Let’s Have More Foam And Less FOMO

Thanks to drone footage we now know that we are closer to sharks than we ever realised.

This shit might freak you out (although, it is their home and we are merely temporary visitors). I put it to you that there’s a more immediate, more terrifying and more debilitating threat in our life. Research says we are never more than 5 feet away from our phones, and when we are, we feel anxious. On average we pick up our phone (often for no reason at all) 58 times a day.  Furthermore, it is believed that more than half of all adult men and women suffer from Nomophobia, i.e. the fear of being without their smartphone.

Being so hooked on these devices is not good for our health and wellbeing. It makes it harder than ever to function, to work, to parent, basically to ‘adult’. Studies showed that being distracted by our phones has seen a 10-point fall in our IQ. Let’s put this into perspective, that’s twice the drop in IQ that you’d experience by smoking weed. You are better off lighting up a joint than having your phone lighting up next to you. 

We are constantly being interrupted by our phones and the interruptions are rarely of a productive nature. The calls, the pings, the notifications, the need to check on our ‘likes’, the constant need to see what others are doing and the fomo we feel when we do, it’s chaos. 

A UK study showed that we check their smartphones on average every 12 minutes during our waking hours, with 71% saying they never turn their phone off and 40% saying they check them within five minutes of waking. We are addicted to this chaos. And our brains are being re-wired. No longer can we concentrate on a task, no longer can we read a book or watch a TV show without our minds wandering off. It’s such a “thing” that ex-Apple and Microsoft consultant Linda Stone has coined the term

Continuous partial attention – or CPA. (wonder if she feels the guilts). We are never fully committing our attention to anything. This is putting us into a hyper-alert state of mind that craves constant stimuli, which we believe we will find in our phones. Phone addiction is blocking the channels to what psychologists call the “flow state”. The happy place where we are completely immersed in a task.  

Surfing is one of the only ways I can get into this flow. The meditative state of hyper awareness where I’m focused on the ocean, my body, my surroundings. This level of bliss cannot be interrupted by my phone which sits out of reach on the sand. This vibrant aliveness only happens when I’m in the ocean and I know it’s partly due to my device being out of arm’s length (if anyone designs a surfboard with smartphone capabilities can we please petition to have them banned from the ocean?). 

Surfing teaches us how to be more mindful and can help facilitate greater concentration, and the ocean is one pf the few places for me where I can restore equilibrium and focus. When I’m in the zone, my mind is entirely absorbed in this activity. Time slows down. Unlike the sheer wastage of time I experience scrolling through my phone. 

If only we worried about our smart phones like we did about sharks. Unlike sharks who are calm most of the time, chilling in their own home and letting us stop by unannounced to party. It’s our phones who should be vilified. The very real and immediate threat of our phone is circling around, provoking us, baiting us and its vicious jaws are increasingly tightening on us.

Let’s try and put down the phone and spend some more time in the foam….