The Mobile Revolution
Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone in 2007.
Met with high praise, the iPhone ushered in the next stage of the internet, the mobile revolution. Nobody, not even Steve Jobs, could fully comprehend the societal implications of the mobile revolution on our species, and ways of being.
The mobile revolution has shifted how we communicate with our loved ones, learn new things, and stay connected online. Importantly, the mobile revolution made internet access geo-location independent.
Gone are the days of being bound to a desktop computer at home or the office, just to have access the internet.
Boredom
One downside to having more information than the Library of Alexandria in our pockets, is that no matter where we are, or what we’re doing, there’s this battery-powered, wireless rectangle in our pockets that keeps any hint of boredom or loneliness at bay.
The modern smartphone is filled with apps for various social media platforms, sources of news, emails, reminders, alarms, games, shopping, entertainment, music, work apps, fitness apps, and more.
This heightened reliance on the smartphone for many waking hours of our day, has changed previously normal behaviour to something that feels more abnormal. For example, something as innocuous as going to the washroom without our phones, can feel like torture for many of us. This kind of behavioural and emotional response is very odd. Us humans have started acting very differently, from how we’d respond to boredom in the past.
After all, even if its just for a few minutes, it seems for many people it feels like torture to be alone with our own thoughts and bowel movements.
This kind of escapist behaviour has led us to have an extreme sensitivity to something as simple as sitting with our thoughts and emotions — and doing nothing.
We seem to be living in a very unique era in human history. One where boredom, loneliness, sadness, and isolation can be temporarily alleviated by convenient distraction in the form of accessible entertainment at our fingertips.
What has this done to the human psyche, and our way of living?
Technology is Exponential
While we have archaeological and historical evidence, we don’t exactly know how our ancestors lived in their day-to-day lives.
One thing is certain: Technological advancements are compounding in nature, and our ways of living are changing faster than ever before.
This means that once a new piece of technology is invented, economies of scale allow for the technology to affordably make life easier and increase individual productivity and human capability, for billions of people:
Access to clean running water and food allows us to get out of survival mode
The dishwasher helps free up time and make life easier
Central heating allows access to more habitable locations on earth
The automobile increases personal mobility
The internet allows for access to an endless archive of human knowledge and information, at our fingertips
The smartphone provides access to the internet while we are out and about, away from the desktop computer at home
Newer technologies build on top of older technologies. We can’t have smartphones without the invention of the internet. Not only do newer technologies build from older technologies, but they also get exponentially better.
For example, the iPhones in our pockets are more than 100,000x powerful than the Appollo 11 Computer (1969) that was used to get man onto the moon. But we might be using it to browse cat pictures and Facetime grandma.
Ultimately, a good definition of technology is that it allows humans to do more, with less energy/effort, and greater efficiency.
Before recent human history (recent ~500 years, when most technologies we interact with today, were invented), we didn’t have a “cure for boredom”, and our lives looked very different from how they look in the present.
Something from Nothing
While we can’t go back in time to assess how our ancestors lived, there are present-day populations and groups of people who are removed from modern living and commercial markets. In other words, they are lagging behind in adopting modern social/economic growth factors, which causes them to instead live more self-sufficiently, and in relative isolation.
This means that these isolated groups of people are not connected to the modern world, and live their lives in less technological sophistication.
What happens when anthropologists visit these isolated groups, and study how they spend their time?
A study by Bhuia, Chudek, and Henrich (2019) wanted to look at how many hours were spent working during the week, between subsistence-
oriented societies (SO; more isolated and self-sufficient groups) compared to those in more market-integrated societies (MI; modern-day, technology-adopted groups).
The researchers used data captured between 1972 and 1987 for 8 subsistence-oriented societies, and compared it with sample data from nationally representative time use surveys for 14 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
Meaning, researchers wanted to compare traditional societies with modern societies in the same time-period, and understand how these groups differed in how they spent their time in a typical week.
Researchers found that those in SO groups spent approximately 10 fewer hours per week on work-related duties, compared to those in the MI group. The differences overall were significant for men (men in SO worked far less hours than men in the MI group), but were non-significant for women (women in SO and MI groups worked approximately the same, but the type of work women engaged in, differed between the two groups).
Cognitive and evolutionary anthropologist Manvir Singh, highlights in his Twitter thread that women in the study were found to “do work more, where work includes food prep, food production, childcare, manufacture, housework, etc.”
What did men and women do with the extra time? In many situations, they did nothing.
Gender Differences in Nothing
While men and women spend equal amounts of time doing nothing, women tended to be busier overall in both groups, when accounting for all types of work — that is, doing anything but nothing (see graph further below).
“[M]en & women do nothing at similar rates, [yet when they get to work, women are likely to work more]. How are men filling that extra time? We can make informed speculations. Look at the data again: Men socialize more & engage in more recreation. They also hunt, fish, & do more wage labor, but apparently not enough to outweigh work by women. These are just impressions when aggregating individual-level data across the 8 communities. I'm sure each society exhibits its own idiosyncratic patterns” (@mnvrsngh).
Lost in the Past
The median number of waking hours spent doing nothing was 27% for one of the SO groups (the Efé).
Almost 1/3 of waking human hours were spent doing absolutely nothing.
While this study compared data from the 1980s (life has certainly changed since then), it indicates the natural tendency for these eight tribes to do nothing for a large portion of their waking hours.
When was the last time you did literally nothing? This concept is different from engaging in activities like sleeping, cleaning, socializing, and farming.
Nothing means nothing.
In contrast, our modern-day experience has pushed us towards always doing something — worrying about the past or the future, feeling the urge to do something with free time, wanting to be productive, and feeling guilty for doing nothing, when we feel that we “should” be doing something. By the way, some of what I describe here can easily start to look like symptoms of anxiety.
Such a contrast between traditional cultures and our modern way of living.
We’ve lost something with modernization.
Something that makes us feel human.
The act of doing nothing.
Always Something
When we are stuck doing, we aren’t being.
But we’re human beings and not human doings. The latter sounds more robotic, automatic, and less “human”.
In the post-iPhone world, it takes contorted effort to be in a state that many traditional cultures (and probably your ancestors) were in, about 1/3 of their waking lives. Something about that doesn’t seem right.
For many of us, to do nothing, we have to consciously plan nothing into our calendars. Or, masquerade it in some kind of self-care routine — a mindfulness exercise, stretching our body, going for a walk, or working out.
Although you’re still doing something, I suppose these activities tend to be more relaxing and on the spectrum towards nothing, but not quite nothing.
Maybe sun-bathing is the closest thing I can think of, but this might also be my Western mind trying to fool itself into being productive in my nothingness while getting a healthy dose of Vitamin D. The alternative is indoor florescent lights and an office chair with terrible lumbar support, after all.
When was the last time you truly did nothing?
What was the situation like?
How did it feel?
Try answering the question without thinking about what you gained (hah!), but by remembering the feeling.
If you can’t remember when you last did nothing, maybe it’s worth doing something about it…