smart phone, dumb me
on phone addiction, the ruinous rotting, and glimmers of hope for a post-screen world
1. caught without a phone
recently, i flew into bangalore and ended up waiting 50 mins in a queue for an uber into the city, and for the first 15 mins i mindlessly scrolled on my phone hoping the next cab would be mine, but eventually sat back and opened the physical book i was carrying… and it felt so weird. everyone else in the queue was looking at me like i was an alien, and i realised how awkward it felt to not use my phone in public and then that realisation made me feel really sad any wayyy phones won’t save us.
Beyond the missing functionality, being without a smartphone can also just feel awkward. Sean Dietrich reports feeling conspicuous: “I feel pretty stupid just standing there, with nothing to look at, staring into space. Sometimes, I’m not entirely sure I’ve done the right thing, giving up my device. If I’m being honest, I feel lonely without my old phone. I feel left behind. I must appear pretty boring compared to other people I see in public, importantly tapping away on their phones.”
2. rotting away in hell
there is a strange kind of disgust i often feel when i realise how much rot my brain is carrying at the start and at the end of each day and no matter how smart or self-aware or responsible1 i consider myself i still fail, every day, and the spiral of disdain is slippery and the rot takes over and god is it torture
you don’t realize how bad it is until you start noticing that impatience has become common currency. watching a full 2-hour movie from the comfort of your couch is torture - even a 25-minute series episode is too much. you can’t stand still while waiting for the bus without reaching out for your phone and opening something - any app, even to check the weather for the millionth time that day.
even conversations are suddenly taking too long, and when you look around, you start hearing all these absurd stories of how people are skipping paragraphs while ‘reading’ books because they think descriptions are boring or just ‘need to’ finish faster to reach their reading goals.
decluttering the mind is SO HARD and one of the few things that have actually worked for me is playing a sport that necessitates you to stay away from your phone for at least an hour and the other perhaps is actually talking to a friend while looking at their face instead of at your screen (radical, i know)
3. to love is to be hyper available?
i used to be terrible at texting for years and would inadvertently end up ghosting or being unreliable in responding but i’ve spent the last year trying to intentionally fix that through a lot of discipline and it has helped me regain and maintain a lot of important friendships that don’t benefit from the privilege of spending time together in person. phone calls, on the other hand, are a quest i’ve given up on2.
But here’s the twist no one warns you about: the human heart is stupidly complex. I crave quiet and connection. I want to be left alone and deeply understood. I want someone to say, “You’ve been quiet lately, are you okay?” but also not message me ever because notifications give me a rash. Make it make sense.
I ghost people a lot. It’s almost my love language. Not on purpose. Not with flair. I don’t slam doors, I just... fade. One day, I’m there, sending memes, overanalyzing conversations, promising we should meet up. The next? Radio silence. Not because I don’t care, but because staying connected feels like trying to hold onto smoke. My mind starts buffering and never quite reloads.
cute essay that i know a lot of the people around me will resonate with.
4. maybe the panic will pass
perhaps this will also just be a phase and humanity will collectively realise and decide that screen addiction is a Bad Thing3.
My dream, my burning desire for the future, is that we'll return to life. See how much bigger, more vivid, and magnificent it is than an internet connection and a glowing box of color and noise. See how things get secretly sweeter when they're not shared. See how the trees and rocks and streams are waiting for us.
I think we’ll learn. That we'll find more connection in communal meals than any number of comments and likes. That a quiet walk in the woods is more nourishing than watching someone else’s trip through Tokyo. That talking to our Mom or Dad or best friend is infinitely better than listening to Tim Ferriss' inflamed ego on air. That things look better in real life than on a screen.
third spaces are seeing more investment, the discourse around offline experiences is buzzing, and the craving for human connection and loneliness is (already?) spurring the capitalist machinery that will monetise and exploit that but hey i hope we live to see this day come true…
I hope we look at social media one day as we look at cigarettes now: "You still scroll? Really?? Like… don't you know how bad it is for you?"
5. oh to be free and slow
slowing down is a luxury.
The man across from me on the train has tired eyes. He’s reading a book and I tilt my head to catch the title. It’s a battered paperback, the book as weathered by time as the man himself. I’ll never know what he thought of it but, for the length of the journey, his quiet presence became a part of mine. Seeing him read the book is important to me. On that train carriage, there were 7 people reading. This is an unusually high proportion; usually I would expect to see someone important with a briefcase scrolling through Twitter (I have never been able to bring myself to call it X), someone’s mother on level 1000 of Candy Crush, a teenager having a loud FaceTime gossip session. On that train carriage, I felt oddly validated in my attempt to slow it down. Me and my book, 7 strangers and theirs.
what i love about this piece is that it’s not all rosy when you put down “that damn phone”. the world is still painful and shitty and slowing down will likely make you just notice is more, which is the point that all this scrolling is helping us avoid :)
until next time & new reads!
🌻
~ rufus
digital alarm clock so i can keep my phone away from the bed, turning off all notifications on the phone, making the phone grayscale & boring, doing away with a smart watch, using social media only on the browser and deleting the apps, time limits on app usage… all of this, and still we rot yay!
if you love me, please don’t call me jk fine you can call me some times but with advance notice so i can mentally prepare the whole day in the anxious build up to it okbye
we should start shaming people on their screentimes! like you would if you learnt they did 10 vodka shots on a weeknight; same vibe, worse vice?
Loved this one and resonated so much with struggle! 🫂
After multiple tries, I finally 'truly' deleted Instragram ( deactivated my account) recently. I was struggling to find words to explain my experiences. Struggling to stay 10 mins without looking at a screen. And I had just had enough!
It's been helpful, wearing off of these drugs one at a time, that keep us sedated away from the pain that is life. Slow and steady ❤️