Neal Thompson
Digital Psychology Specialist
MSc, PGDipSci, BA - Health Psychology

Screen Sense was founded by Neal Thompson, who has studied psychology and philosophy (BA) at the University of Auckland, specialised in health psychology (PGDipSci, MSc) and is certified in health coaching.

At the turn of the millennium, Neal was New Zealand's first professional online computer game player, competing at overseas tournaments with sponsorship for prize money. He knows what it's like to put in long hours of screen time and in the process get addicted. He discovered a passion for computer gaming at the age of five and would later go on to represent New Zealand, competing in Quake tournaments at World Cyber Games (WCG) events and Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) events. Looking back, Neal now reflects openly about extreme gaming, about how addictive it was and about the negative impact it had on his health and also his relationships at the time.

Neal has 20+ years of experience across telecommunications, IT and digital health in product management, project management, innovation management and strategy. He has held senior roles at Spark New Zealand and Telstra Australia, later specialising in the field of digital health. While at Spark, Neal launched New Zealand's first Connected Health compliant video conferencing service called Virtual Clinic as well as upgraded Spark's HealthZone which services district health boards, GPs and pharmacies. While working for Jupl, he led the development of a next generation medical alarm system for aged care clients and domestic violence victims.

Concerned about the impact of A.I. algorithms on social media use, Neal researched ways technology design, behaviour-change principles and positive psychology could promote digital wellbeing. This work led to the development of Screen Sense, an initiative helping people build healthier relationships with technology.