Name: How to Break Up With Your Phone
Uploaded: 2019-04-03
Duration: 7 min 51 s
Description: Science journalist Catherine Price explains how our phones and apps are designed to manipulate our biochemistry.

I've never met most of the people in this room, but there are a few things I know about you already. I know that you're high achievers, that's why you're here. I know that you got to this point in your career through a lot of hard work and concentration, and I also know that over the past few years you probably feel like some things have been slipping, your attention spun feels weak, you're having trouble focusing on just one thing at a time You're busier than ever, but you also feel less productive. And you're finishing your days feeling mentally exhausted. I don't know those things because I'm a mind- reader, I know them because I know you have smartphones. I know that for most of you your phone is the first thing you reach for in the morning and the last thing you touch before bed. And I know that a lot of you are going to have trouble not reaching for your phones for the duration of this talk. [ LAUGH ] Which is going to be eight minutes long so consider that a challenge. So don't get me wrong, smart phones are absolutely amazing tools, but there is something about them that can make us act like the tools. So here's something else I know. It is possible to get your attention span back to increase your creativity and productivity and feel less stressed. To do so you need to change your relatonship with your phone. And today I wanna help you take the first steps. The first thing I wanna do is draw back the curtain on why it's so hard to put down your phone to begin with. And that's actually quite easy to understand. It's cuz your phone is designed to be hard to put down. Why would that be? It's cuz that's how most apps make money. So if you think about it, any app that's free, social media is a good example of this, if it's free we can't be the customers. We're actually the product. advertisers are the customers and our attention is what has been sold. The more time we spend on apps like that, the more opportunities there are to gather data about us and to use it to show us targeted ads. And it's totally fine if you are using the app because you really want to be using it but most of us are not descending into 45 minutes social media spirals before bedtime and have a true desire to rob ourselves of sleep. We're doing it because we've been manipulated. Ad makers manipulate us by borrowing techniques from a different device, slot machines. And that should be concerning because slot machines are widely considered to be the most addictive machines ever to have been invented. Slot machines hook us by triggering the release of dopamine, which is a chemical that our brains use to record when something is worth doing again. Dopamine is evolutionary essential, cuz it's how we remember to do things like eat and reproduce. But our dopamine systems can also be hijacked to established habits that are not so good for us, or to create products that will hook us. To do so, all you have to do is incorporate dopamine triggers into your product's design. So for examples, what would those be? Bright colors. That's why your phone's such a nice vibrant color. Rewards. For your slot machine, you might have the chance of winning money, and on your phone, you might have the chance of getting a like. So social affirmation is very powerful. And also unpredictability. You'd think we'd be more driven to do things compulsively if we knew there would always be a positive result. But that actually is not the most effective. The most effective is to not know what's coming next, that will make you wanna check your phone. You don't know what's waiting for you which makes you wanna reach for it even more. And when you do check your phone and you encounter a dopamine trigger, which will happen, by design, every time you reach for your phone. You're teaching yourself that checking your phone was something that was worth doing again, What's more our brains actually release twice as much dopamine in anticipation of reward as they do when we receive the reward itself, Which explains we're just seeing someone else on their phone can be such a powerful trigger for your own phone craving, It's as if we become [ UNKNOWN ] Dogs and we're trained to salivate in anticipation Any time we even catch sight of a phone. So that's the dopamine side. App makers also get us by triggering anxiety. We're so conditioned to think that checking your phone is worth doing again and again that when you can't do it, sorry, I'm making you do that right now, you feel anxious. Your body actually can release stress hormones like cortisol which is there to help us deal with physical threats. And it doesn't matter that most notifications are there to remind you of an impending lion attack. The anxiety feels uncomfortable, so to alleviate it what do you do? You check your phone again. The result of all these tricks; is that the average person today is spending four hours a day on their phones. That adds up to 60 full days a year. A sixth of our time alive. It's time that we're not spending on our families or our friends or our careers or anything else that brings us meaning or joy. The opportunity costs are enormous. And it's time that once you spend it you can't get back. It's also time that's changing our brains. Because think about it. If you do anything for four hours a day it's going to change your brain And unfortunately, what we know so far about these changes is concerning to say the least. The time we spend on our phones is affecting everything from our attention spans and focus, to our memories, our creativity, productivity, physical health, self esteem, and our sleep. And it's not just us it's taking a toll on, When we prioritize our phones, it takes a toll on the people in our lives that matter to us, our families and our kids. And speaking of children, phones are affecting their brains too. So, that's the depressing part [ LAUGH ]. The good news is that it is possible to create a healthy and happy relationship with your phone in which it's the tool, not you. The first thing to do isn't turn off all your notifications and get your phone out of your bedroom. Though you definitely should do those things. The first thing is to change the way you think about it. You wanna turn your phone from a temptation that you're trying to resist into an obstacle that's getting in the way of how you wanna live your life. You've already started to do this just by listening so far to this talk. But here are three things I want you to do today to further this. The first is to catch yourself. I want you to notice when you reach for your phone. As our next speaker, Judson Brewer's going to explain in more detail, just that mere act of noticing is a powerful tool for behavior change. To make that easier, I recommended putting a rubber band around your phone. That's why you have rubber bands. And- or changing your lock screen prompt to something that says something like this. Do you really want to pick me up right now? And what that does is when you reach for your phone on autopilot and you notice this band or this prompt, you're like, why is that there? You give yourself a chance to decide how you want to proceed. The second thing I want you to do is choose how you want to spend your attention, because here's the thing. Right now your phone's making that decision for you, and we need to take back control. It can be whatever you want, reading, your family, exercise, it does not matter as long as it feels like a gift to your self rather than a restriction. Cuz a lot of people come to me and they say I need to spend less time on my phone and I say well that's not the point. The point is not to spend less time on your phone, it's to spend more time on your life. And lastly I want you guys to have a conversation, I'm always astounded when I com to conferences like these and I see whole rooms of people staring down at their phones. Because you paid to be here, right? I mean, you're surrounded by objectively fascinating people. So I challenge you, the next time there's a break and you feel the need or the twitch to reach for your phone, don't! Instead turn to the person next to you, doesn't matter who. Strike up a conversation. Can't think of anything to say, you can ask them, what's something they want to spend more attention on? The conversation might be lame but I can guarantee you it will be a lot less lame than flying home and realizing you spent this whole conference on your phone. So the ultimate message i wanna leave you with is this, our lives are what we pay attention to. We only remember what we pay attention to, we only experience what we pay attention to, And that means when we make a decision in the moment about how to spend our attention, we are making a much broader decision about how we want to spend our lives. And if you decide you wanna spend some of your attention on the phone, that is fine. The point is just to become more protective of your attention, to guard it like a precious resource, so that you know that when you do spend it on something, it is the result of a conscious choice. And I can speak from personal experience and the experience of thousands of people that I've heard from when I say that if you do this, if you become more purposeful in how you spend your attention, it won't just help you take back control of your devices, it can also help you take back your life. Thank you very much for your attention. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How to Break Up With Your Phone

Health

Science journalist Catherine Price explains how our phones and apps are designed to manipulate our biochemistry.