do I need a smartphone?

Usually about once a year, I have an anti-tech crisis. Something spurs it on – whether it be hate comments/gossip, burnout, an inspirational figure – and suddenly I decide that one day, I am going to disappear from the Internet.

But disappearing is difficult when you make your primary source of income from content creation and depend on the internet to advertise your business. Last year, I told myself that one day, when we build our semi-off-grid house, I will quit my job and live offline.

Then I started two more businesses (both of which greatly depend on the Internet).

Is it admirable to monetize one’s tech addiction? I don’t know, but I have surely done just that. What started as emailing friends turned into blogging which later turned into social media and that turned into my full-time job. I have spent all of my adolescent and adult life online, met my best friend online, communicated with my boyfriend-fiance-husband online, and I literally do not know how to exist without the internet.

That scares me.

Not in a grid-down what-if-I-lost-it kind of way but in a my-thoughts-are-not-my-own kind of way, and that is how I know the addiction is so incredibly deep.

I recently started reading You Don’t Need a Smartphone by August Lamm (who has made it her goal to be completely offline soon – no socials, newsletter, even email) – and she said in her book that she could not leave her phone behind without her thoughts being preoccupied by it – that even with it far away from her she still wondered what people were doing and saying on it.

I’ve often thought that people who don’t have social media have a fundamentally different brain than those who do, and I very much think that’s true. I find myself in the same predicament as August – I simply can’t be offline without thinking about the world on the other side.

Over the past few days this has become a hyperfixation of mine – I think I’m back in one of those crises where I want to disappear, and this time I’m not even sure what has brought it on. Perhaps the fact that I’m working full-time in front of a computer or phone screen for 7-8 hours a day? Or maybe it’s brought on by my need to backup photos and realizing that our generation has an incredibly bizarre access to taking photos and videos that no other generation has and it honestly feels stifling to have literally thousands of photos of your child to sort through.

Last time I went through this crisis, I bought a Bluetooth landline phone and resolved to not use my smartphone around my child – which worked fairly well…until she dropped to one nap and I started working more.

This time, I’m working to set better work-life boundaries, and I’m saving up for a flip phone and point and shoot camera. I think I’m going to try using my smartphone only for work – which will help with the boundary-thing, and use a flip phone and camera for personal communication.

But one day – someday far off in the distance so far it feels almost like a dream – one day I will leave social media, and I know my life will be all the better for it. How I will do that while maintaining two businesses, I’m not sure but maybe I can hire someone to do it for me. Or maybe, I’ll just build my businesses to sell them and live off that.

Sometimes I just feel so sick and tired of the online world and wish I’d never been allowed to blog or have a phone. Which is just me blaming my parents for the victim I’ve made of myself. But it makes me really, seriously consider the childhood I want my daughter to have and the limits I should place on technology! My dad worked in tech – I wanted (still want!) to be just like him. My dad is in many ways the definition of success to me. Will I be that to my daughter? Will my husband? How will my career in technology affect her?

I don’t have all the answers. Or very many, in fact. But I know that life feels less constricting and fuller and more vibrant when we have less access to the world. Have you noticed that? Isn’t it an odd oxymoron?

I’ll keep you updated on the flip-phone journey.

Until later, friends!

Aria