Did my phone just break up with ME?
What happens when the author of How to Break Up With Your Phone loses her phone
Hello, friends.
Well, here’s an interesting life development. Earlier this week, I went down to Washington to do a talk about smartphones and social media for families and educators/administrators from a consortium of schools in the DC area. I had a lovely time, and at the end of the night, happy about how it had gone but also pretty tired, I gathered up my things and walked upstairs, where I was planning to use my phone to get an Uber or a Lyft back to my hotel.
There was just one problem: when I reached into my bag for my phone, it wasn’t there.
This was odd: my phone was one of the things I had been “gathering up” — in fact, just seconds before its disappearance, I had been holding it in my hand. But now, instead of a phone, I found myself holding a plate of snacks that my host had saved for me from the pre-talk reception table, and the phone was neither in my hand or my bag. What had happened?
Feeling a bit sheepish, I told my host (henceforth known as “Julia”) that I seemed to have misplaced my phone, and, after I searched through my bag again, she and I did a quick retracing of steps: we walked down to the auditorium (where I had been holding my phone in my hand) and back up to the office (where I had picked up the plate of snacks). No phone.
Julia suggested that perhaps I should call the phone—which would have been a great idea, were it not for the fact that, as part of my pre-talk routine, I had put it on airplane mode. Not “Do-Not-Disturb” (which allows you to break through if you call three times repeatedly, there’s a pro tip for you), but full-on airplane mode, which (I now know, courtesy of both internet searches and a visit to the Apple Store) does NOT allow you to break through, locate the phone, or turn it off from afar. An interesting twist.
Feeling increasingly frantic and confused, I did what any logical person would do and searched through my bag again (and then again), as if somehow, if I kept searching for long enough, the phone would miraculously appear. (It did not.)
By the third time that Julia and I had retraced our steps — and after she herself had rifled through my bag on my behalf — we had to admit that the phone was truly missing, with the most likely scenario being that I had dropped it on my way up the stairs. (But then what? THEN WHAT?)
She texted her colleagues to ask if anyone had reported finding it, and offered to let me use my phone to call my husband—who didn’t pick up at first, since he didn’t know the number, resulting in me sending a text message that very much sounded like the beginning of a phishing scam. (“It’s Catherine—I lost my phone. Please call!”)
Eventually, he did pick up, and as we talked (with me trying repeatedly to explain the whole “airplane mode” situation), I noticed that Julia was getting very funny texts from her colleagues (eg: “I don’t even put my phone on airplane mode while I’m *on an airplane* lol”). And I have to admit: the situation was indeed funny—or at least deliciously ironic: I had just been on stage talking about the problems of smartphones and railing against social media companies, only to have my own smartphone disappear.
I am not someone who believes in “the Universe,” but I do have to wonder what was going on in my own subconscious that made me lose track of the phone in that particular moment. Maybe it’s just the result of my overwhelm.1 Or maybe Mark Zuckerberg’s new RayBans provide him with the ability to monitor his critics from afar and “disappear” their possessions. I’ll never know.
Whenever I think of “The Universe,” I think of this extremely Not-Suitable-For-Work skit from Amy Schumer (featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy).
Regardless, one thing is clear:
The phone is gone
This happened on Tuesday night; by Wednesday midday, I was coming to terms with the fact that the phone was not going to reappear.
When I realized that I’d truly lost it, my first instinct, perhaps unsurprisingly, was to get a replacement phone as quickly as possible.
But then, another thought occurred to me.
What if I waited?
That might sound like an odd idea, but remember: I’m the author of How to Break Up With Your Phone. I should be able to survive without an iPhone for a couple days! And indeed, I did manage to get myself home from Washington DC without my phone, thanks to an old-fashioned taxi, and an Amtrak agent who printed my train ticket out for me. I decided that maybe, as an experiment, I would try to go a full week without a phone.
The Report So Far
It’s now Friday afternoon, and so far, the experience has been very interesting. To start, it’s pretty bizarre to realize that, with the exception of a couple days back in 2017 or 2018 or so, when I was mugged (a guy pointed a gun at me and I threw my phone at his head; it was a remarkably efficient transaction), I have had an iPhone continuously since 2011. I have a lot of time-saving and attention-protecting safeguards on it (I take my own advice!), but I still use it daily, often for more time than I’d like.
Here are some effects that I’ve noticed so far, in no particular order:
I’m walking a lot more. I mean, I live in an urban area and already walk quite a bit, but I also often take Uber or Lyfts — which I now cannot do. Yesterday, I had two appointments at opposite ends of town, which resulted in me walking 7 miles. Plus one for not having a phone!
Sometimes I don’t like walking. I enjoyed most of my walking yesterday — it was a beautiful fall day, I was enjoying paying attention to the sights and sounds around me — but by the time I left my cardiology appointment at 5pm, brimming with fun facts about lipids (ask me about apoB!), I was really pretty ready to be done with the walking. (Or at least would have liked to have been able to call a friend or listen to some music while walking.) So, while I do love being physically active, I also prefer it to be by choice (and I like talking to friends while I walk). I’m going to count this as plus one for having a phone.
No email, no news, no social media. Strong pluses for NOT having a phone. But then again, I’d already taken the news and email off of my phone, and I only use social media to look up weekend events. So for most people, I think these would be strong positives, but for me, the effect has been relatively neutral. With that said, without a phone I also can’t use a browser to get backdoor access to news sites, and the resulting calmness/lack of doomscrolling is definitely a good thing.
I have no idea if anyone is trying to call me. I believe there’s some way I could access my voicemails if I put some work into it, but honestly, I don’t really feel like it. Most of my calls these days are either political fundraising attempts, scam calls from “google business services,” or OptumRX telling me that my prescriptions have shipped. Plus one for not having a phone.
I cannot call anyone. I haven’t spoken to any friends by phone since Tuesday and, well, I’d like to! I also cannot call my husband to coordinate parenting logistics (possibly a plus?!) or place any calls for practical purposes, like trying to figure out if I need to get an appointment for my flu shot and covid booster at our local pharmacy, or if I can just walk in. Plus one for phones.
I cannot text anyone, unless it’s from my computer. Texting is my biggest time-suck on my phone, and while I do miss its convenience, I also don’t miss pecking things out with my thumbs. I’ve managed to sync up my computer so that I can text from my laptop, and it’s made me realize how much more pleasant it is to type with ten fingers instead of two. I don’t love having access to my messages on the same screen where I’m trying to work, but I also am appreciating how much less time I’m spending in the messages app now that I don’t have a phone (and how many fewer messages I receive if I’m not constantly sending them out myself). At the same time, it’s also very inconvenient to not be able to text. So this one is 50/50.
I’m less distracted. This one is a plus; perhaps unsurprisingly, my focus is better when my phone’s not nearby. (Terrifyingly, I have had a couple times when I could swear I feel my phone vibrating in my bag — that’s called a “phantom vibration” and it shows how conditioned we’ve become to expect constant dopamine hits from our phones!)
I haven’t missed anything. Many of us are reluctant to be without our phones because of FOMO. But despite a few logistical inconveniences (and a few extra miles walked), there really haven’t been any negative consequences of not having my phone. Granted, this may be in part because I still have my laptop, which means that I do have access to iMessages, emails and the news (for better or for worse). But for the most part, I’m experiencing more JOMO—that is, the joy that comes from missing out on whatever is happening on my phone.
I’m more present. Another plus one for being phone-less — though, given that I already was putting considerable work into being present, the biggest effect is that I now have even more opportunities to notice how everyone else is constantly on their phones, and feel upset about it.
I’ve got more free time in the evening than I realized. Apparently I was spending a fair amount of time texting. Last night I spent some of that time learning how to play a surprisingly confusing drum part for a song a friend shared with me, and I went to bed feeling much more satisfied than normal.
I am being forced to be more self-reliant. The other day, at the beginning of my walking adventures, I realized that without access to Google maps, I was going to have to remember where I was going ALL ON MY OWN. As I headed out into the streets of Philadelphia with no maps app to guide me, I felt like a freaking pioneer — almost as if I were Lewis and Clark, if Lewis and Clark had been making an expedition into a grid-based urban environment that they had lived in for nearly fourteen years, and had written the address of their destination on their palm. Plus one for being phone-less (unless I need to drive anywhere new, in which case I’m going straight to the Apple Store).
I cannot verify my identity. Sure, I can “click on all the squares that have bicycles on them,” but if there are sites that require me to enter a verification code that they send by text (one of these sites is Verizon, which is annoyingly ironic, given my circumstances), then I cannot access them. God forbid I have to change any passwords.
I cannot listen to music, record voice memos, or take pictures. Turns out I like those things about my phone.
I am being forced to make plans and stick with them. This morning, I was supposed to accompany a friend to drop off her family’s recently deceased guinea pig to be cremated (long story).2 Normally, we would have texted back and forth ahead of time (“Still up for meeting outside Giant?” “Running 2 min late!” “Be right there!” etc, etc, etc). But this morning, we just had to make a plan and . . . show up. We succeeded — turns out that two adult women can, in fact, meet each other at 8:40am on a Friday without texting about it 15 times first — but it was interesting to notice how foreign the experience felt.
So what am I going to do?
For a day or two, I toyed around with the idea of not replacing the iPhone and switching over to a flip phone—there are some ways in which I think that might feel genuinely freeing.
But I also think that stepping that far out of the mainstream might add unnecessary logistical challenges to my life, given how many everyday transactions and interactions assume that you have access to a phone (and the many ways in which I genuinely do find my phone to be enjoyable or useful). I certainly have some habits I’d like to change, and I’m also concerned by how twitchy I felt for the first day or so after I lost it — but my relative lack of withdrawal symptoms has also made me feel more confident that, in most cases, I truly do use my phone as a tool (as opposed to a time-suck).
So instead of thinking of this as a permanent break from smartphones, I’m thinking of it as a reset: an opportunity to evaluate my current habits, identify what I like and don’t like, and make some changes.3
Intrigued? Join me!
I’ve still got a few days left in my week, and — if you’re at all curious about what this experience would be like for you—I invite you to join me! It’s Friday afternoon where I am: what might happen if, starting at dinner tonight, you committed to 24 hours without your phone? Or what if you left it at home when you went out Saturday, or when you went to work next Monday? Does the idea scare you? (Invite someone to join you!) What’s the worst that could happen? What could you do to reduce your anxiety? And what might you experience or learn as a result?
Feel free to try it on your own and report back in the comments — or, if you want to make it more interactive, I invite you to become a paid subscriber and join our Fun Squad chat, where you can directly connect with me and other people in the How to Feel Alive Community. (I’ll likely not be in there too much this weekend, but I’ll check in on Monday to see how it’s going!)
Regardless, I hope you all have lovely weekends, full of real life experiences that do NOT require you to go to the Verizon store.
To scrolling (and texting) less and living more,
The latest evidence of overwhelm (besides losing my phone): I got locked in a phone booth at my co-working space. Or, to be more specific, I could not figure out how to get out of the phone booth (it was not actually locked). It had a folding glass door that you have to pull in (or maybe out?!) in order to get it to open, and for some reason, I simply could not figure it out. Making things worse, it was a glass door, and on the other side of the door there was a conference table, occupied by several men. At some point, my rattling became intense enough that they looked up from their laptops, which only made me feel more panicked. Eventually it got so bad that one of them got up from the table, walked over, and opened the door for me. Nope. Not embarrassing at all.
It was at a place called “Pet Passages,” located in the back of a strip mall a 30-minute drive away. When we arrived, a very kind young man escorted us into a “remembrance room” where he invited us to put the box containing the guinea pig onto a ceremonial cushion and offered us a private moment to “say our goodbyes.”
As we stood there, we were both struck by the emotional complexity of the situation. On the one hand, it was clearly a room where a lot of grieving people had bid farewell to their beloved pets—a feeling of sadness hung in the air, I knew that the guinea pig had been meaningful to my friend and her family, and I couldn’t help but look at the cushion and dread the day when our own family dog will die.
On the other hand, the cushion was quite large given the size of the pet at hand, there are no real pre-determined grieving practices for guinea pigs, and my friend had transported the guinea pig’s body in a Nespresso box. As she put it, “I’m not sure how I am supposed to emotionally show up for this experience.”
When I do get a replacement (which is its own separate challenge, and another reason that I’m putting off placing the order), I think I’m going to make a concerted effort to keep it in black and white more often, and to use the Brick to restrict my access to only my most essential apps. (I like the Brick so much that I got a discount/affiliate code from them: you can use SCREENLIFEBALANCE10 at checkout to get 10% off. I also really like Unpluq; if you use that link, you’ll get 15% off.)
I accidentally left my phone at home when I went to work. I managed to get halfway there - using prepaid London Underground Oyster card before realising. I carried on - many colleagues said they would have gone home to get it as soon as they realised. Turns out I couldn’t log into my work laptop without phone verification. So even work are making it impossible not to have these highly distracting things on us all the time! There is no other way to securely get onto our work system than through a phone app
I'm a little surprised that you don't get an Apple Watch. Seems like it would fix most of the issues you are encountering (except Uber & photos), but retain most of the benefits of being phone free.
Either way, it is interesting to read about how not having a phone has impacted your life. Every time I try to get rid of mine, I find some function that I can't live without & resort to keeping the smart phone.