How Do Cell Phones Impact the World?
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Next month, I will be giving a talk at a local school about the use of phones and social media by kids. This is my favorite topic to speak on lately, and increasingly, it feels like it’s becoming more urgent. The presentation could be 2 minutes long. I would say: no phones. Full-stop. That’s it—workshop over.
What has changed?
After this month’s horrific display of political violence, I had a conversation with my mom. She’s in her late 60s, and she was reflecting on why things are so much worse right now than, for example, in the 60s. She said how people have always had guns, and yet, despite a history of political violence then, what was different was the gun violence in public places - schools, churches, movie theaters, malls. “What has changed?” she asked. I had one answer: it’s the phones.
This was simply a theory of mine - one that I’ve held for the last half-decade. When parents come to me with troubled kids, the first question I ask is about their phone usage. Do they have social media? How long have they had a device? Is it allowed in their room? Do they use a tablet or personal technology to self-soothe, as a distraction, or when they are bored? What’s your relationship with your phone?
Plugged In, But More Disconnected Than Ever
It’s no longer a theory, though, that phones are contributing to some of the most significant issues of our times: mental health despair, divisiveness, disconnection, loneliness, eating disorders, violence, and attention deficits. Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, presents the abundant data that supports these connections and advocates for school phone bans, prohibiting smartphones before the age of 15, and limiting social media access until the age of 17. Abstinence is the best solution in this situation.
And yet, it’s not just a kid problem. The detrimental impacts of its addiction impact anyone who has a phone. In the podcasts and books I’ve been reading lately, there is a similar theme from the talking heads: we have a loneliness epidemic. I first encountered this argument when I started Reset after reading Johann Hari’s book, Lost Connections. To me, this helped finally put words to what I had been seeing over the last five years with my clients. It was tangible and laid out a roadmap for how we can all feel less depressed, disconnected, and hopeless.
In his book, he describes nine areas in which we’ve lost connection: meaningful work, people, values, childhood trauma (meaning, it goes unprocessed), civility, nature, hope, stability, and systemic influences. I think that if his book were written in 2022, rather than 2017, we’d see much more written about the impact of phones on our disconnection as well. In fact, he later wrote about the attention economy to which we are subjected in Stolen Focus.
The Attention Economy
It’s also not a new term - attention economy. This is what many journalists and researchers have been saying drives marketing and capitalist pursuits in our country. In the attention economy, it’s a race to capture our limited attention spans. It began with broadcast news and became more integrated when headline news on cable TV gained popularity. Rather than discussing facts and perhaps offering a feel-good community update on a slow news day, cable news ran on catchy and often fear-based headlines. And it worked. People became fixated on headline news, eagerly awaiting the following announcement. It worked even more effectively because it generated revenue.
Social media may have started as a means to allow people to connect and share online. Still, it has morphed into a mechanism for control, information spreading, and obscene revenue for the companies behind it. If you haven’t watched the documentary on Cambridge Analytica, I highly encourage you to do it as it lifts the veil on the real intentions behind social media companies. You can find more recent information on the concept of living in a controlled, manipulated online world in this short clip, ironically, on Instagram if you, too, have a limited attention span for documentaries. If you do anything today from today’s newsletter, watch that and share it.
The Impacts & Implications of Phone Usage
I do not want to sound like an alarmist or conspiracy theorist, and I understand that some of this information is hard to comprehend because it’s so vast and unsettling: we are being controlled by our phones. The information that’s delivered to us is carefully calculated to feed into our most subliminal, subconsciously divisive opinions - our darkest thoughts, our most angry views, our more upsetting opinions. It’s how a young boy can become radicalized so easily as he spends hours upon hours on his phone. It’s how a girl can develop a severe eating disorder without anyone noticing. It’s how we can hate our neighbors and fear people in our own communities.
And there are significant consequences to this. We’re living in it. We’re in the post-phone world, and how is it going? I think we can all agree (in fact, recent polls suggest this) that over 3/4 of Americans are unhappy with the direction of our country. We’re lonelier because of social media, we’re angrier, we’re more divided. And we continue to give these companies our power every time we scroll and log in. One of the most significant things we can do is fight back with our dollar. We cancel our subscriptions, stop buying from those stores, and change our routines to using dumb phones, landlines, and slow news.
Being Present (But Not Plugged In)
This fall has been a season of live concerts for me, and it’s been amazing and exhausting. I forgot how late you stay up going to concerts! But one concert stood out not for the music (although amazing) but for the massive number of people in the audience on their phones. They were videoing not the musicians, but themselves, singing and dancing, and then (I’m assuming) posting it and sharing live on their feeds. It was so distracting that some of my friends even moved their seats because of the glow of the phones in our faces every time a song played. Whereas music is and has typically been a connector - something bigger than ourselves, an instrument for presence, a way to share experiences with diverse people - it too has been capitalized by the smartphone.
Enough. I’m sad, angry, and exhausted. We all should feel this way - and companies continue not to care as our country is spiraling downwards.
Our phones are the most significant obstacle to mindfulness.
Reset was founded on the simple vision that everyone can adopt a mindful lifestyle. Our phones are the most significant obstacle to mindfulness - even with their fancy wellness apps, meditations, and focus blockers. The best way to meditate is by being in nature. Not some voice streaming through a black box. The best way to stay healthy is to put down your phone, get outside, breathe fresh air, and move your body. The best way to eat is by listening to your body, not an app. The best way to connect with people is in real life, face-to-face.
So, if we want a better future and a fair chance of getting there? Put down your phone. That’s it. Please scroll down to here, and you’ll find the entire message: it’s about the phones.
Big hug. We’ve got this because we have each other. You’re never alone.
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This week’s Tools, Gratitude, Innovation, Feels
Tools: I make it a point to tell my kids that Mama’s phone is for work. I lament about it, so as not to glorify its existence in our lives. However, my kids still appreciate the option of talking to people on it - just like the original purpose. This week, we bought the Tin Can phones - an old-school style landline phone. Some of my friends and neighbors have them too so that we can create mini networks for our kids. I hope to see my kids calling their grandparents, cousins, neighbors - even spending an hour on the couch chatting. No screens, just connection.
Gratitude: Nature and music. When in a funk, when feeling lost, when feeling alone - it’s nature and music. This quarter at Reset, we’ve all explored creative ways to do therapy, and nature and music came at the top. I’m so grateful for the time spent together learning, sharing, and experiencing these methods as well. On Tuesday, we gathered together to create nature-inspired mandalas and discussed nature’s resilience, which we strive to emulate. Hearts were filled, compassion buckets readied.
Innovation: I believe we’re only in the early stages of some very cool and innovative engineering that will help us break our addiction to smartphones. This phone is gaining a ton of popularity, and I’m hopeful that more products like this will become mainstream. Personally, I’m not sure what I’d do without my digital calendar, but I'm working towards abandoning my iPhone.
Feels: I can’t help but think of the lyrics from my kid’s favorite movie, “We’re in Zombieland,” when writing this newsletter. When people ask what they can do in these difficult times, I reiterate the power of their dollar. In a capitalistic society, companies notice when their revenue drops and shareholder value tanks. We can influence change by spending less in areas known to be damaging to our values and best interests. When all else feels hopeless, this is a real, actionable step everyone can take.