2,479 words
It was supposed to make our lives better, not consume them — or so we thought. Smartphones and social media are as ubiquitous as they are dangerous. They are a tool, but unlike most, they offer an easy on-ramp to behavioral addiction and cognitive decay.
It’s not uncommon to look over at another table at a restaurant and see two or more people on their phones, not saying a word to each other, nor to be on a line for coffee and see every last person with their head bowed toward their little black mirror, aimlessly scrolling without any purpose beyond keeping themselves away from the abject horror of being alone with their thoughts. These types can often be found in an almost trance-like state, slavishly refreshing for another morsel of dopamine. They check their phones incessantly throughout the day with no real expectations beyond what an algorithm may feed them.
Some people who spend all their time on their phones are deeply annoying. Smartphones have elevated the human automaton from a pest to an outright nuisance: people running into you while walking or driving while looking at their phones; people and their iPad kids who have the volume turned up in public places. Under those conditions, nobody can pay attention to anything and they are continually scatterbrained.
Psychological studies have found that people who are more creative tend to be less “bored” when sitting alone without a screen to entertain them, and enjoy the time to think more than less creative people do. While many reach for their phone during even the smallest window of free time, others enjoy the time to think, as a study by the University of Arizona confirmed.[1] While the consequences of this technology are wide-ranging, they grab on to some quicker than others: namely, the less creative and less disciplined.
A handful of disciplined people will be able to use a smartphone to their advantage, while the majority will see themselves struggling to spend any time away from their phones.
Last week I had a full day of running errands. I kept a list of stops I needed to make on my phone and used the map to find the quickest route around the city to reach them all. Having a phone to easily communicate with others and complete the tasks of the day made the entire process smoother than it was in the days of paper maps and payphones. But suppose I saved myself 30 minutes of time and effort with my smartphone by avoiding traffic delays, navigating the best route, not forgetting anything, or needing to stop to find a payphone. What use is it to save time if I were to get home 30 minutes earlier only to spend an hour mindlessly scrolling through social media on the device that earlier in the day made me so productive?
Even as a way to “unwind,” social media is problematic, because it is specifically designed to trigger a dopamine release and foster constant dopamine-seeking behaviors that can lead to addiction. One example of this — and there are dozens — is that social media companies can tell which type of posts you enjoy and interact with the most, and they will place those in your feed at intermittent times to keep you spending more time on the site.
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The average screen time of individuals globally is over five hours per day. While other statistics may report a lower rate, they often do not consider watching shows or listening to radio or podcasts as part of the time spent online, accounting for the variations.
Brain imaging studies show a correlation between intense online use and shrinking gray matter volume in parts of the brain. There is also a decline in cognitive control in the brains of those who spend excessive time online. Upon first reading of these studies, I suspected people with poor cognitive control are more prone to addiction, but a study out of China found that brain atrophy advanced as study participants were online over a more significant period.[2]
The next issue is one I experienced personally, which led me to take this issue very seriously and cut my phone and Internet time to the bare minimum. The problem was a brief disorientation immediately after looking at my phone and a temporary mental fog. I noticed this when I looked at my phone and then rapidly switched to a new task in the real world. This odd disorientation spurred me to research it, and ultimately culminated in my writing of this essay. When we switch from one task to the next, our brains take time, albeit only briefly, to shift our focus, causing an immediate lag in focus. A cognitive concept called “attention residue” further explains the fog, disorientation, or struggle to refocus. Attention residue describes the cognitive impairment your brain experiences when shifting attention from one task to the next.[3] While we may have gone on to the next task, our brains may continue processing information regarding the previous task. When we switch back and forth between tasks, or take on too many tasks at once, it becomes more difficult for our brains to keep everything straight. We can lose focus or find it impossible to refocus on a task after we switch our attention between several. I think of attention residue as akin to a buildup of static that interferes with what we are trying to focus on. When we do not switch tasks, there is little static. But each switch introduces a bit of static that continues to build up until we find it impossible to focus for a certain amount of time.
An example I came across that was very salient was the experience of being in a classroom while listening to a lecture, then checking a message, replying, putting my device away, and then struggling to pay attention to the lecture again. Although I was no longer actively reading or writing, the “residue” caused difficulty in focusing. The same is true of driving. People will often look at their phone to read or reply to a message while driving or at a stop light. When they look back to the road ahead, their focus will be diffused, and the time it takes for one’s brain to switch focus may be costly in such a situation. Another example is being in a conversation, looking at your phone to see who has messaged or called you, and then returning to the discussion — only to struggle to continue speaking fluidly.
I occasionally think of a small but well-conducted study of texting while driving by Car and Driver magazine over a decade ago. While academic approaches to this subject are conducted in labs with driving simulators, Car and Driver used an actual closed runway for their experiment. Their study examined the baseline reaction time for participating drivers to stop a car that was travelling at 35 and 70 miles per hour, then compared the times to those of drivers who were reading or writing a text message, as well as those who were driving drunk but not using a phone. The results were telling. The reaction times of those drivers who were drunk was actually closer to the baseline! Composing or reading a text slowed the drivers’ reaction time to the point of being several times the effect of being drunk.[4] The experiment’s conclusion was that it is in fact better to drive drunk than to drive sober while being on the phone.
Another interesting and more extensive study found that people perform more poorly on cognitive tasks simply by being in the room with their phones. Study participants performed the worst when their phone was visible on their desks. Even when the phone was turned off or kept out of sight, the presence of a phone may still lower cognitive ability and eat up those mental resources we use to focus and control ourselves. If you are actively trying to not use your phone so much, it requires self-control and mental resources that cannot be devoted to other tasks, given that our brain’s energy and other resources are finite.[5]
Studies have shown that using devices can change the physical structure of our brains. In the pre-Global Position System era, the brains of cab drivers had enlarged hippocampi due to the demands on their brains to remember directions, routes, landmarks, and the like.[6] Comparable studies on musicians showed similar results, as did those on monkeys that were taught to use basic tools. In short, our brains grow or decay based on use or disuse. Although my phone helped me to navigate the city on a busy afternoon, too much reliance on mapping technology will cause my natural ability to retain directions in the future to suffer.
The act of remembering and consolidating information strengthens our brains, builds them up, enhances neural connectivity, and allows us to learn new skills and remember new information more easily in the future. By “offloading” or “outsourcing” information to our phones, computers, or the Internet in general, we do not engage with our memories as much, which not only makes it more challenging to use our minds but also makes it easier to lose those skills and memories we do have.
Similar research regarding reading and comprehension suggest that the medium is more important than one might assume and could matter as much as the content itself. Decades of studies reveal that reading the same text in a printed text and a digital screen will have different outcomes in terms of retention and clarity for the reader. Those who read physical books understand the content more clearly and retain the information for longer when compared to those who read the same text digitally.[7]
Digital devices and the Internet are taxing our working memory and adding to attention residue. Essentially, the Internet gives our minds the opposite effect as the calming effect that comes from reading a printed text. The more there is for the brain to focus on or sort through, the more taxing any task becomes. When we are looking at a screen, the energy we naturally use to process and encode information is instead being used to figure out what to focus on, robbing us of mental energy. Studies have found that webpages with a large number of hyperlinks cause readers to retain less information even when readers do not click on them. The decision to click or not click takes focus away from the text, even if it is not done consciously.
Smartphone and Internet use certainly have their benefits, but they are not without serious consequences. Academic studies supported by cross-sectional, longitudinal, and empirical findings have shown that smartphone users who use them a great deal report more physical pain — specifically eyestrain, neck pain, and back pain. They also report more depression, anxiety, feelings of loneliness, and mood disorders when compared to a similar group of users who spend less time on their phones.[8] Further studies have found that study participants who reduce their phone use by one hour per day reported a reduction in anxiety and depression.[9] Thus, the greatest beneficiaries of smartphones and social media are without a doubt those who control the platforms, not the users themselves. A bit of additional convenience can quickly turn into a compulsive behavioral addiction that exacerbates mental health problems.
Over the years I have had used the Internet and my phone at varying levels. During periods in my life when I used them less, I felt better. I had sharper mental clarity, faster recall, a heightened sense of “presence” in the moment, and a general sense of calm. I felt less “scatterbrained,” a term I believe people use to describe extreme amounts of attention residue. There was less mental clutter and a considerably greater ability to focus. When I was going through periods that required more connectivity, I felt the opposite: focusing was difficult, anxiety crept in, and I often felt that I was rushing through the day in a daze. Reflecting on these periods in my life led to many places, and this essay is one of them.
There is little I or anybody else can do about those who choose to remain addicted, infatuated, dependent, and generally enamored with their phones and the Internet. Modernity is bristling with pitfalls for which we were never prepared. Endless pornography, calorie-dense foods with no nutritional value, and high-speed Internet in our hands at all times pose a threat to our well-being. The weak and the natural slave class will become addicted to porn, junk food, the Internet, or computer games, and will likely end up in poor health. It is unfortunate for them, and for us, that we must deal with the consequences.
On the whole, new technologies exist to consume more than to serve. More will be victimized by them than those who use them for higher purposes. Any solution other than the radical deindustrialization of society may not exist on the grand scale. But on a personal scale, understanding the deleterious effects that phones and the Internet can have on you, your friends, and your family is a start towards a more genuine life and serene mind.[10]
Notes
[1] Niranjana Rajalakshmi, “Creative people enjoy idle time more than others,” University of Arizona News, July 5, 2023.
[2] Sarah Harris, “Too much internet use can damage teenagers’ brains,” Daily Mail, July 18, 2011; Dave Mosher, “High Wired: Does Addictive Internet Use Restructure the Brain?”, Scientific American, June 17, 2011; and Homgmei Wang, et al., “The alteration of gray matter volume and cognitive control in adolescents with internet gaming disorder,” Behavioral Neuroscience, March 2015, Vol. 9.
[3] Sophie Leroy, “Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Vol. 109, No. 2, July 2009, pp. 169-181.
[4] Mike Austin, “Texting While Driving: How Dangerous is it?”, Car and Driver, June 24, 2009.
[5] Adrian F. Ward, et al., “Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 2017.
[6] Ferris Jabr, “Cache Cab: Taxi Drivers’ Brains Grow to Navigate London’s Streets,” Scientific American, December 8, 2011.
[7] Ferris Jabr. “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: Why Paper Still Beats Screens,” Scientific American, November 1, 2013.
[8] Muhammad Daniyal, Syed Fahad Javaid, Ali Hassan, & Moien Khan, “The Relationship between Cellphone Usage on the Physical and Mental Wellbeing of University Students: A Cross-Sectional Study,” National Library of Medicine, July 30, 2022; and Elia Abi-Jaoude, Karline Treurnicht Naylor, & Antonio Pignatiello, “Smartphones, social media use and youth mental health,” National Library of Medicine, February 10, 2020.
[9] LaKeisha Fleming, “A Small Reduction in Smartphone Use Can Make a Big Difference for Mental Health,” Verywellmind, May 25, 2022.
[10] For further reading on the subject, see:
Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski with an Introduction by Dr. David Skrbina
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Irresistible by Adam Alter
19 comments
Another aspect of this that I rarely ever see addressed is dating apps. It’s destructive in a different way, but to me no less dangerous than the other things you’ve described. I know many people under 40 who literally never date anyone they meet in real life, and don’t even consider it; they only ever date people they meet on apps. While I have occasionally heard of such meetups ending in a genuine relationship, in 99% of cases it’s just about a string of meaningless hookups for sex. While I’m not a prude, I think reducing relationships and sex to yet another thing that you order online with a few clicks is a major part of the dehumanization process that technology is increasingly foisting upon all of us.
I think part of this is simply women acting incredibly antagonistic toward men in their daily life. There are the “designated” places where you’re allowed to approach or talk to people and even then you could be met with undue aggression or nastiness. A lot of guys simply go the online route because there is way less risk involved and even though, it’s highly in favor of women and doesn’t lead to anything meaningful. It’s better than getting videoed and humiliated because you had the audacity to speak to a woman. Not defending online dating, it’s cancerous.
This is such a timely article, Rich. I have really been feeling the negative effects of internet devices and apps over the last year. I knew that overuse of the same was a problem but, because of my age, had written off some of its noticeable effects (which you’ve described) as just features of deteriorating mental processes that supposedly come with getting older. However, your well-researched article corroborates my increasing suspicion that age might not be the problem after all.
As a survival mechanism — knowing something was wrong, but not sure what, exactly — I’ve here and there dialed things back, but often only arbitrarily, and without much more than a gut feeling as a guide. But resources like this are invaluable for my own way of making drastic changes, changes that require a more thought-out plan.
Group chats are generally a bad fit for me, for example, so that’s an easy one to curtail. But other facets of the same dark gem aren’t as obvious, and the next thing one knows, he’s just losing on a different plane . . . but still losing.
Thanks for putting in the work on this one; whenever you take the time to write it really makes a difference!
“Thanks for putting in the work on this one; whenever you take the time to write it really makes a difference!”
I agree. Thank you, Richard Houck.
We have been manipulated and seduced to the point of delusion for some people. It is all too convenient. Calling it a phone is totally obsolete now. Not only do we crave the ‘tech hit’, the insidious nature also demands attention. A personal anecdote; a couple of years ago I had a little time to spare before meeting work colleagues at a meeting. I wandered the city centre and wandered into a fashion store that I’d seen advertised by sports people, but had never been in any branch of said fashion chain previously.
The next day I had an email from them. I didn’t visit the website or gave any permissions to be contacted, indeed I didn’t even speak to anyone in the store. My visit lasted all of 5 minutes as the clothes were not attractive to me in anyway, still the technology tracked me down.
I’ve also had my phone nearby, ignoring it while I was speaking with my wife about augmenting an existing piece of jewellery, specifically a ring. Next day, 2 promotional designs of rings landed in my inbox.
Now we have the launch of AI and I am being prompted in work to experiment with it, indeed we are being mandated to attend a ChatGP (I think that’s what MS version is called) training session/s. It’s getting worse and trying to avoid it is becoming ore difficult, if you avoid or reduce its influence in your private life, your professional life is dominated by it – LinkedIn for example.
I have started researching podcast players that are not phones and my next step is to buy just that and downgrade my ‘phone’ to a phone.
Sansa clip – a tiny MP3 player that is light and clips on your shirt. It takes microSD cards as well, which gives it a possible 32GB-ish capacity (it won’t take huge cards) and it’s about 30/40 bucks.
Smartphones are genuinely useful for loads of stuff. The problem is you can’t take it and leave it and buy a phone that locks out all social media (a good idea for a phone design?), and having the internet is genuinely useful for emergencies.
I never had a social media addiction so I just use mine as a MP3 player and am not tempted, Luckily. We all have our vices – mine is food. You can buy time-locking safes/boxes and lock away your devices for a fixed time and these can greatly help in getting weaned off of phones and snacks, as well as locking your credit card & phone away so you’re forced to read or do hobbies. It’s sad we have to do this but we live in an age where you have to work at avoiding the temptations of our societites.
Good advice MD and thanks for the heads up on the other options available.
The obvious point from our point of view is what impact increased reliance on AI and tech will have on the 3rd world. IQ is already average below 100 in many of these countries, and the fact they’re going to miss on a lot of skills that Europeans/Orientals had to develop is a warning sign that far from things getting better, things might actually get worse. Not only will the world get browner and blacker, but dumber and dumber. Dumbness compounding dumbness as not only do the people get dumber anyway but the tech encourages them to get even more dumb. A future like Mike Judge’s Idiocracy looks very likely. Unless of course, we win.
As an individual example, I notice the boom in GPS in cars has suddenly coincided with the diversification of taxi driving. (At least in the UK,) taxis were very much a White job. The pass for driving a famous ‘black Hackney’ taxi in London was known as “The Knowledge” and took years to study for. Knowing all the ins and outs and shortcuts through a huge city like London is an impressive feat. That’s just one example off the top of my head of this happening. And this tech is not prohibitively expensive or inaccessible; most of the 3rd world now own smartphones and have Internet access. Yet another reason why we must prevail over our adversaries.
The only thing that Idiocracy got wrong was the time frame. There is no way it will take 500 years to get to that point.
I was going to comment on this, but I forgot what I was going to say.
I don’t find the “dopamine hits” argument to be very convincing, but then I don’t use most social media and have not found it to be very useful.
I think all of us need to figure out what technology is appropriate — just like anything else. And I hope that we are not doing more loser Kaczynski shilling. There is a big difference between actual technology and Nïggertech, and these distinctions have to be understood.
I am not sure how important it is to write cursive these days compared to using an app or understanding computers — but in any case, we are not going to survive without technology as a species, so we had better figure it out.
In the old days there were lots of electronics hobbyist shops around from Radio Shack to Dick Smith’s, and young people actually built their first Ham radios and lots of other gear. I got my Ham ticket in 1985 because I found it useful in the Army Signal Corps. This was before the Internet but we understood what made the telecommunications lights blink and the sounds go wow, and we kept it all in perspective. It wasn’t Voodoo.
But today, the last of these technology hobby shops are closing down.
The median age of Amateur Radio licensees is even older than me and they are dying off rapidly. That is just another example of many — and I don’t see a bright side to it.
Today nobody seems interested in what goes on underneath the bonnet, and that’s what I find disturbing. If we are not learning how civilizations were and are built, we might as well be modern primitives — just waiting for corporate Mao to tell us what to do.
🙂
Some great information here. It would be excellent if you follow this article with a practical guide on improving our relationship with this technology.
Very good piece. On retiring, pick up a (physical) book, or at the very least read (really read) an electronic one — or an edifying online essay. Above all reduce time wasted on social media: do not be like the quotidian idiots who cannot sit without fidgeting with an i-gadget. When the World-Wide-Web was new, counter-cultural luminaries such as Timothy Leary extolled it as the emanation of a new planetary nous. That was naïve: three decades later it is a cliché that a surfeit of time ‘online’ breeds only pliant servitors of the globalist archons.
This is so timely, for me anyway. Thanks for the info about the studies, Richard. I had a hunch or two that things were not as they seem, based on my own experience (if I may share here).
During the lockdown, I was experiencing problems with my eyes and frequent headaches, and I was worried about how much time I was spending on the internet (trying to keep up with current affairs), usually on a small handheld device. I decided to change from my Android smartphone to a flip phone, so I would have a mobile phone just for calls, but making it inconvenient for me to text or surf the internet, etc. (I used a small tablet in my handbag for things like directions or immediate access to email.) My experiment worked. The switch to flip greatly reduced my time staring at a small device, and I discovered that I could retrain myself, I could change my habits. I wasn’t really a slave to this device after all.
After two years, I went back to a smart phone, but I hardly use it, even for texting. I wait until I am at home or the office and use a computer (with some distance between my eyes and the screen), and I try not to spend more than a total of hour and a half online, mainly for reading and catching up on things from trust worthy sources. I don’t “surf” the web anymore. My eyesight has improved, I have fewer headaches, and my mood has straightened out. True story.
I stopped watching YouTube and Hulu (because the ads annoyed me) and I have started to watch DVD movies again on my regular TV screen. Much more enjoyable than being interrupted with promos of mixed-race marriages and the benefits of pharmaceutical drugs (“Call your doctor for more information….”). It has quite an effect on someone’s psyche, the constant barrage of anti-White and anti-male propaganda.
By the way, when I had the flip phone and would pull it out standing in line somewhere, I got comments of approval or “knowing” smiles from people, nodding their heads. I thought people would think it weird, and I was surprised, very surprised, by how people responded.
Social media should be pretty easy to control by a central authority if there were a will to do so. Simply ban social media apps with the exception of Internet forums and comments sections. I’m sure they’ll still pop up “underground”, but who cares, the general population won’t be using social media anymore.
Someone already said here Kaczynski cheerleading is cringe. I’ll also add it’s blatantly stupid.
Thank you for this. Earlier this year I was thinking about this subject and how I was setting a bad example for my three and four year old daughters by letting them see me on my phone too often. I purposely leave it in the other room now when they are around. Also, I’m an avid reader who usually reads at least a book a month, but it dawned on me that I couldn’t remember the last great novel I had read. I had mostly been reading political, biographical, and historical stuff, so I decided to start delving in to the greats that I have never read. I have read my fair share in my time, but until my 42 year on Earth I had never read Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Lord Of The Flies, Kidnapped, The Camp Of The Saints, or Robinson Crusoe(which I am almost through). Next up is Dune, Treasure Island, Gulliver’s Travels and Last Of The Mohicans. It has been incredibly gratifying to finally discover what makes these works the classics that they are. My wife and I also read at least one book every night before bedtime for our girls because I want to instill in them the love of reading that I grew up with.
My brother recently texted me lamenting about the state of education and said “Lee, don’t let your girls grow up to be fuckin’ stupid.” I can’t think of anything more important than that.
(I would happily welcome any suggestions for any classic novels to check out in the future.)
For the unlikely among you to read a dead language, i.e. classical French, there are two excellent books about screen and smartphone addiction, by a Michel Desmurget :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Desmurget
— TV Lobotomie: La Vérité scientifique sur les effets de la télévision (2012) TV Lobotomy: The scientific truth about the effects of television (2023)
— La Fabrique du crétin digital: Les dangers des écrans pour nos enfants (2019) Screen Damage: The Dangers of Digital Media for Children (2022)
These two books are, in my opinion, must-reads about this topic. There are a few conferences by Desmurget on Youtube : I guess English (poor) translation should be available.
Read this at 2am in bed on the phone after doomscrolling the current things.
Interesting article, but I’m so low-tech, I’m not sure about much of the content of this post. For example, what is “social media”? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Is there something else in this category? Is YouTube “social media”? TikTok? I’ve never seen Instagram; I don’t follow Twitter, though sometimes someone emails me a “tweet”; I have a FB account for personal security purposes (I don’t want someone posing as me), but I keep it locked and literally never use it (or get on other people’s FB pages).
But what about the internet generally? Is CC “social media” because we comment here? I feel like CC helps me to become more intelligent, as many of the posts are demanding; I try to read them with critical attention; and commenting, as with any even semi-serious writing, forces me to think. But then, I classify CC as more of a combination intelligent newspaper and repository of (rare) academic materials.
Apart from very basic information uses (finding a phone number, a movie time, the location of a restaurant), I use the internet mainly to read articles either from intellectual print publications I don’t subscribe to, or for their ideological compatibility. The internet has been a huge blessing for me.
But this rings so true to my own experience:
Similar research regarding reading and comprehension suggest that the medium is more important than one might assume and could matter as much as the content itself. Decades of studies reveal that reading the same text in a printed text and a digital screen will have different outcomes in terms of retention and clarity for the reader. Those who read physical books understand the content more clearly and retain the information for longer when compared to those who read the same text digitally.[7]
I’ve noticed this for many years, but assumed it was because I read printed matter more aggressively than digital. But maybe the organic brain simply processes printed material better.
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