And today we’re going to talk about a topic that comes up all the time, and that is the use of smartphones and technology in children from a Chinese medicine perspective.
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Hi, my name is Stephen Cowan and I’m happy to be presenting here today thanks to the American Acupuncture Council, very thankful that they have this opportunity, this platform. And I’m joined today by my dear friend and colleague, Moshe Heller, who teaches with me around the country on pediatrics and Chinese medicine.
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Hi, Moshe. Hello, Stephen. Nice to be here. Nice to see you again. And today we’re going to talk about a topic that comes up all the time, and that is the use of smartphones and technology in children from a Chinese medicine perspective. So let’s go to the first slide. This is an interesting question, and I believe that Chinese medicine is more than needles.
It’s a way of life and being modern practitioners for Chinese medicine and carrying that perspective, the understanding of Smartphones and tech, this powerful technology raises an interesting dialogue that Moshe and I have been having and parents ask about it, particularly with their teenagers, but I think it’s even more important to talk about it with babies all the way up.
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When is the right time to introduce a smartphone? What are the dangers, etc. Things like that. Yeah, that’s a, it’s a very big common questions. And I think one of the things that we have to understand as you mentioned here before is that we need to look at what, how can we translate what’s happening from a Chinese medicine perspective so we can help in balancing that and understand what we need to do in order to make it because Exactly.
Exactly. We can’t stop it from happening. No, the cat’s out of the bag, right? The Pandora’s box is open. You can’t make this go away. We all have smartphones. Parents are using smartphones. So it would be ridiculous to put your head in the sand and say I don’t believe in smartphones because they’re going to be here.
And there are all kinds of positives and negatives. It’s the obvious. Negatives that people know about are addiction, right? Exposure to dangerous things, pornography and violence and things that we don’t want. Bullying misinformation and, loneliness, right? These are the kind of five things that I think, We all fear when it comes to exposing young children.
Let’s go to the next slide and talk about a deeper level of Chinese medicine understanding our society. You can do the other one too. Yeah. So this idea of so much yang in our society at the expense of yin because the circle doesn’t change. If you got more yang, you got less yin. But in our case, we have both happening simultaneously.
Too much, too fast, and too little, too late. And one of the things, Moshe, you and I teach wherever we go, is the What we’ll call the sensitivity and openness of a child’s heart mind, right? This very a kind of gentle, open, innocent heart mind, body, way of consciousness that is absorbing the world.
And here we have this modern society. And I think that’s the first place we have to sensitize parents is understanding both the yin yang philosophy and understanding the nature of a child’s mind and body, right? That quality. They’re not, the classics say children are naturally more young. and more underdeveloped in their yin.
So if you add to that this sequence that we can, everybody can see here, so many things on this list of too much, too fast, that’s cumulative, that’s adding to the natural societal yang nature, right? And then couple it with too little connection, too little exercise, too little darkness, right?
You can leave lights on all night, right? Kids sleeping with lights on. Too little slow and quiet time, too little sleep, too little exposure to natural surroundings. That’s a kind of societal yin deficiency. And so it’s a lot of that stimulation. So it creates, supports that imbalance. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think your kids went to Waldorf school where they actually were very strong in holding off on screens and technology. And There’s one thing I want to just put out. There’s actually two things. One is that actually one of the things we need to think about is that looking at a screen, whether it’s an iPad or it’s a cell phone or it’s a TV, is, on one hand it really makes the feeling that the, or the parents have a feeling that it actually calms the child where the, suddenly there’s quiet, there’s nothing there’s no interaction.
They’re plugged in. But on the other hand, what is happening is all that energy goes inside and creates excessive or extreme stimulation. So it’s actually very similar to a stimulant. Oh, absolutely. And a hypnotic stimulant in that sense. But there’s another piece that’s a really good point you’re making.
As it’s going into the being, the child, there’s a natural feeding of the mind at the expense of body. So you’re creating a tension between the more yang head and the yin. body or lower part, right? So they’re not embodied. They’re so sucked into this technology because it’s so stimulating. that they’re transfixed, but it’s pulling them out of their embodiment, right?
So you’re getting this tension split of being disembodied and engaged, and it looks like he’s learning, or he loves it, or he’s, quiet for a chance, right? How many kids with ADD come to me And they say he has no problem paying attention when he’s on his video games or when he’s on his smartphone, right?
And that’s evidence of exactly what you’re saying. They’re being sucked into this very powerful technology that’s designed to capture your attention, right? There’s another component that when I mention ADD, I have seen over and over again what I call slow modem syndrome. The more you’re exposed to fast technology, The harder it is to go back to slower analog settings, like sitting in a classroom, because it’s like working on a slow modem.
You tear your hair out. You go crazy. It’s like, why isn’t this thing responding, right? And you’re being forced, after you’ve been playing for three hours on, Your screens on Roblox, on your phone, having to sit in the classroom becomes torturous, and there’s a lot of acting out behavior, distractibility, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and then they’re being medicated for that.
So yes, I think it, you’re absolutely right that if you were expecting the child to go back to the classroom after playing a video game, that seems, Extremely impossible. So one of the questions I will ask a kid when I play that out in front of the parents, I say, Let me ask you something.
Why would you want to make school more boring than it already is? And they look at me and they say, I don’t want to make it more boring than it already is. And I said the more you play Expose yourself to this technology. By default, it’s harder to go back and all of a sudden the light goes on with somebody in the family like, Oh my God, we’re actually contributing to the problem.
And so we’re opening up those ideas. Yeah, I have a question about that because I’ve been really struggling with this kind of problem that comes from exactly this point, is that I see that there’s a lot of bargaining with many of the kids that are, that the parents have an understanding that they cannot give them free use of screen time, that they will bargain and sometimes It’s almost like this kind of fighting between the parent and the child.
Oh, definitely. I see it. I earn more time, and and if you do this I see it all the time, and it’s being used as a reward or bribery, right? If you do your homework, you can do, two hours of this. I had one kid, the father was a techie, and really deep in, made a lot of money in the tech world.
And the kid He had set up these, rules, and it turned out the kid was cheating. He was a techie too and he had played nine hours of video games. And in one day and the father was like horrified, right? Nine hours where he was cheating, right? This particularly became a problem during the pandemic where kids were online for school and they were actually playing games or they were Look, I don’t want to demonize all of the screens.
They’re here to stay. It’s a way to make balance, which is what, That’s what Chinese medicine is about, finding that dynamic equilibrium of these two polar aspects of our engagement. The rule I use at home with people, with kids and families, is a one to one rule that I call the green to screen, ratio.
That for every minute that you’re on a screen in a day, You have to have equal number of minutes of time in an analog natural setting. That could be a walk in the park. It could be playing with blocks in your room, something that’s not plugged in to any electronics, right? And as long as you, because the time is limited in one day, you can’t bank the hours for later.
You It limits itself. And, so a kid who’s, I’ve had kids who said, all right, I just did two hours of exercise outside. Can I do some screens now? And I say, yeah, but there’s another rule, an hour before bed, because you don’t want to interfere with your melatonin levels. So an hour before bed, all screens are off in the house, including the parents.
They have to, Pretend to turn off their own addiction while the kids are going to sleep, because it’s not fair. And I’ll hear this over and over again if the parents don’t practice the same principle. The classic place where this is a problem is the dinner table. Screens at the dinner table, phones at the dinner table, and getting parents to break their own habits.
is critical, right? Yes, but there’s another thing that you mentioned in another talk We gave, Moshe, that is so dear to me and really important and that is when we’re asking the question of When is a good time to introduce a smartphone to a kid? Which is a big question I get asked. I think this idea that different kids have different Needs, different sensitivities, and you have to know the complexity of the temperament of a child.
For example, More fiery kids, where that phase, that element, is stronger in that kid, because we’re a complex of all of them. They’re more prone to addiction, because, I find a lot of fire kids just love scrolling through YouTubes and finding all kinds of wacky things that they can’t stop looking at, right?
Whereas, More of the woody kids are more prone to looking for pornography and violence and danger and, they’re just curious about it. I’m not blaming them. It’s part of their nature to be curious about those kind of things. Yes. Earth kids are more prone to the bullying that takes place in, in social media and to FOMO, fear of missing out, right?
They’re voyeuristic. They want to know, is anybody talking about me or are they including me? That’s a very earthy, spleeny way of thinking. So they’re vulnerable to that aspect. I think metal or gold kids are much more prone to misinformation because they’re collectors of information and data. And so they’re prone to get, coming up with the wackiest information, that we see that’s littered in the internet, some of it causing great fear and concern when it’s not even true. And then most, and probably most importantly, is the water temperament or the water within us all that is prone to alienation, aloneness, being cut off from the world because they’re so sucked in so deep.
So knowing the temperament of your child becomes a way of gauging age. When is that, knowing your kid and knowing how they’re developing and what are they prone to already helps guide you in terms of timing of introducing these things. Some people say There’s a movement in parents now called wait until 8th.
Wait until 8th, meaning 8th grade. Because waiting till puberty begins for a smartphone in particular, which is a full on computer that’s in your pocket, as opposed to what we’ll call a dumb phone, which you can use to call mom to pick you up from a basketball game or whatever. But smartphones are a very powerful computer that has access to the whole world.
So that’s one kind of global guideline. I don’t like global guidelines. I think it has to be fit to the needs of the family and the child specifically, but it’s something to think about. Yeah. And as you mentioned before, my daughter went to a Waldorf school where there’s a very strong anti media screen phone exposure till and they also talk about how to expose and the But their concern is mostly about The information that’s being you can be exposed to.
And that’s another, probably totally different talk. I find it interesting that your daughter, who’s a whiz at at IT now was someone who was not exposed early. So it doesn’t delay you in that, but in some kids, particularly in some kids, it makes it even more. enticing by restricting it.
So you have to know your child to know how you can go about doing this. Let’s go to the other, the next slide and talk about that. An important thing, I think to just also talk about that from Chinese medicine perspective, this kind of Excess energy that you mentioned that goes up to the mind being the heart shen can actually imbalance and create less fire in the lower part of the body, in the minstrel fire, and create what we might call now, in fire, right?
As we yeah, it literally, kids where their feet are cold, and their head is hot after playing these, being online for a long time, there’s a physical effect and the poor spleen gets caught in the middle, right? Which is already dealing with absorbing information in the form of food, in the form of exposure to information online.
And gets overwhelmed, right? And so it’s a setup for this quality that, Dongyuan Li Dongyuan talked about this Yin Fire mixed pattern which I think is contributing to a lot of the disorders I see both physically and mentally in children today. Yes, that that plays to another aspect, which is very interesting, I think, is that, A lot of times when we are thinking of balancing that, we should think of the Shaoyang level and Sanjiao gallbladder kind of level where it enables to shift back some of that excess top fire back down to the minstrel fire and create a Better balance with the spleen in the center.
Yeah, I you know, I talk a lot about san jiao as the Relationship organ of the body so that everybody’s relating to each other one big happy family and these the screen addiction of our society is a breakdown in those relationships. So always think of Sanjiao. Both Sanjiao points and Sanjiao concepts as part of the Xiaoyang as integral to the kind of integration of heart, mind, kidney, pericardium, this primary, uh, yin yang relationship.
And in terms of any kid that comes into your office who’s having trouble relating, whether they’re relating to friends, relating to family, relating to the school work, relating to food, whatever, anytime you think relationship, think Sanjiao. And of course, gallbladder being one of the kind of special organs.
this unique, powerful organ that, is kind of part of the extraordinary organs related to mind. So I do, you’re right. It’s really important that we have this concept in our mind when we see the effect of early exposure to powerful technological advances will hit this complex and cause a kind of upside down pattern of yin and yang.
Correct. And, I also have been noticing that one of the a lot of, one, one symptom that I see that comes up more frequently in my practice I don’t know, I know that probably you too, is that I see much more ticks. Yeah, and particularly tics of the neck, shoulders, head, face, eyes, right?
It’s all the yang aspect that’s ticking, right? Occasionally, you’ll get a hand or a foot, but usually it starts with the head. So this is a great example of that and important to approach it with this model. And one of the things, interestingly, one of the herb formulas I’ve been using for tic disorders in general, no accident, is Buchong Ichitan, right?
Believe it or not, even though you’d think, wow, isn’t that potentiating the Qi? Yes, but we’re trying, this is one of the principles of yin fire treatment is not suppressing, right? The yang, but actually improving the relationship of yang. Yeah. The idea is that the pericardium is not necessarily it’s, That deficiency is manifesting in a excess and somewhat correlates to what we sometimes in the course that when we teach, we talk about this kind of hyperactive spleen chief acuity.
That concept also comes from this idea and the importance of strengthening the spleen more so than dispersing that kind of what may seem excess. Exactly. And so the spleen, stomach, middle, burner is what BuChong means, right? Health, unhealthy. Exactly. And I think that was the brilliance of Li Dongyuan’s idea.
It’s so applicable to pediatrics. And we get into a lot of that discussion of both Sanjiao dynamics and hyperactive spleen qi, acuity. in the course. So I think this is a great example of how to see smartphone technology from a Chinese medicine perspective. So I think at this point we can And this discussion.
We’re interested in more about treating kids. And we really encourage all practitioners to be kid friendly because kids respond so quickly. It was very rewarding in your practice. And we’re doing come visit us at the Jing Shen pediatrics site where we’re doing teachings. We have online teachings.
We’re planning some in person teachings and we welcome you guys to be there. And I also want to just point out one more very important thing that I was thinking about is that I think one of the things that when we learn go back and look at the theories and how they manifest in children It actually enables you to even treat adults in a little different way.
Absolutely. Good point that we all have a child inside us and tapping into that. This is old trauma. This is the child activating the child nature, right? Longevity. All of these things, the virtues of a child, when we can tap into that and treat that in adults, it’s very beneficial. I a hundred percent agree.
Thanks, Moshe. This is why I like teaching with you because we always play off each other and remind each other of ideas. So let’s thank the American Acupuncture Council again for hosting us and we look forward to seeing you guys again. Yes. Thank you. See you soon.