Habits and Technology Addiction

I am sick of technology. Let me rephrase that. I am sick of how I and many others USE technology. I am sick of being a voyeur. I don’t know how we came to this point, but I feel offended that I am at times a modern day stalker without actually wanting to be one. I realized this about myself and vowed to never use social media unless I was creating as much as watching. I am worried about kids who like me at times, seem to disappear into a vortex away from the real world around them. So I made this vow with myself to change knowing a personal change is the greatest act any of us can really aspire to in this world.

I made this vow out of frustration. I have been letting myself down. My performance in life, spiritual growth, personal development and overall happiness has been low for some time. I have developed habits and patterns of behavior which are deep in my psyche and I needed to discover if and how I could overcome them. So as a starting point I began to try to understand habit formation in the context of technology use and wrote this piece.

I discovered than whenever you have a Desire, a Feeling, Thought or Sensation in the body (energetic frequency), if you have responded to those energetic frequencies in the past with a certain behavior, Your brain releases dopamine (internal natural high) in anticipation of you satisfying that desire in the same way as before. You then actually satisfy the energetic frequency through the anticipated action and get a second high. The example in textbooks is monkeys pulling a level which release raisons for them to eat.

I began to see this in terms of our own social media use and was shocked by my own realization. If you are bored and you regularly respond to boredom with Facebook scrolling. The next time you feel boredom your brain will release dopamine in anticipation of the Facebook scrolling knowing that it will be relieved through that mechanism.

This is doubly dangerous because screens have been proven to be both addictive and dopamine releasing. So instead of learning to be happy in boredom and fully experiencing boredom, you escape through Facebook giving yourself a high before during and after without realizing it! The dangers of this are stark.

One thing worth noting before moving on, is that BOREDOM is the other side of creativity. So whenever we escape boredom, we are in effect moving further away from our creative potential which lies waiting on the other side of the boredom.

So your brain wires in the response behavior BECAUSE you feel satisfied, making it more likely you will do it again the next time you feel bored. Thus creating a pattern of behavior you are likely never going to escape from. They say you can only truly break a pattern by changing your environment and as tech is something which travels this solution is likely never going to work. It is also likely you might not even realize you want to escape this addiction both because you get high in the process and society enforces a belief that screen use is ok because we use it for work. Also we generally know addiction to be the preserve of things like crack and heroin!

For me, This is super important info, ESP for parents, anyone really, but mostly people with kids. It breaks my heart looking at kids checking out through screens. There is a reason Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, the GIANTS of technology, don’t allow their kids use this technology. It is dangerous to create these kinds of coping strategies for normal feelings and very human experiences.

It’s good to be bored, it’s good to be sad, it’s good to be angry and depressed and upset and every other experience you can encounter in this life. It’s not good to escape these feelings through a screen that falsely satisfies you with a dopamine hit.

Kids are the future right? Well from what I see there is going to be a future where half our population actually ‘get’ themselves and know how to deal with their feelings, anger, boredom, sadness whatever, and the rest will turn to the screen, thinking nothing of it, acting out the same pattern of behavior they have ingrained into themselves.

This is why Tech creators don’t allow their kids to use these devices, this is why schools that have elite/ high net worth individuals kids attending don’t use computers up to a certain age. It numbs us to ourselves. This is already occurring, you see it everyday on public transport, on the street and even in social circles. People using their phones as a crutch to escape the present moment.

There is a difficulty in acknowledging this sinister element of technology as tech is such a gift. Some people are amazing at utilizing it for their own freedom and creative endeavors and are brilliant advocates for what is possible with this tool. But then there is the rest of us, who get caught up in the white light and don’t even know why, losing ourselves and forgiving ourselves because we feel good doing so due to the dopamine release.

They say you should ‘Plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit’. I see it as our role as parents, people, and co-creators of culture and society to ensure the next gen. are just that, next generation. Not versions of what went before. Or worse lesser versions.

But there is actually a danger that for the first time in history we will see a generation of people who are less evolved than their parents, not through war, poverty or disease, but through a lack of self-awareness developed through technology use.

Drugs have been studied and documented. We have treatment centers and social mechanisms in place to ensure most people don’t end up addicted to anything harder than coffee or alcohol. Technology is an entirely new beast and our current climate of fear, sensationalist media, content creation, gaming, social devolution and political uncertainty means that there are masses of people literally checking out and into their phones and becoming zombies in the process. It’s too easy, too enticing and too deeply ingrained as a habit pattern.

The ubiquity of phones and the dichotomous potential for them to be used for creativity and their opposing dark side of mindlessness is a great metaphor for the world, for our psyches and for our humanness. There is danger and potential coexisting, both exciting and scary.

The opportunity to spread messages about revolution re: the Egyptian uprising, but conversely on a personal level to become so unaware of your most basic emotions, needs and desires that you cannot act or grow is startling.

I worry about parents who entrust the screen as a pacifier unaware of the damage being done, will they feel guilt for a behavior society may deem illegal in the future?

Technology addiction is a real thing. The trouble is we use it for work and play so there is no model on how to tackle it. I have lived tech free for over 3 months, I know what it feels like to not have that crutch, but I also know how quick you can fall back into a pattern of behavior that is so encoded and ingrained in your psyche like eating when hungry.

Scarily there is probably no hope for some people. You can see a future when we have overcome this nascent adoption phase of tech and will maybe light candles and say prayers for all the fallen victims who died or lost themselves in the screen unable to handle the power in front of them.

Joking aside, I feel there is a living sadness around us as we watch people lose themselves to an online wonderland in unawareness. I see tech as a multidimensional portal, it is everything all at once. You can shop or study philosophy. You can watch porn or sell stocks and bonds. There is no definition for what the internet and technology truly is and this is the real problem.

Without sounding too Hollywood we have no idea what we are dealing with except what might be colloquially called the universe. Scarily not many of us are trained to travel through space and should move with caution. It has become our idol, our ultimate self. You don’t like who you are? Look at someone you admire and feel good doing so, forget your own self-hate for a moment through the portal of anothers page. And reward your dopamine centers as a result.

This is the danger of the new world we are living in. If there is a solution, and there is, it is to 1) recognize you pattern of behavior and emotional coping strategies. Build self-awareness. 2) Try and find new coping strategies to replace the old. 3) Create. Use technology to create, don’t be an observer. Lastly get outside. Try to live life like it was in the good old days aye.

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