Smartphones

Me, Myself and iPhone

Under pressure from friends, family and therapist to separate self from screen? Don't be swayed. For 21st-century men of distinction, a smartphone is the window to your soul
Image may contain Electronics Phone Mobile Phone Cell Phone Suit Coat Clothing Overcoat Apparel and Tie
Istock

Hardly a day goes by without someone lamenting the modern obsession with smartphones. Whether it's a newspaper article about how our children are turning into phone-toting zombies, or an office conversation about the lack of social skills that much-maligned millennials are decried to possess, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the fastest-selling technological advance in history is sending us just as rapidly back to the Dark Ages. As someone who works in the tech-obsessive world of digital media, it's sometimes hard to remember it was ever any other way.

Phone-shaming? Cell-bashing? Whatever phrase we invent for it, it's not OK. It's true that we are in the middle of a cultural shift towards a place where health, wellness and mindfulness are suddenly at the top of everyone's, well, minds. That's fine - good probably.

But going hand in hand with this movement is the idea that being connected, living our lives online, is unhealthy. "Go on a digital detox," they implore. "Take the stress out of your life." There is a growing view that this constant connectedness is what's responsible for everything that's wrong in our lives.

I was musing on this notion as I was waiting outside my therapist's office but a few evenings ago. After years at it, therapy becomes not only ritualistic itself, but surrounded by other ritual observances - and one of those is the "quick check of the phone before you switch it to silent" as you wait outside to go in. There aren't a lot of rules that therapists insist on, but turning off your phone before starting a session is definitely one of them - you really don't want your train of thought (much less flood of tears) interrupted by a stray Snapchat. Standing outside my therapist's office that week, that final check of my phone yielded a sigh of relief I had been increasingly conscious of in recent days - my iPhone was still on 100 per cent battery. Brilliant.

As someone who is on their phone from sunrise to sunset my battery is usually flat as a pancake by 4pm

Happily tucking it into my pocket, I smiled as I walked into her office and parked myself in the oversized armchair in the corner. "How are you?" she asked, in her infuriatingly neutral manner. "Great," I replied. "This new iPhone case has changed my life."

As I saw her expression turn atypically quizzical, I reflected that this was possibly not a universal human experience.

The previous week, I discovered Apple's chunky case for the iPhone 7 that doubles its longevity by including a battery pack on the back. Not a revolutionary concept - third parties have been making them for years - but this was the first time I noticed Apple had made one, with its trademark Cupertino panache. Sure, it added a little weight and heft to my phone but, heck, double the battery life? As someone who is on their phone from sunrise to sunset - no, scratch that, to the next sunrise - my battery is usually flat as a pancake by 4pm.   Life each day is a stream of notifications, dings and buzzes as the world around you marches on. And if you have as much going on in life as I do, by the time you're thinking of who to round up for a quick pint after work, you've no battery left to WhatsApp them and suggest it.

But now, I mused, thanks to my sparkling new Apple charge case, my phone will keep going long after I have lost my own personal charge and passed out in a heap at the end of the day.

Looking around, now paranoid, I started to see judgement and opprobrium everywhere

As I explained this - and the feeling of lightness and relaxation it gave me - I could see my therapist quietly chuckling to herself in the way that people who aren't surgically attached to their phone often do when confronted with someone who is completely obsessed. It's part amusement and, I realised, a good part pity, and as I related this annoyance to my friend over dinner the following night, I was horrified to see the same look start to creep across her face, too. I don't remember the exact words, but many of you will know the refrain. "Why are you so obsessed with your phone? Why don't you just switch it off... leave it at home... live in the real world... be more mindful?" Et-flipping-cetera.   As I sunk into the lounge sofa, and prepared to spend the rest of the evening with my pal facing passive-aggressive disapproval, I realised that this backwards attitude to total connectivity actually really bothered me. Looking around, now paranoid, I started to see judgement and opprobrium everywhere. A Netflix binge that evening culminated in a viewing of Zoolander - the classic Ben Stiller comedy about a male model who is as dumb as a box of rocks but, in his defence, is also really, really, really ridiculously good looking. Towards the end of the film, Derek Zoolander takes a call on his comically tiny flip phone (this was 2001, flip phones were still a thing). Begged by his love interest to turn off his phone, Zoolander is incredulous. "Turn off my phone? Turn off my phone? Earth to Matilda, don't you understand that this phone is a part of me?" Incongruous as it was for the time, the message was clear. Zoolander is stupid. His phone is stupid. Zoolander's attachment to his phone is stupid.

Giles Coren wrote in the Times over the following weekend about going to a restaurant - Sartoria, a GQ favourite, in fact - and complaining that everyone was distracted by glowing screens. "Why was everyone on the phone?" he demanded. "I was so angry, I got up to glare."

Analysts predict that within a few years, tapping away at a laptop will look positively old-fashioned

Now, yes, there are times when it might be rude or unbecoming of a GQ gentleman to be obsessed with what is happening in app-land when you are in the rambunctious company of good people who are right here and right now. But the undertone of Coren's column, the not very sub-subtext, was that being on your phone is fundamentally unhealthy, maybe a bit sad, and definitely bad for society.

I couldn't disagree more. Paying the mortgage, buying groceries, making appointments - these are time-consuming and stressful things, things that annoy me, send me out of my way, force me to deal with people I don't want to have to deal with. Ordering takeaways, once a bore of digging out a crumpled paper menu, arguing among your friends where to order from, jumping in the car to pick it up, leaping out while the engine idles and praying it'll be ready: an awful chore. All of these things I can now do on my phone in a matter of seconds, making my life much less stressful and freeing up time for more important things. (Like, um, Netflix. Or Xbox).

At a recent media conference I attended, the popular refrain among delegates was that, "Saying mobile internet is like saying colour TV." Of course TV is colour. Of course the internet is mobile. Mobile browsing now makes up more than 50 per cent of all traffic worldwide. For many people, the internet simply is the phone. Analysts predict that within a few years, tapping away at a laptop will look positively old-fashioned, consigned to the history bin with floppy disks and analogue modems.

I'm not ashamed to say that my phone is the centre of my existence

Because time moves on, and technology moves on even faster. When Zoolander was produced in 2001, the iPhone wasn't even a spark in Steve Jobs' imagination (he was busy hyping the original iPod). Text messaging was 160 characters and you had to tap out notes by clicking keys three times in a row. Heck, BlackBerry was the height of cool - remember Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan's thumb-tapping obsession? The world has changed, and so has our relationship to technology.

I'm not ashamed to say that my phone is the centre of my existence. It's where my friends and loved ones are. Whether I see them regularly because they work around the corner from me, or hardly ever because they moved to the other side of the world, my phone keeps me in constant dialogue with the people that I'm closest to, through text, pictures, videos - and, yes, occasionally even phone calls. It's never been easier to be in the loop about someone's life and it means that when we do see each other, we pick up exactly where we left off. How is that not a good thing?   My phone is a vault full of my most treasured memories. I bought my first digital camera when I was at university in 2000 and got an account on Flickr in the same year. As I have moved from camera to camera to phone to phone, all my photos live on Flickr - and now, through the app, I have a library of every cool event I've been to, holiday I've been on, or stupid night out that I sort-of-don't regret. Opening that app is a time warp to decades of happy memories.

My phone is where my loved ones are. Why wouldn't I be attached to it?

I am a music obsessive and I have every single track, album or mix that I have ever loved on my phone. All the time, all the places. Whatever mood I'm in, whatever need I have for a particular track or memory or feeling, I have the right music at my disposal in the time it takes me to open Spotify and navigate through my library.

Oh, and did I mention ubiquitous 4G, meaning that the entire record of all human civilisation (that's the internet, dummy) is always only one tap away? Knowledge is irrelevant. Signal is everything.

My phone is a tiny, magical capsule containing everything that I need and love. Why wouldn't I be attached to it?

So to suggest that my phone obsession is unhealthy, that my attachment to it is unhealthy, that I need a detox - well, you might as well suggest I take a break from my own life. What would it really mean to go on a digital detox? Stand in bank queues? Get photos developed in a pharmacy? Lug a hardback book around in my bag? Christ, buy a magazine? (I read GQ on my iPad. Obviously).

No, I don't think so. You can argue that we're all too connected now, that we are creating a world of social-media anxiety, that we will never again know what it is to walk up to a girl in a bar and start a chat, without having first swiped right on her picture an hour beforehand. But it's too late now. It's an iPhone world and we're just tapping in it. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Like this? Now read:

Staring at your smartphone at night could make you go blind

The best summer gadgets 2017

How to kick your email addiction