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I'm currently the temporary parent of 2,15-year-old girls who are staying with us for almost 3 weeks as part of a family vacation and summer camp. This experience on the ground has brought home the reality of this research article I came across a few weeks ago, about the ever increasingly clear correlation between the use of smart phone, especially social media, and the risk of depression related disorders not only in teens but also in adults.

Depression is certainly a very complex multifactorial health problem. That involves situational stress, biochemical and inflammatory disturbances in the brain and body, (1 of the areas of intervention in our office along with chiropractic care). But I think the blindside is often the contribution of technology exposure to the disease. The healthcare system at large is developing more robust validated assessment questionnaires to help identify how much of a contribution it is for individual patients, and incorporates technology exposure reduction as part of the treatment plan. Incidentally, I get a lot of pushback from patient about requiring them to silence or shut off their phones when they are in the room, but this is based on solid science about how our nervous system responds to the presence of even apparently minor technology signaling such as a message beep on your phone while you're in the middle of a chiropractic treatment, when we are trying to achieve optimal neurological communication between your brain and your body, and the phone signaling constantly pushes your primal stress response system to go into fight or flight mode.