Making peace with the smartphone

This much we know: Smartphones are making us dumber.

- ALEXANDRE JACOBS

Compelling essays suggest we memorise hand-scratched poetry in the morning before opening Pandora's inbox, and warn that the declining literacy of the digitally oversaturated is threatening democracy.

This summer, as an experiment, I decided to go the other way and submit utterly to the pleasures and terrors of the phone when alone, without self-recrimination or judgement.

Jerry Lewis had his telethon. This would be a cyberbender. Benefiting nothing. I followed dozens of cats on TikTok, among my middle-aged cohort the most socially scorned of apps. I soothed myself to sleep scrolling Reddit posts or listening to podcasts—in full blast of that hot, bad, blue melatonin-sucking light.

I clicked on every awful news alert. I clocked more screen time than my 17-year-old son, who at least has the decency to silence his notifications.

And I read, partly on the phone, two books (gadzooks) published last month by internet personalities.

Both offer glimmers of hope that this little gizmo is not completely destroying society.

Algospeak is by Adam Aleksic, an energetic young linguist with millions of online followers.

"Ulysses' would never have succeeded on TikTok," Aleksic acknowledges of the 800-odd-page James Joyce day-in-the-life novel (now, incidentally, a popular short-form video conceit) published in 1922. "It's too disjointed, too nonlinear, requires too much conscious attention. People would scroll away."