What is the purpose of a phone?
“I can’t move until you are all behind the red line”. Having heard these words so often on my daily commute, I’m tempted to mouth along. A full bus meets desperate would-be passengers. An unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Except it’s not actually full; the culprit is usually someone standing halfway down the bus, staring at their phone, creating a bottleneck. On multiple occasions, I have come close to loudly saying “Eh, you, you with the phone, let’s enable people to get to where they’re going via this bus.” The reason that I don’t, is that on some level, I get it. Having an hour plus commute myself, you feel like you are wasting a huge portion of your day, heck even your life, if you don’t do something.
People complaining about others constantly being on their phones is not new, and neither is keeping our minds occupied on a compute. Before phones, it was newspapers, which is a popular response to criticism of the modern era.
Newspapers were designed for one purpose, to be produced daily, read, and then discarded. If you wanted to stretch the usefulness of the paper, perhaps you could re-read it over and over again, but that was about it. Phones, on the other hand, offer a multitude of features. It is difficult to discern what role phones are supposed to play in our life, and thus they have managed to worm their way into almost all facets of our day.
What do you need on a phone?
When they first began rolling out to the general public, mobile phones created the ability to contact others on the go. This could be helpful if plans changed while travelling, or in the case of an emergency when someone needed to reach you. Texting broadened this to include asynchronous communication. If your kid discovers that you are out of blueberries, they could send a text asking you to pick some up when you are at the store, without interrupting you at work.
Convenient, and certainly useful. However, it wasn’t without cost. Patience for not being informed diminished. If you were going to be 10 minutes late for a party, it would be rude not to give the hosts a heads up while on the way. As the phone added more and more features, the patience we had with ourselves diminished. If the phone call couldn’t wait, why should a google search be any different? Why not do it right now.
There are very few things that need to be done with such urgency. As a list, things that actually make sense to do while on the go that could not be done some other part of the day:
- Navigation (maps) - You could look up the route ahead of time, but having real-time information while traveling is actually a huge benefit. Note a dedicated GPS could easily replicate this functionality.
- Phone - Not going to extend this to texting, as texting ends up getting used for things that actually could wait. If your car breaks down in the middle of a rural area, being able to phone for help is essential.
- Camera - Not essential by any means, but does fit squarely in the definition of “functions you cannot put off until later in the day”
That’s really it. What’s shocking is that all three of those functions were integrated into phones many years ago. They are obvious uses, and actually fit the purpose of what a phone should do—while integrating other common tools that people would travel with, the GPS and the camera, into one device for convenience.
What phones have become
Rather than stopping at those functions, companies began to see the phone for something completely different. The phone is something that is always with you. It is a canvas onto which an infinite amount of things can be painted. What about a mobile game in which you spin slots for fake money? What about a web browser? What about the means to find the love of your life? All in one convenient handy form factor.
Even after integrating all of those additional bells and whistles, the phone still fell short of the ultimate purpose at which it has arrived today. The phone is the antidote to boredom. While at home, watching a movie, we pull it out to just “quickly check” what’s up in the infinite feed. We don’t go into an app searching for something specific—the phone is not meeting a particular demand—it is alleviating the stress of having the space to think.
Coincidentally (or maybe the actual reason I began thinking about all of this) there has been increased discussion about the role that boredom plays in our lives, and how phones are helping us numb the pain. This month I read The Siren’s Call, which focuses specifically around how attention and culture have shifted in the last decade, rather than just blaming screens. Screens are not the problem in and of themselves, it is the purpose to which we have assigned them. Earlier tonight my partner sent me Why Everything Is Making You Feel Bored (YouTube Video) which is pretty much the video version of The Siren’s Call. If you are looking for a more in-depth look at the message that I am trying to convey here, both are worth checking out.
Phones are ubiquitous for a reason
Often when reading one of these posts, there is a sense of judgement or shame. I don’t want you to feel that, just as I don’t judge the person on the bus. We’ve all been there, standing in line at the coffee shop, even sometimes on our phones while the worker is making the food, convinced that what we can find on a screen is more interesting than the human standing before us. As I’ve been thinking through this over the past couple of days, and having more conversations about the role that people give to their phones, I’ve come to the conclusion that while currently universal there is a path towards it getting better (though it will be hard). Friends are setting screen limits for themselves[1], it is increasingly seen as rude to be on your phone while at social gatherings, and overall people are just less excited for the next phone models.
Going forward, I’m going to make a more concerted effort to assign a purpose for what I want my phone to be. An e-reader, a holder of music and podcasts, and a space for jotting down things I think of throughout the day. Not a distraction to keep boredom at bay.
Some even set the passcode with their eyes closed or their phone upside down so that they cannot unlock it later. Much like Odysseus constraining himself to the mast knowing that he would be tempted. ↩︎