An alternative ‘12 Step Program for Phone Addicts’
For those trying to break their scrolling addiction, will ‘logging off and going outside’ suffice?
In a September tweet, Stanford University behavioural scientist BJ Fogg predicted that “a movement to be “post-digital” will emerge in 2020". He might make a prescient point — for many, a tide of moral panic has already turned against the pervasive and ubiquitous draw of screens. In what’s been called a “rising epidemic” of addiction to social media, a third of American adults in 2019 said they were “almost constantly” online.
Even Silicon Valley’s finest are getting on board. ‘Angel investor’ and tech-behaviour guru Nir Eyal’s new book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, gives readers tips for how to control their dependence on screentime. It’s not going down as well as his previous book, however: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, the bible by which tech companies learned how to maximise and capitalise on the addictive properties of their apps.
Even Zuckerberg attempts, each time he is dragged before Congress, to pretend to acknowledge all The Bad Things the platform allows, and might not anymore, probably. We are increasingly aware that our device use — and particularly social network use — may not only be bad for our immediate mental health but also the health of the democracies that govern our lives (and in turn, access to healthcare.)
But as public opinion of social media supposedly sours, and those who seek to manipulate public opinion are forced to acknowledge this, the draw of our personal devices remains strong as ever. The debate is still on as to whether we are even able to be addicted to a device. Yet there is a consensus that whether or not it is a causal or symptomatic relationship, mental health issues, inaction and dejection, and problematic levels of use are related — especially for young people.
The conversation swirls around obvious time-suckers such as Facebook, its subsidiaries Instagram and Whatsapp, and Twitter et al, as hardware companies who create the glowing devices, and platforms with similarly addictive design properties — such as Netflix and YouTube — remain cheerfully busy under the chatter. Those who might find ways to lessen their use of social networking platforms — delete the Facebook app, for example — are still distracted and affected by the pull of other apps, games and the internet at large — the screen, and it’s lure away from boring old Time and Space. What many refer to as ‘social media addiction’ could be better described as a more holistic ‘device-’, or ‘digital-addiction’; academics have begun to use the term ‘nomophobia’ (i.e. no-mobile-phone…bia).
Problematic use and its framing as ‘addiction’ has not only generated a defense from the Palo Alto set about who is responsible but also numerous articles outlining how to get oneself unhooked — twelve step programs for the Instagram generation. But will their inevitable ‘get yourself outside’ logic cut it in our 21st Century dystopia?
Understanding the complexities at play makes the spell easier to break — yet reaching for one’s device is often a desire to avoid complexity. This is the first of many parallels to other addictions I’ll discuss, as well as the swirling intersectional vortex of capitalism, political economy, mental health, and the addictive design properties app-makers employ.
Because no matter the ratio of responsibility between you, the board of Facebook, Inc., and Nir Eyal, he’s right when he says: “If you hold your breath waiting for companies to make their products less engaging, you’re going to suffocate”.
‘A human being with technology is exactly like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine’
To be fair, it was Ted Kaczynski who said that and with a barrel of batteries and scrap metal, he was exactly like a domestic terrorist. Are we really as terribly, maddeningly addicted as Kaczynski insists?
Numerous academic studies have confirmed the addictive properties of social networking sites (SNS), wider social media (web 2.0, interactive/user-generated sites such as YouTube and blog platforms) and devices themselves — and the increase in distress or problematic behaviours associated with increase in use.
Whether or not we are addicted en masse or individually, huge effort has gone into keeping us hooked. Devangi Vivrekar’s Master’s thesis from Stanford, titled Persuasive Design Techniques in the Attention Economy, outlines 171 individual ways that LinkedIn — hardly considered a classic ‘timewaster’ — keeps users engaged.
One study by Daria Kuss and Mark Griffiths goes so far as to claim that “SNSs have become a way of being”. A slew of rubbish frankenwords such as ‘nomophobia’ and ‘ringxiety’ have been coined to express the glum chaining of our attention to the device for gratification. Another study concludes that ‘nomophobics’ are more likely to engage in “maladaptive coping styles” in response to stress. This includes behavioral disengagement, denial, self-blame, and self-distraction. A Polish study showed:
“…an increased likelihood of individuals at risk of mobile phone addiction to cope with stress using substitute gratification, resignation, passivity, dejection, blaming others, pitying themselves, and hopelessness (bold, mine). Furthermore, nomophobic subjects were shown to ruminate over their suffering, withdraw from social interactions, and react with aggressiveness.”
Note that these studies are often conducted in Universities, and therefore often upon young students. The behaviours described above are arguably synonymous with a perceived, disdained ‘millennial culture’ (full disclosure, I am one) — a blend of outrage towards others, self-pity and navel-gazing, political correctness, demands for instant gratification (“but I want to earn a living wage and solve the climate crisis nooooow”), etc.
Tech journalist Roisin Kiberd posits that for all intents and purposes, yes, young people are all dependent — especially those engaged in the gig economy:
“Addiction is characterised by abnormal behaviour, but what is “normal” any more? Could anyone stand to live without a smartphone, in 2019, and to go without social media? There will be readers who argue it’s easy, but for a vast number trying to stay afloat in a precarious, internet-ravaged job market, the answer is no.”
The link between phone use and mental health problems isn’t necessarily causal but circular — the economic, social and political conditions within which young people’s phone/social media use becomes an escape pre-dates the escape itself. The existing insecurities of young adulthood are magnified by a digital landscape of distraction and distorted amplification that tells us it’s helping us connect and understand — while draining our time, alienating us, and discouraging sustained action. This unfolds in a number of ways.
‘Time on Device’
In his book The Twittering Machine (2019), Richard Seymour makes a compelling comparison between social media and gambling addictions. An extract published in The Guardian titled ‘The machine always wins’ centers around this similarity; not only in the interaction with an electronic device, delivering radiant colour and pleasing, plinky audio, but also in the removal of attention from the harsh sunlight of real Space-Time to “…the machine zone, where nothing else matters”:
“It is called “time on device”, and everything about the machine is designed to cultivate it. Time on device pinpoints something crucial about addiction. Traditionally, casinos have blocked out daylight and banned anything that conveys the sense of time passing: there are no windows or clocks and, rather than timed meals, there is a constant supply of refreshments. Some gambling-machine addicts today prefer to urinate in a paper cup rather than leave the device. Pubs and opium dens also have a history of blotting out daylight to allow users to enjoy themselves without the intrusion of time. The sense of dropping out of time is common to many addictions. As one former gambling addict puts it: “All I can remember is living in a trance for four years.””
That entranced feeling is one that all device users, but especially problematic users, can relate to — in more than one guise. Occasionally it is a feeling of awe and wonder — the sense that we’re learning, by reading how-to or hot take articles; or connecting, by joining groups and adding our voice. Occasionally it is a feeling of being lost, brainwashed, confused, fraught. (This is not an accident. We will come back to it later.)
While the comparison to gambling helps us understand the physical and experiential contexts of dependent use, a comparison to alcohol can help us understand it culturally. Trying to go cold turkey and log off completely is about as difficult as socialising with a group of British people while trying never to lock eyes with anyone drinking a pint.
We are culturally and economically embedded in the internet. Our excuses for keeping our phones on us at all times can be legitimate: Instagram is a tool for running my business; Uber is how I get around; I’m maintaining a Twitter profile to get work; WhatsApp connects me to my friends and family; Google allows me to learn almost everything there is to know about the world. Almost.
Like the double-edged sword of social drinking, the initial approach can always be justified — as a creative outlet (funny tweet), a connective tissue (FB event), a self-actualising tool (watch videos about how to meditate, because you just can’t turn your brain off at 2am, and the next video might be the one that helps you crack it). It doesn’t take long for us to realise that we might not be able to return to reality with the elixir that was promised us. Recovering alcoholics know that there’s no such thing as dipping into the bar with your mates for ‘just one’, and then going about your merry, healthy, well-spent day.
If you’re drunk on digital information and connection, and so is everyone else, going teetotal might at first feel a little like social death. It requires a completely different pace of life and method of being; not only to the one you have known for more than a decade — for some young people, their entire lives so far — but to just about every other person in the first-world.
We might, then, try to minimise our device and/or app use via a screentime usage app — which presumes that the best way to reduce time spent using apps is to download an additional app. What a reminder, whenever the screen lights up with revelations about our usage, that the best way to proceed is to rely on its agency — not our own.
(NB: I originally included Audre Lorde’s quote about the master’s tools never dismantling the master’s house here, but considering that she wrote it about the erasure of marginalised experience by white feminists rather than ignoring my family cos I’m playing phone Solitaire, I decided it was actually a dick move.)
In a conversation with Miles Ahmad, a 20-something student, about that nameless feeling of being lost, brainwashed, confused, fraught, we discussed the seeming incompatibility of feeling out-of-control because of an inanimate slab of plastic/metal. The ‘conflict’ seemed intangible (although perhaps less so when you remember devices contain something literally known as a ‘conflict mineral’ — the medium is the message, etc.) Miles described his apps of choice, predominantly Instagram and YouTube, as “dementors”; that his reliance on them resulted in his feeling “used”, “less of a person” who was “lacking integrity”.
We decided it was fairly self-evident that apps and devices are designed to keep us engaged. But there were more complex, adverse results also: strong, repeated experiences of confusion and disempowerment. How the design interacted with the content, was key to how it impacted our behaviour.
“Your chaotic, fraught internal weather is not an accident:…”
“…it’s a business model” says Cory Doctorow’s blurb quote on the back of Jenny Odell’s 2019 book: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Although a fairly standard length for a non-fiction, self-help-ish book at just over 200 pages, How to Do Nothing is a vast, overarching look at not only how the hard- and software keeps us distracted, but also the different ways we would be able to pay attention to and be in the world if it didn’t. And therefore the myriad possibilities for living, being, and acting that we are losing when drawn into the perplexing structures of screentime.
This loss can be deeply felt, without the mental capacity to fully comprehend it. A lack of clarity and agency accompanies much of 21st Century life, and they’re somewhat dependent upon one another.
It’s difficult to understand, and act upon, a world to which you’re unable to pay attention for very long. The grating of our attention spans by the ‘attention economy’ is influenced by (and influences) what Odell refers to as “context collapse”. The intake of a modern news feed involves reams of ever-updating information being fed at you on a conveyor belt and, unlike a curated, edited piece of work, quite randomly:
“Let’s take a look at my Twitter feed right now […] Pressed up against each other in neat rectangles, I see the following:
* An article on Al-Jazeera by a woman whose cousin was killed at school by ISIL
* An article about the Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar last year
* An announcement that @dasharez0ne (a joke account) is selling new T-shirts
* Someone arguing for congestion pricing in Santa Monica, California
* Someone wishing happy birthday to former NASA worker, Katherine Johnson
* A video of NBC announcing the death of Senator McCain and shortly afterward cutting to people dressed as dolphins appearing to masturbate onstage
* Photos of Yogi Bear mascot statues dumped in a forest…”
The banal, wacky, and sensational list goes on, and without context, Odell states, without that spatial and temporal context that helps our brains to sort, prioritise and analyse information we are left with “not understanding, but a dull and stupefying dread”:
“Scrolling through the feed I can’t help but wonder: What am I supposed to think of all this? How am I supposed to think of all this? I imagine different parts of my brain lighting up in a pattern that doesn’t make sense, that forecloses any possible understanding. Many things in there seem important, but the sum total is nonsense…”
Economic precarity does not only remove our “margin for refusal” says Odell, it also sees “the stakes for playing along growing.” When we are increasingly less able to have real, sustainable choice in our interactions or earning power, we become increasingly absorbed in the narrative of that being normal. If we are then bombarded with more and more contextless and chaotic information about not only that, but also masturbating dolphins and other dank memes, we are even less able to respond to or resist these structures. Someone has to say it: the 27 shitposting groups you check daily are rendering you unable to collectively organise anything more than what you’re putting in the next meme template.
The feeling of confusion and dread, brought on by the entwined rise of runaway neoliberalism and pervasive technology, feeds itself into a spiral as any addiction will. We feel insecure in the world, so we seek solace in the dopamine hits and algorithmic order of our devices, so we feel insecure in the world — but, in the world, we remain.
The use of usage apps, and the return of Nir Eyal
It’s easy to be cynical about Nir Eyal’s seeming 180 — but he discusses his latest thoughts on unhooking ourselves from his Hooked practices eloquently, and in reference to his own experience. He’s interesting, and convincing (as anyone promoting a book would want to be.)
Eyal explains to TheNew York Times that he found himself frustratingly distracted by his phone, and initially assumed that by curtailing his exposure to the addictive properties of devices he helped to build, he would be able to circumnavigate their pull on his attention. And yet his first attempts did not work:
““I got myself a feature phone that had no apps. I got on eBay a word processor, and all it does is let you type. I made my phone grayscale, which only ruined my pictures,” he said. “I tried a digital detox, but I missed audiobooks and GPS.”
And he was still distracted. He would tidy. He would do laundry. He would read random books.”
Honestly, I wouldn’t say it was a bad thing that he got some tidying, laundry, and reading done. But Eyal’s realisation was that there was an underlying issue of distraction, shiny device or not, and this process reflected an earlier attempt to change his lifestyle — by losing weight. He had at one time been obese, and likens the “proliferation of crash course digital detoxes” to failure-prone fad diets.
“He lost weight only when he thought about why he was eating, he said […] many times we look at phones because we are anxious and bad at being alone — and that’s not the phone’s fault.”
Increasingly, devices are now delivering native screentime apps. Usage tools can help us build awareness, but if we’ve come up against our 5-hour Reddit limit and we want to hide from our friends, family, and all possible adventures a little longer, we can always reset the limit to 7. Greyscale phones and usage apps might help us to be more aware of how we’re using our devices, but what a double bind. We must have not only awareness but curiosity and agency with which to drive the rest of our experience. Yet, it is this curiosity and agency which the dopamine-hit of usage suppresses.
Journalist Nellie Bowles, author of the NYTimes article on Eyal’s 180, puts into words what many of us will be thinking:
“The phone-hooked need to figure out why they are so uncomfortable waiting in line without their screen and what they fear around them, he wrote. They need to keep a tight calendar so they know exactly what they’re missing out on.
It is hard and sort of annoying advice.”
Eyal may be acting with a manner of hypocrisy, but he is nonetheless correct that we need to dig deeper than simple amendments.
A non-twelve-step program
A twelve-step program isn’t a quick fix. When suggesting a non-twelve-step program for those who feel hooked on their phones, it’s probably because I don’t fully grasp what enacting a twelve-step program is actually like. It isn’t twelve to-do’s to tick off, and then *ting*: FIXED! It’s an ongoing therapeutic reference tool: AA goers will use the twelve steps daily, often for life…one day at a time.
Those who can’t get along with ‘the God thing’ can find the steps reworked for atheists. Those who are after more simplicity can follow Smart Recovery’s 4 principles. Articles such as the 12 Steps to Facebook Freedom, written in 2014 by a woman who saw it affecting her friendships, have some basic but helpful ideas — drink water, meditate, apologise to friends you’ve ignored.
Whatever you pursue, this won’t be a quick fix either. There are lessons from AA’s original twelve steps that will be useful; many ask us to open up to the wider world, look within ourselves for honesty and integrity around our behaviour, become increasingly exact and clear in our assessments, and make stronger and more honest connections with other people. Johann Hari’s work on addiction and depression has gained traction, outlined in two successful books (Chasing the Scream, and Lost Connections) and a TED talk.
On the road to unhooking yourself from the screen, there will be as many steps as you need to take, and it may be that this behaviour is interconnected with a number of other behaviours and dysfunctions. Perhaps a twelve-step program is indeed appropriate. Maybe short term counselling, long term therapy — if you’re able to afford it — medication, if you have sufficient healthcare. Even if you are simply experiencing heightened malaise, irritation and boredom with a life that sees you measuring the exact amount of time spent staring at a shiny rectangle, then your first step is to dig deeper than ‘putting it down’.
Be clear: it’s not just about forfeiting procrastination in favour of productivity. It’s about being present for the relentlessness of time and space. Odell shows that when we resist distraction, it’s not in order to spend more time on self-improvement, finish that project, lose weight, be more productive and thus “valuable”; it’s to recognise innate value. To have “mere experience of life as the highest goal”. To feel confident enough to experience life with less dependence, greater freedom to choose, and to fully feel — awful, as well as awe. As I continue into my thirties, I’m having one of those realisations that, on reflection, seems obvious — I’m not certain that the road to learning this ends until it ends.
Miles, and all the other 20-somethings I know, are grappling with this too. He outlined for me a perfect example of how inner drive and connection can easily be turned without vigilance. After having a particular disappointment at work:
“…I turned it on my drive home into, like, this mad force of ‘Okay I’m going to sort out my room, I’m going to go to the gym, I’m going to work til I go to sleep’, and then I got home and I ran around, putting my clothes in the wash, and went upstairs and started tidying my room with all this manic energy, and then I just had this feeling like I wanted to use my phone.
I stood up, and I thought… ‘If I lay down, I’m not going to get back up again’… but I remember thinking that *while I lay down to use it*. I spent like half an hour just scrolling through shit. And I turned it off, and I was like… ‘fuck.’ And I’d just lost all that manic energy, it all just dissipated. And I felt so empty. I’d just scrolled through Instagram, and all that real….like integral energy inside me, something felt deeply personal about it, it felt like my life force….it was just sapped in about twenty minutes.
That’s what I mean about integrity. It does distract you from real experience.”
He acknowledges that being hooked to a phone and/or social media is “making us deeply sad” and that we’d be better off “in touch with the present moment, because the universe is in front of us right now.” He has recently made an effort to stop “accompanying everything he does with a soundtrack” of entertainment. What he helped me to acknowledge was that it’s both/and — deep feelings of sadness come from the fucked up content I’ve just seen on Twitter, that exists in the world, external to Twitter, as well as the fact that I feel hooked to Twitter itself. Before 2006, when Twitter was founded, and when I was Miles’ age, those feelings already existed.
Here, rather than twelve steps, are ten ongoing, evolving actions that I find allow me to minimise all dependencies. I have looked, nervously, at my phone — which is currently on silent ‘so as not to distract me while I’m writing’ — 6 times in the last hour.
I’m still working on it.
Read. Actual, physical books that require concentration over time and don’t blast light into your face. If you’re low on cash, consider sharing the cost with a few friends and share the book, or ask for it as a gift. Start with Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing.
Make fewer excuses not to participate. When you try things you aren’t 100% sure about or comfortable with, you’ll find things you didn’t know you were excited by.
As a counterpoint: if something isn’t working for you, don’t keep doing it. Maintain vigilance over the balance between giving up easy, and flogging a dead horse.
Complete Audre Lorde’s Questionnaire for Oneself.
Meditate, sure, but it helps if you know why you’re meditating, what you’re aiming for. Use some sort of guide. (This video from Russell Brand really helped me to understand the purpose of what I was doing — trying to pay attention to my thoughts objectively, not get rid of them. For years, I said I ‘couldn’t do it’, because every time I tried I had thoughts.)
Be outside, without headphones, eyes up. Talk to strangers, if appropriate.
When you meet people, ask them questions about themselves. It’s the easiest way to talk to people, to get to know them and — counterintuitively — to help them feel as though they know you. (I can’t tell you the amount of dates I’ve been on in which I’ve come away feeling alienated because the person seemed very interested, but in impressing me rather than finding out about me…)
Find the flipside of your anger. That power that your anger has is your power, and can also be found in other feelings. Explore and honour all of them.
Find the people already doing the work, political and non, that you want to do. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, other people who know more than you — yet still need your perspective and action — are already on it.
Stop hiding. Seek breakthroughs. (You can’t have them without seeking other perspectives, whether it’s from a life coach, your aunt, or Eckhart Tolle.) All of the above will help.
Jenny Odell, again, p126:
“…we do not live in a simulation — a streamlined world of products, results, experiences, reviews — but rather on a giant rock whose other life forms operate according to an ancient, oozing, almost chthonic logic. Snaking though the midst of the banal everyday is a deep weirdness, a world of flowerings, decompositions, and seepages, of a million crawling things, of spores and lacy fungal filaments, of minerals reacting and things being eaten away — all on the other side of the chain-link fence.”
All the innards and edges of life are inherently slimy, slippery and awe-inspiring. The only intelligent decision is to pay attention — to what, is your choice. It’s the only way to stumble upon the things you’re looking for.