December 26, 2024 • 50 mins
On this episode of The Middle we're asking you: are you addicted to your phone? We're joined by journalist Johann Hari and Stanford psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country. This encore episode originally aired in July, 2024. #phoneaddiction #addiction #devices #phones #screentime #apps
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. Merry Christmas, so
serious question, how many times have you looked at your
phone today? Never mind, don't answer that, because we're about
to dip into our archives for a show we did
over the summer about phone addiction. We use our phones
these days for just about everything, reading the daily news, doom,
scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, texting with friends and family,
(00:27):
or maybe listening to the Middle as a podcast. You'd
be hard pressed to go a full day without interacting
with your phone at least a few dozen times. I'll
tell you personally, I can sometimes take a break from
social media, and when I do, I find that, first
of all, I read a lot more, but also my
overall screen time goes down by more than I'd care
to tell you. A recent survey found that the average
(00:48):
American spends four and a half hours a day on
their smartphone, and Americans in Generation Z spend over six
hours a day on average. But here's the thing. More
than forty percent of those surveyed want to cut down
on screen time. So our question this hour, are you
addicted to your phone? And if so, what are you
doing about it now. This program was previously recorded, so
(01:08):
we won't be taking any more live calls, but you
can leave us a message at eight four to four
four middle before we introduce our panel. Last week on
the show, we had the wonderful hosts of the hit
podcast I've Had It, and we asked you what you've
had it with and what made you.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Happy this year.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Here are some of the calls that came in after
the show.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
My name is chruck in Paul Creek, Union, Colorado.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I'm over internet trolls. Hi.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
This is Stein Davis from Cleveland, Ohio. What I'm tired
of is QR codes or RQQR codes at restaurants. They
don't make things more convenient, they don't add any sort
of value. They're very frustrating, and I'd like to go
back to the old days of having a waiter or
waitress and taking your order.
Speaker 6 (01:54):
My name is Wesley. I'm calling from Nashville, Tennessee, and
I'd like to say that the thing that made me
happy this year was being cast as the stage manager
in Thornton Wilder's Wonderful play Out of Town in a
professional theater company. It was a role I had no
idea I could get it was great.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Okay, Wesley, you have brought something up. I was actually
the stage manager in our town in high school in Illinois,
and then when I was an intern at NPR in
between high school and college, I got into our town
in Maryland as George and it went on so long
I had to cry every single night. And then they
(02:36):
extended the performance by like a month, and I had
had it with our town by the end of it.
But I'm so happy for you that you are enjoying
being the stage manager in our town.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Anyway, thanks to everyone who called in.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
You can also hear that show anytime because The Middle
is available as a podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts
on the iHeart app orever you listen to podcasts, although
you'll probably have to use your phone to do it,
which brings us to our topic this hour. Are you
addicted to your phone? And if so, what are you
doing about it? Let's meet our panel. Doctor Anna Lemke
is Professor of psychiatry and Addiction at Stanford University and
(03:08):
author of Dopamine Nation, Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
On a Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 7 (03:14):
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And also joining us is journalist Johann Harry, who's author
of many books including Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay Attention,
and How to Think Deeply Again. Johan Harry, Welcome to you.
Speaker 8 (03:27):
Hey Jeremy, I should just warn everyone it is two
am in London and I've drunk enough caffeine to kill
a whole field of cout. It is possible I will
die during this intere I'm glad my last words will
be recorded for posterity.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Performance enhancing drugs I guess are allowed on the middle
Before we get to the phones on a lemke. Do
you think that what we're dealing with when it comes
to phone usage is an addiction the way people get
addicted to alcohol or drugs.
Speaker 7 (03:52):
I think it's really reasonable and science based to think
of digital media as a drug. It lights up the
same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. It releases dopamine,
our reward neurotransmitter, just like with alcohol. The majority of
people who use social media and digital media will not
develop a severe, life threatening addiction. But I can tell
(04:15):
you that in clinical care, we do see the subset
of individuals, including very young people, who present with life
threatening addiction to digital media of all kinds.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
And Johan Harry, do you think it's an addiction and
what are the consequences for society of a phone addiction.
Speaker 8 (04:34):
Well, we're living in a huge crisis of attention and focus.
The average worker now focuses on any one task for
less than one minute. And for every one child who
has identified with serious attention problems when I was seven
years old, there's now one hundred children who've been identified
with this problem. And there's some ways in which it's
like an addiction.
Speaker 9 (04:54):
The core of.
Speaker 8 (04:55):
That problem is I would say to anyone listening, think
about anything you've ever achieved in your life that you're
proud of, whether it's starting a business, being a good parent,
learning to play the guitar, whatever it is. That thing
that you're proud of required a huge amount of sustained
focus and attention. And when your ability to pay focus,
your ability to focus and pay attention breaks down, your
(05:15):
ability to achieve your goals diminishes, your ability to solve
your problems diminishes. You feel worse about yourself because you
actually are less competent. And what I learned in the
research from my book Stolen Focus, you know, researched it
over three years. I went on a big journey all
over the world, from Moscow to Miami to Melbourne, not
just the cities that beginning the letter M. I don't
know why I just did that, And what I learned
(05:36):
is there's scientific evidence for twelve factors that can make
your attention better or can make your attention worse. And
loads of the factors that can make your attention worse
have been hugely increasing in recent years. Some of them
are in our technology. They actually range pretty widely. The
food we eat is really affecting our attention, Our lack
of sleep something I can relate to right now, and
(05:57):
the way our offices work, the way our kids' schools work.
Really broad range of factors. But the key thing when
you understand these causes is both if you're struggling to
focus and pay attention, as I was when I started
working on the book, it's really important to understand this
isn't your fault, this isn't your child's fault. There's nothing
wrong with you. There's something wrong with the way we're living.
(06:17):
But once we understand these twelve factors that are harming
our attention, we can begin to defend ourselves and take
on the forces that are doing this to us.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So an a lunky. How did we get here?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Because I'm a millennial, I grew up in a time
when we weren't there, weren't even smartphones, We didn't do this,
and then all of a sudden, now we all spend
so much of our day looking at these devices.
Speaker 7 (06:41):
Well, these devices are very cognitively adherent, and by that
I mean that our brains collectively invented them, and they
are engineered to be attention grabbing, to be reinforcing, So
you would be merely mortal if in engage with these
devices you found it difficult to moderate your consumption. One
(07:05):
of the interesting things for me is I feel like
as a society we have a lot more compassion now
for people who have addiction to drugs and alcohol, possibly
in part because we see ourselves getting addicted to devices
in a way that we othered before and now we're
experiencing it ourselves. This kind of inability to cut back,
(07:28):
a compulsive desire to use against our wishes, a degree
of involuntariness and narrowing of our focus, and most importantly,
a continue use despite consequences. And it's just pervaded every
aspect of our lives. I think, you know, you know,
twenty five thirty years ago, we were only talking about
(07:50):
the advantages of the technology. We were not considering the
dark sides. So the good news is that we're having
the discussion now.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It's interesting though, I did see a Gallops that found
even in the last couple of years, most Americans think
that they get more benefit than negative out of their
usage of their.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Phone, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Let's see what some of our listeners think. Joy is
calling from Atlanta, Georgia. Joy, Welcome to the Middle. Are
you addicted to your phone?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah? Go ahead.
Speaker 10 (08:18):
I absolutely am addicted to my phone. And it started gradually,
but with Twitter actually, because you just keep going back
and back and I had to take the app off
of my phone. But now I find myself unable to
disconnect from my phone, from my emails. But largely it's
(08:41):
like Instagram. I'll go on Instagram and say, oh, I'll
be on there for five minutes, and I literally half
an hour later, I'll still be on Instagram and I
just don't know where the time went.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
And what do you think is the is like, how
did this start for you?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Why why have you gotten?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And I'm not saying you A lot of people are
in the exact same boat, but why do you think
that it.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Happened for you?
Speaker 10 (09:06):
Well, I I disconnected. I was watching a lot of
cable news. I'm kind of a news junkie to begin with,
and I cut the cord a few years ago, and
so from my perspective, the only source of that news
addiction that I had was through my cell phone, through
(09:26):
checking that Washington Post app, and through checking the New
York Times and reading these articles and listening to them,
and then going on Instagram for funny clips and that
kind of thing, and it just it builds over time,
and then you're you end up spending five hours a
day just interspersed and trying to get your work done.
(09:50):
But it's, you know, it's very difficult because I've never
been addicted to anything else before, and so this is
a new experience for me, and I don't know how
to get help for it.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, yeah, thank you, Yeah, go ahead, Beahan.
Speaker 11 (10:03):
Yeah, I really feel for you.
Speaker 8 (10:04):
I was in a very similar position when I started
working on my book, and I spent a lot of
time in Silicon Valley interviewing the people who designed the
apps that you're obsessed with that I was obsessed with,
And one of the things that most struck me is
how absolutely sick with guilt they feel. They're really ashamed
of what they've done. One of them is a guy
called Dr James Williams, who've been at the heart of
designing these apps. And one day he was speaking at
(10:26):
a conference where the audience was literally the people who
designed the stuff everyone who's listening to your kids are
using today, and he said to them, if there's anyone
here who wants to live in the world that we're creating,
please put up your hand, and nobody put up their hand.
Not long afterwards he quit. He's like, I can't take
this anymore. So for all of the twelve factors that
(10:47):
are harming our attention, obviously there's some aspects of our
phones that I'm sure we're going to go into that
are doing this to us. There are sort of two
levels of which we've got to deal with it in
a very practical way. I think of them as defense
and offense. There are loads of things that you can
do in immediately to defend.
Speaker 11 (11:00):
Yourself and your kids.
Speaker 8 (11:01):
Joe so I give you a quick example of two,
although I go through many in my book. First thing
I would say is you should go online and order
something called a K safe. It's just a letter K,
and then say, it's very simple. It's a plastic safe.
You take off the lid you put in your phone,
you put on the lid, you turn the dial at
the top, and it locks your phone away for anything
between five minutes and a whole day, however long you
tell it to. And once you locked it, you can't
(11:23):
get in right. I use that three hours a day
to do my writing. I would never have finished my
book if I didn't ad one. Another thing I would
recommend is that you immediately download an app called Freedom.
Speaker 11 (11:33):
It's very simple app.
Speaker 8 (11:34):
It sinks to both your laptop and your phone if
you want it to, and it will cut you off
from the specific websites or the whole internet. So you
mentioned Instagram and Twitter, you can just say to Freedom,
do not let me use Instagram and Twitter for the
next save five minutes, two hours, and the minute you've
done that, if you try to use it, it.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Just whoe like your We're going to get to some more.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
We're going to get to some more solutions, but I
do want it to say, Tolliver, it's hard to talk
about phone addiction without talking about the iPhone.
Speaker 12 (12:00):
Mm hmm, yeah, that's right. Back in two thousand and seven,
when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he promised to revolutionize
the way we interact with our phones.
Speaker 13 (12:08):
These are not three separate devices. This is one device,
and we are calling it iPhone.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Today.
Speaker 13 (12:26):
Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Seemed like a good idea at the time, Tolliver will.
By the way, if you are listening to this or
you are looking at your iPhone, you can go on
the podcast app and rate The Middle podcast at the
highest level and give us a nice review.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
That would be nice.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, we'll be right back with more of the Middle.
This is the Middle of Jeremy Hobson. If you're just
tuning in the Middle as a national call in show,
we're focused on elevating voices from the middle politically, geographically
and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet in
the middle. This hour, we're talking about phone addiction, how
it affects us, and what you can do about it.
(13:06):
If you see yourself as being addicted to your phone,
This program was previously recorded, so we're not taking any
more live calls, but you can leave us a message
at eight four four four Middle or reach out at
Listen to the Middle dot com. We're joined this hour
by doctor on Alemke of Stanford, author of Dopamine Nation,
and journalist Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus. As we
(13:26):
continued our conversation, I asked on a Lemke whether.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Things like using a dumb phone, a flip phone.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Or making your smartphone gray scale are useful in reducing
the dopamine triggers that smartphones often provide.
Speaker 7 (13:39):
Yeah, I think those are all great things to experiment with.
I like to think of those of self binding strategies
that allow us to just press the pause button between
desiring consumption, giving us just a little bit of a
break to reevaluate whether or not we want to continue
to use. So Joy mentioned that she down and she
(14:02):
took the apps off her phone. Johan talked about using
a kitchen safe where you lock it away. These are
all different strategies gray scales, making the phone black and white,
so it's not so potent on the visual system. What
I find is that people are different and they really
need to experiment with different types of self binding strategies.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I saw that Kevin Russ, who writes about tech for
the New York Times, did something where he changed his
lock screen to ask himself three questions every time he
unlocked his phone.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
What for? Why? Now? What else?
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Which is great, great from Kevin Ruse. Let's get let's
get back to the phones. And Brian, who's in Denver, Colorado. Brian,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Go ahead, warning, I'm not in the middle. Actually, okay,
what was the other end?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Okay? What about your phone addiction? Are you addicted to
your phone?
Speaker 4 (14:59):
I don't believe I'm a the phone to my phone.
I believe I'm dependent on the use of my phone
because it's technology and I need it for communication. And
I think there's a As a social psychologist, we would
argue there's a big difference between dependency and addiction. So, yes,
addiction does create neurological situations, you know dopamine, and dependency
(15:24):
also creates situations with dopamine. But if I was addicted
to alcohol, I would do everything in my power and
seek everything in my power to get any type of
alcohol fix because I can't do without it. But if
my phone gets lost, I manage and I live and
I until I get a new communication tool. But I
(15:47):
don't go out and seek it and go out and
just use any type like I have an iPhone, which
you guys made fun of. I won't go and get
a small flip phone or a burner phone to use,
like I would go and get any kind of little
bit of alcohol to drink. If I have a giftion
to it, I will I have. You know, I'll take
time and I'll not use the phone until I get
(16:07):
an iPhone that I use because need because of my
communications tool.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, okay, Brian, thank you for that. Johann, go ahead.
Dependency versus addiction.
Speaker 8 (16:18):
I think these things are a continuum, and it's about
knowing that even for someone like Brian, who may not
be as far gone as some of us have been,
there's going to be a cost there.
Speaker 11 (16:26):
I'll give you some examples.
Speaker 8 (16:27):
Professor Michael Posner, who's at the University of Oregon discovered
something I think about every day.
Speaker 11 (16:32):
It's very simple.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
If you're interrupted by something as small as a text message,
it takes you, on average twenty three minutes to get
back to the level of focus you had before, so
I could look at my text now right, my phone
is the other side of my laptop. You think it'll
take me five seconds to look at my phone and reply, right,
but bear in mind it takes you five seconds plus
the twenty three minutes it takes.
Speaker 11 (16:53):
You to refocus your mind.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
But most of us never get twenty three minutes without
being interrupted.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Right on.
Speaker 8 (16:58):
Other person who helped me to think about this went
to interview one of the leading neuroscientists in the world,
an amazing guy named Professor Earl Miller. He said to me, look,
there's one thing you need to understand about the human
brain more than anything else. You can only consciously think
about one or two things at a time.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
That's it.
Speaker 8 (17:14):
This is a fundamental limitation of the human brain. The
human brain has not changed significantly in forty thousand years.
It ain't going to change on any timescale we're going
to see. But the average teenager now believes they can
follow seven forms of media at the same time. So
people like Professor Miller, they get people into labs, not
just kids, older people too, and get them to think
they're doing more than one thing at a time, and
what they discover is always the same, you can do
(17:34):
more than one thing at a time. What you do
is you juggle very rapidly between tasks. You're like, what did.
Speaker 11 (17:40):
Jeremy just ask me?
Speaker 8 (17:41):
What is it say on the TV there about President
Biden's messages at NATO? What is this message on what'sap?
What does it saying on Facebook? Wait, Jeremy, what did
you ask me?
Speaker 11 (17:49):
Again?
Speaker 8 (17:49):
And it turns out that juggling comes with a really
big cost. The technical term for that cost is the
switch cost effect. When you switch between tasks, it comes
with a cost uch less creative, you remember much less
of what you do, you make more mistakes. So, yeah,
Brian may not be totally far. God is not the
equivalent of someone in a dive bar in North Las
Vegas who just can't get through the next ten minutes
(18:11):
without vodka. But you will be if you're using your
phone very heavily incurring those costs throughout the day.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Tolliver, I know that some messages are coming in online
at Listen to the Middle dot com.
Speaker 12 (18:23):
We got a lot of them. Alisa from Northeast Ohio says,
even though I'm not addicted, I feel badly for people
who are on their touchscreen phones too much. I don't
have one. Too many friends seem to have lost a
sense of social obligation or basic courtesy. This wasn't acceptable
before two thousand and five. Stephanie from Birmingham, Alabama, where
we're traveling soon, said we need to push for regulation
of social media and other added addictive apps to keep
(18:44):
them from using addictive mechanisms such as auto refreshing the fee,
displaying posts out of order, and with holding posts during
busy times it would be easier to put them down.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, on a lemke.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
You know, we've been talking a little bit about the
dopamine triggers, and we just heard there that comment about
that sort of never ending flow of information that makes
you stay there.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
And keep looking for more.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
How much control do we as individuals have over this
versus these phone companies and tech companies that benefit that
make money the more time that we spend on these devices.
Speaker 7 (19:21):
Yeah, you're you're raising a really important point, which is
that we can have the subjective experience that we are
choosing how and when and how much to interact online
without perceiving the engineering, the invisible engineering behind the digital
media that is really designed to hijack our reward pathways
(19:43):
and keep us there beyond utility or even desire or
joy in what we're doing. And those are things like
AutoPlay notifications, the endless scroll, the just incredible vivid image
with music paired with narrative, the algorithms that follow us
(20:05):
and learn what we've liked before and then push to
us ever more potent versions of the same, which, of
course is how we then accelerate the addiction narrative, including
things like tolerance needing more potent forms of the digital
media to get the same effect, which you could argue
contributes to the kind of polarization we're seeing in public
(20:27):
discourse today.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
I do want to go do you think that contributes
to the polarization?
Speaker 7 (20:32):
I do think so. You know, this kind of intolerance
for inability, and intolerance for complex, nuanced discussions coming up
with complex solutions, the desire to really just want to
get a hit of dopamine and see a more extreme video,
(20:54):
a more polarized political debate rather than really engaging with
the ideas.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Let's go to Jaya, who is in Baltimore, Maryland. Jaya,
welcome to the middle Go ahead, thank you.
Speaker 14 (21:10):
I am definitely not addicted to my phone. I am
actually someone who loves to be observant. I love to
people watch, and what I see out there, not just
in the US, but also globally, I find to be
very disturbing. Our society has changed to a very large extent.
(21:35):
I grew up in the eighties and I remember being
told to always, you know, fit away from the television,
keep yourself at a distance. And I think it's so
ironic that now we've all become so accustomed to looking
at a screen that's just two inches from our faith.
So I don't know how we got to this point,
(21:57):
but it's very different, and I I find that, you know,
we're we're not considering our own safety, We're not considering
the safety of others when we're using our phones. Many
people take meetings from their car. I think if we
if we knew that that was going to be a
(22:18):
behavior that was coming in the future, I think a
lot of us would have denied it, you know, because
it's it's it's it's somewhat absurd to me that we're
multitasking in the ways that we are. I've been in
public restrooms and I've been in a stall and have
heard the person next to me taking a call, coming
(22:44):
more and more content, so there's no boundaries. There's no boundaries.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
I was in.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Sorry, let me let me go ahead, Jay, let me
let me take that to Johann Harry.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Thank you so much for that call. Very interesting.
Speaker 8 (22:58):
Yeah, well, a lot of people you're sorry, right. The
bathroom thing really grosses me out as well.
Speaker 11 (23:02):
But you're totally right.
Speaker 8 (23:03):
What a lot of the people who've been at the
heart of the machine is Selicon Valley explained to me
when I was researching my books doll and focus is
why what you're describing is happening, and it's more fixable
than you might think when you understand this dynamic. So
if you open TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, now please don't,
But if you did, those companies begin to make money
out of you immediately in two ways.
Speaker 11 (23:25):
The first way is really obvious.
Speaker 8 (23:26):
You see advertising, Okay, we all know how that works.
The second way is much more important. Everything you ever
do on these apps, including in your so called private messages,
is scanned and sortied by these artificial intelligence algorithms to
figure out who you are, to figure out what makes
you happy, what makes you angry, what makes you horny,
and it's figuring that out for a very simple reason.
(23:49):
It's figuring out what to show you next that will
keep you scrolling, because every time you open the app
and begin to scroll, these companies begin to make money
because you see ads. The longer you scroll, the more
money they make. Every time you or your kid closes
the app, that revenue stream disappears. So all of this
genius in Silicon Valley or this AI, all these algorithms,
(24:10):
is geared towards one thing, and one thing only figuring
out how do we get you and your kids to
open the app as often as possible and scroll as
long as possible. And I remember when the people at
the heart of it were explaining this to me. I
kept saying, ah, that sounds too simple, it can be
so obvious, And they kept saying to me, Look, the
head of KFC is I'm sure a very nice man
or woman, But all he or she cares about in
(24:31):
their professional capacity is how often did you go to
KFC this week?
Speaker 11 (24:35):
And how big was the bucket you bought? Right, That's it.
That's all they care about.
Speaker 8 (24:39):
In the same way, all these companies care about is
how good did we get undermining your attention and hoovering
up as much of it as we can. And as
my friend Tristan Harris says, you know, you can try
having self control, but every time you do, there are
ten thousand engineers on the other side of the screen
working very hard to undermine your self control. And when
you first hear that, it can be like, oh my god,
(25:00):
we're just trapped in the matrix.
Speaker 11 (25:01):
Then we're just screwed.
Speaker 8 (25:02):
But the key thing to understand is social media doesn't
have to work that way at the moment. It works
on that model. The longer you scroll, the more money
they make. But there are other ways it can work,
and we can regulate these companies to get to that point.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
We can but haven't so far.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Let's go to Kelly, who's in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 15 (25:21):
Kelly, go ahead, Yeah, I love that intro and the
gentleman who is just speaking. I'm totally picking up what
you're putting down.
Speaker 6 (25:28):
So I'm a.
Speaker 15 (25:29):
Full time working mom and I use the phone. I
think it's interesting when you say you'reddicted to your phone.
Is it really your phone or is it the apps?
So like for me when I'm commuting in the morning
or in the evening. I use my phone as like
text to do something, so, hey, Siri texts so and so,
and it helps me kind of keep up with my mom,
(25:52):
like my mom's stuff while I'm going to and from work.
My kids, though, I want to set an example for
my kids and so, so I need to regulate my
use of the phone and the use of the apps
to be a model for them. And I think it's
important totally what the gentleman was just saying, I have
(26:12):
developed I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell me you
can't use this, you have downtime. I want them to
learn why and self regulate or learn why to self
regulate because of and teach them how these apps work
and that they are after the money. All they want
to do is have your advertisement your eyeballs and inform
(26:33):
them so they can be like, hey, you know what,
this is interesting, but I don't want to be watched.
I don't want to be I go through their apps
and I say, hey, do you see this location setting
in your apps? Turn that off? And they get it.
The reason why I want them to learn and be
able to make an informed decision going through Now another
thing is my daughter has ADHD. She actually relaxes and
(26:57):
unwinds when she watches and does apps. So after a
full day at school, the way she can totally decompress,
and she needs to decompress having ADHD is by just
zoning out inside of these apps. So we allow her
to do that for a period of time. But at
the end of the day, you're done, you're going to
play soccer, you're going outside, whatever, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
But Kelly ken, we've got it.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Let me, let me, let me actually just bring in
our guests of it. Thank you for that call. You
brought up an interesting point. And Anna lemke you know,
you take that where you will. But I will just
say we think so often about how this is a
problem of the young and the young people are addicted
to their friends.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
We're all addicted to It's not just young people.
Speaker 7 (27:40):
Oh, it's so true. In fact, I would say that
among the elderly, we're seeing more and more consumption of
digital media and being online more broadly, which is increasing
social isolation among the elderly as well. You know, I
think I think that Kelly brings up a really important
point about parents needing to model what they want their
(28:03):
kids to do. Often in clinical care, we'll see families
that come in very concerned about their kids consumption of
digital media, but then in the middle of the session,
they themselves will be texting or taking a call. So
it really is true that our kids will you know,
they really will mimic our behaviors more than they'll listen
(28:25):
to what we say. The other interesting thing that Kelly
brought up, which is supported by the history of warnings
about addiction, was that when kids feel like you're telling
them that it's a drug and it's dangerous for them,
they're not as likely to change their behavior than if
(28:46):
you tell them, hey, this was made by corporations who
are profiting off of you and trying to control you.
So she's really smart and intuitive to use that message
with her own kids.
Speaker 11 (28:58):
I she'll thank you as Kelly.
Speaker 8 (29:01):
I totally agree with what Professor Lemkey just said and
everything she says. But I just think as Kelly was
speaking as well. She was talking about self regulation and
teaching that to the kids, and it sounds like she's
doing that in a really wise way. And it was
actually real worry about the young people in my life
that led me to write Stolen Focus.
Speaker 11 (29:18):
But I was think there's another level of regulation.
Speaker 8 (29:20):
It's really important for us to think about if we
want to solve this problem. I think there's an analogy
something moms like Kelly did not that long ago. I
think she'd really guide us now. So when we were kids,
I think you're about to say, age as me Jeremy.
The only form of gasoline you could buy in the
United States with leaded gasoline, right, And it was discovered
by scientists exposure to lead was really bad for people's brains,
(29:43):
and particularly bad for children's ability to focus and pay attention.
And if it's in the gasoline, it was in the
air because it gets in fumes. Everyone was breathing in
huge amounts of lead. So what happened was a group
of ordinary moms at the time was called housewives, banded
together and said, why are we allowing this? Why are
we allowing these for profit companies to screw up on kids' brains?
Important to notice what they didn't say. They didn't say, so,
(30:04):
let's ban gasoline. Let's ban cause. Right, they got rid
of the specific woman gasoline that was harming our kids' brains.
As a result, the average American child is five iq
points higher than they would have been. We can do
the same with tech. I can explain how.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
You know, Tolliver.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
We've actually heard a lot of news recently about governors
trying to limit screen time for young people in schools.
Speaker 12 (30:23):
Yeah, and that's so on both the left and the right.
This is actually Florida's Republican Governor Ronda Santis and New
York's Democratic governor King Sorry Kathy Hochel, with their thoughts
on taking phones out of the classroom.
Speaker 16 (30:34):
I think that they have every right to say, kids,
come in, just check your phone at the beginning, at
the front of the room, leave it there, learn and
then grab your phone and then go after that. We
don't want the kids on the phone the whole time
while the teachers are trying to teach.
Speaker 17 (30:49):
I've been sitting with teenagers in classrooms and in community centers,
and I have seen firsthand the addiction that is going on.
Our kids are being pulled in to a play said
is often very dark.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Bipartisan compromise. Imagine that, tolivern Ray. You know in Florida,
they've actually done the band in schools. In New York,
it's so far just as proposal. We've also heard about
California thinking about this as well. I imagine in the
next several years a lot of states are going to
do the same thing and make it so that students
aren't able to use their phones in schools.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
We will be right back with more of the Middle.
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
This hour, we're talking about phone addiction, how it affects us,
and what you can do about it if you see
yourself as being addicted to your phone. This program was
previously recorded, so we're not taking any more live calls,
but you could leave us a message at eight four
four four Middle or reach out at listen to them
Middle dot com. We're joined this hour by Stanford doctor
Anna Lemke, author of Dopamine Nation, and journalist Johann Harri,
(31:50):
author of Stolen Focus. Before we get back to our conversation,
I spoke with a man named Thomas. We won't use
his last name because he's part of a group called
Internet and Technology Anonymous, a twelve step program to help
people with their digital addictions. I asked him how much
he was using his devices before he sought help.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
So I found that they first of all found their
way into every empty space in my life on the
train when I was in line, it was really hard
for me to be in silence. But I also would regularly,
sometimes more than once a week, even fall into binges
where I was using all night up until dawn. You know,
(32:30):
I'd wake up the next morning, feel awful about it,
and then start again, and I would ask myself why
am I doing this? And I just didn't understand.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
So you decided to get into something called Internet and
Technology Addicts Anonymous. What did they do for you?
Speaker 3 (32:48):
I think the first thing they did was help me
come out of isolation. I felt a lot of shame
and embarrassment that I wasn't able to control my behaviors
around my phone and my devices. In addition, I think
what has been really powerful about this community is that
it's helped me look at all of the underlying patterns, emotions, traumas,
(33:15):
stresses that I was just not dealing with. Technology was
a tool for numbing escape, changing my emotions, feeling things
I wanted to feel, or not feeling things I didn't
want to feel. Now it's a tool for living in
alignment with my values, working on things that matter to me,
(33:35):
connecting with people I love, and ultimately helping me live
a more positive, flourishing life. So we're having this conversation
because of technology. But what I don't do anymore is
all of those behaviors, the games, the social media, the
endless videos, the porn that really left me feeling awful afterwards.
(33:59):
There's a lot lot of causes for suffering in this world,
and technology doesn't have to be one of them. And
if we're suffering because of our devices, that can change.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Tomas, thank you so much, Thank you. Okay, so that's
Tamas's story. An a Lemke, what do you make of that?
Speaker 7 (34:17):
Well, just what a wonderful testimonial and even sort of
the cadence of Thomas's voice for me was quite calming,
and I think speaks to somebody who is not in
this constant reactive mode so to get into when we're
constantly reacting to these external stimuli. It's also true that
(34:44):
many times in clinical care, people will come in not
for help with addiction to digital media and their phones,
but rather for depression and anxiety, and we find that
it's their consumption of digital media that's contributing to these symptoms.
When they take a break from certain types of apps
and reduce their overall time spent online. In some cases,
(35:08):
depression and anxiety improves without our having to do any
other intervention. So one of the soft signs of the
harm of these devices is the insidious way they can
contribute to anhedonia or our inability to experience joy in
anything at all.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Well, I hate to go to the phones on a
show about phone addiction, but all the phone lines are full,
So we're going to kay Is in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Hi, K, welcome to the middle, Go ahead.
Speaker 15 (35:42):
Hi.
Speaker 9 (35:44):
My ability and many his ability to fight their addiction
is sever Fighting your addictions has become a privilege. I
am required by work as many people to use two
factor authentication as soon as I can't use a flip phone.
Most secure two factor authentication these days are eliminating the
(36:04):
ability to send just the text message. I have to
have the app. I not ever, less people, but me
and many others have to have slacked or something or
teams on their phones so their boss can contact them anyway.
Going even further, I can't install these I can't install
these addiction help apps, for example, going to Gray Scale
(36:27):
limiting feed, limiting feed because my company requires a mobile
device manager. So and God forbid trying to go to
an addiction clinic, because okay.
Speaker 18 (36:39):
That's my job.
Speaker 9 (36:40):
So how do you tell your employer or how do
we get employers to let people be healthy when they
mandate your connection to your phone?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
K Yeah, go ahead, Johann.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
And by the way, Johanna, I'll just say, I imagine
that the pandemic made this a lot worse.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
People were working remotely.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And having to be in contact in ways they were
not before with their devices.
Speaker 8 (37:05):
Yea, Kay, you're so, You're right, Jeremy, And Kay is
so right. And this is something I investigated a lot,
and there's several things we can do about this, and
I went to places that had done it. So the
first thing I would explain is what happened in France.
So in France they were having a huge crisis of
what they called lur burnout, which I don't think I
need to translate. And French government, under pressure from Laby
unions really important would never happen if Laby unions hadn't
(37:27):
fought for it, set up a government inquiry to figure
out why is everyone so burned out? And they discovered
one of the key factors was that forty percent of
French workers felt they could never stop checking their phone
while they were awake, never because their boss had messaged
them at any time of the day or night, like
you're describing on slack or text, and if they didn't answer,
they'd be in trouble. Right, this is really recent when
(37:47):
we were kids. I mean I don't remember my parents
ever being contacted at home when.
Speaker 11 (37:52):
They came home.
Speaker 8 (37:52):
Right, You were at work and then you went home.
Speaker 11 (37:55):
Right.
Speaker 8 (37:55):
The only people who were contacted at home when we
were kids were doctors and the president, and even optors
weren't on call all the time, right, So this inevitably
completely exhausts people in the way you're describing. So again,
under pressure from laby unions, the French government introduced a
very simple solution that has worked incredibly well. They introduced
a law giving every French worker what is called the
(38:16):
right to disconnect.
Speaker 11 (38:18):
Very simple.
Speaker 8 (38:19):
Your workhouse have to be written down, and when your
workouts are over, unless you're being paid over time, you
don't have to look at your phone. Right, very simple,
massively improve people's attention. What you'll notice they're kay is
that didn't happen because people went to the boss and said, hey,
be nice to me. It happened because laby unions banned
together and fought for it. Now, the truth is what
your bosses are doing is bad for you and bad
(38:40):
for them. There was a study by Hewlett Packard, the
printer company. They got a scientist and to study their workers,
and he split them into two groups. The first group
was told, get on with your task, whatever it is.
You're not going to be interrupted by things like slack.
The second group was told, get on with your task,
whatever it is, but at the same time, you've got
to answer a heavy load of email and phone calls.
The group that was interrupted did scored ten IQ points
(39:04):
worse than the people who weren't, which is incredible. That's
twice the effect of smoking cannabis. Right, So it's really
bad for them and bad for you. But you can
make that case to your boss. But the truth is
you're most likely to make them do it if you
form a labor union with your colleagues and you demand
they do it. You fight together. You're not very powerful
on your own, but you're very powerful when you stand
with your other workers.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Let's go to Eli, who's in Lexington, Kentucky. Hi Eli
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
What about you? Are you addicted to your phone?
Speaker 19 (39:31):
I do not carry your cell phone. I haven't carried
your cell phone since they invented the cell phone.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Wow, how do you get How do you get by
in life in that way?
Speaker 19 (39:42):
Very good? I have a landline phone, I have a computer,
I have a voicemail. As a matter of fact, I'm
a business consultant and all my clients. No, I do
not carry your cell phone. I think the cell phone
is very damaging psychologically, emotionally, mentally, and physically.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Eli. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
That's a very interesting perspective on a lemke. Do you
come across a lot of people who are like Eli
and don't carry a cell phone?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Even in twenty twenty.
Speaker 7 (40:13):
Four, not a lot many people, for their jobs, as
k was describing, are mandated to carry some version of
a mobile digital device, if only for two step authentication.
But there's a lot of wisdom in not having a
phone at all, or leaving it off as a default mode,
(40:34):
because the truth is, once it's on our person and
it's transmitting, part of our psyche is occupied thinking about
what's going out and what's coming in. And if we
were to analogize to drugs and alcohol. What's really interesting
when we treat people with alcohol addiction is that if
we give them a medication called antibuse, which is a deterrent,
(40:57):
they can't drink once they've taken the pill because they
will get by. They say that the craving entirely disappears. Now,
this is a drug that doesn't directly target craving in
any neurobiological way, but just taking away the option means
that they're not mentally preoccupied with having to think about
(41:17):
whether or not they're going to use.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Let's go to Jim, who's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hi Jim,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
What about you?
Speaker 18 (41:26):
Oh, I am not addicted to my thog Now. I'm blind,
so a touch screen is little or no use to me,
and I refuse to share my personal information with people
using voice commands. And of course that's a security issue too.
I'm an IT professional. I have access to a number
of secure systems and have to deal with this dual
(41:48):
authentication problem all the time.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
So what do you think about all the people who
can see and have become addicted to their smartphones?
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Oh?
Speaker 18 (41:59):
I think it's very sad. I mean, I'm surrounded by
him right in the IT world. Everybody's looking on their
phone and stuff. They can't pay attention. They don't have
any courtesy even like was mentioned earlier at meetings or
other times, to pay attention to what's going on. It's
really a terrible situation.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I think, Yeah, Jim, thanks for calling in.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Johann Hari, what about the rudeness that he just brought
up there, that people You'll just be sitting at a
dinner table and somebody just pull out their phone when
they're bored by the conversation and checket.
Speaker 8 (42:36):
Yeah, well that's people who are being manipulated and trained
to crave.
Speaker 11 (42:40):
This kind of feedback.
Speaker 8 (42:41):
But I think it's connected actually the kind of lack
of courtesy to something that both that dotr Lenka and
some of the people who texted brought up. You talked
about the band on schools having cell phones. It's really
interesting when they did that in Spain, the areas in
Spain that did it sor twenty percent fall in school bullying,
And I think it connects lots of themes that have
been coming up in this show. So it goes back
(43:02):
to remember I was explaining before these apps They're designed.
Speaker 11 (43:07):
To keep you scrolling. Right, Their machines designed to keep
you scrolling.
Speaker 8 (43:11):
All they care about is how long you scroll, because
they make more money the longer you scroll. They don't
care about what they show you. They just care about
the fact that you keep scrolling. So that all these
algorithms are monitoring you the whole time figure out what
keeps people scrolling, and they discovered an underlying human truth.
Speaker 11 (43:25):
It's been known about for a long time that.
Speaker 8 (43:28):
People will stare longer at things that make us angry
and upset than we will at things that make us
feel good. If you've ever seen a car crash on
the highway, you know what I mean, Right, You stare
longer at the car accident than you did at the
pretty flowers on the other side of the street. This
has always been part of human nature, but when it
combines with algorithms that learns what makes you angry, it
has a terrible effect. So picture two teenage girls who
(43:49):
go to the same party and go home on the
same bus, and they both open TikTok to make videos,
and one of them does a video going we had
a great night. We danced all night to Ariana Grande
I loved it. Right, rhythms will pick up that.
Speaker 11 (44:01):
Video and it will put it into a few people's feeds.
Speaker 8 (44:03):
Now, picture another girl who goes, Karen was a skank
at that party of kids still use the word scank,
but just denounces all the other kids at the party,
says they're awful, horrible.
Speaker 11 (44:12):
It'll put that.
Speaker 8 (44:12):
Video into far more people's feeds, because if it's enraging,
it's engaging. You'll go, what do you mean she's a skank,
You're a skank.
Speaker 11 (44:18):
They'll have a fight.
Speaker 8 (44:19):
Right now, that's bad enough at the level of two
teenage girls on a bus. We all know what's happened
to teenage girls mental health. But now imagine a whole
country where the mean people, the cruel people, are given
a megaphone and push to the front, and the kind,
decent people are muffled and pushed to the back. Except
you don't have to imagine it, because we're living it
right right now. That is not sustainable over the long
(44:40):
term for the mental health of all of us, but
also for the survival of democracy. Right we cannot have
a model premised on algorithms that privilege and promote rage
and anger and don't take.
Speaker 11 (44:50):
My word for it.
Speaker 8 (44:51):
Facebook themselves their own data scientists discover that they were
actively promoting anti democratic and rage making forces.
Speaker 11 (44:58):
But it doesn't have to work their way.
Speaker 8 (45:00):
We can regulate these companies so they work in a
different way.
Speaker 11 (45:03):
That's one of the big fights we've got to have.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Now, let's go to Gab, who's in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Hi, Gab, Welcome to the middle. What about you? Are
you addicted to your phone?
Speaker 20 (45:14):
I can't say that necessarily that I'm addicted to my
phone or not. I certainly spend a lot of time
using it all day. But what I wanted to add
to the conversation is that, you know, you guys were
talking about how when our attention is diluted, it can
kind of, you know, really affect our cognitive abilities in
negative ways. But on the flip side of that, there's
(45:35):
you know, a tremendous tool, you know, a tool for learning.
If we can figure out how to focus our attention,
we can do amazing things that we were never able
to do before. So, like in my example, I was
able to learn Spanish to affluent degree within three years
just by focusing my attention and using the tools that
are in my cell phone.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah, I learned. I learned from Greek.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
I learned from Greek methenoel Lennicas Duolingo, okay, my phone.
Speaker 11 (46:03):
It's be great. You make me too excited.
Speaker 8 (46:05):
But that's a really example.
Speaker 11 (46:06):
Duo Lingo.
Speaker 8 (46:07):
It's a great example, gab because duo Lingo or those
other apps are not designed around commercial algorithms that are
designed to.
Speaker 11 (46:14):
Keep you scrolling.
Speaker 8 (46:15):
There, in fact based on a different business model, right,
which is one of the reasons why they have such
amazing and productive effects for us. We can actually redesign
the whole of social media so it works on the
kind of algorithms that are used for Duo Lingo, and
then they have much more productive purposes. That's the equivalent
of getting the lead out of the pet gasoline.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Right.
Speaker 8 (46:33):
We can do that if we want to. Countries that
have begun to push back on these social media companies
demanding regulation, places like Australia have one because we are
so much more powerful than these companies. But to get there,
to get to the point where we fight and push
back against these companies and get to the positive effects
that you're completely accurately describing, it requires a shift in psychology.
(46:55):
We need to stop getting angry with ourselves and with
our kids, and we need to start being angry with
the forces that are doing this to us. And we
need to realize we are not medieval peasants begging at
the table of King Musk and King Zuckerberg for a
few little crumbs of attention from their table. We are
the free citizens of democracies, and we own our own
minds and we can take them back if we want to.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
An Aleem Key, I'm going to give you the last
word here as the hour runs out, and ask you
if somebody's listening to this and say, you know what,
I Am going to cut back on my phone usage.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
What should they do?
Speaker 7 (47:29):
I would say, the first thing is, as Thomas said,
come out of isolation. Talk to another human being about
the behavior that you want to change. By giving it words,
you will get more information and more awareness than you
had before. And then I would say, create a very
specific plan for what apps you're going to delete or
what websites you're no longer going to visit, make some
(47:52):
contingencies for how you can still do your work, communicate
with friends and family, generally enjoy your life. And then
I do reckon men giving that app or that website
or whatever that digital media is up for four weeks.
Four weeks is usually the amount of time it takes
to reset reward pathways and come out of that addiction.
Four tapes in that state of craving, so that if
(48:14):
you decide to re enter into using that particular form
of digital media, you can do so with the clearer
sensorium Tolliver.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
We have time for a very short quiz for our guests.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Go ahead, I'll be quick.
Speaker 12 (48:27):
Okay, what percentage of Americans have their phone on them
all the time? Eighty sixty four percent or fifty five percent?
Jump in when you're ready.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
I can't have too much silence or all this three
stations will go out.
Speaker 7 (48:43):
We're supposed to guess.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
You're supposed to answer yeah.
Speaker 7 (48:45):
Oh yeah, they got highest one the eighty.
Speaker 11 (48:48):
My guess it's sixty four.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
We're better than we have.
Speaker 8 (48:54):
I don't think people are being honest.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Well, I want to thank my guest doctor Anna Lemke,
professor of psychiatry and addiction at Stanford. Her book is
called Dopamine Nation, and Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus,
Why you can't pay attention and how to think deeply again.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Thanks so much to both of you.
Speaker 11 (49:14):
Oh well a pleasure, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Likewise, thank you, and on our next show, as we
kick off the year, we'll be asking you what your
new year's resolution is. How do you want to better
yourself in twenty twenty five. Our guests will be Dan
Harris of the ten Percent Happier podcast and the Great
Mo Rocca of CBS Sunday Morning. You can call us
at eight four four four six four three three five
(49:36):
three that's eight full full four Middle, or write in
a Listen to the Middle dot com and of course
you can sign up for our free weekly newsletter. The
Middle is brought to you by Longnok Media, distributed by
Illinois Public Media Interbana, Illinois and produced by Harrison Patino,
John Barth, Daniy Alexander, and Sam Burmustas. Our technical director
is Jason Croft. Our theme music was composed by Andrew Haig.
(49:57):
Our intern is Anikadeshler.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Thanks for ours.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the more than
four hundred and twenty public radio stations that are making
it possible for people across the country to listen to
the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson, Merry Christmas, happy holidays. I'll
talk to you next week.
Welcome to the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. Merry Christmas, so
serious question, how many times have you looked at your
phone today? Never mind, don't answer that, because we're about
to dip into our archives for a show we did
over the summer about phone addiction. We use our phones
these days for just about everything, reading the daily news, doom,
scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, texting with friends and family,
(00:27):
or maybe listening to the Middle as a podcast. You'd
be hard pressed to go a full day without interacting
with your phone at least a few dozen times. I'll
tell you personally, I can sometimes take a break from
social media, and when I do, I find that, first
of all, I read a lot more, but also my
overall screen time goes down by more than I'd care
to tell you. A recent survey found that the average
(00:48):
American spends four and a half hours a day on
their smartphone, and Americans in Generation Z spend over six
hours a day on average. But here's the thing. More
than forty percent of those surveyed want to cut down
on screen time. So our question this hour, are you
addicted to your phone? And if so, what are you
doing about it now. This program was previously recorded, so
(01:08):
we won't be taking any more live calls, but you
can leave us a message at eight four to four
four middle before we introduce our panel. Last week on
the show, we had the wonderful hosts of the hit
podcast I've Had It, and we asked you what you've
had it with and what made you.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Happy this year.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Here are some of the calls that came in after
the show.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
My name is chruck in Paul Creek, Union, Colorado.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I'm over internet trolls. Hi.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
This is Stein Davis from Cleveland, Ohio. What I'm tired
of is QR codes or RQQR codes at restaurants. They
don't make things more convenient, they don't add any sort
of value. They're very frustrating, and I'd like to go
back to the old days of having a waiter or
waitress and taking your order.
Speaker 6 (01:54):
My name is Wesley. I'm calling from Nashville, Tennessee, and
I'd like to say that the thing that made me
happy this year was being cast as the stage manager
in Thornton Wilder's Wonderful play Out of Town in a
professional theater company. It was a role I had no
idea I could get it was great.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Okay, Wesley, you have brought something up. I was actually
the stage manager in our town in high school in Illinois,
and then when I was an intern at NPR in
between high school and college, I got into our town
in Maryland as George and it went on so long
I had to cry every single night. And then they
(02:36):
extended the performance by like a month, and I had
had it with our town by the end of it.
But I'm so happy for you that you are enjoying
being the stage manager in our town.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Anyway, thanks to everyone who called in.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
You can also hear that show anytime because The Middle
is available as a podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts
on the iHeart app orever you listen to podcasts, although
you'll probably have to use your phone to do it,
which brings us to our topic this hour. Are you
addicted to your phone? And if so, what are you
doing about it? Let's meet our panel. Doctor Anna Lemke
is Professor of psychiatry and Addiction at Stanford University and
(03:08):
author of Dopamine Nation, Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
On a Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 7 (03:14):
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And also joining us is journalist Johann Harry, who's author
of many books including Stolen Focus, Why You Can't Pay Attention,
and How to Think Deeply Again. Johan Harry, Welcome to you.
Speaker 8 (03:27):
Hey Jeremy, I should just warn everyone it is two
am in London and I've drunk enough caffeine to kill
a whole field of cout. It is possible I will
die during this intere I'm glad my last words will
be recorded for posterity.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Performance enhancing drugs I guess are allowed on the middle
Before we get to the phones on a lemke. Do
you think that what we're dealing with when it comes
to phone usage is an addiction the way people get
addicted to alcohol or drugs.
Speaker 7 (03:52):
I think it's really reasonable and science based to think
of digital media as a drug. It lights up the
same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol. It releases dopamine,
our reward neurotransmitter, just like with alcohol. The majority of
people who use social media and digital media will not
develop a severe, life threatening addiction. But I can tell
(04:15):
you that in clinical care, we do see the subset
of individuals, including very young people, who present with life
threatening addiction to digital media of all kinds.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
And Johan Harry, do you think it's an addiction and
what are the consequences for society of a phone addiction.
Speaker 8 (04:34):
Well, we're living in a huge crisis of attention and focus.
The average worker now focuses on any one task for
less than one minute. And for every one child who
has identified with serious attention problems when I was seven
years old, there's now one hundred children who've been identified
with this problem. And there's some ways in which it's
like an addiction.
Speaker 9 (04:54):
The core of.
Speaker 8 (04:55):
That problem is I would say to anyone listening, think
about anything you've ever achieved in your life that you're
proud of, whether it's starting a business, being a good parent,
learning to play the guitar, whatever it is. That thing
that you're proud of required a huge amount of sustained
focus and attention. And when your ability to pay focus,
your ability to focus and pay attention breaks down, your
(05:15):
ability to achieve your goals diminishes, your ability to solve
your problems diminishes. You feel worse about yourself because you
actually are less competent. And what I learned in the
research from my book Stolen Focus, you know, researched it
over three years. I went on a big journey all
over the world, from Moscow to Miami to Melbourne, not
just the cities that beginning the letter M. I don't
know why I just did that, And what I learned
(05:36):
is there's scientific evidence for twelve factors that can make
your attention better or can make your attention worse. And
loads of the factors that can make your attention worse
have been hugely increasing in recent years. Some of them
are in our technology. They actually range pretty widely. The
food we eat is really affecting our attention, Our lack
of sleep something I can relate to right now, and
(05:57):
the way our offices work, the way our kids' schools work.
Really broad range of factors. But the key thing when
you understand these causes is both if you're struggling to
focus and pay attention, as I was when I started
working on the book, it's really important to understand this
isn't your fault, this isn't your child's fault. There's nothing
wrong with you. There's something wrong with the way we're living.
(06:17):
But once we understand these twelve factors that are harming
our attention, we can begin to defend ourselves and take
on the forces that are doing this to us.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So an a lunky. How did we get here?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Because I'm a millennial, I grew up in a time
when we weren't there, weren't even smartphones, We didn't do this,
and then all of a sudden, now we all spend
so much of our day looking at these devices.
Speaker 7 (06:41):
Well, these devices are very cognitively adherent, and by that
I mean that our brains collectively invented them, and they
are engineered to be attention grabbing, to be reinforcing, So
you would be merely mortal if in engage with these
devices you found it difficult to moderate your consumption. One
(07:05):
of the interesting things for me is I feel like
as a society we have a lot more compassion now
for people who have addiction to drugs and alcohol, possibly
in part because we see ourselves getting addicted to devices
in a way that we othered before and now we're
experiencing it ourselves. This kind of inability to cut back,
(07:28):
a compulsive desire to use against our wishes, a degree
of involuntariness and narrowing of our focus, and most importantly,
a continue use despite consequences. And it's just pervaded every
aspect of our lives. I think, you know, you know,
twenty five thirty years ago, we were only talking about
(07:50):
the advantages of the technology. We were not considering the
dark sides. So the good news is that we're having
the discussion now.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It's interesting though, I did see a Gallops that found
even in the last couple of years, most Americans think
that they get more benefit than negative out of their
usage of their.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Phone, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Let's see what some of our listeners think. Joy is
calling from Atlanta, Georgia. Joy, Welcome to the Middle. Are
you addicted to your phone?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah? Go ahead.
Speaker 10 (08:18):
I absolutely am addicted to my phone. And it started gradually,
but with Twitter actually, because you just keep going back
and back and I had to take the app off
of my phone. But now I find myself unable to
disconnect from my phone, from my emails. But largely it's
(08:41):
like Instagram. I'll go on Instagram and say, oh, I'll
be on there for five minutes, and I literally half
an hour later, I'll still be on Instagram and I
just don't know where the time went.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
And what do you think is the is like, how
did this start for you?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Why why have you gotten?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And I'm not saying you A lot of people are
in the exact same boat, but why do you think
that it.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Happened for you?
Speaker 10 (09:06):
Well, I I disconnected. I was watching a lot of
cable news. I'm kind of a news junkie to begin with,
and I cut the cord a few years ago, and
so from my perspective, the only source of that news
addiction that I had was through my cell phone, through
(09:26):
checking that Washington Post app, and through checking the New
York Times and reading these articles and listening to them,
and then going on Instagram for funny clips and that
kind of thing, and it just it builds over time,
and then you're you end up spending five hours a
day just interspersed and trying to get your work done.
(09:50):
But it's, you know, it's very difficult because I've never
been addicted to anything else before, and so this is
a new experience for me, and I don't know how
to get help for it.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, yeah, thank you, Yeah, go ahead, Beahan.
Speaker 11 (10:03):
Yeah, I really feel for you.
Speaker 8 (10:04):
I was in a very similar position when I started
working on my book, and I spent a lot of
time in Silicon Valley interviewing the people who designed the
apps that you're obsessed with that I was obsessed with,
And one of the things that most struck me is
how absolutely sick with guilt they feel. They're really ashamed
of what they've done. One of them is a guy
called Dr James Williams, who've been at the heart of
designing these apps. And one day he was speaking at
(10:26):
a conference where the audience was literally the people who
designed the stuff everyone who's listening to your kids are
using today, and he said to them, if there's anyone
here who wants to live in the world that we're creating,
please put up your hand, and nobody put up their hand.
Not long afterwards he quit. He's like, I can't take
this anymore. So for all of the twelve factors that
(10:47):
are harming our attention, obviously there's some aspects of our
phones that I'm sure we're going to go into that
are doing this to us. There are sort of two
levels of which we've got to deal with it in
a very practical way. I think of them as defense
and offense. There are loads of things that you can
do in immediately to defend.
Speaker 11 (11:00):
Yourself and your kids.
Speaker 8 (11:01):
Joe so I give you a quick example of two,
although I go through many in my book. First thing
I would say is you should go online and order
something called a K safe. It's just a letter K,
and then say, it's very simple. It's a plastic safe.
You take off the lid you put in your phone,
you put on the lid, you turn the dial at
the top, and it locks your phone away for anything
between five minutes and a whole day, however long you
tell it to. And once you locked it, you can't
(11:23):
get in right. I use that three hours a day
to do my writing. I would never have finished my
book if I didn't ad one. Another thing I would
recommend is that you immediately download an app called Freedom.
Speaker 11 (11:33):
It's very simple app.
Speaker 8 (11:34):
It sinks to both your laptop and your phone if
you want it to, and it will cut you off
from the specific websites or the whole internet. So you
mentioned Instagram and Twitter, you can just say to Freedom,
do not let me use Instagram and Twitter for the
next save five minutes, two hours, and the minute you've
done that, if you try to use it, it.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Just whoe like your We're going to get to some more.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
We're going to get to some more solutions, but I
do want it to say, Tolliver, it's hard to talk
about phone addiction without talking about the iPhone.
Speaker 12 (12:00):
Mm hmm, yeah, that's right. Back in two thousand and seven,
when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he promised to revolutionize
the way we interact with our phones.
Speaker 13 (12:08):
These are not three separate devices. This is one device,
and we are calling it iPhone.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Today.
Speaker 13 (12:26):
Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Seemed like a good idea at the time, Tolliver will.
By the way, if you are listening to this or
you are looking at your iPhone, you can go on
the podcast app and rate The Middle podcast at the
highest level and give us a nice review.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
That would be nice.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, we'll be right back with more of the Middle.
This is the Middle of Jeremy Hobson. If you're just
tuning in the Middle as a national call in show,
we're focused on elevating voices from the middle politically, geographically
and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet in
the middle. This hour, we're talking about phone addiction, how
it affects us, and what you can do about it.
(13:06):
If you see yourself as being addicted to your phone,
This program was previously recorded, so we're not taking any
more live calls, but you can leave us a message
at eight four four four Middle or reach out at
Listen to the Middle dot com. We're joined this hour
by doctor on Alemke of Stanford, author of Dopamine Nation,
and journalist Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus. As we
(13:26):
continued our conversation, I asked on a Lemke whether.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Things like using a dumb phone, a flip phone.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Or making your smartphone gray scale are useful in reducing
the dopamine triggers that smartphones often provide.
Speaker 7 (13:39):
Yeah, I think those are all great things to experiment with.
I like to think of those of self binding strategies
that allow us to just press the pause button between
desiring consumption, giving us just a little bit of a
break to reevaluate whether or not we want to continue
to use. So Joy mentioned that she down and she
(14:02):
took the apps off her phone. Johan talked about using
a kitchen safe where you lock it away. These are
all different strategies gray scales, making the phone black and white,
so it's not so potent on the visual system. What
I find is that people are different and they really
need to experiment with different types of self binding strategies.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
I saw that Kevin Russ, who writes about tech for
the New York Times, did something where he changed his
lock screen to ask himself three questions every time he
unlocked his phone.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
What for? Why? Now? What else?
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Which is great, great from Kevin Ruse. Let's get let's
get back to the phones. And Brian, who's in Denver, Colorado. Brian,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Go ahead, warning, I'm not in the middle. Actually, okay,
what was the other end?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Okay? What about your phone addiction? Are you addicted to
your phone?
Speaker 4 (14:59):
I don't believe I'm a the phone to my phone.
I believe I'm dependent on the use of my phone
because it's technology and I need it for communication. And
I think there's a As a social psychologist, we would
argue there's a big difference between dependency and addiction. So, yes,
addiction does create neurological situations, you know dopamine, and dependency
(15:24):
also creates situations with dopamine. But if I was addicted
to alcohol, I would do everything in my power and
seek everything in my power to get any type of
alcohol fix because I can't do without it. But if
my phone gets lost, I manage and I live and
I until I get a new communication tool. But I
(15:47):
don't go out and seek it and go out and
just use any type like I have an iPhone, which
you guys made fun of. I won't go and get
a small flip phone or a burner phone to use,
like I would go and get any kind of little
bit of alcohol to drink. If I have a giftion
to it, I will I have. You know, I'll take
time and I'll not use the phone until I get
(16:07):
an iPhone that I use because need because of my
communications tool.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, okay, Brian, thank you for that. Johann, go ahead.
Dependency versus addiction.
Speaker 8 (16:18):
I think these things are a continuum, and it's about
knowing that even for someone like Brian, who may not
be as far gone as some of us have been,
there's going to be a cost there.
Speaker 11 (16:26):
I'll give you some examples.
Speaker 8 (16:27):
Professor Michael Posner, who's at the University of Oregon discovered
something I think about every day.
Speaker 11 (16:32):
It's very simple.
Speaker 8 (16:34):
If you're interrupted by something as small as a text message,
it takes you, on average twenty three minutes to get
back to the level of focus you had before, so
I could look at my text now right, my phone
is the other side of my laptop. You think it'll
take me five seconds to look at my phone and reply, right,
but bear in mind it takes you five seconds plus
the twenty three minutes it takes.
Speaker 11 (16:53):
You to refocus your mind.
Speaker 8 (16:54):
But most of us never get twenty three minutes without
being interrupted.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Right on.
Speaker 8 (16:58):
Other person who helped me to think about this went
to interview one of the leading neuroscientists in the world,
an amazing guy named Professor Earl Miller. He said to me, look,
there's one thing you need to understand about the human
brain more than anything else. You can only consciously think
about one or two things at a time.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
That's it.
Speaker 8 (17:14):
This is a fundamental limitation of the human brain. The
human brain has not changed significantly in forty thousand years.
It ain't going to change on any timescale we're going
to see. But the average teenager now believes they can
follow seven forms of media at the same time. So
people like Professor Miller, they get people into labs, not
just kids, older people too, and get them to think
they're doing more than one thing at a time, and
what they discover is always the same, you can do
(17:34):
more than one thing at a time. What you do
is you juggle very rapidly between tasks. You're like, what did.
Speaker 11 (17:40):
Jeremy just ask me?
Speaker 8 (17:41):
What is it say on the TV there about President
Biden's messages at NATO? What is this message on what'sap?
What does it saying on Facebook? Wait, Jeremy, what did
you ask me?
Speaker 11 (17:49):
Again?
Speaker 8 (17:49):
And it turns out that juggling comes with a really
big cost. The technical term for that cost is the
switch cost effect. When you switch between tasks, it comes
with a cost uch less creative, you remember much less
of what you do, you make more mistakes. So, yeah,
Brian may not be totally far. God is not the
equivalent of someone in a dive bar in North Las
Vegas who just can't get through the next ten minutes
(18:11):
without vodka. But you will be if you're using your
phone very heavily incurring those costs throughout the day.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Tolliver, I know that some messages are coming in online
at Listen to the Middle dot com.
Speaker 12 (18:23):
We got a lot of them. Alisa from Northeast Ohio says,
even though I'm not addicted, I feel badly for people
who are on their touchscreen phones too much. I don't
have one. Too many friends seem to have lost a
sense of social obligation or basic courtesy. This wasn't acceptable
before two thousand and five. Stephanie from Birmingham, Alabama, where
we're traveling soon, said we need to push for regulation
of social media and other added addictive apps to keep
(18:44):
them from using addictive mechanisms such as auto refreshing the fee,
displaying posts out of order, and with holding posts during
busy times it would be easier to put them down.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Yeah, on a lemke.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
You know, we've been talking a little bit about the
dopamine triggers, and we just heard there that comment about
that sort of never ending flow of information that makes
you stay there.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
And keep looking for more.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
How much control do we as individuals have over this
versus these phone companies and tech companies that benefit that
make money the more time that we spend on these devices.
Speaker 7 (19:21):
Yeah, you're you're raising a really important point, which is
that we can have the subjective experience that we are
choosing how and when and how much to interact online
without perceiving the engineering, the invisible engineering behind the digital
media that is really designed to hijack our reward pathways
(19:43):
and keep us there beyond utility or even desire or
joy in what we're doing. And those are things like
AutoPlay notifications, the endless scroll, the just incredible vivid image
with music paired with narrative, the algorithms that follow us
(20:05):
and learn what we've liked before and then push to
us ever more potent versions of the same, which, of
course is how we then accelerate the addiction narrative, including
things like tolerance needing more potent forms of the digital
media to get the same effect, which you could argue
contributes to the kind of polarization we're seeing in public
(20:27):
discourse today.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
I do want to go do you think that contributes
to the polarization?
Speaker 7 (20:32):
I do think so. You know, this kind of intolerance
for inability, and intolerance for complex, nuanced discussions coming up
with complex solutions, the desire to really just want to
get a hit of dopamine and see a more extreme video,
(20:54):
a more polarized political debate rather than really engaging with
the ideas.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Let's go to Jaya, who is in Baltimore, Maryland. Jaya,
welcome to the middle Go ahead, thank you.
Speaker 14 (21:10):
I am definitely not addicted to my phone. I am
actually someone who loves to be observant. I love to
people watch, and what I see out there, not just
in the US, but also globally, I find to be
very disturbing. Our society has changed to a very large extent.
(21:35):
I grew up in the eighties and I remember being
told to always, you know, fit away from the television,
keep yourself at a distance. And I think it's so
ironic that now we've all become so accustomed to looking
at a screen that's just two inches from our faith.
So I don't know how we got to this point,
(21:57):
but it's very different, and I I find that, you know,
we're we're not considering our own safety, We're not considering
the safety of others when we're using our phones. Many
people take meetings from their car. I think if we
if we knew that that was going to be a
(22:18):
behavior that was coming in the future, I think a
lot of us would have denied it, you know, because
it's it's it's it's somewhat absurd to me that we're
multitasking in the ways that we are. I've been in
public restrooms and I've been in a stall and have
heard the person next to me taking a call, coming
(22:44):
more and more content, so there's no boundaries. There's no boundaries.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
I was in.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Sorry, let me let me go ahead, Jay, let me
let me take that to Johann Harry.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Thank you so much for that call. Very interesting.
Speaker 8 (22:58):
Yeah, well, a lot of people you're sorry, right. The
bathroom thing really grosses me out as well.
Speaker 11 (23:02):
But you're totally right.
Speaker 8 (23:03):
What a lot of the people who've been at the
heart of the machine is Selicon Valley explained to me
when I was researching my books doll and focus is
why what you're describing is happening, and it's more fixable
than you might think when you understand this dynamic. So
if you open TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, now please don't,
But if you did, those companies begin to make money
out of you immediately in two ways.
Speaker 11 (23:25):
The first way is really obvious.
Speaker 8 (23:26):
You see advertising, Okay, we all know how that works.
The second way is much more important. Everything you ever
do on these apps, including in your so called private messages,
is scanned and sortied by these artificial intelligence algorithms to
figure out who you are, to figure out what makes
you happy, what makes you angry, what makes you horny,
and it's figuring that out for a very simple reason.
(23:49):
It's figuring out what to show you next that will
keep you scrolling, because every time you open the app
and begin to scroll, these companies begin to make money
because you see ads. The longer you scroll, the more
money they make. Every time you or your kid closes
the app, that revenue stream disappears. So all of this
genius in Silicon Valley or this AI, all these algorithms,
(24:10):
is geared towards one thing, and one thing only figuring
out how do we get you and your kids to
open the app as often as possible and scroll as
long as possible. And I remember when the people at
the heart of it were explaining this to me. I
kept saying, ah, that sounds too simple, it can be
so obvious, And they kept saying to me, Look, the
head of KFC is I'm sure a very nice man
or woman, But all he or she cares about in
(24:31):
their professional capacity is how often did you go to
KFC this week?
Speaker 11 (24:35):
And how big was the bucket you bought? Right, That's it.
That's all they care about.
Speaker 8 (24:39):
In the same way, all these companies care about is
how good did we get undermining your attention and hoovering
up as much of it as we can. And as
my friend Tristan Harris says, you know, you can try
having self control, but every time you do, there are
ten thousand engineers on the other side of the screen
working very hard to undermine your self control. And when
you first hear that, it can be like, oh my god,
(25:00):
we're just trapped in the matrix.
Speaker 11 (25:01):
Then we're just screwed.
Speaker 8 (25:02):
But the key thing to understand is social media doesn't
have to work that way at the moment. It works
on that model. The longer you scroll, the more money
they make. But there are other ways it can work,
and we can regulate these companies to get to that point.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
We can but haven't so far.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Let's go to Kelly, who's in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 15 (25:21):
Kelly, go ahead, Yeah, I love that intro and the
gentleman who is just speaking. I'm totally picking up what
you're putting down.
Speaker 6 (25:28):
So I'm a.
Speaker 15 (25:29):
Full time working mom and I use the phone. I
think it's interesting when you say you'reddicted to your phone.
Is it really your phone or is it the apps?
So like for me when I'm commuting in the morning
or in the evening. I use my phone as like
text to do something, so, hey, Siri texts so and so,
and it helps me kind of keep up with my mom,
(25:52):
like my mom's stuff while I'm going to and from work.
My kids, though, I want to set an example for
my kids and so, so I need to regulate my
use of the phone and the use of the apps
to be a model for them. And I think it's
important totally what the gentleman was just saying, I have
(26:12):
developed I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell me you
can't use this, you have downtime. I want them to
learn why and self regulate or learn why to self
regulate because of and teach them how these apps work
and that they are after the money. All they want
to do is have your advertisement your eyeballs and inform
(26:33):
them so they can be like, hey, you know what,
this is interesting, but I don't want to be watched.
I don't want to be I go through their apps
and I say, hey, do you see this location setting
in your apps? Turn that off? And they get it.
The reason why I want them to learn and be
able to make an informed decision going through Now another
thing is my daughter has ADHD. She actually relaxes and
(26:57):
unwinds when she watches and does apps. So after a
full day at school, the way she can totally decompress,
and she needs to decompress having ADHD is by just
zoning out inside of these apps. So we allow her
to do that for a period of time. But at
the end of the day, you're done, you're going to
play soccer, you're going outside, whatever, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
But Kelly ken, we've got it.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Let me, let me, let me actually just bring in
our guests of it. Thank you for that call. You
brought up an interesting point. And Anna lemke you know,
you take that where you will. But I will just
say we think so often about how this is a
problem of the young and the young people are addicted
to their friends.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
We're all addicted to It's not just young people.
Speaker 7 (27:40):
Oh, it's so true. In fact, I would say that
among the elderly, we're seeing more and more consumption of
digital media and being online more broadly, which is increasing
social isolation among the elderly as well. You know, I
think I think that Kelly brings up a really important
point about parents needing to model what they want their
(28:03):
kids to do. Often in clinical care, we'll see families
that come in very concerned about their kids consumption of
digital media, but then in the middle of the session,
they themselves will be texting or taking a call. So
it really is true that our kids will you know,
they really will mimic our behaviors more than they'll listen
(28:25):
to what we say. The other interesting thing that Kelly
brought up, which is supported by the history of warnings
about addiction, was that when kids feel like you're telling
them that it's a drug and it's dangerous for them,
they're not as likely to change their behavior than if
(28:46):
you tell them, hey, this was made by corporations who
are profiting off of you and trying to control you.
So she's really smart and intuitive to use that message
with her own kids.
Speaker 11 (28:58):
I she'll thank you as Kelly.
Speaker 8 (29:01):
I totally agree with what Professor Lemkey just said and
everything she says. But I just think as Kelly was
speaking as well. She was talking about self regulation and
teaching that to the kids, and it sounds like she's
doing that in a really wise way. And it was
actually real worry about the young people in my life
that led me to write Stolen Focus.
Speaker 11 (29:18):
But I was think there's another level of regulation.
Speaker 8 (29:20):
It's really important for us to think about if we
want to solve this problem. I think there's an analogy
something moms like Kelly did not that long ago. I
think she'd really guide us now. So when we were kids,
I think you're about to say, age as me Jeremy.
The only form of gasoline you could buy in the
United States with leaded gasoline, right, And it was discovered
by scientists exposure to lead was really bad for people's brains,
(29:43):
and particularly bad for children's ability to focus and pay attention.
And if it's in the gasoline, it was in the
air because it gets in fumes. Everyone was breathing in
huge amounts of lead. So what happened was a group
of ordinary moms at the time was called housewives, banded
together and said, why are we allowing this? Why are
we allowing these for profit companies to screw up on kids' brains?
Important to notice what they didn't say. They didn't say, so,
(30:04):
let's ban gasoline. Let's ban cause. Right, they got rid
of the specific woman gasoline that was harming our kids' brains.
As a result, the average American child is five iq
points higher than they would have been. We can do
the same with tech. I can explain how.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
You know, Tolliver.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
We've actually heard a lot of news recently about governors
trying to limit screen time for young people in schools.
Speaker 12 (30:23):
Yeah, and that's so on both the left and the right.
This is actually Florida's Republican Governor Ronda Santis and New
York's Democratic governor King Sorry Kathy Hochel, with their thoughts
on taking phones out of the classroom.
Speaker 16 (30:34):
I think that they have every right to say, kids,
come in, just check your phone at the beginning, at
the front of the room, leave it there, learn and
then grab your phone and then go after that. We
don't want the kids on the phone the whole time
while the teachers are trying to teach.
Speaker 17 (30:49):
I've been sitting with teenagers in classrooms and in community centers,
and I have seen firsthand the addiction that is going on.
Our kids are being pulled in to a play said
is often very dark.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Bipartisan compromise. Imagine that, tolivern Ray. You know in Florida,
they've actually done the band in schools. In New York,
it's so far just as proposal. We've also heard about
California thinking about this as well. I imagine in the
next several years a lot of states are going to
do the same thing and make it so that students
aren't able to use their phones in schools.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
We will be right back with more of the Middle.
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
This hour, we're talking about phone addiction, how it affects us,
and what you can do about it if you see
yourself as being addicted to your phone. This program was
previously recorded, so we're not taking any more live calls,
but you could leave us a message at eight four
four four Middle or reach out at listen to them
Middle dot com. We're joined this hour by Stanford doctor
Anna Lemke, author of Dopamine Nation, and journalist Johann Harri,
(31:50):
author of Stolen Focus. Before we get back to our conversation,
I spoke with a man named Thomas. We won't use
his last name because he's part of a group called
Internet and Technology Anonymous, a twelve step program to help
people with their digital addictions. I asked him how much
he was using his devices before he sought help.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
So I found that they first of all found their
way into every empty space in my life on the
train when I was in line, it was really hard
for me to be in silence. But I also would regularly,
sometimes more than once a week, even fall into binges
where I was using all night up until dawn. You know,
(32:30):
I'd wake up the next morning, feel awful about it,
and then start again, and I would ask myself why
am I doing this? And I just didn't understand.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
So you decided to get into something called Internet and
Technology Addicts Anonymous. What did they do for you?
Speaker 3 (32:48):
I think the first thing they did was help me
come out of isolation. I felt a lot of shame
and embarrassment that I wasn't able to control my behaviors
around my phone and my devices. In addition, I think
what has been really powerful about this community is that
it's helped me look at all of the underlying patterns, emotions, traumas,
(33:15):
stresses that I was just not dealing with. Technology was
a tool for numbing escape, changing my emotions, feeling things
I wanted to feel, or not feeling things I didn't
want to feel. Now it's a tool for living in
alignment with my values, working on things that matter to me,
(33:35):
connecting with people I love, and ultimately helping me live
a more positive, flourishing life. So we're having this conversation
because of technology. But what I don't do anymore is
all of those behaviors, the games, the social media, the
endless videos, the porn that really left me feeling awful afterwards.
(33:59):
There's a lot lot of causes for suffering in this world,
and technology doesn't have to be one of them. And
if we're suffering because of our devices, that can change.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Tomas, thank you so much, Thank you. Okay, so that's
Tamas's story. An a Lemke, what do you make of that?
Speaker 7 (34:17):
Well, just what a wonderful testimonial and even sort of
the cadence of Thomas's voice for me was quite calming,
and I think speaks to somebody who is not in
this constant reactive mode so to get into when we're
constantly reacting to these external stimuli. It's also true that
(34:44):
many times in clinical care, people will come in not
for help with addiction to digital media and their phones,
but rather for depression and anxiety, and we find that
it's their consumption of digital media that's contributing to these symptoms.
When they take a break from certain types of apps
and reduce their overall time spent online. In some cases,
(35:08):
depression and anxiety improves without our having to do any
other intervention. So one of the soft signs of the
harm of these devices is the insidious way they can
contribute to anhedonia or our inability to experience joy in
anything at all.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Well, I hate to go to the phones on a
show about phone addiction, but all the phone lines are full,
So we're going to kay Is in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Hi, K, welcome to the middle, Go ahead.
Speaker 15 (35:42):
Hi.
Speaker 9 (35:44):
My ability and many his ability to fight their addiction
is sever Fighting your addictions has become a privilege. I
am required by work as many people to use two
factor authentication as soon as I can't use a flip phone.
Most secure two factor authentication these days are eliminating the
(36:04):
ability to send just the text message. I have to
have the app. I not ever, less people, but me
and many others have to have slacked or something or
teams on their phones so their boss can contact them anyway.
Going even further, I can't install these I can't install
these addiction help apps, for example, going to Gray Scale
(36:27):
limiting feed, limiting feed because my company requires a mobile
device manager. So and God forbid trying to go to
an addiction clinic, because okay.
Speaker 18 (36:39):
That's my job.
Speaker 9 (36:40):
So how do you tell your employer or how do
we get employers to let people be healthy when they
mandate your connection to your phone?
Speaker 2 (36:53):
K Yeah, go ahead, Johann.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
And by the way, Johanna, I'll just say, I imagine
that the pandemic made this a lot worse.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
People were working remotely.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And having to be in contact in ways they were
not before with their devices.
Speaker 8 (37:05):
Yea, Kay, you're so, You're right, Jeremy, And Kay is
so right. And this is something I investigated a lot,
and there's several things we can do about this, and
I went to places that had done it. So the
first thing I would explain is what happened in France.
So in France they were having a huge crisis of
what they called lur burnout, which I don't think I
need to translate. And French government, under pressure from Laby
unions really important would never happen if Laby unions hadn't
(37:27):
fought for it, set up a government inquiry to figure
out why is everyone so burned out? And they discovered
one of the key factors was that forty percent of
French workers felt they could never stop checking their phone
while they were awake, never because their boss had messaged
them at any time of the day or night, like
you're describing on slack or text, and if they didn't answer,
they'd be in trouble. Right, this is really recent when
(37:47):
we were kids. I mean I don't remember my parents
ever being contacted at home when.
Speaker 11 (37:52):
They came home.
Speaker 8 (37:52):
Right, You were at work and then you went home.
Speaker 11 (37:55):
Right.
Speaker 8 (37:55):
The only people who were contacted at home when we
were kids were doctors and the president, and even optors
weren't on call all the time, right, So this inevitably
completely exhausts people in the way you're describing. So again,
under pressure from laby unions, the French government introduced a
very simple solution that has worked incredibly well. They introduced
a law giving every French worker what is called the
(38:16):
right to disconnect.
Speaker 11 (38:18):
Very simple.
Speaker 8 (38:19):
Your workhouse have to be written down, and when your
workouts are over, unless you're being paid over time, you
don't have to look at your phone. Right, very simple,
massively improve people's attention. What you'll notice they're kay is
that didn't happen because people went to the boss and said, hey,
be nice to me. It happened because laby unions banned
together and fought for it. Now, the truth is what
your bosses are doing is bad for you and bad
(38:40):
for them. There was a study by Hewlett Packard, the
printer company. They got a scientist and to study their workers,
and he split them into two groups. The first group
was told, get on with your task, whatever it is.
You're not going to be interrupted by things like slack.
The second group was told, get on with your task,
whatever it is, but at the same time, you've got
to answer a heavy load of email and phone calls.
The group that was interrupted did scored ten IQ points
(39:04):
worse than the people who weren't, which is incredible. That's
twice the effect of smoking cannabis. Right, So it's really
bad for them and bad for you. But you can
make that case to your boss. But the truth is
you're most likely to make them do it if you
form a labor union with your colleagues and you demand
they do it. You fight together. You're not very powerful
on your own, but you're very powerful when you stand
with your other workers.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Let's go to Eli, who's in Lexington, Kentucky. Hi Eli
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
What about you? Are you addicted to your phone?
Speaker 19 (39:31):
I do not carry your cell phone. I haven't carried
your cell phone since they invented the cell phone.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Wow, how do you get How do you get by
in life in that way?
Speaker 19 (39:42):
Very good? I have a landline phone, I have a computer,
I have a voicemail. As a matter of fact, I'm
a business consultant and all my clients. No, I do
not carry your cell phone. I think the cell phone
is very damaging psychologically, emotionally, mentally, and physically.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Eli. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
That's a very interesting perspective on a lemke. Do you
come across a lot of people who are like Eli
and don't carry a cell phone?
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Even in twenty twenty.
Speaker 7 (40:13):
Four, not a lot many people, for their jobs, as
k was describing, are mandated to carry some version of
a mobile digital device, if only for two step authentication.
But there's a lot of wisdom in not having a
phone at all, or leaving it off as a default mode,
(40:34):
because the truth is, once it's on our person and
it's transmitting, part of our psyche is occupied thinking about
what's going out and what's coming in. And if we
were to analogize to drugs and alcohol. What's really interesting
when we treat people with alcohol addiction is that if
we give them a medication called antibuse, which is a deterrent,
(40:57):
they can't drink once they've taken the pill because they
will get by. They say that the craving entirely disappears. Now,
this is a drug that doesn't directly target craving in
any neurobiological way, but just taking away the option means
that they're not mentally preoccupied with having to think about
(41:17):
whether or not they're going to use.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Let's go to Jim, who's in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Hi Jim,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
What about you?
Speaker 18 (41:26):
Oh, I am not addicted to my thog Now. I'm blind,
so a touch screen is little or no use to me,
and I refuse to share my personal information with people
using voice commands. And of course that's a security issue too.
I'm an IT professional. I have access to a number
of secure systems and have to deal with this dual
(41:48):
authentication problem all the time.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
So what do you think about all the people who
can see and have become addicted to their smartphones?
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Oh?
Speaker 18 (41:59):
I think it's very sad. I mean, I'm surrounded by
him right in the IT world. Everybody's looking on their
phone and stuff. They can't pay attention. They don't have
any courtesy even like was mentioned earlier at meetings or
other times, to pay attention to what's going on. It's
really a terrible situation.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
I think, Yeah, Jim, thanks for calling in.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Johann Hari, what about the rudeness that he just brought
up there, that people You'll just be sitting at a
dinner table and somebody just pull out their phone when
they're bored by the conversation and checket.
Speaker 8 (42:36):
Yeah, well that's people who are being manipulated and trained
to crave.
Speaker 11 (42:40):
This kind of feedback.
Speaker 8 (42:41):
But I think it's connected actually the kind of lack
of courtesy to something that both that dotr Lenka and
some of the people who texted brought up. You talked
about the band on schools having cell phones. It's really
interesting when they did that in Spain, the areas in
Spain that did it sor twenty percent fall in school bullying,
And I think it connects lots of themes that have
been coming up in this show. So it goes back
(43:02):
to remember I was explaining before these apps They're designed.
Speaker 11 (43:07):
To keep you scrolling. Right, Their machines designed to keep
you scrolling.
Speaker 8 (43:11):
All they care about is how long you scroll, because
they make more money the longer you scroll. They don't
care about what they show you. They just care about
the fact that you keep scrolling. So that all these
algorithms are monitoring you the whole time figure out what
keeps people scrolling, and they discovered an underlying human truth.
Speaker 11 (43:25):
It's been known about for a long time that.
Speaker 8 (43:28):
People will stare longer at things that make us angry
and upset than we will at things that make us
feel good. If you've ever seen a car crash on
the highway, you know what I mean, Right, You stare
longer at the car accident than you did at the
pretty flowers on the other side of the street. This
has always been part of human nature, but when it
combines with algorithms that learns what makes you angry, it
has a terrible effect. So picture two teenage girls who
(43:49):
go to the same party and go home on the
same bus, and they both open TikTok to make videos,
and one of them does a video going we had
a great night. We danced all night to Ariana Grande
I loved it. Right, rhythms will pick up that.
Speaker 11 (44:01):
Video and it will put it into a few people's feeds.
Speaker 8 (44:03):
Now, picture another girl who goes, Karen was a skank
at that party of kids still use the word scank,
but just denounces all the other kids at the party,
says they're awful, horrible.
Speaker 11 (44:12):
It'll put that.
Speaker 8 (44:12):
Video into far more people's feeds, because if it's enraging,
it's engaging. You'll go, what do you mean she's a skank,
You're a skank.
Speaker 11 (44:18):
They'll have a fight.
Speaker 8 (44:19):
Right now, that's bad enough at the level of two
teenage girls on a bus. We all know what's happened
to teenage girls mental health. But now imagine a whole
country where the mean people, the cruel people, are given
a megaphone and push to the front, and the kind,
decent people are muffled and pushed to the back. Except
you don't have to imagine it, because we're living it
right right now. That is not sustainable over the long
(44:40):
term for the mental health of all of us, but
also for the survival of democracy. Right we cannot have
a model premised on algorithms that privilege and promote rage
and anger and don't take.
Speaker 11 (44:50):
My word for it.
Speaker 8 (44:51):
Facebook themselves their own data scientists discover that they were
actively promoting anti democratic and rage making forces.
Speaker 11 (44:58):
But it doesn't have to work their way.
Speaker 8 (45:00):
We can regulate these companies so they work in a
different way.
Speaker 11 (45:03):
That's one of the big fights we've got to have.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Now, let's go to Gab, who's in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
Hi, Gab, Welcome to the middle. What about you? Are
you addicted to your phone?
Speaker 20 (45:14):
I can't say that necessarily that I'm addicted to my
phone or not. I certainly spend a lot of time
using it all day. But what I wanted to add
to the conversation is that, you know, you guys were
talking about how when our attention is diluted, it can
kind of, you know, really affect our cognitive abilities in
negative ways. But on the flip side of that, there's
(45:35):
you know, a tremendous tool, you know, a tool for learning.
If we can figure out how to focus our attention,
we can do amazing things that we were never able
to do before. So, like in my example, I was
able to learn Spanish to affluent degree within three years
just by focusing my attention and using the tools that
are in my cell phone.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yeah, I learned. I learned from Greek.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
I learned from Greek methenoel Lennicas Duolingo, okay, my phone.
Speaker 11 (46:03):
It's be great. You make me too excited.
Speaker 8 (46:05):
But that's a really example.
Speaker 11 (46:06):
Duo Lingo.
Speaker 8 (46:07):
It's a great example, gab because duo Lingo or those
other apps are not designed around commercial algorithms that are
designed to.
Speaker 11 (46:14):
Keep you scrolling.
Speaker 8 (46:15):
There, in fact based on a different business model, right,
which is one of the reasons why they have such
amazing and productive effects for us. We can actually redesign
the whole of social media so it works on the
kind of algorithms that are used for Duo Lingo, and
then they have much more productive purposes. That's the equivalent
of getting the lead out of the pet gasoline.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Right.
Speaker 8 (46:33):
We can do that if we want to. Countries that
have begun to push back on these social media companies
demanding regulation, places like Australia have one because we are
so much more powerful than these companies. But to get there,
to get to the point where we fight and push
back against these companies and get to the positive effects
that you're completely accurately describing, it requires a shift in psychology.
(46:55):
We need to stop getting angry with ourselves and with
our kids, and we need to start being angry with
the forces that are doing this to us. And we
need to realize we are not medieval peasants begging at
the table of King Musk and King Zuckerberg for a
few little crumbs of attention from their table. We are
the free citizens of democracies, and we own our own
minds and we can take them back if we want to.
Speaker 1 (47:17):
An Aleem Key, I'm going to give you the last
word here as the hour runs out, and ask you
if somebody's listening to this and say, you know what,
I Am going to cut back on my phone usage.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
What should they do?
Speaker 7 (47:29):
I would say, the first thing is, as Thomas said,
come out of isolation. Talk to another human being about
the behavior that you want to change. By giving it words,
you will get more information and more awareness than you
had before. And then I would say, create a very
specific plan for what apps you're going to delete or
what websites you're no longer going to visit, make some
(47:52):
contingencies for how you can still do your work, communicate
with friends and family, generally enjoy your life. And then
I do reckon men giving that app or that website
or whatever that digital media is up for four weeks.
Four weeks is usually the amount of time it takes
to reset reward pathways and come out of that addiction.
Four tapes in that state of craving, so that if
(48:14):
you decide to re enter into using that particular form
of digital media, you can do so with the clearer
sensorium Tolliver.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
We have time for a very short quiz for our guests.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Go ahead, I'll be quick.
Speaker 12 (48:27):
Okay, what percentage of Americans have their phone on them
all the time? Eighty sixty four percent or fifty five percent?
Jump in when you're ready.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
I can't have too much silence or all this three
stations will go out.
Speaker 7 (48:43):
We're supposed to guess.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
You're supposed to answer yeah.
Speaker 7 (48:45):
Oh yeah, they got highest one the eighty.
Speaker 11 (48:48):
My guess it's sixty four.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
We're better than we have.
Speaker 8 (48:54):
I don't think people are being honest.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Well, I want to thank my guest doctor Anna Lemke,
professor of psychiatry and addiction at Stanford. Her book is
called Dopamine Nation, and Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus,
Why you can't pay attention and how to think deeply again.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Thanks so much to both of you.
Speaker 11 (49:14):
Oh well a pleasure, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Likewise, thank you, and on our next show, as we
kick off the year, we'll be asking you what your
new year's resolution is. How do you want to better
yourself in twenty twenty five. Our guests will be Dan
Harris of the ten Percent Happier podcast and the Great
Mo Rocca of CBS Sunday Morning. You can call us
at eight four four four six four three three five
(49:36):
three that's eight full full four Middle, or write in
a Listen to the Middle dot com and of course
you can sign up for our free weekly newsletter. The
Middle is brought to you by Longnok Media, distributed by
Illinois Public Media Interbana, Illinois and produced by Harrison Patino,
John Barth, Daniy Alexander, and Sam Burmustas. Our technical director
is Jason Croft. Our theme music was composed by Andrew Haig.
(49:57):
Our intern is Anikadeshler.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Thanks for ours.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
Satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the more than
four hundred and twenty public radio stations that are making
it possible for people across the country to listen to
the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson, Merry Christmas, happy holidays. I'll
talk to you next week.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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