Devika Mankani, Divisional head and Chief Psychologist at Fortes Education, explains to Tell Me Why podcast host Maria Botros the dangers and benefits of AI, and how it dilutes human connections.
Devika: It affects decision making, and critical thinking, in a way you’re more susceptible to believing anything you’re consuming online
Neuroscientists found that tech cause changes to your brain, biochemistry and critical thinking skills, says Devika
Devika: I believe the awareness of regulating and balancing the use of tech is coming through to parents and schools now
Studies have shown that having a phone on the table, even if it’s on silent and faced down, affects the quality of communication, says Devika
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Devika: It affects decision making, and critical thinking, in a way you’re more susceptible to believing anything you’re consuming online
Neuroscientists found that tech cause changes to your brain, biochemistry and critical thinking skills, says Devika
Devika: I believe the awareness of regulating and balancing the use of tech is coming through to parents and schools now
Studies have shown that having a phone on the table, even if it’s on silent and faced down, affects the quality of communication, says Devika
Read the full story here:
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
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00:00It affects decision-making and critical thinking.
00:03So, in a way, you're more susceptible.
00:05Anything that you're consuming online becomes real.
00:08And that ability to just kind of differentiate and say,
00:12is that real? Is that imagined?
00:14About how do you know that's true and how do you know that's not true?
00:17And one of the ways that we do it is we'll actually make using AI videos
00:21and say, that video looks real.
00:24But guess what? It's not.
00:27So, we try to kind of…
00:38Alright, with me in the studio is Devika Mankani,
00:41Divisional Head and Chief Psychologist at Fortis Education
00:44and Licensed Psychologist.
00:46Devika, how are you?
00:47I'm very well today, Maria. How are you?
00:49Good. You are so busy, I'm sure, you know,
00:52these past few weeks and this specific week as well
00:55because it's a back-to-school season and I'm sure it's been crazy.
00:59It's back-to-school day today.
01:01We actually went back to school today.
01:03And I tell you, the parents were happy bringing in their children
01:06and saying to the school, you can have them.
01:09Yes, exactly.
01:10Please, educate our kids. Take them.
01:12Please, do what you do so well
01:14because we will never underestimate what you do as teachers.
01:17Absolutely.
01:18I would say that's one of the hardest and the most difficult professions ever, ever, ever.
01:22Yes, I know, I know.
01:24You're sort of like a parent.
01:25I mean, as a teacher, even if you don't have kids of your own,
01:28you're a parent to these kids.
01:30You're everything to them five days a week, you know, half that day.
01:34So it's insane when you think about it.
01:37Yeah, absolutely.
01:38So tell us a bit more about Fortis Education.
01:40This is new.
01:41Last time, we never spoke about that.
01:43So can you tell us a bit more about that?
01:45Yeah, so I wear a few different hats
01:46and I have the privilege of working at Fortis Education.
01:49We have two schools, Sun Mark School and Regent International School
01:53and ten nurseries, Jumeirah International Nurseries.
01:56The company was set up by my mother-in-law more than 45 years ago.
02:02And I was actually a student at one of the nurseries.
02:04That's the first time I ever met her.
02:06We got along really well then as well.
02:08And she taught me and my sister-in-law taught me.
02:11And it's a real legacy.
02:13Education is really the sort of family passion.
02:17Yes.
02:18And it's taken very seriously.
02:20We are a positive education school,
02:21which means character development and well-being
02:24is just as important as academic achievement.
02:27I love that.
02:28Yeah.
02:29I mean, it's about time.
02:30It's really about time.
02:31The science now is right there.
02:33The science has proven that you just cannot have one without the other.
02:37Yes.
02:38If you have that community that focuses on well-being,
02:42then academic success follows.
02:44And at the same time, if you experience academic success, it feels good.
02:48Yes.
02:50I've never heard anyone say,
02:51Well, you did really, really bad.
02:52You failed.
02:53But just try to feel good about it.
02:54Yeah, exactly.
02:55Right?
02:56So they go hand in hand and developed by Martin Seligman
02:59and other researchers with him.
03:02The foundations are in positive psychology,
03:05which most people say,
03:06I didn't know that there was a negative psychology.
03:08But positive psychology basically says,
03:11Let's look at different facets of well-being
03:15and how we can enhance them
03:16and how we can promote flourishing
03:18versus just looking at what's going wrong
03:22and look at what actually makes, I guess, in a way, people happier
03:28and keeps them happy.
03:29Right.
03:30And there's lots and lots of research now.
03:32We're sort of two decades in the research on that,
03:34which is fascinating.
03:35Yes.
03:36And we'll have some tips coming up on that too.
03:39Actually, today we're going to talk about technology
03:42and how it's affecting human connection
03:44and especially with the back-to-school season.
03:46I mean, we're also going to talk about how tech affects attention,
03:50affects sleep, affects a child's brain development.
03:54And I know that we've heard this so many times.
03:57And I know so many studies have come up.
03:59And that's exactly what we're addressing today
04:02because I feel like we demonize tech,
04:05but at the same time, we depend heavily on tech.
04:09And I want to sort of discuss that balance.
04:13I mean, it's not all bad, but at the same time,
04:16overdoing it can lead to consequences.
04:19Right.
04:20So first off, I just want to know, what do you think about all the tech,
04:23all the advancements that we have today?
04:25Do you think they're good? Do you think they're bad?
04:27Do you think they're both?
04:28Yeah. Really, really bad.
04:30We should all go back to a cave.
04:31Okay. Amazing.
04:34I'm going to quote you on that.
04:35I watched a brilliant video.
04:37We have positive education teacher training
04:40led by my wonderful sister-in-law, Katrina.
04:42She's an expert in the field.
04:44And she runs a three-day training for all our new teachers
04:48and continuing education.
04:50And one of the videos in one of the sections is amazing.
04:53It's about gratitude, but technology woven into that.
04:56And this man is talking about how people complain on flights
05:01about various things.
05:02And he says, how can you even complain?
05:05You're sitting in a seat flying through the air without any effort.
05:09You're served food.
05:11You can watch movies.
05:13You can even be on the internet these days.
05:15And people lose their cool when the internet goes off
05:17for 30 minutes on a seven-hour flight.
05:20And he's like, we have to shift the focus back to, in a way,
05:23what was it like before?
05:25And that enhances the gratitude that we should have
05:28and the focus on how is this helping, right?
05:31And I always say there's the two questions.
05:33The first, and you have to ask them at the same time,
05:35the first is, what is technology doing to us?
05:39Because we know that there's things that we need to kind of integrate
05:42and work on.
05:43And then what can it do for us?
05:45Because if we don't look at both, then we're polarized
05:48and then we just kind of become one of those no-techers.
05:51And the no-techers are not happy either
05:53because they're realizing that it's pretty hard to function in a no-tech.
05:57So it used to be it went from no-tech to low-tech,
06:01and now I think it's smart tech, but I say positive tech,
06:05or intentional tech,
06:07which is just trying to find the pieces that fit for you.
06:10And my recipe wouldn't work in your house,
06:13and your recipe might not work in anyone else's house.
06:16But that means playing around with it, taking some risks.
06:19We've had some blowups at home around tech use,
06:22especially over the summer.
06:24And I know that almost every family, we get messages,
06:27and we get emails, and we get some of the help kind of messages,
06:30you know, what do we do?
06:32So it's there, or it's here.
06:34It's not there, it's here.
06:36And we have to be creative with understanding what it's doing to us
06:40and what we can do, you know, and then what it can do for us.
06:44Okay. Yeah, no, I love that you mentioned summer
06:47because I feel like the summer vacation ruined all the rules,
06:51like we're out the window, you know, ruined all the routines.
06:54I mean, sleep schedules were all over the place.
06:56You know, the screen time limits were, you know, very loose,
07:02very, you know, very agile.
07:04I mean, it was okay to get an extra hour here or there,
07:07but they did lead to tantrums when it wasn't given
07:10because they felt like, okay, well, you know, you agreed yesterday,
07:13why not today?
07:15And I think that's one of the major things we will be discussing.
07:19But I just want to go back to that human connection.
07:23How is it affecting that, in your opinion,
07:26and as a psychologist as well?
07:28Right, absolutely.
07:29You know, this morning I met a bunch of parents.
07:31We were all kind of, you know, like I said,
07:33happily handing our children here to school.
07:36And we were talking about tech and some said that,
07:40and this is the beauty of the awareness around what we're discussing, right?
07:44And it's shows like this that really help to contribute
07:47to that awareness and that information
07:49and to filter it down to the, you know, the important bits
07:52because there's a lot of stuff out there that is, you know,
07:54I want to say it's sort of their claims but not really verified.
07:58And some said, you know, we just said we forgot the iPad.
08:02And I said, really?
08:03Did your kids buy that?
08:04Because I don't know if my mom will buy it.
08:07And they said, yeah, we actually just took that decision to experiment
08:10and say, can you believe it?
08:12We forgot it.
08:14And I said, and how did you do?
08:16Great.
08:17You know, and others said, yeah, it was on the weekend.
08:20And some said it was a nightmare.
08:22So we really had the whole range.
08:24We had the whole range of that tech experience over the summer.
08:27But I do think that this awareness around regulating
08:32and balancing is coming through to parents and schools now
08:37because perhaps it's been around long enough and now we have studies
08:40and we've seen, you know, the actual effects in human interaction
08:46and human connection, right?
08:48So we know from some of the studies that just having a phone on the table,
08:54even if it's on silent and even if it's turned over, so sort of face down,
09:00affects the quality and quantity of communication.
09:06So we think, well, it's there.
09:07I'm not really looking at it.
09:08But just the presence of that thing on the table subconsciously affects.
09:15It's almost like there's something else, right?
09:18And so our children have been born seeing parents holding a phone.
09:23We didn't have that growing up.
09:25Somewhere along the line, you know, maybe in the teens,
09:27we might have seen our parents on computers,
09:29and that was a distraction to the parenting relationship.
09:33But even if you got on a computer like 40 years ago,
09:36if I've got my timelines right, maybe 35 years ago,
09:39there just wasn't so much to do, right?
09:41So you kind of finished what you had to do.
09:43And then, as is the case with all human evolution,
09:47something comes up and it's disruptive, right?
09:51Even if it was TV and then we had the Internet, right?
09:55But I was reading about sort of historically just going back,
09:57even the wheel and how there was anxiety around the invention of the wheel.
10:01It's probably a parent who started that.
10:04He said, I wonder what harm they can do with this.
10:07What's dangerous about this wheel?
10:09But then we adapted, and I think that's where we are right now.
10:12We're at the point where we really, really need to adapt.
10:14We need to figure out what's working.
10:17And I think this is the biggest dichotomy, right?
10:20Regulating takes self-control, which is directed by the prefrontal cortex.
10:27And that's exactly what some of the research has found,
10:31that excessive technology use is thinning the cortex.
10:35So we talk about it as an addiction and an addictive behavior,
10:39and that's exactly what it starts to look like,
10:41because there's no regulation, there's no long-term thinking.
10:44It's just in the moment, the biochemistry is changing,
10:48the dopamine hit is real, it's measured.
10:51Lots of studies have replicated this.
10:53And that's kind of creating a kind of competition, right?
10:59So I get all this excitement from being on social media
11:03and checking all my likes and all these alerts
11:06and things that are just blinging away.
11:08No five seconds are the same anymore.
11:11And so why would I then want to go through reading a whole book?
11:14And this is the young person's perspective, right?
11:16And that's the competition.
11:18So helping them kind of say, well, guess what?
11:20It's not me, but the neuroscientists, they scan brains,
11:24and they found that there's actually changes to your brains
11:27and your biochemistry and how you access
11:30the critical thinking parts of your brain that's changing.
11:33So we're not saying don't use it at all,
11:35but we're saying how can we use it for us in a way that works.
11:40Regulating, I feel like, is the key word that you mentioned.
11:43I mean, it's all about controlling those urges.
11:46It's like any other habit.
11:48It's like smoking.
11:50It's like obsessive eating.
11:52It's about control.
11:54And I feel like that's what tech has become,
11:56I mean, based on exactly what you were just mentioning.
11:59But can you tell us what are some of the consequences
12:02of the thinning of the cortex?
12:04You mentioned that, so what can that lead to?
12:06Yeah, well, the biggest risk is it affects decision-making
12:11and critical thinking.
12:13So in a way, you're more susceptible.
12:15Anything that you're consuming online becomes real, right?
12:19And that ability to just kind of differentiate and say,
12:23is that real, is that imagined?
12:25So we teach our children in the digital literacy bits
12:28about how do you know that's true
12:31and how do you know that's not true?
12:33And one of the ways that we do it is we'll actually make
12:35using AI videos and say that video looks real,
12:39but guess what, it's not.
12:41I love that you use technology for your benefit
12:43and for teaching purposes,
12:45and that's what we were talking about is knowing when to use it
12:48and actually to use it for positive outcomes
12:51rather than just wasting time, like two hours at a time
12:55just scrolling through whatever social media platform,
12:59not to mention anything specific.
13:02But it also goes back to the children's attention span.
13:05I know my niece can literally go through 50 videos
13:09in the span of two minutes because she gets bored easily.
13:13So if a video is longer than 30 seconds, she'll scroll up.
13:17She'll keep scrolling.
13:19And it's funny that you mentioned your daughter as well
13:21because my older niece actually started learning about ChatGPT.
13:26So she was like, yeah, I can always ask ChatGPT
13:29to see if it's true or not,
13:31and she verifies whatever she wants through that.
13:34And I found that shocking. She's only 10.
13:37I was like, I only knew about that like last year
13:39and how to use it.
13:41Well, ChatGPT just came out.
13:43It feels like it just came out,
13:45and we're still figuring out how to use prompts
13:47and how to make the prompts,
13:49how to use intelligent prompts.
13:51So she's definitely ahead of it.
13:54And that's the path that they're going in,
13:56and that's how tech is massively integrated in their daily lives,
14:02I mean, in school, and that's the next question,
14:04is a lot of these kids in schools are using iPads.
14:08It's a prerequisite now that they have an iPad
14:11because a lot of, like, the lessons or notes
14:14or presentations or projects are done on these iPads.
14:18So it is a prerequisite.
14:20So how do you create that balance, like, when they're back at home?
14:23I mean, they're in front of screens,
14:26I mean, from the moment that they wake up
14:28and they enter school until they come back from school.
14:31So how do you control it back in the home?
14:34Well, I think most schools are recognizing
14:38we definitely have a policy that we've been working on
14:42to guide the use of technology in school, right?
14:46So there's different criteria.
14:49So is the technology a substitution for something that is valuable?
14:54So an example would be using Word versus paper and pencil.
14:59So weighing that with every decision that a teacher is making
15:05vis-a-vis technology versus traditional learning
15:08and asking that question.
15:10So the first one is substitution.
15:12Is this a substitution that is in a way necessary, right?
15:15And can you, as an educator or even as a parent,
15:19think of whether this substitution has greater value
15:22or is it maybe just more convenient
15:24but it's actually better to use the paper and pencil, right?
15:27Because we know from different studies as well
15:29that learning how to write and formulate words and letters
15:33is a different brain process and we need to stick to that, right?
15:36Otherwise, we're just losing a whole piece of a part of our brain
15:40and not using it.
15:42So substitution is important.
15:44Or even augmentation.
15:46So that's one of the second criteria.
15:48Is this enhancing the student's learning
15:52and the teacher's teaching in a way that is substantial, right?
15:57That has some kind of evidence to it.
16:00So not because I'm tired or I'm feeling lazy.
16:03I mean, everyone has those days.
16:05But am I really augmenting and enhancing this child's education
16:11by using technology for this particular task?
16:15How can parents put in some practical exercises
16:21or solutions at home to control it
16:24so that it doesn't affect their kids to that extent?
16:27That's a tough one.
16:29As a parent as well, that's something that you have to think about.
16:32It is because you're competing with that chemical change,
16:36which is the dopamine hit that they're getting
16:38from the fun and excitement
16:40of having all of this sort of stimulation all at once, right?
16:45So I mean it's tempting sometimes
16:47and the impulse can be to just take it away
16:49and just kind of, you know, sort of deal with it, right?
16:52But I think we're beyond that.
16:54I think now it needs to be, you know,
16:56we know that even children will choose an activity of higher value
17:00if they experience higher value from it, right?
17:02So when you have a child who's kind of, you know,
17:04developmentally moving on to the next stage,
17:06you don't just take the teddy away
17:08and say you're too old for this teddy as a transitional object.
17:11It's time to read the books and do the puzzles and that.
17:15Ideally, what we should be doing is we present the toys
17:20and the tools for the next developmental phase,
17:22allow them to experience both,
17:24and then they will naturally spend less time with teddy.
17:28Teddy's around, but spend less time with teddy
17:31because they've moved on to the next task of value, right?
17:36I like that.
17:37So there's a developmental process as well,
17:40but if you just took teddy away, there's a void and there's a crisis, right?
17:44So I think with technology now, we're kind of at that stage now
17:48where we're saying, well, how do we go back in a way to basics, right?
17:53And parents and teachers say, well, but the children say that's so boring now.
17:58And that's because of the dopamine hit that they're not getting,
18:00the dopamine rush.
18:02And it's about bringing that to their awareness to say,
18:04look, it's really exciting to go on a roller coaster every day
18:07or, you know, eat an ice cream and do all this stuff,
18:10but what would happen if we did it every day?
18:12In the same way, this is what would happen if we relied on technology
18:15for all entertainment and everything else that went along with it.
18:19So it's a bit of retraining and going back to basics.
18:23So we just started playing chess.
18:25And really, like I was sitting there with my fingers crossed going,
18:28I hope I see excitement and thinking and kind of that interest
18:34that I know I'd see if, you know, they were playing sort of something on the iPad.
18:39We have a lot of games on the iPad, educational games that the kids play.
18:43And some of them are just mindless as well, right?
18:45I mean, there's a whole range.
18:47And they did.
18:48And so for me, that was, you know, I didn't even discuss tech
18:52when we were in the chess class.
18:54It wasn't like, oh, you need to play more chess and be on tech less.
18:58It was just about trying to provide them with something that takes consistent effort
19:03and then remind them that that's actually using your brain
19:06and strengthening your left and right hemispheres a lot more
19:10than passive technology use and passive consumption.
19:15And that's not easy for children to understand.
19:18There's plenty of research that shows that even adults struggle with it,
19:22maybe even more because as an adult you don't have someone else coming in there
19:26and saying, hey, that's too much.
19:28You set your boundaries.
19:30And when you set your boundaries, sometimes you're just not as good as you need to be
19:34when you can do it for somebody else, right?
19:36Absolutely.
19:37So, yeah, I think it's about just being creative but doing things that go back to basics, right?
19:45And seeing if they experience the little joys in that
19:50and then try to make that consistent, try to make rituals out of it.
19:54And also then at the end of the day, it's just about being firm about the boundaries, right?
19:59So 30 minutes three times a week and we're done, right?
20:03I'm not saying that's what it should be, but that's an example of, well, that's done.
20:08And now what else can we do?