How Did You Get Rid of Your Smartphone? | The Survival Gardener

Lindsey asks about getting rid of a smart phone:

Please tell me more about the smartphone. How did you get rid of it? It seems like a silly question I suppose but did you replace it with a dumb phone? Where did you find a dumb phone and a cellphone plan to go with it?

I am interested in the logistics of making it work when you walk into restaurants that no longer carry paper menus. The trendy ones all want you to scan a QR code these days. Or more importantly, communicating with necessary service providers when they all want you to have their app. Looking at banks and daycare at the moment… I suppose daycare isn’t too much a concern for you, but banks?

I guess this all boils down to: do you have any tips for someone considering a similar thing (as I type this on the smartphone)?

At the beginning of 2022, I pulled the SIM card from my Android smartphone and said goodbye.

I took that SIM card and put it into a Light Phone II. All that phone really does is text and call, though it also has a simple map app which provides simple written directions from location to location.

This was a very good decision and I do not regret it.

Our phones are spy devices that track us and record our lives. They also constantly irradiate you. And yes, the Light Phone also allows the user to be tracked, but most of the time I leave it off or at home.

Once you’re not checking notifications and emails and reading the news, etc., you stop caring about your phone.

As for restaurants, etc., I don’t care. If they can’t tell me what they serve without me having to carry a government tracking device smartphone, heck with them.

And no, we don’t do daycare. And I don’t care to install banking apps. I reject all that. You can still function without a phone, and life is much better without it.

Don’t you remember what it was like to not carry that stupid thing? To not constantly have your eyes and attention drawn to a little screen that begs for your attention? To live life unencumbered by digital noise?

I remembered, and wished I had those days back.

So I reclaimed them by ditching my phone.

The benefits of living without a digital chain greatly outweigh the difficulties. I’ve gotten to read many more books since I cut the leash – just look at the reading lists I’ve posted for the last two years!

My wife still has a smart phone, which she uses sometimes. We take photos on it, and occasionally I’ll take it in the car when driving someplace unfamiliar.

But personally, I’m done. And if her phone was gone too, it’d be fine.

I read paper books.

I garden with hand tools.

I can sit by the pond and watch my cows without Zuckerberg dinging away in my pocket.

I play with my children without taking a phone from my pocket.

I carry on conversations face to face.

I go to sleep without the blue glow of a screen.

I don’t have a TV.

I don’t have a computer in my house.

I reject Modernity.

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