Maybe, phone bad after all

8 min read · 1,632 words

I think the older generations may have been right when they claimed "phone bad"—just for the wrong reasons.

There have always been complaints about technological innovation and the ease it brings to the younger generations. Back in the 1800s, newspapers were chastised for inducing anxiety and introducing "information overload". The advent of novels in the 1700s was criticized for promoting idleness, sexual immorality, and social disobedience. Even Plato in the 4th century BC had heralded that writing itself would destroy humanity, preferring human memory to written prose.

Before the proliferation of smartphones, technology had much nicher use cases. You oft were using it for business, for learning, or for communication regarding specific topics (R.I.P. the days of forums, can we bring back MyBB?) There was a required skill, a learning curve to using technology. Hell, there were guides to how to use the internet. People just weren't going online like they are today.

Then came the smartphone and everything changed. Now, in the palm of your hand—the world. No longer were you tethered to a desk or a wireless connection—yes, mobile phone browsers did exist prior, but trying to do anything off a 2G cellular connection was a trek through hell.¹ Now we have 3G! And a touchscreen! No longer does one have to suffer from rolling a ball around on a petite screen to surf the web, we can swipe and tap and [third verb] our way through the internets! Hurrah!

Into existence came fun little games like Flappy Bird, Jetpack Joyride and Angry Birds to vacuum up our time; apps like Facebook, Foursquare, and the beloved Bird App² (rip Twitter) to connect with our peers and keep up on the mundanities of life.

Even though it was millennials that were the pioneers of internet usage, it was posited by society that my generation, Gen Z, are the true sufferers of the net. True, just as my peers don't remember a pre-9/11 world,³ we also seldom have recollection of the world before the mass-proliferation of easy internet connectivity.

Warned at every twist and turn that our phones would turn our brain to mush by those whose forefathers had harked the same about television, we grew immune and dismissive to the effects of the phone. Well, as it turns out, Gen Z isn't the only one being fucked by the phone.

As our brains get turned to formless pink goop by the slop unendingly being shoved down our throats by the algorithm, it becomes more and more apparent to an unnervingly small number of us that there is a greater problem at play here. We gain greater and greater dependencies on our phones like we're heroin addicts, being dangled the sweet, sticky nectar at all times by megacorps who seem to have some ulterior motive that we cannot and do not care to comprehend.

The Attention Economy

Money is no longer the currency of the world. Corporations have forgone cold hard cash for something much more valuable: methamphetamine our attention.

In the olden days, the internet used money. On forums you could purchase ranks which would grant you special privileges and a shiny badge, games like World of Warcraft and Club Penguin made you fork over a chunk of your (or your parent's) hard-earned cash for the ability to play, and advertisements were king. Juxtapose this to now, where most services we use are free.

In tech there's a saying: if a product is free, you are the product. Companies would gather every little itty bit of data they could get from you, the proverbial "searching between the couch cushions for a penny". They did some really shady shit⁴ to scoop up as much information about you as possible, just for more specific targeted ads.

This presented two problems:

1. There comes a limit to how much data one can meaningfully collect
2. People like their privacy

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal⁵ , it became known to the general public that tech corporations were scooping up as much as they could, and in a move that displayed shocking intellectual capabilities from the thumb-sucking adults of the world, people began to retake their privacy.

New regulations were passed on user anonymity and data collection, and no longer could big tech shove their arms whole into the Pringle can, grasping for those few crumbs remaining at the bottom. But now how are they going to keep users on their apps? Now that they can't personalize advertisements to the absolute maximum, they need some way to hold on to you.

Facebook made a massive and contemporarily unpopular change to the Instagram algorithm—no longer does it serve posts chronologically, but instead by how much it thinks you will like the post. Your highschool friend who just got married is now pushed to the ground while those memes you keep liking jettison to the top of your feed. The second you open the app, your feed is designed to drag you in and chain you to the metaphorical dog house.

If you keep seeing things you like, you keep on the app, and companies can keep serving you advertisements that you may like. In the old days, you would pay for services with money. Then, you would pay with your personal data. Now, you're paying with your attention span.

Just as Ronald Reagan innovated the art of delivering crack to impoverished black communities, Facebook and its cohorts innovated the art of short-circuiting your neural pathways—to a very similar effect. Your dopamine receptors are now fucking fried like you've been shooting black tar heroin for forty years.⁶ Even our abilities to produce dopamine have been shot in the head by the horse doctors that are big tech.⁷

AI slop is only speeding up this process. Where before, regular slop took at least a smidgen of skill to create, now anyone with half a functioning brain cell can open SlopGen 3 and monkey-smash their keyboard until enough words come out that a somewhat slightly amusing video becomes digitally birthed.

Mark Zuckerberg has gone on record saying that he thinks eventually, your entire feed will be AI—personalized to you and your interests.⁸ Specially catered to keep you bound to the app as long as possible, a new digital fentanyl created specially for you. Doesn't that make you feel warm inside? Thank you Zucky-poo! Gone will be the days of a shared cultural experience, say hello to the infinite slop chamber.

Speaking of a shared cultural experience, Zuck has also gone on record saying he wants to create a world where most of your friends are AI.⁹ Your real life friends aren't enough, they can't keep you satisfied. Come, talk to your new AI friends! They'll always be there to listen to you, to cheer you up, to validate your every idea! Who needs real friends, when your digital ones are much better?

Phone... bad.

Phone and social media usage have been directly correlated with lowering your cognitive ability.^{10 11 12 13} Keep 'em dumb, keep 'em satisfied, and you have the perfect recipe for a populace you can do just about anything with. (See, the actual legitimate plot of 1984. The book is about more than just censorship, much to the discontent of dog-whistlers who have never read the book.)

All across the board, we have seen an intellectual decline from our planet's cohabitants. It's not just the thought you have when driving on the highway—people really ARE getting dumber. All thanks to phone (and the dominos they knocked down). Gen Z is definitely affected by this, as the media likes to tell us, but every other generation has been cognitively dimmed as well. Phone bad, phone bad for everyone.

Unfortunately, I don't wish to catapult myself into mental retardation like the rest of the world has just yet. I kinda admire and enjoy my cognitive abilities. What can be done about this?

Going Dumb

In my quest to undo the effects of phone, the following quote resurfaced in my head:¹⁴

Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.

For those that don't know, I am a programmer and engineer¹⁵ in my day-to-day job. Subconsciously I do follow the pattern in the post, but I need to make an actual, conscious effort here.

The two biggest changes I've made are setting my phone to grayscale¹⁷ and installing a stupidly restrictive screentime app.¹⁸ Those who I have given my phone to at a function to get their Instagrams have bourne witness to these both. It's honestly helped cut down big time on the amount I use social media and my phone—down to two hours a day from an average of eight.

I've noticed a marked improvement in my daily life as well. I'm finally reading more, I'm writing more, and I'm learning more. I am enjoying life a lot more sans the algorithm. I want to take this a step further and try some new changes, but I will wait until those have been implemented and tested before I write about them.

Conclusion

Phone bad. Phone really bad. Phone gonna make things so much more badder.

Our world is headed to darkness grace à Big Tech. They have taken the internet, a force created to bring about boundless knowledge and interconnectivity, and contorted it to impose stupidity and social isolation.

Get off your phones. Go outside. Talk to people. Read a book. Don't let yourself fall victim to the forthcoming dark future.