i want a dumb phone
(or at least one that doesn’t make me sad on purpose)
Our family needs to get new phones soon. “Need” is, of course, relative, but it’s happening nonetheless. It’s made me nostalgic for the good ol’ days. I used to have a phone held together with blue masking tape. It had no apps, no camera, no settings I could accidentally ruin…just a handful of essential phone numbers and a deeply satisfying click when it snapped shut.
It was basically invincible. I could drop it from the roof of my house, run over it with my car, probably even put it in the blender. Best of all, I could forget about it. If I left it at home it could not ruin my day.
Then I lost it.
My brother-in-law, kind, generous and tech-savvy, handed me a sleek new smartphone. It was beautiful. It was smarter than me. It could do everything—except just be a phone. In fact, “phone” is now just an app on my phone that I hardly use.
Here’s a fun game to play: Who’s the most famous person in your phone? The rules were simple: Google their name or check them out on the Instagram (or whatever the kids are using these days)…most hits wins.
At the moment, I’ve got a few clients that would crush that game, but obviously I can’t disclose them here. (Ethics are pesky like that.) I can tell you I have Sydney Sweeney’s number. She has 25.2 million followers on Instagram. I suppose kind of “knew her when”.
She was an up-and-coming-mega-star. I was a middling-age-drama-dad Weird flex, I know…but I like my chances if we’re playing.
Back then, I used my phone for three things:
Making calls
Getting voicemails I forgot to check
Occasionally playing Snake
Now?
Now I play Block Blast and Twisted Ropes, because at least that feels like accomplishing something. I do the New York Times Crossword too—and can almost finish Thursdays without cheating.
I scroll. I swipe. I click things that make me feel worse just to see if they’ll make me feel even worse. They usually do.
Whenever I’m not sad enough, I just pick up my phone and click on things that make me sadder.
Which is… sad.
I don’t hate technology. I love maps, voice memos, podcast apps, and knowing the score of the game before I pretend I wasn’t checking it. I also have a few text threads that I actually deeply cherish. (Here’s lookin at you, Japanese Death Poets and Wordle Golfers.)
But I don’t like how my brain twitches when I haven’t checked something in ten minutes. I don’t like how often I find myself staring at the black mirror, looking for something to do with my dopamine. Or my loneliness.
I don’t like that I reach for my phone instead of reaching for books made of paper.
I want a dumb phone. I want a phone that doesn’t push notifications. A phone that doesn’t know what I want before I do. A phone that can’t recommend new reasons to be anxious or enraged. A phone that doesn’t tell me what I’m missing, only for me to later find out that I wish I’d actually missed it.
I’ve said versions of this before. I probably will again. I’m not here to romanticize flip phones or rail against tech. This is just me noticing how much of my life I’m spending not really living it. How much of my attention is being siphoned off in exchange for nothing I can name.
Still… when I walk into T-Mobile in the next week or two and ask for a dumb phone, I know exactly what I’ll get: a blank stare and an apologetic invitation to enjoy the shiny new Ultima Max Pro SomethingOrOther.
But this is me, right here and right now, declaring that I’m going to figure it out.
I’m going to stop confusing stimulation with satisfaction.
I’m going to stop being sad on purpose.
It isn’t working.
I want a phone I can forget.
I want a life I can remember.
kZB