Square one... again.

I wish I could be writing you about this being a week of great success in my foray into being more mindful as how I’m using my phone. Unfortunately, I can’t. I had a terrible week. I could wax into reasons as to why. However, that’s not what I started this forum for. You’re not here to listen to my self-pity party, or to hear me whine about situations that are now firmly out of my hands. You’re here to listen to how I’m doing on this path forward.

When I looked at my phone’s weekly report from last week, I discovered that I had used the device on average 4 hours, 53 minutes on average a day. That doesn’t take into account how much time I spent on my personal computer- which, to be fair, I use that a lot less than I do my cell phone. Ladan Nikravan Hayes, a writer from Chicago who penned an article in 2018, says that people who suffer with anxiety and depression often times will utilize it as a quick momentary fix for the problem. I hate to say it- as someone who suffers with depression and anxiety, I think that may be what happened to me. The irony is, it doesn’t help. Later in the same article, Hayes says that the mindless doom-scrolling can lead to further depression and anxiety, which is the entire reason why I started upon this journey in the first place.

So, what am I to do? Clearly, at this point, I’ve done away with the basket, and I’ve failed to turn my phone off. My phone auto-installs apps whenever it updates that I must remove off of my phone. I knew this was going to be a process- but I didn’t think it was going to be so damn difficult.

I suppose, in a way, this is not all my fault. If you’ve been following along since the first post two weeks ago, you know that I didn’t grow up with smartphones in hand. But I came across them at a very impressionable age in my life. This is different than, say, my father who just celebrated his 66th birthday last month, who didn’t come across smart phones until much later in his life, and therefore can take them or leave them. I wish I had that resolve. Then again, he also has a smart speaker that he uses to look up answers, which is something I do not, and will not have in my house. Call me paranoid- but something about having a modern-day wire tap always listening in just creeps me out.

Back to my original point. A trip to the local supermarket revealed that the conditioning is going much deeper. You know those little endcaps throughout the store that have children’s toys on them? I picked up a lot of fun toys from those endcaps. I was a simple kid to please- either a toy or an Illustrated Classics book kept me entertained for hours. When I went to the grocery store just last night, however, those were replaced. Instead? It was a fun little water bubble game… shaped like a smart phone.

Marketing smartphones for kids is nothing new. The FTC has imposed fines on marketers who collect information from kids under the age of 13. Kids are addicted to these devices, and I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen in the future. Is this going to prepare them for the next big technological advance? Or is it going to stunt them developmentally? Experts, I’m sure, already have the answers on this topic. I’m just coming up with my own questions here that I’ll someday look up the answer to.

The good news is? There’s a movement of parents that are refusing to give their kids smartphones, and schools across the world are refusing to allow mobile phones in the classroom, citing many of the reasons that I'm trying to get away from my phone myself.

I can only see this as a win for the kids. I hope, over this next week, that I'll be able to celebrate my success with my own digital addiction struggles as well. Back to de-apping my phone. Until next time, dear reader.

Two steps forward, two steps back

I suppose that it’s time for me to confess something to you, dear reader. My posting day for these entries is on Sunday. You probably know that already; after all, when you are reading this, it is Sunday. But I write this throughout my week, edit it on Saturday and make sure it's cleaned up by Sunday. I only make mention of this because what I’m about to tell you may make no sense without context, which I’ll now provide. Here goes.

I failed.

Yep, that’s it. There’s the big revelation. You remember when I said last post that at some point, I planned on failing? I wrote that post on the Thursday before I edited it and subsequently posted it on Sunday. And, then it happened. Saturday and Sunday, my two days off from my regularly scheduled 9 to 5, I found myself helplessly scrolling through my Reddit feed on my phone. I spent an hour or two in this endeavor both days. This… turned consistent throughout the week.

But really, in practice, modern life makes it so we’re almost meant to fail this endeavor from it’s start. When I was going through my phone so that I could effectively dumb it down, I realized that there were so many apps that I have that I need in order to function in day-to-day life. My thermostat for my heat and air conditioning? Controlled from my phone. Sure, I could just go down the cellar steps and change it from there, but the installers put it in a rather inconvenient place that requires me to go over two pipes and duck under some low-hanging wire.  My work email? Accessed through an authenticator app on my phone. My time clock app for work? On my phone. Those are just very small examples of the larger problem that I can’t quite escape.

The real question comes down to what I can do to mitigate the problem. Realistically, I can’t get rid of my smartphone, too much of ‘modern’ life depends on it. So, for me, the real solution comes into the little-used button on the side of my phone. I have found, though I have not always been successful this week in doing so, that by simply turning my phone off, it triggers a switch in my mind that it is not available. If it’s not easy to just pick it up, turn on the screen and doomscroll my way to a panic attack, for my mind it takes it out of the equation. My friends that will only communicate through texts and Discord can wait until I choose to be available again.

In addition, by keeping my phone off at night I’ve felt better rested come morning. This isn’t by some miracle or an accident. According to an article from the Cleveland Clinic, that nightly doomscroll keeps your mind engaged, makes you feel alert because of the blue light, and can put you at a higher risk of coming across content that can really set your emotions on high alert. For me, my worst habit has been checking the poll numbers for the election relentlessly at night. I minored in political science, what can I say? But, by turning my phone off and refusing to doomscroll once I hit the sack, I’ve fallen asleep a lot faster and I can wake up at the time I want to, roughly about 5 a.m. Goodbye, existential dread, hello working out to Richard Simmons every day!

Here’s the final problem you may come across. You’ve turned your phone off, you’ve set it aside, you suddenly have a lot of time that’s no longer occupied by the relentless doom scrolling- what do you do with that free time? For me, dear reader, I connect with my roommate. I play video games either on the Wii or the NES emulator I have. I read. I catch up on my favorite shows. Your nights without your phone might look different to mine, and that’s okay. But find what works for you, and then run with it.

Until next time, dear reader.

The Beginning

There once was a time when smartphones were not the norm. Hard to believe, I know. But I was born in 1995, I grew up in the 2000s, and I don’t recall a ‘smart phone’ being a thing until maybe around 2009. My first two phones were flip phones. The Motorola Razr? That was my jam in middle school. Sure, I had to leave it in the front office during the day, but I felt cool.

I liked the Motorola Razr. It was so convenient, so new, so innovative, so… anyway. I’m getting off topic. The point of my writing this for your consumption dear reader is not to tell you how wonderful that “dumb phone”, or as I called it, “phone”, was.

Now, I find myself staring down the barrel of thirty. Throughout my twenties, I had a smart phone. It saw me through high school (remember when we were all playing Angry Birds and that god-awful Flappy Bird game?), and it carried me through college. But you know what I noticed, especially while starting my mornings at 5 a.m. and going straight through to 9:00 p.m. between work and school? My depression skyrocketed.

I thought, maybe it’s because I’m pushing myself too hard. Maybe I’m doing too much. Maybe, after graduation, everything will magically be better, and I’ll be able to be the happy person I once was circa-2009. Somewhere in my brain, I thought that once I entered the real adult world, I would finally be happy.

Nope. When I graduated, no longer was I that happy, doe-eyed, fresh-faced kid. I was instead a marginally depressed adult, living in a new city with a wonderful roommate, realizing that my communications degree wasn’t opening the doors I thought it was, settling into a corporate job and future and wondering why, after doing all the theoretical steps to be a happy, successful person, I still… wasn’t. This remained largely the same throughout my twenties. I could go into several reasons as to why, but honestly it starts sounding like a bad Lifetime movie that comes on at 3:00 in the morning right before the commercials proclaiming something is like scrubby bubbles for your intestine.

Then, it dawned on me. Maybe, just maybe, this box of instant gratification that I've been holding in my hand for the past decade has been making my mental health decline more than it normally would. And before you write me off as a grumpy old man shaking his fists and yelling at the kids to get off of his lawn, I'm not the only one who seems to think so. According to a study by Columbia University, the constant notifications can create a sense of urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out), leading to increased anxiety and stress.

So, this past week I launched an experiment. I sat down, sorted through my apps on my smartphone and determined which ones I needed and which ones I didn’t. I determined that my smartphone was going to be a tool, not my go-to instant gratification. Essentially, I dumbed down my smartphone. I even took it a step further. I have a basket set in my living room that when I get home, my phone goes into. I even put a couple of random magazines that started showing up to my house in there so that if I’m tempted to grab my phone when nature shows its ugly side, I have something else to grab and read. Essentially, I decided to make my life a cross between 1985 and 2006, and as I sat on the floor of my bedroom playing Super Mario Brothers 3 with my roommate on a poor imitation for the NES, I realized that for the first time I genuinely felt less stressed, less depressed, and more in-tune with my surroundings.

I'm not saying that my extreme measures are going to work for everyone. I'm also not going to profess myself as the next guru of digital minimalism, and how I've Marie Kondoed my technology to perfection. All of that would be dishonest. The truth is, life is messy, and I am a member of the human race. I fully intend to stumble. I know I'm going to fail. And you know what? That is okay. I am giving myself permission to fail in this endeavor- but I'm not giving myself permission to stop trying.

Throughout this blog, dear reader, you are going to see from me the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm going to tell you when I stumble, how hard I fall, and what I'm doing to correct it. Who knows? Maybe this will inspire some of you to do set down your smartphones and look up, too.

Until next time, dear reader.