I’m 14 — 15 now, actually. 

I have a wide range of relationships in this world. Nuanced ones, ambiguous ones, forgotten ones. Ones with family members, friends, activities. But the most cardinal relationship of my life, one of addiction and commotion, is with technology. More specifically, with my smartphone.

I don’t quite understand the device, how to talk about it, how to write about it. An article suggests it’s a portal to the Otherworld. It’s a nice thought to characterize the digital world as a fairyland, but it’s illogical when our phones compartmentalize real objects such as cameras, calculators, and newspapers. Maybe a better characterization would be The Wood Between The Worlds, a limbo realm in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series that contains infinite portals to other worlds. Perhaps certain apps and functions (think Notes, Camera, Calendar) are like Stranger Things’ Upside Down, a familiar mesh of two worlds (digital and physical), while other apps (think Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, video games) are more comparable to The Abyss, a completely different dimension. Or maybe I’m relinquishing too much control to the device. Maybe it’s more like a robot that my fingers are animating, a machine that I am in control of. Am I in control? I choose how much time I spend exploring its virtual terrain. Certainly, I’m its master then.

But it is also my master. Weeks have passed where that small electronic rectangle was the nucleus of my life. I cut conversations that could’ve evolved into something beautiful short to soothe my visceral hankering for it. My relationships corroded, unbeknownst to me, because the other parties were simply unable to snag my focus back from the device. I denied excursions and outings based on low battery percentage.

My phone has been the warp and woof and woe of my life and I have almost zero long-term memories of anything I’ve ever done on it. Maybe I don’t understand the device, but I do understand that it has consumed me

Things are looking up though. A social media trend suggested switching back to physical media. I see videos of young people showing off their CDs and VHS tapes, newspapers and zines, digicams and scrapbooks, and even flipphones. I’ve been influenced recently by these trends. I’ve set screen time limits and deleted apps and lugged my Canon around. I ask my parents to take me to Rice Village and Upper Kirby, to the places my mom took me as a child, and I don’t charge my phone. I’ve been listening to EDM from the mid 2010s because Instagram said that 2026 is “the new 2016”.  We as a generation are attempting to modify our lives however possible to relive these periods of time, because we’re sick of our highly technologized lives.

I dream of a day where we’ve all unanimously evaluated the negative ramifications that our phones have had on us, and do the work to undo them. A day where we all have library cards and purchase newspapers and claim hidden hangout spots within our small towns and pass notes instead of sneakily text and learn skills for fun and say “yes” because the goal is experience and not comfort. For the first time in a long time, I’m hopeful — optimistic now, actually.