Samuel Oladipupo
@iamessoodee
Smartphones have become constant companions of many of us. Generally speaking, so much have many of us generally got addicted to social media that its side effects have been manifesting in various ways. About two days ago, popular actress, Toyin Abrahams lamented that many people have sacrificed real human bonding on the altar of social media.
But specifically on smartphones, a recent study by the Pew Research Center indicates that nearly 50 per cent of adults reported they “couldn’t live without” their phones.
Whether at the supermarket, in the doctor’s office, or in bed at night, it can be tempting to pick up the device and start scrolling through social media or text messages at any moment. But anyone who has done so in the presence of a close friend, family member or romantic partner may have left that person feeling ignored, annoyed or even pushed away. That’s according to a growing body of research on “technoference,” or the potential interference smartphones and other technologies can have in our face-to-face social interactions.
In a new review paper, forthcoming in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, University of Arizona Psychology professor, David Sbarra, and his colleagues at Wayne State University in Detroit, examine existing research on technoference. They propose an explanation for why humans are so drawn to their smartphones, even when the devices take us out of the moment in our close relationships. It is because of our evolutionary history, they say.
Humans are hard-wired to connect with others, Sbarra and his colleagues argue. In the course of evolutionary history, we have relied on close relationships with small networks of family and friends for survival as individuals and as a species. These relationships were based on trust and cooperation, which is built when people disclose personal information about themselves and are responsive to others.
They eplain that Smartphones, and the constant access they provide to text messaging and social media, make it easier than ever for people to disclose personal information and respond to others in their social networks. And these networks are much larger and more far-flung than those of our ancestors.
“The draw or pull of a smartphone is connected to very old modules in the brain that were critical to our survival, and central to the ways we connect with others are self-disclosure and responsiveness,” Sbarra said. “Evolution shaped self-disclosure and responsiveness in the context of small kin networks, and we now see these behaviors being cued more or less constantly by social networking sites and through our phones. We now have the outer-most edges of our social network cue us for responsiveness. Look no further than the next person you see scrolling through Facebook and mindlessly hitting the button while his kid is trying to tell him a story.”
In their paper, Sbarra and co go beyond the idea that technology is simply attention-grabbing to suggest that there may be an evolutionary mismatch between smartphones and the social behaviors that help form and maintain close social relationships.
“Smartphones and their affordances create new contexts for disclosing information about who we are and for being responsive to others, and these virtual connections may have downstream unwanted effects on our current relationships,” Sbarra said. “When you are distracted into or by the device, then your attention is divided, and being responsive to our partners — an essential ingredient for building intimacy — requires attention in the here and now.”
