Making the most of our mediated spaces
Kris Harrison, PhD, joins me to talk about media sensory curation and well-being
In a time of already diminished emotional stability (on my part, at least, I won’t speak for you all), I was sitting on my couch early during the COVID-19 pandemic, just scrolling through social media news feeds. That’s when I saw the World Health Organization announced that people should take a break from media use because it was hurting their mental health. I grumbled to myself about this gross overgeneralization about “media,” then got distracted by my (then) baby and gave up the fight (for the moment).
However, I could not shake the feeling that, during a time of isolation and uncertainty, for some people media use was a lifeline and there was a missed opportunity to talk about how different types of media use might being doing something to help us regulate our off-kilter systems.
Even “scary new” might be reassuring for some people, especially a former journalist. Listening to familiar voices give me more information about something I did not yet understand, or rewatching some of my favorite fictional television shows for the millionth time, were both somehow soothing to me. Trying to understand why, and what exactly it was about these different types of media use that was helping me calm down, initially drew me to Kris Harrison’s work on media sensory curation.
I reread her work on this topic later in the pandemic when I was driving four a hours a day to the NICU after my twins were born prematurely. I found certain fast tempo songs on the radio made me want to rip my ears off my head, even though they had never bothered me before. In that extra stressful season of life, there was something setting my nervous system on high alert that I needed to address, even if that meant a break music. So, I switched to audiobooks.
These are examples of media sensory curation, or the use of media to help us feel safe, comfortable, calm, or even energized, depending on our needs and desires in that moment. We often do not realize we are using media to regulate our nervous system, but it is one of many tools we have to help us feel at home in our surroundings.
For decades, Kris has examined the ways in which media use can shape our health and well-being, for better and for worse. Her work is creative, interdisciplinary, and just plain interesting to read. From publishing some of the first studies connecting media use and eating disorders to her work on empowerment and objectification in media, and, now, research into the ways in which kids and adults use media to curate sensory experiences, Kris is a leader in media effects research.
Kris is also a mom of three kids (and one adorable chocolate lab named Bruno). She understands—on a personal level—the challenges parents face raising kids, including neurodiverse kids, in an age of screens. Her research combines approaches from developmental psychology, occupational therapy, and media effects to provide us with “ah ha” moments. She also provides us with practical insights into how to find balance between our online and offline worlds.
What I really appreciate about Kris is her open-mindedness, integrity, and compassion for people as unique individuals. As she told me in our chat, “We have to start with the most fundamental mindset, which is, other people live in bodies that process the world differently than we do, including our kids.”
I am so grateful to Kris for sitting down with me to chat about media curation, health, and how to help our kids (and ourselves!) make the most of our media use. She has been a role model and source of support for me as I try to navigate a profession and parenthood.
I think you will all really enjoy the insights she shares in the video of our conversation, below. You can also read through an edited transcript of her comments, below the video.
Kristen Harrison, PhD
(Transcript edited for brevity and clarity.)
If you look at the last 100 years of research on media uses and gratifications, you'll know right that some of the earliest research was on “Why do people use newspapers? To be informed, right? So, we use media for information. But then, media effects work kind of got into the idea that, “No, there are other gratifications, right?” So, we use media for emotional gratification as well.
Even before social media, there's a ton of research showing we use media for social gratifications. Maybe watching a football game together. Or now, of course, with social media memes. Memes give me life! It's like, yes, okay, I can make it through this day because I saw a funny meme, or I have parasocial relationships with dogs on Facebook.
So, we have informational, emotional, and relational gratifications from media use. But there isn't really much at all on like sensory gratifications. It comes back to this idea that all humans inherently seek sensory regulation in our environment. If the light is too bright, if it's too loud, or if it's painfully boring, like some people can't sleep at night if it's too quiet, right? What they're looking for is this sort of overall holistic balance of sensory input that leaves them feeling kind of alert, calm, ready for learning.
So where do media come into play? One of the things my students and I started talking about was how interesting it is that even very young children can get really attached to their media devices. And this is long before they learn how to use media for information, or emotional or relational gratification. Why is that? We started doing a deep dive into the research on neurodivergent kids’ use of media.
I actually was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome in adulthood. So, I identify as autistic. It's identity-first language. Many people say “person with autism,” that's person-first language. That's fine. As a disclaimer, I'm just going to use identity-first language. There's research on autistic kids being super attached to their devices, especially individual devices that can carry with them, their tablet when they're little or their phone when they're older.
So, we started thinking: Is it the information? Is it the content? Is it something about the device? And as we started kind of digging into it, we realized, there are so many sensory gratifications from media. There’s social media and YouTube with ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response). Or people watch things that fit really well into other things. It’s so satisfying, and satisfying is kind of the best vocabulary we have for it. But, there's something about it that's just really centering.
I even noticed myself when I went through this phase where I was playing angry birds. I got what I got addicted to was when you're pulling back the little rubber band to launch the birds. There's almost a feeling of tension. I love that feeling. And I wanted to have that feeling again.
We had to create our own measures because there weren't measures on sensory uses of media and then we created our own measures for children and adults. What we found that was really interesting in our data was that we also looked at the frequency of parent child conflict around the child's media use. It turned out that the more the children were using media for sensory curation, the more conflict there was, even controlling the amount of time that child spent with media.
If you're a high sensory curator, you are very particular about the sensory arrangements of your media. Let's say the parent is, too. And we looked at high sensory curator parent and child pairs. They have the most conflict. It's kind of like saying, “Oh, my! The parent and the child are both picky eaters. What are the odds that they're going to be picky eaters in exactly the same way?” They've got this conflict because what's comfortable for one of them is not comfortable for the other.
That’s kind of where we are with the data. The next step, of course, is looking for ways to help parents understand how their kids are experiencing the world, but then also help them learn how to arrange environments for themselves that support their sensory needs without the use of screens. That way they don't have to keep coming back to screens to regulate. We know that our general environments are becoming more and more dysregulating restaurants are louder. Public spaces are more cluttered visually. So, it's really about creating options. J
It's very easy to pathologize kids who have meltdowns when you take away their screens. And, of course, that's not a reaction that we can live with for the long haul. The child is not happy that they're doing that, either. But, imagine if you knew that you needed to stop eating so much because your doctor said you've gained too much weight. You need to lose weight, and your spouse knows this. Imagine if the way that they handled your eating was to come in halfway through your meal and just yank your plate away. This is kind of what we do when we take screens away from kids. If kids are finding regulation, like this is a safe space, this is a calm space, and we say, all right, you're done, and we take them away. Setting the limit that way is, is like yanking somebody's food away right or pulling them out of a calm situation and putting them into a situation that doesn't feel calm.
We have to start with the most fundamental mindset, which is, other people live in bodies that process the world differently than we do, including our kids. We set up our homes to support our sensory regulation, but it may not do the same for them. And so, they've got these tools. Why wouldn't they use them? They're smart, right? Why wouldn't they use these tools to kind of find a place of comfort and flow and alertness and entertainment? And then you lay all the other media gratifications on top. That's why it's so hard to pull them away from that, because it's really really useful.
The sad thing is, you know, when you and I were kids mostly that would be outside. Jessica Gall Myrick: right? Like outdoors has some place. It has calming places. It has exciting places. It has kinda has something for everyone. But, we don't really make it easy for kids to go outside like that. The days have passed when kids can go outside in the morning and play outside all day, and their parents don't even know where they are till dinnertime. We don't feel safe doing that anymore. Maybe you live in the city, and kids could get hit by a car, or there's crime, or who knows what? We judge these people for letting their kids play on media, but we've taken away those alternative environments.
It's very easy for people to say, well, just turn off the TV and kids will find something to do. But, they have way fewer options now than they did before. The kid can go play in the park, get on the merry go around and somebody's gonna call child protective services because there isn't an adult watching them right at that moment. And of course, the pandemic made us all more reliant on media to get our work done, and so those things become habits as well. Then it becomes like anything that is calming for you, that brings you back to that state of regulation, is going to get reinforced and then you come back to it again and again. It provides a benefit in the short term, but then it becomes a problem in the long term.
And then we hit this point where we go, “I'm not doing all these other things with my life that I wanted to do.” And teenagers will do that. You know, little kids aren't going to be thinking like that. But teenagers will think “I don't really have the friends I used to have” or “I don't see my friends in person anymore., we just use devices.” It's almost like, “If I could see my friends, but be in the comfort of my own bed, why wouldn't I?”
You have to make an effort to pull yourself out of it. But, if you have that awareness of your own sensory needs, you can say, “Yeah, let's meet up, but instead of in this really noisy place, can we meet up here, or maybe take a walk?” Then that will become reinforcing. If it's comfortable, if it's regulating, if it's a good experience physically, then, the social part also gets reinforced. And you can start building those new habits that way.
I think that the more concrete you can be about exactly what aspects of media use and the content are bringing the bad in to your life versus those that are bringing the good in, then you can be proactive. So, for example, if you've been TikTok and somebody finds that they keep getting weight loss videos or pro-eating disorder videos, that's the moment where you go “I gotta readjust this algorithm.” Take stock with “How am I feeling when I walk away from this? What is going through my mind throughout the day?”
If I want to change that to something that's making life more enjoyable, I’ve got to adjust the algorithm myself. Now I go in and I start searching for body positivity videos, or I start searching for comedy. That's my thing, find comedy. Find comedy, the dogs and the comedy. And then, of course, the algorithm will start giving you more of that. Look at the algorithm as a as a sign of where your mind's going and ask, do you want to keep going in that direction?
If you think you're spending too much time using media, maybe it's because you know the environment. The alternative environments you have are not comfortable for your body. And you have to create those alternative environments deliberately and put yourself in there repeatedly that becomes the new habit.
I don't think there's anything inherently bad about using screens. When you have this judgment about your children like, “Hey, all they're doing is screens. They're going to get rickets because they're not getting any Vitamin D because they're never outside.” Then you can say to the kids “Okay, we’ve got to get outside. But where do you want to go? What makes you feel most comfortable? Where does your body feel comfortable when we go outside?” And you just work together.
The other thing that does with a kid is it starts teaching them to read their interceptive cues, to read their body. “Does this feel good to your body? No, okay, we'll try something else.” And they become more and more aware of it. And, ultimately, that's our goal, to teach our kids to have good, responsible stewardship over their own bodies.”
Research shows the more fit you are, the more you can read those internal queues. “My heart rate is too high, right now I need to settle down.” Think about road rage, people being unaware that they are at the boiling point, except they know they're irritated. But they don't understand that their body is so worked up, that they risk acting out and doing something that they're going to regret later on. I think that issue of knowing your own body, being able to read your own body cues is super important. For decades, one of the diagnostic criteria of anorexia was a loss of interoceptive awareness. If you ignore your hunger queues for so long, you lose the ability to tell when you're hungry and when you're not hungry.
That interoception is really important, and nobody can tell you how you're feeling. You have to figure it out. All of our kids have to figure it out. What works for one of your kids may not work for the other. They really need a tailored kind of approach. But if you're working with kids, the first thing you do right is say, “How do you feel? Do you feel comfortable? Does this feel okay for your body?” So much of this is connected to vocabulary, that's why it's hard that we don't talk about sensations other than touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing—but, proprioception, the vestibular sense, dizziness or spinning, interoception—there are so many ways to read your body, and we use media and other things to distract ourselves from those readings.
It can be really difficult to relearn our own signals, but we can do it if we take ourselves out of our comfort spaces and explore different environments around us to see which ones seem to support us and which ones don't.