Constantly Fighting the Cell Phone Addiction Battle

 I started to write this piece on cell phones in my journal, with the thought of turning it into a blog.  I thought, at the time, that it was too long and rambling, and so it is.  I am going to post it here anyway.  Occasionally, I think I will launch a year-long project battling my cell phone use.  I always run into the same problem as when I thought about writing a book about being a car-free family.  We just did not use the car that much to begin with.  Getting rid of it for eight years was really no big deal.  The other books on being car-free I saw begin with a description of horrendous commutes, terrible traffic, impulsive car purchases, etc.  I felt that our own car-free story was not that interesting.

When I think about battling my cell phone addiction, the first thing I note is that I do not actually use the cell phone all that much.  Sometimes it is in my pocket most days.  Occasionally, there is a week or two when I don't pull it out of the desk.  I usually have it with me on the weekends, in case my daughter wants to call.  Yesterday, I thought, was a typical cell-phone heavy day, so I checked the "wellness" app on the phone for my usage.  I had unlocked it four times and spent four minutes using it.  Those statistics do not really scream addiction, but it also doesn't account for the background impulse to pull it out of my pocket and look at it.  I do not only think about it when it rings.  When I put my hand in my pocket, and I feel the cell phone there, I have an impulse to pull it out and look at it - for no reason whatsoever.  If I come to a pause in what I'm doing, I have an impulse to pull out my phone and look at it - again for no reason whatsoever.  Evidently, given my usage statistics, I'm reasonably disciplined at resisting the impulse to look at my phone, but I get angry at the impulse's being there.  What kind of discipline is required to have a cell phone with you, and to not think about it at all unless someone is calling you, or you need to call someone?  That is why I, as often as not, leave it at home, but then I start thinking, what if I get hit by a car when I'm bicycling around, etc.  I'd feel foolish not to have the phone with me.  

At any rate, here is the start of my last long essay on cell phones, in case anyone wants to read any long-form ramblings on the topic (rough, unedited, and incomplete):

This constant state of alertness - is there an email? Has Zeb texted? Has Sadie tried to call? Does Laura need anything? - is the impetus towards some sort of constant watchfulness over electronic media. I keep fighting with the idea that I should give a VOIP phone a try, (though that would necessitate keeping the internet modem powered up all the time, and I like to switch it off if I am not using the internet). It is not too expensive.  I want to see how it would work, or if it would work.  I could, of course, just use my cell phone, and  as soon as I think that, I have the impulse to pull it out of the backpack, power it up, and look at it, as if just looking at it as a consumer object could help me determine what use I should get out of it. I have had it powered off, and in my backpack, all week. It is a matter of pride and self-discipline that I have not turned it on, but still, even thinking of not using it, when I think about it, I think that one of the problems is that it unlocks itself through facial recognition.  Maybe I should turn that off, so it is not so inviting.  And then, for some reason, at some point, I re-installed the New York Times app.  Maybe I should turn the phone on and remove that again. What is it with all these impulses to turn the phone on to fool around with it in an effort to make its use as a non-phone less attractive? Why not just leave it off unless I need it? Why not, for that matter, simply check Google Voice on the web browser once or twice a day? For most of my twenties, I did not have a phone at all, or email.  There were no tragedies. Every week or so, I would swing by a pay phone to give my mother a call to see how she was doing and to update her on my life.  I wrote letters, as I still do.  Letter writing seems to be the main way I keep in touch with my daughter. What is it about the cell phone that makes it difficult to use in the same manner as a pay phone? Why is it that I still want my landline back when I could just power on the cell phone and stick it over on the telephone table? Why is it that I spend so much time thinking about this particular issue?  What is the outcome I want?

I turn 59 this month, so I spent about half my life without digital devices and half with digital devices. (I bought a computer when I was 28 or 29 to work on my Master’s thesis because I did not have time, at that point in my life, to dedicate the time needed to write and rewrite on a manual typewriter, which is what I had been doing up until that point.)

At some point in the early 2000s, I impulse-purchased a pay-as-you-go flip phone at the grocery store because I had wandered the city in search of a payphone to let Laura know the bike had a flat tire, and I would be late.  The first three phones I walked to were nothing but a tangle of wires sticking out of the wall.  The great pay phone decimation had begun. Pay-as-you-go turned out not to mean that.  The minutes I purchased expired after a set amount of time. For someone who did not spend a great deal of time talking on the phone, that seemed ridiculous. A frustration with constantly paying for more minutes when I did not need them led me to buy a Republic Wireless smart phone. They were pioneers of the wifi calling/cheap service businesses, but their plans started changing, and because of a need for cheap international service, we switched to Google Fi.

There is a part of my personality that leads me to want to figure new things out, and there is a part of my personality that is more or less a Luddite. I would like to try a VOIP landline phone to see if it worked, since I canceled my normal phone service because Century Link kept raising the price.  (The traditional landline did, however, work with our rotary phone up to the time.)

Really, all I want from a cell phone is a way to make an emergency call.

I keep wondering if I have more to write on this subject, but I don’t seem to.  There is the question of how much of my cell phone reluctance is due to my normal counter-cultural tendencies. There’s the issue of the Lightphone II.  I keep looking at it because I like the idea of the e-ink screen, but the monthly charge would be more. I also resent my impulse to solve problems generated by consumerism with more consumerism.

The questions are always there. How do I want to communicate? Should I view doing something like looking at the news on my phone as a harmless distraction, or a gateway to lost time? (i.e. should I just lighten up already?) Am I indulging in nostalgia or carefully curating the way I want my life to be?  And why can't I simply use a cell phone, why does it always feel like a cell phone is using me?