Freethinker

The Tennessean recently published an AP article entitled, Smartphone obsessions trouble psychologists (Evernote archive). The psychologists they interviewed are completely full of shit!

“Watching people who get their first smartphone, there’s a very quick progression from having a basic phone you don’t talk about to people who love their iPhone, name their phone and buy their phones outfits,” said Lisa Merlo, director of psychotherapy training at the University of Florida.

Anyone going from a RAZR to an iPhone is going to be enamored by it. They’re moving from a phone where the most they could do beyond calls was text using numbers, to a phone that can now play games and videos, provide a full keyboard for texting and emailing, and can be used as a GPS device in your car. Of course they’re going to love the phone! As for naming their phone, nobody does that. And if they do, who cares?!

…psychologists say the love of them is becoming more like an addiction, creating consequences that range from teenagers who communicate in three-letter acronyms like LOL and BRB to car accidents caused by people who text while driving.

Using shortened text and acronyms is not an addiction. As for car accidents caused by people who are texting, that has nothing to do with smartphones, and has everything to do with stupidity.

Merlo, a clinical psychologist, said she’s observed a number of behaviors among smartphone users that she labels “problematic.” Merlo says some patients pretend to talk on the phone or fiddle with apps to avoid eye contact or other interactions at a bar or a party. Others are so engrossed that they ignore people completely.

They are using their smartphone, because the information and interactions on the smartphone are far more interesting than the people in the room. Before the smartphone, a person would stare at the TV screen at the bar, needlessly check the time on their watch, stare at their drink, leave, or grin and bear with people who annoy the living shit out of them. When you look at it like that, the smartphone is the greatest device ever made!

“The more bells and whistles the phone has,” she says, “the more likely they are to get too attached.”

This is where the psychologist, Merlo, really gets it wrong. What is a smartphone really? A smartphone is a replacement for separate, antiquated and immobile devices. It consolidates all of those devices into one tiny, portable device. Some of the things it replaces are:

• Landline phone
• Desktop computer (for email, web browsing and e-commerce)
• Calendar
• Address Book
• Stereo coupled with CDs/Cassettes/Records
• Video game system
• Wallet
• Newspaper and Magazines
• Notepad
• Camera
• GPS devices
• Alarm Clock

Of course they’re going to become attached to it, but that’s because it just replaced 10+ things in their life.

It’s too bad that the psychologists interviewed in this article are so clueless. The entire piece reeks of self-motivated job security – creating and perpetuating problems that don’t actually exist for self gain. If you focus on any human behavior without considering the full context and history of its actions, it will almost always be troubling. However, it’s the job of a counseling psychologist to cut through the bullshit, not create it.

The word “addiction” was needlessly and unprofessionally misused in this article. The reality is that everyone has an addiction to something. It may be a concentrated addiction to one thing, or an addiction to many things (which subsequently helps mask it from a clinical perspective). Addiction in itself isn’t a bad thing. It’s only bad when it interferes with your ability to relate well to others, harms other people or yourself, causes you to lose your job or not pay your bills, etc… The person who chooses to pull out their smartphone at a party they don’t want to be at is not ruining their life with their so called addiction to smartphones. What they’re doing is making the best out of crappy situation that’s full of douchebags and blowhards.