Ep. 390: What Happens When You Ditch Your Smartphone? + Assessing the Internet’s Latest Self-Help Sensation

Those of us in the technology criticism space talk a lot about the harms created by smartphones. And we all know what these are because we live with them. I'm talking about constant distraction or a distorted view of the world or the dumbing down of our brains or the social isolation or the gambling, the porn, the videos of random people fist fighting. None of this is good. We all agree about that.

But here's an idea that I've longed believed. It's not enough to just list the harms. The problem is that phones also have legitimate uses, and the harms when considered in isolation don't really seem so bad in the moment. Your mind might very reasonably ask, is anything really all that terrible going to happen if I look at TikTok for a little bit during my bus commute home? So it becomes hard to convince your brain to put in the effort required for sustained behavioral changes, and this is why we tend to fall back into our old phone habits.

So what would work better? I think we need to also explore the benefits of a life without all this digital noise. We're wired to find motivation in positive images that seem very desirable. This can inspire much more regular action over time than simply listing harms that you want to avoid. What we need in this phone conversation, therefore, is a better understanding of what goes right when you're away from that device.

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