At public events, speakers and performers often ask the audience to turn off their mobile phones, but Catherine Price really meant it. She asked attendees of Tuesday’s keynote speech at (ISC)2 Security Congress 2019 to actually press their phones’ power button.
“I’m going to guess a lot of people are feeling uncomfortable. A lot of you faked it. A lot of you are probably hating me right now,” said Price, a journalist and author of the book, “How to Break Up with Your Phone.”
For the next hour, Price discussed the reasons we are so tethered to our phones, what it’s doing to us, and how we can take back control. She addressed the dangers of our constant attachment to phones in order to feel connected and prevent FOMO (fear of missing out), which causes anxiety, reduces our attention span and cognitive abilities, and may trigger health effects such as high blood pressure and depression. She also offered advice on how to break the habit.
Phones, she said, are like slot machines, which are designed to hook users by releasing dopamine, a neurotransmitter that reminds us of activities we enjoy and want to keep doing. “You never know what’s going to be on your phone, which makes you want to check it even more,” she said, citing social media, news apps and email as applications that tend to hook users.
“Apps are specifically designed to make them hard to put down. Why would that be? Because they make money,” she said. She cited Facebook, which essentially treats users as a product by collecting data about users and targeting ads at them.
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