Category: Health and Wellness
It’s undeniable. The bond between human and digital device gets stronger every year. The average person sends or receives four times the amount of text messages since 2007. People are starting to feel their phone vibrate in their pockets when in fact there was never a vibration. This has been called “phantom-vibration syndrome.”
There’s a historical shift happening that we’ll only begin to understand years from now. With the wonderful things that the internet has brought us, it also hard to deny the ADHD and OCD-like qualities many of us are picking up as we continue to merge with our digital devices.
As you practice and repeat something, it becomes a habit, and whether the kick starter was a need to use the internet for business or social reason, the devices we have today are pretty good and getting us to use them over and over again. What do you need to be aware of?
The fact is, every day our brain is being trained dozens, if not hundreds, of times to check for messages; be it texting, messaging, Facebook, Twitter, emails, voicemails or any other form of notification. Threfore, it’s going to train the brain to constantly be anticipating the next message. Consider how many times you’ve been on a walk to your car, to the bathroom, in a line or wherever and grabbed for the phone in your pocket. At times, this may have happened even if you forgot your phone. It’s already a habit.
Sherry Turkle, a psychologist at MIT, already thinks we’re there. As she points out, “we are all cyborgs now.” Our brains have already merged with technology. This technology is only in its infancy and offers so many incredible gifts. We can find friends all around the world; we can get aids to help us count our calories easily to manage weight; it’s easier than ever to donate to a needed organization; with the push of an icon we can find a map and navigate wherever we want or find the top rated places to eat. This is all good stuff.
However, we’re not really going to harness the power of this technology if we’re sleepwalking through this new relationship, unaware of the tightening hold it has on our attention. As Susan Greenfield, a pharmacology professor at Oxford University says, “end[ing] up glassy-eyed zombies.”
Larry Rosen wrote a book called “iDisorder,” and “his team surveyed 750 people, a spread of teens and adults who represented the Southern California census, detailing their tech habits, their feelings about those habits, and their scores on a series of standard tests of psychiatric disorders. He found that most respondents, with the exception of those over the age of 50, check text messages, email or their social network “all the time” or “every 15 minutes.” More worryingly, he also found that those who spent more time online had more “compulsive personality traits.” (Newsweek article)
However, we can take the fear of addiction to the internet a little too far. The Newsweek article uses the following as examples of a way to make the misleading point of how dire this is:
“One young couple neglected its infant to death while nourishing a virtual baby online. A young man fatally bludgeoned his mother for suggesting he log off (and then used her credit card to rack up more hours). At least 10 ultra-Web users, serviced by one-click noodle delivery, have died of blood clots from sitting too long.”
My guess is it’s probably safe to say there were mental issues co-occurring with this, but technology usage could have exacerbated those issues.
However, we can also take it too lightly, as a Forbes article explains in We’re all Internet Addicts and We’re All Screwed, says Newsweek. While the Forbes article has some entertaining bits that poke fun at Newsweek‘s focus on internet addiction, this article also mocks it for bringing up an important comment by Sherry Turkle, PhD, suggesting that texting while breast feeding can create stress in the mother that can get passed along to the child. Or that parents are on their devices at the expense of attending to their kids.
In other words, while these aren’t examples of heavy neglect, they are the little things that add up, and the Forbes author’s assertion that these aren’t things worth looking out for may be naive.
In this new era, it’s okay to love and feel the rewards of your Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Pinterest, Apps, or whatever, but it’s all about how far we take it. Each of us is in a pretty serious relationship with our technology, and so the question is, how can we begin to become more aware of how we’re relating to it? How is it affecting our relationships or our stress? Do we feel compelled to grab for it, it is splitting our attention and taxing our brains? When does it turn from a source of leisure and relaxation, like reading a magazine or book, to a source of stress and feelings of being overwhelmed?
Here’s today’s practice:
Start by just being mindful of how your body reacts to your digital devices. Do you notice a pull at times? What does that feel like? What happens when you just let it be, how long does it last? How long until it goes away?
After all, if we’re going to be married to technology, we might as well get to know it a bit better.
Yes, whoops, let me get that text. Be back to post.
LOL, Wayne. While I can see some valid points here, I think this tends to be a bit oversensitive.
I totally agree with this poster. The first one, I mean. I see that in myself. And while people tend to take this lightly, even mocking it at times, I have to wonder: Are they mocking it because they're unaware of this society-wide obsession with technology, or do they dismiss it because they're trying to deny it exists? Perhaps people deny it because the idea is so disturbing that it's easier to just dismiss it as nonsense rather than to come to grips with the possibility. I see my partner check his email every fifteen minutes. Ok, maybe every half an hour. But that's the longest he goes without checking it unless he's seriously preoccupied-either with sleeping, eating or our little one. As I mentioned previously, I see it in myself as well. I notice that I send off an email and I get stressed if I don't hear a response back in an hour or so. It's an underlying stress--Because in my mind, I know that someone isn't sitting at his or her computer just waiting for my correspondence, and yet, something just keeps compelling me to check my email--time, and time, and time again. And when I check all my accounts and all the web sites I regularly keep a watch on, I buy myself time by checking them again, just in case something has changed in the last five minutes or so since I checked last. I have a pull twoard my various social networking sites and my email, though I wish I didn't. I'm not crazy, but I'm only 22. What will happen when I'm 50? lol. Well, probably nothing. i'm aware of my near-addiction to my online presence, but what about those sorry teenagers and all of my peers whose thumbs are about to fall off from constant texting? What about those kids who can't write a legible sentence anymore because they cant' go without inserting some form of text-speak? What about them? I'm worried for them. And therefore, I'm worried for society as we know it now, because that's the generation which is about to take over. So yes, for those that want to disagree, take another good look--It truly is a real concern.
Technology hasn't yet given me aids - sorry, couldn't resist - but I have definately noticed I fall into the slightly adicted catagory. I don't have Twitter - okay I do, but I never use it - and care little for facebook after all most people post are links and pictures these days. But even after two weeks of having an iphone, I've actually experienced phantom vibrations. Even when I'm not carying my phone. I think technology is a wonderful thing, especially among the disabled. I think the examples of in this article are a little sensational, but tha doesn't mean they don't ever happen. Technology does make life easier in many ways. But I wonder what the price of that ease will be. Ten years ago I loved talking on the phone. These days I'd prefer to text or IM, just so I can do other things in the meantime. There is a lot to be said for moderation, and balance. And technological reliance certainly requires those. If technology suddenly ceased to exist tomorrow, many of us would be completely lost. Not because the human race "can't" live without tech, but because many of us have either forgotten how, or never learned.
Oh, don't mistake me, Write Away. I do not dismiss this issue completely out of hand. I too, fall into the slightly addicted category. that's why I said the article has some valid points. It's something we need to be aware of, and keep an eye out for. I just felt like that particular article seemed a bit overboard.
As people we are subject to this with anything. Why should technology take the blame for what is already part of us?
I personally don't have a FaceBook, Twitter, or any of it, but I don't knock people that enjoy it.
Technology has also created ways so you don't have to be checking your accounts all the time. Set up these alarms if you need this. Whoops, I've just suggested you get vibration sickness, sorry.
Seriously. It was TV, the automobile, that telephone thing, radio. I'm surprised we're not all crazy from birth, if you read this and get hooked on worrying about it.
I'm with Sister Dawn and ForReel on this one. There are definitely people who become obsessed with their technology to the point of putting themselves, and even others, in danger. But this isn't the technology's fault. By that logic, guns and knives are the murders, hands and feet alone are the thieves, and kitchen appliances cook all the food. Technically speaking, this is true, but are we going to outlaw knives and guns, amputate all hands and feet, and give the kitchen appliances the status of a chef? I sure as hell hope not. I honestly believe that some people fear the technological era that has been on the rise as of late. My advice to you is this: Don't fear the technology. Fear the people who use it.
When I was a boy, they said my generation was going to grow up with televisionitis, be unable to read and write, be incapable of conversation, and on and on ... and on!
They said it before about the radio. Before that, people said that the telephone would mean people wouldn't visit each other anymore.
Anybody but me see a pattern here?
Yes, there are people who get carried away with things. What things they are doesn't matter, so much as the ability to get carrid away.
To RightAway, I simply wonder if your so-called addiction is really the fact that your employer, your contacts, your family and others, are all trying to contact you and they all have expectations of an immediate response because someone else has expectations of an immediate response from them.
I have yet to get the phantom vibration, and the fair acid test will be once I move back into the city, where I may come and go as I please. For now, social networks have made the last few years bearable. People in the 80s talked a lot about shut-ins or people who were cut off from families, now at least they can contact one another. Yes, there are, and always have been, people who get carried away. I personally think it is that person's tendency to get carried away.
All of this has been done before. And us 40-somethings don't have the rotten brains everyone said we would. So I doubt you young people are going to come out with no skills, whatever you call it, coping skills, any of that.
well said, Leo. I couldn't agree more.
Well said to the last few posts. Every time a new technological advancement explodes, there's a doomsday prophet just waiting to pounce on it and incite fear in the masses. Articles like this will do just that, especially to the older generations who are not at all sure our fast-paced lifestyle of texting, social networking, and touch screens is a good thing. My dad once told me that if it weren't for the fact that the Internet could help me to be successful as a blind person, and that it's more of a need for me than for a sighted person, he would never allow a computer or the Internet in his house. He literally thinks computers are evil and are causing the downfall of society. My grandma, who lives with us, has expressed similar feelings, telling both my sister and I on more than one occasion that online games are evil. She said something to the effect once that it sounded like Jaws is speaking in tongues. So, just as there are computer addicts, there are certainly legit technophobes as well.
ok, interesting article, I guess. I have not felt my phone vibrate or heard it ring when it actually wasn't lol...
Since we're all in the business of calling people addicts, what about a name for these who are addicted to ludite tendencies? A name for the naysayers? People who just can't get enough of bashing whatever new innovations their fellow humans develop?
I'm sure when our ancestors went from wooden points to flint points on spears someone said the gods were going to eat them for it.
anything and everything can be an addiction, depending who you ask. I'm really starting to get tired of people labeling something an addiction just because they feel people are indulging a little too much for their taste. Nobody has that perfect balance of just the right amount of time spent doing any given activity, according to everyone else. Does this mean we all need help? Or perhaps this means we should just stay out of other peoples' business.
Oh you nailed it there: I know that some adictions are real, chemical problems. But there is a huge addiction industry out there waiting to capitalize on people's need for a number of things. The industry didn't start the addiction craze, I don't think: it just capitalized on it. Plus, there are people who benefit, as with anything, from parts of it. But addict is the new communist, or witch, or bigot, or phobe, or what have you: it's a way to railroad people under the couch cushions of concern. Note that addiction is always to pleasurable items: this is the best way to control people. 1984, anyone?
Big Brother, indeed. leo, I was just gonna say that very thing.
Yes Leo. Write an article about it, get enough believing it, make some money. Cure the non sick.
You can't enjoy anything anymore with even a bit more enthusiasm than the unspoken norm without some clown coming along and claiming you're an addict. Then they can start one of those twelve-step groups so people can go get reprogrammed or whatever they do in those damn things. Hell with that. Don't let anyone convince you that you can only enjoy life within a strict set of narrow parameters which are never talked about but seemingly universally understood.
Plus, although I did not read the article, I cannot stand the premise of, "hey everybody, you know that thing that's cool that everybody likes? Yeah, that cutting edge new thing that's all the buzz and the rage? Sit down and I shall tell you about all the dangers, all the things that just might happen to you, I will replace your old tired fears with new fresh ones, and it'll make you buy things!" LOL!
Exactly. At the end of the day, it's all one huge marketing scheme.
There would be no need in keeping the anxiety level in people artificially high unless it was discovered one could profit from it. Are people more likely to be consumers in general if they are more fearful?
Fear is a powerful motivator, that's for sure.
Oh yeah, I'm hip. Think of how many people out there with soapbox and bullhorn try to convince others to hook up with organized religion, guess which one, by spouting some variation on "repent or else!" Or else? You want me to hook up with your Borg collective by throwing an or else at me? Makes one wonder how many are in religion simply because they're afraid of the hammer falling clonk right on their heads if they didn't.
Good Lord, I'm a cellphone junkie. Lord have pitty on me.