Six months without a smartphone and counting

DH journalist Rukmini Ravishankar describes what happened when she traded hers for a feature phone

The author was spending all the ‘extra’ time she now had on reading, watching films, strolling through my neighbourhood, journaling, singing. Credit: DH Photo/Pushkar V

The author switched from a 12 megapixel, 64 GB smartphone to a low-end feature phone. Credit: DH Photo/Pushkar V

It was 2019. A two-year-old cousin was visiting my home in Bengaluru. To keep her busy, I placed a colourful page of a newspaper in front of her. She looked at it curiously, and then with her tiny finger, tried to scroll on it, up and down. Watching her reflexively treat a newspaper like a smartphone made me think about myself — how many times I pick up my phone, how much of what I do is just mindless scrolling, and, importantly, what I would rather do.

Since then, I have tried to watch my phone usage. I downloaded productivity apps such as Forest that splits your day into work slots and break slots, and Google Tasks that helps you plan your day. I also used the Digital Wellbeing feature on my phone to monitor my screen time. Do you see the irony? While this setting is designed to take care of your health, every other feature on the phone nudges you to pick it up more often.

I am 23 years old. I grew up in the era of Barbie-themed toy flip phones. At the press of each button, my pink-coloured phone would play the first line of Bollywood songs such as ‘Chaiyya chaiyya’, and ‘Dhoom machale’. I loved making pretend phone calls on it and banging it shut. And then, during my teens came the era of Japanese dramas in which rich college students would use flip phones studded with real jewels and dangling tags. I would spend hours looking up these flip phones on my ever so dull smartphone.

Also Read | Rural India puts smartphone-buying plans on hold

Turning point

A few days into December 2022, I noticed that my phone usage was averaging three hours a day. This was appalling given that I was now holding a full-time job with this newspaper as a video journalist. The job can get hectic and I didn’t think I had three hours to spare most days.

But I soon realised that if I took my phone everywhere — to the restroom, to the canteen, to the library and on walks around the office premises, three hours just flew by.

According to the State of Mobile 2023 report by Data.ai, this wasn’t alarming. The average phone usage in India climbed from 3.7 hours a day to 4.9 hours between 2019 and 2022. Social media apps such as Instagram usurped most of the screen time for 18-24-year-olds.

Many of my friends use their mobile phone for about eight hours a day, so why was I upset over three? Because I wasn’t doing things I wanted to do. Scrolling on the phone wasn’t something that brought me happiness or made me wiser. It had become second nature to me — I lived; I ate; I slept; I scrolled.

I had to get rid of my smartphone. I had toyed with the idea in the past but I could never bring myself to take that step. I had a bunch of questions: How would I stay in touch with friends? How would I make payments? How would I book cabs during emergencies? And how would I go around Bengaluru given my abysmal sense of direction?

I went for it

A few days later, I decided to take a leap of faith. If problems come up, I will deal with them, I told myself as I sat on the bed in my hostel in Indiranagar.

Now I needed a less addictive phone. These days, a Google search for phones simply turns up a list of smartphones that cost half my salary. One needs to search specifically for feature phones — they are priced Rs 3,000 and upwards.

For Gen Zs who have never seen or used a feature phone, here’s a quick primer. A basic cell phone allows you to only make calls and send text messages. A feature phone does a bit more — you can access the Internet, play mobile games, click photos, and listen to music, but the speed and capacity is limited when you compare it to a smartphone. ‘Click, tap, scroll’ doesn’t work on low-end feature phones — you need to press buttons!

Given my fascination with flip phones, I had already decided that the Nokia 2660 Flip would be my next phone. I spent Rs 4,500, and it arrived in three days. The feeling of holding the phone in my hands was incredible, as if years of longing had come to fruition. It had a little screen on the top. The home screen flashed time, date, and a shortcut or two. I explored further.

The 0.3 megapixel camera on this phone captured grainy photos, unworthy of uploading on Instagram. You could access the Internet, but the browser was so slow and outdated that I gave up in a few seconds. The phone had a few pre-installed games like Snake, Tetris, and Doodle Jump. The concept of downloading things simply didn’t exist on this phone. So, no new games, no new apps, no WhatsApp, no Instagram, no Spotify, no work emails. But I distinctively loved the tactile feel of pressing buttons while typing, and it dripped of nostalgia.

And so, I removed the SIM card from my 12 megapixel, 64 GB smartphone, switched it off, and locked it in my cupboard. My parents, who had discouraged me from taking this step, were now proud of me. My friends were happy but at the same time annoyed that they could no longer send me memes, which, you know, is the primary marker of friendship these days. Strangers on buses and trains stared at my bright red flip phone. They asked me if they could hold it, and make fake calls just so they could slam it shut in pretend anger like they had seen in films. They marvelled at my phone and also at me.

Change was good

I wasn’t sending a barrage of SMS texts as one would assume. Some days, text messages would be fewer than three.

Let me clarify. I didn’t go off social media completely — I could access WhatsApp and Instagram when I had my laptop near me at work, or back at my hostel.

Browsing on the feature phone was almost pointless. I haven’t done it more than four times in six months. While one swipe and one tap is all it takes on a smartphone, turning on the Internet required a ridiculous amount of effort on a feature phone.

I started noticing little changes in my life. My loo breaks now lasted 20 seconds, which is all it takes, really. In my mind, I replaced my phone with a book. Whenever I felt the urge to pick up my phone, I’d pick up a book instead. Then I’d quickly realise that I don’t have the time to read right now, and I’d put the book down and continue with my work. But over time, I managed to devour 12 books, old and new. I would read on Metro rides, while walking from the entrance of my office to my desk, and between my meals. I was thrilled because I had read all of one book in 2022!

I saw an improvement in my mental health — multiple studies have shown that a prolonged use of smartphones can cause stress, anxiety, depression, sleep problems and tiredness.

In the absence of a smartphone to doom-scroll through at night, I would doze off early and sleep peacefully. Social media hardwires you to believe that other people are always having a better time than you — at clubs, on holidays, in everyday life. This curated reality was now out of sight, out of mind, and it made me appreciate my life more — I was spending all the ‘extra’ time I had on my hands reading, watching films, strolling through my neighbourhood, journaling, singing, etc.

Besides that, I noticed I was saving Rs 200-300 every day. As convenient as it is to make payments with a few taps, it makes you lose track of spontaneous spendings on junk food and knick-knacks. My little flip phone had no provision to make such payments. I could pay only with cash, which I barely carry.

Once I switched over, I observed that living in the moment is a concept lost to the Internet age. All we want to do is take photos and share them with 600 people, half of whose names we can’t remember. With my phone camera, I couldn’t take good photos and with slow to no Internet, I couldn’t upload them. Being a visual thinker and filmmaker,
I did miss photography badly, more so because Bengaluru’s golden light is incredibly
photogenic. But on the other hand, I got to live the photo-worthy moments fully.

Going off the smartphone also fostered conversations. Since I didn’t have access to Google Maps, I had to ask people for directions. Even when they didn’t know what to
tell me, they would kindly look it up on their smartphones.

Reality check

I was happy with the way things were going, except on my work front. On shoot days, arranging an office cab, sharing a location with the team and framing camera shots without a smartphone became testing.

Even on non-shoot days, my colleagues had to call me every time I needed to be told something. Last-minute changes to scripts were no longer possible because I didn’t have access to Google Docs on the move. Photos couldn’t be sent to me for verification over WhatsApp. I couldn’t read emails unless I had my laptop around. All of this made my boss unhappy and understandably so. She sat me down one day and told me as necessary as this step may be for my personal life, it is detrimental to my work. Find a way to fix this, she said. If I were in her place, I think I would have had similar expectations.

After returning to my room, I took my smartphone out of my cupboard three months after I had locked it, and booted it back to life. I started checking my WhatsApp and emails at regular intervals to ensure I didn’t miss work alerts. Soon, it wasn’t just WhatsApp and emails. I continued to carry my feature phone in the office, but back in my room, I would switch to my smartphone to scroll on Instagram and place orders on Zepto and Zomato. I could not stop. My sleep became shorter, my spending shot up, and my smartphone usage peaked to an hour a day. This was not good. I decided to keep my smartphone out of sight and pick it up only when necessary.

I knew I wasn’t an outlier, so I wanted to find out how others were coping without a smartphone in the digital age.

Pratush works as a production manager in Mumbai. He didn’t own a smartphone until the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world and made digital connectedness both indispensable and ubiquitous. The pandemic has receded but his smartphone has stuck around. The 40-year-old shared, “With smartphones, you kind of lose your personal space. If you don’t respond to messages on WhatsApp, people say things like ‘We saw you were online. You saw the message but you didn’t reply’. People expect you to be available 24/7.”

Arvind’s tryst with smartphones has been chequered. “I stopped using a smartphone in 2015. Back then, there weren’t many digital wellbeing apps. Thanks to infinite scroll, the moment I finished reading an article on a website, the next came up automatically. It was luring me to spend more time on the site,” said the Bengalurean, who hosts ‘flowgames’, which are designed to bring clarity about life and leadership.

Once he switched to a feature phone, his experience was similar to mine. “My exposure to blue light came down because my feature phone is set to greyscale. My circadian rhythm improved. I was sleeping better,” said the 46-year-old.

He has gone back to a smartphone recently for personal reasons and he doesn’t like it. “I don’t use the colour screen mode. I have set a zero timer on YouTube, so even if I want to watch it, the phone won’t let me open the app. I have set specific times in the day to check WhatsApp and Instagram,” he shared.

Then there are people like Surendra Varma who don’t own any phone, not even a landline. He is a senior scientist with the Asian Elephant Research and Conservation programme at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. When there’s an “absolute” need to communicate, he borrows a phone from his colleagues. I connected with him over an email and then a call.

What does he do if there is an emergency? “What constitutes an emergency?” the 56-year-old asked me, adding, “People went through emergencies before the advent of phones too.”

When I took this plunge, I was worried about how people would perceive my decision but this never bothered him. “Most people are inspired by me and want to do what I
have done. Also, many people are upset that I cannot be reached but they have accepted it. Phones prohibit growth. They don’t let me live in the moment. I work in a forest. I cannot afford to have a phone ring when I am in the forest,” he said.

Working for a media company, I have accepted there is no getting away from the smartphone life. But I haven’t given up on my resolve. I am taking each day as it comes. On days that demand a lot of field work and team coordination, I bring my smartphone to work. On other days, I carry the feature phone. I know I have a choice and I think that realisation is enough to beat the dependency on smartphones.