By Ryan Maloney, assistant women's volleyball coach
On October 23rd, in between our regular season loss to Oswego and the midnight meeting that took place in the hotel lobby that night, we had a 30-minute bus ride back to our lodgings. As soon as everyone boarded the bus, Coach Braun yelled, half out of frustration and half out of necessity, "And turn your cell phones off! No cell phones tonight!"
Silence would normally ensue after such an admonition. Instead, a half-hour singing competition began, a la NBC's The Sing-Off. You'd think we'd just won the match, not lost it.
I was reminded of this scene recently as I listened to Simon Sinek, author of "Start with Why," give a podcast interview about the rise of depression in young people. He attributes it in large part to a longing to feel valued and trying to find that value on the screen of an iPhone:
He goes on to relate cell phone addiction to alcohol addiction:
"We all want to feel valued and we all want to feel loved, so when we get a text, or a 'like' we think, 'Somebody likes me!' We've all had it where if you're feeling a little depressed you send out ten texts hoping to get one back. If you do, it makes you feel good, but it doesn't last. It's a bit of a hedonistic treadmill. Real relationships are based on trust."
Simon Sinek, author of "Start with Why".
"Young people aren't practicing learning to make relationships because they're so attached to the device. Let's look at social media and texting. We don't recognize the addictive qualities, so we allow teenagers free access, which is like opening up the liquor cabinet to them. And so what you have is an entire generation of people who associate their self-worth with the amount of 'likes' they get and how many followers they have ... Their ability to have difficult conversations is gone."The college system is stocked full of people who are being termed "digital natives," people who came to maturity in an age of constant digital connection:
"Universities are now dealing with an uncomfortably high number of students who are taking leaves of absence due to depression. That's unheard of in prior university systems. Depression is on the rise among young people. Suicide is on the rise among young people. Bullying is on the rise among young people. This is, in part, because we have a generation that has grown up addicted."The antidote to the addiction, according to Sinek, isn't complicated, but it might be difficult initially to reformulate a view of your own self-worth:
"Young people need to stand up and take control of their own lives. I'm tired of people telling them they're entitled. No they're not, they're wonderful, fantastic, driven, smart human beings who unfortunately grew up with an addiction. What I ask them to do is to take little, small steps to start to undo these effects. Leave your phone in your bag, leave your phone at home when you go out with your friends. Who do you need to talk to when you're with your friends?
I've been practicing this myself. I notice how much more present I am with my friends. My friends are trusting me more and I trust them more. It's fine to put pretty pictures up on Instagram, but that's not self-worth. Self-worth is when your friend turns to you and says, 'I love you.'"Complement this article with yesterdays feature story in the New York Times Op-Ed, Addicted to Distraction.