Brain Rot: What Screens Are Doing to Our Minds (1)

Summary

Led by Dr. Karyne Messina, a psychologist, psychoanalyst, author and host of NBN’s “New Books in Psychology” and “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Racism in America,” this podcast covers the effects of too much screen time. Dr. Messina talks about this topic with Dr. Harry Gill, a renown psychiatrist who also has a PhD. in neuroscience. They discuss one of the greatest difficulties they see in their child, adolescent and adult patients who contend with way too much screen time, the all-encompassing phenomenon of ceaseless digital interactions that occur on various devices, over an array of social media platforms, and through multi-player online gaming. They contend that because we are bombarded with constant stimulation which causes us to be more distant and isolated from each other, various individual tragedies, addictions, and hollowed-out interpersonal lives are becoming commonplace in our world today. In addition, they talk about the fact that misinformation is spreading at a rapid pace while social structures are breaking down on a global scale. Their hope is to provide information that will help limit screen time for our listener and their family members.

They talk about this problem from a neuroscience and a psychoanalytic perspective focusing on Erik Erickson’s eight stages of development.

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Karyne Messina

Karyne Messina is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. She is the author of Resurgence of Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022), "Barbie and the Great American Identity Crisis: The Unfortunate Reality of a Nation Plagued by Racism, Patriarchy, and Stark Hypocrisy (PI Press, April 2024) and the forthcoming "A Psychoanalytic Study of Political Leadership in the United States and Russia" (Routledge, May 2024).

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