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About Ryan
About Ryan
After graduating the University of Leeds with a Bachelor of Science (majoring in geography), Ryan quickly found success as a geo-informations engineer at both Delta Simons and Telepazio, building in-house systems and providing effective data analysis.
In search of greater social impact in the midst of the pandemic, Techbalance, Ryan's brainchild, began to form. Since being awarded his initial grant from Innovate UK, Ryan has created and delivered workshops on reducing screen time and improving wellbeing to hundreds of students with this organisation. He's also volunteered as a mentor to help young people improve their relationships with screens and live a more balanced lifestyle.
Techbalance has now pivoted to more holistic wellbeing support and it's exciting to see the impact it will make under Ryan's direction!
Top 3 quotes from the episode
Top 3 quotes from the episode
“Just the hours (on social media) itself, (are) not so much a problem, I think it’s more a case of the quality of those hours and, is the result of those hours having an impact on my real world relationships, progress or other impacts on my wellbeing”
“A lot of people, are addicted in some way, to getting this dopamine in, whether it’s for more negatively associated behaviours like excessive time on social media or drugs or alcohol or positive experiences too”
"(As a student) you might be in a new environment, you might not have too many friends, English might not be your first language, the last thing you want to do is reach out and say, I need some help with my mental health”
Alternatively, here's the episode...
Alternatively, here's the episode...
Show Notes:
Show Notes:
What Ryan's doing in the wellbeing space (1:08)
Why he founded Techbalance and left his stable job (3:16)
Is spending large amounts of time on social media problematic? (5:19)
Problematic social media usage (8:40)
How do people reduce unwanted screen time? (10:09)
Barriers to improving wellbeing (14:48)
Rapid-fire questions (19:20)
How to check-in on mental health (27:43)
Why students don't always reach out for support (31:39)
How universities can support student wellbeing (35:02)
My most controversial opinion for improving student wellbeing (37:19)
More quotes from the episode
More quotes from the episode
“A lot of people are quite keen to point the finger at TikTok or Meta or X as being completely negative. But of course these platforms are serving a purpose. You’re not going to be using something all the time if you’re not enjoying it”
“Speaking from experience I’ve had with students and certainly the working (population), the busyness is a key factor. There’s so much information today and so many things to do, so much fear of missing out”
“As a student, you almost feel invincible… A lot of students are going out a lot, they’re not getting too much sleep because they’re pulling all-nighters, they typically don't have the healthiest lifestyles when it comes to what they’re eating, how they’re moving and how they’re sleeping as well”
“If you’re getting different hours of sleep each night, you’re mixing up your diet a lot, stress is very variable, it becomes very difficult … to know what your desired state of wellbeing looks like.”
“For me, making sure I was getting to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time, not looking at devices late at night, had a real big improvement.”
“If you’re not exercising or at least moving about enough, you’re gonna really feel the difference if you start to get in a rhythm of going for a walk each day, or doing 30 minutes of exercise a couple days a week.”
“There’s a lot of opportunity to look back on things that you’ve achieved that really are quite significant … and so if you’re focused all the time on what you’re doing wrong and trying to improve, which is easy to do when you’re focused on behaviour change, it’s easy to overlook these successes you’ve had”
Links from the episode
Links from the episode
Stand Out of Our Light | James Williams
Statistics on Social Media Usage | Center for Humane Technology
Celebrities Struggling with Mental Illness | University of Utah Health
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