giving up true love on Valentine's Day

“I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you or if it was the second or third…But, I remember the first moment I held you…somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.” – Cassandra Clare

It’s Valentine’s Day and so our attention turns to love, true love, and for many of us that is not a human at all – it’s our smart phone. Think about it. If you accidently leave your phone at home or misplace it, aren’t you absolutely lost, as if a body part is missing? Is there a human who makes you feel that way?

 
Without your phone, you feel disconnected, alone and inconsolable. You are your phone and your phone is you. Not only are our phones our life lines – they have become our ultimate objects of desire. I have a nice, new smart phone and I see people looking at it lustfully, with a desire that I never saw turned towards me, even in my youngest, most fit and sexy days.

This is all new to me, as until recently I didn’t have a smart phone – didn’t want one; had no need for one. I relished the silence, peace and time for contemplation my dumb phone offered,  because unless I was using it to talk to someone, it had no hold over me.  

Then, a couple of months ago, Mr. Clark shamed me into getting a smart phone. Apparently, our plan cost $25 per month more than it needed to because it was accommodating my dumb phone. So, even though I really dislike change and was quite attached to my dumb phone, I made the switch.

Mr. Clark wheeled and dealed me into one of the smartest smart phones around, “all for less per month than we were paying for that dumb old dumb phone,” he declared proudly. Hello, telephone plan savings; good bye emotional freedom and contemplative peace and quiet. Now my phone runs my life. It’s the first thing I look at in the morning, the last thing I see at night, and it chirps at me all day. I had no idea a phone had so much to say…

 

According to a couple of NPR shows I listened to, we become so in tune and attached to our phones because they tap into some of our brain’s most basic functions. We are reward oriented; we like surprises; and, if the reward involves a surprise, even better.
 

The psychologist B.F. Skinner demonstrated this with rats over 60 years ago. His studies showed that the most powerful way to train an animal is to give it intermittent, unpredictable rewards - this creates obsessive behavior. Rather than running mazes or nibbling food or taking naps or doing any of the other things healthy lab rats do, Skinner’s rats would simply sit there, click, click, clicking on their treat releasing bar, hoping to trigger a reward, which was always random.  

 

The sound our smart phone’s alert when a new message, text or Facebook post comes in gets our attention in the same way and pretty soon our rat brain is incapable of not responding. We hear that cheery alert and we can’t help but check to see what kind of treat just came in and the random, unpredictability of those messages, texts, posted treats makes them all the better.  

 

Of course, I could put my phone on vibrate or silence the cheery chirps altogether, but what fun would that be? And, I am in plentiful company. Everywhere I go people are engaged with their smart phones when they should be directing their attention elsewhere. That pause at the green light, when no one goes? The drivers are all busy on their smart phones rather than pushing on the gas. Lunch out with coworkers? Everyone’s as busy texting and tweeting and checking their email as they are eating or, God forbid, talking to each other. It’s to the point that folks don’t even try to hide it anymore…of course, I’m checking my social media, why aren’t you?    

 

The Zombie Apocalypse is here and smart phones are our weapons of choice, but, it’s not fully our fault. Much of our addictive behavior (and not just with phones) is driven by our brain’s need for/enjoyment of dopamine – a brain chemical that is released in anticipation of different types of rewards like food, sex, drugs or a new text message.

Apparently, releasing dopamine is the brain’s way of rewarding behaviors that helped early humans survive, which is why it is released when we have sex or learn something or master our environment in some way. But, how to control our need for that rush?

The obvious answer is to step away from the smart phone for a while…take a walk, go out under the night sky or go to sleep, either without your phone or with the chirping and vibrating turned off.

A friend just announced he’s taking a break from Facebook. It’s dominating his already busy life and he needs to get back in touch. While I will miss his ever witty, always amusing posts, I applaud his plan. It would probably do us all good to re-experience the silence our long lost dumb phones used to provide…

 So this Valentine’s Day, why not challenge ourselves to give up our one true love – that smart phone - for at least a bit of the day, in the interest of possibly rekindling or finding romance? It’s worth a shot. Who says rat brain can’t take a break, at least occasionally, on a holiday?