You and I Are Too Old to Be Addicted to Our Phones

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Rasheed Kemy on Unsplash

It’s not our kids. It’s us. Let’s be really, really, really clear here

This past week

The Free Press

published a piece about what seems to be a very popular topic these days:

Jonathan Haidt: Smartphones Rewired Childhood. Here’s How to Fix It.

From that piece:

The mass migration of childhood from the real world into the virtual world has completely changed what it means to be a kid. In replacing free play and quality time with friends with the isolation of screens and phones, we instigated what he calls “the great rewiring.”

Haidt argues that “childhood was rewired into a form that was more sedentary, solitary, virtual, and incompatible with healthy human development.” (author bolded)

That got me thinking. You realize of course that if Gen Z or those coming after decide to take their lives back on their own, which I really hope they do (because it seems Silicon Valley has ONE imperative: utter brain domination), then we’ll see headlines like this:

GEN Z KILLS CELL PHONE INDUSTRY

Don’t get me started.

But DO get started on this. Let’s look at a few other stories that I Googled just for the fun of it:

This piece from The Atlantic about mental health and cell phone use in our kids.

Opening paragraphs:

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and beyond. By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data.

But wait, there’s more!

This CNBC article quotes a Yale expert about the dangers of cell phone use. From that article:

“Teenagers are getting on the order of 200 notifications from their phones today,” she says. “These are brains that are forming and trying to pay attention in school [while their phones are going] ding, ding, ding.”

This is different from us adults how? Just asking. Stay with me here.

This New York Times op-ed piece slams parents because, DUH.

From that piece:

…if we’re trying to teach kids to be safe, responsible and independent, shouldn’t we give them the leeway to do so? Phones don’t teach kids these values; parents do.

For schools to enact what research overwhelmingly shows benefits students, we parents have to back them up. When parents say our kids are the ones with the cellphone problem, we’re just kidding ourselves. (author bolded)

And further:

As much as we lament the besotted, agonized, needy relationship our kids have with their phones, that same phone lets parents off the hook.

While we can blame Silicon Valley all we want, and we most assuredly should hold their forked, cloven feet to the fire they created, where are we adults in all this? Helpless?

Here’s what another writer had to say on the topic from The New York Post:

Sapien Labs runs an ongoing survey into mental global health. For its most recent report, it asked nearly 29,000 adults ages 18 to 24 at what age they received their first smartphone or portable device with internet access.

Then they cross-referenced those responses against answers to comprehensive questions about respondents’ current mental health.

The later someone received a device, the better their current mental health.

Girls who received one under the age of 10 were particularly negatively impacted later on in life — with mental health scores indicating they’re currently “dealing with, or at risk for, a serious mental health condition.” (author bolded)

Here’s a link to the Sapien Labs study.

Here’s another great quote from that article:

According to Common Sense Media, a majority of kids have a phone by 11, and in 2021, about one in five kids between the ages of 8 and 12 were on social media. By age 14, smartphone ownership hit 91%.

Even at my “I watched the OJ verdict in high school” age, I’ve seen how the smartphone has chipped away at my own attention span, exasperated my insomnia and given me irrational FOMO. (author bolded)

We as adults, especially as our own brains are constantly changing, are likely just as susceptible to the dopamine hits as our kids but for different reasons.

Think of it this way.

Research shows that our brains are at their juiciest and swiftest up to age 18, which of course is why all the above is so critical. That’s called “fluid intelligence.” We take it for granted and are largely oblivious to the fact that it begins to slow down at 18.

Right about midlife, 45-55, like Elvis, liquid intelligence has left the building.

Then “crystallized intelligence” takes over, which feels slower but in fact is richer and deeper. It's what we can lean into for experience, wisdom and the breadth we have earned in life.

But not if we avoid exercising it.

Here’s a piece to read about those two kinds of intelligence.

When you and I replace that critical brain work with our phones, and I watched this happen when I use my GPS instead of my innate sense of direction, we can weaken and then lose those skills entirely.

The phone replaces too much of the work of the brain. I don’t have research on this, but all you have to do is be cognizant of the cost in your own life of using your phone instead of your considerable brainpower to remember a route, recall a phone number, remember a name or where you left your keys.

Like our bodies, our brains are designed to be exercised hard.

If you and I feel as though our brains are slowing down, and they ARE, we might be leaning into our phones even more right at the very time we need to be exercising them harder as we age.

That doesn’t make us smarter to use our phones for data. It makes us both dependent, and effectively, dumber.

Photo by Ying Ge on Unsplash

Phones can make us lazy, just as letting Siri do work around the house for us lets us further fatten as we expand. We can’t be bothered to get up and turn off a light or heavens, go make a meal.

Worse, cell phone use is a danger in that we do it while walking. Look, please read this article. As you and I age, the LAST thing we need is another reason to fall, which kills enough people already. But an aging person walking while watching a cell phone? That’s a very sad comedy riff, but not if it’s your grams, or worse, you.

Our brains, like everything else, are softening from lack of use. I could make some points about social discourse and social media but I won’t; you get my drift here. This is about cell phone use.

You and I are WAY Too Old, and we don’t have enough lifetime left, to let an addiction to our phones replace life.

This goes beyond just setting an example. My parents, especially my father, who smoked several packs of unfiltered Marlboros a day, would bark at us to NEVER SMOKE EVER, while lighting up.

We emulate what adults around us do: smoke, drink, eat badly, avoid exercise, overuse our phones, avoid life and challenges and our family responsibilities while addicted to our phones.

Phones and social media are replacing friendships. If loneliness is an epidemic, and we really do need each other, then why is the phone more important than the person we’re with?

I used to write about phone etiquette years ago until I realized that everyone is a phone asshole these days, with rare exception. If I walked out on every person who answered a call in the middle of lunch or a friend date, I’d have no friends at all.

Rudeness is inculcated and hard-baked into society.

Can you put your phone down for a day? Walk away from it? Can you drive around town without using GPS? Can you leave your phone at home all day without agonizing over what you’re missing? Can you turn the damned thing off and BE with people?

If you can’t, and I challenge all of us on this including myself, time to visit our values. You and I are NOT free. Silicon Valley has all of us by the short and curlies. The cost is considerable.

The older we are, the more we need to keep this brain of ours juicy. The more we let the phone do the work, the more our brains get flabby with disuse, right about the time we most desperately need them to be at the top of their game.

Let’s stop bemoaning “kids today,” and look in the mirror. We are as much a part of cell phone abuse as “kids today.” Our phones, social media and all the garbage contained therein, rob us of our final years, too.

Your phone is a tool, not your life. America is a land of addicts (please see Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke, MD). You and I don’t need to be controlled by our phones or anything else if we choose not to be.

If you don’t like that you’re addicted, and I most assuredly do not, take your life back. It’s the only one we have. That will model adulting for the kids we like to complain about, and they won’t have as much to bitch about “parents and grandparents these days.”

Finally, one more key quote from The Free Press piece, above:

As Generations author Jean Twenge has shown, teens who spend more time using social media are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and other disorders, while teens who spend more time with groups of young people (such as playing team sports or participating in religious communities) have better mental health.

How on earth is that any different from any of us at any age, pray tell?

This is about all of us.

Put the damned phone down. Engage, learn, talk, listen, laugh, explore, discover, BE in life.

Let’s play.

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

Thanks for joining me today as I get ready for my Hump Day on the coast, hiking dunes, watching waves, and reading a book. The phone is mostly off. For a reason. I like to play. If you were inspired or enjoyed this, please kindly consider supporting my work:

If you know someone who is getting “phone neck” and might need a break, please also consider

Either way, please take time out of the day to go play. We all need it.