Where Is My Flip Phone?
the call is coming from inside the house
This is how conversations with my family have been going lately:
“Hey, um, you!” I point at a kid. No one responds.
“No, I mean you!” I say. One kids stops and turns to me, looking confused. “What’s your name?” I ask. “Whoever you are,” I say to my son, going through names and getting it right on the third try. “Bring me that spatula, no spoon. What’s it called again?”
Chip stands and watches. He’s likely making a mental tally of the cost of institutional care. “You see what perimenopause is doing to me?” I say.
“It’s word retrieval,” said my friend Jenn when she heard it happening at work. “In perimenopause and menopause, the ability to execute word retrieval becomes more difficult.”
That is absolutely accurate, and there are studies to prove it. But if I’m being honest with myself, there is something else going on, too…
When I attempt to say the name of one of my sons and fail, sometimes part of my brain isn’t thinking about their name. It is thinking about an episode of a podcast I want to finish. Or how they need to hang up their snow gear to dry. Or how I need to send a text. I am definitely struggling with word retrieval, but I’m also only half there with them. My other half is in a parallel universe with AirPods in listening to ‘The Daily’ or sitting upstairs at my laptop.
Last week, I wrote about reading a book in 24 hours for the first time in years. I hadn’t focused like that since I was 14 years-old and trying pause my VHS tape in time to spot my crush Ryan Phillippe’s non-speaking role in Crimson Tide.
Then I saw an author on Substack named Catherine Price, author of ‘How to Break Up with Your Phone.’ When I read the title of her book, I heard a DUN DUN DUN in my head. Uh oh, I thought. Is that my problem?
I remembered that my friend N’Jeri read this book a few years ago, so I reached out to her to hear about her experience and get her review.
“Yes! Read it!” N’Jeri said. “It had an immediate impact on my phone usage. I’ve been meaning to read it again because I’ve been slipping.”
“You’ll notice a huge improvement,” she said. “And it will make you so bummed to know how easily your phone steals your attention. And then you’ll think it’s evil and promise to never get back to that place of dependency again. And then a year will pass and you’ll think to yourself, ‘Man, I gotta read that book again!’ It’s an endless cycle. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES!”
Attention, I thought. That’s it! Where is my attention?
I took it as a sign that there was a copy of the book available at my branch of the library. I sat down with ‘How to Break Up With Your Phone’ in the dining hall and began reading with something to prove. I would show my perimenopausal brain and the world that I could muster up the focus I seemed to lack.
I would read the first section of the book, ‘Part 1: The Wake Up’ in one sitting.
‘How to Break Up With Your Phone’ is not a long book, and it took me an hour and a half to read Part 1. I had to mentally coach myself into staying in my chair so I wouldn’t get up. Reading felt like a concerted effort until I started getting pissed off. Take a look at my notes:
By page 41, I was ready to burn it all down.
“Engagement is sometimes referred to as the ‘currency of the attention economy,’” writes Catherine Price. “…Every moment of attention we spend scrolling through social media is attention spent making money for someone else… It’s attention that we didn’t spend on our families, or our friends, or ourselves. And just like time, once we’ve spent attention, we can never get it back.”
After a few more pages, Catherine addressed our attempts to divide our attention. “…There’s actually no such thing as multitasking because our brains can’t do two cognitively demanding things at once… I also mean all the mini-multitasking that we engage in all day long: glancing at Twitter while we’re also watching TV, looking at our email while we’re on a call… You may think that you’re able to simultaneously listen to your friend and respond to that text, but you can’t.”
She continues, “In 2009, Stanford researchers led by Clifford Naas published a groundbreaking study in which they evaluated self-described heavy multitaskers’ ability to perform a variety of tasks… Naas’ conclusion? ‘We worry that [heavy multitasking] may be creating people who are unable to think well and clearly.’”
This study was conducted only two years after the first iPhone was introduced. Our phones have only gotten smarter, faster, and more distracting. [Note: an updated version of ‘How to Break Up With Your Phone’ just came out this year.]
I could pull quotes from this entire book, but let me just say that Catherine Price lays it all out like a quick smack in the face: the design of smartphones and how they addict us, the role of dopamine, psychological characteristics of humans, social media and mental health, misconceptions around multitasking, and how phones change our brain chemistry, attention span, and memory.
And she says it all in a short book because she knows that that’s all our foggy brains can handle.
I remember seeing an Instagram post from the wife of a podcast host I like. That, in itself, is a very lame sentence and proof of my wasted attention. This gal took photos of her husband, said podcast host, on trips around the world, hanging out at home, and walking around outside… all with his face in his phone.
I don’t want to be like that, I thought. I asked my oldest, “Will you remember me with my face in my phone?”
“Eh,” he said. “Probably not.”
Score! But please note that I did not ask him, “Will you remember me not knowing your name?”
Part 2 is aptly titled, 'The Break Up,’ and I was ready. My son said I wasn’t a lost cause yet, so there was hope.
On Day 1, Catherine Price asked me to take note of my iPhone usage. I went to ‘Settings,’ then ‘Screen Time.’ I averaged 2 hours and 36 minutes on my phone, which didn’t feel that bad to me. But then I read it as a total: 18 hours and 18 minutes of screen time in a week. Is that possible? That is as much time as a part-time job!
I also averaged 116 pickups a day. I received an average of 78 notifications. I got pinged! and responded like Pavlov’s dog 78 times over the course of one day. Times that by seven because there are seven days in a week. [Alissa pours a glass of cold water in her face.]
On Day 3, I was supposed to start paying attention. “Over the next 24 hours, try to notice situations in which you nearly always find yourself using your phone.”
On my Day 3, my oldest son was home sick. I finished writing and posted a Substack essay. I checked the number of views it got five times in the first half hour after I hit ‘publish.’ Then I checked my texts to see if Cousin Lauren got around to reading it. (She is a very good cousin, so she read it relatively quickly.) When would Cousin Roni be able to read it? Would he like it? Text-text-text.
Now let me take you behind-the-scenes of this whimsical Substack you are reading: As soon as I hit ‘publish,’ Substack bumps that essay to the top of my Substack library. In the top right corner, I can click ‘View stats.’ I see ‘Views #’ in a large font, and this is the number of times my essay has been viewed. It tells me how many likes I get (and despite hundreds of views, I usually only get around TWO likes… hi Mom and Aunt Kim!), and they even include a line graph. Yes, a line graph. This line graph shows me how readership of the most recent essay compares to that of past essays. So much for doing it for the love of the craft with these wicked metrics!
And I fall for it. Every. Damn. Time. I must check my Substack metrics twenty times the day I post an essay. It is natural but premeditated on the part of Substack and, if I admit it, a habit I need to break. (However, I do hope that you feel flattered since I am clearly obsessed with you and what you like to read.)
USE MY PHONE FOR SUBSTACK - CHECK
Then my son turned on SportsCenter, and I was absolutely crawling out of my skin wanting to mess around on my phone. It got worse: he wanted to talk with me about SportsCenter. Did I hear someone got traded to the Lakers? No, I did not hear, and I don’t want to hear. Is it kinder to feign interest and say, “Please make this conversation end,” or pull out my phone and hold it up in front of his face?
WANT TO USE MY PHONE BECAUSE I AM BORED BY SPORTS TALK - CHECK
We went to the doctor’s office, and I noticed I almost pulled out my phone in the waiting room. I almost did it again in the room where the doctor met with us.
WANT TO USE MY PHONE BECAUSE I HAVE TO WAIT - CHECK
When we got home, I noticed that I really really really wanted to listen to a podcast while I did the dishes. I couldn’t possibly just do the dishes! Entertain me! My itchy hand is creeping toward the phone! [Alissa smacks her own hand and does the damn dishes in quiet.]
WANT TO USE MY PHONE SO I CAN LISTEN TO PODCASTS AND BE ENTERTAINED WHILE DOING CHORES - CHECK
Here’s the other thing: I tap it. I touch it. If I walk by my phone, I give it a little touch-touch to wake it up and see what’s on the home screen. Anything I need to see? What’s up? It’s a tick. It’s a force field.
WANT TO TAP MY PHONE AND WAKE IT UP BECAUSE IT’S THERE - CHECK
The second thing Catherine Price asked me to notice was:
“How and how often does my phone grab my attention (via notifications, texts, and the like)?”
This one got me ROARING. Notifications! After all that, I still have notifications!
Why do I have notifications on for MyRadar? I do not need to watch a storm system move over my area.
I was so mad, I zipped ahead to:
“Day 8 - Say “No” to Notifications.”
I never even thought about the fact that the default settings on Notifications were all ON when I got my phone. I have been receiving notifications regarding my email, my texts, the news, the weather, grocery orders, photo memories, and on and on and on. Yes, I turned a few off a few years ago, but guess what? It was a pain in the ass to go turn each notification off. That is by design, my friend, all by design.
So I turned off all of my notifications… all of them except Messages. I wanted to be notified of texts, and that was it.
What about email? That one felt sticky. What if I got an important email? What if I had a professional job with a professional team of colleagues and they needed to reach me? [Alissa gets distracted by a Working Girl fantasy and returns to writing another five minutes later.]
I do not have that job and colleagues (yet), so for now, having email notifications off feels fine.
But speaking of email, I also realized that when I place an order for a pickup from BJ’s, my local big box store, they email me a total of four times: the first email confirms my order, the second email tells me when they start shopping it, the third email tells me when it’s ready for pickup, and the fourth email tells me I’ve picked up my order, as if I didn’t know that already.
BJ’s is a separate, additional place I need to shut off notifications, this time for their emails?! They have bugged the phones, they are coming in the windows!
I never thought about the fact that social media apps are free, that the feeds are endless, and that they never stop and say ‘this material has already been viewed. Turn me off now and go make dinner.’
I never thought about the fact that my phone came with a smattering of colorful apps cluttered all over my home screen and that I had to learn how to move them around to declutter (and that many apps could be deleted or hidden in folders). I also never considered how that cluttered menu of colors and choices are exactly what draws me into repeatedly picking up my phone.
I started getting pissed again. So I’m letting tech moguls take over my life, is that it? I’m going to let Mark Zuckerberg call the shots?! Have you seen that turd lately? He’s the worst. He has no moral compass!
I also learned from Catherine Price that deleting apps is never actually ‘deleting’ them. They can always be found, always be downloaded if I ‘miss’ them. I also learned to google ‘how to put apps in folders on second screen’ and cleaned up my home screen so now it looks like this:
This boring home screen is by far the most effective move I’ve made. I have woken up my phone numerous times, taken a quick look at these dull ass choices, and put the phone back down.
The purple podcast app is a dangerous one for me, so it may have to get moved out soon, too. In the past I’ve told myself, ‘If I’m learning something, having my face in my phone is okay.’ But guess what? The things to learn are also never-ending.
If I want to find The New York Times app, which is kryptonite for this information junkie, I have to scroll to the second page, find the new folder titled ‘News,’ and click on it from there.
I have to remember N’Jeri’s wise words: It’s an endless cycle.
But I’m awake now. And before I know it, I just might remember everyone’s name again.
Lest I forget, just because my iPhone’s screen is dark, that doesn’t mean it is sleeping. That doesn’t mean I am safe. If I give it a little shake-shake, it will come alive. There’s something to look at in here! Something good! my iPhone whispers. A peek won’t hurt…
Thanks for reading.
XO
Alissa