Am I smarter without my smartphone?

My 11-month old smartphone died last week. At first, it was just frozen so I wasn’t worried. As a heavy user of my gadgets with several apps running and dozens of browser tabs open at the same time, I wasn’t surprised.

The RAM of my phone is probably as chaotic as my own brain function. Both need a good nudge every now and then. All I needed was a trusty battery pull and I would be all set, right? Everyone needs a reboot sometimes.

Or not. The phone apparently had a death wish. In a matter of minutes, I had researched the possibilities, and in a few hours I exhausted all solutions. By the end of the day, the white gadget that fit so nicely in the palm of my hand for the past year had given up, a DNR order carved on its chest.

It left me like an over-excited 19-year-old. One moment she was wrapped around me, fidgeting and all at once babbling about numerous topics and tugging at my sleeve, sitting on my lap, blowing in my ear, and reviewing me on the Krebs Cycle, to unresponsive – pale skin, blue lips, limp arms on the ground and too dehydrated to be even be foaming at the mouth.

My querida, the only thing that could keep me away from my wife, was dead of a crack overdose. I gave the poor girl too much stuff. 

The phantom phone 

I shipped the unit off to a service center and I’m currently waiting to hear back. In the meantime, I spent the rest of that evening panicked at what to do during my 30-minute commute to and from my job the next day.

The eternity of half an hour of emptiness was daunting. What was I going to do during that empty time slot in my day, twiddle my thumbs? I’ve had this thing in front of my face from the first hour of waking to the last hour at night, replaced only by a computer screen at work.

The day my phone was on its deathbed, I rode the subway forced to do what I used to before smartphones – nothing. I watched feet, I watched people, I closed my eyes. I felt a phantom phone vibrating on my thigh. Out of habit, I pulled out the dead phone as soon as I surfaced, only to see the reflection of my frown on its black screen. 

The next morning on the train, I came prepared. I packed an actual book and two more on my Kindle. I read Junot Diaz on the e-reader happily, stopping every so often to look up, notice a witty subway ad or unusual footwear, and then realize I had no phone with which to take its picture.

When the train crossed an above-ground bridge, I had the urge to check my phone but ended up looking back down on my book and reading, loving that it didn’t have a touch screen and I could grip that single-purpose gadget with my entire hand.

The lost moment

By the end of the week, I’d finished a book and a half, happy to do so but sad at the realization that I had not read a single book for at least a year. In a matter of days I stopped wondering about Twitter interactions and FB notifications.

I realized I loved having the time to myself without any outside stimulus. With my phone I was always worried about missing something, of being left out of an online conversation, of missing a moment. But without it I realized that the moment I had missed was the one I was actually in, the one that didn’t rely on anyone’s opinion of a selfie, or an interesting poster, or a photo of a street performer.

I wasn’t contributing to another world far away from me. By myself and without social media at my fingertips, I could actually let my world happen to me, and then check on everyone else when there was extra time on a desktop computer – instead of the other way around.

I’m definitely not a Luddite who scoffs at technology and mocks social media. I love being in touch with my family and friends in a way I’d never be without the internet. I’m quite aware of technology’s benefits and I’ve been on to new gadgets even before they’re in the market.

I value the purpose of social media and have actually built a following answering questions from young people daily. But losing my phone thrust me back into my own thoughts, the ones that existed regardless of whether there was anyone around to hear them via social media share. I realized I missed that part of me that wasn’t constantly wondering if anybody “liked” me, mentioned me, or sought my opinion on some random topic.

I missed not being so wired. Smartphones first appealed to my desire to be connected to the world 24/7. But as soon as I connected, it actually wasn’t just a medium by which we could get information. It demanded from us our responses, our instantly divided attention.

Within arm’s reach of thousands of friends, peers, acquaintances and fans, we’re constantly hounded for comments, retweets, favorites or likes. I certainly do not miss being asked by a stranger on Twitter, “Why are you taking so long to respond?” That was my cue that my online life was beginning to demand more of me than my actual one.

To be at least SMS-reachable, I recently unearthed my ancient blackberry to use as a temporary phone. In it I found something I wrote to console myself when I lost my (now dead) smartphone for a few days last year. It said: You are not your smartphone. 

You are not your gadget

Of course I was not my gadget. I knew that much. But how much of my personal space and mental real estate did I give up to accommodate the hundreds of daily pings it demanded of me? How much time did I spend responding to others’ need for information and validation instead of catering to my own?

If losing my smartphone would be a nudge towards some much needed behavior modification, I was all for it. Sure I missed my querida, but when she comes back I’d like her to be a little less hyperactive and a lot less needy. Ideally, she would be a mature companion such as a personal assistant or even like a real mistress, present only on an as-needed basis. – Rappler.com

Shakira Andrea Sison is a Palanca Award-winning essayist. She currently works in finance and spends her non-working hours twiddling her thumbs in subway trains. She is a veterinarian by education and was managing a retail corporation in Manila before relocating to New York in 2002. Follow her on Twitter: @shakirasison and on Facebook.com/sisonshakira.