17 Jul Johann Hari launches Series Two of our digital detox podcast
Johann Hari opened Series 2 of our digital detox podcast: ‘Its Complicated‘ last week with a gripping interview on addiction, depression, and looking for connection in all the wrong places. Hari is a New York Times best-selling author and in both his books ‘Chasing the Scream’ and ‘Lost Connections’ he describes the phenomenon of the modern decline of human connection.
Hari’s TED talk, with over 20 million views, to date: “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong” expands on his view on the causes of addiction. It particularly illustrates how the so-called connections that we have formed online are severing the bonds that we had between us and our loved ones. Hari links this closely to loneliness and a lack of human fulfilment. He even draws the analogy in our podcast that “the relationship between social media and social life is a bit like the relationship between pornography and sex” in that the former is not designed to, and cannot, take the full place of the latter.
Hari was raised in an addiction-fuelled environment and as such has expertise in both substance and process addictions. He sees digital addictions in a similar light. In conversation with our founder Tanya Goodin, he questions the focus just on the technology in all of our debates on digital addiction. He suggests instead that we should examine the particular problems within our society and then the people who fall prey to addictions. Throughout the podcast, Hari discusses the natural human needs for connection and how to fulfil them, which may enable us to be able to become more resistant to the temptation of technology addiction. As well as emphasising the need for us to build our lives, not around values of external worth or “extrinsic value”, but rather around the values of service and community.
What’s next
We are incredibly excited about the rest of the guests that we’ll be showcasing on Series 2. As well as addiction experts such as Johann Hari, and social media influencers such as Vex King and Kaushal, we’ll be branching out this series and showcasing activists in the tech space who’ll be discussing their take on a whole host of issues relating to digital wellbeing and addiction. It was only this February that we launched our podcast to help people untangle their relationship with their phone, by opening up the conversation on both the positives and negatives (hence the title #ItsComplicated) of relationship with screens. Throughout the first and now the second series, we hope to inspire and motivate our listeners to reevaluate their screen use. As well as to take comfort from the fact that they are definitely not alone in their struggle to put down their phones!
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