Going Phone-less

As part of Gen Z I got my first smartphone around the time when most of my friends did, which for me was 7th grade. I distinctly remember the first thing I did with my phone was download instagram and make an account. It was just an instinct to do so, as everyone around me had been talking about it, or showing me how to use it. After getting the app I proceeded to download all sorts of other games and “useful” apps.

Quickly, checking Instagram because a habit, as did playing the various games that required constant attention to ensure I was maximizing my “productivity” in them. At this point in my life I would classifiy this behavior as technology maximalizm. I wanted to ensure that I had every possible stream of entertainment or utility available to me on my phone. However, outside the time spent gaming, my phone wasn’t really an issue. I was easily able to put it down and not htink about it for long periods of time, which meant that I didn’t see it as an issue.

Fast-forward a few more years after getting my first phone, and it had now become an issue. At first Instagram start as a convenient way to see what my friends were up to, but looking back on it now, this was of little to no use for me. Especially at that age, my only friends were the ones that I saw at school every day, so checking on their Instagram posts was just replacing time that I could have already spent face-to-face with them. Instead of sitting at the lunch table talking with each other we were instead distracted by our phones “keeping up” with the people sat across from us.

I so deperatly wanted to be recognized by my peers that I would spend the bus rides to and from school liking every single post on my feed (which was much easier back when the feed was chronological). This behavior harmed the way I interracted with Instagram, as I no longer spent the time looking through each post, instead scrolling as fast as I possibly could only stopping to double-tap to like. Luckily, this behavior didn’t last long and around the time I started high-school (2014-2015) I had reduced my following count back down to just my closest friends.

In high school we would take lots of trips for both band and choir, which meant filling hours of bus rides and waiting around. This lead to large groups gathering around specific mobile games that we would play as we waited for the next obligation. The social aspect of playing the game was a benefit in my eyes, the issue came with the desire to “keep up”. Most people would play fairly casually, but some would spend hours outside of group play attempting to level up, which lead to more and more members of the group doing the same. What was once a casual group activity, turned into a hardcore and rigid exercise in one-upping each other.

This led me into a constant feeling that I had to play these games on my own time, so that I wasn’t left out the next time the group was playing. Which quickly turned a light-hearted source of entertainment into a chore. The main issue here wasn’t even the gaming in general, it was how easily accessible the mobile games were. As I highlighted before, I was able to put my phone down for long periods of time when I first got it, yet, fast-forward 2–3 years and I couldn’t set the thing down. Every small moment of downtime or boredom could easily be filled by checking in on a game.

Contrast this with console of PC gaming, which while still a problem, were much less accessible at the time. While you could spend hours and hours playing video games at home on your computer, at least that was (hopefully) the only thing that you were doing. Mobile games were so easily accessible they could easily fill the brief 10-minute gap between classes, or even be tempting enough to play during class. And this is exactly what I did, spending every moment of downtime playing these games.

My school did a very poor job of enforcing no cell-phone policies during the school day, which I honestly cannot blame them for. We were really the first generation with access to unprecedented levels of easily accessible distractions. So to that end, cell phone usage only proliferated during my high school years, with the older generations recognizing the issue, and my generation “having fun”.

I am going to use instant messaging as a more broad term than it was originally coined for. I’ll lump anything that presents itself as synchronous yet not face-to-face or voice based together. This includes things like Snapchat, Instagram DMs, and yes even texting itself, however that requires a bit more nuance. Texting can be entire asynchronous, think of the extreme of texting someone with a 12-hour time difference, where you may only get to send one message at a time, without sitting around waiting for their response. What I am referring to is the constant act of texting, then waiting on a response that most of these platforms now offer.

iMessage has the “…” bubble indicating someone is typing, Snapchat tells you when someone is even on the chat screen, and I’m sure Instagram does something similar, I just don’t remember. These features may seem like a convenience at first, but I have only ever observed them being harmful additions. Someone may have sent a slightly confrontational message, and instead of walking away they will sit anxiously staring at the typing indicator waiting on a response. I can only imagine this is not healthy for our brains.

Even without considering confrontational message, you can observe the same behavior when couples or friend groups seek constant connection. Look around, and you’ll see people out on a nice activity with their family, yet they feel a constant pull to their phone to keep up with what every one else is doing. They somehow feel tied to this attention sink, as if they will be harmed if they don’t, and this fear of harm can be very real. I distinctly remember not responding to a group chat for 4 or 5 hours while at an Oktoberfest event with my family and then be excluded from plans later that evening. Now, should I have continued being friends with that group after the event? Probably not, but that is a whole other can of worms.

Back then the constant tie to the phone was perpetuated by FOMO, or simply a relationship that required constant reassurance that no I am not mad at you because I haven’t replied in 5 minutes. This tie was so strong that I could never put my phone down any more. Even during music performances, I always ensured that my phone was tucked into my choir robe, my band tux, or even my marching band uniform. When I was out with my family I would pop my phone out under the table, so I could interract with a conversation virtually, instead of interrating with the people sitting next to me.

We’ll get to the current day later in the post, but I just wanted to highlight some aspects of this constant connection mindset here, as they were present back in high school for me, just as much as they are present today, the part that has changed are the demands.

I want to start by saying there is nothing inherrently wrong with listening to podcasts (or many of the other sources of content consumption), it just comes down to how you use it. For me the way I used podcasts was to always have something in my ears no matter what time of day or what I was doing. It’s a hard decision becuase in the era of always needing to be productive, why would you not want to be twice as productive by listenting to a podcast while performing some other task. The answer for me was obvious, so I started subscribing to vast number of podcasts so that my feed would never be empty. This now meant I was conditioning myself so always needs some form of stimulation while doing basically anything in my life.

On the surface this was a net positive, as my iPhone reported decreased screen time, but that number doesn’t tell the whole story. I can garuntee that as a whole I was consuming much more content during this time of my life. Not only that, I continued to watch just as much YouTube and read just as much Reddit as I did before starting to listenting to podcasts. The change was I was now filling every possible moment of silence (literally or figuratively) with podcasts.

This is a hard one for me to critique as I feel this was an imense period of growth for me. I learned so much of my computer science knowledge during this time, and I doubt I would be anywhere near a knowledgeable on a vast number of topics without all the podcasts I listened to. However, as we will discuss later, the issue here was how (and more specifically when) I was consuming these podcasts. I was a large mental hurdle for me to realize that I don’t always need to be 2x productive by listenting to a podcast, I should instead focus my energy on one thing at a time, spending my mental energy where it counts the most.

As we approach the present day in this story I began to think more and more about the time I was spending on my phone.

I think most of us have an interal feeling that these phones are somehow harmful, but it’s hard to pinpoint where that line should exactly be drawn. For me, I thought just the actual screen time number was the most important metric, so after watching some YouTube videos about “technology lifehacks” I settled on a basic strategy. Removing all extra apps from my phone, turning the phone into grayscale, and turning off notifications. This sounds like a great plan, but it very quickly becomes inconvenient if you do not have the support structure already set up to support this change. And so, the changes never lasted.

However, this grayscale phone idea persisted in my mind, and I would try it out 5-6 more times before I reached the end of my transition period. The issue was that on the iPhone you can bind a tripple-click of the side button to pop open an accessibility menu, allowing you to toggle the phone back to full color. I figured this was just going to be a convenience if I ever needed to see the colors of an image, but it turned out to just be a slippery slope that lead me into almost constantly being in full color mode. This is especially apparent when meeting new people or showing someone an image on your phone, as it sometimes just requires too much social energy to have to explain why your phone is in grayscale, so you end up leaving it off for large periods of time, before eventually forgetting about the grayscale idea all togther.

That was until the end of last year when I came across a video from f4mi about dumb phones from Japan. I had always known about the existance of dump phones, but never thought they would be sustainable for someons of my age group. Yet, she seemed to make a compelling argument that somehow triggered my brain into research mode, trying to discover anything and everything I could about dumb phones. Ironically, this meant spending way more time than usual on my iPhone watching videos from dumb phone influencers (who knew that was a thing) about the quirks and features of the various different models of phones.

One thing I quickly realized is that this was going to be doable, but I had to choose a specific model very carefully. To that vein, I compiled a list of must-have features, and then a list of phones that satisifed this feature list. For me that meant, calling and texting, some form of audio playback, and maps. Not a huge list, but as I found out, finding a true dumb phone with those features was difficult. I ended up initially landing on the Light Phone II, before quickly talking myself out of the whole idea once I realized for one the phone was out of stock and two, it was fetching nearly $200 used on eBay.

Not wanting to give up on the idea all together I came across a video from Digging the Greats talking about his experience going back to an iPod for his primary music playback device. His video series is very intersting but for me the highlight was his observation of the crossroads he found himself at. He wanted to ditch his iPhone, but the was society operates is largely based on smartphones. To this he makes a suggestion of a “launcher” for the iPhone which displays only 5 or so apps on the homescreen by name. I quickly installed the launcher, set everything up, and started living with it. However, it didn’t take long for me to simply swipe left and have access to the entire app drawr.

Realzing that this effort would take more than a simple skin on top of my phone I more seriously reconsidered the Light Phone.

The switch from iPhone to Light Phone was entirely painless, all I did was pop the sim card out of one and into the other. I don’t want to dive too specifically into the Light Phone here, but their online dashboard works just fine for loading in contact, syncing music, and subscribing to podcasts.

Once I had fully switched over I started going about my days just as I normally had, just without a constant source of YouTube and Reddit ready to go. The only issue was, I was still listening to podcasts as often as I could. The feature that I thought would be entirely necessary for me to switch over ended up being the feature that I should have avoided. But surely I couldn’t subscribe to enough podcasts to fill every hour with every day right? Well that was true, but the Light Phone also allows you to load “music” onto the device, which in my eyes meant ripping YouTube videos to mp3, and loading them onto the device.

So we were essentially right back where we started, just with a slightly more clunky user interface. This continued on for a while, and I definetly noticed some immediate improvements. For one, being less distracted has lead to me focusing all of my energy into building relationships with the people I am constantly around, yet at the same time it has led to me being all the more frustrated by everyone else’s constant device usage. To solve my own frustration I have implemented a simple rule, if someone feels the need to pick up a device in the middle of our conversion I will just stop talking. While not always effective it surely makes for some long awkward pauses in what would be a perfectly normal conversation.

The next benefit is being more focused, and I’m not just talking about not having social media to distract me. No, what I mean is when I sit down at my computer now I know this is the only place where I can get work done. There is no longer the temptation to not reply to an email, or not submit an assignment, as I know if I don’t do it on my computer it won’t get done. This also has the benefit of meaning I need to be very focused with my time, otherwise I will end up spending far more than my minimum 8 hours at the computer to ensure all of my work gets done.

The last overall benefit is embracing other forms of entertainment, and this led me into the final chapter of this story. I started reading again, at first just technical books, real boring stuff about algorithms, different UNIX style tools, and compiler theory. Reading is a very valuable way to gain information, yet it always felt much slower than video or audio, and I never appriciated why. There is typically a certain bar of entry, a stamp or approval, or quality control, that comes along with publishing a book. This means that typically, the level of effort put into a book can be vastly higher than a YouTube video, and this is not to say that there aren’t YouTube videos which required more effort than a book, or the other way around. This is just an observation that books have been vetted over year and years, with thousands of people recommending them, and those books are usually worth the read.

One particular book that kept poping up in my research around dumb phones, and the general lifestyle associated with it was Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. Just from hearing the title it sounded like my kind of book, but I felt as thought I was already leading a digital minimalist lifestyle, so I didn’t bother to pick up the book right away. That was until I was browing the Library website for another book and happened to remember the title, I punched it in the search bar, and sure enough it was available. I checked out the book and began reading it the follow day.

What I took from the chapter on solitude was that we as humans need time uninterrupted by thoughts from others, which is very different to how I would have described solitude before reading the book. The key example that stood out to me was going into a loud/busy coffee shop while sitting down to write a paper. While you are surrounded by plenty of other people, they are not impacting your thoughts or emotions at that moment.

A coffee shop isn’t the common place for me, but this example almost perfectly translates to my walks. I take somewhere between 3–4 walks a day, and up until now these walks have always been my time to listen to podcasts. The interesting thing was, I’d walk so frequently that I’d run out of podcasts, and then I’d get frustrated that I had nothing to listen to. This leads me to ripping YouTube videos to mp3 before each and every walk so that I’d never have to have even a moment of silence on a walk. Looking back on this now it seems so silly, but I had been doing this for a long time, just in different forms.

The other big thing impacting my solitude was YouTube. Every single day I’d get up, make breakfast and a coffee, then go sit down to watch whatever someone else had published. This was then followed up by a walk where I’d listen to a podcast, finally coming back home to get work down, without ever giving my mind the space that it needed to process what it needed to. This once again seems silly, but for a different reason, in our current world of always needing to be productive why would you ever not be consuming information or doing work? Well the answer is because we aren’t meant to always to “consuming”, often times we need to both process our own thought, or produce new ideas of their own.

A shower thought is the perfect example of this phenomenom. Most people (I hope?) are distraction free while taking a shower, and for this reason our mind is left to wander. Generally, nothing profound will come out of this time, but every once in a while you may have a breakthrough on something you’ve been thinking about. The thing is, this doesn’t have to only occur during a shower. Instead of filling small pockets of your life with entertainment, you can instead live alone with your thoughts for a brief period of time. From experience, this is very difficult at first, hence why I am taking the time to write this post today, as it has been the most difficult day so far to avoid temptations.

Solitude also means taking the time to be away from your phone, or more generally technology. Even with a dumb phone there are still notifications, are there may still be the urge to check for a response. This can impact your solitude and not let your mind wander to the places that it would like to go, therefore it is important that your times of solitude are spent truely removed from external distraction.

Leisure is a much harder topic for me, as I enjoy coding for fun, but that inherently is not a tech-free activity. As I said before I am about a week in to my digital detox, and other than reading, I have not found any suitable high-quality leisure activites that I can add to my schedule. However, reading has been very productive, and it is something I’d like to keep up with.

I am also going to try and write down more of my thoughts as them come along, whether of not those turn in to posts remains to be seen.

This is an area I need to spend more focused time into exploring, and I hope to do so in the remaining weeks of my digital detox.

With some of my extra time I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the relationships that I maintain. The baseline thought that has been going through my head is that I have no desire to maintain many surface level friendships, and that I’d much rather have a few much more genuine face-to-face connections. I also personally find it very difficult to maintain relationships with people I no longer see on regular basis, this may come down to having fewer things in common, or just me preferring human interraction as opposed to liking a text message.

Along the same line as the above thought, I am embracing community in a much more serious way than I previously had. I picked up climbing this past summer, and while it can be a solo activity (bouldering), I’ve found that I much more enjoy going to the gym and working on hard climbs with people much stronger than me. Or maybe even giving a newer climber pointers on achieving their next V grade. These aren’t specific one-on-one relationship, they are more so community building relationships where I feel at home in a particual place, able to interract with like-minded people.

Another key thing I’ve thought about is making myself both more available and less available. More available in the sense that when I’m interracting with someone face-to-face I often shut my laptop screen, even if it would be beneficial to google something, I want them to know they have my full attention. Less available in the sense that I am no longer going to maintain many sparse communication channels, just in case someone needs my attention or help. I am going to priortize the people around me, choosing to help them first, and directing to find me in a meeting place.

As I was previously a Teaching Assistant for my college a lot of students think I am constantly available to help solve their issues. Some of my peers handle this in a very respectful manner, asking when I am available, and coming with a pre-formed question, along with all the background information to explain the context. To these students I say thank you, and I am often able to solve their problem relatively quickly, and if I can’t, no harm no foul. My issue is with the large majority of my peers who either have no desire to learn and just want my solutions, or they have a desire to “learn”, as long as learning means me solving their problem.

To address the second group of students I have employed a new strategy to handle their behavior in what I feel is a respectful manner. For one, I no longer immedietly respond to texts asking for help, as often they will solve the problem on their own if left to sit and think for an hour. Second, if they have not provided me with any background information I will ask the simple question “What have you tried?”. Lastly, if they don’t ask a question at all, instead just asking for help on some vague topic I will respond with “What is your question?”. These 3 rules seem to eliminate roughly half of all the requests I was previously dealing with, only falling short for the most insessent of students.

For these remaining students I really struggle with what to do, often resorting to communicating less and less so that they hopefully view me as less of a crutch. This is something I really struggled with during my first semesters as a TA. I wound up sitting and helping people with programming labs start to finish, leaving myself no time to explore coding on my own, and even now I often find myself doing this. This is a hard one because I personally would never ask a TA or Professor for anything but clarification on an assignment, as I know other students have previously completed the assignment, therefore it is clearly possible. Yet, I know I am not in the majority with this opinion, so I struggle to find a balance when those questions are asked of me.

This small section highlights just a few of the ideas I’ve had time to mull over now that I’ve allowed my mind to have periods of solitude to think. They’re not fully flushed out ideas, nor are they all good! All of the above are very fluid in my mind and may change, I’m just glad I have the space now to think through some of these things.