ADDICTED TO THE CELLPHONE
It may be time to break free
JUST as it can take a long time to realise that a romantic relationship is unhealthy, it took me a long time to accept that I needed to break up with my phone. I had begun noticing that I often picked the device up “just to check”, only to resurface an hour later wondering where the time had gone, or opening an app with a sense of anticipation before being left disappointed when it didn’t provide the gratification I sought.
There wasn’t anything inherently wrong about the things I was doing, rather what made me feel weird was how often I initiated them without thinking; how many real-life experiences they were supplanting, and how unsatisfied they made me. I reached for my phone to soothe myself, but I often crossed the line from feeling soothed to going numb.
Breaking up with my phone doesn’t mean that I traded my touchscreen for a rotary dial. Instead, my goal was to create a long-term relationship that kept what I loved about my phone and got rid of what I didn’t: one that made me feel healthy and happy – and over which I had control.
The first step of my break-up was a “trial separation”: a 24hour total parting from my phone. As my husband and I sat down for dinner one Friday night, I lit a candle, we gave our phones one final glance, and then we turned them off – all the way off, from Friday to Saturday night. At first, we were constantly tempted to reach for them — which we convinced ourselves was out of concern that we would miss an important call or text — but, if we were being honest, it was actually a sign of dependency. But we resisted our urges and, when the time came for us to turn our phones back on, we were surprised by how reluctant we were to do so. Instead of being stressful, the experience had felt restorative.
Intrigued, I began to make changes to my everyday routine, taking regular “phasts” [phone fasts]. I rearranged my apps so that my home screen contained only tools, rather than temptations, deleting social media and news apps, which I would only check from my desktop computer. I asked myself what I actually wanted to spend my time and attention on, and took up the guitar lessons I’d long been toying with the idea of.
I also began to research what’s known about the effects of spending so much time on our phones, and was shocked to find how it has transformed the ways we live and love.
A 2016 study from the University of Arizona found that people who reported their partner being reliant on a device felt less secure in their relationship; in the UK, a survey of more than 1 700 people found that up to 62% of women and 48% of men had checked their phones during sex.
In the two years since I initiated my digital break-up, I have not only established a healthier relationship with technology, but I’ve become more aware of the world outside my phone – and of how much of it had been passing me by.
And I’m not the only one: friends and other family members, far from shunning the idea, have greeted my news without asking what or why, but by telling me “I need to do that, too”.
I still carry my phone with me nearly everywhere, and I use it to take photos, listen to music, navigate, stay connected and, yes, to indulge in mindless distraction. I appreciate and am grateful for my phone. But, crucially, I have finally learnt when to turn it off. —