How to Break Free from Screen Time Overload with Sumayyah Emeh-Edu

We spend a lot of time on screens these days, whether it's for work, social media, or just relaxing with a show. It's easy to lose track of time, and hours can pass before we know it. But how much is too much? What exactly is the impact on our health and daily lives? In this episode, I talk with Sumayyah Emeh-Edu, Founder of Embedded Consulting. We discuss the impacts of excessive screen time and social media on mental health and the importance of connecting with people around us. Sumayyah shares her struggles with social media and how she observed its impact on her friends and family. Tune in to hear her insights! --- Listen to the podcast here: How to Break Free from Screen Time Overload with Sumayyah Emeh-Edu Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. And, today, I want to talk to you about a topic that’s really near and dear to my heart, as in I know I have my own initiative around this, which is cutting down on people’s screen time. I think you’ve probably seen in the news that we do have a lot of problems associated with the excessive amount of time in front of screens and people come up with different numbers depending on which particular study you’re using or if you’re considering phones, TVs, computers, and everything as well, but, regardless, it seems out of control and anyone that’s old enough to remember the world before smartphones and everything took it over can remember a world where we spent a lot more time relating to each other in person as well as doing things not in front of some form of digital technology and it’s hard not to make a clear connection between that and a lot of the mental health and loneliness issues that we’re experiencing today. So, today, I’d like to bring on someone who is kind of taking on an initiative in the same vein, in the same realm, Sumayyah Emeh-Edu, the founder of Embedded Consulting LLC. --- Sumayyah, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen. Nice to be here. Yeah, thank you so much, and thank you so much for connecting because it’s always great to meet and connect with anyone else who’s kind of observed the same issue. So why don’t you start by telling me your story about kind of when you first started observing this whole issue, I think it was roughly maybe 15 years ago-ish that we all started in mass adopting these smartphones and excessive social media and the changes started to be visible in everyday life, regardless of whether or not you saw it as a problem. Yeah. So, I was on Myspace back in the day, 2008 I got onto Facebook, and I didn’t really see it as a problem. I was just like, “Wow, this is awesome.” There was a couple documentaries that came out around like 2014, 2015 that I had watched. There was also a lot of ethical folks and whistleblowers that were coming out of all of the big tech companies. And it was just information I digested but, like most people, I’m like, “Well, that does affect me,” and I would say a majority of my time was spent on Facebook. Twitter was always too fast and I wasn’t even on Instagram at that point, and I had already been a person who didn’t have, for instance, social media notifications in my email and on my phone because it just takes up space and I just hate my inbox just filled with a bunch of junk, but I had been in higher education most of my early career and then I made the transition into diversity, equity, and inclusion in 2015-ish, and it was just interesting because the election was going on, the first election with Trump, and it was a lot of negativity, a lot of just ridiculousness going on from a political perspective. And then, on top of it, I was doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work and I was deeply impacted when I would see injustices go viral or, unfortunately, the murder of a black man go viral, and so when I heard all of this thing about how social media is addictive, how it can impact your mood, and again, this was 10 years ago, so we have way more research now, but it really resonated with me because I just knew I was feeling it and it was like being described to me. And I think this is some of the first times too the tech executives were like, “Oh, I don’t let my kids watch social media or have a phone,” and I’m like, wait a second. So I did the social media diet back where I deleted the apps, primarily Facebook, and within a couple weeks, I noticed a huge difference. I just felt my life get better, especially because I do DEI work for a living, which is really heavy. I just didn’t want to be so engrossed every day and seeing trauma. So, my escapism was like, okay, I’m going to read more, I’m going to maybe watch TV more, and it’s also the time where I started, within a couple years of that, started dancing, Latin dancing. Oh, nice. Yeah. So, yeah, so that’s kind of my first time was 2015 right before that 2016 election and I was way more composed over the election and everything at that point. But it’s been a struggle. The past 10 years have been a struggle. I’ve gone through phases where I’m like in it and like I know I’m addicted, I know I’m like unregulated, and then I’ll delete the app and then I’ll maybe only use their browser or my computer or something, but that’s kind of where it all started in terms of my relationship with technology. And so you’ve noticed some differences between how you feel during those periods when you’re fully in it versus how you feel in those periods when you delete the app, when you’re doing some other things, more reading, more Latin dancing and stuff like that. Tell us a little bit about the difference between those feelings and what you observed? Yeah. So, I would say I observed it being an addiction for me, but also the people around me, like one of my best friends, in particular, I remember being really annoyed with her because she could never be present and she was always on her phone so I just got on my phone because she was on her phone, so we spent a lot of time not talking, and maybe we’d show and share, and I’m of an older generation, I’m 48 so this is when I was in my late 30s, I was going through this, and it would annoy me when I go out to like a bar or somewhere and everyone was on their phone, because I’m like, “Why are we here?” It was noticing how I felt and I felt is just like the constant, “Where’s my phone? Where’s my phone?” That’s one feeling of like always having to have my phone by me. I would definitely have some FOMO. I don’t think doom scrolling was a term back then, but –– No, not quite, but it was happening. Yeah. I would doom scroll and, again, because I was doing equity work, I would get really upset because I’m like, “Oh, the world, there’s just so many things that need to be fixed,” and it made me feel like I had to fix them and I was one of those people where I was like, oh, if I just go on and comment and make a smart comment, I’m going to help change people’s minds. And I was so let down when I couldn’t get through to people. I felt frustrated, I felt sad, I felt depressed. I didn’t know it was anxiousness, but I felt more anxiousness when I was online. And then the saddest part is, when you break the habit, is how many times I knew it was a habit because I would just open my phone and just look for the app because I forgot I deleted it and that’s when I was like, “Oh, gosh, this is an addiction,” and I wasn’t even as bad as like –– I’m sure I was like the average user. Yeah, yeah. There are plenty of people who are way worse. Yeah. I didn’t have all the notifications but I felt the weight of what it would do to me. Now that you’ve kind of observed those differences, when you go out into the world, into the real world, because social media has kind of rewired the way we interact with each other, as you were describing, can you spot a person who’s, as I like to refer to it, chronically online, versus someone who’s kind of made some progress toward having a more intentional relationship with this technology? Yeah. I see it all the time. I’m very hyper aware of it, even when I’m in a spurt where I’m not doing well, I’m still aware of what people are doing around me. I got so annoyed with online dating, for instance, and I just now learned, like a year ago, that 20 percent, I think, of social media accounts –– I mean, of dating sites are fake. Bots, yeah. Yeah, whether they’re bots or sex workers or just people trying to get your information, but I remember feeling really disconnected to people because I was like I think online dating is making me ambivalent about dating, because it’s like you get that initial rush of excitement because those first 70 people in one day that liked you, which are primarily bots, you get all this rush of excitement, and then you get let down because you’re like, “Why isn’t anybody getting back to me?” or, “Why aren’t they asking me any questions?” and on one of my many deleting the app and adding it back and delete, while I deleted, I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna try to meet people in person,” like on the train, because I live in the Bay Area, like on the BART train, on events, and I became acutely aware at how addicted people were from their phones because I made a conscious effort to try to just talk to people in person, especially men, and it was hard because no one has eye contact. No one even notices if you come sit by them. They just don’t even notice someone sitting by them. They’re just glued into that phone the whole time, right? Yeah, yeah. So their eyes are on the phone, they’re distracted. There’s no more idle chat. So, yeah, I really was acutely aware of it and it just strengthened my resolve. But, again, it’s not perfect. As much as I’m saying that, I still have –– I have an app on my phone right now because of business stuff, but it’s a constant battle....