The presenter looks into the room. A little test. He asks everyone who does not have a smartphone in their pocket to stand. Margit Vegter (29) from Groningen comes up. Hundreds of eyes are on her. She looks around the room and sees: I’m the only one.
The smartphone, that small device, that is big in everything. He came into our lives a little over ten years ago when Apple presented the iPhone. Where many people in the beginning did not see why they needed such a thing, it is now searching with a searchlight for someone who does not carry one with them.
Goodbye Whatsapp
But they exist. Goodbye Whatsapp, social media and a battery life of a day. Welcome SMS, a two-week battery charge and that retro game Snake.
Groningen Paul Grimmius (36) still remembers the turning point. He became a father over a year ago. “Put that phone down,” it suddenly sounded. “You have more eyes for that thing than for your son. “The mother’s comment slowly dawned on me. “A joke, but with a serious undertone that I felt very well.” The iPhone ends up in a drawer the same day and Paul buys a Nokia for a few tens.
Margit was the only one in the room who stood up, but she is not alone. The 18-year-old HAVO student Yoram Wierenga also goes through life without a smartphone. The parting began when he handed in his phone for a day and a half earlier this year for an experimental school project. On that very day he had a long train journey ahead of him.
For the first time he traveled by public transport without a smartphone. He noticed the whirring wheels, the passing nature, but especially the bowed heads, staring at a screen. And after that day he sees them everywhere. Also at his secondary school in Haren. “They sit in rows in the hallway, against the wall. Really in rows! Crossing your feet, playing games throughout the break and on social media.”
Is it any wonder that the device, with all those apps, attracts us so much? Not according to the American Sean Parker. Parker is one of the founders of Facebook and made a remarkable statement: “Facebook is designed in such a way that our brain is not able to say no to the likes, the photos, the status updates. God knows what it does to children’s brains.”
The Groningen entrepreneur Ritzo ten Cate is very concerned about our smartphone use. He regularly walks through the city, with his camera, chasing people who are being sucked in by their phones. He clicks the moment they look up from their screen and see the ‘real’ world again. “An empty look,” he describes. “From telephone zombies.”
‘Pure phone addict’
And that from the mouth of the man who was one of the first Dutch people to be active on Twitter. In 11 years, he sent nearly 40,000 tweets. That’s about ten a day. “Addicted,” he says. “Pure phone addict.” Ten Cate talks about ‘users’, about ‘kickback’ and ‘relapse’. Like smoking or drinking. “And that’s how I see it. An addiction that you have to learn to deal with.”
Didn’t the same alarm bell sound when the television suddenly appeared in all our living rooms at the end of the last century? Ten Cate sees differences. According to him, five things make the smartphone so relentlessly irresistible. “One: it is always and everywhere available. Two: Everything on the device is practically free. Three: There is an infinite amount, always more news, more photos, more updates. Four: He’s hypersocial. And five: apps are designed to make us addicted.”
Did the goodbye give Margit, Paul and Yoram what they hoped for? As the owner of a dance organization, Paul’s phone was red hot. “That phone took a bit of a hold on my life. If it’s in your pocket, grab it. In line at the cash register, at the traffic light. Now I look around me more. I have more space in my head and the creative processes keep going, because I don’t get distracted all the time.” He works his e-mails bundled, on the computer, at a time chosen by himself.
18-year-old havist Yoram also says he feels very different. That first day without a smartphone, on the train, was the turning point. “I felt really free. A feeling that I did not know, very special.” He describes something that resembles the holiday feeling where the mobile data on the smartphone is turned off. Equally unreachable.
While many of Yoram’s fellow students couldn’t wait to get their smartphones back after the experiment, Yoram’s reunion was different. “There you have it again, I thought. That same evening I sold it to my teacher. Suddenly I had an extra 300 euros for the holiday.”
Resistance
But it does require something. The former smartphone owners describe a period in which resistance to the device increases and a struggle ensues. The first battle is with the social media apps.
Yoram wants to decrease. Several times he throws all apps from his phone. Paul does the same. But they both download the programs again later. That happens at a time of boredom. “You’ll have that app up and running again,” Paul says, holding his Nokia in the air. “That’s why I have this thing now. It is not possible.”
According to Paul, it is difficult to resist temptation. “We respond to our senses. That’s how we were designed and you can’t stop it.” It has been established that a similar reaction occurs in our brain when receiving a like on Facebook as when lighting a cigarette. Yoram: “At first I enjoyed restoring apps, but every time it happened again, I felt worse about it.”
That sounds like a signal for addiction. Is it really that disastrous? American psychologist and researcher Jean Twenge wrote an alarming book about the ‘iGen’; a generation that could not do without a smartphone and becomes depressed and solitary with its use.
Mark Deuze is a communication scientist and as a professor of media studies wrote a lot about the way we use the smartphone. He emphasizes that its use is actually still in its infancy. Ten years is too short to substantiate the alarming reports with studies and figures.
“There are people who love to say that it destroys our brains, but there is no scientific evidence. A German professor calls us ‘Smombies’ and writes books about them, but there is little evidence that smartphone use dulls us.” In fact: “There is more evidence for the exact opposite: contact between families is improving thanks to the smartphone.”
Do you really have to answer right away?
Deuze says he sees the seductiveness of the device. And that a smartphone distracts from the here and now is also plausible, according to him. We have to learn to deal with it, he thinks. “Perhaps in the future people will make a much more conscious choice to use it or not.”
Margit thinks it would work for a lot of people. She has a philosophical practice. People come to her for consultations with all kinds of questions. In conversations she often hears that people think they have no choice. “But very often you do. Do you really need a smartphone for work? I have noticed that it is often very good not to respond to an email immediately. A lot of problems are solved before you answer.” Striking: last week the PvdA came up with a plan to lay down in law that employees may be unreachable. It could possibly counteract stress: occupational disease number one.
‘not anti’
Paul, Yoram and Margit see, perhaps more than others, that the smartphone is used a lot. But all three don’t go up the barricades to convince people. “I’m not anti at all,” says Paul. “That’s bad energy.”
And really: they also miss things. Because such a smartphone is also just damn handy. Yoram immediately found out without a smartphone that day of travel. When he stood at the ticket machine, there appeared to be no balance on his account. “Normally I transfer that directly from one account to another using a smartphone app. Now it couldn’t. I had to call my teacher who had all our phones and ask if she wanted to transfer money.”
What else are they missing? The camera and navigation. Paul was berating himself when he had to navigate on the basis of a printed route map and got completely lost. “And that texting is of course terrible,” says Paul. “So for the c you have to press the c three times.”
Developers also responsible
Where is it going? There seems to be a turning point in the technology giants. Apple recently started providing insight into screen time and users can set time limits for apps. Instagram recently came up with a notification at the top of its timeline that prevents aimless scrolling: ‘You’ve seen everything’.
The American researcher Sherry Turkle believes that developers should take that responsibility. She has been researching the influence of technology on us humans for over twenty years and argues that our smartphone use erodes relationships. Overuse would cause us to lose the ability to engage in spontaneous and deeper conversations with others. She argues that developers should take action, just like food manufacturers should when it comes to sugar, for example.
Facebook also thinks
Earlier this year, professor Mark Deuze paid a visit to Facebook, in California. “Employees there are getting tired of how much ethics is being talked about. They do have a sense of responsibility. ‘Can we add this new functionality? People have so little time already.’ That’s what the conversations are about.”
At the same time, he warns: “Let’s not be naive. We are talking about multimillion companies. Money can be made with mindfulness. It’s the same as Coca Cola saying: drink Coca Cola Light too.”
Mindfulness. Awareness. Anyone who sent an email to Ritzo ten Cate, the ‘smartphone zombie photographer’ last week, received the following reply: ‘I am offline for a few days. No phone, no laptop, no internet, no nothing.’ A conscious choice to step out for a while. Deuze thinks we will see these considerations more often. “Focused during the day with an old-fashioned telephone and in the evening time for the smartphone. Scrolling for an hour can be wonderful.”
But the quick contact and accessibility are still very self-evident. Paul noticed this like no other: “I am now taking a step back from that digital world and that makes the people around me a bit nervous.” Sometimes rightly so, he admits. Because especially at work, his voice is also needed to make decisions. Switching quickly in a group app is very handy. And so the team called on him; this does not work. Paul, grinning slightly: “And yes, now I’m in a bit of a weird situation. Because in addition to my Nokiaa, I also have; a smart phone.”
Keeping the relationship with the smartphone cold is the easiest thing for Margit. She’s only ever used one while traveling; in the Netherlands she always stuck to the simple calling and texting device. “Just like with smoking; I never started it, so I don’t have to stop.”