connected to the people I’m physically with. On the
other hand, I think Snake will get boring quite quickly.Day zero
I decide to test the waters by doing a trial day – I am
still carrying my smartphone, but it has no sim card
and is on airplane mode. I have my trusty new Nokia
105 up and running. It’s less than a third of the size
of the iPhone and at most a quarter of its weight, and
draws an admiring comment from a friend: “Have you
bought one of those phones designed to be smuggled
into prisons up someone’s arse?”
I realise I honestly don’t know the answer to that
question, so promise to address it. In the meantime, I
check my disconnected smartphone roughly four times
i n 30 m i nutes. My f r iend ask s i f he’s bor i ng me.Day one
My fi rst day is almost too easy, as I don’t actually leave
home. So I decide to get answers about whether my
Nokia is indeed a prison phone. I get in touch with Chris
Atkins , author and producer, who served just under 30
months for a fi lm-fi nance tax fraud.
My phone, I quickly learn, would not have passed
muster during Atkins’ time inside. The favourite was
the Zanco Tiny T1 , smaller than a 50p, with almost no
metal parts; Atkins says it was known as the “beat the
boss” phone, the “boss” being a sit-on
meta l detec tor used i n U K pr isons.
But most people, Atkins tells me,The Guardian | 30.04.22 | SATURDAY | 27O
NE MONDAY MORNING early this year,
bleary-eyed and getting ready for work, I am
interrupted by a notifi cation on my phone :
a n A p p l e S c r e e n T i m e a l e r t , i n f o r m i n g m e m y
usage last week was up by 60% : to 19 hours
24 minutes a day. I stare at the numbers for a
while. Anyone who gets the recommended
eight hours’ sleep is awake for just 16 hours a
day – I apparently spent several hours more
than that using my phone. I share a screengrab with
f r iends, who reac t w it h concer n, i f not muc h su r pr ise.
That I am a heavy phone user hardly comes as a shock
to me, either – I work as an editor at an investigative
journalism organisation on a team of more than 20 , I
have a second job as a columnist and I spend more time
on Twitter than is good for anyone’s sanity. Being glued
to my phone is virtually a career necessity, even if I am
g u i l t y o f s p e n d i n g a n e xc e s s i v e a m o u n t o f t i m e o n t h e
game Tents and Trees , too.
Even so, 19 hours seem s like overkill – and so it turns
out. A careful search of Apple support forums reveal s
there has been a glitch in its time online feature that
has in some cases dramatically infl at ed the numbers.
I make an adjustment for that, but the real fi gure isn’t
much better: around nine hours a day. Over the previous
week I’ve had no fewer than 3,845 phone notifi cations
(760 on one day) and have unlocked my phone 1,635
times – 414 on one day, or around once every 3 minutes
28 seconds. (On an iPhone, all these statistics can be
found under Screen Time in the settings menu.)Perhaps, I tell myself, a bit of a break from my smart-
phone is in order. I decide to put it aside for a while, to
see how I will cope.
First, I set some ground rules. I don’t want to lose my
j o b , s o I m a k e s u r e I ’ l l s t i l l b e a b l e t o a c c e s s t h e i n t e r n e t
and all its functions via laptop, provided I use it only at
h o m e o r i n t h e o ffi ce. I can buy a dumb phone – I choose
a Nokia 105 ( about £20 ), featuring a colour screen, FM
radio, fl ashlight and one game, Snake, but very little
else – and for two weeks will use nothing but that.
During that period, I ’ll talk to experts and see what
they think. What’s it like for the heaviest of heavy phone
users to go cold turkey? One school of thought suggests
I’ll feel more in the moment, more observant , moreMY NOKIA RINGTONE IS
CONSPICUOUSLY LOUD.
THE BARTENDER QUICKLY
REASSURES THE ROOM:
‘SORRY, THAT GUY IS USING
A PHONE FROM THE 90S’