How Smartphones Block Finding Purpose
A guy in his mid-seventies exclaimed: “It looks like we all have a problem with social media!” That’s when I knew that I needed to start thinking more about the effect of smartphones on purpose. They affect just about everyone.
This moment happened during a purpose-training workshop. In it, participants examine the meaningfulness of their everyday activities. They identify activities in their life that have little meaning to them. A common answer to this is digital device use. This includes computers, tablets, game consoles, televisions, and, especially, smartphones.
Digital device use can serve meaningful ends. That’s not what we’re talking about here. Instead, let’s explore how digital device use can hinder our ability to find and enact purpose.
Opportunity costs. An opportunity cost is the value of what we can no longer do when we take a course of action. It’s the path not chosen. Suppose you go to the county fair with $20, and you spend it all on cotton candy. You cannot then use it to buy a ticket for an amusement ride because the money is gone. The opportunity cost of buying cotton candy is forgoing the chance to go on a ride.
Digital device use has enormous and underappreciated opportunity costs. When my students track their recreational time online, it adds up to several hours or more each day. This is time that cannot be used on something more meaningful.
Imagine the following. What if, through some miraculous event, you were given an extra two hours a day. Your day now has 26 hours while everyone else’s remains at 24. What would you do with these extra two hours?
When I ask this of my students, they give very thoughtful answers. They would develop deeper relationships, explore career opportunities, learn a hobby, start a business, read more books, learn a language, and so on. Twenty-six hour days are not currently available, but we can free up significant time by using our digital devices less.
Digital device use also consumes our attention and energy. So, even if we have time to do other, more important things, we might be too tired and unfocused to do so.
Change in values. Here’s a fun fact about us human beings. Whether we want to or not, we naturally become more like the people we spend time with. We start to act like them, feel like them, and even think like them. Researchers call this social contagion. It happens with all sorts of things such as happiness, fashion, body weight, smoking, crime, political opinions, and career aspirations.
The people who we interact with affect our sense of purpose as we adopt their values and priorities. This happens when we spend time observing people online. What are these people doing? Some create thoughtful, valuable content. Many, however, seek only to amuse, distract, and outrage. They will do whatever it takes to get your attention for their own profit. Our time online pulls us into becoming like this ourselves.
Passivity. What are we doing when we are watching and listening to digital content? We are doing just that: watching and listening. We are not actually doing something ourselves. It’s the people online who are making things, going places, saying things. Us? We’re sitting or lying down taking it all in.
Purpose always involves some form of action. We do things that matter, that expand who we are, that benefit others. The capacity to act purposefully is like a muscle. It gets stronger when we use it and weaker when we don’t. Passive online consumption makes us flabby.
What to do? Given these and other problems of how we use our digital devices, what should we do about it? How can we keep the good things while getting rid of the bad things? It’s unclear to me how to proceed with this issue. I could create new training, but that takes many months to develop and test. I could point people to existing resources, but they don’t focus on purpose. At the very least, I want to be more fully aware of the problem.
Updates
Recently, we gave a workshop to a law firm here in Connecticut. They specialize in personal injury law and do a lot of good helping people who have been harmed by others. They were a smart, lively group. This year, my lab and I developed a training program specifically for work teams. It is designed to increase employee engagement and enhance work culture. This was one of our early offerings of it, and the preliminary results look promising.
When you read this essay, Substack (the hosting platform) might ask you to donate money to me. This is their request, not mine. Substack’s business model involves taking a small portion of any donations made.
Thank you for this call to action. I just deleted Block Blast from my phone. It’s truly scary to contemplate what playing this game has cost me, in terms of foregone opportunities.