Is There Life After Smartphones?

Matthew Shaer addresses a growing movement amongst young adults to free themselves from the shackles of the smartphone. Shaer highlights the harm these devices can cause—but also does not shy away from just how hard it can be to quit them. Will we ever escape the addiction of doomscrolling? Perhaps the younger generation can lead the way.

And yet as he edged further into his 20s and moved to Baltimore to pursue a career in writing and filmmaking, Keahna found himself increasingly uneasy with the outsize role his phone was playing in his life. The moment he felt sad, or scared, or uneasy, or bored, his hand would shoot instinctively, Gollum-like, toward the device. He scrolled while he walked, while he lay in bed; he scrolled while talking with friends. This, he felt, was bad enough, but not nearly as bad as the accompanying guilt. “I remember being sent a photo from a big family vacation to Montana,” he said. “I have my little niece on my lap, and there are all these mountains behind us, and it’s absolutely gorgeous,” he went on, his eyes shiny with tears. “And there’s me, slouched over, looking at my smartphone. I couldn’t remember being in that moment, because I was transfixed by the screen. I realized that I had given a part of myself away.”