You aren’t bad, neither is your phone…but the capitalists who abuse it are evil

I get all kinds of awful advice from the internet. Just now, on my work email account, I got a message from the Star Tribune telling me how to Make your smartphone dumb, and other tips to break social media addiction. Maybe the first thing I need to do is tell the Star Tribune to stop sending me this crap.

You could switch to a flip phone. You could quit social media. But there are also ways to make your smartphone dumber, with apps and hacks and old-fashioned mindfulness.

First, you have to understand why social media is sucking you in. Studies show that engaging with social media can produce oxytocin and trigger tiny releases of dopamine, said Kit Breshears, an instructor with the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. Apps feature a pulldown refresh mechanism that functions a lot like a slot machine.

No, I can’t do that. My phone has gradually become an essential tool for working with teaching and administrative materials — I can’t shut it off, since I have to deal with push notifications in order to log in to official university web pages, and because my students contact me through the phone (yes, I gave out my personal phone number to my students) to tell me if they need help at the genetics lab, any time of day. I can’t make my smartphone dumber, without compromising my work!

I’m also prejudiced that this advice is coming from the Center for Spirituality and Healing. Here’s an idea: shut down that palace of quackery.

But also, I have a problem with placing the blame for the problem on the user, and making it our responsibility to police the corporations that are sending out the addictive poison. I would love to be able to get a little dose of oxytocin and dopamine at will. What’s wrong with that? Taking a break and looking at cat photos (or in my case, spider photos) might be beneficial to our emotional well-being. The problem isn’t that we can self-administer mild pleasure with a click of a button, it’s that that mechanism has been hijacked by capitalism. You want a little relaxation, and it’s always accompanied by companies using it to sell you something, or make you feel bad for what you are doing, so that you have to buy the cure they are selling. This one article mentions a $59 device to block signals in your home, and an app you can download to reduce your phone to a “minimalist phone”. Fine. But the problem isn’t that I have a device that can access the internet at any time, it’s that the internet has been shittified to such a remarkable degree that it’s painful to use it.

You know, I was just noticing something recently: my habit is to charge up my phone when I get home from work, and then put it by my bedside overnight, in case there’s an emergency. I’ve felt like I’ve got infinite battery, because it almost never drops below 90% charge, unless I’m away on a long trip. Apparently, I’m not addicted to endless doom-scrolling. It’s possible to be a hopeless nerd who loves his fancy gadgets and not be the kind of fool who follows the advice of a quack from CSH.

Mainly, though, stop blaming your phone for your own problems with technology and capitalism.