The way you use your phone is destroying your brain…
- The average attention span of a human has decreased by 33% within two decades.
- Our average attention span is now 8.25 seconds. Which is less than both a goldfish and a squirrel.
- 25% of teenagers forget major details of close friends and relatives.
- 39% of Americans forget basic information or lose an everyday item each week.
- An average person checks their phone 58 times a day, affecting their ability to focus (for Americans it is 144).
- Multi-tasking reduces attention span by up to 40%.
- An office worker will check their emails an average of 30 times PER HOUR!
- The average phone user picks up their phone more than 1500 times per week.
- The average screen time is 3 hours and 16 mins per day.
- 47% of people say they feel anxiety and panic when their phone battery falls below 20%.
What’s Causing this Decline?
Put short: The ever-increasing volume and flow of information and our addiction to short-burst dopamine fixes are largely responsible for our deteriorating brain cells.
These two factors also make-up our increasing tendency to “multi-task”. All my life, I was taught that multi-tasking was a good thing. That it meant you were intellectually superior somehow.
Well, if this were MythBusters that would be totally busted. Doing multiple tasks at once is actually not possible for us mere humans.
What you think is multi-tasking is actually just your brain switching its’ attention to different tasks really, really quickly. “The brain starts learning how to switch rapidly from one task to another to another,” says William Klemm, senior professor of neuroscience at Texas A&M University. The flip side of this is that we get worse at focusing on one substantial task and lose our ability to learn.
The more we are accustomed to distraction, the more we crave it — queue addiction piece of the puzzle. If you think for yourself, how many times have you reached for your phone without any reason to, it’s just a reflex.
Why is it a Problem?
Attention is not the only victim of this technology apocalypse, our addiction to our phones has also been linked to higher rates of ADD diagnosis, Depression and Social Anxieties.
The reality of being ‘connected’ is that we are more disconnected than ever.
It is not uncommon to come across someone who refuses to make a phone call because of the stress of a live conversation, teenagers are turning to tik-tok for life advice instead of their parents and in a world where our profiles proudly display the number of ‘friends’ we have, we feel more alone than ever.
Key things to be wary of:
- Constant digital stimulation
- Frequent ‘pings’ notifying you of something new that pulls your attention away from what you’re focusing on.
- Influx of bite-sized information (i.e. lots and lots of 5 second TikToks/Reels).
What Does Doom Scrolling Look Like?
Let’s face it, we have all succumb to the little black box we call our phones, otherwise known as our 5th limb.
We’ve all unlocked it, navigated to our favorite social media app and sought out our ‘quick fix’ of dopamine. Under the guise “I’ll just take a little look for 5 minutes”…
But it’s all in vain. Next thing you know, it’s been hours and you seem to wake up as if from a trance to find your body hunched over the screen. Your thumb has taken on a mind of its’ own, scrolling away like its’ life depended on it.
I don’t know about you, but on days where I have been sucked into the black hole that is my phone, I come out feeling groggy, stiff, lazy and my mood is flat, there is numbness physically and emotionally. Sometimes, I swear, I can feel my brain cells dying off. I also find that these days end sooner. Social media scrolling plays some funny games with time, and not the good kind.
Before you start beating yourself up though, remember, social media is designed that way. The modern-day commodity is your attention, and the more it can be harvested, the happier it makes the tech moguls.
The first step is to be aware and conscious of your phone use. Don’t let it zombify you!
How To Break the Cycle?
Our collective brains may be slowly dissolving to sludge, but the good news is it’s also super adaptive and always looking for new neural connections (Benjamin Hardy has some good information on levelling-up your brain function).
In all honesty, the best way to beat the addiction is to buy yourself the most rudimentary phone possible — think, 2000 flip phones.
Why? Because you literally can’t do anything with them except what they’re supposed to do: call and text people when you need them.
If that’s too much for you, here are some practical steps to beating your phone addiction that have worked for me and don’t require you to bin it.
1. Identify your Triggers.
Like any bad habit (that’s a nicer way of putting it but really it’s a compulsion. It’s ok though because I said it in the brackets so it doesn’t count as much), if you want it evicted from your day, you first must know what brings it on.
To do this, you’ll need to practice some mindfulness (ooh la la). The second you reach for your phone (as a reflex not if it’s ringing) ask yourself: “Why am I doing this?”. Be conscious of the circumstance/emotion/event that led you to reach for your phone. Here are some example triggers and ways to break it:
- Boredom
It’s actually ok to be bored. We don’t need to be stimulated 24/7 so when this happens challenge yourself with some meditation instead. You could also try jumping up and down to get some blood pumping and hack your way to feeling energised. You’ll be less likely to still want to reach for your phone afterwards.
- Waiting for a friend (there’s a void to fill)
Maybe I’m weird, but it’s totally fine (encouraged even) to simply look around and appreciate the world around you. Look up to feel the sun on your face, watch the trees move in the wind, observe a bird do its’ thang nearby. Chances are no one is even going to notice you with your audacity to stand in a public place and actually be a part of it.
- Social Awkwardness/shyness
We get it, you’re alone at a party and you don’t want to look like a dork. Go get a drink or something to eat instead. People are less likely to approach if you’ve got your head down in your phone.
If you’re feeling like this because you’re sitting on a train or waiting at a restaurant, whip a book out instead.
- You’re about to start a cognitively strenuous task (This is my one)
I still struggle with this one a bit. If I turn my phone off at work, then that really helps because when I reach for it, I know it will take a good 5 minutes before I can use it (and that may as well be an hour).
If that’s not possible for you then try switching to a standing desk in that moment or going for a brief walk outside (I am a huge advocate for outside walk breaks throughout the work-day even if you’re totally perfect and not afflicted with any bad habit whatsoever).
- You’ve just woken up.
This used to be me. I would wake up, so obviously, I immediately need to know what the time is. Then, oh, while I’m here I may as well suss instagram. Next thing I know it’s been an hour and I feel more tired than when I woke up.
This is also the worst way you can start your day.
My advice: get a morning routine. Have a ritual set of things you do in the morning that you actually look forward to so that when your alarm goes off you A) know what you need to do and B) are excited to do it.
Interestingly in some studies conducted on this topic, they also reviewed what triggered people to stop looking at their phone. So perhaps reverse engineering it works best for you.
2. Get Used to Being Physically Disconnected
Truth time. Hands up if you get the heebie-jeebies at the thought of going out without your phone and not having it on you at all times (even on the toilet)?
I challenge you to go for a walk every day without your phone. Start off with just a 5-minute blocky at first and then slowly level up. If you’re feeling really crazy, try going to the shops without your phone (I do this a lot and have survived every time — I know you will too).
The more time you spend away from your phone and the more activities you do without it present, the more you realise you actually don’t need it as much as you once thought. You’ll learn to forget that it’s there and other things/activities/people will earn your attention (and affection).
3. Get Bored with Social Media
Two things:
- Absorb yourself into tasks that are fun and require your hands. Like baking, gardening, knitting, painting..(you get it).
- Formulate a vision for your life (or month, if the former is too daunting), create some goals and use these passion projects to practice engaging in Deep Work (I’m sure you know the term, if not, Cal Newport has a book all about it).
“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.” — Cal Newport
The more you get used to being mentally engaged as opposed to just superficially stimulated, you’ll eventually find that scrolling on insta (or whatever your vice is — I guess I’m giving away my dirty little secret here) is a lot more boring than it once was which will help to reduce the urges.
You’ll also be working your mind in a way that forms new neural pathways, improves your ability to learn and increases your attention span.
4. Maximise your Morning
For majority of people, we operate best in the morning. It is the time of day we are best able to engage deeply in a task. So, I urge you to make the most of your morning.
I read an article recently, that said starting your day slow and in the trap of consumption is training the brain to be slow and under-performative. It prevents the brain from ever reaching flow state throughout the day.
“Consuming junk [social media content] in the morning puts your brain into a state of over-analysis. Over-analysis is crippling. Starting your day like this will leave your brain confused and scattered. You will be trapped in a state of over-analysis for the rest of the day.” — an excerpt from the article which I highly recommend reading.
So, the practical implementation is to be clear about what is important to achieve for your life. Start your day actioning exactly that as close to waking up as possible. Let your brain know what you expect of it and train it to expect that of itself too.
5. Read Books
Books are great and hard-copies are even better. If you swap scrolling on your phone out for a book, you will thank yourself.
Reading is a way of relaxing which is important for our minds too. It gives your eyes some reprieve (assuming you’re reading in a well-lit space) and it is cognitively stimulating. This means you won’t feel like a zombie with back problems after being engrossed in a book for 2 hours.
Is it just me or do you feel like you’re watching a really long movie when you are into a good book. Each time you’re away from the book it’s like you’ve hit pause and all you want to do is go back to press play?
If you find a book that captivates you this much, you’ll forget you even had a phone.
Important Note (and a pet peeve, if I’m being honest): If you listen to audio books, you are not reading. No hate to audio books — just don’t call it reading.
Conclusion
What we put in is what we get out. When we are trapped in a cycle of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality content, our brains (and futures) will suffer.
It’s also worth the reminder that life is short. We can’t afford to scroll away our time, it’s precious.
For the sake of your fulfillment and brain function, get engaged with life and get off your damn phone.
I hope this was helpful.
Until next time…
Luisa
