Put that phone away and start a conversation

This image of a student f ixated on their phone is ubiquitous in university. Fearful for the future a UCD lecturer makes an impassioned plea...

JUST a decade and a half ago it would have been a struggle to force your way into the smoking area of UCD. The air heavy with smoke, students of different ages and disciplines and from across the political spectrum would chat, debate and cajole one another. It was stimulating, often irreverent: it was just what liberal arts students expected college life to be like.

In 2017 that same space is almost unrecognisable. Last week I was met with the sight of 34 students sitting eerily silent, backs hunched and faces illuminated by an LED glow. Every person was staring at, lost even, in their smartphone.

Do not get me wrong, it is an achievement that far fewer students are smoking in 2018 than 15 years ago. However, young people today face a different scourge – an addiction to their smartphones and social media, and the unknown mental health risks lurking in their obsessive consumption.

Irish people have the highest rate of mobile phone ownership in the EU. Three million own a smartphone. A study recently suggested that people on average check their mobiles 150 times a day.

In America, 2012 was a watershed – the point at which over 50% of the population had smartphones. According to a 2018 paper by researchers at San Diego State University and the University of Georgia, the following four years saw a rapid decline in satisfaction with life as a whole, measured in terms of mental wellbeing, and personal satisfaction, among adolescents

In an article in the September 2017 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Professor of Psychology Jean M Twenge reported that ‘all screen activities are linked to less happiness’ and that rates of teen depression and suicide have increased astronomically since 2011, correlating almost exactly with the rise of the smartphone. ‘Eighth-graders [aged 14-15] who spend 10 or more hours a week on social media are 56% more likely to say they’re unhappy than those who devote less time to social media,’ wrote Twenge, author of the book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood – and What That Means For The Rest Of Us.

CONTRAST that with the happiness reported by those who socialise in person with their friends: they are 20% less likely to say that they are unhappy. But how addictive is the smartphone? US psychologist Dr David Greenfield draws on the studies from the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, whose experiments with dogs formed the cornerstone of modern understanding of repetitive behaviour.

Pavlov discovered that if he played a sound before mealtimes, the dogs associated it with food arriving. Eventually, he noticed that if he played the sound, even if food did not arrive, the dog began to drool in anticipation. That is exactly what happens with mobiles, says Dr Greenfield, the founder of The Centre for Internet and Technology Addiction, and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut School Of Medicine ‘That ping is telling us there is some type of reward there, waiting for us,’ he said.

The peer-approval experienced when people ‘like’ your photos causes dopamine to be released in your brain. This is the same chemical that all drugs cause your brain to release, quickly leading you into addiction. Similarly, people experience withdrawal symptoms comparable to drug addicts when they do not have their phones to hand.

‘What we are seeing now is a generation which has reflected self-esteem. Their self-esteem is not based on their direct experience, or they are not even experiencing it. What they are doing is experiencing the opportunity to photograph, record and post their lives, with the hope somebody will acknowledge what they are doing so they can decide whether what they were doing was okay or not.’ Dr Greenfield has said.

Some might argue the smartphone is no different to other technologies, and those who point out its addictive effects are Luddites. Of course mobile phones can be invaluable. They give ready access to information and new ideas. There is ease, even a comfort, in being able to contact someone immediately. But there is something qualitatively different about our use of the smartphone and the programmes built into it. These devices and their connection to social media are specifically designed to be addictive. The likes, the friending, the adulation evoke a pleasurable response, one that we hope for and crave with every new ping.

Many argue that tech giants are no different from the vast tobacco corporations of old.

So what do we do?

THE website of National Public Radio in the US spoke to filmmaker Tiffany Shlain in San Francisco whose family turned off all devices for 24 hours every Friday. ‘During the week, [we’re] like an emotional pinball machine responding to all the external forces,’ Shlain says. The buzzes, beeps, emails, alerts and notifications never end. Shutting the smartphones off shuts out all those distractions. ‘You’re making your time sacred again – reclaiming it. You stop all the noise.’

Dr Greenfield suggests turning off notifications as a first step to weaning off smartphone obsession and constant checking. ‘It reduces the likelihood because the notifications are letting you know there may be a reward waiting for you.’

Whether it is drink, or rich food, or jogging, you are always advised: everything in moderation. When I think of that dystopian vision in the UCD smoking area of youngsters frozen in silence, hooked on scrolling, communicating only through devices, I fear today’s young are losing something else.

Out of curiosity I posted the following message on Twitter: ‘Today I counted 34 students sitting in a shared-seating space, silently staring at their smartphones. 16 years ago in the same space (the smoking area @ucddublin), all you could hear was talk & laughter among students. The smartphone addiction is killing society.’

I received over 150 replies. One from a Dublin county councillor, whom I know well, said he learned more about politics in his years in that smoking area in UCD than he had in nine years as a county councillor.

While the air was thick with smoke, it was bruised with discussion. Staring into an LED screen will never give you the interpersonal skills to listen and debate, to challenge one another, to engage a different point of view, or to learn to adapt arguments. Instead, many are occupying ‘echo chambers’, and constantly experience the reciprocation and approval of their views – they shy away from challenges, from face-to-face interactions with other people.

You might start a conversation that will challenge what you think. You may make a friend. Put away the phone. Take a risk: start a conversation.