Why I’ll Never Look at My Phone in the Same Way Again
Picture the scene — you’re out for dinner at an expensive restaurant with your partner when they excuse themselves to use the restroom. You sit for a few moments before plucking your phone out to check your messages.
There’s nothing new, so you figure you’ll check Instagram. Then Twitter. Then your emails. Before you know it, your partner is back, and your phone is still out.
A World, Ever Connected
Phones have always demanded our attention; ringtones, lights, vibrations and now notifications have come to define the mobile age. In stark contrast to the poster-child of digital technology, the PC, smartphones put accessibility and design front and center.
In 2019, 82% of Americans used a smartphone with an estimated $500 billion spent on smartphones alone globally in the same year. Companies such as Samsung, Google and Apple have worked hard to hone and refine their user experience to minimize friction.
A recent study in India revealed that we spend 60% more time on our phones than our computers, and with the speed at which apps launch, it’s easy to see why.
Even with the best computers on the market today, our behavior has shifted away from booting just a handful of programs, to having immediate access to everything at all times.
“Consumers are expected to spend €1 trillion on technical consumer goods in 2019, of which about 43 percent will be on smartphones with increasingly higher specs.”
— Julia Richter, GFK.com
You’ve Got Mail
So what happened at dinner? Within seconds of being left to your own devices (pun fully intended), you decided to check your phone for the very reasonable explanation that you might have a message that required attention.
There are three possible outcomes:
• One — You have a terribly urgent message and need to leave the restaurant immediately.
• Two — You had a couple of short messages, but nothing that important.
• Three — You had nothing new and didn’t need to continue looking at your phone.
But you did.
You hopped straight onto your favorite go-to apps without a moment’s hesitation. What’s the big deal if you check your phone at dinner? Sure, you might miss a moment of the ‘atmosphere’ but an idle swipe through Twitter during social downtime is innocuous enough, isn’t it?
What’s The Big Deal?
Well actually, over time it might not be so harmless. A 2017 study at the University of Chicago demonstrated that even the mere presence of our smartphones can adversely affect our level of cognitive capacity.
Simply put: we don’t have the same presence of mind we do when separated from our phones.
The ease at which we can use our phones has led to the desire to do just that. Our brains have been trained to consistently search for the next thing, the next app, the next episode. Never sitting still.
Have you ever opened up your phone, scrolled through your newsfeed, closed the app and then blanketly re-opened it a second time on autopilot? Whoops!
Our muscle memory is so acute that the gestures, swipes and taps backed up by billions of dollars of yearly sales have caused us to lose our own agency over our phones.
In his book ‘Goodbye, Things’, Fumio Sasaki states:
“Things don’t just sit there. They send us silent messages.”
— Fumio Sasaki
Sasaki is referring to the physical items that inhabit our personal space, but the same is true of our homescreens. The experience of using a smartphone is so frictionless that you can do it without thinking — and we do. Every day.
Kicking Some Smarts into These Phones
So how do we overcome the odds and take back control?
1. Alter Your Mindset
Consider the nature of the device you hold in your hands. This smartphone is the culmination of years of incremental improvements, but despite the shift in its UI, the speed of its performance and the sheer appeal of its design — it’s still a computer.
With this fundamental understanding, you can alter how you approach your phone.
Interacting with your phone with the same intentionality as you would a computer, you can begin to cut down your screen-time and improve your focus.
Sure, wasting time on the computer is just as easy, but it’s hardly as accessible. Absentmindedly flicking open a laptop just to check Instagram is nowhere near as common. Our phones are designed to capture our attention. The solution? Make it difficult to be captured.
2. Add a Little Friction
Change up the presentation. Instead of having a full homescreen full of apps that sap your time, bury the largest offenders in folders, or hide them altogether. When you want to go to Instagram, the friction of searching for it makes you less likely to bother idly accessing it at all times of the day.
Stock your homescreen with the apps that reflect what you actually want from your phone, so when you find yourself tapping mindlessly, you instead trick yourself into practicing a language, reading a book or working on your personal development.
3. Take Some Space
On the subject of friction, nothing helps gain perspective better than a little distance. The Chicago University study suggests that placing our phones on silent or face-down on the table does little to avoid us picking them up.
“Intuitive “fixes” such as placing one’s phone face down or turning it off are likely futile. However, our data suggest at least one simple solution: separation.”
— Adrian F. Ward, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W. Bos
When you’re working, set your phone just out of reach, so if you want to use it, you’ll need to get up to retrieve it. When you’re out, put it in a bag instead of a pocket if you know you’re not going to have to rely on directions. At home, leave it in another room — not on the couch next to you.
When something comes up that requires a search, you’re now using your phone with intention, giving what you do more meaning.
Many of us struggle with overusing our phones. In writing this article, I’m certain I reached for my own without thinking at least once or twice. All we can do is keep bringing our attention back to the here and now and check our intentions at the door. If we do that, we’ll take the first steps towards using our phones and stopping them from using us.
