I Can't Escape
On Technostress, Digital Dependency, and Why I Can't Put My Phone Down
This is me, every night.
It’s just past 1 a.m. I am hooked up to my CPAP machine and lying on my side. The CPAP doesn’t allow you much movement when you sleep, but I do get a good 4-hour sleep each night. I am on my phone, flipping between TikTok and Zombie Underground. I should be asleep by now. But maybe just in a few more minutes…
I know I am not alone because I can tell which of your friends are online at 3 in the morning. They know I know, too. Sometimes, I get a message asking about gossip. “Why don’t you read a book or something?” I asked myself. Maybe. I opened my Kindle app and continued where I left off on “Alchemy”, but dozed off soon after.
Do you hear it?
It wasn't a sound, though. More like a feeling. This silent hum on my phone, a soft but insistent pull on my attention all the time – a beckoning. I am aware of this; I suspect we all are. We give sage advice about how to manage our online activity. We tell our kids not to become social media addicts, asking them to put their phones down and to go outside and play. We know what it’s like to be on a digital leash.
Yet, we…I fail miserably when trying to manage this overindulgence. There is a constant but mild anxiety present all the time. One that tells you that you’ve got a new message. Something in your inbox. Someone sent you something. Maybe it’s something important. I tapped away from my Kindle app and started wandering off as other apps called for my attention. It’s a bloody noisy quiet world all the time.
This pervasive, low-grade demand for attention is like having a nagging cold that refuses to go away. I think we are all mildly sick; we all have it but refuse to acknowledge that we do. This ailment, called technostress, was coined by American psychotherapist Craig Brod in 1984. He defined it as a "modern disease of adaptation caused by an inability to cope with new computer technologies in a healthy manner", according to ScienceDirect.com. Brod's book, "Technostress: The human cost of the computer revolution," further popularised the concept. The hum becomes the silent, insistent background noise of our lives.
Isn’t it strange that all these wonderful devices, which were supposed to make our lives easier, are slowly sapping us dry? There is no doubt that, in many ways, technology has significantly improved our lives.
I remember when I first Skyped my parents in Singapore, my father was so gobsmacked by the idea. He could not understand how he could speak with me and his grandchildren in real time across two continents. Think about it. In the past, to meet with someone, we needed to coordinate a specific time and place. Zoom has effectively eliminated “space” so that we all no longer need to be in the same space when we meet.
There are other things as well. I can find a recipe for a dish I miss from my childhood with just a few taps. I can learn about any historical event that comes to mind. I can access the collective knowledge of all time. Maybe not quite “of all time”, but bigger than our local library.
Somewhere along the way, when we welcome all this new-age convenience, we also let something else in.
It's a paradox, maybe.
“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
The more connected we become, the more scattered we feel. The more information we have at our fingertips, the more our attention shrinks. Spread over too much, too many. The distraction is real and overwhelming. I guess that is the price we pay when we embrace this constant, quiet hum that we can't escape from. We allowed it, we even encouraged it. So we are now at its mercy.
This urge to check our phones even when there's absolutely no reason to. This perpetual distraction at our fingertips, this needy, demanding companion that so often drains away the best years of our lives. This is what we let into our lives. It is what we have allowed to take control. To take over. I caught myself the other day refreshing my RedNote page just to watch it reload.
Silly. Embarrassing. And a waste of time. But I'm probably not the only one doing that.
Is there a way out?
I wonder about this whole "digital dependency" thing, especially when I can’t go to sleep at two in the morning. I try to recall a time when we didn’t have these devious devices. What was it like then?
Maybe we've gotten so used to constant stimulation that silence feels strange now. Research suggests that there's a genuine public concern about how to navigate all this responsibly in the future. The pace at which technology permeates our lives is accelerating, and we are struggling to keep up.
But none of us really wants to go back to a world without technology. I certainly don't. I do not think I can cope with it. But I do believe we're all trying to figure out how to live with it without letting it take over. There's a tension, a push and pull, between the new and the old.
We're trying to figure out how to thrive in this environment without losing it. Ways to be productive without burning out. How to put our phones down. How to enjoy a moment’s silence: have a conversation, write a letter (not email), read a book. Be. Tricky, isn't it?
I wonder if we're losing sight of what matters. What are we missing out on when most of our attention is divided? For me, it comes down to presence. Being fully there when I'm having dinner with my sons, enjoying a walk with my wife, or being alone with myself. At 1 a.m., if I cannot go to sleep, it is perhaps the best time to spend the hour just being.
Until sleep eventually comes.