SDS 286: Solitude Deprivation

Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast, Hadelin is here.

Hadelin: Hey guys, how’s it going?

Kirill: We’re having a great time sitting on our balcony in Slovenia and watching some, do you see those? What do they call it? Paragliders?

Hadelin: Paragliders.

Kirill: Paragliders going down from the mountain. There’s five: red, green, blue, orange. See the ones over there on the right?

Hadelin: Yeah, yeah, I see them.

Kirill: Oh, so beautiful. Such a beautiful day. I heard like, last time we were in Slovenia two years ago, I was chatting to somebody and I always thought paragliding is, is this paraglide? It’s like when there it’s like a parachute, but you jump, run off the hill.

Hadelin: Well, in French we call it parapent.

Kirill: Parapent. I guess so, yeah. I guess paraglide. So the thing with paragliding is that I was so surprised to find out that you can actually, it’s different to skydiving in the sense that you can spend four hours.

Hadelin: Yes, that’s true. Because you can go up.

Kirill: You can go up because of the hot currents, right?

Hadelin: Exactly.

Kirill: On the mountains. Yeah. So it’s ridiculous. So I was like, you have to make sure you go to the toilet before you start. Otherwise, you’re stuck up there. That’s so good. And it’s so peaceful. So quiet going on. Anyway, today we’re talking about solitude deprivation. And, interesting topic.

Hadelin: Yes. And intriguing, isn’t it?

Kirill: Intriguing, indeed. So we’re listening to a podcast, who is this?

Hadelin: Tom Bilyeu, Impact theory.

Kirill: Impact theory. Great, great podcast. If you haven’t checked it out. Also available on Youtube. And the guest on this episode was Cal Newport. The author of books such as Deep Work. And this is a very interesting person Cal Newport. You won’t find him on social media. He just doesn’t have social media. So he’s written many books. He’s a, you know, like a forward thinker but you won’t find him on social media. And here’s why. Because he believes that social media is really destroying our brains. It’s very addictive.

Hadelin: Yes. And especially it causes solitude deprivation. Because you know how in social media you get all these notifications, all these news and you get some sort of addiction to see your phone every 15 minutes. So, the problem with this is that because you get all these notification and this kind of addiction, well you spend less and less time alone with yourself, which is exactly what solitude deprivation is about. So, the reason why he avoids social media is to be more alone with themselves. And why is it good to be more alone with ourselves? It’s because, well you get to be more conscious. Is that, what he explained? Be more conscious and be more aware of things around you. You can raise mindfulness around yourself and you get to…

Kirill: Develop your thoughts, your own thoughts.

Hadelin: Develop your thoughts, yes. And think about the important things in your life that are more meaningful than social media. And this is really, really useful for you.

Kirill: And more of, when you’re constantly checking your phone. On average, this is crazy, because in about 2015, I checked these numbers, 2015-16 on average, a person was looking at the phone 150 times. Now it’s going up to 300 times per day, on average. That means if you are looking less, if you’re looking at a hundred times per day, there’s somebody who was looking 500 times per day. Crazy. Right? And it’s so, it’s just unhealthy for the human brain to have that much dopamine in there. Like every time you check the phone, you’re getting a jolt of dopamine. And that’s not because there’s something useful there it’s because you don’t know what’s there, right?

Kirill: Even if there’s nothing, you look at it; okay, nothing, nothing. And then when you look at it and there’s something you’re like, oh, whatever it is, that’s a notification, like a like on a photo of a dog, who cares? That’s the dopamine. And we watched this, what’s it called? Black Mirror episode.

Hadelin: Yes, we did. Oh yes, that episode.

Kirill: Smithereens.

Hadelin: Yes. Yes. A great, great episode.

Kirill: Yeah. Yeah. And this is exactly about that, right? Like he, the whole story and we don’t want to ruin it for people.

Hadelin: We don’t want to spoil it. Yes. But, there is an episode of Black Mirror in season five or six.

Kirill: Six I think. Oh, anyway, the latest season.

Hadelin: Yes, exactly. And it’s exactly about this, about social media addiction. So, we don’t want to reveal, we don’t want to spoil because this is a great episode actually, so you might want to watch it. But, it’s very realistic with what’s happening in our time right now.

Kirill: Yeah. And, basically it shows that in that episode, this is not ruining the plot, but, how these companies, social media companies without pointing any fingers or at least in this episode, they describe how they have whole departments of scientists wearing lab coats who are, whose KPIs, their employability depends on how well they design the algorithms to maximize the amount of dopamine that’s going to go into your brain every time, on a daily basis.

Hadelin: And that sounds horrible. Considering the fact that now companies have an ethics, for, you know, they care about humans. They care about business of course, but they also care about humans. And to hear this is just so contradictory, don’t you think?

Kirill: I agree. It’s just, I think we are not aware of it enough. It has only being around for seven years or so. And if you think about it, it’s interesting to have listened to this episode by Cal Newport and then combine it with Smithereens, because in kind of in both of them they say that originally social media started out as a useful tool to stay in touch with your friends and to maybe send somebody a message once in a while, upload a photo or anything. But then they radically shifted towards this, kind of like making people check all the time. Before, at the start of social media we would check it like once a week, once a day at most, because not much was happening. It wasn’t designed in that way. The design has changed and I think it’s just like, we haven’t experienced it for long enough to be aware of the negative consequences.

Hadelin: But I think that today we are aware.

Kirill: Aware yeah, but they’re not like, they’re still under the radar. You know, they’re not legislated and you can’t sell. Cal Newport was talking about this. You can’t sell cigarettes to a child. Right. You can’t sell alcohol to a child, you can’t let a child go gambling, right? But the effects of that are very similar to the effects of social media. You can hand a child an iPad with Facebook on it. Go crazy.

Hadelin: So the stage we are in is just to tell people to pay attention, to be careful with this and to start explaining those concepts like a solitude deprivation, which is unhealthy for you. So, I guess we should help us spread this because, I’m sure that at some point there’ll be negative consequences, so bad that legislation will start coming to play.

Kirill: Yeah. We’ll probably look back on this like cigarettes, right? Or like any other addictive substance that at first was not really that legislated and now it is. Yeah. And so what can people do?

Hadelin: Well, what they can do obviously, well, very simply, they can start by putting their iPhones or androids in airplane mode, for example. But I would say, I have a very good advice to give. The first thing that most people do in the morning is to look at their phone. And they shouldn’t do that. They should absolutely not do that because there is a, I heard a theory that was confirmed by experimentation that if you wait five minutes in the morning before you see your phone, your day is going to be much better. Yes. Because actually you’re alone with yourself in these first five minutes. So you get to have non-addictive like the dopamine substance and you get to develop your thoughts more with yourself. And for this reason, well your whole day is going to be much different than if you didn’t resist to the phone.

Kirill: The problem, I guess is that most people have alarm clocks on their phone. So to switch off the alarm clock, they have to pick up their phone.

Hadelin: Oh. But it’s okay if, you know, I put my phone in airplane mode and sometimes I put the alarm clock. It’s okay if the alarm clock rings, as long as you don’t immediately deselect the airplane mode. You just, snooze it or no, stop it. You have to stop it actually. Yeah, I heard that. Another good thing is to stop it and never snooze it. So as soon as you hear the alarm clock, you must get out of bed and then you don’t put your phone in normal mode. Try to wait at least five minutes or 10 minutes.

Kirill: That’s very good advice. Yeah. I follow the same principle. I put an airplane mode before going to bed, but I would even take it further. I really want to just, I’ve been meaning to just buy a separate alarm clock, you know, one of those like little things and then you can keep your phone in another room. And for instance, like today, I went for a walk in the morning and I didn’t even take my phone with me. I took nothing with me. It feels so liberating. Like 45 minutes. I was away from everything. And even when you have your phone and you are not like intending on checking social media or anything, you’re still tempted to take a photo of that plant or of that tree or of the view. But when you don’t have it and you don’t have the option to take that photo, it’s so much freer.

Hadelin: Yes. You live the moment so much more.

Kirill: Yeah, exactly. So I guess that’s our advice for you, our dear listener this weekend. Try find an hour in your day on Saturday or Sunday or both if you can, and leave your phone at home and go for a walk or go do something without your phone for a whole hour, like physically separate from this device. And as far as you can go, the further the better and see how you feel.

Hadelin: Okay. And guys, the best moment to take action is now. So right now I want you to go to Amazon and buy an alarm clock, like a cheap one, $2 one. I’m sure there are $3-$4 one, buy an alarm clock so that you can be woke up by this and put your phone fully in airplane mode.

Kirill: That was awesome. Okay. There we go. That’s our 2 cents for this week and we’ll see you next time.

Hadelin: See you next time guys.