Text Your Friends
A proper relationship with computing isn't just avoiding the bad.
I'm doing Exodus 90 with slightly over two dozen men at my parish. If you haven't heard of it, it's a ninety-day Catholic men's program built upon three pillars: prayer, asceticism, and fraternity. One of the disciplines - part of the asceticism piece - is to 'avoid unnecessary smartphone use.'
Naturally, I had to ask myself "What is necessary smartphone use?" I didn't want to be super literal about what is "necessary" - in theory, it would be possible to drop by a professor's office every time I’d want to send them an email, but I don't think that's the spirit of the program. It felt like "doing what is fitting for an austere season of life" was the way I'd phrase it.
In reviewing the different apps on my phone and whether to uninstall them for these 90 days or not, I also reviewed the purpose of each of these apps. First up on my home screen was my text message application. What is the purpose of this application? Well, texting - sending short messages to people that they can read asynchronously. Most of my messages are to family and friends. This isn't just an acceptable use, this is actively doing good.
This isn’t to say that is good for all people in all actions in all circumstances. Instant communication certainly shapes the kinds of relationships we can have, which in turn shapes the kinds of societies we build. If we didn’t already live in places set by our careers and our self-images rather than our friends and family, then texting would be a lot less beneficial. Still, given our lives relative to other times and places, reaching friends and family is a greater good than, say, reading information on the internet because friends and family are greater goods than information.
Noticing this especially good use case came with an ironic twist: this is one of the uses of the smartphone that I take advantage of least often. I have a habit of not replying to texts and phone calls from friends - I think I justified it originally by saying it's a consequence of "not being a slave to my notifications" or something, but by this point it's gotten beyond that. One of the best uses of the smartphone was directly what I wasn't using it for. It struck me that watching YouTube with texts unread (rather, unreplied-to) is the digital equivalent of having the TV on while friends are waiting outside. Gross.
With Exodus 90, the corollary to 'avoiding unnecessary use' has meant that I've been more intentional about using my smartphone to connect - to reply to texts and Snapchats from good friends and posting and BeReals to check in. If I'm using a smartphone (which I still am) it ought to be put to good use.
I’m a little surprised (almost delighted) that BeReal was mentioned. When it first launched, I thought, YES, this is a good direction: encouraging the real, the unedited and unfiltered. It’s currently offloaded from my phone as I’ve been cutting back on general social media use, and the creeping anxiety of needing to “be available” to snap a BeReal in preferably 2 minutes was too much. (and not many friends of mine use it.) But the impulse to reality is good.
A friend sent me an invite link to an app called Lapse which is themed after disposable film cameras. You can take as many photos as you want, but you cannot view or post them immediately (they have to “develop”) and there are no editing tools within the app. I love the concept, and would have nearly replaced my regular camera if not for its awful proprietary nature -- you cannot screenshot or otherwise save your photos raw; you must download them from the app after it applies its watermark, and obligatory (but admittedly cool) film effect overlays -- and for the fact that almost no one in my circles use it.
Someday I’ll get a dumbphone, lol!
Great article. Quite relevant to my life too, but even moreso now that I live about 8 timezones from my family (so calling is less practical)