55 Pickups A Day

As a child, there was no thing cooler than the little phones that slid or flipped or folded. Texting on tiny buttons and shortening words to make it easier. Navigating a small screen to use just a few apps. You can text your mom to pick you up early from school, you can spend the night with a friend without your parent losing access to you, you can call and coordinate outfits with your best friend.

Why wasn't that enough?

"Hey, here's a new phone. The screen is bigger."

"Oh hey, here's a newer phone. You can touch the screen now instead of using the buttons."

"But wait, here's a phone you can do so many things on."

"Here's a phone that will replace your computer!"

"This one will replace your TV!"

"The newest, most innovative smartphone will replace your loved ones!"

The mobile phone grew---both literally and metaphorically. The mobile phone takes up more mental space than it does physical. Heck, mobile phone? What other kind of phone is there? Home phones are obsolete.

Now, the phone is important and, don't get me wrong, the phone is very helpful sometimes. Video calling with long distance significant others or family members, looking up a recipe to practice a new cooking or baking skill, using apps to create digital art or videos that serve as time capsules of key moments of our lives.

But 52 pickups a day. What could I possibly need 52 times a day that I couldn't get elsewhere? Besides my dopamine fix, besides my incessant checking of likes on a post, besides pulling up my email inbox like its a fridge---I keep opening to check its contents knowing nothing has appeared since I last checked a minute ago.

The phone is now an extension of my body. A bionic hand that tells me the weather, stores my photos, allows me to play games. The bionic hand extension counts my steps, with frightening accuracy because it goes everywhere I go. The bionic hand extension can tell me where my friends and family are at any given moment. The bionic hand extension also does nothing at all sometimes, serving only as a paperweight, making that knot in my shoulder worse. Sometimes it just serves as something to look at out of habit, raising it to my face before realizing it has no use to me and letting it fall again, like a tick I preform over and over.

And it isn't only me.

People use to say hi to one another, people use to share advice and recipes face to face, people use to know the tone of your message because it was delivered straight to their ears while they looked in your eyes.

People now give a polite, tight smile, people comment hateful rage-bait on a well-meaning video, people get anxious or offended or confused.

People need the phone. Right before bed and as soon as they wake up. Piloting a two-ton mass of metal down a busy highway with plenty others doing the same, often with little children along with them? Pick up the phone! What if you're missing something important on Instagram? Big day at work ahead? Instead of sitting silently and mentally preparing, you should drown it all out with a podcast hosted by two people who don't have the answers any more than you do. You can listen to it right from the phone, of course.

"One more video. Okay, one more video. Ugh, that one left off on a sour note, one more. Okay, I actually didn't mean to scroll, but now that I'm here, I'll watch this last one. Haha, that's funny. Oh, I needed a good laugh. Ahh, that's so inspiring. Here comes the tears; that's the saddest video I've ever seen. Excuse me, why would they say that? That pisses me off. Aw, look at that puppy."

Technology takeovers look intense and dramatic in the movies. A giant robot with a gun, a hypnotizing message that captures an army of glazed over people, a house that becomes sentient and makes your decisions for you before you even realize it's doing so. All of it is so inane and obvious, it would never happen to us.

Life, however, imitates art. Life is subtle and slow. Life will become like this before we know it. Perhaps it already has. Would you believe that I couldn't even finish writing this before I picked my phone up another 3 times?

55 pickups a day. And what do I have to show for it?