Without a Phone

What would you do if you didn't have your iPhone? Specifically, what would you be doing right now instead of using your phone? Phones have invaded our lives. We have them easily accessible whenever we find a few minutes of idle time that need to be occupied, and so we go to them for countless games and social media options. All are literally at our fingertips. This is an interesting exercise for those of us who had a life before we had a phone, and can remember (albeit with some difficulty) what it was like not to be plugged in all the time. Those who are a bit younger will always remember a time they had a phone, perhaps, but maybe for them it will be remembering how life was before the 'smart' phone. The younger generation will not know life without a smart phone. This concept of life with a smart phone available at all times has created a shift. In the no-phone generation, the individuals who had a life before a phone, we were deliberate about the times we engaged with computers. We had to seek them out and they had a special place. And, often times, that place was AWAY from our regular environment. They took time to boot up, to run, to do whatever it is we wanted to do. We had to have an attention span because of the effort that went into even using the devices in the first place. Now we can unlock our phones with a quick code, or a touch of the thumb on the fingerprint scanner, or even through facial recognition. There is no special place we go to use our phones because they're right there with us. We can check our phones while we're waiting in line to buy a cup of coffee. But there are those of us who can remember the time when we had a computer at home that needed to be booted up and was the only option we had for accessing similar information. I had my first phone when I was about 18 or 19. I was living in Arizona at the time. I recall during that time I also had a pager. Here's another fun fact about phones. When we first had them, minutes were much more valuable. Limits for use were much lower, and cellular contracts were much more expensive. So you'd have people page you instead of calling you, so it would put the decision on you whether to use your cellphone to call them back or wait until you got to a land line. So my first phone, which was NOT a smart phone, was around 1996 or 1997. Fast forward to my first smart phone. I had a variety of different flip phones, brick phones, Blackberry, Nextel, and sidekicks. From those I graduated to a droid smartphone in what would have been 2008, if I had to guess. So for over 10 years, I had a mobile phone but still was limited to basic things like calling and texting. Here's what I found, reflecting on this situation of not having a phone. I was happier. I was not as distracted. I was able to think more clearly. I was able to get things done. Now it is simply too easy to access information at any waking moment, so that's exactly what we do. We're not creative about what we do with our time anymore. We don't have the same problem of having to figure out what to do for periods of time, because for any period of idleness we can just pick up our phones. So the next time you're using your phone, consider what else you could be doing. If having a phone wasn't an option, how would you spend that time? What would you do? And what could you do, if you put your phone down? Ask yourself the question - what could I be doing if I wasn't on my phone right now?

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