In the mornings when I wake up — of course without leaving bed like a true sloven — I nearly always grab my phone from its resting place (two feet from my somnolent head with notifications on) and start to scroll. Bring on the bedsores. I guess this is my version of starting the day with six cigarettes and last night’s warm flat beer residing on my nightstand. Yet it feels good: Nothing hits like a little phone hair of the dog, because you were up till one in the morning on your phone in the first place.
I, like many people, am not a big fan of my phone, and particularly the unfortunate grip it has over my psyche. Although it helps with some things, as this article was originally written entirely as a stream-of-consciousness in my notes app, I mostly have found it, and nearly everything I do with it, an insipid waste of time. Many other people my age seem to agree, yet can’t quite figure out what about their device is so insidious.
Many of society’s bravest social commentators speak on this and boldly report that our generation is essentially cooked. iPad-kidism has forever ruined not only our collective happiness, mental health in general, career prospects, natural curiosity, lust for life, fertility and virility, attention span, media literacy and whatever else we might have hoped to enjoy. However, since we spent so much time on-screen from such a young age, we can’t escape the habit. Is the phone destined to be our equivalent of our parents’ generation’s relationship with alcohol? Always trying to cut back but slipping into old ways every holiday?
The thing that separates us phone addicts from those who can go without is the docile acceptance of the status quo of digital exclusive content. The uniform enshittification of all digital content means that phones are not a nice place to be anymore. Apps went from pastiches to forgeries. So don’t kill the part of you that slops, kill the part of you that builds the trough and re-specialize your phone.
So many older people in our lives see their phones not as this twisted yet inextricable 50-Shades-esque relationship, but as just a thing they keep in their pocket and forget about till they need it, like their reading glasses.
My mom has no false pretenses about quitting her phone; sure she has her gripes with it, namely the fact that she is culpable for emails missed while away from desk. However, on the whole, despite a daily habit of New York Times (NYT) Connections, plenty of texting and a few reels here or there — just like you or I — no ill will is held towards it, and even some warmth. While some adults are surely DI reels gooners, plenty enjoy a non-adversarial relationship with their phones.
Sure, those older than us remember the times without a phone, oftentimes with a wince. This additional perspective — along with the memories of losing paper maps, eating at terrible restaurants and missing time-sensitive information — is enough to partially sober them to the e-bacchanalia. However, they also remember the time when “phone things” — services and platforms that we now associate with apps like Facebook — were just websites: things that stayed with the immovable object that was your family’s monstrous home PC, not following you to the bathroom or the driver’s seat. Their separation of phone and computer activities disallows the possibility of our generation’s umbilical connection.
I know, I said in the mornings I like to look at my phone, but at this point, it’s just a depressing display of muscle memory: The phone as I knew it is gone. In my aim of looking at it less — which has in some ways worked — I have created a disfigured device that really is worth all the hostility I lump on it. The first thing I am greeted with is the greyscale screen, the time limits, the loud absence of Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), anything really entertaining. I can play Wordle but I have a hard time telling what is green and what is yellow through the self-imposed greyscale filter. My phone is like what pornography is to sex: A depressing simulacra of an entertainment medium that only produces feelings of guilt, shame and desire for the real thing. But I still look at it, because, like, it’s my phone.
But I don’t hate my phone because it is inherently bad, greyscale and all; I hate my phone because it is full of hateful things. And no sacred cow is spared: It sometimes feels as if even the NYT app is ragebait. Some of the stories, the ones that can be most easily found in print editions, are great in digital form, and many benefit from the inclusion of videos.
However, if the New York Times is literally promoting stories on the app entitled “the unhealthy part of the fries isn’t the oil” — which they had the subsequent cowardice to change the headline of — or writing how the best way to quit your phone is to take a cold plunge or do crunches every time you want to look at it, imagine how slop-ified stuff like Netflix’s mobile games, Youtube Shorts and Instagram Reels have become. These apps have diluted the user experience of valuable services, because it is what you are supposed to do on a phone: Make it a mobile slot/slop machine.
But so many things exist outside of phoneland that are on there. You can watch Netflix or look at Instagram more efficiently on your laptop. The NYT is better in print. The phone shouldn’t be an everything device; it is a jack-of-all-trades yet a master of none. We should use our phone, like the geezers in our lives, for the things that it has comparative advantages in.
I don’t think that we should all get rid of our phones and use the free time for raw milk drinkage, hot yoga and boutique enemas, or just different aspirational flavors-of-the-month. Improving your phone isn’t an act of monastic sacrifice. It represents choice rather than chore.
Using your phone less has become a metaphor for being a more interesting, more successful, more disciplined and more attractive person, but it’s simpler than that. You don’t need to do any stupid bullshit like get an iPod and wired headphones to listen to music; your phone can play music. You don’t need to carry around your hardcover of “Infinite Jest” to read on the Metro; the Kindle app is pretty amazing, and can sync with your audiobook if you want it to.
You don’t need to quit Instagram cold turkey to show everyone how fucking cool and offline and unbothered you are. Just delete it off your phone. You can use the better (reel-less) version of it on your laptop.
Your phone does not need to be this shitty, terrible, hateful and addictive device. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with it. It’s just that a lot of the content that’s made specifically for it is worse on it than in other mediums. You wouldn’t ask Rembrandt to paint you a painting that fits in your pocket, because he loves a big ass painting. Doing so degrades the value of his work. The same can be said for a lot of things. It’s not your imagination. Lots of things are worse when they are on your phone. The good news is that you don’t have to look at them there.
Parker DeVore PZ ’27 writes about his phone and its apps so much because he has no other relatable hobbies. He would write about his passion for street luge if you were ready to hear about it. But you aren’t.
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