We Need a 12-Step Program for Cellphone Addiction

We carry our entire lives around in our hands, and it has created a mental health crisis for which no cure is in sight.

By Jim Geschke 

---

Jonathan Haidt is on a crusade to ban cell phones from all classrooms in the United States. I’m fully on board. Dr. Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of the new best-selling book The Anxious Generation,

---

Among the confluence of events that led to my retirement from teaching at age 63 was the invasion of technology in the classroom.

It wasn’t my choice. I tried. Fought the good fight. But there was no winning this battle, not even a Pyrrhic victory. I got smoked. I was in a battle with the ruthless classroom takeover by cellphones in the hands of unwitting minds of American teenagers.

Keep in mind that the kids weren’t the enemy. However, it was TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and other dopamine-producing applications that siphoned their most precious classroom asset … their attention.

The usurpers were too smart, too manipulative and brazenly uncaring. Here I was, at a teacher’s salary, pitted against youthful MENSA app developers in Silicon Valley whose pay scales and IQs exceed mine by factors of 100.

As I said, I had no chance. 

Cell Power

In a few short years, in my lifetime, the world surrendered to cell phones.

And why not? With them, living is easier, more convenient, and exponentially more dynamic. You are tethered: your schedule, your contacts, your finances, all institutional transactions, online shopping, driving directions, stock portfolio ... even your Friday night date rests in the palm of your hand. Access to every conceivable media, recorded, streamed or live is all on demand.

And most important of all, it’s portable. In your hand, you carry one billion times the processing power of those who sent Apollo 11 on its lunar journey in 1969. That year, Neil Armstrong took one small step; in the subsequent half-century, we took a giant leap … into chaos. 

Social scientists figure that over the past 50 years computing power has increased by an intrinsic value of 5 billion … and that is increasing daily. The collective IQ of humanity over the same period? A mosquito bite-sized sine wave.

We have Neolithic brains, Medieval institutions and God-like technology

How do we adapt -- psychologically, socially, cognitively and especially behaviorally -- to pairing this dynamic processing power with an appositely primal psyche?

We have Neolithic brains, Medieval institutions and God-like technology. — E.O. Wilson

The answer is … we haven’t.

The chasm between the microchip and our primal instinct is as broad and expansive as the nearest black hole, and we have been sucked down by an event horizon of our own making. Behavioral changes are evident daily, and it seems the more connected we are the further we’ve isolated and alienated ourselves. And worst of all, we are intentionally addicted to it.  

Technology has always prompted seismic human change … from the neolithic sparks of fire … to Gutenberg’s printing press ... to the collaborative efforts of Gates-Allen and Jobs-Wozniak in the 1970s.

Ingenuity has always preceded social change. But we have always caught up cognitively and behaviorally … until now. As a species, we are remarkably enterprising and imaginative … and yet in the 21st century, the more technology takes hold the more imprudent and shortsighted we have become.

Social media, born with good intent and cute emojis, has evolved into a Darwinistic nightmare. 

The Social Dilemma

The recent Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma waved the red flags of the unintended consequences of social media. Specifically, the young architects at Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and others testified to their part in the

unexpected and destructive transformation in human behavior. Their commentary ran from surprise to discomfort to anxiousness to extreme guilt. One thing they have in common … all admit to guilt, like Victor Frankenstein did, for creating a monster. 

It is not hyperbolic to say factors such as the innocent “like” button to the Twitter phenomenon of “ratio” (dogpiling on unpopular opinion) to highly invasive data collection practices using powerful algorithms have contributed as much anxiety, depression, dysphoria, divisiveness, political polarization and toxic behavior as any weapon of mass destruction.

William Golding’s 1954 Nobel Prize-winning novel Lord of the Flies brought to light our savage and tribal nature, manifested through its main characters, Jack and Ralph. Today, the trifecta of culture wars, Social Media and political polarization have created a new Jack versus Ralph dichotomy.

In The Social Dilemma, the Millenial whiz kids admitted that their good intentions of creating technology to connect people have been hijacked by profiteering and corrupted by cultural and political forces at the expense of our collective psyches.

The Coddling of the American Mind

In their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and attorney Greg Lukianoff, point to the damaging effects of social media on the most recent generational distinction, Gen Z, also called I-Gen (for Internet Generation). These are children born in the mid-1990s and have entered college within the last seven years. I-Gen is so named because it is the first generation born into Internet technology and the subsequent birth of Social Media.

The spike is dramatic … overall cases of anxiety and depression have gone up more than 90 percent among teen boys compared to the previous decade, and an even more drastic 140 percent among teen girls. — The Coddling of the American Mind

Haidt and Lukianoff explore the confluence of events affecting Gen-I, beginning with the overprotective nature of their parents, the origins of Social Media and the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. They point to an extreme spike in psychological disorders among teenagers beginning in or around 2012, particularly anxiety and depression.

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

The spike is dramatic … overall cases of anxiety and depression have gone up more than 90 percent among teen boys compared to the previous decade, and an even more drastic 140 percent among teen girls. Haidt and Lukianoff point directly to the proliferation of cell phones among teens, and the causal impact of Social Media. 

Why are young people so sensitive and vulnerable? This psychopathy isn’t from a readily available drug or substance. It is behavioral, which carries the same psychological- and physiological-response gremlins (dopamine deficit/excess) as any substance, regardless of age.

So we’re voluntarily hooking up these kids with iPhones at an early age — with unfettered access to Social Media — and as a result are accelerating the addiction process to a far less mature brain.

Does the responsibility lie with well-intentioned but misguided parenting? After all, whose behavior is being modeled? Or are the technology gurus who created this monster in the first place to be held culpable? 

Cell Phone Addiction

This photo says it all. Courtesy of The Telegraph

If you’re out in public, take a 30-second look around. How many people are face down on their phones? If you’re in a crowded waiting room, how many magazines are being read?

According to a survey conducted in February 2021, nearly half of the respondents stated that on average they spent five to six hours on their phone daily, not including work-related smartphone use (Statista.com) Repeat, not including work-related use.

We are wholly dependent on them. In fact, we are addicted to them. Don’t think so? Put your phone out of reach for 24 hours. Make it completely inaccessible. How long will it be before anxiety stabs you? Even if it’s not in your hands, but within reach, when you hear the notification “ding,” can you resist?

I can tell you from experience, a 16-year-old can’t. 

Face it. We’re not merely obsessive-compulsive. We’re addicted. Further, I posit that the more “connected” we are, the more isolated and insular we become. It is the feral nature of the beast.

Worst of all, we’re actively addicting your children. And it’s dangerous. Dr. Haidt compared buying a child a cellphone to “giving a 4-year-old a loaded gun.”

As I see it, the most plausible treatment is the structured, 12-step model founded so many years ago by Alcoholics Anonymous. It may not be a cure-all, but to my mind it is the best treatment available.

“Hello, my name is Jack, and I’m a phone-a-holic.”

Take it from an ex-educator. Your children’s education and future are at stake. 

##

##

Jim Geschke was inducted into the prestigious Marquis Who’s Who Registry in 2021.