10/11/13 BBC - Future Seven rules to stop your phone taking over your life

www.bbc.com/future/story/20131010-lose-the-phone-reclaim-your-life/print 1/4

(Copyright: Thinkstock)

10 October 2013

Seven rules to stop your phonetaking over your life

Transform your relationship with yourphone with these rules, and prepare toenjoy life’s greater pleasures.

How often do you check your phone whenyou’re out and about? I’ve been reflecting onthis question while writing in a rented cottage inScotland, without internet access or phonesignal. I counted the number of times my handtwitches towards my pocket, where asmartphone usually nestles. The tally was atleast once an hour.

These frequent little checks of personal devices are known among human­computer interfaceresearchers as “micro­interactions” – rapid glances at email, social media and apps, often lastingonly a few seconds.

If it’s disconcerting that checking my smartphone has become a habit, there’s a particular irony forme: for the last few months, I’ve been involved in a project to design a “code of conduct(http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/switch­off­chill­out/2034200/)” for smartphoneusage on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. The code comes in seven parts, and aims to helpholidaymakers stop their smartphones taking over time they’ve set aside for leisure, each otherand the place they’re in. Behind it, though, lies something that applies to us all: the need for newetiquettes in an era where shared notions of acceptable behaviour lag years, if not decades,behind the tools we’ve incorporated into our lives.

Here, then, are seven “smarter smartphone” rules, designed to stop technology getting in the wayof other experiences.

Talk now, text later

Or tweet later. Or email later. The list goes on. The thinking behind this is simple enough. Courtesyof the magic screens in our pockets, we can do almost anything online, anywhere, at any time. Andso we do – failing along the way to put boundaries around leisure and pleasure, meals and sleep,

Tom Chatfield

10/11/13 BBC - Future Seven rules to stop your phone taking over your life

www.bbc.com/future/story/20131010-lose-the-phone-reclaim-your-life/print 2/4

vacations and intimate moments. We gorge ourselves on digital delights, and obligations, andsomewhere along the way fail to savour who or what is right in front of us. Which leads on to…

Take a phone­free day

There’s an uneasy edge to this challenge: shouldn’t we simply learn self­control? Every device hasan off button, after all. Yet we can be peculiarly unwilling to use it ­ a tendency captured in thedelightful acronym FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out. How can we resist the continual dopamine hitsof someone “liking” our status, replying to our messages, or retweeting us?

Our conscious minds have a limited capacity for high­quality decision­making, and guard itjealously. As author Charles Duhigg put it in his 2012 book The Power of Habit(http://charlesduhigg.com/the­power­of­habit/), “most of the choices we make every day mayfeel like the products of well­considered decision making, but they’re not.” We decide once to keepour mobile phone switched on and fitted snugly into our pocket ­ and then our initial choicevanishes, sliding instead towards something automatic. Habits are those actions where life hascrept under our skin and become a part of us.

So, break the routine – and make your habits visible once again. Perhaps the best way is to leaveyour phone on the bedside table for the day, but you might also try a technique I discovered byaccident while travelling: engage “airplane mode”, and breathe in a blissful few uncontactablehours.

Or, of course, you can take a more extreme approach. Take the method employed by authorEvgeny Morozov (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/09/evgeny­morozov­technology­solutionism­interview), who routinely locks his digital devices inside a safe with atimer. He even claims to place his screwdrivers inside as well, which prevents him prising the safeopen in a moment of weakness.

Avoid being a search­it­all

In other words, forgo maps, search engines, and review websites once in a while – and embraceserendipity instead.

If you must use your phone to explore your surroundings, consider one of various apps thatencourage chance discoveries. Plug in a destination to the (somewhat tongue­in­cheek) appSerendipitor (http://serendipitor.net/site/), for example, and it will give you directions thatencourage wandering rather than speed, or even instructions such as “follow that car”.

Consider how many conversations and encounters might never have taken place if every questionin history had been answered by one person staring at a private screen. Getting a little lost andrelinquishing control – both literally and metaphorically – is the perfect way to find new questionsyou didn’t even know you wanted to ask.

Elbows and phones off the table

I’ve written elsewhere (http://www.independent.co.uk/life­style/gadgets­and­tech/features/the­rise­of­phubbing­­aka­phone­snubbing­8747229.html) about the habit of“phubbing”: snubbing other people by ignoring them and paying attention to your mobile phoneinstead. It’s a word that caught the world’s attention for a reason: because of a rising desire topush back against the social consequences of indiscriminate, and undiscriminating, technologicalimmersion.

10/11/13 BBC - Future Seven rules to stop your phone taking over your life

www.bbc.com/future/story/20131010-lose-the-phone-reclaim-your-life/print 3/4

Nowhere does the rudeness of phubbing matter more than the dinner table, where the idea ofgood manners arguably began. If there’s a difference between dining and merely ingestingcalories, it’s this sense of occasion – and of something owed in gratitude and pleasure to thosewe’re sharing it with. With recent studies suggesting(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science­news/9589232/Putting­a­mobile­phone­on­the­restaurant­table­will­ruin­your­meal.html) that simply leaving your phone on display whiledining breeds a host of negative feelings in those around you, it may pay more than you realize tokeep your tech out of sight and mind.

Look before you snap

We are, the philosopher Aristotle argued, what we repeatedly do. Among other things, we arepeople who take pictures on their phones a lot. This is fine ­ just ask my new­born son’s dotinggrandparents. Yet we need to recognize that living life through a lens can damage the very thingswe’re aiming to capture.

Take my most recent experiences of a gig, which consisted almost exclusively of watching theband refracted through the tiny screens of a thousand smartphones held aloft. Musicians, too,have baulked at this practice: in April, the band Yeah Yeah Yeahs posted a sign asking fans topocket their phones during their performance.

As the filmmaker Sofia Coppola put it (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social­media/10084186/Is­the­Facebook­generation­anti­social.html) earlier this year, it can feel like“living does not count unless you are documenting it.” Yet the very act of mediation substitutessomething prefabricated for the process of laying down and living with a memory.

I treasure the video and images I took around my son’s birth. But I treasure them because theypoint me towards something else: the experiences I lived, intensely and entirely, in thosemoments.

Taste before you upload

Sometimes, digital technologies treat us like something a little less than human: as merely eyeballsstaring at screens and fingers clicking on buttons. But no matter how many geeks may dream ofbeing uploaded into the Matrix, we remain embodied beings. We exist in particular places atparticular times – and we can only make the most of our moments by giving full expression to thegamut of our senses.

Before you share that Instagram snap, then, make sure you pause, taste, breathe the air deeply,fix the present moment as fully as your physical presence permits – and only then give vent towhatever two­dimensional representation of the experience takes your fancy.

As the computer scientist and philosopher Jaron Lanier has pointed out, sensory measures suchas taste and aroma are neglected by almost all digital technologies – together with every otherquantity that a programmer hasn’t expressly set out to include in their algorithms. This is how ourtools work; but it can also breed a fundamental forgetfulness that, if we’re not careful, causes us tocount the value only of those things our screens themselves can measure.

Kiss your phone goodnight

Lying on the pillow, it’s tempting to pick your phone up one last time. Yet prepare for your sleep tobe disrupted. Why? The screens on electronic devices emit blue light, which your brain associates

10/11/13 BBC - Future Seven rules to stop your phone taking over your life

www.bbc.com/future/story/20131010-lose-the-phone-reclaim-your-life/print 4/4

with daylight. Exposure plays havoc with your body clock, while stimulation – just one more link,tweet, email or text – does the same to your much­abused attention span. You can forget the joysof reverie, too, and the licence that comes with letting your mind wander.

And that’s before we get onto the more intimate possibilities of bedroom time. For the author DHLawrence, one of modernity’s worst tendencies was to put “sex in the head instead of down whereit belongs” – something that surely counts double for glowing screens and late­night games ofCandy Crush Saga.

Finally...

A code of conduct can’t solve every problem. But it can help us to break out of half­acknowledgedhabits – and to remember that moments well spent are quite different from time merely filled. Asthe British author Tim Harford concisely puts it (http://timharford.com/2013/09/3180/),“smartphones are habit­forming, so think about the habits you want to form.”

In Scotland, meanwhile, my useless phone now rests inert on a chest of drawers. In the absenceof physical contact, the pangs of internet cold turkey are starting to ease. I’ll need to pick it upsoon, though. I’m off for a brisk walk up a hill where, if I’m unlucky, several days' worth of emailswill be waiting at the top.

Do you agree? Would you add your own rules? To comment on this article or anything else youhave seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page(https://www.facebook.com/BBCFuture) or message us on Twitter(https://twitter.com/#%21/BBC_Future).

Web linkhttp://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131010­lose­the­phone­reclaim­your­life(http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131010­lose­the­phone­reclaim­your­life)