Phones Are Everyone’s Fourth Biggest Problem

But fixing your phone use can make problems one, two and three look a lot more manageable

I’m off this week. No commute! So in a reflective mood.

I’ve been writing on Substack now for three months. To say I have enjoyed it is an understatement. I’ve been thinking and reading about phones and the mind for years, and it’s so satisfying to work it through in writing. There have been over 15,000 views of these pieces now - although the majority were me checking for typos.

And last week a lot of people said hello on the commute. Maybe it’s the warmer weather.

Here’s the truth though. While people were supportive, and while everyone hates phones, I got the sense that phone use is no-one’s number one worry.

I get that. There’s very real problems in the world. And we’ve each got our own particular thing that keeps us up at night.

People were definitely bothered by other people’s phone use. Maybe their husband or their kids.

But their own phone use? Everyone recognises they use it too much, and everyone has tried and failed many times to reduce it.

But, if they were drawing up a list of worries, they’d likely put it at around number four.

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Meanwhile, in Ancient Rome

Boethius was a man with problems.

A high-ranking Roman official, he had been accused of treason and imprisoned. He suffered the indignity of a sudden and dramatic fall. He then suffered the further indignity of being a story in every self-help book ever, which is where I encountered him.

In the months he spent in his drab cell, Boethius narrated his journey from rage at his bad luck and intense fear of his upcoming execution, through to extraordinary peace and acceptance.

He described a series of imaginary conversations with Lady Philosophy, who helped him see comfort in the transitory nature of fortune and his own virtue. He couldn’t change his circumstances, but he could change how he perceived them.

The resultant work The Consolation of Philosophy is said to be an exceptionally powerful expression of an important truth. If you change your mind, you change your world. Our internal perspective doesn’t just observe, it creates everything.

We see this truth again and again when we see people in fabulous circumstances who are deeply unhappy, and people in the worst who have managed to be cheerful.

Boethius didn’t change his situation, or solved any of his problems. But through a brutal internal struggle, he came to peace with them.

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The cruellest punishment of all

Let’s try a thought experiment for a second.

In prison, Boethius complained of being cut off from his library. He only had his own thoughts.

Let’s imagine that wasn’t the case.

And some evil Roman jailer put a phone in there with him.

I’d bet he’d never have been visited by Lady Philosophy if Lady Tiktok was there to tempt him.

I find it near impossible to get my thoughts together if I have a phone to hand. My train of thought begins on its journey confidently, then I instinctively pick up the phone and before I know it I catch a glimpse of my train of thought chugging off in a totally different direction and I know it’ll take ages to turn it around.

And I’m especially vulnerable to the phone if times are hard. Boethius would have alternated between repeatedly refreshing the status of his appeal application on the Roman government’s website and then the hardcore distractions of 10 Gladiator Fights That Shocked Everyone.

I’d bet he would have found himself scrolling the platitudes you can get on Facebook, Instagram and (yes) Substack Notes. In a cruel twist of fate, some of these platitudes would have been exactly the “our life is the creation of our mind” message he needed. But Boethius wouldn’t have been able to absorb them in bite-size. Minds don’t work that way.

My bet is that a phone would have been the very cruellest punishment you could give Boethius.

My bet is he needed silence and introspection to come to that extraordinary peace.

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Phones hide their true damage

In the years since I made my daughter cry, I became fascinated by my failure to reduce my phone use and determined to do anything to cut it down.

But if at any point you’d have asked me what really kept me up at night, it would be work worries. A combination of “Why on earth did I say that to Clive in that meeting, I’m such a doofus” and “Aaargh! AI is going to take my job”.

I had no idea that my seemingly unrelated efforts to tackle my phone use would help me handle all these (very real) worries much better.

But I should have figured this out.

Phones squeeze out healing periods of being bored, of silence and introspection. Those times when the brain’s Default Mode Network is left to breathe.

Phone use, with its constant checking and fixing, makes us feel more anxious. That anxiety doesn’t just manifest as a general state, we feel anxious about something. The thing we are anxious about isn’t a made up thing, it’s a pre-existing real thing - we just view it more darkly.

In this way, phones hide their damage.

Then, when we are at our lowest ebb, phones present themselves as omnipresent distraction to relieve this anxiety.

It’s quite the trap we are caught in.

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Though I hope your problems aren’t as bad as those facing Boethius, I’ll bet they feel more pressing than your inability to put down the phone.

Boethius would definitely have noticed his scrolling addiction. But I’d reckon he’d put it at problem number four, behind his loss of status, his imprisonment and the fact he would soon be brutally beaten to death.

Phone use isn’t his biggest problem. But it is what’s standing in the way of him finding peace.

Clear a bit of space for your mind, then look at your problems afresh.

[Images by AI, words all human]