Who's the smart one?
Over at The Cramped, Shawn Mihalik shares his experiences of switching to a flip phone for a week and, not surprisingly, it was fine.
Turns out, life without a smartphone is fine. It took me all of a day to learn how to use T9. Plus, this phone has voice-to-text, and it’s way better than the almost-always-wrong can’t-turn-it-off auto-punctuation in Apple’s new “smarter” (read: dumber) A.I. dictation. Like, way better. Like, it gets my sentences, including the punctuation, right nearly every single time.
— One Week with a Flip Phone by Shawn Mihalik on The Cramped
Shawn’s takeaway is that the practical side of going without a smartphone is easier than you’d think.
I think I could definitely go without my smartphone for a while, and I get why people want to get rid of their smartphones, and there are plenty of reasons not to have them. I do believe, though, there is a way to get the balance right with a smartphone.
I’m not a role model for this, and I still pick up my phone more than I need to, but I try to limit my screen time on social media apps. I disable as many notifications as I can and let only the essentials through. On top of that, I keep one home screen with email, browser, calendar and the bullet journal app in the dock, and four other apps I use most days. At night, I keep my phone on mute and set it on the fireplace or the dining room table so I am less inclined to pick it up.
Not picking up your phone is a hard habit to break, especially when you’re idle and perhaps waiting for an appointment or for someone. Everywhere I go, I see people on their phones, and sure, some of them might be doing a puzzle, writing something, or reading the news or an article. Still, I’m willing to bet that most of the time, people are scrolling through a social media timeline.
I sat in the doctor’s reception room last week, and everyone waiting in the room, except an elderly lady beside me and me, was looking at their smartphones.
Looking out from the front of our house, I often see dog walkers going up and down the street. Most of them walk their dog while looking at their phone. Now, we don’t have a family dog, but I would like to think that if we did, I could walk my dog without looking at my phone. Don’t you need to present for your family pets as well?
Maybe the flip phone isn’t the dumb one here. Maybe we’re the dumb ones, because if a device can make us spend so much time on it, we’re definitely not smart, and what we’re using can’t really be called a “smartphone”.