Our Worst Fears Realized

Think Tank #32

Some things in this world are so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget how utterly absurd they are. Today, I want you to take a second and really think about phones.

It seriously seems like something out of a science fiction novel. People live their lives with little devices in their pocket that they’re actually addicted to. Yeah, this is something people say all the time. Obviously, “people are addicted to their phones.” And it’s horrifying.

For most young people, a phone is just as much a part of them as a limb. We don’t go anywhere without these things. They lay next to us when we sleep, wake us up in the morning. In the off chance that we manage to leave one behind for a whole day, the anxiety and feeling of disconnect is overwhelming. We use the devices to get around. Hell, the devices have even monopolized seemingly ‘unplugged’ activities like reading. They’ve become our encyclopedias, and also our flashlights, timers, notepads.

And that’s just the utilitarian side of them. So many people rely on these things for pleasure. Again—yeah, obviously. But ask someone thirty years ago if they would’ve thought that a person’s main source of happiness could come from a little electronic device.

Google the statistics. The ‘average person’ spends upwards of three, even four hours a day on their phones. Browsing social media, checking their email. Getting that little rush of dopamine every time they refresh or a notification pops up on the screen. Feeling angry when prompted to be angry, feeling outraged when prompted to be outraged, feeling happy when prompted to be happy. There’s a word for this (that’s thankfully a little after my time) called ‘doomscrolling.’ People are self-aware. They point out how bad this is. Yet as soon as they wake up, before gathering the strength to get out of bed, the phone is in their hand.

The dystopian aspect of this is coming true by the minute. Attention spans are getting shorter. Opinions are becoming more extreme as mindsets are getting more black-and-white. Everyone’s worst fears about this technology have been realized. Cellphones really are making people dumber.

It gets even scarier. Everyone’s worst fears have been realized, and it’s become normal.

“I should spend less time on my phone” is just something people say now, like “I could lose five pounds.” If you point this out, it’s not really heard. It’s just words. The most an argument against excessive screentime will ever be is an article one stumbles upon which takes up three minutes of their hour and a half of ‘doomscrolling.’ “Scary stuff,” the reader will say, before getting bored halfway through and scrolling on.

I wonder if my everyday blindness to this absurdity is a generational thing. I’m twenty-five. I got my first iPhone when I was twelve. I come from the first generation to have never experienced adult life without a smartphone.

However, I’ve seen how easy it is to adapt to a ‘new normal’ that’s absolutely insane. After a couple weeks, a thing that you thought would never happen can start to seem completely normal. I bet even the people who didn’t grow up with these things have adapted by now.

Because I thought it was a fitting cover photo for this article (and because, admittedly, I think it’s kind of fun), I prompted AI to “draw a person that’s addicted to their phone.”

The first image that the AI generated wasn’t loading, so I pressed ‘regenerate.’ This is what it came up with:

Cartoonish, eyes bulging. Strained expression. The coffee is a nice touch—the kid’s trying to stay awake even though it’s nighttime. If we ignore the third arm that the kid somehow sprouted, it seems like a decent illustration.

I refreshed the page after a minute because the whole thing was glitching, and the first image finally loaded:

Wow. Same characteristics. Same hunched shoulders, dark room, tired eyes. But now, instead of a caricature, it just looks like any random twenty-something on a Thursday night.

The dystopia is here. Right before our eyes. And, like the characters in the books that we all like to pretend we wouldn’t be, we just see it as everyday life.