Everyone is on their phone. Constantly. While they're driving, at work, at home, in bed, at important events, during conversations with loved ones, during once-in-a-lifetime events, everywhere. This isn't news. I'm not the first one to look around and notice this, and I'm certainly not the first to complain about it. In fact, it has become pretty fashionable to criticize our addiction to smartphones in recent years. There are endless articles about it, research studies being done to understand it. I'm disappointed, but not in the least bit surprised to hear rumors about creating a brand new psychiatric disorder to classify it. There are even cool poetic YouTube videos addressing it (Look Up - A Poem That Will Inspire You to Put Down Your Smartphone). My point is: This isn't a new topic. But it is an important one. So I want to say something new about it. So, I'll begin with my conclusion: Smartphones are like steroids for your mind. And like steroids, they can be incredibly useful, but have some sneaky, unintended consequences.
In order to fully explain what I'm getting at here, I want to spend a little time talking about the "mind" itself. Scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as the "mind." For a modern behaviorist such as myself, the "mind" is just a quick, practical term that is used to describe our experience of thinking. But strictly speaking, what we experience as "the mind" is a learned behavioral process. Thinking, language, and the experience of the "mind," are all a particular type of behavior that, as far as we know, only human beings are capable of. To boil this behavior down, and completely oversimplify it, I'll just say that this behavior involves immersing ourselves in experiences that aren't actually happening right now. This behavior is incredibly useful. We can immerse ourselves in futures which haven't even happened yet, in order to plan and predict. We can immerse ourselves in memories in order to remember important experiences and learn from them. And we can look at the things around us right now, in this moment, and immerse ourselves in thoughts about what these things are called, how they work, and how they relate to other things that aren't necessarily present. This skill is not something we are all born with, it is something that we are born capable of doing, and we learn to do it over hundreds and thousands of subtle learning experiences with other human beings who already know how to do it.
As I've mentioned in past articles, this behavior has consequences. If we can imagine and plan for the future, then we can imagine a frightening future (we call that "worry") and experience fear now in the present. If we can vividly remember our past, then we can remember painful, embarrassing, or even terrifying memories and experience them as though they are happening now. And because this behavior is so useful, and so central to everything we do right now in the moment (talking, reasoning, problem solving....), it can easily begin to dominate our experience to the point where we are unable to experience anything without our mind getting involved. We become "addicted" to thinking, and as a result, human beings live much of their lives up in their heads. Constantly drifting into thoughts, memories, predictions, evaluating, imaging, questioning. We become so addicted, that even when our mind is giving us poor advice, or when it is making it difficult for us to fully experience life, we find it hard to put it down. Sound familiar?
Addiction to our smartphones is no different than the "addiction" that we have to our own minds. Similar to the way we are all walking (and driving) around with our faces in our phones, we travel through life with our faces "in" our thoughts.
So back to the conclusion that I began with. When I say that smartphones are like steroids for your mind, I mean that they strengthen the process by which the mind works. They act as an extension of your mind, by expanding the reach that your mind has in any given moment. In the era before smartphones, if we had a question or a thought we wanted to explore further, we had to at least wait until we could get to a computer with internet connection. And before the internet, we had to wait until we could get to the appropriate book for that topic. And before we had easy access to books, we had to rely solely on the knowledge of others, or wait even longer and learn through our own personal experience. But now, when we have a burning question, we can pull out our phone and satisfy our minds instantly. This is obviously an incredible advantage for us. However, just like the incredible usefulness of the mind comes at a serious cost, so does the usefulness of smartphones.
There is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that I use to describe the unintended cost of the mind, and it does an equally sufficient job of describing the unintended cost of smartphones:
"The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet."
We have created for ourselves a device that gives us instant access to information from around the globe, but have lost our ability to sit with ambiguity, to be ok with not knowing. If you want to observe this directly, just try disagreeing with someone (who you know has a smartphone in their pocket) about some factual event, and watch how quickly they grab their phone to prove that they are right. Or try posing a question that you know is likely to stump them: "What's that actor's name that was on that show we used to watch??" and watch how quickly they grab their phone and eliminate the discomfort of not knowing.
We have a device that instantly connects us with everyone we know, but we find that we are unable to just be with the people sitting right across from us. I find myself making resolutions to not take my phone out of my pocket when I go out to eat, because at some point in the conversation we will bring up a thought that my steroid fueled mind wants answered NOW.
We have a device that tells us how to get anywhere we want to go, but as a result we can live in a city for several years and still be completely unfamiliar with the roads. And we can become so immersed in our phones that we almost forget the need to look at the road at all.
The mind is an incredible tool that eventually becomes an obstacle to us simply experiencing the present moment and learning from our direct experience. The smartphone is like our mind's own tool, and the two combine forces to create the ultimate state of "anti-mindfulness." Face pointing downward, perpetually lost in our thoughts and in our phones.
According to the philosophy of science used in modern behaviorism, simply understanding and being able to describe or label a behavior is useless if it doesn't provide a direct way of influencing it. And so, as always, I'll wrap this up with some advice.
Since modern behavioral science, and experience, tells us that you can't just make your mind quiet down when you want it to, and you can't simply replace negative thoughts with positive ones and have it stick (see Positive Thinking and Other Harmful Advice ), what is recommended is a mindfulness-based approach. This involves simply observing your present moment experience, noticing when you have drifted off into thought, practicing observing your thoughts as just thoughts, and then practicing the skill of bringing your awareness back to your present moment experience. And repeat as necessary. Changing your thoughts, or arguing with them, is not necessary and is not recommended. Instead, the goal is to increase your awareness of thoughts in order to have more choice about whether or not you want to use a particular thought, and more freedom in choosing how you behave. If it works to be lost in your thoughts (i.e. planning a trip, doing taxes, making a grocery list, completing a complicated task at work, etc.) then get lost in your thoughts. If it seems as though your thoughts are steering you in the wrong direction, or are going into overdrive, or are judging you harshly, then just passively observe them, like a radio playing in the background, and choose to go in the direction that you know, deep down, will work best for you.
This approach works well when dealing with the mind, so in theory, it should work well when applied to our mind's new best friend: the smartphone. And BONUS: Unlike your mind, you actually CAN turn your phone off! So when you need information, or need to contact others, then get lost in your phone. If you get home from work, and this is the time you like to catch up on other people's lives by going on Facebook, then get lost in your phone. If you find that being lost in your phone isn't working well for you - such as when you've spent hours on it and lost all track of time, when you are with loved ones, or when you're hurdling down the road in a 4,000 lb. mass of rolling steel - then practice passively observing that urge to look down or that familiar "ding," and choose to remain present. If you have a burning question and you feel like you are slavishly running to your phone to feed your mind it's hourly dose of steroids, then practice leaving the question unanswered, and not giving into the craving. The less you feed your mind steroids, the less it will want it. If you dare, maybe even experiment with turning your phone off for a few hours, or leaving it at home for a day. You'll find that this is incredibly difficult to do. Your mind will not be happy about it. It will throw a tantrum, and flood your attention with lots of great reasons and scary scenarios ("What if this is the day my car breaks down?! What if they find out there is an asteroid about to hit earth and I have no way of finding out?!?!?!). Let your mind say what it will, and then hold down the power button. Remind your phone, and your mind, who is in charge here.
