Are we all addicted to apps? Are they making us feel fried? Emma Gleason gives her top tips on how she navigated the week with a burner phone. Video / Ben Dickens / Jason Dorday
Three key facts:
Globally over 50% of website traffic comes from smartphones.
More Kiwis now have a smartphone, 83%, than a laptop/PC, 73%, or working TV, 69%.
In New Zealand, 63% of Kiwis spend between two to four hours online each day; personal use that’s spent mostly on social media (48%) and streaming platforms (39%), and SMS use is at an all-time low.
OPINION
Are we all addicted to apps? Are they making us feel fried? Can we be more present in real life? Overwhelmed by everything on the internet, Emma Gleason turned to a burner phone (and desktop browser) for seven days to see if it could alleviate these feelings, help create boundaries amidst the content churn, and reconnect with the “real world”. Did it work?
Accessing the internet has never been easier, or more addictive, with smartphones serving our every need. I thought breaking the habit would be torture, but instead, it brought a sense of mental clarity, focus and calm that I haven’t experienced in years.
Tasked with using a burner phone (a cheap, discardable mobile devoid of apps and personal data) for a week, I was testing a hypothesis that slowing down our consumption of online content could tackle the sense of overwhelm many of us are feeling in 2024.
Why switch off the smartphone?
It’s 2024, we use the internet a lot, increasingly on smartphones, and much, if not most, of our online activity happens on apps. Compared to some I never thought my digital diet was that bad, but it’s been enough to make me feel fried.
From doomscrolling to content fatigue and information overload, it’s enough to create the feeling of digital burnout. I quit TikTok and Twitter already, but maybe that wasn’t enough.
Can a burner phone – a term aptly loaded with connotations of dependence and distribution – be a circuit breaker for app addiction? Is this even possible when our lives are so online?
One last swipe and scroll on the bright, high-definition screen, checking all my most-used apps: Instagram, Substack, Whatsapp, Podcasts. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to feeling like an addict getting one last hit.
My smartphone is switched off. The screen will be dark for at least a week.
Firing up this new, simpler phone feels like a clean slate. It’s a flip Nokia 2660, nostalgic for anyone who used one in the 2000s. “Nobody buys these,” explained the sales assistant who rang up my purchase.
Inputting critical numbers – parents, partner, close friends, my editor and a few colleagues – the muscle memory of texting with buttons is instant. (And, as I come to learn, less typos are made because I have to concentrate, having opted to turn off predictive messaging). Do people even text anymore? SMS has declined to its lowest-ever daily use, with only 49% of Kiwis texting at least once a day.
There’s no Podcast app or Spotify, but there is radio. And though this phone has internet functionality – delightfully beta in quality – I’m ignoring this feature. I want to unlearn the habit of Googling the answer to every stray thought or question.
You find more intentional ways to use the internet.
For checking the news, I type URLs into my laptop browser, experiencing the curated medium of a homepage with renewed appreciation.
I look at Instagram a couple of times but it’s less appealing, somehow boring. I feel oblivious to what anyone else has been doing.
Substack is good on a browser though, a platform that feels refreshingly less randomised.
WhatsApp and Discord feel different on a computer, more like earlier chat iterations like MSN Messenger. And when they’re not in your pocket all day, it makes you appreciate that space for conversation.
Navigating the city is a different experience. Photo / Jason Dorday
Watching other people use their smartphones is unsettling.
There’s almost a collective social tic that happens when one person gets out their device for a scroll; one by one everyone does the same. You notice it when you don’t have one.
The short sound bursts of TikTok and YouTube give me a visceral skin crawl.
You realise how distracted people are, and know you’ve been guilty of the same thing. They thumb quickly through screeds of content, looking for something that might satisfy.
Getting around town is another issue.
There’s no Uber app on this phone. But as it turns out, they have a phone service and it works. So do taxi company numbers.
Navigating without a GPS map app requires either forward planning, writing down the address and route, or muddling through, trusting your sense of direction, or asking for help.
My first real task is a visit to Auckland’s Central City Library to pick up a copy of Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger (a timely read), but the new anonymised hold system requires a code sent via email. This poses a challenge; I’m locked out of Gmail, which insists app authentication. But when technology creates hurdles, humans can help; the librarian directs me to the right shelf.
It’s a book I rip through over the next week – no distractions – and it explores our digital selves, the “externalised double” and “idealised identity” we create online. “Generating a figure who is not exactly us, but whom others nonetheless perceive as us,” Klein writes, these are roles we must perform if we are to succeed, all amidst real fears around data privacy and “surveillance architecture as the shadowy back end of personal branding and identity performance”.
How did it feel after a week on a burner phone and, in a pinch, a web browser?
Protected – from myself, and the deluge of information – and free.
More focused at work and less distracted at home – though I need to stress I’m not doing this for increased productivity. If anything, I want my brain to be doing less, not more.
Anxiety and cortisol levels feel way down.
I’m more present with the people around me, more in my life and the “real” world.
I feel like less of a machine, less of a data point.
What are the takeaways from this?
Phones are a tool, we have control.
Stepping back a bit feels like an act of resistance.
Consciousness and time are resources to be protected in the attention economy.
Changing the technology affects your media diet; all those bite-sized bits of content are harder to access.
Changing the technology we use changes the way we experience work, and our lives off the clock too. Photo / Jason Dorday
So what’s the verdict?
I didn’t stop at seven days, stretching it to 10 before switching my smartphone on.
As far as a burner goes, the very name suggests impermanence. Will I be crushing this on the curb now this story is filed? Far from it actually, I’m hooked. It’s going to be my primary device, housing my sim card, with my smartphone reserved for tactical leisure.
The technology we use impacts us in more ways than we realise. In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan describes electric technology as an extension of our central nervous system and extension of consciousness. “The urge to continuous use is quite independent of the ‘content’ of public programs or of the private sense life, being testimony to the fact that technology is part of our bodies,” he wrote in the 1964 book.
I’m not forgoing my media ecosystem entirely, just building in some barriers and friction – compartmentalising online activity and being more intentional, which hopefully will help reestablish a sense of balance and rebuild value. I want to trust my brain and accept its limitations.
Why does it feel like there’s so much content to wade through?
Patterns of overproduction and overconsumption can be applied to our digital habits; we’re in a binge era – be it hours on TikTok, devouring a whole podcast season in one day, or scrolling numbly through a feed. And, as with the proliferation of any commodity, this can lead to a perception of devaluing.
Keeping up with that volume of content, let alone understanding it, feels Sisyphean at times.
Every second around the world Instagram users share 1,099 posts, on Facebook, there are 4,050 photos published, 34,722 snaps on Snapchat, and 752,314 WhatsApp messages sent, according to music tech site Spectralplex, which crunched the numbers on the scale of content uploaded online.
If it all feels like a lot to take in that’s because it is.
“The volume is going up exponentially,” says New Zealand social media expert Vaughn Davis. “Far more headlines are being read than stories, and that just reflects the way we browse things.”
Enmeshed in our lives, phones give us information at our fingertips, and the technology extends our consciousness. Photo / Jason Dorday
How are we using our phones now?
Are Kiwis addicted to the social media apps on our phones, I ask Davis. “Completely,” he says. “It’s quickly become the centre of our digital lives. And for many people, the centre of their actual lives. Addiction is not too strong a word.”
63% of Kiwis spend between two to four hours online for personal use each day, according to InternetNZ, and 27% of Kiwis clock over five. 48% of that is spent mostly on social media, and 39% on streaming servers.
What are we doing with that time? It was a question posed by NZ On Air in its 2023”Where Are The Audiences?” survey, which asked 1408 New Zealanders about the media they used “yesterday”.
The results reveal our changing behaviours. 68% of people consumed video online daily, spending an average of 90 minutes watching this content – more than streaming music (33% listen to Spotify each day) or listening to the radio.
Social media is changing the way we learn about things like news. 29% of people get their info from news media accounts, 28% from posts by family and friends, and 24% from community newsgroups on these platforms. Music discovery is shifting too: 20% of Kiwis do this via TikTok.
“Social media uptake here is just as prevalent as it is anywhere else in the world,” says Davis.
It’s not surprising when 83% of us have a smartphone. They’re now more common than a PC or laptop (73%) or a working TV (69%).
As a nation, our usage of both fixed broadband and mobile data has grown significantly since 2012. But exactly how much internet activity is happening on our smartphones is hard to unpick. Mobile data figures only paint part of the picture, because most of us switch over to wi-fi when we get to home, work or school. “Usage on fixed broadband has always been about 100 times higher than on mobile,” explains Kurt Rodgers, Chorus’ network strategy manager. “The majority of usage on a mobile phone (as much as 80%) is actually on the fixed broadband network.”
Kiwis are spending less time on social apps than during the Covid years, which changed digital habits dramatically. Instagram use has notably declined, dropping to pre-pandemic levels.
Globally, website traffic on mobile devices has increased from 31.16% in 2015 to 54.67% in 2023, according to Statista, and by the end of 2023 94% of internet users accessed it using their smartphone, compared to 62.2% on laptop or desktop.
Having one device let alone three to use is a privilege. Many markets have been mobile-first with internet access, and habits vary considerably.
Internationally, 57% of web browsing time is via mobile. 87% of web page views in Nigeria were via mobile devices, reports Statista, higher than the 62.6% international average. India counts 230 million Instagram users and 182 million Snapchat users, both the largest audiences in the world, but TikTok is banned there.
It estimates that by 2027 Earth will have 5.85 billion social media users as smartphones become more ubiquitous.
Can unplugging give us a sense of reprieve from our online lives? Photo / Jason Dorday
What else?
“Recently, I’ve been thinking about a way simpler time,” sings Charli XCX on Rewind, a track from Brat, the chartreuse green album capturing the zeitgeist right now. “Sometimes, I really think it would be cool to rewind.”
The internet used to be like an escape from the real world, but the tables turned; unplugging now feels like a break from our digital lives.
Last year Corey Doctorow outlined the “enshitification” of apps like TikTok for Wired, explaining how once-popular platforms decline, and Kyle Chayka shared his theories on why the internet isn’t fun anymore with The New Yorker. “The social-media Web as we knew it, a place where we consumed the posts of our fellow humans and posted in return, appears to be over.”
The consensus is that connection has given way to capitalism.
Even by writing this story, there’s a contradiction regarding the commodification of self and time; I’m producing a first-person feature about this for my employer, which you’re likely reading on your phone, probably on the award-winning NZ Herald app.
It’s a point rightly raised by a wise, perceptive friend. She’s right, and often is.
As a writer, it’s hard to resist the urge to put thoughts, feelings and experiences into words – it’s how we articulate things and work them out – and is part of why, I think, people in this field can feel particularly overwhelmed by the volume of content, discourse, platforms and stories in the digital world.
How are we spending our attention? It’s a valuable commodity; we’ve named a whole economic ecosystem after it. Is being intentional about who and what we give it to a way of regaining agency and protecting our brains? The speed at which mine felt better was shocking.
Deploying a less innovative option isn’t rejecting the present or romanticising the past, rather, it’s about restricting the integration digital technology has in our lives and the behaviours it fosters, ringfencing some humanity and privacy during a time when most of our daily interactions are conducted digitally, and personal data is an economic resource.
But we can’t only rely on self-control and individual actions when the norm is structural.
“There’s been a lot of moves in the last two years,” says Davis, noting this week’s call from the US Surgeon General Dr Vivek H Murthy for social media to carry warning labels. New Zealand’s nationwide school phone came into force in April. How far other ideas and policies will get, and whether the tech giants will acquiesce, is left to be seen.
Is opting out the answer, or is scaling back more realistic? “It depends how you live your life,” he says, and your job. “It’s always going to be very niche, people have been talking about these for the last 20 years.”
Exercising some agency and control is a very human desire during times of disruption, and ours has plenty, both off and online.
Can dialing down, if not quite off, help? There’s only one way to find out.
Emma Gleason is the New Zealand Herald’s lifestyle and entertainment deputy editor. Based in Auckland, she covers culture, fashion and media, with a keen interest in how our tastes and behaviour are changing.
