Are phones are a force for good or bad in the world?
How many times did you check your phone today? How long did you spend on it? When was the last time you didn’t use your phone for a day? When was the last time you sat through a whole movie without checking your phone? When was the last time you read a book? What is the last thing you do before you go to bed? What is the first thing you do when you wake up?
Can I say anything that will make you limit your time spent on devices? If five years of attempts to try to limit mine is any indication, then no. But hopefully I can convince you that your screentime is a problem, because at least once you acknowledge it’s a problem you are empowered to act.
In short, device usage, especially amongst young people, is linked to heightened rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, suicide itself, body image problems, and eating disorders [1]. Device usage also corelates with the destruction of your ability to concentrate, the decimation of your attention span [1]. Millennials and older generations didn’t grow up with the same access to smartphones as we did. No one knows what the future effects on us will be of having devices so intertwined with our childhood, our teens, and our development into young adults. It’s already fucking with my memory, I fear longer term effects like early onset dementia. Who’s to say whether that will be the case, we don’t know, only time will tell [2]!
I know the pull and draw of your phone because I’ve felt it, and continue to feel it too. It provides the happiness of staying in touch with friends, the allure of potential romantic partners, and the contentment with keeping up to date all at the touch of a button. I’ve felt the rejection, exclusion, and ostracisation that it brings, and the calmness and comfort that scrolling elicits in response to such negative feelings. I forget. I am pacified. Wait what was I gonna search? I no longer hurt. I know those late nights feeling disgusted and ashamed of having wasted hours upon hours mindlessly numbing myself to sleep. What’s worse than being caught in this cycle than to turn back to your screen because it is your source of comfort, your therapist, your dopamine rush. When we feel stressed, we turn on our phones. Our phones, in turn, use and abuse us, they commodify our anxiety and insecurities, they radicalise us beyond recognition. We are always the product, never the user.
How is it is possible to meaningfully change the world when we no longer control our own thoughts and our rightful anger is redirected and pacified? And still the rich get richer.
Perhaps that was an incoherent and unconvincing rant. If you’re still sceptical, I offer you a challenge: Switch off your phone for 24 hours. If your first thoughts to this challenge were all the reasons you need your phone, I suggest you write them down and evaluate whether or not they’re valid. If they’re valid, then try to only use your phone for these reasons for the next 24 hours, let’s see how you go.
Inevitably, we all fail, because our phones are fucking addictive. Don’t just take my word for it, here is a second challenge. If you’re stuck on time, I would suggest reading “Your Attention didn’t Collapse, It was Stolen” an article in the Observer/Guardian by Johann Hari [3]. That should only take 10 minutes. If you have a spare two hours, which if you check yesterday’s screen time, you surely do, The Social Dilemma on Netflix by Tristan Harris really opened my eyes to the extent of this issue [4]. Finally, when was the last time you read a book? Add up all the unnecessary screentime from the last two weeks and you probably could’ve. So why not try? The Shallows by Nicholas Carr is a great read [5]. In all honesty, it might be worth doing all three. They’re linked in the description and I’m not being paid to suggest them, though I’m very open to payment!
You’d better pause now, because that Guardian article won’t read itself. It only takes 10 minutes, we all take longer shits … at least when we bring our phones to the bathroom!
What did you think? Have you bought in yet? I hope so. You may have noticed that this Quote Unquote “video” is just a black screen with an angry face. The black screen is supposed to be dull and boring in contrast to most videos which do all that they can to capture your limited attention. Why not just produce podcasts? Well, the beauty of Youtube’s drive to commercialise means that, at least for mobile users, you have to have the tab open to watch the video unless you’re paying for premium. So, I chose Youtube, in part because it would prevent you from mindlessly scrolling causing you to be distracted during my videos, which would’ve been possible if they were podcasts. (Youtube also has more users than any other similar platform.) I’ve also disabled comments for similar reasons. It’s not that I don’t care what you think, I just don’t want you wasting your precious time scrolling through them. Please don’t like, or subscribe, or turn on the notification bell. Actually, if you do have notifications enabled for Youtube turn that shit off. If you want to interact with this content, do so in the real world, not the virtual one. Show it to your friends, enemies, parents, siblings. Discuss it over meals. Tag, (The Angry Generation) after all, is a game played by children where It is passed around. I don’t want you to subscribe, because subscribing changes how you consume content. Rather than actively seeking out videos, your subscriber feed presents you with options… nudges. By not subscribing, you are forced to actively participate and not be the passive user that big tech desires. I’ll post at 8am BST every Sunday. If a new video isn’t up by then, it won’t come out for another week. The corresponding blog post will also be made available at the same time!
These are all examples of designing one’s space to limit digital content consumption. (Nudges) Others recommended in The Social Dilemma include turning off all notifications and turning on greyscale (i.e not having your phone in colour). There are lots of others, and I’ve tried most of them. I’ve gone as far as to read Atomic Habits by James Clear [6]. It’s a great book and I’ve definitely improved certain habits, but my phone usage is pernicious. It always seems to find a way back into my grasp. It eases stress and induces mind numbness, how could I possibly resist? Every source I have recommended so far universally acknowledge the difficulty in ditching our devices. We’re competing against supercomputers that know more about us than our own mothers. These apps are oh so addictive, and they prey on our every weakness. Taking personal accountability just doesn’t solve this issue. It certainly can improve it, and you definitely should take all the steps recommended by these sources, but even the best cannot escape phones forever. Phone usage has become locked-in in our society. We are expected to have one and to be plugged in in order to survive.
I have three points to conclude.
The first is that technology platforms are knowingly profiting off of us whilst they, themselves, are protected by a lack of accountability and regulation. In the exact same way oil companies obfuscated climate change results and the Sackler family sold opiates, “Big Tech” is destroying our social fabric with no consequences. Facebook (or Meta, ugh) knows about the mental harm it’s causing to young people and lots of tech execs don’t let their children anywhere near devices [7]. The self-professed disruptors have done exactly that, disrupt. And we should be angry. They must be held accountable for their actions and for the havoc they are wreaking. As consumers, we can all delete our accounts to target their income streams. We can attempt to challenge them in courts by highlighting the destructive nature of their products, though I’m doubtful how successful that could be. Or we can make addictiveness of technology a political issue. To force the giants to change their services, we can apply pressure on governments to enforce more stringent rules on them. We can succeed together, because never forget the immortal words of Caesar (from Planet of the Apes of course!) that, “ Apes together strong”. We can all try, and fail, and try, and fail to limit our screen time individually, but collectively we can change the rules of the game.
My second point is to acknowledge the apparent hypocrisy of using Youtube as a medium to express this viewpoint. I accept that by producing content I am contributing to the problem. I am attempting to release and curate my content in a responsible manner. But until a point comes when YT is no longer the best medium of communicating to a potentially massive audience, here I will remain.
Finally, I was thinking about Ready Player 1 recently. In that dystopian future, the masses are forced to interact virtually as there’s no alternative. Previous actions have locked in their fate. On the other hand, we can still enjoy the world we live in, so I would implore you to do just that. Turn off your phone. Go see a friend. Go on a walk. Be, exist in the world, because sooner than you think, we might not be able to enjoy the world we currently take for granted and may instead be confined indoors to the virtual one. That is if climate change keeps burning.
How many times did you check your phone today? How long did you spend on it? When was the last time you didn’t use your phone for a day? When was the last time you sat through a whole movie without checking your phone? When was the last time you read a book? What is the last thing you do before you go to bed? What is the first thing you do when you wake up?
I know I have a problem, but I can’t stop scrolling.
[1] Well, my claim was harder to verify that expected. Specifically, this meta-analysis
“Global Well-Being and Mental Health in the Internet Age”, Matti Vuorre, Andrew K. Przybylski
suggests no link can be found between internet usage and well-being. To be more specific, my claim focuses on young people who have developed with the internet. With that in mind, they do find some suggestion that internet usage can negatively affect the well-being of young people. Irrespective of their findings, their last paragraph rings true to me, with them calling out big tech companies for withholding user data which could give us all a better insight into the effect they have on us.
Beyond this meta-analysis, most googlable studies highlight an adverse relationship between phone usage and well-being, especially among young people, just Google suicide rates and depression rates if you want to.
[2] This is the point that I really want to emphasise. We don’t know the long term effects of internet usage, especially when starting from a young age. I am happy to be proven wrong, but I will remain cautious.
[3] “Your Attention didn’t Collapse, it was Stolen”, Johann Hari, Guardian
[5] “The Shallows”, Nicholas Carr
[6] “Atomic Habits”, James Clear
[7] “Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show”, Georgia Wells, Jeff Horwitz, Deepa Seetharaman, The Wall Street Journal (Pay-walled, but they are the original people to break the story so I felt it’s justified). Importantly, at least in my opinion, Meta have all their user data and came to this conclusion …
The Angry Generation 
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