How a Temporary Return to Smartphone Life Is Reaffirming My Decision to “Go Dumb”
“It’s like an army,” said my seven-year-old daughter.
“What is?” I asked.
“The sea.”
We were sitting on the beach in Tel Aviv, staring at the Mediterranean Sea, which was angry that day. Angry isn’t quite the right word actually. More like wild and purposeful, just like the army of Awakened Trees in Prince Caspian. We’d been reading the book together for the last few months and had just come across this description of the tree warriors the other night:
“But soon neither [the enemy’s] cries nor the sound of weapons could be heard any more, for both were drowned in the ocean-like roar of the Awakened Trees as they plunged through the ranks of Peter’s army, and then on, in pursuit of the Telmarines. Have you ever stood at the edge of a great wood on a high ridge when a wild southwester broke over it in full fury on an autumn evening? Imagine that sound. And then imagine that the wood, instead of being tied to one place, was rushing at you; and was no longer trees but huge people; yet still like trees because heads tossed and leaves fell round them in showers.”
My iPhone—which I begrudgingly brought with me on this trip since my flip phone doesn’t work outside the U.S.—pinged with a text, yanking me out of my reflections about Narnia, the Mediterranean, and the delightful connections my daughter was making between the two. With a flip phone, this would have been a brief distraction but not a huge deal. I could have quickly responded to the text and gone right back to peacefully staring at the wild and purposeful waves. But with a smartphone, it’s another story. As soon as you unlock your phone, the entire internet is there, beckoning. It’s a battle of wills to stay on task.
I answered the text and then came the predictable urge to swipe over to my email and the news—something that just doesn’t happen with a flip phone. In preparation from this trip, I had actually deleted the email and news apps off my smartphone in a desperate attempt to “add friction” to the device since I knew I’d be using it daily. But who was I kidding? Opening my email on the app takes about half a second. Checking it on the browser takes maybe two seconds longer. This is not friction. Hacks like this do not suddenly turn our digital slot machines into simple tools, and we are kidding ourselves if we think these are sustainable solutions to the attention crisis.
Summoning willpower, I put the phone away without looking at my email or the news. But now I was irritated. I hate this device, hate having it on me. I hate constantly battling with myself to not succumb to digital distraction. I hate the space it occupies in my brain even when I’m not looking at it.
And this is what I think people should know about flip phone life. Having a flip phone is liberating because it totally removes the tension I’m describing. When you are out in the world, you don’t have to try to not look at your email, the news, or whatever thing online is calling you—because there’s no “online” in the first place. There is quite simply nothing of interest on your phone. Being present becomes second nature, not a struggle. It’s wonderful.
Some may be thinking, what’s the big deal about checking your email or the news for a couple minutes while you’re at the beach? The big deal is that I don’t want my attention hijacked by some annoying email that nine times out of ten doesn’t require an immediate response when I’m trying to focus it on something else. The same goes for the news. I have made a real effort to be more intentional about my internet use lately. I set aside a few hours in the morning to be online—during which time I respond to email and take care of any other “business” that requires the internet—all done on my laptop. After that I log off for the day (some days more successfully than others). This type of intentionality is damn near impossible to maintain when you carry a smartphone with you. Using one’s smartphone “as a tool” requires a level of willpower that is exhausting at best and impractical at worst.
And here’s another thing I HATE about smartphones that I’m being reminded of constantly on this trip: the camera. Because of smartphones, many people now typically experience the most special moments of their daily lives through a screen rather than firsthand. You see this happening at concerts, sporting events, school plays, beautiful sites in nature, family reunions, holidays, a night out with friends—basically anywhere that anything happens, people are filming and photographing it rather than living it, and in doing so robbing themselves of a more meaningful existence. And in the last few days on this trip with my smartphone, I’ve felt myself falling back into this trap as well—frequently reaching for my phone to take pictures rather than soaking everything in firsthand.
Which brings me to the next point: what are we modeling for our children when we live this way? I’ve written about this before but one of the most surprising delights of switching to a flip phone has been not feeling pressure to photograph my kids on a daily basis. When I first got a flip phone with a terrible blurry camera, I worried I was missing all these precious moments, but now I see that I was missing them before when I used to view them through a screen. I don’t want my kids growing up with a camera in their face multiple times a day every day. I believe this constant photographing of our kids throughout their childhood trains them to be preoccupied with appearances, and it also trains them to think that the best moments in their life should be repackaged as content for other people to consume. This is not the way, folks!
Yes, my smartphone has made this trip more convenient. I can shoot off a text in a few seconds rather than laboriously typing messages out on my flip phone’s T9 keyboard. I can head out the door into the unfamiliar streets of Tel Aviv with minimal planning because my GPS will lead me anywhere I need to go. Those are great “tools” that this phone offers.
But convenience isn’t everything, and this trip is reaffirming for me that the benefits of smartphones are not worth the cost.