I remember the first time I tried to get rid of my smartphone. I was twenty-two and just graduated from college. I was starting a graduate program and wanted a fresh start. I wanted to immerse myself in my surroundings, go on hikes and rambles and get lost.1 When I went to the Verizon store they couldn’t fathom what I was saying.
What about your photos?
I have a camera.
What about your music?
I have a CD player.
What about Maps?
I have a GPS.
And on and on and on. Ultimately they let me walk out with a flip phone and I felt like I’d had one over on them. Ha! Let me enjoy my $10 a month phone plan and live free and clear of all these mind-crowding apps.
Joke’s on me. The whole experiment lasted about four months. I quickly integrated myself into my new university, spontaneously signing up for just about every extracurricular, including Director of Communications for the Graduate Student Association. This was a role that, not surprisingly, required near-constant access to email and group texts and all those things I was vowing I didn’t need when I made that naive switch to the flip phone.
So back to the smartphone I went, and knee deep into all the apps and social media and swipe-swipe-swipe that would dominate my life for years to come (still does, in many ways). But I do still wonder, should I ditch the phone???
Well, my husband Chris has gone ahead and taken the plunge. He now has a classic Nokia flip phone and he says he wouldn’t go back to a smartphone now that he’s on the other side.
We acknowledge the uniqueness of our situation, two parents with flexible schedules at home much of the time. And Chris’s work does not require him to be on email 24/7 and he doesn’t use social media. There’s lots of reasons why not having a smartphone might work particularly well for him, but I think if we push on it, we may find the excuses we give for our own smartphone use just don’t hold up the way we thought they would. Caveat here is that I have a smartphone and plan on keeping it. We talk about that too!
We talk about how it's going, what he loves about it, and the genuine inconveniences he has to put up with (maps, group texts, music, even going to a baseball game have all been issues). We have a far reaching conversation on memory, technology generally, the role of physicality, time, friendship, community, and independent thought. We also talk quite a bit about smartphone use in the context of parenting and the sort of environment we want to create for our children.
I hope you enjoy and that it gives you a chance to ruminate on your smartphone use and technology generally and the role you want it to play in your life.
Would love to hear any thoughts in the comments!
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We did. A lot. See: “Is your smartphone robbing you of experiences?”
My husband got a flip phone