Following is the full text of Barbara Jennings’ talk titled “Cell Phones, Dopamine, and Development” at TEDxABQ conference.
TRANSCRIPT:
The cell phone has greatly changed our lives. In many ways, it’s more practical. We can talk to almost anybody from almost anywhere.
But there’s also ways that the cell phone has impacted lives that you may be not aware of.
You see, our brain has a natural chemical response to the cell phone. It’s a release of the chemical in the brain called dopamine.
Now, I know the dopamine is the chemical that makes you feel good. But that’s not actually the case.
Dopamine is the chemical that’s responsible for our seeking. So we look for something, and we find it, and we get a dopamine release.
And we look for something else, we get another dopamine release. This is what’s known as, again, the dopamine loop.
This is the same thing that occurs when you get on the internet and you’re doing a search, say, for a recipe for dinner. And you find yourself, an hour later, light years away from where you started.
Now you’re reading about designer breed dogs and dinner still isn’t ready.
The cell phone has greatly impacted our lives, and in some ways we become dependent again.
Here’s my story. I had the original cell phone that came with my plan. It wasn’t fancy, no text, no camera, but it was practical, and I kept it in my purse and I used it when it was necessary.
Then came the iPhone. Now I had camera, internet, email, and a whole host of phone applications, in an all-in-one hand-held unit.
And I found myself, really developing a dependence on this phone. I would carry it with me from room to room in the house, even taking it in the backyard, when I went to garden.
But my dependence worsened when I get into a relationship with a texter.
I so looked forward to the texts I would get from him, and when I got them I’d be elated and excited, but when they didn’t come in, I found myself really low.
So this intrigued me. And I started looking at how other people use their cell phone. Families on cell phone. Parents talking on the phone instead of to their kids, kids on the cell phone.
I go into restaurants, and whole tables, everybody on the cell phone.
So, I decided to do some research. It turns out that everything about this technology is designed to rope us in, from the alert that it emits to the amount of text you can see on the screen.
And we buy into it, because we become information seekers. Even the text on a news media. audios, visuals and texts scrolling across the screen, and we go for it.
The most common use of cell phones is occurring in college students. They’re receiving about a hundred texts a day, and checking for their texts, an additional 60 times a day.
Now, their compulsive addiction isn’t to the cell phone, it’s to the dopamine they get every time they get a message. Think how you feel when you check your messages and you don’t have any, versus when you do. Elated, valued, kind of important.
The cell phones also, change the way we think and we communicate with people. We’d rather communicate in snippets of text, rather than way through a voicemail or email message.
And our focus and our attention span, is shorter. We split from topic to topic, and idea to idea, hardly ever finishing anything. And even in the Google age, with all this information provided to us, we’re willing to take the first response supplied, rather than really verify it.
Here’s another thing.
How do you feel when you drive away and you realize you’ve left your cell phone behind? Do you turn around to go back for it, no matter how late you are, to wherever you’re going?
Well, as it turns out, there’s been a reported increase in anxietyof this kind, and there’s a medical condition associated with it: Nomophobia.
No, really. No mobile phone phobia. And it’s the condition that arises from the anxiety that we feel when we don’t have our cell phone, or when you don’t have communication.
So, I want to offer you a challenge today. For the next two weeks, put your cell phone out of your physical location, for an hour a day. For one hour a day, be without the cell phone. Focus on something else. Your surroundings, the people around you, or just gaze into these beautiful New Mexico skies.
