Hold Me

It's early morning, you are in bed with your partner, and you both have just awakened.  What do you immediately do?  That depends on the state of your heart and mind.  One partner might reach out for, hold, and embrace the other, savoring some precious moments together. To do so provides more than mutual warmth and comfort.  The activity communicates powerful messages—you are top of my mind, my day begins with you, you have my undivided attention and time.  If instead, you awaken, reach for, and become engrossed in your mobile device, you also are communicating clearly to your partner.

Attention and time.  No matter how rich or poor you are, these are life’s most precious, unreplenishable resources.  In the 21st century, our limited attention and time are stolen. 

Contemporary attention and time bandits, many of whom are multi-millionaires and billionaires are organized into a variety of cartels.  A few of these thieving conglomerates are tech hardware manufacturers, internet providers, and entertainment producers.  A mafia of others - marketers and similar influence purveyors - assist those who traffic in attention and time theft.

Attention and time crooks have preferred devices: personal electronic devices, such as cellphones and computer tablets.  These so-called mobile devices have an addictive allure and permit unprecedented intrusive manipulation by persons seeking to exploit us. Virtually all tech hardware manufacturers, internet providers, and entertainment producers create and disseminate methods and memes to keep us perennially focused on whatever they are promoting.  The more they can do so, the more they earn.  Compulsively attached to their items and agendas, we have little attention and time for personal activities that occupied us in the 20th century.  To cite one well-publicized and obvious example: We rarely talk at length on the telephone anymore, and we tend to keep our face-to-face meetings to a minimum.  When we must be in the presence of another flesh and blood person, we often interpose an electronic device between them and us at every opportunity.  Our electronic hardware, software, and internet are specifically structured to continually present a never-ending array of enticing stimuli to capture and monopolize our attention and time.

If you believe that the attention and time robbers are satisfied with their success, think again.  Consider the research of Nicholas H. Lurie and his colleagues (2016).  Their paper, Everywhere and at All Attention and times: Mobility, Consumer Decision Making, and Choice explicitly targets electronic mobile devices and consumer decision making.  They seek to advise on ways to advance strategies to steal our attention and time through mobile electronics by better understanding mobile ecosystems, their contexts, and the interactions between the ecosystems, contexts, and the minds of the consumers.  To directly quote three of the many questions that they seek to answer and exploit:

"How does mobility affect cognitive capacity and the influence of incidental information?"

"Are mobile decision-makers more myopic?"

"How do mobile ecosystem capabilities and pervasivity affect socially undesirable and personal choices?"

If Lurie and his group succeed in their quest, electronic hardware, software, and the internet will be all the more effective in monopolizing your attention and time.  Please note that I am not condemning all electronic devices and the persons who make, distribute, or use them.  The devices actually can and do save us attention and time, if used with discretion.  My point is that the "system" promulgates indiscriminate, continuous, compulsive use. 

Every minute of indiscriminate, continuous, compulsive electronic device use is a minute not spent on anything else.  Only you can determine the physical- and mental-health consequences of your personal, unique electronic device usage.  Do your devices keep you in your chair rather than moving about?  Do the devices interpose a barrier between you and authentic, in vivo human experiences?  On the other hand, do you use devices sparingly and prudently - think Fitbit - in ways that can enhance your health?  When you awaken in the morning will you first hold, attend to, and spend time with your partner or with your device? The choice is yours to make.

Reference:

Nicholas H. L., et al. (2016).  Everywhere and at All Times: Mobility, Consumer Decision-Making, and Choice.  Invitational Choice Symposium, Lake Louise, Canada, May, 2016