Outsmart your smartphone

I finally broke down and bought a smartphone. It feels like I was the last holdout. I did it mostly because I want to maintain a friendly relationship with my daughter, who is 18. No texting, no friendship.

So I got the smartphone and, of course, the smartphone got me.

I constantly reach for the thing. Why? Because it’s there. After work, I used to go for walks or bike rides and enjoy the sky, the trees, the neighborhood; now I resist the urge to check messages and the news. Since five minutes ago. And five minutes before that. Leave the thing behind, I’ll feel the phantom vibration in my pocket.

We’ve known since forever that human beings are creatures of habit; we’re still learning how easily our eyeballs are seduced by colorful motion, flashing lights, animation, information. Voice-to-voice is the least of smartphone technology; the most of it is the screen and its promise of literally endless stimulation, reward, flattery (“How many likes did I get?” “How about now?” “OK, but how about now?”).

I sense that the servant has become the master. I can feel it training me to get on its schedule. What’s happening to my brain? What about the easily influenced brains of children?

The Columbian surveyed the recent literature and reached out to doctors, educators and parents. How do we manage the double-edged sword of a technology that’ll bring you the whole world on a platter — while sucking up your attention span and social life, if you let it?

Digital drugs?

Opinions vary as to whether “addiction” is the right word when a brain finds screens irresistible — but many believe it’s not far off. Some hardcore electronic gamers’ craving to play, and their rush of pleasure as that craving is satisfied, is a “druglike” dynamic, scientists keep saying. Mature decision-making, impulse control and empathy for others all decline; isolation, agitation, impatience and dishonesty all increase.

“We now know that those iPads, smartphones and Xboxes are a form of digital drug,” writes Nicholas Kardaras, a leading addiction-treatment doctor, in a new book called “Glow Kids.” “Recent brain imaging research is showing that they affect the brain’s frontal cortex … in exactly the same way that cocaine does. … Your kid’s brain on Minecraft looks like a brain on drugs.”

And, a young brain busy with Minecraft is not building social skills and learning about reality. Here’s a telling experiment: Two groups of preteens were asked to infer people’s feelings from photographs of facial expressions. The control group did this after living routinely wired lives, but the other group spent five days at a nature camp without TV, computers, phones or any screens at all. After five days, the unplugged group was “significantly” better at reading human faces — understanding human feelings — than the plugged-in one.

Adolescents who spend their days playing video games “develop great thumb control and eye-hand coordination, and they’ll probably grow up to be great bomber pilots,” Kathy Bobula, a former early childhood education teacher at Clark College, has said. “But that’s at the expense of deeper thoughts and conversations, moral choices, relating to people.”

Emotional life

Addiction, compulsion, habit — whatever you call it, you know when you’ve lost control. Do you prefer your phone to people? Do you interrupt other activities for it, or use it when your attention really belongs elsewhere (like on your kids, or the road)? Do you feel uncomfortable without your phone, even for a short time? Do you need it beside you at meals and in bed?

Can you not stay away from internet pornography, gambling, even stock trading? Do you organize your day around it — and hide that you do?

If so, the real issue isn’t in the gadget but in your mirror, according to Dr. Craigan Usher, a child psychologist at Oregon Health and Science University. Usher said he frequently traces patients’ technology compulsions back to anxiety disorders and low self-esteem.

“We have emotions. We have an emotional life. Our emotional life is reflected in how we use technology, for better and for worse,” Usher said. Neuroscientists have long known that tools “become an extension of you,” he said; if you’re especially needy, lonely, anxious or unhappy, the infinite internet can be an incredibly empowering tool — and an especially tough one to put down. For some people, digital drugs can become impossible to resist.

Still, Usher dislikes the term “addiction.” We’re going to have a lifelong relationship with technology, he said, so our challenge is to develop the necessary management skills and healthy attitudes — and demonstrate them for our children.

“Children watch closely what you do,” Usher wrote. “When you are with them at the dinner table or the park, if you are checking out Facebook or playing Words With Friends, they will learn that this is what being together, eating together, playing at the park is all about.”

At school

This year, Vancouver Public Schools will start distributing iPads to all students in fifth grade and up. Evergreen Public Schools is also launching a new digital learning program.

VPS officials say they’re excited about the possibilities — and mindful of the dangers. “We want them to be safe and healthy online,” said chief digital officer Mark Ray.

“We are more ‘clenched’ than many other school districts,” Ray said, when it comes to making sure that devices really are used as learning tools, not constant companions. Claims that smartphone applications are “educational” are everywhere; Ray said there’s a central school district committee that evaluates apps for real educational value.

And, all students undergo “digital boot camps” before getting their hands on school electronics, Ray said. “All students who get iPads go through six different layers of training,” he said, including the most basic aspects of online culture: “Who am I online? How is my online behavior affecting others?”

Ray believes that early training like this means promoting “civil discourse” on an internet that’s overflowing with trolls and trash.

Patrick Mahaney, a language arts teacher and program coordinator at Discovery Middle School, said he’s not worried about distributing “digital drugs.” The benefits are considerable, he said, while the drawbacks are easily prevented — just by being an old-fashioned good teacher.

“Teachers are always tasked with managing our classrooms. This is no different,” Mahaney said. “I walk around a lot, but I don’t see” much goofing off with cellphones hidden under desks. “When I do, it’s ‘Please put it away.’ We model behavior in classrooms.” Once when a student received a text from home during class time, it was Mahaney who called up a slightly embarrassed mom to find out whether there was an emergency. (There wasn’t.)

Mahaney added that he sees technology as a real boon for the nervous or simply quiet kid who never raises a hand. Online dialog is a painless way for that kid to participate, he said.

“I don’t see it as drugging kids, I see it as helping them stay engaged,” Mahaney said. “We are still people, interacting and showing we care. A device cannot do that.”

At home

It’s a confusing time for conscientious parents. Some authorities, such as Kardaras, are sounding alarms; others, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, which used to recommend “just saying no,” are slowly softening about screen time for kids. “In a world where ‘screen time’ is becoming simply ‘time,’ our policies must evolve or become obsolete,” the AAP said.

The Columbian surveyed the changing landscape, including articles and reports by Usher at OSHU, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Harvard School of Public Health and more, to assemble the following commonsense list of tips and pointers for parents.

• NO SCREENS AT ALL before age 2. Some recommend age 3.

• Set screen-time limits and stick to them. Create media-free zones and times — especially family meals and overnight.

• No TV or internet access in kids’ bedrooms. Recharge devices overnight, elsewhere.

• Don’t buy a car with built-in screens. Sing songs, tell stories, listen to audiobooks. Discuss.

• Children are mimics, so model good behavior. Put your phone away. Never text while driving.

• Devices are not the educators they’re touted to be; conversation and experience are.

• Don’t pacify an upset child with a screen. Kids need to understand and manage feelings, not avoid them.

• Watch and analyze media with your kid. What messages are coming through about violence, sex, possessions, money?

• Know the ratings of video games your kids are playing.

• Remind your kid that ONLINE MEANS FOREVER. There is no such thing as privacy and no real “delete.”

Usher recommends that families take gadget-free vacations with board games and charades. Want to snap photos and preserve memories? Bring a camera and write in a diary, he said.

Detox

Vancouver Heights mom Kelly Sporseen never leaned unplugged. The college mass communications major once worked behind the scenes on a TV soap opera. She loves using email and cruising the internet. She loves having a handy little camera and a portable library of all her favorite music.

But her smartphone became both too seductive and too stressful. Plainly put, it drove Sporseen a little crazy.

“I was really easily distracted by it. It affected my mood. I realized I was kind of addicted,” she said. “I’ve read a lot about the impact on the brain, and I know you get a hit of dopamine every time you get a text. I was really driven by that.”

She recognized it as a genuine problem when her children started threatening to hide her smartphone. She felt “weird and uncomfortable” without it, she realized. Sporseen decided she’d better “detox” for a month. That’s something endorsed by Kardaras, who says it takes about that long for a “hyper-aroused nervous system to reset itself.”

Sporseen’s phone-free month is now going on two years. While her husband coexists peaceably with his device, Sporheen just doesn’t trust herself. She’s sworn off smartphones the way some people swear off alcohol, she said.

She knows that means disconnecting from much of the world. “Almost no one else seems to live this way now,” she said. “I find it hard to meet people who’d rather talk than text.”

Her oldest child is beginning fifth grade, and Sporseen is ambivalent. She might opt out of an iPad — but, “I don’t want to deprive or isolate my kids. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

“I’m not anti-screen,” Sporseen said. “I’m anti-bandwagon.”