Get rid of your smartphone
It's a quick, easy and cheap way to make your life much better.
I got rid of my smartphone last year and it has been an unalloyed and comprehensive good in my life. I figured that out after like six days. Getting rid of my smartphone has unquestionably made my life easier, calmer, more satisfying, more relaxing, and overall much happier, and it’s virtually certain that you will experience the same thing if you get rid of yours.
It is difficult to remember that there was ever a world where smartphones did not exist, but it did exist, and one of its defining features was that you were not always looking at a little computer screen everywhere you went, all the time, every day, forever. It is more or less a given now that anytime anyone has a sedentary moment of any kind—if they’re waiting in line at the grocery store, if they’re stopped at a train crossing or a red light, if they’re sitting on a park bench waiting for a friend, if the friend shows up and sits down next to them—anytime they’re not moving they’re apt to have their smartphone out, swiping on it, looking at it, never looking up. Lots of times you even see men and women out on dates at fancy restaurants just gazing at their phones. It was not always like this; it was in fact not very long ago that it wasn’t always like this, and it was so much better that way.
The unpleasantness of this way of living seems self-evident, though there are plenty of people who either don’t find it bad at all or who consider the trade-offs worth it. People will often cite a variety of reasons that having a smartphone is for them an absolute necessity. Let’s go through them one by one:
“I need it for work.” No, you probably don’t. If you’re an hourly/entry-level worker, there is almost certainly no way you actually need it for work. If you’re a mid-level salaried worker, there’s nothing you can do on your smartphone that you can’t do on your computer, and it’s really quite doubtful that you’re actually getting any work done on that thing when you’re, you know, out at the mall, or at your kid’s soccer game, or wherever (and if you are, you should absolutely rearrange your life so work isn’t always at the center of it). If you’re an upper-level executive or CFO or something, you have more than enough leverage to go without your smart phone. In all these cases I promise you that nobody will notice if you give it up. Don’t tell anybody when you do—give it like six months before you say anything. Nobody will be aware. It will be fine.
“I need it for navigation.” No, you don’t. Look at a map. Plan your route out ahead of time. It is one of the easiest things in the world. Human beings have been planning routes within civilizational pathways for like 12,000 years. The smartphone has so thoroughly debased our ability to get around in the world that most people now use their phones to go places within their own cities. It is obscene and ridiculous to functionally be a tourist in your own town. Start learning street names, byways, shortcuts, addresses, landmarks, buildings. You will be more connected to your local environment and you will develop a wonderful skill, i.e., being able to get around on your own.
“I need it to take pictures/videos.” Oh goodness no you do not. We need to stop viewing 94% of our lives through a smartphone screen. Public events are now almost universally just waves of people holding up smartphones, not actually looking at or enjoying anything but just sort of mindlessly capturing it on their phones. It is so awful. The utility of having a photo or video you might look at twice more in your life is obviously eclipsed by the existential horror of only ever seeing interesting things through an iPhone lens. There are many beautiful things to look at out there. Your life will be better if you stop letting Apple and Android filter it for you.
“I need it for [insert superfluous convenience here].” Name any number of things. “I need it for recipes.” No you don’t. Use a cookbook or print a recipe out online. It’s much more pleasant, you can easily save/bookmark those recipes, and you won’t be greasing your phone up with a porky, oily finger when you need to swipe down to read more. “What if they’re out of something at the grocery store and I need to figure out a replacement?” Buddy, teach yourself how to cook a wide variety of cuisines and dishes and you won’t need to outsource your thinking to Google to figure out a substitute. “I need it to listen to music when I’m out.” No you don’t. If you’re so desperate to have music pounding in your ears every time you’re out in public around other human beings, you can always get an old iPod or some other music player that doesn’t have the side effect of slurping up your consciousness at every waking moment. But also, you could just go without music when you’re out. It’s not a bad thing to just be with your own unmolested thoughts every once in a while, or to listen to the sounds of the city or the country, or to possibly strike up a conversation with someone about something interesting.
You could argue, of course, that one could simply buy a smartphone, delete virtually every app on it, and still have it for those critical situations where it might truly be a meaningful practical tool, e.g., when you’re legitimately lost and need directions. They certainly make dumb phones with navigational tools now, so you could always do that, but beyond that this is a rather unrealistic scenario, because the smartphone isn’t designed to be left alone most of the time. It is tactically, deliberately designed to capture your attention and keep you looking and swiping for as many hours of the day as possible, and if you have it it will almost certainly do that. That’s the point. It would be like someone saying, “Just get some crack rocks to have on hand, just in case you need them if you’re really stressed out.” That’s not how it works. The problem is not the application but the function itself.
The smartphone’s direct competitor isn’t other smartphones; it’s other things, tangible things you might look at and touch and interact with that aren’t on a little screen. Smartphones are competing with reality at the margins—which is another way of saying the smartphone’s chief competitor is you.
Do yourself a favor and take yourself out of that particular economy altogether. Cell phones are wonderfully convenient devices for a variety of reasons, but their utility/negative externality ratio began to get flipped on its head sometime around 2008. Toss it, get yourself a flipper or a re-released Nokia brick, and start existing in a far more pleasant, healthy and normal way. You’ll love it!