if the title wasn't clear enough to you, i am now one of those quirky people that don't use their phone much anymore. i actually got my first phone at FOUR YEARS OLD. that is not a normal age to recieve a phone just to make that clear. this was before the time where parents simply give their kids ipads just to make them not cry, instead of being a normal parent. this was 2010, and it was an iphone 4 that i recieved during my 4th birthday, i believe it literally just came out. i know, the fact that i recieved an iphone 4 during my 4th birthday makes me sound super young, and i kind of am, i am 16 (17 in 3 days) years old as i'm currently writing this. but because i recieved a phone so early on in my life, it was pretty obvious that i would become fairly addicted to phones starting at a young age. i had all the social media in the world at around 8-9 years old. i had a youtube channel, i had an instagram account, a twitter account, a facebook account, and a few other ones that I probably can't remember. with me having social media at such a young age, like i've said previously, me being also addicted to social media was bound to happen. in fact, i have been active on those platforms (minus facebook, i stopped using it at around 11) up until a few months ago. i actually decided to stop using my phone as often for a multitude of reasons, so i'll get into that.
alright, so the first reason i actually deceided to stop using my phone was because i became addicted to consuming the media on each platform. i would like to admit though, i have not FULLY quit out of the social media craze. i do have a discord account to talk to a few online friends, and i do have a youtube channel where i upload stuff here and there, as well as consume lots of youtube videos. but, i DID go completely ghost on instagram, which was the platform i used the most, stalking people's instagram accounts, posting my own stuff constantly, thinking that people actually cared. but the truth is, none of these people actually care. i didn't care about any of the people i was looking at, i was simply just looking at stuff to distract myself from the problems i had. i guarantee that you can probably relate to that just as much as anyone else. everyone is just looking at these random short-form videos and pictures to distract themselves from any problem or goal they have to work for. i was very much a victim of this. all of the content on these platforms are completely useless. i want you to think of a useful video you have seen from either instagram, or tiktok the past day or two. i GUARANTEE you cannot think of one thing, and i wouldn't have been able to either at the peak of my media consumption. it's all just dumb garbage, and i can promise you that.
another thing i can mention, this mostly applies to twitter, but this is still applicable to instagram and other platforms. the people are ABSOLUTELY AWFUL and completely unbareable at times. i can barely even put into words how many times i got severely annoyed, trying to argue with a complete idiot over a topic that didn't even matter, and i would just turn my phone off for a few minutes to clear my head from the nonsense. especially with twitter, i swear. i didn't use twitter NEARLY as much as the other ones, but i would hear lots and lots about how random people on the internet getting angry at a celebrity for a few days because they said something "weird" or did something bad, whatever the case is. either way i have always questioned why these people exist, and did they ever let something that has nothing to do with them, make them so angry. the celebrity in question literally does not know you and will still be making millions, if not, billions of dollars, with or without your support. if you see a popular person doing something you don't like, simply just move on from it, completely ignore it. it seems like these type of people dont really have the common sense to do things like that though, they just let the internet get too involved in their lives, and they let it control them to the point of idiocy. now i do have to say, i am also KIND OF a victim to this scenario as well. it didn't have to do with celebrities though, it was mostly just random people on the internet being complete weirdos, and instead of just ignoring them, blocking them, or doing whatever i can do just avoid them, i would get really mad and try to get it into their head about why the things they are doing are incorrect. at the end of the day though, there is nothing you can really do to stop the people who are doing weird shit online, they all just do it for attention so the way to really defeat these people is just ignoring them. This is actually one of the reasons I decided to make a website, I tend to feel emotions more exaggerative than others, so it's really a good way to rant about something that's been on my mind, whether i simply want to info-dump, or talk about anything really.
there's only so much i can really say that hasn't been said by hundreds of thousands, if not, millions of people already, so i'll keep this section short. these monstrous sized companies like apple, google, etc, are very obviously taking any data of yours they possibly can (usually all/most of it), or just straight up spying on every single move you make. if you are reading this, you have had most, or all of your privacy taken from you by these huge companies, there's no doubt about it. i REALLY wish i can go back and just never made any of those accounts, and i simply played with the toys i had when i was 4 years old, instead of relying on social media and phones, and computers. there is very little you can do to take back the data, as their servers that hold your data are MASSIVE. the advice i can give is to simply stop using all of it, delete all of your accounts, and to just simply find a new hobby or something. even things as simple as carrying your phone in your pocket as you wonder around, doing outdoor activities, your phone is tracking you, and making it seem like it's doing that for a good reason. "well, it's because if something goes wrong it can send my location to authorities", this isn't a good enough excuse for me to just allow companies to track my every movement. now you could also make the argument that it is technically not harming your experience as you do stuff in life by letting these companies track you, and while that is technically true, the point is that it's simply weird that companies are just allowed to watch you like that. i am not the greatest in explaining stuff like this, so i will leave sources to either a youtube channel or video that can explain this whole ordeal on privacy with phones much better than i can.
by definition, escapism means, "the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy." now while you can apply that definition to the very thing everyone else is currently doing, using their phones to talk to people and consume media. me personally, i actually like to look at this from a slightly different point of view. i would like to refer to escapism as, quite literally escaping OUT of your escapism techniques. what i mean is, you can escape the things you are using to distract yourself from your problems. as an example, you probably use your phone to watch videos on tiktok or instagram, insteading of doing homework, or doing something for work. you are using escapism, to escape from that work by using your phone. instead, i, or you, would use escapism to escape using the phone, by doing the work. even if it isn't the most enjoyable thing to do something, phones have rotted our brains into thinking that life is supposed to mostly be comfortable, and we get to use our phones as a reward for doing the hard work. we can instead replace our phones being the reward, with something much more intuitive and thought provoking. reading is probably one of the most popular escapism tools that is much better than phones. but it doesn't have to be reading of course, you can replace your phone with literally anything that you can benifit from. we are in a modern age so of course it's still okay to SOMETIMES have a reward that doesn't benifit you much, like playing video games or watching youtube videos. although i'd like to recommend that people watch youtube videos they can learn from, if you find the right channels, watching youtube videos can actually be a little more benificial than you might think, but that's going off topic. my point is, life was NEVER supposed to be a mostly-comfortable experience, we have just become so used to the idea that life is an easy breeze, so when things get a little challenging, we want to give up. i hate using this term because it makes me sound like a psycho conspiracy theorists, but they have literally made us sheep. they want people to be easily manipulated, and what easier way to have this happen than to give us technology that simplifies life, and actually sets humanity back rather than forward. that's all i really had to say, so if you would like to learn more about stuff like this, i HAVE to reccomend luke smith's website as well as his youtube channel, he has very thought provoking concepts about phones and social media and all that stuff that are really interesting to hear. he is actually one of the many reasons i decided to make this site. below will be a link to his website.
so, i've talked about all this nonsense, but the question stands, how do you even break out of the cycle of using your phone for everything. now this question can technically apply to any other subject of quitting ever. how do i stop smoking? how do i stop watching porn? how do i stop drinking? how do i stop reading a random person's rant session they posted online for no reason? the answer to all of these questions, is to just stop doing it. there is NO secret to quitting, no real way or method of quitting. to stop doing something, you just simply have to stop doing it. now of course, i can understand something to that degree is very difficult to do and it's much easier said than done, but that is the harsh reality of addiction in general. however, i CAN give you a bit of advice on how to just stop using your phone. what i did, was make my phone as uninteresting as possible. i deleted all the apps on my phone (minus a few emulators to play games when i feel like i deserved it), i turned my phones' color filter to simply black and white, and i deleted all of my contacts i had, except for immediate family. by doing this, even if i wanted to use my phone, i would have to hassle downloading the apps again, which involves me having to load up my computer, open keepass (an open source offline password manager that i strongly recommend), enter the password to the password manager which is in a notebook of mine, THEN i would have to find my icloud password and enter that manually to download just ONE app. as you can see, i gave myself MANY hurdles in order to download things, so my laziness takes over, and i simply just don't use the phone. i would recommend doing these things to avoid using your phone as much as possible. another thing is that you really have to shift your mindset towards looking at the smaller things in life to enjoy. as cliche as that sounds, it makes you even forget you have a phone sometimes. i currently only use my phone to play emulated games on, which soon i plan on replacing that with actual consoles that i want to collect, but i haven't had the money to do so yet. that is all i have to say, and if you have read to this point, i give you the challenge of attempting to not use your phone ONCE, minus text messages you NEED to answer, for a week. let me know if you have tried this! so for now, goodbye!
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