Pa Ingalls, Technology, and Giving Up My Smartphone

I’ve wanted to ditch my smartphone for years, and I finally did it. It was surprisingly painless to switch to a dumbphone, and I hope more people give it a try! Here are my thoughts on “tech creep” (i.e., the way technology increasingly permeates our lives without our noticing), and what it’s like to use a dumbphone. Note: I’m writing from the U.S., and coming at this from a Western perspective. Smartphone habits and implications can have similarities around the world, but also a lot of differences. For instance, in some demographics a smartphone could be someone’s only link to the internet, and they do not own a computer. That would certainly factor into a decision about not owning a smartphone, and for them, a smartphone might certainly pass the thresher test!

Recently, I’ve been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s autobiographical Little House novels to my kids. One of the many things I love about this series is its old-fashioned “time capsule” quality–the way it shows life in the olden days of the late 1800s. In fact, one of the reasons why Wilder wrote the books was to capture that fading era. But in spite of a pervading nostalgia for the old ways, there’s a fascinating chapter in the first book, Little House in the Big Woods, when Pa Ingalls extols the virtues of technology.

In “The Wonderful Machine,” Pa and several of his neighbors and relatives pool their money to rent a horse-powered threshing machine, which condenses the work of weeks into a single day. Pa is amazed by this efficiency, and says he’s going to adopt any new technology that helps him as much as this did.

One can imagine how invaluable the time was that Pa freed up by using that machine. He worked constantly to provide immediate, physical needs for his family–felling trees to build furniture, hunting for food, and actually making the bullets to hunt for said food.

The time he saved threshing could now be spent producing additional food, doing something from Ma’s to-do list, teaching his daughters a new skill or simply playing “Mad Dog” with them! In other words, he could provide for further needs of his family, assist his family in the home economy, or tighten family bonds. We know this is likely what he did with his “extra time” because that’s the man Pa is shown to be throughout the series.

Do Our Technologies Meet the Thresher Test?

One and a half centuries after the Little House books, we are absolutely swamped with technologies and wonderful machines; we use and rely on more than we can easily count. But I wonder how many of them serve us as well as Pa’s thresher? How many of them give us precious, precious time to re-allocate in meaningful ways?

The benefit of some machines is obvious. One thing that for us definitely passes the “thresher test” of usefulness is our washing machine. I am tremendously glad not to have to engage in the long and arduous process of handwashing clothes and bedding for six people! Sure–there could be residual pleasant things about that, like having quiet mental space to think while you plunge your hands in warm, soapy water; or chatting with your children while you work. But I already get the mental space or the chat while I fold the laundry, so I much prefer to use the washing time for something else!

We and our smartphones have a constant give-and-take relationship with skewed proportions that aren’t in our favour. A smartphone gives you the convenience of checking your bank account in sixty seconds…but then it swiftly takes twenty minutes (or much more) of your time scrolling Facebook because you wanted to give it a quick glance in passing.

I believe that one of the key attributes of an effective machine is that it saves you time on a specific task you’re already doing, without exposing you to other things that will zap the time you saved. What if Pa’s thresher not only threshed wheat, but also offered the add-on option of a horse-powered ice cream churn? All you have to do is grab your ingredients–milk the cow, skim off the cream when it separates, travel ten miles to the store to buy white sugar, borrow some ice from your neighbour’s ice house. Put it all in the churn and you’ve got delicious, home-made ice cream that you didn’t have to travel to the big city to buy!

Of course, you’d spend a considerable amount of time and money on that ice cream that you didn’t even want or need to begin with. The thresher-ice cream churn combo was there, so you used it, but it was a dumb connection to begin with.

And so is the bank account/Facebook scrolling combo. Or any of the other million things your smartphone gives you a portal to.

Internet-linked apps are designed to catch and keep our attention: the infinite scroll of social media and web browser feeds, email slot machines, intrusive notifications–an insidious and entirely intentional bid for our time and focus.

Smartphones Meet Our Desires, Not Our Needs

Even while many people recognise the problematically time-consuming nature of smartphones, we keep on using them religiously. Why do we feel they’re so integral to our lives?

I think one major reason is that our modern-day society in the developed world loves to “optimize” everything. Take our desire to source the very best product, for example. When we’re in the market for a new fill-in-the-blank (vacuum cleaner, sheets, coffee maker, whatever) we have the option to do endless research and read dozens of reviews in our quest to find The One.

We also love to optimize our routines, our workweek, our systems, our schedules, our diets, our bodies. And smartphones play right into our desire to optimize.

Smartphones give us the illusion of ease, optimization, and efficiency, making us feel like our very lives are in our pockets…in our hands…the ultimate Swiss Army knife that provides everything we need: communication channels, scheduling, fitness tracking, mobile banking, dating prospects, shopping, school info, portable entertainment, monitoring one’s “wealth management.”

Hmm…maybe even more than optimization, we feel that smartphones give us control.

The Optimization Is a Lie, Steven

The truth is, smartphones do not help you optimize your life or live intentionally. Smartphones are optimized for you, by Big Tech. You are not optimizing or controlling your life, They are–the companies who crash into your atmosphere the moment you set up your smartphone. Every smartphone comes preloaded with distractions, with junk that you must spend time discovering (or having it pushed on you) so you can delete it. And most of it, you can’t delete, because it’s part of the suite you tacitly agreed to when you bought the phone.

A Smartphone-Free Life Is a Quieter Life

The world inside your smartphone is a noisy, app-cluttered, algorithmically-controlled slush that you wade into every time you enter your passcode.

At 36, I’ve certainly been around the Sun enough times to know there will always be yet another “next thing.” Did you know that soon you will be able to open your phone by holding it under your nose and scanning your nostrils? No two person’s nostrils are alike, with quite the same arch, thickness, or delicate nose hairs. So while someone may be able to open your phone with a piece of Scotch tape that bears your fingerprint (or worse yet, cut off your index finger), scientists agree that it is virtually impossible to fake someone’s nostrils–and certainly much more difficult to cut them off.

There’s always going to be another way that smartphones “integrate” into our lives. Combine this with the digital onslaught outside our phones–with robot “priests”, AI spouses, endless smart devices for our homes–and it’s just all too much, for me, anyway. I want to stem the rising tide of tech in my life, and while I may never countenance an AI priest, I did have a way to put the breaks on daily, immediate tech inroads in my life.

I got so fed up with swimming in it all that I started looking for an exit plan a couple years ago, and finally switched back to a dumbphone in summer of 2024. I say switched back because a dumbphone was the first kind of phone I ever had. That blueprint experience–that “life before the smartphone” made the dumbphone switch easier.

My Dumbphone Experience, and Why I Switched

As a Millennial, I’m part of the last generation to grow up without a cell phone (and with minimal internet use, depending on the household). I was born in the 80s and my family was slow to adopt new gadgets, so I didn’t get my first cell phone until my senior year of high school in 2004. And that first cell phone, even into college, I shared with a sister. (Whoever was taking the car out automatically got dibs on the phone.)

Back in Days of Yore we had to worry about cell phone minutes, so having a portable phone was basically just for quick check-ins with the parents to announce when I was heading home from youth group, or for the minor emergencies that rarely happened.

I remember in college my older sister introducing me to the new feature called “texting,” which she promised I would use all the time once I got the hang of it. She also helped me sign up for a Facebook account since I had a college-issued email address–a prerequisite, in those days–and I “met” a couple dozen classmates online before we got to campus. (Funnily enough, everyone seemed extremely different in person.) Of course, back then social media like Facebook was an entirely separate thing from one’s cellular device, although it’s the complete opposite now.

I didn’t get a smartphone until I was graduated and married, and I had to consider if I even needed one. (I decided I didn’t need one, but would like to give it a try.)

It was nice to have, at first, although the principal non-communicating thing I used it for was to take better pictures. Over the years, I began to learn how others were using smartphones, particularly within my chosen industry/hobby of blogging. People said they were amazing for pinning on the go, tweeting, scheduling Facebook posts, even photo editing. (Reels and video weren’t on the horizon yet, but they were a’comin’.) I assumed I was the lone weirdo who found it difficult and annoying to do these things through the medium of a phone, rather than a laptop and mouse.

Eventually, I decided I wanted conscious rather than passive consumption. I decided that smartphone use did not coincide with the things I value or the things that great women and men from history valued. Things like:

• Community
• Legacy building
• Hospitality
• Civility
• Self-discipline
• Self-reliance
• Observation and attention
• Physical activity
• Mental activity
• Rhetoric (eloquent and persuasive speech)
• Interaction with the natural world (enjoying it, gaining firsthand knowledge)

I was weary of the interface, weary of “the game,” weary of the social, mental, and physical cost. And I already had a blueprint for a smartphone-free life.

So I did what every more-addicted-than-they’d-like-to-admit smartphone user would do, and I spent months and months “deciding” to dumb down and figuring out how to do so!

Yes, I got caught in the optimization trap, shopping around to find My Perfect Dumbphone Match. I researched off-phone workarounds to things I commonly used my smartphone for. I read reviews and read articles about other people’s phone downgrades to psych myself up. I ended up picking the Hickory phone from Sunbeam Wireless, which I use in conjunction with my cheap Mint Mobile plan. It still has handy stuff like navigation, weather, a flashlight, alarm clock, calculator…little basics like that. No internet browser, no email. It’s a flip phone, which I just think are more fun, and the buttons are large and tactile.

I’m very pleased with my Sunbeam phone, but I wish I’d pulled the plug much sooner! I knew where I was heading ages ago, so I should’ve just up and switched!

Things I Miss About Having a Smartphone

Nothing.

What It’s Like to Have a Dumbphone

I have been in many situations over the past year where I could’ve used a smartphone and it would’ve been quite handy. But I’ve survived without it! When we were on vacation, a smartphone would’ve been nice to look up restaurants and locations on the go. Instead, I researched and planned ahead before the trip, writing down phone numbers and business hours in a little notebook. During the trip I used my laptop in the hotel when we were done with the day’s adventures. My husband used his smartphone a couple times to find me a coffee shop, but I’m also aware we could’ve asked a local or just driven around for a few minutes!

So what did ditching my smartphone free me up to do? I’m not exactly sure. I know I’m attempting to read all of Shakespeare’s plays this year, and I’m teaching two children to read, and I started another side business–all things that fall into my daily routine and would’ve been disrupted frequently by extra email checks and news scrolling. Maybe I’ve used that time for more trivial but still worthy things like watching The Amazing Race with my sons or being better about returning my library books so they aren’t overdue. Honestly, I’m not sure in a one-to-one ratio way.

But do you know how many minutes I’ve spent scrolling Google’s newsfeed in the last year? 0. How many living room conversations I’ve missed (for my part) with relatives because I was on my phone? 0. Times my child has fallen off their chair because I was distracted with a smartphone? 0. Times my smartphone has disrupted my sleep? 0. Times I’ve gotten annoyed, depressed, or sick to my stomach because of something I saw on a algorithmic feed? 0. Times I’ve come across as rude because I was scrolling or tapping a screen? 0.

These are things I didn’t want to happen anymore, that inevitably do when you have a smartphone, even when you try to “optimize” your phone by setting up screen time boundaries and habit hacks to curtail your usage.

Why People Don’t Ditch Their Smartphones

In all that research I did before switching to a dumbphone, I read a lot of articles about others who made the choice, and I read many of the Comments sections as well. There was a refreshing number of commenters who had also made the switch, and none of them seemed to regret it. There were also many (most) people who still used smartphones, and I noticed that they fell into three main camps:

First there’s the “Why Would I?” camp. These people love technology (often coupling it in their minds with the words “exciting” or “innovative”) and they always want the latest gadget, if they can get it. They may even proclaim: “I shall use my smartphone for good!” But to them I say “No, Boromir, it will destroy you. One does not simply check their phone and only use it for five minutes. Cast it into the Apple Store from whence it came! Only if you were Frodo Baggins could you wield it (and even Frodo felt the effects and was almost destroyed by it, don’t forget).”

Then there’s the “I Would, But…” camp. They see the pitfalls of smartphones or long for a “simpler” time, but they believe they can’t disentangle themselves–they use their smartphone for too much, and the things they use it for are too important or too fun.

Lastly, there’s the “I Didn’t Know You Could” camp. They do not know there is another way, the way of the dumbphone. Or perhaps they knew it, once, but the algorithms have spun it out of memory and time.

The people in the first camp would need a big shake-up in their life before they’d ever consider giving up their smartphone, and the reality is most of them will never switch.

But to the people in camps 2 and 3, why not just try it? Try turning your phone back into a niche technology by dumbing down. See if you can live without your smartphone. See if life is quieter without it. See if you like the way you are without it.

If you do feel the nudge to get a dumbphone, don’t wait too long to switch, just switch. The whole point of a dumbphone is that it’s not a big deal. A phone will no longer be a big deal in your life, so you don’t need to spend too long obsessing over what to get. It’s like a wallet: it will grow familiar with use as a tool, as a mere tool. You don’t get out your wallet to stroke it and flip through your cards and count your change. You don’t pull out your wallet when you have a minute of down time. You don’t finger the zipper or folds, you don’t carry it to bed with you or put it under your pillow. It’s not the last thing you see when you go to sleep, or the first thing you touch when you wake up.

You get something that works for you and then if it falls apart you get a new one.

Now, I know people will use the comments section on this blog post to explain why they need a smartphone, and why–much as they may like–they are simply stuck with it for X reason. I bet you have really good reasons, better than mine were that made me keep my smartphone for as long as I did. But don’t say it’s impossible. You’re human, you can figure it out.

(Oh, and if you’re wondering why you can’t just keep using a smartphone, but implement “boundaries”? Also because you’re human.)

The Next Generation of Smartphone Users

In closing, I just want to consider for a moment the current youth and children who are using smartphones or may be soon. I hope more and more “kids these days” will resist getting a smartphone. It’s a very hard and very brave thing to do, when so many peers are glued to their phones. If you’re a teenager and reading this, perhaps consider joining The Luddite Club for solidarity with other youth who have made the countercultural choice of forgoing a smartphone. A blog like Freya India’s is also helpful for critiquing phone-based trends from a Gen Z perspective.

To parents of young children: Do not let your kids grow up to be another generation of anxious, addicted, and lonely smartphone users, which many teenagers and young adults today are. You can help prevent this by not giving your children anything with a portable screen. An iPad or your old smartphone that’s disconnected from the internet is, to them, a pretend smartphone. They will use it (more than your gut is comfortable with) and look forward to the day when they can get a real one. Instead, help them build a rich inner life that will give them a center. They don’t need to look to internet personalities for inspiration. Build a rich outer life for them, starting close to home by investing in your family culture. Work outwards from there, letting them be around other kids and adults who don’t use their phones all the time, so that that’s their normal. And read books like Little House to them, so you can learn, together, the wisdom of the old ways.

Further Reading

Posts from my own archives

I’ve written a number of posts on intentional and slower-paced living. Here are a few:

• Why I’ll Be Taking Fewer Pictures From Now On
• Recovering the Lost Art of Analog Living
• 10 Fun Boardgames for Your Next Cozy Game Night (a great alternative to time on your phone!)
• Recovering the Lost Art of Porch Sitting
• 8 Things Intentional Homemakers Do Every Day
• 9 Things to do With Your Evening Besides Watching TV (or besides scrolling your phone!)

Outside Reading for Tech Criticism and Analog Living

These are sites I read regularly and have really appreciated!

• After Babel (I also recommend the authors’ book, The Anxious Generation)
• School of the Unconformed
• Pilgrims in the Machine
• The Analog Family
• The /dumbphones reddit can also be helpful for practical questions on switching to a dumbphone or what kind to try. Here’s a good thread where people commented on their dumbphone experiences, which is helpful for seeing how possible it is for all sorts of people!

Alright, open forum! What are your thoughts on smartphone use? What’s one app you would be loathe to give up, and would you ever be willing to try anyway? If you use a dumbphone, tell us about why/how you switched!