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Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones – WIRED

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Source: Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones. Tristan Harris Wants to Rescue Them | WIRED

Technology steers what 2 billion people are thinking and believing every day. It’s possibly the largest source of influence over 2 billion people’s thoughts that has ever been created. Religions and governments don’t have that much influence over people’s daily thoughts. But we have three technology companies who have this system that frankly they don’t even have control over—with newsfeeds and recommended videos and whatever they put in front of you—which is governing what people do with their time and what they’re looking at.

I’ll be the first to admit I spend a lot of time online.  But I pretty much avoid most social media sites.  Stopped using FaceBorg.  Instagram to catch the occasional post from one of the kids.  A little Twitter for news.  LinkedIn rarely.  It wasn’t hard for me to recognize mass brainwashing.  Not to mention addiction.

One of my more popular posts was a link to this Atlantic article.

But many of you never clicked through to read the article.  I do hope you take the time to read this Wired article.  It will make you think long and hard about your use of technology.

Think about what would happen if you shut off some of these apps that keep dinging you for attention?  This happens.

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

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Source: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? – The Atlantic

Step away from the phone slowly and keep your hands where I can see them.

Check out the following quote from a celebrity interview.

I heard you deleted the Internet from your phone. And that you deleted Twitter and Instagram and e-mail. No way that’s true, right?
It is! Whenever you check for a new post on Instagram or whenever you go on The New York Times to see if there’s a new thing, it’s not even about the content. It’s just about seeing a new thing. You get addicted to that feeling. You’re not going to be able to control yourself. So the only way to fight that is to take yourself out of the equation and remove all these things. What happens is, eventually you forget about it. You don’t care anymore. When I first took the browser off my phone, I’m like, [gasp] How am I gonna look stuff up? But most of the shit you look up, it’s not stuff you need to know. All those websites you read while you’re in a cab, you don’t need to look at any of that stuff. It’s better to just sit and be in your own head for a minute. I wanted to stop that thing where I get home and look at websites for an hour and a half, checking to see if there’s a new thing. And read a book instead. I’ve been doing it for a couple months, and it’s worked. I’m reading, like, three books right now. I’m putting something in my mind. It feels so much better than just reading the Internet and not remembering anything.

Chill

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The photo credit belongs to an Instagram feed from Aspen Well Being.  I follow several Aspen CO related feeds for the pictures.  It only took me years to discover the tiny button in Instagram that saves photos to your phone.

Years.

Have LinkedIn and Medium Killed the Old-Fashioned Blog? – HBR

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Have LinkedIn and Medium Killed the Old-Fashioned Blog? – HBR.

Publishing exclusively on LinkedIn or Medium is indeed the right choice for some people, particular if you are a new or intermittent writer. If you’ve already invested time in building a LinkedIn network, you’re going to find an audience a lot more quickly than if you start a site from scratch. And unlike an independent blog, there’s no need to commit to a regular posting frequency on LinkedIn: you can write a post whenever you have something to share or say, and even if that’s only a few times a year, you’re extending your professional credibility and voice in a context where it can be discovered. It’s also a great way to try out posting without investing in setup or making a long-term commitment: you can write a few posts, develop your own voice, and then decide if you want to commit to running your own site.

Kids Ignored When Caregivers Are Hung Up With Phones

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Using a mobile device during meals in fast-food restaurants made caregivers less attentive to the small children they were with, researchers reported.

During a non-participation, observational study, caregivers who were absorbed with typing and swiping on mobile devices during meals at fast-food restaurants spent less time paying attention to the child or children (ages 0 to 10) in their care and often reacted harshly to misbehavior or bids for attention, according to Jenny S. Radesky, MD, of Boston Medical Center, and colleagues.

 

In the case of one absorbed caregiver, the child’s bid for attention was met with a kick under the table. With another, the child was trying to pull the caregiver’s face away from the screen, and the caregiver physically pushed the child’s hands away from her face.

via Kids Ignored When Caregivers Are Hung Up With Phones.

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”

OK, put the phone down and keep your hands where I can see them.  Now turn the damn thing off and pay some attention to your kids.

Or you can just kick them.