Nov 9th, 2023
When I had a phone, there were always more things to do. Respond to this person. Check that email. Look up that thing you haven’t heard of. Add that item you just remembered to your to do list.
I wrestled with my phone. When things didn’t work, I would get frustrated. Simple things would require me to log in with a password I didn’t remember, click on useless boxes to give consent I didn’t really want to give. It was always running out of battery, and how full it was was always a background concern whenever I stepped more than a few feet from my door.
I carried around a charger, headphones. But I didn’t carry books, a journal, things to do in those little moments of the day.
A phone fills all of those moments. Not only that, it fills time you didn’t even know you have. I felt like I was saving time, ticking things off. Accomplishing a task was another thing I had sorted. But send one message, and it prompts another. Check one thing, and you need to check again. And again. Until you are checking things that don’t even make sense. That don’t matter to you. That just exist for the purpose of checking.
It’s an anxiety economy. And it’s also tied to the depression economy, and the schizophrenia economy, and the bipolar economy. How many conversations in real life have you seen which sound like Twitter?
It’s an economy of attention, because once something gets your attention, it doesn’t need to be good. It’s just there. Like that slightly weird guy in your house share, who the rest of you didn’t really talk to, but now he’s in the kitchen so often you’re kind of friends.
The problem is when he moves away. And you’ve spent all that time chatting in the kitchen. Death scrolls are just kitchen chats with someone you don’t really like, in disguise.
By saving time, with your phone, you waste it. Hey! It’s so quick to take a picture. No film needed. No setting of the settings. Just –
There isn’t even a snap sound, anymore. So you can spend the whole day taking pictures. Then look at the pictures to tell yourself what a nice experience you had, taking pictures.
How many products are there that aim to condense, contract, extract from books? The most efficient way to read, or to run, or to learn how to cook Chilean food is to stop reading this and so it right now. How often, when you have the impulse, do you immediately drop everything to go do something?
It’s not practical to live without a phone. But it’s not practical to live one either. I can go four months without seeing my best friend. It’s sad. But four months without a phone? Unimaginable. Yet it disrupts our sleep, distorts our ideas, takes bills out of our wallet, and plugs us in to the giant capitalist vacuum cleaner hoovering up our money-dust in deep clean mode.
Smash your phone right now. Are you scared of it? How scared. Can you even imagine life without it? Will you be willing to go without it?
I suggest, once in a while, leave it at home. Put it in another room, when you have a conversation. When there’s a lull, just think. Look at what’s around you. What are you going to get, by looking at your phone? If your partner is giving birth, do not do this. If they are not expecting, what are you worrying about?
You might notice the seasons. You might notice the direction of the wind, how it blows north west around 11 and then after lunch, blows east. You might see birds building nests, flowers hidden in cracks. When was the last time you spent five minutes staring at a weed? They’re beautiful. So are cockroaches, if you look at them long enough.
Keep your phone in aeroplane mode. Keep your life in aeroplane mode. Write with a pen. Read holding paper between your fingertips. Do you know how different the ideas and images you absorb would be if all you consumed was through paper?
If there’s a global event, you will hear about it. Your friends won’t throw away their phones. If there’s something important, you can talk to people. Ask. They can always email you. Send all the detritus of society to your laptop. Something you can shut the lid of, and not see the screen. Something you can’t carry and use every waking minute of the day.
There is WiFi in the Himalayas. It’s terrible. Even up there, some people won’t go without it for a day. Even the sociable ones. But if it cost you money every time you looked at your phone, how much would you look at it?
Here is a more radical option. You make a swear jar. Only every time you look at your phone, put in a pound. Maybe you’ll unlock that screen three times a day. Spend half an hour on it, when you really need to. When you can’t escape from a catch up call or a mind-numbing commute. Spend the money on things that aren’t phones. All the things you’ll buy to replace your phone – a camera, a notebook, an MP3 player (yes, they still exist). Even a tablet is better than a phone. A tablet you can’t fit in your pocket.
Or donate it to the cause. All the people who don’t eat because their phone tells them to. Who won’t heal because every time their mental health confronts them, they just look at their phone. Or even more – those people that never pursue things, or pursue the wrong things, because they carry opium and a pipe in their pocket. It’s a drug with no direct health consequences, no direct usage cost, no recognised withdrawals or treatment for rehabilitation.
You have to create that plan yourself. I, meanwhile, have to get back to my phone.