In my articles about digital productivity, I’ve discussed topics like tech habit formation and getting into a flow state. But in order to truly assess our productivity today, we need to grapple with one particular piece of equipment that promises to make our lives easier but in reality causes all sorts of new problems.
To find it, just look in your pocket (unless it’s already in your hand). I’m talking, of course, about the smartphone.
What are the Causes of Smartphone Addiction?
Smartphones are devices deliberately engineered to command your attention and keep you glued to them as much as possible.
Everything from the badges and notifications to the sounds and alerts to the sheer variety of purposes to keep picking it up again and again combine to create a situation that can become an addiction.
The difficulty with combating smartphone addiction is that these behaviors are largely subconscious; you don’t intend to keep checking your phone, but you do it anyway.
This has to do with neuroscience and the release of the pleasure chemical dopamine each time we receive a new notification or scroll through fresh content on social media.
This subconscious impulse also makes it harder for us to accurately evaluate how much of our time it is taking up.
And the consequences can be more dire than many of us assume.
Is Phone Addiction “Real?” A Look at the Research
It’s clear that smartphone habits can become unhealthy, but a common question is whether it rises to the level of an officially-recognized addiction disorder. For this we can look to the research as there have been numerous studies centered around this question.
In one study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, Panova and Carbonell conducted a literature review of qualitative and quantitative studies of smartphone addiction. They conclude that the behaviors observed “could be better labeled as problematic or maladaptive smartphone use” and that they don’t “meet the severity levels of those caused by addiction.”
Another study by Yu and Sussman consisted of a systematic literature search for research on smartphone addiction and problematic smartphone use. The authors conclude with an approach to treating smartphone addiction as an emerging behavioral addiction, since much research to this point fails to distinguish smartphone addiction from other technological addictions nor clarifies if it is an addiction to the device itself or the features it offers.
So overall, the details of how exactly to define smartphone addiction are still being determined, but there is no question that the research shows its addictive behavior.
And for you as a user, these behaviors have negative effects on productivity as well as daily life and well-being, which we’ll explore next.
Negative Effects of Smartphone Overuse
This continuous use of smartphones can have devastating consequences for your productivity. Studies have estimated over 5 hours lost per worker per week just due to idle phone use. (And that doesn’t even start to factor in similarly disruptive behavior on work computers.)
Research shows a particular type of stress known as “technostress,” as well as feelings of guilt, never being truly free, and disconnection from friends, significant others, and our children.
Taking Your Life Back: How to Overcome Phone Addiction
The forces that glue you to your phone are largely subconscious, and the key to fighting back against them isn’t willpower or some “magic” productivity app.
Instead, it’s the seemingly mundane but absolutely crucial process of habit formation and change. (You can read more about this in B. J. Fogg’s excellent book Tiny Habits.)
Overall, you want to build processes that make it harder to pursue your addictive behavior and break that habits that enable it.
A great start is to turn off notifications and badge icons so they don’t interrupt you at all times and pull you into their web.
Also, batching tasks like checking and responding to emails so you do it all at just a few set times during the day instead of constantly checking for something new helps confine those activities to an acceptable timeframe and makes them happen on your terms, not your phone’s.
Other things to do can vary depending on what exactly your time sucks are on your phone, but it may include deleting social media apps, hiding problematic apps in a folder on your last page, or even logging out of services and changing your password to something you won’t remember.
It’s all about forcing you to put forth an extra effort to get to the addictive stuff and fighting back against your brain’s natural tendency to seek novelty, which can start with a notification and easily turn into endless scrolling.
At the same time, you can work to build more positive habits on your phone. For example, if you decide that you’d like to read more books, put your Kindle or other e-reader app prominently on your home screen and go there, not Instagram (or whatever your time sucks are) if you find yourself grabbing your phone just to find something to do.
At the same time, breaking your smartphone addiction should include deliberate training on things like focus and achieving flow states as well as being stricter about choosing times in your life to go phone free, like during meal times or right before bed and when you wake up.
It’s unlikely you’ll be able to (or even want to) disconnect from your phone entirely in this day and age, but being honest with yourself about the extent of problematic behaviors and working on retraining your phone habits can lead to huge results.
Some solutions to phone addiction depend on other people, like in the case of a workplace culture that requires constantly checking and responding to emails after hours. Try not to do this type of thing just to “get ahead” and work with your colleagues and supervisor to find a solution that works for everyone and keeps you sane at the same time.
We hope this article has helped you understand smartphone addiction and given you some tools to start to overcome it. Do you have any other suggestions for how to break a negative relationship with your phone?
In my articles about digital productivity, I’ve discussed topics like tech habit formation and getting into a flow state. But in order to truly assess our productivity today, we need to grapple with one particular piece of equipment that promises to make our lives easier but in reality causes all sorts of new problems.
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