Was life better before smartphones? Don't be ridiculous
Ditching one’s smartphone is all the rage this year. Eddie Redmayne, the Oscar-winning actor, recently revealed that he had adopted an old-fashioned “dumb phone”, joining a cadre of celebrities who have declared their escape from the tyranny of the high-powered modern devices. The “digital detox” has gone from a quaint idea to a fully-fledged branch of the leisure industry(£745 will buy you a week of yoga and surfing in Cornwall beginning with a ritualistic “handing in” of your gadgets).
And it turns out that smartphones aren’t selling as well as hoped: Sales of the iPhone are falling for the first time in history and those of other smartphones are growing substantially slower than the rate that manufacturers have become used to.
Less than a decade old, it seems like our infatuation with smartphones is wearing off. The magic experience of having the entire internet easily accessible in your pocket has become mundane, and has been replaced with a gnawing, inescapable resentment. The ability to communicate with someone anywhere in the world instantly was out of most people's reach not long ago, but now we have had our fill, and pine for the days when we could switch off.
Our constant use of smartphones is now seen as unhealthy, if not downright dangerous, and we bemoan how fundamental they are to our lives. We despair at the rows of people we see on the commute, every single one of them staring at their devices (despite many of us being guilty ourselves) and worry about the effect that always having a distraction from boredom will have on our brains. Gone is the admiration of five years ago in which we marvelled at how smartphone cameras and social media catalysed the Arab Spring.
Now suddenly, retro phones are apparently in vogue: Adele sports aflip phone in her latest music video, a throwback to the days when we would open our handsets and then shut them off again, rather than have them demand our attention at all times. New dumb phones like the Punkt M01 (three weeks of battery life from a device that just calls and texts) or the £70 Light Phone (billed as the "phone away from phone" for jaded smartphone owners) are going on sale.
Might smartphones suffer from the same primordial recoil that has seen ebook and ereader sales stutter? Could the great industries of the smartphone age – social media and the sharing economy – be hit by people giving up their always-on connections? It seems highly unlikely – the fervour around last week's Mobile World Congress, the annual jamboree for the industry, was undiminished – but people are asking whether our lives are actually worse off because of smartphones.
I would like to present the defence. Rather than take a retrograde step and ditch them, or fear that they are taking over our lives, we should embrace the amazing opportunities they create. Having a personal navigator in your pocket, being able to video call a relative on the other side of the world, and accessing the world's knowledge instantly are things that we take for granted, but we should remember when asking if we're better off without them.
Smartphones are giving millions of people access to resources they would never have had otherwise: The technologies in them – GPS, high-definition video cameras, comprehensive encyclopedias – would have cost hundreds of thousands of pounds a couple of decades ago.
They are creating new industries: Minicab-hailing app Uber, which reportedly sits at a valuation of $62.5bn (£45bn), exists entirely on smartphones. A rapidly-growing portion of ecommerce is conducted through them, with instant price comparison and reviews preventing consumers from being ripped off. Open-source transit data available on phones are making big cities' baffling transport systems understandable. Our friends and relatives are accessible whenever we need them – an irritation at times but something that is a lifesaver when we really need it.
In developing countries, smartphones are being used to spread vital health information, foster cashless societies and provide education.
Of course, they are liable to distract us; leading to heads buried in screens when they otherwise might have been appreciating the finer things, but it's hardly a surprise given the wealth of opportunities now available at our fingertips. Before we tut about smartphones making people antisocial or unproductive, we should remember that they can be used to talk to thousands of people and access possible crucial information.
Like all fascinating and powerful technologies, they are liable to being abused, but smartphones have been an unequivocal boost for societies. Though our love affair with them may have evolved into the everyday familiarity of marriage, there is no good reason for a break-up. The likes of Apple and Samsung that rely on our dependence on them shouldn't worry about the future of their industry just yet.
Besides, anyone who thinks smartphones are turning us into easily-distracted daydreamers are going to be in for a shock should if virtual reality ever does catch on.
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