The Happiness Effect

by Donna Freitas

  TAKING CONTROL OF OUR SMARTPHONES: HOW STUDENT AFFAIRS PROFESSIONALS, FACULTY, AND PARENTS CAN HELP YOUNG ADULTS FEEL EMPOWERED WITH RESPECT TO SOCIAL MEDIA AND THEIR DEVICES

  Having interviewed nearly two hundred students, conducted a survey of several hundred more, and had hundreds of informal conversations with students, faculty, administrators, and parents over the years, I have come to recognize two things especially clearly. First, smartphones and social media have essentially taken over young people’s lives. Second, young people don’t feel they are well-equipped to handle this sea change. Those of us who work with them need to tackle these challenges head-on to help them acquire the tools to use social media in a way that makes them feel empowered rather than oppressed. This takes work.

  It needs to happen in the home.

  It needs to happen in the university classroom and in our schools.

  It needs to happen in our wider communities and in our social lives.

  The work ahead of us is necessary and urgent. Social media and smartphones have transformed our lives at such blinding speed that we have a lot of catching up to do.

  Academics can be slow to react to these kinds of rapid cultural changes. Scholars often consider anything that smacks of trendiness or pop culture to be unworthy of study. This means that in the halls and classrooms of our colleges and universities—the very places where young adults go to become good critical thinkers and citizens of the world—faculty will often regard the most potent influences on our daily lives as irrelevant to the lofty art of traditional scholarly inquiry.

  I mention this because, as a scholar myself, I know all too well that as soon as faculty see the word “practical,” many of them tune out. But attending to the ways in which social media is changing our lives and our world is not only the work of the Student Affairs folks and of parents. It is also the work of faculty. It is in the classroom that we teach our young people to reflect critically on the world—or at least, we should.

  What follows is some practical advice for parents, for those of us in mentoring and programming roles, and, yes, for faculty, too.

  SMARTPHONES ARE LIKE LITTLE DICTATORS (BUT THEY DON’T HAVE TO BE!)

  College students worry that they do not know how to be alone, how to be bored, how to sit with their own thoughts, or how to handle uncomfortable social situations or the silences that sometimes happen in conversations. They do know that all these things make them anxious, and they resort to the compulsive checking of their phones and their various apps to avoid having to deal with this reality. Phones provide them a constant and necessary respite from such a fate. Students both love and hate their devices because of this.

  I think often about how powerless the students I interviewed felt in the face of their smartphones, their inability to unplug, to not check their apps, to take much-needed breaks from the 24/7 news cycle of social media. And then I think of that small percentage of students in the online survey who felt they didn’t need to have periods of intentional unplugging because they had this thing called willpower—and I recall the superiority I detected in their tones as I read what they wrote. Those students know that they are special and unusual in a culture where most people do not have the willpower to unplug.

  Technology should be a tool for expression and connection, not a dictator of our emotions and in our social lives. As one student interviewee contended, we should use it, and not the other way around.

  The thing we have to learn is how.

  We need a dramatic change in our relationship to social media and its delivery devices. We need to shift our culture so that we have a healthy relationship to new technologies. I think both the home and the college campus are ideal testing grounds for such a shift, and that there are simple things that can help us can begin to change our relationship to social media and smartphones, and the way they affect our sense of self and our social lives.

  Number one on this agenda: we need to help each other to unplug in the home, in the classroom, on the practice field, and on campus.

  And let’s be real about willpower. It has limits.

  Faculty have begun to ban all technological devices from use in their classrooms because their students simply cannot resist the temptation to check their social media accounts and surf the Web during class. We’re returning to the age of pen and paper because if we want our students to learn and pay attention, there isn’t much other choice.

  I applaud such a decision. It’s realistic.

  Simply hoping for “willpower” among young adults, or even demanding it outright, isn’t a credible proposition. We are all too dependent (even codependent) on our devices. Perhaps only when we begin to experience regular pockets of required unplugging will we begin to develop the skills necessary to resist our devices and become more accustomed to not having our devices within reach.

  I do think we need to fully take in this reality: that in order to create environments where listening, learning, and engaged participation can take place, many faculty are resorting to banning all technology (even if this is the honest, practical fix to a lack of willpower and the availiblity of Wi-Fi throughout campus). What faculty (and students trying to study) are facing, is the fact that listening, learning, and engaged participation is, more often than not, stymied in the presence of our devices and with the availability of Wi-Fi. Surely, in some instances and for certain disciplines those same devices become necessary tools. But, as a culture, and as institutions of education, we need to take a long hard look at the ways that social media, Wi-Fi, and our devices are disrupting the educational process as opposed to facilitating it.

  For parents: Why not have a basket readily available for certain times of the day when everybody surrenders their phones? During dinner, while doing homework, even while sitting and watching television together in the living room. It’s a simple thing to do that empowers everyone to let go for a spell and be in each other’s presence or truly sit down to concentrate on something for a sustained time. And certainly, during family outings and vacations, consider requiring “unplugging” for all, or at least part, of the time.

  For faculty: ban all devices in the classroom if you believe this will help everyone focus and learn. Just do it. This may not be a perfect response, and your students may protest at first, but eventually the relief and the rewards of the technology-free classroom will grow on them. Obviously, this is not an imperative for everyone, but it will certainly not hurt a college student’s education to have a mix of classroom experiences, at least some of which take place entirely offline.

  For coaches, mentors, and Student Affairs professionals: hold device-free practices and programming. It’s a simple shift, but it will make an enormous difference in the experiences of the students who participate. The more “unplugged programming,” the better. Imagine what it would be like if there were opportunities and programs during first-year orientation where no smartphones were allowed. Imagine how different it would be among the first-year students if they couldn’t resort to using their devices. They would talk more, meet more new people, and have to learn the valuable skill of not simply grabbing their phone if they get nervous or if a silence occurs within a group.

  To everyone: don’t be afraid to take this step. If I’ve learned anything from the students who’ve participated in this study, it’s this: even if it’s difficult at first to set aside those devices, eventually the payoff—attention-wise, learning-wise, and socially—is enormous. It will help people to slow down and take a step back. It will create sustained and regular experiences of being present, being “alone,” and having thinking time, and it will give young adults the opportunity to learn how to do all those things they are becoming so afraid of, like just being still. Students are looking for help putting down their phones. Give them plenty of reasons to do so.

  Regular social media sabbaths will help students begin to feel like checking their phones and social media apps is a choice rather than a compulsion.

  CREATING WI-
FI-FREE OASES IN OUR LIVES AND COMMUNITIES

  I think we were all too hasty in wiring everything in our homes and on campuses and even in our parks without thinking about the possible consequences. Yes, the ease of connection is great! We can get online everywhere we go, even on vacation! But this has also become a terrible burden. Most young people—most people—don’t have the willpower to disconnect.

  Just as we need to empower each other to disconnect for regular periods by, at times, banning devices in the classroom and, at times, during sports practices, in the home, and even for programming on campus, we need permanent, identifiable Wi-Fi-free spaces in our communities and on campus.

  College students love those dead spots. It’s where they go to study. It’s where they’d like to socialize, at least sometimes, if the option were available. It’s where they’d be able to sit and think and learn to be still and alone with their thoughts. I heard too often from students about a tucked-away corner in the library where the Wi-Fi doesn’t reach and how absolutely everybody went there to try to get work done because it was the only place on campus where they could actually concentrate.

  Yet the Wi-Fi-free spaces the students find now are accidental ones. We need to become intentional about creating those spaces. We need to offer them up to everyone in our community for reflection, study, thinking, teaching, and socializing. It is a mistake to wire absolutely everything. It creates a situation in which everyone is constantly battling to not pick up their devices instead of being in the moment.

  So: What about a Wi-Fi-free cafeteria (especially on those big campuses with lots of cafeteria options)? A Wi-Fi-free lounge in the residence halls? A Wi-Fi-free coffee shop or cafe? A Wi-Fi-free spiritual space?

  Students will jam those spaces. They’ll go to them to study, to socialize, to eat, and to have blissfully uninterrupted conversations. Students spoke so much about the joys of not having Wi-Fi on vacation, on service and camping trips, and during study-abroad experiences. We need to create identifiable public spaces where students (and all of us) can take “mini-vacations” from being online.

  Likewise, what if colleges were to offer their faculty a selection of classrooms where Wi-Fi is simply not available? Then a faculty member could pick and choose what kind of classroom experience they would prefer for teaching and learning ahead of time, rather than have to go through the battle of banning devices on the first day and ensuring the students don’t succumb to temptation during class on subsequent days.

  RETHINKING COLLEGE APPLICATION AND CAREER CENTER ADVICE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

  We need to rethink the advice we are giving teens and young adults about how to polish and clean up their online profiles. Or, we at least need to better understand the consequences of this advice. We need to ask ourselves: Is it ethical that we check the accounts and profiles of college applicants, of potential employees, of our athletes and residence hall advisers? What is it doing to the emotional health and well-being of young adults to know they are being evaluated and judged on platforms that originated as spaces for socializing and self-expression? Is the cost of doing this too high for the young people we care about?

  We have turned social media into new stages for performance, new proving grounds for success, new spaces to showcase achievement, new places where young adults must work to meet the expectations of people they hope to please.

  I believe that we (those of us in the position to judge, including well-meaning parents) are contributing to the extremes students experience—of over-achieving and perfection, on the one hand, and vile behavior (as on the anonymous Yik Yak), on the other. I do believe that a message that started with good intentions has had significant negative effects on the social, emotional, and intellectual well-being of young adults. While the consequences may be unintentional, this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t confront them and change course.

  We may simply need to stop using social media as a place to measure, judge, and evaluate. We may simply need to acknowledge that none of us is perfect, and that potential employers and admissions officers don’t belong on applicants’ social media accounts. And we can’t let the excuse that we are ensuring our child can keep up with the competition let us off the hook in confronting this issue. I can hear people now: “But I want my child to get into a good college, so she has to toe the line like everyone else!” And, “We want our students to impress future employers, so regular ‘cleanups’ of their social media accounts are essential!”

  If these questions are inevitable, we must follow them up with others: Do I want my child to feel the crushing pressure of performing constantly for others and being inauthentic online? Do we want our students to learn to navigate who they are in public honestly, or do we hope they all work to become polished “name brands” while they walk (and eventually leave) our halls?

  Do we want the young adults we care about to learn that the appearance of happiness is more important than actually being happy?

  I would guess that the answers to this second set of questions (for anyone who cares about the health and emotional well-being of their children and students) will generally amount to no—no, we don’t want these results for young adults and students. This is not to say that we go straight back to the days of college students posting their keg stand photos on Facebook (among other inadvisable things)—and I do remember those days, since my Facebook account dates back to the earliest era of the platform when each individual college had its own Facebook, as yet unconnected to other colleges, and where my students posted images and updates that I wished I could unsee. But we need to take a long hard look at how our well-meaning advice is contributing to the advent and popularity (even the necessity) of sites like Yik Yak that allow young adults to do all the things (and far far worse) they feel they no longer can on sites attached to their names. Yik Yak is a bit of a monster, and I do believe that we (the well-meaning adults) need to consider whether our advice to young adults about social media has inadvertently helped to create it.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECTUAL REFLECTION ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA INSIDE THE CLASSROOM

  Very few students who participated in this research could identify classes on their campus that asked them to reflect on social media and smartphones and how they are changing our lives, our sense of self, and our world. The discussions that do happen seem to occur in the business school, where students learn about branding, advertising, and how to use social media for their careers. The conversation centers on social media as a marketing tool and stops there. The other department on campus where students might find such discussion is in courses on media and journalism, but again, these are courses about how to use social media to expand one’s audience or about the importance of social media to the dissemination of information.

  If the topic of social media came up for discussion outside of these two spheres, it was only in cursory ways, such as telling students not to use smartphones in class, or that they should use Facebook to set up group meetings or even set up a class Facebook page for communication and posting.

  Thus, we seem to be either relegating social media and smartphones to their professional uses (in business or media/communications) or merely considering them as tools. Until now, we seem to be following that “professionalization of Facebook,” Career Center–type model of drawing on social media and smartphones only when they touch directly on professionally related concerns.

  At only one school did I hear of a class where students were asked to consider how social media was affecting our self-understanding and our relationships. This discussion is the one that is needed the most.

  As I said in earlier chapters, the capacity to think critically and philosophically about the role and influence of social media in our lives seems to empower young adults to make better decisions in their use of it, helping them to understand what they see on it, as well as how their own participation influences their sense of self and real-life relationships. We need to actively empower our students to do rigorous analysis of how social
media and our devices are influencing all those big questions we ask (or should ask) in college: about how they are influencing our emotional, personal, familial, and relational lives; how we experience childhood; how we make choices; our sense of well-being and self-esteem; and, certainly, our happiness. One excellent place for this is in the classroom (whether that classroom is on a university campus or in a high school).

  This does not mean that we need to offer entire courses devoted to such topics (though we do need at least some course offerings of this nature), but we must ask direct questions about these subjects when we are teaching philosophy, psychology, theology, politics, sociology, and literature, which invite students to make connections between what they are studying and how they are living their lives.

  TEACHING STILLNESS, MEDITATION, SLOWING DOWN, AND JUST BEING

  In our efforts to wire everything, “connect” everything, update and upgrade classrooms, homes, and residence halls, we’ve made it incredibly difficult to just sit still and be. In any and all moments of stillness, of doing nothing, everyone can now reach for a device that will distract from the quiet of being offline. Even going for a run is now interrupted by Fitbits that monitor our heart rates and our number of steps (among many other things)—which is nice in theory but is yet another distraction from, say, just paying attention to the color of the leaves or letting the mind wander here and there. Now we can monitor and count and play with yet another device that delivers information and gives us specific objectives and goals, something to attend to other than our own thinking about life and the world, ourselves and the people we love, or the simple rhythms of our body as it moves.