Opinion – Ronaldo Lemos: Disconnecting is increasingly rare and difficult

There is an educational and terrifying experience: using an application that monitors how much time we use our cell phone per day and what that use is. Apps like iOS Screen Time, for iPhone, or Digital Wellbeing, for the Android system, create a detailed map of how many minutes we spend with our eyes fixed on the device’s screen and how.

Anyone who does this experiment is usually shocked. As time is the scarcest resource there is, it is disturbing to reach the self-knowledge of how we let this precious resource be thrown away by swiping our finger across the screen for no purpose. More than that, there are implications for mental health.

A 2018 University of Pennsylvania study determined that people who use social media for a maximum of 30 minutes a day have significant improvements in their well-being, with significantly reduced feelings of loneliness or depressive states, when compared to the control group.

The point is that, even knowing exactly how much time we spend on the cell phone, it remains difficult to change habits. In other words, disconnecting is not easy.

I always like to remember the biographical documentary about Bill Gates that came out on Netflix. The episodes show how the billionaire founder of Microsoft is a disconnected person. He rarely goes near a computer or cell phone. And he makes a point of showing that he carries a basket wherever he goes with the paper books he’s been reading that week.

In fact, it might take someone like Bill Gates to disconnect in today’s world. For the vast majority of people who are connected to the internet, disconnecting is not an option. We depend too much on the network to work, survive and talk to other people to be able to let go of it.

A 2020 survey by the US Department of Labor Statistics determined that in that country a person has an average of 5.5 free hours a day. An increasing share of that time is now spent on mobile or screens in general.

In the face of all this, what to do? Behavioral scientist Michelle Drouin recommends looking at the problem through a lens of economic optimization. It starts from the premise that it is very difficult to stop using the cell phone. However, it is possible to make better decisions about how to manage time from a change in perspective.

She proposes two models for this: omission and substitution.

Failure to do so is to refrain from using the cell phone, something not always easy to do.

Replacement is different. It’s a mindset shift to understand that whenever we choose to spend time passively moving our finger over our social media feed, we’re giving up the opportunity to use our time in other, more constructive and valuable ways. Both offline, with people and activities, and online (for example, researching something in self-interest).

In other words, by using the cell phone passively, we substitute other possible uses. Understanding this allows you to choose between living adrift and having control over your opportunities.

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