Recommended Listening “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by The Beach Boys
Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite author, and author of such notable works as Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions and my personal favorite, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, would often tell a story of an interaction between him and his Uncle Alex. The interaction took place during summer while Kurt and Uncle Alex were drinking lemonade under an apple tree. While Kurt was speaking, his uncle interrupted him and said, “Well, if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” Uncle Alex always made it a point to say when things were nice and his chief complaint was that people wouldn’t take the time to notice these occasions.
I was watching Baby Mama the other day (I’m not bragging). Not exactly the transition you were expecting, huh? Me either. The film is about a working class professional who seeks out a surrogate to have a child for her (get it, baby…mama?). Clearly, there is a plot twist in there that grabs your attention, but I’ll save you. Here’s where I am going with this. The film was released in 2008 and takes place in the present, i.e. 2008. The stunning thing is that in the first 10 minutes, one character pulls out their phone, and that phone is a flip phone. The rest of the movie is immersed in dialogue and comical events.
In January of 2007 the iPhone was released making way for the emergence of touchscreen smartphones everywhere. The closest thing prior (from the market’s perspective) was the Blackberry (don’t know what one is, look it up…it had a trackball and was awesome). They released a touch screen called the Storm and it was wretched (I was dumb enough to purchase the first, and the second, both delivering an equally subpar performance).
In the past 10 years phones have drastically changed how we live. They went from devices used for calls and texts to GPS’, social media tools, website navigation, on-demand music players, and artificial intelligence that is prepared to give you what you want…when you want it. They are a highly effective tool, rivaling the comparison of the hammer to a carpenter. And here you are fully immersed in this world that not even your parents, or any adult for that matter, fully quite understand.
We’re still learning how to live with them as such an integral part of our life. To be brutally honest, we’re losing. It’s incredibly easy to lose minutes, hours, and days immersed in these devices. If I had a dollar for every time I walked down a hallway in a school and saw a student with their phone out, I would be a millionaire. Not an exaggeration. It’s understandable, given the aforementioned, however, it’s important to take breaks.
Why you should take a break…
Let’s first discuss how your phone is wired. You’re phone is wired to make you an addict. Woah, that’s harsh you may be saying to yourself…as you check your phone. UCHealth released an article in which they identified that human beings check their phones between 100 – 150 times a day. The reason you check your phone could be for a wide variety of reasons. No matter what it is, your phone has wired you to check it.
Why do we check it so much? Dopamine.
Dopamine? Yes, dopamine. Physcology today states, “Dopamine is one of the brain’s neurotransmitters—a chemical that ferries information between neurons. Dopamine helps regulate movement, attention, learning, and emotional responses. It also enables us not only to see rewards, but to take action to move toward them.” In layman’s terms it’s the chemical that is released to make you feel good. In our natural states, we typically enjoy clean environments, so it would only make sense that would want a clean phone, right (known as a notification free phone, aka a clean home screen)?
But here’s the deal, it never gets clean. There will always be new notifications unless they are managed. Trevor Haynes, a blogger, for Harvard University wrote that, “platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram leverage the very same neural circuitry used by slot machines and cocaine to keep us using their products as much as possible.” Woof. Your brain is being wired to release a reward driven chemical to incentivize you to check your phone. That’s some tough wiring.
Alright… What happens if we don’t check the phone? We experience something called, “phone anxiety.” In an article by ABCNews they explain that the more we use our phone, the more anxious we are about using our phone. If we’re not on it, after all, we’re not getting our dopamine fix.
So…to recap we check our phones somewhere in the area of 100 – 150 times a day, we’re wired to check from an over release of dopamine, and if we don’t check it we have phone anxiety. Also, let’s not forget about our constant never being present. So what do we do?
Gimme a break…
The solution lies in the quote from article by ABCNews, we have to limit our interaction with our phones. Woah. Crazy. Here’s how….
- Take breaks. Yes. You heard it right. Wire in a time where you take a break from it. Maybe from 5 – 6:00, you turn it off. Like anything we have an addiction to, it will be tough at first. During this time, plan an activity that won’t require your phone. This will help you in the initial trials to pull yourself from the marriage to your device. Gradually over time you will be able to do it without pre-planned activities.
- Don’t take it to bed. As a matter of fact, leave it out of your bedroom. Remove the temptation all together. Purchase an alarm clock to alleviate the need to use your phone for this purpose.
Dial back the notifications. Go into your apps, or your phone’s general settings and eliminate the notifications from different applications. You could give yourself a day by day elimination challenge. Maybe on Monday I turn off this app, then Tuesday, I turn off this apps notifications. This will help you from the pull of your phone. As you are doing this it is important to notify those that you love, and love hearing from you, what you are doing. Our society has evolved into this unrealistic expectation of constant connectivity. The break is good. If you need further help, you can always use an app. Here is a link to 6 that can help.
Once you have successfully implemented these, watch and see, the phone stress will dial back. You may even find yourself stopping, looking around, and quietly muttering to yourself, if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what it is. And someday, I’ll be able to walk the hallways of a school where students don’t have their device 6 inches from their face. Oh, what a world!
FYI, I checked my phone 6 times while writing this article. Lousy Pandora.
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Eric Berngen 