Two days ago, I listened to an episode of The One You Feed, a podcast that explores various topics on spirituality and philosophy. On the show was author Johann Hari, who was discussing his new book called Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention & How to Think Deeply Again. I highly recommend listening to the entire episode, which you can find here.
Hari shares about his experience living without the Internet for 3 months (yes, friends, apparently this can be done) and the evidence revealing our attention crisis. While you may be thinking Hari is anti-technology, he isn't. Instead, he raises awareness of how harmful the current business model of social media is to us and our attention. He advocates for a shift in technology use that could heal and aid our attention instead.
As I listened, I thought about how often my phone makes demands on my attention. Ding! an email. Ding! a Snap. Ding! a Facebook alert. I thought about how often I open my phone with the intent of looking something up and end up scrolling mindlessly and forgetting why I even reached for my phone in the first place. I thought about my students who experience real anxiety when they don't have the pacifier of their phone in their hands.
Who benefits from interrupting me all the time? The social media apps and Amazon, of course. And while I agree with Hari that we need larger, systemic changes to the current, largely unregulated business model of social media, I know there are some steps that individuals can take to reclaim their attention. I had already taken some smaller steps, like assigning specific ring/text tones to the contacts I don't want to ignore (parents, husband, kids), but I needed to make some adjustments.
Here's what I started with --
1. Each morning at school, I set up my phone to play relaxing music in my office (affectionately dubbed "Denise's Spa Room" by the guidance team). Then, I put my phone in a drawer for the day. I stole this idea from James Clear (if you haven't read Atomic Habits, what are you waiting for?). Simply placing a barrier between me and my phone has led to fewer pick-ups.
A caveat -- I do wear an Apple Watch, and I set it up so that I receive text notifications. If a text comes in from Gene or the kids, I get my phone out of the drawer to respond and then put it back.
2. I turned off notifications for Instagram, Facebook, & Snapchat. Yep, OFF. I did this two days ago, and I can already see the difference. I don't think social media is entirely from the devil. (I mean, my doctoral research is on the marketing of public education....) But, those constant notifications, birthed from the algorithms intent on increasing our time wasted online (and our money wasted online) don't deserve the amount of attention I was giving them.
Instead of those apps telling me to open them, I decide when I want to open them. Not surprisingly, I've discovered I'm not missing much at all. What I do like about social media -- connecting with friends and family -- is still there, when I want to use it.
The impact so far is that I feel less distracted, less interrupted, and more fully present in whatever moment I am in. I'm not ready to smash the cotton gin or abandon the Internet entirely for three months by any means, but 19th century Transcendental philosopher Henry David Thoreau was right: "We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us." Our railroad is the technology we use, and it's time we stop allowing it to use us.
No comments:
Post a Comment