New Books In Psychology

In the third podcast of this series, “Brain Rot: What Our Screen Are Doing to Our Minds,” host Dr. Karyne Messina, psychologist, psychoanalyst and author talked about the problems that can emerge in Erik Erikson’s Identity versus Identity Diffusion stage of development along with Dr. Harry Gill, a psychiatrist who has a PhD in neuroscience. The two mental health professionals discussed major difficulties they see in their young patients when they are exposed to too much screen time. For one thing, excessive screen time during this stage of development can have significant effects on pruning which leads to structural changes in the brain. This is a crucial process in adolescent brain development that involves the elimination of unnecessary neural connections to enhance efficiency while optimizing brain functioning. They also focused on the impact of social media on the formation of identity, a critical part of healthy personality development. Drs. Messina and Gill shared the challenges young people have naviga