I keep seeing advertisements online for lite/small/basic/dumb phones. These are usually promising to break the user away from the mind-numbing addiction to the doomscroll and allow them to once again see the world around them. I am guessing that none of these products actually have much of a likelihood of succeeding in the marketplace because, at the end of the day, they are the electronic equivalent of a healthy diet and we all want pizza.
But I get the appeal. I have gone to great lengths to simplify and cut back and escape the ultra-intrusive and soul-crushing miasma that is the modern internet, social media, news, hell even the gas pumps have Maria Menounos talking your ear off whenever you just want to fill ‘er up. The world is loud. Everybody everywhere wants a piece of everyone else, everybody wants to be viral and sticky and every available niche is being filled by noise. It’s awful. No wonder we tell ourselves that a simpler phone will save the day. Seems like such an easy solution, but that’s an illusion. The phone isn’t the problem. The phone is a delivery device for the poison of our modern culture, sure, the smart phone is to psychological poison as the cigarette is to carcinogens, but the real problem is the fascination with and addiction to the gazillion small hits of dopamine we get from ingesting the latest stupid headline, the latest trivial status update, the latest tweet, the latest Tik Tok video, the latest, the latest, the endless content ocean.
I put it to you that the mindless consumption of endless hours of low value content and ephemeral news (always mostly bad) has never, in the history of humanity, been a healthy activity. It was a little harder to do, back in the day, I’ll give you that, but only just. You know what the Fox News MAGA Boomers have in common with their Zoomer grand-kids? The former keep a television on during all waking hours, feeding themselves an endless stream of targeted information chosen by an editorial staff in the service of advertisers and the latter stare at a phone during all waking hours, feeding themselves an endless stream of targeted information chosen by an algorithm in the service of advertisers. The Venn diagram is a circle. Only the content differs. The narrowcast, tailored, corporatized “social” web and app ecosystem is no more diverse, empowering, educational, or conducive to free thought than the old broadcast radio and television it has superseded. At least there were three major networks broadcasting television to our parents generation and, you know, PBS, but for us it’s one bubble, crafted by tracking cookies, collaborative filters, and virality that create an echo chamber at the personal level that gives Fox News programming a run for it’s money in it’s extreme lack of variety.
Reality has been so curated for us, our ideas and desires and personal situations, our friendships and family connections have been productized, monetized, and exploited so heavily, that we find ourselves in an almost absurd predicament as a society. We technically have more access to all of the information in the world than any population in mankind’s history and yet on a daily basis we have to make such a violent and intentional effort to encounter it that it might as well not be there. We are the least informed consumers, the least enlightened populace, and the most radically misinformed bunch of sad sacks that the modern post-enlightenment world has ever seen.
Of course, this is all in the service of scratching the itch of boredom. We work at our jobs all day and we crave something interesting and corporations are really really incredibly good at giving us diversions. Allegedly we want to know what’s happening in the world, connect with our friends, laugh at something silly, but really, it’s just that we are bored and don’t know what to do with that novel feeling in a world so filled with stimulation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that we don’t even have a chance to get legitimately bored. We simply find ourselves lacking a diversion, which is not the same thing. We have forgotten how to just exist to such a level that we equate being alive with boredom. We get an idle minute and we have to decide to be unconscious (sleepy time!) or to seek out something diverting. Diversion wins. We happily step into the most convenient available trap. The Phone. The TV. Potayto. Potahto. So, you see, this isn’t a new problem and a simpler phone isn’t much of a solution. What we need to do is learn to do nothing and have it be enough. Allow inaction to occur. Don’t call it boredom. And don’t seek a diversion. Here are some exercises you can try.
Exercise: Turn off all electronics. Put them in a totally separate room. Make a meal. Eat it and give it your full attention. Don’t shovel it in your mouth while scrolling Twitter. Taste it.
Exercise: Switch out some piece of media consumption that you currently use a device for with it’s “obsolete” equivalent. For example, you like your e-reader? Read a print book for a change. You love Spotify? Dig out those old tapes or records or CDs from the closet and play one. Experience the difference between streaming “media” into your bubble and the physical act of interacting with a physical piece of media. Read a paper newspaper.
Exercise: Remember back to things you used to do to entertain yourself before you had a smartphone that you don’t do anymore. Do that for a day. See how it feels.
Exercise: Schedule times to be online for a week but otherwise, be offline by default. Throughout human history, as recently as 10 years ago, most people were not carrying a phone around with them 24/7 and could not be pinged, messaged, rung up, or tweeted at and somehow, somehow, these brave ancestors survived. Imagine a world in which your time was respected, in which nobody expected you to be waiting by the phone 24/7, nobody panicked if you went a day or two between texts, how much pressure would that take off your shoulders? How much relief would you feel?
Exercise: Find a news outlet that is honest, reliable, and without partisan bent and (if you must consume current events) make that your first stop of the day. Before you encounter memes, spin, or your own bubble, try to be aware of a neutral reporting of facts, sans opinions. Then, for bonus points, form your own opinions.
Exercise: Track the trackers. Add an extension to your browser that alerts you to how many organizations track your every move online and block them. Observe changes in your online experience. Opt for media interactions that don’t track you and, even more to the point, don’t monetize your activity. Buy products, not access, copies, not subscriptions. Companies don’t track you if you aren’t being monetized. When is the last time you actually owned a copy of a new album rather than just streaming it?
Look, I get it, we aren’t ever getting rid of this technology. You’re not going to live this way all the time. These are exercises intended to make you think about the choices you’re making on a daily basis. Practices to gain some perspective. Things you can try doing to make yourself more aware of the ways you are being catered to, manipulated, handled, exploited, and sold. We aren’t going back to the “good old days”. There aren’t any. We are, however, going to wind up in Idiocracy if enough of us don’t get out of the bubbles and into reality. So, you know, stop reading this. I’m not tracking you or monetizing your eyeballs but still, get offline. Paint something. Play that xylophone you got at the yard sale. Read a physical book. Sit quietly in a room and listen to your environment. This whole online thing is a fiction and you know it. Shoo.