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Breaking away from your smartphone

In a New York Times article published earlier this year called “Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain,” author Kevin Roose describes his “heavy phone use,” and how he learned to put the phone down and how that led to several improvements in his life.

In it, he writes:

I don’t love referring to what we have as an “addiction.” That seems too sterile and clinical to describe what’s happening to our brains in the smartphone era. Unlike alcohol or opioids, phones aren’t an addictive substance so much as a species-level environmental shock. We might someday evolve the correct biological hardware to live in harmony with portable supercomputers that satisfy our every need and connect us to infinite amounts of stimulation. But for most of us, it hasn’t happened yet.

He then goes on to describe his phone use, and how it eventually became a problem. Realizing this, however, Roose was able to take action and become as independent from his phone as possible in this day and age. By doing so, the rest of us would reap numerous benefits, including a renewed sense of attention in everyday conversation, and with that, improved relationships and interpersonal communication abilities.

Read the NYT article here.