Smartphones and Mental Health, Free Will

                         Smartphones and Wellbeing

Sleep, Robert Gemmell Hutchinson (1855-1936)

Photo Credit: City of Edinburgh Council [CC BY-NC-ND]

Using smartphones and other screens has little impact on the wellbeing of teenagers – even before they go to sleep, according to a study.

Despite the common belief that screen time could damage young people’s health, researchers at Oxford university have found little evidence to support these fears, using data from more than 17,000 teenagers.

Results suggest that the total amount of time spent on screens per a day had a limited impact on teenager’s mental health, regardless of it being a weekend or a weekday.

(The i, 2019)

                    Perhaps it’s not the using of them that matters but how they are being used?

*My phone knows where I am, how many steps I took to get there, the whisper of a thought I don’t remember forming in my brain. It knows I am addicted, which is why it doesn’t ever have to worry about whether I’m creeped out by the digital eyes looking over my shoulder.

Apple has put a feature on the i phone that’s supposed to shame me into putting down the drug it won’t stop selling me. I use the statistics it collects as a challenge to spend even more time messing around on my phone. Only one hour and 37 minutes of social networking yesterday? Let me put this book I was reading down and try to top that. But my phone already knows that’s what I’d want to do.

(Samantha Irby, The New York Times)

           You’re a bit of an eejit, Sam, aren’t you?

                             Freewill and Social Media

…Arguments about free will seem esoteric, the preserve of university philosophy departments and earnest late-night student debates. But the advent of gigantic social media companies with the capability to influence our behaviour makes the issue urgent.

…Cambridge scientist, Hannah Critchlow says that our actions are the result of myriad influences, from genetics to our upbringing to our recent experiences.

Salome, Carlo Dolci (1616-1686)

Photo Credit: Glasgow Museums [CC BY-NC-ND] 

If a company knew enough about us to effectively influence our subconscious behaviours it could become very powerful indeed. Thanks to our millions of accumulated searches, uploaded pictures, statuses, likes, and movements in the real world and online, Facebook and Google know an awful lot about us.

…Frighteningly, tech companies are already controlling our lives in significant ways. In 2014 it was revealed that Facebook had experimented with manipulating the moods of almost 700,000 users by showing some of them content with a preponderance of happy and positive words and other content that was sadder than normal. As expected, these users were more likely to post happy or sad statuses depending on which way Facebook had manipulated them.

That is just the beginning. Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook will be able to gather enough data about you to “tell you what bar to go to” when you arrive in a strange city. Not only that but the bartender will have your favourite drink waiting and you’ll look around the room and identify people just like you. 

Alarmingly, Zuckerberg sees nothing sinister in this. But how far was going to that bar a matter of conscious choice? And if other bars paid Facebook money to nudge you in their direction with adverts, would that infringe your free will?

Google’s Eric Schmidt put it rather more creepily when he explained:

“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

…we like to think of ourselves as the effortless masters of our destinies.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking is not fit for purpose in the 21^st century. Tech companies are way ahead of us. They hire psychologists, behavioural experts and social scientists to help them understand and manipulate their users. If we are properly to combat this sinister and unethical behaviour, we must let go of the illusion of free will.

(James Marriott, The Times, 2019)

“We must let go of the illusion of free will”. Not just yet. If you know about the antics of Facebook and Google and are bothered about it then you have a choice to make. Carry on or give them up.