The downfall of the smartphone

Although I’m not attached to social media as most people are, the truth is that my screen time statistics on my iPhone tells an interesting story.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been staring at my phone for roughly 3h 30m a day. The apps I used the most were Brave, YouTube, Reddit and Maps. I’m going to let Maps aside, because I mostly use it in the car. It’s an actual legitimate use of a smartphone, I’d say.

Now, for YouTube—which I actually use inside Brave, but for statistics sake, I’m glad it comes up as a separate entry—and Reddit, there’s no way around it: it’s just me killing time. Time that I could be using for something else. Something actually useful like doing house chores, like reading a book, or listening to a full album, which is something I love to do and can’t even remember the last time I did, now that there are playlists for everything—well, that’s a different post.

For Brave, I wasn’t aware I was spending so much time in Brave, but truthfully told, if I can avoid installing yet one more app, that’s what I’ll do. So it’s not entirely surprising that Brave is at the top of my list.

But the thing is that even though I could be watching an interesting video on YouTube, and most of the videos I watch do have something I can take away, or researching something that’s interesting me on Brave, most of the time, I’m just doing it because that’s what my brain is used to. I don’t need it. But my brain still goes for it. While I’m on the couch. While I’m waiting at a supermarket line. While I’m waiting for someone. Or pretty much in any situation where I want to signal I’m not going to pay attention. As headphones used to do it for me 20 years ago.

I’m not sure if this is the 40’s crisis coming up earlier, but more and more I’ve been feeling like technology 20, 30 or even 40 years ago was less distracting, less addicting, more forgiving, more long lasting and more interesting in general.

Back when I rode the bus every single day, I used a pair of earbuds by Sony that were absolutely perfect for my ears. They were not cheap! But I liked them so much that I went through 3 or 4 pairs. Every time one of them broke—and it took years and plenty of use to happen—I went for a new one of the exact same model.

Can you imagine buying a tech product more than once nowadays? Most likely, after 1 year, it gets discontinued and replaced with The new one ™.

This is getting long already, so let’s go back to the smartphone.

There are a few things that I do on a smartphone that I would consider legitimate uses. Things that make me think about possible alternatives when I consider getting rid of my smartphone. Think navigating in your car, listening to music, location based automations, video calls with family, and most importantly, for me anyways, a good camera that’s always with me and a two factor authentication device.

But again, even though these are the things I’m worried about the most as I move forward with this plan, my screen time statistics tell a different story. These are the things I do the least with my smartphone.

It should be called a distraction-phone, instead of smart-phone.

Yes, it has plenty of legitimate uses. Yes, we can even argue it’s a work device. But down deep, we all know it’s a distraction machine, that also happens to do the other things we actually need it to do and don’t do very often.

I want my 3 hours back. Every day.
We’re talking about 21 hours per week! Almost a full day staring at a phone.

Think about it for a minute! 3 hours of screen time is very low for today’s standards, or so I’ve been told. But if you look at it from a different perspective, spending a full 24h day staring at a phone is absolutely insane. How much stuff would you get done in 24h? I bet you have some project or task you would like to get your hands on and find you don’t have the time. I know I do!

Guess where that time is going…
I keep going back to this:

A day has 24h. That’s 3 blocks of 8h.

8h to sleep and 8h to work are non negotiable for most people.
But whatever you do with the remaining 8h is up to you. I just don’t think that spending 50% or more of the actual “free” time we have per day staring at a phone is a good use of our time.

So here’s my plan, when it comes to tech devices, moving forward:

• A computer to do work;
• A tablet to edit photos, write content and consume media;
• A phone to communicate;
• A watch for fitness tracking and some smart features;

I talked about my new computer in a previous post. That’s a Linux machine running Omarchy. The tablet is an iPad Air 5th gen from 2022. The watch is still not defined, but it’s going to need cellular connection for the smart features to work without an iPhone nearby. And the one you’re most curious about, the phone, it’s going to be the AGM M6—a 4G feature/dumb phone with big keys, a rugged form factor, battery for days a humongous 3.5w speaker in a package that costs less than 100€.

After 3 or 4 years deep inside the so called Apple ecosystem, also known as the walled garden, I’m slowly climbing up that wall and finding great devices elsewhere.

Smartphones are amazing and highly complex devices. And we can look at them from plenty of different perspectives to justify moving away from them.
For me, it’s mostly about time.

It’s time to move on.