Hi, my name is Rajesh, and I am a smartphone addict

Confessions of a smartphone addict

I have had a smartphone for the 15 years now. I had the first-gen iPhone — this was back when Myanmar did not even have mobile internet. I saw one of my friends in high school toying with one, and asked one of my aunts to purchase it for me the next time she went to Thailand.

This was the beginning of a journey of increasing smartphone usage over the past decade and a half. And I am sure I am not alone. I don’t want to bore you with stats but I am sure you all are hooked to your smartphone to some degree. Am I safe in saying that you’re reading this on your phone right now?

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Why am I writing this?

Well, for one, I already had a blog that I had set up about 3 years ago, which I wanted to use to write about stuff (anything from song names to cryptocurrency) from a distinct data-based angle.

But this blog fell by the way-side. Like dozens of other projects that I had wanted to do — projects that I really really wanted to do. But just couldn’t.

And something weird happened about 4 weeks ago when I ran into a Tiktok video that showed me how to change a setting on my iPhone that would make it “dumb”.

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You can try it too. Go to Settings > Accessibility > (scroll all the way to the bottom) Assistive Access. Here’s the link to the site that shows how it works.

There are a few scary screens that the iPhone will show you, but if you bear with it, it will do a mini-reboot, and you will be taken to an iPhone that looks more like the first version that came out in 2007.

And thus began my journey of decoupling with my iPhone, something that had taken over my attention and every “I’m bored” second.

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After about a week or so of having this setting on and also consciously putting it away from sight, very strange things started to happen.

I started waking up at 6am (before I used to lazily wake around 7:30am … and then hop on my phone which meant I was out of the bed only by 8:10am or so).

I noticed myself cleaning my bedside table which had been a mess for months.

I noticed myself keeping my work desk neat and tidy — something that I just wasn’t able to “get around to doing” before.

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Super curious of what’s happening, I started watching Youtube videos of folks who have “quit” their smartphone. There are dozens of videos on Youtube of people who go through similar experiences to mine after they ditched their smartphones for dumb phones. Here’s one that I really like.

And here’s one that really explains what’s happening:

So, what I have learned (so far) is that, once you take away the overstimulation that comes from your smartphone, your mind stabilises — and you are able to do “hard things again”.

It’s been fascinating! I mean, I don’t recognise the person that I am now. I am cleaning the grime off my shower-head in the middle of the day while before I couldn’t do my dishes without having a podcast or a Youtube video play in the background.

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This post is not written in the best prose — I probably have a ton of grammatical and structural errors in there. I could have an AI check it and make it perfect, but what the heck - I am going to publish before this post stays and remains in my Drafts.

DITCH YOUR PHONE.

TRY IT!