It’s 10:18pm on a Saturday night, and I’m sitting alone in my apartment on Logan, as defeated as all that implies and more. I’m staring at my iPhone 14. There’s a server somewhere crunching my look of disgust. I’ve heard they have algorithms that can predict your approximate life expectancy just from analyzing your face…
I guess on some level I’d always thought I could part with my smartphone if I really wanted to—that I had that level of control in my life at least. It would be absurd to believe otherwise, right? To think that you were tethered to a product (what used to be a luxury) and then to suddenly apprehend this high-tech toy as a symbol of your servility.
I just spent five weekend hours and $70.00 on a lesson in absurdity. I tried and failed to start using a dumb phone. Here was my thinking.
First (and most importantly), I’m privileged enough to have a job that doesn’t require the constant use of a smartphone. I go to the office every day. We thankfully don’t use apps like Slack or Asana for inter-office communication, and my job is very old-fashioned. In fact, it’s the only career-track job I’ve had where they don’t pester you after you leave for the day. An incredibly rare gig. A throwback to the golden era of Dad’s working life, where if someone from the job called in the evening, your folks would get all indignant. “Hey, we’re at the dinner table right now…”
I can’t imagine that rebuff exists anymore. Your boss can call you whenever they want. You’re never completely off the clock—unless you’re lucky to have a job like mine.
Second, I’m not dating. As most single people know, it’s very difficult to meet people these days without the apps. And here again, I can consider myself “lucky.” I’m five years divorced from my high school sweetheart—after which separation, I plunged headlong into the apps, luxuriating in a mad parade of hollow pursuits until eventually I was surfeited and then spiritually chilled from the experience (some of you know how this goes, yes?). I’m in a solid relationship right now. So I’m done with those things, hopefully forever.
Third, I don’t use social media personally, only professionally. My last gasp of personal social media use came in the form of me posting poems and excerpts from a recently finished novel. However, I noticed that I quickly became addicted to tracking my likes and follows, and, what’s worse, I began considering how well something would perform on IG while I was writing it. That was the end of that.
So, with all this in mind, I thought that I was in the perfect position to get a super cheap flip phone—in the style circa 2006 or so—and just use that as my “day phone,” while at work, thus blocking me from the daily doom loop of checking my email, checking the Denverse IG, skimming apocalyptic headlines, watching a YouTube video in the bathroom, checking my email, checking the Denverse IG, etc., etc. I could gradually wean myself off the smartphone stupor, I thought. I could return my brain to its happier prelapsarian 2014 state (I was a late adopter).
I got pretty damn excited about the prospect. I gleefully told a friend my plan. She said it was “a fool’s errand.” But I paid her no mind. Forthwith, I drove to the Target on Colorado Blvd and bought me a brand-new AT&T Cingular flip phone for $29.99 + tax.
At the register, I was fanatical, acting very much like a not-so-wise person on an errand of some kind.
“I’m going back to a dumb phone. Finally!” I told the young man in the Pokémon shirt at the cash register.
He was courteous but puzzled, probably believing my Luddite crusader spiel was a ruse to hide the embarrassment of me buying a burner to cheat on my partner or sell pills.
This was a “prepaid” phone, so I purchased a $40.00 card to go along with it. I figured I would be using the dumb phone pretty sparingly during the day. I would just have it in case someone really needed to get a hold of me. I’ve grown too used to having a phone on me at all times for that reason, at least. I could alternate between the dumb phone and the smart phone when I needed to do things for the business. I was willing to make compromises! Rome wasn’t built in a day, etc.
The first phone was broken right out of the box. So I spent 20 minutes driving back to Target, where I discovered that they didn’t have another AT&T flip phone in stock and the gift card was non-returnable. I won’t regale you with the transactional hell that followed, but at one point I was shaking my head like a madman, reaching out to the young man in the Pokémon shirt for commiseration.
“They don’t want me to have one. That’s it. They don’t want me to have one,” I raved.
“Huh…” returned the young man in the Pokémon shirt, appropriately.
But I’m no dunce. No, no. I’ve been an American long enough to know that anything that’s difficult or expensive in this country is probably good for you. Forthwith, I drove to the Target on Quebec, where I purchased another AT&T Cingular Wireless flip phone in a shopping center that looked like a sterile blue Lego block nightmare.
And then, finally, there I was, sitting pretty with my dumb phone, feeling accomplished and self-righteous.
But alas, a few problems were beginning to crop up. For one, I discovered that paying for a flip phone isn’t as easy as it used to be, back when prepaid meant prepaid. Now, most of the time, you have to commit to a monthly plan, even if you buy a card at the store; the amount just goes to your monthly dues. For AT&T, I was going to have to fork over $30 a month for the privilege of having a dumb phone. And of course I’d have to keep my smartphone online for the business, so this retrograde endeavor was going to cost me a pretty penny.
Then I thought about how I would break it to my boss and all the people at work. How would I do that exactly? Sometimes my boss and the others contact me through my cell. Would I give them two numbers? How would that look? And what about all those meetings? Occasionally, I’ll have to look something up on my phone during a meeting. Would I now be the one person who couldn’t do that? Useless? “Oh, Paul’s special. He just has to do things his way…” That would be the message. Not a good idea.
As I continued to dwell on the practical day-to-day of my dumb phone switch, I realized my friend was right. I wasn’t in control. I didn’t have it; it had me. I was stuck. And why? The same reason everyone in this country gets stuck. I couldn’t afford to improve my situation, and I had to keep working. It didn’t matter that the phone was bad for me—I couldn’t get rid of it if I wanted to. The proof was in the pudding. But you shouldn’t have to pay for something that’s bad for you. Right? Right?!
I’m a millennial, so to actually experience this reversal is a bit of a shocker. I can remember when smartphones were a status symbol for the privileged—not everyone could get them, only those who could afford it. Now, I realized that if I ever wanted to wriggle out of the grasp of this addictive, advertising, cognitively toxic device, I would have to be rich.
In fact, I made a list of all of the qualities you would have to possess to live without a smartphone. And it’s the profile of a very special, very wealthy person indeed.
To Qualify for a Dumb Phone, You Must Have
- A job that doesn’t require the daily use of a smartphone. Or a job that you have absolute control over. Or no job at all.
- No desire or need to move into a job that would require a smartphone.
- Membership in a social network that wouldn’t look down on you or judge you negatively for having a dumb phone. (When I had an Android, I remember several people razzing me just for having “green texts,” so I imagine this would be rarefied air).
- Membership in a social network where social media doesn’t play a significant role in your interactions.
- No need to date neo-conventionally.
- A reliable computer or an assistant to manage all of the other digitalized aspects of your life (your banking, your rent payments, your emails, etc.).
- A good camera, if you like taking pictures.
- A smartphone in reserve, just in case.
These thoughts may not resonate with you. People love their phones, and I get it. They’re pretty handy for a lot of things. But with most products, when it’s not convenient for you, when you want to stop using it, you can just drop it. Not so with the smartphone.
Unless I hit the jackpot, I don’t see a future where I’ll ever be able to leave this thing (or whatever its next iteration is) for longer than a day. It’s part of me, but it isn’t mine. I don’t want it. I have it, and, likewise, it has me.
by Paul M. French
Paul M. French is the founder and editor of Denverse Magazine.
