Just think about it, take a second, and consider how many times a day you get intimate with your phone.

Some days it might be more than others but, on average, US citizens touch, type, swipe, and click about 2 617 times a day.

And here I was thinking it would be more.

That number came from a study done by Asana, a Silicon Valley-based company that works to improve office productivity. It’s headed by Justin Rosenstein, the man who created Facebook’s “like” button and who, in an effort to distance himself from the Internet, took drastic measures to limit his use of social media, explains The Guardian:

Rosenstein had tweaked his laptop’s operating system to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook.

When Rosenstein purchased a new iPhone, he instructed his assistant to set up a parental-control feature to prevent him from downloading any apps.

He was particularly aware of the allure of Facebook “likes”, which he describes as “bright dings of pseudo-pleasure” that can be as hollow as they are seductive.

Here’s Rosenstein:

A decade after his Facebook offering, Rosenstein “belongs to a small but growing band of Silicon Valley heretics who complain about the rise of the so-called “attention economy”, an internet shaped around the demands of an advertising economy”:

The growing concern is that as well as addicting users, technology is contributing toward so-called “continuous partial attention”, severely limiting people’s ability to focus, and possibly lowering IQ.

One recent study showed that the mere presence of smartphones damages cognitive capacity – even when the device is turned off.

“Everyone is distracted,” Rosenstein says. “All of the time.”

The Guardian wrote a full-length piece about a band of ex-engineers who are disconnecting themselves from the Internet after having worked for massive tech companies.

It’s a good read, and will make you think twice (at least for a second) about how addicted to your phone you really are.

Find it here.

[source:qz&theguardian]