What are phones doing to our relationships?
As I approach seven years sober, an app on my phone reminds me how much money ($29,530), energy (245,086 calories), and time (1,968 hours)1 I have saved by not drinking. As I look down at the illuminated device in my hand, it dawns on me—
Shit! I’m not sober.
My smartphone is a tool, like alcohol, that I have used to facilitate social connection, disappear myself, and regulate my nervous system, but I am left feeling more empty, dysregulated and alone.
We spend on average 5 hours and 24 minutes on our mobile devices every day and check our phones on average once every 10 minutes.2 We have merged with our phones and don’t even realize it. Half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness and isolation.3 Meanwhile we lay in bed next to our partners scrolling social media, yearning for each other, and wondering why we don't have better sex or sleep. We cannot tolerate a moment of life in-between, waiting for an appointment or standing in a line, without escaping. Relationships and friendships vanish without any real conversation, productive tension, opportunity for growth—just here and then gone.
The idea of being an adult without a smartphone makes me feel like an alien, the way not drinking alcohol at a social gathering used too. Big tech companies have taken a page or two from the big alcohol playbook, telling us that if we don’t have a smartphone, there is something wrong with us. If we are unable to use our phones responsibility and in moderation, it’s our fault. Our device is essential for socializing. They tell us smartphones don’t cause harm, despite the research on the negative mental and physical health consequences of technology.
Esther Perel4 reminded us of The Still Face Experience5 and how non-responsive expressionless faces affect emotional development and connection. I highly recommend you take a few moments to watch the experiment to get a feel for what is happening in our shared moments with each other.
Our children have grown up watching our expressionless faces, as we stare into our devices. It makes sense that over the last decade anxiety, depression and loneliness along with emergency room visits for self-harm, for suicide attempts and completed suicides have increased among teens.6 Our friends and loved ones look into our averted eyes feeling lost and confused, because being alone standing next to someone you love is the most painful kind of isolation.
Instead of looking at my own relationship to my phone, I’ve been entrenched in a battle to keep technology out of the hands of my teenage daughter, which feels like trying to hold back the ocean. Everything has turned into some version of social media, commodifying and selling her attention. I am terrified her tiny malleable brain will be manipulated and changed by complex algorithms, her threat response system activated with each message, image, comment and like, her attention drained like blood from an open wound as her fragile adolescent mental health is discarded like trash on the side of country road.
I stand between my teenage daughter and our phone. Personally, disrupting her neural pathways to pleasure and reward as she accuses me of ruining her life. She is the only one of her friends in the seventh grade without free and full access to a phone. And yet, she’s been looking into my vacant face her entire life, watching my nervous system vibrate and my dopamine receptors ping with each alert from my phone.
I can’t ask her to do what I am not willing to model so I’ve decided to strip everything off my phone. I deleted my email, social media and hid the internet for emergencies—although I am not sure what an internet emergency entails. I’ve removed all the apps except maps, banking, calendar, weather, camera, music and my fitness tracker. The technology audit revealed how intertwined my life is with my device. Moderating my phone use feels like trying to tear off one of my limbs.
Within a few hours, a gentle calm came over me as I cooked dinner. I didn’t feel pulled between preparing dinner, managing my calendar, sendings messages and ordering groceries. Within 48 hours, I was jolted awake, stunned by how our pocket computers control and dictate our daily lives.
When random queries about pop culture, news and history come to mind, instead of falling like Alice down the rabbit hole of the world wide web, these questions float around in my mind unanswered. I sit in my car with the seat tilted back, looking at the weather through the window, waiting for my appointment time to arrive. I leave my phone at home when I go for walks or run a quick errand. I stare like children do, into the blank faces of tweens, teens and adults packed into a busy train car, physically present while lost somewhere far away in their smartphone. Trying to get sober again.
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Meaningless statistics and interesting nevertheless.
Flynn, J. (2023, April 3). 20 Vital Smartphone Usage Statistics [2023]: Facts, Data, and Trends On Mobile Use In The U.S. Zippia. https://www.zippia.com/advice/smartphone-usage-statistics/#:~:text=Americans%20check%20their%20phones%20on
U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory. (2023). Our epidemic of loneliness and isolation. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf
In her recent live show The Future of Relationships, Love & Desire
The Still Face Experience by Edward Tronick
Doucleff, M. (2023, April 25). The truth about teens, social media and the mental health crisis. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/04/25/1171773181/social-media-teens-mental-health