Day 25
It starts like a New Years Day resolution. It is easy for the first few days and then you just want a taste or in this case to post something. You satisfy it by updating the work FaceBook page. You admit it was an excuse. You use the free time to get stuff done at work and at home but it fails to give your brain the dopamine hit it is craving. You try reading long form but are easily distracted. You note that didn’t happen before. You switch to an ebook and it is better because you are touching the screen again. You are turning the page. Each new page a new hit to the brain. Then it hits you like an epiphany. Your brain is addicted to the constant rush of new stimuli. It could be a game, an ebook, a website, the sports scores that does it the brain doesn’t care as long as the new stimulation is there.
There isn’t a recovery, there is no treatment center, there isn’t a 12 step program. This is the world we live in. My job, our jobs, require us to use digital devices. My family runs on the Calendar App on our phones. We have taken an inanimate digital device and made it part of our brains. We don’t leave our calendars behind when we walk out the door. The grocery list is always with us. We don’t have to watch the news or read the paper for the weather report. It is at our fingertips or wrist or at a quick voice query. It is being woven into our lives and we would no more get rid of it than we would get rid of our opposable thumbs.
Reality is messy, life is challenging, and discipline is hard. I got the new iPhone and have been monitoring my app usage through the screen time setting. I would change a few categories, messaging is clearly not social media it is how the family communicates with each other so it could be labelled Family Time. It would make us feel better at least. I’ve added 8 apps and deleted 2 of them. The two were games and on the phone less than a week. My wife added an app for grocery shopping since our old app doesn’t exist anymore in the App store. RIP Grocery IQ. My son added two as well ESPN and Harry Potter. So, 25 days into the new phone and I use 6 non native apps. Starbucks – because I still have money in the account. Fitbit – so I can use my fitbit through bluetooth since the screen just died but it still counts steps, heart beat, and sleeping. Feedly – my RSS reader that I use for most of my news and information since going to each website overwhelms you with ads and pop-ups and potential cyber issues. Firefox Focus – a privacy designed browser that doesn’t allow tabs. Wunderground – for the weather forecast since Apple’s Weather app is visually pleasing but data poor. I’ve had two games on that within days deleted as I realized I was falling back into a bad habit. It is hard enough retraining the brain to focus for longer periods of time like it used too before the smartphone to add games back into the mix. There is a feature built into the iPhones that allows apps you haven’t used in awhile to be offloaded from your phone. Turn it on as it won’t hurt your experience but they are still available if you need them.
That’s what I’ve discovered after 25 days off social media. It’s an addiction, like sugar, or simple carbs, or alcohol, or heroin. It’s just not limited to social media. It’s an addiction to brain stimulation. We don’t know the consequences this societal choice to be addicted is going to have but it will be profound. There are trade-offs between what you could be doing in the physical world and what you do in the digital world. Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, and Augmented Reality will just be another layer of depth to the digital addiction. If you don’t want to be addicted don’t by the new tools of the addiction. Don’t be a supplier and buy them for your kids either.
One thing to keep in mind as you probably followed this through a link at our Facebook page or my personal Twitter, they want to keep you happy, coming back, and spending lots of time on their sights. They need your data after all you are the product they are selling. They do not have your best interests at heart. The more data they can collect about you the more valuable you are to them and they can sell you at a premium. Read the headlines about what data they are collecting on you that you may not even have given them. You could have never been on Facebook but they got your information from your friends who did share their contact information with them. That information was then sold to advertisers to target you. That’s how their business model works.