An average person checks 110 times his phone on a day, with peak hours between 5 pm and 8 pm (Woollaston, 2013). That means you’ll consulting your smartphone nearly 40.000 times a year. Your phone will become your constant companion and trusty factotum – your teacher, secretary, confessor, guru. The two of you will be inseparable.
A recent essay of Nicholas Carr in the Wall Street Journal gives some troubling research about the impact of smartphone on our ability to concentrate (Carr, 2017).
The smartphone has become a repository of the self,” wrote Nicholas Carr “recording and dispensing the words, sounds and images that define what we think, what we experience and who we are.” For many, this is increasingly true (Wihelm, 2017)
The endless flow of information leads to a constant distraction of normal daily activities. And that’s fateful for the concentration, the stress arc and, above all, for the ability to consider something in peace, US technology commentator Nicholas Carr warns in his recently published book The shallow, how our brains deal with new media (Carr, 2017).
Our brain is being trained by the internet and new media to constantly shift attention. And it only stimulates superficial reflection. A growing number of Silicon Valley insiders — including Justin Rosenstein, who invented the Facebook “Like” button — are publicly pushing back against highly developed and intentionally addictive social-media apps that they compare to heroin (Lewis, 2017).
“When I read a book, my brain becomes after a page or 2 restless. My brains do not want to read anymore linearly, but are looking for a link that I can click on, “said Carr in March the Social Media Club Rotterdam (Carr, 2017). According to the technology commentator, it is widely used by iPhones, the Internet and other new media for a changing thinking pattern. Volatile and superficial. “The brain is physically adapting to new technologies.”
When we constrict our capacity for reasoning and recall or transfer those skills to a gadget, we sacrifice our ability to turn information into knowledge. We get the data but lose the meaning. Upgrading our gadgets won’t solve the problem. We need to give our minds more room to think. And that means putting some distance between ourselves and our phones.
Davey van Gilst, 386525
References:
Wihelm, H. (2017, October 13). Our toxic smartphone addiction. Retrieved from Chicago Tribune: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-smartphone-addiction-wilhelm-1013-story.html
Woollaston, V. (2013, October 8). How often do you check your phone? . Retrieved from Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2449632/How-check-phone-The-average-person-does-110-times-DAY-6-seconds-evening.html
Carr, N. (2017, October 6). How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds. Retrieved from Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-smartphones-hijack-our-minds-1507307811
Lewis, P. (2017, October 6). Smartphone Addiction Silicon Valley Dystopia. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia
Dear Davey,
I appreciate your passionate plea towards a more offline world in which we don’t constantly have to check our phones for updates but live in the moment a little. However, do you really think we will be able to turn away from our mobile devices so radically. I think it is much more fruitful to have discussion on how we can adapt to these strong technological market forces. I don’t think that we can stop it to be frank. Hell, even my 4-year old niece has a iPhone now. Shouldn’t we work with the technology not against it to better prepare ourselves, others and society for the ramifications thereof. For instance, a popular trend in the Netherland at the moment are so-called iPad-schools in which all students work and interact with school(work) through iPads. They started working from the ideas that conventional schooling was in a sense denying the emerging mobile dominance and would rather accommodate to said dominance than to be made obsolete.
Thought-provoking article!
I recommend reading further into Harris’ “Time Well Spent”, an initiative whose aim is to increase awareness of tech multinationals “hijacking our brains”. It touches upon your call for action of putting some distance between us and our smartphone. It does not translate into not using our phones anymore, but rather use it mindfully. Examples of that are disabling notifications that do not necessarily come from humans such as your YouTube recommendation notifications or Instagram. It encourages people to keep it simple by only allowing lock screen notifications from Messages, WhatsApp and other messaging apps whose alerts are actual people looking for you. Additionally, launching apps by typing into the search bar gives the brain a second moment to think whether it really wants to open that app or it is just momentarily boredom.
The constant fight for our attention by the different social media outlets has shaped indeed the way we think, the amount of time we dedicate to a challenging question and what kind of connections our brain decides to make. While I do not think that the tech giants like Google, YouTube or Facebook are evil, I’m not sure whether we’re always able to discern between doing what we want to do and what they want us to do. Is the choice always ours, did we really decide to watch one more YouTube video or was it just Autoplay at work?
I have found myself thinking about maintaining a snap-streak with a friend, and now I am wondering if this is just another mechanism to keep my brain occupied with my smartphone’s apps and superficial display of closeness. Maybe if our current attention-economy is steered towards building meaningful conversations and fruitful debates, then our time on our smartphone will be time well spent. Until then we’ll continue scrolling on our phone while clicking through the several tabs open on our laptops.
Sources:
“Time Well Spent”, accessed online at [Oct 16 2017]
Thomson (2017),“Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Smartphones Tristan Harris Wants to Rescue Them”, Wired, accessed online at [Oct 16 2017]
Hi Davey,
Great post. I indeed agree that we sometimes need to put more distance between ourselves and our phone. Especially when we are participating in social activities, hanging out with our friends or working together on a group project for example. It’s very annoying to get the feeling that somebody is not listening to what you’re saying because they are on their phone. More so, it even occurs that this phenomenon of ‘being hijacked by our smartphones sometimes even crosses the border of becoming dangerous. A well-known example is that many people use their smartphone while driving. This is needless to say very dangerous. In fact, 52% of car accidents that occur are (partly) a result of smartphone usage while attending traffic (AOL, 2017). This also indicates a lack of concentration and at the same time shows characteristics of addiction. How hard is it not to use your smartphone for the (relatively) short time you are driving? Especially when using it means potentially putting others at risk.
New study reveals cause of majority of car accidents. (2017). AOL.com. Retrieved 17 October 2017, from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/04/study-majority-of-car-accidents-caused-by-distracted-driving/22024897/