WhatsApp Made Me Do It

Taking the Smartphone Plunge-- and Living With the Consequences

I was one of the last holdouts in my friend group who still had a flip phone. (Now it’s just you, Theano!) I was proud of it. I’d had an iPod touch for a few years, mostly to replace the iPod that had housed my music since my teenage years and then unceremoniously crashed, losing decades of songs in the process. I would have gladly replaced my old school iPod with the same model, but it was discontinued. By that time, the only replacement was the iPod touch, which was a completely different beast. First of all, it looked exactly like an iPhone – the same touch screen and home menu icons. The only difference was that it wasn’t a phone; it didn’t operate with a phone/internet plan and therefore was only connected to the internet when there was a Wi-Fi connection available.
 
The major difference between the iPod and the iPod touch were the apps. Suddenly, I had so much more than music at my fingertips. I could take part in all the things I had been hearing about for years: Words With Friends, Instagram, Duolingo, FaceTime. A strange thing happened; I started listening to more podcasts than music. I’d download them when I was online and then savor them while I drove or chopped veggies in my kitchen. My music intake has never recovered.
 
Still, I didn’t feel like I’d fallen into the smartphone rabbit hole. Most of my telephonic communication happened on my flip phone: good ol’ fashioned texts and phone calls. I didn’t have the internet in my pocket. If I didn’t know how many steps were in a mile, I couldn’t google it on the spot. Before I left the house to go somewhere new, I had to figure out directions because I couldn’t just type in the location into my phone. Being a flip phone user meant I had to be more prepared for life.
 
Most of my internet time was spent on the computer. I was a Facebook junkie and an email addict, but at least I didn’t have access to them in the palm of my hand. The time between computer sessions wasn’t punctuated with tweets and pokes and beeps. I scoffed when people acted like smartphones were a necessity. I was doing just fine without one!
 
Sometimes, having a flip phone had its consequences. Once in a while, I got lost and had to (egad!) ask someone for directions. Other times, being away from the internet meant that I had to call my mom and ask her to check something in my email inbox. Also, being a flip phone alien in a smartphone world meant that other people often used internet-based modes of communication to reach me—email, Facebook messenger, Twitter—which I didn’t always have access to. I’d arrive at a lunch date on time and wait forever for a date who never showed, only to find out much later that the person had cancelled via FB messenger. I’d miss an urgent Skype call from a friend who lived across the globe because I simply wasn’t always connected.
 
I didn’t mind the inconveniences posed by my flip phone. In fact, I appreciated them. I knew that these inconveniences allowed me peace of mind that a smartphone wouldn’t. I also knew that I didn’t have the willpower necessary to maintain that peace of mind while owning a smartphone. Surely, I would become as addicted as the rest. My partner said, “You just need willpower!” and in return, I showed him articles about the neurological research that was going into the design of these products to make them as addictive as possible. I knew that having a smartphone would alter my reality to the point that it would be difficult to make the transition back to the simplicity of a flip phone. My mantra was: “Once you go smart, you don’t go back.”   
 
So why did I take the plunge—10 years (to the day!) after the first iPhone was released and 18 years after the first Blackberry hit the market?
 
WhatsApp made me do it.
 
The summer of 2017, I moved to Colombia to teach English as a Fulbright Scholar. My father had been recently diagnosed with dementia and was facing a difficult transition from living on his own to an assisted living facility. I needed to be able to communicate easily with the United States, but I also needed to communicate with my new Colombian colleagues and friends. And you might not know this but Latin America runs on WhatsApp (as does much of the world!). From the dean at my university to my students—communication happened via WhatsApp.
 
Unfortunately, WhatsApp was not available on the iPod touch. The reason being: you need a phone number to download the app. The iPod touch doesn’t have a phone number. And so it was that I meekly asked my partner if I could have his old iPhone that he’d tried to gift me before. He was triumphant, in that annoying “I told you so” way that partners can be.
 
Now I’ve drank the Cool-Aid. I’m not to the point of feeling phantom vibrations from my phone (mostly because I’ve disabled all notifications), but we have a very close relationship. Nearly every single day, I wish I could get rid of this device and return to my dependable flip phone, but as I suspected, once you go smart, it’s incredibly difficult to go back.
 
I think that if it weren’t for WhatsApp, I’d give it up in a heartbeat. It’s become the place where most of my communication happens – more than email, texting, Facebook, or Skype. I love the voice message function and making video calls to faraway friends. I love keeping in touch with friends through group chats, which provide a much more private and individualized way to share news (in contrast to a newsfeed). WhatsApp group chats are the new email chains! It’s become an integral part of my communication; how would I—and the people around me—make the transition? As Sara Critchfield writes about her transition making the transition to a flip phone, “When I chose to get rid of my smartphone, I wasn’t making an individual choice. That choice has effects on my relationships, how I integrate into society, how people view me, how included I can be in a certain types of socializing.”
 
As I write this, I realize that so many of our choices are dictated by big tech companies. Because Apple stopped making the music-only iPod, I had little choice but to upgrade to an iPod touch. Of course, I could have bought a music player, and I looked into it, but having all my music on iTunes plus not being particularly tech-savvy made it easier to stick with Apple. Because WhatsApp doesn’t work on the iPod touch (and because it’s so ubiquitous in Latin America), I had to get a smartphone. Many apps are mobile-first, meaning that you need a handheld device in order to use them properly. Users can’t upload photos on the desktop version of Instagram (or if there is a way, I haven’t figured it out yet) and Venmo is phasing out its website, making it impossible to pay and charge over the web. Of course, I could make the choice to eschew these apps on principle. And I suppose that’s a choice that I’m not willing to make at this point. And so, I suffer the consequences (i.e. neurosis, loss of attention span, distraction, etc).
 
It certainly won’t get any easier to live device-free, but do you think it’s possible—or worth the hassle?