Pandemic Enabling Phone Addiction?

hink it's going

to be incredibly hard for us to

to resist the temptation to do that and

that's going to create a literal

physical barrier between human beings

i think we're all going to be living in

our own little universes eventually if

things go the way they've been going

well if i was conspiratorially minded

and i kind of am but only for fun

uh i would think that someone has

probably

set that ball in motion with kovid with

kovid and the lockdown

it's almost like if you wanted to make a

movie

where artificial intelligence wanted

to figure out a way to hook us deeper

artificial intelligence would release a

virus

and they would force us to stay inside

it doesn't kill everybody but it makes

people scared

so you stay inside and it connects you

even deeper

to computers and maybe more importantly

separates you

even more from the human experience of

touching and

being around each other in social cues

and social gathering

and it makes it even more compelling to

do things virtually

more compelling to be on your computer

all the time and messing with

applications

and then while this is all going on

something

far more immersive is released

when you're already accustomed to it

yeah i've got to say i mean

life in the last decade in particular

has has got way stranger than fiction

yeah the real world right now there is

so much about it that just seems like it

can't be real you know if anyone wrote a

movie with the script of the last

five to ten years how about the last

four here

or the last four let's pick the last

four people would say this is this isn't

yeah it's not it's nonsense like

whatever it's kind of be great hollywood

stuff that we're looking at here

um but you know the interesting thing

about this pandemic period for me is i

think it might have a weird backlash

effect where

we've all been forced to to spend time

on screens

um it's instead of going to the screen

because we we

love it and we're attracted to social

media and

whatever other things we're doing on

screens a lot of us are being forced to

use them

and one thing that's changed is

sentiment towards screens i think a lot

of people are just over it

and so when we are past all of this i

think there's a chance that's going to

be the catalyst to push people away from

screens a bit

because if you you know before this if

you were you speak to especially younger

people they'll say

and then this is true for me too i would

rather just use the most remote form of

communication possible whatever's

easiest i don't have to speak on the

phone

i don't want to have to see people let

me just send a quick text or an email or

whatsapp or whatever

and i think there's a shift now where

people are like craving

that that true face-to-face time where

you're actually sitting in front of a

person having a real conversation

and and that's that's been i think a

shift in the last

roughly eight or nine months i think

there's people like

you that are craving the experience of

being around

other folks because i think you're aware

of the repercussions of this virtual

experience that we're all

engaging in and the addiction to screens

and screen time and phones and games and

applications but i think there's plenty

of folks that are happy

to just get lulled to sleep and sucked

into it and i think that's my real

concern my real concern is

mindful thoughtful people like yourself

that are you know

that are saying listen we need you know

just a real experience with human beings

and

we're revolting and leaving the but

if you look at the numbers in terms of

human beings like what like

the average screen time all that stuff's

going up

the use of these things is all going up

and i think there's folks like you

that would like to think that we're

rejecting it but i think it's a

it's a minority that's rejecting it i

think the minori

the majority are embracing yeah i it i

i think that that may be true i mean i

think one of the big drivers of screen

time

uh is you know if you take psychological

needs away from people the things that

are really important to them to function

psychologically

that's when they turn to screens that's

when they turn to drugs that's when they

turn to alcohol that's when they turn to

all the things that

soothe us and screens do that they are a

kind of

a non-substance way to to be soothed

um that's what happened with me on that

flight for six hours

that's what happens when you're on

social media scrolling mindlessly when

you're watching tons and tons of videos

online all that sort of stuff is

is is a way of soothing you and i think

people need to be

soothed more than ever right now because

this is a

hard time for a lot of people it's hard

financially it's hard because you're

socially distant from people

um it's it's just it just creates this

kind of pool of uncertainty that sits

above everything we do

and humans hate that we don't like

uncertainty we don't like not knowing

what's coming around the corner

and not just about the pandemic i mean

politically in a lot of different ways

there's a lot of uncertainty

right now and for the last while and

when you put people in that state

they're going to turn to screens i don't

know if that's

an enduring thing but anytime you rob

people of well-being of some sort of

psychological

need they're going to try to find it

elsewhere and one of the ways they do

that is

now the easiest way to do it is to turn

to a screen