How much time have you spent on your phone today? When you scroll through your news feed, what exactly are you looking for? Statistics say you check your phone more than 157 times per day (Klein), spend 135 minutes per day on social media platforms (“Social Media Fact Sheet”), and that you spend nearly twice as much time engaged with each of those as you think you do (Andrews et al., 2015).

Twenty years ago, smartphones and social networks were virtually nonexistent, but now it seems we can’t go more than a few minutes without either of them. Their newfound ubiquity has less to do with the sheer pace of technological innovation than it does the psychology of addiction.

Tristan Harris, a former Design Ethicist at Google, describes the modern iPhone as “a slot machine in a billion pockets.” Incorporated into every major networking or gaming app is some form of an intermittent variable reward – an instant all-or-nothing response that, because of its unpredictability, keeps you coming back to it. You know the feelings: the small, insistent dopamine bumps that come with every Instagram like; the somehow gnawing nonevent of glancing down at an empty lock screen; Tinder’s unique sort of dissonant fantasizing, the concurrent push of self-aggrandizement and pull of anonymity that finds you swiping right on the toilet.

Product designers also know those feelings. They capitalize on humans’ need for belonging and the neuroscience behind it, and they have shaped a landscape where to not constantly engage with their product is to fall behind socially, professionally, and personally (for more on this, I highly recommend Harris’ article, linked to here).

Even the boundary between smartphone and self may be hazier than it seems. Clinicians have proposed that “nomophobia” – an intense fear of/anxiety about time spent away from a cell phone – is both intense enough and common enough to warrant consideration as a legitimate psychological disorder. Less extreme cases are equally troubling.

Consider a recent survey of young adults that asked, “Would you rather have a broken bone or a broken phone?” 46% of respondents said they would prefer the latter (Atler, 2017).

Broken phone or broken bone – which would you choose?

References

Alter, A. (2017). Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. London: Penguin.

Andrews, Sally; Ellis, David A.; Shaw, Heather; & Piwek, Lukasz. Beyond Self-Report: Tools to Compare Estimated and Real-World Smartphone Use. (28 October 2017). Retrieved from: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0139004

Harris, Tristan. How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind – From a Magician and Google Design Ethicist. (18 May 2016). Retrieved from: https://journal.thriveglobal.com/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3

Klein, Michelle. (2016). Social Media Week Report, New York City. Retrieved from: https://socialmediaweek.org/newyork/2016/05/31/millennials-check-phones-157-times-per-day/

Social Media Fact Sheet. Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C. (12 January 2017). Retrieved from: http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/