i hate the smartphone
While reading this post, please keep in mind that it is in no way objective or completely correct. This is nothing else but an internal scream that I can no longer contain inside. Your opinion is as valid as mine, and everyone's situation is different. Thank you.
Everywhere I look, I see a phone. I can't escape them. Everywhere I go, people are stuck in a constant loop of doing something on their phones. Every place now looks the same: it is just a backdrop for people who are texting, scrolling, and taking pictures. They are everywhere.
A year ago, I ditched my smartphone in hopes of an escape. I wanted to experience the world again with my own eyes. I wished for a break from the ever-increasing flood of information. I thought that my habits and my phone were to blame.
Yet my life changed much less drastically than I had hoped for. Once my eyes and mind started wandering around again, I noticed how much everything has changed. I've suddenly become hypersensitive to the amount of "phones" around me. I could escape my habits, but I couldn't escape the habits of everyone else.
It is hard for me to name any other change in human history that has happened so fast and seamlessly as the worldwide adoption of smartphones. Just 15 years ago, they were still a novelty. Today it's nearly impossible to find someone who doesn't own one.
In this short amount of time, it has already left a deep scar on the face of humanity. We were sold on a tool, not understanding how much it would change us. Without knowing, we've traded our autonomy and time for the shiny "technology of the future". And now, when we slowly start to notice the consequences, it is too late. We've been taking the drug for too long, and the world only demands more of it.
Phones have became socially acceptable drugs. They separate us from each other, they dumb us down, they break our ability to focus, they make us all want and do the same stuff. Yet, unlike other drugs, everyone is abusing them, and we aren't really worried about them. Sure, people talk about their massive screen time in a negative sense, but the addiction is real, and it is insanely hard to break from. And once you are sober, you start to see things that make you wish that you weren't.
I can't stop the feeling that people find their phones more interesting than each other. Instead of putting priority on friends around us, we are eager to reply to some random person texting them. People meet up in cafes to chat, yet they all just end up staring at their screens. As I'm writing this in a local cafe, there is not a single person who isn't currently sitting in front of their phone. I can't express my grief in words.
Most people can't imagine leaving their house without their phone. What will they do when they get bored? What if they get lost? What if there is an emergency? How will they live without taking pictures and listening to music? Yet, somehow people not only lived but thrived without all of these things just 20 years ago.
The ability to instantly look something up and message anyone has drastically dumbed us down. We gladly offered the "burdens" of life to our devices. No more do you have to actually orient in the city, because you always have a navigator on hand. Why would you ever want to remember anything, if you can just look it up instantly? Why talk to another human, if it is much more convenient to ask your phone? Why would you put effort into picking what to listen to, if there is an algorithm that already knows better than you what you enjoy? Why choose, if there is an infinite content served on a silver plate? Why spend energy on thinking, if you can just consume? Consume everywhere: on your job, in transit, in a restaurant, in a toilet, in your bed — everywhere. Because the reality is slow and boring.
I truly want to live in a better world. I try to be positive about all of this, but I fail so hard. Everywhere I go, I am constantly slapped with the harsh reality of this brave new world. I've given up on pretending that the internet is a nice place. But I did not expect that when I try and escape back to the real world, I would find it in even more depressing state.
Owning a smartphone is the de facto norm these days. A lot of things are becoming hard or impossible to do without one. In many places, you can't buy a ticket without an app. On my job, you have to pay for lunches by scanning a QR code. In general, human-readable links are quickly being replaced with QR codes that only a machine can read. Android users laugh about the walled-off Apple users, while themselves being trapped in a similar walled garden, albeit a bit bigger.
Self-reflection and contemplation have become a luxury. The majority of thinking and free time has been replaced by looking at things outside of ourselves, be that books, movies, shops, or social media, it doesn't matter.
As humans, we have found solutions to a lot of complex problems. Yet, it is becoming harder and harder to think. Our thoughts rarely go deeper than our worries and everyday tasks these days, because we literally don't have enough time to process the incoming information. The increase in the amount of information consumed by an average person has been increasing for a long time, but the arrival of the source of infinite information in our pockets has put that trend on fast-forward.
If to think means to be alive, then we are much less alive than we used to be.
I wish for a world where people are focused on one thing at a time.
A world where you could go out with friends without interruptions.
A world where you can go anywhere without taking pictures.
A world where it is normal to be bored and do stupid stuff IRL again.
A world where I don't get shoved opinions of everyone around me and where my every sentence isn't judged by a like counter.
A world where people are open to trying things that aren't popular.
A world where music, movies, and games are discovered through word of mouth.
A world where my every single action isn't recorded for extracting ad money from it.
A world where I am not bombarded by ads everywhere I go.
A world where it is okay not to know something and not look it up instantly.
A world where food is just food and not a source of likes.
A world where to hang out with someone, I have to put effort into physically seeing the person.
A world where it is okay to talk to strangers in bars, cafes, and everywhere else.
I'm painfully aware of all the phones around me at all times. They are eyesores that break my immersion in this world. Every time I see one, I get a stark reminder of how things are now and that the person holding it is bound to snap out of the world around them at any moment now. I'm aware that this sounds like anything but healthy, but I can't unsee them anymore.
I do not know what to do. Trying to stay away from everything above requires a constant uphill battle. The amount of effort exerted in the fight for our attention by the other side is colossal. It is foolish to think that my current situation is sustainable. But unless I move to a remote location, there is no way to prevent the spillage of garbage into my life. Because they are literally everywhere.
None of my friends are really on board with my viewpoint, nor even my wife. Everyone around me sees this as a weird quirk of mine that causes them more trouble than it is worth. I've met only a single person IRL who came to the same conclusions as me and took actions. I'm starting to feel exhausted and hopeless.
I do not know what to do.