Saving Ourselves and Our Children from Smartphones. Where to Begin.
All aspects of our lives can be managed from the small black screen of our smartphones. But, how do we teach our children to have a better relationship with them than us? Plus, an app that can help.
In Never Stop Learning this week I will be covering the following 1-2-3:
One Big Thing - Saving ourselves and our children from smartphones
Two Recommendations
The impact of social media on our brains
What happens when our minds are overstimulated
My Top 3 articles of the week
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One Big Thing: Saving ourselves and our children from smartphones
Imagine an experiment where we gave a group of people a device that contains the entirety of human knowledge since the dawn of time and allows them to interact with each other 24 hours a day.
That would be really interesting right?
Well of course, it’s worse than that.
We have given these devices to EVERYONE.
The genie is already so far out of the bottle that its impossible to even consider getting it back in. The world economy is totally dependent and by definition so is the way of life of the world’s population. There are very few places in the world that are not touched by the mobile phone.
Add on top of that, the scourge of social media. That place where many of us on Substack have come to avoid. The echo chambers, the magnification of false and disturbing narratives. The pollution of the pure meaning of truth.
People are now set in a spiral of not knowing what is true. The advent of AI has the potential to make this even worse.
This subject has come to the forefront of thoughts in our house recently. Our daughter has just turned ten. She regularly flips between acting 4 and 18 and then back again. All in the space of a few minutes.
She is a classic pre-teen.
But the subject of phones and whether she should have one has suddenly become a big issue.
In her final year of primary school her year group are allowed to walk to school. For her, it’s a 15 minute walk that comprises crossing one busy road, a walk across a park and then through a rather lovely neighbourhood before reaching school.
However, a few of the parents have immediately responded by giving their children the latest IPhone 15! It’s totally unbelievable. Do they not see what they’re doing to their children?!
Sorry, I will calm down.
You can see the immediate problem this creates.
Once one child gets a phone, they all want one. It’s like an arms race. It suddenly becomes the most important issue in their lives. Hormones are rising, small things become big things but the peer pressure is immense and the need to keep up with their friends becomes all encompassing.
Thankfully, it is only a small number of who these devices so far. This means they aren’t all Whatsapping each other or sending snap chats yet.
Yet. Yet indeed.
One girl has already been caught watching YouTube at school and some of the boys got in trouble for Googling all kinds of stuff. Inevitable maybe.
So what can we do? As parents it’s a minefield that previous generations didn’t have to deal with.
So far we are holding to the line that she can have a phone when she starts secondary school next September but it will be a basic phone that allows calls (remember them) and texting (not Whatsapp).
I have no idea how sustainable this is. Already, the counter arguments are along the lines of:
How will I communicate with my friends who are all in their own groups on Whatsapp?
I will look really “sad” with my Nokia 3410 and people wont like me.
I’m sure I will come back to this subject soon as this one has a long way to run….. within our family and with the wider debate.
What do you think?
I have started a poll on LinkedIn. Here are the emerging results on what people there think is the best age to give smartphones to children….click on the picture to vote here yourself.
In the spirit of Never Stop Learning I want to leave you with some actions to take
My belief is that we should be good role models for our children and that extends to behaviours around our phones.
In particular, I have taken the following actions which are starting to work:
I leave my phone downstairs at night - this has been wonderous to my quality of sleep but also around what I do first each morning.
Not have my phone in the room while I’m doing deep work
Downloaded the OneSec App - did some searching through potential solutions to how people get addicted to their phones and this appeared to be worth a try. See below.
The One Sec App has been a game changer
I posted about this app in a post at the start of this year.
One Sec helps you bring more purpose to your phone usage by adding just a little friction when you load particular apps that you select. I have added One Sec to LinkedIn, YouTube and TikTok. These were the three apps that were taking the most of my screentime so this is where I started.
How it works
Once you’ve downloaded the app you can then choose the app or apps you would like to apply it to.
So for me, when I open LinkedIn, YouTube or TikTok I am automatically diverted to One Sec.
You will be forced to take a deep breath and decide if you really want to spend time in that app or whether it was simply an impulse set off by boredom or habit. It encourages you to be intentional with your time.
One Sec has a few intervention options:
The default option being a few seconds of encouraging you to breathe.
During this time you can decide if you really want to open the app or whether you should be doing something more productive.
OneSec is designed to be annoying
On top of creating a more intentional use of some of your most addictive apps it is designed to have other long-term impacts.
“Long term effects kick in when you get annoyed or upset about “One Sec”. One Sec is supposed to be annoying. By adding additional friction to opening certain apps, your brain rebalances those dopamine-on-demand effects that Instagram or Twitter provide.
After some time, you will notice that your urge to open those apps declines and really helps you to think less about those apps…. which results in lower screen time usage in general.” One Sec Blog
So far then, what are the results?
The app tells me I’ve saved 3 days of my life in the past year. Pretty amazing really. It makes you stop and think about what you’re doing.
Conclusion
I’d definitely recommend giving this app a go. I’m already finding I tap on the apps less as I know those few seconds are coming to add that friction and, in that time, I’m able to divert my thoughts onto something more useful.
It takes some will-power to add the app and get it set up when you know it’s going to annoy at times, but I think it’s totally worth it.
Think what you could do with all that time!!
Two Recommendations - what to consume this week
1. After A Few Minutes of Social Media, This Happens
2. How overstimulation is ruining your life
Top 3 articles of the week
Finding great articles on Substack can be difficult. Fear not, I have been digging deep into the discovery areas of the platform so you don’t have to.
Here are my top three posts to read this week:
The Case For Phone Free Schools by Jon Haidt of After Babel
Want to run faster? Slow down then! by
ofWhy Everything Depends on Setting the Right Priorities by
ofLast week’s post
In case you missed it:
Never Stop Learning Recommendations
A big part of this newsletter is the community we are building. One of the ways we do this is through recommendations and building links between Substacks that share our values. Never Stop Learning recommends these Substacks that I suggest you check out.
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My kids have our old cell phones but it's more like using it as a tablet. They use it as a camera, they can look stuff up, they aren't mobile devises since they don't have a SIM.
They also have to have permission to use it and be able to explain what they want to do.
There is zero social media. They have FB messenger for kids to explore with myself and a few friends but they don't use it much.
Great article Martin! Social media is a huge energy and well-being killer and it's a problem for all of us. I can tell that for me, social media usage to directly connected to the quality of my well-being and mental health! That's why it's crucial to find ways to decrease our time on those apps, One Sec looks like a great app, I'll try it out!