1013 - A College Course for Digital Detoxing
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
About this episode:
A class at Loyola University Maryland has pushed students to think critically about their technology use in an age of constant scrolling. In this episode: class instructor Shreya Hessler and student Emma Hester reflect on the value of getting offline and how to spend less time on our devices.
Guests:
Dr. Shreya Hessler, PsyD, is a psychologist and the director of the MINDset Center.
Emma Hester is a senior studying psychology and speech, language, and hearing sciences at Loyola University Maryland.
Host:
Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.
Show links and related content:
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Phones ruled their lives. A new college class helped them break free.—Washington Post
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Mental Health in the Scroll Age—Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health Magazine
Transcript information:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhh.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith-Rogers. |
| 0:33.8 | Today, kids may be missing out socially and learning-wise because they spend so much time |
| 0:38.1 | on their mobile phones and other devices, but what if they were more intentional about |
| 0:42.3 | their screen time? |
| 0:43.7 | Stephanie Desmond talks to psychologist Dr. Shreya Hesler about a course she created at |
| 0:47.7 | Loyola University, Maryland, which encourages students to choose a more offline path and |
| 0:53.3 | to Emma Hester, one of her students who did |
| 0:55.7 | just that. Let's listen. Shreya Hesler and Emma Hester, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:01.1 | Thanks for having us. Dr. Shreya Hesler, you recently taught a digital detox class at Loyola |
| 1:07.6 | University, and I'm dying to know what that is. I'm really excited to talk about it. |
| 1:12.1 | So the digital detox piece is a little bit of a misnomer. It was kind of like a clickbait for |
| 1:17.8 | students to enroll in the class, which you filled up pretty quickly. But it was actually a class |
| 1:22.9 | in experiential learning and learning about the psychological impact of using technology in our |
| 1:28.5 | day-to-day everyday lives. And so it was more of a class, less of abstinence, but more of |
| 1:35.1 | intentional use and contemplation of how using technology of all kinds serve us or don't serve us |
| 1:42.1 | from a psychological perspective. So what is the landscape look like? |
| 1:46.5 | So the landscape really looks like what I was seeing on a day-to-day basis in clinical practice. |
| 1:51.1 | And I see individuals actually across the lifespan all the way from elementary school up until later |
... |
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