SAVE ME FROM MY SCREEN

Despite the do-not-disturb settings, time-spent reminders and ritual purging of apps, we’re hopelessly addicted to our smartphones—and it’s ruining our lives. Dispatches from the digital minimalist movement

- LUC RINALDI

In the spring of 2024, I walked into a Telus store in Liberty Village and requested a flip phone. The clerk stared. “Why would you want that?” he asked. It was a reasonable question. The short of it was that I was sick of my iPhone. I was tired of feeling chained to my many inboxes and alarmed that any time life lagged—if I was standing in an elevator, riding the TTC or sitting on the toilet—I'd default to opening Instagram or a news app. My time was being stolen from things that mattered more: my wife, sleep, exercise, all those books I'd convinced myself I didn’t have the bandwidth to read. I wanted to see whether I'd get more out of life if I used my phone less. And I wondered if the world wouldn't be better off if we all did a digital detox.

The problem: our smartphones weren't designed to be used less. Most apps are purpose-built to maximize user engagement, cajoling us with FOMO-inducing notifications (“Tylor just posted for the first time in a while”), hyper-personalized content (cat videos, volleyball highlights, music memes) and limited-time offers (“Play now and get double XP”).