How you end up stalking your crush while googling that assignment
This is how your smartphone hacks the spotlight of your attention
Hunched over his precious, he would smile. It gave him a purpose, an obsession. He would watch it as hours melted into days, even as his own body and mind wasted away. I don’t know what was going on in J.R.R. Tolkien’s mind when he imagined smeagol, or gollum, as he would later be called. Dare I say, he saw the future. Only half a century later, more than half his species would be equally enchanted by a precious little magic brick. They would hunch over it for hours and lol & heart. A moment’s separation would cause enough anxiety to consume their mind[1]. Yup, I said it. Your phone is (probably) turning you into a gollum.
In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport argues that humans are turning into ‘suckers for irrelevance’. In other words, we’ve forgotten how to tune out noise and stay focused. It makes complete sense why. 21st century lifestyle is riddled with distractions. Everywhere you go, there are ten things battling it out for your attention. Notifications don’t care for where you are or what you’re doing. The fear of missing out often forces you to drop anything and attend to the message or tag. Do it 10 times a day, for weeks and months, and it becomes a habit. The notification becomes a cue. You get a craving to answer it. You drop whatever you’re doing and pick it up immediately, and are instantly rewarded with a little hit of dopamine[2]. Every time we repeat this behaviour, we train our mind to be always on the lookout for the cheap and easy reward. This makes it difficult for the mind to tune out irrelevant information and maintain a train of thought. It’s not a stretch to say, a train that constantly derails is not a very reliable one.
I spent a long time feeling that such derailing is harmless. If I immediately get back to work after a brief distraction, what’s the big deal? Multitasking is a must have skill for any 21st century worker! It would be amazing if we could truly multitask, but the human mind is simply incapable of it. In cognitive science parlance, we don’t really multitask, we do ‘task switching’. Every task brings along with it a baggage of goals, challenges, and other memories. The official term for this ‘baggage’ is attention residue. When we switch to a new task, this baggage doesn’t just evaporate. It lingers around and competes for your attention with the goals, challenges and memories of the new task. This competition is good if you are trying to make connections between two topics -such as Psychology and economics, it even has a name- Interleaving[3]. But if you are trying to write that paper or solve that bug, it is not a good idea to let yourself be interrupted so easily. You will probably get the work done, but it would take a toll. In a study[4], researchers divided subjects into two groups: one group was interrupted while performing a task (like reading, or solving a math problem), the other group wasn’t interrupted this way. The result? Those interrupted while performing the task took significantly longer to complete, felt the task was tougher, and also reported feeling more anxious. Imagine doing this over and over, it becomes a sure shot recipe for increased stress. It is exactly what’s observed too, those more dependent on their smartphones also reported feeling more stressed and anxious in the past month[5].
The problems don’t end there. The mere presence of smartphones is enough to hog on your attention and memory capacity. In a recent study[6], participants were randomly divided into three groups: They were instructed to keep their phones on the desk, or in their pockets/bags, or in another room. All participants were instructed to switch off their phones. Each group performed tasks to measure their working memory, attention and fluid intelligence. Working memory and fluid intelligence are often considered markers of one’s ability to solve problems, and are strongly correlated to a host of factors such as reading ability, IQ, academic prowess, etc [7], [8]. Subjects who had left their phones in another room performed substantially better than the other two groups! Subjects were also asked if they thought about their phones during the task, or such thoughts influenced their performance. On an average, all groups replied negatively to the questions. Yup, the mere presence of your smartphone can impact your performance, even if you are confident it doesn’t. Let that sink in for a second.
Part 2 of the same experiment brings some hope. They conducted a similar experiment. However, this time they tried to understand if the effect is due to smartphone dependence. As expected, only those least dependent on their smartphones were unaffected by the location of their phone. Those slightly and highly dependent on phones performed poorly when phones were right in front of them, or even in their pocket. What is happening here? The authors speculate that as smartphones try to capture your attention, and your attention network has to work harder to stop that from happening. This leads to reduced availability of resources for the task at hand. The more you are dependent on the phone, the more things you associate with it- chatting, talking, gaming, reading, working, socialising, etc. Thus, the cue of a smartphone activates many, many goals, challenges and memories. Which makes it more of a challenge for your attention networks to ignore.
In my quest to never be bored, I always had 50 articles open on my phone, and would pull them out every chance I got. I’m not alone, 40 to 75% people report taking their phones to the toilet[9] Other than making the phone a hot spot for bacteria[9], we’re also denying ourselves the much needed off time to do nothing[10]. The mind wanders when it has nothing to do, and in that wandering it recharges and connects random dots. This in turn increases focus while you’re working, and helps you be more creative[11]. But our go to method of taking breaks is more draining than it is recharging. When people were instructed to take breaks on their phones, they took significantly longer and solved fewer problems than subjects who didn’t use their phones during the break. The phone group’s performance was almost as bad as those who didn’t take a break at all![12]. Yup, surfing, texting, or making a to-do list on your phone is as bad as not taking a break at all. We can use attention residue to explain this finding. Phone related interruptions may also be the cause for increased inattention and hyperactivity. While you may not have ADHD, I’m sure you’ve experienced inattention symptoms such as- zoning out while reading, only to realise you have no idea what happened in the last 2 pages! Or ended up stalking your crush while researching for your assignment. Or maybe some hyperactivity symptoms such as fidgeting or getting extremely impatient while waiting in a line. A bunch of university students were instructed to keep their phones on silent for an entire week- no notifications of any kind[13]. At the end of the week their inattention and hyperactivity scores dropped. Just one week was enough to see changes in such behavior!
As the boundary between mind and machine blurs (more in part 3), the need to master your mindscape becomes even more imperative. Don’t be a sucker for irrelevance. If you feel your attention and memory isn’t what it used to be, you need to evaluate your smartphone usage. All this evidence suggests that our smartphone dependence is spilling over our lives, sapping our energy and flushing down our creativity. We are constantly left feeling burnt out and short on time, despite all the efforts we put in. Thanks to these constant interruptions, a 2 hour task now takes 5 hours, and leaves you feeling a lot more anxious, and a lot less satisfied [14]. These devices aren’t just leeching off your work life, they are also impeding your inner growth. You might want to paint, or read that book, or just be in the moment, but you simply can’t find the time and energy for it. Maybe this is the reason why: Deep engagement is rejuvenating, but it requires hours of effort and attention. Sadly, our attention has been fractured. It’s just easier to escape in a reality that gives cheap and easy rewards with the touch of a button, especially when you are tired[15]. Humans need to create and rest to feel a sense of satisfaction. Thanks to the parasite in our pocket, we aren’t getting enough of either.
This is part 2 of my series: The Parasite in your Pocket: How smartphones are influencing our social lives, mental health and creativity
References:
[1] R. B. Clayton, G. Leshner, and A. Almond, “The extended iSelf: The impact of iPhone separation on cognition, emotion, and physiology,” J. Comput. Commun., 2015, doi: 10.1111/jcc4.12109.
[2] T. Haynes, “Dopamine, Smartphones & You: A battle for your time.” http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/.
[3] D. Rohrer, R. F. Dedrick, and S. Stershic, “Interleaved practice improves mathematics learning,” J. Educ. Psychol., 2015, doi: 10.1037/edu0000001.
[4] S. Leroy, “Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks,” Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process., 2009, doi: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002.
[5] M. Samaha and N. S. Hawi, “Relationships among smartphone addiction, stress, academic performance, and satisfaction with life,” Comput. Human Behav., 2016, doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2015.12.045.
[6] A. F. Ward, K. Duke, A. Gneezy, and M. W. Bos, “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity,” J. Assoc. Consum. Res., 2017, doi: 10.1086/691462.
[7] T. P. Alloway and R. G. Alloway, “Investigating the predictive roles of working memory and IQ in academic attainment,” J. Exp. Child Psychol., 2010, doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2009.11.003.
[8] S. Nouwens, M. A. Groen, and L. Verhoeven, “How working memory relates to children’s reading comprehension: the importance of domain-specificity in storage and processing,” Read. Writ., 2017, doi: 10.1007/s11145–016–9665–5.
[9] “Is your phone making you sick?,” [Online]. Available: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4229044/Why-shouldn-t-use-phone-toilet.html.
[10] “iPhones Have Changed the Way We Poop… for the Worse,” [Online]. Available: https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/smartphone-toilet-health-risks.
[11] B. Baird, J. Smallwood, M. D. Mrazek, J. W. Y. Kam, M. S. Franklin, and J. W. Schooler, “Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation,” Psychol. Sci., 2012, doi: 10.1177/0956797612446024.
[12] S. Kang and T. R. Kurtzberg, “Reach for your cell phone at your own risk: The cognitive costs of media choice for breaks,” J. Behav. Addict., 2019, doi: 10.1556/2006.8.2019.21.
[13] K. Kushlev, J. Proulx, and E. W. Dunn, “‘Silence your phones’: Smartphone notifications increase inattention and hyperactivity symptoms,” in Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems — Proceedings, 2016, doi: 10.1145/2858036.2858359.
[14] E. Isikman, D. J. MacInnis, G. Ülkümen, and L. A. Cavanaugh, “The effects of curiosity-evoking events on activity enjoyment,” J. Exp. Psychol. Appl., 2016, doi: 10.1037/xap0000089.
[15] C. Libedinsky, S. A. A. Massar, A. Ling, W. Chee, S. A. Huettel, and M. W. L. Chee, “Sleep Deprivation Alters Effort Discounting but not Delay Discounting of Monetary Rewards,” Sleep, 2013, doi: 10.5665/sleep.2720.
