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posted by janrinok on Monday October 10 2022, @06:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the everybody-is-looking-for-something dept.

Researchers at Baylor and Campbell universities found that smartphone users seeking meaning and purpose through their devices and social media could experience the opposite:

Smartphone users will be disappointed if they expect their devices and social media to fill their need for purpose and meaning. In fact, it will probably do the opposite, researchers at Baylor and Campbell Universities found in a recently published study.

[...] The researchers' results provide a sociological link to the psychological studies that point to connections between digital devices and media use with feelings of loneliness, depression, unhappiness, suicidal ideation and other poor mental health outcomes.

"Human beings are seekers – we seek meaning in our relationships, our work, our faith, in all areas of social life," Pieper said. "As researchers, we were interested in the role that smartphones – and the media they give us instant access to – might be playing in meaning-seeking.

"We conclude that smartphone attachment...could be anomigenic, causing a breakdown in social values because of the unstructured and limitless options they provide for seeking meaning and purpose and inadvertently exacerbate feelings of despair while simultaneously promising to resolve them," Pieper said. "Seeking itself becomes the only meaningful activity, which is the basis of anomie and addiction."

[...] "Our research finds that meaning-seeking is associated with increased smartphone attachment – a feeling that you would panic if your phone stopped working," Nelson said. "Social media use is also correlated with increased feelings of attachment."

[...] A key finding of the study is that this feeling of attachment is highest for those who use social media less often. However, the research found that individuals seeking solace or connection through their phones in shorter spurts might exacerbate attachment.

"What is interesting is this association decreases for the heaviest of social media users," Pieper said. "While we don't know how this group uses social media, it might be that normalized use at the highest levels erases feelings of attachment for the individual – as we put it, it would be like saying one is attached to their eyes or lungs."

Journal Reference:
Justin J. Nelson and Christopher M. Pieper, "Maladies of Infinite Aspiration": Smartphones, Meaning-Seeking, and Anomigenesis, Sociological Perspectives, 2022. DOI: 10.1177/07311214221114296


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by KritonK on Monday October 10 2022, @11:32AM (1 child)

    by KritonK (465) on Monday October 10 2022, @11:32AM (#1275819)

    Actually, they still make plain phones. If shopping on line, untick the "smartphone" check box (or set the price range to under 100 $/€/£) in the store's product selection page, and you'll see links to the good stuff. I'm perfectly happy with my 2017 Nokia 3310, e.g. It does what it's supposed to do, is stylish, inexpensive, and its battery (still!) lasts for days, not hours. It may no longer be produced, but I see that it has been replaced by this year's reissue of the 8210, which seems very similar. An added advantage of the 3310 is that it only has 2.5G, which means that now that even 3G is being phased out, I wouldn't be able to connect to the internet with it, to use its tiny browser, even if I wanted to.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday October 10 2022, @12:41PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Monday October 10 2022, @12:41PM (#1275824)

    Be warned, apparently that's on its way out.

    Locally we just had a rash of phone upgrades as the local carriers apparently retired legacy infrastructure and only support calls via "Voice over LTE (VoLTE)" now - which seems to be something that was added some time after my old once-a-flagship-model 4G smartphone was made. Even my dad's decades old-indestructible flip phone got a free "upgrade" since it would no longer be able to make calls.