Chances are, you’ve experienced the following situation: You’re with a
small group of friends at a nice restaurant. Everyone is enjoying the
food and conversation when someone decides to take out his phone — not
for an urgent call, but to check email, Instagram and Facebook.
Maybe you’ve witnessed this behavior and found it unsettling. What do
you do? Do you sit idly by, thinking disparaging thoughts? Or do you
call out the offender?
For years, I accepted ill-timed tech use as a sign of the times.
Sherry Turkle, an author and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, diagnosed the situation succinctly: “We expect more from
technology and less from each other.”
I used to do nothing in the face of indiscriminate gadget use. Now I’ve
come to believe that doing nothing is no longer okay. Staying silent
about bad technology habits is making things worse for all of us.
Social antibodies
Paul Graham, the famed Silicon Valley investor, observed that
societies tend to develop “social antibodies” — defenses against new
harmful behaviors. He uses the example of cigarette smoking: Smoking in
public became taboo over the span of just one generation after social
conventions changed. Legal restrictions played a part, but a shift in
the perception of smokers — from cultured to crude — laid the groundwork
for public support of smoking bans.
Similarly, the remedy to screen indiscretion may be developing new
norms that make it socially undesirable to check one’s phone in the
company of others.
By better understanding the psychology behind our technology, we can put it in its place.
Like cigarettes, our personal technology use can become a bad habit.
People enter a zone when they use their gadgets. Checking email or
scrolling through Facebook can be intoxicating and disorienting. Tech
makers design these products using the same psychology that makes slot
machines addictive. The variable rewards built into apps make time pass quickly, and can make people oblivious to what’s happening around them.
“Most people I know have problems with Internet addiction,” Graham
wrote in 2010. “We’re all trying to figure out our own customs for
getting free of it.” Ironically, despite his awareness, Graham has poured millions of dollars into addictive sites and apps, including Reddit and the gaming companies Machine Zone and OMGPop.
To be clear, I’m not pointing fingers. Like Graham, I am conflicted. My book, Hooked,
is a how-to guide for building habit-forming products. I wrote the book
in hopes that more companies could utilize the techniques used by
Facebook, Twitter and the like to make their products more engaging.
However, the byproduct of making technology better is that sometimes
it’s so good, people can’t seem to put it down.
The trouble, as Graham points out, is that “unless the rate at which
social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at
which technological progress throws off new addictions, we’ll be
increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us.” In other words,
if we don’t build social antibodies, the disease of distraction will
become the new normal. But how do we develop and spread social
antibodies to inoculate ourselves against bad mobile manners?
At work
One solution is to take an explicit approach. At almost every
corporate meeting I attend, someone (typically the highest-paid person
in the room) starts using his or her personal technology. The behavior
is toxic in many ways: It sends a message to everyone in the room that
gadget time is more important than their time; it distracts people who
assume the boss is sending work their way; and, perhaps worst of all, it
prevents the person using the device from participating in the
discussion, which means the meeting wasn’t worth having in the first
place.
The best way to prevent this waste of time is for someone senior to
mandate a “no-screen meeting.” In my experience conducting hundreds of
workshops, the discussions declared device-free are by far more
productive. Setting expectations up front is equivalent to administering
a distraction vaccine.
Among friends
In other situations, being explicit isn’t as easy. Take the
dinner-party scene described earlier. Unlike in a corporate setting, no
one at a dinner is the boss, so no one has the inherent right to enforce
a device-free fiat.
For a while, phone stacking
— in which people tossed their phones in the center of the table, and
the person who first reached for his phone during the meal had to pay
for everyone — was sort of a thing, but it never took off, because the
whole exercise felt punitive and patronizing.
Setting expectations up front is equivalent to administering a distraction vaccine.
Most people understand that using their gadgets in an intimate social
setting is rude — but there’s always that one person who doesn’t.
So what’s the best way to get the transgressor off the phone?
Embarrassing him in front of others isn’t a good idea, assuming you want
to stay friends. A more subtle tactic is required. The goal is to snap
the offender out of the phone zone and to give him two options: either
excuse himself to attend to whatever crisis is happening, or put away
the tech. Over time, I’ve hit on one way to effectively call out
someone while keeping things cordial: Ask a question.
Posing a direct question does the person a favor by pulling him back
while sending a clear message. The technique works like a charm. For
one, the unexpected question elicits an entertaining reaction — sort of
like what happens when you hold someone’s nose when he’s dozing off: He
gasps and sputters. But in this case, it’s not your fault, because you,
as questioner, can play dumb. “Oh, sorry, were you on your phone? Is
everything O.K.?” If there really is an emergency, the person can excuse
himself — but more often than not, he’ll tuck it back into his pocket
and start enjoying the night.
Let’s do something
Asking a direct question and declaring device-free meetings are simple
tactics that spread social antibodies. Though personal technology
clearly isn’t tobacco, it’s important we know that our devices are also
designed to keep us hooked. By better understanding the psychology
behind our technology, we can put it in its place.
Now is the time to take a stand. Fight fire with fire by sharing
articles like this one on social media. Set limits, and don’t resign
yourself to being ignored. The idea is not to disavow technology
completely, but to encourage people to appreciate its power, and to be
aware when its power over them is becoming a problem. In the end,
technology should serve us — we should not serve it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment