There are 3.8 billion smartphone users in the world and we receive 427% more messages and notifications than we did a decade ago. The companies who rely on our addictions, Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Microsoft and TikTok (to name a few) are the world’s mega companies, earning more revenue than the entire GDP of whole countries. The average smartphone user, spends nearly four hours on their phone every day, voluntarily providing data to these mega companies — what we like, and importantly, what keeps us picking up our phones. I have read that our phone knows us better than our spouses, perhaps better than we know ourselves!
The mega companies have spent billions of dollars working out how to keep us on our phone, creating attention-capturing tricks that harness our dopamine system. Our dopamine system is triggered by many wonderful things, like eating and sex — however, our body is not able to distinguish the useful dopamine hits from the not so useful hits.
We are starting to get a better understanding that chronic phone overuse can lead to psychological and biological dysfunction, including losses of concentration, poor sleep, reduced cognition and impaired relationships. Research also shows that phone addictions can actually change our brain’s physiology and morphology in ways similar to that observed in people with a substance use disorder.
It was my 21-year-old son who called me out on my phone addiction. We had just bought our daughter a new phone for Christmas. He asked "why did you get her such a good one, that’s just encouraging her phone use".
He then said — "I get why you bought us one when we were younger — you didn’t understand how damaging they are, but now we know better."
He told me he limits himself to no more than an hour on his phone a day, and has chosen to take up yoga instead.
From the mouth of my babe — there was my challenge. I decided to take up yoga first — crazy that that seemed easier than reducing my phone use and somewhat ironically, I accessed my yoga classes via a phone app! That worked well in starting to calm my erratic brain — but his comments were still nagging at me as my phone obsession marched on.
Next step, I took social media off my phone. Facebook and Instagram, deleted, gone. This helped a bit, I looked at my phone less, but I found I started checking my email and LinkedIn apps even more — I was still addicted. Email has always been my worst obsession, and for work reasons, the hardest one to justify removing from my phone. Then I read in a McKinsey report that the average American employee checks their email 77 times a day, that is simply crazy! So, I pulled the final pin, I took email off my phone about 10 days ago. From now, to access any email or social media, I have to be intentional and go to my computer.
I will admit the first few days of my purge I was quite twitchy and slightly anxious — what was I missing out on? Slowly, I am adapting to the point that when I jump on to my computer for a quick social media scroll, it has little interest for me. I still find myself picking up my phone a lot — and then I remember there is not much to look at, so I put it down again. I wait in a queue in a cafe and just stand there — so weird, simply breathing instead of reading some trashy feed about David Warner — the Facebook algorithm just about tipped me over the edge on that one. I sit down in a chair and stare out the window — at nothing. I find myself listening to people — well those people who aren’t staring at their own phones — and wow, I really notice how much people look at their phones now — Houston, we have a problem!
I am not going to go all holier-than-thou on you. It’s too early to say that I am on top of my nomophobia. My sleep hasn’t come right, for me that is a big ask, but I am finding my concentration has improved and I am feeling calmer and very importantly, there is a tiny and growing sense of satisfaction that I might be on the way to registering a small, but meaningful win over the mega companies.
- Anna Campbell is co-founder of Zestt Wellness, a nutraceutical company. She holds various directorships.
