Erica: Welcome to the Executive Function Brain trainer podcast. I'm Dr. Erica Warren.
Darius: And I'm Darius Namdaran and we're your hosts.
Erica: Darius, great to see you.
Darius: Great to see you again, Erika.
Erica: Yes. And I'm excited about this topic of, is scrolling hijacking your executive functioning?
Darius: Yeah. Or you could call it doom scrolling. It depends on, how you think about it. I know a lot of young people and people call it doom scrolling. When you get caught in that scrolling trap and you feel like you're doomed to stay in that scrolling loop forever.
Erica: Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's something that a lot of people are concerned about. I know in my practice a lot of parents are concerned about their children scrolling too much. Even adults say that they're concerned with the kind of addictive nature of scrolling and how it can be a black hole. But I'd love to talk about how it specifically affects executive functioning and thought that maybe we could start off with working memory. How could scrolling impact working memory? So our working memory really is an opportunity for us to process to some extent. Right. We're processing a little bit the information so that we can encode it into long term memory. What I'm finding is with scrolling it's not giving you the processing time to be able to place things into long term memory. And so a lot of people that, that truly are scrolling with no pauses or, and without taking notes, they might have these little dopamine hits like, oh, that's a cool idea or that's really interesting. But they don't have the time to be able to encode it so that it's useful beyond the moment. What are your thoughts on that?
Darius: Yeah, so like, I think it's useful to think about for those who haven't really talked about working memory very much. It's like working memory is a part of short-term memory. So you've got your memory, you've got working memory, short term memory, long term memory. The division between them is not aligned. But there are key differences between working memory and your memory. Working memory is very temporary and it's kind of like the, the lobby of your mind. If something gets accepted or rejected, that's the place it gets accepted or rejected. And if it gets rejected, it gets deleted and it's gone. It's as if you've never experienced it. It's just basically deleted. And so what you're basically saying is this working memory is this temporary holding place for that information if it doesn't go somewhere and your brain doesn't decide that's important, I'm going to put it somewhere. It just gets deleted. However, the experience of it doesn't necessarily get deleted. I imagine if you're scrolling through something, you see something, oh, that's great. Or whatever, you still feel it, you still have that moment or whatever that has that dopamine effect or whatever. But the actual content hasn't been placed on a shelf in your memory and so it's gone and deleted. So that's the context, isn't it, in terms of neuroscience that we're talking about.
Erica: Well, and you know, there are these tools within working memory where we can keep information alive in working m memory and that is our inner voice visualization and spatialization. Spatialization is imagining yourself moving through space. So all of these enable you to keep it in working memory so that you can work with it before you encode it into long term memory. So it's a little different than short term memory. Goes through short term memory into this workspace sketchpad kind of mind map. Maybe a, ah, mind map would be spatial. Right. Your inner space would be verbal, and visualization would be more of the visual spatial sketchpad. So we do have these tools for working with the information in our working memory. Like our stage.
Darius: Right, it's the stage. And was it. Bradley calls it the phonological, loop and the visual spatial loop.
Erica: Visual spatial sketchpad.
Darius: Yeah. And so. But the phonological loop is like a loop as well, isn't it? Yeah, it's like saying it over and over to yourself until it finds itself.
Erica: That's one way to do it. And isn't if you want to memorize your phone number sometimes. Like when I was a little kid, I still remember my mine because I spent a whole day using my phonological loop to just say it over and over and over and over again in my head.
Darius: Yeah. And your working memory is kind of using these loops, temporarily spinning it in that stage, as it were, until it's like juggling it in that temporary space and you're like
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Darius: juggling three balls until you decide to put one ball down and you pick up another one. And so it's rapid and there is this phonological loop happening and this visual spatial loop happening as well.
Erica: And he calls it the episodic buffer, which I like, you know. Cause it's like it's an episode and
Darius: it's that buffering and it's like that spinning buffering where you're holding it and it's bouncing around and it's not just static I think that's the key point here. I think sometimes it's easy to think it's just sitting there, but it's a very dynamic environment in that microsecond of working memory.
Erica: And the more active you can be with the information by attaching it to prior knowledge or coming up with memory strategies, then you can consciously encode information. And this is where I'm talking about with scrolling. Scrolling is so rapid that you don't really have the time to utilize all of the tools in working memory. Now technically you could, but you would have to pause the scrolling. You would have to be mindful of the scrolling. But I find that even if I wanted to take notes or screenshots, everything is moving so fast that it's hard to, it's processing for me too fast. but we'll talk about that later. Some things that I know, we're going to have some recommendations of how to make scrolling, how they could change the algorithm of scrolling to make it more beneficial for the brain.
Darius: Well, one of the things I did a while back, a year and a half ago, when I really switched on to Apple Notes, it might be three years now, was I would tell myself, if I'm going to scroll for half an hour, why don't you find the best video as you're going along and just share it to Apple Notes? And there's this great function in when you click share, you can see a video, any video you've got on YouTube, TikTok, X, whatever, there's always a share function because they always want you to share it. And so you click share and you can share it to your notes. it could be notion, it could be Obsidian, it could be wherever, but I used Apple Notes and I would just share it to Apple Notes. And the reason why I liked Apple Notes was that my unconscious mind knew I could find it. And I think that's the important thing for your brain and your working memory is if your brain knows that it can find that, information and it's actually saved not just in its memory, like using those memory tools and mnemonics and so on, the brain knows, oh, that's saved, I can let it go. But it also knows, oh, that's in Apple Notes. I know I can just scroll through that quite quickly and find it that I can let go.
Erica: But then you're not scrolling anymore, you've actually stopped scrolling, right? So if you are truly scrolling and you're not stopping, so what you do is very different. This is what I wanted to talk about later. But let's talk about it now. Mindful scrolling. Mindful scrolling is where you decide whether this is, useful information or not. Then you can pause it and you can save it if it's useful. So I think that's a great way of making scrolling better for working memory. I think it's a great strategy.
Darius: It is a great strategy. But your kind of glorifying it a little bit. It's not that mindful. It's. So if I was thinking about me doom scrolling, which I do sometimes I'm scrolling and I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling and I'm like, oh, yeah, watching, watching. Oh, that's quite interesting. My sister will like that, my wife will like that, my daughter will like that. Or I'll use that for work or that's a good tip. in that moment I hit share Apple notes. Carry on scrolling. And so that it's not a huge pause, but it's a very short pause, ironically short enough for me to stay in the flow of the doom scroll. And so for me, I don't want to, when I'm in that flow, actually want to get out of that flow because I'm quite enjoying it. And then I hit that share button to save it. but that makes me try and get something valuable out of it.
Erica: Right. All right, so we won't call it mindful, but it's definitely somewhere it's more mindful than pure doom scrolling.
Darius: Well, it's more meta executive function, isn't it?
Erica: Right? You are using, you're using that, you're using your executive functioning. But a lot of people when they scroll, they're m a little bit more mindless. They're just literally scrolling for the act of scrolling. And they're letting it all go, you know, and they're getting these mini dopamine hits. And then sometimes there's some regret, like, oh, I wish I'd saved that. I've had that happen before. Like
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Erica: Like I wish I saved it.
Darius: But anyway, it's interesting you said, regret, because I think a lot of people regret that they just lost an hour of their time to getting caught in that loop. And X is quite clever in their mission statement in that it's maximizing unregretted user minutes. And social media is really trying to just maximize user minutes. X is trying to maximize unregretted user minutes. And I think that's in a way what should be our mission as well if we're going to use it to maximize unregretted user minutes.
Erica: I think that makes a lot of sense. Again, that's kind of a mindful approach to scrolling. So let's go on to inhibitory control. How can scrolling hijack inhibitory control? And inhibitory control is really attention. Right. Your ability to inhibit things and be able to focus. It also has to do with metacognition, thinking about your thinking and even emotional regulation. So, you know, scrolling definitely, is always pulling you forward, pulling you to the next image, the next video, the next saying. You know, it's feeding you information at a pretty rapid pace. And so there's not going to be a lot of maintenance of attention. There's going to be a lot of split attention. And it's interesting, I was talking to a good friend of mine. I feel like anytime. I haven't scrolled many times in my life, but when I have, I feel like I know what it's like to have attention deficit disorder. Because it's just like I feel like my attention is going in so many different directions.
Darius: Yeah, yeah.
Erica: But I want to.
Darius: Well, I spend a lot of time scrolling. So you're the other end of the spectrum in terms of scrolling. You keep away from it a lot. I don't. I no longer do Facebook much or Instagram and so on. I'm very much YouTube and X. And I chose X because it is a little bit more of a thoughtful platform depending on what you choose to look at, rather than pure entertainment, et cetera. Anyway, the point is, inhibitor control is really about controlling your attention, what you're paying attention to. And inhibitor control is the ability to control and inhibit your attention. So basically block things out so you can focus your attention. It's like zooming in a camera. Camera is wide, angled and has attention to everything, but it decides to zoom in onto a particular frame. Focus in on that. Yes. And it's inhibiting everything else round about it by that lens zooming in. And another way of thinking about it is, I said that to my daughter. It's about mute and zoom. Try and mute sounds and distractions round about you and zoom in onto what you find important. Because there are lots of things in this world that are trying to say they are important. Please pay attention to me. And our goal as human beings who are exercising our executive function are saying, what's important to me is X, Y or Z. And in the whole Alphabet of 26 A to Z, we have to mute all the other letters of 23 letters and focus in on X, Y and Z. Whereas the doom scrolling is capturing our attention and leading our attention.
Erica: Right, right, right. So we have given up control. So we don't have executive functioning control over what we are receiving. We're kind of these passive watchers of what it decides to give us. But I know you and I have also talked in the past that we can bring in some metacognition if we choose to pause it, maybe process, maybe share, maybe take a note about it, you know, so we can bring in a little bit more control by using, you know, using our metacognition to say, like, ooh, all right, I'm going to pause this. I want to think about that. That's kind of cool. Or let me save that. And where can I put that where I can access that again? But again, it's not really what scrolling is made for, but I think we can make scrolling more useful. We're basically saying stop scrolling for a moment
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Erica: and take control for a moment and then decide whether you want to go back to scrolling again. Because really what you're doing is you're saying you're using scrolling to search for nuggets, golden nuggets of information, but you want to. If you capture them, you are taking control of your attention again, and you're using your metacognition. So there are ways to do it. But pure scrolling is really, giving it up. You are hijacking your executive functioning when you are fully scrolling without capturing or thinking about anything.
Darius: Well, another way of saying is you're disengaging your executive function, or you're giving it away.
Erica: You're giving your.
Darius: Someone else is controlling. There's no inhibitor control. They are controlling it for you with the algorithm.
Erica: That's right.
Darius: What was our question in the pod here?
Erica: Is scrolling hijacking your executive functioning?
Darius: interesting. Is it hijacking your executive functioning? It's definitely wanting to hijack your inhibitory control.
Erica: Right. And your attention.
Darius: Yeah, because your attention is all about inhibitory control, what you pay attention to.
Erica: Well, and we've decided that it can get in the way of working memory. It can take control of your attention. It can definitely, if you're in a pure scroll block, it, could block metacognition. But let's see. What about cognitive flexibility? That's an interesting one. It depends, because some algorithms give you more of what you want, which isn't necessarily nurturing cognitive flexibility. But it all depends. I mean, you can also start.
Darius: What do you mean some algorithms? All algorithms give you more of what you want.
Erica: Okay, all right. So then. But you could choose, like, I can choose an opposing thing on, YouTube. You know, I could choose something that completely opposes, just to see what's out there. So I think that you know. But yes, it doesn't really nurture cognitive flexibility.
Darius: So what we're saying is scrolling on its own as its default overwhelms working memory, hijacks inhibitory control by taking control of your attention, and actually promotes cognitive inflexibility by creating an echo chamber of you just hearing what you're used to hearing, and that's it. So I think that would be a fair assessment of the default nature of how scrolling works. And in many ways, you could say, often life itself is doing all of those three things as well in its own way.
Erica: And we are too, because we tend to live in our patterns.
Darius: We do.
Erica: We tend to just go on automatic pilot at more than 90% of the day.
Darius: Yes. So in many ways, social media is like an amplification and a distillation of some of these other things that we do on a lower level. So there might be lots of things in our lives that are overwhelming our working memory, and we're not actually remembering things and putting them in the right place. We talked about that a lot in the pod. There are things that are competing for our attention and pulling our attention left, right and center, and we're not exercising inhibitory control. And then cognitive flexibility is like, just don't tell me anything different. I don't have the head space for it, and I'm feeling inflexible. I'm emotionally dysregulated right now or whatever, you know, and so you get stuck in this and basically scrolling. Ah, social media and short clips. Doom. Scrolling is the key; is the short clips is hijacking that in a way that human. It's hijacking a number of things. The dopamine system, you know, that is already there and is already functioning, and it's hijacking it in that it's an existing system, it's an existing process, just like working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, all existing processes. And it's just locking into that and then taking over that loop.
Erica: right. It becomes addictive.
Darius: Yes, yes. So what's the answer?
Erica: Well, you know, I think, before we even go to an answer, I want to be cognitively flexible. And I want to say, could this be helpful for some people? Say somebody has a very slow processing speed, and they need to be doing exercises
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Erica: that speed up their purely processing speed just to see if they can keep up with things. That's an interesting thought. Particularly if someone had a head injury.
Darius: Right? Yeah. It's a bit, niche and oblique.
Erica: It is.
Darius: Maybe if we make it more general in that sometimes I'm thinking from a dyslexia point of view in terms of processing.
Erica: Right.
Darius: You know how we talk with dyslexia; you need multiple repetitions of certain things. There is one great thing about doom scrolling is that you hear the same thing repeated over and over and over again.
Erica: Very interesting.
Darius: From different angles until it sinks in.
Erica: Wow. What if education used it? So having like little educational clips or you were learning your multiplication tables and you kind of almost turned it into doom scrolling. I mean, you know, that's kind of funny, right? Isn't that flashcards?
Darius: It is flashcards and I think that that's the beauty. Flashcards is probably the educational equivalent of doom scrolling.
Erica: I think you're right. And in fact I'm not a fan of flashcards because it's rote, rote memorization. And for some people that works. But for many people, particularly those with dyslexia, it doesn't work. It doesn't work for me. What I need to do is I need to be mindful; I need to make connections. I need to do memory strategies. I need to work my working memory. I need to consciously encode information so that I can consciously retrieve that information.
Darius: Yeah, I'm the same. I find flashcards really, really hard, I think, because they constantly disconnect me from the context of that bit of information. So what I ended up doing, inventing something called flash maps where I taught my students. Okay. Instead of doing flashcards.
Darius: Let's say we've got a body of information and there's maybe 25 pieces, core pieces of information. You might have 25 flashcards for each. One for each. Okay. So you've got a stack of 25 flashcards. What if you could have one mind map with all those 25 elements on it and you have one flash map. So what you're doing is not just learning that one atomic piece of information, you're remembering the structure that. What do you call it in psychology? Not spatial. When you've got frame of reference, a grid, not the big picture, there's a formal term for it.
Erica: You introduced me to simultaneous processing.
Darius: No, it's schema. It's a schema. Do you know what a mental schema. And the researchers discovered that a schema
Erica: M is like a mind map. It's using your visual spatial sketchpad. It's the Spatial piece, yes. Spatialization, yes.
Darius: And what researchers found was that people didn't remember on its own, elements on its own, they had to fit it into a schema, not just a random schema. And a schema has some order to it, there's some pattern to it, there's a framework to it, et cetera.
Erica: Right, you're putting the information into a framework, a lattice.
Darius: Yes, yes.
Erica: So that it has a place.
Darius: Yeah, absolutely. And so these maps became for me and my students something that they would flash, and we'd literally take a piece of paper out and just redraw a map in 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, really scrappy scribbles and so on. But they knew that scribble represented the neat map over here and so on. And so basically, they're reinforcing in a flash that connection and that meaning. So what's happening with the doom scrolling is you're getting repeated information reinforced so there's that processing. But this schema is not necessarily being built up. But what is, what schema is being built up, is the algorithm Erica.
Erica: But it might, for some people, they, some people might be able to take all that information and put it into a schema.
Darius: They might be if they intentionally do it or they're, they're really doing it in their brain. I find it very hard to create a schema in my brain just straight up, just in my brain. I don't have enough work to do. Some people can. I don't have enough working memory to hold things and move them across my brain. I have to draw it out and once I've got that schema I can see it, then it goes into my long-term memory, and I can really lock into it.
Erica: So it's part of the visual but it's also part of the tactile.
Darius: That feeling, feeling the spatial, the color, the movements, the icons, the key words,
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Darius: all of these are elements in a
Erica: mind map which it's multiprocessing.
Darius: Utilize all sorts of different key elements in the way a brain functions optimally.
Erica: That's right. So you're using visual, you're using simultaneous processing, you're using sequential processing, you're using visual processing. If you're talking about it, you're using verbal processing. If you're listening to other people talk about, it's auditory processing, if you're working with others, it's interactive. And the more processing areas we employ the easier it is to encode information. And of course when your doom scrolling you tend to be Kind of passive in the backseat, just receiving information. But are there any benefits? Are there any benefits?
Darius: Yes. So I think there is benefits in terms of repetition, you know, that rapid, for some people, type repetition, you know, so I hear it, I see it, I, move on, I hear it, I see it, I move on. So those are benefits. But I think the biggest. There are without doubt huge benefits to society that have come from social media. I know it's a very controversial thing to say because it's easier to jump on that it's terrible for everyone and so on bandwagon.
Erica: But nothing is completely terrible.
Darius: There's another side, I think, about the amount of people who have become aware of dyslexia through Facebook groups and social media and aware of ADHD and the way their brains work and they're no longer, being gatekept by professionals.
Erica: People that are painfully lonely or have really poor social skills or may even have some kind of physical disability where they don't look attractive. You know, it can be an opening to be able to connect with other people, to be able to see what's going on in the world so that you're not completely isolated. So, yeah, I mean, there are some benefits to it. you know, I think that the key is that the more we can be mindful of using it and really think about what you want to achieve before you go into it. Is there something specific you're looking for? And, yeah, and taking those moments that when you find something to share it or to. Because even when you share it, you're now making it social and you're going to talk about it, you're going to, you know, or putting it into Apple Notes where you can access it later. So I definitely think there are ways to use it where you're not completely allowing it to hijack your executive functioning, but you're giving it intermittent control to allow you to process, perhaps, or maybe find new information, new ideas. If you are mindful enough to go outside of your algorithm and bring in some, you know, spice it up a bit, ask for something that you wouldn't normally ask for, just to see the other side.
Darius: Yeah, and I think this is where you're talking about being the executive of your life. Yeah, and we're really talking essentially about executive functions. Like to get anything done in life, you need to exercise your executive function. And it doesn't just happen. We don't just become the executive of our life, of our family, of our business, of our work, of whatever part of our life is, or of Our TV schedule or whatever, you know, we have to exercise and, become that executive. And that's why executive functions are really very important, because they are the thing that chooses what we want to do in life and what we pay attention to. It's that exercising executive function uses your working memory to choose what's important to remember and save and what needs to be deleted. It powers our attention and focuses it, and it uses our cognitive flexibility to be inflexible sometimes and to be flexible other times. It's both, you know, and it's that, adaptiveness. So capture, focus, and adapt are, the three main things that I think of executive functions as how I capture, how I focus and how I adapt. We need to exercise that. And that includes doom scrolling.
Erica: That makes me laugh because I hear you and I hear that that works for you, but it doesn't work for me. And that's why I love our podcast, because we agree to disagree and it's, beautiful, because, you know, for me, that makes me laugh because it doesn't work. Doesn't work for me. You know, I would rather get my information in a different way.
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Erica: Now, if I could affect the algorithm, if I could turn down the speed, if they gave me these kind of levers, dials, that would allow me to say, okay, you could have this much control over my working memory, this much control over. My inhibitory control, this much control over. I put really high on the cognitive flexibility because I'm, I love, I love. And that's why I love this podcast with you, because we have a lot of, very different views, but I find that enriching. Yes, I find that exciting.
Darius: Me too. Me too. I learn a lot from you, and I think you learn a lot from me. And we change as a result. And I think we do have the ability to control the algorithm. Now, I think ideally, we as humanity need to have completely published algorithms so we know exactly what Facebook's algorithm is, Instagram's, all the rest of it, so that we can see what they're doing and how they're getting it to us. And okay, it might not be us individually, but all the computer geeks out there will be analyzing and working it out and then communicating it to us and so forth. And that transparency and bring it into the sunlight means that it starts to get disinfected. Now, I know that X has published its algorithm, and it's the only social media platform to publish its entire algorithm, and it's also publishing its entire code base so that people can examine how it's making decisions from a code point of view as well. And so there's transparency. And I think we need to get to the point where we can actually borrow someone else's algorithm. So, like, if I wanted to see the world through your eyes for a bit, Erica, I could borrow your algorithm if I wanted to see the world through another person, an influencer's eyes, you know, how would.
Erica: That's cool. Because if you want. If you want good employees, how great would it be to be able to share your algorithm? And then they would know how to work for you, how to accommodate you, how to please you. Although, that's a little weird, too. It's all a little weird.
Darius: Well, it's not about how to please you. It's about understanding perspectives. You know, it's like once you start to see how a person sees the world, right, you can start understanding them more. And so I think we'll end up in a world where people will publish algorithms. So handcrafted algorithms that are, a nice mix of X, Y or Z. You know, you might be into anime, you might be into a particular hobby. You know, it's kind of like having a playlist, but it's a dynamic playlist. Do you know what I mean?
Erica: Lovely. Yeah. Do you want to see Darius Namduran's doom scroll?
Darius: Yes. And the thing is, you can right now program your own algorithm, you know, so it was.
Erica: So we are going there. We are going there.
Darius: No, we're doing it now. Yeah. but you can't share it at the moment. So that's the thing I'm talking about. So there was this funny post on X, and this guy was complaining about, why is there. So somebody needs to take all this porn off X and all these naked pictures and so on. And then someone commented, hey, mate, there's none of that on, my algorithm. It just gives you more of what you've liked. And so, basically, so often that's a metaphor for. We often complain about, why is there so much of this and why is there this and why is there that? That's because you're paying attention to that, and it's giving you more of it. And then other people's algorithms don't have it in it, you know? And so what happens is you can take control of the algorithms around you. So, for example, if you like something like click, like, or love, then that's an indicator to the machine that you want more of that. If you share it or you save it, they like it that even more. So we'll give him more of that, plus other stuff that's close to it. And so it sort of cognitively flexibly stretches you just a little bit. And if you start liking that, it'll give you more and a little bit. TikTok's very good at that. Maybe too good. So you can use likes and you can also go in and click, I don't like this. Don't show me any more of this in the submenu. You know there's a submenu, don't show me this. And so you can aggressively go in and say no. And also is affected by who you follow, who you interact with, who you make comments
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Darius: on. All of these are indicators of what you want more of and you're in control of that.
Erica: That's right. You just have to have to think, do I really want to like this?
Darius: Yes.
Erica: Yeah, that's good information. Wow. This has been a fascinating discussion
Darius: sponsored by ivvi. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. Well, try ivvi for free now at ivvi.app. that's ivvi.app.
Erica: sponsored by learningspecialistscourses.com courses and resources that support educators and coaches.
Darius: And I think we've not talked about children very much, you know, and I think.
Erica: Should we dip into that for a moment?
Darius: Yeah. Because in many ways it as we're talking about being the executive of your life. Okay. And as adults, that is our responsibility. And then as parents, it's also our responsibility to be executive of our family and also the executive of our children, especially when they're young, and then gradually to build up those executive functioning skills so they have the discernment to know in their working memory what they're seeing in their eyes, what they accept, what they reject, what they let in, what they don't let in, et cetera, including people and circumstances. You know, these are all decisions. What they pay attention to, what they don't pay attention to, what they. Where they'll be adaptive and when they. When won't adapt, you know, where the hard boundaries, et cetera. Because cognitive flexibility isn't just about, oh, yeah, just, yeah, accept everything and yeah, everything's fine. No boundaries, et cetera. No, we need boundaries. And so there's this journey with children where they're actually being taught how to take control of their own lives and build up that ability.
Erica: They can be taught. And I, don't think they're always taught. I mean, I think personally I Think we should start this in elementary school?
Darius: Well, I'm saying they should be taught. I mean, I'm saying as parents, that is our responsibility, whether we do that responsibility or not. But it is our responsibility as parents to raise our children up, to be able to be effective contributors in this world. Responsible citizens, independent learners, you know, and all of that involves executive functions at some level or another.
Erica: It does. And I do think that if we can be more explicit about. And go. Because what you were talking about with higher level executive functioning, if we could be explicit about even the working memory and the inhibitory control and the cognitive flexibility and using those words and getting them comfortable with those words. That's the work that I do. I do. I'm an executive functioning coach and that's what I do with children and that's what I even do with their parents. we do a lot of very explicit. I like my students to know what working memory is. and I want them to know about the tools, and I teach them how to use the tools and. Yeah, and they can. A lot of people don't think you can control attention. Well, yes, you can. You just have to learn how to do that. You don't, you don't always have to go on medication. You don't have to externalize everything. You can kind of decide to be the executive of your own brain. Executive functioning is a functioning executive. And you can teach your kids metacognition simply by thinking out loud.
Erica: You can teach them to use the inner voice by using your inner voice, by making your outer voice. You can teach them how to visualize by asking them questions. What did you see when we read that passage?
Darius: Yes. And that can be related to our doom. Scrolling. So for example, I'm just thinking through how as a parent would I help a young person become the executive and take control of their algorithm?
Erica: Okay, interesting.
Darius: So there's a few ways, you know, you as a parent can go in there and start putting clear boundaries in, in terms of what's allowed within parental controls, what sites they're allowed to or what channels or subscriptions, etc. There's all sorts of ways of, sort of taking control of the algorithm, you know, the boundaries of it, et cetera. Like you're only allowed to watch videos on YouTube from these three people you subscribe to. And that's it. Nothing else. You know, so there's all sorts of ways to do it. I'm not in that world, so I don't know the tech itself, but, but there's ways to do that. But then once they're
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Darius: doing it and they're watching it; how do you get them to start to do these better practices of training the algorithm to give them what is unregretted or high value M minutes of engagement. And I think that comes down to discussing, you know, what they've watched in the doom scroll, for example, scrolling. I would. If I, if it was me and I knew what I knew. Now, I don't know how I would do it, but I'd get to a point where I would say, you've just watched half an hour of, you know, YouTube videos. Scroll through half an hour, show me the one you. You like the most. And I kind of like, well, no, not even. What do you learn? Show me the video you like the most. And what that's doing is. It's like, oh, I can't remember. I just watched them. All right, here's a rule I'm going to put in place. I would like to see what video you like the most. You know? Well, you know, as you grow up, Billy, you know, I need to do this myself. I can get lost in all this good information, and if it's valuable and it's a, a video about Minecraft and a certain technique, instead of just listening to it and saying, oh, that was good, now remember it, you'll forget. So just save it. And then you can go back to that. And then when you're on Minecraft, you can watch the video again, go through that process and it'll be so much better. Wouldn't that be good? And Billy goes, yeah, that would be good. Actually, there was that thing that I forgot, and I would like to see that again, and I can't find it. Okay, well, just click save. And every once in a while, I'll ask you, Billy, what sort of YouTube video did you say from the last YouTube session? Here it is, dad. You know, I watched this one. You know, they made this bridge here and they did this and so on. Oh, that's really interesting. That's great. You know, and so what you're doing is you're. You're creating this metacognitive executive slowly, where you're saying, right, I'm going to decide what's important, I'm going to save what's important, I'm going to direct it. And every time they do that, it automatically trains their algorithm to give them the better stuff that they've just saved. Do you see what I mean?
Erica: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even teaching them that, they have these other controls that if they get. They're getting stuff that they don't want to see, that they can report that, and that'll help to shift the algorithm back into something that's more pleasurable.
Darius: And that's a really interesting point, because if you can build up that sort of relationship with your child where it's not all just done in their own hidden account, you know, students in the past and young people who have seen stuff that's disturbed them, you know, and they've come up and told me and I've gone, oh, that, that's not right, you know, and you can correct it. You can show them how to stop that happening, or other children are doing something like that. And also in that moment, you can help them process the emotional responses to some of this. And emotional regulation is part of executive function.
Erica: Yeah, it's right under inhibitory control.
Darius: Yeah. And I think the one thing that was the biggest for me is we said to our children, we have full control. We can go into any one of your accounts and look through your history. So we've got your password and you keep your history. And at any point we want, we can go through and read your texts and read your stuff. Oh, but no, it's private and so on. It'll be private when you're 16. Until then, it's not private. I'm your parent until then. I need to pay attention to all of that and be responsible for of that. That is my responsibility. I'm going to keep that responsibility. And that's the only way you're going to have an account. What do you want? If you don't want me looking through your messages and so on, that's fine. You don't need to have the messages. We'll just remove that and you're okay, you can have that. But if you want the messages, I need to be there as oversight as well, just in case. And it's that sort of thing that can literally save your child's life.
Erica: Yes, it can.
Darius: You know, like, you can go through, find suicidal messages, identify it, deal with it, help them get through it. And that's all part of executive function. And sometimes you need someone there who is the executive of the executive, the little budding manager of their life. Growing up to being an executive, they need to go through those stages. So I think scrolling is no exception. And there are gentle ways to do it and also clear boundaries to help with that too. You could scroll through their history, and they're saved and so on, and see what it's like. And then Talk through them. Why are you watching so many of these
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Darius: particular videos? Is there a reason? Oh, I don't know, they just shows me, it. Okay, well do you want to watch more of those? Not really. I don't like them. Well then why don't you like these other videos that you like more and save them and so on and then the algorithm will stop showing that stuff you don't want.
Erica: Right, but you even said that you can go in and say that I don't want to see this.
Darius: You can, yes. But the simpler way is to just click on what you do want to see. So instead of going through the process of this is wrong, stop this, stop that, just replace what's bad with what's good. Right.
Erica: That probably will feel better for a child because we have to be careful not to shame them.
Darius: Yeah. Ah, it's self-motivating. Do you really want to be watching that? Not really. Is there something else you like watching more? I prefer these ones. Well, like them, save them, show them to me, share them with me, send me a text message of them and then the algorithm learns that you really like them. Send me a WhatsApp and they're like, okay, dad. And my daughters, 26 still send me WhatsApp’s of silly clips that they think I might like or good clips they think I might like. And all this is actually quite healthy for the algorithm because it reinforces to the algorithm what you want. So that's my take on, doom scrolling. I'm not against it; I'm for controlling it.
Erica: I think that sounds great. Yeah. And I guess for me it's not really something for me, but I can see some. I suppose there could be some value in there if you're really searching for certain things. And I guess it's a matter of really again taking control, being mindful of what you're watching.
Darius: Yeah. And it changes depending on the platform as well. I think that's partly why I've gone away from Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and moved more towards YouTube and X. YouTube is much more practical, hands on, how to thoughtful on the whole. For me that's my algorithm. Very practical, et cetera. Of course there's loads of other stuff on there and then X as well. More news, more information, more about AI and coding and all sorts of stuff to do with my business, et cetera. So the platform also influences the algorithm, what you're going to see.
Erica: Yeah, yeah. Well, I think this is a really great episode. I think it's going to be really Helpful for people, because I think there are a lot of concerns about scrolling and doom scrolling, and I think we've been very explicit about how it impacts executive functioning and how you can make it more useful and take a little bit more control over it.
Darius: Could I say you could maybe hijack the doom scroll?
Erica: Hijack, yeah.
Darius: Okay, so the question was, is doom scrolling hijacking your executive function?
Erica: Right.
Darius: Yes. By default, use your executive function to hijack doom scrolling.
Erica: That's right.
Darius: That's the ideal. But it is very powerful, and often our executive function isn't up to it.
Erica: That's right. Because we're usually scrolling when we're spent at the end of the day or whatever.
Darius: Yes, that's right. You're switching off, and that's okay. Isn't that okay? Sometimes you just need to switch off, and you use it to switch off, but sometimes you can just stay switched off and you want to switch back on. And when you switch back on, that's you being the executive. So maybe set a timer and just shake yourself out of it.
Erica: Yeah, well, I think it depends on your personality. Some people have very addictive personality personalities, and they're addicted to it in a bad way.
Darius: Yes.
Erica: And some people get addicted to it in a healthier way. I mean, you could be addicted to exercise programs or recipes.
Darius: Golf.
Erica: I think that has to. Is that you, Darius?
Darius: I'm addicted to golf, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Erica: That's a fairly new addiction, too.
Darius: Very new one. It's, I've been playing now for 16 months since June last year. What's that? June, July, August, September 15th. No, 15 months. so I've been playing 15 months. I've gone from a 43 handicap to 17.5 handicap in. In that period of time, which basically means I'm, about an average golf player now to half decent, you know, so, yeah, congratulations. That's great. Fully addicted.
Erica: I know, I know. You really are very mindful about your golf.
Darius: Yes. Yeah. Very intentional. And actually, I've learned a lot through executive function about how
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Darius: to play golf, you know, through dyslexia. Because my dyslexia affects my golf and ADHD affects my golf, and I need to use executive function strategies, processing strategies to make golf work, because I tried it when I was 21 and it was a catastrophe. But now that I'm older and I know how my brain works and how I learn, my approach to learning golf is not your typical approach.
Erica: That's a whole other podcast.
Darius: It is. Well, until next time, Erica. Until, next time. I'm going to go and try hijacking the algorithm and the doom scrolling. And you're just going to avoid it?
Erica: Yeah, probably. Until next time. Bye. Sponsored by learningspecialistcourses.com Courses and resources that support educators and coaches.
Darius: Sponsored by ivvi. Imagine turning your meetings audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. Well, try ivvi for free now at ivvi.app. that's ivvi.app thank you for joining us at the Executive Function Brain Trainer podcast.
Erica: Check out our show notes for links and resources and follow us on social media.
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