#SmartphoneFree: They Were Controlling Us

"If there's any addiction that we have today as individuals and as a family, we (the parents) perpetuated it," Mr Clarke told the BBC. "They're cool devices, but we began to feel like they were controlling us and not vice versa."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50830944

#SmartphoneFree: An App To Pretend To Meditate

"Mostly, I became aware of how profoundly uncomfortable I am with stillness. For years, I’ve used my phone every time I’ve had a spare moment in an elevator or a boring meeting. I listen to podcasts and write emails on the subway. I watch YouTube videos while folding laundry. I even use an app to pretend to meditate." 

Great article in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/business/cell-phone-addiction.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

#SmartphoneFree: How To Ditch Your Smartphone

Cartoon by Manu Cornet (http://ma.nu/)

This is not a blog post to convince you to go smartphone free. It's not even a blog post about my experience of going smartphone free. It's a blog post about how to go smartphone free.

So, you've realised you want to ditch your smartphone - smart move! The robots aren't quite in control of you yet. But how do you do it? It's basically a massive 'find and replace' exercise. Let's start with what you'll need to get rid of and what you'll need to replace.

Lose the smartphone - buy a dumbphone

An obvious step, but one that is easily put-off which makes for a huge fall at the first hurdle. Just go out and buy one. If money's not an issue and you really want to make a statement there are some ludicrously cool, ludicrously expensive handsets out there - usually available through an exclusive Kickstarter campaign or similar. But they are totally unnecessary and they spoil some of the side-benefits of going smartphone free (i.e. how cheap it can be). Get yourself to the supermarket and pick up something dirt cheap - my SIM-free Alcatel 1066G (the name must be a wry reference to how not-up-to-date it is) does the job perfectly and it cost me £14 - you can get it on the supermarket's own network for half that price.

Get a watch

This was a step I took whilst I still had a smartphone to try to reduce number of times I got it out of my pocket to check the time (because that inevitably led to me checking more than just the time). I'd also previously set my smartphone to turn off automatically at 9pm and back on at 7am (another supposed hack to reduce smartphone use) meaning I needed something else that had an alarm. Again, for me, cheap is the order of the day. A £9.99 Casio works a treat - mine's even bright blue. Time + alarm = I don't even need to get my dumbphone out of my pocket anymore.

Take a book

Smartphones are great at providing entertainment in those little bits of time inbetweentimes. But so are books. I find that non-fiction and poetry that can be consumed in smaller chunks (with fiction you lose the plot if you are only reading little bits here and there) are ideal. It makes you look and feel super-intelligent and I reckon they're a better potential conversation starter - no one would dare ask what you were reading on your smartphone but people do strike up conversations about books as they're less personal. Granted, they're often more cumbersome than a phone, but holding a book in your hand instead of the phone that used to be permanently glued there isn't such a hardship.

Get a map

I'm willing to bet that one of the most inhibiting factors for people considering getting rid of their smartphone is the lack of access to GPS/WIFI/data connection-enabled mapping apps (yes, I mean Google maps). When I first got rid of my smartphone I had no map and I made a few errors resulting in us not reaching our destination. Then I bought a road atlas for £2 and we've been fine ever since - all the parts of our 2-week summer holidays that I navigated were done successfully using a paper map. I've gained a better geographical understanding of the places we've been and I, as a map-lover, have enjoyed poring over it whilst planning journeys.


Dig out a digital camera

So many people had one of these before smartphone came around - I managed to find two lurking around the house. I do enjoy taking photos but I've discovered many of the photos I took were for the express purpose of sharing spontaneously on social media - something that without a smartphone you don't really do. At first I took a compact digital camera with me but found I wasn't really using it. On holiday we used the DSLR that my wife has for her business to record those golden family moments. This is a potential expensive outlay but one which might be balanced out by not having those expensive monthly payments for a smartphone contract.

Make some plans

It's very true that you might begin to miss the on-tap social interaction that smartphones provide. The quality of such interactions is questionable - in fact, Science appears to show that social media only provides low-quality social interaction - but that doesn't mean that you won't miss it when you say goodbye to your smartphone. To combat this, send a text or make a phone call arranging to meet up with friends or family in order to enjoy some real face-to-face time. Of course, not all of us live close to our relatives so a phone call might have to suffice. If video-calling is valuable to you and your loved ones (I totally get that it might be) then consider having a tablet device which you don't cart around with you the whole time in order to provide this service.

Revive some hobbies

I've heard absolute smartphone-junkies bemoan the lack of time to do other things that they actually consider to be more worthwhile. The fact that you no longer check your smartphone every 4 minutes (that's the average) and that you suddenly spend literally hours less per day looking at that little rectangle of light means that you can do all those things you used to love before the smartphone robbed you of your time. Get your guitar back out; start work on that book you've been thinking of writing; take those dancing lessons; spend more time with your loved ones - whatever it is, do it more. These kinds of activities will also help you combat the potential withdrawal symptoms.

Replacing other apps

There are other potential replacements, depending on what you use your smartphone for. I would be happy to guarantee to anyone that there will be another gadget out there or just a more traditional way of doing things (even if it's a slower way, there's every chance you'll still actually save time because you'll be able to do it distraction-free) that mean that however much you think you rely on your smartphone in your personal life, you could ditch it forever and not look back. One such example for me was getting hold of a Mighty Vibe audio player which plays Spotify audio on the go (see my review here).

Just do it

You'll never know what it's like until you do it. You'll never know what your personal version of going smartphone free looks like. It takes a can-do attitude (ridiculous that I'm speaking of getting rid of a piece of technology in such strong terms) and not a what-if attitude. You have to just do it - for yourself, and for the people around you who are losing you to all the time you spend with your phone.

#SmartphoneFree: But He Lost What He Had

"He got what he wanted (but he lost what he had)…"

We often seem to think about what we would lose if we had to give up something and rarely think about what we might gain.

With our smartphone use we gained what we wanted.

We got instant access to all the knowledge in the world, an foolproof way to navigate from A to B, increased communication, the ability to shop 24/7 from the comfort of your own home, an endless stream of cat videos and so on. We even got loads of stuff we didn't know we wanted but definitely think we want now we've got it.

But we also lost what we had.

We lost time alone with our thoughts. We lost proper conversations face to face. We lost time spent with our families. We lost the experience of wandering and noticing what goes on around us. We lost time. We lost money. We lost relationships.

Yet we also forget what we lost and think that their replacements are even better.

We think we gained knowledge, inspiration and improvement by being constantly influenced by a multitude of minds through podcasts, vlogs, blogs, articles, tweets and status updates. We think we gained better communication because it is so instant and easy and constant. We think we gained quality family time because it looks so good to our friends on Instagram and Facebook. We think we gained a world-wide perspective because our phone and computers regularly update their home screens with beautiful pictures from around the globe. We think we gained time because we can do things so much more quickly. We think we gained money because it's so much easier to find a bargain or sell on our unwanted stuff. We think we gained relationships because we connect with hundreds and thousands of people on a daily basis.

We got what we wanted and we lost what we had. And what we wanted turns out not to be what we really needed. And what we had, in the end, for some us, is what we want again.

If that's you - the one who knows that they want again what they once had - then think not what you might lose from giving up your smartphone, or your social media accounts, but what you might gain. And just do it. It's really not as bad as you think it's going to be.

#SmartphoneFree: Screen Love

'Can you hear me love? It's like you've never seen enough. 
If there's one thing between us, love, it's your screen love.'

A great track from Rel McCoy explaining how smartphone addiction can drive a wedge between loved ones.

Although I do admit to feeling frustrated by others' use of digital devices I eventually had to turn the spotlight on myself. I couldn't change the habits of others, but I could change my own. And, although I'm here evangelising about the #SmartphoneFree way of life (still have to have a hashtag!), I never intend to be preachy, at least in real life. I made my decision for myself, not to try to influence others.

If you find yourself annoyed by how much time your friends and family spend using digital devices, allow that to prompt some self-reflection into your own usage.

#SmartphoneFree: Mind-Forged Manacles

Please forgive me if this comes across as crass, but I'm sure many of you will know what I mean: one of the places you really miss having a smartphone is when you're 'in the bathroom'. I suppose, in all honesty, some of us perhaps spend more time in there than we really need to because of our smartphones.

One of the principles in Cal Newport's book 'Digital Minimalism' (which I discovered 5 months after getting rid of my smartphone) is that when you complete a digital declutter you should replace your digital activities with more meaningful non-digital activities.

I'd already worked this out - in fact, I'd thought of so many things to do in all the time I was going to save by not having a smartphone that I don't have enough time to do all of them - and knew that having something different to read during moments of downtime was going to be a must.

I'd already decided that poetry was something I wanted to get into a bit more and so my copy of 'How Poems Work' by Robert Gullifer and Matthew Jenkinson  made its way onto the windowsill in our bathroom. In this book there are 100 poems, each at around a page long, which are all partnered with another page's worth of brief analysis of the meaning of the poem and the techniques used. I've learned loads about poem structures, literary movements, rhyme schemes and so on, and have absolutely loved getting to know some brilliant and emotive poems.

Many of the poems have struck me for different reasons, but one line in 'London' by William Blake belongs here on this blog:

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.

With this line Blake refers to the 'mental imprisonment of London's inhabitants'. Blake was writing in the time of revolution - industrial, American, French - but I see his words bearing relevance during today's digital revolution.

As Newport discusses, an oft-given reason for continued overuse of social media and digital devices is that they are useful and that life is difficult without them. This is an example of mind-forged manacles. We tell ourselves that the scant positive gains we get somehow outweigh the negative consequences of our screen addictions. And, actually, this is exactly what the tech companies want - they deliberately design their products to convince us that life is impossible without them.

One more reflection on 'How Poems Work': I always rejoice in intertextuality and I found a great example in three of the books I've read recently or am currently reading. In 'The Way Home', Mark Boyle (the cover of his book alone speaks to me) cites Henry David Thoreau as an influence, particularly his book 'Walden'. Cal Newport, in 'Digital Minimalism' also references and quotes Thoreau:

'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. They honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up on our prejudices.'

In 'How Poems Work' I not only found Thoreau's 'The Summer Rain' but also Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem 'Walden' about his area of woodland where Thoreau lived in a cabin for two years, two months and two days. Both poems speak of nature's superiority over the man-made although perhaps Thoreau takes it too far when he almost denounces the reading of books - I will certainly be continuing to enjoy the pleasure of reading real paper pages over the shining screen of my smartphone.

Booklist:

The Way Home: Tales From A Life Without Technology by Mark Boyle (Oneworld Publications)
How Poems Work by Robert Gullifer & Matthew Jenkinson (John Catt Educational Ltd)
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport (Penguin)

#SmartphoneFree: Before You Turn Into A Clone

"Grab you by your chin while you're staring at your phone, raise up your head before you turn into a clone." - Dynamite MC

#SmartphoneFree: Click That Button Four Times

Truth be told I do miss the ease of texting on a smartphone. It takes a lot longer on my dumbphone, I probably don't go into as much detail and I haven't even worked out how to make capital letters yet. But, perhaps the time it takes to write something puts me off sending pointless texts? Or maybe it's actually making me more disconnected from those who I don't see on a regular basis?

#SmartphoneFree: 87% Think They Use Their Phone Too Much

Positives of owning a smartphone aside, do you think you use your smartphone too much?

Please RT!

— That Boy Can Teach 📵 (@thatboycanteach) July 20, 2019

Nearly 1000 people responded to my poll about smartphone use. I didn't set the criteria for what constitutes too much but 87% of respondees self-identified as using their smartphone too much.

And if it is true that they are, what are they going to do about it?

#SmartphoneFree: Consumed By Their Devices

Today I saw one of those viral Facebook posts that goes round. This one (the one above) was written by a teacher who has just left the job.

Usually, I am not a fan of those - I'm the guy whose other blog used to be called 'Why I've Stayed In Teaching' - but Ms. Gentry does make some good points. And yes, some of them are about digital devices such as smartphones:

"PARENTING has changed. SOCIETY has changed. The kids are just the innocent victims of that. Parents are working crazy hours, consumed by their devices, leaving kids in unstable parenting/coparenting situations, terrible media influences... and we are going to give the excuse that the KIDS have changed? What did we expect them to do?"

She goes on to say:

"In the midst of all of this... our response is we need to be "21st Century" schools. 1 to 1 student to technology. Oh. Okay. So forget the basics of relationship building and hands on learning. Kids already can't read social cues and conduct themselves appropriately in social settings... let's toss more devices at them because it looks good on our website."

Her solution was to leave her job to focus on bringing up her own child in a better way - very admirable indeed. Which puts doing away with a smartphone in perspective - if someone can jack in their job in order to live by the principles they believe in, then surely giving up your smartphone is do-able?

In fact, it was an incident with my children that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me:

"We’d set out in our waterproof-everythings for a day of avoiding the house while my wife taught a baking class. I’d tucked my phone away and had purposefully brought a camera – I really wanted to spend a day in the great outdoors with my children without constantly feeling the need to share it with the rest of the world in real time. 

 We’d crossed a few fields, walked through a farmyard, got up-close-and-personal with a group of cows and that’s when it happened. My daughter was standing at the gateway barring us from passing through.

 “What’s the password, Daddy?” 

 I wasn’t sure what the password was. So I asked her. 

 The reply came back: “Daddy’s stupid phone.” 

 It hit me hard. On a day when they hadn’t seen me using my phone, it was still on their minds. And, in their view, it was clearly something negative."

(Taken from my forthcoming TES piece about life without a smartphone)

I realised that in order to bring my children up in a way that I believed in, I'd have to stop modelling such poor behaviour to them. How would I have a leg to stand on when they started asking for their own phones? And if I had to speak to them about their own device usage? I knew there and then that my lack of self-discipline was going to come back to bite me if I didn't do something about it.

I hope not to ignore my daughters due to my screentime. And I hope never to fob them off with a screen so that I don't have to interact with them. But that's just me.

#SmartphoneFree: Turning Off My Phone

"Every day I wake and everything is broken 
Turnin' off my phone just to get out of bed 
Get home every evening and history's repeating 
Turning off my phone 'cause it's hurting my chest 

All I hear is voices 
Everybody's talking 
Nothing real is happening, 'cause nothing is new 
Now when all is tragic 
And I just feel sedated 
Why do I feel numb? 
Is that all I can do? 

I can't sit and hope, I 
Can't just sit and pray, that 
I can find a love, when 
All I see is pain 
I try to do the things, I 
Say that I believe (I do believe) 
I can't just preach, baby, preach"

Jon Legend (legend) is definitely talking about how current events make us think and feel, but he identifies smartphones as being a conduit for how we recieve the news. And it is true that waking up and reading the news and reading it before we go to sleep is probably a pretty rubbish way to begin and end the day. But maybe he hasn't really got a downer on smartphones.

However, the song did inspire me to actually do something about what I was beginning to think and feel and believe about my own smartphone usage. I had to try to do the thing... and the thing was rid myself of the device which kept on sucking time out of my life and my attention from the people who I share life with.

And now I've done the thing... I can legitimately preach.

#SmartphoneFree: Focus On The Journey

"Wonder what life was like on a landline, 

Or what life was like before the landline, 

Probably black and white where everybody had time, 

To focus on the journey 'stead of focused on the timeline, 

So... I'm absorbed in my phone screen, 

I look up, up, up and I'm alone, see." 

 Wise words from Leyma on his 2019 single 'ExtraExtra'. 

 That acknowledgement that before smartphones we might just have been all a little bit more focused on things that really mattered. And that admission of how lonely it can feel, even when surrounded by others, in a world full of smartphone users. It certainly rings true for me, and if an 18 year old can see it too, that gives me hope for the future.

Leyma had this to say about these very lines (taken from giggoer.com): 

 "These topics aren’t really vocalised enough. We all “wake up and (I) say nothing”, but I do think that everyone sort of knows what’s happening isn’t healthy. With the line “I wonder what life was like on a landline”, I can only really imagine that everything was different. That mental health among the youth wasn’t as prominent. That you had more time to go do things “instead of focus on the timeline”. I won’t ever know, but it’s mad thinking about how recently that was. I know how comparing yourself to other people can f*** you up, talking first hand. The thing is, that’s just what social media is now- just a bragging platform, where we all take ourselves too seriously, a toxic place to be.

 Being adolescent is difficult enough, without this constant judgement of who you are and what you’re doing. I feel for the people who are 14 right now, dealing with all that stress."

#SmartphoneFree: Experiencing And Savouring The Present Moment

When you've gone #SmartphoneFree you have to have something to do on the toilet - the back of the Domestos bottle gets boring quickly. I installed a copy of Meik Wiking's 'The Little Book Of Hygge' and have been picking it up and reading bits at random.

Given that I've not had a smartphone to use in the moment when curiosity hits, it's taken me until now to find out just how 'hygge' is pronounced: apparently it's hyoo-guh. Not that I needed to know that to recognise I've been able to see eye-to-eye with lots of these Danish principles of living well and achieving happiness.

The bit that caught my eye, and tallies well with my attempts to live a #SmartphoneFree life was the following:

"Hygge is charged with a strong orientation and commitment towards experiencing and savouring the present moment... on that camping trip there was nowhere else we needed to be. We were offline. No phone. No email. We were surrounded by simplicity, by nature and good company, and able to fully relax and take in the moment."

I wonder how much less we do just savour the moment when we constantly have access to things which seems to be so much more inviting on our phones?

These days I'd consider myself an ambivert (part-extrovert, part-introvert) but there was a time when I'd have considered myself an out-and-out extrovert, and all my friends would have too. Those were the days before smartphones - I can't help but wonder how much smartphone use has contributed to my desire to be on my own more. I'll never really know - perhaps my more introverted tendencies are just as a natural result of maturing.

Either way, though, the last few weeks without a smartphone have certainly enabled me to be more 'present' in social situations.

It doesn't need to be a camping trip that drags you away from your wifi connection - going #SmartphoneFree could have the same effect. Then you can notice and enjoy life's simplicities and relax a little bit more.

Latif Fityani CELL Phone Cartoon

#Twitter #Facebook #socialmedia #smartphone #family #friends #تويتر #فيسبوك #التواصل_الاجتماعي #العائلة #الأصدقاء pic.twitter.com/9i7EK0il85

— Latif Fityani (@LatifFityani) April 23, 2015