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.
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