We may check our phones to see if any messages might have come in, if someone posted an interesting film, if something dreadful has happened overseas. But this is in danger of sounding far too normal and too kind to us. The truth is a lot darker and rather more humbling.

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“There are the standard, conventional-sounding answers: we check our phones to see if any messages might have come in, if someone posted an interesting film, if something dreadful has happened overseas.
But this is in danger of sounding far too normal and too kind to us. The truth is a lot darker and rather more humbling. We don’t pick up our phones to find out what’s going on, we pick them up to ensure – with considerable ruthlessness – that we are in no danger of finding out anything more about ourselves.
If we forensically study the moments when we are drawn to pick up our devices, these are almost always when some kind of anxiety is pressing in on us – an anxiety on whose analysis and interpretation the correct navigation of our lives may depend. We are using our devices as an alternative to thinking about our futures, we employ our machines to block insight, to halt the business of processing, to alienate our minds from their most promising and complex substrata…”


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CREDITS

Produced in collaboration with:

Léon Moh-Cah
https://leonmohcah.com/animation


Title animation produced in collaboration with


Graeme Probert
www.gpmotion.co.uk

phone addiction, psychology of phone use, digital detox, self-awareness, communication technology, screen time, mental health, personal growth, anxiety and phone use, avoiding self-reflection, phone use and relationships, phone use and productivity, overcoming phone addiction, introspection exercises, questions to ask yourself, mindful phone use,