Disconnected 🎬 🔊 ♬ ✍ 💬 - Page 2 of 2

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This section unashamedly has a TL;DR badge at its front door so if you don’t want to do a slightly deeper dive into the science and policy related to disconnection and distraction (albeit generously illustrated) then it probably isn’t for you.

Alternatively, the power of the underlying message of disconnection and distraction has now so distracted you that you need some time-out before continuing.

Dada de Dada has enjoyed a long career using and studying information technology stretching from the very introduction of the first microcomputers to today’s almost total connectivity in many developed parts of the world.

_{Rama, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en,}
_{via Wikimedia Commons}

_{Simon Inns, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

A particular interest, however, was on the dysfunctions associated with the use of said information technologies. Not faults in the technologies themselves but the actual and potential negative consequences for people and systems as the devices and networks broke out of the dreaming spires of academia and / or defence R&D to penetrate deep into our everyday lives. Whether desired or not.

The Dada de Dada journey was not one of technophile to technophobe. Instead this interest in dysfunctions was triggered by observations of how rapidly behaviours changed once even rudimentary computer systems were introduced into an environment where previously person-to-person interactions had been the norm. A few of experiences below were the trigger for this long-term interest.

In one major national project I had a desk in an open plan office. Next to, and facing me were other team members sitting at their desks. We could all easily communicate verbally with each other or walk to each other’s desks. But the place was near silent. Why? Because people were sending emails to each other despite their close proximity.

I also once had an excellent boss, whose office was situated at the far end of a long corridor of offices and workshops. Several times a day she would come along the corridor and interact with colleagues, including myself. And then email came on the scene. She suddenly developed a preference for email missives rather than actually meeting face-to-face. On the surface much more efficient for her but, what had previously been an opportunity for valuable interaction, had been degraded to management by email, or, more accurately, administration by email.

In both examples above, the email inbox and outbox had become ‘the work’. A phenomenon which Dada de Dada had hoped was but a transient phase that time and experience would mitigate. But for many people now decades later the inbox is still considered to be ‘the work’. An inbox which is never empty. An inbox now supplemented by other messaging tools or social-media channels.

Later as a project manager one of the banes of Dada de Dada’s life was the number of emails between other colleagues I was copied into. Each team member was preserving their own evidence base of communications in case they needed to prove that x or y (or the project manager) was made aware of issue x or y on such-and-such date and time. This digital quicksand of emails grew daily. Serving no function other than to suck-in and drown any who dared try to enter or drain it.

But at least at one time the expensive computers and their rudimentary networks were mostly restricted to a working day at the office. Once you had escaped that environment then human interactions would still return to something like a people-friendly pace. But the computers and their networks have now escaped the office. For in the human pocket or bag is the portable device for always on connectivity. And Banksy’s Mobile Lovers artwork as presented within Disconnected captures the social and behavioural consequences brilliantly. Spotlighting the preference for the virtual over the real, for the next click, the next dopamine hit, the next date, or next whatever.

The always connected mobile device, particularly in its smartphone guise has proved to be an extremely effective agent of human distraction with the potential for mutating social behaviour to a level that the smartphone zombie (smombie) is now so culturally ubiquitous as to be unremarkable.

A smombie has been defined as:

A person so engaged with digital technology and/or social media they are unable to separate themselves from a persistent online presence. (University of Sydney, 2017)

_{Rawpixel, CC0 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Screen_time.jpg} _{via Wikimedia Commons}

Consider the following examples.

The image of young people pouring out of school at the end of the day with groups of them silently walking away each looking at their phone. Or the group of school-friends all sitting next to each other all with eyes fixed to screen and fingers on virtual keyboards. No sound emerges for all are communicating or feeding off something. All minds engaged somewhere else.

_{Ccmsharma2, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

Or the music festival, concert or theatre outing where making a video record of the event on the smartphone appears to have become more important than the experience of the event itself.

_{Gyrostat (Wikimedia, CC-BY-SA 4.0), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

Or the meal where taking photographs of the food now appears almost de rigueur and a potential source of irritation to other diners and sometimes restauranters. Alternatively, visualise the dinner party or restaurant meal where the mobile sits next to the cutlery and the eyes are perpetually pulled down to the latest Twitter/X or TikTok feed or Facebook posting.

_{Eaters Collective eaterscollective, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons}

The same distracted and disconnected behaviour can even manifest itself in the most unlikely environments. One vivid example was by then UK politician Nigel MIlls a Tory MP who in December 2014 found the game Candy Crush so irresistible he was noticed playing it on his iPad for over two hours during UK parliamentary select committee proceedings.

Also Neil Parish now the former Tory MP for Tiverton and Honiton was forced to resign in 2022 after being found to be viewing pornography on his phone in the chamber of the UK Parliament.

But when we get ‘mobile using a mobile’ then being connected to the virtual world can impact on the real in very direct and unfortunate ways.

_{Alfredo Borba, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

The picture above is from the cycle-friendly Netherlands. But two hands off cycle handlebars, headphones in ears, eyes on phone screen and texting with cursory glance up now and again to check for oncoming traffic is not that unusual in the UK and elsewhere. Admitedly the image below caricatures this to the extreme.

Although the photograph that follows is no caricature. Why not maximise distraction and to capture that all important selfie try the feat below?

_{Jean-François Gornet, Paris, France, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

The distraction disease, however, gets even more deadly once mobile communication devices and tons of metal on wheels get together.

The 2014 edition of “Injury Facts” by the US National Safety Council estimated that 26% of all motor vehicle crashes in the US involved cellphones, a rise from the previous year, i.e. 1 in 4 car crashes involve mobiles. 21% of those crashes involve drivers talking on hand-held or hands-free cellphones with circa 5% being caused by texting.

In the UK the laws have become progressively tougher which from 25 March 2022 means that drivers will be breaking the law if they use a handheld mobile phone behind the wheel for any use, including to take photos or videos, scroll through playlists or play games. Anyone caught using their hand-held device while driving could face a fine of up to £1,000 as well as six points on their licence or a full driving ban. This means an immediate driving ban for Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) drivers or for motorists that passed their test in the past two years. HGV drivers also face a maximum fine of £2,500 for a mobile phone offence. The definition of ‘driving’ includes being stationary in traffic so now drivers will have to be explicitly ‘parked’ in order to use their handheld devices. Making contactless payments while stationary, e.g. toll booths and hands free, e.g. satnav (as long as the device is in a fixed cradle) is permitted. Prior to the 2022 change some drivers escaped prosecution if they were not using their device for ‘interactive communication’ which meant that taking a video or scrolling a playlist whilst driving was not easily prosecutable. Now using a handheld device for any purpose while driving is banned.

Despite these potentially life-changing penalties, the embedded behaviour of mobile use in inappropriate or unsafe contexts is proving to be very resistant to change.

The UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) has studied the effect of different types of distraction on driver performance. Their fndings regarding texting while driving are illuminating:

It was found that participants were significantly impaired in their performance when both reading and writing text messages, with the latter producing the greatest impairment. Reaction times to trigger stimuli were around 35% slower when writing a text message. This compares to an earlier distraction study looking at alcohol consumption to the legal limit where an increase in reaction time of 12% was recorded, whilst with cannabis, the reaction time slowed by 21% … drivers also showed significantly greater lateral variability in their lane position when texting, with the vehicle drifting into adjacent lanes far more frequently when texting. This risk is not mitigated by speed reduction and would lead the driver into potential conflict with other traffic … Overall, the study highlighted that when texting whilst driving, a driver may present a greater accident risk than when at the legal limit for alcohol consumption (Dangers of Texting Whilst Driving, Transport Research Laboratory, UK, 2008)

Readers are also recommended to read the Transport Research Laboratory’s earlier report How dangerous is driving with a mobile phone? Benchmarking the impairment to alcohol (TRL 2002). The conclusion was clear. Mobile devices impair driving more than alcohol. This report had a significant influence on the shaping of UK law related to mobile device use while driving.

Results showed a clear trend for significantly poorer driving performance (speed control and response time) when using a hand-held phone in comparison to the other conditions. The best performance was for normal driving without phone conversations. Hands-free was better than hand-held. Driving performance under the influence of alcohol was significantly worse than normal driving, yet better than driving while using a phone. Drivers also reported that it was easier to drive drunk than to drive while using a phone. It is concluded that driving behaviour is impaired more during a phone conversation than by having a blood alcohol level at the UK legal limit (80mg / 100ml).

_{Transport Research Laboratory (2002)}

And that was a conclusion in 2002 before the range of current generation of digital touch screen diversions arrived to improve the drivers user ‘experience’. The TRL report Distracted Driving Evidence Has Fallen Behind the Latest Technological Changes (2019) recognised the need to respond to the wave of new agents of distraction, also know as in-car ‘infotainment’. The 2022 change in UK law referred to earlier has attempted to respond to these technological changes.

Other research seems to indicate that, once embedded, behaviours such as mobile phone use, are being automatically ported across all contexts of people’s lives. Even inappropriate contexts where there are both legal, social and physical risks (to both themselves and others) and even when the individual is fully aware of the inappropriateness. Such as driving.

Statistical analysis suggests that mobile phone use while driving is more closely linked to ‘routine’ behaviours, such as eating or drinking while driving, than ‘deliberate’ risky behaviours, such as tailgating or changing lanes quickly without indicating. This may indicate that motorists tend to use their mobile phone in an unwitting or ‘unconscious’ way, bringing this behaviour from their home life into the vehicle. If so, policy interventions geared towards stricter enforcement procedures may not, in isolation, succeed in reducing the incidence of drivers using mobile phones illegally while driving. This is underlined by the fact that many of those who recognise non-compliant mobile phone use is unacceptable in a range of circumstances still exhibit some of these behaviours (Ipso MORI for UK Department for Transport, Research on Mobile Phone Use While Driving, November 2021).

Distraction refocuses the cognitive processes (executive functions) of the brain away from what should be the priority tasks. The bear trap is that we don’t know we are distracted. Our eyes may be on the road and our hands on the steering wheel but our brains are elsewhere. Watch the video below to find out what a category 1-5 distraction can do. Prior to the experiment all of the participants in the study had self-identified themselves as good drivers.

To the extent that you think distracted driving is a problem now we expect that it is likely to get much worse with the kind of things [technologies] that are coming down the road … I’m hopeful that as this [policy] dialogue progresses we start to actually say that you know what, we need to reel in some of these behaviours that are just unsafe and not become totally driven by whatever device is ringing or shining or trying to compete for attention. (David Strayer, University of Utah, 2013)

What all of the above examples have made obvious is that a very high level of human distraction and behavioural conditioning can still dominate, even in the most deadly circumstances.

The recent attempted assasination of Donald Trump in 2024 perhaps illustrates the phenomenon at its most extreme. View the YouTube video below, several times if necessary. Observe carefully the behaviour of some of the crowd with mobile phones situated in the premier places placed behind the 2024 US presidential candidate.

As the shots were being fired and Candidate Trump promptly dropped to the ground followed shortly afterwards by a pile on of his protection detail. Note how some of the phone videographers particularly at the rear kept standing and filming what I assume was exciting content for their social media feed. Others were very sensibly seeking safety out of the line of fire. Had the gunman not been quickly neutralised these participants may have been playing a more direct role in the events. Their own video of distraction could have ended up as evidence at their own coroner’s hearing. They would not then have been available to update their social media accounts.

The irony of all this communications technology is that a significant proportion of humanity almost seem to prefer the virtual world to the real ‘hear and now’. People appear to actively seeking protracted disconnection and distraction in whatever silos of distraction represent the zeitgeist of the time. Yet another proportion view being, an online ‘influencer’ as a prestigeous and potentially lucrative career choice since they will be recruiting to whatever virtual world silos of distraction become the zeitgeist of the time.

Consider then this quote from the developmental psychologist Susan Pinker:

“In short evolutionary time we have changed from group-living primates skilled at reading each other’s every gesture and intention to a solitary species each one of us preoccupied with our own screen.” (The Village Effect, Susan Pinker, 2014, Atlantic Books)

The American political philosopher Mathew Crawford has coined the term ‘The Age of Distraction’ for modern public and private environments filled with constant attention grabbing stimuli manifested as advertisements, entertainment, or immersion in virtual worlds of one form or another. Indeed, in the absence of such distraction, some now appear to find it difficult to embrace and exploit opportunities for internal quietness and reflection. Instead, such opportunities can become sources of anxiety when cut off from the virtual world; rather than the more challenging interactions and problem-solving required in the real world (Mathew Crawford, 2015, The World Beyond Your Head: How to Flourish in an Age of Distraction, Penguin.

“The media have become masters at packaging stimuli in ways that our brains find irresistible, just as food engineers have become expert in creating “hyperpalatable” foods by manipulating levels of sugar, fat, and salt. Distractibility might be regarded as the mental equivalent of obesity.” (Mathew Crawford, 2015, The World Beyond Your Head: How to Flourish in an Age of Distraction, Penguin.

The social dysfunctions associated with distraction should be concern enough but there is also some really bad news for putative digital natives claiming to be black-belt multi-taskers, particularly in potentially dangerous physical environments, e.g. roads, and cycleways. What the research shows is that these self-defined multitaskers are actually very distracted. Their confidence levels are seriously out of sync with their actual competences.

Virtually every multi-tasker thinks that they are brilliant at multi-tasking … You know what! It turns out that multi-taskers are terrible at every aspect of multi-tasking … They get distracted constantly. There memory is very disorganised … Recent work we have done suggests that they are worse at analytical reasoning … We worry it may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly … (Clifford Nass, Stanford University).

Here is an opportunity to listen to the late Clifford Nass in more detail.

Or consider the views of the ever effusive Douglas Rushkoff.

If we are going to deal with the problem of distraction, it’s something we are going to have to do together … Maybe it’s time to press the pause button. We need to know if we are tinkering with something more essential than we realise … It’s changing what it means to be a human being by using all this stuff … (Douglas Rushkoff)

As this section draws towards its conclusion let us return to that concept of ‘technoference‘ introduced in the opening lines of this post, i.e.

The interruptions in interpersonal communication caused by attention paid to personal technological devices. (Brandon McDaniel, Illinois State University (2012).

Those wishing to following up on some of the Brandon McDaniel studies related to the impact of technoference on relationships may find the YouTube interview below a useful starting point.

It would be great to be able to end this post on an upbeat note but that proved too difficult. For now through the dysfunctional behaviours initiated by technoference we appear be willing participants in handing over and amplifying problems and issues for the next generations. The study Perceived Parental Distraction by Technology and Mental Health Among Emerging Adolescents (JAMA Network, 2024) makes for uncomfortable reading. It adds to the growing body of research indicating that parents are being so distracted by the siren call of their devices that they are missing the distress and behavioural cues of their own children, particularly at the pre-adolescent or adolescent stages. And this study and others suggest this is having negative consequences for the wellbeing of their children.

Despite its benefits, routine technology use (eg, texting, scrolling through social media) can also disrupt interactions between parents and their children of all ages, a phenomenon encapsulated by the understudied concept of technoference.² A recent phone-tracking study of parents with young infants found that parents spend 5.12 hours per day on their smartphones and 27% of the time with their infant engaged with their digital device.³ Similar rates are identified across age groups, with 68% of US parents with a child younger than 17 years reporting that they become distracted by their smartphones during interactions with their children.⁴ In early childhood, parental technoference is associated with decreases in parent-child engagement,^5,6 reduced ability to notice and attend to children’s needs,^7,8 less frequent and lower-quality joint play and conversational turns,^9–11 more negative responses to children’s behavior, and higher risk of child injury.¹² In adolescence, adolescent-perceived parental technoference is associated with higher levels of parent-child conflict and lower levels of parental emotional support and warmth.^13,14 When children’s emotional and physical needs are consistently ignored or inappropriately responded to, they are at risk of developing mental health difficulties … (Perceived Parental Distraction by Technology and Mental Health Among Emerging Adolescents, JAMA Network, 2024)

In the UK the National Literacy Trust report Parents’ Support for Young Children’s Literacy at Home in 2024 indicates the level of parent-child engagement is falling when compared to studies from previous years.

1 in 2 (50.5%) parents said they had read with their child daily in 2024, a decrease of 15.1pp compared with 2019, when 2 in 3 (66.1%) said they had done this.

Whilst Dada de Dada certainly wouldn’t want to eschew the comfort of modern life and technologies, we all need to first acknowledge there is a problem and then mitigate the harmful effects. It would be naive to think that corporate interests are going to do this because, just like the tobacco companies, it’s in their interests to continually nudge us to consume more of what ever device or virtual product is ‘new’. No one is immune from their all pervasive influence on our behaviour. The next time we find ourselves thinking we must use up our phone contract minutes or text/data quota then consider who and what is actually driving our behaviour? Because we don’t seem to be.

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