Tag: unplug

For the past month or so I’ve been experimenting with a new lifestyle:

I ignore my phone as much as possible.

Let me explain…

I Hate Cell Phones

I bought my first cell phone in 2007 at the age of 22 when I was in college. From the moment I walked out of that Cingular store til now, I’ve hated the idea of having a cell phone.

Up until that point in my life, I had never needed nor desired a device on my person that would put me at everyone’s beck and call anywhere, anytime. Up until that point, if anyone wanted to reach me, they could call my home or apartment phone and if I happened to be there, I would answer. If not, too bad, leave a message I’ll call you back whenever I get to it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was something freeing and liberating about this way of life. And it wasn’t unique as it’s how everyone lived an operated until some time in the 90’s when I remember my parents getting their first cell phones.

Don’t get me wrong, as a kid I was fascinated by the technology of cell phones. I was a master of the classic game “snake” on my mom’s Nokia. As a teenager I enjoyed calling my girlfriend from my home phone to her cell phone and chatting for hours, possibly wishing I had my own cell phone so I didn’t have to worry about my parents breathing on the other line listening to my inspiring, eloquent, love-captivating, flirtatious sweet nothings whispered through the electromagnetic radiation waves of technology.

Besides that, I don’t remember ever asking my parents for a cell phone or ever feeling like I had to have one. And for that, I’m grateful. I may have been part of the last generation of teenagers that spent our high school years happily without a cellular device.

After high school I spent 2 years in Ecuador as a missionary and when I came back to college in January of 2007… EVERYBODY HAD CELL PHONES. Apartment landlines became obsolete and I was forced to buy calling cards just to use it. As if I didn’t have enough financial stress as a poor starving college student, I caved and found myself buying a cheap flip phone on a basic plan, something like 250 minutes and 250 texts per month.

I reluctantly entered the next technological paradigm shift of my life.

Dumb Phones

Dumb phone, oh dumb phone, I miss you so,

Your screen was so grainy, your buttons so small,

The satisfying feeling of snapping you shut,

Your cheap plastic shell was more than enough,

Your camera was crappy, your service was bad,

Your buttons were clicky and sticky and sad,

But hey, I could text just about anyone,

With eyes closed, one handed, with only my thumb,

You served your purpose, no more and no less,

You felt no desire to technologically progress,

When “smart phones” arrived, therefore labeling you dumb,

You took no offense as you knelt to succumb,

And now, in a world where smart phones reign supreme,

Surrounded by videos, noise, GIF’s and memes,

I recall the sweet silence that felt just like home,

Of using a boring, plain, quiet dumb phone.

Smart Phones

Some time after college while working in my first job in 2012, I decided it was necessary for me to finally upgrade to a smartphone. An iPhone seemed like the logical choice, and while I’ve occasionally drifted into different android and Google phones over the years, iPhone has really been my solid foundation. And for a while, I was a sucker for anything and everything that had to do with the iPhone. I wanted the latest iPhone as soon as possible, the newest software, the best features. I would watch the Apple events and even download the beta versions of iPhone software updates to experience them first.

I was hooked. There was just something about having that little expensive rectangle in your pocket that affected the way I felt about my life. I became dependent on it. Addicted to it.

And not just the phone, but everything ON the phone. Apps, games, and social media. In a matter of almost no time at all, the distractions of everything I could do on my iPhone that kept me so connected with the world, actually disconnected me from the world and most importantly the people in my life around me. It became an escape, a dopamine fix, a place to temporarily sooth my shallow soul while I looked at everyone else’s glossy life and hoped for more comments and likes on my own shared social media.

Any feeling of pleasure I’ve ever derived from any app on my iPhone is very short lived and kept me coming back for more. I hated that his little device designed for communication became like an all-powerful evil genie, pretending to grant me wishes and trapping me in it’s lamp.

Smart phones are the epitome of phenomenal cosmic powers trapped in an itty bitty living space.

Dumb Parents

As I’ve become a parent heavily involved in my children’s lives and activities, I’ve had to learn to be more and more cautious about the use of my phone. I’ve seen way to many dance performances, touchdowns, and soccer goals from within the frame of my 6.1″ display. In my effort to capture the moment, I miss the moment, and I can never get that back. Sure I can watch it later on my screen, and maybe post all over social media for other’s to enjoy, and I know there’s a time and place for that, but… I felt like I was missing out on a lot of real time moments that would be more impactful if I would just put the phone down and take the experience in.

I needed to stop capturing moments in 1080p and live in moments of full HD. The resolution from watching something happen live with my own eyes beats any kind of resolution replayed in 4k, 8k, or even a 120k screen.

Also, I hope I’m not the only parent who experiences this, but one of the negative effects of posting photos and videos of your children to social media is that your children will start to think that EVERY photo and video you take will end up on social media, and they (smartly) don’t want that! We’ll be on a family walk, and the kids will start saying or doing something funny, and I’ll pull out my phone to capture the moment, but as soon as they see that I’m recording, they’ll stop and insist I delete whatever I recorded because they don’t want it shared to the world. Most of the time, in those kinds of moments especially, we as parents have no intention of posting anything, we just want to capture a fun family moment. But the moment is ruined by a fear of potential social media posting, and the result is we aren’t able to capture what would have otherwise been a funny thing to enjoy again later as a family.

How many goofy and silly pictures and videos did we all take as children and teenagers? We felt free to be ridiculous, creative, and funny on our 80’s and 90’s camcorders because we figured nobody would ever see it but our ridiculous, creative, and funny family. The idea that any of that could be potentially shared with the world on a public platform wasn’t even a thought.

But now, it is. And it’s ruining some of those moments.

On top of that, there’s also an emotional effect that occurs inside me that connects me to my child, in that moment, where nothing else matters but my full attention and focus on my child. A smile and a cheer from the sideline or from the audience, feelings of pride and happiness expressed without distraction or interruption. Allowing myself to be fully present.

Then there’s the example I set to my children as a parent. How often do they walk into a room and try to talk to me and I’m on my phone? I may even be doing something productive and healthy, like listening to a good audiobook or uplifting music, or catching up and responding to important family messages and events. It doesn’t matter what it is, I have to pause or stop and say to my child “sorry, what was that?” They don’t know what I’m doing on my phone, they just see me on my phone, and in their eyes, mom and dad are always on their phones, and they will follow that example when they someday get a phone.

I have a teenage daughter who has a phone and preteen son who has a watch. Now these are very limited devices and can pretty much only text and call, NO INTERNET WHATSOEVER, but even still, they are drawn to them. We can’t keep them off them! We give them a little bit of freedom with a communication device and they very quickly feel entitled to use these devices however they damn well please.

And why not? We’re kidding ourselves as parents if we think that we can expect our kids to not want to be on phones or communication devices constantly if we ourselves are on them constantly.

Smart Parents

I finally decided it’s time to be smart, and I hope it’s not too late. I don’t want my kids to see me on my phone anymore. I don’t even want to carry it with me when I leave the house. Maybe if they can see that I don’t need to be on my phone all the time, they don’t need to either.

I understand that especially as my kids get older, more and more of their friends will have phones at younger and younger ages. My third-grader informs me that kids his age on the bus regularly watch episodes of “The Last of Us” on HBO Max on their phone. I’m in a loosing game here if I think my example can compete with that of their peers.

But at least it’s something. Maybe they’ll remember me as an always present non-distracted father, maybe they won’t.

More than that, I want to be accountable to myself. I want to eliminate the distractions for myself. I want to empower myself to function in the world I live in without being so heavily reliant on or addicted to my phone.

So how do I do this?

After some research on the internet of how other people have taken similar approaches, I landed on the best answer for me.

Apple Watch.

I learned that I could leave my iPhone at home, or even turned off and tucked away in my drawer, and still have a fully functional communication device in the form of my Apple Watch.

For a few years now, Apple Watches have had the ability to have their own cellular number or companion connection through an iPhone to function away from your iPhone. Due to cost and unnecessary hassle, I never bothered to look into it much. It seemed like a luxury service. But now that I was considering using my Apple Watch as my main communication device, this seemed like a viable option. I did some research, found a very affordable way to make this happen (US Mobile), and now I barely touch my phone. I answer all calls and texts, listen to music, audiobooks, podcasts, access maps, etc on my Apple Watch, without the need for my phone close by.

I ignore my phone as much as possible.

There’s some sacrifices (if you can call them that). No more sitting and scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube. No Netflix, Prime, Max, Hulu, or Disney+ whenever I want. The longer I keep my iPhone tucked away at my bedside, the easier it is to ignore it.

The biggest drawback is if you have any texts from your green bubble friends, Apple being the way it is, they won’t come through to your Apple Watch without your iPhone nearby. So occasionally I do need to turn my iPhone on and check messages from my long lost android and google phoned friends. Incidentally I’ve learned how few people I know and regularly communicate with that DON’T have an iPhone. So this hasn’t been a dealbreaker for me.

The only other drawback is taking photos. If I’m out and about with my Apple Watch, I’m unable to take any photos or videos. At first, I was really worried about this, especially with all of my kids in sporting and dancing events. I’ve always been the screaming dad behind the camera filming my children doing every little awesome amazing thing.

Now, after a little over a month, it’s totally fine and I addressed my feelings about that earlier in this post. If I feel that strongly about taking photos or videos, my wife has her iPhone or I could bring my phone along for photos. Or I could go buy an actual camera (something I’d love to do!). I’ve basically learned for myself that I don’t need to take as many photos and videos as I think I do.

Other than that, if there’s something that I need to accomplish on my iPhone, I’ll just do it on my iPad. Or my MacBook. I go to my home office and do those things. I typically don’t carry those devices around the house.

Unplug to Recharge

I realize this lifestyle change just plain won’t work for everyone. For example, thus far I’ve failed to mention that I do actually have a day job that requires me to use the phone a lot, and I’m fortunate in that my job provides me a separate work phone to do that. I’ve had past jobs where I’ve had to use my personal phone for work purposes, and ditching my phone at home all day trying to operate on a watch just wouldn’t be possible no matter how much I might want to.

I do still post to social media when I upload a song, or a post like this one. I do enjoy using Marco Polo still to connect with friends. This isn’t 100% all or nothing solution.

This post is less about the means and more about the problem I was facing and feeling, and how I chose to solve it. And I’m far from perfect at it. I still have to watch myself constantly and stay vigilant.

I’ve read that if you keep a phone plugged in at 100% capacity at all times, this accelerates chemical aging and degrades the battery’s capacity faster. Today’s cell phones have protections built in to prevent this, but we’ve all had past phones with rapidly declining battery capacity.

I don’t think we’re much different. The more we stay plugged in to our phones, these lighted screens in front of our eyeballs, we drain our capacity. To function, to succeed, to get through the day with enough energy to survive. I’ve been raising 3 kids for 13 years now, and it’s utterly exhausting. I falsely believed that the solution or at least minor relief to my exhaustion during or at the end of the day was to relax and look at my phone for a while, but now that I’m doing that much much less and instead finding other things to fill my time, I am less exhausted. I feel more capable. My capacity seems to have increased.

The more I unplug, the more I’m recharged.

More than anything, I’m allowing myself to be alone with my thoughts more. Heaven knows there’s nothing wrong with listening to a good book or music or podcast, and I generally still do that quite a bit. But more often than not nowadays, it’s just me and my brain. Doing the dishes. Making dinner. Mowing the lawn. Cleaning the garage. Playing with my kids. All without the distraction and buzzing of a phone in my pocket.

I don’t have studies and I don’t have science or facts, but I’m pretty sure that sitting on the toilet without a phone not only enhances pooping efficiency, but also enhances brain stimulation and activity, lowers your water and electric bills, saves the whales, cures cancer, and slows climate change.

I’m still in my experimental phase of this lifestyle change and it’s safe to say that thus far, I think the experiment is going well.