Are smartphones bad for us?

So, I’m old enough to remember a time before cell phones became ubiquitous. When they were mainly limited to a select few business users.

It was the late 80’s, maybe early 90’s when my dad’s company bought him a car phone. He’s a civil engineer who frequently travelled to remote job sites, so this was the only way he could keep in touch with the office. Back then the device was the size of a car stereo amp, required an external antenna, and even then had a very limited service area. These things were expensive and portable only by the loosest of definitions. It wasn’t really until the very tail end of the 90’s that cell phones became small and cheap enough to reach mass consumer adoption. It would be another decade before the same thing happened with smartphones.

Nowadays, nearly everyone has a mobile device. They’ve become practically required for modern daily life. So it’s hard to believe that they’ve only really been around since 2007. At least in their current form, with the first iPhones and consumer BlackBerrys. People now seem hopelessly married to their devices, to always being connected, to the point where a lot of philosophers and thinkers are beginning to question whether they have been a net positive on our society.

Well, like any piece of technology, smartphones aren’t inherently good or bad. They’re just a tool, and like any tool, their impact largely depends on how they’re being used. A hammer for instance can drive nails, or bash someone’s head in. Because it can do the latter doesn’t mean it’s a terrible invention in and of itself. The fact is that a powerful, pocket sized, general purpose computer with access to the internet is very handy. It’s replaced a lot of separate tools into one sleek device. Yet it’s entirely possible to have too much of a good thing.

From a social aspect, a lot of apps we use on a day to day basis are designed, often deliberately, to be addictive. They hijack our natural instinct for novelty, and play into our fear of missing out. Social media does this in a particularly efficient and insidious way. Essentially providing us with a highly curated feed of idealized lives and censored news to drip feed us a warped version of reality. One where you can infinitely scroll for that new piece of information, the exciting new photo or rage inducing post, that gives your brain the dopamine hit it craves. Yet this grossly distorted world view is messing with our mental health and social cohesion. And you don’t even need to be a psychologist to see that. Just take a visit to Twitter on any given day that ends in Y. Social media is not bringing people together. It’s making us nuts. And not in the fun and kooky way.

Now in the past, back when the internet was still, you know, fun, this was largely mitigated by the fact that you had to sit down in front of a computer to get that hit. Laptops and desktops are somewhat cumbersome devices that are often tethered to one spot. Smartphones are with us all the time. Convenient and always ready to instantly chase off boredom and the flick of a finger. They’re the ultimate time waster.

This is something that companies have used to exploit people financially, socially, and politically. Such as the rise of aggressive microtransactions in free-to-play mobile games. Everything is monetized, especially you as the user.

Smartphones are data gobblers. They transmit vast amounts of personal information to advertising companies and platform holders. Information which is then sold for profits, or handed over to state actors. If you own an Android device, you can grab Oxford University’s “Tracker Controller” app off F-Droid to see just how much, and to whom. Accuweather, a popular weather app, for example is in communication with twelve different companies on my device. Tracker Control can also set up a local VPN to block these communications. This does not require root, so it comes highly recommended. Though it does not block the vast amount of snooping Google themselves are doing, as shutting that off can actually prevent Android from functioning properly. Likely by design. Google is, after all, primarily an advertising and consumer research company

For the most part though, it seems like we’ve just sort of accepted that we no longer have privacy in the digital age. Some even question why that’s even important. Which is kind of messed up when you really think about it. We’re all celebrities being hounded by a relentless, all seeing, all listening, and never sleeping paparazzo. Apple for example got caught a couple years back when a whistleblower at an Irish contractor said that Siri was listening and sending back data regarding private conversations, often without peoples’ knowledge. Things like intimate moments and business meetings. Which further cements that Edward Snowden’s revelations were just the tip of the iceberg.

And that information can be used against you, whether you like to think so or not. Sure, people say they have no skeletons in their closet. Yet I can guarantee everyone has some piece of information about them they’d rather not go public. We’ve already seen this with Cancel Culture, where an off colour, offhanded comment made years ago goes viral, and the mob uses that to destroy the person’s life. Or China’s dystopian cyberpunk Social Credit system, where all your digital activity is used to determine “how good a citizen” you are, purely based on the regime’s backwards ideology. Who’s to say those recordings your phone is making can’t be used in a similar fashion? Piss off the wrong sort of people, or some politically zealous contractor catches wind of something, and oops, it got leaked.

Of course there are a few folks that are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the wasted time and privacy intrusions smartphones enable. Some encourage taking a “tech sabbath”, where for one day a week you basically put down all digital technology. Others have ditched their smartphones for “dumb” phones. In other words, cellphones that are just cellphones and nothing more. These are great things if you can work with them. But as I said, having a smartphone is becoming a necessity to function in modern society. So shunning the tech may not be an effective or even practical strategy for everyone.

I think as both individuals and a society though, we do need to periodically reevaluate our relationships with technology. Of course we are tool builders. That’s what fundamentally makes us human. However, we need to make sure that our tools working for us, not against us. Or in other words, that the negatives don’t outweigh the benefits. Even if that means sacrificing some of the conveniences they provide.