Burnout - Research - Life is easy with technology, but is it happier?

Life is easy with technology, but is it happier? 

- Gary Stern

A 2015 study reported that 68 percent of all Americans have smartphones.

Steve Josephs is a 74-year-old tennis pro from Woodstock, N.Y. He does not have a phone or computer or any type. But is Joseph missing something because he can’t obtain online travel deals and post on Instagram, or is he—and the other outliers like him—happier avoiding the internet?

“If I want to buy something, I go to the store and buy it. If I want to send a message, I don’t mind dropping a letter in the mail,” he adds.

In Josephs’ view, most people’s over-reliance on their smartphones and consistently checking messages is a way to “avoid contact with the outside world.” Instead, he stays in touch with a host of people through an old-fashioned mechanism: the landline phone. It works effectively, conversations are more in depth and more private than posting one’s innermost thoughts for all to feast on via social media.

The four basic uses of the digital age—information, shopping, communicating with friends, and engaging in social media.

“Cognitive overload is a big problem with internet use,” cites Suler. “There is so much going on in cyberspace that our mind tends to go numb. We lose the ability to think critically, to examine things carefully, to notice subtlety, and to focus our attention.”

smartphone users are invariably overcome by distraction. “They don’t pay careful attention to what’s happening around them or the people around them. They lose their ability to carry on conversations face-to-face,” Suler says.

“Abstaining from device use helps revive that awareness of and ability to effectively interact with people and the environment around us in the here and now,” he notes.

Suler describes the people constantly tuned into their mobile devices as “disassociated physically.” The dependence on devices is a “physically passive activity,” which isn’t good for people’s health and contributes to people being disconnected from their bodies and physical surroundings.

An increasing minority are fed up with “listening to people rant in social media. They are tired of the competition to get likes, the relentless wave of advertisements forced upon us, and the superficiality of what they see in social media,” declares Suler.