Guest Post-Mortem: Life with a smartphone

a guest post by Madeleine Barowsky

Here’s my paradox: I’m tech savvy, but I’ve never been what you’d call an early adopter. I started using a computer at the age of 5, writing code in my teens, and have worked as a software engineer for three years. Yet I delay software updates as long as possible and would rather copy-paste a hundred times than figure out spreadsheet macros. My longest holdout has been a cellphone: I only got my first smartphone this past January.

Incident duration: 13 years 8 months

Time to resolve: 30 minutes with a very likeable telecom customer service guy plus 45 minutes manually typing all my contacts’ phone numbers in.

Incident Timeline

• 2009–2024: I usually had access to some kind of app device (e.g. an old iPhone without a data plan or an iPad mini), so if I really needed to check out what the fuss was about with Angry Birds or Snapchat, I could hang onto pop culture by a thread.

• 2010: When I started high school, I got my first flip phone, a requirement set by my parents since I was a latchkey kid. I kept it on silent and never answered, so it was more of a one-way communication sitch. 

• 2013: The further I got into tech, the more I heard about how creepy smartphones could be: microphone permissions, geolocation, and cryptographic backdoors.

• 2014–2024: When I read think pieces about how phones were Ruining The Youth or wreaking havoc on attention spans, I felt a twinge of smug superiority.

• January 2024: While updating my Internet plan, the man reading from his script of upsell options asked if I wanted to open a phone line with them and save even more. Keen for a discount, and realizing the numerous disadvantages of a flip phone (see “Contributing factors”), I agreed.

If you can get them in focus, flip phone cameras lend a charming nostalgia to the scene. (photo credit: author)

Contributing Factors

• Inconveniencing everyone else. The “dumb phone” couldn’t handle group chats—my replies got sent individually to each person in the group, making the conversation infinitely worse. If I got lost on the way to an event, I either had to find a map (e.g. on the side of a rental bike station), ask a stranger for directions, or call a friend and ask them to route me on Google Maps. My younger sister once did this for me from the other side of the country (🙏)

• Check fraud. I live far from all my bank’s ATMs, so I started sending checks to their PO box to be deposited. Each time they sent me back an official “bank by mail” statement. I guess the service quietly existed for elderly people who couldn’t leave their houses and also stubborn millennials who refused to get smartphones. I joked about how I shouldn’t tell people I banked by mail in case they committed check fraud against me, but then I actually got check fraud committed against me. Now I am a firm believer in mobile deposit. 

• Cost. All this time I had been sending $45 to my mom every month because I was still on her account and never thought to question whether unlimited data was a good plan for me. The customer service guy told me I could pay $15 for a single gig of data and use their free phone. It was a Samsung Galaxy. “Do you have anything that’s older?” I asked. “Maybe a flip phone in a dusty box in the back somewhere?” He told me no one had ever asked him that and also no.

What I Learned

• Directions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to go somewhere new and arrived in the general vicinity before realizing I don’t know exactly which street to turn on or what number the building is. Once I had to turn around and go home, carrying a cake, just to look up the full directions. Life is literally so much easier now.

• Mobile boarding passes and tickets. You guys were onto something with this! Saves time and paper. I was a little stressed about battery life, but it hasn’t been an issue. 

• We all made fun of the Internet of Things but I’m genuinely thrilled about the “smart” lightbulbs I’d been using like regular bulbs. They came in the lamp I picked up off the sidewalk and were stuck in slightly different tones of warm white until I got my smartphone and paired them with an app. Now I can make them purple or pink or green at will. Mostly I just turn them on for my cat when I’m out late.

Risks

• Access to real time transit information is freeing, allowing me to go places without researching return options ahead of time. However, it’s still valuable for me to have some baseline knowledge in my head in case the app tries to tell me I should wait four hours for a bus that I know comes every 40 minutes at worst.

• One of the reasons I held off on getting a smartphone for so long was data privacy. I know how much information a phone generates, even without mobile data enabled, and how deeply tech companies can mine that to infer behavior and preferences. Even if my phone sits in my coat pocket at home, connected to wifi—okay I just got up to turn off wifi on my phone—the fact that I have remained stationary within a short radius of that modem is information about when I’m at home. Me using the Smart Home app to turn off my lights before bed is information about when I sleep. 

• It doesn’t fit in as many pockets as my flip phone did, which presents a bit of a logistical challenge for runs.

My friend has to text me twice whenever we switch between my phone and iMessages (2024)

(In)action items

Things I’m going to continue doing or not doing:

• No fun apps on my phone. Even though I caved, I need to maintain Luddism by some other means. I log into Instagram on my laptop on an as-needed basis and memorize the names of TikTok accounts so I can visit the URLs directly. 

• Keep mobile data off unless I’m someplace unfamiliar. I only have 1 GB per month, and I think a little friction to prevent me from searching every stray thought in my head is a good thing.

• Google Voice as a go-between. If I think of something I don’t want to forget when I’m out and about, I text it to my Voice number.  I have my number connected to my email, so every text shows up in my inbox. And then I go the other way for grocery lists—since recipes are usually on my laptop, it’s easy to copy-paste what I need to buy and text it to my phone so it’s there when I’m at the store. Is that convoluted? Maybe. Is it genius? I don’t know, you tell me.

• Prepping for driving somewhere. Trips go much smoother when I have already memorized the route. Some of the highway interchanges in Boston are gnarly, and I don’t think I could figure them out on the fly with a computerized voice telling me to MERGE LEFT MERGE LEFT RIGHT NOW.

Summary

I would never recommend anyone else go without a smartphone unless you live in a tiny rural community and never leave. The world is not prepared to let us function without one even if it’s just for two-factor auth and transit info (one time I called the number on a bus stop after waiting two hours in the heat in a suburb of Seattle, and the number was out of service). 

That said, I’m glad I made it through so many years without one. I have excellent mental maps for walking and driving, and I still feel totally disconnected from the Internet when I’m out and about. After almost three decades etching these grooves, I hope they will not be worn away by the mere presence of a 4G connection in my pocket.

Recommendations:

• ShowerShroom – one boring adulting purchase that has resolved a significant amount of plumbing stress. Even the short-haired among us benefit.

• Taskmaster – inventive game show where comedians try to solve or find loopholes in inane challenges

• Greenhat Guava Mochi Ice Cream – I’ve tried a lot of mochi ice cream and this is my fav. The packaging is airtight so the mochi stays fresh and soft. The brand has a bunch of flavors and you can find them at HMart.

• https://fallingfruit.org/ – every summer I try to forage as much fruit as possible, and this website helps me do it. It’s exciting to see what edible species are lurking around the corner and to get good enough at identification to contribute back to the map. (PS if you have juneberry trees near you, you should try some! they taste like cherries and blueberries combined)

• Geotastic – geography game where you get plopped on street view maps and have to guess where in the world you are. Set up an online lobby to play with friends or kill time on your own.

---

Madeleine Barowsky is a software engineer and line cook who lives and works in Massachusetts. Her writing has twice been named Notable in Best American Food Writing. You can sort of find her on Twitter @h0momorphism, but mostly because she doesn’t want to give up the handle. Email is more reliable: madeleine.barowsky@gmail.com.

---

Say hi to my new Managing Editor for Post-Mortem, Farah Faye! She is the host of the Scrappy Reading Series, and is an emerging writer living in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and cat. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Spalding University and her work has appeared in Business Insider, Medium, and her Substack, art monster magazine. You can find her on Instagram @whoisfarahfaye and @scrappyreadingseries.