She became understandably annoyed when forced to scroll through 94 new messages about the next birthday party or unexpected drama in the kindergarden of our two toddlers. I had to continually ask my wife about discussions in our kids’ school groups.
When I met friends, I needed to be updated about earlier group exchanges. But I also learned what it meant to miss out and not to be part of groups anymore. Photograph: Lauren Hurley/PAĪfter a few weeks, I noticed that I checked my phone less, did not scroll through my contact list to look for updated profile photos or send messages to people low on the conversation list just to say hello. I checked my phone less – which meant I missed out on what was happening in my kids’ school groups. Some contacts ebbed away, while I had to withstand the odd awkward look of disbelief and discontent from others when I explained that I did not use WhatsApp. My family and closest friends even installed one of the new non-Facebook messaging apps I had suggested, but suddenly I went from having 70 contacts to just 11 on my list.Īt the beginning, I often felt isolated and as if I had abandoned friends.
Instead of typing and recording messages, I returned to having actual conversations on the phone. Good friends sent text messages during New Years Day, called or responded to my calls. My defiance turned into a social experiment: I bought a smarter phone but uninstalled the application that, Facebook says, “one billion people around the world use … every day to stay in touch with their family and friends.” App-stinence The notifications made me wonder whether I should be using non-Facebook-owned alternatives and stop spending so much time on convenient but seldom meaningful chats. By the end of 2016, the ubiquitous chat app started to send me annoying periodical reminders that it would stop working because the operating system of my beloved Nokia phone was no longer supported. I had installed WhatsApp in 2012 only because all my friends had it.
My initial reasoning for such a drastic step had little to do with mindfulness or the want of being disconnected. It felt strange, uncomfortable, daring and good. During the first minutes of 2017, I saw my friends typing on their phones while mine remained unusually silent.
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