Is Your Phone Using YOU?!
Are you using your phone or is your phone using you?
As discussed in the last post, your “phone” is immensely powerful. It is capable of helping you interact with the world in beautiful ways and at the same time is capable of destroying your life.
Unsurprisingly, the difference between these two outcomes depends on your awareness and control of your device.
This post (and the next few) will address exactly that, starting with how to more accurately assess the impact your phone has on your life.
The first exercise is a fun (ny) but helpful test that categorizes phone usage based on the following metric:
Are you using your phone?
Vs.
Is your phone using you?
To understand this test, we’ll use some scenarios - first, a few examples of an individual using their phone:
You are excited to take your girlfriend to dinner for Restaurant Week. You grab your phone, take a look at the participating restaurants, their menus, and you make a reservation. You just used your phone.
You arrive at your job and find out that your coworker Bob fell on ice over the weekend. You grab your phone, call Bob, ask how he’s doing, and offer to bring him dinner on your way home. You just used your phone.
You are cooking dinner and realize that the experience would be positively heightened by playing some music by Buena Vista Social Club (good choice). You grab your phone, go to your music streaming app, and begin a light two-step while you chop vegetables. You just used your phone (and now you’re dancing).
You find out that your new classmate is from Brazil. You grab your phone and use a translating app to learn how to say, “it’s nice to meet you” in Portuguese. You smile and greet your classmate in their native language. You just used your phone.
Now, a few examples of your phone using you.
You have a new goal of going to bed by 10pm. You are all tucked in at 9:55, cozy and excited that you’ll clock almost eight hours of sleep. You grab your phone, open Instagram, and enter into a scrolling abyss. You finally put your phone down at 11:17pm. Your phone just used you.
It is your son’s eighth birthday party. While folks sing Happy Birthday, you turn into a paparazzi, moving around the table to get different angles of his Batman cake while yelling at him to wait to blow out his candles until you get the perfect shot. While your son opens his presents, you sit on the couch typing and re-typing a caption for the photos you will later post on Facebook. Your phone just used you.
You are excited about starting an exercise routine and over the last week you have been going for a walk and doing some stretching every day after work. Today you get home and put on your sneakers, but before you go out, you open TikTok. You see thirty different videos of people who all look like fitness models staring into a mirror flexing their abs. You think to yourself, “what is the point of going for this walk - I will never look like them” and instead of getting some fresh air and movement, you lay on the couch and fire up Netflix. Your phone just used you.
You have realized your spending has gotten out of control and have decided to make a budget that allotts $150 per month for discretionary/fun spending. It’s the last week of the month and you have done great, but you are now laying in bed and are somewhere deep in the recesses of Instagram. You are looking at a bag that Celebrity ________ is carrying. The bag costs $450 but it’s “cute”. You buy it. Your phone just used you.
My hope is you had a chuckle reading these, but at the same time see the potential value in framing your phone usage this way.
I encourage clients to play with this attitude - when you “wake up” from mindless/unintentional/compulsive phone use, actually say to yourself, “Wow, I just got used”.
I think there is value in feeling that “defeat” and recognizing what you LOST - time, money, love, a healthy habit, etc
When you’ve really felt that loss enough times, the desire to explore and implement preventative measures will be greater (I’ll do that in the next few posts!).
P.S. To assess your behavior first requires the “wake up” moment I referenced earlier. Unfortunately, there are plenty of folks cruising around so deeply entrenched in their digital existence that the awareness piece is still missing - as the saying goes, you can’t escape a prison you don’t know you’re in.