Close Phone, Far Phone

Megan McShane

The conversations brought up recently in class, I think, had a lot of us wondering how much our phones are distracting us, if they even are. I personally battled with the idea that my phone isn’t really distracting me unless I let it, and that I was totally in control of the distractions. I had a conversation with Dr. Vrooman after class, saying that if my phone was really THAT distracting, I would just not bring it with me places. Which then snowballed into a conversation about emergencies and the importance of having a phone, but still left me ready to prove that my phone isn’t controlling my life like he said it was.

This weekend I did a no phone challenge that I called ‘Close Phone, Far Phone’ where I gave myself two hours with my phone on my desk as I did homework and two hours of my phone thrown to the other side of my room while I did homework. I chose to do it like this because I don’t think hearing my phone go off, checking the notification, and putting it down, is really a distraction. Truly though I did want the notifications to distract me, which is why I told myself I could use my phone, I could sit and watch TikTok’s for two hours if I wanted to because I wanted to see how the presence of my phone affected me doing my homework. I set an alarm for each half of the challenge, one at two hours in to tell me to toss my phone across my room and one at four hours in which let me know I had survived.

Both instances the ringer on my phone was on 1 because I think it’s important that we can communicate with others especially if there’s an emergency and with the weather lately, I’m not about to miss a tornado warning. And 2 because I wanted the notifications to distract me, I wanted to be able to hear them and think about them.

I started at about noon and the first two hours, when my phone was on my desk, I found myself having a hard time starting my homework, it took me about 15 minutes to get settled and started. I was also touching my phone a lot more even just to check it without a notification, and if I needed to get up for any reason, I would bring it with me every time. I found that I was able to ignore notifications for a bit, waiting about 3-5 minutes or finishing the sentence I was writing before I looked at them. I also found myself taking more frequent breaks, because of this, I was almost compensating for the time I ignored my notification. For example, TikTok breaks, restroom breaks, or Twitter breaks were all taken after ignoring notifications for a bit. At one point my sister messaged me, which turned into about 15 minutes of wasted study time and then after that I had to leave my apartment and grab something from my car, and I spent some time on TikTok and Snapchat while I was doing that. I also want to state, and this is important later, that my cat Dunkin, did not bother me once during the first two hours of my challenge, when I had my phone on my desk.

Overall, I spent most of my time on my phone in the first two hours on social apps or creativity apps like the iPhone messenger and Tiktok.

I also picked up my phone a lot more times in the first two hours and I got a decent number of notifications within the first two hours as well.

The final two hours, when my phone was across the room, I found myself not getting up to check notifications but to check the timer a lot, I checked the timer five times, three within the first hour and two times within the last hour. During the first hour I brought my phone with me anytime I left my room, and I would check it for messages and notifications but during the third and fourth hour I didn’t bring it with me at all. I didn’t take as many breaks to use my phone during the third and fourth hours as I did during the first two. I did find though that the clock was really what was messing with me this round, I was more worried about the timer and when the timer ended, so I could use my phone, than I was for any notification that went off. The notification sounds were less distracting being that my phone was on the other side of my room, and I didn’t get up or check it every time it went off, and if I did, again I was more worried about the timer. I did find myself opening a texting app on my computer to look through once and I also opened YouTube once, even though I didn’t take a break to watch a video. My cat, Dunkin, also bothered me 4 times in the last two hours of the challenge. He stepped on my keyboard and erased an entire paragraph of this blog, he knocked over my pen cup on my desk, he knocked scissors off my desk, and he also bit me.

Overall, I spent far less time even looking at my phone during the last two hours of this challenge as well as using any of the apps on it, even though I received the same number of notifications across the two separate challenges. I also completed one and a half assignments, the uncompleted half being the data portion of this assignment.

The first and most important thing I learned is that my phone was very distracting, much more than I thought it would be, but it has its perks it keeps my cat off my desk. I also learned that the distance I had from my phone really affected how distracting it was and how often I used it. The notification volume was the same and the amount of time I spent with my phone or away from it was the same but within the first two hours where my phone was within arm’s reach, I picked it up more often, I used it more often and I got distracted on it more often. I would hear the notification, see it, and then get on a social app. It didn’t matter what the notification was, it could have been a Tweet, or Instagram or an email notification, I got distracted anyway. I also learned that not having my phone in my workspace prevented me from using it. I’m lazy, so didn’t want to walk the 10 steps to grab it every time it went off, and so I stayed off it most of the second two hours. It’s convenient to have it next to you but I learned it harmed me more than helped me, I felt like I couldn’t concentrate with it there, and so I used it, because at the very least I could concentrate on my phone. I managed my time much better when my phone wasn’t near me than when it was. Even after the challenge and when I was writing this blog, I had my phone next to me, and I felt like I couldn’t concentrate like I was before, during the challenge, so I threw it back on the other side of the room.  All in all, I was right, in my opinion that my phone distracts me if I let it, but the only way to not let, for me, it is to not have it near me, or have it far enough away that I don’t want to get up and get it. So maybe I don’t have as much control over the distractions as I thought, and maybe being lazy is a actually good thing. I thought that I would be able to ignore my phone and engage with my homework even with it sitting next to me and I realize now that that’s not necessarily the case and that phones are a really big distraction, at least for me.