By Isabel Ratner
My phone use is a ticking persistent thought in my mind. I have taken breaks, come back, told myself I didn’t need it at all, and stopped using certain sites.
I grapple. And, I am grateful for that.
It mostly stems from my brother, who, in high school, when all of his friends could not wait to get their new iPhones, was perfectly content with a simple phone with few functions. My younger, naive self struggled to understand at first. How could anyone have a phone if it was not one that could do everything? Throughout middle and high school, my brother would make comments to me around the house about my phone use — and he still does: how often I would check my phone, the need to have my phone wherever I went, my mindless use of Instagram or Snapchat. I often responded ignorantly, telling him it was not his business to tell me what to do. Deep down though, I know he was right all along.
Through keen observation of my personal satisfaction with each individual moment of my life, I have come to realize that being attached to my phone and its many functions — including the space for social media — only makes me feel more alone and distanced from what I am living through. This is clearly contrary to its purpose and guarantee of “connecting” us.
I am addicted to my phone, and it was only recently when I became more aware of this, as I noticed the way I carry my phone around my house to each room I enter, keep it face up on each desk I sit at, or feel the need to bring it simply to go to the bathroom. These observations simply make me feel naive to what technology has done to me. I am disgusted with myself.
DISGUSTED
A few weeks ago, I received an email with the link to the long-awaited professional photos from a musical I had just been a part of. I immediately got onto my computer and spent a long time scrolling through the website, looking at each photo and taking myself back to each of the moments captured. Pretty soon after though, I felt an impulse familiar to many of us. I had to compile my favorite photos for an Instagram post. It was the only way for the moment to truly be complete. I went through the photos and selected my top six. Once I had put them in the order I wanted, I began writing an elaborate caption describing how meaningful the show had been for me. I wrote of how proud I was of our group, the work we had done, and what the show had taught me. After I was sure I had adequately encapsulated the experience, and had everything perfectly put together, I clicked “post.” Seconds later, I stopped to think, and deleted the post. I couldn’t believe myself.
A REALIZATION
For years, I have mindlessly posted pictures of my experiences on Instagram, not realizing that I was searching for some sort of gratification for my own memories. I thought to myself this afternoon, alone in my study next to my computer, and eventually became so distraught with my actions that I got a sheet of paper and wrote the following across the page:
WHY DO I NEED TO EXTERNALIZE. POST. SHARE. ISN’T MY EXPERIENCE ENOUGH FOR ME. IT'S SO STUPID. WHY WAS MY FIRST INSTINCT TO POST THE INTO THE WOODS PHOTOS.
I did not understand, and I am still wrapped up in this confusion. Why couldn't these photos from a beloved experience — or even just being a part of the show — be enough for me? Why was the post so important? Had an Instagram post become my way of fully experiencing something?
The answer was yes.
Social media is a mechanism designed for instant fulfillment and pleasure. This immediate gratification is crafted in the form of a retweet, or a “sooooo pretty” on your most recent Instagram selfie. In an ideal world, we could derive our confidence from within ourselves. Obviously, that is not always easy, but it is strange to think that social satisfaction is now coming through these means. People are slowly becoming reliant on these forms of “praise,” when ultimately, they are the most insincere. A compliment should be a compliment — someone looking into your eyes and telling you that you are beautiful, not reading those words on a screen from someone who would likely never say it to your face. I fear for a world where these intimate moments are no longer appreciated and instead replaced with meaningless Instagram comment threads.
THE RE-WIRING BEGINS
Social media has also taken the most simple moments in our lives and psychologically wired our brains to make us think we must post about them. Think about your Instagram feed on the last day of summer before the new school year. Or the final day of 2017. As your finger mindlessly moves up and down the screen, your feed is filled with “obligatory” posts that we are now telling ourselves are necessary.
We are telling ourselves that the summer cannot fully be encapsulated, or enjoyed, until a few of our favorite moments have been posted, and we sum up what the summer meant to us.
To show our full love and appreciation for our best friend on their birthday, we have to give them an Instagram post. These acts dominate even on holidays like Thanksgiving — think of all of the family photos you see with a caption expressing someone’s unwavering gratitude for all that they have. Think of a photo of the Colorado ski slopes, captioned “Goodbye Colorado.”
We feel the need to “pay tribute” to each moment, when in reality it is completely unnecessary.
Can you imagine living through a moment without thinking about how you will post it? What if you focused on the finiteness of that moment and appreciated it, rather than worrying about how you would share it with others?
We mindlessly do these things while not thinking about why we do them, and that is the trap. Amidst these instances when we think we are “capturing” an experience, we are really just missing out on everything beyond the screen.
In a recent New York Times interview with social psychologist Dr. Adam Alter, he explained what exactly these devices are making us miss out on.
“We’ve become obsessed with how many ‘likes’ our Instagram photos are getting instead of where we are walking and whom we are talking to,” Alter said in the Q&A.
He goes on to describe the damage of this.
“If you’re on the phone for three hours daily, that’s time you’re not spending on face-to-face interactions with people. Smartphones give everything you need to enjoy the moment you’re in, but they don’t require much initiative.”
Alter is spot on. Our phones are making us less connected, contrary to what they are apparently designed to do. We are simply missing out on what is happening around us.
Scrolling through Twitter is now a way to waste time. This passing of time can be seen everywhere: while riding the bus, standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for your doctor’s appointment, or even walking down the street. Everyone is glued to their phones. Like Alter described, the lack of initiative required when looking at your phone solves our discomfort in these moments. It is easier to look at your phone than talk to the people around you. The indirect interaction is more comfortable.
The idea that I am becoming uncomfortable with simply being around people, and that I revert to my phone to comfort me, is what I knew was starting to ruin me, and I know it is ruining others. Instead of talking to the people around us, looking at the sky or the trees, the way the world is moving, or even reading a book, we are attached to screens. In these moments, we are losing human interaction with the world and with other humans.
I think back to so many concerts I have attended, where I stood behind people who spent most of the performance taking and retaking videos for their Snapchat until they were sure they had the perfect one. They essentially missed out on the concert.
NEVER-ENDING
Through awareness, I have also come to realize that apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter are simply designed to be addictive. The purpose of Snapchat streaks is to keep users on their phones for as long as possible. A 340-day streak means that you have been on your phone for that many days straight. I see people measuring friendships through streaks, and even hear of people giving their passwords to friends when they know they will be without their phones for a period of time — just to assure their streaks will not be lost. It is that important.
This is just one example of the way these apps are messing with our brains. Alter elaborated on this in the Q&A.
“I’m addicted to email. I can’t stop checking it. I can’t go to bed at night if I haven’t cleared my inbox. I’ll keep my phone next to my bed, much as I try not to. The technology is designed to hook us that way. Email is bottomless. Social media platforms are endless. Twitter? The feed never really ends. You could sit there 24 hours a day and you’ll never get to the end. And so you come back for more and more.”
Our devices have made us addicted to the idea of completion, and this brings us a new kind of satisfaction: a cleared inbox; having no unseen snaps; knowing that we have seen each photo on our Instagram feed, that we haven’t missed anything. This is all a part of the design, and again, it is a trap. Like Alter said, the feed never really ends. The feeling of “missing” something or not responding to a text as soon as we receive it has created an anxiousness within us. We feel more relieved when we have responded to everything; we have to stay updated.
These devices are controlling us — to continue scrolling, to keep on refreshing, to never take our eyes off of our screens.
Once I began to be more aware of these impulses, I got scared. There is a concerning lack of awareness among social media and phone-users of what is being done to them. So much of what I have described is mindless, despite teachers yelling at kids to put their phones away, despite people hearing the statistics.
BEGINNING AWARENESS
When I think about how important my phone is to me, how important a post is, I look back on my life and realize how little it has contributed. I cannot think of extraordinary moments in my life where I had my phone in my hand. In fact, the most transcendent were those where my phone was not even close to me. I think of when I stepped foot atop the snowy summit of the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska after an arduous hike I still vividly remember. I could taste the air. I could feel the strength in the women walking beside me resonating in my body. These are long-lasting feelings. They are tangible. I still keep them with me. They are the moments I spend on stage, feeling the most present, as I am fully immersed in the human beings surrounding me, breathing with them, looking into their eyes.
This right here, the recognition of the power of technology-free moments, can let us distance ourselves from our screens. I believe that everyone should contemplate what they are defining as the greatest moments of their lives. If these involve screens, consider what they added to the moment, as well as what they took away from it. By doing so, we can begin to seek out the most fulfilling aspects of our lives — that do not involve screens — and practice them heavily. For me, I have found these to be things like music, writing, being outside, and spending time with the people I love. I am still on this journey of finding these things, and replacing insignificant screen time with fulfilling life experiences.
I challenge all of you to begin to practice this awareness, and see how far you can push yourself. See how it feels to break a Snapchat streak, to combat what your impulses continuously tell you. Are you still just as close to the person with whom you shared it? See how long you can go without checking your phone, or posting on Instagram. See what it feels like to go to the bathroom without your phone, to keep it in your bag all of class. Check out your battery usage and how much of it was spent on social media. Or, simply look at how much of your phone battery you use up a day. Furthermore, question your phone use and ask yourself the difficult questions:
How many of the experiences in my life have found their way onto Instagram or been molded into a tweet? How often do I have my phone on me? What would my life be like without my phone and all it holds?
It is not until we can begin to ask ourselves these questions — and contemplate the answers — that we can start to become more aware and maybe make our own changes. My brother asked them early on, and for that I admire him and only wish I had done the same. I am now beginning to contemplate the answers to these questions and think about what social media and my phone itself are adding to my life.
For anyone to even begin to make a change, we must start small. Don’t ignore the subject of phone addiction in conversations with your friends. Ask yourself the difficult questions, the ones you have pushed away for so long. We need to start answering them before it is too late.