Waking up, what is the first thing you do? You grab your phone, check your messages, view your mailbox and then open your social media apps and spend a lot of time browsing through content. Why do we commit so much time to this morning routine? It is not so much that we read important information, but it is more about the feeling of not wanting to miss anything that has happened since yesterday. Most people see technology as a tool, something that humans can use to reach certain goals. But when technology is highly involved in our life, we tend to let technology control us. We become overly dependent on technology.
According to a study conducted by Flurry, the average hours spent per day on a mobile device is 5 hours while millennials now spend up to even 9 hours a day on social media platforms. A day comes with 24 hours, subtracting the average sleeping time of 8 hours gives us 16 hours. The average time spent on your mobile device equals 31,25% of the time you have available each day. According to a news article from The Telegraph in 2011, a student ‘addiction’ to technology is ‘similar to drug cravings’. They found that four in five students had significant mental and physical distress, panic, confusion and extreme isolation when forced to unplug from technology for an entire day. They call it “information withdrawal syndrome”.
Another report from the American Psychological Association (APA) stated that being constantly connected increased stress. Immediately checking and responding to your emails is bad for your health. This urge to immediately reply to your boss, co-workers or clients is named “workplace telepressure.” Removing the barrier between your work and private life disrupts the balance. Work follows you even after you are done. A fixation on work email can contribute to physical and mental burnout.
Moreover, 45% of the parents feel disconnected from their children because of technology, according to APA report. Not only parents can feel this way, also friends. Often when millennials are physically in the same space as their friends having a meetup, they are distracted from reality by being constantly on their phone. They are talking to other friends while neglecting their friends right in front of them. Why? Because everyone else is also doing it. It has become the norm.
The number of meaningful relationships a millennial has is scarce. The majority of millennials are active on social media. According to the Pew Research Center, an average Facebook user now has 338 friends. This number is, of course, a lot higher for millennials. Having so many (digital) friends, keeping contact with lots of people at the same time, and negligence of friends mentioned in the paragraph above, makes you feel easily replaceable. You feel having a lack of personal attention.
Last but not least, millennials are raised with the message that they can do anything they want. They are the generation that will change the world. So we grow up with the thought to really have an impact on this world. Articles popping up daily about another successful young entrepreneur. However, the reality is far different for the most of us, where success is not reached instantly. Now add social media, where everyone portraits themselves as the best version of themselves, often unrealistic. Millennials spend so much time browsing through all the content on social media and watching how perfect and impactful other people’s lives are, that they become insecure when they compare it to their own life. Because they are comparing a perfect illusion with reality.
“Millennials will be the smartest, most developed and successful generation the world has seen so far”. This is the general thought of the rest of the population when they think of people born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s. Because of the rapid development of technology during this period, millennials are (expected to be) familiar with using technology. Which is true for the most part, in my opinion. Technology has been intertwined with our lives from the day we were born. Millennial’s technical competence, the rise of technology and high welfare during their upbringing are the main reasons for why the expectation for this generation is so high.
We, as millennials, love technology, we cannot live without it. Too much, and it becomes an addiction. You hate that you love your social media addiction, but there is not much you can do. By removing your connectivity to the rest of the world, you feel anxious, alone and untethered. We are the first generation that grew up in this technology-focused environment. Whatever problem we encounter, we will also solve it for the generations to come. So, my final message is: keep on using technology but stay aware of how it affects your life.
Very interesting post! Two questions that came to mind while reading were: (1) do you really think there is nothing we can do to curb our addiction to technology? (2) Do you think the problem will continue to grow, or will it eventually go away?
Personally, last year I decided to run a self-experiment to determine how I spent my time during my day to day life. i was interested in how efficient I was being, how much time I wasted, and particularly how much time I spent on technological devices (outside of uni- or work-related use). I.e. how much time on Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Tindr, etc. I did this for one month. At the end of it all, I could see I was spending hours a day just browsing social media and having random conversations with dozens of people at a time.
With this new information, I decided to try to change this. I forced myself out of some of my oldest habits, such as always having Facebook, Whatsapp, and messenger open in tabs on my laptop. I turned off notifications for all my social apps (except of course messenger/whatsapp), and changed the bookmark on my laptop to go to my Facebook profile instead of the news feed, so I couldn’t get sucked in to randomness when I just wanted to check one page or event.
The results have been great, and I now spend <1 hour per day on social media type activities. Contrary to what some would believe, it actually reduced my anxiety and increased my happiness. My fear of missing out disappeared, and I strengthened many personal friendships. All-in-all, I became more productive, happier, and now when I go to use social media I rarely browse (even when presented with the option).
So I think there is something we can all do about our addiction, but we must first recognize it and see how it affects our daily lives.
My second question is more general, but I am very curious how this will play out in the future. As you said, we're already extremely addicted to our devices. And as most people will never take a step back to look at their own addiction, will the problem ever be solved? Companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple are working on projects that will replace the smartphone entirely and instead offer devices connected directly to your body (think of a device implanted in your brain that could project your iPhone screen directly onto your eyes). To me, this is a step too far. But for those who are still addicted to their devices, will they take this next step without a moments hesitation? Will they continue to increase their addiction, to the point that they have it connected to their body 24/7?
That's something I'll be very interested to see in the future!
Thanks for a great post! 🙂
Ross
Hey Joey,
Very interesting read. Personally I have experienced anxiety and depression and I have come to believe that part of this might have been caused because of my hate/love relationship with technology. For me the love is expressed in the many hobbies that I can commit to because of technology (making Youtube videos, playing games, reading interesting articles, finding hacking methods and working 24/7). The hate is expressed in the destructional behaviours that I end up with such as being less social, less active, more stressed and less open towards the outside world.
I find it hard to say that technology will really make us the smartest, most developed and succesful generation that the world has ever seen. Complex might be another word to describe this generation, as balancing the benefits with the potential dangers of all technology available to our human bodies might become the way to go.
I personally really enjoy watching older people just talking, without any technological barriers or pressure, about random subjects. For me those generations are still smarter in their way of communicating then we are.
Greetings,
Steven de Rooij.
Thanks Joey, for this interesting and accurate blogpost.
I do relate to the issues that you emphasize your writing.
But I would like to put the fact that by removing your connectivity, you will feel anxious, alone and untethered into perspective.
Eventhough, we have a lot of friends, who we keep in contact with in real life or via internet and all the social media, we are actually the most individualist generation, this is due to the instant gratification that is offered by internet and social media. (Sabre, 2017) Ironically , loneliness began to surge, two years after Apple launched its first computer and five years before the world wibe web was invented. (Forbes, 2017) So it is not only when you will remove our connectivity, even with the connectivity we still will feel lonely.
http://www.sabredigitalcreative.com/marketing-to-millennial-reaching-the-most-distracted-generation-yet/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinebeaton/2017/02/09/why-millennials-are-lonely/#23c3c447c351
Personally, I would say ‘friendship’ is about a connection, a bond, something deeper than sharing drinks in a bar, opening up about personal things and being ‘vulnerable’, in a sense. And if one has hundreds of friends on social media – well, such a deeper kind of friendship isn’t likely to exist with 99% of them.
Damn, interesting read. Usually don’t comment but since this also involved me I’ll give my two cents. Mismatched expectations are often the culprit for unhappiness indeed and technology is the driving factor behind this. Risky time to be alive. But paired with high risk is high value if you succeed. Focus on being in charge of technology and use it to complement your life is the key to success. And with all negative things in the world, finding the humour within will make life way more enjoyable. Laugh at the you back then who was overly worried about every little thing. Be open and honest, and then let the fun begin.
Hi Joey! I read the title of your blog and you got my attention right away. Unfortunately, I can relate to a lot of things you are writing in your blog. I think that makes me a real millennial!
There are so many pros and cons about our digital life we are having now. I read an article about reasons why it is okay that millennials struggle with burnouts. It is especially the pressure that our environment and we put on us.
That is why sometimes we just want to isolate ourselves from the technology. But we can’t, because we will miss some much if we are ‘offline’. In my opinion, we should create a culture where it is fine to be ‘offline’ for a while. That it is not a necessity but a choice. That will improve the ease of use of technology, because we will avoid the urge of being ‘online’ then.
https://evajinek.kro-ncrv.nl/artikelen/vijf-verdomd-goede-redenen-waarom-millennials-kampen-met-burn-outs
Dear Joey,
Thank you for your interesting blog. I am a little confused; you mention that some people spend up to 9 hours a day on their mobile devices. This is obviously a lot, but you forgot to mention what amount of people is doing this, it is not an average or anything, so 9 hours a day is not as shocking as you make it seem like. Secondly, for mobile devices, are laptops / computers taken into account as well? It may very well be that people are working all day on their laptop, either for their studies or for their job. This is not necessarily a bad thing, do you think so?
These are just some minor questions, but now I am wondering, where do you think this social media addiction goes next? Do you think the problem gets bigger, people spending more time on their devices and on social media, or do you think it will stop at some point, when people come to realize the destructional effect of social media?
Best regards,
Pauline
Hello Joey,
Your post grabbed my attention. Especially, the part, which describes how watching the perfect image of other people’s lives in social media can lead to depression and insecurity. I believe that this is a huge problem of our generation. According to the recent research by RSPH, Instagram is ranked the worst social media channel for mental health (see, https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/instagram-ranked-worst-for-young-people-s-mental-health.html ).
Daily comparison of thoroughly edited pictures of celebrities and bloggers with ordinary person’s life makes the latter feel worthless. A lot of young people are dreaming to be social media famous, get millions of followers and make money out of it. Such beautiful life seems to be full of fun, parties and traveling. However, nobody knows what problems might cover behind those happy photos. In my opinion, Millennials also need to learn how to focus on their own life, stop comparing themselves with others and be grateful for what they have in their life.