Are you anxious? Nervous? Irritable? Depressed? Fearful? Panicked? Lonely?
All of the above?
Ruling out other personal factors . . . Guess what the main contributor to those low-level evolutionary states is?
Yup . . . Your trusty friend that you can’t go without. Your partner in crime. The love of your life. Your daily fix . . .
Your phone.
Also known as a CSD ”“ Constant Stimulation Device.
Which, to the point, is what’s causing so much stress. If you’re constantly being stimulated, but don’t realize it, your brain never has an opportunity to reset itself. Basically, in order to function properly, our brains need to turn themselves off (have downtime) and then reboot. Instead they’re firing all the time now because of our constantly checking our phones ”“ which the average person does 150 times a day.
Yikes.
Technology is not neutral. I’m not saying the developers of your favorite apps are like the evil Dr. No in the James Bond film. But for sure, advertisers want you to use your phones in ways that keep driving you to the phones. And their products. And their embedded information. The more unconscious we become, the better it is for them. And for the apps.
So our constant use of the phone is shaping how we think and feel, without us really having a say in it.
I post, therefore I am.
It also stimulates a race for attention-seeking and reward gratification. Which sadly, is a race to the “bottom of the brain stem” as an expert on the news program 60 Minutes recently described it. The reptilian brain which survives on fear, panic and loneliness, is ultimately the part of our brain that gets stimulated by our habitually checking our phone, scrolling for some piece of information we are looking for (but never find!) and comparing our lives to the glamorized picture-posting of our frenemies.
A process of devolution could very well be at play that’s leading us (slithering us?) all the way back to the genesis of our primitive, reptilian selves over 300 million years ago.
It’s not science fiction. It’s science.
A neurological response within you is triggered every time you go to your phone. Like a drug addict who gets his dopamine fix but needs to keep going back for more, our phones do the same. They bring us momentary rewards and release lots of feel-good chemicals (all those “likes”, thumbs up, heart emoji’s ”“ We’re validated! We’re loved! We’re popular! We’re seen!) but ultimately provide zero sustaining value.
So that’s why we keep going back for more.
The more I get lost in the wormhole that is my phone and all the social media sites it proliferates, the more I realize none of it is real! We start to believe ”“ and live in ”“ this fictionalized, alternate-reality, fantasy world because we become addicted to those feelings associated with that world. The good, and the bad.
And that’s the very scary thing.
Since my addiction to that imaginary world gets stronger and stronger, I start living more and more in that made-up universe than my actual reality.
And knowingly, or unknowingly, I guess that’s exactly what the programmers wanted. To make us love something unreal more than what’s real.