Reflections

SELF-GUIDED AND GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS & ACTIVITIES

Reflections

Consider your own behaviors as you read through 24/6 and discuss the following:

Let’s start with a brief self-assessment. Visit gobricknow. com and take Tommy Sobel’s phone quiz.

Alternatively, there is also a Smartphone Compulsion

Test to try: virtual-addiction.com/smartphone-compulsiontest

The questions include:

Do you find yourself spending more time on your cell phone or smartphone than you realize?

Do you seem to lose track of time when on your cell phone or smartphone?

Do you find yourself spending more time texting, tweeting, or emailing as opposed to talking to people in person?

Do you feel reluctant to be without your cell or smartphone, even for a short time?

In the first and seventh chapters, Tiffany mentions how people get addicted to their smartphones and devices. On page 41, she declares, “Addicting us is the whole point.”

“Technology can be just as addictive as nicotine or heroin or any other drug; in fact, it works in some similar ways.” (Page 44) In her own book, Catherine Price devotes the first two chapters to describing how “our phones are designed to addict us.”

Randi Zuckerberg (sister of Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame) claims in Dot Complicated that 90% of people are within three feet of their device 24 hours a day, 52% of people wake up in the middle of the night just to check their device(s).

Now ask yourself: Have you ever been addicted to something, such as nicotine, caffeine or video-gaming? Do you habitually stay up late watching sports or movies, or binging on a TV series that everyone is talking about, to the extent that your sleep suffers? How would you compare screen addiction to other addictions?

Tiffany claims, “Our 24/7 society is a firehose of media, news, emails, tweets, posts, likes, texts, pings, notifications, and buzzes.” (Page 8) “Think about how many times we get up from being where we are because of a ping that is not urgent in any way.” (page 33)

Does this characterize your day?

Analyze your typical day. How quick are you to respond to every ping and buzz on your phone?

Do you check your email, texts or newsfeed just before going to bed or as soon as you awake?

Even at work, do the quick glances to check your phone end up derailing your productivity?

How much time do you actually spend on screens each day?

Arthur Green had a similar take: “We are living through one of the great ages of the speeding up of human consciousness. How incredibly fast the pace of our lives has become! The computer revolution, and with it the possibility of virtually instantaneous worldwide communication, has made us think about time in new terms.”

How many times a day do you check your email?

How soon do people expect you to respond to their queries and messages?

Remember when letters used to take two to three days to arrive?

“Just watch your child playing computer games and see how fast that fleeting object runs across the screen. Could we chase anything that fast a generation ago? We worry about the effect all this may have on the human mind. What has happened to our leisure? Remember all those labor-saving devices, all those prepackaged foods and household gadgets that were supposed to save us so much time? Where has that free time gone? It seems as though it’s all been a plot just to free us up to work harder than ever, to answer messages ever faster, to squeeze more productivity out of each minute of our lives.”

What do you do to slow down the pace?

How do you reclaim leisure time?

“The arrival of digital technology has completely changed how we view time, how we structure it, and, often, how we have lost control of it. In the process we’ve created a culture where we’re almost never fully off duty.” (Page 13) “Many of us don’t get weekends off anymore: a recent study found that 63 percent of people say their employers expect them to do some work on most weekends.” (Page 18)

How does your work time overlap with home time?

Is there a solid boundary, or do you check on your email at home?

Do you respond to work queries while at home or on vacation?

Are you ever fully off duty?

Shlain quotes Unitarian minister Ana Levy-Lyons that “time is the ultimate form of human wealth on this earth. Without time, all other forms of wealth are meaningless….To reclaim time is to be rich.” (Page 17)

What takes up most of your time? What do you never have time for?

Are these mainly tasks, leisure activities, creative thinking, reflection, interactions with family and friends?

How would you like to shift the use of your time?

Shlain contends that “24/7 technology is bad for us and bad for the culture. We rush to fill any unstructured moment we have with work and entertainment, feeds and updates, pulling out devices that distract us from bigger-picture thinking. We’re constantly reacting and responding without reflection.”

How does 24/7 technology affect and effect you?

How often do you pause to listen to others before you begin forming a response in your mind?

Are you often overwhelmed with the details that technology provides that you don’t look

down from 30,000 feet to see patterns and trends, not seeing the forest because of all of the trees?

“The Commandment to keep Shabbat may be carved in stone, but the way people have observed it isn’t.” (page 20)

She realizes that “When we unplug on Tech Shabbat, we impose limits, rules, and boundaries.” (Page 120)

Chapter 12 is about making and breaking rules. In several places in the book, Shlain discusses how she observes the Sabbath, and she consciously acknowledges that it is not the traditional Shabbat of her forebears.

Does this make her claims about her Sabbath less valid, or is this liberating to you?

Do you observe a Sabbath the same way your forebears did, or do you carry any guilt if you do not?

How might you observe a Sabbath, so that there is a real boundary between workdays and non-workdays?

Something is missing from Shlain’s book: how living 24/6 might affect one’s marriage. The June 2017 issue of Work and Family Life’s Research Review section notes that “Smartphone use is rising rapidly on the list of issues couples fight over, according to a study from Brigham Young University. It’s right up there with sex, money, kids and ‘I don’t like the way you’re driving.’ A majority of 143 women in the study reported that phones, computers and other digital devices were ‘significantly disrupting’ their family lives and relationships with spouses and partners. Excessive phone use by loved ones—which the researchers refer to as ‘technoference’—was found to lower overall wellbeing, increase anxiety and even trigger depression.

“Why would someone’s use of a hand-held device trigger such a strong response? ‘It can feel a little like being shunned,’ according to Guy Winch, PhD, psychologist and author… ‘The shunned partner is likely to experience such moments as flat-out rejection. And rejection, even in small ways, can be extremely painful. Your brain responds to it the same way it responds to physical pain.’”

Shlain mentions that her father would not permit the telephone to interrupt any family meals.

What is your practice?

Do you interrupt family meals for pings on your smartphone?

Do you experience any “technoference?” Even simpler, do you read the newspaper (or your newsfeed) over breakfast (or after a day of work as Tiffany complains about her dad on page 85) instead of talking to your family? How does this affect your family life?

If you have children, you may want to consider the words of a high school teacher in California: “Although I’m an enthusiastic advocate of using technology, I’m also fiercely protective of my time with my family. I have two small children who deserve my time, attention, and energy in the evenings. I don’t want them to feel they’re competing with devices for my attention.

“So I’ve made a habit of unplugging from the time I get home to the time my kids are in bed. On weekday evenings between 5:00 and 8:30pm, I close my computer and put my phone down with the volume off. I don’t check social media, e-mail, or text messages during that window. It’s too easy to get sucked in. Instead, I make dinner, help my kids with their homework, read with them on the couch, and listen to their stories about school. It’s a relief to take a break from technology.” [Educational Leadership, May 2016, The Techy Teacher column]

Shlain has made films about character strengths, or virtues—The Science of Character and The Making of a Mensch. You can guess which one is directed at a Jewish audience and which is not. She believes that living 24/6 helps develop one’s character. “A lot of what 24/6 living entails is self-control and establishing a habit