> Please don't take it as an insult, but how do you know this technology is not causing similar issues in your life?
That's something I think a lot about. For me, the evidence that technology is not having that effect on my life:
1. At least once a year, I go on a hike of at least 1 week (without a phone). I'm consistently able to do this without feeling any sort of withdrawal.
2. I try to read a book on my Kindle for an hour every day. [0]
3. Whenever I fly, I never purchase wifi. If I'm able to consistently go 9-12 hours without any internet access, just reading or napping, it hardly seems like I'm addicted.
4. When I'm around other people, focus on them. If I go out to dinner with someone, I sit and talk to them instead of playing on my phone. It honestly boggles my mind that people think it's acceptable to stare at your phone while talking to someone.
[0] The fixation on "printed" books really is ludicrous. Reading on the Kindle is no more or less distracting than reading a printed book. It's essentially an offline experience.
I'm an information addict and here's a fun fact about my recovery experience:
It didn't start til I stopped looking things up in books. That kicked off 9 months of vivid dreams that evolved as I managed to identify & slowly remove other innocuous compulsive behaviors from my daily life.
I want to be clear about this: I'm not saying you sound like an addict. Everything in the world is potentially addictive if it can help escape from or numb emotions. And it doesn't matter much what the source of the addiction is, but the behaviors involved in interacting with that source. That's why it didn't actually matter that I went offline for months on end.
My view of addiction is this:
Addicts are genetically (and likely epigenetically) predisposed to developing a learning disorder we call addiction in response to psychological trauma. The first step to solving the problem of addiction in society isn't to lock up all the addictive things. It's to recognize technology has made it easy as hell for anyone to partake in activities that provide immediate gratification and that means the world has become a much more dangerous place for people predisposed to addiction.
Information addiction is frightening as hell to think about, even when I'm happily moving along in my recovery. I live in a world where the spread of technology is always on the rise & any job that pays well will require me to, in one way or another, dive into my addictive behaviors.
If the author's (likely fearfully) suggesting what you see as extreme solutions, I can absolutely understand where he's coming from.
That's something I think a lot about. For me, the evidence that technology is not having that effect on my life:
1. At least once a year, I go on a hike of at least 1 week (without a phone). I'm consistently able to do this without feeling any sort of withdrawal.
2. I try to read a book on my Kindle for an hour every day. [0]
3. Whenever I fly, I never purchase wifi. If I'm able to consistently go 9-12 hours without any internet access, just reading or napping, it hardly seems like I'm addicted.
4. When I'm around other people, focus on them. If I go out to dinner with someone, I sit and talk to them instead of playing on my phone. It honestly boggles my mind that people think it's acceptable to stare at your phone while talking to someone.
[0] The fixation on "printed" books really is ludicrous. Reading on the Kindle is no more or less distracting than reading a printed book. It's essentially an offline experience.