Don’t Blame Your Phone

Blaming externals does not help you build internal power.

[People on phones when I climbed up a Mayan temple in Mexico. There was good reception!]

We are being told that our phones are to blame for our distress. We’re told that our phones and apps are addictive by design, so it’s not our fault if we can’t put them down. I think this message is profoundly disempowering. It makes you a victim of forces outside your control. You are better off knowing how your brain creates distress, so you can find your power to relieve it.

Life was stressful long before the invention of smart phones. Our brain is good at creating stress because it evolved to promote survival, not to make us happy. But the brain defines survival in a quirky way. Here are three brain quirks that cause the bad feelings we blame on our phones and social platforms.

Quirk #1:  Our brain seeks attention as if your life depends on it.

Children need attention to survive because they can’t meet their own needs. So the child brain is designed to create life-or-death feelings about getting attention. These feelings stay with us in later life because our core neural networks are built in childhood. We are born with billions of neurons but few connections between them. We build connections each time a neuron is activated, so the vulnerable feelings of childhood build the pathways that turn on our emotional chemicals. As a result, everyone has strong feelings about attention, but everyone defines it according to their unique individual experience. Adolescent experience adds to our life-or-death feelings about getting attention because the teen years bring a second peak of neuroplasticity.

Quirk #2:  The brain cares about the survival of your genes more than your body.

Young people do crazy things to get attention because our brain is designed to spread its genes. Social recognition is central to what biologists call “reproductive success.” That includes everything that could raise your ability to compete for mates and your child’s ability to compete for mates. You are not consciously trying to reproduce, but natural selection built a brain that rewards you with a good feeling when you do things that help spread your genes. Animals aren’t aware of genes, but they compete for mates and protect their young constantly because the brain makes it feel good. Humans have always had strong feelings about social recognition and their children’s safety, but each generation expresses it with the technology available in its time. Today’s social media reflects that timeless mammalian urge for social recognition and advancement of one’s offspring.

[People on phones when I arrived at a temple in Jaipur, India.]

Quirk #3:  The brain habituates to rewards you have, so we keep seeking new and improved rewards.

If you get ten likes on a social post, it feels good for a short time. But the brain quickly habituates, so it takes more likes to spark the same pleasure. To understand this natural urge for more, imagine your hunter-gatherer ancestor looking for food. They find a tree full of ripe fruit and it makes them happy for a few minutes, but once that need is met and they move on to meet another need. It takes an un-met need to spark happy chemicals. Our physical needs are easily met today, so social needs become the focus of our quest for happy chemicals. The brain that drove our ancestors to find firewood in the snow and water in a drought is now driving the quest for social recognition. Wheeeew. That’s a harsh truth.

But the full story is even harsher. Imagine your distant ancestor stumbling on the biggest fruit tree they ever saw. Their brain would respond with an extra large surge of happy chemicals, which would pave an extra-large neural pathway to help them find the tree in the future. Each of us is wired by the extra-large rewards of our past. Each of us seeks whatever met our needs in our own early years without consciously knowing why.

When you understand our quirky brain, you see that you can’t banish stress by locking up your phone and deleting your social accounts. You may find it hard to accept the quirkiness of our brain. You may prefer to believe that happiness is the natural default state and something has gone wrong with today’s world. You may believe that the healthcare system should make us happy. These beliefs are hard to avoid because they’re accepted as THE Science in today’s world. You’re accused of being anti-science if you question the disease model of mental health. But your distress may continue even after shopping from cure to cure, so you need to know about another brain quirk:

Disappointment triggers threat chemicals.

If your online post is snubbed, you don’t consciously think it’s a survival threat, but the brain releases cortisol when rewards fall short of expectations. We’re talught that cortisol is triggered by predator threat, but when you’re safe and comfortable, your cortisol system zooms in on smaller threats. Getting less than you expect is a threat from your brain’s perspective because you’d fail to meet your needs if you kept repeating a behavior that didn’t work. Cortisol helps us survive by getting our attention when results fall short of expectations. High expectations leave you with a lot of cortisol.

When the bad feeling turns on, it tells your brain to look for evidence of threat. We are good at finding evidence when we look, and that leads to more cortisol. It’s easy to end up in a cortisol spiral. You can’t believe that this feeling of impending doom was caused by a small social disappointment, so you presume there must be a real threat. You define the threat in ways that are popular with those around you thanks to mirror neurons. Cortisol creates a full-body sense of alarm that’s designed to grab your attention, and it connects neurons that turn it on faster next time. So it’s easy to feel like a disappointment is a real survival threat.

You can stop this spiral if you know that cortisol is just doing its job. It’s designed to let you know when a need is not met. An elephant surges with cortisol if it treks for miles to a waterhole that turns out to be dried up. A lion surges with cortisol if it sees the gazelle it’s chasing get away. Cortisol wires the elephant to avoid that waterhole next time, and it wires the lion to choose its targets more carefully. We are designed to learn from cortisol, but it’s hard to appreciate the learning while you feel like your survival is threatened. In past generations, hunger and violence were more common in daily life, so people were less inclined to see social disappointments as survival threats. Today, small disappointments can ruin a good life unless you understand how your brain works.

You may still think phones are the problem. We hear a lot of rage against social media and our mirror neurons take it in. This outrage is always couched in terms of the greater good, but it’s helpful to see how selfish it is. People who tell you to put down your phone are often grieved because they are not getting attention. Some people lost attention when social media gained. They are striving to meet their needs, even if they claim to be focused on yours. I am not saying it’s okay to ignore your family at dinner and focus on your phone. I am saying that people have always competed for social recognition, and always will. But it’s not socially acceptable to acknowledge this selfish urge, so people keep coming up with greater-good arguments to justify their appeals.

If you think you can’t be happy until other people put down their phones, you will not be happy. Instead, here are three simple steps to feel good despite this quirky brain we’ve inherited.

Step 1
Accept that the urge for social recognition is natural.

It’s hard to accept your own longing for social recognition. You see other people vying for attention and they seem stupid so you don’t want to be like that. But when you fail to get the recognition you had hoped for, a bad feeling surges. You blame it on family, friends, coworkers, and “our society” if you don’t know how your brain creates it. This blame-shifting mindset is popular, but it leaves you feeling bad.

Your natural urge for social importance is more manageable if you know how it works in animals. We like to think animals are loving and cooperative, but field research shows that they fight over food and mates a lot. When I say “fight,” I mean that they are on the verge of conflict, but don’t actually come to blows because they are so good at predicting who would win. The mammal brain constantly compares itself to others, and backs down when it sees that it’s weaker. Fights only erupt when both individuals perceive themselves as stronger. They make these judgements with neural pathways built from the endless childhood tussles that we call “play.” Every moment of strength or weakness triggers an emotional chemical that wires in future perceptions of strength and weakness.

We humans have inherited this brain that constantly compares itself to others and responds with emotional chemicals. Each of us makes social comparisons with neural pathways built from our own past moments of strength and weakness. We’re not aware of our pathways, so we think our social responses are just what any good person would do in that situation.

Everyone longs to be special in a world where eight billion others long for specialness too! Everyone seeks social recognition with neural pathways built in childhood and adolescence! Yikes! This is a real conundrum. Society cannot make it go away, but each of us can build the skill of managing our brain. Get the complete story in my book I, Mammal: How to Make Peace With the Animal Urge for Social Power.

Step 2
Give Yourself Recognition

A pat on the back from someone else feels much better than patting yourself on the back. But if you wait for others, disappointment is likely, so it’s good to know that you can spark happy chemicals by doing something you are proud of and applauding yourself for it. The chemicals don’t last, but you can do something you are proud of again and again.

It may seem hard to find pride-worthy things to do. You may think you have to rescue others because rescuers get recognition and our mirror neurons absorb that. But rescue efforts may fail to get the recognition you expect, leaving you bitter and resentful. You can’t manage the bad feeling if you can’t admit that you wanted recognition. You are better off taking pride in steps that meet your own survival needs. It may feel selfish at first, but in time you will see that it’s less selfish than trying to “help” in ways that don’t really help. Focusing on your own needs may feel lonely at first, but you will meet others on the path. Find more on how to do this in my books Status Games: Why We Play and How to Stop.

Sometimes, you will get applause or a pat on the back from others, and it will spark your happy chemicals. That wires in the urge to repeat behaviors linked to the happy moment. But you may not get applause the next time. We can’t predict the approval of others, which is why we need the skill of giving it to ourselves.

Step 3
Manage Threatened Feelings

We all get disappointed because our brain is designed to look for more. And any social recognition you get can be quickly lost. So every life has cortisol, whether you see yourself as a big baboon or a little mouse. Fortunately, you can stop a cortisol surge by shifting your attention from threats to rewards. Threats will always be with us and rewards will always be unpredictable, but your chemicals depend on whatever is on your radar screen. If you shift your focus from disappointment to steps you are proud of, you spark a good feeling and build up the pathway so it flows there more easily.

Feeling good is a skill that comes with practice, just like playing the piano or speaking a foreign language. You don’t build the skill if you think genes cause good feelings. You don’t build it if you think happiness should come without effort and blame “our society” if it doesn’t. You don’t build the skill if you blame your phone and social apps for your distress.

You build the skill when you know that it matters. Anyone can build it by shifting their attention from threats to steps forward a few times a day. Focus on realistic steps to avoid the disappointment that comes from unrealistic expectations. Target a reward within reach and approach it in small steps. A reward need not be physical. A reward is anything that meets a need as your brain defines it. You may think a bottle of wine is what you need because your old pathways go there, but you can broaden your understanding of your natural needs. The Inner Mammal Institute has books, videos, and an online course to help you do that.

It’s hard to think of yourself as just another mammal competing for social recognition. It’s hard to ignore the opinionators who blame the device for your distress. But managing your brain gets easier with practice. Please spread this message, in whatever ways you like to spread messages.

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