The Bamboo Lab Podcast
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The Bamboo Lab Podcast
Robert Hall: Reclaiming Human Connection in a Digital World
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What happens when technology advances far faster than our ability to use it wisely? In this profound conversation, relationship expert Robert Hall reveals how our addiction to smartphones and social media has created a crisis of connection that affects every aspect of our lives.
Drawing from his rural Oklahoma upbringing where relationships were both necessary and complicated, Hall explains how modern technology has disrupted the very foundation of how we relate to one another. His 2012 book "This Land of Strangers" predicted many challenges we now face, but even Hall underestimated how profoundly social media would weaponize our interactions and escalate division.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Hall examines the neuroscience behind our digital habits. Those quick dopamine hits from scrolling create addictive patterns that research shows dramatically increase anxiety, depression, and loneliness—especially among younger generations whose developing brains are most vulnerable. Political echo chambers further isolate us in what Hall describes as cult-like patterns, where we're exposed only to views that reinforce our existing beliefs.
Yet amid these concerning trends, Hall sees hope. From the growing movement to remove smartphones from schools to the surprising rise in church attendance among young adults seeking community, there are signs of a cultural correction. "Technology is always ahead of competence," Hall notes, "but there's evidence right now that people are going on [digital] diets."
Most powerfully, Hall offers practical wisdom for reclaiming human connection: create phone-free zones in your life, prioritize face-to-face interaction, and model healthy technology boundaries for children. As he puts it, "We've experienced technology disruption; now we need relationship disruption"—a deliberate movement back toward what matters most.
Listen to discover why authentic human connection remains our most valuable resource, and how we can protect it in an increasingly digital world. Your relationships might depend on it.
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Introduction and Welcome
Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the Bamboo Lab Podcast with your host, peak Performance Coach, brian Bosley. Are you stuck on the hamster wheel of life, spinning and spinning but not really moving forward? Are you ready to jump off and soar? Are you finally ready to sculpt your life? If so, you've landed in the right place. This podcast is created and broadcast just for you, all of you strivers, thrivers and survivors out there. If you'd like to learn more about Brian and the Bamboo Lab, feel free to reach out to explore your true peak level at wwwbamboolab3.com.
Speaker 2Welcome everyone to this week's episode of the Bamboo Lab Podcast. As you know by now, I'm your host, brian, and I'm excited to talk to today's guest because a wonderful friend of mine that you've all heard on the podcast in the past, dave Dick recommended reached out to me a few weeks ago and said here's a guy you really should have on your show. He's just an interesting human being. He's got a wealth of knowledge to share. So he connected Robert and I. We have Robert Hall on today. So he connected us. Robert and I talked a few weeks ago and hit it off right away and I thought this is a guy that I want to learn more from. So I want to just give you a little bit of a shout out of who Robert is.
Speaker 2Robert is a noted author, consultant and speaker on relationships. That's his specialty. He has authored more than 200 published articles on leadership, relationships and strategic direction. His work has appeared in Forbes Magazine, the New York Times, ceo Magazine, the Dallas Morning News and the Huffington Post. His latest book, which is titled the Land of Strangers the Relationship Crisis that Imperils Home, work, politics and Faith, has been called one of the most influential and most important books of the decade. So, my friend Robert, welcome to the Bamboo Lab podcast.
Speaker 3Brian, it's great to be with you. I've enjoyed our discussions and I look forward to this one.
Robert Hall's Background on the Ranch
Speaker 2I do too. I do too. You have a very, very calming voice. I do too. You have a very, very calming voice, and I can tell a person's voice and how their voice resonates with my mirrors that come up here, and your voice is just perfect for what we're doing here today. Oh, great, great to hear. Well, robert, I've gotten to know a little bit about you and I've done my research as well, but can you tell us a little more about yourself, you, your childhood, your family, where you're from, who or what inspired you growing up? I'll let you just go with that for a while.
Speaker 3Sure well, it's not particularly noteworthy. I grew up on a ranch in southeastern Oklahoma near a little community called Stewart. I can remember when we had no electricity and no plumbing. That wasn't because we couldn't afford it, it was because it wasn't available there yet. And so there were 20 in my graduating class. My parents were ranchers. My dad was born on that ranch. His dad actually acquired the ranch during the time of Indian Territory in Oklahoma and, as I think so many of us have in our ancestry, they had a really strong faith. They had a terrific work ethic and they were very strong in their relationships and that ranch. Now our grandkids are fifth generation on that ranch. So you know the idea of place mattering. That place really is kind of almost spiritual to us. You know, when I was growing up, as so many people who experience rural backgrounds, work was kind of the center of everything. We fed cattle in the winter from the time I got off the school bus till dark, and then in the summer we baled hay. We would cut up between 1,000 and 2,000 tons in a summer and I started out as a six-year-old riding I'd guide the hay truck for them to load the bales, and then, when I was about nine, I graduated to the hay rake wind, rowing the hay, and then, when I was about 15, started hauling hay, and so that's kind of where I came from.
Speaker 3As I look back on my background, you know, I think there's two things that are really kind of my first two loves. And the first love was baseball. I loved to pitch baseball and eventually it was kind of mediocre when I started but I blossomed in high school and I wound up going to turn down an offer with the New York Yankees to pitch for Oklahoma State University, and at that time they were in the top five programs in the country. In fact, we're in World Series time right now college baseball we got beat out in the quarterfinals of the college World Series that first year. And the second love of my life is I met my wife there. I was in this little tiny community and she was in a slightly larger community called McAllister, and I met her when I was 16 and we dated, went off to college, we got married in college, and so you know, that's kind of a little bit of the background, and you know when I think about what inspired me, all of those things were a part of me and inspired me. But you know the way I think about it is. Really there was a community of relationships that really made a difference. And it's interesting. Raj Chetty at Harvard's done a lot of research recently and what we're finding in the research is that the community you grow up in matters more than we realize. We often focus on parents and they're very important, but siblings and community really matter, and so my parents worked hard. It really was a no victimsvictims environment. No matter what happened, you dealt with it, you moved on.
Speaker 3One of the things that was really valuable for me my dad. We had cattle and we did hay baling and all that. So I got a chance, from the age of six on, to see my dad run the business and we'd have anywhere from three or four to 10 or 15 people involved in the work there on the ranch and in hang and so forth, and so I really saw what it meant to do the right thing. He was really big on that. Also really experienced kind of the understanding, the value of faith, especially in adversity but also in success. So those were really important lessons. Just an aside, this is kind of typical of my dad. So I grew up and by the time I was running a couple of hay crews, we paid all the other hay haulers that worked for us. So a buck and 70 pound bales of hay around and so forth, and so we paid all of them. But dad's investment strategy with me he had a mindset of investment thinking, not spending thinking. And so he said I'm going to give you a heifer and she will reproduce. And as you have more and she will reproduce, and as you have more reproduce over time, and by the time you're ready for college, I hope these cattle will pay for your college and I'll pay for the feed and upkeep and the pasture and so forth, but I'm not going to pay you in money. And it's interesting, that was the norm there. I never thought anything about it, but it was a very interesting kind of investment mindset. So it's interesting when you think of the value of long-term investing.
Speaker 3That started so early. A couple other people really important inspired me. My older sister went off to college ahead of me. She was the first one in our family to go to college and she really helped guide me to that.
Speaker 3We had a seasonal worker that worked with us every spring when we'd be pulling together Bermuda grass sprigs to plant pastures. His name was Banty and I would drive the truck on weekends and so forth and he would load roots with a pitchf it. And banty loved baseball and his son was a really good baseball player, played in the minor leagues, and banty, when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, taught me all kinds of things about pitching and and to really love it, and I'd never actually been able to get to pitch, uh, on the teams I played on, but he he taught me a lot about that and so that was really important. Uh, I had a coach in american legion ball named eve williams who really believed in me and said you've got potential in college.
The Value of Small Communities
Speaker 3Um, there were a couple other people a guy named bill sandmillan who was at oklahoma state when I was in high school and I was up there for an FFA trip and he went and introduced me to Chet Bryan, the coach there. There was a guy named Larry Wood who when I first started pitching as a sophomore, I never really before knew more about pitching and could throw harder than I could who really taught me a lot, particularly about how you throw inside and how you put on your game face and you don't allow anything to ruffle you. So those were key parts of the community and each of them played a role and at the time probably none of it seemed in any way exceptional, but collectively they made a huge difference in my life.
Speaker 2So they were all pieces of a puzzle that inspired you Exactly Now, how many were in your families, how many siblings?
Speaker 3I had two sisters, and so there were three of us. I was the youngest, ok, and so that that was. You know, that's that's kind of the whole family when I was growing up.
Speaker 2It's amazing and I've said this so many times on this show, robert how many successful, impactful people I have spoken with in the last three years of doing this show three and a half years. How many people have come from small communities and close families. It's incredible. I never thought that would be the case.
Speaker 3In fact there's research for that and it's been a while since I've seen this study. But a disproportionate number of CEOs and leaders in organizations come from small communities and a lot of them from rural farming, ranching and so forth, because work and responsibility and accountability are so important. And my dad he was really my dad was very loving, but he was very tough and so I had lots of responsibility early on. Just a quick story. So when I was being scouted, the baseball coach at Oklahoma State, chip Bryan, came to see me pitch the first time. He came up to me before the game. He said now I'm going to be sitting right behind home plate.
Speaker 3Every time you look in for a signal. You're going to see my face. I want to see how you can do under pressure. Well, I didn't always realize it because my dad put a lot of pressure on me, but at that moment I realized you know, this pressure and this accountability and this responsibility that I've gotten, that felt at times. You know, tough in reality was a gift, and I do believe that's one of the things we are challenged to replicate in today's society. My kids trying to find work and responsibility and so forth is much tougher. So I do think we miss that in today's culture.
Speaker 2I do too, and I think there's something about when you grow up in a small community as well. We think of big cities as there's so many more people. You get to know so many more people but you really don't. I've lived in bigger cities and you really don't know as many people. You know your little subculture in that big city, but when you're in a smaller community you do get to know a lot of people. So you understand teamwork, you get to mimic and be mentored by people one-on-one. So I think there's that work ethic and those character traits that are built from that and the accountability and I think there's also that sense of community, there's that sense of a teamwork that you get in a smaller community. There's potluck dinners when somebody gets sick or passes away, or weddings, and I think that just builds that natural leader and it brings it out in most people anyway. Or a lot of people you know. I think that is exactly right.
Speaker 3And there's another piece to that that I would add, and that is the messiness of relationships and the challenge of having to deal. You know, in our little community there weren't five schools to choose from, there was one school. That's where we went. There weren't 11 churches to choose, there were a couple, and so you didn't have the choice to kind of discard relationships that were messy or you didn't care for it. You kind of had to figure it out and you didn't always get that right.
Speaker 3It wasn't perfect, but there was a level of accountability and it was also that, as long as you were in that community, the good news and the bad news was that if you did something untoward, if you did something that wasn't right for someone, it's remembered a long time, and so, as opposed to the anonymity that we have in social media today, there was incredible transparency and a long memory, and some of that could be oppressive. So it's not all good, but I do think it's a better model. It's interesting Some of the research on schools right now find that kids do better in schools up to about 400, where the teachers and the students all pretty much know each other. When you get into anonymity and lots of people you don't know and you create factions. That brings a new dimension and we're struggling with that in our society today that's interesting.
Speaker 2I didn't know you have you know your whole uh background is so much on relationships and leadership and communication. Um, when you wrote the book this land of strangers, that was what was that? 2012?
Speaker 3yeah, I actually started the research in 2006. It's interesting my first book was on CRM customer relationship management scenario. I worked in, and when I wrote that first book I was so pregnant I knew exactly what I wanted to say that I wrote the first draft in 109 hours. Unfortunately, my second book, I spent six years doing the research because I had not worked in the areas of home, family politics and faith, I just worked in business, and so I started the research in 2006. And, interestingly enough, at the time, the book came out in 2012,.
Speaker 3You know, I think some people might have said, gee, you've really said relationships are really. In fact. I said relationships are the single most valuable and value-creating resource we have and I said we're really in trouble. There's a real and I have all kinds of stats to back them. Some people say, well, maybe you look at, you know 2025,. We say no, I probably didn't overemphasize. I probably understated how significant the relationship challenges are that we face and it's interesting. After I sold my company, I dedicated the rest of my life and that's the path I'm still on is to the opportunity to build stronger relationships in our society.
Speaker 2I think and can I ask you what have you noticed in the last several years? What have you learned that you didn't know? Or maybe you didn't know that it would be to this extent when you wrote the book you know 13 years ago or so. What is it? What's the revelation? I?
Speaker 3think the the biggest revelation in 2012. Social media or, or you know, the the whole uh, facebook and all that uh was coming on stream, uh, but it wasn't nearly as strong, and I don't. At that time I did not foresee how social media and the internet and so forth would allow us to weaponize interactions in such a powerful way that leads to divisiveness, to animus and so forth, and I also didn't realize how the access to smartphones and the Internet would leave us more lonely than we've been. Those trends were already there in 2012, but they have grown, so political animus and the level of loneliness that a lot of people experience as they literally carry the internet around in their pocket has greatly exceeded what I imagined and I made the case for that in 2012.
Speaker 2You know, that's so interesting. One of the things that I found for many, many years I was addicted to Facebook, and I could see my level of it wasn't depression, but there was a level of morose that I carried with me that I never had before, and so I don't know when it was maybe a year, just in the last year, maybe I decided to. Just, I do a morning post every every morning on social media. On all my posts, it's a, it's a, it's an inspirational post or some type of wisdom you know, and then I'm done and I'll look at it, maybe once during the day, I'll check, and that's pretty much. It Maybe sometimes twice, but I was on Facebook, robert, I was checking it every hour, and I don't know why. There was nothing I was looking for. It was just an addiction, and I can honestly say that that's been the best move I've made in I don't know years as far as helping my you know my dopamine level.
The Growing Relationship Crisis
Speaker 2What I've done, though, unfortunately, is I've switched over to YouTube, so I had to get YouTube off my phone. I do have it on my computer and on my iPad, but it's not readily available on my phone, so I don't have it on my phone. So it's I, when I get a break, I'll put on a YouTube podcast or something, but that's kind of that. What I like about YouTube rather than Facebook is I'm not. I'm not seeing people battle back and forth and I don't like that. And I really don't care what somebody had for dinner. I don't want to see their dinner.
Speaker 3Exactly. You know the term that fits most for me, for what happens is it follows us out. It somehow removes some of the most important parts that are in us, in our spirit, and I'm working on an article, probably posted next week on LinkedIn, that really looks at. There's a real trend now for just what you described. People are literally going on social media and smartphone diets. They're putting themselves on a diet. So, just as we pay attention now to what we eat and what we consume in our bodies, uh, we are finally. You know, it took us a long time to figure out how to turn that technology on and use it. It's even harder to learn how to turn it off and stop using it, and that's where we are, and that's the gist of the article that I'll be posting next week.
Speaker 2Good, I'm following you on linkedin so I'll make sure I look for that next week. You said something to me when we talked a couple of weeks ago that really hit home for me about how technology advances very, very rapidly but yet our competence advances slowly and our ability to handle that. Can you break that down a little bit, because I'm really curious about that?
Speaker 3You know it's really a mismatch. It's really a mismatch and I think the widening gap between the speed at which technology is accelerating and the kind of flatline, our ability socially to absorb it and figure out how to use it. Technology is always ahead of competence, but the technology particularly now with AI coming on stream, has so accelerated that I think we're overwhelmed and it's going to be interesting to see. There's two things I see one in the acceleration and secondly, the issue of trust Increasingly, particularly with AI, and what's happened.
Speaker 3I'll use as an example if you look at 15 or 20 years ago, when direct mail first came online, people were really impressed. You could send mail out. They hadn't been able to do that before and they got high response rates and everybody read all of the letters they got in the mail and so forth and so on, and the overtime response rates just went down and down and down. And what happened is the channel called direct mail became toxic and people didn't believe it anymore. And so one of the things now, as technology gets both more prolific but less trusted, at what point in time will we deem it toxic and basically say I'm not going to deal with that channel? Just as an example you gave, Facebook became, in your mind, toxic and you stopped using it, and so when I was in the CRM business and the software business, we talked about the technology adoption lifecycle.
Speaker 3I think we're beginning to see now a technology rejection lifecycle, and none of us we've always been really poor at predicting how that's going to turn out, but I do believe we're going to see a significant shift as trust continues to decline and conspiracies that are born out of false information At some point in time we're going to shut it down. And you know, do we get to the point where we only trust something we hear from someone we know, and trust, I mean? That's kind of where we're headed. So it's going to be that the information develops rapidly and competence develops slowly is going to have a consequence at some point in time that I think is different than what we've experienced today.
Speaker 2Okay, and a question for you as well is as technology has changed the way we communicate through text, email, social media, virtual calls and things of that nature do you feel that? So, if I'm a person out there, I'm a younger person and obviously I have to be adapted to technology because in order for me to succeed in the business world or my professional life, where do you see that person is who can do the technological communication but has really focused himself or herself on that one-on-one, eye-to-eye contact, the handshakes, that good old school communication? Do you think there's a place in the world for them? Who will master that art, the old art versus the new art?
Speaker 3master that art, the old art versus the new art. Here's kind of what I sense. We're never going to go back, the arrow doesn't fly backwards. But I do believe, and it is my hope, that the younger generation, the Gen Zs, the younger people who grew up with technology, are going to discover you know, every generation has to discover their own version of what's true and what's real and what's meaningful. And I do believe there's evidence in the article that I'm working on right now. There is evidence right now that people are going on diets, that Gen Z and some of the younger generations are figuring out how to turn it off and how to set boundaries around it and are looking for. I'll just give you one example. There's a bunch in there.
Speaker 3We've heard about the nuns in the N-O-N-E-S. The nuns people who have none of the above religions. None of the above we've seen in their last 12 to 18 months and I document this in this article is a significant rise in church attendance in the uk and in the us, and it's primarily driven by younger people and the speculation is they've been followeded out, as mentioned before, and they're looking for community, face-to-face community, in-person community, community that is recurring in nature, where those relationships grow over time where they're asked to give something and they're purposeful in then making a difference with others. That is, that they both have to sacrifice something, but they also then give to others. And so, as I say in the article, I think it's too early to say this is a for sure trend, but there's really interesting indicators. And then you look at some of the other things in the article.
Social Media's Impact on Mental Health
Speaker 3There's evidence that there's a shift afoot and we'll see how it goes, and so it's just going to be interesting to see. You know, do we have just innovators and early adopters and it won't catch on, or is this going to be a movement? I predict it's going to be a bit of a movement, how big I don't know, but you know, when you look at Hollow Me Out, I mean, there's just a couple of things that I covered there, things that I covered there. If you look at the rapid growth of pornography, if you look at sports gambling online, if you look at what's happening in terms of people now taking smartphones out of the schools and finding the students do much better and the students, as much as they complained about initially, like it better. Those are three data points that I think reflect that we're headed for a new place, and I think, as always, it will require the younger, up-and-coming generations to really flesh that out, reinvent the new reality and make it their own and then promote it.
Speaker 2Robert. Let's hope that happens. I'm going to stay optimistic on that one. Can you think back on any other technology that we've created as a human race that was destructive at first, like social media, smartphones have been? I mean, obviously serve a really good purpose as well, but have been used or bastardized or weaponized like those? Have that actually turned around and became an invention that was for the better good? I know when cars were invented people were afraid that they're going to eliminate families because people are going to live far away from each other, because they can travel. It was going to hurt. They were going to kill horses on the road, they were going to pollute the you know. But obviously automobiles became a good invention. Is there any other inventions that you can think of that started off with a lot of negativity and, attached to them, then ultimately turned out to be good?
Speaker 3well, it actually depends. You know, one of the things that I think about is the printing press, and initially, in religious communities they thought that was really bad, and particularly Catholics and some of the others that were used to doing worship in Latin, they thought it was going to be the end of their faith. And so there's always resistance and there's always opportunity. And as much as I lament the downside of technology, my wife right now has an Apple Watch. She's had some heart issues and it's great because they can tell if she goes into AFib, we can see right there. So, as is always the case, the power of the positive valence also has a negative valence and it's up to us as humans, as best we can, to learn how to use it constructively as we can and to minimize the downside. You look at nuclear weapons. You look at all the various things that we've done. Almost always is a significant downside, but there's usually also great opportunities.
Speaker 3That goes all the way back. Like you say automobiles, you go back to the beginning, the way back. Like you say automobiles, you go back to, uh, the beginning, the wheel, I mean, wherever you are. Yeah, new, new technology put some people out of jobs. It gave others more power. It restructured and realigned the hierarchies, and so you know that's always a part of it's. Our job as humans uh, as humans is to figure out how to make it as constructive as possible, and there will always be downside and there will always be discomfort. So to me, I'm in the course. I ran a software company for 20 some odd years. I see how valuable it is, but I also see it requires, like everything else, judgment and it requires us to make good decisions and we're challenged by that.
Speaker 2Well, and the thing is like, I think, the best way when you shared that with me a couple of weeks ago. You know, technology moves quickly, competence moves slowly. It happens so rapidly I mean it doesn't seem like more than you know it was. I've been been doing. I guess I've been coaching for almost 29 years and when I started coaching I just had a phone that I had to pay per minute on. It was a cell phone that I never use, only for emergencies.
Speaker 2And I don't know when I got my first real cell phone. That was one, but it was more like a. You know, you pay three dollars every 20 minutes that you had to make a call, so you just kept it on your purse in the case. Three dollars every 20 minutes that you had to make a call, so you just kept it on your person in case. And then I'll. Now I don't even have a landline, I don't. My mother has one. Exactly even my mother's landline is connected to the internet.
Speaker 2Um, yeah, so that's the just everything's changed so rapidly. And then when you get like I'm at 58 years old, so I'm an old gen x, I'm kind of the older end of the gen xers, but then I've got my millennials, I got the gen z's in my family, like my son grew up on not having a cell phone, necessarily until he was a certain age, but you know, they grew up playing video games. They grew up going to school with laptops and internet. Yeah, um, and it really. I think you're right. It's up to those generations uh, you know, it's obviously our generations can lead them and steer them and give them the wisdom and the information, the research that's done. But it's up to them to take this forward and say, okay, we're going to use this for the better good, but we're not going to let it use us.
Speaker 3And I think that's what's happening. In fact, we might say one of their most important jobs is figure out how to use technology in a way that doesn't destroy relationships and, in fact, builds relationships, going back to kind of my mantra that our relationships are our most valuable and value-creating resource we have, and so that's their job, and they won't do it the way we would have done it. They're not going to go back to the good old days.
Speaker 2They're going to hopefully create hybrids and boundaries and and and uh habits that support that yeah, you know, yeah, and I, and I think that is that has to be that generation I look at right now and I get you know. Probably every week or two I get a text from a friend of mine who will say did you see what so-and-so put on Facebook? How horrible. And I know that person who posted that. And usually it's somebody I don't follow, because when I see that I unfollow the person and that's why people will tell me and I'll say, hey, I don't want to hear what they said, but I still get the text from. Usually the same three or four people tell me that and I think that person would never, ever communicate those words to anybody face to face or over the phone, but they will do it behind a keyboard or behind their, their smartphone.
Speaker 2And where does that courage come from? Or that is, is that? I don't call that? That's cowardice to me. But where does that, where does that desire to be seems to be more critical, more destructive communication. Why is that more prominent than it is when you're talking to somebody? Is that just because you don't have to face the person's eyes, you don't have to hear them respond? What causes a person to get that almost technological courage when they're behind a keyboard Right.
Speaker 3You know, if I were to say the one thing that I think drives the whole challenge we have right now, it is adverse incentives. And in today's world, the more extreme and radical outlandish things you say, the more attention it gets. So we're in an attention economy that rewards really some of the worst things that get said, the absolute worst, and our technology industry gets rewarded in terms of clicks and followers and all that. So we get rewarded as individuals and they get rewarded, rewarded, and somehow we haven't figured out to somehow change the incentives so that, rather than weaponizing information and sharing that, we somehow uh find a way to reward uh, less radical, less attentive, less whatever. And I I keep hoping and your example on Facebook is a good one that enough people OD on extreme, radical, drama-filled fights and invectives that go on, that over time we will stop rewarding that, we will turn it off and it will extinguish to some extent over time.
Speaker 3Now, we've always been in a world if it bleeds, it leads Newspapers. We've always been in a world where we like drama, we like what's new, we like what's exciting, we like what's a little outlandish. But I think what we call the attention economy has to somehow have a recession and even a depression, where we reconfigure what's valuable, and right now we got what's valuable as what's not good and what's very destructive, and so that's to me what it comes back to. I see to your point. I see people who post stuff that they would never say face-to-face. They got something out of that, and usually what they got was attention from other people who are extreme like them, and it just feeds itself. So everybody sees that that's not new, but somehow over time, we have to figure out a different way of recognizing and incentivizing more constructive behavior.
Speaker 2Do you have any? When you're looking at a person like me, obviously, the one of the things is to you know a social media diet is a good one. Go on a diet. Are there other things a person can do to increase their level of communication and relationships with other people around the idea of technology and social media?
Technology Advances vs. Human Competence
Speaker 3You know here's what I'm saying in this article that I'm working on kind of deals with how do we become more intentional about face-to-face and community-based relationships? Technology plays a role in that. It can help us get organized. We can have block parties, we can join church groups, we can join social clubs or whatever. But to date, the novelty of technology and the ease and convenience of it makes it a preference for a lot of people, a preference for a lot of people actually getting in the car and going somewhere, even being on a phone call with someone. All of those take intention and what I'm hoping and what I'm seeing in the evidence of Gen Z is they paid enough of a price in terms of learning how they get hollowed out that they're placing a priority on a more human, face-to-face set of interactions and they're making that a priority.
Speaker 3If you look in the business world, for example, covid, I wrote an article right as we were going into COVID saying, gee, this is the last thing we need. We're going to have not just a, a, a medical pandemic, we'll have a relationship pandemic and we kind of have so kind of what I said is what if, after we get finished of sheltering in place and being in place and all that kind of stuff that we're deprived of face to face and human relationships enough that we come out with some pent-up demand that causes us to seek out with intention to balance our lives more. And I actually think that's what I'm seeing evidence of is that we are recognizing it. It's hard to break old habits. The convenience of technology is very seductive and even addictive, and that's the right word addictive.
Speaker 3If you look at online gambling, online porn, online dating apps, online scrolling, I mean it is addictive. We have to recognize that and that's the point I take. So we literally have to detox, we have to put ourselves on a diet. It doesn't mean we'll get rid of it. We go on a diet and with intention, we say I must seek out the things that more nearly fulfill me, and I'm seeing evidence of that. But it will take effort and intention beyond kind of what we've been able to do in the last five to seven years able to do in the last five to seven years?
Speaker 2Yeah, do you think you know? You look at scrolling on social media, any of those. It's really you're getting a fake dopamine level. You're getting that short spike in your dopamine, but it's not. It's not long lasting, it serves no long-term purpose and it has resulting negative consequences. That, versus having a conversation with one face-to-face or going on a walk in nature or going exercising or reading a good book, listening to good music, that's real dopamine. Now, do you think that what I've seen? I don't know what the studies show on this, but it seems like in the younger generation maybe the Gen Zs, maybe millennials, and maybe in the new ones, I think it's called the alpha generation, maybe the Gen Zs, maybe millennials, and maybe in the new ones, I think it's called the alpha generation, the newest one it seems like there's an increase in mental health challenges and mental health issues with those generations. How much do you think is contributed by this? Constant levels of fake spike dopamine coming into your system then leaving rapidly?
Speaker 3Oh, I think that's exactly it. And there is there is voluminous research behind that A guy named John Hite. Dr John Hite, a social psychologist who's written the book the Anxious Generation, yeah, validates all of that. And you're exactly right when we say addiction, it is not figurative, we're saying no, it is literal and it creates, like you say, the dopamine, and so that's literally what's going on, and so that's why we're having to look at it a different way. But it is addiction and that's kind of what schools are fighting. That's what in so many parts of our life. It's interesting.
Speaker 3I work with a group of college presidents. I've been working with them since 2013. And we meet every year and sit down and talk about the issues that they're dealing with. And, starting in about 2013, they saw a dramatic spike in the demand for mental health services at these universities and initially everybody couldn't figure it out. They were just swamped, of course, while John Hite's gone back and done the research, and Gene Twinge from San Diego State and others is that's the point in time that kids started having smartphones, and it literally the term they use for young kids and young adults. It literally rewires their brains, it changes how they think and we now worry about AI Is it going to further rewire our brains? And so it's a big mental health issue, and it's not just anecdotal, it is backed by serious research. And so you know, lordy, don't the wheels turn slow. We're having to do this. It's been actually interesting to me.
Speaker 3The issue of getting smartphones out of schools has moved really quickly as movements go, typically that'd be a 20 or 30 year thing. It's happened, uh, significant. There's 21 states now that are banning or regulating phone use in schools, and there's a bunch more in the in the hopper to do that. So we're seeing society respond. It takes while, but the high levels of anxiety, depression, suicide you go through, all the things, kids cutting themselves all of that jumped dramatically starting in about 2013. So it's very much. It's not just attitudinal. There's actual behaviors, admissions to hospitals for cutting and self-harm. All of those spiked, and so that's what's gotten everyone's attention. So the pain of that is our fuel now to exert boundaries and decisions and opportunities now to do things differently. And while that's being done in the school systems, part of the article that I'm working on is saying OK, now, that's great for the kids, what about us adults? So it's not just for the kids. Although kids have prefrontal brains that are much more susceptible in the developmental stages, it's a factor for all of us.
Speaker 2It really is and I always think of it this way when you know I don't I'm not a fan of gossip, but but and in fact I'm not a gossiper but there have been times in my life where I was, where I was with certain friends and those friends are really not not close to them any longer, but that when you're with them that they wanted to gossip, and you get sucked into that gossip and there's a dopamine spike when you're in that gossip and I don't know what it is, if it's maybe this feeling that you have information on somebody that they don't know you have, or maybe you feel better about yourself because you're hearing these negative things about someone else, but there's a spike in your dopamine. But then you walk away from that conversation and you just feel gross, you feel heavy. And that's what I felt when I'd scroll on social media or especially when I would read. And, honestly, maybe up until seven, eight years ago, maybe I don't know I would get into those political conversations on Facebook and I'd be arguing with somebody and finally one day I said what am I doing?
Speaker 2I just felt horrible about it. I wasn't making any change or positive impact. I was changing no minds. I was not increasing the sense of self-worth of anybody. On the other end, I was just being arrogant, insecure and throwing my ego around, trying to make a point and just making myself feel heavy and gross the rest of the day. And finally I just said no more political posts, no more. Yeah, you can put anything and that's why I don't even read my. I don't read anything that people say about my podcast, good or bad. I've never. I don't read comments because I know me, I'll get on there. If somebody has a negative comment, I'm going to want to argue with them.
Speaker 3And I'm like there's a couple of things I would just add to that because that is right on the money is that, unfortunately, in a society where we're more lonely, more separated, disconnected, estranged, that one of the ways to build intimacy is gossip, of talking to people talking about a third party. It's a false kind of connection because it's negative, but I think some of it is driven by lonely people looking for some way to connect and that's one of the more predictable ways to connect. But it turns out to be corrosive, it turns out not to be productive. So I think that's part of the loneliness that people have in being isolated.
Speaker 3Is that, of course, the research is clear. What happens in those things is virtually never does one person change somebody else's mind in those arguments. It never happens. So it is not a productive effort to communicate when you get in that mode. It is simply a way that all sides walk away feeling hollowed out and have wasted their time. So that's part of the reality and that's what we're having to learn, and it seems, like Robert to, that's what we're having to learn.
Speaker 2And it seems like, robert, what I've noticed in my immediate circle or I shouldn't say my immediate circle, but my next level circle in my life it seems like during COVID and during the quarantine that I saw people either come out of that time frame of our existence a better, stronger human or a much weaker, lesser human.
Echo Chambers and Political Division
Speaker 2And what I mean by that is I see people who are angrier, they're maybe more fear based, more opinionated, less tolerant of other people, and they tend to be the ones that now those are the people I get comments from my friends will say did you see what so-and-so posted? Because I stopped following those people. But there's a select group of people that I can think of that I care about deeply in my life very much and I have all of my life cared about them. And during COVID they just went from a normal sometimes being a little political on Facebook or sometimes, you know, saying something that's a little bit, you know, argumentative, but now it's every comment from what I hear they post is incredibly angry and hate-filled. And I don't know if COVID had something to do with bringing people closer to social media and it drew them in a little more. I don't know. Is there any research or thoughts on that? Did that have any impact on it?
Speaker 3I think you're, you're, you're right on it and it's kind of like it's. It's a, a mechanism that either you know what you overcome makes you stronger or if you don't overcome it, it makes you weaker. Some people came out of that and said, geez, now that I've been so reliant on just technology and social media and so forth, I need to go with intention and refine community. And then there's other groups that came out almost disabled by it, other groups that came out almost disabled by it.
Speaker 3And one of the things we worry about in kids is that during that developmental time we're seeing that the communication skills of kids, of how you provide eye contact, how you have a discussion, how you deal with disagreement, all that has atrophied as we become much more reliant on social media as our primary means of communication. But it's also happened to adults. So the net is, as a society, our EQ, our emotional quotient, unfortunately, has declined, I believe, and some of that is around the horrible animus that exists among all of us. And then the other is the lack of practice and the lack of engagement. So again, to me what that comes back to is in every part of our lives in our kids' lives, in our grandkids' lives in our colleagues' lives and so forth' lives and our colleagues' lives and so forth. I'm asking for people you know to be an advocate for reestablishing human connection in a way that we've lost through just electronic interaction.
Speaker 2I'm just trying to write here, so bear with me. To write here, so bear with me. And I also think that when, when I look at the state of today's younger generation and I see them on social media or I see them on youtube is where I see them and they're screaming and yelling and I think to myself, I never can't imagine being in college and doing that like I I, you know, I was very blessed in college. I have some amazing friends that we had deep conversations. You know, I was an idiot and I was a fool and I like to drink my beer and go to parties and get in fights and do all the stupid things that you do when you're full of testosterone at 20 years old, but we never really had that kind of anger, or. But then I think about this.
Speaker 2I think, okay, if I'm a 21-year-old person and I have been on social media all my life and I'm on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat, whatever it might be, and I start putting in a certain, maybe a political side that I lean toward, and all of a sudden, all I get now is I'm in that echo chamber, I'm getting confirmation bias thrown at me, so I can never really branch over to the other side, because the other side is crazy. They're Nazis or libtards or whatever we want to these negative names we want to call either side of the spectrum. We don't see them. We kind of dehumanize the other side of a political or religious or philosophical argument because we're only seeing one side. I look at my YouTube. It's all the same thing coming. I like certain things. Those four or five different topics come up all the time and you have to pursue to look at the other side's viewpoints viewpoints and I and that's that's where I see a lot of danger in social media is the algorithms and how they, they.
Speaker 3they throw what we like or what we already are interested in back at us and we don't have to be tested by the other side's argument and it's, and and I I fear, with ai coming on stream, there will be implicit in ai also algorithms and bias, uh, depending on who's writing the code and how the rules are being established. And you know there's research that supports that as a group becomes more the same, that over time they become more extreme. And what happens is that in groups that are homogeneous, leaders begin to be picked who are more extreme and they then lead the group further and then more extreme people come on board, and so there is an escalation factor from homogeneous groups that are not hearing, as you say, the other side, not interacting with the other side. And so what does that mean? That means we have to intentionally look for communities and it's not a great place on social media. We look for communities where there is a diverse set of opinions on things and we hear the various sides.
Speaker 3I find, for example, I listen to the news. I have to listen to at least two different sources of news to really kind of find out what's going on, because there's not only the bias in how they tell the stories but in what's reported at all. And so we are right now, as long as we're in these echo chambers, the level of kind of radical extreme moving to the far side is going to continue, and so that's where becoming intentional is so important. The good news is, a lot of people now have experienced this, and the question is is do we have the will to, and then the skill to, move away from dysfunctional levels of use of information, so that we don't fall into that trap, because it happens mindlessly?
Speaker 2The will and the skill, and that applies to so many things. As you said that, I thought, yeah, it applies to just about everything in life.
Speaker 2It does, it absolutely does yeah, and you, when you look at how you're, as you're talking about social media and the echo chambers, I, I can see where I look at behaviors of certain people and I would say, obviously these are the extremes, but the extreme people, as you said, if it bleeds, it leads they.
Speaker 2We see them more on the news or social media. We see the extremes of both sides, but it does seem like there's cult-like behavior on both sides of the political spectrum. And when I think about cults, one of the first things a cult will do is they will separate you from your family and your friends and isolate you into their world. And that's what algorithms. Algorithms do they separate you from the other viewpoints and bring them into, bring them, bring you into that algorithm of your world and everybody else is is alienated out of it, and so it is a form of cult-like behavior and or cult-like uh um direction, and so you. That's why we see what kind of looks like cult-like behavior in our country and around the world for that matter, and that separates people dramatically.
Speaker 3Well, it absolutely does, and you know we have a term for that in the world of sexuality, called abusive relationships. And what happens in abusive relationships is control is exercised by separating someone from all their sources of connection and so forth, and that's exactly what you described, although it's applied to a cult. It is an abusive relationship where the desire and the effort for control supersedes everything else, and it is in the disconnection that people then lose the capability to move back, so they become isolated, estranged and powerless. And that happens in sexual abuse, that happens in cultish abuse relationships.
Speaker 2Wow, yeah, I've never thought about it that way. Do you see? Um, so you're seeing. So you have some optimism, though, about the younger generation being able to break through this mold. I'm kind of sensing that you, you're holding onto some good optimism.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, and, and you know, um, you know I, I I'm not going to say hey, there ain't never going to be another bad day, but I do see evidence of it and I actually am pretty sure that my generation I'm a baby boomer I'm pretty sure my generation isn't going to make much headway. I'm not sure. Gen X. I'm looking to what has to happen, I think, in generational change, and I think that's coming. That doesn't mean there won't be other issues, but I am hopeful that that's going to occur. I can't say I'm certain that it is, but I'm hopeful that the next generation has seen enough of the carnage and they're beginning to experience control of smartphones in schools. It's interesting. You may have seen the state of Virginia passed a law this last week of limiting 16-year-olds and under one hour of time online per day. Now how they're going to enforce that, I have no idea. But you are seeing movements in politics, in our laws and legislation, in our school systems and in some of the companies. Just one example work from home. Work from home was a godsend for us, using the technology that kind of allowed us to keep the economy going. But what we know now is there's a big movement. We got people working from home that could. Whose job would allow that? Particularly college educated, white, uh, color jobs and now the question is how do you get people back to the office? Because it's not convenient and it costs time and it costs money. And so what we're seeing now is there is a movement back. The research shows that the average number of work from home days has decreased almost a day. I've got the research in this paper has decreased almost a day from where we were in 2022. So there's another example of someone looking around and saying at the time that happened, I wrote an article and I said the research I read says that you are more productive individually at home, but your team and your organization is less productive and less creative, is less productive and less creative. And so a lot of smart CEOs are saying I know you love the convenience of that, but we're losing, culturally and synergistically, some of the benefits that we need. And so there's a movement back. So companies are making a movement back.
Speaker 3We're seeing churches having more people show up. We're seeing school systems say we're going to take the smartphones away during school hours. We're seeing movements now around gambling and around pornography. They're very embryonic of where people are recognizing. You know it's interesting.
Signs of Hope and New Boundaries
Speaker 3When I was growing up, gambling and pornography was viewed as quote a sin problem, and that was through the lens of religion. Today, I think people are understanding. Well, if you look at it through that lens, it's still a sin problem, if it's excessive or whatever. But we're seeing that suicide rates have increased for 18 to 34-year-olds who bet on their smartphones. We're seeing that pornography breaks up marriages, causes people to go bankrupt. That's always been the case, but it used to be. Your access was really limited. Today, with a phone in your pocket, you can go broke in a short period of time.
Speaker 3So we're seeing guardrails beginning to appear in a number of places, and that's where my hope lies. It's not just an empty hope. It's a hope based on evidence and facts, of things that we can measure, things that we can see. It won't be a straight line. There will be challenges, there will be resistance. We won't always get the reforms right, but the problem is large enough and the consequences are dire enough that I believe we as a society will be able to correct. That's what I'm betting on as a democracy. That's what we bet on. We bet democracies aren't great because they get everything right. Democracies are great because they have the ability to correct. That's the bet.
Speaker 2I like that. One of the things I want to share with you is I've realized one of the things you talked about working from home versus working in a workspace. Now, I'm a pretty solo kind of, I'm a lone wolf kind of guy. I'm not a corporate guy. I was for a while and I did have 13 employees at one time working for me. It wasn't my thing, I'm just not my thing.
Speaker 2But what I noticed, robert, over the past several years is I was, you know, I'm on the phone with clients all, quite, quite almost all the all day, four days a week, yeah, or three and a half days a week I'm on the phone and I was. I found myself, even though I was talking to my clients and we text back and forth a lot, my clients and I they would text me first thing in the morning till late at night and I'm okay with that. That's the relationship I like with my and emails. I was feeling very lonely and I and I refused I literally refused to do Microsoft Teams virtual calls or Zoom meetings where you can see the person, and I finally gave in three weeks ago and I said, okay, I'm going to start doing, I'm going to offer Microsoft Teams, virtual meetings with some of my clients, and I offered and I got to tell you I love it. Yeah, I love it because I'm you know it's not the face-to-face communication, you know you don't have all those all of my senses aren't being stimulated the sense of smell, the sense of touch when you shake a hand. But I'm seeing them and that's a start.
Speaker 2And I realized the difference between using technology for a good purpose, because now I can look in my clients' faces, I can see their reactions, they can see mine. I feel there's a better connection with those clients and even prospects and other organizations that I'm collaborating with. That I realized, okay, that was the missing link for me. I was using technology ie, phone and text and email but there was this whole new one that is actually better for if you want to connect with somebody, and that's that face-to-face, virtually anyway, then I think you know what, if we could do more of the actual face-to-face, the shaking of the hands? Because early this year I was traveling to Grand Rapids, michigan, lansing, michigan, detroit, michigan, a lot, and I was meeting with prospects and I was meeting with clients that I have locally in the state of Michigan and I loved it because I hadn't done that in a while, you know, since prior to COVID.
Speaker 2And so there is a beauty and a benefit to getting away from the keyboard, putting the cell phone down, and if you can't meet with somebody face to face or talk to them on the phone and hear their voice, look at them on a, you know, do a Zoom call, a Teams call, a FaceTime call with your family. That's just. It's a different level of connection, and so that told me right away that technology can be used for good, especially those clients or family or friends that you just can't. They're in Texas, they're in Washington, they're in Boston, wherever they might be, they're around the country or around the globe. But again, it's when I'm talking to those clients face-to-face or those family and friends face face to face, I'm not going to say the things that 10 years ago Brian would have said on Facebook.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, exactly. And here's, you know, here's the thing. You provide a great example. That's what I think is happening millions of times over the days and weeks ahead by millions of people. And it sounds like this you know, for this group, I'm going to try to at least have lunch with them once a month or once a quarter. I'm going to be face to face and by doing that then, when I'm in phone or Zoom or Teams calls, it's more valuable because we've met face-to-face.
Speaker 3And people are saying I'm going to have at least two or three gatherings that I go to in a recurring way where I have maybe it's social, maybe it's religious, maybe it's sports, maybe whatever.
Speaker 3Maybe it's religious, maybe it's sports, maybe whatever. I'm going to have a group that I gather with, or two or three groups I gather with over the next year, monthly, quarterly, whatever. So people begin to say you know, there's decisions that I can make that doesn't turn my world upside down, that can enhance the relationships that I have, that can help me be less hollowed out and that can establish a way of being connected that I haven't had before. And it's almost like we went from default, where technology wasn't available decades ago. We've been almost in a season where we by default it's all been technology and now we're saying, oh, wait, a minute, I can make decisions to mix this, I can have hybrid kind of interaction, game plans for different individuals and different groups of people, and when that happens millions of times by millions of people, we will see a shift in our culture. I think it's already underway.
Speaker 2I hope so, and I got to tell you. I'm going to ask you one more question before we wrap up. I think the work you're doing is some of the most valuable work right now on the planet, and I see that from my own perspective, where I've gone awry with social media, with technology, where I'm kind of coming out of that hole. But I'm 58 years old. When I look at an 18, 19, 17, 15, 25 year old younger person, I can see that hole is probably deeper for them because they've grown up on that and they don't have the mental capacity or experience or necessarily the wisdom to pull themselves out of it. So I think I got to thank you because I've got children who I love dearly, I've got grandchildren who I love dearly and your kind of work is, I think, is what's going to make their lives better than it would have been had this information, this wisdom not have been researched and shared by you and other people like you.
Speaker 3You know, if I were to net that out, and I just totally agree with that we've experienced technology disruption and now we need to have relationship disruption. That is disruption that moves us back to relationships, have to sit down with the stakeholders and the people we love and figure out how we're going to divide the pie differently in terms of human interaction and technology. And to your point, you know, michael Porter, the well-known Harvard strategic planner and thinker, said the essence of strategic planning is determining what not to do. And in many respects, that's what we're we're dealing with right now is we're going to stop doing some things and we're going to replace that with something different, better, more fit, and so it starts with stopping something, freeing space, but then we have to be intentional to replace it. It's not just stop, it's then replace, and that's the business, I think, of the relationship world we're in. The challenge right now is to stop and then replace.
Speaker 2Stop and then replace. I love that. I have one more question for you and this is a piece of advice. So I've got five children, two biological children and three bonus sons in my life and with that we have a handful of grandkids. I have two more grandkids coming on the way. My oldest is four and the next two are coming in the fall of this year. What would you say to my children who are raising young you know very young kids, obviously, a couple of not born yet to a four-year-old? What would you say to them for them to be on the lookout as they raise these children in a technological world where they can actually help to avoid some of the misfalls and mishaps and the pitfalls we have fallen into?
Speaker 3Well, you know, I think, first of all, they probably are seeing it and experiencing it. So I think everybody most everybody is aware of it. And the question is what do we do about it? And if I had one recommendation, it would be as a grandparent and this is something that I'm working on I have four grandkids nine, eight, six and three is I want to model it for them and demonstrate it for them in a way that hopefully sets a good example, and here's what I mean by that.
Speaker 3I've set a goal to as much as I can be physically present with them. Now, that's much harder if they live on the other side of the country and all that, but there's ways to do it and you know, um, whether it's, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be on site with each kid for some period of time. It's a lunch, it's an afternoon, an afternoon, it's an outing. I'm going to take them on a two-day fishing trip, whatever it is. I'm going to set aside a certain number of days or hours to be face-to-face with them in an activity that will be outdoors. You mentioned earlier outdoors. Outdoors has a different vibe and a different outcome than indoors.
Speaker 3Outdoors, if possible, face-to-face, one-on-one, and then in groups I'm going to look at my calendar over the next 12 months and I'm going to come up with a game plan on how I'm going to do that, and I think that then provides a model and rather than preaching to them, you say here's what I'm wanting to do and here's why. And that will, I think, be more powerful than any advice is just to model it and I think it helps provide courage for them. And believe me, I know we've got kids. They are overwhelmed with their kids these days. There's so many activities they're overscheduled. I mean, they're in a dog fight. So actually one of the things is finding times when you can take their kids for them for some short period of time and give them breathing space to think about this. So those are the things I would do. I'd model it and then I would see how I help them free up what their obstacles are so they have more space to do the same thing.
Speaker 2Well, you just gave me two pieces of great advice, and I can honestly tell you I'm not good at modeling it, and I'll share with you why, before we wrap up. Robert, when I'm with my oldest grandson, grandson jack, he'll be four next month so many times he'll say, papa b, come up to my playroom, so we'll go upstairs in his playroom. What do you think I grab on the way up? I grab my cell phone and, yeah, he will look at me and when I, when he sees me get on it, he'll call. He always tries to get my attention and so it's funny though.
Speaker 2So I'll put my phone down very dialed into that oh they, they absolutely dialed it.
Speaker 2the thing is I'll like sometimes I'll check a text and I'll put my he'll be playing over the other side of the playroom or the living room, yeah, and I'll look at the phone down, I'll put my, I'll have the phone on the phone on the floor and I'll look at it and I'll kind of type, and he sees my head go down and instantly he notices that my head, he knows I'm on the phone, he knows I'm disengaged and I'm not present. And it's really creepy how well in tune they are to that.
Speaker 3They absolutely get it and they don't like it, they feel discounted in it. And so you know, we've done it in schools phone-free zones, not without phones altogether, but there's periods of time we say no phones and a lot of people now have no phones at dinner and a number of people are putting little places to put their phone when you come in the house. So whatever, phone free zones. I give you just one other tiny example for me.
Face-to-Face Connection in Digital Age
Speaker 3I have some with our grandkids, picking up and taking to school or whatever, and one of the things I do is I listen to the radio, typically when I'm by myself, whatever, I never turn the radio on and I set my phone over to the other side because there may be an emergency, I may need to see it, but I don't take phone calls unless I see it's an emergency or whatever, just around the very objective you stated, and that is to be totally, 100% present with them. When you are present with them, so in their presence, being present, and that's a small thing, but the kids really get it. And so, as you model it and create habits with those kids, it's fishing, it's going to the park, it's going to whatever it is, as you create habits with those kids. It's fishing, it's going to the park, it's going to a movie, whatever it is. As you create habits of that, my experience is, over time that becomes really golden and they come to appreciate that there's been space set aside for relationship that is not invaded by technology.
Speaker 2That right there. That last thing you said be in their presence, be present, and that's one of the things I try to be engaged. I use the word engage a lot, it's one of my focuses in life with family, friends and clients, and I can I honestly can tell you I'm not as engaged as I want to be I'm, so I fail on that one so often and I think that's a good role model, that's a good rule to follow from this point forward.
Speaker 3Well, and it is really hard because we have all this stuff coming at us. We have to learn that diet we talk about. We got to have phone free zones and it'll be there when we get back, but it takes real effort. We are literally having to detox from a addictive force that has some positives but that we're all dealing with Wow.
Speaker 2Robert, I can't thank you enough for the work you do. Can I ask you what's next for you in this, on this subject matter?
Speaker 3You know, right now kind of what I'm focused on, as I said, is there's been so much negative about the technology stuff. All the stuff we've talked about and it's as real as a heart attack is I'm trying to focus right now on where is there evidence of progress? Where are the green shoots that portend, we hope, new growth and new opportunity? So I'm really kind of we all know the problem and understanding how bad the problem is gives us courage. But then we got to have some kind of vision around. Okay, what is this looking like elsewhere? How might I adopt or adapt what I'm seeing others doing to my life? So that's where I'm focused right now is let's look for the opportunities now to move to a next level.
Speaker 2Well, I'm going to knock on wood and I'm going to send out some positive vibes to you so that this mission you're on can make an impact on the world. Positive vibes to you so that this mission you're on can make an impact on the world, because I think it's definitely an incredibly crucial area of study and research and the work you've done is making a difference. I appreciate you, Robert.
Speaker 3Thanks so much, Brian. Thanks for having me, as always a delightful time talking with you.
Advice for Raising Children Today
Speaker 2It was a pleasure, and I know there's a lot more of your research and wisdom. I'd like to have you back on in the near future. Are you okay with that? Are you open to that? Oh, that'd be great, wonderful. Thank you, my friend, for being such an amazing guest and thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you, take care. Take care, my friend. Thank you everyone.
Speaker 2Please share this episode. Robert has so many years of wisdom and research and experience in this subject matter. Please pick up his book this Land of Strangers on Amazon and please share this episode with people you love and care for. Please rate and review us and smash that like button. But, most importantly, just sit down and listen to what Robert had to say today. This is groundbreaking stuff and it's crucial and necessary for the future of our children and grandchildren. I appreciate all of you. As you know, I'll talk to you all again in one week from now same time, same place. In the meantime, please get out there and strive to give and be your best. Please show love and respect to others and please live with intention and purpose Until next time.
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