Throughout college, I’ve examined human interaction through my studies in the psychology department and my job as a sports writer. I enjoy making sense of the world through storytelling, but I also know the importance of backing up my assumptions with data and research.

 

Because of my experiences, I now find myself observing others when I’m out getting coffee, sitting on a bench in a park or with my friends at the bar. I wonder how many people walking through the park are talking on their phone. I wonder what percentage of people in the United States check their phones more than five times while sitting at a restaurant. I wonder what the ratio of in-person human interaction to phone usage is between two friends catching up at a coffee shop.

 

These curiosities led me to writing the three observational essays included in this project, but I knew that I also wanted to provide tangible evidence that the commentary I give isn’t just related to my own experiences. Researchers worldwide are noticing new trends between people and their phones, and luckily for me, there’s now a wealth of writing on the topic.

 

Recently, The Atlantic interviewed former Google product philosopher Tristan Harris at Unplug SF, an event that outlawed “WMDs,” a tongue-in-cheek shorthand for “wireless mobile devices.” Harris understand how addictive smartphones can be, and he’s trying to put a stop to it.

 

As author Bianka Bosker puts it, “Harris is the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience. As the co‑founder of Time Well Spent, an advocacy group, he is trying to bring moral integrity to software design: essentially, to persuade the tech world to help us disengage more easily from its devices.”

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Harris wants developers to adopt a “Hippocratic oath” so that software no longer exploits people’s basic psychological vulnerabilities. Harris understands how companies can easily instill habits in its users because of his firsthand experience with B.J. Fogg, an experimental psychologist at Stanford.  He learned from Fogg that people often get hooked to their smartphones because of the variable rewards that come from “likes” and messages.

 

I’ve learned through my own research that the variable ratio schedule is the most addictive reinforcement schedule. Think about people who get hooked to slot machines: every time a user puts in a coin, they think they may get a reward, but they don’t know when that reward will come. The schedule gets people to play game after game after game.

 

Harris has worked to make the developers in Silicon Valley realize the weight of their choices. He put together “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention,” a presentation that even got the attention of Google’s then-CEO Larry Page. Even though it was met with general agreement, Harris doesn’t think much has changed since it was published.

 

Tristan Harris clearly believes that changes need to be made to the way we use our devices. The only question is, if we block out our social media, does that also inhibit the social interactions we have with others through our phones?

 

Louis C.K., the famous comedian, would certainly think not. Instead, he thinks that devices encourage people to interact with one another in ways they normally wouldn’t In 2013, C.K. went on Conan and ranted about how phones can make people less empathetic.

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“You know, I think these things are toxic, especially for kids,” C.K. said. “It's this thing. It's bad. They don't look at people when they talk to them. They don't build the empathy. Kids are mean and it's because they're trying it out. They look at a kid and they go, ‘You're fat.’ Then they see the kid's face scrunch up and say, ‘Oh, that doesn't feel good.’ But when they write, ‘They're fat,’ they go, ‘Hmm, that was fun.’ ”

 

To some extent, it’s easy to understand the point that C.K. is getting it. According to the National Crime Prevention Council, 43 percent of teens have been victims of cyberbullying in the past year. The Internet doesn’t forget, and that results in the kind of virality that wouldn’t occur in a normal bout of bullying. Most teens have access to smart phones at all times, and within minutes, they can see the incident online and the bully has an audience.

 

At the same time, however, teens also use cell phones to keep in touch with friends.

 

In February, Wall Street Journal journalist Christopher Mims interviewed teens about their usage of Houseparty, an app that allows users to video chat with up to seven friends at the same time. As soon as two people start to have a conversation, an update gets pushed out to the friends they’re connected with and other people can join in on the video chat. The teens don’t mention bullying as a use of the app, instead using it to work on homework and to socialize with friends.

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It isn’t the same kind of hiding behind a keyboard that Louis C.K. dismisses. Instead, this app comes very close to replicating face-to-face interaction that would normally happen when hanging out with friends.

 

According to WSJ, the app now has over a million users after being launched in February 2016. This isn’t surprising because according the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of teens had access to a smartphone in 2015.

 

Teenagers aren’t the only ones using their phones to video chat with friends and family in other places, however. I couldn’t find a more recent statistic, but according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, a fifth of U.S. adults have tried video calling from their cell phones. That percentage can only have gone up since then. Video chat can be used to talk to parents across the country or old friends from college. This undoubtedly improves the connection between both parties using the app, and isn’t inhibiting that relationship one bit.

 

Regardless of if our phones ultimately improve human relationships or hinder them, we can all agree that sometimes our funniest blunders are borne from attachments to our devices.

 

In April 2017, The New Yorker published an interview with 31-year-old Peter Huang. The video director recently made “5 Films About Technology,” a short, four-minute exploration of how our smartphones can lead to cringe-worthy behavior.

 

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“We spend so much time staring into our devices,” Huang told The New Yorker. “I’ve literally seen people get a text message, and because of what happened on their screen, these little pixels, they stop talking and then almost, like, break down into tears. And I thought that was always really interesting, because it’s a weird inanimate object that re-creates an emotional experience from another person.”

 

Huang puts it simply, but he puts it well: it is a very strange time in human history, indeed.