There is research suggesting that using cell phones for only a half hour a day for ten years doubles one’s risk of brain cancer.The soreness in our fingers and wrists from texting too much is so prevalent that the term “text claw” has entered our lexicon.“Problematic Internet Use” (PIU) is now considered a behavioral addiction, with almost half (48 %) of participants in one study considered “Internet addicts.”In her remarkable book, Reclaiming Conversation (2015), MIT professor Sherry Turkle discusses research pointing to how a quarter of teens in the US are connected to a device within five minutes of waking up each morning, and that most teens send at least one hundred text messages per day.Most alarming to me is Turkle’s citing of another scientific finding: That over the past 20 years our society has seen a 40% decline (most of it occurring over the past decade) in indicators of empathy in people, and that researchers are linking this trend with the rise of digital communication technologies.
A Practice to Be Mindful with Your Phone
This practice is about opening up to our experience of how we make use of this piece of powerful technology. Instead of closing down our awareness and letting this device’s screen become a “rabbit hole” that we fall mindlessly into, are we willing to make a habit of seeing the negative states it can draw out of us. Again, smartphones (and the Internet, social media, and other digital technologies) aren’t inherently “bad.” They are, however, dangerously addictive. Sure, guns don’t pull their own triggers, and lines of cocaine don’t march up peoples’ noses unbidden, and yet somehow we typically know it’s not wise to place either in a young child’s unsupervised and unaware hands. Somehow we’re not so careful when it comes to our digital devices. Are we willing to make a mindfulness practice out of the very thing which seems to be pulling us toward dangerous degrees of mindlessness? Pick up your phone and try the following:
Changing Our Relationship to Smartphones
As we get more connected to our wireless technology, we appear to run the risk of damaging our brains’ wiring, and disconnecting from the face-to-face interaction that our social and psychological systems need. With its emphasis on harnessing attention with intention (i.e. redirecting it on purpose), mindfulness—with all its scientifically-established health and well-being benefits—has the potential to keep us from drifting hopelessly away from one another. Perhaps it can keep us connected, even though we might only be feet away from one another as we tap out texts, emails ,or check up on our “social” life on social media. In addition, it might help us stem the tide of our ever-ebbing attention spans. It’s because of our MTV (for me in the past) and tweet-truncated capacities for focused attention (for the youth I work with as a therapist now), that I’m learning to keep my blog posts brief—particularly this one. I want you to actually read (and apply something to your life) from this. I’m not saying we should all throw our phones in the trash, or that we should forgo Facebook or terminate our Twitter accounts. The technology may not be “evil” in and of itself. These devices and capabilities do bring incredible benefits and possibilities for sharing information and creating global interaction than ever before. We simply (and yet with great difficulty) need to learn to hold our technology more lightly—with more awareness. As I’ve considered this, I wondered if, in addition to the wealth of traditional mindfulness meditation practices, it might help if there was a practice specific to the phones we can’t seem to live without. Consider going beyond any current practice of mindfulness you’ve incorporated into your daily life. Consider making your phone itself a cue for waking up instead of checking out. And feel free to ask my wife what she thinks of all this – particularly when she’s trying to get me to engage in a conversation about household logistics whilst my phone is open and casting its pale, zombified glow onto my face. References Aboujaoude, E. (2010). Problematic Internet use: an overview. World Psychiatry, 9(2), 85–90. Shapira, N. A., Lessig, M. C., Goldsmith, T. D., Szabo, S. T., Lazoritz, M., Gold, M. S. and Stein, D. J. (2003), Problematic internet use: Proposed classification and diagnostic criteria. Depression and Anxiety, 17: 207–216. Caplan, S.E. (2010). Theory and measurement of generalized problematic Internet use: A two-step approach. Computers and Human Behavior, 26(5): 1089-1097. Sara H. Konrath, S.H., O’Brien, E.H. and Hsing, C. (2011) Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15: 180.
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Sam Littlefair August 29, 2018
Stephany Tlalka May 5, 2017
