Don’t pick up the phone

Social media impacts agency, leading to distractions and self-interruptions. Awareness of phone use can help combat addiction and improve focus.

I was recently part of a conversation exploring how social media and the algorithm seems to be impacting us and, in a way, taking agency away from us. Clients often speak about the helplessness that they experience in terms of how social media has taken over their lives. In the last year, there is at least one client daily who talks about social media and devices in the session and how it has begun to impact their concentration, productivity, mood and sense of self. The common theme across the last seven years is clients talking about the itch of reaching out for their phones even when there aren’t any messages and notifications. Very often, we interrupt ourselves and end up distracting ourselves using our phones. Very often as adults we end up blaming technology and forget that we play a key role too - and by that measure we can bring a change too.

Don’t pick up the phone

Adulting is beginning to recognize where we can acknowledge our role in the problem and then begin to make the change.

A study by Dr Maxi Heitmayer, a social psychologist and teaching fellow in the department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE, throws up some mind boggling facts. The research reflected that a whopping 89% of the smart phone interactions are initiated by the user, only 11% is prompted by an alert from the phone. Dr Maxi says, “Everyone believes their phone is distracting them but our research shows that, actually, users are distracting themselves. If you put your phone on silent and then check it proactively there’s no way for any designer to combat that.” This idea of self-interruptions is what I read a few years back in researcher and author Gloria Mark’s work.

A big reminder that while we may blame notifications and emails, how and when we are picking the phone is also part of the problem. I ask clients as an experiment to note how many times they picked up the phone daily, or sometimes in the first hour after they woke up – the numbers are shocking. The act of reaching out for our phone even when there isn’t a message or a call to be made has become so normal that it almost feels like a reflex where most of the time it feels subconscious. So, becoming aware and being mindful of how many times we pick up the phone is a good enough starting point for people to introspect and bring about a change.

We have also confused our mind into believing that watching short form content, checking for notifications are going to soothe us or provide our brain with rest and a break. In fact, too much exposure to large chunks of information in short bursts is doing the exact opposite – it’s numbing us, making it hard to concentrate, and leading to what has come to be known as brain rot.

The way to deal with it is to learn and identify where we can make the change. The more we engage with the world, nature, activities and hobbies that go beyond devices is where we will be able to break this pattern of addiction. Choosing to buy an alarm clock, pausing for a few minutes when the urge to check the phone emerges, an act of slowing down our breathing and then choosing to put the data off when we have a choice helps. There is a joy of missing out, and remembering this helps combat the fear of missing out

Maybe the solution begins with a simple step: learning when not to pick up the phone.