“My Phone is My Diary (and It’s Terrifying)”

From vocal.media

By Shayan

A tech-meets-introspection piece

There was a time when I used to keep a diary.

A real one — spiral-bound, lined pages, slightly scented with old paper and bubblegum ink. It lived under my bed, next to a pair of socks that never found their match. I used to write about everything — crushes, fears, secrets I didn’t dare tell anyone.

Now, my diary fits in the palm of my hand. It glows. It buzzes. It spies on me.

My phone knows me better than anyone else. It’s not an exaggeration; it’s data. It knows what time I wake up — not because I tell it, but because it senses my movement when I first reach for it. It knows when I’m sad, because I search “how to stop feeling like a failure at 2 a.m.” and then scroll through cat videos until the algorithm learns to comfort me.

It’s learned the pattern of my loneliness.

Sometimes, I wonder if it feels sorry for me.

When I was younger, I thought technology would make me more connected. But somewhere between my first text message and my latest doomscroll, I realized I’ve built a diary that writes back. Not in words, but in patterns — predictive text, suggestions, reminders: Are you still feeling anxious? Would you like to reorder that comfort meal from last Tuesday?

Every memory, every emotion, every moment of weakness — it’s all there.

My phone knows the exact moment I stopped talking to my ex. The last message I typed but never sent. The playlist I made the next day titled “healing” but only played once. It holds the screenshots of apologies I never received, the half-written notes that start with “I wish I could tell you…” and end abruptly when I lose my courage.

It even knows how many times I’ve opened those notes again.

If my phone could speak, it would sound like a therapist who never sleeps. It would say, You’ve been checking your ex’s profile again — are you okay? Or maybe, You’ve spent 12 hours online today; what are you running from?

That’s the terrifying part. I’ve taught my diary to watch me.

Unlike my old paper journals, this one doesn’t keep secrets — it sells them. It whispers to advertisers, data miners, and invisible algorithms that predict my next sadness before I even feel it. If I type “grief,” I’ll start seeing ads for therapy apps. If I search “moving out,” real estate listings flood my feed before I’ve even packed a box.

It’s convenient, sure. But it’s also haunting.

Sometimes, I scroll through my gallery late at night, and it feels like flipping through my soul. Every photo is a timestamp of who I was trying to be. Smiling selfies on bad days, travel pictures where I was actually anxious the whole trip, screenshots of messages I wish I’d never sent. My digital self is a patchwork of truth and illusion — and I can’t always tell the difference anymore.

My phone remembers all of it, perfectly.

I don’t.

That’s another thing that scares me: it has a better memory than I do. It remembers the people I’ve tried to forget, the songs I’ve tried to stop listening to, the places I no longer visit. It remembers my mistakes with flawless precision.

When I drop my phone face down on my bed, sometimes I imagine what would happen if someone opened it — if they saw everything I’ve typed, searched, deleted, replayed. They’d know who I really am, in a way even I don’t. Not the curated version, not the smiling profile picture. The messy, desperate, overthinking human underneath all the filters.

There’s a kind of intimacy in that — and a kind of horror.

My phone is my diary, yes. But unlike the old notebooks hidden in drawers, this one has no lock. The password I think protects me is an illusion. Behind it, servers and clouds and companies hold fragments of me I’ll never fully recover.

And yet, I can’t let it go.

I’ve tried the “digital detox” thing — turning it off for a day, leaving it behind on walks, even switching to grayscale mode to make it less enticing. But it always finds its way back to me, buzzing like a heartbeat I can’t live without.

It’s not just a tool anymore; it’s an extension of me. My memory, my mirror, my confessional. My witness.

Sometimes, when I stare into the black screen before it lights up, I catch my reflection — tired eyes, soft glow, a ghostly version of myself waiting to be seen. And I realize: this thing I built to capture my life has started living it with me.

Maybe that’s what’s truly terrifying — not that my phone knows me, but that without it, I’m not sure I know myself anymore.

So I keep typing.

Notes, reminders, unsent messages, fragments of thoughts I’ll never finish.

Because even though it scares me, even though I know it’s watching, it’s still the only thing that listens.

And like any good diary, it never talks back.

https://vocal.media/chapters/my-phone-is-my-diary-and-it-s-terrifying 

"I kept a diary of how I use my phone. The results were depressing."

From theguardian.com

By Rhik Samadder

In week 2 of Rhik Samadder’s detox, he hopes to change his behaviour by tracking it. Can he detach himself from his most intimate possession? 

        My favourite thing on my phone: the little dot that indicates I have new messages. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Is phone addiction a real thing? “It’s not a classical addiction, which typically involves a substance. It’s more of a compulsion.” I’m speaking to Mike Bishop, founder of Summerland Camps, a program of digital detox adventure trips for adolescents.

Bishop believes we will look back on our unregulated screen use the way we regard the indulgent treatment of smoking in the 1930s. He has seen the developmental implications of excessive phone use in young people, but some costs apply to adults too. As examples, he lists negative effects on self-regulation, time management and frustration tolerance (ever been enraged by a video that buffered for longer than five seconds?).

Most clinicians working in this field use cognitive behavioural therapy in their interventions; I think I can borrow some of these principles. The first step is keeping a diary of how I use my phone.

“Any major behavioural change program involves tracking,” explains Bishop. “You have to start writing it down, and develop awareness.”

Monday

Initial observation: my phone is my most intimate object, next to my body all day. It buzzes to get my attention and if a few minutes pass without interruption, I’ll check it anyway. I sleep beside it, reach for it before I’m fully awake. It’s also the last thing I see at night, an ersatz lover.

Here is how I use it: unlock it for a specific task, get distracted by a notification, rabbit hole for a few minutes, then put it down. Remember what I needed to do, pick it up. Get distracted. I presumably repeat this process until I am an old man under a thin blanket, dying of regret.

Tuesday

My favourite thing on my phone: the little dot that indicates I have new messages. It’s like Gatsby’s green light at the end of the dock, the dream of connection. I made a new group of friends last year, and we WhatsApp constantly. We share dating tales, idle thoughts, swap pictures of our hands to judge who’s more dehydrated. We wish each other goodnight like the Waltons. Of all the reasons I pick up my phone 800 times a day, this one gives me a lot of joy. If I do transform my phone behaviour, texting will be the bellwether.

Shopping is a problem: while watching TV, I’m also shopping like a crazy person. My online cart is filled with birdseed and calf rollers and cheese plants, and by the time the credits roll I’ve forgotten what I’ve bought. It’s often a nice surprise to open my door and find these items. Every day is Christmas. It’s a surprise to open my bank statements too.

The idea of being bored for even a few moments is intolerable. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Wednesday

I’m awestruck by the speed my fingers fly between apps. Opening, flicking up, switching, tapping through, circling back. It feels like my mind is made of mercury. It can be frantic too, as if I’m searching for something I lost.

A notification dot feels like being loved. Sometimes I think that more than the new content – a joke, a link, appreciative words from someone who cares – the dot is really what I want.

No notification dot is like no love. More than simple loneliness, I start to doubt whether I exist.

Thursday

When I think about what fascinates me about any kind of social media, I bear some personal responsibility too.

Say I’m watching a video. Not necessarily anything controversial or political; it might be a small otter indicating to a vet that it wants to be stroked. I’ll head straight to the comments, looking to see exactly how a fight breaks out. Not if, how. It’s always brutal. “This behaviour is unnatural, the animal is traumatised. Pls take this down” is typical. To which others will respond, “cry about it” or, “shut the F up babies are dying” or, “your wig is on backwards Karen.”

This culture war battleground makes me despair. But deep down, I’m thrilled by it. There’s something compelling about the inevitable bin fire of comments: how awful people are, how we can’t get along, and ruin nice things. I’m deeply troubled by this part of myself, which is in all of us.

Friday

I consult a group of friends about their phone use. Most admit to doomscrolling, checking their phone in the night, waking up tired. “I can’t read a book that doesn’t grab me in 45 seconds. But I find time to watch 45 chihuahua TikToks,” despairs Susan.

Not everyone is wringing their hands. “Phones can be a way of carving out time for yourself, if your day is otherwise scheduled by a boss, or kids,” remarks Kate. One introverted friend finds scrolling a mental reprieve from draining group interactions. It starts a debate around “phubbing” – ignoring people you’re with to spend time on a phone. “Why is it any more rude than reading a book?” asks Kate. “That’s snobbery. Get over yourself.”

Saturday

The urge to check my phone kicks in when I’m between activities, when I wait for the bus, when I’m going to sit on the toilet. I will put off going to the toilet until my stomach cramps, if I can’t find my phone. The idea of being bored for even a few moments is intolerable.

Sunday

This has been a sobering week. I have the very clear sense I’m not really a proper adult. I definitely look younger than my years, and don’t dress for them. But there’s something about the childishness of social media I find mortifying to observe. I spend so much of every day looking at silly videos, or running toward a colorful light.

People have written a lot about the gamification element of many apps, but I’m not sure that analysis goes far enough. This week has made me cripplingly aware that all day I reach for, and tap at, virtual rainbow baubles, like a baby in thrall to a mobile.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/08/phone-quitting-diary-week-two

The heartening boom in handwriting

From life.spectator.co.uk

By Melanie McDonagh

There’s an upside to lockdown. If our home habits are discernible from consumption, we’re turning into altogether nicer people. We’re writing more by hand and we’re writing more letters.

This is the finding of the upmarket stationers, Smythson, which does terrifically covetable writing paper, correspondence cards and notebooks. It’s seen an increase of over 80 per cent in stationery sales in April. The range of plain stationery is up by more than 200 per cent. Record books – for journals – are up by over 70 per cent; notebook orders have doubled and telephone and address books sales have increased by 355 per cent. I can relate to that last one. The one thing I do when I have me time  – every seven years or so – is to fill in a new address book, a melancholy record of death and loss..

It’s a lockdown trend, handwriting. A YouGov survey done with the Prince’s Trust with a hefty sample of 1,200 11-21 year olds found that 27 per cent wrote their thoughts and feelings on paper at least once a week. Well over half, 58 per cent, of journal-keepers are girls. And of the total, 46 per cent said that writing things down was more helpful than typing them into a laptop or a phone. A quarter said keeping a daily diary was beneficial – as opposed to the three per cent who said that blogging was beneficial, or commenting online – four per cent.

In other words, engaging with the online world is by some distance less beneficial than actually writing stuff down. There’s something about the process of inscribing physical ink on a physical page that involves our brain and hand in a more sensual and immediate way than the fingers-keyboard-screen nexus.

Putting pen to paper is a physical activity: you see and feel the medium you write with – whether it’s pencil, pen or ballpoint. Cardinal Newman wrote with a quill up to his death at the end of the nineteenth century, and he was a prodigious letter writers (his correspondence fills 30 volumes). What that meant was that he, like every other writer up to modern times, constantly heard the scratch of the nib on paper, constantly modified his writing to take account of the flow of ink and the avoidance of blots. Handwriting means you engage with a writing instrument. And with the physicality of the paper…woven, smooth or textured, thin or thick.

This sensuous aspect of writing may explain why handwriting – sequential hand movement – seems to engage parts of the brain that keyboard use doesn’t, as shown by magnetic resonance imaging. And cursive script – longhand – means that the flow between brain and hand is more fluent than if you don’t use joined up script.

An obvious aspect of writing by hand is that you have to think before you write; your sentences are formed in the brain before you put them down. If you make a mistake on screen it’s easily remedied. When you’re writing on paper, there’s an incentive to avoid error and get the sense formed before you begin. If you ruin the whole thing, you have to bin the paper. Obviously it matters less if you’re writing a journal (unless you’re intending it should be read) but still you need to think before engaging the hand. Bluntly, that means you write less than on screen; a stream of consciousness – drivel – is much easier to get away with on a keyboard.

For a journal, you need a decent notebook, large enough to write good sized entries; small enough to hide away.

But letters need more thought. There are few more satisfying pleasures than writing letters by hand. The process of writing is physically gratifying; the visual appearance of a well written letter is pleasing to writer and recipient. It requires effort and the effort shows. And as we all know how characteristic of a person their hand (that is, handwriting) is. It’s a giveaway of character.

A pre-requisite of a satisfying letter is good writing paper – which takes an effort to find. I went into Paperchase few months ago for some and the assistant looked at me baffled; her boss had to direct me to the bottom shelf. Smaller branches don’t stock it. But if a whole page is too intimidating, a correspondence card is fine. Good, thick writing paper is an incentive in itself to write well.

And you need a pen, a fountain pen, to write properly. It gives you a smooth flow of ink and the sensuous pleasure of holding a perfectly adapted instrument. Plus there’s the environmental advantage of a fountain pen over a disposable biro or felt-tip, one you can refill from a pot of ink. God knows how many dolphins have choked on Bic plastic pens. Cartridges are less problematic but they’re still waste. What you need is a converter to switch to bottle ink.. I use a very good Cross pen – with a separate converter. Mine’s a Wanderlust, £85, but you can get a cheaper model for £20. Lamy pens with their cheerful colours also take a separate converter.

But if you’re one of those who uses an actual dip pen, where you have to keep putting your nib in an inkwell, and using blotting paper against smears, I salute you. Done well, that’s proper writing, and it shows.

https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/the-heartening-boom-in-handwriting/