The Need for Discomfort

At its best, technology is used to facilitate positive change. But what happens when good intentions take an unexpected turn? When designing the smartphone, no one pitched the idea of families and friends splitting dinner time with news updates, targeted advertising, and text conversations. But alienating behaviors like this are now common and acceptable all over the world. 

Many people are unhappy with the effects of these attention-demanding devices, especially when it comes to young people and children, who have direct access to a mostly unregulated online world. In addition to poor etiquette, digital devices have ushered in a host of problems, including lethargy, isolation, depression, loss of social skills, low attention span, dysmorphia, and subconscious influence through targeted advertisements. Parents and children alike may be aware of these negative effects but feel that there’s no alternative since these devices are also “necessary” to maintain social relevance.

Teenagers are not the only people negatively affected by these devices and technologies. The 2016 US presidential election was influenced by disinformation and polarization on social media platforms. YouTube has been accused of leveraging rage to prolong viewership, sending users down rabbit holes that lead to radical content and conspiracies. Canadian writer, Cory Doctorow, describes how online platforms attract users with a good service, which is then degraded to benefit its advertising customers, and finally degraded even further for the platform’s own profit, all while locking in its users and customers through the connections it has enabled. Examples like these illustrate that while our “smart” devices may bring genuine value in many ways, they can also be the catalyst for considerable harm if not consciously used. 

Awareness of these failures is important. Feeling the effect of them is critical—without discomfort there is no need to change. Perhaps accelerating toward disaster will bring awareness faster and force society to adapt. Newton’s First Law of Motion (the law of inertia) states that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by friction. Perhaps instead of designing technology to make life easier we should purposefully introduce discomfort into our lives to force alternatives and accelerate change.

For teenagers specifically, parents, schools, and government can influence how technology is used. Sweden recently announced plans to ban mobile phones in schools for all students aged seven to 16. And several states in the US have passed or are proposing laws regarding children’s use of social media. Not as much is being done to protect adults—technology companies are generally left to self-regulate.

Rather than depend on companies and governments to set boundaries, can we consciously introduce discomfort into own lives to accelerate change? Should this extend to those around us as well, particularly our children? And what level of discomfort creates enough of a tipping point without creating new traumas?

Adults can take simple actions like turning off devices, choosing for less efficient but more rewarding forms of engagement, and turning new behaviors into rituals, like quarantining phones at social gatherings. Actions like these can create space for autonomous decision-making while empowering personal agency.

Parents who adopt healthy practices for themselves are also modeling behaviors for their children. Rather than protect children from discomfort, parents can model resilience and how to manage hardship. They can challenge their children to come up with original ideas for changing behaviors that do not serve them well. After establishing standards, parents can step back and let their children face challenges independently while still being available for support. As they learn how to deal with the discomforts that arise, children will feel empowered, building confidence through failure and determination.  

The direction of innovation is not for one person to decide, but we can control how we integrate it into our lives. Intentional discomfort can help to break debilitating habits and model better behavior for those around us, spreading awareness and agency in both teenagers and adults. By deliberately choosing how we want our life to feel and how we want to connect to the world, we can decide for ourselves what our relationship with technology will be.

Concept contributors: Mila Chorbadzhieva, Maron Galama, Jessica Smarsch, Koen Snoeckx, and Raymond van Ee

Writing & Illustration: Jessica Smarsch