It is time, I have decided, for a digital detox. Again.
Those of you blessed with a good memory will recall a period in late 2021 when I underwent two separate detoxes. If I remember correctly, it was the latter of these two, in late November/early December, which led me to delete all of my social media, a decision that is quite possibly one of the best I have ever made. I still reminisce cheerfully about my bright pink Motorola Razor, but this time, I have switched to something even better.. you can see for yourself next time we meet!
Recently, although I am in a far better place mentally than I was back then, I have noticed that my screen time is creeping back up. Despite having deleted every distraction I could think of from my iPhone, I still find myself watching YouTube shorts via Google Chrome, even though I deleted the app to try and prevent myself from watching shorts. Admittedly, the shorts were of shows such as Yes Minister or The Crown, which allows me to maintain my middle class credentials, but even then, it’s not ideal. I would even find myself looking through my internet banking or playing four games of Chess in a row – games I would often resign from halfway through because I was bored.
I was left to draw the conclusion that I had dealt with some of the symptoms, but the fundamental problem remained – I think it is genuinely impossible to focus entirely on one single thing whilst knowing that your iPhone, that glorious piece of technology which has successfully destroyed our ability to concentrate, is sitting there, waiting for you to pick it up.
I read a glorious piece by James Marriott not long ago which summarised and explained my thoughts on the subject so perfectly that it would be entirely pointless to even try and do so myself (The dawn of the post-literate society). I would urge you to read it, but the premise is essentially that smartphones, whilst not the originator of the problem (Marriott argues in a separate, just as enjoyable piece that we could probably trace this issue back to the launch of television), are making us dumber. We are less able to think critically, articulate our thoughts clearly and engage in rational debate. Additionally, the advent of AI is likely to further hasten the diminishment of our collective intelligence, but I shall address that in a separate piece I am planning to write.
The main point for me is that I don’t want to take this lying down. Reading, writing and debating are possibly my three favourite things, and if the iPhone is going to diminish my ability to engage in these activities, then I’m going to have to resist the iPhone for as long as I possibly can.
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to survive in the modern world without a smartphone; they give us access to our bank accounts, our emails, satellite navigation, music, boarding passes, the news, a camera, and a plethora of other things. Since it seems it will be impossible to get by in the long term without a smartphone, I’m not quite sure what my plan is, although I have read about “smart dumb phones”, which are essentially Nokia-looking devices that have spotify and google maps on them (Qin F21 Pro). Admittedly, you could probably still download TikTok and similar apps, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to watch them on a screen so small, so perhaps I’ll get one of them.
I know this might make me seem naive and/or anachronistic, but I really do believe that smartphones, or more specifically, the apps we are encouraged to download on our smartphones, are designed to make us stupid, to dumb us down to the point where the only content of any kind that we will be able to engage with has to come in the form of a six second video.
En conclusion – Vive la Résistance.
