How a Zoom Call, Tommy Tiernan, and Some Celtic Lad from France Made Me Rethink Deleting Social Media and My Relationship with My Smartphone

I was fully planning to delete all my social media, I was exhausted with it all, constant news, constant ads for rubbish I don’t even want or need and the constant hate in the comments sections. I hate it, but there I am scrolling away, the infamous algorithm keeping me addicted. I’m reminded of the monologue from the 2017 film Trainspotting 2, where the character Mark Renton, played by Ewan McGreger, tries to explain to Veronica his twist on the slogan “Choose Life”  from a 1980’s anti-drug campaign which goes as follows:

Have a listen or read it below.

(Warning, some sexual and colourful language used)

“Choose designer lingerie, in the vein hope of kicking some life back into a dead relationship. Choose handbags, choose high-heeled shoes, cashmere and silk, to make yourself feel what passes for happy. Choose an iPhone made in China by a woman who jumped out of a window and stick it in the pocket of your jacket fresh from a South-Asian firetrap. Choose Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and a thousand other ways to spew your bile across people you've never met. Choose updating your profile, tell the world what you had for breakfast and hope that someone, somewhere cares. Choose looking up old flames, desperate to believe that you don't look as bad as they do. Choose live-blogging, from your first wank till your last breath; human interaction reduced to nothing more than data. Choose ten things you never knew about celebrities who've had surgery. Choose screaming about abortion, choose rape jokes, slut-shaming, revenge porn and an endless tide of depressing misogyny. Choose 9/11 never happened, and if it did, it was the Jews. Choose a zero-hour contract and a two-hour journey to work, and choose the same for your kids, only worse, and maybe tell yourself that it's better that they never happened. And then sit back and smother the pain with an unknown dose of an unknown drug made in somebody's​ fucking kitchen. Choose unfulfilled promise and wishing you'd done it all differently. Choose never learning from your own mistakes. Choose watching history repeat itself. Choose the slow reconciliation towards what you can get, rather than what you always hoped for. Settle for less and keep a brave face on it. Choose disappointment and choose losing the ones you love then as they​ fall from view, a piece of you dies with them until you can see​ that one day in the future, piece by piece they will​ be all gone and there will be nothing left of you to call alive or dead. Choose your future, Veronica. Choose life.”

It can be a pretty depressing monologue when we really think about it, but ever since I first seen the film in the cinema, this scene always stuck with me, particularly the point about human interaction reducing to nothing more than data and if we do keep spending our lives like this there will be nothing left to call alive or dead. Connection to others without technology seems to be disappearing rapidly and the human species does not seem to be coping very well with this with rising anxiety and depression. Humans are a social being; we thrive in small social groups. The human brain has only the capacity to deal with around 150 people on an empathic level, but here we are with 500, 600, maybe over a thousand friends on Facebook, and on top of that we are constantly being bombarded with news from all over the world. Yes, some of that news is interesting, sad, or whatever, but we are not built for that. We are built to focus on our local community, and people close to us and the environment around us. Trying to empathise with everything we come across on social media is exhausting, which leaves us too exhausted to deal with the realities of everyday life.

But…..over the weekend I got a reminder of the positive side of social media after having a catch up on a zoom call with a dear friend of mine whom I haven’t spoken to in a while. We don’t live close to one another, and we are kept up to date on each other’s lives via social media. And it’s for this reason that I can’t bring myself to delete social media. I have friends and family dotted all over the place and social media helps maintain those connections. However, something else happened over the weekend. My partner and I went out to a show Friday night, to see the comedian Tommy Tiernan. If anyone knows this artist will know that he hates smartphones and the show was a smartphone free event, meaning we had to put our phones away into one of those lockable pouches. We took our seats and had a 20-minute wait before the supporting act came on stage, I didn’t need my phone for distraction as I was too busy eating my Ben and Gerry’s cookie dough ice cream while we chatted. What really struck me was during the interval break which was about 40 minutes before the main act came on stage. We were sitting near the back and had a good view of most of the 900 attendees. As I watched, not one person on their smartphone and everyone was chatting. It was like I time travelled back to the early 2000’s. It was fantastic to watch. The main act came on stage and set the scene of an Irish smoked filled pub form a time before the smoking ban and smartphones, were everyone talked nonsense, had the craic, and had no fear of being recorded on a smartphone and then shared all over social media. It was nostalgic. It got me thinking, I was wrong to think that my relationship with social media had to go, it is my relationship with my smartphone that’s the problem. It’s like a drug, distracting me from the present moment. Distracting from emotions, if you can’t connect with emotions, you cannot connect with others.

So, what does the science say?

Smartphones shape modern life, but their overuse brings concerning effects on health, relationships, and empathy. To explore this I looked two papers, the first one from Leonid Miakotko (2017)"The Impact of Smartphones and Mobile Devices on Human Health and Life" and the second one from Hamida et al. (2021) "Smartphone Addiction as Mediator Effect: Loneliness to Empathy among Generation Z".

Physical and Mental Health Risks

Miakotko (2017) highlights several health concerns from excessive smartphone use, such as text neck, repetitive strain injuries, and disrupted sleep patterns from blue light exposure. Additionally, prolonged screen time fosters anxiety, stress, and digital addiction, which worsens mental well-being.

Smartphones, Loneliness, and Empathy

According to Hamida et al. (2021), smartphone addiction mediates the relationship between loneliness and empathy in Generation Z. Their study of 253 participants aged 18-23 found that loneliness often leads to increased smartphone dependency, which in turn reduces empathy. Digital interactions can replace meaningful face-to-face connections, hindering emotional understanding and compassion.

The Social Impact

Both studies emphasize that overreliance on smartphones disrupts personal relationships. Miakotko (2017) warns of digital addiction's role in social isolation, while Hamida et al. (2021) stress how empathy declines with increased screen time, reducing the ability to connect emotionally with others.

Strategies for Healthier Smartphone Use

• Promote Digital Well-being: Encourage regular screen breaks and real-world interaction to maintain social bonds.

• Foster Emotional Awareness: Educational programs that nurture empathy and self-awareness can help counter digital isolation such as mindfulness practices.

• Develop Healthy Digital Habits: Use apps to track and limit screen time, promoting a balanced digital lifestyle.

Together, these studies reveal how smartphones both connect and isolate us simultaneously. By addressing their physical, mental, and social effects with mindful use and healthy habits, we can enjoy technology’s benefits while protecting our own well-being and empathy.

So that’s the key here, being mindful of how we use our smartphones. I wonder what our ancestors would think if they saw us now, spending our time mindlessly staring at a screen. Our culture is being lost, not because of immigration or the influence of Europe. How can there be individual culture if we are all staring at the same smartphones, with the same apps, all made by the same people? There is a wise fellow Celt by the name of Samuel Lewis, a Cornish man now living in the Celtic region of Brittany in France who talks of how the word culture comes from the word cultivate, and our culture comes from the unique way the land is cultivated in that specific region and the local customs and rituals that go with it. It is this that our deep connections to the land and to each other belong, we cultivate communities. When we lose this connection we end up spewing out a monologue like the one in Trainspotting and become addicted to something to distract ourselves from the uncomfortable emotions of disconnect. I hope to introduce you to some of these old customs and rituals in future blog posts, some are fascinating, but for now I need to renegotiate a better relationship with my smartphone.

References

Miakotko, L. (2017). The impact of smartphones and mobile devices on human health and life. New York University.[Internet].

Hamida, A., Nashori, H. F., & Syamila, M. R. (2021, September). Smartphone Addiction as Mediator Effect Loneliness to Empathy among Generation Z. In 2021 9th International Conference on Cyber and IT Service Management (CITSM) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.