Attention and my phone

The title “The Siren’s Call” is a reference to a scene in the Odyssey. Odysseus is traveling through the sea by ship on his quest. He will have to pass an island of sirens famous for luring male sailors in with their seductive song before boarding their ships and eating them alive. 

Odysseus stuffs his ears with wax, and orders his crew to tie him to the mast of his ship with tight rope. When his ship passes the island, he thrashes and struggles against the ropes tying him down as hears the sirens’ song. He wants nothing more than to join the sirens on their island. Once the ship is out of range of the sirens, the spell wears off and he can be set loose again. 

Hayes mentions a critical choice Odysseus made: that he didn’t avoid the sirens’ danger completely. He knew he would be overcome with temptation, and that giving in to that temptation would end in peril, but he still couldn’t resist a little taste of it out of curiosity. He found a way to literally restrain his temptation. 

The story is a pretty obvious allegory for sexuality and  hedonism, but Hayes uses it to illustrate our modern relationship to technology and the constant stream of content that needs our attention in order to turn a profit. We know this is bad for us in excess, but we still can't resist tuning in at least just a little. How do we control our attention when everything on our phones is designed on every level to reel it in every minute?

Hayes observes that much of your screen time isn’t necessarily mindlessly scrolling, but innocent 2-15 minute checking of emails or Instagram during a random moment of boredom. This is the type of phone overuse that I think is most destructive to me right now. Though I have also had periods where I spend way too much time doomscrolling and spending too much time on the internet in the past. 

We only have so much attention, and where we put that attention is really what defines our memories and experience of reality. 15 minutes spent looking at your phone is 15 minutes not spent looking at something else in the world. You could have started up a conversation with the person next to you, or noticed a butterfly, or thought about someone you hadn’t for a while. And your life is largely made up of little 15 minute moments. I don’t want my life to be defined by my phone. 

I don’t plan on being one of those people who gets a flip phone or doesn’t spend any time at all on social media. I really love entertainment, and news, and pop culture, which are all things that require being online a fair amount. But like basically anyone with a smartphone or an internet connection, I am still trying to figure out how to have technology enrich my life instead of stealing it away from me. Because sometimes it does feel that way. I feel that constant flood of content degrading my attention span. I know it already has to an extent, probably permanently. And that scares me. 

It is hard to write about this topic because it is so ubiquitous it feels cliche and almost redundant. It’s like the modern problem. I don’t really have many new revelations on my phone use after reading this book. But it was a good reminder to pay attention to the attention I give to my phone. I actually don’t think I’m spending a crazy amount of time on my phone right now, but it’s still more than I’d like. And I feel like moderating phone use is a constant practice.

Things I do/have done/want to do to avoid spending as much time on my phone 

Carrying a book with me

I started doing this in school just because I had a lot of reading to do because of my English classes. It really helped me manage my screen time and finish books faster. Whenever I had a spare moment, I’d read a page or two of my book instead of checking my phone. If I got into it and had a spare moment, I’d just sit down in a comfy place and read for a while. I started doing it even if I wasn’t rushing to finish a book for a class for this reason. 

There are a few cons though, the first being that it’s annoying to have to carry around a book with you which is most of the reason why I haven’t in a while. Maybe this is me being self couscous but sometimes it makes me feel slightly obvious to be reading a book in line at FedEx or whatever, like pretentious or performative. Even though it’s not when I do it! I swear. Also if you are a girl reading a book in public you will get hit on with near absolute certainty. Which is kind of fun but also gets kind of annoying. My favorite was when I was halfway through reading Frankenstein and a guy, who was 100% serious, came up to me and asked me if I knew Frankenstein was actually the name of the doctor and not the monster. I said no I didn’t and asked him to explain it to me, and he did very earnestly, it was really funny.

Doodling

I only do this rarely, but sometimes I’ll bring a pad of paper and a pen or pencil with me to doodle. I do this the most when I’m expecting to eat at a restaurant alone. I like to sketch the workers and customers and the view outside from the windows. 

I think another tempting thing about phones is just the tactile element of fiddling with something, so having something tangible to keep your hands busy is nice. Sometimes I’ll just scribble little shapes and doodles onto a napkin or whatever. I was eating out at a restaurant the other day and saw two people at one table who seemed to have run out of conversation, so they were just silently stabbing their napkins with their forks to make napkin art. They got all flustered when the waitress came with their food right as they were showing each other their napkin art, but I thought it was great. So much more fun for me to watch than if hey had just been on their phones. 

Taking photos on a digital camera 

This is not really an everyday thing. If I’m in a country with a lot of pickpockets I bring my parents’ little digicam from the early 2000’s so that I can take photos without risking my phone being stolen. At least that was the original purpose. The last time I did this was when I was in Mexico City with my parents earlier this year. I’ve also done it out on hikes just because I want to take nice photos of trees and such. What I’ve found when I’ve done this is that it makes me use my phone way less. Especially when doing an activity that’s out of the ordinary,  one of the main reasons to take out your phone is to take a photo. And then you might stay on it to do whatever else after, responding to a text or getting distracted by a notification. A digital camera can only take the photo, obviously, so once the photo is taken there’s not a reason to keep it out. It also made me much more intentional about what I took photos of because I had limited SD card space. This section is a little off topic, I don’t think I take too much photos on my phone or anything, but it’s a cool experience to be precious about what I did and did not take a photo of. I don’t really do this when I’m just living my regular life, but I kind of want to once in a while.

Being bored 

I think there are two kinds of being bored: there’s the bad kind that is more long term and quieter of just being bored of your life. That I think might just be a general lack of fulfillment. Then there’s another kind that I think is a healthy kind of boredom, of just not knowing what to do in your immediate present. I think that kind of boredom and mind wandering is where a lot of unexpected thoughts and reflections and observations come from. It’s also very grounding. I think that because of smartphones, there isn’t enough of the latter kind in people’s lives.

Recently I was thinking about how bored I often was as a little kid. There’d be summer days where I’d just run out of things to do, and I’d just lie there on the floor so frustrated because I didn’t know what to do next and I was so bored. Or when my parents would take me on an errand I didn’t want to be a part of, and I’d be wandering around whatever random store I didn’t want to be in for an hour. I’d get so frustrated. I’d look around at everything to try and find something to occupy my mind. I’d stare at the popcorn ceiling and try and find shapes in the texture. I’d watch the box of light through a window shift with the moving sun. I’d read all the labels of the products the store was selling.

As soon as I had a smartphone with unlimited data, I never had to be bored in that way ever again. There’s universe of things more exciting to look at than a popcorn ceiling when you have a phone. But those experiences I remembered were so grounding and almost meditative. They made me feel real and tangible. They made time feel slow. They made me pay close attention to the world around me. I think it’s really healthy to experience a little of that kind of boredom. 

I have been trying lately to make myself just be really bored and frustrated instead of looking at my phone. To observe the world around me even if there’s nothing obviously interesting about it. Lately, I’ve been playing little games with myself if I’m out in public, and bored maybe waiting in line, and want to go on my phone. Like challenging myself to find 5 colors in the room or listen if I can hear 5 different sounds, or eavesdropping on people’s conversations. 

Talking to people 

This one is the hardest for me because I am naturally pretty shy. My dad said once that before phones, when people were bored, the go-to thing was usually to just start a conversation with whoever was next to you. Not even with the goal of being outgoing, it was just literally the only thing to do. That concept is kind of crazy to me. Like what a louder world it must have been. 

I’ve spent an unholy amount of time sitting in bureaucratic waiting rooms the past few months while applying for my visa. Maybe that’s also why I’ve been thinking about boredom a lot.  There’d be rows of people just hunched over on their phones. I personally didn’t always really want to chat with the randos next to me, but I think the waiting room vibes would have been better if people were making small talk with each other. I think that would be more fun for me. Even though I'm not much of a talker, I'm a huge eavesdropper.

I think that the lack of uncomfortable small talk and small social interactions in daily life is a serious threat to community, but that’s a whole other topic I won’t get into right now. Anyway, I think it's a good challenge to just try and chat with the people around if the situation is right. Like while waiting for your coffee to be made to just talk to the barista instead of awkwardly checking Instagram or responding to a text.

Exercise and long walks   

Exercise is obviously really important for attention and general brain health. Sometimes, I am drawn to my phone or the internet because I’m feeling kind of scatterbrained and jumpy, and nothing else can keep up with my mind’s fast pace. That feeling is usually an indicator that what my body and mind really needs is exercise and I need to get myself to the gym or go on a run or long walk.  Long walks are my favorite for specifically settling and slowing my mind. I’m a huge advocate for long walks, they are my go-to cure for a lot of things.

Making my life more joyful 

The time I’ve spent the most time on my phone and internet by far was during covid. I hated every minute of my daily reality and just wanted time to pass as fast as possible. Endless scrolling was an easy escape and made the hours go by quickly and easily. Another time I spent too much time on my phone was during a particularly rough semester of college. Without going into it, I felt really stuck, and lonely, and angry, and sad. I wasn’t very happy with myself or with the reality of my daily life. Probably because of how I was feeling, I also wasn’t feeling super focused in my classes even though I wanted to be.

I started spending a lot more time my phone than usual. I was consuming content all the time. Social media, listening to music or podcasts constantly, checking my email even though I knew there was nothing there. My mind would turn right off in a way that it couldn’t with anything else. It made time pass quickly when I just wanted the day to be over.

After a while, I noticed I was struggling to read books and to write. I can’t emphasize enough how disturbing this was to me. Reading and writing are maybe one of my favorite things in all of life. Pretty high up there on my personal Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Now I was itching to check my phone after a single page. This scared me straight, I deleted everything for a bit and forcing myself to sit in my unhappiness and boredom. Which was not fun, but I think very necessary.

Soon after that, I was in London and Paris for a month and a half for school. I barely touched my phone for anything other than directions. Why would I want to distract myself from a reality that was so new and exciting and beautiful?

Looking back, the periods of time I’ve spent the least amount on my phone are often also the times I felt most fulfilled and excited about life. Content and the internet is an escape from reality. If I want to escape my reality all the time, that is not a great sign. 

Those experiences made me think of that temptation to distract myself with my phone as an indicator that maybe I have to do something to make my life more interesting and joyful. Find a new hobby. Spend more time with people who make me genuinely happy. Change my routine. Etc.