I Can’t Use My Smartphone and Function At the Same Time

Does anyone else have this problem?

Citizen Reader
Tech and Me, Loving It or Hating It
6 min readSep 19, 2024

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Tiny green dinosaur toy sitting on brown tree branch against blurry background.
Most days I feel like this lost little dinosaur. Photo by Magda Ehlers: https://www.pexels.com/photo/gray-dinosaur-toy-on-rock-1319591/

Ever since smartphones became ubiquitous I have felt unable to function in the world.

I held out for a long time by not getting a smartphone. Then I had to give in and get one just to receive texts from family members and my kids’ school. I hate it and use it as infrequently as possible.

But it’s clear to me now that everyone uses their phone for everything. And, after a recent vacation, it became more clear to me why I struggle with mine.

Travel has changed a lot in fifteen years

My family and I recently vacationed in a large city on the U.S. East Coast. We had a truly wonderful trip.

I was nervous before we went, though. I hadn’t taken a trip that involved plane travel for more than 15 years. The last time I traveled, few people in America had cell phones, and it was seen as mostly normal to print off plane boarding passes and other maps or tickets that you needed while traveling.

Things are different now.

I still printed our boarding passes, because deep down, I don’t trust that my phone won’t run out of charge at the very moment I need it most. But after that it became very clear that…

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Tech and Me, Loving It or Hating It
Tech and Me, Loving It or Hating It

Published in Tech and Me, Loving It or Hating It

Your experience with technology in your life, work, or business.

Citizen Reader
Citizen Reader

Written by Citizen Reader

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