The iPhone effect

AKA how your phone is destroying your relationships

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I’ve come across the same study multiple times recently, and I take that as a sign I need to write about it.

The study goes something like this:

Researchers put two strangers in a room, sit them at a table, and have them engage in normal conversation.

In one scenario, there’s nothing but a notepad on the table.

In the other there’s a phone.

And would you believe that the mere presence of a phone on the table caused the participants to report lower satisfaction with the interaction?

It wasn’t either person’s phone.

It wasn’t ringing or getting notifications.

No, just the phone being in their visual field was enough to degrade the interaction.

This experiment has been recreated multiple times, and the results are always the same (or even worse, when your phone is on the table).

It has become what researchers call “The iPhone Effect,” which shows that having a phone in our view lessens the quality of our interactions with those around us (even if we don’t use it).

The more research I do on technology and how it affects us, the more I realize how damaging it is (especially phones).

That little rectangle we always keep within arms reach was designed to be as addicting as possible, and they succeeded in that regard.

We carry around our mini slot machine everywhere we go, and any time we get even a little bored, we pull it out to swipe around and hope for something novel to excite us.

The problem is, while we’re swiping our lives away, life is passing us by.

I wrote in a previous post about how the average person will spend 9 years of their life on their phone (but I would estimate it’s even higher), and how we could better use our time to do things that have meaning to us.

But what I didn’t consider when I wrote that is how even if we’re not using the phone… it’s STILL taking something away from us.

Even if the phone is face down in the edge of our peripheral, just seeing it will cause us to be less present with our loved ones, and enjoy the time less.

Our phones have many useful features, don’t get me wrong.

But are they giving us as much as they’re taking away?

I’m not so sure.

In the book Areté, Brian Johnson repeats this idea probably two dozen times throughout the book.

“Our greatest obstacle to being fully present in our relationships is almost always technology.”

In the case of our phones, this is definitely true.

We watch our kids grow through our phones, recording every moment.

We go to a concert and record it.

We record fireworks shows and repost them on social media.

Even worse, we use our phones while the people we love the most talk to us, giving them only the remnants of our attention.

We live our entire lives through the medium of a phone…

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of living that way.

Even now when I’m writing this, I hid my phone so it’s out of sight.

Last night, after I signed off from work, I turned off my phone and put it in another room so I could be present with my family.

And as many times as I can throughout the day, I’m going to make an effort to do things like that.

Because in all my years of having a phone, very rarely has anything on my phone been as important or as meaningful as what’s happening in my life in the here and now.

So, if you want to be the best you can be at work, in love, and in relationships, remember the iPhone effect.

Remember that a phone even being in sight fragments our attention.

And then decide what you want to do about that.

I can’t tell you how to deal with it, but I can only say that I’m starting to look at my phone a lot differently.

Our phones were created to be a tool to help us; at the core, they are wildly important innovations.

But when your phone is filled with social media, constant entertainment, and all the distraction you could ever want… it starts to do more harm than good.

We should use our phones… not the other way around.

Thanks for reading,

– Josh