Image: Jean Marc Côté (ca.1899), Rare Historical Photos
Your Ancient Brain Is No Match For The Smartphone’s Digital Opiates:
Way back in 2007, I met a colorful character who worked at a gas station.
He somehow had the money to not only buy the brand new “Jesus Phone”, but to pay for the yacht-owner-expensive data plan.
And by 2011, only ~30% of non-gas-station Americans had a smartphone.
That number is much much higher now, and it’s drastically changed the way we do just about everything.
But for every miracle-save by a Door-Dasher or an Uber driver, there is also a downside.
The truth is both our short time using the internet, and even shorter time using smartphones are something our primitive brains are not ready for.
And a UTA team has the numbers on just how bad that is…
The Short Answer:
- The sudden info-revolution of Internet & Smartphones is both great & awful in different ways.
- 91% of Americans have a smartphone that connects to the internet.
- This “Always On” connected state may not be good for our mental health.
- We’ve had internet & smartphones for just .008% and .006% of the time we’ve had big brains.
- A UTA team tried to see if there’s something about it that’s too much for us to handle.
- ~470 subjects, aged 32 on average were tested 3x over two weeks.
- They were asked to turn off the internet on their smartphones and only use it for calls & texts for that time.
- Only 25% of them completed the program.
- 90% of them reported better mental health, subjective well-being, and attention span.
- 70% of them also had results for Depression & Anxiety that were better than meds can do.
- Their attention-span improvement was equal to reversing ~10 years of cognitive-decline.
- They were allowed to use the internet on computers at home and at work.
- Instead of just watching more movies & tv, the subjects went out and did more “real world” stuff instead.
- These included: Hobbies, Sleep, Social Bonding, and Time In Nature.
- The study authors agree with the existing Anxiety & Depression research that shows we’re not really ready for always-connected smartphones.
- Strangely, photo-sharing sites have not been associated with as much Anxiety & Depression as others like Facebook and Twitter.
Read on to find out the details…
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Modern Tech Has Undermined Mental Health Since At Least The 90s:
So last time, we nerded right the hell out on how the large-scale decision-making of the modern world is causing us all mental fatigue.
That post was aimed at helping you reduce unnecessary noise & work, despite your brain’s ability to adapt.
One part of that was to try to get you to disconnect a little.
Because the internet & smartphones are gigantic changes in about .008% & .006% of the time humans have been as smart as we are,
And about 6+ times less than that since we walked upright.
The Austin team points out this is a particularly relevant problem, since 91% of all Americans now have a smartphone that connects to the internet.
Smartphones Make Internet Addiction Even More Powerful:
So in a study of almost 470 subjects with an average age of 32, the team tried to disconnect people’s smartphones from the internet.
Now if people were already being diagnosed with “Internet Addiction” in the mid-2000s, you can imagine how this went.
But the good-news counterpoint to that is 58% of all smartphone users in the US think they already use them too much.
So perhaps the two-week detachment wasn’t so ambitious after-all?
Even though the phone-control app blocked everything except calls and texts, the users were still allowed to connect at home, work, or school on regular computers.
But as you might imagine, just under 60% of subjects actually installed the blocking app and only 25% of them were able to go the full two weeks.
A Psychology Miracle Happens For Those Who Will Just Unplug:
But that’s where the bad news ends!
Because after doing both self-reports and objective tests at 3 main points in the study,
About 90% of all subjects improved on one of these 3 metrics:
1) Mental Health
2) Subjective Well-Being
3) Sustained Attention-Span
Not only that but for 70% the improvement was so great, their test-results were better than those of prescription meds for Depression & Anxiety!
…WHAAAAT?!!!!
And the improvement in Attention-Span was about the same as reversing ~10 years of cognitive-decline.
Image: Jean Marc Côté (ca.1899), Rare Historical Photos
The Benefits Of Pre-Internet Life Turn Out To Be Very Real:
Not only did subjects show improvement every single day they were disconnected,
They also went out and did more “normal” 1980s, “Go Play Outside Until Dinner”-things.
Instead of just more TV, Movies, & binge-watching, these included:
1) Doing Hobbies
2) Spending Time In Nature & Parks
3) Socializing Face-To-Face
4) Getting More Sleep
5) Forming Stronger Social Connections
6) Gaining A Sense Of Agency
The More Intelligent The Tool, The More It Will Try To Use You!:
So not only do the study authors agree with the idea our brains might not be ready for this persistent connection.
Study author Ward says, “Smartphones have drastically changed our lives and behaviors over the past 15 years, but our basic human psychology remains the same,”
“Our big question was, are we adapted to deal with constant connection to everything all the time? The data suggest that we are not.”
And they aren’t the first, either. Social media use has been associated for a long time with worse results for:
1) Anxiety
2) Depression
3) Self-Esteem
Although to be fair, those results hold most for Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.
Somehow, filters and Photoshop-be-damned, Instagram & photo-sharing use resulted in better scores for those measures.
So Let’s Add One More Item To The Decision-Detox Brain Health List!:
So although we previously waxed poetic about the “Midnight In Paris”-theory, that maybe things were somehow better in an earlier era,
We did give some solid recommendations for avoiding decision fatigue.
These included Information Diets, Decision Diets, Exercise, Meditation, Magnesium, and a few other tricks.
So if we didn’t make the point strongly-enough at the start of that post, we’re definitely making it here.
Let’s all add “Disconnecting Smartphone Internet & Social Media” to that list!
Even intellectual bigwigs like Jonathan Haidt, author of, “The Anxious Generation” would be on the same page with that.
END-ZONE CLUB BONUS!: The app the study used to accomplish these amazing results is called, “Freedom“.
A similar effect can also be achieved with the iPhone’s “Screen Time” feature.
References & Links:
• Source: UTA
• More Coverage: HT-Fatigue From Decisionmaking
• Source Study: PNAS.Nexus – Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being
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