This is the second of a little handful of shorter summer essays - some reader questions, some very strange thoughts that didn’t fit elsewhere.
A few weeks back I was pestering a friend of mine to read something I’d written on here. I am ever anxious as to whether any of this makes sense.
She apologised. She said she had meant to read it the night before, but when she picked up the phone to do so, she instead scrolled away what time she had.
She then added, with unexpected poignancy, “I don’t know why I did that.”
Because I am a terrible know-it-all I started to mansplain my theories.
I still wonder what I should have said.
You wake up and the phone is in your hand and what ON EARTH have you been doing?
And for how long?
You have only so many hours on this earth and you have just spent one of them doing worse than nothing. How much, you wonder, has this added up to over your life?
You’ve read enough stuff to know your brain is fried by it and that you’ve likely just supported a business you hate.
Dragging your attention back to whatever needs your focus, there’s a palpable bleariness. Like your brain ate a tonne of crisps.
You open and close a couple of windows on the laptop.
Around this point a thought arises to check something benign on the phone… did your mother-in-law look at the WhatsApp about picking up your daughter?
But no. You know enough now to spot where that’s heading.
You fling the phone at a sofa. Your face flushes a little and you do a little nervous tic with your fingers. There’s an odd sensation in the back of the head.
I am the very worst phone addict in the world, you say. But it ends today.
And then, if you’re anything like me, a few minutes later the thing is in your hand again.
What are we supposed to do with these moments?
I say a friend said this. I could equally say everyone I’ve ever talked to on the commute. I’m the worst they say - the worst addict of all. You won’t believe this, one person said, but I had to ask my seventy year old mum to set a phone password for me. And then just a few days later I called her up to get the password off her.
But rather than blame the phone, the person telling this story was blaming herself. She was genuinely embarrassed.
I have felt my fair share of self-loathing about phone use. But no more.
It stops here.
Self-loathing is no help.
In fact, it makes it worse - I’m convinced that there’s something in the condition of post scroll self-loathing which begets even more use.
No. Since my very strange mirror experience I take a hard line on this stuff.
A thought arose about using the phone. That thought was produced by the brain at that time for what reason we do not know - we might guess a need for distraction, or purely just from an engrained habit.
Then, later, another thought arose - that the previous decision to pick up the phone was a bad one.
A thought then followed that the entity thinking up the thoughts is a doofus.
And that it should be sure never to pick up the phone again.
But this thought on its own has no power to bind future thoughts. It’s just a thought.
The logic that exculpates you from blame also demands you be deeply pessimistic about your in-the-moment resolve to resist the phone. (Read more about my thinking here.)
It may not be your fault, but it is still your problem.
So a more helpful thought than “Never again” would be: I’ll make a pact with my loved one so we don’t use phones at such and such a time. Or I’ll install a hardcore blocking app.
Personally I found that I later demolished any barriers I set up, sometimes without even noticing. So I decided I needed to switch battlegrounds, to devote a little time each day to watch my mind. And over time I saw the automatic impulse to pick up the phone more clearly. And because I saw it clearly, I could practise resisting it.
The external barriers to phone use - still useful by the way - were joined by internal barriers. My use slowed and I felt much better in lots of ways.
Maybe you’ll decide to go down that route, maybe you won’t. Your call.
But - and I hesitate to be prescriptive but I’ll give it a go on this one occasion - whatever you do, do not blame yourself.
This behaviour is not just widespread - it is near universal.
It is not just automatic - it is default.
I should have said to my friend - I do that. We all do that.
Thanks so much for reading! If you know anyone who’s tired of their phone use (or if there’s anyone whose phone use you are tired of) please share this with them.
This is part of a series of articles following 1,000 hours of silence on the London commute. The very strange story of how that started is here.
All my posts, both new and archive, are free and are neatly categorised at phonefreewill.com.
I don't know if it will work or not, but the "brick" will be here in the morning. I admit I need it. My wife still argues she's fine LOL
This was terrific, per usual! This line hit me in between the eyes! ‘doing worse than nothing’. Yes! Because not only is time lost but it’s usually content that isn’t neutral.