There is a book with a similar title to this post, How to break up with your phone by Catherine Prince. I’m about to dive in and start the 30 day plan. I have been in a cyclical relationship with my phone for many years now. I feel that the lockdown period created some habits that were not just flash in pan ‘oh my screen time has gone up’ because I’m at home more, but more like a way of adjusting life to turn to the screen for many things that I was previously getting elsewhere. This period of time was long enough that it feels that what shifted in that time was more than just habits that need breaking but more of a shifting in lifestyle and relationship to all parts of life. Although it’s so long ago now I still feel like I’m turning over stones and finding new things which make me question, ‘huh?’ How did we get here? I was walking in London last weekend and found myself standing on a faded ‘socially distanced’ sticker, another strange artifact of a distant dystopian time where we needed stickers to teach us how to stand next to each other.
My cyclical phone behaviour means that I start to rely on it more and more. It’s builds up over a few weeks until I get this pattern of checking which is where I just bounce between apps - email, instagram, linked in. Sometimes even Facebook marketplace even though I’m not selling anything. I used to spend ages on apps like ASOS but years ago I quit a fast fashion habit and that died away, now it’s more checking IG for DMs and posting stories. At the peak of my addiction cycle I’ll usually find myself in a terrible routine of watching depressing things before bed and it comes to head in a physical way, my thumbs have rsi, my eyesight strained, sometimes I feel like i’m going cross-eyed. Then I pull the plug, delete apps, leave my phone downstairs at night, feel really good until the whole thing starts again, it’s infuriating.
There’s no getting around it, I have actual physical health symptoms as a result from being on my phone too much. My hands went years ago from commuting back and forth from London and spending hours writing emails on my phone. The last few years even my eye test has declined so that I can’t legally drive without my glasses on. Technology has been positioned as being highly convenient allowing us to live our lives with more freedom, we can multitask, work on the go, take charge of our own admin, research our own entertainment and connect with anyone. I sometimes wonder how much of any of this is actually true. I believe we’ve just been given more to do. The goal of speed and convenience should be to have more free time - more play time, but glancing around I can’t confirm that’s true for most people. For me personally I am moving on from being cross at myself for not being able to break this cycle and start to think more objectively that I have in my pocket / hand / bed something that’s akin to drugs, cigarettes, alcohol. It is doing things to my brain I can probably never fully understand. Unlike other addictive substances the thing with the smartphone that’s different is that having a ‘normal’ life is quite difficult to have without one. Do I want to fully unplug and go off grid? No. I like feeling knowledgeable about what people are doing, what’s happening in the world and I like to be able to communicate with people in different ways. The problem is other effective methods have been drowned out because they perhaps take a bit longer or can’t be done in the moment.
Instagram has ended up becoming a large pillar in my life and it's not something I’ve always been as intentional about as I should be. It’s unreal how it just becomes part of the everyday. It’s a reflex for me to share part of everyday with 1000s of people and whilst if I really didn’t want to do it, I know that I would just stop, it’s the unconscious, zombie march to do it when I’m not thinking about it that I really hate. No one is telling me to do that, it’s an addictive pull. I am considering getting a second phone. I kind of hate that I’m adding more tech to solve this issue but I think it might be the only way. Ben always tells me to just leave my phone at home but I think that is said through a very male lens! I am often off hiking or driving here and there and the best thing about phones is the safety aspect. Sometimes going backwards is the solution to going forwards and I like the trend of people going back to their basic bitch flip phone to reap the benefits of tech progress without the addictive baggage. Even when I’m being disciplined and not using it as much, just having it with me shifts the energy. I refer to it as frodo’s ring, I feel it’s pull. Ugh. I hate that so much.
Since I have started writing here more on substack, since beginning my scriptwriting course, since Ben and I have been getting back into podcasting I have got so much more from those things. I do have a need to communicate with the world, I like to connect, I have been really delighted to build the community on IG, I’ve made real life friends, got great work opportunities and learned a lot too. But I think I need to move it on, take the audience who cares into deeper, more thoughtful media. I am restrategising how I use my space on Instagram that is more planned, that takes place on a phone that lives only in my office.
It's a hard time to be an adult right now. There is so much to worry about. The future is very unknown and we live in a state of ‘permacrisis’. I do believe, if you can, if you have safety and connection around you, it’s the time to just enjoy the moment and make the most out of real life. Everything feels a bit more strange to me post pandemic. It’s like the universe shifted one dial to somewhere else and everything looks a bit different. I want to access different parts of my mind. I want to tumble deep into creativity, I want to play with the people in my life who I love. I want to etch deep memories in the simplest way possible. I want to notice when something physical happens in my body and take that seriously instead of shrugging ‘well that’s just life today’. Life. Today. That’s how I want to live. And that does not happen at the end of my phone.
I’m feeling guilty even reading your article but it massively resonated and I promise I’ll put my phone down now! Promise! 😬😬😬
This is me right now. Feeling desperate to get rid of my phone but also wanting to enjoy the creativity and fun that the internet used to offer. I’ve read the breaking up with your phone book and it’s great. I’m due a second read clearly. Would also recommend Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. I really don’t know the long term answer to this but I feel like it might have to be quite radical!