Fall semester has once again begun, and I’m still slogging along –no longer stuck, but moving– on my latest batch of as-yet unjoined essay rambles. And, once again, as sure as the cicadas that start up in July, begins the lament from my students in their first-of-the semester self-assessment papers:
“I used to read all the time, but I got too busy with [sports, extracurriculars, homework, …fill in the blank].”
“I used to write short stories when I was younger. I don’t know why I quit.”
And then comes the sentence that is most telling to me, perhaps answering the questions posed above as to why the change in reading and writing habits: “I guess it all happened when I got a [smartphone or laptop or gaming system].” Few are the students who say it out loud, but I think most of them –and most of us who are out of school– could say similar things.
I’d been meaning to for the last three semesters, but this time, I finally did it. I sent out an email opening up a conversation about why we’re all so prone to distraction and its evil sibling, procrastination. I’m curious to hear, in light of the recent pushback by some members of Gen Z against smartphones, just why they think this is. I don’t think many (any) of my students are in line to trade in their iPhones for flip phones, but I hear an increasing amount of commentary by my students’ generation about the ways that they feel a constant stream (scream?) of notifications is affecting not only their free time, but their mental health.
Toward the end of the email, I painted my students a picture, via statistics:
In 2007, the first iPhone was introduced. If they’re 18 today, they’d have been 2 years old.
In 2009, the Droid came out. They’d have been 4.
In 2010, the iPad was released. They’d have been 5.
I’m 50 years old as I write this. I didn’t own a smartphone until I was 38, and only bought an iPad in 2020 to help with online pandemic teaching.
These are the kids who grew up perhaps handed their parents’ iPad to keep them company during a long road trip. They might have been watching cartoons on their mom’s phone while riding in the cart at the grocery store. They’ve likely not known a world where the only options while waiting in line (or waiting for class to start) are striking up a conversation with the person next to them or just quietly watching the world.
Would Spaceman Spiff (Calvin and Hobbes fans will understand) have existed if Calvin had been given an iPhone? Maybe not. Have our phones stolen from us the art of daydreaming? Maybe so.
There’s a creativity to daydreaming –that other relative of distraction and procrastination– that doesn’t exist in the kind of distraction and procrastination that comes from a screen. Some of us creative weirdos would even say that daydreaming –mental margin, empty time and space to dream– is essential for our creative process. I’m one of those who would claim that. When I lost my two-hour commute to campus, I lost my prime time for mental margin: driving. I’ve since been able to replace that with a superior substitute (walking), but I hadn’t realized what I’d lost until I spent a summer sunk deep into the internet with the worst case of creative block I’d ever experienced. I point the finger of blame solidly at my tendency to scroll rather than type. I’d traded creativity for consumption, and the result was that at the end of the summer, I was exhausted and bored for no reason with nothing written to show for all my hours in the computer chair.
Since that revelation, I’ve tried to be more intentional about leaving some mental margin. I switch off my computer entirely on Saturday night before I go to bed. If I need the internet, I’ll use my iPad, but I take it off the charger. Once the charge is gone, I’m done. On Sundays I generally try (and often fail) to stick to analog: books. Notebooks. Pen and paper. I’ve very, very rarely had email on my phone (only when necessary, when I’m away from my computer and anticipate students who have trouble with an assignment), so this also means I don’t check my email on Sundays. I’ve already alerted my students (those who’ve read the syllabus, that is) that I’m offline on Sundays, so they’re aware. I will still open my email Monday morning to find a couple new emails, but I’ve not yet had a crisis over a Sunday due to abandoning my inbox for a day.
Has it helped? I believe so. Even just having that one day “off” my normal routine of morning writing and grading and taking breaks to scroll news sites or YouTube (I’m still off social media, except for a rare trip into Instagram now and then) has helped as a once-a-week reset.
Reset is an important concept. Reset, and the idea of mental margin. Some seek it by meditation, but I think there are even more possibilities for gaining that sense of openness and quiet in the mind. Prayer, for one. I spent a lot of my time up and down Highway 75 between Luverne and Sioux Center praying in an informal kind of way, just letting my thoughts go in the direction of a conversation with God. Sound weird? Maybe to some, but it’s the primary way I connect with God and find peace in the middle of things I don’t understand or don’t think I can handle. And that kind of prayer happens easily for me when there’s mental margin. It dies out when I’m surrounded by distractions. Prayer’s never been something I’ve struggled with, and I think that’s largely due to the fact that I treasure that mental margin. I notice a lack of peace, a rise of anxiety when it’s disrupted –although sometimes it takes me a whole summer to realize it.
So maybe that’s the center of all of this: mental margin. Learning to daydream again. Turning off the notifications and walking (literally) away from the screens every so often –or regularly. Here’s hoping that a conversation with my class brings about a renewed pursuit of focus –not just by trading in our iPhones for a flip phone or a weekly digital Sabbath, but learning to let ourselves rest as we go, to reclaim those before-class or in-the-hall moments by reconnecting with each other.
Oh, and my latest EDC (everyday carry) includes a flip phone. My daughter has said she gives it 3 months. (Her, in the car, trying to respond to a text while I’m driving: “This thing sucks!!” Me, quietly with an eyeroll: “Yes, that’s the point!”) I’m keeping my deactivated iPhone to use as an iPod (no Spotify on the flip phone), but it’s staying home for the most part. And no, I don’t see this as a short-term experiment. Where do I sign up for the grownup chapter of the Luddite Club?
