I get asked quite often why I use a flip phone instead of a smartphone, but I rarely sense this is a genuine question - the type of person who asks tends to have certain unstated assumptions, and these aren't about to change because of my response. The first of these assumptions goes something like this - people see no reason to use an older technology. The above question therefore isn't about my choice, it's about my implicit rejection of the assumption, so responding with "I'm protecting my ability to focus" isn't adequate, particularly because there is no clear link between my answer and the assumption. This disconnect is often demonstrated with the logical follow up - why not just get the smartphone, then put it away when it's time to focus?
It leads me to the second and perhaps more important assumption - focus and distraction go together, like the two ends of a see-saw. The theory goes something like this - if I'm distracted, I can focus by eliminating the distraction; if I'm focused, I can lose it by becoming distracted. I understand the logic underlying the worldview, but I don't agree with the zero-sum nature of the idea. The way I see it, focus is like a muscle in that it strengthens steadily with regular use while distraction is the invader that decays the focus muscle. Each distraction, in other words, is not just a temporary impediment to focus, it also permanently reduces my ability to focus in the future. I think there is a consensus as it regards distraction and its immediate effect on focus, but I feel I am in a minority when it comes to my suspicion of the long-term consequences; the problem is not that I'm getting smoke in my lungs, the problem is that I don't want to have lung cancer in three decades.
But if there is smoke, then where is the fire? This is what ties back to the original question, and my answer - the technology of the smartphone is relatively new, and its value is proportional to its connection to the internet, which improves with every iteration. In some way, the question regarding flip phones and smartphones is a question about the internet, and why anyone would voluntarily reduce access to the internet. The problem I see is that although many regard the internet as unambiguously beneficial, it does come with a cost, and that cost is focus. The stupefying effect of watching too much television, particularly due to that mindless way which leads to excessive consumption, is only appropriated and magnified by the internet, which in some ways resembles the actualized dream of those who felt limited when surfing merely hundreds of channels; social media in particular is like a television package with an infinite number of channels at your fingertips. The quaint, disorienting effect of going from station to station - with each of those transmitting an endless series of non-sequiturs in the forms of breaking news, mindless programming, and senseless commercials - has been replaced by the self-inflicted shell shock that is the common result of smartphone bombardment. When I talk about the smoke of distraction, I am talking about the internet as the fire that is burning away focus, and like any fire it leaves behind a pile of ashes and the demoralizing prospect of rebuilding. I am tempted to invoke the legend of the phoenix, to take solace in the idea that focus can reemerge in full form only from the smoldering ruins of its own destruction, but I suspect this is merely another distraction, a flight of fancy in a world increasingly grounded in a storm of disconnected information, where left and right wing flap without context, and without unity.
I could go on, perhaps exploring this path that others have stomped into the underbrush, their steps still cooling in the ashes, yet I linger at the opening, radiating indecision, suspecting that the internet is this generation's cigarette, but finding only surface associations in the shallows - I fear the argument would lose my audience, who inconveniently for me is on the internet, and whose attention spans are surely at the breaking point as this essay passes its 700th word, and this sentence, its 90th. The internet is bite-size, brevity is traffic, I must focus. This is my answer, and my question - why should I use a smartphone when its users so frequently express a desire to spend less time with the device? Everyone hit the road and now they are stuck, but they insist on moving faster, they dream of a super superhighway, and only turn back to beckon me forward. It seems logical to wait until the road is clear before I follow their lead, or at least until the vehicle has a brake, but perhaps my thinking is backward - something still lurks here that once scared everyone off my path, it sent them scurrying into the future, this something so terrifying that no one speaks of it, and maybe I should rejoin the pack before I find myself alone with this unspeakable horror.
