Warning! Overusing smartphones can be detrimental to your health! We might hear warnings like this, and perhaps even believe them to be true. Perhaps the claims are supported with solid scientific evidence on things like overdependence and addictive behaviors, sleep deprivation, information overload, and severe stress and anxiety. And yet, we pay them no heed, and continue to overuse personal technologies in unhealthy ways. Why? I think part of the reason is because we aren’t necessarily equipped to ask the right questions, and we simply allow ourselves to succumb to the attractive idea that smartphone technologies will simplify our lives, despite the mounting evidence that suggests the contrary.

As I explain in this episode, we have seen this before — those who remember flip-phone technologies and their descendants can probably recall how the promises of convenience would eventually be tempered with unforeseen costs and inconveniences. Moreover, the increasing complexity on how we use and adapt the technologies (witness the incredible diffusion of collaboration apps, for example), and it should no surprise that these devices can become incredibly burdensome — we fell like can’t stop using them even if we wanted to. Can this cycle be broken? Can we step back, stop, and think about what we may be doing to ourselves in the name of convenience?