By: Nick Santangelo

Are you distracting yourself from school, work or relationships by reading this article on your phone? Is reading through this entire story going to be a challenge as group texts or notifications from Snapchat and Instagram pop up on your phone? If you answered yes to both or either of those questions, then you missed out if you didn't attend the professional development Alumni Networking Panel in the Student Center last Thursday.

Opening the event, Sociology Associate Professor Dustin Kidd showed a video that highlighted just how prominent smartphone and social media obsessions have become. Americans check their phones about 47 times a day. Worse, that number is 82 for 18-22-year-olds. Sure, this can help us be productive by firing off work or school-related emails. It can help us nurture our professional networks with LinkedIn. But are either of those your primary use for your phone? Probably not.

Demonstrating this, Dr. Kidd had audience members raise their hands to indicate if they sleep with their phones or waste time on social media in ways that interrupt their lives. A lot of hands went up. But the point of the event wasn't to chide students and alumni—it was to challenge them to think critically about how to solve this shared problem.

Intellectual Heritage Assistant Professor Naomi Taback explained that each person in the groups of about 10 per table was to write down up to five potential solutions on the post-it notes they'd been provided. Next, they'd share those ideas with the rest of their group and categorize each idea with similar ones. Finally, they'd choose the idea they liked best and present it to the entire audience. A half-serious/half-joke idea started things off at one particular table.

"I lose my phone a lot, and then you can't use it. So that's my solution," a female student said, laughing.

A male student suggested something a little less drastic but with the same end goal. To him, people would ideally put their phones away on their own while working. But for those who lack that level of self-control in the moment, they could ask a friend to hide or hold onto the phone for them. If you're not able to take the first approach, though, are you treating the symptom instead of the problem?

"Moderation is important. Phones and social media are not the problem—it's self-control," argued a female student. "You have to recognize what the problem is and change your behavior."

A few other group members seemed to agree, stating that they had already implemented some self-control measures on their own. One alumnus said he doesn't allow himself phone time until after he leaves the house every morning. A female student, meanwhile, said everyone should turn off their social media notifications; bring a book to keep them from reading things on their phone; stop using their phone after a certain time at night; and occasionally leave their phone in a different room.

These all sound like reasonable suggestions in the abstract, and they're probably ideas anyone who uses their smartphone a lot would eventually come to if they thought long enough. So, why aren't more people taking actions like this? Could it be a case of phones having become social crutches?

"Ninety percent of people are buried in their phones," said an alumna. "I wonder how much of that is an avoidance and a self-protection measure. So, taking a risk today means engaging with a stranger on a social level. Even if it means just saying, 'How are you?'"

Continuing, she also mentioned the need to replace "the drug" that is smartphone/social media use. Jumping at this, a female student noted how, with any addiction, it's important to not take away the thing someone is addicted to without a plan for replacing it with something else. "It's very easy to slide back into the old patterns," she said. "Fundamentally changing how we interact with our phone or social media is the key."

Of course, whenever there are questions about drug use, there must also be questions about the drug providers. "The scroll never ends, but it always feels like there's going to be a point where it ends," commented a male student. "And it just takes up so much time. I'm not on social media that much, but when I am it's never like three minutes. It always ends up like half an hour because of all the scrolling."

At this point, Dr. Taback took the microphone again and showed the audience a graph charting feasibility versus impact. She wanted each group to take their chosen best idea and think about how to refine it to maximize both its likelihood to be implemented and its ability to solve the problem.

"How are you going to make this as impactful on as many people as possible so that the solution doesn't just have weight for yourself but is a broader solution for people?" she challenged the students and alumni.

Dr. Kidd added that each group should also think about the qualitative values of their potential solutions. "It's really important that we think about the kinds of solutions you're coming up with now," he said. "We've seen a range of problems from social media, from smartphones that are affecting our lives."

At this, the same alumna who had argued people use their phones as an escape from real social interactions offered up a simile. "Think of the phone as just a tool. It's like a screwdriver, like a pencil or a pen," she said. "You pick it up when you want to and put it down when you want to. So if you use your phone as a tool, how can you use it in a way that will decrease your dependability on it?"

The internal group conversation then turned towards a variety of subjects. Do certain notification colors spur phone users to take action more urgently? What apps does everyone use and how do they use them? Would deleting certain apps force users to rely on their browsers more and, theoretically, lead to them checking for updates less frequently? At this last idea, one female student said it seemed silly to her to uninstall apps to make using your phone clunkier.

"That's the whole idea," responded another student. "It's more work so you're less likely to check it as much."

With that, it was time for every table to share their best idea with the other tables. One group's suggestion further explored the idea of making phone usage less sleek and enjoyable. This could involve changing the phone's color scheme to grayscale or installing apps that make the user feel bad for using the phone too much. One such app called Forest "grows" a little tree that "dies" if the user exits the app and goes into another one. Somewhat similarly, another table suggested phone makers release a "smart-ish" phone, meaning one that does everything smartphones do—except for social media.

One table had an idea specifically for solving the problem during social engagements. "We started off by saying everyone at a dinner table would have to stack their phone at a table," said a male student, "and whoever touches their phone first would have to pay the bill."

Then came another suggestion that users force themselves to exert more self-control with their phones. Specifically, this student wanted to see everyone set a phone usage budget for themselves just as they would set a monthly spending budget. But not everyone agreed the problem should only be internalized. Another table saw it as a public health crisis and advocated for a campaign "built on the idea of research scaring people, shaming them if necessary." The campaign would be similar to anti-drug, anti-smoking and anti-drinking and driving campaigns that have worked—to varying degrees—to combat those problems.

Instead of ruling that any one idea was the best solution, the professors encouraged the attendees to continue thinking critically like this about how to solve problems. They framed this as a "core competency" that universities and employers have identified as critical for anyone entering the workforce. At Temple University, there's a push to help students develop this competency.

"What you've observed today in this exercise is what we do in the Intellectual Heritage Program," Dr. Kidd told attendees. In closing, he added that Intellectual Heritage's coursework helps students to think about "how you can intervene in [problems] and create practical and impactful solutions."