Contact Admin. My wife and I have two young children. And yet, one night not so long ago, a handful of my enslaved brain cells sparked unexpectedly to life. I looked up from Twitter. When they made it really fast and put it on a phone, it was pretty much game over. My usage is heavy, best described as a zigzag, across apps. Baseball stats, flight status, email check, text, random article, who knows what.
All it takes is a slim distraction and my thumb turns turbo. Of course it should have been obvious long ago, but on that revelatory night, I realised I had lost control. The reach for the phone had become involuntary. A bulbous chunk of my brain, sucked up by phonethink. Should I charge it now, or later? At work or at home, notifications buzz me like low-flying planes.
I have found myself wondering if this is a matter of evolution. Maybe future humans will have legs that ring. And maybe knees that tweet.
And so I began looking for balance. In the midst of the all-consuming, politics-driven death spiral that is the US today, I shut down all notifications. Effectively, I banned news. So I tried something else. I deleted Facebook and Instagram. I kept on bouncing between my apps, checking the damned New York Post.
Could I just chuck the damn thing in the ocean? Or just leave it at home? Alas, that really is the stuff of fantasy. But what if I could have a smartphone for when it was really needed but used a low-tech phone for less-essential tasks and times?
