Happy New Year! 2026! The Year of the Horse! Neigh! 🐴
Last April, I got a Barbie phone and wrote three posts about it:
1️⃣ First 2️⃣ Second 3️⃣ Third
Last September, I went to London with a friend and our kids, and decided to swap the sim card back to the smartphone for the city trip. Since then I hadn’t “thinked pink” again, sadly. So Barbiephone has sat in the bowl of assorted crap next to hairclips and broken toy bits for three months.
However, after a wall-to-wall festive break of eating/parties/meetups/lols/birthdays/drinking, I was furiously charging the brickphone at 5:30am on New Year’s Day.
Barbie was back.
Some cool and not-so-cool stuff. Please find the bullet list below:
Christmas shopping
Instagram rebrand
I wanted to share my writing publicly on Instagram instead of sharing personal posts. So, I downloaded all my old photos and deleted everything else before a certain date (if you’re ever thinking of doing this by the way, it was a pain to navigate to, but easy once you’re in the right place).
Now I am posting articles and poems etc., it definitely feels more meaningful to have a “reason” to be on there...
But it has also been fuzzy and nice to keep up with my friends who are far away, and just be a normal social media user without putting lots of pressure on how bad it is (for me).
Opened an Etsy shop
The order tracking and happy cha-chings when you make a sale are great fun on a Smartie.
Took way more photos
Lots of fun, productive and interactive social media use
Lots of self-hating, unproductive, indulgent social media use (AMA about the Marty Supreme campaign, for example...)
Current with current affairs
Anxious about current affairs
Very responsive on emails
Very productive on Adobe Express
As I was going to a city with my friend and our little ones, it didn’t feel right to just take the brick and burden my friend with the smartphone responsibilities... I wanted to have a smartphone for safety, navigation, practicality, train tickets...
And after switching, it’s something I didn’t expect to admit, but using my smartphone again after so long made me feel like a kid with a new toy.
Maybe you get it too, when you suddenly remember you have free will and start behaving weirdly without inhibition (eating alone with total disregard of table manners one of my favourites). But, yeah — it was a bit of a thrill. Looking up whatever you want on the internet at any given moment (lol) or just finding out what your friends are up to, because you can... Sending mad voice notes on a whim.
Also, I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done last Autumn, but also all the usual things I still had to do... So much to do that even the thought of finding dedicated computer time for this list was very off-putting. Instead, I chose to squeeze smartphone things into the day when the kettle was boiling, or in “quiet” moments. This seemed like a reasonable approach.
Honestly, this was my intention: to use my phone in the natural pauses of the day, mutual downtime, and carry the integrity I’d learned from not using the smartphone the previous few months into this “reintegration period”.
However it is sad how much, and how openly, I began to ignore my loved ones in the real world. When I was “quickly” trying to be productive and “save time” – get one email sent, one design finished – I noticed my presence take a total nose-dive. I began to feel that old twitch just to check something, pull down the top of the screen and see the swirling circle.
You might say: don’t be hard on yourself, we all do it. I might say, I was just caught up in this so-called rediscovered newness. But honestly, it didn’t feel good. Especially because I seemed to be choosing to do the task/scroll regardless of its impact on my attention and attentiveness to others.
Maybe this hyper-awareness was because I’d had five months “off” smartphone life, and had a solid, recent comparison. Maybe I am generally more sensitive to how/why I use my phone.
I don’t know.
But, it’s a whole week now back with the brickphone, and I feel 10x better. (This correlation may also be from not drinking plum liqueur daily, and not having chocolate cake for pudding at lunch and dinner... and generally being less busy). For the purposes of making a point though, the brickphone is definitely the number one factor in my improved mental wellbeing.
And I do mean that.
:)
My conclusion is:
Life is better with a brickphone.
Life is easier with a smartphone.
When I have my simcard in the brickphone, it’s basically a pager. I’ll either call or reply in noughties text-speak to whoever is messaging, or whizz over to the smartphone / computer if I’m home to hash things out on WhatsApp if we need to.
My smartphone is on Do Not Disturb at all times so it doesn’t lure me in with a blippy WhatsApp alert or the dingle of new notifications. I simply go to it when I need to for general, useful things: listening to music, looking up a product/recipe, ordering something, sending an email, processing orders... And I no longer berate myself for using the smartphone in these small doses. Whereas before, I was essentially preventing myself from having a nice day just to stay on the moral highground for “the cause”.
I should say though, I’m much more efficient if I do any kind of admin in one sitting on the computer.
The physical act of putting the sim card in the Barbie phone and killing the smartphone’s ability to distract me is, however, the most exhilarating part of the whole process.
There comes a huge sense of control, detachment and freedom with this minor act. And, I don’t know how relatable that will be for other people — but just mentioning in case you’re considering trying this out.
I also feel better physically from not hunching over and tapping on a miniature screen for no good reason, plus my eyes aren’t as tired... And better mentally: way less overwhelm, tonnes more gratitude.
I love speaking to people on the phone. I wish I could call everyone as soon as I think of them, but I can’t, and most of us don’t because: it’s the weekend, it’s too late, too early, they’re at work, they’re not at work... This is a widely acknowledged courtesy we all afford eachother nowadays, and one that’s become totally ingrained since we started using mobile phones.
It’s also why WhatsApp remains invaluable: you can message anytime, with zero urgency, and it’s a way to be in touch without the burden of bothering someone.
So, whilst I would like to go full brick, I know from my experience last year that WhatsApp is crucial. Some friendships just don’t work without it, and I definitely missed out on group chat spontaneity, and even scheduled events that I just completely skimmed over from not being “notifications on”.
When I’ve only used the brickphone on holiday, I had a lovely time — as you can imagine. But on reflection, I basically relinquished all the smartphone responsibilities: navigation, research, arranging get-togethers... So yeah, it was two thumbs up for me, but not the same for Mr. Sarah. I guess if you’re with someone, they need to be on board with you relying on them, or up for sharing their phone.
Equally, as I mentioned in one of the earlier articles — it is best facilitated if your life and support network are mainly local and reliable.
My plan going forwards is to be mostly Barbiephone and then switch the simcards for trips, holidays, or busy weeks.
I'll still have my smartphone on during the day, but leave it unattended in DND-mode at home. If there's ever something urgent, I will find out because the Barbiephone is always with me.
Not in my average day-to-day, largely because I have a routine, people who can help me close-by, and other means of technology at home. But I definitely need it on certain occasions, mainly for safety and reassurance when travelling.
The exceptions are the few apps/tasks that are more secure to do on the smartphone, like banking. I'll also still use my apps (Etsy, Vinted, Grocery shopping, Instagram) but with the same mantra as “only when I need to” and make it task-based rather than whim-based. For instance, Instagram: my intention is to keep posting my writing there, and hopefully find more eyes to read my stuff. 👀👀👀👀👀👀
Equally, I've found the less time you spend on any app, the less time you want to spend on there. It's just about breaking the cycle, man.
Yes, absolutely. I am more productive, happier, grateful, and active when I have my simcard in the Barbiephone.
Looking back, the first few days of using a brickphone were as close to a religious vow of silence I’ll likely ever get. Everything becomes quiet. Like you’re suspended within your own reality; and I put that down to having to confront the natural pace of the world again.
So, yes. To answer the question a different way — my life has improved because I’m learning how to dial up and down, and dip in and out of the digital space. It’s a lesson I'm very pleased to be taught.
Two things.
First a short story. This new year, having gone back to the Barbiephone, I noticed my son, the little picklechop, had said ‘love you’ at least a dozen times (!) completely unprompted (!!) and not even in an attempt to con me for chocolate (!!!). Kids are so perceptive, and I wonder if not using a smartphone all the time is really *that* noticeable: the perpetual distraction and semi-focus limiting and damaging us in unseen ways.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to wonder who I’ve been all these years: my real-world personality clipped at the edges by all the effort I’ve put into carving my digital self. And I wonder who I could become if I’m able to stay “detached”.
Knife, heart, I’m cooked.
💔
And I’m not even that addicted to my phone!!! I just like to write about it and overthink the whole thing!!! And I love the fact the Barbiephone is bright pink and ridiculous helping me in my effort to be less digitally dependent!!!
Secondly, I would 100% recommend trying it if you have the resources and patience. Even if it becomes something you do temporarily, or just to keep the option open for weekends, certain months, or as a detox.
And that’s that. Thanks for reading, I edited the absolute sh*t out of this but it was still pretty long. If you got all the way down here, that’s very nice of you.
Bye! I’ll be writing weird normal stuff again from now on: ultraviolet catastrophes etc.
xoxoxoxoxo
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