There was a point in my life when I came back to Washington after living in Hawaii, and I was broke, sad, single and trying to grow a business so I could feed myself.
I had already been in practice for about 12 years. I couldn’t believe I was starting over again.
And then I would get on Facebook.
Everyone seemed so much further ahead than I was. They had husbands. I was single. They had children. I didn’t. They had homes. I had an apartment. They looked happy. I was miserable.
And somewhere along the way, I realized I was manufacturing a version of myself to put online because the person I actually was at that moment didn’t seem like someone I wanted everyone else to see.
I did this for about six months.
Then I finally noticed something incredibly simple: every time I went on Facebook, I felt worse.
So I deleted it.
It wasn’t easy. I just did it.
I still had Instagram because I barely used it and promised myself I would never post anything artificial on it. But over time, something totally different started happening there. I would get caught endlessly scrolling through reels. The day I found that, was the turning point.
I remember setting a timer for 10 minutes because I knew I needed a boundary. The timer would go off, I would turn it off, and two hours later I would still be scrolling.
Then one day I realized I had scrolled away an entire beautiful afternoon.
That was it for me.
It had hooked me again, and I was done playing.
I deleted Instagram. Thankfully, I never got into TikTok. Today, Amy handles all of Glow-Vibe’s social media. I genuinely never see it because I never go on social media.
And then I listened to a conversation between Mel Robbins and social psychologist Dr. Jonathan Haidt that made me think about all of this again.
My heart especially went out to our kids.
I have been treating people for more than two decades, and I see differences in children today compared with the children who walked into my treatment room when I first started practicing. Haidt’s work asks us to seriously consider what growing up surrounded by smartphones, social media, constant stimulation and algorithmically engineered attention might be doing to developing brains.
But I don’t think this is only about our children.
It’s us, too.
I went to a live concert recently. I haven’t done that in forever, and I was enjoying myself.
There were actual human beings in front of me. Singing. Dancing. Performing live music.
And do you know what I caught myself thinking?
I wished I could play my Numbers game on my phone while I listened.
Seriously.
I actually wondered how low I could turn the screen brightness and if it would bother anyone around me?
Some part of my brain believed this beautiful live experience would be even better if I could simultaneously give it another source of stimulation. But more than that, I needed something else to fill the spaces of the slower songs…I was entertained ENOUGH!
And that moment stopped me.
Because this isn’t simply about Facebook or Instagram or TikTok.
It’s about attention.
It’s about our nervous systems.
It’s about whether we can sit on the porch anymore without reaching for something. Whether we can stand in line without needing entertainment. Whether we can listen to a song without doing something else at the same time. Whether we can have a conversation with another human being without some part of our brain wondering what else is happening somewhere else.
I don’t say any of this to make anyone feel guilty about being on their phone. These technologies were intentionally designed to be compelling. If you find yourself reaching for your phone without even realizing you’re doing it, you have a lot of company.
But I do think we need to start noticing.
Jonathan Haidt talks about what has happened as childhood has moved away from a play-based world and increasingly into a phone-based one. He and Mel discuss attention, dopamine and reward, anxiety and depression, social connection, childhood development, and why boys and girls can be affected differently by the online world.
One of the things I appreciated most about the conversation is that it isn’t simply, “Phones are bad.”
It asks a much more interesting question:
What disappeared when our phones began filling every empty space?
Boredom.
Silence.
Unstructured play.
Eye contact.
Daydreaming.
Being completely absorbed in one thing.
Being with another person without needing another layer of stimulation.
Maybe we don’t need to throw our phones into the ocean.
Maybe we start smaller.
Eat one meal without one.
Take one walk without one.
Leave it in another room while you talk to someone you love.
Sit outside for ten minutes and don’t fill the silence.
Notice the impulse to reach for stimulation and get curious about it instead of immediately obeying it.
Because I think it is time for us to take our nervous systems back.
It is time to remember what silence feels like.
It is time to remember what it feels like to be bored long enough for our minds to wander somewhere unexpected.
It is time to remember what it feels like to talk to another person without wishing we were doing something else at the same time.
And most importantly, it is time to remember that our attention belongs to us.
I strongly encourage you to listen to Mel Robbins’ conversation with Dr. Jonathan Haidt. The podcast is free. Whether you are raising children, have grandchildren, work with young people, or simply own a smartphone and have wondered why it can be so hard to put the damn thing down, I think you will come away understanding your brain and our current culture a little differently.
Toward the end of their conversation, Haidt offers a beautiful reminder about how we might begin thinking about our attention again:
Treat it as something “sacred and precious.”
I think he’s right.
Your attention is your life.
Let’s be a little more careful about who and what we give it to.
Listen to the podcast from the below links.