I miss the phone. No no that slab in my pocket that we call the smartphone.
Yes, that device can act like a phone. But it also works as a laptop, camera, alarm, console, TV, wallet and many other things, not sure what it is. But one thing is for sure: Calling an iPhone just a “phone” has never felt quite right.
It’s easy to lose sight of just how vast a smartphone’s capabilities are. Hidden inside our pockets is a powerful machine that really seems to be able to do everything, everywhere, all at once. There’s a reason why recently restricted cuts FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried just a dumb phone away. A smartphone is a powerful tool, especially in the hands of a math nerd who lost billions of other people’s money overnight.
And while my smartphone has improved my life immensely, and I’m not going to get rid of it, it has also made some things worse. I mean, my brain. The smartphone allows us to easily check things constantly and immediately, be it the news or our loved ones, but at the expense of our attention span, mental health, and relationships. Hell, recently, I realized that I barely remember most of the concerts I’ve been to, and why? I was too busy taking hundreds of videos and sharing them on Instagram with my phone. Strangely, I didn’t even watch the videos afterwards and only did so when I needed to delete them to free up storage space.
That’s why I want the dumb cheap phone back, and I’m so excited that it’s about to potentially as more Gen Zers adopt it more and more. I need a break, and as long as my iPhone is this good, I don’t think it’s going to give me one right away. I need a phone that, while I wait in line to feed my caffeine addiction, is devoid of apps so I can’t pull it out and be distracted by the news or FOMO-inducing vacation photos. A phone, ideally, without a camera either, that doesn’t keep me from enjoying the present moment with my baby nephew while he shows me one of her first toothy smiles.
I also want it to be a Thing. Kind of common again, so I don’t feel like a freak when I call attention to myself and pull out a dumb phone that looks like it’s from the early 2000s, which actually happened. I also want it to be affordable so everyone can have one, not a couple hundred bucks like many popular dumb phones like the Light Phone cost.
And yes, I know what you’re thinking. “Why don’t you put your phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’?” Have. Repeatedly. On good days, when my willpower is high, sometimes it helps. But I’m only human, and smart phones and Applications they are designed to be addictive. On those days when I’m already feeling down or exhausted, the temptation to pull out my smartphone for a quick and easy dopamine rush becomes too strong. I know I’m not alone.
We’ve proposed bringing back dumb phones before, back in the days when Trump ran the country by Twitter and rattled our collective nerves with each new tweet. The need to log off was great, and now he feels even bigger.
Since then, we have suffered a global pandemic while the US witnessed a literal coup attempt. Russia invaded Ukraine, which has cost more than 200,000 people their lives, destabilized the region, and contributed to severe food shortages. As that conflict continues to play out, we’ve also recently hit our… what? — millionth big financial crisis in 15 years? Every other week, we live in unprecedented times, and it’s no wonder Diagnoses of depression are on the rise..
At the same time, technology is getting better and even more distracting. There are even more addictive apps out there, as well as more capable smartphones and AI tools to improve our lives. And as social media companies continue to add more and more distracting features, more and more research demonstrates the negative impact all of this has on the mental health of young people and Adults similar. No wonder: reading the news sometimes makes you feel like the world is about to end, but somehow Instagram and LinkedIn feeds make you feel like everyone is winning at life every day and all the time. And they do it all while looking like supermodels, thanks to amazingly good AI filters.
And that’s why I, no, we, need the dumb phone to get back. We need something to help us temporarily disconnect from a fake digital world so that we can be more connected to the real world. It used to be that getting out of the house was the way I could tune out, but now I never can with my smartphone in my pocket and technology everywhere. We can’t hit a pause button in the world, but we can force ourselves offline using a dumb phone instead of a smart one.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want smartphones to go anywhere, and I don’t want them to stop getting better either. Rather, I envision a world where we have our smartphones, but it’s also normal to have cheap and dumb phones to use, say, outside the home or just when you need a break. Just a basic phone that we can all use to text and make calls. No cameras, no apps, no internet, nothing like that. Just a phone, not another constant distraction.
