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I live in London.
But I rarely go into central London.
Yesterday, I did.
I took the tube.
I saw the same thing again.
Everyone glued to their phone.
Headphones in.
Eyes down.
Not one person wasn’t scrolling.
Young. Old. Everyone.
It felt dystopian.
It felt wrong.
I wanted to get off the train.
I’m in no way different.
I’ve been glued to my phone too.
Plenty of times.
But this feels off.
Deeply off.
I’m scared I’ll spend my entire life on screens.
And honestly, that’s where things are heading.
Living without technology now is hard.
Almost impossible.
And I like technology.
I really do.
It gives me a lot.
But I want distance from it.
I use an e-ink phone.
It looks like a normal smartphone.
But it’s slow.
On purpose.
It stops the endless scrolling.
It forces friction.
It gives me my time back.
I remember being on my iPhone for hours.
Seven/eight hours a day.
Then another eight on a laptop for work.
I used my iPhone when traveling recently.
Immediately fell back into scrolling.
I was in some of the most beautiful places.
And yet craved my phone.
Then you get the fear of missing out.
Using it to fill the gap.
Drip-feeding yourself dopamine.
I can’t live addicted in that way.
I know I'll regret it later in life.
And yes, I know I swing to extremes.
But this one feels necessary.
When I see how addicted everyone is,
I think most people will regret it.
I refuse to be one of them.
I want technology that supports me.
Not technology that control me.
I want to be in the real world.
The real world is not online.
We are not designed for this.
We're all addicted.
Sedated.
Robert Wright said it best.
“Whatever the ancestral environment was like, it wasn’t much like the environment we’re in now. We aren’t designed to stand on crowded subway platforms, or to live in suburbs next door to people we never talk to, or to get hired or fired, or to watch the evening news.” - Robert Wright in The Moral Animal
