Quitting the iPhone is a White Male Privilege
But everyone deserves the right to end their addiction
Two stories came to me recently from friends that made me think more deeply about my decision to quit the iPhone. The first came from a recently single woman who had turned to the phone to find a partner. While I had dipped my toe into what was once called “online dating” in the early aughts I hadn’t realized how essential “the apps” have become in the 2020s for finding intimacy. More importantly to the iPhone question, I hadn’t realized how instrumental intentional anonymity is, particularly for women, when they venture outside the safe confines of their homes to enter into potentially risky situations. If there is one thing the iPhone excels at it’s a kind of masking that lets us engage superficially with others under the guise of a semi-permeable electronic identity. For my friend, this masking was key to helping her feel safe when she met strangers. It gave her a refuge to retreat to if that stranger she was meeting turned out to be, well, strange.
What you shouldn’t do is think of your phone as an “everything tool” that leads you to things that are less and less relevant to your core being.
