A week without smart | NPO Radio 1

A lot of people thought he was crazy before. A week without whatsapp, instagram, twitter and your banking app? Where to start ! It didn’t work either. On the first day of his experiment, Uilenbroek arrives too late for his appointment with cognitive psychologist Stefan van der Stigchel. No google maps in his pocket, and his outdated navigation box sends him a beam in the wrong direction.

The danger of waiting

Fortunately, Van der Stigchel is patient, and explains to him what he must pay attention to in the days to come: “These thoughtless moments, when you have nothing to do, then you will automatically pick your pocket. It will become less and less less, and at some point you don’t even think about it. It’s going to be difficult when you’re not actively working on a task. Waiting for the bus, at the cash register, those kind of times of waiting, then people grab their cell phones.”

The problem is that at these times you are alone with your thoughts, and we humans don’t usually like that very much. What’s called: Scientific research has shown that people would rather give themselves a shock, Van der Stigchel says, than have time alone in their own company without distraction. A better pain than being alone with your thoughts. No wonder people fill every empty moment of their lives with their smartphones.