I Think I Hate My Phone

Have you ever had a friend who started dating someone who sucked? I’m talking about the noxious dynamic where the significant other gives your friend just enough to keep them, “happy,” but actually making your friend happy isn't the goal. This dysfunctional control freak can't let your friend just hang out without being present. In a group context, the SO adds nothing to the conversation and barely interacts with anyone else. They cling to your friend spending the night trying to pull their attention away from the group. The SO feeds and feeds and feeds off your homie’s vitality, slowly reducing them into an unhappy emaciated shell. 

It’s far easier to spot patterns of abuse in someone else’s dynamic than to see them in your own. This is part of the beautiful safety community provides us, but imagine a world where all of your friends were in abusive relationships. Imagine you were in one too. How would you know? How would any of you know?

You wouldn’t.

You wouldn’t unless you met someone in a healthy relationship. Seeing two people taking care of each other, supporting one another, even sacrificing for each other would shatter your paradigm. Learning that love was something deeper than your lived experience would seed a desire for change. 

Wouldn’t you want to tell your SO to kick rocks? You would want to leave your toxic relationship and get healthy, right?

Of course you would want to, but anyone who is familiar with abuse knows that leaving is never this simple. Abusers leverage an array of controlling mechanisms, both physical and emotional to keep their victim close. Leaving begins with a realization, but the path to freedom is a hard-won process that is rarely cut and dry.

About 5 months ago, I realized that I was over a decade into a relationship that any honest person would call abusive. I realized that my wife was in one too. In fact, most of the humans I care about are also victims of the same abuser.

I woke up to the reality that I have been systematically exploited by a device that I pay for the privilege of using. I don’t know how to leave and I feel trapped. I am at a loss for words, so imo just say it:

I think I hate my phone.

I didn’t always feel this way. As a millennial, my first phone was the Samsung flip phone AT&T gave you for opening a new line. I don’t remember the specific model, only that my little silver bullet looked dorky next to a Motorola RAZR. My phone was simple: Calls, Texts, and Frogger - except I didn’t text. Even in a pre-iPhone world, pressing a number on the T9 pad to select a letter was too much hassle for me. I remember the exhilaration of opening my first smartphone. I had just graduated college and had accepted an offer of admission to the Rackham Graduate School at The University of Michigan. My parents surprised me with an iPhone 3GS - which released THE SAME MONTH as my commencement ceremony. I was floored. Totally floored. It instantly replaced the iPod, digital camera and the printed-out directions from Map Quest I kept  in my car. That iPhone instantly changed my life in a way few things have.

It did not take long for social media to enter the picture. Both Twitter and Facebook existed before the release of the original iPhone, but (get this Gen Z) you used to have to log in to a computer to access your social media accounts. Mobile website optimizations and native apps are features that were added to our smartphones subsequent to their release - they did not spring like Athena, fully formed from the head of Zeus. 

Along with millions of other users, I gladly downloaded my favorite social media apps. The app store claimed they were free. At the time I was naive enough to think that the absence of monetary price meant that using these applications had no cost. We now know I was wrong and not just anecdotally. In the very real, pier-reviewed, scientific-publication-sense, the link between social media use and mental health degradation is uncontested and has been so for years. For further reading, I recommend this article written by Trevor Haynes for the Harvard Graduate School blog in 2018. I have seen these statistics before, but what I found interesting were the quotes from Chamath Palihapitiya - former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook. He has gone on record outlining how during his tenure, the social media giant began implementing the same neurological feedback loops implemented by slot machines to condition users to check their phones. These routines induce dopamine release in the brain that mimics both gambling and cocaine addiction.

Again, none of this is news. So what woke me up to the exploitative nature of my device? The short answer is pgLang.

The long answer? I’ve been going through something.

For the past few years I have been trying to use my phone less. It started when I turned my family’s text messages green with envy by switching from iOS to Android. As I set up my new device, I didn’t download Facebook. I told myself I could still login to Facebook through my desktop, but I didn’t want it immediately at my finger tips. I wanted to choose to use the platform rather than mindlessly opening the app by rote habit.

This decision gave me room to breathe. Less time on the infinite scroll increase my mood day in and day out. It made me aware of the tax levied by my phone against my own consciousness. I started looking at my screen-time monitors to see what else I could cut out. I did not miss being on Facebook, but I was still on my phone a lot. I kept trying to, “use it less,” but this proved ineffectual against a decade of unconscious conditioning. I know you can set up application time limits, but the sheer number of apps on my phone made this task feel too overwhelming to attempt. In the midst of my turmoil, the clouds parted and golden rays of light shown all around. A company I had never heard of before presented a way of escape from everything I had grown to resent about my smartphone.

For those who don’t know, pgLang is a company founded in 2020 by Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free. The company’s opening statement claims, “pgLang is designed to be artist-friendly above all else and embrace both quality and unconventional concepts.” Their first handful of collaborations are what one might expect - short films, music videos and clothing - but then, last October, they dropped a phone.

This phone was a branded collaboration with an existing product that I had never heard of before: The Light Phone.

The pgLang-produced video that popped up in my instagram feed, ironically enough, claimed that it was, “Just A Phone.” No app store, no adds, no social media, no web browser, just calls, texts and a few other minimalistic features - notes, directions, calendar etc. 

From the moment I saw The Light Phone, I knew I wanted this simple brick. The more I read about it the more excited I got. Even negative reviews increased my desire. Tech users bemoaning their social media itch while testing the device sounded like trumpets of liberation to my ears. I fantasized about buying The Light Phone for 3 weeks straight. Then, the screen on my now 3-year-old Samsung went on the fritz. I needed a phone & I needed one now. Would I go with the safety of the familiar or would I bravely reach for the new?

Guys, I wish I was brave enough to embrace my fantasy of freedom, but I upgraded to another smartphone. These are my reasons, some carry more weight than others, but all of them together kind of make me sound like a 1st-world-problems baby. Nevertheless, here they are in the spirit of full disclosure:

💔 The e-ink (read kindlesque) screen on The Light Phone has the characteristically low refresh rate, which makes correcting text or following directions laggy.

💔 From time to time I use my phone as a hotspot to do work on my tablet. The Light Phone can provide a hotspot but it’s 4G cellular connection is slower than the 5G I am used to.

💔 All my devices charge on USB-C. I didn’t want to pack a special micro-USB just for The Light Phone.

💔 The Light Phone can not call an Uber or Lyft.

💔 I like taking pictures of my kids. The Light Phone has no camera.

Do you know what gives a story its happy ending? After descending into the belly of the beast, the protagonist wrestles with fate and returns as a triumphant master of their own destiny. What about when they lose? When fate crushes their defiant spirit and they return unchanged? We call this kind of story a tragedy.

As of the date of publication, I am still using a smartphone. So why did I write this article? When you stop and think about it, the narrative arc is pretty lame:

Dude hates his phone/Thinks about buying a dumb phone/Buys a new smartphone.

I’d call it tragic, but honestly? I just sound…lame. So why did I do it? Well, I actually started writing this article before my old phone died. When I first began outlining, I was considering switching to a Light Phone in a purely theoretical sense. The death of my previous device changed everything. I had to make a blood-earnest decision about my next phone and I had to make it now. These conditions forced me to wrestle through the practical implications of leaving the familiar smartphone ecosystem and weigh the practical day-to-day cost of living without an app store. 

I saw how enmeshed my life is with my device, maybe for the first time. My volition and desire were at odds. My head and my heart disagreed on my next best move and my ultimate decision came as a disappointment. I couldn’t break free even though I wanted to. Believe it or not, I am thankful for this journey. I am thankful for the work being done by pgLang and The Light Phone. The stories these companies are telling helped me feel and articulate the negative impact my personal electronic device has on me in a way that mountains of data never did. 

I feel defeated, but I am not resigned. 

I continue to fight against the pull of the anxiety-inducing infinite scroll lurking beneath the screen of my smartphone. All I want is a device that helps me through my day. For many of us, our phones actively distract us from accomplishing our goals. They distract us from connecting with the human beings physically present in our lives. 

It is my hope that this article would provoke thought. Maybe it will cause you to question how your own health is impacted by Steve Job’s worst gift to the world. Since the dawn of iOS, mobile app developers have used our attention to make money at the cost of our mental health. If enough of us want a dumb phone with a killer camera, some tech company might just fill that need. 

All I can do at this point in my life is dream and write my next article.

I will catch you next month on the 3rd,

-JT⚡