In the early summer of last year, after I'd gone into a few stores that didn't have anything dumb enough, a T-Mobile rep located a Kyocera flip phone somewhere in their shop's back room. I don't think he had sold this model to someone under 60 before. Once he gave up trying to upsell me, he seemed amused. Even before the SIM card was in, flipping the new device open and closed brought back memories of how visceral, how tactile, it was to end calls with a snap. No more dabbing the screen with my thumb.
Each time it cracked shut it felt like I was severing myself from all the bad habits which had accumulated around my smartphone. During some of my pandemic low points, my average smartphone use had crept upwards of six hours a day. The aspects of the internet that prove most ensnaring differ person by person, but for me, it had been YouTube videos and clickbaity articles. I won't say I enjoyed either of those things, but that's what trapped me in binges. It would often begin with something substantive and worthwhile — maybe two experts debating the projected impacts of global warming — and that would lead to something a little less illuminating, say, an MSNBC interview or a late-night comedy clip, and pretty soon I'd be watching hashed up clips of a movie I'd already seen or two hours of epic fails or whatever else the algorithm had identified as something my particular psychological profile would be unable to resist at that moment.
