Silicon Valley Sold Us Convenience

Ever since I first read Noah Smith's Honestly, it's probably the phones, I've been unable to stop the feeling that there's a link between Internet use (namely via the ubiquity of the smartphone) and poor mental health indicators. And I don't think I'm the only one; for a few years now Gen Z has been shunning the most modern technology, preferring older digital cameras, dedicated music players like iPods, and even feature phones (or as they are commonly called now, dumb phones). You may have seen it written that "the internet used to be a place", and whilst it's becoming trite to read that phrase, it's true! Talk to the millennials and the eldest Gen Z you know and ask them about the computer room. My family had one and, I'd wager, quite a lot of families still do have one - but it's now "the office" or "the place I work from home".

For some, "the computer room" was just "the family computer"; a wooden desk with a beige pizza box or tower PC and a crisp CRT (and later, a chunky 4:3 LCD panel) in the corner of another room, such as the dining room or living room. It was in a place where your Internet use could be seen over your shoulder - you knew that at any time a parent, guardian, or sibling could walk in and ask "what are you looking at?". Things like edutainment games, Wikipedia, or research websites were good - and things like adult-oriented games, crass/loud videos, and pornography were not. "Mum said it's my turn on the Xbox" might be a meme these days, but when the family had one computer between them, time on the Internet was restricted. That includes the time it took for your machine to boot to desktop!

Come back to the present for a moment. Where do you go to access the Internet now, in 2026? It might be a more revealing question if I asked, "where haven't you accessed the Internet in 2026?" You do it in supermarkets when looking at recipes online to see what ingredients you need. You do it in a coffee shop to reply to a group chat. You do it because you responded to that notification, and your muscle memory opened another app. You even do it mindlessly while walking along the street or sat on the toilet, because you've become accustomed to never having to be bored ever again. At what point does it become an addiction?

Luckily, you can set app timers on all your social media through Digital Wellbeing or Screen Time. Is 15 minutes a day per app enough? What about uninstalling the apps from your phone? Can you put it in another room during the day, or leave it behind when you go outside? How does it feel to think about doing that? Did it make you anxious, or does it feel like a relief? What kinds of thoughts does using your phone let you avoid?

There are several different problems at play with the way that most people now access the Internet. In no particular order:

• We can access the Internet at any time, in almost any place, and with little to no restrictions.

• There are little to no social repercussions from accessing the Internet in this way, even when avoiding others in public spaces. (This, apparently, is called "phubbing".)

• Infinite-scroll or endless-scroll user interfaces encourage addiction by continually feeding users stimulus without any defined breakpoints (stopping cues), by design, to increase KPIs such as user retention time and advertiser/platform revenue. You're no longer making a choice on platforms like this; you're just still there.

• Social media platforms and 'for you' style content discovery algorithms surface divisive and emotionally manipulative content, as it drives engagement and thus revenue.

• The Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is greatly boosted by our always-connected lifestyles.

• We are bombarded with an onslaught of information from the 24/7 news cycle that desensitises us to violence.

• The assumption that everyone will be carrying a modern smartphone has led to companies prioritising connection, and dropping non-connected services. This is referred to by a number of names, such as digital exclusion or digital disadvantage.

There are of course many different kinds of 'online harms', typically those that are spoken about in the same sentences as 'protect children', such as (extreme) pornography, terrorist or extremist content, 'pro-suicide' websites, disinformation, etc. However, in my opinion the largest-scale harms are done not by age-inappropriate content in and of itself, but by the use of centralised social media platforms and excessive screen time caused by the-whole-Internet-in-your-pocket devices. The more screen time you have in a day, the higher the chance you will expose yourself to these harms; the Molly Rose Foundation reports that "teens aged 13-17 were being algorithmically recommended potentially harmful content at deeply worrying levels".

A recent article in The Times is titled Some primary school pupils ‘can swipe a screen but can’t speak’ and features a number of shocking paragraphs about some of the impacts that unfettered Internet access is having on young children. Whether this is a global trend or not is yet to be proven, but in the age of Adolescence and Andrew Tate this is a deeply worrying study. Of course, this doesn't tell the full story of why this is happening, to which the answer probably lies somewhere in "parents don't have enough time to care for their children because the cost of living is too great to work part time". Many millennials will claim that they (like I did!) have either fairly or completely unrestricted Internet access, and that they "turned out alright", but the Internet and indeed society is such a different beast to when we were younger.

I believe that the primary accelerator of this is to do with convergence; over the past 30 years, this technological convergence has almost completely erased the friction that media consumption used to have. If you wanted to watch a movie, you had to go to the cinema or rent a video from Blockbuster. To listen to music, you put on a cassette or CD. If you wanted to watch the next episode of a TV show, you had to wait until next week. To get news, you bought a newspaper or caught up with bulletins on TV at different points throughout the day. In 2026 we are coming up to over a decade of being able to do all of these things on a smartphone within seconds of each other, and you can do it from anywhere you like, for as long as you like, given you have a Wi-Fi connection or mobile data signal and enough battery. This convergence has fundamentally changed the way that we engage with media and art.

It's not just our relationship with media that has changed. We're now expected to be available and respond to messages within minutes - as group chat software made the jump from IRC to apps. WhatsApp, which shows read receipts, has completely overtaken SMS (which doesn't). Discord is the communication tool of choice for a whole generation. When was the last time you called your friends, using the phone part of your phone - and left a voicemail if they didn't pick up? Of course there are many benefits to asynchronous communication but it's a completely different experience; think of how many long email chains leave people irritated, and how phone calls to customer service (hopefully) lead to getting your problem solved - the warmth of hearing someone's voice in real time cannot be underestimated.

Breaking the cycle

This argument is not one of "convenience is bad", but rather that an excess of convenience breaks down important psychological walls that would otherwise prevent us from spending too long using something. And in this case, it is this convenience that the smartphone allows that funnels people into either doomscrolling, seeing unwanted or traumatic content, or being manipulated by bad actors (state backed or not) who want to shape public opinion through social media networks.

I see a possible way out; make the Internet a place again! By having spaces where the Internet is and having to leave them to engage with the world, we stand to be more present in our lives and with each other. That could look like any number of things, for example:

• Leaving your smartphone in one room of the house, meaning you have to go there to use the Internet.
• Replacing your smartphone with a "dumb phone".
• Not having Wi-Fi at all; forcing the internet to become tethered again.

There are also other things I would suggest doing, regardless of what you do with your smartphone:

• Stop using big social media platforms; they are psychologically designed to make you addicted (and to feed on your strongest emotions). Block them at your router/firewall level if you have to.

• Have honest conversations with the people you know who struggle not to be on the Internet.

• Make time in your week to be completely disconnected from the Internet; be present with your thoughts and those around you.