I've owned an iPhone now since last October. It was a gift from Kendra for my birthday.
Since then, it's become apparent to her -- and more and more to myself -- that I may bloody well be addicted to the device.
It's possible that I have an actual psychological addiction to Facebook. The sort of thinking that leads me to perpetual page refreshing seems eerily akin to the behavior of rats who want another seratonin shot and keep pumping that pedal. In some ways, Web 2.0 is a tool -- that will suck out my soul if I let it. It allows me a way to be "friends" without actually being friendly -- a key temptation for an introvert such as myself. Then there's the added problem of apps -- stimulation vs. sensitivity. Our culture is addicted to stimulation (Kurt Cobaine's "here we are now, entertain me"). However, the more stimulated one gets, on movies, gadgets, music, etc. the less sensitive they become.
Something, spiritually speaking, is definitely going on here. Turns out, I'm not alone. A recent study conducted by Tanya Luhrmann at Stanford University found that many college students report being "addicted" to the their iPhones. From Luhrmann's summary of her findings:
To be clear, I don't want to say the iPhone is a demonic power. Only that it is a fallen power, as are all powers in this world. So my goal here isn't to engage in some sort of nostalgic Luddite handwringing. Web 2.0 and Facebook are rightly regularly found to be great goods.
So the goal here, quoting Stringfellow, is to learn how to "live humanely in the midst of the Fall". That's the question I want to think about. How to live humanely with the iPhone as a spiritual power in the midst of the Fall.
Let's be honest. There are lots of goods that come from Web 2.0 and Facebook. Connectivity comes immediately to mind. The fact that you're reading my ideas on this blog is a witness enough.
But, as the research indicates, Web 2.0 isn't delivering as much connectivity as we want to believe. For example:
Any attempt at trying to "discern the spirits" of Web 2.0 also needs to wrestle with anonymity and its effects upon the self and relationality.
To start, there is a public good to pseudonymity and anonymity. Particularly in repressive cultures that lack a free press or where speaking truth is likely to be met with reprisals. So it is good that the Internet allows social critics in places like Iran or China to remain anonymous.
In addition, certain forms of social disclosure are easier in anonymous situations, like with the Catholic confessional. The anonymous nature of PostSecret sharing gives people the courage to begin the process of difficult self-disclosure, for example.
So there are good things about anonymity on the Web. B ut there are some concerns as well. Here is Stanley Fish in a piece entitled Anonymity and the Dark Side of the Internet:
Humans are social creatures. Consequently, much of our behavior is regulated by social norms and social approbation. So when these social controls are removed, when out actions cannot be connected to our identity, we find it easier to behave badly.
Internet pornography comes to mind. Back in the day you had to have a social interaction to get access to pornography. You had to purchase a magazine or a video from a clerk. And there was just enough social shame in this interaction, along with an associated fear of someone you knew walking in the store, that helped people fight the temptation to purchase pornography. If not consistently, at least from time to time.
And so, as most people know, the Internet was the greatest thing that ever happened to the porn industry. Largely because of the anonymity. The few social controls that existed are now gone.
But it goes further than porn. If you're a blogger, blog reader, or blog commenter you are very familiar with how people treat each other online. And the bad behavior is largely due to the anonymity Web 2.0 provides. We treat each other differently when we are face to face. Even if we disagree. But online, where we are communicating through an impersonal medium via pseudonymity, the social controls are missing and, thus, the nastiness comes out. Some have called this the online disinhibition effect (or, more profanely, the GIFT theory where, yes, the F stands for that f-word; see here for pictorial depiction of GIFT).
This nastiness causes a lot of people to give up on Web 2.0. Either that or we change try to avoid the nastiness as best we can. For example, a friend of mine writes a popular blog and whenever he writes on a hot-button topic related to theology the comments tend to blow up. So much so that I now only read the posts and not the comments. I know reading the comments will make me angry and depressed. It's just not spiritually healthy to get too deep into some comment threads.
I think this is why a lot of people seek to limit their participation with Web 2.0. They find face to face interactions more civil, humanizing, and uplifting. And, if they do use Web 2.0, they try to step around the nastiness, limiting their exposure to certain comment threads, blogs, or even Facebook friends who post too much nasty stuff, politically or religiously.
In his essay entitled Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts, Jonathan Franzen riffs off a contrast between Facebook "liking" and the risk of loving real people.
The article begins by suggesting that technology creates an extension of the self and that, to keep this illusion intact, it must undermine what stands opposed to the self: Love.
Franzen then turns to contrast the narcissism of Web 2.0 "liking" with the messy work of loving actual persons:
There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: It exposes the lie.
There isn't (yet) a huge psychological literature on Facebook, but some studies are starting to appear in the empirical literature. One interesting study was published in 2010 in the APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Kennon Sheldon, Neetu Abad and Christian Hinsch. The title of the study was "A two-process view of Facebook use and relatedness need-satisfaction: Disconnection drives use, and connection rewards it".
The study was built around a paradoxical observation about Facebook use, a paradox that I've been kicking around today. Specifically, in prior research Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch noted that Facebook use was correlated with both social connection and disconnection. And again, this seems to be one of the paradoxes about Facebook. Facebook makes me feel both connected and disconnected.
How can that be?
To understand this paradox Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch propose a simple motivational and needs satisfaction model. They argue that social disconnection motivates Facebook use: When lonely we log onto Facebook. And then, having logged onto Facebook, we experience connection. Thus the source of the paradoxical feelings. Disconnection drives Facebook use and Facebook use creates a sense of connection.
Across a series of tests, Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch find support for this model. Of particular interest are tests that involved asking participants to give up Facebook for 48 hours or asking participants to set a Facebook use reduction goal. In both these tests social disconnection predicted a greater inability to give Facebook up and setting less ambitious Facebook reduction goals. Disconnected people seemed to "need" (addicted to?) Facebook more than the connected.
On the surface, these results seem like good news. Lonely people seek out Facebook and, as a result, they feel more connected. But the trouble is that Facebook use isn't decreasing the feeling of disconnection. Again, that's the paradox. Typically, we expect social connection and disconnection to be negatively correlated. As one increases the other should decrease. As social connection increases (e.g., friendships are growing) we expect social disconnection (e.g., loneliness) to decrease. This only makes sense.
But this doesn't seem to be happening with Facebook. Even though Facebook makes me feel connected the feelings of social disconnection persist. That is, a lonely person is driven to Facebook and they get a feeling of connection, but this doesn't attenuate the loneliness.
This is the psychological dynamic that Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch think might sit behind Facebook addiction. From the conclusion of their study:
Were such responses effective? It appears the answer is "yes and no". The more participants use Facebook, the more connection they report feeling in life. In terms of conventional SDT [Self-Determination Theory], Facebook use helps satisfy people's positive relatedness needs, which explains why they use Facebook and suggests that use is primarily beneficial. However, clearly distinguishing between connection and disconnection supplies a caveat to this conclusion: Disconnection is not decreased by Facebook use. Thus, it is possible that a lonely person may gain transient positive feelings while using Facebook but may not solve underlying real-life social problems that gave rise to feelings of loneliness or disconnection; ultimately, those problems may even get worse (Kim et al., 2009). The portrait that arises is of a person who is addicted to a coping device that does not approach problem-resolution directly but, rather, approaches a pleasant distraction from problems.
I've spent a good deal of time talking more about Facebook than iPhone, but the same principles apply, I think.
Since then, it's become apparent to her -- and more and more to myself -- that I may bloody well be addicted to the device.
It's possible that I have an actual psychological addiction to Facebook. The sort of thinking that leads me to perpetual page refreshing seems eerily akin to the behavior of rats who want another seratonin shot and keep pumping that pedal. In some ways, Web 2.0 is a tool -- that will suck out my soul if I let it. It allows me a way to be "friends" without actually being friendly -- a key temptation for an introvert such as myself. Then there's the added problem of apps -- stimulation vs. sensitivity. Our culture is addicted to stimulation (Kurt Cobaine's "here we are now, entertain me"). However, the more stimulated one gets, on movies, gadgets, music, etc. the less sensitive they become.
Something, spiritually speaking, is definitely going on here. Turns out, I'm not alone. A recent study conducted by Tanya Luhrmann at Stanford University found that many college students report being "addicted" to the their iPhones. From Luhrmann's summary of her findings:
The iPhone is an identity. People spoke about their phone as if it were part of their body, and even more a part of their mind, with a weird entanglement of Big Brother anxieties over security -- "If someone stole my phone, they could just get in everywhere and retrace my steps everywhere" -- and an emotional sense that their phone was who they were. Some people said that without their phone they felt disconnected from the world around them, fuzzy-headed, helpless and incompetent ("I would feel lost without it") ...This jibes with what I've been calling the past few weeks, "principalities and powers". Stringfellow describes "the spiritual forces" we battle against like this:
The iPhone is alive. People patted their phones. They caressed them and cleaned them and obsessed about where to carry them so that the phone would not get scratched ...
People also worried about not being "good" with their iPhone, not using it to its full potential. They had a sense that there was a competent iPhone user ideal, and they worried about not measuring up...
Users see it as addictive: "It's sort of like booze or something." More bluntly: "It's a drug."
According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits …What, you might ask, makes these things "spiritual powers", objects of idolatry and spiritual enslavement? Stringfellow answers:
And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more -- sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family -- beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.
People are veritably besieged, on all sides, at every moment simultaneously by these claims and strivings of the various powers each seeking to dominate, usurp, or take a person's time, attention, abilities, effort; each grasping at life itself; each demanding idolatrous service and loyalty. In such a tumult it becomes very difficult for a human being even to identify the idols that would possess him or her ...It's important to note that Stringfellow lists "technology". And his description of the powers -- things that "dominate, usurp, or take a person's time, attention, abilities, and effort; each grasping at life itself; each demanding idolatrous service and loyalty" -- seems to apply to what we are seeing emerge with iPhones.
To be clear, I don't want to say the iPhone is a demonic power. Only that it is a fallen power, as are all powers in this world. So my goal here isn't to engage in some sort of nostalgic Luddite handwringing. Web 2.0 and Facebook are rightly regularly found to be great goods.
So the goal here, quoting Stringfellow, is to learn how to "live humanely in the midst of the Fall". That's the question I want to think about. How to live humanely with the iPhone as a spiritual power in the midst of the Fall.
Let's be honest. There are lots of goods that come from Web 2.0 and Facebook. Connectivity comes immediately to mind. The fact that you're reading my ideas on this blog is a witness enough.
But, as the research indicates, Web 2.0 isn't delivering as much connectivity as we want to believe. For example:
Any attempt at trying to "discern the spirits" of Web 2.0 also needs to wrestle with anonymity and its effects upon the self and relationality.
To start, there is a public good to pseudonymity and anonymity. Particularly in repressive cultures that lack a free press or where speaking truth is likely to be met with reprisals. So it is good that the Internet allows social critics in places like Iran or China to remain anonymous.
In addition, certain forms of social disclosure are easier in anonymous situations, like with the Catholic confessional. The anonymous nature of PostSecret sharing gives people the courage to begin the process of difficult self-disclosure, for example.
So there are good things about anonymity on the Web. B ut there are some concerns as well. Here is Stanley Fish in a piece entitled Anonymity and the Dark Side of the Internet:
The practice of withholding the identity of the speaker is strategic, and one purpose of the strategy (this is the second problem with anonymity) is to avoid responsibility and accountability for what one is saying. Anonymity, Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago observes, allows Internet bloggers "to create for themselves a shame-free zone in which they can inflict shame on others." The power of the bloggers, she continues, "depends on their ability to insulate their Internet selves from responsibility in the real world, while ensuring real-world consequences" for those they injure.This is an extreme example, but it gets at the underlying issue: We behave badly on the Internet, particularly when we are anonymous.
Humans are social creatures. Consequently, much of our behavior is regulated by social norms and social approbation. So when these social controls are removed, when out actions cannot be connected to our identity, we find it easier to behave badly.
Internet pornography comes to mind. Back in the day you had to have a social interaction to get access to pornography. You had to purchase a magazine or a video from a clerk. And there was just enough social shame in this interaction, along with an associated fear of someone you knew walking in the store, that helped people fight the temptation to purchase pornography. If not consistently, at least from time to time.
And so, as most people know, the Internet was the greatest thing that ever happened to the porn industry. Largely because of the anonymity. The few social controls that existed are now gone.
But it goes further than porn. If you're a blogger, blog reader, or blog commenter you are very familiar with how people treat each other online. And the bad behavior is largely due to the anonymity Web 2.0 provides. We treat each other differently when we are face to face. Even if we disagree. But online, where we are communicating through an impersonal medium via pseudonymity, the social controls are missing and, thus, the nastiness comes out. Some have called this the online disinhibition effect (or, more profanely, the GIFT theory where, yes, the F stands for that f-word; see here for pictorial depiction of GIFT).
This nastiness causes a lot of people to give up on Web 2.0. Either that or we change try to avoid the nastiness as best we can. For example, a friend of mine writes a popular blog and whenever he writes on a hot-button topic related to theology the comments tend to blow up. So much so that I now only read the posts and not the comments. I know reading the comments will make me angry and depressed. It's just not spiritually healthy to get too deep into some comment threads.
I think this is why a lot of people seek to limit their participation with Web 2.0. They find face to face interactions more civil, humanizing, and uplifting. And, if they do use Web 2.0, they try to step around the nastiness, limiting their exposure to certain comment threads, blogs, or even Facebook friends who post too much nasty stuff, politically or religiously.
In his essay entitled Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts, Jonathan Franzen riffs off a contrast between Facebook "liking" and the risk of loving real people.
The article begins by suggesting that technology creates an extension of the self and that, to keep this illusion intact, it must undermine what stands opposed to the self: Love.
To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes -- a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance -- with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.According to Franzen, one way technology tries to diminish love is through commodification. An example of this is the Facebook "like":
Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn.
A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb "to like" from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture's substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products -- and none more so than electronic devices and applications -- is that they're designed to be immensely likable.But in the end the Facebook "like" simply creates a narcissistic loop:
Consumer technology products would never do anything this unattractive, because they aren't people. They are, however, great allies and enablers of narcissism. Alongside their built-in eagerness to be liked is a built-in eagerness to reflect well on us. Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.
And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don't have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It's all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.
Franzen then turns to contrast the narcissism of Web 2.0 "liking" with the messy work of loving actual persons:
My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love. My friend Alice Sebold likes to talk about "getting down in the pit and loving somebody." She has in mind the dirt that love inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard.
The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you're going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you'll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don't like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.Suddenly there's a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?
There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: It exposes the lie.
This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self's own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.There is much more in the essay worth engaging.
There isn't (yet) a huge psychological literature on Facebook, but some studies are starting to appear in the empirical literature. One interesting study was published in 2010 in the APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Kennon Sheldon, Neetu Abad and Christian Hinsch. The title of the study was "A two-process view of Facebook use and relatedness need-satisfaction: Disconnection drives use, and connection rewards it".
The study was built around a paradoxical observation about Facebook use, a paradox that I've been kicking around today. Specifically, in prior research Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch noted that Facebook use was correlated with both social connection and disconnection. And again, this seems to be one of the paradoxes about Facebook. Facebook makes me feel both connected and disconnected.
How can that be?
To understand this paradox Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch propose a simple motivational and needs satisfaction model. They argue that social disconnection motivates Facebook use: When lonely we log onto Facebook. And then, having logged onto Facebook, we experience connection. Thus the source of the paradoxical feelings. Disconnection drives Facebook use and Facebook use creates a sense of connection.
Across a series of tests, Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch find support for this model. Of particular interest are tests that involved asking participants to give up Facebook for 48 hours or asking participants to set a Facebook use reduction goal. In both these tests social disconnection predicted a greater inability to give Facebook up and setting less ambitious Facebook reduction goals. Disconnected people seemed to "need" (addicted to?) Facebook more than the connected.
On the surface, these results seem like good news. Lonely people seek out Facebook and, as a result, they feel more connected. But the trouble is that Facebook use isn't decreasing the feeling of disconnection. Again, that's the paradox. Typically, we expect social connection and disconnection to be negatively correlated. As one increases the other should decrease. As social connection increases (e.g., friendships are growing) we expect social disconnection (e.g., loneliness) to decrease. This only makes sense.
But this doesn't seem to be happening with Facebook. Even though Facebook makes me feel connected the feelings of social disconnection persist. That is, a lonely person is driven to Facebook and they get a feeling of connection, but this doesn't attenuate the loneliness.
This is the psychological dynamic that Sheldon, Abad and Hinsch think might sit behind Facebook addiction. From the conclusion of their study:
These studies have interesting implications for a number of issues, including theories of basic psychological needs, theories of addiction and coping, and theories to explain the popularity yet potential downsides of social networking ... In the current data, the presence of disconnection apparently motivated Facebook use as a coping response. This is consistent with the findings of Kim et al. (2009), Stepanikova et al. (2010), and Kraut et al. (1998), who found that Internet use (including social Internet use) may be a response to loneliness or distress.
Were such responses effective? It appears the answer is "yes and no". The more participants use Facebook, the more connection they report feeling in life. In terms of conventional SDT [Self-Determination Theory], Facebook use helps satisfy people's positive relatedness needs, which explains why they use Facebook and suggests that use is primarily beneficial. However, clearly distinguishing between connection and disconnection supplies a caveat to this conclusion: Disconnection is not decreased by Facebook use. Thus, it is possible that a lonely person may gain transient positive feelings while using Facebook but may not solve underlying real-life social problems that gave rise to feelings of loneliness or disconnection; ultimately, those problems may even get worse (Kim et al., 2009). The portrait that arises is of a person who is addicted to a coping device that does not approach problem-resolution directly but, rather, approaches a pleasant distraction from problems.
I've spent a good deal of time talking more about Facebook than iPhone, but the same principles apply, I think.