12 hours without a phone
How 'not an option' felt so different than 'do not disturb'
A few weeks ago I posted my review and reflections on “Stand Out of Our Light”. One of the most startling takeaways for me, which has come up in many a conversation the last few weeks, is how technology can distract and interfere with our attention even when we are not using it.
It’s a scary thought: that we lose some control of our selves — both what we do and who we are — when we allow dopamine-inducing, notification-centric technologies into our lives.
Social media and sugar
Earlier this year, Jonathan Haidt published a meta-analysis rounding up all the major evidence on social media and its affects on mental health. It’s meaty and no doubt pushes the conversation. Most interesting to me is his explanation for why studies were inconclusive for so many years:
Nearly all of the research––the “hundreds of studies” that Hancock referred to––have treated social media as if it were like sugar consumption. The basic question has been: how sick do individuals get as a function of how much sugar they consume? What does the curve look like when you graph illness on the Y axis as a function of daily dosage on the X axis?
He goes on to say:
When we look across thousands of girls, we might find no strong or clear correlation between time on social media and level of mental disorder. We might even find that the non-users are more depressed and anxious than the moderate users (which some studies do find, known as the Goldilocks effect).
What we see in this second case is that social media creates a cohort effect: something that happened to a whole cohort of young people, including those who don’t use social media.
The network effects of social media mean that its perils affect even those who do not actively use — which makes the problem all that harder to solve.
Social media — per Haidt’s analysis — is just one example of how technology can impact us even when/if we are not using it.
An experiment of my own
Last weekend I went to a wedding about an hour from home. I decided last minute to leave my phone at home, and see how the day would roll.
The experience was unique, and unexpectedly so.
I’m generally quite good at keeping my phone from direct/immediate distraction — what William’s calls “distraction of spotlight” in Stand Out of Our Light. I’m on do-not-disturb at all times. I’ve turned off almost all notification - emails, Instagram, news (with the exception of twice-daily “summaries”, a nifty iOS feature that groups your notifications together and delivers them at a set time). I do not keep my phone next to my bed or within reach when I’m sitting down to get something done. And when I meet someone for coffee or a lunch, the phone is away.
But I had never experimented with how my phone affects me even when I’m not using it. So I decided to give it a try, and I left my phone at home.
The wedding was a full day and evening ordeal, and I only knew a couple of people there. At multiple points throughout the service and then evening party, I found myself craving, wanting to reach for it.
Had I had my phone with me, I don’t think I actually would have picked it up all that many times. I’ve trained myself to keep it away as much as possible — going so far as to track my weekly ‘pickups’ (which helped me cut down by more than half).
But, this time felt different. Knowing I couldn’t possibly reach for it, I had no choice but to engage fully in the moment.
And what I discovered in those moments of craving was a little bit scary. Those moments were not random. It was not as if my mind had some 30 minute clock ticking, with a reminder to check for new updates at the end of each interval.
Instead, while undergoing this phone-less afternoon experiment, I realized that the moments I thought of reaching for my phone were the moments I felt most anxious. They were the moments when I came out of the bathroom, looked around the room and wondered who I could possibly strike a conversation with. They were the moments in the church service when my mind started wandering to stresses about work, things I said or did the last week that I wish I hadn’t. Moments I looked at the bride and groom and started thinking about my own romantic life.
In recognizing these moments and what was actually going on — only because I did not have the choice to reach for my phone — I came to see my device as a distraction far deeper than a disruption to my focus.
Technology and its provision of endlessly-available information has made it harder for me to be aware of my own state of being. To recognize my social anxiety, work stress, boredom, loneliness, laziness, self-doubt. Knowing there’s something there, right there, in my pocket, that could give me a cover — that is a cover in-and-of itself.
I run 3-5 days a week, and usually listen to music. But when I don’t listen to music, I have my phone with me. And last week I tried running without the phone.
It just felt harder.
It’s an escape, a way out of feeling the things I don’t want to feel, of processing the thoughts I don’t want to confront.
What to make of this — I don’t exactly know. I am not an anti-technologist, and I have no intention of living device-less anytime soon.
But, one thing I’d like to try to do is to be more aware of why I’m reaching for it. Do I have a set task I want to accomplish? What is that task and how do I plan to accomplish it using my device?
If I cannot answer those questions, why not? What else might be going on within me and how can I acknowledge and become more aware of that?