Last weekend I lost my iPhone for the first time ever.
Waking up the morning after my friend’s wedding, I did the usual headcount: wallet? Check. Shoes? Check. Boyfriend? Check. Phone? Nowhere to be seen. I called the taxi company, the venue, the bridesmaid, even the taxi driver directly – alas, my trusty iPhone was gone without a trace.
The hours and days following saw a reaction that shocked me to the core – in the place of the heart-wrenching panic I would normally assume at a time like this, I was strangely calm, relaxed, and even…happy?
It was becoming an extension of my natural self – a limb, a child, a lifeline. I would scramble for my phone at the hint of vibration, and have almost been hit by a car more than once whilst engrossed a rapid-fire text conversation. Zero battery meant a complete halt in all social proceedings, whilst a pent-up Instagram scroll could consume a full hour from my day. My iPhone was beginning to operate me, and I didn’t like it.
Like any friendship, everything started out rosy – in the palm of our hands we had infinite messaging abilities, a proper digital camera, the Internet, Facebook, bus timetables, video calls overseas, recipes, Instagram – heck, we even had a tiny invisible woman named Siri in there who knew everything. Including some pretty high-qual jokes.
Indeed, it was quite a while before the friendship begun to sour and the toxicity of this increasingly pervasive device started to show.
People suddenly stopped talking to each other, and the social etiquette rule book was rewritten with new commandments such as, ‘It is perfectly acceptable to eat dinner with someone whilst making zero eye contact and engaging only with your phone.’ Every moment became a potential photo opportunity, every joke became a Tweet, and every debate was won by a Googled gallery of supporting evidence.
Top Comments
So you don't know how to put your phone down, and you don't know how to use "Find My iPhone"?
Maybe this crazy modern world just isn't for you.
Everything in moderation I say! Nostalgia and "simpler times" are overrated, I would never willingly go back to a life without GoogleMaps in my pocket.