What do smartphones and stale popcorn have in common?

Whatever you do on your smartphone, whether it’s browsing Facebook, watching YouTube, or playing Jetpack Joyride, you probably know just how hard it is to put your phone down. The most popular apps are designed to capture attention and keep you locked in. You may plan to leave your phone on the table or spend just a few minutes checking email. Yet, when you find yourself using your phone despite good intentions, and minutes have turned into hours, you might wonder, “How did that happen?”

In fact, the part of your brain involved in doing what you plan (like stopping by the store on your way home or finishing the dishes before going to bed) is not the same part of your brain that controls what you do automatically out of habit. A habit is something you’ve learned to do without thinking every time you’re in a certain situation. Instead of studying for a test after dinner like you planned, for example, you might turn on the television simply because that’s what you usually do after dinner.

Habits may start off as planned, motivated behaviors, but they become so automatic that they happen even when it’s not what you want. Like a zombie shuffling down a dark road, we engage in habitual behaviors without much attention or decision-making.

When you get sucked into your phone, how can you break free? An experiment involving stale popcorn may offer one solution. Researchers discovered that people will eat a bucket of stale, seven-day-old popcorn simply out of habit if they’re watching a movie. In fact, people with a habit of inhaling popcorn in the theater ate just as much of their stale popcorn as people with a freshly popped bucket. They ate it all even though they did not like the taste. They just reached for it without thinking. Sound familiar?

Here’s where it gets interesting. When participants in the experiment needed to use their non-dominant hand to eat popcorn, it broke the spell. If the person was right-handed, being forced to use their left hand led them to eat less stale popcorn. Similarly, if the person was left-handed, being forced to use their right hand stopped them from acting out of habit.

After this discovery, the researchers suggested that changes to the environment can help people break unhealthy habits.

Break the Smartphone Spell

If you are motivated to spend less time on your phone, habits may be your biggest barrier. To break free, try these three steps.

1. Think about when, where, and how you use your smartphone.

Where do you usually sit? Are there certain times of the day when you typically use your phone? Do you text with both thumbs? Do you drink soda while playing games? This is your routine. Notice the details of your routine.

2. Come up with one simple change to your routine.

What can you change in the environment or setting where you usually use your phone? Do you usually keep it in a certain spot (for example, to your right on the couch)? If so, put it down somewhere new (to your left instead). What can you change about how you use your phone? If you have shortcuts to your favorite game on your home-screen, try removing the shortcut. Whatever you do, keep the change simple. You don’t want to make life harder. You just want to shake things up a bit.

3. When you feel the urge to pick up your phone, this simple change to your routine will help you make a different choice.

You must be motivated to spend less time on your phone, but in that moment when you usually pick up your phone for an hour of texting, things will be different. You might reach to the right, but your phone is on your left. That’s your chance to make a new choice! That’s your window to make a change. The part of your brain in charge of habits, which usually controls you in that moment, will not quite know what to do, and the part of your brain that makes decisions (based on what you truly want) can finally be heard.

In that moment of freedom when you have the chance to choose how you’ll spend the next hour, think back on how you felt the last time you lost an hour scrolling through memes or slashing fruit like a digital ninja. Despite an instant rush of good feelings, those feelings probably did not last. The next time you reach for your phone, ask yourself, “Do I even like this?” Smartphones do have a lot to offer, but after a while, reaching for your phone is like eating stale popcorn.

Reference

Neal, D.T., Wood, W., Wu, M., Kurlander, D. (2011). The pull of the past: When do habits persist despite conflict with motives? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(11), 1428-1437.

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