Can ‘Inside Out’ help fix our tech-wrecked emotions?

Comedian Paula Poundstone doesn’t like what she sees at the park near her Santa Monica home: “95 percent” of parents and nannies ignoring their kids while staring at phones.

But aren’t adults talking with their children at the park about trees, people and dogs around them, educating their ready-to-learn brains and emotions?

No.

“Those parents or nannies either have a headset on, or are staring or talking into a phone while they’re pushing the baby,” she said.

Poundstone — who performs Friday and Saturday at the Orleans hotel ($22-$44) — thinks people are becoming isolated because of tech, and now many of us are worse at processing emotions.

Poundstone points out she’s only the latest person to observe this trend.

She and I were talking about this subject, because she believes the new movie she’s in, Pixar’s “Inside Out,” could in some way help kids and adults address, value and understand their neglected emotions.

The animated adventure comes out Friday. It has 100 percent raves on RottenTomatoes.com, including David Edelstein’s declaration it’s “going to be a new pop-culture touchstone.”

“Inside Out” tells the story of a girl, and the main characters of the girl’s internal emotions, such as sadness and joy, while her emotions process the girl’s struggles in a new town.

Poundstone gives voice to one of many “Inside Out” virtual characters, Forgetter Paula, in charge of forgetting. The real-life Poundstone has serious concerns about tech’s sapping our lives.

“In my humble opinion, the entire country and world are in the midst of a mental health crisis,” Poundstone said.

“We have an electronics addiction crisis,” she said, “causing our society to relate to each other quite stupidly.”

As we all know, she said, social networking equals mean snarkiness. If you make a mistake, it goes viral and dogs you forever.

“Those things are not manifestations of a healthy society. People are very isolated. It’s like we’re all yelling at each other out of our cars,” she said.

Poundstone proposes a novel idea: How about we look each other in the eye instead of staring at screens in unison?

“Doesn’t looking in your eye give you a dopamine release in your brain?” she said.

Poundstone has a personal connection with all this.

“My son has very severe electronics addiction,” Poundstone said. “He can’t be around any of this stuff. I haven’t allowed him to play with it for years, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t” when he’s out of her view.

She was the one who “stupidly” put him in front of electronics in the first place.

“It’s tough to tell what came first, the chicken or the egg. Did he not learn social skills because he was hiding behind a computer? Or was he hiding behind a computer because he felt unsteady with social skills?”

Poundstone still uses tech. She’s not calling for a prohibition.

“I think it’s time to take a second look at how we use it, not whether we use it.”

But she has noticed we all think everyone else is addicted except for us, and that kind of belief is a hallmark of addiction.

However, Poundstone is a legendary comedian, so she has a funnier way of putting devices in perspective:

“Here’s the reason I know they’re addictive. I love to play Ping Pong. I love to practice the drums. I love to tapdance. And I have never once tried to figure out how to do one of those things in my car while I’m driving in such a way that the cops can’t see.”

Contact Doug Elfman at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. Find him on Twitter: @VegasAnonymous