When Mashiach arrives, the entire world will know it instantly! I heard this opinion many years ago, and it was hard to imagine, then, how this could happen. Today, the scenario is quite understandable. A few “shares” on Facebook reposted thousands of times, a few tweets forwarded, not to mention live breaking news, and you’re there.
But aside from its future role in heralding the arrival of Mashiach, the modern cell phone is truly a wonder right now. It has the ability to connect us with virtually anyone, anywhere, any time – and to access a seemingly endless amount of information – with a device that fits into our pockets. Like any technology, however, mobile devices can be a blessing or a curse. As Rabbi Yissocher Frand said in his pre-Yom Kippur drasha, “Is Your Master in Your Pocket?” we need to make sure that we are controlling our technology and not vice versa..
We are not alone in our concern. The mixed blessing of smart phones and other online devices is something the non-Jewish world is concerned about as well. A plethora of books and articles have been written by experts in many fields trying to define the problem – or debating whether there is a problem at all – and suggesting solutions to get a handle on it. Our digital challenges include distraction (which can become quite addicting) changes in social behavior, safety issues, and, as Rabbi Frand suggested, loss of clarity in our mission as Jews.
Technology on the Brain
We have all noticed, wherever we go, people absorbed in their mobile device screens even when they are with other people, including their own children. We’ve all probably been one of those people ourselves. Still, we sense that there is something wrong. We are very connected to others through texting, emailing, or social media but absent to the people beside us – so near and yet so far away. But can we apply the word addiction to such behavior?
Half of teens aged 12 to 18 do believe they are addicted to their mobile devices, according to an online CNN article (July 2016). Two thirds of parents thought their kids were spending too much time on them, with a majority feeling their teens were addicted. And 72 percent of the surveyed teens said they felt the need to immediately respond to texts and social networking messages.
Cell phone addiction is not yet recognized as an official disorder in the U.S. Nonetheless, when I googled the phrase “addicted to cell phone,” 24 million results came back, demonstrating the concern many are feeling. Holland Haiis, a “digital detox expert,” describes technology as “the new 21st century addiction.” One self-help article by Tova Payne entitled, “Addicted to Your Mobile Phone? Five Ways to Beat Your Phone Addiction” got over 3,000 shares on social media, 10 times more than any of her 11 other articles on the Lifehack website. We can see that this is a hot topic.
In his book, The Distraction Addiction: Getting the Information You Need and the Communication You Want, Without Enraging Your Family, Annoying Your Colleagues, and Destroying Your Soul, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang talks about how our minds are “attracted to today’s infinite and ever-changing buffet of information choices and devices. [The brain] thrives on overload, is drawn to shiny and blinky things, and doesn’t distinguish between good and bad technologies and choices.”
The very technology that is supposed to help us think better, work more efficiently, and connect more meaningfully with others, says Pang, too often interrupts us and divides our attention, stretching us thin. “Techno-anxiety” is the term Alexis Madrigal uses to describe the feeling many have that “something is not right” with this picture. (The Atlantic, July 2013)
“People who study smart phone habits say we’re crossing the line from using our cell phones to being used by them,” writes Markham Heid in Time magazine (February 2016). He quotes Dr. David Greenfield, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction: “Not knowing what we’ll find when we go online gives you the addiction and pushes you to keep going back,” says Dr. Greenfield, “Something good could happen at any second.”
Of course, there’s the converse feeling as well. One new acronym I came across recently is FOMO, meaning “fear of missing out.” Yes, people are so hooked on social media that they are afraid they’ll be left out of the loop and not know what their friends have been up to.
Dr. Greenfield continues: “These compulsive behaviors stem from the way our phones – and, more specifically, the internet – fire up our brains’ reward pathways.” Calling the Internet “the world’s largest slot machine,” Greenfield says the fact that we don’t know what we’ll find when we check our email or visit our favorite social site creates excitement and anticipation. This leads to a small burst of pleasure chemicals in our brains, which drive us to use our phones more and more.
Madrigal says the anxiety is serious, but he does not see completely “unplugging” as the solution. Rather, these technologies themselves need real critiques. “Our social networks and smart phones are not ‘neutral’ tools. We may be able to manage our relationships with them, but we need to know what they are trying to do, technically, culturally, and financially.”
Evgeny Morozov, writing in The New Republic, suggests a more reprehensible purpose. Beyond merely facilitating communication, he says, apps are designed to make money by pulling us in and making sure we keep coming back for more. “Twitter, for instance, nudges us to check how many people have interacted with our tweets. That nagging temptation to trace the destiny of our every tweet, in perpetuity and with the most comprehensive analytics, is anything but self-evident. The business agenda is obvious: The more data we can surrender – by endlessly clicking around – the more appealing Twitter looks to advertisers. But what is in Twitter’s business interest is not necessarily in our communicative interest.”
Morozov suggests that we, “subject social media to the kind of scrutiny that has been applied to the design of gambling machines in Las Vegas casinos. While casino operators want us to think that addiction is the result of our moral failings or some biological imbalance, they themselves are to blame for designing gambling machines in a way that feeds addiction. With social media – much like with gambling machines or fast food – our addiction is manufactured, not natural.”
Towards a Smart Phone Etiquette
I got a chuckle the other day seeing a cartoon of a woman sitting among the guests at a formal dinner party, who looked at the table setting and asked her tablemate, “I can never remember; does the cell phone go on the left or the right?”
Contrary to the perception that etiquette is a matter of trivial details like forks and knives, etiquette is about smoothing social interaction to avoid offense and hurt feelings. The new social expectations and conflicts engendered by a technology as mesmerizing and invasive as the smart phone make such hurt feelings inevitable. One problem with using any type of cell phone is that you are the phone’s “home,” making it difficult to separate public and private space. The ability to connect with others is one of the most liked qualities of cell phones, while being continuously available for others’ contact is also one of its most disliked qualities. How should one decide who gets his attention: the phone beside him, or the person he is with?
According to etiquette expert Emily Post (among others), the phone should be turned off when you are with another person. But turning off the phone may not be enough. Studies have shown that the mere presence of a cell phone on the table between two people can have a negative impact on a relationship! It’s like having a third party in the room, someone who could cause a disruption at any time. Clearly, a society-wide consensus has yet to be reached about what is proper and polite cell phone usage.
“Safe” Apps Aren’t so Safe
Unquestionably, no one should text while driving. Yet there are apps that seem designed to promote distracted driving. Using Snapchat to post photos of driving speeds and playing Pokémon Go to search for targets along the highways are obvious examples, and both activities have been blamed for traffic accidents. But even using the WAZE app to score points when reporting traffic jams, accidents, or police sightings endangers everyone in the car (not to mention other drivers on the road) if the driver is the one clicking away and reporting.
Ironically, even the many apps and devices designed for “safe” hands-free use have been blamed for causing traffic accidents. In a November 2016 article in the New York Times, Neal E. Boudette reports, “After steady declines over the last four decades, highway fatalities last year recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years. And the numbers so far this year are even worse. In the first six months of 2016, highway deaths jumped 10.4 percent.” And according to Robert Gordon, a senior vice-president of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, insurance companies are convinced that the increasing use of electronic devices while driving is the biggest cause of the rise in road fatalities.
“Most new vehicles sold today have software that connects to a smart phone and allows drivers to place phone calls, dictate texts, and use apps hands-free,” Boudette writes. Many older models have hands-free devices to allow similar types of activities. However, he writes, “It was not clear how much those various technologies reduced distraction – or, instead, encouraged people to use even more functions on their phones while driving. And freeing the drivers’ hands does not necessarily clear their heads.”
Deborah Hersman, president of the nonprofit National Safety Council, agrees: “It’s the cognitive workload on your brain that’s the problem.” Our brains are not designed to multi-task and it is particularly dangerous to try to do so while driving.
The Capacity for Empathy
When Rabbi Frand spoke last October, he prefaced his remarks by saying that he was not giving a typical teshuva drasha. Teshuva, he said, doesn’t only mean to become better. It also means to become different. It’s about change in behavior, and that was the point and purpose behind his talk. He spoke about “a subtle and pernicious affect that smart phones are having on our lives.” He wasn’t even speaking about protecting ourselves from online dangers. What he was addressing was how smart phone use has actually changed us.
Talking to himself as much as to his audience with his wake-up call, Rabbi Frand does not think it is hyperbole to say about smart phone ubiquity that it is the “greatest change in society in our generation. It is as though people cannot be without their smart phones even for the smallest amount of time.”
I found there’s actually a term coined for that, too. “Nomophobia” (no-mobile-phone phobia) is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Rabbi Frand delineated what he called the greatest problem with the prevalence of smart phone use: losing our capacity to emphasize with others. He cited evidence that the lure of the screen, with its promise of instant gratification, has changed the atmosphere in yeshivas or seminaries where smart phones are allowed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that boys who attend smart phone-free yeshivas have a better chance of developing close relationships with their peers. One mashgiach told Rabbi Frand that he would accept a boy from any background at all, no matter how far from Yiddishkeit. But he has one condition: no cell phones. “Because if they have a cell phone, there is no one to talk to, and if I can’t talk to them, then I can’t reach them.”
Rabbi Frand quoted from Sherry Turkle’s book Reclaiming Conversation, which he calls one of the more important books on the subject. “Her book’s thesis is simple: Our preoccupation with cell phones is damaging our humanity.” Turkle writes, “Face-to-face conversation is the most human and humanizing thing that we do. It is where we develop the capacity for empathy.”
I found Turkle’s book to be full of compelling information as well. “Without conversation, studies show that we are less empathic, less connected, less creative and fulfilled. We are diminished, in retreat. But to generations that grew up using their phones to text and message, these studies may be describing losses they don’t feel. They didn’t grow up with a lot of face-to-face talk.
“We now rarely give each other our full attention, but every once in a while we do. We forget how unusual this has become, that many young people are growing up without ever having experienced unbroken conversations either at the dinner table or when they take a walk with parents or friends. For them, phones have always come along.” These are the habits they have grown accustomed to.
Rabbi Frand says the use of texting and less face-to-face conversation has created a generation of people who find it difficult to converse. He cites reports that job seekers have problems beginning and ending a conversation. A social worker he knows told him that her daughters sit at the Shabbos table without talking because they are used to only texting. Rabbi Frand asks, “How on earth are these people ever going to get married if they don’t know how to have a conversation with someone? The basis of every marriage is communication.”
Parents often act as poor role models for their kids. Rabbi Frand points out how common it is for parents to be with their kids at the playground or at a sports event, but instead of watching or interacting with their children, they are staring down at their screens. “The children have grown up today expecting parents and caregivers to be only half there. We are a nation of compassionate people: empathetic, modest, kind, giving people. These traits are in our spiritual DNA. If in fact smart phones make us less empathetic, then smart phones are affecting what makes up the fabric of the Jewish people. And that is devastating.”
Rabbi Frand said G-d chose Abraham because He knew that he would convey the mesorah of keeping Torah and mitzvos to his descendents, to his children and to his grandchildren. “We as parents, just like Avraham Avinu, have a responsibility to give over to our children what it means to be a Jew. And if our children see that we are only half there, we are failing at being parents because they are only secondary to our emails and texts and all other cell phone activities. We are permanently damaging our relationships.”
Psychology Speaks
Barbara L. Fredrickson, a professor of psychology at the University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill, echoes Rabbi Frand’s concerns about losing the ability for empathy. In a 2013 New York Times article, she says our ingrained habits change us. “Neurons that fire together, wire together…reflecting the increasing evidence that experiences leave imprints on our neural pathways. Any habit molds the very structure of your brain in ways that strengthen your proclivity for that habit.
“Just as muscles that are not used will atrophy,” Fredrickson says “your habits of social connection also leave their own physical imprint on you.” The more you interact socially, the more you “build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health. The more attuned to others you become, the healthier you become, and vice versa. This mutual influence also explains how a lack of positive social contact diminishes people. Your heart’s capacity for friendship also obeys the biological law of ‘use it or lose it.’ If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the biological capacity to do so.
“Work in social genomics reveals that our personal histories of social connection or loneliness, for instance, alter how our genes are expressed within the cells of our immune system. New parents may need to worry less about genetic testing and more about how their own actions – like texting while breast-feeding or otherwise paying more attention to their phone than their child – leave life-limiting fingerprints on their and their children’s gene expression.”
In other words, according to Dr. Fredrickson, not only could we damage our “spiritual DNA” that Rabbi Frand warns about but – our physical DNA as well!
A Scattered Soul
Rabbi Frand stated, “Cell phones are not the source of our problems. They’re emblematic and symptomatic of a much deeper disturbing problem. And that is how trivialized our lives have become. Our lives are so full of nahrishkeit, nothingness and silliness.”
Rabbi Frand urges us to remember our primary goal: to have a meaningful and purposeful life, not one of distraction. Acknowledging how busy and harried our lives can be, he cited the French author Blaise Pascal, which he said was so profound that it needed to be repeated and emphasized: “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us from our miseries, and yet it is the greatest of miseries.”
We need to be saved from our distractions, said Rabbi Frand, because being distracted causes us to lose our direction and focus in life. He quoted the Chovos HaLevavos (Duties of the Heart), who mentioned the prayer of a righteous person who used to say, “G-d save me from distraction. G-d, save me from a scattered soul.”
SIDEBAR
Taming Phone Addiction
Each of us needs to find his or her own solutions to avoid being overly attached to our devices and their addicting distractions. This requires paying attention to how we relate to them and then taking steps to change. Not only we but our future generations depend on our diligence in doing this now.
Rabbi Frand made several suggestions for changing our cell phone behavior:
- Don’t sleep with your cell phone in the room
- Don’t let your children sleep with the cell phone in the room; they will spend half the night texting.
- Don’t have a cell phone nearby when learning with your children.
- Ban cell phones at meal times
- Don’t daven with your smart phone siddur; use a real one.
Tova Payne, who wrote about smart phone addiction, suggests these tips:
- Don’t reach for your phone when you first wake up.
- Create no-phone time zones during your most productive hours (to avoid distractions).
- Turn off the phone when in the car to let with the real person you are with take precedence.
- Power off the phone an hour before bedtime.
Although texting was not mentioned specifically in this article, it is part and parcel of the smart phone problem. How many of us feel we have to answer texts immediately? To me it always seemed impolite not to respond immediately if I was near my phone and saw the text. Then I discovered an app for that. I recently downloaded “Txt Msg Away Message Lite,” which sends an automatic text back to whomever sends me a text, letting people know I am not available but will get back to them later.
