The NY Times does a piece on something that IS really impossible for most of us….
A tech reporter that actually tried doing it….
Those who make the switch be warned: There were quite a few complaints in my inbox about our increasingly smartphone-centric world.
“The issue that is most disturbing to me, and one that I wish that journalists and regulators would turn their attention to, is the ever-increasing need to have a smartphone to navigate daily life,” wrote a 47-year-old father with no mobile phone at all. “Ten years ago, lacking a phone meant some minor social challenges; nowadays, it can be hard to go through ordinary life.”
He has been frustrated by the now common use of QR codes to get into sporting events and to view restaurant menus. He and many others said payment machines at parking lots often directed people to pay via a smartphone.
“I just got a parking ticket this week because I couldn’t go online and pay via their QR code or app,” wrote a 31-year-old Missouri mother with a flip phone. But she said it was worth it.
“Even in these moments I wouldn’t go back to the smartphone. I am done being enslaved to a piece of tech that has robbed me and my kids of my attention,” she wrote. “Your child-raising years are short. Your kids NEED YOU. Want to be a good mom? Want to raise healthy kids? The best thing you can do is throw your smartphone into the toilet, even for a short while.”
(But don’t actually throw your smartphone in the toilet. You might need to connect it to Wi-Fi at some point to get a two-factor authentication code.)
Some readers, such as one corporate executive and mother of three, said they “could never go flip.”
“The invention of the smartphone has enabled work-life integration in ways I couldn’t imagine!” she wrote.
She said her hacks for making it less addictive included turning off notifications and deleting social media apps. She and others thanked me for pointing to a study that found switching a smartphone from color to gray scale mode helped people significantly reduce their screen time. “Pumped about the grayscale tip,” she wrote, “turning that on today!”
For those who are wondering, I’ve now been using my flip phone as my main phone for two months. But I did get a second line for my smartphone to use when access to the internet is a necessity. I’m not sure, for example, that I would have been able to find Fabuwood’s headquarters — on unfamiliar roads in industrial Newark — without it…….
More….