Because I keep a fairly meticulous journal, I know the date I purchased my first smartphone. It was a Thursday, in early 2012.
The energetic cell phone store sales guy was instantly deflated when I told him what I wanted to buy. He asked, nay pleaded, with me over and over again "are you sure you want to do this?" But I didn’t relent and through the whole transaction he looked as if I was asking him to carry out an unjust sentence. I'm sure that after I left with my new smartphone he went into the back and washed his hands and sobbed over my life choices.
At the time I understood his anguish was over my phone’s OS… you see, instead of an Apple or Android phone, I purchased a Windows Phone. (Even in 2012, no one was buying a Windows Phone.)
But now over 10 years later, knowing all we know about smartphones and what they’ve done to us collectively, I wonder if this store clerk wasn’t also a bit of a prophet, a voice of warning: “are you sure that you, and everyone else, really want to do this???”
For a while, getting a smartphone was kind of cool; felt like coming into the future you always imagined. Skeptics and pessimists were fools. Optimists and big-brained forward thinking types forecasted the end of all kinds of problems. Normal people were simply amazed at what it could do. “I can carry the internet everywhere I go.” There’s an app for that.” “Isn’t it amazing what I can do on here?!” “It’s like 10 devices in 1!”
Fast forward a decade and the optimism is long gone. Now, bring up smartphones or social media and it’s all talk of depression, and despair. We’ve forgotten what problems they solve for us because we’re drowning in the problems they cause. I don’t need to give you stats or studies because you’ve seen and lived them all already.
By now, we all know that smartphones, social media and most of the attention seeking side of the internet are, on the whole, incredibly unhealthy for the average person, and even more so for teenagers and children. We all know this perfectly, without doubts or hesitations, just as we know the sun rises in the east and rain is wet. To be in denial of this now is to be blind to reality. What the internet, and our interaction with it, have become has hacked up our minds and our attention into billions of little pieces.
At a distance, the obsession with our devices would look utterly ridiculous but once in their thrall, it all seems so very normal.
And so it remains, that in most social circles today, not giving a teen a smartphone, or trying to live without one yourself still seems a bridge too far.
We can’t look away.
A Deal With The Devil
We can’t actually imagine diminishing their influence in our lives because of the power, freedom and importance we receive in return. And it comes instantly, without having to work very hard for it.
In the Garden of Eden, Satan tempted Adam and Eve to be “as the gods”; made possible by a massive, cosmic shortcut in the form of a piece of fruit.
The devil lied then and he continues to lie to us now; tempting us to be as gods again, asking us to look into our devices as if they were “a sea of glass and fire, where all things for [our] glory are manifest, past, present, and future, and are continually before”1 us.
The promise of the attention consuming internet in the palm of our hands is a shortcut to knowledge, fame, influence, achievement, productivity, relevance, validation, ease, convenience, entertainment, and escape. It amplifies our voice, it agitates our enemies, it soothes our anxieties, and it wipes away boredom.
But like all devilish bargains, the kingdom we build on the back of these technologies isn’t real and leaves us feeling empty and without purpose.
But the tide is turning; you can feel it. We’re exhausted2 by our devices, they’ve stretched our sight and our minds to breaking. We can’t handle the power of infinite choice and distraction. And we want out.
There’s No Way Out
Some approach this subject with a measure of wisdom when they say that a smartphone, social media or the attention seeking side of the internet is like a tool; a hammer or a saw that one needs to learn to use. They extend this concept to their decision to allow their kid’s to have devices. “They’re going to have to learn how to use it eventually, might as well let them do it under my roof while I can monitor it.”
Seeing it only as a tool can give us the false impression that it’s natural thing; a natural phase of childhood and adolescent development, a natural part of adult responsibility. And that the problems that ensue for each group are just normal things everyone has to deal with. But of course, it’s anything but natural. When we understand the devilish bargain at the heart of these technologies, as they’re currently designed to consume us, they look less like a natural human tool and more like a radioactive metal.
A hammer or saw can sit harmlessly on a garage shelf. But smartphones, like radioactive material, don’t even have to be used or touched for them to be lethal. They can just exist in your world, somewhere nearby, and you and your family are irrevocably changed. Studies abound on how even the presence of a smartphone or the potential of open browser tabs nearby alter our brain chemistry and diminish our ability to focus, decide, and feel… good.
Simple exposure is going to slowly kill you. Prolonged exposure is a medical emergency.
Just as we can’t escape from the atomic era, there is no escape from these attention consuming technologies, there is only survival.
Nuclear Containment
How does one survive in the presence of deadly radioactive material? Massive amounts of precaution, redundancy and intentional design. Nuclear power plants have safety precautions built on top of safety precautions. Various levels of procedure and barriers that keep the people who must work around this stuff from dying painful deaths.
Until our society figures out how to design a healthy internet, surviving with the one we have will require the same type of approach: massive amounts of precautions, redundancy and intentional design.
Or you die.
I don’t believe there is only one way to achieve this. The exact safety approach one should take depends upon which parts of the devil’s offer are most difficult for you to turn down. But I can tell you what I’ve done.
My goal has not been to be Amish and live without this stuff. My goal has been to figure out how to live with this stuff. On my terms.
Some of the following you might find ridiculous or impossible, but I hope it sparks an idea or two in your own life.
My phone Is No Longer a Distraction Device: I thought long and hard about ditching my smartphone for a flip phone, but key parts of my work require that I have access to certain security apps. So I did the next best thing: removed all the apps which ask for my attention. No browser, no email, no social media. No Slack or other group chats. No consumer apps of any kind. I have the few apps that I have to have, plus I can call or text and take pictures of my family3. It’s almost impossible for my phone to deliver me from boredom now or to distract me, unless it’s an actual phone call. (Remember those?)
Use a Desktop Focus App. There are many website blockers, but I use this one. It’s on by default. When I sit down at my desk, I only get a short time each day with it off. My desktop can’t distract me from doing things like writing this article or getting up when I’m done to enjoy the sun. (That is, when it’s sunny in the PNW.) A lot of people sit down in front of the computer to do something but find their mind directing them to do about 1,000,000 other things, most of which aren’t important, but all of which are made possible by the deal we’ve made with the devil. I’m not going to give up the internet, I’m just going to make sure I do one thing at a time; which it turns out is the only way to do anything.
Check My Email At Certain Times of the Day. I’m not that important and if someone really needs to contact me, they probably have my number. Plus, the more emails you respond to the more emails you get back.
Muting Social Media: Social media can be a massive time suck, and feeds keep going forever, so I got rid of the feeds. It took me a couple of hours, but I muted every person I’m friends with or follow on the social media sites I use. When I open social media now, the feed is usually blank or I can only see my own posts. I then navigate to a profile and interact with a person I was thinking about or want to check up on. Again, I’m not swearing off social media, I’m just using it the way I want to, in a way that fosters human connection over scrolling.
These aren’t perfect solutions. Sometimes I forget to turn them on or properly maintain them. Sometimes, despite my precautions, I find myself going down a rabbit hole of useless knowledge anyway. And I miss out on a lot, at times being the last to know what’s going on in my various social circles. But this is a small price to pay for the reconstruction of my mind that began to be undone at that cell phone store; despite that sales clerk’s best efforts.
Once Again, We Have To Be Weird
Normal today is being glued to a phone. Normal today is being mind-hacked by technology. Normal today is letting radioactive waste sit unconfined next you and your kids, 24 hours a day and hoping for the best.
You don’t want to be normal. And you don’t have to be.
But you can’t go it alone. This is a societal problem, a social contagion. Experiment on what works, tell your friends about it, encourage them to be better. Build a village of likeminded people who want to survive in the digital world.
And after all, Only The Weird Will Survive.
In a recent study out of the University of Chicago, college students were asked “How much would you have to be paid to deactivate your phone, if most others did too?” The answer, for many students was they were willing to pay, not be paid, to bring about a scenario where there was no social cost to not having a phone.
Since I’m not a teenage girl, access to texting isn’t that big of a deal.