As an antitech activist, I spend a lot of time telling people how to live without a smartphone. I gave mine up for a Nokia 2780 flip phone a few years ago. “Moderation is a myth,” I say, and I mean it. You simply can’t forge a balanced relationship with a device that’s designed to be used constantly.
When I share this message online—in essays, podcast interviews, and workshops promoted on social media—I am often accused of hypocrisy. In one essay, I was accused of harnessing social media to make my “opposition to technology [my] brand;” apparently “the contradiction is so blatant it verges on self-parody.”
The criticism hurt, but I held fast to the knowledge that switching to a dumbphone in 2022 had changed my life for the better, and that spreading my message—in real life, but also, yes, online—had helped strangers across the world. “You have played no small part in giving me my life back,” one writer told me in an email. Still, there was one accusation that haunted me, because it rang true: Downgrading my phone was irrelevant if I was still addicted to my laptop.
When I first got rid of my smartphone, I still thought I could set boundaries around my laptop. I kept it at my art studio, and my evenings were gloriously offline. Then one day, I brought my laptop home to continue working on a short story. I did that the next day too, and every day after that. It wasn’t too bad; I didn’t have the Wi-Fi password for the apartment I shared with five roommates, so all I could do on my computer was write. Then, in a moment of weakness, I peeked at the bottom of the router and found the password.