My name is Emily, and I don’t own a smart phone. Shocking, I know. As an almost 21-year-old you would assume that I’d be posting this article via my second or third iPhone, that as any proper millennial I’d be snapping pictures of my organic smoothies and hipster coffee with deeply-contemplated hashtags to build my following on Instagram, and that my phone is not only my most prized possession, but my world.
Wrong.
What can I say? Some have called me a Luddite. I’ve owned the same slide-keyboard “dumb” phone since I was a junior in high school. I’m a fish swimming upstream, one average girl with one average phone wading against the crowd. All too often, it’s a lonely struggle. One by one, friends turn in their dinosaurs for flashy Siris. There are so few of us that you can instantly bond with people you just met over still possessing an un-smart phone. You can also drop it a million times without the screen breaking, and no one is likely to ever try to steal it.
The downsides to staying a step behind? Well, I'll admit, there are a few.
1. You're a “social” outcast.
When you are the only member of your family that isn't a proud owner of a smart phone, more than a few times a week you reach that awkward time of the day when everyone is gathered in the living room, and everyone has their smart phones open and in hand except you. Brother has his headphones in and is watching a tutorial on YouTube. Mom is scrolling through Facebook and the weather forecast. Dad is researching something on Google. So you sit there quietly, hands folded while you decide what to do because talking might have been nice but you can’t participate in this social ritual because the phone in your pocket can text and tell time and that’s about it.
2. "I don't know" is your catchphrase.
I work with kids, and I think all of them assume that if you’re older than 12, you have a smart phone and can look up whatever you want whenever you want. Adults are assumed to be wells of information because of their magic devices. I’ve let many a child down because of this. No, I couldn’t look up a map of the U.S. to help them with their homework. No, I couldn’t find out how watches work. No, I couldn't say what the temperature was outside. Hot. That’s what it was. Extremely hot degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know.
3. Miss-applications
While I save money by not buying apps, sometimes it would be helpful to have them. It's not the games I'm interested in—I got addicted to Candy Crush on my iPod for a while, and I don’t need that back in my life—it’s the practical tools. Like when I found out you can deposit checks through your phone. That's cool! Oh wait ... they meant smart phone. Never mind.
4. Emoticon-less
Emoticons, emojis and gifs play an essential role in communication. Why use words when you can send facial expressions? Unless you have a dumb phone. If you want to send a picture, you have to get creative, because each one is a piece of art fastened together with punctuation and the alphabet. And the pre-made ones other people send you with their super smart phones look like this: [] [] [], and sometimes can't even be received.
5. #NoFilterEver
Smart phone people take cameras and photography for granted. Selfies on dumb phones take way more skill and coordination than the simple flip camera button on the iPhone. Also, once you take it, there's not much you can do with it, so the selfie is a social practice limited to the smart phone class. Beyond selfies, if you’re going on a trip and want nice photos to commemorate the occasion, you have to bring along an actual camera that takes up extra space. Then you have to upload the photos from the them from the SD card once you get home and then sort through all of them and make some edits and then if you’ve made it that far, the time has probably already passed to upload them onto social media. The trip was a month ago. #nofilter #ihavenofilters #ifyoucanseethetinypiconthetinyscreenI’llbeimpressed
6. Tortoise Texting
There are two kinds of dumb phones: those with keyboards and those without. When I switched to a phone with a keyboard, my texting life exponentially increased. But the speed at which I can receive, read and respond is still significantly slower than my smart phone friends. Everyone is a faster texter than I am. My brother will send me four texts before I’m even done replying to his first. The conversation changes before I even enter it.
7. Let’s get lost ... Literally
If you have neither a smart phone nor a GPS, you live in fear and trepidation for the day you make a wrong turn. If you're going somewhere you've never been before, you have to plan ahead: not only looking up on Google Maps every single turn you'll have to take, but transcribing each of them, placing them somewhere easily visible from the driver's seat and familiarizing yourself with them because there will be no magical automated voice telling you in advance when a right turn is coming up. Thankfully I have a GPS, because otherwise, with my severely lacking sense of direction, I would probably still be lost somewhere right now.
8. Language barrier
Technology has introduced a whole new branch of words into our vocabulary. If you're not familiar with it or using it on a regular basis though, it can be hard to keep up or participate in conversation with smart phone fanatics. For the dumb phone user, data is still just a word you learned in fifth grade science. I'm not entirely sure what the difference between an emoji and an emoticon is. What you thought was a pound sign is actually a hashtag. Why are there so many acronyms? I just want to be able to communicate.
Shout-out to the lonely few who still use dumb phones: What are some struggles you deal with that your smart phone friends take for granted?
