The smartphone is sticky
By Edward Willis (http://encw.xyz and gopher://encw.xyz)
Published Feb/15/2025

I recently published and removed a version of this article. I wrote it a long
time ago, and it didn't reflect my current situation. This is a rewrite.

The smartphone is sticky. And by sticky I mean it sure is hard to ditch.

In my 2022 post "On smartphones", I wrote about how smartphones are becoming 
mandatory in the US, and how centralizing our lives on smartphones gives the 
companies that control them control over us.

I think over the last 3 years there has been an increase in entrenchment for the
smartphone. In some restaurants you'll be given a QR code to scan with your
smartphone rather than a menu. I've heard of some fast service places that
require a smartphone to order food. And other stores that require a smartphone 
to pay at all.

Now, I am old enough to remember a time before smartphones, so I know that 
people lived perfectly well without one. But today people have become dependent 
on them. They've changed people's behavior in many ways.

The most fundamental change is the lack of preparation. If you've got a 
smartphone, wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, you can always look 
something up if you get stuck or lost. This happened to me when I first 
switched to a dumbphone. I was out somewhere and I had to complete a series of 
tasks. Turns out I didn't know how to do one of them. Thinking through every 
little thing I had to do well ahead of time hadn't occurred to me -- it would 
have before I had a smartphone. I had to call my wife, and ask her to look it 
up and walk me through it.

When I got home, after having to be talked through something, I put my sim card 
back in my smartphone, where it stayed for a few weeks. It takes time to adjust 
mentally to being without a smartphone.

How often do you get into the car without paper directions or a map? How often 
do you drive somewhere without the phone number of your destination written 
down or in your contacts because you can always look it up? How often do you 
depart to complete tasks that you don't fully understand, and aren't bringing 
printed materials for? Before the smartphone you'd never leave home unprepared. 
You knew that once you left home, you'd better be ready, because you're on your 
own.

Then there is the societal expectation that you'll have a smartphone. Say you 
were going somewhere pre-smartphone, and you knew you might have to wait a long 
time, like a doctor's office, you'd bring a book. If you didn't, at least you 
could read the provided magazines. Go somewhere with a waiting room now without 
a smartphone, and you'll find that the magazines are, most of the time, long 
gone. You don't have a paper planner or notepad with you anymore, so thank 
goodness for appointment cards. And though this is more a matter of cellphones 
generally than smartphones, good luck finding a payphone when you're in town!

Smartphones have also changed our expectations of privacy, both in good and bad 
ways. Starting with the good: Why would anyone want to use SMS and make phone 
calls when end-to-end encrypted communication is available? It's not usually 
available if you're using a dumbphone. Once you've been using Signal and 
end-to-end for a long time, it's HARD to go back to unencrypted carrier 
services. I knew the carriers had that data before, and it never bothered me, 
but now it feels like a violation. And on the other hand, putting so much 
personal information on one's phone, and in applications on the phone, is a 
huge reduction in privacy. Smartphone data collection so often means that one's 
personal data ends up on servers all over the world.

I think it is still worth the effort to ditch the smartphone. The smartphone
is simply too addictive. Perhaps it could be said that it is too convenient.
Over half of Gen Z say they are addicted to their phones, and more than 85% of
them say they have an unhealthy relationship with their phone. Almost half of
Millennials also claim to be addicted. Americans supposedly spent more than 5
hours a day on their smartphones. From the age of 18 to 78, an adult lifetime,
the average American will spent 12.5 years, days and nights, on their phones.
Counting only waking hours (assuming 8 hours of nightly sleep) Americans will
lose some 18.75 years of life to their smartphones. This sort of thing is the
same fear that got so many people away from their televisions, the so called
idiot-boxes. They're now wasting their lives on their smartphones instead.

Then there is social media, and the well studied negative effects that it has 
upon people's lives and happiness. Yes, you can access most of these services 
on your desktop computer, but it is much easier to control oneself when you're 
not carrying social media around with you in your pocket.

If you're on the fence about getting rid of your smartphone, give it a try. 
Whether you make the switch permanently, or go back and forth between smart and 
dumb phone, you'll be better for it.