August 7, 2025 • 44 mins
Me and my phone are in a toxic relationship, let me explain...
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. I've been having this huge
desire recently to see what it is like to go
without my phone for a week, for a month, maybe forever.
(00:46):
And I'm not talking about a digital detox, although that
would probably be nice at this point. I am talking
about a full breakup, a full intervention, a full divorce
between me and my iPhone, because I've been tracking so
much of my unhappiness back to this device that has
become ubiquitous in all our lives and what it's been
(01:09):
doing to my mind and to my productivity, into my relationships,
and to my self esteem. We are probably never more
than five meters away from our phone at any given time.
We take it to the bathroom, even if people think
that's gross. A lot of us. Do we spend more
time with it than our friends and our own parents.
(01:30):
It is this constant force in our lives, so why
aren't we examining our relationship with it more. What's really
caused me to start thinking about this was not one.
It was actually two things. Two things I came across recently.
One was a quote. One was an article. The quote
was from Henry David through and it essentially said, the
(01:53):
cost of anything is the amount of life you exchange
for it. And ironically it came across my Instagram feed
and just kind of reached through the screen and grabbed me,
and my brain immediately was like, oh, this is talking
about your phone and the habits that you currently have
(02:14):
with this device, and how much life or time I'm
giving to scrolling and to apps and to social media
for very very little reward. It is like a pit
that I am sinking so much of my day into
almost six hours a day at this point, which is like,
honestly a bit disgusting when I say it out loud
(02:35):
and in actuality. For how much time I am spending
on this thing, I'm getting basically nothing from it, and
that time would so much be better spent learning a
new skill, or experiencing the world, or being present with
my friends. So that quote really just kind of gripped
me and has been running through my head a lot recently.
(02:55):
The second thing that has me thinking me and my
phone need to get some serious distance was an article
written by the ABC that I read about a group
of teenagers who call themselves the Ludite Club. Ludites, I
only just like this is the name of a group
of textile workers who during the Industrial Revolution refused to
(03:15):
use machinery. They like actively destroyed machinery, like they were
anti technology. These kids, the Ludites, they don't have smartphones.
They some of them have never had a smartphone. They
don't use social media. They have what they call dumb phones,
so basically a flip phone with no apps. It's just
for emergencies. And they're kind of this group of individuals
(03:39):
who seem so connected. They have all these friends, they
seem so much happier, so much more self expressive, and
just wise beyond their years. And I was reading this
article when I was looking at these kids who have
kind of gone against our expectations that they would be
quite lonely or disconnected, and I felt very, very envious. However,
(04:00):
when I also started thinking like, maybe I could do that,
maybe I should do that, the first reaction I had
was one of like panic and almost anxiety about the
thought of not being connected and all these situations I
might not be able to handle without my iPhone, And
it just brought me this extreme unease and it made
me think, any item whose absence creates that's that much
(04:24):
of a reaction needs to be rethought, because how can
an inanimate object control my emotions, my self perception, my
sense of capability that much. How did we kind of
let it go this far to the point where a
lot of people wouldn't know how to navigate their own
(04:44):
city without their phone, They wouldn't know how to get home,
they wouldn't know how to entertain themselves, they wouldn't know
how to be connected. It's kind of scary when you
really start to interrogate how this technology is actually harming us.
And I know I sound like such an old lady,
like I sound like such a concerned parent, but it
(05:07):
is what I want to talk about today. I'm in
this weird mental head space of wanting to rethink my
technological habits, and I want to see if you guys
are feeling the same way, and also how we can
find kind of a solution here, because it might not
be a full breakup with our smartphones, but there definitely
is part of this that we need to rethink. Is
(05:29):
there a middle ground or have we just gone too far?
What would our brains? What did our brains look like
before our smartphones? What do they look like now, what
could they look like afterwards? And just so many other
questions that I've been having around what this is doing
to my mind. So I'm so excited to be able
to explore with you guys today. Hopefully give myself some answers,
(05:50):
give you guys some answers if you're feeling this too.
Without further ado, let's talk about why we should maybe
be breaking up with our phones stay with us. So
other than that throw a quote and that article, there
have been a few other kind of wake up calls
(06:11):
for me recently. I would say, firstly, it was a
conversation I had with my boyfriend where he kind of
made like an offhand comment about me always being on
my phone, and it offended me a little bit. But
he said to me afterwards, like, surely you know this
about yourself. Surely you know that you're someone who's like
always working, always on their phone, like this is just
(06:33):
kind of who you are. And I was taken aback
because I did not think that about myself. It was
like a major psychological blind spot for me. Something that
is obvious to others obviously not to me, and I
kind of had chosen, I guess, in some way to
ignore that this is how other people perceived me and
this is how I behaved. Then after that, I started
(06:56):
really going into my screen time data and just realized, like, wow,
I this thing is controlling me more than I'm controlling it.
Like I'm picking up my phone three hundred times a day.
Each time I'm on it for like two minutes or more,
I'm basically giving up my life to this inanimate thing.
In like one percent increments. Social media, I think, like
(07:19):
most of us, is probably where I spend most of
my time. And I think I could largely excuse that
because social media is part of my job and so
it was justifiable. But really, I think I could only
be on social media for thirty minutes a day or
less and still do my job. This was again like
just an excuse that I was giving to myself, I guess,
(07:41):
an excuse to stop me feeling a bit embarrassed or
ashamed or alarmed, or like, to stop me from recognizing
that something kind of needed to be done. There's also
this realization I had that if someone asked me, someone
held a gun to my head and said, tell me
the last five things that you saw on Instagram or
(08:04):
the last five reels that you scroll past on TikTok,
I would not be able to tell them. A lot
of this scrolling that I was doing and that I
still am doing, is entirely mindless. And if I wasn't
present with the outside world, which I wasn't because I
was on my phone and I obviously wasn't present with
whatever was going on with my phone like that, time
(08:27):
is basically entirely empty. I basically I could see the
argument that I wasn't even conscious in a weird way,
and that was kind of a scary feeling. That's just
time that it's just been rubbed out by me, just
I guess, going numb from watching reels or doing things
on my phone. I really would ask you to ask
(08:49):
yourself that same question. Could you do that? Could you
tell me the last five videos you've liked on TikTok
or the last five things you saw on Instagram that
genuinely actually change your life. Could you give me any
kind of recount on the value being provided by your
phone or by social media. Yes, there are small things,
(09:10):
but I don't think that value outweighs what it would
feel like to not be on your phone. I think
that we make all these excuses for technology that no,
you know, like I can make online friends and it's
made life so much more convenient, and it helps me
with this, and it helps me with that. But let's
not kid ourselves. There's so much more value in the
real world and being outdoors or being really intensely present
(09:34):
with a friend than there is ever going to be
from some kind of artificial connection that we have through
a screen. I think the tension that we have with
our phones is that they are actually very useful tools,
and they have of course been designed to have all
these capabilities and to have convenience in mind. You know,
we don't have to carry a map and a notebook
(09:56):
and a wallet and a calculator and a flashlight and
an address and an address book and a camera around
with us like we don't have to carry all of
these things, and that's pretty marvelous. Definitely is saving our
arms and our shoulders from heavy backpacks and heavy tote bags.
Like it has been designed to be helpful, it's also
been designed to take up as much of our attention
(10:19):
as possible to be an attentional leech. Specifically, the apps
we have on them have been created to use the
fact that our phones are always close to us and
basically an extension of us, as a way to really
lure us in and to get us to spend more
time and in some ways more money on them and
(10:39):
more money within these like digital spaces. Smartphones and you know,
social media going go hand in hand. They go hand
in hand, and they were both really designed around what
psychologists call intermittent reinforcement. Intermittant reinforcement is the same principles
used in gambling. Basically, in gambling, you never know when
(11:00):
you're going to get a reward. With your phones, you
never know when you're going to get a ping, you
never know when that person's finally going to text you back,
or you're going to receive a like or a message,
so you just keep checking just in case. You just
keep scrolling just in case you missed something, and in
some ways it becomes quite mindless. What maybe started as
(11:21):
a dopamine related and dopamine motivated behavior has now become
one that's just like entirely normal and devoid of a
lot of feeling. Actually, there have been certain former employees
of Google and Facebook and Meta and Yahoo who have
come out and said, this is what we were doing
behind the scenes when we were designing these platforms and
(11:44):
we were designing these apps. It was called a race
for attention. That's literally what it was called. Because there
was this idea, whoever has our attention, has our money,
has our ears, has our eyes, can deliver messages, can
persuade us, can influence us to act one way or another,
and that is an incredibly lucrative business model. And so
(12:08):
these apps, and you know, the people who designed our
phones had you know, literal neuroscientists on their teams being like,
how can we make this more alluring, more flashy, What
sounds will attract people the most? How can we get
people more hooked in? Now one, we can't stop scrolling.
You know, our phones were designed to exploit our deepest
(12:29):
psychological vulnerabilities, our deepest biological vulnerabilities. You know, the fact
that we craved opamine, the fact that we crave serotonin,
and the fact that something like Instagram or social media
or any number of things can provide us that in
like a very nice snack like bite. I know, I'm
(12:50):
kind of starting to sound like a bit of a
conspiracy theorist here. And obviously I don't think that there
is some big, bad, nefarious plot to have us all
reliant on technology and on a to devoid enjoyment from
anything else. I don't think there's some big plot to
slowly control our minds or whatever else people might put
out there. But I do think that because we've taken
(13:10):
all of these technological advancements for granted, we haven't considered
the implications further down the line for our brain, for
our neuroplasticity, for how we socialize. Let's examine that for
a second. Because this technology has only been around for
let's say twenty years, already, we have seen changes to
(13:31):
our brains. You've probably seen a few articles here and
there exclaiming that our phones are rewiring our minds and
they're making us less human. The truth is a lot
more nuanced than the headline suggests. But yes, there is
truth in that statement that smartphones are reshaping the way
our brains process information, regulate, attention, experience, emotion, think, feel, express, empathy,
(13:59):
all the things that make us well human. One major
area of concern that I think is on everyone's minds
is obviously attention span. I feel like this has gotten
a lot worse for me in the past four years,
perhaps since COVID. Tell me if you feel the same,
(14:19):
But I feel like my attention pre COVID post COVID
is so different, and some people will attribute that to
smartphone use. So there was a study published in Nature
in twenty twenty two that basically found that globally our
attention spans have measurably shortened in the last decade, and
they link that mainly to rapid fire dopamine driven feedback
(14:43):
loops provided by digital content. You know, apps like TikTok
and Instagram are designed to overstimulate us, and they have
trained our brains to kind of expect novelty and expect
some new form of entertainment every few seconds. And because
they've been trained to expect that, it makes sustained long
(15:05):
term focus and attention feel boring and feel almost intolerable.
That's why when you know you've been in a task
for a while, you suddenly will have this weird, almost
impulsive urge to scroll. It's like your brain begging for
like a treat, begging for like a hit. The problem
with that is that many of the tasks were required
(15:26):
to do as humans, or that we would normally enjoy doing,
don't operate on the same dopamine reward scale or the
same timeline. Take, for example, working towards a thesis, working
towards a big exam, and your business idea or long
term project or goal, you're not going to get a
hit for a while. The dopamine that comes from successfully
(15:47):
completing that big goal or that big task is significantly delayed.
It's definitely not on a six second, twelve second, one
minute cycle. The way that our phones are operating, There's
going to be a lot of repetitive hard work that
you will not be rewarded for in the moment. But
because we can no longer sustain our attention to focus
(16:09):
on those things, because we are so used to being
rewarded instantly, it can become a lot harder to sustain
our focus and our attention on the thing ahead of
us and to complete goals. It becomes a lot harder
to resist small daily temptations in favor of a more
valuable feeling later on. Studies have shown we are becoming
(16:32):
worse at delaying gratification. We want the pleasure and we
want it now. That's not good news. We are actually
as a society less inclined to do hard things. We
can't pay attention for as long and on an emotional level,
phones are also interfering with our ability to self regulate.
A study from the University of Texas demonstrated that the
(16:53):
mere presence of a smartphone, even if it's off, actually
reduces our available emotional and cognitive capacity. Why because part
of your attention is always unconsciously monitoring your phone just
in case it lights up, or it vibrates, or someone
(17:14):
needs you or it demands your attention. The phone, your
phone becomes kind of like a cognitive parasite. It's like
quietly siphoning off mental energy even when it's not in use.
That's the critical thing, even when it's not in use.
This is due to what a psychologists call, in the context,
the smartphone use brain drain. We have limited attentional resources,
(17:37):
and so if we are constantly exercising our willpower in
one way subconsciously really trying to resist checking our phone,
trying really hard to not pay attention to it, we
actually are depleting our overall resources in another way. And
that's what makes concentrating on another task substantially harder, even
if you don't realize it, just the fact that your
(17:57):
phone is there and that you want to touch it,
even if you're not, it's still making what you're doing
now more difficult. This effect was strongest in this study
amongst the participants who reported being more emotionally dependent on
their phones. So people who said they used their phone
to deal with difficult feelings, they resorted to drowning out
(18:20):
uncomfortable thoughts using social media, using these proxy forms of
social connection. There was one question that was like, uh,
I can't remember what it said, but it was basically,
can you imagine can you imagine dealing with this situation?
And it was like someone breaking up with you without
having your phones? Do you think it would make it worse?
(18:41):
And almost everyone was like, oh yeah. There were all
these questions that basically showed that our phones are like
a little security blanket, like we're children, and when we're sad,
or when we're lonely, or when we're tired, we go
to them for nourishment in a weird way. Let's also
talk about social connection for a second here, because I
think it's probably one of the most important parts of
this conversation. Everyone everyone wants to talk about it. Do
(19:04):
our phones make friendship and dating harder or do they
make it easier? I feel like everyone split down the middle.
Half the people say, no, you know, I'm more connected
than ever. The other half say, yeah, you might be
more connected, but is that real connection for me? I
personally think that our phones are again a tool, but
when they become the only tool through which we can
(19:26):
connect with others, they're not useful anymore, like they've served
their purpose almost too much to the form of reliance.
I saw this tweet the other day that I think
captures the price we've paid for this convenience and this
ease beautifully. This person said, our phones and social media,
they don't work because humans are inherently social. They work
(19:48):
because they figured out how to replace real connection with
the artificial sensation that we are connecting artificial because it
doesn't require either person to be truly present or in
invested in the other person. You can maintain a friendship
through a series of happy birthday messages, through sending reels
back and forth. Your dating life can become looking at
(20:10):
thousands of faces over and over again, rather than walking
into a bar and feeling the spark in real life.
And so no, it's not the same, but in some
small way, we've been made to feel like it is.
Psychologists have actually given that experience a name, the experience
(20:31):
of I guess having these like bite sized, small moments
of connection in like a digital space that aren't real
but kind of sustain us until we can meet up
in person. They call them social snacks, or they call
this process social stacking. These brief digital interactions that mimic
(20:52):
the nutrients of real connection are important, and they do
sustain us over time, like a stacks between a meal,
but they are not a meal. They don't feel us,
and over time, as these micro interactions become the default,
they actually begin to substitute the real thing. You know,
(21:13):
a phone call no longer needs to take place if
you feel like you know, you're kind of full on
just texting them throughout the day, laughing with someone until
you cry doesn't happen as much, really, like sitting down
being present with your friends for a weekend and not
pulling up your phone to show them something or not,
you know, being like, oh, what were we talking about?
(21:34):
Because you've been distracted by a notification. It just doesn't
like that's all that happens these days, Like there is
no just sitting down and being like, I'm here, you're here.
Let's be completely present and know there isn't something more
interesting than I want to be doing. When connection just
becomes like I guess, an exchange of content, we do
lose the intimacy that comes from actually knowing and being
(21:57):
known by another person. And then sometimes you can get
to the point where, because you've been snacking all day,
like social snacking. I guess you're so tired by that
that you can't even do the real thing. Like all
of this technology is meant to be helping us and
making the real thing more convenient, but then when you're
so exhausted by all the stuff that happens in between,
(22:18):
you don't make it happen. Hopefully this is making sense,
But what I've been finding is that I can't even
be bothered to reply to texts or to reply to
reels or to messages anymore, because it's just so overwhelming.
There's just so much and as soon as I open
my phone, it's like, oh my god, there's like fifty
people or whatever, like I need to reply to or
(22:38):
there's just this actually feels like more effort for less outcome.
And so unless someone's like message, you mean to make plans, Like,
I'm not particularly engaged, but I also realize that so
much of how other people interact with each other takes
place in those in between moments. So that's the dilemma.
Like you both want to participate and you want to
(22:59):
be around for those moments. You also are kind of
exhausted by this process, and you understand how over reliant
you are on it, so you do want to take
a step back, like it's kind of exhausting. Really, Hopefully
that dilemma makes sense. The more I think about it,
you know, the more it does kind of sound like
a toxic relationship, right, Like me and my phone are
(23:20):
in a toxic relationship. We need to break up. It's
like when you get to that point with someone when
like you can't be with them anymore, but you also
don't know life without them, so you're just kind of
like hoping it will get better or like working up
the courage to do it. That's literally what this feels like.
It's kind of funny, honestly, like talking about these ananimate
(23:41):
objects like it's a bad boyfriend, but it kind of is.
It's this boyfriend that like actually keeps telling you that,
like you can't live without them, but you probably couldn't.
So with that in mind, let's take a step back.
Let's take a step away, have a short break, Go
have some water, go have a tea, and let's come
back and talk about solutions, as well as some more
(24:01):
stories of people who have gone completely technology free, whether
they regret it, what they've learned, whether they would recommend
it as well, all of that and more after this
short break. So, I've been really fascinated, particularly by stories
of people who have stepped away from social media and
(24:25):
their phones entirely and what happened to them afterwards. I
feel like it's like I'm watching from afar seeing their experience.
They're my guinea pigs, and you're probably gonna hate what
I have to say next. All of them love it.
Literally every single person who has a story about quitting
(24:46):
their phone, all of them are like, I'm happier, I'm lighter,
I'm more productive, I smell the flowers, animals come up
to me, food tastes better, Like all of them have
a story like that. One woman who quit her smartphone
for a year and wrote this big article about it,
even said that that year felt like the longest year
she'd ever lived because she basically gained more time or
(25:10):
a greater perception of time, which like that feels pretty profound.
I think a lot of us could do with more
time in our day and a sense of more time
in our lives, more time to do things, experience things.
She's saying that that gave that to her, and even
more like kind of shocking example or story of this
was a town in France that has gone completely phone free.
(25:34):
This town is like fifty kilometers away from Paris. There's
two thousand people. It's called Sane Point Point send Port.
I think si n e prt senn Port very interesting. Basically,
like back in twenty twenty four, they voted on this
and their mayor was like, do we want to go
(25:55):
phone free? Fifty four percent of them said yes, and
so mobile phones are banned in public places. Like you
walk down the street apparently, and like you just don't
see phones. It's like you're from a completely different time.
And I don't know how they enforce that, like whether
it's a fine or what not. But people apparently really
really love it. I'm sure some hate it, but from
(26:16):
the article that interviewed the mayor, he was like, people
really enjoy this idea of just being present with their
neighbors and they're watchful and they're really enjoying their community
rather than just feeling sucked into this device. That gives
the impression of community. You know, when you read blog
posts and stories of people who have quit their phones,
(26:38):
it is it feels like people talking about being converted
to a new religion. And yes, of course a lot
of these cases are anecdotal and they're based on someone's
personal experiences, but the science does back up some of
their personal findings that their perspective, their worldview, their brains
feel like they've been changed. The biggest claim that's come
(27:02):
out of the scientific community recently is that just being
without your phone for seventy two hours or partaking in
a three day reset creates changes in your brain activity
that researchers can physically observe and see. So this particular study,
which I feel like has been talked about everywhere recently,
it was published just earlier this year in March twenty
(27:23):
twenty five by the University of Klonne and Heidelberg University
in Germany, and they took a number of people between
the age of eighteen and thirty and they basically said,
you are not allowed to use your phone for three
days unless you are literally in an emergency, do not
use your phone for three days. And during this three
(27:43):
day period, the researchers conducted psychological tests and they used
brain scans using fMRI to kind of just examine what
they were seeing and what the effects were of restricting
from usage. The brain scans were kind of shocking. They
showed the brains of basically people in withdrawal very similar
(28:05):
to how the brain of someone withdrawing from drugs or
alcohol would look. There were these huge shifts in the
reward and craving regions of the brain. And whilst they
weren't entirely clear on why this was, they basically suggested
that because not using your phone is a kind of
withdrawal from a dopamine source. Your brain is very quickly
(28:27):
trying to rewire how it can seek out stimulation and
pleasure elsewhere when it's been overly reliant on one source
for a long time. This is just one finding among
so many studies, and a lot of these studies I
think have cropped up largely in response to this new
anti technology revolution and whether not using your phone does
(28:50):
make a difference, because you kind of have these natural
groups that you can test against, like you have a
natural control group, you have a natural experimental group because
a lot of people have resorted to not using their phones,
whereas there's another large majority who use their phones excessively.
Another one of these studies was done in twenty twenty two.
(29:10):
It focused more on mood, and this time they asked
people to go without their smartphones for a week. Almost
all participants reported significantly lower levels of anxiety, specifically social anxiety,
and much higher levels of life satisfaction. For example, a
lot of them said their days had more good moments
(29:31):
than bad when they weren't using their phone. They said
they found themselves smiling more. They said they found themselves
more emotional, and more in touch with their emotions, and
that they had better social interactions without this constant influx
of notifications and stimuli. You know, I think what's really
happening is that the brain is allowed to return to
(29:52):
its natural rhythm, one that yes does include boredom, and
it will include scary thoughts sometimes, but also creative thoughts
and deep focus. And when any of these things come up,
they're not immediately stifled by the insertion of a screen.
They are allowed to flow naturally, and when people get
(30:14):
into the rhythm of that flow, they feel more human. Also,
to be expected, sleep improved. We know that blue light
exposure from our phones is really bad for our circadian rhythm.
But I think the most profound thing from this study
wasn't that they were happier. It's that actually not having
a phone didn't decimate their friendships. And obviously it was
(30:38):
only for a week, but there are so many other
examples of people who you know, are in their twenties
or in their thirties who have given up their phone
thinking that it was going to mean a lot of fomo,
thinking that it was going to make them more disconnected,
that it was going to be harder for them to
see their friends, and it turns out that it's the
complete opposite. People report that it actually gave them a
(31:01):
clearer view of which friends would make an effort. Also,
because they removed that social snacking in between, they saw
their friends more often, they made more plans, and they
had more fun during those plans, more fun than a
lot of them could remember having for a long time.
You know, these moments were richer, they were more fulfilling,
(31:22):
they were more enjoyable. And so I think that's something
that a lot of people like me in their twenties
one a year, is that going without your phone or
social media isn't going to destroy your life. We've been
made to feel so reliant on this thing so that
we can't stop hearing these brave people who have said, actually, like,
on the other side, it's never as bad as you
(31:43):
think it is. In fact, it may actually be better,
is what I'm hearing. So for those of you playing
at home, I think the evidence is kind of stacked
against me when it comes to whether I should break
up with my phone or not. Like if I was
doing a pro cons for this relationship, the cons of
keeping my phone definitely outweigh the pros let's think about
(32:07):
the evidence for a second, more productive, better sleep, better friendships,
more neural pathways evidenced against it, less convenience, maybe less
connection to my job for me personally, because I work
for myself. But you know, would that necessarily be a
bad thing. I think a lot of my family and friends,
(32:28):
my boyfriend would definitely say, like, no, maybe not being
connected to your job twenty four to seven would be
a good thing. They're probably right. So obviously, I've been
thinking about this before I sat down to recall this,
and I've been thinking about what a break up with
my phone would look like. And I do think it
would have to be rather gradual rather than like a
full blown rip the bandit off. I know I was
(32:48):
talking at the start about having this real big impulse
to just say goodbye never come back, but I think
it's going to be a slower thing. This is what
I'm committing to, and I'm just gonna say what my
plan is. If you want to follow along at home
and try these, you are more than welcome. I can't
say I'm gonna be entirely successful, but I want to
(33:09):
see if I can do this. For a month. We're
gonna start with the things I'm already doing, and then
we're gonna move on from there the things that I
want to do to see if I could go kind
of phone free and for how long. The first thing
I'm already doing, and if you listen to the podcast,
you'll know I've been doing this for a while. I
charge my phone outside of my bedroom and I have
like an old school alarm clock. It's literally like a
(33:33):
silver alarm clock that goes like didnit evening and then
you like hit it over the head. It's like if
you've seen Ferris Buella's Day Off, which I'm sure most
of you have, Like it's literally stereotypical, like nineteen nineties
silver alarm clock. And it's been great because firstly, it
makes me get out of bed a lot quicker, mainly
(33:53):
because I do want to check my phone, but also
because I'm like, oh, if I don't get up with
this one, like, there's not gonna be seven more along
that are gonna go off. And so that's been really
really useful. And I will say, like, I don't immediately
go to my phone. I do get up and do
other things. So it's not the first thing I say
in the last thing I say morning and night. Secondly,
I've been like slowly transitioning to only having social media
(34:16):
on my work iPad. Feel very lucky that I have
the additional technology and additional means to be able to
do this, but I I just social media, like it's
just too freaking available. People are too available. We shouldn't
be able to look at everyone's lives all the time
and think that that's normal, and think that seeing a
(34:38):
million little tiny videos every single day is what our
brain chemistry was made to respond to. So having it
on my iPad definitely gives me like a cognitive distance,
and it gives me like a barrier, like a friction barrier,
Like it's not easy, it's not immediate, like I do
actually have to go and turn it on and charge
(34:59):
it and find to be able to use it, and
it's kind of bulky and it's kind of hard. So
having that barrier fantastic. Thirdly, when I have my phone,
and if you're my friend, you know this, I constantly
have do not Disturb on constantly. It's probably very frustrating,
but it's so that I can, like I can check
it when I want to rather than when it wants
(35:19):
me to pay attention, Like I feel like it's switching
the script on who has power on this relationship? Me
on my phone, Like do not Disturb kind of doesn't
give it a voice, so I can just only check
it when I want to check it. I found that
very very helpful. Fourth thing I've been doing. I cannot
use two devices at the same time, can't watch TV
(35:40):
and be on my phone. And the way that I've
been trying to not do that is obviously just pay
more attention. Like when I'm doing one thing, I'm doing
one thing, but also I've been kind of slowly accumulating
other activities to do whilst I'm watching TV at night,
watch whilst I'm kind of sitting at the couch, and
it's just like background noise, sudoco, that stuff, Like it
(36:04):
is so much fun doing sudoko. I've become a little
bit obsessed with it, Like I can't leave the house
unless I've done like a couple I got one of
those like big books from the news agency and I've
done half of it now. Whenever I catch flats, I
always found like the sudoko in like the back of
the magazine. It's so engaging. I feel like I'm also
doing a lot for my long term brain health in
(36:26):
terms of protecting against dementia. Like I'm doing these little
brain exercises every single day, and you can just kind
of sit there and like mindlessly do it and still
be kind of focusing. I also someone got me a
Lego set the other day or so much fun. Like
Lego is. It's literally a billion dollar industry. So I'm
not surprising anyone when I say that I'm enjoying it.
(36:47):
I'm sure a lot of people enjoy it. But it's
feels amazing. It feels so great doing something with your
hands whilst you know you're watching your TV show, especially
if you're someone who struggles to just concentrate on one
thing at once. Friend of mine is also teaching me
how to knit. My beautiful friend Chia. She made me
this gorgeous scarf, and I was like, I I feel
like I need to learn how to make something because
(37:08):
how often how many of us know how to like
truly make something these days, Like you know, maybe some
of us know how to make cookies or like you
really tried, you could make like a box out of wood.
But we're really losing like these skills that were used
to perfect long ago, and so getting back to that
and like having someone who is really good at something
be able to teach me. It's also like a fun
(37:29):
social thing. Actually saw someone the other day talk about how,
in their journey to kind of stop using their phone
as much, they had a boredom menu. They found that
their major trigger for using their phone, even when they
didn't want to, it was just that they had run
out of things to do, and like their brain was
just obviously pleasure hunting and like stimulation hunting. So she
(37:50):
has this big list of things to do when she's bored,
including chores, including things that she would never normally have
on her to do list. That a thing she kind
of wants to do. Like that is something that I
think I need to implement more. Obviously I've done it
a little bit. I can see how that would be
very effective. This is also something I'm working towards, which
is using gray scale on my phone. I don't do
(38:12):
this all the time. I actually find it to be well.
I think the point is that it's meant to make
the appeal of the phone less alluring by putting everything
in black, white and gray. But I find it comes
sometimes kind of gives me a headache, but the technique
is definitely effective. By removing color, I definitely have noticed
(38:32):
that there's like less accidental sensory overload. So that is
something that is definitely a quick I think, a quick replacement,
quick fix that gets to like the root of the problem. Also,
I have ordered a flip phone, and I'm going to
keep you updated on how it goes. But it's pink.
It was like one hundred dollars from Office Works, and
(38:56):
I'm excited for it to arrive. Like I think it's
going to be a fun little accessory. And what I
really want to do is just begin by taking it
to the park when I walk my dog, and like
just giving that number to my boyfriend and to my
close friends and to like my parents, and then taking
it like to run errands, and then taking it for
(39:17):
like day trips or like into work so that I'm
not entirely disconnected. But there is like not this not
the brain drain of the of the iPhone being next
to me that I constantly feel inclined to like scroll
and swipe and do things on just because it's there,
especially like when I'm commuting or when I'm just like
(39:39):
in moments of stillness, I really want to try and
not just feel like the first thing I can do
to entertain myself is to pick up this device that
requires absolutely no active energy from me. One thing I
will say about the flip phone, though, and if you
have a flip phone, tell me how you are going
with this, is that I kind of want a hamra
(40:00):
on me. Feel like that's gonna be the biggest issue,
especially with like restaurants or having QR codes these days.
I think that's gonna be I guess you could always
order at the counter, but also just you know, if
my dog does something cute or if I see something cool,
I do think I'll miss that. But I think we
crossed the bridge. That bridge when we come to it.
(40:22):
I also don't want to replace one technology with like
a thousand more pieces of technology. I don't think that's realistic,
you know. I feel like I've spoken about getting the
iPad and there's one piece of technology, and then getting
the flip phone that's two pieces of technology, and then
getting the camera it's like that's three, and it's like
I kind of see why they made these obviously. But finally,
(40:43):
I think with that I do kind of want to
work up to doing phone free weekends, no phone. One
of my friends Meg, like recently went away with her
boyfriend and she left her phone in Sydney and she
was telling me how like the first hour she was
like kind of panicking, and then she was like, Oh,
doesn't really matter. So no phone for a weekend and
then maybe no phone for a week on holiday. That's
(41:06):
something I want to work up to. I'm going to
report back. Please hold me accountable if someone can like,
dam me, if you're listening to this in like three months,
can you dam me and say, hey, did you end
up doing that? So that I feel some sense of
like external responsibility. Mainly, I think just being aware of
how much time my phone has drained out of my
(41:27):
life has been important in itself. I have a lot
of excuses, some of them may even be valid, but
the only person I'm making those excuses to is me,
and I'm also the one who's suffering the consequences. And
so I think a big part of this is just
having a frank chat with myself and being like, does
your phone usage and does your technology usage actually align
(41:50):
with how you see yourself and actually align with how
you see your life, because the answer is no. I
don't see myself as someone who wants to waste time,
and I don't see myself as doing things that are
completely at times useless. And I have a lot of
things I want to achieve, and I have a lot
of projects that I'm working on, and I am feeling
very time poor. At the same time, it's like, well,
(42:11):
I can't be sitting here saying that I'm time poor
if I have time to scroll for six to seven
hours a day, like two things cannot be true. So
I want to just reclaim my attention for myself and
I want to reclaim my time for myself and just
stit and be present with what I'm doing. And I
(42:31):
think this will be a good challenge for that, a
challenge in delayed gratification, a challenge in uncomfortable stillness and boredom,
and just I want to see if I can do it,
and I want to see if it's something that will
actually help me. I have a feeling that it will.
Considering every single person who ever I've talked about it
with genuinely sounds like they are in a cult. So
(42:54):
am I willingly signing up for this cult? Yeah? I
think I am, and I will report back, but yeah,
tell me what you think. To tell me in the
comments below, if you are also having this strange dilemma
with your phone, whether you're also seeing the appeal of
all these people who are leaving technology behind. Do we
think this is going to become more common and more popular,
(43:14):
especially as people are kind of at their wits end
with social media and with technology and with AI and
with all these other things. I think so, I personally
think that it's going to be like a huge counterculture,
counter revolutionary thing. I'm excited to be a participant. Maybe
hopefully let me know your thoughts below, and make sure
(43:36):
that you are following along whatever you are listening to
this episode, whether you're on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, so
that you know when we release new episodes, maybe even
an update episode to this one. Make sure you yes
again leave a comment below and are following us on
Instagram at that Psychology podcast, so that you can let
me know your thoughts and also share any future suggestions
(43:57):
for episodes you want us to cover, any topics about
our twenties, about culture, about psychology, about so much more.
And until next time, Stay safe, be kind, be gentle
to yourself, get off, get off your damn phone, and
we will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. I've been having this huge
desire recently to see what it is like to go
without my phone for a week, for a month, maybe forever.
(00:46):
And I'm not talking about a digital detox, although that
would probably be nice at this point. I am talking
about a full breakup, a full intervention, a full divorce
between me and my iPhone, because I've been tracking so
much of my unhappiness back to this device that has
become ubiquitous in all our lives and what it's been
(01:09):
doing to my mind and to my productivity, into my relationships,
and to my self esteem. We are probably never more
than five meters away from our phone at any given time.
We take it to the bathroom, even if people think
that's gross. A lot of us. Do we spend more
time with it than our friends and our own parents.
(01:30):
It is this constant force in our lives, so why
aren't we examining our relationship with it more. What's really
caused me to start thinking about this was not one.
It was actually two things. Two things I came across recently.
One was a quote. One was an article. The quote
was from Henry David through and it essentially said, the
(01:53):
cost of anything is the amount of life you exchange
for it. And ironically it came across my Instagram feed
and just kind of reached through the screen and grabbed me,
and my brain immediately was like, oh, this is talking
about your phone and the habits that you currently have
(02:14):
with this device, and how much life or time I'm
giving to scrolling and to apps and to social media
for very very little reward. It is like a pit
that I am sinking so much of my day into
almost six hours a day at this point, which is like,
honestly a bit disgusting when I say it out loud
(02:35):
and in actuality. For how much time I am spending
on this thing, I'm getting basically nothing from it, and
that time would so much be better spent learning a
new skill, or experiencing the world, or being present with
my friends. So that quote really just kind of gripped
me and has been running through my head a lot recently.
(02:55):
The second thing that has me thinking me and my
phone need to get some serious distance was an article
written by the ABC that I read about a group
of teenagers who call themselves the Ludite Club. Ludites, I
only just like this is the name of a group
of textile workers who during the Industrial Revolution refused to
(03:15):
use machinery. They like actively destroyed machinery, like they were
anti technology. These kids, the Ludites, they don't have smartphones.
They some of them have never had a smartphone. They
don't use social media. They have what they call dumb phones,
so basically a flip phone with no apps. It's just
for emergencies. And they're kind of this group of individuals
(03:39):
who seem so connected. They have all these friends, they
seem so much happier, so much more self expressive, and
just wise beyond their years. And I was reading this
article when I was looking at these kids who have
kind of gone against our expectations that they would be
quite lonely or disconnected, and I felt very, very envious. However,
(04:00):
when I also started thinking like, maybe I could do that,
maybe I should do that, the first reaction I had
was one of like panic and almost anxiety about the
thought of not being connected and all these situations I
might not be able to handle without my iPhone, And
it just brought me this extreme unease and it made
me think, any item whose absence creates that's that much
(04:24):
of a reaction needs to be rethought, because how can
an inanimate object control my emotions, my self perception, my
sense of capability that much. How did we kind of
let it go this far to the point where a
lot of people wouldn't know how to navigate their own
(04:44):
city without their phone, They wouldn't know how to get home,
they wouldn't know how to entertain themselves, they wouldn't know
how to be connected. It's kind of scary when you
really start to interrogate how this technology is actually harming us.
And I know I sound like such an old lady,
like I sound like such a concerned parent, but it
(05:07):
is what I want to talk about today. I'm in
this weird mental head space of wanting to rethink my
technological habits, and I want to see if you guys
are feeling the same way, and also how we can
find kind of a solution here, because it might not
be a full breakup with our smartphones, but there definitely
is part of this that we need to rethink. Is
(05:29):
there a middle ground or have we just gone too far?
What would our brains? What did our brains look like
before our smartphones? What do they look like now, what
could they look like afterwards? And just so many other
questions that I've been having around what this is doing
to my mind. So I'm so excited to be able
to explore with you guys today. Hopefully give myself some answers,
(05:50):
give you guys some answers if you're feeling this too.
Without further ado, let's talk about why we should maybe
be breaking up with our phones stay with us. So
other than that throw a quote and that article, there
have been a few other kind of wake up calls
(06:11):
for me recently. I would say, firstly, it was a
conversation I had with my boyfriend where he kind of
made like an offhand comment about me always being on
my phone, and it offended me a little bit. But
he said to me afterwards, like, surely you know this
about yourself. Surely you know that you're someone who's like
always working, always on their phone, like this is just
(06:33):
kind of who you are. And I was taken aback
because I did not think that about myself. It was
like a major psychological blind spot for me. Something that
is obvious to others obviously not to me, and I
kind of had chosen, I guess, in some way to
ignore that this is how other people perceived me and
this is how I behaved. Then after that, I started
(06:56):
really going into my screen time data and just realized, like, wow,
I this thing is controlling me more than I'm controlling it.
Like I'm picking up my phone three hundred times a day.
Each time I'm on it for like two minutes or more,
I'm basically giving up my life to this inanimate thing.
In like one percent increments. Social media, I think, like
(07:19):
most of us, is probably where I spend most of
my time. And I think I could largely excuse that
because social media is part of my job and so
it was justifiable. But really, I think I could only
be on social media for thirty minutes a day or
less and still do my job. This was again like
just an excuse that I was giving to myself, I guess,
(07:41):
an excuse to stop me feeling a bit embarrassed or
ashamed or alarmed, or like, to stop me from recognizing
that something kind of needed to be done. There's also
this realization I had that if someone asked me, someone
held a gun to my head and said, tell me
the last five things that you saw on Instagram or
(08:04):
the last five reels that you scroll past on TikTok,
I would not be able to tell them. A lot
of this scrolling that I was doing and that I
still am doing, is entirely mindless. And if I wasn't
present with the outside world, which I wasn't because I
was on my phone and I obviously wasn't present with
whatever was going on with my phone like that, time
(08:27):
is basically entirely empty. I basically I could see the
argument that I wasn't even conscious in a weird way,
and that was kind of a scary feeling. That's just
time that it's just been rubbed out by me, just
I guess, going numb from watching reels or doing things
on my phone. I really would ask you to ask
(08:49):
yourself that same question. Could you do that? Could you
tell me the last five videos you've liked on TikTok
or the last five things you saw on Instagram that
genuinely actually change your life. Could you give me any
kind of recount on the value being provided by your
phone or by social media. Yes, there are small things,
(09:10):
but I don't think that value outweighs what it would
feel like to not be on your phone. I think
that we make all these excuses for technology that no,
you know, like I can make online friends and it's
made life so much more convenient, and it helps me
with this, and it helps me with that. But let's
not kid ourselves. There's so much more value in the
real world and being outdoors or being really intensely present
(09:34):
with a friend than there is ever going to be
from some kind of artificial connection that we have through
a screen. I think the tension that we have with
our phones is that they are actually very useful tools,
and they have of course been designed to have all
these capabilities and to have convenience in mind. You know,
we don't have to carry a map and a notebook
(09:56):
and a wallet and a calculator and a flashlight and
an address and an address book and a camera around
with us like we don't have to carry all of
these things, and that's pretty marvelous. Definitely is saving our
arms and our shoulders from heavy backpacks and heavy tote bags.
Like it has been designed to be helpful, it's also
been designed to take up as much of our attention
(10:19):
as possible to be an attentional leech. Specifically, the apps
we have on them have been created to use the
fact that our phones are always close to us and
basically an extension of us, as a way to really
lure us in and to get us to spend more
time and in some ways more money on them and
(10:39):
more money within these like digital spaces. Smartphones and you know,
social media going go hand in hand. They go hand
in hand, and they were both really designed around what
psychologists call intermittent reinforcement. Intermittant reinforcement is the same principles
used in gambling. Basically, in gambling, you never know when
(11:00):
you're going to get a reward. With your phones, you
never know when you're going to get a ping, you
never know when that person's finally going to text you back,
or you're going to receive a like or a message,
so you just keep checking just in case. You just
keep scrolling just in case you missed something, and in
some ways it becomes quite mindless. What maybe started as
(11:21):
a dopamine related and dopamine motivated behavior has now become
one that's just like entirely normal and devoid of a
lot of feeling. Actually, there have been certain former employees
of Google and Facebook and Meta and Yahoo who have
come out and said, this is what we were doing
behind the scenes when we were designing these platforms and
(11:44):
we were designing these apps. It was called a race
for attention. That's literally what it was called. Because there
was this idea, whoever has our attention, has our money,
has our ears, has our eyes, can deliver messages, can
persuade us, can influence us to act one way or another,
and that is an incredibly lucrative business model. And so
(12:08):
these apps, and you know, the people who designed our
phones had you know, literal neuroscientists on their teams being like,
how can we make this more alluring, more flashy, What
sounds will attract people the most? How can we get
people more hooked in? Now one, we can't stop scrolling.
You know, our phones were designed to exploit our deepest
(12:29):
psychological vulnerabilities, our deepest biological vulnerabilities. You know, the fact
that we craved opamine, the fact that we crave serotonin,
and the fact that something like Instagram or social media
or any number of things can provide us that in
like a very nice snack like bite. I know, I'm
(12:50):
kind of starting to sound like a bit of a
conspiracy theorist here. And obviously I don't think that there
is some big, bad, nefarious plot to have us all
reliant on technology and on a to devoid enjoyment from
anything else. I don't think there's some big plot to
slowly control our minds or whatever else people might put
out there. But I do think that because we've taken
(13:10):
all of these technological advancements for granted, we haven't considered
the implications further down the line for our brain, for
our neuroplasticity, for how we socialize. Let's examine that for
a second. Because this technology has only been around for
let's say twenty years, already, we have seen changes to
(13:31):
our brains. You've probably seen a few articles here and
there exclaiming that our phones are rewiring our minds and
they're making us less human. The truth is a lot
more nuanced than the headline suggests. But yes, there is
truth in that statement that smartphones are reshaping the way
our brains process information, regulate, attention, experience, emotion, think, feel, express, empathy,
(13:59):
all the things that make us well human. One major
area of concern that I think is on everyone's minds
is obviously attention span. I feel like this has gotten
a lot worse for me in the past four years,
perhaps since COVID. Tell me if you feel the same,
(14:19):
But I feel like my attention pre COVID post COVID
is so different, and some people will attribute that to
smartphone use. So there was a study published in Nature
in twenty twenty two that basically found that globally our
attention spans have measurably shortened in the last decade, and
they link that mainly to rapid fire dopamine driven feedback
(14:43):
loops provided by digital content. You know, apps like TikTok
and Instagram are designed to overstimulate us, and they have
trained our brains to kind of expect novelty and expect
some new form of entertainment every few seconds. And because
they've been trained to expect that, it makes sustained long
(15:05):
term focus and attention feel boring and feel almost intolerable.
That's why when you know you've been in a task
for a while, you suddenly will have this weird, almost
impulsive urge to scroll. It's like your brain begging for
like a treat, begging for like a hit. The problem
with that is that many of the tasks were required
(15:26):
to do as humans, or that we would normally enjoy doing,
don't operate on the same dopamine reward scale or the
same timeline. Take, for example, working towards a thesis, working
towards a big exam, and your business idea or long
term project or goal, you're not going to get a
hit for a while. The dopamine that comes from successfully
(15:47):
completing that big goal or that big task is significantly delayed.
It's definitely not on a six second, twelve second, one
minute cycle. The way that our phones are operating, There's
going to be a lot of repetitive hard work that
you will not be rewarded for in the moment. But
because we can no longer sustain our attention to focus
(16:09):
on those things, because we are so used to being
rewarded instantly, it can become a lot harder to sustain
our focus and our attention on the thing ahead of
us and to complete goals. It becomes a lot harder
to resist small daily temptations in favor of a more
valuable feeling later on. Studies have shown we are becoming
(16:32):
worse at delaying gratification. We want the pleasure and we
want it now. That's not good news. We are actually
as a society less inclined to do hard things. We
can't pay attention for as long and on an emotional level,
phones are also interfering with our ability to self regulate.
A study from the University of Texas demonstrated that the
(16:53):
mere presence of a smartphone, even if it's off, actually
reduces our available emotional and cognitive capacity. Why because part
of your attention is always unconsciously monitoring your phone just
in case it lights up, or it vibrates, or someone
(17:14):
needs you or it demands your attention. The phone, your
phone becomes kind of like a cognitive parasite. It's like
quietly siphoning off mental energy even when it's not in use.
That's the critical thing, even when it's not in use.
This is due to what a psychologists call, in the context,
the smartphone use brain drain. We have limited attentional resources,
(17:37):
and so if we are constantly exercising our willpower in
one way subconsciously really trying to resist checking our phone,
trying really hard to not pay attention to it, we
actually are depleting our overall resources in another way. And
that's what makes concentrating on another task substantially harder, even
if you don't realize it, just the fact that your
(17:57):
phone is there and that you want to touch it,
even if you're not, it's still making what you're doing
now more difficult. This effect was strongest in this study
amongst the participants who reported being more emotionally dependent on
their phones. So people who said they used their phone
to deal with difficult feelings, they resorted to drowning out
(18:20):
uncomfortable thoughts using social media, using these proxy forms of
social connection. There was one question that was like, uh,
I can't remember what it said, but it was basically,
can you imagine can you imagine dealing with this situation?
And it was like someone breaking up with you without
having your phones? Do you think it would make it worse?
(18:41):
And almost everyone was like, oh yeah. There were all
these questions that basically showed that our phones are like
a little security blanket, like we're children, and when we're sad,
or when we're lonely, or when we're tired, we go
to them for nourishment in a weird way. Let's also
talk about social connection for a second here, because I
think it's probably one of the most important parts of
this conversation. Everyone everyone wants to talk about it. Do
(19:04):
our phones make friendship and dating harder or do they
make it easier? I feel like everyone split down the middle.
Half the people say, no, you know, I'm more connected
than ever. The other half say, yeah, you might be
more connected, but is that real connection for me? I
personally think that our phones are again a tool, but
when they become the only tool through which we can
(19:26):
connect with others, they're not useful anymore, like they've served
their purpose almost too much to the form of reliance.
I saw this tweet the other day that I think
captures the price we've paid for this convenience and this
ease beautifully. This person said, our phones and social media,
they don't work because humans are inherently social. They work
(19:48):
because they figured out how to replace real connection with
the artificial sensation that we are connecting artificial because it
doesn't require either person to be truly present or in
invested in the other person. You can maintain a friendship
through a series of happy birthday messages, through sending reels
back and forth. Your dating life can become looking at
(20:10):
thousands of faces over and over again, rather than walking
into a bar and feeling the spark in real life.
And so no, it's not the same, but in some
small way, we've been made to feel like it is.
Psychologists have actually given that experience a name, the experience
(20:31):
of I guess having these like bite sized, small moments
of connection in like a digital space that aren't real
but kind of sustain us until we can meet up
in person. They call them social snacks, or they call
this process social stacking. These brief digital interactions that mimic
(20:52):
the nutrients of real connection are important, and they do
sustain us over time, like a stacks between a meal,
but they are not a meal. They don't feel us,
and over time, as these micro interactions become the default,
they actually begin to substitute the real thing. You know,
(21:13):
a phone call no longer needs to take place if
you feel like you know, you're kind of full on
just texting them throughout the day, laughing with someone until
you cry doesn't happen as much, really, like sitting down
being present with your friends for a weekend and not
pulling up your phone to show them something or not,
you know, being like, oh, what were we talking about?
(21:34):
Because you've been distracted by a notification. It just doesn't
like that's all that happens these days, Like there is
no just sitting down and being like, I'm here, you're here.
Let's be completely present and know there isn't something more
interesting than I want to be doing. When connection just
becomes like I guess, an exchange of content, we do
lose the intimacy that comes from actually knowing and being
(21:57):
known by another person. And then sometimes you can get
to the point where, because you've been snacking all day,
like social snacking. I guess you're so tired by that
that you can't even do the real thing. Like all
of this technology is meant to be helping us and
making the real thing more convenient, but then when you're
so exhausted by all the stuff that happens in between,
(22:18):
you don't make it happen. Hopefully this is making sense,
But what I've been finding is that I can't even
be bothered to reply to texts or to reply to
reels or to messages anymore, because it's just so overwhelming.
There's just so much and as soon as I open
my phone, it's like, oh my god, there's like fifty
people or whatever, like I need to reply to or
(22:38):
there's just this actually feels like more effort for less outcome.
And so unless someone's like message, you mean to make plans, Like,
I'm not particularly engaged, but I also realize that so
much of how other people interact with each other takes
place in those in between moments. So that's the dilemma.
Like you both want to participate and you want to
(22:59):
be around for those moments. You also are kind of
exhausted by this process, and you understand how over reliant
you are on it, so you do want to take
a step back, like it's kind of exhausting. Really, Hopefully
that dilemma makes sense. The more I think about it,
you know, the more it does kind of sound like
a toxic relationship, right, Like me and my phone are
(23:20):
in a toxic relationship. We need to break up. It's
like when you get to that point with someone when
like you can't be with them anymore, but you also
don't know life without them, so you're just kind of
like hoping it will get better or like working up
the courage to do it. That's literally what this feels like.
It's kind of funny, honestly, like talking about these ananimate
(23:41):
objects like it's a bad boyfriend, but it kind of is.
It's this boyfriend that like actually keeps telling you that,
like you can't live without them, but you probably couldn't.
So with that in mind, let's take a step back.
Let's take a step away, have a short break, Go
have some water, go have a tea, and let's come
back and talk about solutions, as well as some more
(24:01):
stories of people who have gone completely technology free, whether
they regret it, what they've learned, whether they would recommend
it as well, all of that and more after this
short break. So, I've been really fascinated, particularly by stories
of people who have stepped away from social media and
(24:25):
their phones entirely and what happened to them afterwards. I
feel like it's like I'm watching from afar seeing their experience.
They're my guinea pigs, and you're probably gonna hate what
I have to say next. All of them love it.
Literally every single person who has a story about quitting
(24:46):
their phone, all of them are like, I'm happier, I'm lighter,
I'm more productive, I smell the flowers, animals come up
to me, food tastes better, Like all of them have
a story like that. One woman who quit her smartphone
for a year and wrote this big article about it,
even said that that year felt like the longest year
she'd ever lived because she basically gained more time or
(25:10):
a greater perception of time, which like that feels pretty profound.
I think a lot of us could do with more
time in our day and a sense of more time
in our lives, more time to do things, experience things.
She's saying that that gave that to her, and even
more like kind of shocking example or story of this
was a town in France that has gone completely phone free.
(25:34):
This town is like fifty kilometers away from Paris. There's
two thousand people. It's called Sane Point Point send Port.
I think si n e prt senn Port very interesting. Basically,
like back in twenty twenty four, they voted on this
and their mayor was like, do we want to go
(25:55):
phone free? Fifty four percent of them said yes, and
so mobile phones are banned in public places. Like you
walk down the street apparently, and like you just don't
see phones. It's like you're from a completely different time.
And I don't know how they enforce that, like whether
it's a fine or what not. But people apparently really
really love it. I'm sure some hate it, but from
(26:16):
the article that interviewed the mayor, he was like, people
really enjoy this idea of just being present with their
neighbors and they're watchful and they're really enjoying their community
rather than just feeling sucked into this device. That gives
the impression of community. You know, when you read blog
posts and stories of people who have quit their phones,
(26:38):
it is it feels like people talking about being converted
to a new religion. And yes, of course a lot
of these cases are anecdotal and they're based on someone's
personal experiences, but the science does back up some of
their personal findings that their perspective, their worldview, their brains
feel like they've been changed. The biggest claim that's come
(27:02):
out of the scientific community recently is that just being
without your phone for seventy two hours or partaking in
a three day reset creates changes in your brain activity
that researchers can physically observe and see. So this particular study,
which I feel like has been talked about everywhere recently,
it was published just earlier this year in March twenty
(27:23):
twenty five by the University of Klonne and Heidelberg University
in Germany, and they took a number of people between
the age of eighteen and thirty and they basically said,
you are not allowed to use your phone for three
days unless you are literally in an emergency, do not
use your phone for three days. And during this three
(27:43):
day period, the researchers conducted psychological tests and they used
brain scans using fMRI to kind of just examine what
they were seeing and what the effects were of restricting
from usage. The brain scans were kind of shocking. They
showed the brains of basically people in withdrawal very similar
(28:05):
to how the brain of someone withdrawing from drugs or
alcohol would look. There were these huge shifts in the
reward and craving regions of the brain. And whilst they
weren't entirely clear on why this was, they basically suggested
that because not using your phone is a kind of
withdrawal from a dopamine source. Your brain is very quickly
(28:27):
trying to rewire how it can seek out stimulation and
pleasure elsewhere when it's been overly reliant on one source
for a long time. This is just one finding among
so many studies, and a lot of these studies I
think have cropped up largely in response to this new
anti technology revolution and whether not using your phone does
(28:50):
make a difference, because you kind of have these natural
groups that you can test against, like you have a
natural control group, you have a natural experimental group because
a lot of people have resorted to not using their phones,
whereas there's another large majority who use their phones excessively.
Another one of these studies was done in twenty twenty two.
(29:10):
It focused more on mood, and this time they asked
people to go without their smartphones for a week. Almost
all participants reported significantly lower levels of anxiety, specifically social anxiety,
and much higher levels of life satisfaction. For example, a
lot of them said their days had more good moments
(29:31):
than bad when they weren't using their phone. They said
they found themselves smiling more. They said they found themselves
more emotional, and more in touch with their emotions, and
that they had better social interactions without this constant influx
of notifications and stimuli. You know, I think what's really
happening is that the brain is allowed to return to
(29:52):
its natural rhythm, one that yes does include boredom, and
it will include scary thoughts sometimes, but also creative thoughts
and deep focus. And when any of these things come up,
they're not immediately stifled by the insertion of a screen.
They are allowed to flow naturally, and when people get
(30:14):
into the rhythm of that flow, they feel more human. Also,
to be expected, sleep improved. We know that blue light
exposure from our phones is really bad for our circadian rhythm.
But I think the most profound thing from this study
wasn't that they were happier. It's that actually not having
a phone didn't decimate their friendships. And obviously it was
(30:38):
only for a week, but there are so many other
examples of people who you know, are in their twenties
or in their thirties who have given up their phone
thinking that it was going to mean a lot of fomo,
thinking that it was going to make them more disconnected,
that it was going to be harder for them to
see their friends, and it turns out that it's the
complete opposite. People report that it actually gave them a
(31:01):
clearer view of which friends would make an effort. Also,
because they removed that social snacking in between, they saw
their friends more often, they made more plans, and they
had more fun during those plans, more fun than a
lot of them could remember having for a long time.
You know, these moments were richer, they were more fulfilling,
(31:22):
they were more enjoyable. And so I think that's something
that a lot of people like me in their twenties
one a year, is that going without your phone or
social media isn't going to destroy your life. We've been
made to feel so reliant on this thing so that
we can't stop hearing these brave people who have said, actually, like,
on the other side, it's never as bad as you
(31:43):
think it is. In fact, it may actually be better,
is what I'm hearing. So for those of you playing
at home, I think the evidence is kind of stacked
against me when it comes to whether I should break
up with my phone or not. Like if I was
doing a pro cons for this relationship, the cons of
keeping my phone definitely outweigh the pros let's think about
(32:07):
the evidence for a second, more productive, better sleep, better friendships,
more neural pathways evidenced against it, less convenience, maybe less
connection to my job for me personally, because I work
for myself. But you know, would that necessarily be a
bad thing. I think a lot of my family and friends,
(32:28):
my boyfriend would definitely say, like, no, maybe not being
connected to your job twenty four to seven would be
a good thing. They're probably right. So obviously, I've been
thinking about this before I sat down to recall this,
and I've been thinking about what a break up with
my phone would look like. And I do think it
would have to be rather gradual rather than like a
full blown rip the bandit off. I know I was
(32:48):
talking at the start about having this real big impulse
to just say goodbye never come back, but I think
it's going to be a slower thing. This is what
I'm committing to, and I'm just gonna say what my
plan is. If you want to follow along at home
and try these, you are more than welcome. I can't
say I'm gonna be entirely successful, but I want to
(33:09):
see if I can do this. For a month. We're
gonna start with the things I'm already doing, and then
we're gonna move on from there the things that I
want to do to see if I could go kind
of phone free and for how long. The first thing
I'm already doing, and if you listen to the podcast,
you'll know I've been doing this for a while. I
charge my phone outside of my bedroom and I have
like an old school alarm clock. It's literally like a
(33:33):
silver alarm clock that goes like didnit evening and then
you like hit it over the head. It's like if
you've seen Ferris Buella's Day Off, which I'm sure most
of you have, Like it's literally stereotypical, like nineteen nineties
silver alarm clock. And it's been great because firstly, it
makes me get out of bed a lot quicker, mainly
(33:53):
because I do want to check my phone, but also
because I'm like, oh, if I don't get up with
this one, like, there's not gonna be seven more along
that are gonna go off. And so that's been really
really useful. And I will say, like, I don't immediately
go to my phone. I do get up and do
other things. So it's not the first thing I say
in the last thing I say morning and night. Secondly,
I've been like slowly transitioning to only having social media
(34:16):
on my work iPad. Feel very lucky that I have
the additional technology and additional means to be able to
do this, but I I just social media, like it's
just too freaking available. People are too available. We shouldn't
be able to look at everyone's lives all the time
and think that that's normal, and think that seeing a
(34:38):
million little tiny videos every single day is what our
brain chemistry was made to respond to. So having it
on my iPad definitely gives me like a cognitive distance,
and it gives me like a barrier, like a friction barrier,
Like it's not easy, it's not immediate, like I do
actually have to go and turn it on and charge
(34:59):
it and find to be able to use it, and
it's kind of bulky and it's kind of hard. So
having that barrier fantastic. Thirdly, when I have my phone,
and if you're my friend, you know this, I constantly
have do not Disturb on constantly. It's probably very frustrating,
but it's so that I can, like I can check
it when I want to rather than when it wants
(35:19):
me to pay attention, Like I feel like it's switching
the script on who has power on this relationship? Me
on my phone, Like do not Disturb kind of doesn't
give it a voice, so I can just only check
it when I want to check it. I found that
very very helpful. Fourth thing I've been doing. I cannot
use two devices at the same time, can't watch TV
(35:40):
and be on my phone. And the way that I've
been trying to not do that is obviously just pay
more attention. Like when I'm doing one thing, I'm doing
one thing, but also I've been kind of slowly accumulating
other activities to do whilst I'm watching TV at night,
watch whilst I'm kind of sitting at the couch, and
it's just like background noise, sudoco, that stuff, Like it
(36:04):
is so much fun doing sudoko. I've become a little
bit obsessed with it, Like I can't leave the house
unless I've done like a couple I got one of
those like big books from the news agency and I've
done half of it now. Whenever I catch flats, I
always found like the sudoko in like the back of
the magazine. It's so engaging. I feel like I'm also
doing a lot for my long term brain health in
(36:26):
terms of protecting against dementia. Like I'm doing these little
brain exercises every single day, and you can just kind
of sit there and like mindlessly do it and still
be kind of focusing. I also someone got me a
Lego set the other day or so much fun. Like
Lego is. It's literally a billion dollar industry. So I'm
not surprising anyone when I say that I'm enjoying it.
(36:47):
I'm sure a lot of people enjoy it. But it's
feels amazing. It feels so great doing something with your
hands whilst you know you're watching your TV show, especially
if you're someone who struggles to just concentrate on one
thing at once. Friend of mine is also teaching me
how to knit. My beautiful friend Chia. She made me
this gorgeous scarf, and I was like, I I feel
like I need to learn how to make something because
(37:08):
how often how many of us know how to like
truly make something these days, Like you know, maybe some
of us know how to make cookies or like you
really tried, you could make like a box out of wood.
But we're really losing like these skills that were used
to perfect long ago, and so getting back to that
and like having someone who is really good at something
be able to teach me. It's also like a fun
(37:29):
social thing. Actually saw someone the other day talk about how,
in their journey to kind of stop using their phone
as much, they had a boredom menu. They found that
their major trigger for using their phone, even when they
didn't want to, it was just that they had run
out of things to do, and like their brain was
just obviously pleasure hunting and like stimulation hunting. So she
(37:50):
has this big list of things to do when she's bored,
including chores, including things that she would never normally have
on her to do list. That a thing she kind
of wants to do. Like that is something that I
think I need to implement more. Obviously I've done it
a little bit. I can see how that would be
very effective. This is also something I'm working towards, which
is using gray scale on my phone. I don't do
(38:12):
this all the time. I actually find it to be well.
I think the point is that it's meant to make
the appeal of the phone less alluring by putting everything
in black, white and gray. But I find it comes
sometimes kind of gives me a headache, but the technique
is definitely effective. By removing color, I definitely have noticed
(38:32):
that there's like less accidental sensory overload. So that is
something that is definitely a quick I think, a quick replacement,
quick fix that gets to like the root of the problem. Also,
I have ordered a flip phone, and I'm going to
keep you updated on how it goes. But it's pink.
It was like one hundred dollars from Office Works, and
(38:56):
I'm excited for it to arrive. Like I think it's
going to be a fun little accessory. And what I
really want to do is just begin by taking it
to the park when I walk my dog, and like
just giving that number to my boyfriend and to my
close friends and to like my parents, and then taking
it like to run errands, and then taking it for
(39:17):
like day trips or like into work so that I'm
not entirely disconnected. But there is like not this not
the brain drain of the of the iPhone being next
to me that I constantly feel inclined to like scroll
and swipe and do things on just because it's there,
especially like when I'm commuting or when I'm just like
(39:39):
in moments of stillness, I really want to try and
not just feel like the first thing I can do
to entertain myself is to pick up this device that
requires absolutely no active energy from me. One thing I
will say about the flip phone, though, and if you
have a flip phone, tell me how you are going
with this, is that I kind of want a hamra
(40:00):
on me. Feel like that's gonna be the biggest issue,
especially with like restaurants or having QR codes these days.
I think that's gonna be I guess you could always
order at the counter, but also just you know, if
my dog does something cute or if I see something cool,
I do think I'll miss that. But I think we
crossed the bridge. That bridge when we come to it.
(40:22):
I also don't want to replace one technology with like
a thousand more pieces of technology. I don't think that's realistic,
you know. I feel like I've spoken about getting the
iPad and there's one piece of technology, and then getting
the flip phone that's two pieces of technology, and then
getting the camera it's like that's three, and it's like
I kind of see why they made these obviously. But finally,
(40:43):
I think with that I do kind of want to
work up to doing phone free weekends, no phone. One
of my friends Meg, like recently went away with her
boyfriend and she left her phone in Sydney and she
was telling me how like the first hour she was
like kind of panicking, and then she was like, Oh,
doesn't really matter. So no phone for a weekend and
then maybe no phone for a week on holiday. That's
(41:06):
something I want to work up to. I'm going to
report back. Please hold me accountable if someone can like,
dam me, if you're listening to this in like three months,
can you dam me and say, hey, did you end
up doing that? So that I feel some sense of
like external responsibility. Mainly, I think just being aware of
how much time my phone has drained out of my
(41:27):
life has been important in itself. I have a lot
of excuses, some of them may even be valid, but
the only person I'm making those excuses to is me,
and I'm also the one who's suffering the consequences. And
so I think a big part of this is just
having a frank chat with myself and being like, does
your phone usage and does your technology usage actually align
(41:50):
with how you see yourself and actually align with how
you see your life, because the answer is no. I
don't see myself as someone who wants to waste time,
and I don't see myself as doing things that are
completely at times useless. And I have a lot of
things I want to achieve, and I have a lot
of projects that I'm working on, and I am feeling
very time poor. At the same time, it's like, well,
(42:11):
I can't be sitting here saying that I'm time poor
if I have time to scroll for six to seven
hours a day, like two things cannot be true. So
I want to just reclaim my attention for myself and
I want to reclaim my time for myself and just
stit and be present with what I'm doing. And I
(42:31):
think this will be a good challenge for that, a
challenge in delayed gratification, a challenge in uncomfortable stillness and boredom,
and just I want to see if I can do it,
and I want to see if it's something that will
actually help me. I have a feeling that it will.
Considering every single person who ever I've talked about it
with genuinely sounds like they are in a cult. So
(42:54):
am I willingly signing up for this cult? Yeah? I
think I am, and I will report back, but yeah,
tell me what you think. To tell me in the
comments below, if you are also having this strange dilemma
with your phone, whether you're also seeing the appeal of
all these people who are leaving technology behind. Do we
think this is going to become more common and more popular,
(43:14):
especially as people are kind of at their wits end
with social media and with technology and with AI and
with all these other things. I think so, I personally
think that it's going to be like a huge counterculture,
counter revolutionary thing. I'm excited to be a participant. Maybe
hopefully let me know your thoughts below, and make sure
(43:36):
that you are following along whatever you are listening to
this episode, whether you're on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, so
that you know when we release new episodes, maybe even
an update episode to this one. Make sure you yes
again leave a comment below and are following us on
Instagram at that Psychology podcast, so that you can let
me know your thoughts and also share any future suggestions
(43:57):
for episodes you want us to cover, any topics about
our twenties, about culture, about psychology, about so much more.
And until next time, Stay safe, be kind, be gentle
to yourself, get off, get off your damn phone, and
we will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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