'Just put your phone away'

You'll enjoy conversation more if you do

👋 Hi, this Shane O'Mara, writer of the BrainPizza Newsletter. I take a fresh look at life through an informed, empirical, neuroscience and psychology lens. I do regular in-depth treatments of topics such as our very human metabolism, George Orwell, AI hype, brain implants, memory, hunger, NIMBYism, thinking, how to write books, and much, much more, as well as occasional listicles, readings, book reviews, and commentaries. You can browse the archives here; if you’d like to get these regular in-depth emails in your inbox, you can subscribe here (special offer). Coming soon for subscribers only - downloadable PDFs/EPUBs (for Kindle/ereader) of archived pieces.

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Smartphones are everywhere

But you know this already; you're one using to read this, most likely. To confirm it, here’s a fairly plausible statistic:

In 2024, the number of smartphone users in the world today is 6.93 Billion, which translates to 85.74% of the world's population owning a smartphone.

In truth, smartphones are so recent, and they are so powerful and useful, that we are still negotiating social norms regarding their use.

And there are strange behaviours everywhere with smartphones: reading them walking along the street, or crossing the road, or taking selfies in obviously dangerous locations to get that perfect ‘gramable shot.

It’s very common to see a couple in a restaurant paying zero attention to each other while they scroll on their phones.

Why did they bother going out together? Maybe they’re escaping the dreariness of each other’s company? Or perhaps sending each other texts about the loud bore droning at the next table? Or planning a weekend away together?

Who knows?

It’s similarly common to see people have a quick look at their phones during what might be an enervating meeting - anything to perk up the senses.

a couple paying zero attention to each other while they scroll on their phones

Smartphones are amazing

They are indeed. It’s impossible (or very difficult) to conduct many aspects of modern life without them. Banking services are a great example: bank branches are disappearing everywhere, nobody wants to process your bits of paper, and financial services migrating to your phone is completely common. Now multiply this by lots of everyday activities. Flights, hotels, tracking deliveries, booking a cab, shopping, and so much more. I even do the final edits to this newsletter on my phone, because it will most probably be read on a smartphone.

The contents of our thoughts

Smartphones have also been a particular boon to psychology and neuroscience, offering the chance to do all sorts of useful things that were difficult or impossible: from tracking thoughts and mood in real time, to assisting in the monitoring and diagnosis of a wide range of conditions such as depression (e.g.).

Here's an example of this approach: the renowned social psychologist Roy Baumeister and collaborators conducted a study examining the mental contents of individuals during their daily activities, and especially how much we focus on the future compared to the past in our moment to moment thoughts.

Using a sample of 200 participants, who received six daily SMS text messages between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., respondents reported their emotional states and physiological arousal levels. They also indicated whether their thoughts pertained to the past, present, or future and specified the time frame. The results, based on approximately 6,700 mobile samples, showed that thoughts about the present constituted around 53% of our thinking time, while exclusive focus on the past constituted a minority (about 5% of our thinking time), and thinking about the future comprised about 24% of reported thoughts.

This finding highlights the substantial portion of our cognitive processes dedicated to future-oriented thinking - so much for the mindfulness injunction to stay centered in the present moment. Restlessly moving along a mental timeline from the present to the future is what we humans are built to do.

This kind of experiment would have been more-or-less impossible before smartphones (but pagers? Yeah, no).

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Relevant BrainPizza pieces (go, on subscribe - special offer here!)

Lie to me

Let's Talk: How we use conversation to create our shared worlds

In praise of talking

Therapeutic Conversations

The con artist and the mark

How Great Storytelling Lingers in the Mind

Talking Heads: The New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our Worlds

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But…

There’s always a but. I won’t explore here all the other worries regarding smartphones and their potential misuses (but defintely don’t drive while using one!).