Today I tried making like a Zoomer and writing an essay on my phone, but it didn’t work out for me.
When you actually know how to type, writing on the phone feels so painfully slow. There’s the low speed of actually thumbing the letters, of course, but then there’s also the constant battle with autocorrect: Most of the time it’s useful, but then it’ll throw in a truly wild guess for no reason and completely derail your thought process. And then, of course, there’s the pain of editing—your phone never puts the cursor where you need it, and you wind up deleting half of what you wrote because you couldn’t get close enough.
But again, all this presupposes that you actually know how to type; fortunately, I am a millennial and I was forced to learn in high school. I only got super fast when I started Instant Messaging my friends, though: There was nothing more motivating than constantly being two thoughts behind a friend during a fight.
But anyway, I was trying to write on my phone because over Christmas I came to the unwelcome conclusion that I’m horrifyingly addicted to social media. We were having a nice family moment, just me and my husband and the toddler and Erika, and I was constantly fucking around on my phone. It wasn’t even fun, really: It was Christmas, so of course no one was updating, and yet I kept scrolling. Even now, as I’m typing, the urge to grab my phone and open the app is overwhelming, which is frankly embarrassing. Food, benzodiazepines, my phone—what won’t my junkie ass get addicted to?!
It all started from an understandable place. The awkward thing is that frankly, being responsible for a toddler all day, every day is a very specific kind of boring that is hard to properly describe. She doesn’t nap, so except for the one hour where I yeet her into her crib and insist that she try to relax for a bit, I’m constantly on call. It’s not like she isn’t capable of entertaining herself: Most mornings, I’m able to get the house into some semblance of order while she plays on her own. But since she is a person and therefore occasionally wants human interaction and affection, I am always being interrupted during whatever I’m doing. This can be super annoying, and the aggravation was really getting to me, so I started doing low-stakes things that I wouldn’t be devastated to set aside whenever she needed me. Hence, constantly scrolling through Instagram or Reddit or the barren wasteland that is what’s left of Twitter.
The problem is that now this is all I do. Don’t get me wrong: If my daughter wants or needs me, I immediately put down the phone and interact with her, so it’s not like I’m neglecting her. But what kind of example am I setting for her by constantly being glued to my phone (when I’m not cleaning the house)? I saw how devastating phones can be for children firsthand when I was teaching, and I don’t want that for her. Also, on a totally selfish note, I can feel myself getting dumber and less interesting the more time I spend on my phone. It’s not like I’m constantly looking up ways to be a better mother, or searching for healthy recipes that will trick her into eating even a single fruit or vegetable, or researching historical information for my currently-defunct podcast—I’m just scrolling through social media, often of people I hate. It’s not exactly an uplifting exercise, and I need to cut back in a major way.
So that’s why I was trying to write this blog post on my phone: I wanted to do something that stretched my brain even the tiniest bit, but my computer was upstairs and my daughter showed zero interest in going up there. But I eventually sucked it up and went and got the damn computer, because I am too old and set in my ways to make writing on my phone into a thing. Even though I’ve currently got my computer balanced on one thigh while my cat is perched on the other, typing is still less annoying than keying on my phone. So hi. My name is Clare, and my New Year’s Resolution is to update this space at least once a week. I think I can manage that much, and hopefully it will keep me off my phone at least a little.