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The letter confirmed what I had known even before the course – that I needed to make drastic changes, not just tweaks, to end my addiction. This included my friends being onboard with my detox, too, or, at the very least, supportive of it. As with any form of detoxing, being around the thing you crave the most in the early days of change is risky. My willpower is, partially, dependent on my friends’ support, meaning I needed social un-influencers in my life.
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In the United States, smartphone addiction is actually dropping among users aged 18-29. According to the Pew Research Centerdependency dropped from 28 per cent in 2021 to 20 per cent in 2023. Yet in Australia, the latest Digital 2024: Australia report by Meltwater revealed only 3 per cent of internet users aged 16-64 don’t have a smartphone. Data from Red Search also shows smartphone usage has increased from 85.7 per cent of the general Australian population in 2021 to 86.6 per cent in 2024. Despite these high figures, the same research found one in 10 Australians find mobile phones annoying, and four in 10 find them distracting.
Collective smartphone addiction, both literally and figuratively, keeps me awake at night. We’re changing how our brains work, and how entire communities interact. Instant gratification has replaced delayed dopamine release, which always takes too long.
Red Search data shows that 32 per cent of smartphone users in Australia report mobile devices increase their stress and anxiety levels which can, in turn, cause problems with concentration and sleep.
In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton said children’s “insidious” app addiction was one of her top concerns for our future and noted that many Silicon Valley execs – most of whom would be intimately aware of the addictiveness of the technology – ban their children from using smartphones and iPads.
Which is how I ended up flipping over my pillow to check my phone 40 minutes into a film.
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Now, I’ve become so determined to succeed that I’m willing to rethink friendships over it. These people are my enablers; they influence my addiction when my already wobbly willpower wanes. Some of them become defensive when gently challenged about potential overdependence.
Thankfully, one friend enthusiastically agreed when I suggested a “mobile-free” catch-up, where our phones stayed in our bags. We made our own jokes rather than sharing ones from the internet. Without incessant alerts, we didn’t lose track of what we were talking about every five minutes. It brought back creativity into the conversation.
Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, nor do I want them to. They’ve improved our lives in so many ways, but what I do want is for more people to move out of denial about their addiction to them.
Only when my inner circle awakens to the need for more balance will I be able to truly step away from mine more often, too. Collective addiction ends by osmosis.
Gary Nunn is a regular contributor.
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