Starting Uni without a Smartphone- Connectivity in Isolation
By: Elly Roberts
Tags: Smartphones, Connection, Resolutions, Social Media, Digital Detox

In August 2019, a month before starting my first year at university, I decided to exchange my smartphone for a light blue Nokia 105. Apart from three free trials of Snake and its torch feature, it was a dumbphone. I learned how removing my dependency on constant connection changed my experience of meeting new people, going about day-to-day life and how this lifestyle affected those around me.

Like most big decisions in my life (I turned vegan seconds after devouring a steak and chips), it was a spur of the moment choice: I dropped my iPhone down the back of a theatre seat when watching a play at the Edinburgh Fringe and didn’t have the money for a new one. That said, I didn’t think the challenge would be easy. Like most people our age, I grew up on social media. I used BBM to constantly message other year 7s and I gained 20k followers over a year 8 summer spent on Tumblr. I owed the majority of my ‘friendships’ in year 9 and 10 to Instagram (2010) and Snapchat (2011), through which I had been invited to house parties and wanna-be-raves around London which, of course, you were only invited to if people knew your username and had seen you in other peoples’ selfies. Social media made me feel, and to an extent become, ‘popular’. So once the long-time-coming revelation that it wasn’t real had hit me, it took a while to remove myself from those platforms, one by one, before my eventual switch to the brick.

The only photo of me (on the right) and my phone (the light blue thing on the table) that I can find. Shot on a friend’s iPhone in our first term.

The first week was bliss. I felt I’d aced it. I had finally said goodbye to Apple, the company I’d had such a love-hate relationship with for years. I could finally speak of the horrific ways they treated their workers without being reminded that I had my own guilty Apple purchase hiding in the back pocket of my jeans. My boyfriend, however, would disagree. Habitually, I’d grab his phone to take photos, “quickly send a picture to Mum” and ask him to look up directions to the next theatre we had to rush to in our jam-packed Fringe schedule. I didn’t purposefully avoid smartphones. I couldn’t.

As former head of Mozilla, John Lilly, told his son, “somebody wrote code to make you feel this way”. Just like sugar or takeaways, you are only more aware of your addictions when you’re trying to avoid them. Even then, Chris Anderson, who edited Wired magazine, claims smartphones are “closer to crack cocaine” than sugar. As a result of being so drawn to the phones, I began to notice people were checking them all the time and I knew I had been the same. When I was on my device, I would go into tunnel vision and be unable to hear if anyone tried to talk to me. You only have to look at photographer Eric Pickersgill’s series “Removed” to realise we are so used to seeing people on their phones that only when you take a step away do you see their true addictive nature. I used other people’s phones less and less (largely as a result of it annoying them) but I was still dependent on them in certain situations. They could give me directions, tell me the time, Google the lyrics to the song stuck in my head, or take a photo and send it to me to receive via email. Those people were often strangers.

Photo from Eric Pickersgill’s “Removed” where smartphones are photoshopped out of people’s everyday lives.

I found that not having my own smartphone meant that I was forced to re-engage with the outside world. At first, I imagine the dissociation was thoughtless. It’s easy to get lost in the endless resources available at your fingertips and once you do this often enough, remembering how to engage with the world feels more alien. I know I’m guilty of sometimes pretending something important is happening on my phone to avoid looking like I’m waiting without purpose, looking dodgy on a street corner, or avoiding conversation with rough sleepers asking for money on the tube. I couldn’t avoid any of those things as easily without my device in hand but I felt better for it. I had a conversation about Shakespeare with strangers smoking out of their third-floor window when lost on my way to the station, walked with tourists to their destination instead of showing them the way on my phone, and had a beautiful conversation with an old woman who was coincidentally often at the bus stop at the same time as me. Yes, talking to any stranger could be dangerous, but with your head up, you tend to be safer and more aware anyway.

There were difficulties. Or, more accurately, there were adaptations I had to make. My friend Soph felt like she was meeting up with someone living in 1980s New York when I turned up with a film camera; my old watch became my alarm clock; I noted down directions before heading out; whilst commuting, I became better at listening to silence and my own thoughts which surfaced without distraction; I ran until I was tired, to the rhythm that suited me that day; I sat on the toilet without entertainment; I watched the news on the TVs at the gym; I arrived at meet-ups on time as I couldn’t notify people if I was going to be late, which could have been frustrating for them if they were stuck in traffic or needed to rearrange. Luckily, this never happened but people did act differently around me with a smartphone.

A photo on a film camera from a weekend trip away to Brighton.

For anyone wanting to plan last-minute gatherings pre-lockdown, I was a nightmare to get hold of. I would notice missed calls and texts days after they were sent, and the habit has stuck with me even now I have my Fairphone 3+. The peace, presence, and freedom that the year gave me often came at the expense of others: I would be out walking for hours whilst my brother needed to borrow my keys and had no way of reaching me. That said, the time we spent together was more enjoyable and demanded more presence. I wasn’t habitually checking my latest messages and nobody had to “worry about looking nice in case [I] posted a photo to Instagram”. I was a nicer, more available person, which is hardly surprising. In 2018, the NHS created a Centre for Internet Disorders and the damaging effects of smartphone usage on our health are well-reported. Both my anxiety and my tense neck eased and taking a break from my mindfulness apps, which I was inevitably distracted from, gave me more opportunity to focus on my wellbeing.

In ‘Happiness by Design’, Paul Dolan suggests that in order to feel happy, we must fill our lives with activities that are either purposeful or pleasurable. Much of my screen time was neither. I began to realise how much time there was in a day! The 247 Exhibition at Somerset House claimed we had eight hours to sleep, eight hours to work, and eight hours for recreation. All three of those categories had been damaged by my smartphone addiction. I knew from reading Matthew Walker’s ‘Why We Sleep’ that smartphones, along with caffeine and alcohol were affecting my sleep, but only by preventing my interaction with all three did I realise what I’d been missing out on. I didn’t stay up scrolling for hours and there was no screen light to trick my brain into thinking it was earlier than it was. Sleep became pleasurable and purposeful. As a result, I could focus on work, which was particularly useful as I started my first year at drama school. Enduring the first year at uni without a smartphone is possible, but you will have at least one night where you end up staying at a 90s themed club night for hours after wanting to leave, waiting for your friends to order the Uber. As for recreation, I started hobbies I’d always put off for “when I had time”. I found a love for writing and began sending postcards, letters, and cards, and completed the 100 book challenge that led me to the books mentioned above. According to Code Computer Love, in the UK, the average person spends 3 hours 45 minutes on their phone per day. You can discover your usage in your weekly report if you have an iPhone or iPad, and many people have been concerned by the increase per week over lockdown. The time quickly adds up to 10,000 hours, the amount of time neurologist Daniel Leviton says “is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything.” Noah Lekas put it well when he said, “If you’ve owned a smartphone for five years, like most people have, you’ve spent almost half a year using your device. If you worked out two hours a day for five years, you’d be cut like a Greek god.”.

Post day! Sending cards, presents, postcards, and letters.

It took me a year to figure out how and if I wanted to go back to life with a smartphone. Some take on the challenge and never go back. When I bought one, I chose a company called Fairphone which I felt happier giving my money to than Apple. However, whilst the smartphone is back, my screen time habits seem to have changed. I take photos on my camera rather than my phone, resulting in fewer, better photos. I no longer use paper to note directions but have realised how much my sense of direction around London has improved, and I rarely monitor my exercise digitally. I do now use my phone on the toilet again and am back to my old ways of being late to events, even on Zoom. Out of precaution, I’ve kept the apps on my phone minimal but I’m not very drawn to it anyway- I’ve even slept peacefully after leaving it at college twice because I don’t have it on my person at all times. I now schedule monthly detox days or weekends, to ensure I’m not getting sucked back into my old ways. I’m fortunate that I don’t yet need my phone for work, but even when I do, I will need to be available at any moment due to the nature of my job. I’m grateful that even then I know I will have a much healthier relationship with online communication. Most importantly, I am happier for it. I am less anxious, more aware of my mind and self and have just begun my next 100 books in a year challenge. In ‘Untamed’, Glennon Doyle suggests that “when we are bored, we ask ourselves: What do I want to do with myself? We are guided towards certain things: a pen and paper, a guitar, a forest, a soccer ball, a spatula. Right after itch boredom is self discovery.” The technology that was supposed to help me express myself prevented me from realising how I wanted to spend my time.

Celebrating NYE 2020–2021 on Zoom with friends from school.

If everyone’s paying huge sums of money for their smartphone and mobile data package each month, and spending hours on them each day, they must have some value, right? They do. Many people feel safer with a smartphone. They provide us with entertainment, which is pleasurable, and for the artists behind the entertainment, purposeful. Ofcom reported that in April 2020, the pandemic caused an increase of a third in time spent watching TV and online video content, which reached an average of six hours 25 minutes each day. Parents will not hesitate to tell you about the benefits of an iPad for homeschooling children, or the benefits of videos that encourage exercise, which could help decrease childhood obesity. SocialBlade estimated that YouTuber Adrienne Mishler, or ‘Yoga with Adrienne’, is now earning as much as $188,500 per month on advertising revenue alone, without being noticeably branded. If we use the time on our devices smartly, they become smarter phones, but the problems start when we become addicted. If the 50% of us that own dishwashers in the UK broke our dishwasher, we might reconsider getting one straight away, instead opting to wash dishes by hand. Students know that communal washing machines or laundry services can be good places to socialise or read a book. Others opt to cycle instead of learning to drive, use loose leaf tea instead of teabags, or listen to vinyl instead of Spotify.

We accept that people do these things because they are beneficial to their way of life, but most would still be outraged at the suggestion of living without a smartphone. If we can take a break from the dishwasher to consider what benefits we get from it, why would a phone be any different? Perhaps going a year without one during a pandemic, when we rely on technology to keep us connected to friends, family and work, seems impossible, and for some it is, but just a day or an evening off could be a welcome break. Perhaps for others, though, it is a 365-day challenge that might help us to feel less lonely in this isolated world, as a result of improving self-confidence and inspiring change and appreciation. Or, it might give us a better idea of people’s real attitudes towards our current situation. As suggested in the Netflix documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’, if we stopped immersing ourselves in the echo chamber that is social media and smartphones, maybe we would take an interest in views that differ from our own and notice that not everyone is walking in the same shoes. In my year without a smartphone, I learned that looking up gives us a much better perspective on reality.

A photo from a smartphone-less weekend camping trip shot on my camera.