{"id":11142,"date":"2024-06-27T15:49:21","date_gmt":"2024-06-27T21:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wakeupcall\/?p=11142"},"modified":"2024-08-02T10:00:23","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T16:00:23","slug":"the-shimmer-how-our-smartphones-are-slowly-killing-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wakeupcall\/2024\/06\/the-shimmer-how-our-smartphones-are-slowly-killing-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shimmer: Reclaiming Your Attention in a Distracted World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>

How smartphones are ruining lives and what you can do about it. Photo via Joshua Sortion and Unsplash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Have you heard of \u201cthe shimmer<\/strong>\u201d? It\u2019s a term coined by the life philosopher and dharma<\/a> artist Erick Godsey<\/a> to describe our unhealthy attraction to our smartphones, or any screen that sucks us into the Internet.<\/p>\n

Godsey, whose ideas are rooted in mythology, didn\u2019t exactly invent \u201cthe shimmer.\u201d He borrowed it from the 2018 science fiction movie Annihilation<\/em>. In that film, the shimmer is (as reported by Wikipedia) \u201ca mysterious quarantined zone of mutating plants and animals caused by an alien presence.\u201d \u00a0But the truly scary part is that the shimmer \u201cdistorts and transforms everything that falls within its boundaries,\u201d including the DNA of humans, causing us to self-destruct.<\/p>\n

In the online video Mastering the Shimmer<\/em><\/a>, and on podcasts and blogposts, Godsey makes the case that the shimmer is living amongst us today\u2014radically changing who we are as people, what we do and how we act. And not in a good way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a new world \u2026 this is something never seen before.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n*** ** Godsey sees the emergence of the digital world as one of the most significant moments in the history of the universe\u2014right up there with humans learning how to write and the invention of the printing press. But the Internet may be even more powerful, as it now connects virtually every person in the world.<\/p>\n ** ***It\u2019s a huge paradigm shift and it may seem like progress. After all, we now walk through life with a supercomputer, aka a smartphone, in the palm of our hands. We literally have a world of information right at our fingertips. But as Godsey points out, \u201cinstead of using the Internet, the Internet has begun using us.<\/strong>\u201d Consider these facts:<\/p>\n \nWe now check our phones an average of 144 times a day (for 18- to 34-year-olds, estimates run as high as 200 times a day)<\/li>\nOn average, we look at our phones once every 4.9 minutes<\/li>\nWe spend about four and a half hours a day on our phones<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n The problem with all this time devoted to looking at our phones? Aside from the damage it does to our souls, our attention<\/a> has begun to fragment. As Godsey says, we\u2019ve become so distracted, that \u201cwe don\u2019t know we\u2019re drowning.\u201d We\u2019re less able to focus on the tasks in front of us or complete them in a timely manner. We\u2019re also far less present to those around us and right in front of us.<\/p>\n It\u2019s even worse for the young people in our lives. In the book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness<\/em>, Jonathan Haidt calls smartphones and social media \u201cthe largest uncontrolled experiment humanity has ever performed on its own children.\u201d His take: \u201cthe experiment has been a disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n Are advances in social media apps to be blamed?<\/strong><\/h3>\n On a short discourse on the Waking Up<\/em> app, host Sam Harris<\/a> explains the problem: Social media platforms are using algorithms that rule our attention, by exploiting emotions like desire, fear, and outrage. When we click on these attention-grabbing posts, the algorithms give us more of the same. More desire. More fear. More outrage. This snares us in an endless loop of manipulation and is bad for everyone involved, especially our youth.<\/p>\n Godsey reports that depression among teens had gone up almost 250% in the past 10 years. Measurements of everything from anorexia to ADHD to anxiety are all way up. And if you think the new generation is just more open to talking about their mental health issues, data shows there more to it than that. Emergency-room visits for self-inflicted injuries, including suicide<\/a> attempts, are up over 100% in the past decade<\/p>\n The good news is the shimmer doesn\u2019t have to win.<\/strong><\/h3>\n******* ** *******The shimmer isn\u2019t going away but there is a person that can beat it. You<\/em>. As Sam Harris explains, you can do this because \u201cyou have the ability to choose what things you pay attention to.\u201d It starts with being alert to what you\u2019re doing and not mindlessly grabbing for your phone every 4.9 minutes.<\/p>\n To fix your own attention deficit, be aware<\/a> of what\u2019s happening. Godsey believes that attention is a skill, and you need to train it \u201clike an athlete.\u201d That starts by managing your phone, instead of letting it manage you. Here are a few tips:<\/p>\n \nDon\u2019t allow social media apps to send you push notifications<\/strong> like text message alerts. Go into your settings and turn them off.<\/li>\nQuarantine your social media apps<\/strong>. Put them in a folder where they\u2019re not easily accessible and it takes more than a single clip to reach them.<\/li>\nBlock your time<\/strong>. Only allow yourself to access social media at certain times during the day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n What will you do with all the extra time you have by spending less time on the phone? If you haven\u2019t already, start a practice that improves your mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. Godsey has some ideas and I\u2019ve added a few of my own: Meditate. Exercise. Pray<\/a>. Eat healthy. Go outside<\/a>. Keep a notebook where you can jot down your thoughts and dreams. Make a contribution to the world, be it sharing your art or your humanity.<\/p>\n The shimmer isn\u2019t going away. It\u2019s here to stay. But by being a little more mindful of your actions and how you fill your days, you can do more than deal with it. You can thrive<\/a> despite it.<\/p>\n If you like this story, check out my book Wake Up Call: Daily Insights for the Spiritually Curious<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you heard of \u201cthe shimmer\u201d? It\u2019s a term coined by the life philosopher and dharma artist Erick Godsey to describe our unhealthy attraction to our smartphones, or any screen that sucks us into the Internet. Godsey, whose ideas are rooted in mythology, didn\u2019t exactly invent \u201cthe shimmer.\u201d He borrowed it from the 2018 science […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1184,"featured_media":11145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203,277],"tags":[2379,1175,2376],"class_list":["post-11142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-attention","category-awareness","tag-age-of-distraction","tag-erick-godsey","tag-the-shimmer"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Shimmer: Reclaiming Your Attention in a Distracted World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Is your smartphone distracting you from life? 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