Off the Grid: Disconnecting From Technology

Living in this age of civilization, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that our lives are unavoidably intertwined  with technology, to an extent that we once wouldn’t have believed was possible. We use super-fast pocket-sized computers every day to post Instagram stories, go through TikTok, chat with our friends, and even read this article. When you stop to think about the marvels of technology and how far we have come, the world around us doesn’t stop. And people around us don’t stop either. They continue scrolling. They continue liking. 

It doesn’t stop.

There are roughly 3.5 billion smartphones in the world, with a steady increase in users (Georgiev, 2023). Adults not only check their phone on average 96 times per day, but 71% of the users go to sleep with their phone nearby, while also using their phone for at least an hour before sleep. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, average screen times have even increased by 36.7% (Statista, as cited by Kiran, 2023). The reason behind our dramatically rising screen time is simple. Our “seeking behavior”, looking for items that we need, is managed by the neurotransmitter dopamine, and this chemical is released when we find what we are seeking (TED, 2013.) Evolutionarily, this may have been useful in developing cognitive control and other higher-order executive tasks, but this system is now being overstimulated by our cellphone use. Dr. Barbara Jennings summarizes this in a concise manner: us, smartphone users get addicted to not the cell phone itself, but the continuous dopamine loop that is stimulated with every text message that we get (TED, 2013). 

Fulfilling the seeking behavior of getting a text makes us feel good, and encourages us to keep checking our phones. However, phone use in social interactions may come at the expense of real-life connections. Misra et al. (2014) conducted a study on the influence of mobile devices on social interactions. They asked pairs of customers in a coffee shop to either talk about a trivial topic or a meaningful event in the past year for ten minutes while a researcher assessed the quality of the conversation and the presence of a mobile phone in participants’ hands. Out of 100 dyads, 29 had a mobile phone in their hand at some point in the conversation. Moreover, they found participants felt more connected when mobile phones were not present. Pairs who did not use their phones for the allocated conversation time also showed more empathetic concern towards their conversation partner. This illustrates how even just the presence of mobile devices can hinder the quality of the conversations that we have, limiting the connections that we can have with other people. 

The impact of smartphones is not limited to adults. An increasing number of children are exposed to technology at earlier ages, with children gaining more freedom with technology early on. A study on Saudi Arabian families showed that 50% of the children have their own iPads. This is likely due to parents using technological appliances for keeping their child occupied with educational videos, which does not always bring about the desired benefit. According to subjective reports by the Saudi Arabian mothers, 75% of the applications children use are related to games, while only 37.5% are educational (Al-Jarf, 2021). Mothers also express worry about their children’s over-reliance on the iPad, with not only its impact on their children’s eyesight and sleep patterns, but its impact on their social behaviors as well. They indicate that their children prefer to be alone with their iPad rather than play with someone else. This finding is further reinforced with research conducted by Muppalla et al. (2023), which underlines the effect of screen time on multiple aspects of child development, pointing out decline in cognitive, language and social-emotional development. 

However, isolating children from technology is not the solution. In the same study by Al-Jarf (2021), mothers report on the positive influence of technology on their child’s development. Children use educational games to learn new skills, and it is clearly seen in their acquisition of other languages. In this sample of Saudi children, 30% of the children use the iPad to learn English. Another study on Singaporean children also shows that the use of animated e-books can help with learning Germanic languages (Sun & Charles, 2019). 

With that being said, it is palpable that the impact of technology on children is substantial. However, to control their exposure to technology, parents can choose to implement screen time measures to encourage their child to develop a healthy relationship with technology, using it for educational purposes. This can be true for adults as well. Given the negative impacts of unhealthy smartphone habits, adults can also benefit from having set times where they disconnect themselves from technology. 

Regulating screen time is essential to mitigate the effects of excessive use of technology. With the issue particularly surfacing in recent years, most cellphones now also measure average screen times, which can give you important information to take the first step. You can consider looking at how much time you spend looking at social media, and think of how you can lower that number. If you think that you are spending too much time, there are ways to limit your daily use of an application through your cell phone. Instead, you can slow down and observe the fast-paced life we usually miss when we focus on our phones. It is very tempting to keep consuming technology, but sometimes easy things are not the things that we need. <<