Hi, my name is Jason, and this is my first time building in public. My organization is called Chicago C.H.A.T., short for Creating Healthy Habits Around Technology (my mom helped me come up with the name), and the goal of this endeavor is to build a social support group for people of all ages who struggle with unhealthy behavior patterns around cell phones, social media, video games, dating apps, television, and other forms of digital technology.
I was inspired to build this social group because of the problems that I am having as a young man living in Chicago, working to get my life up and off the ground. I graduated from college in 2023 with a BFA in dance from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. I discovered dance in high school, and it turned into my first true love. Well, maybe my second, after video games. I continued studying dance in college at Emory University and then transferred to a more serious dance program at Illinois in 2020. Unfortunately, when I graduated, I realized quickly that I was not going to have a professional career in dance. As my friend Max said to me on the phone last night, “you are not exactly Adonis.” Even if I was lithe and beautiful and qualified, I realized that a career in the arts, living off of the dime of private donations and the government’s money was not what I had in mind. I was going to go into business, and make money the proper way. So, immediately after graduating college, I started working on a dance choreography software, by myself, in the basement, which I ended up calling MoveMind. MoveMind was not a complete failure, but let’s just say I learned a lot of lessons working on the venture. One of those lessons was my inclination towards procrastination, unhealthy technology use, and despair. I have always been a generally level-headed person with strong physical and mental health, and I found myself really challenged by unstructured time, and the combination of, like, zero life skills and very high ambitions. I would cycle almost every other week between times when I was motivated and productive, and times when I would waste away my days in bed with a cell phone, an anxious twitch in my foot, and a pit of depression inside my stomach. The past year has been the worst mental health year of my life, and a large portion of that struggle can be attributed to compulsive technology use.
Compulsive technology use is a fancy way of saying that I have a really hard time stopping once I start, so I end up binging on tech for hours more than I intended and for hours after the peak amount of happiness has been reached. This problem has been with me since a young age, and has taken many forms from childhood until now. As a kid, I would hide my DS from my parents under my pillow and play games on it well into the night. As a teenager, I watched lots of TV. That was also around the time when I discovered League of Legends and Hearthstone, video games which I would play during school, during my waking hours, and during many hours where I should’ve been asleep. As a college student, especially during the pandemic, I watched a lot of YouTube videos. Most recently, I am addicted to the vertical short-form feeds on YouTube and Instagram, where you can swipe endlessly, and each video is a minute long or less.
I am embarrassed to share this information, and I am worried that it may affect others opinion of me. Nevertheless, I am choosing to be vulnerable here, and I kindly request that you do not hold it against me. The truth is, everybody has a vice, and mine is technology. Like any other addict, I have gotten very good at pretending like everything is normal, even when I am in the middle of a binge. All you can do is to pull yourself together as best you can and continue on, despite the headaches, restlessness, and shortened attention span. The good news about a technology behavioral addiction is that the side-effects are minor. Rarely do I feel that my life, my wallet, or my relationships are in danger. Also, I have been able to live a very full life and accomplish many wonderful things. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I am able to complete my responsibilities and keep my appointments. I consider myself to be a very highfunctioning addict. That’s why it was so concerning to me when, while working on my start-up, my life began to fall apart.
During the year that I was working on MoveMind, I struggled hard-core with my technology addiction. I felt that my time was being stolen away from me. My social relationships suffered, my productivity suffered a lot, and as I mentioned before, my mental health would rapidly decline. I did the standard things to try and improve my situation: I saw a therapist. I invested more into exercise, nutrition, and sleep. These things helped, but I still felt that the tide was working against me. At one point, I decided to look for something that would specifically help me with my technology behavioral addiction. The results were unsatisfying. None of the options could provide what I was looking for in an offline, non-stigmatic way. I wanted to share how tech was having such a negative impact on my life. I was also in dire need of social support. What I wanted was a community of people who were knowledgeable about the potential negative effects of technology use and were willing to talk about it with vulnerability and pragmatic optimism. In C.H.A.T., as in many of my previous entrepreneurial efforts, I am trying to create that which I could not find.
I know that I am not the only person struggling with this issue in America, or even just in my own city of Chicago. Increasingly, in our culture, it has become more and more acceptable for people to be on their phones or laptops all the time. You can see on YouTube and on TV people wryly admitting to screen time averages above 10 hours a day. I’ve heard over and over again from my friends and acquaintances that technology use is detracting significantly from their overall level of life satisfaction. Through C.H.A.T., I am determined to make a difference. So far, Chicago C.H.A.T. is a continuation of my previous project, in the sense that I am still working alone in my basement. Today is day one. My hope is that I will be able to share this blog (and other content) with the world in order to build up a mutually beneficial support group between myself and the other people in my community who also struggle with establishing healthy relationships with the technology in their lives.
Starting in October, I will be hosting in-person meetups on the North Side of Chicago. Some events will be offline adventures: a fun place to socialize with others away from your phone and computer. Other events, which I'm calling "roundtable discussions" will focus on learning and debate: a place to share your experience with others and learn more about the facts and strategies that help people build healthier relationships with technology on a daily basis. For questions, feedback, or statements of interest you can reach me publicly at jasonbrickman2022@gmail.com. Please join me on this mission in order to help yourself, help others, and make the world a better place.
Yours truly,
Jason B.