I got my first cell phone right before I started college.
It’s a small red Alcatel model, equipped with a large antenna, a microscopic screen and large plastic buttons: “One Touch”. SMS then begins to change the way we communicate. I no longer have to wait at home for someone to call me. Cell phones open up a world of possibilities.
Technology and communications are intertwined with how I have explored the world. My experience is not unique: it is that of my entire generation — the “old” millennials. Born in the early 80s, I’m old enough to have felt the joy of receiving postcards and handwritten letters, and Arcade Fire lyrics in We Used to Wait resonate within me.
That said, I am young enough to have built my professional identity with digital technology. The promise of being able to carry the world in your pocket and of being able to find an audience without geographical limitations has profoundly shaped my relationship with journalism. I started my first blog in 2004, joined Facebook in 2007, LinkedIn in 2008, Twitter in 2009, and later, Pinterest, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat and TikTok — although I was never a user very active of these last two networks.
I’m not nerd, but the impact of technology on journalism and our cultures has never ceased to fascinate me. I’m a bit of a ” news junkie “. Nothing pleases me more than an investigation as ambitious in substance as in form. I unearthed story ideas and found sources on social media. I am passionate about all the digital innovations that have transformed the journalistic environment, particularly in Quebec.
I left Montreal for San Francisco almost three years ago. I have traveled the highway connecting San Francisco to Silicon Valley, I-280, many times. Each exit sign points to a place that evokes innovation: Menlo Park, where Meta’s offices are located. The Stanford campus. Sand Hill Road, a thoroughfare known for its high concentration of VC (Venture Capital) firms.
Since living here, I have been fascinated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Even though I’m tech-savvy, my relationship with screens bothers me.
Looking at my cell statistics, I see that on average I “take” my cell more than 80 times a day — I invite you to do the exercise, it was revealing for me. My most time-consuming applications are social networks: messaging, Instagram, of course, and LinkedIn. I’m abandoning Twitter a lot, I’ve always protected myself from TikTok and its formidable algorithm — I suspect that the short videos that make the application so successful could eat up even more of my time.
So I often dream of a world where I would no longer be reachable. I am nostalgic for the time when scroll did not exist. I often talk about this bygone time, between two trips on my cell phone, to my 11-year-old daughter.
Like all parents of my generation, I worry about the impact of social networks, and more broadly, screens, on the lives of our children. In the United States, as in Quebec and France, the place of cell phones in our schools is the subject of numerous debates. Should it be banned? What place should screens have in schools?
American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt made a lot of noise in the spring by publishing a book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, in which he notes that American adolescents and young adults are doing less and less well. According to the figures it publishes, anxiety has increased by 134% since 2010, and depression by 106%.
The root of the problem, according to his argument, is the access these young people have had since childhood to networks and distractions of all kinds on their screens.
His observation is enough to distress any parent. Does cell phone harm children? It’s a big question, and if it seems fundamental to me, I believe that we must also confront its corollary: our own relationship with technology.
“Everywhere, I always see adults with their faces in their screen, they don’t look at their children and they are distracted, they always look at Instagram or apps random and they are captivated by the life of random strangers who live on the other side of the country,” my 11-year-old daughter told me recently.
I know she’s talking about me too.
Getting off the phone is not easy. In any case, that’s what Will Stults, 30, an American who has just launched into the business of selling phones with very limited functionality, believes. dumbphonesafter realizing he was spending way too much time on his phone.
“Life is not eternal. The question I ask myself is: what do I want to spend my time on? I think back to my twenties and the time I spent on my phone and you can be sure I wish I had that time back. But I also believe that there is a balance to be had: you have to find your sweetspot with technology,” Will tells me.
Changing is not easy, but we have a lot (of time) to gain.