Week 1: my dumb phone
Welcome
Starting today, I will get rid of my smartphone and delete all of my social media accounts…
I will write about it each week, conducting interviews with experts along the way…
The second half of this episode contains an interview with Joe Hollier, co-founder of Light Phone. He sent me one of their light phones to use in place of my iPhone… it just does texts, calls, music and podcasts.
“Light was born as an alternative to the tech monopolies that are fighting more and more aggressively for our time & attention,” Joe told me. More on that to come…
***
I have just given my iPhone to my flatmate, Bennie. He will keep it locked away.
The catch is, if I ask for it back, I will have to permanently end this project and send a final email to you all; accepting that I was unable to live without a smartphone and social media.
I’m a little nervous, but imagine it will take shape as we go. Write to me — I would appreciate all of your input! And if you like the email, forward it to a friend :)
Week 1: my dumb phone
My phone and I were high school sweethearts. We used to play games together, watch movies and see friends. It was the first thing I saw in the morning and the last at night. We had a magical connection.
But, as the years have passed, the nature of our relationship has changed. Today, my phone feels less like a toy and more like an utterly vital link to the world; an umbilical cord tying me to the vast ‘online’.
As such; with the passing of time, my phone’s little screen grows increasingly enticing, ever tempting my loving touch…
Wistfully;
I gaze into your flickering organic light-emitting diode display and my heart skips.
without you, I would be lost and alone,
and so I subject myself to you, succumbing to your every whim, even your slightest buzz arouses me,
all embracing tenderness makes even momentary separation bruising,
I’m giving everything in loving you. It is draining. It can’t go on.
Our relationship is bad. I am addicted to my phone.
And it seems that I am not an isolated case. In fact, my experience is alarmingly common. Particularly amongst people my age and younger.
To give you an outline:
Time spent on social media can lead to social anxiety, abuse and depression, and in some cases, suicide. Molly Rose Foundation.
Kids are getting phones younger than ever and using social media more than ever. Common Sense Research
Big tech is making a killing by harvesting our highly personal data, and doing a terrible job of keeping it safe: “at least 16 billion records, including credit card numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and other highly sensitive information, have been exposed through data breaches since 2019.”SelfKey Research
As Shoshana Zuboff says: “Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data.”Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Oh, and the milking is painful! High phone use causes physical damage to people's bodies.NYT
Online dating is leading to abuse and assault, and the apps are doing nothing about it.BBC
And yet, screentime is increasing across the board - research suggests that people devote a third of waking time to mobile apps.BBC
Luke Gbedemah, a reporter at Tortoise said: “[social media] encourages pathologies, [and is] corrosive to our ability to form real relationships with each other. If we look back in 50 years we will see the proliferation of social media as one of the worst things we did with technology.”
‘Relationship between phone addiction and depression scores’
“The positive correlation between smartphone addiction and depression is alarming.” (The relationship between addiction to smartphone usage and depression among adults: a cross-sectional study.) BMC Psychiatry link
According to a study by Yehuda Wacks and Aviv M. Weinstein from the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ariel University, “Excessive smartphone use is associated with difficulties in cognitive-emotion regulation, impulsivity, impaired cognitive function, addiction to social networking, shyness and low self-esteem.” link
And, “A new study found that teenagers are increasingly depressed, feel hopeless and are more likely to consider suicide. Researchers found a sudden increase in teens' symptoms of depression, suicide risk factors and suicide rates in 2012 — around the time when smartphones became popular” says Jean Twenge, one of the authors of the study.NPR
I told flatmate Will about these studies. He said, “they are literally re-wiring our brains, it’s fucking mental.”
***
So, as I keep saying to myself, the time has come. The phone must go.
Interview with Joe Hollier, Co-Founder of Light
I spoke with Joe on Friday afternoon. He lives in New York but is visiting his family on a farm in Louisiana. He spent the last few days painting a large barn. He says it’s a nice change of pace from buzzy New York life.
Joe has long hair and a friendly smile.
He and his co-founder, Kaiwei met in 2014 at a Google incubator. The course was kind of intended for people to get together and make ‘sticky smartphone apps’; based on ‘sticky’ algorithms, which are designed to be… well… sticky; hard to break away from.
The more time someone spends on your app, the more data you get. The more data you get, the more money you make. So, it's profitable to make sticky algorithms.
But, Joe and Kaiwei wondered: “Do sticky apps/tools actually make people's lives any better?”
“I felt like a lot of people I've talked to were habitually overwhelmed, you know… and in our overwhelmingness - when we feel bad - we resort to pulling out our phone and becoming more overwhelmed,” Joe told me.
Sounds both sticky and harmful.
***
Long story short, they made the Light Phone, a phone designed to be used as little as possible.
It does calls, texts, music, alarms, directions and podcasts.
And people seem to like it:
Joe told me about a middle-aged couple who both got light phones, “They went out to a nice dinner together. The wife was like, kind of giddy telling me about it. She said “it felt like we were on a date when we were younger. My husband wasn't looking at his email and you know, we were really connected, and it was really fun, we had a great date.”’
This speaks to a thing Joe said, “when people get rid of their phone, they really get, you know, lost in life.”
Joe continued, “but then at the end of the night, since they're so used to calling an Uber or Lyft that, when that didn’t work, and they couldn’t find a cab, they started arguing about how to get home.”
And I guess that’s just it; at times this experience will be incredible, and other times I’ll just be lost, annoyed and a bit lonely.
Joe said a funny thing that really stuck with me: “I think back to my early relationship with the internet, and you know, my dad had one computer in the house that had the internet. You had to go to that computer and sit there and the second you left that chair you kind of left the internet behind.”
Thanks, Joe.
Edited by Nimo Omer, doodles by me.
***
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading.
If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do - using this link. And if you feel generous, feel free to buy me a pint - here :D
If you wanna ring/text me, I’m 07464295588
Thanks to Luke Gbedemah, Nimo Omer, Phoebe Davis, Oscar Ingham, Will Abell, Bennie Lueders, Callum Mason, Skye Hervas-Jones, Taima Hervas, Ingrid Hervas and Justin Jones for their constant support and help editing/inspiring this newsletter.
About me:
I am Sebastian Hervas-Jones, a 23-year-old journalist. I live in central London and work at Tortoise Media.
I have done some reporting on corruption, crypto, and big tech. I’m big into skating, surfing, and saunas… and I spend around 5 hours each day on my phone - mostly on Instagram.