In Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This – the best ‘internet novel’ there is, in my opinion, the narrator invites the reader into “the portal”. It’s never precisely clear what exactly the portal refers to: the internet, the phone that enables it, the social networks that live on both? But one thing is for certain about the portal: it takes you somewhere else.
That somewhere else might be the most important place in the world, or it might be nowhere in particular. It is important, in this time of constant technological self-reproach, to note that our phones really are often good for us: all of our loved ones live in there, and so much of the rest of the most beautiful things in the world. If there wasn’t some good there, of course, we wouldn’t keep going back.
But also all the people that hate us most live in there – and they very often exist for us only within our devices. And many of the worst things are stored in them too; content aimed at making us confused, hurt, hateful. If there wasn’t something deeply unsettling there, of course, we wouldn’t want to stop going back.
Which is, of course, among the many reasons that our phones both thrill and concern us. It takes us away: which might, in times of strife, be exactly where wgar we need . But in an age that both increasingly values presence and makes it harder than ever to actually achieve, not here might be exactly where we need to avoid.
Today, there are what feels like uncountable solutions being offered to this problem of our phones and their ability to distract, incense and confuse us. Devices like the viral Brick phone promise to free us from our phones by temporarily disabling them solutions within our tech such as screen time aim to make it easier to track and limit our usage; and there are growing numbers of articles across the internet that offer one easy tip for fixing your relationship with your phone.
And now here I am saying the same thing.
But this isn’t me proclaiming that I have reached some kind of reached some kind of technological nirvana, where my devices no longer tug at me; one glance at my screen time would be enough to undermine that. It’s certainly not me posing as some wise instructor, who will finally fix your phone once and for all, since I don’t even really have the power to do that myself.
open image in galleryIt’s only to share one simple tip that has profoundly changed my relationship with those devices more fundamentally than any screen time settings or novelty devices for intentionally, if temporarily, breaking your phone could actually do. And it starts with not trying.
Not trying, that is, to constantly push our phones away, which really means keeping them against our hands, even if not in the usual way. And instead to try and notice a little more.
I stole this line of thinking, I must admit, from a monk. (Which does feel like a particularly wicked sin, but I don’t think he would mind.) The point isn’t to try and cast our devices out, but just to sit a little with the feelings that it brings up each time we interact with it.
The habitual notification check reveals itself to be an anxious and largely empty habit. The scroll through Instagram in the pursuit of a quick fix for boredom shows itself to actually just lead to a deeper and more lasting ennui. The instinct to look down at our devices during times of low-stimulation are actually taking our attention away from the constantly enlivening and joyful surprises of the real world, which very often show up only when you give them the right kind of attention.
And, on the other side, the joys. The connection in a short text or a long phone call; the rich memory of a photo seen in a scroll through your camera roll; the instantly available beauty of a song, picture or TV show pulled up from the internet. Each of them richer and more beautiful precisely because the transporting and profound power of being not here is meaningfully noticed.
This, of course, is exactly the kind of insight that makes mindfulness in general so powerful, and people have of course been using it for thousands of years to improve their relationship with all kinds of things. But it feels especially powerful when turned against these devices.
There is a certain glee in turning the power of these devices and the services they run back on themselves. Because if there is one thing that these social networks need and are good at taking from us, it is surely our attention.
Every day we carry astonishingly powerful devices that can create or destroy any given moment. It’s ours to choose what we do with them – and all it might take is a little noticing.