I've been trying to understand why people feel so conflicted about their phone usage. It’s such that I keep hearing people saying “I want to use my phone less, but I’m not able to”, and I also sense this normalisation on screentimes and excessive screentime conversations, but I also sense layers of guilt, resentment and helplessness, sometimes stemming from internal comparisons and sometimes external. So, I wanted to see why this happens and try to understand it from some lived experiences and conversations. I spoke to 13 college students in India, and this is what I found. I wanted to see how generalisable this is for the western context, as well as to test the validity of my conclusions.
The Invisible Standard
Every single participant had a clear sense of what "good" phone usage looks like and what "bad" phone usage looks like. But when I pressed them about where does that definition come from? Nobody could tell me. Most of the answers were on the lines of: I just knew it or that’s what you're supposed to do.
It’s as though everyone subscribed to this common knowledge that dictates what’s right and wrong for them. As someone that has spent a significant time studying digital habits, I can see the roots of this definition arising from passive consumption and knowledge peddlers, but for a layperson, I don’t think it’s something they think of often or even know where these definitions arise from. And it also appears that this lack of definitions is leading to a lot of dichotomy, where a person who finds that using social media sometimes helps them relax, feels they are doing the wrong thing, because the standards they have as students say that all they’re supposed to do is use their phones to study. I relate this with Steven Pinker's common knowledge, at least in a way.
Productive Procrastination
All of the 13 participants said Instagram is bad for them, but they still use it everyday. The reason they give is that they're looking for productive content. DSA tutorials, career advice, financial planning advice or just people doing interesting things. It appears like they’ve found a way to navigate the guilt of using instagram with the feelings of perceived productivity with the content they consume on it. But the bottomline is, although the participants mentioned they go on there for productive content, they end up spending an hour on unproductive content and come back feeling guilty, which they then cope by doing productive things.
I also infer from the conversations that automaticity has a lot to do with this. And I think while the amount of rewards you receive vary based on the content type, ultimately you are building an automatic behaviour that gets triggered by boredom or negative feelings such as loneliness or disappointment ( which participants have verbally mentioned)
The Same Device Problem
At some point people realize their habits aren't working for them and that they want to change. But they cannot put the phone down completely, they need it for classwork, or to talk to people or look up answers to quizzes and so on. And when they come back to the devices with good intentions, automaticity acts up and they end up going back to their previous behaviours. Even if the apps are uninstalled, the emptiness of not doing what made them feel safe or comfortable overrides the intention to build better digital habits.
This is what differentiates digital addictions from substance addictions, you can’t separate or get rid of digital devices completely. I’m not saying you absolutely cannot, but it’s incredibly hard in today’s world.
The Societal Price
The other layer is the societal price. The same platforms that are making you feel like you need to change are also making you feel like it's not okay to let go. When you get rid of instagram you also are no longer involved in the recent trends discussion with your friends or you will not know about that cool thing that's happening soon. Instagram is only one example, and I refrain from mentioning any AI tools, because they bring in so many other factors that would be a much longer post to address.
So, ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that a lay person, based on their occupation, receives this signal from the common knowledge mentioning good and bad ways to use their phones. When they find themselves not following these standards, feelings of guilt, resentment and helplessness start developing. But they still crave rewards and find productive ways to get these rewards, leading to the development of automatic behaviours. Ultimately there will come a time when they consciously face their actions, either as a result of their own actions (loss of productivity, looking at their screentime) or in comparison with their peers, which leads to heightened guilt and regret, leading them to take actions. The actions address their device, not the mental models they have, and are more often aimed at reducing these uncomfortable feelings rather than taking actual action. But as they live in a digital society, either the price is too high or the same device problem falls in, and with automaticity as a catalyst they get back into the loop.
This is the framework I landed upon, while I do understand that a lot of these ideas are trodden upon previously, I find that this way of framing explains current behaviours about digital dichotomy rather well, and I have not found well known references of the Invisible Standard.
And I'm posting this on LessWrong:
To see if the community finds the conclusions to be valid and if it resonates with anyone at all and or if I’m missing anything in here.
To see if anyone else is thinking about something similar
To stress test this theory with other perspectives before I start theoretically grounding this.
I've been trying to understand why people feel so conflicted about their phone usage. It’s such that I keep hearing people saying “I want to use my phone less, but I’m not able to”, and I also sense this normalisation on screentimes and excessive screentime conversations, but I also sense layers of guilt, resentment and helplessness, sometimes stemming from internal comparisons and sometimes external. So, I wanted to see why this happens and try to understand it from some lived experiences and conversations. I spoke to 13 college students in India, and this is what I found. I wanted to see how generalisable this is for the western context, as well as to test the validity of my conclusions.
The Invisible Standard
Every single participant had a clear sense of what "good" phone usage looks like and what "bad" phone usage looks like. But when I pressed them about where does that definition come from? Nobody could tell me. Most of the answers were on the lines of: I just knew it or that’s what you're supposed to do.
It’s as though everyone subscribed to this common knowledge that dictates what’s right and wrong for them. As someone that has spent a significant time studying digital habits, I can see the roots of this definition arising from passive consumption and knowledge peddlers, but for a layperson, I don’t think it’s something they think of often or even know where these definitions arise from. And it also appears that this lack of definitions is leading to a lot of dichotomy, where a person who finds that using social media sometimes helps them relax, feels they are doing the wrong thing, because the standards they have as students say that all they’re supposed to do is use their phones to study. I relate this with Steven Pinker's common knowledge, at least in a way.
Productive Procrastination
All of the 13 participants said Instagram is bad for them, but they still use it everyday. The reason they give is that they're looking for productive content. DSA tutorials, career advice, financial planning advice or just people doing interesting things. It appears like they’ve found a way to navigate the guilt of using instagram with the feelings of perceived productivity with the content they consume on it. But the bottomline is, although the participants mentioned they go on there for productive content, they end up spending an hour on unproductive content and come back feeling guilty, which they then cope by doing productive things.
I also infer from the conversations that automaticity has a lot to do with this. And I think while the amount of rewards you receive vary based on the content type, ultimately you are building an automatic behaviour that gets triggered by boredom or negative feelings such as loneliness or disappointment ( which participants have verbally mentioned)
The Same Device Problem
At some point people realize their habits aren't working for them and that they want to change. But they cannot put the phone down completely, they need it for classwork, or to talk to people or look up answers to quizzes and so on. And when they come back to the devices with good intentions, automaticity acts up and they end up going back to their previous behaviours. Even if the apps are uninstalled, the emptiness of not doing what made them feel safe or comfortable overrides the intention to build better digital habits.
This is what differentiates digital addictions from substance addictions, you can’t separate or get rid of digital devices completely. I’m not saying you absolutely cannot, but it’s incredibly hard in today’s world.
The Societal Price
The other layer is the societal price. The same platforms that are making you feel like you need to change are also making you feel like it's not okay to let go. When you get rid of instagram you also are no longer involved in the recent trends discussion with your friends or you will not know about that cool thing that's happening soon. Instagram is only one example, and I refrain from mentioning any AI tools, because they bring in so many other factors that would be a much longer post to address.
So, ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that a lay person, based on their occupation, receives this signal from the common knowledge mentioning good and bad ways to use their phones. When they find themselves not following these standards, feelings of guilt, resentment and helplessness start developing. But they still crave rewards and find productive ways to get these rewards, leading to the development of automatic behaviours. Ultimately there will come a time when they consciously face their actions, either as a result of their own actions (loss of productivity, looking at their screentime) or in comparison with their peers, which leads to heightened guilt and regret, leading them to take actions. The actions address their device, not the mental models they have, and are more often aimed at reducing these uncomfortable feelings rather than taking actual action. But as they live in a digital society, either the price is too high or the same device problem falls in, and with automaticity as a catalyst they get back into the loop.
This is the framework I landed upon, while I do understand that a lot of these ideas are trodden upon previously, I find that this way of framing explains current behaviours about digital dichotomy rather well, and I have not found well known references of the Invisible Standard.
And I'm posting this on LessWrong: