The concept of a ‘phone zombie’ – someone zoned out on their phone and oblivious to their physical environment, is widely recognised in the UK. However, our report launched this week found that far from being passive or brainless, being “on your phone” involves almost constant decision-making. For example, young people take around 514 conscious decisions in a typical hour spent on social media – being on your phone is active, not brainless.
On a platform like Instagram, young people we worked with could identify themselves making a decision approximately every seven seconds. Most of the decisions were social in nature – relationships, norms and values as well as the desire to feel connected to others all contribute to the decisions and judgements we make online. Whilst people on their phones might be ‘zoned out’ from people in their physical environment, seen from this perspective they aren’t being zombies; they’re just concentrating on something else.
So where could the ‘phone zombies’ story we’ve been telling ourselves coming from? Technology and moral panic have a long history together. Thought leaders of each era have reflected the anxieties of the people of the time, warning that technologies could disrupt the social order too quickly or too radically. In 400BC, Socrates warned against learning to write, saying that it would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.″ In the 16th Century, Swiss scientist Conrad Gessner highlighted the danger of the growing number of printed books, arguing that the overabundance of information would be “confusing and harmful” to the mind.
When radio came along in the 1930s, it was accused of distracting children from reading and diminishing their performance at school through the “compelling excitement of the loudspeaker”. Then, when television became widespread in the mid-20th Century, it was seen as damaging radio, conversation, reading and family life.
Are mobile phones just the latest example in this long list of innovation triggering moral panic? While the debate around phones and mental health bears many of the characteristics of a moral panic, concerns around technology should not be dismissed as a hysterical paranoia. The strength of feeling is telling us that we are at a fork in the road. Society is facing an important set of decisions about how technology will shape our future.
The relationship between our phones and our mental health is not yet determined. It will depend on the choices we make as individuals, in our relationships and as a society.
Young people are making choices already. They are reflective about the debate and have clear ideas about what they want the future to look like. Young people are not passive victims, floating helplessly in a predetermined direction unless they are ‘saved’ by adults. Decisions about technology need to be made together with young people, in the context of a broader set of choices about how we want to live as a society.
We are alive, we are awake and we’re thinking for ourselves. Together, we can decide where we want to go with this technology next. There are no ‘phone zombies’.
Dr Amy Pollard is founder and director of the Mental Health Collective