i got my first smartphone in 2009. i was 21 years old. before that, i had one that slid out to expose a physcial qwerty keyboard. when smartphones and apps hit the market, i could tell they were a big deal and not just a fad. i remember seeing a movie - i no longer remember what it was - but i do remember a high tech, mysterious sci-fi ad before the movie for something called DROID. id been exposed to the idea of Augmented Reality years before, and the idea of a screen with a camera and networking abilities seemed like it was gonna make Augmented Reality possible. i imagined a world of data superimposed over physical reality, viewable thru these new windows. i got a "budget smartphone" - it had a little ball you could roll to navigate - but it was, technically, a smartphone. it had apps, gps and a decent camera. i was sure that within a few years, i'd be able to pull out this device and see messages left behind on walls and windows. digital graffiti - no longer would u need to know who you were talking to, you would be able to virtually interact with the world itself for others to discover.
a few years passed. i had been on twitter for a little while, i had been an early adopter during late 2008, and my friends and i became familiar with texting a phone number to post to twitter. we used it like a group chat. i could be at work, text a number, and my friends would see my messages if they opted to. "hey is anyone doing anything tonight?" instead of texting a group, we were broadcasting everything we did, all the time. it didn't take long for my young (20yo) mind to adapt to this new mode of communication. if i had a funny thought, i reached for my pocket. i was bored, i reached for my pocket. stimulus, response. i got a clue of what was to come one time when twitter briefly went down. i tried to send a message and was told it didn't work, twitter was down. "oh okay." a few minutes later, i wanted to post about not knowing what to do while twitter was down, only to catch myself and realise i couldn't do that. seconds later, i wanted to post about how i caught myself, only to realise, once again, that i couldn't. i remember a distinct feeling of both amusement and frustration at my apparently now-automatic response.
in 2013, i learned about a game called Ingress. it would dominate my life for the next several years, as this was the closest anything had come so far to my vision a few years before. a virtual world, an extra layer of reality superimposed on the Real World, accessible with a piece of technology. i bought a new phone so i could play it (samsung galaxy s2) and then an even better phone a while later (moto x) because i wanted better performance for Ingress. the moto x was especially cool, it was the first phone that had something called "google now." i could speak to my phone and it would understand me. i could walk into a room, not know where my phone is, and say the activation phrase, and the phone would light up and make a little "bloop" sound. i probably used it for that more than anything else. "where did i leave it?" say the magic word and "oh that's where it is."
my relationship to music slowly changed. i used to download music, or rip it from a cd, and put it on my ipod. i knew what all my music was because i had chosen it. i had sought it out. music streaming became viable, and with it came recommendations. the Algorithm would suggest things to me id never heard of. some of it was really good, but it meant that often i didn't know what i was listening to. at first i would collect this new music, a song or an artist i wanted to explore. as time went by in this new paradigm, however, i stopped doing that. maybe i would favourite a track so i could find it later, but often i would forget to do that and the music would simply wash over me. i stopped feeling like it was My Music, and i was essentially just listening to the radio. curated for my tastes, sure, but not something i was in control of in the same way. music slowly became background noise rather than something i actively engaged with.
pokemon go was announced in 2016. i had been very active in ingress and loved pokemon, so i was hyped. the summer of pokemon go came... and went. it briefly seemed like a game like i imagined had finally reached mass appeal. that didn't happen, of course, it was a fad for most people but i held on for a long time. i stopped playing as much Ingress because of pokemon go. eventually, my excitement waned as i realised i would have to spend money to play the way i wanted (having enough inventory space.) i probably spent $150 on that free game before i decided "no more. it's not even very good."
in 2017 i deleted my facebook account. it was wonderfully freeing. in 2018, i quit twitter. i would keep my phones until they were basically obsolete, then reluctantly upgrade. sometime in 2019, i broke my smartphone. i had moved to a new city the year before and was frequently lost. i left the phone on the bumper of a friend's car, neither of us noticed, and they drove off. it took me a few hours to realise i didn't have it, and using a "find my phone" app i found it a block away, the screen completely shattered. i tried to keep using it, but the slivers of glass that kept trying to slice my fingertips made it more trouble than it was worth. "no big deal," i thought "ill get a new one in a few days. maybe that new google pixel thing."
the first day without my phone was a novelty. i re-experienced the "i have something to say something in the group chat. oh i can't. i should say something about that in the group chat. oh i cant" over and over. i noticed i felt isolated and alone. i wondered what my friends were talking about. i knew i would check when i got home on my computer (which i had basically quit using, prefering the smartphone) but i got my taste of fomo, something i thought was just a buzzword. it's real, it turns out. when you're not plugged into the Network all the time, you notice its absence.
the second day was about the same as the first. a pervasive feeling of anxiety. what if Something Happened? how would i know? i began to notice a familiar sensation: one i was familiar with from quitting cigarettes multiple times over the years. obviously phones dont give a chemical dependency, but the habit loop is the same. i noticed i was reaching for my pocket only to remember: there's nothing in there. believe it or not, i began to experience "phantom vibrations." a buzz in my pocket, despite there being nothing causing it. sometimes i could chuckle and say "im imagining things" but other times i swear it really felt like a phone was going off. i realised that this was having more of an effect on me than i expected.
by day three, i was mostly past the worst of it, and i noticed i was... paying more attention. my thoughts were quieter. i found little ways to pass the time, writing myself little notes on scraps of paper, or just looking around. what i was susprised to notice was how much other people were looking at their phones. it's cliche at this point but it really did shock me realising how used to these things we'd all become. smartphones had been around for about 10 years at this point but it was clear they'd completely changed us. i noticed people looking around when they had nothing to do, and then reaching for their phone. i noticed parents with their kids, and the kids trying to talk to them or get attention, but the parents were more interested in their phone. i noticed people everywhere, always on their phone. i was only three days off my own (very heavy) smartphone usage but i admit i felt a certain smugness, like i was the only one awake in a worlds of sleepwalkers. i got over that pretty quickly as i realised this wasn't something i had chosen, but something that was forced onto me. a week ago i was the same way, worse in most cases if im being honest.
i began to think that maybe my phone getting broken was a good thing, a sort of wakeup call that made me confront some things i otherwise wouldn't have. i remember going to get laser hair removal done, and the technician was on her phone, talking about whatever thing in the news was going on. she was sharing about it, unprompted. she eventually put her phone down and began the procedure but i wondered: in a world without smartphones, what would the equivalent be? i imagined, with some amusement, her reading a newspaper out loud to me while i sat in the chair waiting for her to get started.
while i was in this period, i realised i had no way to tell what time it was. i could look at a cash register or a clock, if there was one. i could ask someone if someone was around but otherwise, i was completely time blind. i had no way to know if i was running late. i went across the street during work to a big chain grocery store and looked around for a clock. a watch, an alarm clock, anything and to my amazement, there weren't any. i asked an employee and they seemed confused. why would anyone need a clock? why not just use your phone. this was during the summer, and they told me (quite uselessly) that they sometimes carried clocks around christmas time. i couldn't wait six months to learn what time it was, so i left with no timepiece. i ended up finding one at an auto parts store, a little LCD clock that was meant for dashboards but it worked. it was about $6 and was unbelievably useful. you never realise what youve been taking for granted until it's gone i guess.
after 4 or 5 days of this, i felt more clearheaded than i had in a really long time. i was mindful, lucid, and aware of my surroundings as if cobwebs had been cleared from my eyes. i rediscovered what boredom actually felt like, and it wasn't as unpleasant as i expected. on the contrary, it was simply an impulse to find something to do, a precursor emotion to doing something fun. at this point, much like a smoker who has quit, i didn't even want to start using a smartphone again. i thought about extending this serendipitous little experiment. i wondered if anyone even still made regular phones ("feature phones" or "dumbphones" as theyre affectionately known.) to my excitement, there were still phones, regular phones, without apps and social media, being made. i ended up getting an adorable blue Nokia 3310 (2017 edition) and a cool yellow Nokia 8110 4G (the "Matrix phone", both remakes of old nokia phones from the late 90s and early 2000s. i was delighted to rediscover t9 texting. after a week of being Unplugged i was happy to have any way to communicate while out of the house. i could text and call again and i realised that's all i really needed, the built in mp3 player, camera and (terrible) mobile web browser were cool additions but not something i needed to have. i remember getting my cute new phone and going to the phone carrier's store. i remember the young, nerdy guys who helped me set it up and looked at me like i was a time traveler. they awkwardly offered a plan which included "a better phone." i laughed and said i had done a lot of research before ordering this one. this was the phone i wanted. they shrugged.
the most difficult thing about not having a smartphone was losing access to google maps. again i was living in a still unfamiliar city and besides getting to and from work, and a couple other places, i didn't know how to get anywhere. the phones i had did have a gps and used something called KaiOS, which has a very simplified version of google maps. you can have it find where you are, put in your destination and (after it loads) it will give you directions to the place you're headed. however it doesn't track your location while you travel, and at every turn you have to press "next" to see what the next direction is. better than nothing, certainly but completely unusable if youre driving. when headed to an unfamiliar place, i ended up making a habit of looking it up on my computer, and just doing my best to commit the route to memory. sometimes i would write down directions but mostly just "okay then a left here... forward... then after three more blocks take a right" and reviewing it until i was pretty sure i would remember it. i would get turned around occassionally, but by this point everyone in my life knew i didn't have google maps and they were understanding. besides, if i got really lost i could ask someone for directions. everyone has a smartphone, after all.
i adapted. i felt free. Unplugged. i began to seek out stories from others who were experiencing the same thing as me. youtube had videos about people going through a "digital detox", mostly minimalist-type influencers, and what their experience was. our circumstances were different but we were all in a strange group who were, at least when not at home, "offline." this is not the same as people who simply never had a smartphone, since they never became reliant on them, but people who were heavy smartphone users, who for whatever reason, were no longer using them, at least for a while. through this, i found a book called "digital minimalism (Cal Newport)" which, while not amazing, helped me think about this experience in a new way. i didn't need to use methods that caused more problems than they solved. was getting a little lost occasionally worth all the negatives i'd realised came along with the smartphone? the answer, for me, was "no."
not having a smartphone, to my surprise, made me feel more connected to the people around me. my dumbphone was a conversation starter. when i explained i had stopped using a smartphone, people would say things like "good for you!", "wow i should probably think about doing that," or "that sounds really nice." while i was at work, a lady pulled out the same phone i had, same colour and everything! i pulled my own dumbphone out of my pocket and we both had a laugh about it. she had a kid with her and she said something about, "so they cant track me." lots of reasons to use a dumbphone, i guess.
it's kinda funny, going from a person who was excited about technology, thought it would solve most of the worlds problems, someone who thought "maybe google should control everything, actually, to someone who had a disdain of what our smartphones had done to us. i began thinking more about how pervasive these things were, how the very idea of "social media" was a societal poison. socializing is something all intelligent beings do, and now the social sphere was a form of media, like tv or movies. tech companies had commodified our ability to even talk to one another. to this day, everyone still has facebook messenger because everyone still has facebook messenger.
i held onto instagram, against my better judgement, for longer than the other socmed sites. all my friends are on there, i thought. i want to know what's going on in their lives, i reasoned. something came out (leaked) that said the company had been aware its products caused insecurity, addiction, and mental health problems in teenagers. that was it for me, i couldn't in good conscience contine to use the platform. i posted a goodbye method with ways to reach me for my old friends from school, coworkers, etc. someone joked "youll be back." but i knew i wouldn't be. i think i got messaged from 2 people, nobody else reached out. if a relationship only exists because we're following each other, how valuable is that relationship really? if someone wont take the time to send me an email or text message, how badly do i need them in my life? maybe we could just part ways and that would be okay. the people who really cared would reach out. if it's purely a friendship of convenience... meh?
in late 2019, 10 years after this story began, i travelled back to my hometown. the plane landed and my service on my phone didn't come back on. i was travelling with a friend who could do all my communicating for me so it wasn't too much of a problem, but we went to our phone carrier's store and asked if they could fix it. after being baffled at the phone i was using and trying a few things, we couldn't get it working. i resigned to asking "well do u have a non-smartphone i could buy?" the very helpful young man told me that they did but... (in hushed tones) told me i could find the same thing for cheaper at walmart, and if i brought it back he would set it up. that's exactly what i did. we went and got an Alcatel MyFlip for $40 and went back to the store. he set it up and i was able to text again. it was a phone made for seniors, and the buttons were huge and wonderful to text on. despite being the phone i liked the least aesthetically, that phone became the one i used from then on because the buttons were just so nice to use.
after the trip, i came back home and kept using the new flip phone. one day in 2021, i was skating and... dropped it. the screen broke. sad because i liked that phone but not a huge deal, i just popped the sim card into one of my other dumbphones. i was unemployed shortly after that, money was tight and i was sleeping on my partner's couch. in trying to think of ways to make money and i thought of food delivery apps. i realised i couldn't do that without a smartphone, and my partner remembered they had an old smartphone in a drawer somewhere. i weighed my options and gratefully accepted their hand-me-down. almost immediately, i was back to my old habits. i didn't reinstall any social media, but mobile games (including pokemon go and Ingress) and apps were something i'd been living without for more than a year at this point. i was flooded with the old feelings of easy entertainment. i stopped feeling bored. i was sleepwalking again.
i learned a lot during this time. about myself, about other people, about society, about technology, about psychology and addiction. smartphones definitely changed the world but... it's worth asking ourselves what we traded for them.
last night, on a whim, i looked up current dumbphones. i do this every once in a while just for fun. hmd is the company that makes nokia's products now and some of them are really cool looking. i was scrolling and admiring how pretty they all were when one in particular caught my eye. it was a flip phone, hot pink and had the word "BARBIE" across the back. it was... beautiful, honestly. i became giddy. the flip phone of your dreams! it advertised. i was overcome with remembering the year i spent without a smartphone and i began thinking... maybe i could do it again. i woke up still thinking about it. i considered it and weighed my options. i haven't bought myself anything fun in a very very long time. i've been holding onto some gift cards to one of the few places that sells it, and the food there is too expensive to be worth it (even with prepaid gift cards.)
it will get here in 8 days.
thanks for listening.
tesarova