My dumbphone diary
Daily musings on my first six weeks without a smartphone
On March 4, I decided to give up my smartphone for Lent. From March 5 to April 19, I shared short, daily Notes about life with a dumbphone. One reader observed that the early updates are “frantic” while the later updates are “calm.” Looking back, I think that’s broadly true.
In the beginning, I was constantly bumping into obstacles to my old habits: I can’t tap to pay! I can’t send group messages! The doctor’s office is asking me to scan a QR code and I didn’t download the KaiOS QR code app!
At the two week mark, I begin to relax and enjoy the silence. By week four, I’ve found an equilibrium. So, perhaps it’s no surprise that at week six, I decided to keep my dumbphone indefinitely.
Day 1: Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I have given up my smartphone.
Day 2: I drove downtown. Forgot my credit card. No way to pay for anything. No way to pay for parking.
Drove in circles for a while. Found a free parking spot, in front of the coffee shop I wished I could go to. Pulled out my laptop, used the WiFi. Online gift card? Only redeemable at the online store.
Found a cafe that would take an e-gift card. Bought it. Put my laptop on the glass display case and said: can you take this? They said: never had someone try to pay with a laptop before. Showed them my Nokia. They liked it!
Walked out with a coffee and cookie. Thought about how inconvenient life can be, if you don’t have the most convenient device in the world.
Day 3: Am I cheating by listening to podcasts all the time? If my phone was really dumb, I couldn’t listen to TrueAnon on it. That said, the rudimentary podcast app on KaiOS wasn’t working for me, last I checked. That little crutch may already have been kicked from under me!
Day 4: Dropped my Nokia on the ground and it exploded into phone, battery, panel (a satisfying sound I found I remembered, once I heard it). She’s sturdy.
Day 5: Group messaging doesn’t work (paging US Mobile!) but still managed to have a picnic with friends. [Note: US Mobile customer service fixed the issue and group messaging worked fine.]
Day 6: Couldn’t fill out an online form at my doctor’s office because I didn’t have a smartphone. It was fine, they dug out a paper version, but still: an example of how many important tasks assume/require A Device.
Day 7: I’ve been spending more money lately. More visits to coffee shops, more drinks with friends. How many of us spend time on our phones because we can’t afford to do what we actually want to do? Watching #quietluxury TikToks instead of buying the bag.
Day 8: I still spend lots (most?) of my time staring at screens. I work on a laptop, I watch YouTube cooking videos. The crazy thing about Screen Time as measured by iOS is that it’s X hours a day — on top of all that other stuff.
Day 9: My tech dread has been reduced but not eliminated.
Is tech dread immediately understandable to everyone else? That feeling you get, like you should be looking at your screen, but like there’s something bad waiting for you there? Did I forget a meeting? Did I miss an important message?
Day 10: There is still so much about my relationship with technology I want to change. I found myself doing a lot of not-quite-pitching and not-quite-writing on my laptop today. Getting rid of my smartphone was a big step — what’s next?
Day 11: Broke down and turned on my iPhone today, in part to make sure my husband is alive. We’re in separate countries right now, and WhatsApp was the way we kept in touch. (He’s alive; tomorrow, we’re video-chatting on my laptop like it’s 2014.)
Some perspective: an old professor once told me that while getting her master’s degree abroad, she kept in touch with her family by sending them regular shipments of home-recorded cassette tapes. Imagine: a box full of cassettes with your loved one’s voice.
Day 12: There was an in-real-life event I didn’t do today, in part because it required Discord. (OK, also because it was very public and a little embarrassing and only a few other people showed up and I’m shy.)
The point is: I’m missing out on some good stuff, some human-connecting stuff, because of the dumbphone, too.
Day 13: I’m embarrassed to admit that it’s time for me to set some boundaries with my Nokia (!!!). This morning I woke up in the early hours of the morning and instead of attempting to go back to sleep, I opened the KaiOS news app. Which crashed almost every time I tried to read an article. But I still did it!!! Ghost-scrolling!!!
On the bright side, I eventually gave up and baked some bread. And muffins. So, progress, I think.
Day 14: What does it mean to give up my smartphone without giving up my laptop or television? In practice: long-form over short-form. I was never watching Instagram Reels or TikToks, but there was still a bite-sized quality to the [shudder] content I [vomit] consumed. Now it’s more long podcasts, full articles. (I realize there is an irony to posting this on Notes.)
The next question: can I stand to let more silence into my life?
Day 15: I almost forgot to write this update. I think I’m ready to take a break from more than just the smartphone.
Day 16: The first day I didn’t listen to podcasts. I chopped vegetables and stirred the roast with nothing, or a little Fado music, in the background. A long time ago, the phrase “podcasts rot your brain” came to me and stuck. It didn’t make me stop listening to podcasts. But I’m certain there is a cost to eliminating silence from your life.
Day 17: Someone approached me today to ask about my Nokia — and show me their Light Phone.
Day 18: There was an emergency and I needed to call an Uber — but I couldn’t. What would a person from the 90s do (WWPF90D)? Call a taxi. But I don’t know any of the local taxi services’ numbers.
I was with someone else who could call an Uber, and it was okay. But a reminder that reverting to older technology requires reacquiring older knowledge.
Day 19: I’ve developed a tolerance for silence.
I swept the floor, and roasted a chicken, and put up a trellis. And I didn’t put on a podcast or listen to music, even though I could have.
Day 20: No smartphone does not equal no screens. I still jump from tab to tab on my laptop during the workday.
Day 21: I haven’t had a single moment of missing my smartphone.
Day 22: feeling more interested than ever in the internet. Websites over apps, small groups over large followings, RSS over FYP.
Day 23: sometimes people talk about giving up smartphones to gain time. More time than they know what to do with. Time they fill with crosswords or Dostoevsky or daydreaming.
I’m not sure I feel that way. Like, objectively, I am no longer spending five hours a day on my phone, and I have not filled all of that time with alternate screens. But I feel like I’m still spending the same amount of time on offline leisure activities as I was before. I just feel like I have more room to breathe around it all.
Day 24: Thinking about influencers.
This morning, my sister walked out the door in a cool outfit to go to her cool job; last night, she hosted a craft night and served home-brewed kombucha and chocolate cake. No one except us will ever witness this, because she’s not online like that.
I thought: I’m so lucky to have someone so inspiring in my life. And then I thought: is this the feeling we are searching for when we follow influencers? Instead of looking up to the people in our lives, we find virtual replacements.
Day 25: I really feel like I’ve ironed out most of the logistical kinks. The yoga studio might prefer I book on an app, but it’s still possible to book on their website or in-person. It took a reminder or two, but my friends are now texting me instead of WhatsApp-ing.
Day 26: a lazy Sunday after a late night. Prime scrolling time. Instead, lingered over breakfast with the friends who slept over. Watched a really stupid movie. Walked on a misty trail.
Day 27: has letting go of my smartphone improved my mental health? Not at baseline — I think I was born melancholy and I haven’t grown out of it yet. But it has prevented The Spiral.
The Spiral: feel bad, look at phone, feel worse, look at phone more. Repeat.
I’m glad to be free of that particular feeling.
Day 28: I was afraid I was replacing my smartphone screen time with laptop screen time, so I installed a tracker on my browser.
I am pleasantly surprised by the numbers. On a particularly laptop-y day, one that made my eyes hurt by the end of it, I spent a grand total of 18 minutes and 35 seconds on Reddit. I used to spend hours on Reddit.
I don’t love that I spent those 20 minutes not writing. I especially don’t love that this was broken up into 41 sessions: a telltale sign I was tab-hopping between sentences.
But it’s progress.
Day 29: Am I more productive?
The first few weeks after giving up my smartphone, I wrote about 20,000 words of my novel. I had multiple really good workdays. I was on my domestic labor grind: meal plans were made, dinner parties were hosted. I had a little glimmer of optimism — maybe this is who I really was all along. A perfect, productive person, trammeled by Big Tech.
This past week is evidence to the contrary. I have sent out exactly zero pitches. I have this really fun capsule wardrobe going on where I wear my grandpa’s old union t-shirts to bed and then also wear them all day, with leggings. There is a plate of pre-sliced, rock hard Cheddar in my fridge (and little else!).
People advocating various forms of digital minimalism often promise that you will be more productive if you adopt their pet strategy or product(s). I’m not sure that’s true.
Off days existed before smartphones. So did depression and stupid jobs and messy houses. My dumbphone didn’t turn me into a writing, or cooking, or hosting machine. Maybe it reminded me I’m never going to be any kind of machine.
Day 30: Thinking about pain.
On really bad back pain days, I spent a lot of time in bed, on my phone. I would get so absorbed that I would forget about my pain — forget about my body almost entirely.
Of course, the more time I spent in bed the worse my back pain got. I was trading long-term deterioration for temporary dissociation.
Around the same time I got the dumbphone, I started going to physical therapy. I’m paying a lot of attention to the soft animal of my body these days.
Day 31: Gonna be real. Found a website that works on my Nokia and stayed up way too late last night – not scrolling, because that implies a fluid movement, but, like, bottom-button pressing over and over again. Kind of impressed it took this long!
Day 32: Saturday morning cleaning with music. Directions to the function ready and waiting on my Nokia. Better living through technology — just not a smartphone.
Day 33: I used the KaiOS Google Maps app to navigate to a new place! In practice, this meant glancing at written directions step-by-step instead of getting location-based guidance. It was completely fine — just had to pay attention to street signs.
Day 34: My husband is here after three months away. For the first couple of months, I still had my smartphone, and we had frequent WhatsApp chats: meme exchanges, quick pseudo-phone calls. For the past, you know, 34 days, we’ve only been talking once a week, on wistful video calls organized via email.
The thing is, none of that — not the memes, obviously, but not the video calls, either — was anything like having him here with me. There is no substitute for sitting here, face to face, holding hands.
Day 35: I still look at the headlines as soon as I wake up, some days. Just on the KaiOS news app, which presents an uncurated blend of Daily Mail, Unilad, and local news outlets (from several localities). This is clearly a reflex leftover from the smartphone. It is surprisingly tough to shake.
Day 36: If you’re looking for an alternative to scrolling for images, I suggest cutting up magazines for collages. Our walls are slowly filling up with reassembled old issues of Life.
Day 37: Received $40.67 in the Facebook Internet Tracking Settlement. This feels timely.
Day 38: I’ve been leaving comments lately.
For years, I was a lurker: always reading, never posting, rarely commenting. Recording my genuine response in black and white felt scary. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I reveal my ignorance? What if I annoy OP? (Quelle horreur!)
Without the smartphone, the imaginary chorus of trolls has quieted down. I’m just a girl, typing on a laptop, sharing my thoughts about your post.
Day 39: Finally talked with my friends about downgrading.
They said it feels bad to be asked “what have you been up to?” when the answer is “nothing, except looking at my phone.”
They said it feels bad to be asked “what did you see, exactly?” and not to know what to say.
They told me they are deleting apps and using them less.
It’s a vulnerable conversation, which is why I’ve tried not to start it with people who aren’t interested. But maybe that’s a mistake. There we were, at the park, trading stories about how we used our phones. Trading ideas about how to use them less. What if we all started having those conversations?
Day 40: Haven’t been thinking much about my appearance lately.
I see myself in the mirror when I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed at night, in the little in-betweens — and that’s pretty much it. It’s not like I’m out here taking selfies on my Nokia 2780.
Actually, that’s one of the first things I did when I powered it on for the first time: take a selfie. I had to open the flip phone and flip it backwards and press a button blindly on the side. The result was kind of blurry and yellow and oddly flattering. At least, not unflattering. I didn’t take another one.
One of my more depressing smartphone activities was lying in bed staring at myself in the front-facing camera. Not a good look for anyone, I think. It definitely wasn’t a good look for me.
One of the unexpected outcomes of letting go of my smartphone has been losing self-consciousness in a variety of ways. This is one of them.
Day 41: So, I lost my credit card.
I tend to be very blase about these things. Like, I actually lost it on Thursday. Didn’t realize until Friday. Continued whistling my way through my weekend until waking up, in the early hours of Monday morning, thinking I really need my credit card or else I’ll have to turn my iPhone on and carry it around with me and then where will we be?
I could chalk being unfazed at first up to an admirable detachment from material things: probably not true, though. I think I’m just used to the safety net of the smartphone.
I don’t really need to know where my credit card is, or what my passwords are, and most times I don’t even need my ID — just the picture of it I keep on my phone.
Handy in a pinch? Or learned helplessness?
P.S. I found my credit card. It was in my bag.
Day 42: So, I lost my credit card (again).
I’ve always lost things. I still remember the $80 key replacement fee in college (brutal). The old phone slipped out of my pocket, under the pedal of the go-kart. My friends once watched me circle the living room for one, two, five, ten? minutes, losing my keys, then my phone, then my card, unable to leave the house.
How much (if any) of this is due to constant internet use from an early age? How much of this is just me?
P.S. My husband found it. It was on the coffee table this time.
Day 43: Just got back from trivia night (we won!).
Of course, there were no phones, dumb or otherwise, at the table while the game was going. Question, answer, and the sticky in-between of us puzzling it out.
“It was a brave man who first ate” which food? Which instrument do the angels play? Which silver-barked tree is often used for plywood? What connects the answers to these questions?
We thought over all this. Argued, joked. And on the way back home, we quizzed each other on more questions as they came to mind. What does salubrious mean? We tried to figure it out on our own for full minutes of back-and-forth before someone finally Googled it.
I don’t think it’s wrong to Google (salubrious means healthful), but I do think it would be a shame to give up those minutes beforehand, of talking or thinking it through. Where would the fun be in that?
Day 44: My Nokia has a few basic apps, and a public domain ereader is one of them. This morning, I read “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell.
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.
Thinking about the words we use on the internet (fascist, neoliberal, pickme) and the words we use to discuss the internet (enshittification, Big Tech, content).
Day 45: You know when you’re feeling awkward in a social situation, so you pull out your phone and scroll?
I don’t have that option anymore. So what do I do instead? There are two choices. One: improve the situation. Sparkling conversation, fun game, etc.
Two: leave.
If no success with option one, highly recommend option two. Both more effective than scrolling.
Day 46: I gave up my smartphone for Lent. If I wanted to, I could turn it back on tomorrow. I just don’t want to.
If you asked me today: do you want a computer in your pocket? It allows you to access the internet at any time, in any place. It also has addictive potential.
I would answer: no, thank you.
As a child, my answer was yes. I’ve spent every day since living with the consequences — good and bad. This six week break has given me the chance to answer differently.
This is not the end of my dumbphone, but it is the end of my daily dumbphone updates. Thank you all for reading along.
Going to miss your daily update notes! But thank you for sharing them!
Thank you for sharing these. Today is my Day 1...