Angela Duckworth at Bates: Push those cell phones away

Good morning, Batesies. Oh, before I

begin, uh, President Jenkins, I'd like

to ask you for a favor if that's okay.

Um, don't want to get distracted up

here. So, I wonder if you might hold on

to my phone. Let me put it on silent. It

is. Is that okay? Okay. Thank

you. Oh, one more thing. Uh, would you

mind if I held your phone, too? I

promise to give it back. Swear. Yeah.

Thank Thank

you.

Awesome. Very nice

case over

here. Okay, graduates. I'd like your

help, too. Families, friends, and even

faculty up here and in the back. I want

all of us to do an experiment together.

I want to try something that's never

happened before on the quad.

probably something that isn't happening

at any other graduation ceremony in the

world. I want all of you to do what

President Jenkins and I did just now.

So, if you have a cell phone, please

take it out. I think nearly all of you

do.

Okay? And I want you to hand it to a

neighbor. Doesn't matter who, left or

right. Doesn't matter if you end up with

two

phones, but I don't want anybody holding

their own. Okay. All right. You set.

I've got President Jenkins covered. You

handle your neighbor. And I really do

mean this. Parents,

grandparents. Oh, and do make sure it's

on silent, by the way. That would be

embarrassing for your neighbor.

Now uh parting with your phone may be

causing some anxiety and I want to

assure you that the withdrawal symptoms

should abide

presently. Graduates as we celebrate

your achievements I want to talk about

something that might seem trivial but in

fact has profound implications for your

future success and happiness. Something

as consequential as your major or where

you land your first

job. And that's where you choose to keep

your

phone. Where you physically place your

phone just might be one of the most

consequential decisions you make. And

unlike some decisions, the choice of

where you keep your phone is one you get

to make over and over again every hour

of every day for the indefinite future.

I've spent my career studying grit,

goals,

self-control, and this research has made

one thing abundantly clear. And it may

surprise you because it definitely

surprised

me.

Willpower is overrated.

In study after study, psychologists like

me have found that achieving what you

want out of life has very little to do

with forcing yourself to act in one way

or another. In fact, if you follow

around successful people as they go

about their everyday lives, you discover

that they rarely rely on inner fortitude

to resist temptations in the heat of the

moment.

Instead, they avoid them

altogether. In other words, successful

strivvers are exquisitly aware of how

the situation shapes their behavior and

they deliberately design their

situations in ways that make wise

choices

easier. Which brings me back to your

phone.

Your generation, Gen Z, is spending more

than six hours a day on their

phones. If you have a younger brother or

sister, the odds are that they're

spending even more time on their

screens. Teenagers in the United States

are now up to about 8 hours a day on

screens. That's 56 hours a week, a full

half of their waking

lives. If being on a phone were a paid

job, we'd be getting

overtime. Now, each time you pick up

your phone, you invite a cascade of

notifications, messages, and images to

hijack your attention. Each time you

stare into a screen, you look away from

what's around you. And research suggests

that very often you do so reflexively,

mindlessly, automatically. In other

words, when you pick up your phone, you

may be doing so as instinctively as

blinking or

breathing. 10 years ago, when I was

researching my book, Grit, I interviewed

athletes artists CEOs scientists.

They were all at the top of their game.

Now, the word grit may make it sound as

if these world-class performers just

force themselves to do things, but

that's not

accurate. They love what they do, and

because they love what they do, they

create sanctuaries where they cannot be

distracted from their craft.

I didn't interview her for my book, but

my mom is one of my very favorite

artists. As a painter, she says, "It's

nearly impossible to do your best work

unless you have, as the writer Virginia

Wolf once put it, a room of your own."

My mom was in her late 80s when she

marched down the hall of her senior

living community and knocked on the door

of the

manager. Could I use the unoccupied

apartment one floor below mine? She

asked. Why? The manager wondered. Oh, I

need a place to work, my mom explained.

A room where I can get things messy and

not worry about it, and where I won't be

interrupted.

The manager's answer, "Yes." At the age

of 87, my mom got for the first time in

her life an art studio where she could

paint to her heart's content. A room of

her own. And that's where she paints

today. Very recently, my mom told me she

painted my portrait. It was the largest

work she'd done in many years. A canvas

five feet tall and six feet wide. When

at last she was done, I couldn't wait to

see it. And when I did, I couldn't

believe

it. My mom had painted me standing in an

art gallery with red, white, and black

sculptures in the background as if I too

were a work of art, a statue frozen in

time. But you can't see my face because

I'm hunched forward and looking

down. And what am I looking at? What am

I staring at so intently that I'm

oblivious to all the beauty around

me? Some of you have guessed by now, and

you're right. My

phone. When I asked my mom why on earth

it was that she chose that particular

composition, she said simply, "Oh,

that's how I see you most of the

time." Of course, I rushed to defend

myself. I pointed out that when I'm on

my phone, I'm not playing Candy Crush or

scrolling through Tik Tok. But then, in

the middle of justifying my need to

pound through work emails, I I realized

something. The fact that I was using my

phone every moment of the day to do work

doesn't make it

fine. At least it doesn't make it fine

by me because I don't want to spend my

entire life oblivious to what is going

on around

me. In my research, people who vow to

spend less time on their phones

typically rely on willpower to do so.

But as I said, relying on willpower to

rescue us from digital distractions is

downright

foolish. So what do we use

instead? Something smarter than

willpower. Situation

modification. Situation modification

means using physical distance to create

psychological distance. For example, if

you don't like how your phone grabs your

attention, directs your thoughts,

triggers your desires, then push it

away. On the other hand, if you do want

something to take up more of your

conscious awareness, art, poetry, a

really good novel, keep it close, as

close as possible.

The research on situation modification

is remarkable. In what's now known as

the brain drain study, researchers found

that when taking an IQ test, having your

phone within sight, even if it's face

down, lowers your score. While keeping

your phone in a bag or in another room,

raises it. Seeing your phone and then

forcing yourself to ignore it saps

mental energy, leaving you with less

cognitive bandwidth for the task at

hand. My research team has found a very

similar pattern. In a nationally

representative sample of teenagers, we

found that students who keep their phone

farther away while studying do better in

school. The farther the phone, the

higher the

GPA. And there's more. Research also

shows that when we feel awkward,

anxious, or bored, we reach for our

phones the way a toddler reaches for a

comfort

object. In other words, cell phones are

effectively adult

pacifiers. Now, here's what's really

troubling. The research on phones and

face-to-face interaction. The surging

popularity of social media since 2004

parallels a striking decline in time

spent socializing in person over the

same period. Something that I think

bates know a lot about in-person

community. Now think about that. Text

messages, DMs, and emojis displacing

moments of rich, nuanced in-person

communication. Think about all the

things you can't do when you're stuck to

a screen. bear hugs, high fives, locking

eyes with a future

soulmate. Recently, my colleagues at

Stamford completed the largest

randomized controlled experiment on

social media and emotional health in

history. What they found is that paying

people to get off Instagram and Facebook

for just one month measurably increased

their happiness and decreased their

anxiety and depression.

And consider this. Phones now give us

247 access to ChatGpt and other AI chat

bots. More and more people are turning

to chat bots for life advice, for

companionship, and even for love.

Harvard Business Review, by the way,

says that is the number one use now of

chatbots. Companionship, advice, and

comfort affection.

What if the time we spend commuting with

digital companions displaces the time we

spend with one

another? That's the concern of a

terrific young researcher named Dunigan

Folk. Dunigan has found that people turn

to chat bots when feeling lonely. But

those interactions with chatbots may

actually increase loneliness in the long

term. In other words, chatbots may be

the equivalent of social junk food,

providing short-term gratification at

the cost of long-term

nourishment. Shaping your situation

before your situation shapes you starts

simply. And today, you've made a start.

Sure, I nudged everyone to handph phones

to neighbors, but the decision to do so

was yours. Here are six ideas for

dealing with your phone. Six ways you

can use situation modification in your

everyday life. See if any of these

appeals to you. Number one, when you

need to focus deeply, put your phone in

another room. Out of sight is out of

mind. Number two, change your sky to

screen ratio. When you're feeling

awkward, anxious, or bored, get up and

walk out the door.

The blue canopy above, even on this

cloudy day. Well, it has no marketing

department, no fancy algorithm to keep

you hooked. But whoa, what an awesome

alternative to the glowing blue

rectangle in the palm of your

hand. On August 22nd, 1853, Henry David

Theorough reflected on his two-year

experiment of living at Walden Pond. In

his journal, he wrote this. All nature

is doing her best each moment to make us

well. She exists for no other end. Do

not resist her with the least

inclination to be well. We should not be

sick. Unfortunately, very few of us are

taking the advice. These days, most

American adults spend less than one hour

a day in the great outdoors.

So that's a skyto-screen ratio of about

1:6. Only you know your own

sky-to-screen ratio. Only you can change

it.

Number three, when you're having dinner

with people you care about, for example,

this very

evening, you might agree to keep your

phones off the table, ideally in a zip

pocket where your habit of reaching for

it will be

interrupted. Number four, when you're

behind the wheel of a car, keep your

phone beyond arms reach. Each year,

distracted driving causes nearly 800,000

accidents, more than 300,000

injuries, more than 3,000

deaths. Number

five, don't keep your phone in your

bedroom. As relationship expert Esther

Prell says, if the last thing you stroke

before bed and the first thing you

caress in the morning is your phone, you

are not moving in the right direction.

And finally, number

six. When you decide deliberately that

you want to listen to something on your

phone, look up the Ezra Klein podcast

featuring the British author Zadeie

Smith. When Ezra asked Zadeie why she

refuses to get a smartphone, she says

this. I had one for three months in 2008

when it came out. Other people's

opinions matter to me as I'm sure they

matter to everybody. The thought of

being exposed to those opinions every

second of every day, of having to

present my life to other people in some

other form than it exists every day,

like a media presentation. I cannot

imagine what my mind would be, what my

books would be, what my relationships

would be, what my relationship with my

children would be.

Speaking of

relationships, situation modification

isn't about

abstinence. It's about

intentionality. It's about ining

creating it's about creating space

between stimulus and response, between

notification and reaction. And it's

about reclaiming your

attention. Here's something else to

consider.

At Bates, face-to-face conversations

with friends well came built into your

daily life. You lived together on

campus. You studied together at least

sometimes in lad. Of course, you ate

together in commons. But starting today,

maintaining your friendships will

require more deliberate effort. You'll

need to schedule time, travel distances,

and prioritize showing up for the people

who matter to you.

All that becomes infinitely harder when

your default response to free time is to

dive into your

phone. Now, some of you may be thinking,

"Wait, my phone helps me connect with

other people." And that's true. Phones

can connect us to people who are far

away, but they can also separate us from

the people right in front of us. How

many times have you been alone together

with a friend, physically present,

mentally elsewhere, scrolling through

feeds, pretending to

listen? How often have I ignored my own

mother? Small acts of situation

modification may seem trivial, but they

compound over time. That's what one of

my closest friends told her two boys as

she removed the flat screen TV from the

family living room. Oh, the boys

complained, but she reminded them of the

Hindu proverb her own mother had passed

on to her. You worship what you sit next

to. President Jenkins, thank you for

permitting this little experiment that

we all just carried out together.

Now that we know what it feels like to

be separated from our phones, it is time

to get them back. So take them out,

exchange them. President Jenkins.

Graduates, as you leave the quad today

with your hard-earned diploma, walking

for one last time beneath this beautiful

canopy of trees, the trees that have

witnessed generations of Bates before

you, I urge you to make a humble yet

powerful vow. Commit to situation

modification. Because this is what

mindfulness looks like in the digital

age, not willpower, but the wisdom to

shape the situations that shape

you. Oh, one last thing. All of us have

a fear of missing out. Surely each of us

missed at least one text message,

notification, or email during

the 17 minutes our neighbor was holding

our phone. As for everything in life,

there there are

trade-offs. When you make your choices,

remember what the writer Annie Dillard

said. How we spend our days is of course

how we spend our lives.

Thank you and go Bobcats.

[Applause]