‘I notice the world more’: how to escape the cycle of constant phone use
Excessive mobile phone use is being described by experts as an addiction similar to playing the pokies. But there are steps you can take to regain your concentration and meaning in life.
When science writer Catherine Price found herself compulsively scrolling eBay postings selling Victorian doorknobs on her mobile phone, she knew she had a problem. Her home renovation was complete and she didn’t need another Victorian doorknob.
But it was the wide eyes of her tiny baby girl, attempting to connect while her mother’s attention was elsewhere, that clinched Price’s realisation that her obsessive phone use was robbing her of the small moments of connection that make for a meaningful life.
“I had these moments where I would find her looking up at me and I was looking at my phone,” Price says. “That was really the moment that clinched it for me, the realisation that this is the impression I’m giving my daughter of what her relationship is with her mother, and that is not OK.”
The personal revelation of the destructive impact of mindless mobile phone scrolling and the way it interrupts relationships kicked off a years-long scientific project for Price exploring the ramifications of compulsive phone use. “I wondered what does it mean to have a whole society of people who are no longer making eye contact,” she says.
“As I researched more I discovered that basically your phone is packed with dopamine triggers. The bright colours on the apps, the anticipation of notifications and updates, the unpredictability, they’re all huge dopamine triggers and have pretty much the same effect on our brains as playing a slot machine.”
Price – who went on to write a book entitled How to Break Up with Your Phone – is not the only expert to assert that compulsive mobile phone use is a behavioural addiction similar to uncontrollable gambling, particularly playing pokies.
Psychiatrist Ian Hickie says one of the reasons it’s so hard for some people to put their phone down is the constant reinforcement many apps provide, that keep the brain in a state of seeking and obtaining constant rewards.
“It’s called intermittent reinforcement,” says Hickie, co-director of health and health policy at the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre, who discussed the phenomenon in a recent podcast. “They use visual cues, they use audio cues, they provide constant updates. It’s exactly like pokies. Mobile phones are extremely attention-grabbing and that is very arousing for the brain.
“But our systems are not built to be excited 24/7. And many people end up in a chronic arousal situation, a chronically stressed situation, and then people don’t sleep, they don’t turn off, their brain doesn’t restore and back up.
“There are also other health consequences of this state of chronic arousal when systems don’t flip over into a restorative phase. There’s a ‘wear out’ effect, a kind of burnout.”
The consequences of this constant state of “switch-on” or arousal – induced particularly when phones are used in the hours before bed, extending the window of time in which the body is exposed to light and thus altering the body clock that is so crucial to mental and physiological regulation – could be extensive, according to Hickie.
“The extent to which night-time light exposure is associated with an increased rate of mental health problems is significant,” Hickie says. “The problem is it’s turning the system on or keeping the system on when it should be off. It’s keeping all of those cortisone, adrenaline, immune factors on when they should be off.
“And the downstream effects of that, it could lead to premature ageing, impaired immune function over time, or in the long term potential increased risk of cancer when immune surveillance fails.
“And the increased adrenaline, sympathetic nervous system sort of stuff can increase the risk of hypertension, heart disease, premature cardiovascular disease. And because you’re wearing out your brain, there may be an increased risk of dementia. So you’ve got all these kind of accelerated ageing, degenerative processes accelerating because you’re not dealing with the restorative processes on a 24-hour cycle.”
Hickie suspects the potentially profound health consequences of mobile phone addiction are only just beginning to be understood, particularly as awareness grows around the importance of a balanced cycle of arousal and rejuvenation occurring within the body’s 24-hour clock.
But the concept of compulsive phone use as an addiction is still a matter of controversy. It was only a decade ago that the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of psychiatric disorders recognised out-of-control gambling as a diagnosable addiction. Some say it’s time to look at including compulsive mobile phone use in the DSM.
Author David Gillespie, a lawyer and researcher, agrees there is no doubt phone use can be an addiction for some people, primarily via social media apps.
“The phone is just a platform for multiple things designed to deliver addiction,” says Gillespie, author of the book Brain Reset. “Addiction is our reward system going wrong, it occurs when you overstimulate our reward system.
“Social media is explicitly engineered to be addictive, firstly through the ‘like’ mechanism and the endless browse mechanisms.
“That gives us a reward shot of dopamine through a mechanism called oxytocin, which makes us feel good. We get the same thing when we get a hug from someone, but social media delivers the reward at a high speed and frequency. And whether it’s drugs, porn, gambling, whatever, it does the same thing because it uses exactly the same mechanism in the brain, it changes our set-point, so that we become accustomed to those hits.
“So the brain adjusts upwards our threshold for what we need to be stimulated, and we want more and more and more of the thing that’s delivering the addictive hit.
“That change in our biochemistry, that change in our brain is a semipermanent one. The science is absolutely clear that if we change the thresholds in parts of the brain, we’re more likely to be anxious, more likely to be depressed and more likely to be unable to focus.
“It’s a very, very big problem that we are handing people mechanisms which deliver addiction 24-hours a day, in their pocket. And it is no surprise to discover that rates of anxiety and depression are accelerating wildly in today’s society.”
There are online quizzes people can take to determine whether their phone use is likely to be classified as compulsive. One of the best is the Smartphone Compulsion Test run by the US Centre for Internet and Technology Addiction. It asks questions such as: “Do you sleep with your cell or smartphone (turned on) under your pillow or next to your bed regularly?”; “Do you text, email, tweet or surf while driving or doing other similar activities that require your focused attention and concentration?”; “Do you feel ill-at-ease or uncomfortable when you are without your phone?”
Price has developed a 30-day plan to “break up” with your phone that includes measuring your app usage, putting limits on your internet time and deleting social media apps from your device. But once basic limits and boundaries have been set, the plan progresses into a strategy that for many people, including Price, has resulted in a life transformation.
“It’s important to have a philosophical approach to it in terms of knowing what your goal is,” Price says. “When I spoke to people who wanted to cut back their phone use, people would say things like ‘I find I can’t be present with my friends and my family’ or ‘I feel like an automaton’.
“But when people try to scale back their phone use, they don’t realise that if you’re going to try and change a habit by removing something, you have to figure out what an alternative is. I really do recommend people ask themselves: what’s something you would like to do more of?”
This is also in line with Hickie and Gillespie’s recommendations. The best strategy in their view is to replace all of that time you were spending scrolling and checking likes or emails with a different activity – but not just watching TV or bingeing on Netflix.
We’re talking about slow, restorative, immersive activities that restore that sense of concentration that is so nourishing to the brain and encourages the wind-down process that is crucial in the couple of hours before bedtime. Experts suggest starting with putting the phone down for just 10 minutes at a time, and slowly extending it.
Top recommendations include establishing a yoga practice, going for a walk in nature, learning a musical instrument or language, taking up a hobby such as crocheting, knitting or pottery. Playing team sport is an excellent choice, or homebody activities such as playing board games, keeping a daily journal, writing letters to friends, baking cakes or taking up a course of study.
“The things to replace phone use with are the things that stimulate dopamine but in a healthy way,” says Gillespie.
“So some things that stimulate dopamine are intense focus. Find something where you can be absorbed and entirely focused on for, say, an hour at a time, without stray thoughts entering your head. It might be building model aeroplanes, it might be knitting, it might be yoga, whatever it is. If you can get to that state where your brain is entirely focused on that thing, then you are effectively substituting the dopamine hit that you get from the addiction.”
Hickie agrees. “To maintain those synaptic connections in the complex, creative parts of the brain, you need to use them. It’s a use it or lose it type of situation. And the mental health benefits are enormous.
“Utilising these parts of the brain is connected to developing a really strong sense of who you are, a sense of perspective and a sense of your relationship with yourself and in the world. It’s a sense of going inside your own world. And the stress arousal response goes down, but in a really creative way.”
So it doesn’t really matter what hobby or activity puts you in this state of mind as long as it’s something you can lose yourself in. If you choose reading, it doesn’t matter if it’s Dostoevsky or airport trash, as long as it carries your mind away and absorbs you.
For Price, the benefits of following her own advice have been life-changing. She has learned guitar and now plays in a band, with the pursuit leading to a raft of new and deep friendships. She also has developed a love of plants and foraging.
“It’s made my relationships much deeper and it’s led to new relationships,” Price says.
“My focus and my attention span are markedly different. I think I just notice the world more, I notice where I’m directing my attention. Because in the end our lives are lives are what we pay attention to.”
