Stephen Monteiro, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, says that conversations around smartphone use tend to focus on content, rather than on the place the devices themselves have come to hold in our lives.
“Social media is a big one. Gaming is another big one. More and more the use of AI is another one,” he said. “We’re only getting part of this story with that, and we really need to focus as well on the devices themselves and how we interact with the devices, and how that can build this sort of sense of companionship or sense of intimacy between us and the devices.”
He says people will often use their phones without thinking.
“ We reach out for the device oftentimes when we’re not even sure what we’re gonna access through the device, or if there is something that we need to access through the device,” he said. “We have that sort of longing or desire to interact with the device.”
Monteiro says smart devices have become so integrated in people’s lives that it’s not a question of whether or not we should have them.
“ We’ve become so reliant on them just to go about our everyday lives. However, just because we’re reliant on them doesn’t mean that we should necessarily behave for them the way that they want us to behave.”
He says that phones are often tracking various kinds of data, even sometimes when the device isn’t being actively used.
“When you’re sharing things, yes, you’re sharing it with your friends and so forth, but you’re also sharing it with the social media platform, the corporation behind it, and that’s something that’s talked about a lot, right? But also this sharing even when we’re not using the device, that we really have to one, start thinking about that and two, think about ways that we can control that.”
Monteiro points to mobile ordering at restaurants as one way our relationships with our phones have come to erode day to day relationships with other people.
“When you go into a coffee shop or a fast food restaurant or something like that, and you may possibly just complete your order on your phone, right? And then pick up your food without interacting with anybody, right? That kind of changes the whole sort of social fabric of society when we do that all the time,” he said.
“You do it sometimes when it’s crowded or something like that. That’s one thing. But when we do it all the time, it breaks down that kind of social bond that exists between, between us and others.”
He says people could change the settings on some tracking features, or spend some time in a day away from their phones to help maintain an intentional relationship with their devices.
“ We may feel in some ways that [our phone] is our friend and we have these connections, but it’s not our friend and everything that we share with it is collected and potentially can be used in, in other ways that we don’t know. Both today, but also, we have to think about the future, right? What other sort of ways our data might be used in the years to come?”
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