August Lamm is the author of “You Don’t Need a Smartphone: A Practical Guide to Downgrading Your Phone and Upgrading Your Life.”
A common complaint from recent dumbphone converts is that the switch has made them more reliant on others. Without a smartphone, it becomes necessary to ask for directions, weather, transit times and other information that was once easily accessed online.
But why is interdependence a bad thing? In the depths of what has been dubbed a “loneliness epidemic,” with friendship rates at an all-time low and screen time at an all-time high, the solution is not to become more self-reliant but to reinforce our social fabric through shared responsibility.
I have lived without a smartphone for the past four years, and in that time I have grown comfortable depending on friends and even strangers to help me navigate an increasingly digital world. Most often, this help comes in digital form — calling a rideshare or searching Google.
Asking a human for help is becoming taboo. “You can look it up on your phone,” is the first suggestion of restaurant workers, train conductors and hotel concierges around the world. Universal adoption of the smartphone has created a “radical monopoly,” writer Ivan Illich’s term for a single product that “has frozen not only the shape of the physical world but also the range of behavior and of imagination.”
When faced with a problem, many assume the solution will be digital; you need not consult any human on the way to procuring it. To live without a smartphone is to move beyond the acceptable range of behavior: to look up rather than down, to idle rather than scroll and to ask for help rather than rely on a device.
But I do not see this as proof that smartphones are necessary. It’s confirmation that many people have, in less than two decades, lost their ability to live without them. My friends now reach for their phones as soon as a question leaves my mouth, but in an earlier century they might have possessed the answers they now seek online. Certainly they would have known whom to ask or where to go for further help.
The debate over social interdependence in the age of digital tools has been happening since at least the early 1990s, when the farmer and writer Wendell Berry published his seminal essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer.”
Berry, who died last month and never did buy a computer (or a smartphone), describes in the essay his writing process, which involved drafting a piece by hand and then having his wife transcribe it on a typewriter. This dynamic drew criticism from readers — and, later, a response from Berry. He noted that his detractors assumed that his wife was “a mere ‘device’ easily forced to provide meaningless ‘free labor.’” In truth, the exchange was satisfying to both of them.
A smartphone, unlike a spouse, is a mere device. Its owner can force it to provide labor. But if you ask human beings for help, you need to treat their labor as a social exchange — an opportunity to deepen bonds — and not merely an inconvenience.
When I had a smartphone, I did everything by myself. Now, thankfully, I don’t have that option. There are moments when this choice has made it necessary to ask for help, but I have never regretted that. Losing my own personal safety net has made me comfortable approaching strangers, calling friends and leaning on loved ones in times of need. As a result, I am more social than I ever was with a smartphone.
Recently, I found myself stranded at a bus station in Upstate New York. I had missed my airport shuttle and was going to miss my flight. Inside the bus station there was no posted timetable, no departures screen, no ticket agent (the booth had been permanently shuttered) and not even a phone number to call. My ticket, which I had printed at the library, was similarly useless. The only informational sign displayed a QR code.
In a panic, I called my boyfriend, also a flip phone user, who spent the ensuing hour on his computer, consulting bus schedules, calling rental car companies, rebooking my flight and arranging a taxi to take me to another airport.
Once I was safely on my way — my travels back on track, my boyfriend catching up on work — I thought of the years I’d spent carrying a smartphone. Back then, any logistical problem was easily resolved with a few silent, solitary taps. I had seen my smartphone as a tool for independence, but I know now that it was a marker of isolation. It turned me into a faceless denizen of an online forum instead of a member of a family or community. Nobody knew when I needed help. I managed everything alone.
How little I asked of the world, and how little I got.
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