My mother-in-law was coming two days after I switched phones and my daughter and I were driving 3 hours to pick her up and spend the night at a hotel before bringing her home the next day. We would be doing some shopping and I was nervous about navigating a much larger town and finding stores without my smartphone. I printed out her flight itinerary and flight number, directions to the hotel and reservation number as well as the addresses of the stores we wanted to go to. We have a GPS in our truck that I used to navigate by putting in the addresses of places I wanted to go. I have to admit that I did take my iPhone along just in case I needed to put my SIM card back in it and use it for looking things up. I never did use it though and it remained packed in my overnight bag. It felt weird simply having a phone instead of a smartphone but I was also starting to experience some of the great freedoms and benefits of being disconnected. I paid closer attention to my surroundings and my time and conversation with my daughter was rich and bonding. Once the initial sadness of leaving my smartphone behind abated, I became sold on this choice for myself and gained more confidence in seeing this as a sustainable way of life.
I started noticing the brilliance of colors, a scent on the air, and so many little things that I hadn't noticed before or at least not to that degree. It seemed like a cloud had been lifted and all of a sudden I was standing in this world of dazzling light and beauty. I saw things with marked distinction and could tell that I was starting to file these sights, sounds, and experiences away as new, poignant memories instead of fleeting sights rushing by but never catching hold. I felt a greater presence than I had felt in years. I was truly there wherever I was at. My husband and I shared coffee and conversation in the mornings instead of being on our phones. We talked in the evenings or read or played games with the children instead of reading articles or watching YouTube videos. We cuddled in bed and visited at night after the children were tucked in instead of both staring into the screens of our phones to gather a few more bits of information before drifting off to sleep. I thought I already had a very rich life, but it just got a whole lot more so. A few weeks into living without a smartphone and the benefits have been astounding.
Here are some things I did that I feel made this transition both successful and a bit easier. Maybe they will help you, too, if you are looking at making this change in your life as well:
Know your triggers and pitfalls. What do you use your phone for the most and what alternatives can you find? One of those for me was making sure I had plenty of interesting and stimulating books to read. Another one was keeping a small camera handy to capture pictures with.
Make sure you do not do this alone. Let at least one person in on what you are doing for both support and accountability.
Make sure you schedule more real life social interactions for at least your first week (this week is the hardest) if not the first 2 weeks. Invite people over, schedule coffee dates, walk around a park with a friend, etc. There needs to be even more social interactions than you normally have and they need to be good ones, not just a simple exchange with other people as you drop your children off at sports. Make it a point to really connect with people. This does a lot in balancing out the withdrawal effects. I had my mother-in-law here for 10 days and I did a lot of things along with that: we had a weekend trip to pick her up, church, ladies over for coffee and cinnamon rolls, a picnic at the lake and an afternoon in the sunshine watching the kids play in the water and sand, and a visit to a couple different friend's places. These interactions help produce natural dopamine and oxytocin which helps with the withdrawal and stress.
This may be TMI but since I am sharing this process so candidly, I figured I should include this one as well. If you are married, I would encourage you to have more sex. If you are unmarried, stick with suggestion #3 and just connect with people even more frequently than suggested, scheduling something social every single day. I noticed an increase in desire and need to be with my husband intimately and it helped tremendously at feeling connected and loved, seen and cared for - all those things that a smartphone or social media appeal to in our nature but are a knock-off of.
Allow for extra sleep. I was so very tired the first 3-4 days. I just about couldn't get rested and it felt like what I would imagine a crash after a very strong stimulant to feel like. I went to bed earlier than usual and needed 9-10 hours of sleep a night during those first few days and I was still exhausted during the day. I am happy to report that after the first few days of detoxing, my body's sleep cycle became normal and my sleep was deeper, sweeter, and more restful than it has been in years. The whole family is reaping the benefits of an early to bed and early to rise schedule.
Don't simply replace your addiction with another. It would be easy to start watching more tv shows, spend more time on a computer, or do some other thing that just replaces one distraction with another. I was extremely careful with this and didn't allow myself to simply fill my time with the computer or phone calls.
Create! Creating something and having projects to work on are great ways to ease the stress and tension of those first few days and weeks. It is therapeutic as well. We made nightstands out of crates and also a book shelf for our living room. It required hours of sanding and staining and then assembling them. It was a great project and was so fun! Paint a room, do some landscaping, tye-dye shirts with your family, or do a fun Pinterest project you've been meaning to do for awhile. The satisfaction from this is so much more than what you get from just consuming information and digital stimulation.
I have noticed that I have a greater ability to concentrate now and I hope that will continue to improve as time goes on. I have more patience and am more willing to let things happen as they come and not be stressed out so much about things (i.e. sitting in road construction for 26 minutes the other day on the way to a friend's house which made me very late. But it gave a great opportunity to talk with the friendly flagger and we exchanged funny stories and the time passed very pleasantly.) I have noticed that even the little things seem more special to me and I am making a point of visiting with people when I'm out and about which is hard for me to do as I tend to be fairly shy.
I would encourage anyone to go smartphone free for at least a month. Even if you think you use it reasonably or don't feel you have a problem with it, there is only one way to find out for sure and that's to go without it. It has been a very eye opening experience and I think it would be good for anyone to do just to see if their smartphone habits actually line up with where they think they do. We tend to think we do things much better than we do whether that is money management, phone usage, etc. We always think we spend less than we do or think we use our phone less than we actually do. Nothing gives a reality check like seeing our financial numbers in black and white or being confronted with the truth of our phone usage. We become so used to it just being an extension of ourselves that we don't even register all that we do on it or how many times we use it throughout the day. When starting out, I didn't know how to explain my choice to other people, or even if I wanted to. I have only had to let a few people know that I wasn't on a smartphone and I just told them I was doing a smartphone fast and so I was using a basic phone. No one has asked any further questions. Besides those few instances, no one has even noticed. If you are not sure this is something you want to commit to longterm, I would suggest doing a 30 day smartphone fast. People understand and think it is interesting and not as polarizing as telling someone that you permanently gave up your smartphone. This gives you time to test the waters and also get a better understanding of your usage and where you should go from there.
I have to be more intentional with my internet usage and looking things up since I don't have the convenience of my smartphone. This actually helps a lot in weeding out the non-essentials. A lot of the "important" things we do on our phones are actually not that important at all. The things that feel so urgent in the moment I end up forgetting by the time I get on the laptop in the afternoon at a set time. In a time where everything in our world seems urgent, important, and pressing, it has been very peaceful to really practice mentally slowing down and learning how to prioritize my time and thoughts and live with greater intentionality and awareness.
One of the drawbacks has been people sending pictures and links. This has not happened too often but it has definitely happened several times. When this has happened, I simply told them that I was on a smartphone fast and using a basic phone so if they wanted to send the pictures to my email that would be fine. This has worked great and I get the pictures later at a more convenient time for me instead of my attention being arrested in the moment. It has been a great compromise. I have also been asked for links to websites or articles and I just ask for their email address and send them over at a later time. I haven't sent many pictures myself but about once a week I email my Mom some pictures of the children that I have taken on my camera.
The question of group messaging came up recently and I thought I would answer it here for anyone else who might be wondering. My phone does not do group messaging well. I am not in many group chats (and secretly kind of hate group messages) so this has not been a huge issue for me. It is a fact that there are some things you "miss out" on by having a basic phone. I'm ok with that. Any info I have truly needed to have, I have gotten through other means. Anything that's nonessential has gone by the wayside and my mind is less cluttered because of it. The benefits of not having a smartphone have greatly outweighed the benefits and things I "miss out" on by not having one. However, I believe the Light Phone, the Gabb Phone, and Punkt have group messaging. These all have different advantages and disadvantages and are all more expensive than the $40 little Nokia phone I purchased. Since I was tentatively dipping my toes in this experiment and I didn't know how it would go in the beginning, I didn't want to spend a ton of money upfront for some of these other alternatives. There may be other phones out there that I'm not aware of as well. As I am gaining more confidence and seeing huge benefits to being smartphone-free, I am seriously looking into other phones that are higher quality than my Nokia for longterm use.
I think it is important to not simply focus on all the things you might miss out on as that is only a portion of this experience. You cannot weigh all those things without also weighing the huge benefits of not having a smartphone. All of our internal objections (and even those from others) are all about what we will miss out on. "But you can't send links and pictures!" "But what about group messaging?" "What if I miss some important bit of information?" "What if I need it?" Living (mostly) distraction free is priceless. Investing where it matters is of eternal importance. We only have one brain and I want to treat mine with care and not abuse it like I have been. I want it to heal and flourish and serve me well all the days that I'm given here on this earth. Investing in knowledge (not just information) has a lifetime of benefits. Having clarity of thoughts and time and space to simply breathe and be and analyze our experiences for ourselves is wonderful. To quiet the noise around us and simply experience life for ourselves and experience those most healing connections and life-giving moments is indescribable.
In researching books on this subject I found this description of a book called Silicon Snake Oil by Clifford Stoll written in 1995 about the internet and it caught my attention. "Is being on-line truly useful? "Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life." I haven't read the book yet but I thought he made an interesting point. My smartphone did not add any value to the things I value most. I don't need it to cultivate a Bible reading discipline and a prayer life. I don't need it to invest in my marriage and children. I don't need it to write notes of encouragement to others. I don't need it to make a meal for a shut-in. I don't need it for developing deep friendships. I don't need it for church. I don't need it to practice hospitality. I don't need it to homeschool my children. I don't need it to read books. I don't need it to play with my children. I don't need it to make phone calls to ones I love that live far away. I don't need it to create a warm, inviting home. I don't need it to cook my family a nutritious meal. The concept that my smartphone was unnecessary to everything that is truly important to me really helped me reframe the necessity of my smartphone.
I hope this helps you if you are looking at doing this experiment for yourself. I also cannot recommend Brad Huddleston's book Digital Cocaine enough. He gives not only the neuroscience behind what happens in our brains with social media and smartphones, but offers solutions and ways we can protect our brains. He is not anti-smartphone or technology but stresses how they should be viewed and used. In an age where there is little training on phone etiquette and how to interact with these devices without them controlling us, I found his suggestions very good and eye-opening.