Our Story
The Urban Hermit Project is a small business owned and operated out of Ottawa, Ontario. Growing up in the early 2000s while major forms of technology were being introduced, the founder of The UHP found himself using his phone far too much. You know, the daily screen time that you can view in your settings but everyone ignores? This was beginning to haunt him. However, as a full-time employee of a technological company, he struggled to bring this number down.
Determined, he set himself out with the goal of finding a way to decrease his own screen time. First, looking at the activities that he knew he enjoyed, such as reading, engaging in physical activity, and visual arts. Although each hobby would accumulate to a certain number of hours each week, the Urban Hermit found himself with the same screen times, if not higher. This led to him turning to research for an answer.
Not only did he find others struggling, but he found that on average each of us will spend about 4.5 hours on our phone daily (Volz, January 22, 2024). Unsurprisingly, it is suggested that each generation is struggling more than the next (Ibid, 2024).
Further research provided him with the answer. Several newer studies have indicated that the mere presence of a smartphone in a room will influence one's working memory capacities and fluid intelligence, both of which lead to a lower attention rate(Skowronek et al., 2023, p. 2). In other words, having a smartphone available is the leading factor to our using it so often. To the opposite effect, having your smartphone unavailable while engaging in an activity will positively benefit the individual in a slew of ways (Ibid, 2023).
With this in mind, the Urban Hermit began placing his phone inside a clear jar while he performed the same hobbies, finding extraordinary results. Being eager to help others combat phone addiction in all age categories, he set out to create a product similar to his personal creative set-up.
With this product, we aim to provide a healthy, creative, and educational alternative to smartphone usage. Each activity provided aims to recover dopamine secretion and cycling. Meaning that although an activity may not appeal to you- it will still benefit your brain health. We hope that by providing a product that allows you to focus on your creativity, you may be able to focus on what is important. Whether you will be sharing the activity with those you love or taking time for yourself, we hope this product helps you.
As we begin our journey of delving into the creative world unencumbered by our smartphones, we urge you to join us!
Research
Creativity
Creativity is commonly defined as the ability to develop original and novel ideas that are useful and appropriate for solving problems and encompasses the cognitive spectrum of convergent (focused solutions) and divergent (multiple responses) thinking (Müller & Montag, 2024, p. 2)
Smartphones inhibit creativity by capturing attention. Furthermore, social media platforms, designed to retain users, may pose a real threat to creativity by fostering extrinsic motivation and pressure for engagement, such as posting, commenting, sharing, and liking (Müller & Montag, 2024, p. 2)
Technology Over-Use
Technology overuse comprises problematic handling of the Internet, the smartphone, or social media networks (Müller & Montag, 2024, p. 2)
Since smartphone (over)use affects cognitive processes, such as attention, inhibitory control, and working memory it may also impact the highly valued human good of creativity, which involves higher-order cognitive processes. (Müller & Montag, 2024, p. 2)
On average each of us will spend about 4.5 hours on our phone (Volz, January 22, 2024).
Several newer studies have indicated that the mere presence of a smartphone in a room will influence one's working memory capacities and fluid intelligence, both of which lead to a lower rate of attention (Skowronek et al., 2023, p. 2).