Do phrases such as these sound familiar to you?:
“When are you going to get off your phone?”
“It’s like you're addicted to your phone.”
“Can’t you go 5 seconds without your phone?”
If you have heard these phrases or something similar to them, I’m right there with you. Whether you have heard these things from colleagues, friends, family, or society, it seems like we can’t escape judgment for using our phones.
It’s ironic really. For society to normalize smartphones as a common and basically essential tool for people, we still simultaneously have this tendency to criticize our use of our technological advancements. When you really think about it, we use our phones for a lot of various reasons which can include communication, entertainment, work, etc.
In my last blog post, I discussed the teaching of James Williams from his book Stand Out of Our Light. Just as a quick refresher, Williams argues that the significant amount of attention that we may find ourselves giving our phones is not entirely our fault. Phone and app producers have made it to where they have created material that intrigues our attention constantly, encouraging us to give our attention over to these devices. Although we have our own goals, our devices have their own goal that conflicts with our own: gaining our attention. In addition to these particular phone habits not being our faults, it is also not the phone and app producers faults either. They may play a factor in this matter, but Williams points out how no one goes into their job with the intention of making people’s lives harder. We have to make efforts that encourage our devices to align without our own goals instead of fighting against them.
However, not everyone thinks like this. A lot of people like to voice this “phone addiction” narrative because that is what they have been consistently exposed to throughout the years. Which helps this harmful narrative to continue on with shaming people and their utilization of phones.
We are constantly made to feel embarrassed and shamed for how we use our phones or for how long we use them. This phone addiction narrative that we’ve been fed for years has even sparked the creation of support groups and treatment regiments that are intended to help a person have better control over their “addiction.”
But the word “addition” suggests that we do not have a choice in our use of our phones. Since applying the “addiction” label to devices, we have suddenly treated phones as the equivalent of drugs. When in reality, these two things are very different and have different effects on a person. Yet someone way back in the beginning of the age of smartphones placed the “addiction” label on technology because it was convenient. And as a result, we now have people self conscious about their phone habits and constantly questioning if they have a legitimate problem.
For the past few weeks, my classmates and I were assigned to attempt various challenges from Manoush Zomorodi. Zomorodi argues that our phones hinder us from being bored. Which might sound positive to many, but Zomorodi views boredom and the state of being bored as a helpful tool that can help spark creativity and help your brain from being constantly stimulated.
Zomorodi offered us 7 different challenges that encouraged participants to put down their phones:
Monitor the amount of time you use your phone.
No devices in motion
No pictures
Delete “that” app
Take a “fakecation”
Observe something
Get bored and think about a problem you’ve been trying to solve
I tried 4 of these challenges: challenges 1, 2, 3, and 6.
Challenge #1 (Monitor the amount of time you use your phone):
Challenge #1 was pretty interesting for me. When I checked out just how long I used my phone, my phone reported a daily average of 6 hour and 6 minutes. And this challenge got even more interesting as I looked into what apps I used predominantly during that daily average. You can see those details below.
So let's see here. Let’s try to make sense of all of this.
I use TikTok quite often. That’s not new information for me. I know that I fall down a few TikTok holes throughout the day. With an algorithm that caters towards my interests (books, art, pop culture, etc.) it’s pretty easy for me to be entertained by this app for a good amount of time.
Safari is in second place because I use it frequently for school. I use it to log onto class pages, for my job, research material, etc. And in addition to using Safari mainly for school, I do use it for entertainment purposes as well. Mainly to read articles and watch videos.
SnapChat and Instagram are up there because they are the two apps that allow me to chat with one of my best friends who is currently studying abroad. We’ve discovered that these apps still allow us to stay connected.
Messages and Mail are up on this list for a simple reason: they’re my main means of communicating with friends and family. I definitely use my messages and email apps everyday. How much I use them in a day completely depends on communication circumstances.
Messenger is there because that is what my mother and I use to do our daily digital calls to catch up at the end of our days. A lot of that time is admittedly us messing around with filters and playing games.
So cool! I now know why I spend a little over 6 hours on my phone on a daily basis. A lot can happen in 6 hours, but in truth, I don't feel guilty for spending that much time on my phone. Even with using my phone everyday, I still manage to get my school work done, complete tasks for my job, catch up with family and friends, and take time to unwind on social media. I still get everything I needed/wanted to get done by the end of each day in a timely manner. And my phone helps me do all of that. So why would I feel bad about using it? I don’t feel like I'm some kind of addict that can’t control my phone consumption time. I know why I use my phone so much, and I’m happy to know this device helps me with tasks I have. Sure, at times, I’ll admittedly stay on TikTok longer than I’ve intended to, but I had fun on TikTok. And I still get everything done. So, no real harm.
Challenge #2 (No devices in motion):
This challenge wasn’t as interesting for me compared to challenge #1. In truth, I don’t use my phone in motion unless I’m messaging someone back. The day I tested out this challenge, I only caught myself doing this once. That was when I was walking up the stairs while on my home and texting back my friend. It took me 2 seconds, and sure, I could've done that sitting down. But I headed upstairs to read a book. So I just took care of something on my way to my room.
I didn’t feel like using my phone here harmed me or anyone else in any way. I again didn’t feel like an addict. It just seemed like a normal action that took under a minute.
Challenge #3 (No pictures):
Now this challenge was actually pretty interesting for me. The day I tried this challenge I only felt the urge to take a picture once. It was when I was in Barnes and Nobles and I wanted to take a picture of a book so I could remember to add it to my to-read list. I caught myself before I snapped the picture and instead searched it up in Google and left the tab open for later.
This challenge made me realize how I use photos as a reminder for myself. When you think about it, it’s a simple means of reminding one self. I take pictures or screen shots of items and then there they are in my photos. By the end of the day when I check my photos I have a helpful series of photos that helps me make sure I completed various tasks. Simple and easy. So I honestly don’t feel bad for using my camera on a daily basis. It helps me throughout my day.
Plus if I don’t use my camera ever, how am I going to capture photos like these when the opportunity presents itself?:
Challenge #6 (Observe something):
This challenge was nice. I took 15 minutes to just lay down on my bed with my dog and observe the surrounding details. I noticed things such as how the sun beams shone on my bed in a stripe-like pattern due to my blinds, the way the leaves rustled in the tree, my desk was dusty (I cleaned it), my dog’s snores, etc. It was a nice moment to just be. But if I’m being honest, I observe my surroundings all the time. I like looking for details in surrounding areas and environments that I’m in. This challenge was a nice little excuse to keep doing that.
Had I been on my phone, would I have caught all of these details? Perhaps not, but I’m not on my phone all the time. So eventually I would’ve gone back to observing. So this challenge didn’t make me feel like a phone addict either.
Although I understand that Zomorodi was trying to get us to consider a perception that didn’t include the presence of phones, I didn’t feel like these challenges were fantastic. I basically revealed to myself that I use my phone. Yup! I definitely do that. Is my phone my whole life? No. Does it aid me in my life? Yup! But as much as I use my phone for various reasons, I don’t feel like I don’t have any control over how much I use my phone or that I’m a “phone addict”. I just feel like someone that utilizes their smartphone in a society that has normalized smartphones.
And maybe that’s how you feel. You know you use your phone, but that’s why you have a phone: to use it. Use your phone! If you feel like you personally are not happy with your device use habits, then you can work towards adjusting your habits towards your own liking. But that should be your decision. No one else's. You shouldn’t be made to feel like you can’t use your phone, or that you have to deliberately put it away in order to experience life. Smartphones are now a part of our everyday society, and thus, a part of our lives. Be aware of your habits if you feel that you need to, but don’t feel ashamed for having used your phone.
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