Restrictions for the mind, for the mind
What’s the first thing a person does after waking up in the morning? Checks his smartphone. Duh! It’s fascinating that the answer to this question wasn’t this obvious a decade ago. We live in a very different world than the one we were born in. Everyone has a smartphone today. You most likely are reading this on one. This brilliant piece of technology has enabled us to carry the internet in our pockets. But with great technology comes undesirable consequences. Let’s dive into the repercussions of the information age on our brain and how can we avoid the harmful effects.
The intro to the Internet
I was born in 1999 and experienced the internet in 2007 for the very first time. Coincidently, the same year Steve Jobs released the revolutionary iPhone. The internet wasn’t anything like it is today. The speed, especially in India sucked big back then. You’d been lucky to load google search results in less than 20 seconds. YouTube was next to impossible to browse without buffering. Another reason for not browsing YT was the fear of data exhaustion. And mind you, it was really expensive. It used to take multiple seconds of loading time for opening a link and more time going back if it’s the wrong link.
How was it different than Today?
The internet speed on mobile phones was worse than the PCs. Plus, the interface on the feature phones was not exactly convenient when compared to a computer or laptop. So the dedicated device for surfing the WEB was a computer. I remember when we(kids) had a specific log-in time for Facebook and used to wait for classmates on that dedicated time. We had limited time allotted for the internet. Things were getting fast but still, the penetration of social media was far from the pockets of our jeans.
How did it all change?
Even though, iPhone was launched in 2007. It really took around 5 or 6 years in India for smartphones to become somewhat affordable. So by 2012 smartphone sightings did start to increase. I got my first one in 2016. It was a second-hand Moto E, just in case you were curious. It got lost within 30 days. Ah! The pain.
Smartphones were getting cheaper for everyone to afford. Messaging apps like WhatsApp made it essential to have an internet pack in your phone. Suddenly nobody wanted to miss the good morning messages from their relatives. So everyone started having smartphones. This was the boost needed for everyone to come on social networking sites. It was the beginning of the era of madness. Drowning us in the ocean of information. Fake news, politically driven agendas, scandals, going viral, depression rates, lack of sleep, lack of focus, and so on. It was nothing like humanity ever dealt with.
Back to present
Things are changing faster than ever before. Thanks to Covid-19 which forced everyone to adapt to technology faster than ever possible. The old professors who resisted the gadgets had to adapt to conduct online classes. Kids got their smartphones without the promises of good marks in exams. Even 3rd graders have their own smartphones today. We could only dream of getting a mobile this early. We couldn’t have imagined a decade ago that we would be carrying such a powerful piece of technology in our pockets. It enabled a whole set of businesses that would otherwise have been impossible. Startups like Uber and Zomato would not have gotten this big without the internet and smartphones.
Smartphones are supposed to serve “us” and not the other way around
We love to pick up that nice expensive magic brick first thing in the morning. Whether it’s emails, text messages, or social media notifications. Even though technology has made our life easier. It does come with some serious problems. It’s making us more distracted. The average attention span of homo sapiens is dropping fast. This will affect our genes and if it continues, the collective concentration abilities of our species will drop. We did not evolve to be this distracted. We did not evolve to consume this much data and information. And clearly not to react to every single tragedy that’s happening on the planet. You are not supposed to know Osama Bin Laden has been killed moments after the incident. Information spreading this fast is more likely to be junk. There’s limited space in a newspaper therefore only a finite amount of information can be printed and shared. This was a good filter for junk information/news. Now, even newspaper publishers are on the same train to churn as many online articles as possible. More articles mean more reads and hence more money. It’s crucial than ever before that we filter the form of information and its source.
You have to be more strong-willed than ever before.
The role of Social Networking Sites
Whenever you see someone’s picture on a social networking site, your subconscious judges and compares the life difference you two have. Your mind tries to establish a hierarchy. And when you post something. You get validation from the likes and comments along with some dopamine(the feel-good pleasure hormone). But this happiness is short-lived and you need to keep posting and need those likes and comments to stay happy. Which starts a vicious cycle. This can lead to low self-esteem. Attaching your happiness to something you have no control over is a sure road to misery. Your mind does not need to be informed of every single life update of your peers and friends. And what value does it add to your life? Knowing that your friend just had a coffee at Starbucks. Or your college friend is on a vacation eating a chocolate volcano with his boyfriend at an expensive hotel. Ignore the FOMO.
Infinity Pools
I don’t remember who came up with this analogy (Paul Graham, I think) called infinity pools. An infinity pool is a feed that can be scrolled for an infinite amount of times. (Facebook, Instagram, basically every social media feed) You essentially open these between work or at the end of the day to relax your mind. But these end up sucking all your energy. It’s endless abuse of your dopamine receptors. You have no control over what is being fed to you in an infinity pool. You are what you eat and the content you consume. Letting a bunch of data science engineers and algorithms developers control what you consume. With only one goal in mind- To keep you hooked into the app and make profits with your attention. Not a smart choice. They have no regard for your mental health and wellbeing. Avoid all infinity pools. Curate your own content.
Distractions
This fast shift of technology, integration of the internet, and smartphones in our lives is very new to our biology. We did not evolve to be this distracted, every single thought that comes to your mind can be verified by a single google search. You no longer process your thoughts and ideas because you are constantly distracted. Your subconscious is overwhelmed by the amount of data you are throwing at it. A lot of mental health problems are due to this fact only.
Boredom is good for you
There was a time when the days were long for you, “The Childhood”. When you are young, you are always in the present. The world is fairly new to you and you absorb everything without judgments. Because you are experiencing most things and situations for the first time, you stay indulged in the present. Time feels experientially slow to kids when compared to “average adults”. Another reason is we didn’t have access to the internet and smartphones. Unfortunately, it’s not true for the kids born in the late 2000s. They have internet and smartphones at their expense to kill time.
All great ideas come when you are bored.
All your life things have been happening to you. You forget some things, some stick with you. Heartbreaks, Traumas, and whatnot. It gets accumulated deeper in the consciousness. This is why you are not happy or often get angry. You are carrying a lot of baggage with you. It’s this pile of unprocessed data taking a toll on your emotional, mental, and physical health. What’s interesting is that it gets resolved on its own if we spent alone time.
Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination,journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us mentally fat to fit.
-Naval
Why you should stop watching the news
We are always told and appreciated to read the newspaper. It’s the official intellectual flex of boomers. Think about news from this perspective. Your brain has a limited bandwidth, which means it can only hold limited information. Do you really wanna fill it with useless junk that’s going to be irrelevant a week later. Or would you rather fill it with timeless ideas and knowledge? Peer pressure is the same as watching sports but if you are able to resist. It can free a lot of brain RAM which can be used to execute creative/mental tasks. Stop consuming news. Or stick to newspapers if it’s essential to your study or work. Farnam Street has a really good article on this if you need more convincing.
The Paradox of News: By telling us to care about everything, the news leads to apathy instead of action.
Stick to books
Books are still the best learning medium. It’s been here for thousands of years and is here to stay. A good rule for selecting which books to read is to pick old books that are still in print. If a book is in print for decades or even centuries. It most likely has timeless ideas which are going to stay relevant for many years to come.
When it comes to healthy food or content. Start with reducing the bad first.
Limit your inputs
There is no collective awareness about the consequences of bad internet and smartphone habits. And it will be too late before it will get the light of the mainstream. Changes are happening faster than ever and it’s a necessity to adapt fast or face the repercussions. It’s crucial that you limit and not mindlessly consume what is being presented to you by clever algorithms and media.
Have control over what you consume. Meditate. Spend time with yourself. Away from the Internet and screens. Keep the junk out. Look out the window of the bus or train. Observe life. Don’t think about the past or the future. Just be. And your mind will reward you immensely.
And remember…
You are what you consume.
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