YOU NEED TO WATCH ‘THE SOCIAL DILEMMA’
Eward Tufte, Statastician and professor of political science at Yale University was once quoted as saying “There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’. Illegal drugs and software.”
When I read that I thought, “YES!” the similarities between clients I work with who have gaming and technology addictions and the people I work with who have substance dependency problems are scary.
I urge anyone who has a smart phone to watch “The Social Dilemma,” and encourage your family and friends to do the same. The movie was inspired by a presentation developed by Tristan Harris (President of Centre for Humane Technology) which you can find here: https://www.slideshare.net/paulsmarsden/google-deck-on-digital-wellbeing-a-call-to-minimize-distraction-and-respect-users-attention
But ultimately it is urging people become aware of their screen time and take steps to manage their well-being and the well-being of the people in their lives who matter.
This can be achieved through the following:
1. Turn off those social media notifications. They are keeping you glued to your phone and being unnecessarily engaged with your device.
2. Declutter your social media feed. Our brains aren’t evolved enough to deal with all that excess information/human interaction. If you don’t know them and the pages content or the celebrity influencer you follow isn’t directly aligned with your personal goals/ethos. Delete it/them!
3. Stop scrolling! Go to the page of the family member/friend you want an update from or actually give them a phone call/text to check in instead of hoping you will see them featured in your news feed.
3. Your attention is worth money, don’t waste it. Now is the time to stop procrastinating and be productive.
4. Don’t look at your phone first thing in the morning and STOP taking it into the toilet/shower with you.
5. Stop watching the recommendations on YouTube. The computer algorithms that run social platforms are evolving much faster than us and when you manually source content you are more likely to watch something informative and engaging than if you let the device decide what you will waste your time on.
6. Start a hobby that requires ZERO tech. this will help you keep your distance from your device and also help you to become capable at engaging your creativity once more.
7. Assume all news is fake news and research it before sharing information you have found online. And REMEMBER, Google will autocomplete your search with recommendations based on the data extrapolated from the geographical area you live in so turn that feature off now!
8. Encourage others to watch ‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaaC57tcci0 To read Jaron Laniers ‘TEN ARGUMENTS for deleting your social media accounts right now,’ https://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Deleting-Social-Media-Accounts/dp/125019668X To check out local resources to overcome screen addiction such as this one https://www.todaysparent.com/family/parenting/7-surprisingly-easy-ways-to-fight-your-screen-addiction/
Lastly, start now! Don’t put off this battle (and it will probably be one of the hardest struggles you will face) if we can all take steps to regain ourselves from technology and only use them as tools again we can ensure a far better future for ourselves and others.
