What Was Your Life Like Before Cell Phones Existed?

Yesterday, my friend and I had a nice long chat with lots of rants — from wanting to move somewhere tropical, to Dave Chapelle, to Covid, to relationship struggles. One of the topics we touched on that really stuck with me, was how we both really miss life before cell phones.

Now, of course, this won’t apply to everyone – I was born in the late 80s and she was born in the late 70s, so we have been part of the generation where we had to transition from no computers and cell phones to where we are now.

I told her my boyfriend was in the process of trading his iPhone 12 in for a flip phone because he’s so fed up with the stress — and one of my long-time friends (Hey! Liam Ford) has also made the switch back to a flip phone. She laughed as she said had been considering it recently as she noticed how much the endless scrolling on TikTok and Instagram and whatever other bullshit fills the time, has impacted her mental health.

Immensely — and not in a good way.

“Sometimes I just throw the fucking thing under a pillow and walk away” I could hear her exasperation.

I suggested she do that more often — hide the phone, put it on airplane mode, pretend you lost it.

My job requires me to have a smartphone (lots of constant emailing, texting, web searching) but I told her my tricks to manage it, with some strong boundaries– I have never signed up for TikTok or all the latest trends, I have very limited apps on…