I started to panic and said, “So, everyone needs to buy one product in order to fly now?” He said, “I don’t make the rules” – an Orwellian response if ever there was one. The airline employee at the Newark check-in counter seemed baffled by my not having a smartphone and told me in a conclusive tone that the QR-coded form is required, despite my proof of vaccination. Getting back home to Spain required a Covid form with a QR code. You’re probably thinking right now how obnoxious I am I know I come across as smug and virtue-signaling. I felt pretty good about surviving for a week without a phone. It still works: a friend picked me up at the airport and, throughout the week, everyone showed up as planned, one friend even commenting that the novelty of meeting up this way is “kind of fun and quirky”. We’re all over 40, we remember pay phones and how making plans used to work. Before I left Spain, I told my New York friends to meet me at this place and time, like in the old days. My phone plan works only in Europe, so I didn’t pack my Nokia on a recent week-long trip to New York. I’m all about the old model everything being replaced by innovation is what I still rely on. I lug whatever book I’m reading in my purse – my excuse for never reading War and Peace. I hail taxis there’s no Uber or Lyft in my little, shrinking world. I don’t need to know how many steps I’ve walked. The clock on my flip-phone tells me if I’ve walked for an hour. Usually people are on their phones, so there’s no eye contact. I want to take a walk with only the city or woods taking my attention. Apologies are made and there’s always an urgency for one response, one minute. When I eat out with friends, their phone sits face-up on the table like a third wheel, pinging and flashing until attention is inevitably turned in its direction. I see couples in restaurants each staring lovingly into their hand-held device. On sidewalks, I walk hoping people look up in time to avoid a collision. There’s nothing addictive about a flip-phone.Įverywhere I go, I see people staring into their screens. But that’s the limit of its seductive features. One friend texts me: “big heart big heart big heart emojis.” My Nokia cost $70 and I’ve dropped it dozens of times and it’s never cracked. My phone can get a text, but emojis appear as plain squares, so I don’t know the emotion being conveyed without accompanying words. I have a clunky camera which mostly sits in the closet. My flip-phone doesn’t play music or take photos. But, when I’m not at home, I don’t have access to any of it. I have a computer that I use for work, online shopping, time-sucking web-surfing and movie-watching. We all know it’s wrong, but we reach for it anyway. We are being manipulated – and we clearly have a problem. Social media companies admit they exploit our dopamine receptors, designing products to hook us, such as irregularly timed rewards.Ĭan I tolerate a little slot machine in my pocket, or would I be lured in? Would that tiny thrill of social affirmation turn me into a compulsive checker? Tracking screen-time, turning off notifications, setting monochrome colors, taking “digital-detox” retreats or “internet sabbaths” – none of this seems to make a lasting dent. Two-thirds of Americans check their phones 160 times every day. If I bought my own, I know I’d be smoking a pack a day.Īmericans check their smartphones an average of 96 times a day, which works out to once every 15 minutes. I never wanted to start smoking at all, but the world is conspiring to make me bum one. It’s awkward when I ask a stranger for directions and they pull out their smart phone, looking at me as if to say, “where’s your phone?” My brother says I’m like a smoker who won’t buy her own pack, but smokes everyone else’s.
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