Phone Addiction: Your Phone Is Not Your Friend

A few months ago, I wrote an article for the Life Teen blog called “Curbing a Social Media Addiction.” Where I listed seven steps for teenagers to handle social media addiction or just a phone addiction in general.

I didn’t mention this in the article, but I based it off the 12 Steps in Alcoholics Anonymous.

The first step in AA is to admit that you have a problem. More specifically, that you are “powerless over your addiction.” This is a good first step for an alcoholic because they’re already aware that drinking too much is a bad thing.

Phone addiction is different, though because it’s socially accepted. We need to go a step further. We need to admit our phone is not our friend.

Our phones run like slot machines. Bright colors, addictive apps, randomized rewards in the form of likes and notifications. Phone addiction is well-documented and most people know they spend too much time on their phones. So, why haven’t we done anything about it?

I think it’s because most people think about their phones like I do. I treat my phone like a friend. I take it everywhere, I miss it when it’s gone, and I turn to it when I need something. But it’s not a friend. At its best, it’s a tool. At its worst, it’s an enemy.

I’ve tried all the hacks: deleting social media, turning off notifications, greyscale, etc. But those are all technical changes. My mindset is still the same: I need my phone wherever I go.

The root of any bad habit is usually in our mindset. Life hacks to reduce phone time usually just treat the symptoms of a problem. If I want to become less addicted to my phone, I need to admit it isn’t my friend. It’s just a tool that automates certain parts of my life (communication, travel, scheduling, etc.)

In my short post about the deep life, I talked about the value of getting away and being alone with God and with our thoughts. But what if this was our default? What if silence was my norm and the interruptions of my phone only came when I let them?

In the “friend mindset,” your phone goes everywhere with you and interrupts you whenever it buzzes. This causes a state of distraction that seriously impairs you over time. The friend mindset isn’t conducive to the deep life because at any time your thoughts can be interrupted by something as trivial as a Candy Crush Saga notification. This is the mindset of phone addiction.

In the “tool mindset,” your phone is an afterthought. You decide where your mental energy needs to be spent and then decide how your phone fits into that. For instance, your phone is a great tool to call your mom, get directions, or listen to a podcast (ahem, listen to The Crunch.) But those things don’t require the 4 hours of daily screen time some of us accumulate.

The tool mindset is the first step to get rid of phone addiction. Often it just takes something as simple as leaving it off and in another room until you need it. Starting and ending your day with your phone reinforces phone addiction. If you do that, that’s a great first step you can take.

The tool mindset is great because it allows for the convenience and value of phones without allowing phone addiction to get out of hand. This isn’t a “phone bad” attitude, but a “phone not necessary all the time” attitude.

I plan on writing a lot more about technology and phone addiction in the future. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment and sending me an email.