Back in the 1980s, mobile phones were an upscale toy. Like beepers, they were something that the "Fast Lane" corporate folks would buy and carry in order to prove they were important by always being ready to receive a call, anywhere, anytime including in the middle of a performance at the Lyric Opera. Where I would feel like just crawling up between the seats and silently slitting their throats like a Green Beret so as to accomplish the kill without disturbing the aria. I'm sure that fantasy ran through many opera lovers' heads every time one of them went off. Today, they are ubiquitous and the plans available for them vary. Some are so cheap it's practical for someone poor to own one. They're used by children for the convenience of parents who want to be able to call and check up on them wherever they are. They're used by homeless people when before the mobile phone, you could not get a phone number without having an address.
They've gotten lighter, fancier, usually full of special features. You can get phones that include MP3 players. My Razr isn't the newest-bestest but it still has a very convenient little camera and if I wanted, I could upload blog posts from it. Provided I ever left the house and wanted to blog, and that I was willing to sit there slowly and painfully pressing a number key three times to turn it into a letter after using the text function that I don't remember how to do. I have yet to fill out or update most of the address book for that reason.
For someone who types over 100 words a minute, one-finger texting with repeated pressing to change what letter it is can be a real pain. This is one of numerous reasons I have not gotten into "texting." Another is that it costs money, so does uploading anything or surfing the Net. I use my phone as a phone and a pocket camera, that's it.
So they have some conveniences and are in general a good thing. There is a dark side to this one though. One is the money sink that texting to Twitter or reading Twitter from a phone while people are out can do to their monthly bills. People who are having trouble making ends meet wind up carrying huge phone bills on these special services -- when there are other, cheaper ways to keep yourself amused during breaks at work or on a bus. The "texting" thing is only essential if you're phoning someone who's hearing impaired.
Then it might become a serious convenience -- the hearing impaired can now use a phone the way everyone else is doing and most of the people they'd call would respond the same way without thinking about it. So a phone for the hearing impaired no longer necessarily takes spending the money for an expensive voice-to-type function at home. That is great for one specific group of people.
Everyone else is just playing with a toy and racking up a vague, unplanned bill while doing so. This may lead to a significant amount of credit card spending on entertainment that's basically just social connections -- and yet socializing is one of those things that is independent of medium. If you are a social person, there are many different ways to express it and communicate. It's free to actually talk to the person sitting next to you on the bus. Costs nothing.
Money weaves in and out of this, because texting and mobile phone use, especially upgrading the phones to get the newest bestest coolest gadget is a frequent expense that carries hidden expenses. Most of the convenience aspects involving online use cost a lot of money. Where it can save money is in long distance or international calls. Most plans have flat rate minutes and go through the Internet in a way that makes distance irrelevant to the cost of the call.
I don't use the phone much.
I don't like being interrupted. It's that simple. I dislike having to get up and run, stop what I'm doing to answer the phone. My phone is right next to me where I usually sit, so the occasional time I get a call -- usually my daughter when she's out at the store and needs to ask me a question or my friend Lisa calling to say she's coming over -- I don't have to reach for it. I treat it almost like a land line in that regard. I keep it tethered on its charger unless I've pulled it off to use it as a camera.
Phone camera shots are flattering, because they are low resolution. Most problems people have with how they look are heightened by high resolution photography -- flaws and pimples and so on just vanish in a low resolution little picture and to be seen at all you need decent side lighting. So the phone as camera has some serious advantages for that.
It even functions well for phone as sketchbook because it doesn't fill the shot with tons of irrelevant detail, just gets the basic shapes and gist of whatever I snapped. So the mobile phone is a useful tool for artists that could be substituted by getting a keychain camera that wasn't a phone. But it's convenient when it's on the phone. It means other people can get hold of you no matter what you're doing.
It's convenient for them, not for me.
I have discouraged phone contacts among my friends. I hang up on telemarketers. I hesitate to put in my phone number on the many online forms that ask for it, because I do not want sales calls and don't socialize by phone.
It boils down to time sinks and interruptions.
Beepers and pagers and now mobile phones have eroded privacy. Anyone can get hold of you anytime. With mobile phones even the bathroom is not private, is not self time when no one can reach you.
How many times do adults in the middle of sex get a phone call and automatically stop all the proceedings from proceeding in order to answer what turns out to be an evening telemarketer or an annoying in-law who wants to give an hour or two of advice? How many people put up with that treatment?
Leap to answer if it rings no matter what else is going on. Now with mobile phones, it's in your pocket when you head into the bathroom and so you wind up compelled to answer when it rings, not wait for it to ring out and go to voicemail.
Beyond that, a much more annoying service got added to personal lines about a decade ago and has become almost ubiquitous -- the function that lets someone who's calling while you're on the phone with someone ring through and buzz you to change calls and put the first caller on hold. That bit of bureaucratic humiliation used to be limited to offices and institutions. Now your annoying in-law can put you on hold during that hour or two of unwanted advice and you'd better not hang up or wander off or she'll get mad.
That kind of treatment, that hurry up and wait syndrome of the Fast Lane causes immense stress in people's lives. Without paying attention to what mobile phone use does to your habits, you may be taking several of the worst stressors from an office job home with you to apply no matter what else you're doing -- mid meal, sex, playing with kids, watching TV, working on a project, talking to friends, no matter what you're doing, someone can interrupt you for whatever reason they have to want your attention.
It's no wonder that the biggest complaint aside from lack of money that working people have is not enough time to do the things they need to and the things they want to.
So to get the full benefits of a mobile phone without raising your stress levels, think through and make some decisions about when and how you use it. Look at your budget and ask whether texting is entertaining enough to be worth what you're spending on it. Look at your stress levels and ask whether it would reduce your stresses if you just never answered any second calls that interrupt a call. Look at your life patterns and maybe train yourself into turning the ringer off when you're in the bathroom, having sex, doing something you don't want interrupted.
Decades ago, if someone got a busy signal, they just called later or blew it off. If it was a trivial call, just killing time, they'd call someone else. Now with that hold feature, everyone expects to be top priority in your life even when they're just goofing around killing time.
Technology brings some wonderful freedoms into modern life. Freedom takes responsibility and conscious choices. So what I really advise to anyone reading this article is to take a week and chart everything you do with your phone. Then sort it out, rate it for whether it's pleasant or useful and whether it's cost effective in time and money.
I don't call that simplifying your life. Simplifying is just doing without. I call it organizing, because when you do organize and plan you can eliminate a lot of things you neither need or want in order to afford the things you wish you had the time and money for. Who you are is who you are -- your priorities will be different from mine and should be. But you will be more comfortable and happy in life the more of those choices you make according to your own real priorities than those of whoever happened to call while you were talking to someone else.
