6 months ago I wrote about taking an extended break from Facebook and trying to do better – with the bigger life problem: the distraction problem. Like working at the pizza shop and getting concerned about my all-pizza diet, I was bothered by how wrapped up in social media I felt. However, it’s not just about one food. I found I had a habit of running to all kinds of distraction without thinking. At that point I had to admit, the biggest culprit was still attached to me: my smartphone.
I love the possibilities of new technology to improve our lives. But was this one right for me?
Forgetting not having one
Until I was halfway through high school, it wasn’t a practical reality for everyone to have a phone on them. Even then, I didn’t like the idea that I wouldn’t get to choose when and where I was reachable and when I had “sacred” quiet time. I liked camping; at one point I’d learned orienteering (finding your way with a compass). It stuck with me how good it felt to take a walk and, sometimes, deliberately get lost.
But in the early 2000’s, that became less and less possible. Over the course of 15 years through college and into adulthood, a small computer in my pocket became an ever-present part of my life. I traveled extensively for work into new states, I used GPS, music, searches for local food, churches, and more. I worked and took classes remotely, and had to connect from wherever I was. I organized big events, and tracked my plans. I got interested in marketing and technology, and generally existed as an extrovert, entangling myself in all sorts of smartphone conveniences and connections. I’d forgotten not having one.
I realized I wasn’t happy with how things had evolved this year. I’d gotten over-saturated with social networks and entirely sick of dinging and beeping interruptions, not to mention disheartened by constantly checking the news. I was worried about what a kind of Wild West of digital social norms was doing, and I wanted to take some time to think about that. So I worked on setting myself some boundaries. I thought it would be hard but I could do it; I didn’t really know what I was in for.
Setting boundaries
I’m a believer in the positive possibilities of the right technology to improve our lives. What usually trips us up, I think, is not thinking deliberately about it. We could set ourselves up better with good habits – like we do with personal diet and exercise; or we could create better societal rules for bigger deals – like we do with recycling, seatbelts, and FDA regulations. We haven’t gotten very far regulating the digital world we live in, though I bet we will someday soon. So I gave myself a shot at making some personal changes. I set no-phone times and got an app for locking the screen on a timer. I talked to others in my life about when and how they could reach me, and tried to distance myself from “instant” messages unless urgent. I stopped using Facebook altogether for a while, and after deciding to open it again 6 months ago I widdled down the distracting features with tools like F.B. Purity and Social Fixer.
I still found myself with the nagging urge to break those self-imposed limits. It’s normal – people have trouble with New Year’s resolutions for a reason – but of course it’s frustrating. Without thinking I’d catch myself on my phone, doing just one more thing, then another. I’d look up and see everyone on the bus, the sidewalk, in their cars, in the cafe, at the party, wrapped up in their phones – including me. It’s not just something I came up with on a whim that smartphones are having a troubling effect on people’s minds and emotions, often without us realizing it. Research is starting to show that nagging feeling things are too often out of balance may be rooted in something more serious.
Besides, the more I heard “How can anyone live without a smartphone!” the more I had the strong impulse to huck mine off a cliff.
So I did.
Cold turkey
I am stubborn; this is my work and my treasure. I decided half-measures weren’t enough and sold my smartphone back. I’d quit Facebook for half a year, why not smartphones next? It felt good to call my own bluff.
A baffled phone store employee, practically having an existential crisis on my behalf, helped me switch to a 1990’s era clamshell, a real brick that laughed in the face of the phrase “mobile optimized”. The web browser was a broken time travel machine that could only see one page from 1992. I’d text about half a sentence before giving up and making a phone call.
It was perfect.
I felt a bit curmudgeonly, and resolved myself I was OK with that. It seemed a fair exchange for leaving the “young” off of “young adult” as I am now firmly in my 30’s. I couldn’t GPS, I couldn’t Uber. I asked people to call or visit in person instead of text long, confusing conversations. My coworker half-joked about whether I could function on a business trip.
Most people were tolerant about this whole life choice I was making, but one thing was pretty clear. This was different than just not liking Facebook. People who sadly nodded their heads and agreed they’d love to take a break too when I talked about quitting Facebook, now stared blankly at me or immediately swore they’d never leave their own smartphones. It was too important, too vital, too tied into everything they did and needed and enjoyed. Many people simultaneously said they had a problem – i.e. they admitted to breaking their own limits and not liking it, or not feeling like they could really stop themselves – and said it wasn’t that bad.
I’d given myself no choice but to stick with it anyway, or else I don’t know if I could disagree. I’d felt the exact same way.
I’m not a Luddite who wants to grab people’s phones and smash them, but I think we could stand to question it when we feel cut off instead of connected, when we see everyone’s looking down, all the time.
I live in a busy city, and I walk by an intersection every day where a woman my age was hit and killed in the crosswalk. I debate with myself how effective it would be to say to a passersby, please look up. Please take care of yourself. They’re usually just annoyed with me. I usually don’t.
Why do this
Well, even if that weren’t the case, even beyond my right to be an annoying stubborn old person if that’s living the dream for me, I felt committed to the idea that we each have the right to determine our own quiet time. It resonated with high-school me, first resisting a cell phone because Edward Abbey said every free American has the right to get lost, sunburnt, and eaten by bears. We should be allowed, and able to stand firm to say “no” to things even if we feel pressured into them because of convenience, artificial urgency, or because everyone’s doing it.
Over the spring and summer, into the fall, it’s only recently I notice myself not craving to check my phone any more. It’s taken, realistically, months for that to really change. I gradually remembered things I used to have to write down or check ahead of time, like bus times, phone numbers, what I was doing that afternoon. I could work to make club communications more widely accessible. I could get a work phone. But the real difference is more profound.
It feels like I’m starting to get my attention back. Not to be overly dramatic, but I force myself to do whatever I’m doing – ride the bus, look at the sunrise, notice people around me – instead of by default, thinking about my phone. Sure, I could do this before. People can and do set aside their smartphones, detox and unplug. People can use them as great aids, planners and communicators and organizers, then put them in a fixed place and set firm boundaries. Maybe I simply had trouble with this myself, and like anyone’s personal health journey, with steps forward and back, you’ll find differences and similarities to help you with your own. But there’s something pretty important I was having trouble with when I had a smartphone on me. It was always there, even when I didn’t want it to be. It always had a piece of my attention, and I could rarely give my whole attention, 100%, to anything else.
I was having trouble forgetting what it was like having one. I was, I’d say, unable to imagine living without one.
I don’t think I’m going to get a smartphone again, not for a while. Maybe never. It’s too valuable a thing to sit and think about sunrises and nothing else.
