Studies showed digital addiction was affecting mental health but also causing a rise in the number of children with physical conditions like myopia, dry eye disease and rounded shoulders, spine and neck.<\/p>\n
Frances Russell \u2013 the clinical lead for Touchgrass youth service \u2013 said it was time New Zealand joined in.<\/p>\n
Touchgrass is a website and clinical service to help 13- to 24-year-olds and their families deal with addiction designed by young people and people with lived experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve decided to go across the board with screen addiction, gaming and gambling is what we\u2019re finding is that they co-exist a lot together.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite often, you\u2019re not just seeing one thing, you\u2019re seeing at least two across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell said they wanted to create a targeted option because clinicians often report they weren\u2019t specifically trained or funded to look at screen issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe interesting factor with it [screen addiction] is that there are often comorbidities [other mental health issues] that sit alongside both of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I guess the question is, is the mental health issue being perpetuated by the screen use or is it an existing mental health issue that needs to be treated by a mental health service?\u201d<\/p>\n
The service is described as a \u201cdigital gateway and website\u201d.<\/p>\n
The website starts off with digital self-help tools detailing ways to manage, includes a closed loop AI chatbot aimed at those in the early stages of dependence, and also offers clinical counselling and youth workers to help people face to face who might be in more acute stages.<\/p>\n
Russell said it was not a willpower problem, rather a design one.<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung people are not failing to resist screens. They\u2019re succeeding at being human in an environment that\u2019s deliberately engineered against them.\u201d<\/p>\n
But those screens are now causing physical health impacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the really frightening ones is the number of kids that we\u2019re now seeing with increased levels of myopia and dry eye disease, even like musculoskeletal problems relating to being on devices for long periods of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually becoming quite a broad ranging public health issue rather than just kind of mental health issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c…. I think that our brains were not really built to be on devices all of the time. And so for adults as well, this is a really challenging space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Addictions practitioner Justine Hamill agreed. She manages Red Door Recovery, a residential treatment centre for drugs and alcohol. People don\u2019t come for their screen use, but more often than not, it\u2019s part of the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a process addiction … something that we do often, but it\u2019s not necessarily as mind-altering or life-changing as the main presenting addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n
The main addiction is what takes them down, but the phone use is secondary.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe find that once they come in here and they\u2019ve given up their drugs and their alcohol, that then all of a sudden they\u2019re left with, \u2018oh my gosh, I have to sit here and feel my feelings\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so then they want to deflect from that by using devices or distracting or whatever to get away from themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said it was the same for people without serious substance addictions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re sitting with someone, say you have a friend or a partner or family member that every time you start a conversation, they\u2019re picking up their phone, or every time particularly uncomfortable conversations, or every time there\u2019s space, they have to divert their attention to their phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I guess it\u2019s a marker that there\u2019s an inability to sit with something and being curious about what that is, what\u2019s being avoided.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamill said no one was immune to digital addiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my favourite things to sit in a waiting room and look around the room and usually 99 per cent of people are just staring down at their phones.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what are we missing when our brain is always in this digital world?\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell said the programme was developed out of need as the age of children with addictions was getting younger.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re seeing screen addiction issues in kids around the age of 5.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also troublesome at the other end of life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith elderly people, we have a loneliness epidemic and we, in some respects, like screens are potentially, like potentially preventing them from actually wanting to get out in the world and being with other people.\u201d<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Studies showed digital addiction was affecting mental health but also causing a rise in the number of children…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":941035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[36],"tags":[1556,97257,12655,15654,46611,13977,16220,381,210,1622,517,635,9226,67,132,68,64497],"class_list":["post-941034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-addiction","tag-cellphone","tag-centre","tag-charlotte","tag-coming","tag-cook","tag-first","tag-for","tag-health","tag-is","tag-mental-health","tag-new","tag-treatment","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-zealands"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116935242968355088","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}