Cellphones, Social Media, and Apps! Oh My!

I love to play a game with teens and adults called "Pull My Finger". The rules are simple, stand in a circle, put your left finger in the person next to you's open palm on your left side and let the person on your right (their left) put their finger in your other open palm. When I count to 3 and say go, they have to pull their finger out of the person's hand and grab the finger of the other person's that is in their other hand. (Easier to demonstrate than explain).

We play a few rounds and it usually comes along with a lot of laughter, shouts, and thankfully after about 15 years of playing, ZERO dislocated fingers!

The point of the game is to give them a real time experience of what we all go through every day of our lives, which is a fear of failure (don't let my finger get grabbed) and pressure to perform (gotta grab the finger in my hand).

We experience at school, in sports or other extra curricular activities, at home, at work, with our friends or significant others, and online.

Social media has quickly become a major factor in our mental health. There is a lot of research that shows that the more time you spend on social media, the higher levels of stress, depression and anxiety you can experience.

 We know that the designers of our cell phones and the apps we love did a ton of research to make sure they could make their products were as addictive as possible. I compare their strategies for early adoption / addiction to what the tobacco industry has done and continues to do to groom and garner new addicts.

In the spirit May being Mental Health Awareness Month, I wanted to share a resource we created to help us keep our cell phone and social media behavior in check. It's a simple guide to help teens and adults make the healthiest choices possible when it comes to digital engagement. Please click on the link below to download this amazing resource.

FTMO - Digital Responsibility Plan.pdf

Download PDF • 805KB

Also, here's a quick video that gives 10 tips for healthy cell phone behavior that we produced a few months ago.

It's a little different because I tapped into my Hip Hop roots for inspiration to create it.

Please watch, react, and if you like it, go ahead and share!