Tips to help lessen the Impact of Cell Phones on your athletes performance.
Over the last 25 years I have seen many changes in the classroom and in the gym. Fundamentally I still believe that young people are inherently awesome but I have definitely seen some concerning developments.
My role as a coach and teacher has allowed me a front row seat to witness how cell phones are impacting the lives of our youth.
Due to our rural location our team always travels a great deal and road trips used to be filled with laughter, tall tales, music and connection. These things still exist but in much smaller doses. It has been replaced by the glow of blue screens and flashlights as they communicate with their worlds from their phones.
I have always tried to stay positive about advances in technology. For years I championed the responsible use of cell phones and technology in classrooms and in sports environments. I believed that it was the job of adults to model and teach young people to use it responsibly.
My opinion has changed over the last year.
I see so many humans struggling with mental health, lacking meaningful relationships, compounded by the inability to exist without having their phones out.
Cell phones are engineered to create addiction, not responsible use. The engineers and app designers are very good at their jobs. I know very few people who have a healthy relationship with their phones.
We would not give our young people access to Crystal Meth and get mad at them when they become Meth heads.
This is what we have done with cell phones.
I believe every teacher, coach and parent should read Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation. It does a wonderful job outlining the impact of cell phones on our young people and how it has contributed to the increase of anxiety in our society.
Haidt also provides an avalanche of data that highlights the connection between cell phones and the decline of mental health of our world's young people. There is a 145% increase in suicide attempts and hospitalizations due to mental health that starts in 2010 when the smart phone was introduced.
This is a great book. Haidt is not preachy, he outlines the problem and proposes some realistic (somewhat) solutions that can help young people and society navigate cell phone and social media usage leaving as little damage as possible in its wake.
Haidt suggests that the vast majority of young people have been and continue to be affected. The age range of affected young people goes from today's tweens up to those were tweens when smart phones appeared in 2010. They are know approaching 30. So regardless of what level you coach the impact of cell phones is being felt on your team.
Haidt highlighted four key ways that cell phones are impacting our athletes. Here is a brief explanation of the problems as Haidt sees them and how they are impacting our world as coaches. I have also provided a few suggestions for how we can combat the problem with our teams. If you have found other solutions I would love to hear them.
1. Exhaustion
Today's teenagers get less sleep than any generation of young people in human history. They go to sleep later, their sleep is interrupted by notifications and they are almost never well rested. Over 50% of teens get less than seven hours of sleep a night.
Human brains continue developing until we are at least 22 (maybe even later for us guys) and developing brains need at least 8 hours of sleep a night.
An exhausted athlete is not going to perform their best. Every book, podcast and self-help guru tries to encourage us all to sleep more with good reason. Our beds are giant wireless chargers, they set us to perform our best.
A lack of sleep hinders an athlete's physical recovery and their ability to learn. A mountain of research is confirming that the vast majority of encoding what we learn happens when we sleep. Particularly in the REM phase which we often do not reach when our sleep cycle is shorter than 7 or 8 hours.
I have found many students and athletes complain they need to stay up long past midnight studying and completing assignments. Frankly, I call bullshit on this. We assign less homework than at any point in the history of school. The issue is time management. The real cuplrit is the four to six hours spent on their phones daily. It means they must work later to compensate for that lost time.
Or in some cases they spend a good chunk of that 4 to 6 hours after they have gone to bed. Either way it isn't working
By the last class of the day, my students are zombies. They are exhausted and unable to learn or concentrate. The lack of sleep is compounded by the ingestion of huge doses of caffeine that gets them through the morning. It leaves them with a huge crash in the afternoon.
I no longer practice at 4pm after school because my athletes' attention, fatigue and effort is at it's lowest in that time period. I don't need to deal with that frustration anymore.
Actionable Strategies to help combat exhaustion
Take some time to educate your athletes about what the lack of sleep is doing to their bodies and brains. It is concerning. I recommend this video from sleep expert Dr. Matthew Walker. It is 18 minutes well spent. It also addresses many of the myths that exist around sleep.
Teach them time management techniques so they can keep their lives organized. Being an athlete is a privilege but it definetly adds to the workload of the athletes.
Provide them with some tools to help create structure in their lives. They have to balance, sport, school, family, girl/boy friends, hanging with friends, jobs, rest and recovery. It is a lot, compund that with their cell phones stealing their time and it is no wonder they feel stressed out by it.
One of our earliest classroom sessions is dedicated to exploring what they are spending their time doing. I am blown away by how many of the teens I coach and teach spend over 6 hours on their phones. I would feel like I had no time to get anything done either.
Here is the handout we use to facilitate that discussion:
Time usage (1).pdf
2. Navigating & Building Meaningful Connections
The amount of time that kids spend socializing face to face has also reduced drastically over the last 20 years. In 2001 teens spent on average 160 mins a day socializing in person with friends. By 2021 that had been reduced to 40 mins a day.
This has impacted their ability to create meaningful relationships. They do not have the experience or skills to build or navigate interactions with the people in their lives.
Haidt talks about a shift from a play-based childhood to a screen-based childhood and it's impact on how our young people interact.
The move away from a play-based childhood is rooted in the perception that our communities aren't safe and so parents need to supervise their kids at all time. Haidt rightly points out that most predators operate online not in real life. This has had a profound impact the development of social and leadership skills.
Being a good teammate requires a whole set of social skills that our athletes are not learning. Being empathetic, putting the good of the team ahead of the needs of the individual and fostering a sense of belonging that creates psychological safety for others. These skills are vital to a teams success so coaches need to teach them.
They also do not have the ability to navigate conflict at all.
This is a hard skill to learn for all of us but our athletes are not getting any reps. In part, because their parents are doing everything for them. I had an athlete this past season who did not feel comfortable ordering his meals because his parents had always done it for him. He was 16. How is he going to navigate a tough conversation with me over his playing time?
Additionally, conflict in the phone-based world is unlike the real world. It is largely anonymous and the ramifications are not immediate.
The good news is that kids crave meaning and connection they just don't always know how to make it happen. This is where the art of coaching comes into the picture.
Actionable steps to help athletes develop connection.
We have started role playing tough conversations. Having athletes workshop how they will deal with tough scenarios and conversations that arise in the season prepares them for when the time arises.
We brainstorm a list of situations that are likley to arise in the season. We assign each player a partner or two and discuss how we navigate conflict and tough conversations. These situations will arise regardless of whether we prep our athletes for them or not.
It is also important to prioritize relationships. Dedicate time early in the season to allow coaches and athletes to connect as humans. Preferably away from the basketball court.
Also modelling vulnerability and creating a safe environment for your athletes, helps them see how it is done.
3. Fragmented Attention and Focus
Phones have also changed how our attention works. It's drastically shortened our focus.
Everyday the world's best computer engineers are working to find ways to keep all of us on our phones. It is not a fair fight. They are equipped with unlimited money for research and have the power of psychology at their disposal.
Haidt writes" Every app is an off-ramp, every notification is a Las Vegas-style sign calling out for you."
Their engineering works on all of us but it is especially effective on the still-developing brains of our young athletes.
Software engineers create apps that allow the creation of short bite-sized content that captures our attention. Then they feed of us more of what we like through their algorithms. The algorithms are powerful. They will deliver more and more of the content you like with the goal of having you spend more time on their app.
I personally get fed an enticing mix of out of bound plays, bbq videos and people trying to help me improve my golf swing. The algorithm knows.
I am sure this isn't news to anyone but the more time we spend mindlessly scrolling through Instagram reels the more money advertisers pay for our attention.
But the real culprit is the push notification.
Designers created the push notification to let people know they had received an email. They quickly realized what they had discovered. They had created a powerful tool that tapped into our psychology.
When we recieve a push notification it sends our brain a hit of dopamine. What is waiting for us? Has someone reached out to with exciting news or passed judgement on a post? It is effective which is why EVERY app wants to send you push notifications.
The app designers quickly figured out the formula. Push notification leads to phone pick-up which leads to more time spent on the phone which equals more money for the company.
Teenagers average a notification every five minutes reaching a staggering total of nearly 200 a day. This is the average teen.
Heavy users (only drugs dealers and software companies refer to their customer as users) can average 400 a day.
Everyone of these notifications distracts our athletes, even when their phone is just in their pocket. It pulls their attention away from the task at hand and puts it on the mystery suprise of the notification.
Humans are not capable of multi-tasking. It is a myth. What we are actually doing is attentional switching from one task to another. The downside is that it takes time to get back on task. 200 times a day our athletes are switching their attention from the task at hand to the buzz from their phones
200 times a day our athletes are training themselves to be distracted. There is no doubt that this carries over to all aspects of their life including sport.
I wrote more extensively about the impact of focus in Issue #5.
You can read it here.
Actionable Steps for Coaches
Help your athletes understand how their cell phones are controlling their lives.
In the settings function (at least on an iphone) you can mine all kinds of data. How many pickups a day the athlete is averaging, how much time they spend on their phone. What apps they use the most. There are daily and weekly averages. This is the data that cell phon companies are willing to share. I can only imagine what they know about our phone habits and usage that they don't share.
We explore this and help the athletes see the connections and how it is impacting their lives. I strongly encourage them to turn off push notifications for any app that is non-essential. Then we revisit usage a week later. They are blown away by how many fewer times they pick up their phones and generally usage follows it.
4. Addiction
The last area that Haidt highlights as a concerning is the prevalence of addiction that has resulted in our young people.
Cell phones cause addiction through the brains desire for more dopamine. Dopamine feels good and when it wears off we search for more of it. This works in small doses with food like potato chips. While Dopamine is not as addictive as drugs like cocaine or meth it still creates a strong craving and compulsion to take action to receive more.
App designers have figured out the loop that keeps us on their apps and it involves using the sam psychology that keeps people playing slot machines. The framework is known as the hooked model as outlined by Nir Eyal.
There is an external trigger like a push notification which invites the user to open the app. This leads the person to open the app and see what is happening (action). Someone times when the app is opened there is a reward in the form of an expression of praise or friendship. Sometimes not and this is important, if we received the reward everytime it would not be as enticing, but because we don't know what we are going to get it increases the dopamine.
This is classic behaviourism as outline 80 years ago by B.F. Skinner. Stimulus, action, reward.
The last step of this cycle is investment. Apps require personalization, our photos, feelings, thoughts and ideas are all on shared on our social media platforms. This compounds the first three steps of this cycle. Is the push notification about my photo, post or idea? The mere thought of a reward will pull them away from their task to their phone searching for a dopamine hit.
It is a powerful cycle.
Digital addiction is real and it remains to be seen if it is a gateway to other more destructive addictive behavior.
For girls this cycle plays out most frequently through social media apps, with young men it is more likley to occur with video games, pornorgraphy or online gambling.
The proliferation of online gambling in the last five years is a problem we will be dealing with in the future as the generation that learned how to gamble online starts to earn significant money.
Very few of our athletes will technically be addicted to their phones but they are wiring their brains for addiction.
Build a Cell Phone plan with your team.
Creating a set of norms around the use of cell phones is important. Make sure your athletes have some input so they are more likley to comply.
A few staples in our program.
- No phones at team functions
- Occasional phone free trips to away games (especially early in the season)
- Phones away one hour before game time. This includes the air pod warriors. Air pods are about "you" not "us" so I am not a fan of them being used in warmups.
I have tried checking in phones at night and have mixed results with it.
It is important to let parents know about times when they will not be able to connect with their child.
We had a coach at our school who did not notify the parents that it would be a phone free afternoon as they travelled. One of the parents was a RCMP officer. When he could not reach his son he feared the worst and put out an alert on their team van. They were pulled over and asked why they weren't responding to texts. So clearly the kids aren't the only ones who are anxious.
I am encouraged by recent legislation in many states and provinces geared at preventing phones in school. That is a good start. But will these laws be upheld by teachers, administrators and most importantly parents.
Haidt's suggestions include.
- no smartphones until kids enter high school.
- no social media until 16.
- no phones in school at all.
There's no doubt that as a society we need to take action. There is simply too much at stake.
Here is a link to the Huberman podcast with Dr. Haidt. It is a good introduction to the topic at a deeper level.
The 100th Issue of the Competitive Advantage Newsletter
When I first hit publish on issue #1 I did not have a clear idea of what I was hoping to acheive. I knew that I was (and still am) very passionate about helping coaches find an edge through the intersection of culture, high performance and sound coaching philosophy. I also had discovered that I enjoyed the process of writing
Was it going to be helpful, would anyone other than my mother and my children read it (thanks for the support fam!)?
100 issues and two and a half years later I realize first and foremost it has made me a much better coach.
Clarifying my thinking through writing (and some research) has really changed me as a coach.
I am also very grateful for the relationships I have made along the way. It's incredibly rewarding to connect with people who have shared values and beliefs about a topic we care a ton about.
Thanks for subscribing, reading and letting me know what has resonated and where you disagree. I am looking forward to the next 100 issues.
I continue to appreciate your feedback and I love to know what you would like to learn about in future issues.
Here are my five favourite articles from the last 100 issues.
Let's work together.
I would love to help you or your team build a competitive advantage. Here are a few ways I can help:
- Consult with your team
- Teach mental skills via Zoom
- Work 1 on 1 with coaches
- Work 1 on 1 with athletes
Shoot me an email I love to talk coaching and see how I can help you.
Coaching is hard, let's make it easier.
Send me an email at jasonpayne@evolutionmpc.com
Thanks for reading and have a great week.