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Insight
I can hardly imagine life without
WhatsApp. It’s so ideal for making
appointments, keeping each other
up-to-date, or just asking someone a
quick question. I hardly make phone
calls anymore; the app has become my
most important line to the outside world.
WhatsApp also means getting
bombarded with useless smiling emojis,
thumbs-ups and other trivialities. Or
being in a group with twenty people
who all feel the need to tell that one
sick group member to get well soon.
And then there’s the compulsory nature
of the app: ‘Why haven’t you answered
yet? You read my message, didn’t
you?’ Yes, you can turn off notifications
and the check marks, but it still remains
slightly Big-Brother-like: The minute you
start typing, you become visible. Even
if my phone is set to ‘do not disturb’,
it still burns a hole in my pocket.
Whenever I get a free moment, such
as standing in line at the supermarket,
waiting for a traffic light to turn green,
and even, I confess, walking through
the city, I can’t stop myself from quickly
checking my WhatsApp messages.
JUST LIKE SMOKING
The downsides of this handy app are
becoming increasingly more noticeable.
They don’t outweigh the advantages (for
now), and this applies to most people
incidentally, but there is a small vanguard
that is sick and tired of it and has been
rigid about deleting it from their phones.
One of these people is Rens van der
Vorst, head of IT Innovation at the Fontys
University of Applied Sciences in
Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and a
self-proclaimed techno-philosopher.
He was spending at least two and a half
hours each day on his phone, and a
large part of this time was on WhatsApp.
“I always wanted to be able to respond
fast, but most of all I wanted to be the
funniest and wittiest,” he says. “It took
up too much of my time and attention.
I wasn’t even able to spend an hour and
a half concentrating on a soccer match
without sending people WhatsApps the
whole time. The crazy part was that I
didn’t feel good at all afterward; I was
annoyed that I hadn’t paid more
attention to the match.”
Van der Vorst saw similarities between
being on WhatsApp and smoking:
The way we constantly check our
smartphones now is similar to how we
smoked one cigarette after the other in
the 1970s. “We thought that was really
normal at the time,” he says, “but if you
think about it, it was of course absurd.”WHATSAPP-FREE ZONES
In his book, Appen is het nieuwe roken
(WhatsApp Is the New Smoking; Dutch
only), Van der Vorst shows how we can
apply the lessons we learned from
smoking to our phone habits. Okay, he
admits, WhatsApp won’t kill you—unless
of course you’re hit by a car driven by
someone sending text messages—but
the analogy does apply to many other
aspects. Much like the tobacco industry,
app builders have a preconceived plan
to make sure we get addicted. Tech
companies use all sorts of marketing
tricks to make sure that we reach for
our phones dozens—sometimes
hundreds—of times each day. ‘Just like
with smoking,’ Van der Vorst concludes,
‘the users are the victims. We have beenturned into addicts.’ He sees even more
parallels: One is, just as it is irritating to
breathe in someone else’s second-hand
smoke, it’s incredibly annoying to see
someone’s eyes wander to a screen
that’s lighting up and typing a response
‘that just can’t wait’. We have to use
what we learned to address the nicotine
addiction, Van der Vorst says. He
advocates text-free zones, such as
during meetings, at festivals and in train
compartments. He even sent a proposal
to the Dutch Hospitality Industry
Association about converting the
soon-to-be-eliminated smoking areas
in bars into smartphone-free areas.BLUE CHECK MARKS
Nonetheless, smartphone owners
around the world send messages daily
via WhatsApp. This is also what makes
it so hard to stop, according to Dutch
media psychologist Mischa Coster.
“Not only is the app an easy way to
stay up-to-date on everything,” he
says, “people are also afraid they
might be missing something. This is
understandable, because WhatsApp
has become a standard means of
communication for day-to-day things, so
you really can miss out on information.”
Coster also sees how the little blue
check marks have a real effect on us. “If
you have sent a message and don’t get
a response even though you can see
that it has been delivered and read,”
he says, “this can quickly feel like a
rejection, even though the other person
is probably just busy or wants to think
about their response. There are a
variety of reasons someone might not
answer right away, but we still feel >