an entirely exploitative thing. And this is why it makes everything so difficult, because it does both at the same time. And that's the thing, I think that makes it really hard to navigate. Because think how many people I've worked with young people, particularly, you've just found social media to be so powerfully wonderful for them, like an autistic child of work with a lot of autistic young people who are at home, and they don't want to go out. And they're all of their interactions through their games and their online activities to lifeline. It saved their life. Some of them are now making money using the internet, doing coding and things like that. And then other people, young people I've met who was self harming, and they found a community online. This contrasts with the general media narrative that the social media creates self harm. We don't have good evidence of that. But what we do have good evidence of is that sometimes young people use social media to connect with others who are self harming, and that's really helpful to them. So it can do those things. But it can also be a great way for you to make a business or make money for yourself. So in a way, the Internet has allowed people who are less powerful than maybe in previous generations to be seen, to be heard, and actually to have a capacity to gain resources for themselves. But as your data sets, and it does do the other stuff, it does exploit you, it does sell your data, it does portray you as a commodity. And at some level, it doesn't tell you where that data is going, which is extremely problematic, isn't it? And really pernicious, it can involve cyber bullying, which can be awful. So it's, that's why I think Ella and I have so pressing the idea of conversing with young people and thinking together with them, because I think it's really hard to get across those sort of binaries. And they are extreme binaries, aren't they? They're just telling, because exactly like you said them teenagers will then go, what you want about me, you don't understand, and then they might switch off. But if you talk,
Xand Van Tulleken
I don't want to be told I don't want to, like my brother tells me what to do. I don't listen.
Chris Bagley
Yeah, so it's, I don't know, it's just think and the more I talk about it, the more complicated it gets, in my mind, it's, it's really tricky. What do you think Ella?
Ella Gregory
Yeah, I want to say I want to just drop a couple of things in as well, which is that in my kind of early experience with social media, which was really in the age of like, fandoms, where you would form communities based on groups and people that you loved, I made some really good and really important friends through that. And at a time where I didn't necessarily feel like I really connected with people at school. And there's, you know, there's ups and downs that because maybe me making friends online meant that I tried less harder people at school, whatever, no, it is the way it is. And throughout also my own experiences as quite severe distress. Social media was, in some ways, very helpful for that. And in some ways, slightly harmful for that. I think, you know, it's, as we've said before, it's complex. But the one thing I will say is the better I felt the less I wanted to use it. And I don't know what that means. And I have thought, because of things I've seen on social media, because of posts, that I'm never going to be good enough that I'm never going to be okay. But I also have found communities and introduction into Buddhism, and an introduction into maybe the idea that I'm perfectly imperfect. And you know, that I'm perfect. And I could do with a bit of work, which is currently my favourite one. So I think that there's, you know, there's there's a, there's a risk, and there's a danger. But yeah, I just want to go back back again, to the fact that it's not. It's not social media, it's the system behind it. And I think maybe this is the point that I would sort of want to end on is that social media can, I think it's perfect, disrupt that system? If used intentionally and carefully, it can disrupt it. But what I feel like sometimes I see this podcast, I'll take it, yeah, I'll do your job. But what I think I sometimes see in activist spaces, especially on social media, is a sort of falling into the what if I might just turn which I'm sure I've stolen from somewhere, a sort of ego trap, where, because social media is all about the individual, you know, it's a one person's profile. It's how many followers we habits, how many likes we get, it's all about engagement with us as an individual or as an organisation as an entity, that there is, there's a trap that all that social media will do, ultimately, is feed into that sense of individualism, rather than a healthy sense of being an individual in community. And if we can harness social media, to bolster our sense of community over our own sense of ego, I think we can use it to disrupt. It's it I think, it's just time will tell, and however we use, it will tell
Xand Van Tulleken
it's so good. I love it, you both have just kind of led us very beautifully to the idea of disruption, which is what we're so interested in disruptive, thinking everywhere, so not just in public health. So we always ask everyone that comes on the show, what piece of anything art, music, poetry, literature, what tick tock post what anything has disrupted your perspective. And it could be something that's incredibly meaningful to you or something that briefly shook you up today, Ella, you can go first.
Ella Gregory
I have a line from the Heart Sutra, which is a Buddhist text. This is a line that has, every time I read it, it disrupts my ego, it disrupts the idea that I have a fixed sense of self. And that is that Form is emptiness. And emptiness is form.
Xand Van Tulleken
That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. What Chris, what have you got?
Chris Bagley
Well, I'm not going to be able to beat that Xand. Okay, so I'm always struck by James Baldwin's writing and as someone who's working in the education sector, and Ella and I have worked in Newham for many years now with young people who are mostly black, black, Caribbean, Asian descent, for example, is really diverse heritage. And I just love his work about how the worst thing in society is ignorance allied with power. And I think one of the things that was really trying to do it states of mind and we haven't really I haven't, I don't think I've spoken Veteran be about this it days of mine, but it's something that was always at the core of my thinking is that there's so many things about things like social media, for example that people don't really talk about don't necessarily understand. And that includes young people. And that is allowing some of these extremely powerful groups of human beings who maybe don't have the best motives to come into the system and disrupt it on their behalf rather than our behalf. And I think that's the same in the education system. And it's the same in politics. So I guess for me, Xand, in answer to your question, it's around trying to help people through conversation, not through coercion, to figure out where we're ignorant, what we don't know. And then to try and come up with our own conception of what knowing is, and it's gonna be different for everyone. And from that position, I think we can really disrupt and we can disrupt using a form of what Michael Barzani wrote an amazing book called The Power of giving away power, called constellation leadership. And that is, rather than the pyramidal structure of leadership, assuming that everyone who is taking part in this conversation or this organisation is a star that shines brightly and less brightly at different times around different issues, different topics. And if you can bring that constellation together, and position everyone as active participants, and try and figure out different ways of knowing together, but I think that's where you can disrupt. And I feel like that's the journey we're on at states of mine. And I'm certainly on as an individual.
Rochelle Burgess
Now. This is why it's my favourite question. For the podcast, because I just sort of feel like yeah, we still we still all the Yeah, we don't steal. What we're doing is sort of making we are we are building a collective of disruptors
Xand Van Tulleken
Absorbing. That is true,
Chris Bagley
Thanks so much for inviting us.
Ella Gregory
It's so wonderful to talk to you.
Chris Bagley
Thank you, everyone. Thanks, guys.
Xand Van Tulleken
Thanks so much. Cheers. Bye.
Rochelle Burgess
You've been listening to public health disrupted. This episode was presented by me Rochelle Burgess and Zan van Tulleken produced by UCL Health Republic and edited by Annabel Buckland, a decibel creative. Our guest today are Dr. Chris Bagley and Ella Gregory,
Xand Van Tulleken
if you'd like to hear more of these fascinating discussions from UCL health of the public and make sure you're subscribed to this podcast so you don't miss future episodes, come and discover more online and keep up with the skills latest news, events, research. There's all kinds of things going on. So just Google UCL health of the public. This podcast is brought to you by UCL minds bringing together UCL knowledge, insights and expertise through events, digital content and activities that are open to everyone.