I
recently revisited a piece I wrote in 2013 about a Wall Street Journal essay by a then-40-year-old investment banker describing his experience of living without a cell phone for two decades. He cited the statistic that, as of that writing, 21 million American adults didn’t own one either — not just a smartphone, but no cell phone, period.

I wrote that I found that figure both surprising and heartening, and also a bit deflating. Here I’d thought I was doing quite well, thank you, for firmly insisting on holding onto my old-fashioned cell phone, and along came this survey to inform me that tens of millions of other Americans were doing entirely without. I do wonder, though, what the figure is now, nearly six years later.

I went on to speak of some of the practices I’d put in place regarding cell phones and their place in my life. I mentioned that I’d never even consider getting a hip holster for my phone, which would make it too much a permanent part of me. Instead, it lay in my shirt pocket and on perpetual “vibrate” mode.

I also noted a few personal rules I’d adopted for sending messages: “I only respond to messages but don’t initiate them, and even then, there has to be a good reason for me not to actually call the person back instead of sending a message; and I write back using fully formed sentences, punctuation and all. Weird, I know, but effective for my purposes. Better weird than wired, you might say.”

I mentioned as well the guidelines I’d tried to give myself when cell phones were first becoming ubiquitous, but which went by the wayside pretty quickly, such as going off to the side to answer a call on the street rather than speaking on my phone while in public.

Well, I still keep the gizmo on vibrate mode in my shirt pocket, and send messages in complete, punctuated sentences, typed letter by laborious letter. The world of social media remains entirely, blessedly foreign to me. I still don’t know, and frankly don’t want to know, what Twitter is, other than the kind I hear on spring mornings outside my window.

But in other, subtle ways, I’ve given in to the human inclination to acclimate and lose sensitivity. An example is the occasions when I’ve taken a peek at a message that comes into my phone during Shacharis. Would I operate any other machine in the middle of the beis medrash, and during Birchos Krias Shema? I’d like to think not. But because it’s so small and so momentary and I’ve seen others doing it regularly, it’s somehow okay. Like so much else in our lives, this is about the slippery slope of normalizing the objectively abnormal.

One antidote to help get oneself back on track, I find, can be reading about others’ struggles and triumphs, so I was happy to come across a recent New York Times essay by technology columnist Kevin Roose entitled “Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain.” He begins:

My name is Kevin, and I have a phone problem…. I don’t love referring to what we have as an “addiction.” That seems too sterile and clinical to describe what’s happening to our brains in the smartphone era. Unlike alcohol or opioids, phones aren’t an addictive substance so much as a species-level environmental shock….

I’ve been a heavy phone user for my entire adult life. But sometime last year, I crossed the invisible line into problem territory. My symptoms were all the typical ones: I found myself incapable of reading books… or having long uninterrupted conversations. Social media made me angry and anxious…. I tried various tricks to curb my usage…. But I always relapsed.

When, in December, Roose decided he’d had enough, he called science journalist Catherine Price, the author of How to Break Up with Your Phone, a 30-day guide to eliminating bad phone habits. She agreed to be his phone coach for one month, helping him craft a practical plan for building a healthy relationship with his phone and “unbreak” his brain by focusing on the root causes of phone addiction, including the emotional triggers that led him to reach for his phone.

Price advised Roose to create “mental speed bumps” that forced him to think briefly before engaging with his phone, e.g., changing his lock screen to display three questions to ask himself each time he unlocked the phone: “What for? Why now? What else?” This made him acutely aware of the bizarre phone habits he’d developed, like reaching for his phone every time he brushed his teeth or stepped outside his apartment building.

Roose also reviewed all his apps, keeping the ones that promoted healthy habits and discarding all others, which meant deleting all social media, news apps, and games. He reduced his home screen to just a calendar, e-mail, and password manager and disabled push notifications other than for calls and messages from a small list of people. He bought a locking mini-safe and began storing his phone inside it overnight.

Perhaps his most important discovery was:

…how profoundly uncomfortable I am with stillness. For years, I’ve used my phone every time I’ve had a spare moment in an elevator or a boring meeting. I listen to podcasts and write emails on the subway. I watch YouTube videos while folding laundry. I even use an app to pretend to meditate.

If I was going to repair my brain, I needed to practice doing nothing. So during my morning walk to the office, I looked up at the buildings around me, spotting architectural details I’d never noticed before. On the subway, I kept my phone in my pocket and people-watched…. It’s an unnerving sensation, being alone with your thoughts in the year 2019.

He also took up activities that could replace his phone habit, like pottery-making. At one point, he told his wife that while it felt great to disconnect, without a constant news stream and social media access, he often felt he was missing out on something important. To which she replied, “I’m sad that you’re having trouble with this, because it’s been great for me.” Since starting his disconnection program, she said, he’d been more present and attentive at home, spending more time listening to her and less time distractedly nodding while checking his inbox or tweeting.

Mr. Roose then underwent a 48-hour trial period during which he wasn’t allowed to use a phone or any other digital device. He spent a two-day weekend in the Catskills, and despite complications like getting lost due to no access to Google Maps, he observes that:

…it was great. For two solid days, I basked in 19th-century leisure, feeling my nerves softening and my attention span stretching back out. I read books. I did the crossword puzzle. I lit a fire and looked at the stars. I felt like Thoreau….

I also felt twinges of anger — at myself, for missing out on this feeling of restorative boredom for so many years; at the engineers in Silicon Valley who spend their days profitably exploiting our cognitive weaknesses; at the entire phone-industrial complex that has convinced us that a six-inch glass-and-steel rectangle is the ideal conduit for worldly experiences….

But I cannot stress enough that under the right conditions, spending an entire weekend without a phone in your immediate vicinity is incredible. You have to try it.

Hey, I just did, and will do so again in just six days’ time.

By the end of the monthlong program, his daily phone use had dwindled from five hours to one. More importantly, he concludes:

I’d bet that something fundamental has shifted inside my brain in the past month…. I look people in the eye and listen when they talk. I ride the elevator empty-handed. And when I get sucked into my phone, I notice and self-correct. It’s not a full recovery, and I’ll have to stay vigilant. But for the first time in a long time, I’m starting to feel like a human again.

And I suppose one might begin to feel more like a Jew again, too.

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 754. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com