In January of 2025, I gave up my smartphone for an old T9 flip phone.

I will never go back.

I talked about giving up my smartphone for years. It felt like the opportunity eluded me for just as long - I was in school, which demanded apps for two-factor verification among other things. Then I moved to Japan, and had no idea how to navigate getting my own phone so simply had to use the one that my company provided me. Then I came back to the US for school, which demanded that I again use two-factor verification.

Then I graduated in May of 2022, and... I would keep my smartphone for another two-and-a-half years for reasons I could not articulate.

I felt addicted - and as a person who has struggled with substance abuse, I don't use that word lightly. Of course, since then I've read all sorts of papers and books and news articles about how social media websites and pornography and online games employ casino-like tactics to engender a gambling-addiction-parallel in their users, so regardless of how "dramatic" a sentiment like "phone addiction" may seem to some, my instincts have been thoroughly validated.

The problems with my smartphone certainly mirrored a lot of my problems with substance abuse: the urge to use it was constant, especially in response to anxiety or boredom. Fighting it would take serious effort some days, which evoked a sense of shame and failure. I disconnected from other people, turning toward my phone rather than turning toward my friends for what I thought was a sense of safety - but was actually a sort of numbness to a whole army of underlying issues that, until 2021 or so, I hid from myself through constant noise and distraction. These are the sorts of underlying issues that don't go on a blog, they go into EMDR therapy.

(Small side note: if you have childhood trauma that has metamorphosed into CPTSD, try to find a way into EMDR therapy. It is expensive as hell but it is a life-changer. I'm looking for ways to make it more accessible to people, I think it's so useful and important.)

Most of all, I felt disgusting. I don't mean that in a moral sense; I mean unhygenic. Though "hygiene" has its own baggage, I suppose. I felt like my brain needed a bath. My mind was getting dirty, wallowing around in muddy puddles on the digital sidewalk. I would take full no-screen days just to "detox", and I would only make it about 2/3 of the day.

So, in December of 2024, my phone broke. I needed a new one. I decided to make the switch. In early January, my little TSL flip phone arrived.

TSL is not the brand I would have chosen, I think. Their customer service is notoriously bad, and so are their parts - in fact, my phone's graphics card died a few months into the year and I had to send it in for a full factory reset. It started with the front screen freezing, and now any time there's a graphical hiccup I get nervous it's the first symptom in another phone death.

Despite that, the decision to switch from smartphone to "dumb"-phone has been one of the best I've made in a long time. I thought the change would be exceptionally difficult, perhaps the length and effort of the recovery process mirroring my addictions like the symptoms did. There were some jitters, urges to pull out of my phone in the first couple of weeks, but the absolute stonewall of "there is nothing to do on this phone if I'm not texting or calling" was a stunning - and easily-predicted - safeguard against a protracted mental battle. Why look at your phone when there's nothing to look at? I'm not going to spend hours staring at the voice-recorder function or my empty notes app, am I? No way.

There was a sort of secondary battle, as I still had access to the internet in other ways. I wasn't overly concerned about simply picking back up my old habits on my laptop, but I had some concerns; I had deleted all of my games and most of my social media accounts well before I made the switch, but there were still a few hangers-on. I had left Facebook and Tumblr years before due to their exclusively negative impact on my mental health, I had never had a Twitter (for more than a couple of tweets, anyway), and I had no idea how to log back into Snapchat. Instagram remained, as I have a number of friends in other countries who I would likely lose touch with if I deleted it. I also had a Reddit account.

This is important, because my job requires me to be on a computer, but doesn't always require me to be doing things. A number of public-facing positions I've held have made it a policy that you can do whatever (safe-for-work) thing you like on a computer because it looks to the customer like you're doing work, I guess. I think that's bullshit and the customer absolutely knows you're on Reddit or Tiktok or whatever. In any case, I can think of few better ways to engender screen addiction than giving and employee hours of nothing-to-do with internet access.

And indeed, it did not help. I found myself on instagram and reddit at work; initially, I justified it by looking for information and inspiration relevant to my job. I should have caught myself then, because it's the same mental gymnastics I've used before, but suddenly it was a few months later and I was brainrotting on Reddit during my work hours.

I don't have a strong turning point for this part of the story. There was no moment where it clicked and I just stopped. I reduced my Reddit usage and then logged out, and I've only logged back in once or twice in the past six months or so (and even then, I basically just note my lack of notifications and log out again). I still find myself scrolling instagram once every few days, but I catch myself fairy quickly now. I'll send a few memes to loved ones, send them an actual message, and then log off. The fight continues.

I feel like I do more now. Not in that sort of protestant-work-ethic idle-hands-wringing capitalist-production sort of way, but just like there are more facets to my life. On one horrible hand, that continues to cement the substance-abuse parallel, because this is also how I felt after quitting alcohol. But on the other wonderful hand, my life feels fuller. The irony of shutting off social media is that now I feel more connected. I feel more satisfied. I feel happier.

I've been drawing, I've been sculpting, I've been collaging. I've made three websites, including this one. I've been making a lot of time for friends and loved-ones. I exercise and take care of myself more. I can't say I've been outside more, and that's been frustrating to realize, but now I'm making the effort to change that. I do more research, read more books, make more things.

I also rest more. I'll just sit and watch the weather, or other people, or my dog, or my garden. I rarely do any sort of intentional "screen fasting" like I did when I had a smartphone because I don't feel like I need to anymore. Every day I rest my mind by just letting myself be away from inputs. The internet is over there now, and despite the struggles that remain with my job setup, it's much easier to simply step away from it all.

It is strange, in a non-judgemental way, to people-watch now. I used to think everyone was on their phones, in a very literal way. Now I realize that there are so many people who aren't, and I can smile at them and say good morning and make incidental acquaintances around my town. But there are also so many people that are on their phones, out in public, wandering down the sidewalk with their nose glued to their screen. That used to be me. I don't judge them for it, but maybe I look and wonder at my past self.

My mind feels cleaner. Or, perhaps, it feels dirty in the way that primordial soup is dirty with life and potential, rather than the way that wet socks are dirty with oil-slicked puddle water.

Why would I ever go back?