From Zero to iPhone: Observations From a Smartphone Newbie

Here is a typical commuter on the morning train: headphones in, face illuminated by a blue glow emanating from their phone or occasional iPad. They are cross eyed with concentration, frantically updating Facebook or throwing about angry birds.

And this is me: I am napping. I am staring out the window. I am reading a book – a real, physical book. From the library. I am a one-woman anachronism.

Until a month ago, that is, when I went from zero to iPhone 5.

When it first arrived, I fell into an infatuated swoon over my new, shiny gadget , and it spent many hours in my embrace – this partly because, faced with the slick touchscreen, my slow typing resembled a monkey on a typewriter. My great achievement that first day was not Shakespearean plays, or even sonnets, but more modest works: Facebook status updates. I downloaded a collection of useful-sounding apps. I spent an hour taking photos of objects around the house and then applying Instagram filters to them. In a show of restraint, I did not post these photos to Facebook. But the iPhone is strangely magnetic, and to my alarm I found it incredibly to difficult to put it down for long.

I’ve resisted getting a smartphone for a long time in no small part because I was afraid of turning into one of those living-dead technophiles who live entirely in the Cloud realm of social media, news websites and Yelp reviews, who have difficulty maintaining make eye contact with their real-world companions, and whose phones can be pried from their hands only through delicate surgery. I am not so very far from that, having already outsourced a good part of my brainpower to Google, but now I wouldn’t  need to even temporarily download, say,  restaurant directions into my brain. With a smartphone, I would never have to know anything ever again: not facts, not word definitions, not even the contents of the article I read just that morning. I worry about eventually reducing my intellectual debates to a frantic exchange of links to blogs posts and op-eds.

The other change I am adjusting to is the level of interconnectedness, or the expectation of it. The smartphone reassuringly promises that I will never miss an email or status update again, never be left out of plans. I jumped the first few times I got notifications informing that friends were at nearby restaurants and bars, before learning how to turn those off – the flip side of interconnectedness is a feeling that you are missing out, and that you must somehow account for your free time, like for gaps on your resume, with photos or witty updates. On a recent Sunday, an hour into a gorgeous morning solo hike, I felt compelled to take a photo and then immediately post it for my friends to admire – “intimate hike, just me and a few hundred of my Facebook friends!” Would the hike have felt less enjoyable without instant validation that yes, the views were stunning? And will this addiction to instant approval get even worse, now that it is so accessible?

I am hoping to use my iPhone for the powers of good, even if the novelty of instant validation hasn’t yet worn off, and may not. Yes, I check Facebook more frequently, but I resist taking photos of every meal or publicly venting about my commute. I do stay up to date on the news, I listen to Radiolab, I document neighborhood street art. As an avid photographer, it’s deeply reassuring to be able to capture my life on the fly without dragging my hefty camera around – as reassuring as being able to find my way with instant maps and directions. Mostly, I remind myself to take out my headphones, to look out the window, to make eye contact. And  I am not ready to give up my library card just yet.

Photos by Kseniya Tuchinskaya.

Kseniya Tuchinskaya is an overthinker, urban meanderer, photo-taker and science fangirl. Her biggest challenge is finding enough hours in a day to fit in all the reading she wants to do.