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| 90's girl: Just a sweet little freak with no phone |
I remember the first “text” I ever received.
And the flush of joy and relief it gave me.
It was the 1990s, before anyone I knew had a cell phone. I was a teen who’d been dropped off at a fire hall for a friend’s graduation party, only to recognize on the spot that I didn’t fit in. Standing there in my concert tee, ragged fishnet stockings, and Doc Martens, I surveyed the crowd of adults, high school jocks, and normal kids and panicked. If I’d had a phone, I would have texted my mom to come get me.
But as I awkwardly munched from a bowl of potato chips, I spotted a kindred spirit: a teenage boy, hidden behind his curtain of dark hair. Our eyes met. I saw his fingertips. He wore black nail polish! He’d let his freak flag fly, and I clocked it, loud and clear. I wasn’t the only “alternative” kid at the party. I just had to work up the courage to speak to him.
As the teens broke away from the grownups and tumbled into the parking lot, I followed. The boy with nail polish entered my orbit. He fell into step beside me and handed me … a calculator.
It was a slim silver device in a fake leather sleeve. He motioned for me to look at the screen, and I saw it. The wide keypad also held letters of the alphabet — amazing! — and he had typed out a message on the rectangular screen:
THIS PARTY SUX
I laughed in sheer delight. Yes! This party sucked! He was so right! I studied the keyboard, found the delete key, and handed it back with a grin and a message of my own:
I HATE IT HERE
As he read it, a smirk spread across his face. He typed and passed the calculator back.
IM ZAK. U?
And that’s how Zak and I passed the afternoon, silently roasting the party and our dreary teenage lives, swapping messily-typed jokes and confessions until my mom picked me up.
“How was the party?” she asked.
It was great.
The thrill of receiving a tiny, covert message would return decades later, times one million.
I met my future husband after his band stepped off stage. I was enamored. Smitten. And speechless. As he tried to flirt with me, I fell shy. I slipped away and went home.
Thankfully, he tracked me down that night and sent me a message on Facebook. Safe and confident on the other side of my iPhone, I typed out a reply to this handsome man. He wrote back.
A few months later, he moved in to my apartment. Without Facebook and that first message, would we be married today?
Facebook was different back then. Those days, it could still bring people together. Grandpa’s MAGA memes were a ways off, and Facebook hummed with the earnest energy of a daily blog site. I worked in public relations, a career choice at constant odds with my shyness. After I worked with a reporter or producer I liked, I’d send them a friend request. Soon, we’d be liking each other’s pets and vacation pics, and the next time I sent out a press release, the person who called me back felt like my friend.
I loved my online world. Through my screen, I could conquer my shyness. Much later when the pandemic hit, I was ready to go remote, and earned two promotions while I led meetings and directed campaigns through a laptop.
When life got stressful and I found myself struggling to cope with anxiety, I retreated further and further into my screen. When your heart is racing and you can’t catch your breath, it’s hard to tell the difference between “grounding” yourself and “dissociating” in a stream of mindless content. My phone became the quickest, most effective anesthesia.
Eventually, I found myself losing five or six hours to screen time every day, and I had nothing to show for it. In fact, staring at my phone made me feel worse. I love reading and writing and working on creative projects, but my attention span had been hijacked. So much of what my phone served up made me miserable — but I found it hard to do much else, or even focus on the content I like. I’d even scroll away from a poem I liked, unable to stay with anything for more than a few seconds.
I wanted those hours back. I wanted my brain back.
So this New Years Day, I set a resolution and a time limit. Since I still need to look at my phone sometimes, I’m allowed to use it — but for two hours or less per day. I would reduce my screen time by almost 67%.
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| Today: This 90s lady looks at her phone too much. |
Here’s what I’m finding so far:
These days, two hours is quite enough to see what the world has to offer.
Okay but no seriously. What I’ve found:
- I had to figure out the difference between using my phone as a tool (a map to drive somewhere new) and to feed a bad habit (doom scrolling).
- And I discovered that sometimes, NOT having the answer to every question can actually be liberating.
- I had to bust myself for finding loopholes. (You can continue to doom scroll on your laptop.)
- I had to set rules. For example, taking photos of things I love is okay. Refreshing Instagram to see who liked those photos is a bad habit.
- Same with texting and FaceTiming my loved ones — that nourishes me, never depletes me. Talking to a friend or sitting with a guided meditation is “good” screen time. Cackling over a video shared with my bestie, who’s separated from me by miles? Priceless. I would never give that up.
- I’m also allowed to jump on and respond for my job — although, at ten o’clock at night, sometimes it’s good to set a healthy boundary there, too.
- Screen addiction is real. I can feel the itchy withdrawal of wanting to gaze into my phone like the soft glow of a bonfire. I know the dopamine drip of picking it up and finding a screen full of notifications.
- But at the very least, in the end, what I’m gaining is time. Delicious, full stretches of wonderful time that I can fill with tasks or fun or just remembering what it’s like to daydream. Recently, I read a book in a waiting room, like a person from a bygone era. It felt wonderful. It feels wonderful to find clear, mental space.
- I also feel mildly, but meaningfully, less bothered. Suggested reels and clickbait headlines strike me as … stupid. Who cares? Most of the videos I watch aren't that funny.
But it’s still just January, I type with trepidation. Can I trust myself to keep this up? What about the next time something bad happens, and I find myself swirling with panic, unable to focus on anything but cat videos and bite-sized content? What about the next time I travel for work? Will I turn to my phone for companionship and a lifeline to the familiar, or will I lift my eyes to the world around me?
I’m not sure. Because finding this discipline is actually quite hard.
But I know this feels infinitely better. So I type this as a blog, a reminder, a promise to myself. Our story started out so sweet, but I’ve been in a toxic relationship with my screen. It’s time to break up. I’d just like to be friends.
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