The Smart Move to a Dumb Phone

I kicked my iPhone to the curb, and I'm happily driving into the sunset without GPS

“Bro, this is honestly the craziest conversation I’ve ever had.”

So said the Xfinity customer support rep a few weeks back, when I asked for advice on how to switch from my iPhone 13 to a “dumbphone.”

He was bewildered. He was confused. He didn’t understand why I wanted to go into the past, and not into the glorious future, and in a way, neither did I.

In an era of AI, next gen, at-your-door, same-day, make money without leaving the house, 10x living, why was I looking to avoid the latest technology and convenience? Was this a privileged move? Was this some Captain Fantastic shit? Where was this coming from?

A sober reflection on addiction

I’ve been alcohol-free for 14 years. Before I stopped drinking, I literally could not imagine living in a world without booze. It was a part of the nightlife I participated in as a musician, a part of the tortured artist gig as a composer, intertwined with romance and good times, and as a dude, beer is life; or so I had told myself to excuse my secretive and daily use of alcohol. 

One solid, full-strength anxiety attack in 2009 sealed my commitment; I was unhealthy, overweight, and a mental mess, so I decided to hang up my spurs. 

For the first two weeks, it was pretty hard, not because I had the shakes or anything, but taking alcohol out of my routine exposed the MASSIVE amounts of time I had wasted getting buzzed, leaving me with huge chunks of the day to do something with.

And I filled the void with projects, releasing a solo album, focusing on composing, and then connecting with Big Daddy Kane and becoming an integral piece of his touring band, and recording horns on Anthony Hamilton’s Grammy-nominated album, “Back To Love.” 

Would all of this have happened had I stayed drinking? I’m not sure, but the likelihood of it all would’ve been diminished for sure. My energy and action was trapped in addiction, and only on the other side of making concrete changes was I able to see how much energy I lost, and appreciate all the wonderful things I gained.

Based on my experiences in sobriety (and in jazz and poetry), I have extensive experience turning my back on a world where all the functioning adults are partaking in something I’m not. 

After getting sober, you can clearly see how everyone is at different points in admitting they have problems handling an addictive substance that hijacks their decision-making skills. It isn’t that certain people are weaker, diseased, or just can’t handle their booze, but that addiction to anything rewires your dopamine to engage the substance/scenario in spite of your rational brain.

Enter; the smartphone. 

A sober look at phones

I won’t share all the crazy research that’s been done to prove that smartphones are crack. You can just think about living in a world without one and feel your anxiety pump up, your dopaminergic dendrites salivating, your fear of disconnection and loneliness roar to life.

I felt all that too before I got off the highway and it was a long, winding offramp.

After bringing my smartphone usage down, from 7 hours a day at the peak, to a little over an hour before I ditched it, and looking at the daily pickups (100 minimum) I realized the next horizon on my journey was to figure out how to get off the smartphone crack. And that’s when it got real….what was I going to lose?

My photos - my social media accounts for work - email - Slack - Zoom - my music - Google Maps - the pizza delivery app - all the contacts - emojis - GIFs in texts - ALL OF THAT was going to go away if I got a dumbphone.

But my experience of living nearly half my time on Earth without a smartphone, gave me hope. If you want to do computer stuff, use the computer. If you want to use the computer when you’re away from it, you can’t, so plan ahead.

Simple enough; now, where can I find a dumbphone….

My Punkt Phone

I asked folks at work what they thought of the idea of getting rid of the smartphone, and they were super supportive and told me about the Punkt phone.

I looked it up, it was able to take the nanoSIM card in my iPhone, the marketing was aimed at people exactly like me, and it was $300. A bargain compared to the $1700 iPhone. So I bought it and took it to the Xfinity store.

From the moment I whipped out my dumbphone, all the Xfinity employees (all wearing shirts that said “home of 10G” whatever that is) were agog; they did not believe that this was a real phone. They laughed, invited others over to gawk at it, and inspected it like the apes in the beginning of “2001: A Space Odyssey”

Actual image of Xfinity store employees looking at my dumbphone

Turns out, they are so in the future, the Punkt phone could not be seen by their network. They told me I would have to get a new phone number and a pre-paid plan from Target, like some drug dealer with a burner phone.

I then went to the AT&T store next door, and got it set up in 15 minutes, same number, no issues. Score one for legacy infrastructure.

From smart to dumb

Transitioning to a 4G LTE phone was hard, NGL. I had to manually input contacts after failing to understand how to get a VCF file off the phone. But this was good too, because a huge number of contacts in my iPhone were not needed. Score one for spring cleaning.

I had to go back to manual texting, hitting the alphanumerics until I got a T, then an H, then an A, then an N, then a K, and finally an S. THANKS! Jesus. This might suck. T9 predictive is no help either, I didn’t get that back in the day, still don’t.

No reactions to texts, no thumbs up, or hearts. My emojis were there, but I have to scroll through pages to find the right one.

People texting me URLs? Naw man - can’t see it. Email it to me like I’m your grandma.

But within the first days of owning a dumbphone, I started to feel a shift.

Just like when I quit drinking, I was now the proud owner of a bunch of free time. Time I had spent checking my phone, seeing if something happened, did they text, email, did I get a Like, should I comment, or reshare, this is interesting, I’ll read this later, I disagree with this, I love this, I need that, I hate that - all on a drip connected to my arm. Now, gone.

What replaced it was something I had unwittingly missed, for years; a different kind of time. Time to listen, engage, and live in the real world, time for games, music, jokes, conversation, walks, quality moments/memories with my children; all that time and all those experiences came galloping back.

And most shockingly and pointedly (because I hadn’t noticed how bad it was) there was the absence of anxiety. Anxiety I’d miss something, or more precisely, anxiety I forgot to check to see if I’d missed something, the anxiety that came with having access to something that supposedly kept me from missing anything.

Digital detox

I came across Jonathan Haidt’s Substack, and saw a post promoting this Digital Detox quiz, and I took it before I got rid of smartphone and after, and boy, lemme show you….

This was the best discovery. To know I couldn’t even answer some of these questions after ditching my smartphone, because my phone was now JUST A PHONE, was the best surprise. I stopped bitching on the social media apps on my smartphone about the addictive nature of social media apps on a smartphone, and decided to take action. Feels lush, accountable, and rebellious AF.

So my advice after all this is; if you can make the switch to a dumbphone, it could be one of the smartest decisions you can make, for yourself, your family, and the future. If you want advice or to talk about it, I am here for you.

And I bet you might be wondering; will I go back? To the anxiety, to the time suck, to the on-demand attention harvester, to my kids seeing me staring at a screen rather than their faces?

What would you do?