It seems that almost everyone owns a smartphone, a device that has proven to be as practical as it is distracting over the last decade. Thus, the apps and tools birthed since the release of the first iPhone have made deep, uninterrupted focus a challenge to obtain and maintain.
Cal Newport, a Georgetown University professor Cal Newport and author of the 2016 book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, argues that the ability to perform deep work is a rare skill but one that is increasing in its value, especially in the workplace. He defines “deep work” as “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration, that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit (Newport, 2016, p. 3)”. Unfortunately, digital distractions can and do prevent even the most diligent of academics and employees from reaching their full potential. Many psychologists and Silicon Valley technology engineers have gone as far as to compare the magnetic pull of social media apps to the allure of slot machines in Vegas. The time and mental energy that an increasing amount of smartphone users dedicate to maintaining a digital presence often results in low-quality work and strained relationships. We can’t stop smart technology from influencing our world any more than we can stop gravity. But what we can do is reevaluate the reasons why many of us feel addicted to our smartphones, understand what their psychological and behavioral impacts are, and make practical changes to reclaim our focus. Link to my white paper here.
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The same weekend I began reading Julie Beck’s article “How It Became Normal to Ignore Texts and Emails,” I found myself guilty of being the said ignorer.
A friend had texted me earlier that day, asking if I wanted to meet her in Downtown L.A. with her and her boyfriend. I love this friend, but abhor mid-Sunday Los Angeles traffic. I also knew I had a big day ahead the following Monday and don’t like to be out late on “school nights.” But I didn’t have the heart to say “No thanks, maybe next time?” right off the bat. So I let the message sit as I went about my day, finally responding to it three days later. Considering that for most of us, our smartphones are chained to us wherever we go, it’s likely that it doesn’t take a long time for our friends to see the messages we send them -- even though they might respond hours or even days later. To be honest, I enjoy the freedom texting gives me to delay my responses. It’s the reason why I’ve disabled the read receipts on my phone. “The defining feature of conversation is the expectation of a response,” Beck writes in The Atlantic. But while text communication is meant to “mimic” the ebbs and flows of face-to-face conversations, it’s ironic that the instantaneous nature of texting has given us a way to slow our responses to messages. In turn, we pay for the convenience of a supposedly speedy communication method with anxiety and the overanalyzing of the texts we do receive. At the same time, the convenience of text communication leaves much to be wanted. For example, I cannot gauge the full meaning of a text message without being able to interpret my friend’s body language and voice fluctuation. Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguist, iterates that the “metamessages” that come with texts can make the messages even more confusing to read: “...because the technologies, and the conventions for using them, are so new and are changing so fast, even close friends and relatives have differing ideas about how they should be used. And because metamessages are implied rather than stated, they can be misinterpreted or missed entirely.” In dating, the “three days rule” is a concept popularized by movies and television shows. The idea is that the pursuer (a man, usually) should wait three days -- supposedly the appropriate waiting period -- before texting the person of his desire. Texting any sooner than that might make him look eager or worse, desperate. Sherry Turkle, director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at MIT, expands on this idea, saying that “taking a long time to write back is a way of establishing dominance in a relationship, by making yourself look simply too busy and important to reply.” Aside from the fact that I believe that there shouldn’t be a “dominant” partner in a relationship, I find this mentality problematic. While dating, I never once thought to myself, “Gee, I’m really attracted to this person. He’s so funny and I just love the way he takes forever to respond.” In fact, what drew me to my boyfriend now is that he never had an air of “I’m too busy to be bothered.” Beck states that despite all the anxieties that come with text messaging, texting is still the preferred method of communication for Americans under the age of 50. But texting is a double-edged sword; it provides all the conveniences of a mini-computer and Rolodex but obligates the smartphone owner to be constantly chained, or rather connected, to their network. We’re often so connected, even to the point that we lose sleep, writes Eric Andrew-Gee in his article for The Globe and Mail, “Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy. So why can’t you put it down?” Andrew-Gee writes, “Smartphone use takes about the same cognitive toll as losing a full night’s sleep. In other words, they are making us worse at being alone and worse at being together.” What’s even more frightening is that Americans reportedly spend three to five hours each day looking at their smartphones. Assuming that this doesn’t include using social media for work (I’m a content creator for social media), it was saddening to read Andrew-Gee’s prediction that most of us will spend the equivalent of seven years on our phones. In summary, it’s more than odd that as much as we desire the instantaneous -- whether it’s news articles, status updates, Instagram/Snapchat stories, or text messages -- we also want to slow the pace of how and when we reply. Although it would seem that something as simple as responding to a text takes no time at all, it’s actually an added source of stress for smartphone users. In an effort to stay connected with our established friend groups, we run the risk of feeling technologically burned out. Even 60-plus years ago, Canadian economist and media expert Marshall McLuhan’s commentary about that state of our communication platforms is still very much applicable today in 2018.
In his article “Social media is keeping us stuck in the moment,” Clive Thompson describes the “reverse chronological design” (or “reverse chron” for short) feature that apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram use to keep users logged in. He argues that while Internet trolls and cyberbullying, decreased inclination towards face-to-face interaction, and increased narcissism (we have the selfie partly to thank for that), Thompson believes that these negative outcomes of social media are exaggerated. He writes, “If you asked me what the true danger about social media is, I’d say it’s much more subtle. It’s the problem of time -- and becoming stuck in the present.” Thompson argues that the reverse chron trend didn’t necessarily begin with Facebook or Twitter, but with the advent of newspapers. Since their beginning, newspapers have been present-oriented, beckoning readers to keep buying the latest editions as new news developments unfolded. This need for the new, gives society “an obsession with the immediate...criticism of the moment at the moment,” Marshall McLuhan says, quoting author Henry James. Clive Thompson asserts that technology is not necessarily shaping social media users to be more narcissistic than we already were, but I disagree. I believe that the immediacy of social media, compounded with our desire for the latest and newest updates, is shaping us to believe that our friends or followers care more about our photos and words than they probably do. Travel is one of my favorite activities, but I can often get so caught up in documenting each new sight and experience that I realize I’m seeing the world through the lens of my iPhone rather than my own eyes. When I go out of town, I’ll post a series of photos from my latest trip, forgetting that no one probably cares all that much about where I am and what I’m doing at a certain point in time. Except for my mom, perhaps. I do agree, however, with Thompson’s proposed solution to controlling our obsession with reverse chron: “On one level, it’s a personal battle; seizing back control of our own attention: We have to learn to enjoy what’s powerful and delightful about online tools, but to resist their casino-like seductions.” This reverse chron phenomenon can be so powerful that we may often feel compelled to stay logged in, logged into the present, lest we miss an important update or flattering comments under our pictures/posts. So much to the point that we equate the validation of a “like” or retweet with inherent truths about ourselves. In an interview with The Washington Post, former Facebook vice president Chamath Palihapitiya discusses the dangers of social media users becoming “programmed” by the Internet giant: “We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection, because we get rewarded in these short-term signals...And instead, what it is is fake, brittle popularity that’s short-term and leaves you even more, admit it, vacant and empty before you did it. Think about that compounded by 2 billion people.” It’s a bit frightening to think that Facebook’s 2 million users (and growing), as well as the tech engineers behind the app, have hands in what early Facebook investor Sean Parker described as “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” The tech brains running Facebook have the skills and know-how to implement data collection and reverse chron technology to keep users coming back, but Facebook users are the ones providing up-to-the-second content that draws their fellow users to click the blue and white Facebook logo. In my opinion, there isn’t really a solution to the swath of problems Facebook has unleashed over the years, unless those profiting off the success of the social media platform are willing to trade their financial gain in order to somehow make Facebook less addictive for users. The solution, Palihapitiya says, lies with users. He says, “...your behaviors, you don’t realize it, but you are being programmed. It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you’re willing to give up, how much of your intellectual independence.” Though there seems to be a significantly growing number of critics in Silicon Valley speaking out against Facebook’s ability to collect data and use its ‘dopamine-driven feedback loops’ to influence users, I don’t expect Mark Zuckerberg and company to step off the gas anytime soon. I suspect Facebook will continue hiring PR teams to generate more bland public statements about “making sure the right investments are made” in order to temporarily quell the critics. I have always been an avid list-maker. Whether it’s through my iPhone’s Notes app or any scrap of paper I find, you can count on me to jot down activities to get done before the day’s up, groceries to pick up from Trader Joe’s, or the RSVPs of guests attending my best friend’s upcoming bridal shower.
This is why I like the project management software Trello. The program isn’t new to me, as I was already familiar with Trello in my most recent public relations job. My colleagues and I shared our Trello boards with each other to determine what digital marketing goals still needed to be met, track our clients’ coverage in the media, and curate content for our firm’s e-newsletters. The beauty of Trello is that if you make your Trello board public (or at least share it with friends or coworkers), your colleagues can track your progress on activities, or know how much you’re juggling on your plate. Similar to Google Drive, Trello can be as collaborative or private as one wants. What I also like about Trello is that it’s a digital to-do list that can always be updated and changed, no erasers or new sheets of paper necessary. Each Trello board, along with the cards in each board, can be renamed to the user’s liking. This week, I broke down all of my tasks and deadlines for each module of ICM 501: Foundations in Graduate Studies into individual cards on Trello. Each column lists the specific projects that need/needed to be completed before the Sunday night deadline of the weekly modules. My Module 5 assignments are listed in the first column under “To Do,” which has a September 30 deadline. When you click on most of the assignments under that, you’ll find a checklist of specific steps I need to take in order to fully complete a project. In the “Doing” column, I have a September 23 deadline set. Again, each project to be completed for the module is listed individually, each with their own specific set of steps. For example, under the blog post assignments, these cards have checklists that remind me to write my blog post, edit my blog post, create an image for my blog post, and of course, publish my blog post. For the blog post tasks I’ve already done, I took the liberty of adding the images I made for those blogs. For the assignments that are all finished, I’ve checked them off with big, green check mark stickers. Normally, I’d move my most recently completed tasks over to the right-hand side of the screen under one “Done” column but because there are quite a few assignments, I’m simply changing the “To Do” columns to “Done, by September X deadline” and then creating a new “To Do” Trello board every week. Another important step I took was prioritizing each task in the order I wanted to complete them. Starting each week with our Zoom meetings puts me in the right mindset to continue forth with the rest of my work. I also prefer to read every single assignment before trying to tackle any writing. Additionally, I’ve found that reading and annotating my assigned reading is extremely helpful in completing the rest of my projects, such as my annotated bibliography and blog posts. Lastly, having to separate out each module’s projects individually has taught me the value of NOT multitasking. This week, I read neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley and psychologist Larry Rosen’s article “Remedies for the Distracted Mind,” which reminds readers about the counterproductive aspect of multitasking. Rather than try to complete multiple projects at once, I am inspired to stay deeply focused on one task at a time for the best results. The authors of this article iterate how they’ve observed students multitasking while studying, which resulted in decreased work performance and lower scores. “In the office, we often juggle our work assignments...We believe that we’ll be able to manage everything at the same time, and maybe even more productively,” the authors write. As practical and user-friendly as Trello is, I’m not entirely sure if the software is something I will use outside of the workplace. While I have no issues with the software itself, I won’t always have my laptop open, and there’s always something comforting about being able to draw a line through a completed task on my to-do list with a pen. The way author Adam Greenfield starts his essay, “A Sociology of the Smartphone” sounds almost like the beginning of a romantic poem: “They are the last thing we look at before sleep each night, and the first thing we reach for upon waking.” No, he isn’t talking about his lover’s arms, but the rectangular “sandwich of aluminosilicate glass, polycarbonate and aluminum” that usually accompany us in bed. I remember when the first iPhone launched in 2007. I was at two friends’ combined birthday party when the resident rich kid of our class brandished his thin, sleek touchscreen phone. At 14, I had gotten my first cell phone. It was a silver Razr phone, only given to me with the understanding that it was to be used for calling my parents only. At the time, I found it so odd that this kid’s parents deemed it necessary for their child to own a pocket-sized computer. Actually, I still think it’s weird. I honestly don’t know why anyone under 18 needs constant access to apps and the Internet. I was just fine without a smartphone or laptop until I started college. As the iPhone and other comparable smartphones replaced brick phones, each new model decreasing in size and weight, it seems that we haven’t noticed the total changes to our communicative landscape wrought by these newfangled smart devices. At that seventh-grade party/2007 iPhone unveiling, we teens spent the night dancing, laughing and eating cake. Had more of us owned iPhones, I have a strong feeling that that birthday party would’ve looked a lot more like the teen parties of today. We would’ve spent more time bent over our phones, analyzing texts from boys, finding the best Snapchat filter for our selfies, and ensuring all of our friends and followers on social media knew that we were at a party. I agree with Greenfield when he says that the smartphone has dominated most social spaces, acting as “an extension of our bodies”: “Equipped with these devices, we’re both here and somewhere else at the same time, joined to everything at once yet never fully anywhere at all.” The smartphone, Greenfield says, has replaced much of the traditional human interactions that connect us. Gone are the days of hearing about the latest current event at newspaper stands, gathering around a TV/electronic store to watch the results of the big game or election, or hailing a cab with a flick of the wrist -- there’s an app for that now. The smartphones have become the ultimate substitute for a number of tools we once carried in our purses. Contact lists have replaced the Rolodex, physical credit cards and bills have been swapped with credit card apps, roadmaps with Google Maps, and pocket photos of family and pets with digital photo albums. Surprisingly, Greenfield writes, few things remain irreplaceable even with the advent of smart technology, such as passports and driver’s licenses. I remember when I finally got my first iPhone (the second semester of my first year in college), I was grateful for the instant access to my email. I wouldn’t have to trudge up to my dorm to check my laptop for replies from professors. As I became more engrossed with my new toy, I began to appreciate its more unnecessary but fun features. Camera filters made photos of myself look tenfold better, I could avoid asking for directions thanks to my maps app, and I could use hilarious emojis to replace words. I had, in the words of Greenfield, traded my privacy for convenience. “For most of us, most of the time, the functionality on offer is so useful that this is a bargain we’re more than happy to strike, yet it remains distressing that its terms are rarely made explicit,” he writes. “When we move through the world with a smartphone in hand, then, we generate an enormous amount of data in the course of our ordinary activities, and we do so without noticing or thinking much about it.” I admit, the convenience of getting from Point A to Point B with help from Google’s satellites is beneficial enough to me that I don’t necessarily think about the cons of this smart technology. I rarely think about how someone out there in Silicon Valley knows exactly where I go, how I spend my time, the messages I send, what I buy, and the photos I send and receive. I also know that the relatively cheap cost of the iPhone comes at the expense of laborers overseas who put the phones together. They are often subjected to long hours, low wages, and dangerous working conditions. But because I don’t see this happening, it’s almost as if it’s not happening. Sadly, I liken the casual attitude I have towards general smartphone use to my use of plastic. I hate the fact that a lot of our plastic ends up in the ocean, and while I try to use less plastic in my own life, I don’t think I can eliminate it completely. With my iPhone, I hate knowing that someone has so much intel into my life, as well as the other problematic aspects of smart technology, like computer hacking. But not quite enough to go back to my old, 2006 Razr phone. During one of my health kicks in college (a time where I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be vegetarian, vegan, or pescetarian), I watched the Netflix documentary “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead” and was inspired to attempt my own 5-day juice cleanse. No solid foods, just liquefied fruits and veggies for those five days. I'd heard that Beyonce and other popular celebrities had done it before the day of an important shoot or promo event. It was just for five days, how bad could it be?
Very bad, as it turns out. The first night -- the only night of my juice cleanse before I put the kibosh on the whole idea -- I slept very little. My stomach gurgled and groaned, begging for something solid or at the very least, salty. The next day, I ripped open a box of Wheat Thins like it was a Willy Wonka chocolate bar with a golden ticket inside. I’m happy to report that my 5-day Detox Data experiment went much more smoothly than my attempted juice cleanse of 2013, though not without a few hiccups. For my experiment, I chose to abstain from Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat for five days. Though it would’ve been more interesting to give up texting, email, and Facebook over the week, I’m in the midst of maid of honor duties, job hunting, and event planning. I’ve never been a huge fan of Twitter or Snapchat but have both on my iPhone for some reason. Instagram, on the other hand, is my social media vice. I’m a visual person and have a love/hate relationship with how easy it is to get lost on the app. It’s almost as bad as Pinterest. One glance at someone’s Instagram profile can give you a quick look into that person’s lifestyle and interests and the search hashtag feature gives me the ability to get endless inspiration for #fallfashion, #midcenturymodern bedroom designs, and #foodie dinner ideas. The two main criteria I wanted to explore in my experiment was 1) how many times I would be tempted to log into my ‘banned’ social media accounts, and 2) how I felt throughout each day, whether I logged into these accounts or chose to spend my time doing something else. I didn’t want to use an app like Rescue Time to track how much time I spent on every activity, since I figured it’d be ironic to use an app to reveal how much more beneficial it would be for me to allocate less time to apps. I did, however, like some of the tips from HumaneTech.com as it pertained to living “more intentionally with your devices right now.” Some of the tips I’d already implemented when I first got an iPhone, such as turning off all push notifications. Even back then, I knew I didn’t want all the added distractions that come with being a smartphone owner. I also kept my most important, non-social media apps on the first page of my phone so that I’d be less tempted to open Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. In hindsight, I would’ve been better off deleting them from my phone entirely but at least this way, I could intentionally practice the act of self-control. From Monday through Friday, I conducted this experiment. As one can see by my detox data results (see above), Twitter and Snapchat didn’t prove to be too challenging to abstain from, as I'd expected. But Instagram was more difficult. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m renovating my living space or am always looking for some travel inspiration via Instagram hashtags. Simply put, I love having access to a platform that is dedicated to aesthetics. I did notice that on the days I managed to not log onto these three social media accounts, or log on two times or less, I could spend that time focusing on more productive activities, such as my graduate work. It was also easier to abstain from social media on days where I had multiple commitments and appointments to attend, leaving no brain space for social media. The times that I did accidentally log onto social media were done out of pure habit. When I check my email on my phone, my fingers often automatically go through the rest of my most commonly used social media apps. I found this to be most evident when I first woke up in the morning, or if I was walking around, mindlessly scrolling through my phone. My usual routine for going through my phone goes like this: email → Facebook → Instagram → Snapchat, and if I’m truly bored, → Twitter. I learned, in reading the CNN article “Smartphone addiction could be changing your brain,” that I may not be much better than the smartphone-addicted teens writer Sandee LaMotte discusses. LaMotte uses the term “Nomophobia” to describe one’s fear of not having constant access to their cell/smartphone. In the Nomophobia Questionnaire, I scored a 62 -- yikes -- which means I “probably can’t go long without checking your phone.” I attribute this constant phone-checking partly due to the mentality I built during my time as a journalist. Missing that crucial text or phone call could mean losing my last chance of getting that quote I needed to finish my story and get my paycheck. According to Caglar Yildirim, an assistant professor of human computer interaction, smartphone addiction can result in severe anxiety for those who can’t have access to their phones. He says, “This might negatively affect your social life and relationships with friends and family. There are studies that show those who score high on the (Nomophobia) test tend to avoid face-to-face interactions, have high levels of social anxiety and maybe even depression.” I’ve definitely felt annoyed when I’ve been with friends who break eye contact with me every time their boyfriends text them but at the same time I realize that there have been moments when I too could have turned my device off. Being attached to my phone has caused me some anxiety, not because I fear not having immediate Internet access, but because I fear that I might miss an important email or notification. Yildirim also says that even when cell phone users attempt to be productive via multi-tasking, their attention is still divided: “We know that medium to heavy multitaskers, who engage in multiple forms of media simultaneously, tend to demonstrate matter area in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is the area of the brain responsible for top-down attention control. Altogether this means that if you are too dependent on your smartphone, you are basically damaging your ability to be attentive.” In reading Cal Newport’s “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World,” I found his comment about the “cacophony of voices” that try to tell deep workers what activities they need to be engaged in to be successful was compelling. He writes, “...we live in an era where anything Internet related is understood by default to be innovative and necessary. Depth-destroying behaviors such as immediate email responses and an active social media presence are lauded, while avoidance of these trends generates suspicion” (p. 75). Having worked in jobs where email, social media pages, and other administrative fluff were necessary, I can admit that I was often more stressed by these small, shallow tasks than by the meatier projects I also had to complete. “Many knowledge workers spend most of their working day interacting with these types of shallow concerns,” Newport writes. “...this is a foolhardy way to go about your day, as it ensures that your mind will construct an understanding of your working life that’s dominated by stress, irritation, frustration, and triviality. The world represented by your inbox, in other words, isn’t a pleasant world to inhabit” (p. 81). At the end of this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that my social media detox attempt was a thousand times more preferable to a juice cleanse. For one thing, I never once uttered “Dear God, please make it stop” during this week’s experiment. But I’ve also learned the value of using my time intentionally and not resorting to my smartphone when I’m bored or procrastinating on a project. Though I certainly could use more practice, I look forward to setting aside short bits of time for play and the rest for deep work and more meaningful life moments. I remember attending a family gathering around Christmastime, where a myriad of cousins came to socialize, catch up, and most importantly, eat (typical Filipino events always revolve around food). I have a big family; you couldn’t walk about freely without nearly tripping over small children; my cousins and second cousins.
Many of those little ones were guaranteed a full evening’s worth of entertainment thanks to the iPads and Kindle Fires they had in tow. I recall feeling extremely annoyed by the end of Christmas Day, having heard the song “Let it Go” from the movie “Frozen” blare from my youngest girl cousin’s iPad at least 25 times. What bothered me more than the repetition of 2013’s most overplayed song was the fact that the children who owned iPads -- at the time, these kids were under the age of five or six -- seemed to replace normal social interaction and child’s play with a portable screen. For many of these children, a smart device had become a babysitter of sorts. Perhaps this is why I resonate with a recent article I read from The Atlantic, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” In the article, San Diego State University professor of psychology Jean M. Twenge writes about the generational shifts between the teens of today and past decades, specifically as it relates to the rise of technology. Twenge quotes her young, 13-year-old social media-savvy niece as saying “We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like people.” I found this very telling. At 25, I can recall Internet being around for most of my life, but I still remember the days of dial-up and corded phones. I remember bringing books, not iPads or smartphones, with me to keep me occupied when I accompanied my mom on her errands. I also remember a time when the word “like” meant approval and not the click of a Facebook button. Twenge pinpoints the two biggest differences between today’s teens and the teens of prior generations: 1. their view of the world, and 2. how they spend their time. In 2012, Twenge writes, roughly 50 percent of Americans owned a smartphone. In 2017, a survey of 5,000 American teens showed that three out of four of them owned a smartphone. Smartphone ownership and evolving social media platforms have led to major changes in the behaviors of today’s teens versus the teens of just a few decades ago. “There is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives and making them seriously unhappy,” Twenge writes. Twenge implies that this may be because instead of taking advantage of the responsibilities and opportunities that come with young adulthood, teens are stuck on their phones, letting life pass them by. Young people today are working less, dating less, are less sexually active, getting their driver’s license later in life and sadly, are more likely to experience symptoms of depression the longer they’re glued to their smartphones, according to Twenge. They’re also prone to experience “FOMO” (the fear of missing out), feelings of loneliness, cyberbullying, sleep deprivation, and quite likely, emotional distance from family or friends. Twenge writes, “Adolescence is a key time for developing social skills; as teens spend less time with their friends face-to-face, they have fewer opportunities to practice them.” To be honest, I have wondered if the term “social anxiety” is used too loosely today, perhaps as a safe replacement buzzword to describe teens’ inability or unwillingness to communicate with each other in real-time. While my teen years are long behind me, I’m far from perfect when it comes to my smartphone habits. Perhaps it’s ingrained in me, due to my two-year stint as a journalist, that I always keep my phone within easy reach. I check my social media accounts often to see if I’ve missed anything important. Maybe I’m more similar than I realize to the teens Twenge describes in her research. Some may argue that while Twenge makes the association between social media/smartphone use and depression, it does not necessarily equate to causation. However, I completely agree with Twenge when she writes, “The correlations between depression and smartphone use are strong enough to suggest that more parents should be telling their kids to put down their phone.” Perhaps next family gathering, my adult cousins will be encouraging their children to do just that. While reading an article from The Guardian recently, I couldn’t help but notice the irony in journalist Paul Lewis’s description of tech engineer Justin Rosenstein’s technology habits. Rosenstein, the brain behind Facebook’s “like” feature, keeps parental controls on his iPhone to stop him from downloading apps and blocks himself from popular online platforms such as Snapchat and Reddit.
Imagine creating a series of safeguards to keep yourself from feeding the monster of your own creation. Although I would argue that the rise of technological developments were made with good intentions for the most part, it’s unsurprising that they’ve resulted in numerous negatives. “There is growing concern that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called ‘continuous partial attention,’ severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ,” Lewis writes in his article, " 'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia." It’s funny how our egos can be fed by something so trivial as Facebook “likes.” Though Facebook’s “like” button was engineered with the goal of allowing Facebook members to give their friends self-esteem boosts throughout the day, it’s become a source of addiction. The bits of affirmation social media apps provide strengthen users’ impulse to check their smartphone devices for notifications. And often, these social media users will log into their accounts to numb the negative emotions they feel, such as boredom and loneliness. Lewis interviews Tristan Harris, a former Google employee and vocal critic of the technology industry. For Harris, the issue goes beyond the distraction caused by smart devices. He believes tech engineers are helping decrease the quality of our relationships with each other. Harris compares the addictive qualities of smart technology and social media to gambling. He says, “Each time you’re swiping down, it’s like a slot machine. You don’t know what’s coming next. Sometimes it’s a beautiful photo. Sometimes it’s just an ad.” Given that the average person swipes, taps, or touches their smartphone more than 2,500 times each day, it’s unsurprising that Lewis compares the allure of today’s technology to addictive drugs and gambling. Expanding on this drug/gambling addiction comparison, Lewis writes on Twitter engineer Loren Brichter’s creation, the pull-to-refresh app. He calls it “one of the most widely emulated features in apps” and “as intuitive as scratching an itch.” Apple engineer and aspiring neurosurgeon Chris Marcellino seems to agree with this assessment, describing to Lewis the similar effects technologies and gambling and drug use all have on our brains: “These are the same circuits that make people seek out food, comfort, heat, sex," Marcellino says. I can vaguely remember a time in high school when I asked my sister to temporarily change my Facebook password so that I could focus on that semester’s finals. Since then, I haven’t taken similar measures to keep myself concentrated on college papers, work projects, or the like, partly because not being easily able to check my phone or social media accounts can be more distracting than the original source of distraction. While typing all this, I’ll occasionally pat my pocket thinking my phone has vibrated when in actuality, it has not. And if I do choose to play around on my phone for a bit, I find myself slightly disturbed by the targeted ads displaying the accent table or jacket I had just been looking at on Target.com. I don’t believe that the rise of what Lewis describes as an “attention economy” will be going away anytime soon. As long as capitalism is alive and well, we can reasonably expect to be inundated with technology's advancements. Profit maximization will always be a priority in Silicon Valley, rather than the work-technology-life balance of consumers. To reverse the negative effects of technology and app addictions, the tech industry would be forced to fold. I consider myself somewhat of a late bloomer when it comes to smartphone ownership. While reading a different article, “What is ‘Brain Hacking’? Tech Insiders On Why You Should Care” I thought about how fortunate I was to not have had the distraction of an iPhone during my grade school, high school, and early college years. In his CBS News “60 Minutes” special, Anderson Cooper (forever one of my journalism icons) describes “brain hacking” as computer programmers’ ability to engineer their products so that users are prompted to check in constantly. Tristan Harris again provides his expertise on the matter, once more comparing smartphone addiction to gambling addiction. Instilling habits such as checking Facebook notifications every hour, one way of hijacking people’s minds. Harris says: “What you do is you make it so when someone pulls a lever, sometimes they get a reward, an exciting reward...There’s a whole playbook of techniques that get used to get you using the product for as long as possible.” I wholeheartedly agree with Harris’s fear that tech companies have the potential to enslave consumers to their screens. We're already seeing this happen. This may not be the tech companies’ intention on paper; they’ll release the latest and greatest tech features under the guise of enhancing user engagement. It all boils down to making money and successful advertising. It would be futile to ask the brains of Silicon Valley to stop making technological advancements and creating apps, not as long as these tech engineers want to earn their paychecks. Similarly, it would be pointless to ask Las Vegas casino owners to shut down their slot machines because of all the lives ruined by gambling addiction. If it’s true, as Anderson Cooper asserts, that there is an “addiction code” that technies use to predict our needs and desires, we the consumers will have to keep up; find ways to break the addiction. Throughout this week’s readings, I found myself thinking “That is so me” whilst reading about general smartphone habits and the impact of the Internet’s constant visual stimuli on our neurological functioning.
Through Harvard Business Review writers Adrian F. Ward, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W. Bos’s study of smartphones’ effect on cognitive ability and behavior, we learn that even when our devices are not present, their absence can cause just as much of a distraction. The authors’ experiment involved 800 participants who each completed a series of simple math problems, memorization exercises, and completion patterns. The difference between the highest performing participants and those who performed poorly had to do with the location of their smartphone devices. Those whose phones were kept in their pockets or on desks nearby did not perform nearly as well as those who kept their phones in an entirely separate room. The fact that the seeming absence of distracting factors (in this case, smartphones) can actually cause further distraction is worth noting. According to the experiment and what we can learn about cognitive psychology, we are programmed to turn our attention almost immediately to sources that pertain to us (i.e. a text message or a “like” on social media) even while engaged in an entirely different activity, such as homework or deep work. While reading Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, I could occasionally feel my mind wander to my phone and who may or may not have texted me while I was busy reading. I realize this is a bit ironic considering the nature of this course. I named this blog post “Dividing and Conquering” because of the solutions provided by the various authors and deep workers who address the challenge of remaining active, diligent readers in the Internet Age. A key component in being successful in deep work is learning how to separate or divide oneself from distractions, digital or otherwise, and focus totally on the task at hand. In Michael Harris’s opinion piece “I have forgotten how to read,” he cites an excerpt from fellow author Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows,” which states that “digital technologies are training us to be more conscious of and more antagonistic toward delays of all sorts." In order to get back to a pre-Internet type of focus as it pertains to reading, Harris says we must adjust our reading habits. The idea of changing our reading habits for the better is discussed at length in the Farnam Street article “How to Remember What You Read.” The author shares effective reading behaviors of active readers, versus the habits of passive readers, such as choosing the right book, note-taking, and annotating while reading. Rather than simply skimming over words, active readers are encouraged to immerse themselves into the pages by teaching themselves, and then others, the information. |
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