About 2 months ago, after years of resistance, I succumbed and bought my first smartphone.
Before that, I had the standard flip phone. I liked it. It worked well for me. But two important reasons prompted me to change.
First, I wasn't sure that the flip phone was all that durable. I didn't know when it would break, and I didn't know how to quickly (within a week or so) get a replacement when it broke. So at least a smartphone is supposedly supported and in the (big) city I live in, it's easy to find an outlet to get a replacement. Add to all that the fact I can afford a smartphone and the data costs associated with them.
Also, smartphones have a couple features I might need. The chief feature is ride share apps. I\m not enthusiastic about ride sharing, but I'd like to have the option if or when I need one. There are fewer and fewer taxi options, and I'm getting old enough that I need a plan B if the bus isn't coming for a while and 1) it doesn't feel safe to walk or 2) it's too far to walk.
Another feature (if we can call it that) is that it generally has better roaming capabilities and can be used outside the US. I travel to other countries very rarely, but it's nice to be able to have a way to call and do things. I know that theoretically a flip phone can be used out of the country if the plan is changed and something something something SIM card. But I've never once successfully managed to do that. It's easier (though still not easy) to arrange for a smartphone to do the trick abroad.
Smartphones have their disadvantages.
An obvious one is they're more of a they're more of a theft risk. Flip phones may be having their moment as a kitschy, ironic, and anti-commercialism toy. That is, in fact, one reason I'm not confident I could get a new one. Places probably don't carry them and those that do are probably out of them because of the kitsch fans. That said, I was never all that worried someone would steal the one I had. I was worried I might lose it. But that challenge comes with smartphones, too.
Smartphones are addictive. I see the temptation. I browse as much online (on my desktop) computer as anyone, and I have a video/strategy game that I can play for hours at a time, zoning out all outside encumbrances, if I'm not careful. Both browsing and gaming are fine when done in moderation and (in the case of browsing) with purpose. I don't do those in moderation. I don't need one more thing to be addicted to.
Smartphones can be socially isolating. I recall one academic event I was at about six months ago (well before I got my smartphone). I was there to judge the work of junior researchers at a fair my university was putting on. I sat at a round table with maybe 5 or 6 others, one of whom I actually knew. And they were all focused on their smartphones. Now, I'm as socially anxious and avoidant as most people, and even more avoidant than some. And I was grateful not to have to make small talk. I'm not sure how much different avoiding people by staring at a smartphone is from avoiding people by reading a book I've brought with me. But it just seemed wrong to me in a way that's different and hard to explain. (And for what it's worth, I had forgotten to bring a book to that event.)
There's another disadvantage to smartphones that's hard to explain, something malign and almost evil. Smartphones are almost like the reverse televisions from Orwell's 1984 that people were required by law to keep on. As I said in a post at Hit Coffee several years ago (A Voluntary Surveillance):
In 1984, the narrator mentions screens that enable the government to observe citizens in their own homes. Citizens were not permitted to turn these screens off. For quite a while I’ve seen a correlation between these surveillance screens and internet access, cell phones, and now i-phone technology, the main difference being that we choose to use them. We can turn them off, and we do, but we depend on them nevertheless.
These devices make us “observable” to others, not necessarily or only to the state, but in a way that potentially guides our actions and maybe even the way we think.
We are more and more legible to others. The legibility is not only to the state, but also to others: employers and vendors, for example.
And it's not just about legibility. It's also control. Smartphone technology is a system. And like most (all?) technological systems, it guides us along certain pathways. And while we can often deviate from those pathways, it's difficult to do so. In a formal sense, that problem has been around as long as there have been pathways. Thoreau discovered it at Walden pond when he noted he had worn a trampled path on a walk he took regularly around his abode. Whatever the problem is, it certainly didn't start with smartphones. The internet (the subject of my Hit Coffee post), preceded by drivers licenses, selective service enrollment--you'd have to go back pretty far to find no controls of that sort. In fact, you'd probably be forced to hypothesize some unattested state of nature.
But smartphones and the "social media" technology of which they're a part seem different. Maybe the difference is only in degree and not in kind, but the difference is in such a degree that it's almost a difference in kind. Or if it's "only" a difference in degree, then it's still a pretty big degree.
