Hasta La Gadget!

By Kira Beilis

In his new best seller, A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention, New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Matt Richtel explores the neuroscience of our obsession with our phones in the context of a deadly car wreck caused by a texting driver. Science of Us caught up with Richtel about the dark side of technology, its surprising parallels with food, and how we’re acting just like smokers — even if we’ve never touched a cigarette.

What first got you interested in exploring the dark side of our culture’s obsession with technology?
In Silicon Valley, the herd is going one direction very fast, kicking up clouds of dust. It was a simple journalistic impulse to say: Why are we going that direction so quickly? Then I also saw my own behavior: watching the certainly magnetic, if not magical allure of my device. I thought something’s going on here, and as I was saying it, scientists were beginning to ask the same question. So it was a pretty good holy trinity journalistically of an almost overwhelmingly conventional wisdom, science questioning it, and a gut instinct that my own behavior was changing profoundly.

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You write of a powerful clash between technology and the human brain. What’s the root of the conflict? Are we just not hard-wired to keep up with all the information technology throws at us?
We’re creating stuff that is so powerful as to almost be supernatural. The pace of innovation is practically light speed and the pace of evolution is snail speed. We don’t change at the pace technology changes just as we have not changed at the pace that food has industrialized, so we don’t metabolize junk food any better than we did 50 years ago. We’ve just learned we have to be careful with it. Similarly we have to learn to adapt to technology in a world that is changing way, way faster than we can evolve.

Drawing on that analogy between the industrialization of food and the emergence of our omnipresent mobile devices, what lesson can we draw?
Things that have enormous power to serve us can also have enormous power to take advantage of us. It’s almost the way that when you love someone so fiercely, it can manipulate you in ways that you either don’t see or don’t want to see. It can steer you against your own interest in invisible ways or in ways you just don’t want to acknowledge. One of the lures of writing about this is the disconnect between what we say we’re going to do with our phones in the car and what we actually do.

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So, 96 percent of people say they shouldn’t text and drive, and 30 percent do. I can only think of one other thing that a gap so profound exists — the gap between what smokers say they should do and what they actually do. There’s a reason smokers say one thing and do something else — they’re addicted, sometimes to the point of killing themselves. I think if you watch your own behavior, often you are going to your device whether inside the car or out of it, to get a little boost of dopamine in the same way that maybe smokers get a little boost of nicotine. What if some part of our interaction with our devices is not need, urgency, or even necessarily connection, but rather a kind of neurochemical fix?

If that’s the case, how deeply and permanently has technology affected our neurochemistry?
If I spend two or three days without my device, I can live without it and I kind of don’t want to go back. That says to me that while it might have addictive properties and be extremely habit-forming, it is possible for a lot of us to break that with some effort. But it’s harder for young people because the part of the brain involved in making good decisions — the prefrontal cortex — is not yet developed.

Even for those of us with mature brains, it can feel impossible to disconnect; the temptation to check our phones is too strong. So what do we do?
It sounds so silly, but the very first thing is to make a concerted effort to disconnect on a regular basis for a period of time. Because research shows, when you have a lot of information coming at you and you’re processing a lot of it, you’re diminishing your ability to make a decision. When you’re in the car texting or even talking on the phone, you compromise your ability to make decisions in both of those contexts. Get enough space to let your brain nap. That’s critical.

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The second thing is, you deplete your brain over course of the day through things large and small; even choosing what to wear begins to deplete executive function. If every free second, you’re checking your device, you’re stealing resources from decision-making you may need later. You don’t want to bleed your brain to death tweet by tweet.

Did writing the book change your own relationship to your phone?
The biggest thing, and it’s changing by the day as I watch myself embody the very things the scientists warned me about, is that I turn it off when my kids are around. For two reasons: If it’s in my pocket, I feel a yearning to check it, even if I’m not expecting it. It’s like going outside to get a little fix. The other reason is I know I’m setting a very clear example for my kids.

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Was it like going through withdrawal to start to “unplug”?
I’m intensifying my efforts to turn it off on the weekends. That’s hard, because I get an itch now and again. I play a lot of tennis, and someone’s going to text me since there’s no other way to communicate — no landlines anymore. Once you’re drinking the beer, why not have a cigarette? All of sudden I’m checking my email, my Amazon numbers. I think this is a very, very powerful device in the way it plays to primitive social wiring and our deepest reward systems, and we need to catch up to that understanding or it has a chance to enslave us rather than become the most powerful tool we’ve ever had technologically.

On that note, what is the biggest takeaway readers should draw from your work?
That your relationship with your device is not what it seems. You should scrutinize it so you can own that little monkey and it doesn’t own you.

This interview has been lightly edited.

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Are Our Phones Making Us Less Empathetic?
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First it was Lululemon’s Runsie, and now Brooks is set to grace us with a running romper in 2015.

Photo from Lululemon

But every runner we’ve talked to about the prospect of running in such a getup has the same question: Why?

Why make it even more difficult to peel off sweaty workout clothes? Why make it even more difficult to make a quick bathroom pit stop, mid-run? Why guarantee you’ll be running with a wedgie?

The idea turns off us so completely, we can think of countless other things we’d rather do in these (undoubtedly!) cute designs. Please, just don’t make us run in them.

1. Wear it as a beach coverup.

2. Wear it as pajamas.

3. Bowl.

4. Go to the club.

5. Use it as an apron while cooking.

6. Wear it as a smock while cleaning the apartment.

7. Wear it to go to a party we only plan to stay at for 10 minutes (and then go to bed).

8. Garden.

9. Run Do errands.

Imagine a weekend, a week or even a month without your iPhone, computer or any other devices. Chances are you’re not going to work, at least not in the same capacity. You might go far away from home, to take in views of old growth forests or coastal sunsets. You might even pay for a retreat meant to make people disconnect, distracting them from the loss of their phones with nostalgic camp games, face painting and vegan food.

That doesn’t sound too hard. But returning to a mountain of email and miles of missed social media might jumpstart your old habits. A digital detox won’t, on its own, fix an obsessive relationship with technology, said Dr. Larry Rosen, a California State University, Dominguez Hills, psychology professor and former department chair who has studied people’s attachment to their phones. You’ll have to make a concerted effort to change your behavior once you return to your devices.

Compulsive clicking, posting and checking doesn’t give us pleasure, Rosen said. It’s based on a need to get rid of neurotransmitters that signal stress or anxiety, like cortisol. “People are acting more out of the need to not be left out, the need to respond immediately, and they’re doing it not because it makes them feel good, but because they have to,” he said. “And if they don’t do it, they get stressed.”

Instagram users spend an average of 21 minutes on the app each day, Mark Zuckerberg said during a Facebook earnings call this week. A study last year showed that smartphone users check Facebook on their phones an average of 14 times a day. And Locket, an app that pays Android users to display ads on their locked screens, says its users unlock their phones more than 100 times a day on average.

Rosen and colleagues have demonstrated that taking people’s phones away can actually result in separation anxiety. And we’re so used to distracting ourselves with clicks and likes that most men would rather give themselves electric shocks than be left alone with their thoughts, a recent study published in Science found.

These stress-based habits can’t be cleansed away, but some people who have done digital detoxes have successfully changed their relationships to their devices after they’ve finished. Others have been able to make incremental shifts without completely unplugging.

Travis Cody, a Los Angeles-based best-selling author who worked in Hollywood for a decade, found himself stressed out and miserable in what he thought would be the job of his dreams. He first noticed his productivity went up when he turned off his cell phone ringer so he wasn’t hearing Facebook notifications, emails and texts pinging all day. He started wondering what would happen if he turned everything off, and decided to try it when he had a six-week stretch with no deadlines ahead of him.

Cody turned all of his devices off at midnight one Friday. The following Monday, he went out to dinner with friends, who immediately noticed something was different about him.

“They were just kind of looking at me, and after a minute, they were like, ‘Dude, what’s going on with you?’ Their exact words were, ‘Your energy is just so zen, man.’”

Cody was able to remain unplugged for 30 days, writing by hand and communicating only in person or through a land line. He found he could get his work done so efficiently that he had plenty of time to walk around outside and look at the ocean.

Reentry into the real world was brutal. “A tsunami of distraction just crushed me,” Cody said. “The first couple weeks were not pretty. My shoulders and body hurt, I got chronic headaches, I had no energy. I was like, this is ridiculous.”

Cody, who’s working on a documentary about the experience called “30 Days Unplugged,” needed about six months to work out a system that keeps his digital distraction and anxiety at bay. Most mornings he doesn’t turn on his phone for the first two or three hours after he wakes up, using the time to go to the gym, meditate or read and write. He’s pulled Facebook and email off of his phone. And he sets aside specific windows of time for reading and answering emails — a strategy that works for him but isn’t realistic for workers who feel they must respond to emails as soon as they hit their inboxes.

“Right now, we’ve fallen into this trap where we must respond immediately,” said Rosen.

Some companies are standardizing expected response times or limiting email on the weekends. But employees can do their part, Rosen said, by setting automatic replies telling colleagues how they can be reached offline, limiting email use before bed and setting goals of email-free focus time.

Jodi Katzman, director of events and production at JBK Productions, a media design firm, found herself in the midst of an involuntary digital detox a few weeks ago when her phone and computer crashed and her TV stopped working at the same time. She ended up using the downtime to reconnect with herself, old friends and the outside world. Now, she says, she can leave unread emails sitting in her inbox without feeling the urge to open them.

“Anytime I saw those bold emails that hadn’t been read, I used to get a little stressed,” Katzman said. “Now I don’t. No one imposed those restrictions on me. I imposed them on myself.”

A detox doesn’t have to mean a break from all your devices. Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post, encourages people to do what they can.

“It’s important not to make the perfect the enemy of the good,” she said. “Any starting point is good: no devices at dinner, no devices by your bed while you are asleep, and then gradually graduating to a day of digital detox or a week and then digital detoxes while on vacation.”

Disconnecting in some way on a regular basis is important because you need to “let your brain nap,” Matt Richtel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for The New York Times and author of “A Deadly Wandering: A Tale Of Tragedy And Redemption In The Age Of Inattention,” told New York magazine in a recent interview. Richtel tries to ignore his phone on weekends but can’t always fight the urge to check it.

“I play a lot of tennis, and someone’s going to text me since there’s no other way to communicate — no landlines anymore,” he told the magazine. “Once you’re drinking the beer, why not have a cigarette? All of sudden I’m checking my email, my Amazon numbers.”

Richtel added that he turns off his phone when his kids are around to avoid temptation, and because he wants to set an example for them.

Setting personal rules and boundaries around when and how we use technology is key to breaking bad habits, Rosen said.

“You don’t need the detox to help you do that,” he said. “What you need is to examine your behaviors.”

SALT LAKE CTIY (AP) — A Utah couple and their three children found dead in their home last month were likely poisoned, their bodies found together in a locked room with cups next to each of them, and empty bottles of methadone and nighttime cold medicine in a trash can.

Police in Springville aren’t saying who killed the family or whether one of the parents might have been involved. Toxicology results have not determined an exact cause of death, but search warrants obtained Wednesday say the family was likely poisoned. Benjamin and Kristi Strack were in bed, with children ages 11 through 14 lying around them, tucked in bedding up to their necks, according to the search warrants. Kristi Strack had a red liquid coming out of her mouth.

Some of the bodies looked to have been positioned after they died Sept. 27. They were found by the couple’s older son and Kristi Strack’s mother, who said she couldn’t believe “she” would do this to the kids but wouldn’t elaborate, police wrote.

Investigators found empty methadone bottles, 10 empty boxes of nighttime cold medicine and two boxes of allergy medicine in their garbage, along with a red liquid substance in Pepsi cups. They also found a pitcher of red juice, a purple bucket with yellow liquid, a bag of marijuana and other medications, including sleeping pills.

Springville police Lt. Dave Caron said Wednesday he couldn’t comment on the search warrant or speculate about the cause of death until results of a toxicology test come back. That’s expected in late November, he said.

“Until I get those, I really don’t have anything,” he said. “I could come up with all sorts of theories, but it’s not helpful.”

The search warrant says it wasn’t normal for the children to be in their parents’ room because they have their own rooms.

Kristi Strack was last seen alive at 6 a.m. by the older son’s girlfriend, who also lives in the home. The girlfriend went back to sleep after talking with Kristi Strack, and the house was quiet when the older son and his girlfriend left the house that afternoon.

When they returned at 7 p.m. and saw the house was still quiet even though all the cars were in the driveway, they knocked on the master bedroom door. When no one answered, the couple called Kristi Strack’s mother and her friend, who helped them force it open.

Authorities have previously said the five did not die violently.

The five were identified as Benjamin Strack, 37, his wife, Kristi, 36, and three of their children: Benson, 14, Emery, 12, and Zion, 11.

Little is known about the family. A family spokesman has declined to reveal much and, at a vigil, family members declined comment.

Benjamin Strack’s former boss said he worked off-and-on for six to seven years at AK Masonry, a bricklaying company, and had borrowed money in the past. Court records show Benjamin and Kristi Strack pleaded guilty to misdemeanor forgery charges in 2008 and disorderly conduct the following year.

Springville is a city of about 30,000 near Provo, about 45 miles south of Salt Lake City.

A regular speaker is something that we can all understand, you connect it to a smartphone or stereo system, and you can hear the music all over a room or home. A parametric speaker is something altogether different, it produces sound, but that sound is focused akin to a laser beam. That means the sound can only be heard by … Continue reading