Choice Words
The life we choose and the screens we use
Time changes everything, but rarely all at once. Change often unfolds so slowly that you barely notice it, until one day the explosive colours of autumn are suddenly on the ground, and the trees stand bare in quiet disbelief. The creeping pace of change is reflected when I barely recognise my hometown each time I visit. An eternal river, change meanders its way through the buildings, the streets and the faces. Washing away that which came before, all while I was just getting on with my life elsewhere. (Has it really been a year already?)
Similarly, the devices, apps and technologies we carry with us everyday gradually shape how we spend our time, think and connect with one another. Yet despite the landscape of life shifting beneath our toes, we must remember that we are not merely observing it. Every action we make: a tap, swipe or scroll, reflects a choice.
Since the Industrial Revolution technological change has occurred at an exponential speed, breaking the sound barrier around the mid-20th century as we entered the Information Age. After the war, the United States in particular experienced a consumerist boom. Vance Packard’s 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders warned of a shift into the “Age of Manipulation”. Subliminal messaging was already commonplace in marketing, but developed further during the 50s and 60s. Marketing companies started to make use of existing consumer data in order to find the best way to push products.
Consumers began being targeted for their “pain points”, marketing jargon for the aspects of life that can be improved. This optimising attitude saw us make small swaps; from which dish soap we use to the cars we drive. Products were promised to save us time, make us more attractive and even better people. The manufactured desire to maximise our time and energy landed us at the smartphone.
The IBM Simon, released in 1992, is technically regarded as the world’s first smartphone. Blackberry later increased the demand for devices that could do more than just text and play Snake, but it was the launch of the iPhone in 2007 that defined the smartphone as we know it today.
The iPhone, Steve Job’s magnum opus, was released to huge acclaim. It coalesced the computer, mobile phone, mp3 player, camera, calculator – and more – into a small device that would fit into the palm of your hand. When delivering his keynote speech, Jobs declared “Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone”. That they did.
After the launch of the smartphone, people increasingly wanted to be on their phones as much as possible. As devices cemented their place in daily life, society responded. Apps began popping up for everything. For instance, The Royal Bank of Scotland launched what it claims was the first mobile banking app in 2011, promising to bring customers “closer to their own financial affairs.” It was revolutionary. No more queuing at the bank. Everyday tasks could now be optimised in ways never seen before.
Despite the early optimism, the smartphone and consequent technological advances now have quite a bad reputation. We’re warned of diminished cognitive ability and social isolation. Teenagers are in pipelines and elections are being rigged. How can one imagine that we all agreed to it?
It is much easier to believe that we didn’t, that it was forced upon us. We were tricked by Silicon Valley tech bros into buying smartphones and scrolling our way to our graves. To be clear, there was manipulation. There is evidence that points to the addictive psychology behind our devices and the content we consume on them. A 2023 peer-reviewed study conducted in China, published in Computers in Human Behaviour Reports, showed that the persuasive design of smartphones and their apps, such as notifications and content suggestions, contributed to prolonged screen time, repeated phone-checking habits and distraction.
Teams of developers are encouraged to create apps and operating systems that are as addicting as possible. It’s normal to feel disgusted by this. But look a little closer and we see a team of developers who are doing their jobs exceptionally well. That is: to meet and surpass targets and keep shareholders satisfied. This is what happens when we have a culture that places so much importance on optimisation.
Former Facebook president Sean Parker recalls how social media “pioneers” consciously knew that the products they were creating were exploiting vulnerabilities in the human psyche, and that they did it anyway. Does that make him the villain? Parker has since expressed regret about his choices. He serves as a reminder that the people building these systems are operating inside the same incentive structures as the rest of us.
We can be simultaneously outraged by the tricks that these devices and apps have used to harness our attention and also recognise our own agency within the situation. This is how we can create change. You can pay attention to what’s happening around you and also have the power to transform your experience of it.
The human fixation with what we haven’t got, and our insatiable hunger to get it, has driven the planet into chaos. It is now seen as strange to want less, to do less and to be satisfied with less. It is also increasingly difficult to get by with less.
Notice how the choices in your life are influenced by the need to optimise, maximise and profit. Maybe you work more hours than you actually need to, at a company that you’re not really morally aligned with, but you turn a blind eye as it funds your lifestyle.
Your lifestyle might be shopping at fast-fashion retailers so you can wear a new outfit every time you go out. You might be semi-aware of the harsh conditions of the workers that produce the clothes, but you absolve yourself of any guilt by reminding yourself that you aren’t rich and you deserve to buy new clothes too.
Perhaps you use dating apps to speed up falling in love and filter out potential partners that don’t meet your expectations on paper. You might sense that reducing intimacy to a swipe feels off, but you do it anyway; everyone else is. These choices (and the cognitive dissonance they carry) are not that different from the ones that fuelled the addicting apps that we decry.
Choosing to not use a smartphone will almost certainly inconvenience your life, and is perhaps impossible for the kind of life that many of us live. Choosing to use a smartphone may improve your life, but will alter your sense of time, attention and presence.
Perhaps it’s unnecessary to decide which path you’ll choose, rather to notice that you can choose. To see how small, incremental decisions such as opening or closing an app shapes the texture of our days. Your phone isn’t your villain, neither is it your saviour, it’s your mirror. What you see in it depends on how you hold it.
After recently re-publishing my essay Smartphone Junkies, I realised that although I had reconciled my relationship to the smartphone, many people haven’t. I spent over a year using a dumbphone, and as a result, my approach to life has been irrevocably changed.
During this time, I wrote a paper that was intended to guide people on how they too can live without a smartphone. Although my desire to radicalise people into anachronism has dissipated, I would still like to share my findings and perhaps guide others on how to decenter the smartphone.
Also in the Decentering Your Smartphone series:
Nutritious
Incredible as always