At 3 a.m., Li Zhen's fingers still couldn't stop sliding on the phone. She fell into a state of "I don't know what I'm doing."
She kept brushing various apps, clicking into them, smiling or angry. She found that anger was also an addictive emotion that seemed to be an outlet. But this emotion is only a flash. Such a process has been repeated for several hours. In a bad mood, she originally wanted to play with her phone to relax, but in the middle of the night, she was shrouded in a deeper sense of anxiety.
Li Zhen, 26, is an employee of an Internet company, and even though she knows that the Internet company has done everything in her power to extend the user's use time, she is still irrepressibly lost in various pushes, and at 4 a.m., she sleeps exhausted.
There are many working days of late nights, Li Zhen is spent in this way. Until one day, she suddenly realized that she was addicted to mobile phones. To change this state, the first thing she has to do is to quit the phone.
On the Douban group, there are many people like Li Zhen who "declare war" on mobile phones. Her "Away from Screen Project" group advocates a degree of away from electronic screens and embracing the real world. The Douban group was founded in 2020 and has now been joined by more than 30,000 people. The "anti-technology dependence" group, which was formed a year later, also has more than 20,000 members, who believe that excessive reliance on technology will lead to the degradation of some capabilities. Both groups advocate for a certain degree of relinquishment of mobile phones and exploring ways in which people and technology can get along more harmoniously.
Zhao Wenxi's mobile phone in the bedroom. Courtesy of respondents
When life is dominated by mobile phones
In January this year, Lin Xuan released her "phased results" of quitting the network in the "Far from the Screen Plan" group. Screenshots of her phone in the post showed that she spent 4 hours and 40 minutes on her phone that day, a 27 percent reduction from last week. She is a commercial real estate practitioner who has worked for 8 years, and in the past, the first thing she did when she woke up every day was to play with her mobile phone, and even if she was sleepy at night, she couldn't bear to put the phone down. She and her friends have dinner to look at their phones, and when they talk to people, they can't help but look at their phones. Sometimes company leaders pass by her workstation and make a joke, "Are you playing with your phone again?" "Although there may not have been any message push on the phone at that time, although it was just aimless to look at the phone, I just wanted to slide the screen away." She said.
She couldn't say why she was addicted to mobile phones, she just felt that she was immersed in the world of mobile phones, and time passed quickly. Lin Xuan is keen to chat with small partners in the WeChat group, and will also follow the hot spot as a "melon eating" mass. "Jumping from one link to another, this melon eats the next, and before you know it, time is gone." In recent years, her myopia has deepened by another 100 degrees.
One day in November last year, at two o'clock in the morning, Lin Xuan, who was still staring at her mobile phone, suddenly felt that her eyes were dry and stinging. She realized that it was a signal from her body that she couldn't do that anymore. She suffered from severe depression 5 years ago and was rescued by the doctor. It is precisely because she has experienced life and death that protecting her body has become the strongest motivation for her to quit her mobile phone.
Li Xiaoke, a member of the "Anti-Technology Dependence Group", feels that mobile phone addiction is a state that is out of his control. She worked for a foreign company in Shanghai for 5 years, and in 2019, she felt a lot of pressure due to her promotion and became obsessed with playing mobile games. At one point, she found herself working 4 hours a day while playing games for 8 hours. "At that point, I clearly felt that I was very tired of the game during the process, but I would still subconsciously open it. Sometimes I quit the game and subconsciously press the key in a round. Li Xiaoke said that she felt that her state was not right, and she made up her mind to quit the game, but unexpectedly, she began to be fascinated by online novels again.
"Anxiety, confusion, boredom... We were eager to overcome these negative states through the screen, and we did do do in the beginning. But slowly, over time, our anxiety, confusion, and boredom have returned, and they have become more fierce. The screen-connected online world, instead of helping us overcome these negative states, deepens them. Yan Xian, a legal counsel at a company in Shenzhen, made a post in the "Away from Screen Project" group to explore why people need to stay away from screens.
Yan Xian realized 6 years ago that excessive use of mobile phones is a problem. At that time, he was still in college, and he used almost all of his time outside of studying on his mobile phone, even in between doing homework and listening to lectures. He found that he would gain a sense of security in the face of the bombardment of massive fragmented information, but after brushing down his mobile phone for an hour, he could hardly recall anything, and a sense of emptiness would follow. "Brushing dramas, watching lace news and short videos is the most direct way to solve boredom, but simple, repetitive stimulation can produce dopamine in a short period of time, and gradually make people lose the desire and ability to think and change." He wrote.
Zuo Ying is the creator of the "Anti-Technology Dependence Group". As a graduate student in human cultural heritage, the biggest problem brought to her by mobile phones is impetuosity, for example, in the face of a social topic, after reading a large amount of information on the Internet, she will choose a point of view that she recognizes, and then directly abandon the process of her own thinking. Zuo Ying felt that her ability to think independently was being weakened. "I'm going to get caught up in the impetuousness of using my phone, and I hate it." Wang Shan, a Chinese teacher at a primary school in Qingdao, also feels the same way, and after watching small videos and short articles on her mobile phone, it is difficult to calm down and read papers and English articles. "Watching small videos is completely brainless, and slowly, your ability to think deeply will be lost."
Lin Xuan's mobile phone use time within a week. Courtesy of respondents
A duel with the "Thieves of Time"
After deciding to quit her mobile phone, Li Zhen conducted psychological counseling once or twice a week. The counselor used cognitive behavioral therapy, where she was asked to observe her own behavior and then undergo some treatment. Li Zhen spent three weeks recording when she wanted to play with her phone. After self-observation, she found that there were two kinds of situations: First, she encountered a difficult thing to deal with, such as a colleague who made her feel depressed and she could not reply. Another situation is that she has just done a good job, rewarding herself with a reward and hoping to play with her phone.
But for the most part, she, like Li Xiaoke, is using her phone to escape reality. Li Zhen said that at that time, there was a lot of pressure to change to a new job, not only had conflicts with colleagues, but also had no friends in the new city, and the contact with domestic parents was also decreasing, but he did not have a venting channel, so he immersed himself in the mobile phone.
After each psychological consultation, she will get two or three days of peace, can control herself well, and has a better relationship with the mobile phone. In a few days, the effect will drop like a curve.
"One of the hardest things about quitting your phone is that this era requires you to match this tool, and it's like your organ. For example, to work in China, I need to use DingTalk or WeChat to communicate, and I also need to use WeChat to contact my parents or friends. Li Zhen said that these functions make people have to use mobile phones, and every time you use some other software, you will unconsciously open it, and time will pass unconsciously.
After firmly believing in quitting mobile phones, Li Zhen installed an app to quit mobile phones, turned off the push of all apps, and stopped bringing her phone into the bedroom before going to bed. The difficult problems of work and life, she gradually began to face, no longer escape, and later she found that these problems did not seem to be as terrible as imagined. When Li Zhen finished her 12th psychological consultation, her mobile phone use time gradually dropped from 7-10 hours a day to four or five hours.
Yan xian tried many mobile apps, but the effect was not ideal. "The penalty mechanism for some mobile apps is that if you use your phone for a time other than is allowed, it will ring." Yan Xian said, "But you will evade the control of this software by uninstalling or some background way." "Often he is determined to achieve very little use time today, and insists that the next day he will retaliate and return to the state of mobile phone addiction." He even used a more extreme approach — buying a locked iron box to hold the phone and physically isolating it.
Yan xian quit the locking iron box used in the mobile phone. Courtesy of respondents
During the period of graduate school, Yan Xian really quit the mobile phone, every day in addition to sleeping, eating, learning to prepare for the exam, even did not turn on the whole day, he did not care. But after work, the mobile phone has become an inseparable thing, and when he rests on weekends, he still can't help but play with the mobile phone. Fortunately, "after several years of exploration, my understanding of mobile phones is not as simple as before, basically the control of mobile phones has reached 70% stage." The game with mobile phones is still difficult in Yan Xian's view, and people are facing not only a mobile phone, but also the design team behind the App to increase the user's use time.
Zhao Wenxi, a graduate student in the department of Chinese at a university in Wuhan, once posted to share her 22-day experience of quitting mobile phones. She downloaded the Quit Mobile app and tried to reduce her phone usage from 8 hours a day to 90 minutes. "Some software will set a limit for the user to use the phone, and when the time comes, the screen will turn gray." She felt particularly painful at first, sometimes like a drug addict suddenly addicted, and when she was bored or tired, she couldn't help but open her phone, and once she turned it on, it was difficult to turn it off again. "It's like a black hole that sucks me up easily." She later adjusted the target usage time to 3 hours. Fortunately, after a week, she gradually adapted to this state. At that time, Zhao Wenxi had just started an internship, and she would concentrate on reading the information she wanted to see at noon, and basically did not look at her mobile phone during the day. "When I really wanted to open my phone, I forced myself not to look at it, either to do a sport immediately, or to pick up the book next to me and read it first."
The price of convenience
As a researcher on social media, Dong Chenyu's initial motivation for doing research was to solve his own puzzles. He also spent a lot of time in an app, but without knowing it, he called it a "time thief."
Dong Chenyu said that since the popularity of smart phones, mobile phones have no longer been a simple communication tool. We are not using mobile phones now, but living in mobile phones. Our lives are being appged. At a micro level, if these apps on mobile phones want to survive, the first thing they need to do is to ensure their daily active users. They must want you to be able to access it constantly. And this is a more or less psychological manipulation of the science, a combination of technology and psychology.
"Technology is addictive in many ways. For example, you often see an app with a small red dot on it, and that thing triggers your dopamine secretion. Dopamine is not secreted when we are happy, it is secreted in large quantities when we encounter uncertainty and get excited. Dong Chenyu said that if a "3" is displayed on WeChat, after opening the 3 are replies from your particularly good friends, you will be particularly satisfied. But sometimes clicking on 33 likes from people who are not very connected, you are not satisfied. If you feel satisfied every time you open the app, the sense of uncertainty will decrease, and the secretion of dopamine will decrease. "Just like people who have big fish and big meat every day, they can't get interested in big fish and big meat." Therefore, this uncertainty is more addictive.
George Dyson wrote in his 1997 monograph on the history of artificial intelligence, Evolution in Machines, that all the things humans do to make computer networks easier to manipulate will also make computer networks easier to manipulate for different reasons.
When mobile phones are embedded in our lives, what are the consequences? Dong Chenyu said that our lives are further fragmented, and people who often look at mobile phones are likely to have a declining ability to read long texts in a disconnected environment. The American writer Nicholas Carr wrote in Shallow: How the Internet Poisoned Our Brains, "When we make the Internet our universal media and devote ourselves to it, the greatest sacrifice of all the sacrifices we make may be the loss of the ability to focus." ”
Dong Chenyu is doing a study on the explosion of information in WeChat groups. He found that WeChat groups have also become a life dilemma for contemporary people. "We now have a variety of groups such as work groups, home groups, girlfriend groups, takeaway groups, etc., which makes people feel that the information explosion is exploding." There may be 100 unread messages at a point of opening, but only 3 of them may be related to you, but you need to keep looking forward, this process is called 'climbing the stairs'. Dong Chenyu said that the information explosion makes it difficult for people to focus on one thing.
Recently, Dong Chenyu is carrying out the "break away" of mobile phone Apps. The process of quitting mobile phones, in Dong Chenyu's view, is essentially resisting the manipulation of people by technology. "The easiest way to judge whether it is in harmony with electronic devices is to see if there is a sense of crisis in autonomy." He said that although he also often posts Weibo, if he deletes Weibo, it doesn't matter if he doesn't post it. But if someone feels particularly anxious after deleting it, it is a state of addiction. But now, no one can delete WeChat because it has become a communication tool. "This is our destiny in the digital age."
"Media literacy is too overlooked." Dong Chenyu said that the core key point of media literacy lies in disenchantment and criticism, that is, knowing that news can also be wrong, and being able to judge which news is credible and which is not credible through media literacy. But in the age of social media, this critical power is no longer enough to support media literacy.
Lin Xuan saw a poster posted on the gate at the subway station. Courtesy of respondents
"We used to use newspapers, mobile phones, but now we live in social media. I think the key point is coexistence, which is how to use the medium wisely, how to live with the medium, how to make the medium give us a sense of happiness, not to make our lives worse. These are beyond the dimension of information. In other words, how to make me use the internet, not the internet 'use me'. He said we need to get teens to improve their media literacy, and their future technological environment may be more difficult and complex than we face.
On March 28, 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China guided the organization of short video platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Volcano Small Video to pilot the launch of the youth anti-addiction system. On May 28, 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) comprehensively promoted the launch of the "Youth Anti-Addiction System" on major online video platforms across the country. The newly revised Law on the Protection of Minors, which came into effect on June 1, 2021, has a chapter on "Online Protection".
According to the relevant requirements, at present, the main domestic online games, videos, live broadcasts and other platforms have launched the "youth mode", open the App will pop up prompts, you can choose to set the "youth mode" without logging in, by restricting the use of time, online time, service functions and other ways to regulate and guide the minors' online behavior. However, there are still loopholes in the "teen mode" of major online platforms, such as minors can bypass this mode by entering unlock passwords, jumping accounts, etc.
Life taken back
Although the earliest quitting mobile phones was just to protect her eyesight, Lin Xuan gradually found that she saw more of the beauty of the real world when she got out of the online world. Lin Xuan had time to read more books and listen to more music. She put down her phone during the dinner and communicated seriously with her friends. She watched the sky every evening, paying attention to the faces of every passer-by.
Li Zhen became obsessed with sports in her spare time. "I found that exercise is an activity that gives people a positive idea, and it feels good after every exercise." In addition to going to the gym, she said, she also learned hip-hop. "It makes me feel that there are other things in my life that can make me so forgetful and happy." I'm still joining a dancing group, and a lot of people in it feel that their lives have changed after dancing. ”
Li Zhen in front of the Los Angeles dance studio. Courtesy of respondents
"Once you've bought your time back, you have time to think about what you can do. But if you don't make good use of this time, you will easily return to the 'mobile phone camp'. Yan Xian said that he now maintains a period of study every day. During the period of home isolation, he cooked his own meals three times a day, and the house was clean and tidy. In the past, when I was addicted to mobile phones, my clothes would not be washed for several days, but now this is not the case. Last weekend, he played badminton with friends for two hours. "Playing mobile phones is actually very draining on people's spirits, but playing ball is not tired at all, reading books will not be tired, but there will be a very fulfilling feeling."
A friend of Yan Xian's also developed a new hobby after quitting his mobile phone - riding the bus. "He probably didn't expect to be hooked on this, and usually takes the bus out when he has time, not going to any destination, just to see the city." More interestingly, Yan xian said, he also found a group of bus enthusiasts. They know the driver very well, eat together, and occasionally pick the night to take the bus. There is also a special term for taking the bus in this group called "operation". They'll say, get out and run it tonight.
Zuo Ying seems to be back in the "mobile phone camp", last year she opened a bedtime reading punch card post in the group, hoping to use sleep instead of brushing mobile phones, and set the daily mobile phone use time to 4 hours.
But now, with the outbreak isolated at home, her plans had to be interrupted. "After the epidemic became serious, mobile phones became difficult to quit." Zuo Ying said, "After being separated, everyone becomes very vulnerable and needs emotional support. It's now my fourth day of quarantine at home and I can't see my friends and have to use my phone for social needs. ”
Compared with the 8 hours a day when she was addicted to mobile phones in the past, Zuo Ying's current mobile phone usage time has been reduced a lot, but she still feels a little frustrated. She hopes to focus more on real life, develop the ability not to rely on technology to deal with some things, and not drown in the convenience and control that technology brings.
And Zhao Wenxi has returned to real life from the mobile phone world. Without playing with his mobile phone on the way to the internship, Zhao Wenxi forced himself to observe the environment on the side of the road. People on the side of the road, kittens, puppies, flowers, even cars are interesting. "During that time, there was a very small flower in the school, but I may have walked by looking at my phone on the road before, and never noticed." Zhao Wenxi said that she found that the original school flowers bloomed like this, the color was like this.
One day walking on the way to work, Zhao Wenxi suddenly saw that in the afterglow of the setting sun, a middle-aged man was carrying a child's pink Disney Princess school bag, and the other shoulder was still hanging a briefcase; one hand was holding a courier, and the other hand was holding his little friend. He had a grin on his face, especially gentle, and was chatting with his daughter. Zhao Wenxi was a certain distance away from them, but he was poked hard by this warm scene. She felt that the picture was so beautiful that it was difficult for her to express it in words, "This scene is more impactful than any warm article on the Internet." ”
(In the text, Li Zhen, Zhao Wenxi, Lin Xuan, and Li Xiao can be pseudonyms.) ）
Beijing News reporter Pu Xiao Editor Chen Xiaoshu proofreader Liu Yue