i hate my phone so much

the captor that is my iphone

I quit cigarettes instantly after reading Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Quit, which brilliantly argues that the nicotine high is an illusory, meaningless crutch. Carr convinced me that quitting is easy. When I get a craving, I remind myself of the millions of people who don’t endure the empty feeling of wanting a cigarette. The addiction subsided mostly because of the countless examples of people who live happily without nicotine. But what happens when an addiction affects nearly everyone on the planet, and the only people immune to it are the ones powerful enough to have engineered it?

That is how terrified I feel about my phone. The addiction is frictionless, invisible, built into everyday life and encouraged via QR-code menus and contact tracing apps. I am a 1993 millennial, and I hate my phone so much. I hate the dependence, the control, the slouched neck and dopamine abuse.

I remember receiving a postcard from my grandmother while I was at summer camp in 2006. That same year, I heard ab…