I don't own a smartphone — and I don't want one

I have been left behind by the obsession with constant connectivity. And that's okay.

A classic.
(Image credit: iStock)

Whenever I'm making plans with a new acquaintance, there's often a moment when our mutual enthusiasm turns to chagrin — and that moment is, inevitably, when we pull out our phones to swap contact information. My friend-to-be usually owns a smartphone, slim and sleek in a case that — whether leopard-patterned or festooned with images of some Saturday morning cartoon hero — manages to protect it while also subtly proclaiming the artful quirkiness of its owner's personality. I, however, own a "dumb phone" that can't connect me to Lyft or let me read restaurant reviews via a Yelp app, won't allow me to scroll through email or get into arguments on Facebook, let alone zone out to music on the metro, or even check the weather. My acquaintance's eyes widen as if I've just admitted to living in an underground bunker with a can of beans and a dented spoon. Unable to help herself, she'll outright ask if that is really my phone. And I'll mumble that yeah, really, it is.

Yes, I am among the narrow two-to-four percent of millennials who don't own a smartphone. Never have, and likely never will. Most days, this causes me no pain at all. Thanks to the marvels of home computing, I can make reservations online and get directions to wherever I'm going, which I print out from MapQuest. I can charge an iPod and check the weather, and, of course, hold vicious political arguments on Facebook. I just can't do all of that at once, or on-the-go. And somehow, this has translated into a conception that beneath my favorite Oxford blouse beats the heart of a doomsday prepper. In her own essay about being a "dumb phone" user, Janet Burns wryly laments that dumb phones, particularly flip-phones, now only appear in media as "the personal tech go-to of onscreen drug dealers and serial killers." The last time I saw a young person using a phone just like mine was on a re-watch of The Wire.

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Laura Bogart

Laura Bogart is a featured writer for Salon and a regular contributor to DAME magazine. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, CityLab, The Guardian, SPIN, Complex, IndieWire, GOOD, and Refinery29, among other publications. Her first novel, Don't You Know That I Love You?, is forthcoming from Dzanc.