Flip Phones and the Middle Way: Finding Balance in a Tech-Saturated World

Smartphones allow our every thought and impulse to be actualized.

My wife recently parted with her smartphone and opted for a flip phone. What was once a novel piece of technology — a relic from the past — is returning with a vengeance.

“Take it away from me, I feel like a crackhead,” Alicia would often say, her smartphone clutched in her hand like a fiend waiting for the next hit — only now, the drug of choice was dopamine.

I’ve felt this way many times myself. Our social feeds are rapidly learning our deepest desires and fears, and with the rise of artificial intelligence, our phones may soon know us better than we know ourselves, if not already.

Clever marketers could preemptively use our data to nudge us into buying exactly what they want. It’s like Madison Avenue reinvented — but this time, it’s not Don Draper pushing women to buy cigarettes. It’s a superhuman intelligence capable of changing our minds at will. It’s both terrifying and thrilling — like something straight out of a sci-fi film.

My wife and I have always talked about parting from our smart devices and getting something simpler, but she was the first to pull the trigger.