Phone Update

I'm not one to talk on the phone. But I still spend entirely too much time on my phone. It's not the ability to talk that does it, it's access to information. I'm continually googling things, or using imdb to figure out who that familiar-looking guy was in The Post, or using Goodreads to figure out what is the name of the next book in the Brother Cadfael series, or whatever. It's like an addiction-- instant access to anything I want to know.

I spent quite a bit of time at the beginning of the year experimenting with different ways to corral my phone time (see this post and this one if you missed it), and I thought I had it figured out. To my surprise, I missed my two games (Candy Crush and some other game I can no longer remember) more than I missed social media. So I figured if had no games, and I only let myself use my phone between noon and bedtime, the problem would be solved.

It worked pretty well for awhile. But then I put my games back on to pass the time on a trip, thinking that I had been disconnected from them long enough that it wouldn't be a problem anymore. And it is nice to have them for odd moments when you're bored. And my mom and my sisters and I started a tradition of texting every morning (partly to have a daily check in for my mom, who lives alone).

And then six weeks later, I was back to spending an hour or more per day playing games, and I had forgotten all about avoiding my phone before lunch. So I deleted the games again, ran through the whole process again, put them back on my phone, a couple of months later realized I was spending an absurd amount of time arranging little patterns on my screen, and last week finally admitted to myself: I cannot have those games on my phone.

They are like crack for someone with a brain like mine. They feel oddly relaxing at first, but eventually, I'm just rearranging tiny pictures on my screen, over and over, getting that little hit from a line disappearing, their orderliness increasing and decreasing at the same time.

This is why we can't have nice things, the saying goes, only my version is: this is why I can't have games on my phone. Because it starts out fine, and then before I know it I'm on level 348 and I've logged an absurd number of hours just moving things around on the screen of my phone.

I want that time back. So I deleted them again, and I've only had a couple of word games for the past ten days or so. For some reason those aren't as dangerous, so I rarely play them for more than the odd five minutes, which I'm OK with.

But last night I scrolled through Instagram, which is the one social media app that I still really enjoy, got to the end of the day's updates, and decided it was time to go to bed. Those of you who are similarly afflicted can guess what happened-- an hour later, I was still sitting there, scrolling through things I didn't care about, because Instagram--like all social media-- will just keep feeding you new things to see as long as you're willing to sit there.

Which is making me think, maybe I shouldn't even have a phone. Or at least, not a smart phone. Just a phone that does voice and texting, and nothing else. It hasn't been so very long since that was all we had.

I remember Google used to have a number that you could send a question to via text, and you'd get an answer back in a few seconds. It was my first nirvana of infinite info. I could find out ANYTHING. But ten years later, my brain is already oversaturated with information, and there's probably not much of anything that I need to know right this instant. It's tempting to go retro.

But I can't imagine I actually will. work in progress.