Could you survive without your cellphone?
If you had asked me this one year ago, I would have answered with a resounding “No!”. My addiction to mobile technology ran deep. I was a relatively early adopter of cellphone technology- my first phone was a odd little Fujitsu model with mediocre reception, a ridiculously short battery life, and a fake dial tone when you flipped it open. Long before texting, long before MY5, I had a bulky, static-y cellphone that made me feel like Zack Morris and look like a drug dealer.
It took about ten years before I made the leap to my first true smart phone, a fancy little work-issued Blackberry that ensured I was plugged in and available any time, day or night. It was love at first buzz- I could keep on top of work and stay in touch even when I was away from my desk, and quickly became a master at BrickBreaker. While some people feel enslaved by the Blackberry, my initial feelings were those of freedom- I didn’t have to rush home from a movie or a box social to check my email, I was always in the loop and didn’t have that heavy feeling in my chest every time I sat down at my computer after an absence, wondering what disaster was waiting for me. Call it Stockholm Syndrome if you like, but I felt a noticeable drop in my stress levels as long as my little buddy was chained to my belt.
But then the unthinkable happened- I found myself without a phone. When I changed employers last January, my Blackberry didn’t follow me and I was too cheap/frugal to pay for one myself. I felt like a 2 year old who had just had his beloved pacifier ripped from his mouth. What if someone had a question for me outside of regular business hours? What if the boss needed me while I was at an outside meeting? How could I check the market in the back of a taxi? What if my wife needed me to pick up milk on the way home? You can’t have cereal without milk- would I never have a healthy breakfast again?!?
Much to my surprise, the loss of 24 hour connectedness didn’t result in a series of work disasters and personal catastrophes. With the exception of once buying tomatoes at the market when we already had a bunch at home (and I couldn’t call home to check), things continued pretty much as normal. I had always found my Blackberry to be a bit of a stress reliever, as I stopped worrying about what I may be missing when I was away from a computer for more than 6 minutes. I quickly came to realize that it hadn’t actually been relieving stress at all- it was just a way of masking it. I had been incapable of leaving the office at the office, but my Blackberry served a convenient coping mechanism. It was a crutch that allowed me to carry on like a real human boy without having to find effective and constructive ways of dealing with my lawyerliness. A junkie who wears long sleeve shirts to hide his track marks is still a junkie. Being Blackberry-free quickly forced me to address the underlying and problem and find real ways of dealing with stress, like relaxing walks, yoga, and binge eating.
There was one curious side effect to my cold turkey cellphone recovery. Occasionally, while sitting at the dinner table or enjoying a movie, I would feel that familiar tingle on my hip, those two gentle prods that had become a part of my physiology. Like Pavlov’s dog, I would instinctively reach for my hip to find… nothing. I suppose it was like a much kinder, gentler version of phantom limb syndrome- I call it Phantom Blackberry Disorder, or PBD. Thankfully, my PBD more or less disappeared after 3 months, but every now and then I’ll still feel a little twinge on my belt and let out a nostalgic sigh. But perhaps the biggest adjustment has been to losing immediate access to the boundless knowledge of the internet. Like so many others, I had become accustomed to turning to Google or Wikipedia to answer every query and settle every dispute. With my Blackberry gone, I can no longer avail of the collective wisdom of cyberspace. But I’ve found a way to adjust- now, instead of reaching out for Google when somebody wants to know something, I just do what I had done for years prior to internet-in-your-pants- I make something up and say it with enough confidence that nobody will question me. What’s the capital of El Salvador? Why it’s St. Mangoes, of course. How many feet in a furlong? 800. Is Ann Coulter actually a robot? Of course she is. It’s nice to return to a world where the winner of an argument is not determined by “facts”, but by who can most confidently argue that which he knows nothing about. It’s like the whole world is a courtroom!
Image by Cyndie@smilebig!
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Kudos! I’m attached to my crackberry and once suffered from the false alerts. It honestly felt like the regular vibration, but then I would check and nothing. A very interesting phenomenon. I decided to change the settings so that it only notified me of phone calls - emails, texts, etc did not trigger a beep or a buzz - fixed the problem after a few weeks. I check the blackberry often enough that I don’t need instant notifications - they are such a distraction.
I also lost a blackberry in a snow drift, retrieved it about 7 weeks later after the snow melted (and it worked!), but those 7 weeks were quite liberating after the initial “I feel like I’m not wearing pants” shock…
I’m way too hooked to give up my iPhone. No way, no how. For some of us, phones are for more than just work- mine replaced my home phone a few years back, and it’a great safety feature for driving in remote areas or walking home late at night.
@Preet- Glad to hear I’m not the only one who had phantom buzzing. You make a good point about turning off notifications- I’ve done the same thing on my desktop PC- no instant alerts, and I check my messages on a regular schedule instead of being tempted to read each on as it comes in.
But I must ask- how on earth did your BB survive 7 weeks in a snowbank?!?
I had Blackberry back when they still had monochromatic screens and it actually had some sort of prestige to it. Now they give them away to children in boxes of Sugar Crisp.
Funny that I moved away from it and returned to a phone that I could easily conceal and fit in my pocket. I’ve never been happier and I still snicker at the thought of people carrying these gigantic Commodore 64 sized devices on their belts. I check the internet when I am at work, or get home. Otherwise, I quite enjoy my time with nothing but voice\text contact.
I seem to also have a thing for dropping those things in toilets. I undo my belt and the Blackberry rides it like a monorail right into the drink. I will save my extraction methods for another time…
I think it was because the temperatures were cold enough that not much water got into the unit, it just sat in a cocoon of ice, effectively. I *think* snow banks melt top-down so it’s almost like sublimation, or close enough that not much water got into the unit even as the snow banks receeded… ?
In any case, there is a tab under the back cover that is white that turns red if the unit had “irreparable water damage”. Well, the tab was RED - so even by its own admission, it should not have worked. Therefore I must have some sort of undead blackberry.
Have you noticed you write in complete sentences, actually interact with people and become a normal human being?
My favorite smartphone story is walking into a bar that is known for being a pick up joint in downtown Toronto and watching everyone around me texting and no one actually talking to one another. And we call this progress!
We haven’t had cell phones for 9 months (thanks to our old provider having NO coverage where we now live and us not having the money for a security deposit with Bell or Telus). We never had Blackberries (Blackberrys?), but we were used to sending text messages about picking up milk on the way home. I miss the convenience of that, but otherwise, we do just fine without them.
I think if I ever had 24/7 internet access I’d turn into a zombie. I’d have to get an undead Blackberry like Preet’s.