2/11/2018
Keep Your Head Up: How Smartphone Addiction Kills Manners and Moods - The New York Times
https://nyti.ms/2GhizKz
SMARTER LIVING
Keep Your Head Up: How
Smartphone Addiction Kills Manners
and Moods
Leer en español
By ADAM POPESCU JAN. 25, 2018
Let’s play a game: The next time you’re sitting among a group of friends or out on a
date, measure how much time passes before someone grabs their phone to look at it.
How long can you last?
“If that happens, that’s when dinner ends,” said Judith Martin, the Washington
Post writer whose Miss Manners column is syndicated to 200 newspapers a week.
“I don’t think anyone would dare do that to me,” she said.
Most of us don’t have the authority that comes with 40 years of being Miss
Manners, but no matter who you are it can be near impossible to pry anyone away
from their mobile playthings. (Harder still: Are your friends or partner more into
their smartphone than they are into you?)
3
The problem of looking at our devices nonstop is both social and physiological.
ARTICLES REMAINING
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/smarter-living/bad-text-posture-neckpain-mood.html
SIGN UP
Subscriber login
1/6
2/11/2018
Keep Your Head Up: How Smartphone Addiction Kills Manners and Moods - The New York Times
The average human head weighs between 10 and 12 pounds, and when we bend
our neck to text or check Facebook, the gravitational pull on our head and the stress
on our neck increases to as much as 60 pounds of pressure. That common position,
pervasive among everyone from paupers to presidents, leads to incremental loss of
the curve of the cervical spine. “Text neck” is becoming a medical issue that
countless people suffer from, and the way we hang our heads has other health risks,
too, according to a report published last year in The Spine Journal.
Posture has been proven to affect mood, behavior and memory, and frequent
slouching can make us depressed, according to the National Center for
Biotechnology Information. The way we stand affects everything from the amount of
energy we have to bone and muscle development, and even the amount of oxygen
our lungs can take in. Body language, perceptions of weakness versus power — it’s all
real.
And the remedy can be ridiculously simple: Just sit up.
Social psychologists like Amy Cuddy claim even standing in a confident posture,
with your head up and shoulders back, can heighten testosterone and cortisol flow in
the brain, preventing much of the above. So, why aren’t we heeding these signs? It
might be simple denial.
Inattentional blindness is a problem
Some 75 percent of Americans believe their smartphone usage doesn’t impact
their ability to pay attention in a group setting, according to the Pew Research
Center, and about a third of Americans believe that using phones in social settings
actually contributes to the conversation.
But does it?
Etiquette experts and social scientists are adamantly united: Nope.
That “always-on” behavior that smartphones contribute to causes us to remove
ourselves from our reality, experts said. And aside from the health consequences, if
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/smarter-living/bad-text-posture-neckpain-mood.html
2/6
2/11/2018
Keep Your Head Up: How Smartphone Addiction Kills Manners and Moods - The New York Times
we’re head down, our communication skills and manners are slumped, too. But,
ironically, that might not be how most of us see ourselves.
“We think somehow that this antisocial behavior is not going to affect me,” said
Niobe Way, professor of applied psychology at New York University.
Ms. Way studies technology’s role in shaping adolescent development. These
head-down interactions take us away from the present, no matter what group we’re
in, she said. And it’s not just a youth problem. It’s ingrained, learned, copied and
repeated, much of it from mimicking adults. When kids see their parents head down,
they emulate that action. The result is a loss of nonverbal cues, which can stunt
development.
“What’s happening more and more is we’re not talking to our children,” Ms.
Way said. “We put them in front of the tech when they’re young, and when we’re
older, we’re absorbed in our own tech.”
You’ve seen it: Think of how some parents deal with screaming toddlers. “Here
kid, take this iPhone and go to town,” according to Ms. Way — not, “Let’s talk this
out, what seems to be the problem, son?’”
She added: “We think, ‘Somehow my kids will know what’s a good and bad
interaction, they’ll have empathy.’ But when I go upstairs into my son’s room and
seven teens are all looking at their phones, none of them saying a word, there’s all
sorts of disengagement happening. It’s not Facebook that’s the problem, it’s how
we’re using Facebook.”
All ages are affected
A study in 2010 found that adolescents ages 8 to 18 spent more than 7.5 hours a
day consuming media. Since then, our digital addictions have continued to, in some
ways, define our lives: In 2015, the Pew Research Center reported that 24 percent of
teenagers are “almost constantly” online.
Adults aren’t any better: Most adults spend 10 hours a day or more consuming
electronic media, according to a Nielsen’s Total Audience Report from last year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/smarter-living/bad-text-posture-neckpain-mood.html
3/6
2/11/2018
Keep Your Head Up: How Smartphone Addiction Kills Manners and Moods - The New York Times
The National Safety Council reports cellphone use makes drivers more accident
prone than drunk driving, causing 1.6 million crashes annually, mostly from young
people ages 18 to 20. One out of four accidents in the United States are caused by
texting and talking on the phone while driving.
“Mobile devices are the mother of inattentional blindness,” said Henry Alford,
the author of “Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Manners.”
“That’s the state of monomaniacal obliviousness that overcomes you when you’re
absorbed in an activity to the exclusion of everything else.”
The social scientist Sherry Turkle analyzed 30 years of family interactions in her
book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each
Other.” She found that children now compete with their parents’ devices for
attention, resulting in a generation afraid of the spontaneity of a phone call or faceto-face interaction. Eye contact now seems to be optional, Dr. Turkle suggests, and
sensory overload can often mean our feelings are constantly anesthetized.
Researchers at the University of Michigan claim empathy levels have
plummeted while narcissism is skyrocketing, with emotional development,
confidence and health all affected when we tuck our chins in and let our heads hang
like human ostriches.
Facebook’s former president, Sean Parker, recently said the platform was
designed to be addictive and to “consume as much of your time and conscious
attention as possible,” which he characterized as boosting our self-esteem, everpresent in the dopamine hit of likes.
“It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other,” he said. “It
probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing
to our children’s brains.”
That said: You’re probably reading this story on a mobile device right now. And
that’s O.K.! (As long as you’re not behind the wheel.) We’re not here to tell you to
throw away your iPhone and abandon digital media. But like many addictions,
admitting a problem is the first step to treatment. And, mercifully, the fix isn’t antitech — it’s pro-conversation, according to Dr. Turkle.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/smarter-living/bad-text-posture-neckpain-mood.html
4/6
2/11/2018
Keep Your Head Up: How Smartphone Addiction Kills Manners and Moods - The New York Times
Make an effort to interact with people
Digital detoxes have never been so popular, but they’re no cure-all, and
realistically, there simply isn’t a black-and-white fix.
The simplest answer for all of us is biblical: Do unto others — and maybe do it
without clutching your smartphone. Next time you’re in the checkout lane or stopped
at a red light, look around. How many people are really there with you?
“Actual human beings, in the flesh, take precedence,” Ms. Martin chided. “To
ignore people you’re with is rude, whether you ignore them for virtual friends or
distant friends by snubbing them.”
It sounds so obvious it almost borders on stupid. But like Dr. Turkle’s hope of
building dialogue, not denigrating the digerati, it’s an obvious dialogue we’re not
having enough of.
Mr. Alford, who used to write a monthly manners column for The New York
Times, described the issue as a “monomaniacal obliviousness” of being absorbed in
an activity to the exclusion of the rest of the world.
“To treat the person standing in front of you as secondary to your phone, is
usually, as the kids say, a micro-aggression,” he said.
Many Silicon Valley pundits go to war when anyone so much as suggests that
tech’s merits aren’t uniformly positive. But in light of the brutal schoolyard that
social media has become, that approach now appears moot.
Young or old, we’re all a generation of literal test cases. Etiquette, manners,
body language, the way we respond, interact and even look is changing. We’re
missing a whole life happening a mere 90 degrees above our smartphones. Start
looking up.
“Never be the first person in the group to whip out his phone,” Mr. Alford said.
“Don’t be Patient Zero.”
Correction 1/30/2018: An earlier version of this article misstated the number
of car accidents attributed to the use of smartphones. About one quarter of car
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/smarter-living/bad-text-posture-neckpain-mood.html
5/6
2/11/2018
Keep Your Head Up: How Smartphone Addiction Kills Manners and Moods - The New York Times
accidents in the United States are caused by texting and talking on the phone while
driving, not solely by texting.
Adam Popescu is a writer living in Los Angeles who contributes frequently to the Times.
He can be reached on Twitter at @adampopescu
© 2018 The New York Times Company
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/smarter-living/bad-text-posture-neckpain-mood.html
6/6
P2R Discussion
1. In small groups, discuss your responses to the texts, including questions, reactions, examples,
evaluations, connections, and summaries.
2. Choose something your group talked about to share with the class.
Active Reading Journal
1. Consider how you can elaborate on your responses:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
Generate an open-ended question and answer it using material from the texts.
Describe your reaction and provide details from the texts to explain your feelings.
Select a significant example and explain why it is important to the texts overall.
Evaluate an idea in the texts and explain your opinion in greater depth.
Share a connection to something outside the texts and explain the relationship.
Summarize the main idea of the texts and provide key points that support the ideas.
2. Select one of the options above, and write a one-page journal in that format.
Content
•
•
•
Organization
•
•
•
•
Writing
•
•
•
•
•
Clear response type (question, reaction, example, evaluation,
connection, summary)
Main idea and supporting details from texts, including a
minimum of two pieces of information from each text and two
pieces of commentary to support each response
1 page double-spaced in 10 or 12 pt. Arial or Times New
Roman font (including MLA heading at the top)
Introduction to the texts, authors, and response type
Transitions between ideas
Multiple body paragraphs with the first line of each
paragraph indented (including intro and conclusion
paragraphs)
Conclusion to restate main point of response
Clear Sentence structure (avoid fragments and run-ons)
Minimal spelling errors
Correct use of punctuation
Vary word choice (rather than using the same wording
repeatedly)
Proofread your work (utilize the Writing Center as needed)
Purchase answer to see full
attachment