Sometimes the issue comes up when someone sees my phone.
Sometimes the issue comes up when I ask for directions to a location ("Let's all meet at [restaurant name]. What do you mean, 'Where is it'? Just look it up.").
Sometimes the issue comes up when I have to correct an underlying assumption ("We can just require every employee to complete their lab safety inspection using an iPhone app on their personal phones.")
My slide phone (and landline) are generally met with an incredible level of disbelief. It is never accepted without question. Normally there is a barrage of questions about my reasons and motives, none of which are satisfactory. So, to organize my own thoughts, and prepare for the next onslaught, here are the reasons I do not have a smart phone.
1. I am cheap.
There is no denying that my current phone plan is cheap. I'm on a family plan with my parents which costs $20-$30 a month depending on which additional line I am considered. Since my dad refuses to bill me, whenever I visit my parents I slip a twenty into his wallet and softly call out what I'm doing to which he replies "Okay, sure!" because his hearing aids aren't in and he's pretending he can hear me.
2. I don't need another distraction.
Trust me, I waste plenty of time on the Internet as it is. Between 10 pm and 11 pm, I spend a good half hour to 45 minutes consciously procrastinating going to bed by reading news and joke websites. It's stupid and I know it but I do it every single day. Plus, I'll admit I've been spending a ludicrous amount of time playing Jurassic Park Builder on the Nexus tablet I won at a conference (notice a theme of me being reluctant to pay for technology for myself). I've been going into work around 20 minutes later than usual for the past six months just so I can poke at dinosaurs and collect their dino coins. If I had dinosaurs in my palm all the time? I can't even imagine.
3. I would rely on it as a social crutch
Like everyone else.
4. I own a GPS
Everyone, when trying to explain how useful a smart phone is, mentions maps. Funny thing, that's what a GPS does. Without a monthly subscription cost.
5. I want to leave work at work
Because of the nature of my job, I'm on call for manufacturing 24/7 for a big chunk of the year. I also frequently work weekends or holidays because cell culture experiments work that way. Having a smart phone capable of having work email all the time would mean I have work email in the little time I currently have away from work. I don't want the capability or the expectation that work invade every hour of the day.
6. I want to leave email at work
Because my work requires so much email, I've started to feel like email is work. Even to people I like. There are a few people, like my friends from high school and my family, who I think "get" me enough that I can write in my natural voice, but with most other personal emails I have to exert a day job level of effort to avoid inadvertently sounding bitter or sarcastic.
Sarcasm is my first language. Polite and chipper is a hard-won second.
7. I charge my phone around twice a week
Not all the time that it's not in my hand. Not in the car. Not with a borrowed charger at a party. My phone battery lasts over four days, and that's only when it gets down to 60% and I charge it because I paranoid and always think of a massive emergency scenario where I'm forced to evacuate my home and would want enough cell phone charge to call my family.
This is also why I fill my car with gas when it reaches the half tank.
8. I want to be aware of the world around me
I feel time. I wait in lines. I read books on buses. I remember things rather than Instagram things.
9. I don't want to carry something that expensive around all the time
If I lose my phone, it's not the end of the world. Or the end of my paycheck.
10. I don't want to be the most important person in my life
I'm part of what is probably the last generation that will remember a time before Facebook. I've seen the Internet and social media twist slowly from an experimental realm you used to discover new things to a space where everyone carefully crafts an image of themselves, carefully choosing what to share, what to show off. I'm starting to hear "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!" reverberate inside my head when I look at Facebook or Instagram. If we all think only about ourselves, what we'll post, how many likes we'll get, where do other people fit into our lives except as backup players on our stage (or likers to our posts, commenters on our status)? I don't want my life to be all about me. We're all players on the stage but it's not my stage.
And I don't want a device in my hand that implies otherwise.
