My week without a smartphone. What I learned about our relationship with technology.

A couple of weeks ago my phone and wallet were stolen from my bag which I had left unattended. Beyond the initial shock, what most affected me was the helplessness I felt without any means of payment or communication. I initially couldn’t think how I would get home. Fortunately, I was helped out by colleagues and when I got home was able to use my wife’s phone to cancel my bank cards and block the phone. 

It took nearly 10 days to replace the phone and get up and running again. I quickly discovered how difficult it is to do anything online without a phone (like trying to buy a phone!) because of two-factor authentication. Given my interest in how technology mediates our relationships, organisations and societies, this has been an instructive experience. What have I learned? 

Firstly, the initial feeling of helplessness is important to note. This suggests a high degree of dependency, not only in practical terms but also emotionally. I was fully invested in my relationship with my phone and used it as an integral part of my life including for: payment, navigation, communications, music, news, entertainment and diary. In order to gain the many benefits of technology, we give up our agency to it.  

This high degree of dependency may indicate that we are regressed to a more infantile state of mind in which there is an expectation that our needs are met instantaneously. If they are, then there is no need to bear the frustration which is a pre-requisite for thinking to emerge and to learn from the experience. The connectedness of digital technologies means that any anxiety that is experienced can be dispersed in multiple directions, such as through social media or in impulse purchases.  

My experience of losing my phone was that our world is increasingly orientated to the ‘convenience’ provided by these powerful technologies. But is this in our best interests or of the companies that thrive on the dependent phone users looking for instant gratification?  

I had some positive experiences during my phone-less week including the satisfaction of navigating London without Citymapper or Google maps. It was nice to use my brain for the task rather than delegating it to an app. This links to a finding from my research which was that, rather than ‘switching off’ completely from technology as a way out of the child-like dependency, it is possible to have a more mature or adult relationship with it. Perhaps a third position is possible in which we both use the phone and continue to think about how we are using it?