The Psychology Of Phone & Tech Addiction - Adam Alter | Modern Wisdom Podcast 293

There are ways to curate your life so you get the best from these forms of tech without having to just accept the bad stuff that comes along with them, and I think that's the key goal here. That's certainly my goal. I don't want to turn my back on tech, I want to embrace it fully. But in embracing it, recognize what it's doing that's negative.

Do you know anyone who doesn't wish that they spent less time on their phone?

Not many people. Um, I, you know, it's funny, when I, when I speak about this, um, it's been a while, but when I'm in a room with people and I ask them a question, I go- I often begin the, the, the event by saying, "All right, I want to get a, a sense, from one to ten, from all of you, how do you feel about your phone use?" Where one is, "I'm completely happy, I wouldn't change a thing, it's only brought joy into my life, makes my life better, it's enriching my experiences," blah, blah, blah, to ten, "It's destroying my life." So that's the spectrum. And I ask them to close their eyes, so they're all doing it individually, and they put their hands up at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And the vast majority of people give a score between a six and a nine, out of ten, which says that they feel that the phone has done a lot of harm, it's brought a lot of damage. So there, there are some people though, you watch them, you say, "One," you start at the number one, they'll be like ... Now, if you've got 200 people in a room, there'll be a couple of hands that go up at one. And I'll often ask them afterwards, not usually on the spot, but I'll say to them, like, "Tell me about your use, your phone use." And they'll say things like, "I'm in tech, I know I'm unusual this way, but I've got a lot of systems in place, I'm very careful." It's never people who are like, "I just happened to stumble on a perfect way of using my phone." These are people who are serious about what they're doing. So there are a few people, but not many.

So you need the weaponry to be able to fight back?

You need the systems in place. I think the, the word systems is so critical with phones because they, they do everything they can to dismantle whatever self-control resources you have, and the only way you can fight back is by having habits and systems that, that mitigate. That, that, uh, help you overcome those many, many attempts from, from tech companies to, to circumvent those systems.

What are the most common systems that you see people come up with? Is there a common thread between them?

Um, yeah, I ... People sometimes talk about having kind of wishy-washy rules, like, "I will try to do this or try to do that." That never works. It's really hard to go by those rules. It's like dieting, that if you, if you say, "I'm gonna try to eat less of, you know, less chocolate, I'll only have three of these little kind of pieces of chocolate instead of five or ten," that's really difficult. But if you say, "I'm not gonna have chocolate," that's often doable. So I find that people who do the best are, um, they're pretty firm. Like they'll say things like, "Um, dinnertime is completely phone-free for me. Uh, there's no way I'm gonna change that rule, I'm never gonna have any flexibility on that rule. I could be home alone, I could be out with friends, I could be ... No matter what context, when it's, when I'm eating dinner, there is no phone involved, there is no TV involved." And those people seem to succeed, um, and I, I know it's hardline, and some of them do have flexibility and they'll say, "You know, I'm gonna make an exception," but generally speaking, I think having those really firm hard and fast rules works well. And that, that's just one example, but, but generally, having a very firm rule and est- and establishing a habit I think is really important in this domain.