Unhooking from the phone and saving our spiritual practice

Phones are one of the greatest traps of modern time, weapons of mass distraction as some call. They are the culmination of centuries of evolution of tactics for capturing attention

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Phones are one of the greatest traps of modern times, weapons of mass distraction, as some call. They are the culmination of centuries of evolution of tactics for capturing attention, something that started long ago with newspapers and other periodicals, progressed into the radio, TV, etc., culminating with social networks and apps. The phone is the tool that combines all of these in an explosive package, hooking the human brain in ways we are not prepared to deal with.

The greatest problem is that phones accumulate too many functions. We use them to see the time, for alarms, as a flashlight, for listening to music and podcasts, news, reading, and practically everything. Because they accumulate so many functions, we end up picking up the phone every few minutes, even if to just see the time, and each time we are bombarded with notifications, requests, notices, intimations, and who knows what more, which can end up keeping us distracted for quite some time. Multiply it by the 150 times an average person picks up the phone per day, and we have a problem. The phone tends to be the last thing we see at night and the first thing we see when we wake up. Forget about Krsna, the phone is the new deity.

Because the phone concentrates so many functions that are essential for modern life, even when we decide to cut down on its use, it is easier said than done, because every few minutes we come to some situation where some function in the phone is needed.

As mentioned, the core of the problem is that phones accumulate too many functions, which forces us to pick them up frequently, even for banal things such as seeing the time. The trap is that the ecosystem is made in such a way that it tries to hook us up with notifications each time we do that.

How to solve that?

One of the secrets to avoiding the negative effects of phone usage is to offload functions to other, dumber devices that can perform just one or a few functions. We can get a Kindle or other e-book for reading, some simple audio player for music and classes, a simple, dumb phone for calls, a watch for seeing the time and setting alarms, and so on, leaving the phone for just the core functions of messaging and productive apps. Even some of these functions can be used on a computer, which further reduces the need to use the phone.

The ones who grew up in the 1980s or early 1990s may remember a time when we used to do exactly that: use a different dumb device for each function. At that time, we had a much healthier relationship with technology than nowadays. When smartphones started to become popular, it sounded like a good idea to have just one device replacing several others, but it ended up evolving into an ecosystem that exploits us.

It may sound counterintuitive that more devices can reduce the problem, but unless one is ready to give up technology and go to chant under a tree, the solution usually passes through it. That’s a way to continue having access to functions we need for our daily activities without being enslaved by it.

Apart from an e-book and an audio player, another device that can make a great difference is a cheap smartwatch that we can use to see the time, check the appointments for the day and the weather forecast, set alarms, use it as a small flashlight, and so on. This can reduce a lot the number of times we need to keep up the phone for these basic functions, which helps to use it less. Now we don’t need to sleep beside the phone, because we don’t need it as an alarm clock. We don’t need to bring it with us when we walk, because the watch has a GPS, and so on. Of course, more advanced watches have too many functions, which can defeat the purpose, but this is not the case with cheaper devices.

Individually, each of these tools is not interesting apart from what they are intended to do. There is not much we can do with a Kindle apart from reading, and similarly, there is not much we can do with a watch apart from the functions they are made to fulfill, allowing us to concentrate on one task at a time without being distracted. Although also electronic devices, they don’t have the same effect as a phone.

By offloading functions and using different devices for different functions, we can reduce the use of the phone and improve our quality of life. When it comes to the point that we can leave the phone on the table and use it only when we are working, or otherwise a couple of times per day to read useful things, answer messages, etc., we are coming to the point where it again starts to become a useful tool, instead of just a distraction.

One of the principles of spiritual life is that it is mono-task in nature. In spiritual practice, we train to be able to focus on one activity at a time, be it chanting, reading, worshiping, etc. Phones, on the other hand, are multitask in nature, and they rewire our brains in ways that are profoundly negative to our spiritual practice, diminishing our capacity to focus, which is the very foundation of our spiritual practice.

Ultimately, the price for a phone may go much beyond the initial cost, or even what we spend on different subscriptions. The price for a phone, if we are not careful, can very well be another material birth, or even a long sequence of them. It is surely a pressing issue.

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