It's Time To Move Out
At the start of this year, I moved out.
Not out of my apartment, or my parents’ place for the third time.
I moved out of my phone.
I think we all should, at least for a while. Our phones have quietly reshaped how we relate to each other, steadily becoming symbiotic with our identities. What was once a tool for connection has become a replacement for it, as fundamentals of awareness are replaced by feeds curated to keep us scrolling solo. But it’s not just a personal problem, it’s a social one.
In some form of personal protest I deleted TikTok, Netflix, the same glowing games I play when my boredom exceeds its bearable bounds. I stopped answering the phantom buzzing of my phone, constantly cradled in my pocket or palm in anticipation of a message or a need. I started conversing with my housemates more after work, simply allowing silence to persist in my spaces. Contrary to what you may think, I didn’t start this for New Year’s or pride (well, maybe a little). I just started noticing how often I reached for my personal brain box, not only in pauses or boredom, but at family gatherings and house parties with my favorite people.
Within countless hours of distracted scrolling, I’d see ads for screen time management apps or devices. I had conversations with friends about the looming presence of our phones, expressing the want to disengage but an inability to follow through.
After much thought, two “truths” became cemented in my mind. (1) Having a dependent relationship with your phone seemed to me a largely universal experience, and (2) Our relationships with and through our phones feel too emphasized in comparison to actual lived experience. So I started researching.
A few papers and conversations later, I had two more hypotheses. (1) What I thought was a bad habit is more complicated than one should personally take accountability for. It’s built in. (2) As a result, we must assign enough responsibility to ourselves to create the change we want to see. It’s our job to rebuild.
From my readings, sociologists Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman (2012) describe our era as one of networked individualism. Instead of belonging primarily to tight, bounded communities, we now operate as individuals at the center of personalized networks. We maintain connections rather than inhabit shared spaces. The individual becomes the primary social unit.
Sherry Turkle (2011) builds on this, writing that we “expect more from technology and less from each other.” An uncomfortably familiar truth. My phone offers connection without vulnerability. Companionship without obligation. Elsewhere she observes that we risk “giving human qualities to objects and treating each other as things” (Turkle, 2011).
So, assuming our habits are shaped by these systems, I ponder, who’s actually responsible for changing them? Ben Green (2021) argues that conversations about “tech ethics” often focus on individual responsibility, e.g. what designers should do or what users should choose, while ignoring the systems that structure those choices. Responsibility becomes diffused across platforms among corporations, algorithms, and users. Everyone participates, but no one feels fully accountable; responsibility seems atmospheric, present everywhere and felt nowhere.
This realization is what sparked my personal protest. I wanted to know whether I was actively choosing my habits, or if something else was pushing them on me. I wanted to inhabit a space truly and fully. Those mundane, magnificent spaces that exist between a kitchen with three chatty girlfriends, or by myself, dangling upside down the side of my bed, knowing nothing but the rush of my blood and depth of my breath. #tagyoureit
References
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Green, B. (2021). The contestation of tech ethics: A sociotechnical approach to technology ethics in practice. Journal of Social Computing, 2(3), 209–225. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.01784
Rainie, L., & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The new social operating system. MIT Press. https://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs047n/readings/rainie-networked.pdf
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books. https://www.churchintheoaks.com/en/grow/resources/Alone-Together.pdf
Haley Walk is a Master of Marine Affairs candidate at the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, where she studies environmental policy and the legal implications of emerging conservation technologies.. Haley’s work focuses on bridging scientific research, environmental governance and justice, and everyday practice.