This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tiffany Ng, a 24-year-old tech and culture writer based in New York City who runs the newsletter Cyber Celibate. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
I found myself, as most people are, attached to my phone.
So I started a project called Cyber Celibate, where I took a “vow of digital chastity” and started experimenting with being a “neo-Luddite.” The idea was: What technology can I quit for set periods of time, what can I learn from it, and how can that help me find more intentional relationships with technology?
One thing that I started doing was leaving my phone in a separate room. I realized if I charge my phone in the living room, instead of next to my bed, I don’t scroll in the morning or before I get to sleep. So I asked myself, “What’s the most extreme form of this?”
I thought if I chained my phone to my wall, and it makes the experience of scrolling on my phone incredibly uncomfortable, then I could condition myself almost physically to stop using it as much.
So that’s what I did for a full week. I used an old belt to chain my phone to the wall. I put a bench in front of it that was not comfortable at all, so sitting on it was not great. I kept the phone settings exactly the same, but I wanted to mimic the idea of minutes, or the idea of scarcity, through a singular charge, so I charged my phone at the start of the week and not again.
I don’t want to sound overdramatic, but towards the end, it really felt like I was reentering real life in a way.
Tiffany Ng
Phone out of sight and out of mind
The first day or so was a little difficult. It was uncomfortable because I was so used to the routines of scrolling on my phone. It also made me realize how much I relied on my phone. I had to ask people for the time and for directions.
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But eventually it was liberating.
Usually if I were at work or writing and my phone was near me, I would have the temptation to just pick it up and check the time or tap on it. But when my phone was physically away from me, often a couple miles away, I forgot about it in a way that I really didn’t expect to.
I expected that when I would be at a coffee shop working on my laptop, I would want to reach for my phone and it wouldn’t be there, or that I’d hear phantom pings. Instead my phone was really out of sight, out of mind.
My phone lasted four days on a single charge with minimal usage, and I still had my laptop, which I use for work, so after my phone died I was still able to message friends if we were meeting somewhere.
The experiment made the action of being on my phone so much more intentional, compared to typically when I have my phone with me everywhere I go, I find myself pulling it out and checking it mindlessly, which goes back to the original reason I was doing this project: because I caught myself checking my phone so often for no real good reason.
I’ve also been trying to be more present in my everyday life but it is so hard because there’s all these things that are calling me. I feel distracted all the time. But in doing this, I was physically placing all those forms of distraction very far away from me. When I would be waiting for a train, I wouldn’t be on my phone. I wouldn’t have any other form of stimulation, so it made me really just stand there and be in the moment.
At the train station that I frequent near my apartment I started noticing the buildings around it in a way that I didn’t before, which is so embarrassing and jarring to me that I didn’t notice that they were there. I started noticing how the air smells different between this station and that station. I noticed how people dress a little differently on different train lines, and that people are angrier further downtown than uptown.
Tiffany Ng
Scrolling isn’t satisfying
The formality of the scrolling experience also made me realize it’s really not that deep. What am I doing with my phone? The first couple of days I would go home and be like, “I’m excited to scroll on my phone.” But then the buildup of anticipation of being on my phone would be immediately met with the very anti-climatic experience of looking at pictures of Alix Earle because apparently that’s what my feed decided I needed to look at.
After that happens enough times, the almost religious experience of being on your phone loses its aura. It’s very alluring, but it’s not satisfying at all. We scroll on end but it doesn’t scratch the itch entirely. It scratches around the itch. But it’s enough to make you think that you will eventually scratch the itch and keep you on the phone.
I continue to leave my phone in separate rooms, and I’m trying to think of modifications to the experiment that I can continue.
I think the biggest takeaway for me was just knowing that when my phone is not near me, it frees me from the temptation of the phone. And that it’s okay to leave my apartment without my phone sometimes.
Now I leave my phone at home If I’m going to the park with some friends who I’ll stay with for the duration that I’m away. I used to always leave my apartment thinking, “Phone, keys, wallet. Phone, keys, wallet.” Now maybe it’s just, “Keys and wallet.”
I think my generation is separate enough from prior eras of technology such that we don’t have all the same associations with it. I recently learned about dial-up internet. The concept of having such limited internet access is something that I romanticize, but I never had the experience of my mom nagging me to get off the phone or my dad disconnecting my phone call with a friend because he needed to access the internet. So these so-called older forms of technology are something that people of my generation might be more likely to choose to opt into.
Neo-Luddite to me is not just renouncing technology in its entirety, it’s finding different ways to use technology that works for you. It’s not giving up the iPhone, but maybe it’s just finding different ways to contact your friends.
