In this episode of Let’s Talk Tri Delta, Tri Delta CEO Mindy Tucker, Southern Methodist, sits down with Dr. Adriana Unger Stacey, Alabama, a board-certified psychiatrist who specializes in the mental health of children, adolescents and young adults. Adriana brings her expertise in how screens, social media and technology impact our brains, our relationships and our ability to be fully present. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of why this topic matters, along with practical, actionable ways to create healthier habits around technology and connection.
Explore what it means to build authentic connection in a world designed to compete for our attention. As a Medical Advisor for ScreenStrong, a national nonprofit helping families navigate healthier relationships with technology, Adriana brings professional expertise and personal perspective to this conversation, breaking down the science behind how our brains respond to technology, why face-to-face interactions are essential for developing empathy and focus and how small, intentional changes can help us create healthier relationships with our devices. Listeners will learn practical ways to be more present and understand why connection and belonging are not just important for our well-being, but essential to how we grow, lead and thrive.
You’ll leave this episode with a deeper understanding of your own brain, practical tools for navigating technology and a renewed reminder that the most meaningful connections are built when we put down the distractions and truly show up. In a world that constantly asks for our attention, Adriana reminds us that one of the greatest gifts we can give another person is our presence.
This episode is dedicated to Mary Virginia Stacey. Following the unexpected passing of her daughter, Mary Virginia, Adriana created the Mary Virginia Stacey Charity Fund to continue her daughter’s legacy by supporting causes that reflected Mary Virginia’s heart, including children, the elderly, animals and youth sports.
[Sisterhood, Screens and the Science of Connection With Dr. Adriana Stacey]
This transcript was created using automated technologies and may contain errors.
Welcome back to another episode of the Let's Talk Tri Delta podcast. I'm Mindy Tucker, Tri Delta CEO and a Tri Delta from SMU. Today, our guest is Adriana Unger Stacey, MD. She is from our Delta Mu chapter at Alabama and lives in Arkansas. She is a board-certified psychiatrist devoted to helping young people thrive in a fast-paced digital world. Oh, if we all knew how to do that. She specializes in the mental health of children, adolescents, and young adults with a particular focus on screens and how social media and technology are really impacting the mental health and relationships of young people. She works in private practice today and also as a medical advisor for ScreenStrong, a national nonprofit that's helping families break free from this toxic screen use. We're going to talk a little bit about that. You may also recognize her name. She was a contributor to our fall issue of the Trident Magazine, our article about chatbots and AI in our lives. And today's conversation is one that's really going to sit at the intersection of sisterhood and leadership and real life and how it all comes together for our collegiate members and others as we really grow up around screens and AI and this sort of constant presence in our lives. So I'm ready to dig in. Adriana, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, me too. It was fun that I got a chance to meet you in person about a year ago when I was visiting the University of Arkansas. But a lot's happened in life since then. I know we're going to dig in here on a lot of this. We're really grateful to have this perspective from you. I, as a parent, run into this all the time. I'm always struggling with how I'm failing on this with my kids regularly. Same, same, Mindy, same. And then I see our, you know, 24,000 collegiate members just totally encumbered by social media and their phone. And so there's, I know there's a lot to talk about here. Let's go back to the very beginning for you. What led you to Alabama and drew you to Tri Delta? Sure. So I grew up in South Arkansas in a pretty small town. And I'm the third of six children. And so my parents sort of said, you know, if you want to go to college, it needs to be free. And so I sort of went on the search for where I could get a scholarship. And Alabama, luckily for so many, gives amazing scholarships. And so I was able to go to the University of Alabama for free. And as everyone probably knows, Alabama has an amazing experience for Greek life. there, and so I knew when I went to school there that I wanted to be part of the Greek system there and have that experience, and I have an aunt who was a Tri Delta, and she was sort of the only one in our family that was really experienced with that. She went to the University of Arkansas, and then I had a sister that was a Tri Delta as well, and so went through recruitment and found some of my most amazing friends still to this day as part of that experience. I love that. Then came medical school and residency. How did you end up choosing your specialty? So sort of interesting and tried out to play the part in this because I went to college to not to be a doctor. So I had other things that I was interested in, interior design and some other stuff. During my sophomore year of college, one of my really close sorority sisters, whose name was Laura Brunson, unfortunately developed leukemia. So Laura had had a organ transplant earlier in her life and sometimes as a result of having an organ transplant you're on immunosuppressants and one risk of that is developing leukemia and she was diagnosed with leukemia when we were sophomores and so we spent quite a bit of time sort of back and forth to Birmingham you know sort of walking with her through that and she unfortunately passed away at the end between our sophomore and junior year in college. And so at that point sort of changed my life and decided I wanted to be a pediatric oncologist. So a doctor that works with kids with cancer and was really interested in St. Jude's, interestingly. And I have an aunt that lives in Memphis and we would like volunteer at the St. Jude Marathon and, you know, a lot of that. And so I went to medical school really to be a pediatric oncologist. Got to medical school, was very set on that, and then did an experience at the children's hospital there in Little Rock working with some oncologists there. Back then, you know, I'm a little old. So, you know, many years ago when I was in medical school, a lot, a huge number of the kids that had cancer died from it. And so I did that experience and just felt that I just, that it didn't really suit my strengths to be in that role. And so it was sort of in medical school now, not knowing what I wanted to do because I went to medical school specifically to do that. And we always sort of joke that I got married in my third year of medical school. over the Christmas break. And then my first rotation back after that was psychiatry. And I was sort of on, you know, like this honeymoon high from just getting married and did my psychiatry rotation and loved it. And so the thing that I love about psychiatry is that you form really strong relationships with your patients. And so a lot of my patients I've seen for a really long time and you sort of usher them through a very difficult time in their life. And there's a lot of great treatments and you can really, really help people. And I love that I chose that. It's a hard specialty for people to choose in medical school because it's not very traditional and you're not really touching your patients and doing procedures and things that a lot of medical students want to do. But I'm so glad that it's the one that I chose. So that leads to you leaning in around how the digital effect is, how that's playing out with adults, with students. Yes. You travel nationally, you speak to parents and educators. It's really become a passion, a huge passion. And now part of your career. How did that get started? How did you end up? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I had no idea. You know, of course, when I started in this, this wasn't a thing. Like, I mean, there were no, there were no, there was like Facebook, but you had to, you know, be a college student. You know, it was a totally different world. So it's hard to really go back and think about that. But I remember very vividly the first patient I had that was. So I used to run an inpatient unit at the University of Wisconsin, and that was my first job out of training. And my very first patient who was suicidal and tried to kill themselves over something that was said on Facebook. And at that moment, I thought, this is something. This is really something we need to look into. This is very strange that this, you know, because we all didn't really understand all of that then, like, you know, the social media piece. And then I can tell you a little bit how I got involved in this and I've been sort of speaking and you know doing sort of social research about this for 12 years now and we were going on a vacation my husband and I and our four children and our twins at the time were I want to say they were almost four and we were going on a 15-hour road trip and so My husband and I, I went to Target, you know, to get all the things you need, like snacks and sunscreen, you know, we're going to the beach. And there was this big display for iPad minis. And I thought, you just sort of transport yourself back to a time before every toddler had a tablet in their hand. That wasn't the norm back then. And I saw this display. It was like buy one, get one free or something. I thought, oh, like I'll get these and I'll. put some educational apps on there and then they'll be entertained for the 15 hour road trip. And that's exactly what happened. So I bought these two, I put these apps on there and they weren't spitting at each other and pulling each other's hair. They were very glued to these screens, you know, for 15 hours. And then we get to the beach and I take the iPads away. And what do you think happens? They lost their minds. Like, literally, it was like I needed to call an exorcist, you know. So. At that moment, my husband and I looked at each other and just thought, we're not doing this. There's something about this. I feel very lucky because we had that experience and it led us to sort of making some family decisions that have helped us along the way. And I remember thinking there's going to be something to this and I really need to look into it. And so at that point, 12 years ago, I really started looking at the research and talking to experts and sort of doing things. And at the same time, I was seeing a huge change in my clinic practice. So it used to be when we would have teenagers and kids that would come see us that had depression or anxiety, they had... some pretty significant what we call ACEs, adverse childhood events. So something traumatic that had happened to them or a strong family history. But I was not seeing that. I was seeing kids that had every resource imaginable, you know, great supportive families, and they were having a significant issue with depression and anxiety. And then I started looking more into like screens and social media and sort of how that affects them. So I became very interested in it learned about ScreenStrong, which is an amazing organization that I'm sure we'll talk about a number of times today, run by or started by a nurse out of North Carolina, that the main goal there is really to educate and help people figure out how to solve this problem, right? So there's a lot of people now talking. Luckily, there's been a lot of um kind of high profile stuff going on around this issue which is amazing because there's been a lot of talk about it now but there's a lot of talk about the problem and not a lot of talk about the solution so what i like to do is talk to people about what you can do to change it how you can sort of make it different for yourself for your kids you know if you're a college student listening to this you can make it different for yourself and your friends um There's so many places I want to go with this. Let's start with the science. The brain is amazing to me. Every time I learn something new about the brain, I'm just fascinated. What is actually happening in our brains with these screens that makes it addictive and dangerous? Here's what we have found out, which is very interesting. You are looking at a screen. When I'm talking about a screen, I'm speaking more about fast screen. So this is like scrolling or you know, fast videos and things like that. TV from far away is a little bit different. We can talk about that later. But what's happening is your brain does something. It causes something in your brain, which we use the term a dopamine dump. So dopamine is a reward chemical in the brain. And when you do something that your brain wants you to remember is rewarding, it releases some dopamine. So this happens. all the time so you eat a good meal you have a you know really good relationship with a friend or um you know it's a good talk or you know there's like small amounts of dopamine that are released over time but when you're using screens interestingly It's the same as when you use cocaine. So the brain releases a huge amount of dopamine at once. Well, why does that matter? Well, for a couple of reasons. One is the brain gets to where it really enjoys that huge amount of dopamine. And so then the brain wants to steer you towards things that only do that. So that's why when I'm working with kids and teenagers and college students who are like, I just can't stop using my screen very empathetic towards that because that's true it's very hard to do because the brain is always wanting to go back to that screen because it's craving that dopamine so your brain is releasing all of this dopamine and then eventually there's just not enough left for it to replenish itself quickly enough and that's when you get this crash and you get you know depression and anxiety and then your brain goes back into this craving and then it wants more of it so it's this sort of endless cycle of how the brain is really seeking out that dopamine and they've done some imaging studies and looking at it and it's very similar like I said to what cocaine does to the brain yeah um I know that for this generation um it's having a particular effect in terms of friendships social dynamics um and we see this in sorority life especially at college um what How can we help? What is this doing that's sort of replacing face-to-face interaction? How dangerous is that? What is that doing to relationships for young kids? and you know i wish we had um 10 or 12 episodes right we could go through all these things but sort of high level things that are of importance one is understanding how the brain grows and so the brain is sort of like a big tree and it makes all of these connections so when you're born you have the ability to make millions and millions and millions of connections within your brain and what happens is your brain much like your body is really trying to conserve energy so it wants to get rid of any connections that it's not using and so if you don't use certain brain pathways sort of like you can visualize it like driving down a dirt road if you don't drive over that dirt road then the grass creeps in and grows over it and then eventually it's not there anymore and that's sort of what happens when your brain sort of prunes away all of these you know pathways that it's not using and so if you're not using face-to-face interaction the brain prunes away those pathways and then you don't know how to do it anymore which seems crazy but you can see this happening in young people where they don't know how to do that another thing that we worry about is that the issue with attentiveness. So it's very important in making friendships and sort of interpersonal success to be attentive to the people that are around you. And so we're seeing a huge spike in ADHD diagnoses. Some of that is because it is familial and it's growing, but another part of it is this sort of It's not really ADHD. It's that our brains are not learning how to maintain attentiveness. And another reason I bring that up is because similar pathways in the brain are responsible for attentiveness and empathy. So empathy is sort of understanding the feelings of another person. People who are really high on this inattentiveness also have trouble with empathy. And so we see these two things going hand in hand. And so that's very important when you're learning how to have relationships, which is a huge part of what Tri Delta and other organizations are about. It's forming these friendships. And you have to use face-to-face interaction and sit with people and sort of have this attentiveness and empathy towards one another in order to maintain those relationships. Um, I've seen the, the graphic of like you know, the brain pathway that like gets used more, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And the ones that don't get smaller and smaller, like you talked about the road that doesn't get driven on, it gets grown over. I guess the good news is you can also rebuild them. Yes. Yeah. Another thing we've realized over time, which all of this is so fascinating to me, how much, you know, we know now compared to when I first became a physician is a term called neuroplasticity. So neuroplasticity is basically like teaching an old dog new tricks. Right. So it's like we can learn new things. But what I will tell you is that the brain reaches full development around age 25. It's a little bit earlier, we think, for women. once that brain has reached full development, that building of new connections becomes a little bit harder. So what I like to tell people about... the teenage and early twenties brain is that it can learn better than any time in your life. And so it can learn so many good and wonderful things and it can learn bad patterns as well. And so we have to be very protective of that brain during that timeframe. But, you know, in the college years, so if we're, you know, if we've got some college girls listening to us today, you can be very optimistic because your brain is at like prime time to really change some of these dynamics within your brain. Well, and you've just reinforced for me something we're investing in, which I call it sort of jokingly friendship one-on-one. Yes. How to, how to create relationships because we have a generation coming in that they don't always know and don't always understand because they haven't used that muscle or that brain pathway. Okay. When I have these conversations with you or others, I'm like. okay, I'm failing. This is hard. I don't know how to do this. So I'd love to hear from you. Like, what are some realistic practical tips for using your screen less and, and feeling without feeling completely disconnected? Um, how do we do this in this day and age? What are some steps? Sure. And I've got lots of tips and we'll talk about some of those. So one is I would like to encourage people. To start small. So don't feel like you have to go throw your phone in the river, right? I mean, it's like, this is a huge problem. And we as parents have to apologize to our 20 something and teenage kids because we didn't know, right? So when this all started, we had no idea. And we're slowly learning more and more and or maybe quickly learning more and more. So start small, create some phone free moments. Take some time to sort of look at the things you do in your day and make a conscious decision to have phone-free moments within your life. And so one thing sometimes families or people will do is pick a day of the week where you're just not going to use your phone. And you let those closest to you know. Because if you're in college and you're not using your phone all day on Sunday and your mom is calling you and you're not answering and then the police show up at your apartment, right? That's not what we want. So you just have to let everyone know, okay, I'm putting my phone away from 8 to 8 or whatever. So you're not going to, you know, be able to get in touch with me because I'm going to have some phone free time or whatever, even if it's just an hour or two. My most favorite tip. is to keep your phone outside your bedroom and not just at night. So keep your phone outside your bedroom all the time. And so if you live, like I lived in a sorority house and it was amazing because we had a sleeping porch and we all slept in one room and then everybody sort of had their little rooms where they had their clothes and stuff. And it was back then, it's not anymore, but the tread off the house in Alabama was round. And so it was circular. And in the middle, there was a living room. And I can sort of visualize myself at that age, us like having a charging strip, you know, in that main room where we would all. keep our phones and so you can start a trend wherever you live and sort of have everybody put their phones in the hallway and not have those in your room and you may need to get a real alarm clock and they do sell those and pretty much every store has real alarm clocks and you can get those And so that's a trick, you know, to really help you cut down on some of your screen time. As far as the screen itself, make sure you have all non-essential notifications turned off. So any app or anything that you have on your phone, make sure that any non-essential notifications, you can go in your settings and turn those off so you're not getting interrupted consistently. um use focus mode do not disturb mode as much as you can anytime you're doing something like with your with when you're with a friend when you're at a meal when you are in class um when you're riding the car with friends you should be kind of paying attention to them so use it then if you can being the one to sort of encourage your friends to not scroll when you're together. So that's one of the most dangerous things I think about these devices is their portability. And when we get together in groups, then we find ourselves just doing what we call parallel play. We're sitting next to each other both on our devices and scrolling and really trying to make a conscious effort that when you're with your friends to put your phone away. And if you feel like you could do this, having a phone basket in your sorority house or in your apartment where when people walk in the door. where they can just drop their keys and their phone in the basket. And then that way, if they need it, you know, for a reason, they can grab it, but it's not sort of in your pocket. Another thing that helps is deleting social media apps from your phone so then you have to use them on a bigger screen and you're less likely to use them if you don't feel you're ready for that just pick one and that's what i usually talk to my patients about is pick one so whichever one of the social media apps you feel like you can delete and delete it from your phone and i had the one of the most precious um patients and she was eventually able to get them all off her phone and she was so proud of herself because she kind of did one at a time and then you realize sort of how much better you're feeling when you're doing your phone yeah um go ahead no it's just it's so there's so many places to start so that feels good yes but also as you talk so many places where it creeps in and takes over and um i've been thinking about for collegiate women you know we have a mental health program yes my new view is if it doesn't involve how to get rid of screens or how to reduce the use of screens it's not doing its job yeah and I wonder, like, do we have screen free chapter meetings? Like, how could we step into how could our members, collegiate members in particular, step into this with some creative ideas? And so it's you talked about. I definitely think that's worth brainstorming within your chapter. Like, how can we do this for us? Like, do we put a basket at the door? Right. Or I have seen some organizations have they're sort of like the shoe holder things you can hang on the back of the door and everyone's has a name on it. When you walk in the door, you just. put yours in that, um, that specific one with your name on it and then your phone's there. And, um, they do that at schools. They do. Yeah. They do it at schools. Um, and it's sort of making some, um, rules together about which parts of the house, maybe you're not going to have phones or like, like maybe at dinner time, we don't have it or at functions, we're going to do something different or, you know, I mean, getting together as a group, um, and sort of coming up with some ideas about ways to be more, together. Like, you know, I had this patient say to me one time, she said, you know, Dr. Stacey, my generation, we're just forever elsewhere. And I thought that's true because you're constantly thinking about that notification or that text message or that Instagram post or, you know, so this idea of being where you are. right so be doing what you're doing and having that sort of overall theme about your life where you're present and to where you are and one thing that goes along with that is getting some screen-free hobbies. So a lot of kids I've worked with and kids I know in my personal life don't have screen-free hobbies. And so, you know, let's go back to those things. And I have seen recently there's been a big uptick in scrapbooking and needlepoint, cross-stitch, these kinds of things, which I love because I remember sitting around my sorority house cross-stitching with my friends like I'm the old lady. But, you know, those kinds of things are really fun. Making friendship bracelets or in scrapbooking is of fun for, for college girls. You know, so those sorts of things can really encourage screen-free time when you come up with a hobby and really sort of, you know, asking yourself, am I being intentional about my screen use or is this a habit and something that I'm doing automatically? Yeah. So if you're in a situation where you're concerned about a friend's or sister's screen use, how can you step in and support them without it feeling judgmental? Yeah. So that's very important is that you want to make sure that if you. you know have a friend that you're worried about that you come to them in a way that's with humility and not with judgment right and so the first thing you want to do is really listen to your friend and then maybe make some suggestions that don't come across as judgmental so one thing I always like to start with is what we call modeling so that's sort of telling your friend that you want to do something and see if they want to sort of jump on board and do it with you. So you could even start with, hey, let's go for a walk around campus and we'll leave our phones behind or admitting you have an issue as well. So, you know, I really noticed I'm spending a lot of time on my phone. Do you want to help me in sort of let's try to reduce our screen time together? And also encouraging your friends that I'm here if you need something, you know, maybe if you think they're having a hard time. And I love the phrase, tell me more. So when you're talking with your friends and they're telling you about their concerns, to follow up with tell me more. And that always sort of helps people want to open up a little bit more. But modeling behavior is very important, you know, just in a lot of different ways. And we do know that having genuine friends is one of the most powerful ways to sort of combat this isolation that leads to excessive technology use. So a lot of people use their phones because they feel lonely or isolated or bored or whatever. And so building these genuine friendships in and of itself kind of helps offset that. Yeah. They're searching for that connection and belonging and finding it in a more dangerous place than it is. Yeah. You've talked about using selfies less. I think this is particularly poignant for our group of women of age. Although we joke that I have no idea how to take a selfie. I take terrible selfies. Me too. My husband and I have a joke. We have a whole file of selfie fails because that's what we're good at is the fail and not the actual selfie. But this generation, they sure do know how to do it. And it's a part of like everything that they're thinking about. For you, you've talked about using them less. Why does that matter? How can that help in this whole, you know, thinking about self-image and their mental health? Sure. So one thing we know, and it's at this point correlation, not causation, but we do know that through the national decline in mental health, when we look at depression, anxiety. coincides with the time when the iPhone developed a self-facing camera. So that was around 2010 for some models, 2011. And that's when we really see the steep decline in mental health or increase in those diagnoses. And so what we have seen from social research is that when we're very appearance focused and we're sort of taking pictures and editing them and sort of like, oh, I need to turn this way and do this and sort of looking at, you know, really scrutinizing our appearance and posting pictures of ourself a lot. It can increase what we call self objectification or social comparison. So really sort of looking at ourselves as compared to someone else. And that changes our thinking from asking yourself, how am I doing? to how do I look? And we really want to prevent that because we know that our true selves is not how we look, right? I mean, we all want to look cute. We always, you know, want to make sure our hair looks good and, you know, we like our new mascara or whatever it is, but we really need to have our core values and our core thoughts about ourself be who we are, not how we look. And over time, our sense, our sort of sense of self-worth can be tied to external validation instead of how we really value ourselves. And we know that our self-esteem really gets solidified in those late teen, early 20 years. And so we don't want our girls carrying that into their life, you know, and so. That constant sort of looking at yourself. You know, it's interesting because I was talking about this earlier today with a friend about I think I probably have maybe 50 pictures of myself from college. And it's just so interesting because the average college girl, I'm sure, has 50 pictures of herself from last night. Right. And it's just a totally different way that we do things. But we have to be really careful that we're not judging ourselves by how we look in the camera. Yeah. Interesting. We could have a whole podcast on each of these topics. One of the things I like to talk about is I believe that sorority is the solution for so many of the things that ALS these days. And I'd love to hear your perspective on how sorority can step into or how sorority takes the place of some of this. How do we address some of these challenges using the things that we do in sorority, the benefits of sorority? Yeah. So, you know, sororities are so powerful in that, you know, it really is about relationship. And I'll talk about this a little bit more later, but I had a really severe tragedy happen in my family in January. My 15 year old passed away very suddenly from the flu. And my sorority sisters, this many years, 26 years later, we graduated 26 years ago, were the first ones to be on the phone, you know, calling me and trying to help i mean from all over the country and that relationship runs so deep and that's because of that experience we had together right in college where we really had this strong sense that we belong to one another so they belong to me and i belong to them and we've had all sorts of things that we we faced as a group over the years and um I don't know that our girls these days are getting to experience that as much because of this interception of this sort of technology-based culture. And I think that being in a sorority is a way to combat that because we have this group of women that all have this sort of similar values and they want to belong to each other. I think it's really important that we can use that. you sort of group in that sense of belonging to build a healthier culture around technology youth because we can you know Care for each other and love each other in a lot of different ways. And one way is to say to your sorority sister, I care about you enough to make our face-to-face time very important to me. Your time is important to me. Spending time together is important to me. And I encourage all the girls that are listening to start with your own chapter. You know, start with your pledge class. Let's get together and let's make, you know, a commitment to one another. A pledge to one another that we're going to really try to work on this. Because as we know, and I'm sure everyone listening has experienced this in their lives. the greatest gift that you can offer someone and someone can offer you is your time. And so that is something that is, you know, completely invaluable. And so this ability to have authentic connections is a huge gift that you can give of yourself and that you can receive from your friends. Yeah. Shifting gears, but still on the Tri Delta front, you're a leader. You've stepped out. You've used your voice powerfully. What did you learn in Tri Delta? and your experience that sort of impacts your work today. Sure. I mean, like I said, I think the most important thing I've learned is appreciation for the power of relationships. Now, I come from a big family, so I had some of that already because I had to really have a lot of different types of relationships with all of my siblings. You know, they're all very different from one another. But what I have sort of seen over my life that was cultivated at my time in Alabama and Tri Delta is that relationships really are at the center of my personal and professional life. And so my relationships with all of my friends, family with my patients with the people I work with is the most important thing to me and so I think that through childhood Tri Delta I learned genuine servant leadership and so I learned really how to lead with a servant's heart and I think that's really important for me personally and that's really really helped and I have so many amazing memories and these memories are ones that I'll you know take with me for the rest of my life and a lot of those were moments where we would challenge one another where we would support one another those late night talks where we were sitting up you know getting know each other better and helping each other through challenges, I think has really benefited me throughout my life. Yeah. I'd like to share with our listeners what's next for you personally and professionally. I know you're getting your master's at the University of San Diego in theological studies. What's that about? What are you? Yeah. So it just came to me one night that, you know, I'm doing a lot of this work and have been to really help. people with this sort of technology problem. But I really am interested in the intersection of faith and science and sort of how those can work together to really heal and strengthen communities. And I came across this amazing program at the Franciscan School of Theology in San Diego. And so I'm almost done. I just have a few more months to finish that. So I'm excited to see where that takes me next. I love it. And you, I think, have found a really special way to remember Mary Virginia. Yes. Her life. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. So, like I said, I have four children. My oldest is 20 and I have twins. And then my youngest is 13. And one of my twins, Mary Virginia, passed away from the flu in January, very suddenly. And she was so amazing and had such a servant's heart. And so we have started the Mary Virginia Stacey Charity Fund and we are. looking to support all kinds of projects um things that were important to her so she loved kids she wanted to be a kindergarten teacher she loved um the heart of you know our um Our elderly population and sort of the wisdom that they offer loved animals and loved sports. She was a tennis player and a golf player and loved to play basketball. And so if anyone listening has any projects that you are working on that you feel like could use a little bit of support, reach out to me. And we would love to help you sort of reach those goals through support from that charity fund. So that's a good segue to how do people find you? Sure. So specifically to that, you can find. The stuff about Mary Virginia's charity at lovelikemv.com or on Instagram, it's lovelikemaryvirginia. I would love for you to follow us over there to see all the amazing things we're doing. My professional account on Instagram is Dr. Adriana Stacey. There's a period in between Dr. Adriana and then another period between Adriana and Stacey. And then I would love for you guys to visit ScreenStrong. They're on Facebook and Instagram and their website is screenstrong.org. There are some amazing resources on there, all kinds of research and stuff for teachers and students. And one thing I do want to call out specifically with ScreenStrong is their 30-day detox. So if you really feel like you're at a point where you want to really significantly reduce your screen time and you know how it's affecting you, they have some great resources about how to do that over a 30-day time span. And it's a really good opportunity to really look at how you're spending your time. Well, thank you, Adriana, for spending some time with us today. We'll have to have you back again because, like I said, there's a hundred conversations. We've got lots more to talk about. Yeah, and I always walk away with something, some nugget I can take and put to use. A little more inspiration to do it and get it done. So thank you for that. Of course. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I know our listeners love hearing that. And for everybody else out there, we hope you'll like, subscribe and rate our podcast. We have three stars in our crescent, but we love those five star ratings. Thanks for joining us today. And until next time, Delta Love.