Bloomberg Businessweek Says To Reduce Loneliness And Anxiety, Throw A Party

Screen addiction is a real thing, and is something that leads to anxiety and loneliness, and is something we've been writing about for several years now.

We've talked about living in an age of anxiety, and that's not diminishing, unfortunately.

We've recommended that when appropriate, companies should consider emphasizing how they can help reduce stress. (Even B2B companies can consider talking about how they help reduce stress for decision makers.) 

We've also noted the rise of mindfulness and apps to help guide people -- last week, three different people urged us to download the same mindfulness app, and it seemed like a cult. (We tried it but had difficulty with it, and kept urging the narrator to speed things up, feeling like the 10-minute session was taking too long. Clearly we've got work to do.)

Meanwhile, Bloomberg Businessweek has a suggestion: "The World Depends on You Throwing a Party. More connected than ever, we are also lonelier than before. The case for being a host." Key quote from the article:

At the very least, let's agree: The more time we spend with our devices, the more time we need with actual human beings."

Interesting, the article notes, retailers and real estate developers are commissioning designs that turn places into gathering places. For retailers, that's an advantage over online retailers. For developers of commercial buildings, offering "lots of greenery, soft seating and even carefully chosen accents and music," are succeeding in "inviting tenants and guests to interact."

So Bloomberg Businessweek is validating our prediction. But in the interest in helping reduce our readers' stress, we're going to keep this blog short so that you can turn off your device, and start interacting with real humans.

Have fun!

More Validation About Our Prediction About Living in the Age of Anxiety Or 3 Articles About De-stressing & 1 About Screen Addiction

One of our predictions for 2018 is that we're now living in an Age of Anxiety, driven in part by our screen addiction.

What we're seeing is confirmation of our prediction. In this blog post, we'll cite validation from the New York Times and Bloomberg.

Among the points we made about the Age of Anxiety was "We anticipate more coverage on stress, anxiety, mental health and ways to de-stress, which includes taking a break from your device – aka a technology cleanse or digital detox – which is healthy and a good idea but may seem impossible to do."

And that's just what we've been seeing. We'll tackle in a future blog post what it means for marketers to try to communicate with key audiences in such a way so as to minimize their stress levels. This is a real challenge because there's so much anger and resentment, sincerely felt by conservatives and liberals, that the personal -- like which team you root for and which coffee maker you use or what programs a brand advertises on -- has become politicized to an unprecedented degree,

But first, some advice on how to de-stress from the New York Times:

How to Manage Stress Like an Olympic Biathlete

The pressure of an intense physical race combined with methodical target shooting gives biathletes a unique perspective on coping with stress.

By TARA PARKER-POPE

The Promise of Self-Compassion for Stressed-Out Teens

Many in this driven generation believe they can’t move forward without beating themselves up.

By RACHEL SIMMONS

How to Break Up With Your Phone

Nine ways to have a healthier relationship with your phone.

By CATHERINE PRICE

Meanwhile, here's a Bloomberg article about screen addition: 

Tech Diets Catch on With Apple Executives, Facebook Billionaires and Google:rSilicon Valley insiders, concerned about the attention-sapping effects of modern technology, experiment with ways to log off.

We'll continue to explore the Age of Anxiety because, I'm afraid, it's going to be a main theme for a while.

Boston Globe's "Tech Nomad" Recognizes Screen Addiction + 3 types of solutions that aren't going to work

At some point there may be a backlash to this trend but for the moment, there is a rising recognition that as a society, we are overly dependent on our devices, and that what we're all suffering from is screen addition.

Screen addiction is something we discussed in our predictions for 2018, published in December 2017.

The Boston Globe's "Tech Nomad" columnist, Michael Andor Brodeur, recently wrote about this in a column entitled, "Hard Wired: Our smartphone habits are more like full-blown addictions. So how can we regain control?"

So we consider ourselves validated but that still means we're addicted.

 What's worse, Brodeur suggests that the proliferation of virtual assistants like Alexa presents another opportunity to become addicted to tech. And he's right about that.

So, what to do?

Brodeur cites other industry experts who suggest we should:

• Simply switch your phone to grayscale. By muffling the ways your phone uses contrast, color, and, for lack of better phrasing, sparkly stuff to recruit your attention, the phone becomes less of a dazzling gem to gaze into, and more of a utilitarian brick.

Brodeur also mentions phone-free zones and Yondr, which provides a case in which you place your phone in spaces for artists, educators, organizations, etc. and the case, with a lock, prevents you from temporarily accessing your phone. Seems unnecessary. For all that, you could just agree to turn off your phone.

But the hard part is that so far in the articles we've read about phone addiction, we've come across three types of solutions:

1. Rely on Apple and others to design smartphones that are less addicting.
2. Ask Congress to find a way to regulate big tech to reduce distractions.
3. Identify lifehacks (as in the bullet above) to weaken your addiction.

Of the three, the most likely to happen is #3. But we're open to suggestions. One of us goes on a Facebook hiatus for a week at a time, and combined with the decision to stop checking whenever an alert lights up his phone, finds himself less tense and anxious. But in our business, you can't go cold turkey on news and social media. Which doesn't mean we can't try to break the addiction, just that find ways to scale back and find a better balance.

Suggestions? Send them our way!

New York Times' Farhad Manjoo Validates Our Prediction About Screen Addiction

In his Jan. 18, 2018 column in The New York Times, "It’s Time for Apple to Build a Less Addictive iPhone: Apple gave us the modern smartphone. Now, it can create a new take on the device by encouraging us to use it more deliberately — and a lot less" by blog-fav Farhad Manjoo validated our prediction about screen addiction issued in Dec. 14, 2017.

A month ago, we said:

The ‘60s may have been the Age of Aquarius but this decade seems to be the Age of Anxiety and Anger. One cause: screen addiction. Constantly clicking our smartphones for the latest news – and it seems that there’s continually breaking news – may help us feel we’re on top of the situation but it leaves most of us feeling more empty, worried and angry than before – despite political preferences. We anticipate more coverage on stress, anxiety, mental health and ways to de-stress, which includes taking a break from your device – aka a technology cleanse or digital detox – which is healthy and a good idea but may seem impossible to do.

In his article, Manjoo observed:

Tech “addiction” is a topic of rising national concern. I put the A-word in quotes because the precise pull that our phones exert over us isn’t the same as that of drugs or alcohol. The issue isn’t really new, either; researchers who study how we use digital technology have for years been warning of its potential negative effects on our cognition, psyche and well-being. 

What is new is who has joined the ranks of the worried. Recently, a parade of tech luminaries, including several former Facebook employees, have argued that we’re no match for the sophisticated machinery of engagement and persuasion being built into smartphone apps. Their fears are manifold: They’re worried about distraction, productivity, how social networks alter our emotional lives and relationships, and what they’re doing to children.

 By the way, when we write that our predictions have been validated, it's only partly for self-congratulations. Mostly, we see this an opportunity to continue the discussion on a topic that already interested us, and to move the story forward.

In this case, Manjoo takes a deeper look at the issue, pointing out the problem is: 

Like air pollution or intrusive online advertising, tech addiction is a collective-action problem caused by misaligned incentives. Companies that make money from your attention — that is, ad-supported apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube — now employ armies of people who work with supercomputers to hook you ever more deeply into their services. Sure, we should call on them to act more ethically — and Facebook, for its part, has said it’s willing to lose money to improve its users’ well-being — but I’m skeptical they’ll be able to suppress their economic interests.

That's an important point: a solution may reside within the companies that are not only causing the problem, they also make money because we are hooked on their products. So solving our addiction will cost them money.

Which means: fixing this will be hard to sell to a board of directors and shareholders.

I do like two of Manjoo's suggested fixes:

1. Imagine if, once a week, your phone gave you a report on how you spent your time, similar to how your activity tracker tells you how sedentary you were last week. It could also needle you: “Farhad, you spent half your week scrolling through Twitter. Do you really feel proud of that?” It could offer to help: “If I notice you spending too much time on Snapchat next week, would you like me to remind you?”
2. Another idea is to let you impose more fine-grained controls over notifications. Today, when you let an app send you mobile alerts, it’s usually an all-or-nothing proposition — you say yes to letting it buzz you, and suddenly it’s buzzing you all the time.

The notifications (as we observed in our predictions) are a real part of the problem. Your phone lights up, and your turn to see what it was. Combined with the increasingly fast news cycle (another one of our predictions for 2018), we expect screen addition to get worse this year.

Like us, Manjoo feels that government regulation is unlikely to solve the problem (another of our predictions). He urges Apple, which has a different business model from Facebook and the other advertising-supported social media platforms, to take design steps to reduce our addiction -- since doing so won't hurt Apple's business model.

We agree with Manjoo and hope that Apple will build those common-sense suggestions to reduce our collective addiction to our devices.

Of course, while we think everyone would benefit by being less addicted to their devices, that doesn't mean we want you to stop visiting our blog. Let us know if you disagree with the screen addiction concept or if you have suggestions that could reduce our own screen addiction until Apple and others unveil a less-sticky design.

Wall St. Journal & New York Times Validate Our Prediction About Screen Addiction

In one of our predictions for 2018, published Dec. 14, 2017, we made what we thought to be a longshot prediction: That this year, people would recognize screen addiction as a real issue. Here's what we said:

The ‘60s may have been the Age of Aquarius but this decade seems to be the Age of Anxiety and Anger. One cause: screen addiction. Constantly clicking our smartphones for the latest news – and it seems that there’s continually breaking news – may help us feel we’re on top of the situation but it leaves most of us feeling more empty, worried and angry than before – despite political preferences. We anticipate more coverage on stress, anxiety, mental health and ways to de-stress, which includes taking a break from your device – aka a technology cleanse or digital detox – which is healthy and a good idea but may seem impossible to do.

The reason we thought it was a longshot is that over the past couple of years, there has been the occasional article about digital overload but it hadn't coalesced into something more than a blip. But last year, we felt that could easily change in 2018.

And it has.

Check out:

1. The Wall St. Journal's "Debate over iPhone use by young people reflects the misgivings some in the industry feel toward smartphones' ubiquity: Silicon Valley Reconsiders the iPhone Era It Created"; and
2. The New York Times': "Tech Backlash Grows as Investors Press Apple to Act on Children’s Use: Apple should give parents more tools to curb technology use by children and study the health effects of excessive screen time, two big funds said"; and
3. The New York Times: "It’s Time for Apple to Build a Less Addictive iPhone: Apple gave us the modern smartphone. Now, it can create a new take on the device by encouraging us to use it more deliberately — and a lot less" by Farhad Manjoo.
   

According to the Journal, "a letter to Apple on Saturday from Jana Partners LLC and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, which control about $2 billion of Apple shares....urged the tech giant to develop new software tools that would help parents control and limit phone use more easily, and to study the impact of overuse on mental health." And also, the Journal reported, "On Monday, Tony Fadell, a former senior Apple hardware executive involved in the iPhone’s creation, also called on Apple to do more, saying on Twitter that adults are struggling just as much as children with smartphone overuse."

Last year, Fadell apparently began voicing concern, but the media didn't start paying real attention to it until this year.

In it's article, the Times quoted the same letter, describing "a backlash against big tech has been growing for months." Which is another trend we predicted in which we said, "There will be a debate about whether or not and how to regulate Facebook, Google, and Twitter." We did not use the term "backlash," though we should have, and we did not mention Apple specifically but later in that paragraph, we do say that one of the underlying questions would be "Has big tech gotten too powerful." And we think that increasingly, the answer is: "Yes" (and that's part of the backlash).

In fact, check out this front-page (remember that the front-page used to be an indicator of importance) article from the WSJ: "The Antitrust Case Against Facebook, Google and Amazon: Facebook, Google and Amazon dominate their worlds just as Standard Oil and AT&T once did. Critics say they should get the same treatment. The answer to the antitrust question depends on a narrow test: Are consumers worse off?"

For us, screen addiction and big tech backlash and big tech's power are important societal issues. We doubt much will happen to address either the screen addiction or big tech's power (and we think the anxiety and addition they cause does amount to consumer harm) but it is significant that these issues are being raised.

TrendReport 2018: Our Annual Look at Media and PR Predictions

Here is our 16th annual list of predictions of media trends. We develop the annual list to help our clients understand key trends that will affect media, marketing and technology over the next 12 months, so we can help them develop more compelling story angles and strategies to be effective.

Here are five of the agency’s top 18 media and marketing trends for 2018, and we will roll out the rest over the next week:

1.  Expect to hear about “the retailpocalypse” as a key consumer sector tries to fight Amazonification. Consumers love to shop online for the low prices, unlimited selection, and fast, free delivery (if they have Amazon Prime or specials). But traditional grocers and retailers (including Wal-Mart, which recently dropped “Stores” from its name to boost its e-commerce cred) have to find new ways to compete. A retailpocalypse could cause far-reaching ripples into: real estate (there are more than 1,000 malls); advertising (a downturn in retailers’ ad buying would also impact media’s budgets); and employment (the sector lost 51,000 jobs in 2017).

2.  People will be more anxious and angry. The ‘60s may have been the Age of Aquarius but this decade seems to be the Age of Anxiety and Anger. One cause: screen addiction. Constantly clicking our smartphones for the latest news – and it seems that there’s continually breaking news – may help us feel we’re on top of the situation but it leaves most of us feeling more empty, worried and angry than before – despite political preferences. We anticipate more coverage on stress, anxiety, mental health and ways to de-stress, which includes taking a break from your device – aka a technology cleanse or digital detox – which is healthy and a good idea but may seem impossible to do.

3.  There will be a debate about whether or not and how to regulate Facebook, Google and Twitter. The concern is about the power of their algorithms to determine what we see, especially regarding political ads and the veracity of the news delivered to each of us. The three major platforms have not disclosed specifics but have committed to working to increase transparency and prevent completely false and irresponsible content from being perceived as real news. The underlying questions are: "Has big tech gotten too powerful?" and "Can the major players truly clamp down on the false narratives spread on their platform?" and "How can Congress find a way to regulate them to prevent it from happening in the future?" Expect Congress to continue to hold hearings on the subject – just don’t expect any agreement on the answers before 2018’s midterm elections. (Net neutrality, another issue that also involves big tech, will be an additional source of debate and contention.)

4.  The labor shortage and the gig economy will spark think-pieces about the nature of work. The media will examine the nature of work in the age of a gig economy, including whether it’s a temporary arrangement until a full-time job comes along or a side-gig to supplement primary salaries. Also look for articles about rethinking the social safety net and the future of unions for gig workers who may not get minimum wage, unemployment benefits, employer-contributions for workers’ comp, social security and Medicare, among other benefits.

5.  Conversations about gender, sexuality and sexual harassment have changed – at least in the media. We’re in the midst of a necessary and significant societal change, and hope that the conversation will deter sexual harassment, and cause toxic cultures to reform, whether in the office or elsewhere. While a post-Weinstein mentality has certainly affected the media and entertainment worlds, we will know if there are long-term changes if men in other fields, like banking (not just VCs) and politicians (not yet named), are resign or are forced out of their positions. Meanwhile, gender and sexuality issues will continue to generate coverage, whether about bathrooms, pronouns or other ways to be inclusive.

The complete list, containing more than a dozen additional predictions, touching on the changing media landscape, bitcoin, smart-home tech, and the future of unicorns, will be rolled out on PRBackTalk.

In the meantime, let us know if you think we were right, somewhat right, kind of wrong or totally missed it.