My dumb phone is here
The day that no one was waiting for (except me) has arrived. My family is a bit frustrated I am no longer in the group chat, and I will have to read a phone manual to access the voicemail I received. Hopefully the voicemail is not too important because I will not be able to read the manual today. I am busy writing here.
But, I am incredibly excited.
After several years of thinking about getting a dumb phone, I ordered the Barbie phone. This was not my first time ordering a dumb phone. I ordered the light phone in 2022 but ended up sending it back because I had such a hard time using it. I now realize that is the whole idea. It is meant to be hard to use. Apparently it was not yet my time.
I am not sure you can imagine how delighted I was to place the order for my Barbie phone. I waited an entire year to order it. Last year when it came out, I put it on my wedding registry with my ex because I was working on paying off my student loan debt and refusing to buy anything fun for myself. No one got it for me because they thought it was a joke. Turns out the wedding was the actual joke. My ex has fancy gifts from that registry and now I have my dumb phone, so it all worked out.
Anyway, while I was waiting for my Barbie phone to arrive, I read this wonderful pamphlet by August Lamm and the pamphlet convinced me to get a Punkt phone instead. August is wildly creative and her writing is very clear and inspiring. She has owned a dumb phone for several years and she had the same type of flip phone as the Barbie phone before switching to the Punkt phone. She explained that the Punkt phone is even dumber, which swayed me. My favorite fact in the pamphlet was how many books August has been able to read since she switched to a dumb phone in 2022. I love reading and learning, so this is a very exciting possibility for me. She is even more extreme than I plan to be as she does not even own a computer. She writes on a typewriter and goes to the library to send out final drafts. Nonetheless, I love her and find her inspiring.
I did end up spending a bit more than I intended to for this project. I bought a GPS for my car and I had to pay a $99 tariff to get my phone shipped here. I also had to pay off my iPhone that was on a payment plan to be able to port over my number to my new dumb phone. It doesn't have to be an expensive project though. And if I stick with a dumb phone, it will be less expensive in the long term because I won't be upgrading to the new iPhone every few years.
The other expense I am considering for this project is a polaroid camera for taking photos on special occasions. Even thinking about getting a polaroid camera makes me smile. It sounds so fun to print out photos and collage them into a memory book instead of posting them somewhere online for strangers to see.
So why did I want a dumb phone in the first place?
Every time I reduce digital clutter, I become calmer, happier and more focused. I wrote about my process of letting go of different social media sites in this post from 2024. Getting a dumb phone felt like the natural next step for me to take to create more headspace.
I also read many books and articles about how technology impacts our behaviors that encouraged me to progressively limit my technology use. Cal Newport is one of my favorite authors in this area. Cal studies digital ethics at Georgetown. His books Deep Work and Digital Minimalism helped me explore different ways to manage my attention. Cal introduced me to Cory Doctrow's philosophy on the enshittification of social media platforms, too. This process explains how we get so attached to social media and why things go south. At first, social media platforms are good to us. They help us build relationships and connect. But over time, the social media platforms begin the process of monetizing our attention and that is when they become unhealthy for us. Cory's articles explain this process in more depth and I recommend reading at least one to fully understand the concept.
I have only had the dumb phone for a few days now, but I am already noticing some strange and exciting changes:
There is more space around my thoughts. And perhaps because of that space, my thoughts are becoming more interesting to me. I will report back on where this goes.
When I get up to go to the bathroom, I still search for my phone. I now laugh when that happens because my phone is so boring that when I find it, I do not bring it along to the toilet. I would not even be able to check the weather to make myself feel productive while I pee. I am happy to see my phone staying in its place as a tool instead of coming along with me as though it is part of my hand.