Current tech and web paradigms only draw me closer and closer to the flip phone (and psychosis)
Some Observer - Into The Void
Here's my foray into the space of articles also losing their minds over this.
Thoracic hyperkyphosis, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, ad-ridden apps that you don't need but have installed because you can't (you're lying to yourself) do a task another way. Because the smartphone is a catch-all tool, but it absolutely should not be.
When you clean your room, you feel better about things, don't you? The physical environment you facilitate is an extension of your internal feelings, thoughts, and intentions. It's the physical workout to sharpen your cognitive tools of planning, living, and existing.
With our undeniable use of technology for a numbingly-long part of our waking hours, and research correlating visualizations of tasks to our brain's response being effectively identical to actually doing the task, we can grant this added space as another environment of ours. You know it isn't reality, every part of your frontal lobe (your reddit lobe, in slop speak) can relay that, over and over again, but in the parts of our minds that interpret and process, subconsciously, the difference does not exist.
Put concisely, this is why some people think Nazis are every other white man on the street, and why other people think trans women are every other white man on the street.
Your biases are reinforced online, and your brain has trouble discerning the difference between that reality and the more nuanced, you-can-live-under-a-rock reality you're dropped back into when your phone battery dies.
I'm positive we're experiencing the re-invention of the wheel a thousand times over because of the current technology and web meta. Reinvent the notebook, use Notion and 3 other planning apps to miss all of those tasks and think it's the app's fault; reinvent sitting down and meditating for free, by subscribing to an app that has your favorite paid-for celebrity guiding your mind to think yourself into meditating; reinvent being bored and grabbing ideas from God/the Ether by getting your short-term memory a train ran through by endless pieces of short-form content, instead.
I have a flip phone, currently deactivated, but at the time I utilized it, I forwarded calls to it from my main phone, and left that at home frequently. Suddenly, I felt I was in 2009, when I had my playing cards, iPod Touch 2nd generation, and a Samsung Hue in my pockets. It was the foundation to going back to my 13 mini with the same mindset, but it takes a long time to get there.
I recommend, fully: cut down your phone to the bare essentials. Delete the apps you feel most uncomfortable deleting, understand that these are not an IV line that will put you under if you remove them, and that the acceptance of many apps and services only paint the illusion that they are one. Your phone runs beautifully without social media, 25 games, and Temu- it'll run better, honestly, since a majority of them phone home anyway. Keep distance from your phone if possible: put it in a bag, keep it out of your room if not needed, ringer on if needed. Speaking of ringers, reduce what makes your phone ring by minimizing notifications to messaging apps and phone, and if you can do notification summary (its equivalent on your OS of choice) with other apps, do it. If it gets hard, look into putting your phone in black and white from time to time, it makes this process easier, too.
Of course, think for yourself, do things your own way, and see how it works for you. The world needs to be challenged and shifted, and I’m sure you do, too.
Eventually, with enough fight (do not quit), that itch becomes more dull, and you can reposition yourself to reality as the default setting.