At public events, speakers and performers often ask the audience to turn off their mobile phones, but Catherine Price really meant it. She asked attendees of Tuesday’s keynote speech at (ISC)² Security Congress 2019 to actually press their phones’ power button.

“I’m going to guess a lot of people are feeling uncomfortable. A lot of you faked it. A lot of you are probably hating me right now,” said Price, a journalist and author of the book, “How to Break Up with Your Phone.”

For the next hour, Price discussed the reasons we are so tethered to our phones, what it’s doing to us, and how we can take back control. She addressed the dangers of our constant attachment to phones in order to feel connected and prevent FOMO (fear of missing out), which causes anxiety, reduces our attention span and cognitive abilities, and may trigger health effects such as high blood pressure and depression. She also offered advice on how to break the habit.

Phones, she said, are like slot machines, which are designed to hook users by releasing dopamine, a neurotransmitter that reminds us of activities we enjoy and want to keep doing. “You never know what’s going to be on your phone, which makes you want to check it even more,” she said, citing social media, news apps and email as applications that tend to hook users.

“Apps are specifically designed to make them hard to put down. Why would that be? Because they make money,” she said. She cited Facebook, which essentially treats users as a product by collecting data about users and targeting ads at them.

Phones are causing a “state of continuous partial attention,” which splits our attention between our phones and our lives. And when we are looking at the phones, our attention is further split by email and other apps on the phone. While we may think we are multitasking, that is actually impossible because our brains cannot hold two thoughts at the exact same time, Price said.

In addition to reducing attention span, phones also are hurting our creativity because the state of continuous partial attention and FOMO create an effect of ongoing crisis. The body responds to crisis by increasing cortisol levels. Cortisol is a hormonal steroid that can increase the chances of obesity, stroke, heart disease, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression and other health effects.

Phone use also reduces the protein that the brain creates to promote creativity, she said. For cybersecurity professionals, she noted, this can be a problem since people in the field need to draw on their creativity to solve cybersecurity problems.

Breaking the Habit

Price shared several practices to help users reduce their phone time:

1. Have a positive goal. Figure out when your phone use is getting in the way of achieving that goal and try to correct that.
2. Notice your habits. Price suggested putting a rubber band around your phone, for instance, as a reminder to use it less. When you reach for the phone, the rubber band triggers the reminder and you stop yourself.
3. Kill the “slot machine.” Get rid of dopamine triggers by making the phone boring. Some tips she shared include making your home screen black and white; bright colors used in apps are designed to hook you.
4. Reduce your FOMO with an antidote – JOMO (joy of missing out).
5. Protect yourself. Build firewalls around your life to increase happiness and creativity through deliberate decisions to, for instance, not having the phone during meals, meetings and bedtime.

Vita Unplugged

Before Price took the stage, Pat Craven, director of the (ISC)²’s non-profit Center for Cyber Safety and Education, announced a pilot program called Vita Unplugged. The program’s goal is to reduce screen time among students for an hour a day to focus on other activities. The inspiration for the program, Craven said, came from reading Price’s book.