I think we've all contemplated at one point or another giving up the trappings of modern life and living like our ancestors did, or at least like our older brother, and seeking the comforting solace of a time when everything was less convenient.
In his piece, "I switched to a flip phone and dramatically improved my well-being," a guest columnist for the Washington Post, Mark Lukach, demonstrates that by eschewing the miraculous technology of the smartphone in favor of the slightly-older miraculous technology of the flip phone, you can find a kind of inner peace (as well as become an annoying pain in the butt to everyone around you, not unlike that one dinner guest who insists on detailing his 17 imagined food allergies and commitment to sustainably sourced tofu).
Lukach begins with a plaintive cry, a deep yearning for days long gone by.
Well, not long gone by. Maybe 15 years. Heck, you might still have the same cat in the time that has passed, but hey, let him go, he's emoting.
I felt empty and frustrated at how much time I spent on my iPhone.
If only there were an easy solution to that bedeviling problem of modern life - some way, any way, to not spend so much time on your iPhone.
Alas, such is the unavoidable plight of the modern human condition.
Well, I suppose you could do something radical like, I don't know, stop spending so much time on your iPhone.
Nah. Lukach has a better idea.
Treat himself like a small child and take away those temptations for which he simply does not have the maturity to handle.
So I spent the last five years steadily stripping my phone down to the basics. Social media was the first to go, then email, then news apps, and then even internet browsers.
Cool. You reduced your $900 smart phone to a half-decent camera and a really crappy flashlight.
Each step was more liberating than the first…
Liberating! Like the French in the closing days of WWII (only the baguettes are not as good).
…and the incessant itch to check my phone shrank smaller and smaller. And yet, it didn't disappear entirely. I was still checking the weather at least 15 times a day, since it was one of the few things left on the phone. Even when there's almost nothing on it, the smartphone is hard to ignore.
Equally hard to ignore is Lukach's complete lack of anything resembling willpower or sense of personal agency.
Lukach notes that he had considered switching to a flip phone for some time and then revealed that he teaches a course on "purpose and community."
Like a prison warden removing an inmate's shoelaces so he wouldn't hurt himself, the man who had to delete apps from his smart phone so he could reintroduce himself to human contact, teaches a course on "purpose and community."
He even confesses that in the class they
…specifically look at how our phones can get in the way of both.
I don't think it's the phones.
And I don't think that's a course he should be teaching either. Taking, maybe, but not teaching.
He then described what almost sounds like an intervention. Two of his students ditched their smartphones and got flip phones, which prompted Lukach to do the same.
Predictably, it's inconvenient to have a flip phone, which is kind of the point. Most of the inconveniences turn out to be quite lovely.
Lovely.
(I'm not sure we're the ones he's trying to convince here.)
Texting is terribly slow, so instead you call people and have a delightful stream of five-minute phone conversations throughout the day.
I am SO glad Lukach does not have my number. Can you imagine?
'Hey, just calling to say hi. Again. Watcha up to? See any new movies?'
'Bro, I'm at work.'
What's really delightful about modern texting is the convenience. It's better in every way.
People are busy. I can ask my brother a non-urgent question, make some humorous observation, or even share a picture of some place I'm at in real time that I thought he'd enjoy, and he can get back to me when it's convenient without having to drop everything and deal with me on my time.
The average phone call today is like the long-distance phone call of the past: It's probably important. If I want to have a delightful five-minute phone conversation, I can text first.
(Mainly so they don't assume that someone had died.)
OR, if you insist, you can call instead of text. Both functions can exist on the same phone at once. You get to choose which, not your phone!
You get restaurant recommendations from conversations with your neighbors, rather than through Yelp.
Too bad you can't do that when you have a smartphone.
Do WaPo writers not know that you can own a smartphone AND talk to your neighbors??
That aside, you know what you can't get from your neighbors? A restaurant recommendation for a place none of your neighbors have been to.
You don't scroll while in line at the grocery store, and instead talk to the person helping you check out.
Okay, look, nine times out of ten, the person checking you out does not want to talk to you. You are not that interesting, nor is your purchase of ricotta particularly fascinating to them either.
(And no, they don't want to hear about the great lasagna recipe your grandmother gave you either.)
IF the checkout person is in a chatty mood, and you should be able to pick up on that (particularly if you teach a course on purpose and community), you can leave your smartphone in your pocket and talk with them. Otherwise, all you're doing is making your little existential crisis their problem and everyone's who is waiting behind you in line.
(You'd probably talk to the other people in line, too, but 9 times out of 10, they are on their phones.)
You can always find someone to talk to. I've done it.
You study maps at home before driving somewhere new, and then see what happens. You even get a bit lost, and it's great.
No. Getting lost is not great. Getting lost makes you late, which inconveniences others and worse. Getting lost can be stressful and/or dangerous depending on where you get lost and when.
Back in the day, some friends and I were driving back to DC from Baltimore around one o'clock in the morning after seeing some bands we liked at a downtown club. We knew the area reasonably well. We had looked at maps.
We got lost.
Guess where you don't want to get lost at one o'clock in the morning?
Baltimore.
We ended up in a part of the city we had no business being.
"Run the lights," I said. "Just run the lights!"
(At that point, I would have welcomed a police presence anyway.)
Lukach alludes to the fun of inadvertently coming across areas you'd never otherwise go to. You can still do this.
The smartphone is not preventing you from doing these things.
You are.
This is the charming, romantic side of owning a flip phone: more conversations, more eye contact, more connection. And it is my primary joy in making the switch.
Charming? Romantic?
You had to get a flip phone to make eye contact with people?
My favorite example of this happened at my son's school. To sign your kid out each day, you scan a QR code. Without my iPhone, I worked it out with the administrator that I could stop by the school office and they would manually sign him out for me. Each school day, I now have a friendly chat with two school employees whom I had never met before.
He seems convinced that burdening employees with more work is a net gain because his presence is the highlight of their day or something!
Want to meet people at your son's school?
Get involved. Volunteer, chaperone, whatever is needed. Then, instead of being a burden, you're a help, and maybe your friendly chats will be more sincere than "make sure you smile when you talk to the crazy guy checking his son out manually."
Like most WaPo writers, this guy is evangelizing a lifestyle. He is assuming his pathologies are ours.
Rather than just exercise some personal choice, he seems to want the world to accommodate his incapacity to deal with it like an adult.
As it turns out, our addiction to smartphones is not just on an individual level.
"Our" addiction?
Intentionally or not, we have built structures that depend upon smartphone access, making it an essential feature of modern life.
First, it was 100% intentional.
Second, why do you suppose that is?
It's because like the vast majority of people, I like not having to sit at a desk and spend time writing out paper checks, but rather pay all my bills with a few taps on my phone. I like not getting lost in the middle of the night in a bad part of town. I like knowing if it's going to rain as I'm walking my dog. These things save me time and trouble, opening up opportunities to do more productive things.
Like spend time with people should I so choose.
While most of the flip phone inconveniences are charmin,…
The inconveniences you have detailed do not sound charming. They sound... inconvenient.
…some of them are so frustrating that they make you want to pull your hair out.
I know what you mean, buddy. Have you tried sending a telegraph lately?
What a pain!
