From September to October 2019, I decided to go on a Smartphone detox. It was a much simpler and relaxed month, in between work and focusing on my wellbeing.
These are my top 14 learns from a smartphone detox, from life off the “technological highway”.
1. You Are Not the Centre Of Attention
You may be in there somewhere, but it's not all about you.
I’m sorry to say it – you are not as important as you think. Unfortunately, whether you accomplish great things in your life or just have an enjoyable life surrounded by close friends and family, you will be forgotten by many of the people you’ve interacted with in life.
That’s the harsh and honest truth.
But phones make the world revolve around us. My phone, my notifications, my facebook page, my Instagram.
“Oh look, I’ve got 52 likes for that Facebook Post – I must be special!”
Phones put us in a bubble that’s all about feeding our ego, our own narcissism. It’s where the world comes to us, and nowhere else. People say that dogs are a man’s best friend, but I actually think it’s your iPhone 11. They don’t shit on the carpet; they just tell you how wonderful you are at all times.
By not having a smartphone, you get taken out of that bubble. It allows you to see the world, metaphorically and literally. Metaphorically, not only will you not have the ego boost from your phone. But you will literally have to look and observe the world, because you won’t be able to retreat into your phone.
You will see people, you will talk to people, you will interact with people.
And you will realise there are 6 billion people on this planet and you are only 1 of them. It’s an equally liberating and terrifying realisation.
2. You Can Actually Live Without A Phone
There is a simpler life through the gate
When the conversation turns to phones, you’ll hear this time after time from friends and family– “I can’t live without my phone”.
Guess what? Fifty years ago we all lived without our phones.
Okay, we did have a phone. In our house. A rotary phone.
When we met, you’d be like, “I’ll call you Monday at 7 in the evening for our normal catchup,” and then every Monday at 6:55pm I’d sit by the phone waiting for it to ring. And if I had to ring you, I’d hope to God that your phone number had lots of ones and hardly any nines or zeros, because that would take ages to dial. Then we’d chat, have a good catchup, we’d hang up and then….. forget about our phones.
The point is that everyone can give up their phone.
It’s just about what sacrifices you’re willing to make. What people are actually saying is I don’t want to live without a phone.
Living without a Smartphone for 30 days was, at times, painful. Things become inconvenient. For instance, anything to do with banking, navigation, or booking stuff is a pain in the bumhole without one. It’s not convenient, but you get round these problems.
Moreover, the thing you notice more than anything is this:- if tomorrow somebody took your phone or it was destroyed, you’d be okay. Everything would be okay. I promise.
Now breath….
3. Social Media Is A Bit Shit
How often have we seen this screen? - Social Media has been done to "death"
My name is Dave and I am a social media addict. I admit it. Not only am I addicted but I love in too, at times.
But let me level with you and let’s talk about this with open minds. For all that is good that social media does, it’s a bit shit.
It took something we didn’t need – and quite happily lived without years ago – and made us think we needed it.
I’ll tell you what is useful. Being able to drive 500 miles with no idea of where you’re going with a map app, like Google Maps, to guide you. That’s useful. In fact, it’s pretty amazing.
However, you loving my Instagram Post. Nothing, nada, niet.
I’m sorry – I love you my friends and I’m so glad you “loved” my photo and I am deeply appreciative. Honest. But let’s be real – it means nothing. All it has done is inflate my ego. I’m still stuck in the car with no idea where I’m going… if only I had Google Maps instead.
It’s also becoming less fun. Do you remember the first time we jumped on My Space and got Tom as our friend? It was new and exciting and fresh, like rubbing Mint Original Source on your nether regions. Wow, but in a good way.
Then we had Vine. Oh Vine, how I love thee. It was fun. People actually called up their mates went outside, were creative, and made stuff. They produced, they created, they learnt – and a lot of it was funny shit.
How about Snapchat? It was lower grade fun for the lazier creator. I actually met a load of people from Snapchat and a couple of my best friends are random as f**k strangers from Snapchat. How cool is that?
Snapchat was amusing and we may have pushed the boundary of upleasantness at times, but – I’ll say it again – it was fun. Then they started to monetise Snapchat and changed the layout and brought in celebrities and corporations, and it kinda lost it.
Finally, Instagram Stories came out – damn you Facebook – and we all decided that we didn’t want our social media to be off-the-bat and spontaneous and exciting and real and funny. Instead, we wanted ultra-curated content that said:- “look at me, my life is so much cooler than yours. Oh and by the way, please give me $10,000 for each post because I’m an influencer now and people take my shit seriously.”
This is our current state of affairs for the big social networks in 2019 – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, Tik Tok.
Facebook is just there, and has been from almost the beginning. But it’s process driven. We all seem a bit fed up of funny cats – actually I think we’ve run out of funny cats. And we’ve seen all the memes in the world. And all the self help videos in the universe. We go on, scroll, post, get off it. It’s the big Daddy-O that most of us can’t escape, but we don’t have fun with it.
Instagram is being Facebookified. It’s ultra-curated. Photos and videos are pretty, and it’s massive right now, but there are troubles on the horizons.
Twitter I’ve never got the appeal so I’ll leave that one to the experts. It always seemed like a limited version of everything else to me.
Youtube and Pinterest are more search engines than social media, but at least Pinterest takes a more unique approach.
Tik Tok, on the other hand, is full of absolute drivel, but, and it’s a big but, it’s fun. It seeks to do what Vine was doing, albeit driven by a Chinese corporation. These “guys” aren’t getting much slack at the moment – see Huawei for details.
And the future is anyone’s guess. I think we are getting tired with the current state of affairs, and if I can sum it up in one word, it’s because it’s all a bit shit.
4. But Your Phone Is Very Useful
Using maps and satnav on phones is useful for the keen hiker
So so useful.
Each day I wake up. I eat breakfast and add my calorific intake into My Fitness Pal to keep me on my diet. I cycle to work, opening up Samsung Health to record my bike ride stats (or somthing similat like Strava). En route I think of a few things I need to do – jot them down in the notes function on my phone for later reference. I forget that I need to transfer some money. Open up my banking app and that’s done. Gotta get to a place in London I’ve never been – up comes Google Maps.
That evening I’m invited to a restaurant in town I’ve never been to. Google Maps, again. Plot a walking route to it, and I can even see the address, opening times, website and reviews. Pop on the website so I can browse the menus in anticipation.
Fancy a holiday? I’m on Kayak, finding the cheapest flight. Five minutes and it’s booked using my credit card details stored into Google Pay or maybe on Paypal. Also saved myself money on just heading to a travel agent or just checking one airline. Booked some accommodation too on booking.com or expedia or similar, and I’m good to go.
Can’t focus on work, so I’m perusing Tripadvisor for cool things to do on holiday.
Difficult sum – bring up the calculator.
Need to plan stuff – bring up the calendar.
Need to back up photos – send it to the cloud.
And so forth.
You get my point. Whilst some functions on the phone are less essential, we save so much time when we use our phone right.
For instance, my one week holiday when on detox was intensely frustrating, to say the least. If I had a phone, I could have planned easily, seen more, and had more time.
The key is using it right.
5. Not Having The "Five-Min-Twitch" Is Bliss
The simple pleasure of relaxing without a phone
This is probably the single greatest joy of not having a phone.
The five minute twitch, as I call it, is that little voice in your brain that ultimately drives and fuels all your egotistical and anxious behaviours. It’s the voice that five minutes after you post to social media, says, “you should check that now to see how many likes you’ve had”
Zero likes.
So merely a minute later, it’s cajoling you again. “Quick, quick, check again. Surely by now, a hundred people have seen your brilliance and adored you. Right now, people are worshipping you and kneeling figuratively at your feet. We must check.”
Guess what? Still zero.
It’s that surreptitious move of your hand to your phone in your pocket at all times. Note to addicts– put your phone somewhere else than your pocket every now and then. It’s almost disconcerting, the feeling that it’s not there. Moreover, it illuminates and starts to break the cycle.
Better yet, take a day each week and leave it at home.
That moment when you sit down at the coffee shop and can’t bear being alone at a table with just you and the coffee, so you take out your phone. Twitch.
The moment you’re in a restaurant and your friend leaves you, for just 2.71 minutes to go to the toilet. Twitch.
That constant need to be on your phone is fuelled by three things. Addiction, boredom and fear.
You have trained your brain that this is something you cannot live without. It is harder to put down then coffee, alcohol, cigarettes and coccaine. Okay, I’m not sure about the last one. But I can tell you that giving up cigarettes is way, way easier than giving up your phone (in my humble opinion).
Boredom and fear are the offspring of addiction. They are the Jesus Christ and Holy Ghost saying, “hey your phone’s pretty cool – would you like to meet my Dad?”
One of my favourite phrases, and overused by me, at the moment is; dare to be alone and afraid.
It’s okay to be in a room full of people on your own. It’s okay to be bored. Life is not about constant stimulation. Your phone is a surrogate friend. You’re not really losing the boredom – you just think you are.
In a coffee shop on your own? So what. Everyone needs to eat and drink. Would you rather be in bed hiding, or in a coffee shop alone? Exactly, coffee shop please. Own your solo time. Own your alone time. No phone necessary. You don’t need to hide behind it and seek it like a comfort blanket. Breathe, get your sass up and work that room. Picture people naked if it helps, zone out, think of the best sex you ever had – whatever it takes to stop thinking about reaching for your phone.
If you ever give up your phone for a month, that addiction completely disappears. But even by the fourth day, the twitch is gone.
6. You Really Don't Need To Compare Yourself To Others
Which is better? Letterbox A, or B?
When I had a 286 computer back in the eighties that didn’t have a clue what the internet was (in the same way that many readers won’t have a clue what a 286 is), I knew about two hundred people. And that was cool. Because I was pretty sure that compared to the two hundred people I knew, my life was pretty cool and seemed to be going the right way.
Now I have 1300 Facebook friends and 600 people on Instagram. I also have friends who themselves have 5000 Facebook Friends.
I can read about the world in a heartbeat, if I’m not already being bombarded by it through multimedia outlets.
I see hundreds of photos each day of people doing amazing things, and now my life is shit.
Of these 1300 Facebook friends, it looks – on electronic paper – like my life is in the shittest 100 of them.
Looks like being the key phrase.
Funnily enough, I’m not posting all the bad stuff that’s happening on my social media. Also when I’m posting the good stuff like that amazing beach photo, I’m not posting the whole picture. I’ve filtered it, and I haven’t shown you that I’m actually standing in garbage smelling waste water being bitten by mosquitos and sniffed by rabid dogs to get the best angle and photo to prove to you that I’m in paradise.
The camera never lies. Well, yes, it does – time and time again. That’s kinda how Photoshop and cropping and angles and filters work.
If you don’t have a phone, you can’t see everyone else’s life. You can’t post your own. Something strange happens after around a week. You give up thinking about what you would post (if you had a smartphone and a social media account) and you give up worrying what everyone else is doing.
You realise you don’t need to compare. You just need to get out and run your own race.
In fact, the only person you need to compare yourself to is you. Are you a step ahead today or yesterday? Yes. Then great – that’s amazing. Now, move on.
7. Nothing Bad Happens If You Don't Post
Keep your privacy and think if every post is necessary
This is similar to the problem of “comparativitis” but is a slightly different learning. Not only do you not need to compare yourself to anyone, but guess what, nothing happens if you don’t post your life across the internet.
Don’t pay your bills, you get evicted. Don’t go to the gym, you get less fit. Don’t go on that awesome holiday, you miss out on some cool experiences.
Don’t post on your social media…. Tumble weed.
8. People Send You Shit (Metaphorically)
This is literal rubbish, but you get the point!
When I got back to Facebook after my thirty day hiatus, I had 85 notifications. It’s just less than 3 a day, which isn’t much.
But when you took that down to “quality” notifications, it was about 10. I hadn’t posted anything in 30 days and I hadn’t interacted with others, so 75 notifications were pretty much garbage.
Of the 85, about half were people inviting me to like pages. The odd one or two I empathised with, as they were passion projects or businesses that friends had been investing in. The rest was crap that I had no interest in, and had no real bearing on my friend either. For instance, I was invited to like a film studio. I like movies, but I don’t need to like Revolutionary Pictures.
Because it’s accessible, we seem to work on quantity a lot of the time over our phones, rather than quality. Look at your Messaging chats. Could you have said what you did in about half the space? Probably. Could you have said most of it in a friendlier, Face to face discussion? Almost definitely.
We want to fill the silence. We want to spend as much time on our phones. We want to like the universe. So we send Z-list grade shit out there to keep busy, and the rest of us lap it up.
Sometimes less is more.
9. Old-Skool Texting Was Not As Great As We Remember
Old alpha numeric system we used before touchscreen keyboards
Remember texting on old Nokias and thinking it was painless. Then when, keyboards and touchscreens came out, we all moaned it wasn’t as good as the old numeric keypad.
Let me put the story straight. It’s fifty times better. Texting on a Nokia 8110 for a month was hell. I actually gave up on all but the most important texts after a couple of weeks.
And I don’t want to go back to that time.
That’s all I have to say on that matter.
10. A Phone is a Mahoosive Time Drain
Time just flies when you're having fun ... or on your phone
The UK Regulator Ofcom undertook, in 2018, one of the most comprehensive studies compiled showing how your behaviours have changed in the last ten years of technology use. They found that 88% of people spend 24 hours a week online.
The normal American gets 2 weeks holiday off full time work each year. The average European gets a more delightful 4-6 weeks holiday a year.
However, you spent 7.5 weeks of each year online. Two whole months, probably doing little of any use, liking a status here, or posting a comment there, or maybe doing some “life admin” that wasn’t even that important, etcetera etcetera.
Even if you took half of that time, you would have 630 hours a year to do something with. I could go out for a half hour run, play guitar for half an hour and see a friend for a coffee. Every Day. At the ned of the year, I could be a fitness freak and fit, have closer relationships with my friends and alleviate anxiety and depression, thereby improving my happiness. Plus, I’m also a kick ass guitar player now.
Or, I could spend it online. Potato, Potato.
We always say we don’t have time in our modern world. The reality is that we choose not to spend it wisely.
11. Other People Use Their Phones Way Too Much
We've all been there - obsessing with recording the moment rather than experiencing it
Way, way, way, way, way too much.
When you have a smartphone, in many ways, it’s like being in the Matrix, and when that’s taken away, it’s as if your eyes are cleared. You walk looking straight ahead, and you see that most people walk looking straight down.
You see the world; they see their phone.
Every moment you have without a smartphone is a chance to do something else, or merely observe. Any spare moment anyone else has is a chance to use their smartphone.
The more time you spend away from your addiction device, the more the behaviour of others seems less normal. It becomes more antisocial. It becomes stranger.
What you thought was normal behaviour because everybody does it, starts to drift into the territory of abnormal behaviour when you become more objective.
The key when you get back to your smartphone, if you decide you want to go back to it, is finding balance. You can be part of the crowd, but maybe not too much. Forge your own way at times, and see it for what it is. It’s an addiction, but unlike four cigarettes a day, it is constant. It’s a three hundred packets a day, 6000 cigarettes, chainsmoking, never-ending bombardment of an addiction (except when you sleep).
Get a better addiction.
12. FOMO May Be Real, But MO Is Bulls**t
Fear can be an illusion
One of the big reasons that we don’t like to leave our social media is the FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s a lovely modern abbreviation, in the same way that we were all going shit crazy over YOLO (you only live once) about ten years ago.
Here’s the thing – I understand.
There will be some great things that you will want to know about; your friend getting married, having a kid, achieving something big. There will, also, be the odd invitation or event that you miss out on.
However, the people that mean the most to you will still be in contact. You will still make them a priority. You won’t miss out, it will just take you a little bit longer. Maybe you won’t hear about the pregnancy the moment it happens – well maybe not the moment it happens, but the moment your friend posts about it.
In two months, however, when you see her, there won’t be any hiding the news. It’s how we used to operate, and it makes our face-to-face interactions richer.
Maybe you missed out on that event though. The thing is, you did five more events instead because you had the time you weren’t looking at your phone. And because you’re now in the “I’m only running my race and not anyone else’s” camp – who cares? It means little.
You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.
Social media and technology makes us think we can do everything and be everything, but unless you can travel at the speed of light, it’s not going to happen.
Stepping back will help you readjust. You will find that you miss out because you are on your phone all the time, not because you aren’t.
So FOMO is well, but MO is not.
13. You Get Bored
When even your favourite toy can't stop you from being bored
Phones are sexy and cool and interesting. You can amuse yourself with them for hours or days (or even 7.5 weeks a year as the Ofcom survey found)
But there’s a skill to being bored. To realising you need some time to yourself to observe and be with yourself.
You don’t always have to be connected.
That five minutes inbetween tasks that you would normally spend on your phone to fill every last drop of nothingness in your schedule…Just let it be.
Embrace the boredom.
14. You Feel Alone At Times
Being alone can be horrible, but it can also be the best of things
This is a hard chestnut to bear.
During my 30 day detox, I received some bad medical news and I wanted to go messaging away and posting on social media and to have some interaction with friends to make it a little better. But I had a dumb phone that I couldn’t stand texting on and didn’t want to call people. So I wallowed instead and took it internally.
Incidentally, we seem to live in a time where we call people less and less in favour of other means of electronic communication. We don’t want to “disturb” people so the messages and the emails duplicated and the calls – the nearest we have to face to face communication – goes down.
Thankfully, video calling is on the rise and it’s a beautiful way of seeing and interacting with friends and family who are far away.
When you can’t fill in the time with your phone, you get lonely.
You’ve trained yourself to always have a phone around, to be at your beckoning call, like a well behaved and idolising puppy. But 30 days ago, you took that puppy and you threw it out the window.
While getting rid of a smartphone is liberating, there are times where it feels lonely. The skill is to break through this illusion. Your phone is not a dog, it’s not a person – even if you think it brings you closer to people. It’s an object. One you got addicted to and you used and abused too.
In fact those coffee shops and restaurants and streets, even when you are not communicating with the others around you, you still have a sense they are there. You observe them and interact with them, and you feel part of the world.
Give it enough time, and the loneliness goes away.
It’s replacement – true connectivity to the world around you.