Why we check our phones so much, Part 1: Needing to matter
On the need to know people are thinking about us.
“I wasn't looking at my phone. I was looking for evidence that I mattered."
I had a habit, for a while, of checking who had viewed my Instagram stories.
Specifically looking for particular names and patterns. Proof that people were interested in my life even when they weren’t reaching out. Evidence that I existed to them, essentially.
Yes, I know how that sounds and I knew it at the time. But for reasons of feeling low and unimportant, I did it anyway. What I was looking for couldn’t be found anywhere else in that moment, and the phone was available.
I don’t think this is unusual. I think most of us, at some point, have used our phones this way, to soothe something. To check whether we’re thought of, and find quiet proof that we are, in some mind somewhere, present.
The problem is that the phone is very bad at this job.
Sometimes the data is there, and someone viewed the story. Someone liked the post or opened the message. But data is not the thing we’re actually looking for, it’s a poor proxy.
A view count can’t produce that feeling. It only tells you someone’s thumb stopped scrolling. It doesn’t tell you what they were thinking or feeling when it did. The view or open isn’t evidence of the thing we’re using it as evidence for.
The checking doesn’t resolve the ache, though it might temporarily soothe it, the way scratching an itch does: briefly, and then not.
I’ve noticed this urge usually arises in a moment of particular aloneness. A time when someone I care about isn’t reachable or present, or at a distance I didn’t choose. And my nervous system, which is well practised at looking for signals, goes looking for them. The phone is just where the signals live now.
What’s helped is not trying to stop checking, because willpower fails when the ache is loudest. It’s noticing the impulse first and asking myself, ‘What am I actually looking for right now?’
Sometimes that pause and reflection is enough. Once we sit with it a moment, the phone becomes obviously inadequate for the job. This doesn’t necessarily mean we will put it down. But we do stop pretending it’s going to give us what we actually need.
The ache is real, and when it’s big, the checking is understandable. But the phone just can’t do the thing we’re asking it to do.
Three things to try.
1. Name it before we check.
The next time we feel the pull toward something specific on our phones, pause for ten seconds first, and name what we’re actually looking for, the feeling underneath. Just naming it makes a difference.
2. Watch what the checking produces.
If we have a habit of checking something or someone’s engagement, notice honestly what it produces. Temporary relief? More anxiety? Whatever it produces is information about whether the behaviour is serving us.
3. Try the other thing first.
Identify one thing that genuinely makes us feel less alone and more grounded. Try that before checking our phone the next time the impulse comes. It doesn’t have to work every time. Even just ‘some times’ is good progress.
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