Your phone addiction is keeping you from achieving flow state | Arthur Brooks — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00A lot of people are not convinced that  they're addicted to their devices. And
2. 0:03and one of the big reasons for that is  because pretty much everybody is. I mean,
3. 0:07you go to societies around the world where there's  a ubiquitous addiction. [music] For example, in
4. 0:12the Soviet Union before the the fall of the Iron  Curtain, drinking was so incredibly common that
5. 0:18people who are hopelessly addicted to alcohol had  no idea that they were alcoholics because they,
6. 0:23you know, it's ask a ask a fish, you  know, how's the water? And he'll say,
7. 0:28"What's water?" is what it comes down to.  So, that's one of the reasons you notice
8. 0:31when somebody's addicted to heroin because  it's not that common for ordinary people. You
9. 0:36don't notice when somebody's addicted to their  phone because literally everybody is addicted
10. 0:40to their phones. My name is Arthur Brooks. I'm  a professor and a writer about the science of
11. 0:46human happiness. My latest book is The Meaning of  Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness.
12. 0:57Thank you for watching Big Think. If you'd  like to support our work, we encourage you
13. 1:01to join our members community. As a member,  you'll receive our quarterly print magazine,
14. 1:05a beautifully designed collection of  the ideas and interviews that matter
15. 1:08most. Bigthink is for curious people who  want to take deep dives into big ideas.
16. 1:13To support the media you want to see in  the world, go to bigthink.com/membership.
17. 1:18And now back to the interview. How to  overcome your addiction to technology.
18. 1:26One of the most interesting areas of social  science is that of human addiction. A and
19. 1:32addiction is such a fascinating area of human  behavior because it's based entirely on on a
20. 1:39really great part of human life, which is  our ability to learn, our ability to make
21. 1:44progress. Our brains are designed to learn new  things that make it easier for us to pass the
22. 1:51winner and pass on our genes. and and we have  neurochemicals that actually make this possible
23. 1:55as well. We want to make sure that when we learn  something that's an adaptive advantage that that
24. 2:00we remember it and that we bank it and we learn  new things after that. This makes us fit. This
25. 2:06makes it more possible for us to find mates, for  us to eat. And this is a real advantage to homo
26. 2:12sapiens. It's one of the reasons that we're so  unbelievably successful is because we learn and
27. 2:16we have brains designed to learn. Part of this is  a a neurochemical that neurom modulator that most
28. 2:22people are familiar with called dopamine.  Dopamine is often mischaracterized as a
29. 2:27pleasure hormone. It's not. What it does is it  gives you the anticipation of reward. And and
30. 2:33and here's how it works. You learn something,  you come across something, you're surprised by
31. 2:38something that that you like and you you encode  that such that the next time you think about it,
32. 2:44you get a little spritz of dopamine in your  brain and that gives you the anticipation of
33. 2:48the reward for getting that thing again. And so  you go in search of it again. If you find even
34. 2:53more of it the second time, more dopamine, which  reinforces the cycle. And this is a great thing.
35. 2:58This is why you would remember that there are  gazels around a watering hole or berries on a
36. 3:03bush and you're looking forward to going and  getting that. The same thing as simple and as
37. 3:07innocent today as I happen across a deli with a  great roast beef sandwich and the next morning I'm
38. 3:13thinking about that roast beef sandwich the first  time my stomach growls around 11:00 in the morning
39. 3:17and I say I'm going to go get another one of those  sandwiches. The problem with that is that we found
40. 3:22a way to to juice that dopamine system to give  us even more of it. So we have more anticipation
41. 3:27of reward and more of the reward when we get the  thing that we that we want. We found neurochemical
42. 3:34ways to increase it artificially. Now sometimes  it's through drugs and alcohol. If you use cocaine
43. 3:41or even cigarettes, you'll neurochemically enhance  the amount of dopamine in your brain. If you use
44. 3:47something like methamphetamine, you'll get about  10 times as much as you could naturally get,
45. 3:52but all sorts of other things will do it as well.  A slot machine will do it. Your iPhone will do it,
46. 3:58as a matter of fact. And it's designed to give  you the anticipation of reward to say, "I want
47. 4:04to see what's on my notifications. I want to see  if somebody actually texted me." What's going on
48. 4:09is your brain is working the way I was supposed  to. But it's been hijacked by modern technology
49. 4:15to do that natural thing. in a unnatural way.  It's entirely legitimate to say that the way
50. 4:21that we interact with technology today is a a lot  like any other addiction. It's involving the same
51. 4:26neurochemistry in more or less the same ways. We  are in point of fact addicted to tech. Here's a
52. 4:33simple test. Put your phone away for an hour and  then write down how many times you think about
53. 4:39that phone. How many times you just reflexively  reach for that phone that you want to pull out
54. 4:45that phone. and you wonder if something is on that  phone. If it's more than once every 5 minutes,
55. 4:50you're an addict. That's just dopamine spritzing  into your brain saying, "There's something there.
56. 4:56Go check it." Anticipation of reward. Now, again,  this is not to say that you need to go to the
57. 5:00Betty Ford Clinic. This is not saying that you  need, you know, some intensive detox at a far away
58. 5:06site in the desert. It just means that your brain  has habituated itself to that and that's something
59. 5:11you need to deal with, which you can. People often  wonder is something wrong with me because I have
60. 5:18negative emotions. And the answer is no. Quite the  contrary. If you didn't have negative emotions,
61. 5:23something is wrong with you. We are evolved for  bad feelings. We're evolved for good feelings,
62. 5:29too. Don't get me wrong. But negative emotions  are more intense than positive emotions because
63. 5:34negative emotions keep you alive. There  are four negative emotions. They are anger,
64. 5:39disgust, sadness, and fear. They exist because  uh different subp parts of the lyic system of the
65. 5:47brain have been evolved to produce those negative  emotions. When you're feeling those things,
66. 5:52it means your brain is working properly. Now,  they can be exaggerated. Don't get me wrong,
67. 5:56there are psychiatric conditions in which they  are they are in events in life overemphasize
68. 6:01those those negative emotions, but for most of  us, these are things that we feel every day. As a
69. 6:05matter of fact, the average American spends 16% of  her or his day in predominantly intense negative
70. 6:12emotions. Your results may vary, but if you're 16%  of the day bummed out, you're normal. That doesn't
71. 6:20mean anything's wrong with you. It means things  are working correctly in your brain. You need an
72. 6:24alarm system for things that you should probably  avoid. That's normal. Now, it's interesting when
73. 6:30we study the different parts of the lyic system  of the brain that we're that we have different
74. 6:34parts that are designed to create these terrible  aversive emotions specifically and for specific
75. 6:40reasons. I'll give you an example. There's  a part of the lyic system called the dorsal
76. 6:44anterior singulate cortex. It's dedicated to help  you feel social exclusion, sadness. It lights up
77. 6:52like a Christmas tree. If you lose somebody that  you love, if somebody leaves you at the altar,
78. 6:57if somebody that you love dies and you're feeling  grief, that dorsal anterior singulate cortex is
79. 7:03on full blast. Now, why would be evolved to feel  grief or or any sadness for that matter? I hear
80. 7:10people say, "I want to live without sadness."  No, you don't. If you never had any sadness
81. 7:15and it didn't really bother you, if it were not  incredibly uncomfortable, you wouldn't do what
82. 7:19you need to do to avoid it. You'd say everything  that's on your mind. You do all kinds of things
83. 7:25that would make people throw you out of the tribe.  250,000 years ago, that would mean that you're
84. 7:30going to walk the frozen tundra and die alone.  And you don't want that. Today, it would mean
85. 7:35that you're fired, friendless, and divorced in  about 2 weeks. Not so good for you either. Thank
86. 7:41goodness for your dorsal anterior singulate  cortex and the sadness that you hate and that
87. 7:46you're afraid of and so you try to avoid. Okay.  Now, how do we avoid it? One way that we avoid it
88. 7:52is by having good relationships with other people.  By apologizing when we hurt somebody's feelings,
89. 7:58by going out of our way to help people feel  good around us. That's the normal way to do
90. 8:03it. Here's another way. Distracting ourselves  with drugs and alcohol, with workcoholism,
91. 8:10with technology. We distract ourselves from our  negative emotions, which are completely normal,
92. 8:16very healthy. We distract ourselves by opening  up the screen, by scrolling something we're not
93. 8:22really interested in because it captures so much  of our brain activity neurocognitively. We're
94. 8:28we're just drawn in in ways that are well, they're  designed to draw us in. And in so doing, we we
95. 8:35numb ourselves emotionally. It's a numbing device,  much as a bottle of whiskey is a numbing device,
96. 8:40much as staying 14 hours at the office because  you're not very happy with your marriage is a
97. 8:45numbing device. But the most ubiquitous of all  is the device that we're looking at that's in our
98. 8:50pockets. And that is not just not healthy. It's  actively making us sicker. Now, often people tell
99. 8:59me, and not just young people, people my age as  well, they say, "Look, I I get it. I shouldn't be
100. 9:0412 hours a day on my screens. I get it. I get it.  But, you know, there are times when I just want to
101. 9:08veg out. You know, I want to lie in my bed or I  want to sit in my comfy chair and I just want to
102. 9:12doom scroll for 45 minutes for an hour. I want to  detach from the world." Now, that sounds good, but
103. 9:18it's very problematic for a couple of different  reasons. Number one is that when you're highly
104. 9:24engaged in information that's being thrown at you,  especially on social media, which is conflictive
105. 9:29or or which is exposing you to social comparison,  you're actually unbelievably stressed out. It's
106. 9:35actually raising your anxiety, not lowering your  anxiety. What it's doing is it's detaching you.
107. 9:40So you're you are in fact veging but in a very  very anxious stressed out way and you're not
108. 9:47designed to relax with something that actually  stresses you out. It's an unnatural way to do it.
109. 9:53Number two is you're fueling the dopamine cycle.  And when you fuel the dopamine cycle unnaturally
110. 9:59again and again and again and again, you get  something that feels like short-term relief
111. 10:03but turns into long-term problems as sure as I'm  sitting here. You know, one of the things that we
112. 10:08find with alcohol, and this is a parallel I make  a lot, alcohol, what it does very effectively,
113. 10:13it cuts the connection between the part of your  lyic system that makes you feel anger and fear,
114. 10:18the amygdala, and your prefrontal cortex, your  executive center, in which you consciously
115. 10:24understand that you're feeling fear and anger. It  you are feeling fear and anger, but you just don't
116. 10:29know it when you drink alcohol. That's a very very  short-term solution because guess what happens
117. 10:35when you come down from the inebriation the next  day for example more fear and anger than you felt
118. 10:41the day before. You get a rebound effect which  leads to escalation and that leads to addiction.
119. 10:47It also leads to an inability for your brain to  work the way it's supposed to naturally when you
120. 10:51do have actual threats and impairs your ability  to feel pleasure in the ways that you should as
121. 10:58well. Same thing is happening with our devices.  We don't feel pleasure the way that we should
122. 11:02and we cut off our ability to feel the emotions  that we're designed to feel. It's bad for you.
123. 11:08There's a huge literature on on how people recover  from addictions. People have been addicted for a
124. 11:13long long time. And so we've had plenty of time to  figure out how to how to cope with it. One thing
125. 11:18that we know is it's not easy. It's not simple.  It's not as straightforward as snapping your
126. 11:23fingers and saying, "Oh yeah, I shouldn't drink a  fifth of whiskey a day. Silly me." and just stop
127. 11:31it. It's harder than that because your brain is  captured. Your dopamineergic cycle is is actually
128. 11:36working and it's impaired in such a way that  that you've become dependent on that. Now, what
129. 11:42we do know from from the the behavioral science on  addiction is that breaking free from addictions is
130. 11:48absolutely possible, but it requires three basic  parts. Number one is you got to get mad. You got
131. 11:56to get tired of this thing. You have to become  resentful and that that something has captured
132. 12:01your brain and has taken over your life and you  need to have the spirit of the rebel. That's why
133. 12:07they often talk in in in the in in the literature  on drug and alcohol addiction, you got to hit rock
134. 12:12bottom. What does hit rock bottom mean? It doesn't  necessarily mean that you're sleeping in a gutter,
135. 12:16that you're getting in car crashes, that you're  getting in bar fights. It means that you've had
136. 12:21it and you're not going to take it anymore. The  second step is detoxing. Is actually understanding
137. 12:28that there are brain processes involved. That this  is a biological phenomenon and and dealing with it
138. 12:34as such. Is actually changing your behavior in  such a way that you're going to interrupt the
139. 12:39brain the way that your brain works. The cycles  of activity in your brain that are keeping you
140. 12:43addicted. And then the hard part comes. Part three  is you got to live in a different way. You know,
141. 12:49if you're hanging out with a bunch of drunks, you  got to get new friends is what it comes down to.
142. 12:54If you're working in a job that keeps you chained  to your desk 16 hours a day, you got to go on the
143. 13:00job market and do something else for a living.  You have to change your circumstances. And in
144. 13:05so doing, you need to become comfortable with the  thing that was making you most uncomfortable with.
145. 13:09And I'm going to tell you right now what it was.  It was you. The problem isn't that you were trying
146. 13:13to go someplace else. The problem is you were  trying to escape from inside your own head. And
147. 13:18you need to become comfortable with with boredom.  I teach the science of happiness and and it might
148. 13:24sound like I'm just going to say studies show  studies show studies show. But that's not it at
149. 13:28all. When you're studying human happiness, you you  got to start with the best questions. And the best
150. 13:32questions never come from behavioral scientists  like me. They don't. They come from philosophers
151. 13:36and theologians and the wisdom tradition. The  big questions of life, which means I'm reading
152. 13:42philosophers all the time. I'm asking my students  to actually read philosophers to get the right
153. 13:47questions before we can go to the neuroscience  and the behavioral science in the first place.
154. 13:50So since I do that, one of the questions that  a lot of my students ask me is, you know,
155. 13:54professor, who's your favorite philosopher?  Ah, maybe Aristotle was so great. I don't know,
156. 14:01maybe throw in a little bit of uh Thomas Aquinus.  Got to love that. Yeah, I do. I love all that
157. 14:06stuff. But my favorite philosopher hands down is  an American from the 19th century from the 1840s.
158. 14:13That's Ralph Waldo Emerson, the really the most  American philosopher, because he talked about the
159. 14:19spirit of self-reliance, what it actually means  to rebel against the things that are holding you
160. 14:24down. It's like a tall glass of cold water on a  hot summer's day, as far as I'm concerned, because
161. 14:30we all need to rebel against a lot of things. You  know, we're we especially need to rebel against
162. 14:35ourselves when we're chained by our technology.  And Ralph Aldo Emerson writing in 1841, his most
163. 14:42famous essay, self-reliance, talks about exactly  how to do it, even though there wasn't even the
164. 14:49shadow of an iPhone in his pocket. Nonetheless,  he had the philosophy that we can all still use
165. 14:54today. Emerson's philosophy has a lot of different  parts to it and and I write about it extensively,
166. 15:00but but really what it comes down to is this.  If we want to be free, we need to be honest.
167. 15:05And and and that doesn't mean, you know, going and  telling mom everything you did when you were a kid
168. 15:09that you're ashamed of. Do that. [snorts] Fine. It  means being honest with yourself. To get off the
169. 15:16sauce. If you're drinking too much alcohol, you  need to get honest with yourself that you're doing
170. 15:20something that you shouldn't be doing and you're  ashamed of it and you don't like it and you want
171. 15:24to stop and you've been lying to yourself all this  time and thinking that it's going to be okay. And
172. 15:28you you finally drink enough that you'll just lose  the urge to do so. You know that's a lie. you know
173. 15:33that you're doing something that you shouldn't  be doing and you feel rotten about yourself,
174. 15:38admit it. Be honest with yourself. Emerson talks  about the fact that everybody needs a radical
175. 15:43honesty in their lives, in all parts of their  lives. And it's hard. It's hard to do. I mean,
176. 15:48there's a ton of behavioral science literature,  even research I've participated in myself that
177. 15:53shows that we don't know ourselves very well. And  the main reason is because we lie to ourselves all
178. 15:57day long. We got these biases that make us feel  better about ourselves, you know. Yeah. You know,
179. 16:03it's like I think to myself, yeah, Arthur Brooks,  he's a guy with good hair. You know, I can kind
180. 16:07of I'm bald. It's time for me to actually suck it  up and be honest with myself. Now, that's an easy
181. 16:13one. You know what's not an easy one? My personal  faults, my foibless, the ways that I'm actually
182. 16:20insincere, the way that my personality isn't what  I want it to be. And Ralph Waldo Emerson says, "Be
183. 16:25honest with yourself." Because when you do that,  then you're actually able to think for yourself.
184. 16:32When you're honest with yourself, then you're able  to think for yourself. You're able to go against
185. 16:36the crowd. The crowd will tell you anything that  you want to hear. Basically, you'll surround
186. 16:40yourself with yes men and sickopants who'll tell  you all is well. You're not drinking too much. You
187. 16:46drink like everybody else. That's cuz your friends  are drunks. What we need to do after we're honest
188. 16:50with ourselves is to be is to is to really think  as individuals. and and and that's hard because
189. 16:57the truth of the matter is that once you start  forming your own opinions, I don't know, maybe
190. 17:00you're on a college campus and everybody is is is  protesting against this one thing and you're like,
191. 17:07I don't want to do that. I disagree with that.  Well, you're going to lose friends. And you know,
192. 17:11one of the places you can lose friends the most is  on the internet, on social media. Have a a weird
193. 17:17contrary opinion on the internet and watch how  many friends that you actually lose. So critically
194. 17:22important that you actually think for yourself.  And then step three, go your own way. Once you're
195. 17:29thinking for yourself, walk by yourself if you  need to walk away. You know, it's so it's so
196. 17:34amazing. You know, I've talked to in the context  of what we're discussing here and addiction to
197. 17:39tech. You know, I've talked to students in  my own classes and I said, "What would happen
198. 17:43if you just like got rid of your social media  accounts? You became invisible on social media.
199. 17:50It makes them panic because that that would mean  that I'm not going to be able to distract myself.
200. 17:54That means I'm going need to be honest with myself  and confront myself with my own life. I'm going to
201. 17:58need to think for myself as opposed to being in an  echo chamber. What's going on around me? And and
202. 18:03then most subversive all of most countercultural  of all. I got to be alone in the global internet
203. 18:10commons. Nobody's alone. But when they do it, they  say, "I'm free. I'm free. I feel like I've taken
204. 18:18out my horse and ridden into the western frontier.  Is it lonely? Yep, it is lonely. It's hard,
205. 18:25as a matter of fact. But there's a bracing quality  to it. There's a goodness to it. And and that's
206. 18:30the essence, as far as I'm concerned, of the  philosophy of what we actually need to rebel
207. 18:35today. The good news about tech addiction is that  it's actually easier to break than many chemical
208. 18:41addictions. The truth is that many people have and  so can you. Now, it's harder if you don't remember
209. 18:48the before times. It turns out it's much easier  for people my age to break tech addictions because
210. 18:52my brain was almost completely formed before there  were devices in my life. And so, there are a lot
211. 18:58of things that people find just uber addictive  that I don't even find especially attractive. It's
212. 19:03hard for me. It would be very hard for me to spend  an hour on Instagram because it just wouldn't be
213. 19:08as interesting to me as it would be for somebody  whose brain was formed in the era of Instagram,
214. 19:12for example. But everybody, including people  who are born after 2008, can absolutely do this.
215. 19:18And what it comes down to is a certain set of  protocols that I'll break into three categories.
216. 19:22Number one is tech-free times. Number two is  techfree zones. And the third is tech fasts.
217. 19:30And just with these basic protocols, which are  not that hard, they're not simple, but they're
218. 19:36not that hard, you can reorient yourself toward  technology. You can have a different relationship
219. 19:42with your devices, and your and your I promise  you, your life is really going to change. Now,
220. 19:45the tech-free times are really only three-fold.  It's the first hour of the day, and and that's
221. 19:50when your neurocognitive programming is most  important. you set the tone for the day. And
222. 19:56you know, there's all kinds of literature out  there that shows that if you have a a bad habit,
223. 19:59a tick or something, if you can control it in the  first hour, you probably will have control over
224. 20:04it over the rest of the day. But if you give  into it in the first hour, that's it for the
225. 20:08day. There's a lot of literature that actually  shows that this is the case. It's also true when
226. 20:12it comes to the way that you used your devices.  Now, some people have to, you know, if you're a
227. 20:16doctor or a journalist or something, you got to  make sure nothing's on fire. So you open up your
228. 20:21phone when you need to and and just check your  email and your text and then put it down for the
229. 20:24rest of the hour. Just that first hour of the day.  No scrolling, no reading the news, no social media
230. 20:31because your neurocognitive programming should  be life in real life. Go for a walk outside,
231. 20:39watch the sun come up, work out without devices,  which is something that I just regularly do. Well,
232. 20:45and by the way, there's a reason for that. that  ignites the default mode network in your brain.
233. 20:50Kind of like taking a shower, which is when you  get your best ideas, it's because the phone isn't
234. 20:55in there. So, using that first hour to actually  come alive. Second is meal time. Homo sapiens are
235. 21:03designed to get a lot of a neuropeptide called  oxytocin when we have eye contact with our kin
236. 21:08while we're putting pieces of yak meat in our  mouths around a campfire. That's how the ancient
237. 21:14humans were designed. That's how we knew who a kin  was. This is with the bonding neurochemistry would
238. 21:20when it would when it would occur. There are even  studies showing that if you have your phone face
239. 21:24down on the table while you're having a meal that  you'll look at it and every time you notice it,
240. 21:29you'll wonder if there are notifications or  something on your phone and that will interrupt
241. 21:33your neuropeptide exchange. That will cut off  your oxytocin flow which will make it harder
242. 21:38for you to bond to other people. Third is the last  hour of the day. Now, most people watching this,
243. 21:44they already know that screens are not good  before you go to bed. What what does the blue
244. 21:48light do? The blue light, it interferes with  the proper functioning of your pineal gland. So,
245. 21:53you don't get enough or you know the proper  level of natural melatonin, which wrecks your
246. 21:59sleep architecture. Everybody knows that. So, you  can get some fancy blue blocking glasses and keep
247. 22:04looking at your phone. Better yet, don't look at  your phone because you get the side benefit. If
248. 22:08you don't live alone, you live with other people.  you'll be focused on them. And what we're supposed
249. 22:12to do as we're getting ready to sleep is be with  the people that we actually love. Giving us a
250. 22:17sense of connection, giving us a sense of harmony.  These are the three times. First hour of the day,
251. 22:23meal time. Last hour of the day, watch your life  change. Second is tech-free zones. That means
252. 22:30literal places where you don't have devices. And  you get used to it. And I promise you, you'll get
253. 22:36used to this really, really fast. The first is the  bedroom. Now, obviously, if you're not looking at
254. 22:40your phone for the last hour of the day or the  first hour of the day, you shouldn't look at it
255. 22:44between those times. So, don't have your phone in  the bedroom. Now, that's hard for a lot of people.
256. 22:48I have students who say, "Professor, that's  how I wake up. It's with my phone." And I say,
257. 22:52"I have this new fangled new invention. It's  called the alarm clock. It's incredible. You
258. 22:58can get one for five bucks on Amazon. It's  great. Your phone should not be next to your
259. 23:04bed. I recommend having it in a different room,  locked up in a closet, plugged in someplace else,
260. 23:09and you simply don't see it. Now, here's the good  news. After 6 or 7 weeks, you won't even want to
261. 23:13look at it if you do have it at your bedside. So,  if I'm traveling and I don't have my alarm clock,
262. 23:18I can have my phone there. I will not look at it  at night because I'm out of the habit. The second
263. 23:22tech-free zone is the classroom. There shouldn't  be a school from kindergarten through PhD that
264. 23:28allows phones at any time during the school day,  especially during lunch. And it's crazy that they
265. 23:34still have more than half the states in the United  States that allow unfettered access to phones.
266. 23:39That's simply a lack of courage and knowledge  at this point. It's insanity. I understand it.
267. 23:44I mean, what happens is that students hate it at  the beginning and and so their parents freak out
268. 23:49and they convince themselves that it's a it's a  danger. It's a security risk. And so they call
269. 23:55the principal, who calls the superintendent, who  calls the governor. I don't know. The bottom line
270. 23:59is this is a lack of political and and moral  will and this should get done now. We have the
271. 24:05technology to get all phones out of all schools  at all levels. Last but not least is tech fasts.
272. 24:10I recommend 96 hours a year. That's just 4 days.  I take a spiritual retreat. I go away and I pray
273. 24:18and meditate for 4 days in complete silence with  no devices. And it's it's a miracle. The first
274. 24:25day you're screaming in your head, where's my  phone? The second day you're calming down. The
275. 24:29third day you're saying, "I understand this  tranquility." The fourth day you say, "I wish
276. 24:34it were all year round." If you're not religious,  find a secular way to do it. But the bottom line
277. 24:38is that you need a 4-day tech fast per year if  you can possibly manage it. And you probably can.
278. 24:45There are a few other ways that we can change the  odds in our favor with respect to the technology
279. 24:51and the dopamine. One of the biggest problems is  that the design of the technology in the in the
280. 24:55portable devices is that they they're bugging us.  They're trying to get our attention and and when
281. 25:01they can get our attention, what that does is that  stimulates dopamine to give us the anticipation
282. 25:06of reward which fuels the wanting, l learning,  liking, craving addiction cycles in our brains.
283. 25:12The way that you can interrupt that is by getting  rid of things that that that touch you. Look,
284. 25:17it's bad enough that you think of the phone  on your own. It's even worse when the phone
285. 25:21is thinking of you. It's trying to remind you of  itself. So, the best way to do that is to turn
286. 25:26off your notifications. There's one notification  that should be on your phone and that's when your
287. 25:30mother is calling. That's it. Or that person,  whoever it happens to be. But everything else,
288. 25:35you don't need notifications for really anything  else. I know it's convenient. I really, really
289. 25:39got it. But the truth of the matter is that mostly  what it's doing is it's stimulating your dopamine.
290. 25:44There's another way that the devices will will  will will really capture your brain in full,
291. 25:49which is making sure that it's it's audio and  visual and visual in the the most intense way
292. 25:55possible, which is in color in really really high  definition while giving you all sorts of of sounds
293. 26:02that are designed to hook your brain maximally  across the different uh cortices of your brain
294. 26:08for the different senses. I mean, if they could  make you smell it, they would is the bottom line.
295. 26:12So turn down the fidelity of of the sensory  experience that you're getting. And the best way
296. 26:17to do that is with your strongest sense, which is  your sight. Now, the occipital lobe of your brain,
297. 26:22which functions, it's the whole back of your head,  basically, is is dedicated to sight. And and we're
298. 26:27really attuned to color. Color is unbelievably  important for homo sapiens. It's how we decide
299. 26:31between all kinds of things. We can tell if  somebody likes us because they flush a little bit.
300. 26:36We can tell if a piece of fruit is ripe and ready  to eat. we can tell if something is probably going
301. 26:40to poison us often by color as well as by smell.  So, one of the ways that you can actually get
302. 26:45less hooked by social media or any screenbased uh  technology is by turning off the color and turning
303. 26:52it to black and white. Sounds like such a little  thing, right? But you'll be amazed that when when
304. 26:57your screen is black and white, you will care less  about your screen and you will look at it less.
305. 27:03There's a wonderful body of social psychology by  Mikai Chiket Mikai, the great social psychologist.
306. 27:11He invented the idea of flow, the flow state.  Most people have experienced this. When you're
307. 27:18involved immersively in something and hours  turn to minutes, you lose track of time. It's
308. 27:24intensely pleasurable. You get into this kind of  almost hypnotic state in which you're able to do
309. 27:30things that are hard but not too hard and they're  not boring. It's almost like a state of Buddhist
310. 27:38meditation. People want this and it's really one  of the great sources of happiness. When you have
311. 27:43your sense of calling, you get that. As a matter  of fact, the trouble is it's getting harder.
312. 27:49One of the reasons that happiness has been in  decline, especially for young adults, is because
313. 27:53they're less likely to attain a a flow state.  To get into a flow state, you need to be fully
314. 27:58immersed in something. You need to be concentrated  on something. Now, not anything. You can't just
315. 28:03like focus on something that you hate. That's not  going to work unless you are really really adept
316. 28:09as a, you know, if you're a yogi maybe. But for  the rest of us, it has to be something that you're
317. 28:13truly interested in. The problem is that what  technology has created staying in the the category
318. 28:20of Buddhist thinking, it's given us the the monkey  mind. The monkey mind is that in which the mind is
319. 28:26um is a monkey that's jumping from tree to  tree that can't stay in one particular location
320. 28:32that you can't you can't get a bead on it. It's  always jumping around. And everybody watching me,
321. 28:37you know how it feels to have the monkey mind.  I'm doing this. I'm doing that. I'm distracted.
322. 28:41When you're addicted to tech, it's not just that  you have a flow state and you're knocked into the
323. 28:46monkey mind by the evil exterior. You're doing  it to yourself. You're turning on five things.
324. 28:51You're constantly multitasking because you have a  hard time distinguishing between immersion and the
325. 28:58dreaded boredom that you become completely averse  to. Here's the thing about immersion. Here's the
326. 29:04thing about flow. You got to get a little bored  before you get into it. But if you can't get a
327. 29:09little bored because you've lost your ability,  your the fortitude to actually do that because
328. 29:14you've you haven't felt that way in days, months,  years, you'll never get into that state. And the
329. 29:22moment that you start to feel a little bored, that  could lead to something blissful, could lead to
330. 29:26a divine experience. That's when you turn on the  podcast and scroll the the social media and read
331. 29:35something and do something else and you know  where it goes. You're a monkey jumping around
332. 29:40from tree to tree. I don't know that much about  my greatgrandparents. I know some of their names.
333. 29:48My paternal great-grandfather was Leroy Brooks,  born in 1862 in tha Kansas. And Leroy married
334. 29:56the sheriff's daughter, Mary Ellen. And he was a  farmer like a lot of people in those days. Now,
335. 30:02I don't know much more about him than that, but  I'm going to make a supposition. I'm going to
336. 30:07imagine that Leroy never came home from work and  said, "Honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule
337. 30:15today." And there's a reason. Because all Leroyy's  brain was working the way it was designed to work.
338. 30:23Now, let me give you the contrast between Leroyy's  brain and our brains today. Leroyy's life behind
339. 30:31that mule was pretty boring moment to moment. I  mean, hours a day looking at a mule's butt. How
340. 30:37great is that? Pretty boring moment to moment.  But I promise you, at the end of his life when
341. 30:42he was taking his dying breath, he wasn't saying,  "What a boring life that was." Because it wasn't
342. 30:48a boring life. It was a real life. Now, let's  think about us. We're not bored. We're not bored
343. 30:55moment to moment. On the contrary, we've wiped out  boredom moment to moment. We crack the case. We
344. 31:02look at the phone. We scroll the social media. We  listen to the podcast. We wipe out every moment of
345. 31:07boredom. But when you do that all day, be honest  with yourself. How interesting is your life? I bet
346. 31:14it's grindingly boring. And if you're spending 10  to 12 hours a day behind the screen and checking
347. 31:20your phone 205 times a day, you're in danger of  getting to the end of your life saying, "Well,
348. 31:25that was pretty boring because I was never bored."  If you want to know the stakes here, think about
349. 31:34your eulogy and what you want people to say  about you. Think about what you want to think
350. 31:39about yourself at the end of your days. How do  you want to look back on your life? Now, compare
351. 31:45it to how you're spending your life right now. I  dare say that if you're like the average American,
352. 31:51checking your phone 205 times a day, spending  somewhere between 4 and 9 hours on your screens,
353. 31:59small and large, if you were honest and you got  to the end of your life right now, you'd say,
354. 32:03"I spent a lot of time online." But one thing you  wouldn't say is, "I sure wish I'd spent more time
355. 32:09online." You'd say, "I wish I'd spent more time  with my loved ones, with my friends, with my
356. 32:15family, getting to know people, having real life  experiences." That's what you'd say, right? Well,
357. 32:21that's what to go do. That's the argument for  this. I know breaking a tech addiction is hard.
358. 32:27I get it. It's hard for me, too. And the younger  you are, the harder it is. But those are the
359. 32:32stakes. What are you going to say when you come  to the end of your days? It was really boring cuz
360. 32:37I wiped out boredom. Well, and and I could have  done even even better if I spent even more time on
361. 32:42Instagram. I don't think so. I think you're going  to want to have had deeper relationships and love,
362. 32:50been fully and passionately alive in the  world. So, you got to get after it now.
363. 33:03Four times a year, we print a magazine  worth putting your phone down for.
364. 33:07Big Think's premium print magazine is built  with custom artwork and expert insight from
365. 33:11the world's biggest thinkers. No AI slap, no  rage bait, just big ideas for curious people.
366. 33:17Support the media you want to see in the world.  [music] Go to bigthink.com/membership to join.