You don't need a smartphone
An excerpt from my forthcoming pamphlet
Note: The following is an excerpt from my illustrated pamphlet, “You don’t need a smartphone.” The pamphlet charts my own experience with technology and social media, and outlines the damage done to us by our devices, and finally offers solutions for the future—primarily the option to downgrade to a dumb phone i.e. one with limited functionality beyond texting and calling.
I didn’t have any friends in high school, but I did have a phone. It was 2010 and I begged my mom to get me an iPhone for Christmas. She said no at first, but then on Christmas morning there was a little white box under the tree. Opening it was a ritual unto itself—a slow, smooth uncoupling of matte cardboard parts. The device itself was even better. I spent all day learning it. I didn’t have any contacts then, not even strangers online. I had the app store. I played skeeball with the flick of a finger. I took photos of my room and washed them in a retro filter. I sprayed digital graffiti on a digital wall. My new phone was a toy chest, a dozen gifts in one, arcade meets art supply store. I lay in bed all day, switching between apps, discovering new ones to download. Within hours, it was an addiction. I was fifteen years old. I had just gotten my first period.
The average age at which an American child receives a smartphone is twelve. Of course, children use these devices much earlier. It is common to witness toddlers in public streaming TV shows and playing games, facilitated by their parents. Watch what happens when an adult places a device in a child’s hands: the child, previously alert and engaged with its surroundings, is suddenly silent, swept into an alternate digital plane, suspended in time, gone. You are no different.
If you were born in the nineties or later, chances are you received your first smartphone before becoming an independent adult. Your caregiver bought it for you. You didn’t have a choice, not really, because you didn’t know what it meant. You just wanted it. Everyone had one. Why not you? Chances are you still own a smartphone today—we live in a society premised on progress, which discourages downgrading. You’ve owned a smartphone for your entire adult life. You don’t know who you are without one. At this rate, you never will.
Moving through the world without technology was a privilege enjoyed by every generation of human beings up until the present day. The historical figures you reference and revere—every pre-21st century artist, writer, politician, activist—existed in a world without smartphones. Their collective output was produced without the aid of digital tools or networks. Given this, how could we possibly claim that such tools are necessary?
If you were born before the nineties, you have memories of pre-smartphone life. You may feel nostalgic for elements of this era: the absence of distraction, the ease of presence, the resulting depth of connection. I encourage you to share your experience with younger generations. You are a valuable resource to those who cannot fathom moving through life without a computer in their pocket.
Picture yourself in a decade. You can’t know what you’ll be wearing, where you’ll be living, how your hair will be styled, what you’ll have achieved, whether you’ll be single or partnered, healthy or sick. But you can say with certainty that, barring any radical change, you will still use a smartphone.1 You will still struggle with boundaries, with striking a balance between digital and real-world activities. The impulse to check will be constant. You will cycle between resisting and indulging that impulse. You will feel shame when you give in. You will blame yourself for a lack of willpower and self-control. You will resolve to be better. You will never get better. Why? Because you’re not supposed to.
These machines were designed to addict you, to keep you in their thrall. Autoplay, infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations—each of these was implemented as a means of prolonging and profiting from your time and attention.2 Unprecedentedly powerful corporations have harnessed unfathomable amounts of money, and the sharpest minds of multiple generations, to engineer the perfect trap. How could you possibly blame yourself for getting caught in it?
So direct your anger outward, at the people and institutions who have robbed you of your time and serenity, and left you anxious and distracted and stressed. Get pissed off! Tell everyone about it! Tell me!3 But don’t wait for institutional change before making a change in your own life. Big tech has zero incentive to become less addictive. Their money lies in more, not less. Waiting for legislation or regulation is like waiting for your heroin dealer to die before you get clean: it diminishes your power and delays your recovery. We cannot effect radical institutional change overnight—these corporations are too powerful, too enmeshed for that. But we can effect personal change today. We can radically reclaim our lives in a matter of hours. If enough of us do this, our collective voice will be loud enough to change the system.
I’m referring to it as a smartphone for simplicity, but it may well take on a different form in the near future e.g. wearables, subdermal implants, retinal lenses. These are not paranoid or fantastical imaginings: the technology already exists. It’s just a matter of widescale adoption.
Others have written about this in greater depth and with greater insight than I can provide. See: Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments, Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus, Julia Bell’s Radical Attention, Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, etc. There is a reason that so many people are now writing about the ills of technology. Listen to what they have to say. It’s not pretty.
Seriously, if you are considering ditching your smartphone, let me know. Leave a comment. Reply to this email. I’ll do what I can to help because I know that downgrading will change your life for the better. Use me as a resource, an ally, a sponsor. I’m here for you.
Hi August. I have an anecdote for this predicament which you might find interesting:
I switched to a Nokia flip phone for about 5 months after my iPhone was stolen in August 2023… I will say from experience, the issues which develop by having a smartphone are lesser than lacking a smartphone in a world which *expects* you to have one. There is no more world without smartphones, that alternative life left us for good at the onset of the 2020 lockdowns. The built-in capabilities of iPhones (to use your example) have replaced many skills that used to be commonplace, but are now no longer supported by our culture. Try routing yourself to a new friends house without the map app. Try looking for your keys in the gutter without a flashlight in your pocket. Need to search Google but aren’t near a computer? In some cases, menus, tickets and other pertinent information for real world events, can now only accessed via a smartphone.
When I tried for as long as possible to go without one, I found myself accepting that there were just things I was no longer going to be able to do. That was okay, I reasoned: I had an excuse not to be held accountable, for example for school group projects, since my number wasn’t compatible with iMessage text groups; I carried around a point and shoot camera and took notes down on a pocket notebook; I made peace with the new way of going about the world. And admittedly, I was quite content with it—It made me feel radical and ahead of everyone else.
Then, after half a year had passed, my family and friends‘ criticism became more frustrated and urgent. They lamented on how difficult it was to communicate with me, or rely on me to navigate efficiently. They had a point. I was happy with this new lifestyle, but as a result, they constantly struggled to get through to me via text, give me directions, or do for them any one of the dozen abilities I had forgone in my abstinence. My decision to give up the smartphone left me feeling selfish. I had dropped out, and I had left behind those who could not so conveniently join me on that other side.
Smartphones have many extremely useful features. I once made a list and it had easily two dozen items. Many of those helpful things are built in, other we make a willful choice to install and incorporate into our lives. Unfortunately, many of those 3rd-party digital tools are built to to distract us from the edge of the world beyond the phone, and keep us coming back for more.
My proposal: make a compassionate agreement with yourself. „my phone is a TOOL.“ So, when you find yourself using it for purposes which can’t be readily explained as useful or necessary, stop there, and reconsider your need for that application. Keep installed only those which have the potential to be needed at a moment‘s notice. All else which can be deleted or removed from the home screen—let them go.
Important is, not to punish oneself for falling into the trap of manipulative software design. You mention this—August—they are designed with an addictive quality. It is not our fault that we have become subservient to our tools, but we do still have the agency to weaken their grip on our lives.
I could go on about mindfulness, which I believe is a major part of the issue, but some of these apps are straight exploitative. Even with notifications turned off, the maladaptive neural pathways they have carved into our minds are difficult, maybe downright impossible to correct. Nonetheless, any wisdom from someone who is critically thinking this through—about our psychological relationship to this not yet understood parts of modern culture—is useful for the rest of us who, too, have become aware of the problem, but are unsure of what to do about it.
As for me, I now have a smartphone again. My parents made it hard to say no when they offered to help pay for a new iPhone… Some of my habits remain, but there are now much fewer apps installed, and I feel better about my use. If I were to better follow my own advice, I would delete everything which is able to be deleted. Maybe aside from Substack… I can still justify Substack…
TL;DR, the smartphone isn’t inherently the problem, it’s the way we view our relationship to them. They are tools, and our power is not necessarily forgoing possession, but maybe in choosing to deliberately defer their use for all the frivolous ends they serve as convenient means for.
Echoing Kevin - have been on the cusp of this decision for a while, and your words pushed me over the edge. Thank you.
Flip phone is on its way. I'm excited. Working on an essay about it...