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There has always been an interesting dichotomy between the technology I have been handed throughout my life and the social rhetoric that swarms it. Being given an iPhone at the ripe age of 13 with the foreboding warnings of a TECHNOLOGICAL DYSTOPIAN waning on the horizon confused me.
If this technology is as bad as you are saying it is, why are you handing it to me? Am I, a young ignorant girl, supposed to deem it to be or not to be in alignment with your inter- and intrapersonal social destructive prophecy?
When I reflect on my past seven years of smartphone use, there are, without a doubt, moments where I unknowingly neglected my safety, compromised my AUTHENTICITY, and used the virtual realm as an escape from interacting with the world in front of me. However, while I don’t agree with letting these technological consequences go unremedied for myself and other users, I see the ways in which the devices in my life have benefited my “real life” experiences to a far more substantial degree. Simply put, I don’t believe digital technologies are all that bad.
As a media studies student, I have been exposed to a variety of content debating this very concept from a select few angles. I find myself taken back by the TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM approach suggesting that technology changes society and humans are, according to some of the more extreme variants of this mode of thought, unable to resist this stream of influence.1
There is an antagonizing discourse about digital media and how it has irreversibly changed the way we interact with the world -- which is very true, it has changed things, but is it really the villain these dialogues suggest it to be?
I often come across excerpts that strike me as particularly alarming for they seem to describe a current dystopian world that I don’t believe I am a citizen of. This rhetoric is usually accompanied by the following visuals.
“A train station (like an airport, a café, or a park) is no longer a communal space but a place of social collection: people come together but do not speak to each other. Each is TETHERED to a mobile device and to the people and places to which that device serves as a portal.
I grew up in Brooklyn where sidewalks had a special look. In every season . . . there were chalk-drawn hopscotch boxes. I speak with a colleague who lives in my old neighborhood. The hopscotch boxes are gone. The kids are out, but they are on their phones.” 2
Unless I live in a different world than Brooklyn, which very well may be the case here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or unless society has changed since Dr. Sherry Turkle wrote these words nearly 11 years ago, this is not the experience I have stepping outside of my home every day. Children play, people interact, conversations occur in the line at the grocery store often without the company of digital devices. The use of phones is, of course, existent in everyday life. I do see people texting, talking on the phone, absorbed in Instagram or TikTok, earbuds engaged. However, I don’t think the strain on society is as grave as some media theorists suggest.
After spending four days conducting a self-observation exercise of my personal phone, my predisposed sympathy towards digital media proved to be, for the most part, valid. Over the course of four days (96 total hours with about 68 waking hours) I spent 20 hours on my phone. To put it into perspective, this is approximately 30% of my waking time, but as I look at where I am spending these hours, I begin to understand how it accumulates to this seemingly high percentage. 12 of these 20 hours are divided among three places: Instagram (6 hours 45 minutes), phone calls (6 hours 30 minutes), and messages (4 hours). The remaining eight hours is comprised of other applications such as Netflix, Safari, Photos, Camera, Spotify, Mail, GroupMe, Facebook, and YouTube, all of which do not amount to more than an hour and a half of time, in fact, some are even as low as three minutes. Thus, I consistently spend my primary phone time in three specific destinations.
Instagram is what I might call my “guilty pleasure,” but the thing is, I don’t feel all that guilty about it. I spend 1-2 hours every day on this social media app using one particular feature…reels (short clip videos produced by Instagram users around the world). For me, this is my entertainment. I seek laughter and relaxation in scrolling through these funny and creative video clips. It’s a passive action for me, to sit back and watch video after video, but at the end of a long day of lectures, grocery shopping, or simply dealing with people, this experience gives me an opportunity to zone out. I use this digital feature to fill my down time which occurs mostly in the evenings and on the weekends when I am away from professors, friends, and colleagues. While I do not find this to be problematic in my daily routine, I have begun to dedicate more intentionality in not filling this down time.
The concept of MIND WANDERING, “what our brains do when we do nothing at all,” wasn’t necessarily foreign to me before my studies, but I never viewed it as something that could be purposefully facilitated.3 In this video, Manoush Zomorodi further explains the idea of mind wandering and how it can lead to what is called . . .
IMAGINATION NETWORK AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PLANNING
I know that I am capable of storming up a variety of ideas, inspiration, and even philosophical ponderings when I have no task to focus on in front of me, but I never thought about purposefully keeping myself unoccupied to encourage this. After reflecting on the concept of BOREDOM as an impetus, I found myself less inclined to fill quiet moments. My commute home, which is traditionally accompanied by music or playlists, are now spent in silence. I have already been amazed by some of the ideas I have sewn from this boredom. In fact, I planned this very essay on one of those commutes. While I plan to continue to integrate boredom into my life as force for innovation, I am still content with my use of Instagram and the opportunity to simply not think for a while and having an outlet for stress and over-thinking. However, I interact with Instagram very differently than I used to.
As a high school student, my relationship with Instagram was much less relaxing and positively rewarding. I unknowingly maintained very strict MEDIA IDEOLOGIES and IDIOMS OF PRACTICE by observing how those virtually around me were collectively agreeing to use this social technology.4 There were strict unspoken structures to the use of Instagram that I, as a young and malleable teenager, felt very compelled to adhere to as I navigated my worth and place in society. This included regular MEDIA ACCOUNTING that often compromised my sense of AUTHENTICITY draining my enjoyment from this technology.5
Criteria existed to be deemed a successful social media user: (1) post often, but not too often, (2) post aesthetically pleasing imagery that coheres to a feed theme, (3) post photos of yourself but not too many photos of yourself as to avoid narcissism, and, among many more, (4) avoid both cheesy and overly vulnerable captions. These criterions were upheld by one simply element: engagement. If a post did not receive sufficient likes, comments, or interactions, a user had failed.
I often deleted “failed” posts while mentally taking notes for how TO DO BETTER next time. This tolled deeply on my self-image and how I measured worth.
I still adhere to this social construct in many ways, feeling the need to account for my QUOTIDIAN life online occasionally, RITUALIZING media posting, and valuing virtual interactions.5 However, I have strained out the MEDIA IDEOLOGY I had developed which told me I was worthless without meeting these criteria. This, in turn, has returned pleasantry to my social media experience, and at my own discretion. I post when I can and when I want to. And as far as spending hours on reels goes, well, that is my new “Netflix binging.”
The two other areas in which I spend my phone time are for a much difference purpose. In part, the time spent in messages and on phone calls is with my mother and sister. I live at home with them both in our single-parent home and I uphold a great deal of responsibilities. If I am ever found to be texting in class, while I am with a friend, or while I should be studying, they are, among only one other person, who I am contacting in a potentially socially disruptive fashion.
Staying connected with them via texting and calling is a matter of scheduling my sister’s school pick-ups and dance class drop-offs, notifying me that I need to pay a bill by the end of the day, and, above all else, the safety of both of them. If my phone dies, I am not anxious because I may miss an Instagram update, I am anxious because I am relied on by my family, and vice versa.
A dead phone, for me, means I could miss a text saying, for example, that my sister unexpectedly needs picked up, that my mom’s car broke down, or that I need to grab an item for dinner tonight. My phone, and access to it, is very much a safety necessity.
On an even larger and more impactful scale of digital technology as a CONDUIT for safety and connection, this documentary illustrates how Safaricom's M-PESA Mobile Money Transfer service using cellular devices is changing lives in Kenya.
However, of course, these 10 hours are not solely dedicated to communicating with my immediate family. There is another element in my life that has completely redefined my relationship to my phone: a long-distance relationship. My iPhone is no longer simply a device. It’s many tools has transformed my phone from an object into something that holds my most dear possessions.
The DIGITAL AFFORDANCES, or ways in which technology allows kneadable and ambiguous social practices, has given my device the role of being the lifeline to my relationship.6
My phone, sitting next to me right now, doesn’t simply allow me to contact my partner. It also homes hours after hours of conversation (fun, serious, heartfelt, angry), over 300 photographs of our limited reunions, virtual love letters, and cheesy playlists. I am attached to my phone, and this is because it grants me access to my partner and these virtual memories we have built.
My partner and I regularly use Wix, traditionally a public website builder, to document our stories and photos we have taken when we visit each other.
Like any new technology, our phones awoke great social fear about the fate of our relationship with the “IRL” world. There are, without a doubt, consequences to the misuse, unknowingly or not, of technology through developed media ideologies and social practices.
However, my phone is much more than just a distraction, just a challenge against authenticity, it is my lifeline to cataloguing my relationships and complementing my life as a tool for connection.
There will always be ways in which we can improve our device use to be more efficient and to live a healthier life, but our phones and digital technologies are not the antagonist they are often made out to be.
1Nancy K. Baym, “Making New Media Make Sense,” Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2010, pp. 24-56.
2 Turkle, Sherry (2011). “Always On” in Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, New York: Basic Books (pp. 151-170 and 171-186).
3Manoush Zomorodi, Introduction, Chapter 1 & Chapter 2 in Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017: pp. 1-53.
4 Ilana Gershon, “Introduction,” The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting Over New Media, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2010, pp. 1-15.
5 Lee Humphreys, “Sharing the Everyday” in The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018: pp. 29-49.
6 Joshua McVeigh-Schultz and Nancy K. Baym, “Thinking of You: Vernacular Affordance in the Context of the Microsocial Relationship App, Couple,” Social Media + Society, 1(2), 2015, pp. 1-13.
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