Maybe It Would Be Best if I Threw My Phone Into a Lake

According to mothers around the globe, if something ails you, the solution is likely one of two things: you need to drink more water, or you need to spend less time on your phone. Even the kids are of that opinion now: coming into the mid-2020s, our culture seems to be having a reckoning with technology and our relationship to it. Look anywhere online, and you’re sure to see posts about digital detoxing, hating phones and how the internet isn’t fun anymore. You're probably familiar with the dumb phone discourse or the rise of people opting to ditch social media. People are wrestling with phone addictions and declaring that technology is cooking our brains.

Once proclaiming an exciting new frontier, ushering in an era of increased connection and information, tech optimism has largely been replaced by antipathy towards the digital world. There is a growing awareness that this iteration of the online space isn’t serving us anymore and is starting to harm us mentally and socially. Sometimes I wonder if there are even any people on the internet anymore. Maybe it’s all bots and advertising. Maybe it’s making us dumber and angrier. Maybe I spend too much time online. Maybe it would be best if I threw my phone into a lake. 

Perhaps the biggest perceived evil of the internet today is its effect on attention. A widely circulated claim is that the internet, screen time and/or short-form video are killing attention spans. According to a decade-old article from Time magazine, the internet age has shrunk human attention spans to be less than that of a goldfish. I’m not sure that particular assertion is true, but it is true that scientists have measured declining focus since the 2000s. Gloria Mark, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, logged how much time people spent on one device activity at a time (e.g., reading emails, typing an essay, checking social media). In 2004, the average time spent on one task was two and a half minutes. More recently, that has dropped to 47 seconds (at least that’s more than a goldfish’s nine seconds). Certainly, the internet is shaping the way we focus in negative ways, and for negative reasons.

It seems like social media specifically has become perpetually distracting. Per neuroscientist Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, the attention problem isn’t necessarily a function of a decrease in inherent ability, but of tech companies doing their best to alter people’s behavior. The internet now is designed to be addictive; social media platforms are engineered to be exploitative because their business strategies are based on how much time they can get users to spend on their platforms. Referring to this design, Natasha Schüll, a cultural anthropologist and associate professor at New York University, compared social media platforms to slot machines: they provide rapid but unpredictable rewards. When one gets a like or sees a shiny new reel, their brain releases dopamine, and a search for another hit keeps them coming back. Infinite scrolls, nonstop notifications, and algorithmically personalized feeds contribute to the adoption of compulsive behaviors. 

On top of that, social media is engineered to foster echo chambers and rage bait. The algorithm measures engagement and pushes posts that get the most. When a user sees something that makes them mad, they comment or share, or stay on the post, which the algorithm takes as engagement and uses to amplify the inflammatory content. Conversely, people support content that supports their beliefs, which trains the algorithm to show them more of that type of content, putting users into echo chambers and driving polarization. Not to mention the fact that platform’s priorities have moved from connections with family and friends to corporations and celebrities, or that social media has become ground zero for rampant misinformation—don’t even get me started on all the problems with generative AI.

Despite my grievances, I have never known a world without the internet, and it would be impossible for me to deny all its benefits. I look stupid stuff up literally every day, and social media helps me keep in contact with people I can’t access in person. Social media is home to all kinds of cool, creative enterprises, and Web 2.0 has given people unprecedented access to the world and to each other, democratizing information sharing and providing everyone with a voice. News is easier to access than ever, and Wikipedia exists, which is a big pro in my book. As Mark noted, cutting oneself off from the internet completely is unnecessarily penal. And, to be honest, nearly impossible with the way the world is set up today. 

Tips for minimizing the negative effects of internet (over-)use generally include making it harder to access. Schüll and other experts have suggested things like hiding your smartphone when you need to focus or setting screen time limits. Another recommendation is deleting social media apps from your phone and using the platforms on a computer in the browser. I personally do this, and I’ve found it really helpful. (It’s obviously also really inconvenient, but that’s the point.) In general, just being mindful about how you use the internet and how it affects you can make a significant difference in how you choose to interact with online spaces (or don’t). I don’t think the whole of today’s technology needs to be disowned; I neither desire a return to pre-internet society, nor believe it’s possible. 

With all that said, there’s one area where I think a return to analog living might be for the best—music and entertainment. It’s no secret that streaming service prices are rising. Shows and movies get shuffled around platforms, and sometimes, they disappear altogether. I don’t know about you, but growing up, I had a collection of movies and shows (well, my parents had them). Those movies were on a constant rotation, and a lot of them I feel really connected to. I feel like the plentiful options people have today could limit how much media they let make an impact on them. I am wholeheartedly behind the idea of making a physical collection of movies. Plus, if you pay for a physical copy, you don’t have to pay to watch that movie again. And you would own it! And no one can take it away! 

I am also an advocate of collecting music. Spotify sucks for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is where their money goes (it’s not to artists, I’ll tell you that). Buying albums instead of streaming them means monetarily supporting the artists you love, and, in my opinion, a deeper connection to the music. I’m not saying everyone needs to start a CD collection (although I have one and think it’s great); a digital “analog” solution like an MP3 player is also good. It has the benefits of streaming—portability, wireless listening, playlisting—but I have full control over what music is on it, it doesn’t charge a subscription, and it’s like a library of my favorite songs. 

The other good thing about physical media is that you technically don’t have to pay for access if you don’t want to. If you have a DVD or CD player, a trip to the library provides a lot of options. Berrien Springs Community Library has a ton of movies, from “One Battle After Another” to “Hamnet” to “Wicked” (both parts) to “Sinners” to—you get the point, they have a lot of movies. Closer to home, the James White Library houses numerous DVDs (including a shocking amount of BBC dramas), and the Music Materials Center has a varied collection of CDs and vinyls, which can be played on the library’s players.

I still stream a lot of music and watch movies over the interwebs. The digital age is, like everything else, a double-edged sword. I share some concerns over how we use technology, but I think there is a lot of good that comes from the new ways we connect, too. I’m not going to throw my phone into a lake, but I think that adapting to technology involves using the tools at our disposal wisely, and, in some cases, recognizing when what is tool-shaped is not really a tool.