In part of her book How to Break Up With Your Phone, Catherine Price explains the harms of modern technology and provides a 30-day plan to take back your life. But more important, she succinctly explains how vital it is to rethink our relationship with technology. Perhaps, if we take a second to look away from our screens, we can rediscover the parts of our lives we didn’t know we had been missing.
I was given this book by All School Health Education Department Chair Caitlin Hutcheon as part of her minimester this year—Y2K in PA—where we took a three-day detox from our devices. Although I went into the minimester wary of what three days without technology would look like, I left with feelings of both restoration from the trip and resentment towards my phone. This detox has helped me understand why being off my phone is so difficult, and to my surprise, this difficulty is not entirely my fault.
Hutcheon explained that her goal with the Y2K in PA minimester was to give students an opportunity to really break up with their phone for three days. She wanted us to find support in social connection and offline learning opportunities rather than in our devices. Leaving minimester, I thought I was addicted to my phone because almost every aspect of how I communicate and my social life is linked to my phone.
I had always entertained the idea of staying off my phone for a long period of time but never followed through because my primary mode of communication with my parents is my phone. However, my need for communication is not the main cause of my attachment to my phone. While yes, it would be easier for me to put down my phone if there were no pressure to keep up with my family and friends’ messages every day, that does not detract from the fact that my brain has been conditioned to rely on my phone as well.
As Price explains, our phones, and the applications on our phones, are addictive by design. The creators of some of the most successful social media platforms have catered to the most human parts of our brains—like our dopamine receptors—to manipulate us into consuming harmful content that inhibits us from ever being fully present in our lives. They feed on our attention; through carefully curated algorithms that tailor to our interests, designers of social media platforms successfully remove us from our lives and insert us into a realm where our engagement with certain brands’ content funds their apps. Though frightening, it’s not hard to imagine these apps using our (freely given) personal information to manipulate us into consuming more content, to their owners’ benefit.
Social media platforms manipulating their users is an offense of a larger culprit responsible for our excessive screen time: capitalism. The efforts tech designers make to hijack our brains into scrolling more are rooted in our engagement with advertisements on their apps. On these apps, “we are not actually the customers, and the social media platform itself is not the product. Instead, the customers are advertisers. And the product being sold is our attention,” Price explains. Our excessive scrolling on our phones benefits no one more than those running the apps we are using.
“So often, GDS students blame schoolwork for their stress levels or sleep issues, but I think it’s really that we’ve all become really inefficient with our attention because we’re doing everything with our phones,” Hutcheon said. As we lend our attention to our devices, we lose time scrolling when we could be working to manage our stress levels.
Rarely on our phones do we find ourselves in the driver’s seat; we are almost always passively scrolling through content chosen for us, not content we have chosen to watch. Whenever I find myself on Instagram or Snapchat, it is not because I consciously chose to scroll through, but because my brain has succumbed to the psychological tricks these apps have employed to lure me into using them. Instead of getting caught in your Instagram or TikTok feed, immerse yourself in activities that force you to be present in the moment. Things like going on a hike, having a conversation with a loved one or even journaling are great ways to keep you grounded and relaxed.
I am grateful for my experience in this year’s minimester not only because of the fond memories I made on the trip, but also because of the perspective it gave me on my relationship with my phone. I have only now begun to recognize the importance of understanding my phone’s role in my life and I urge you all to do the same. Most of us would agree that we need to put down our phones, yet we rarely do the work to think about how and why it is crucial to do so. If we fail to think when using our phones, we might risk unknowingly losing the best aspects of our lives.