Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I'll Never Do (4 page)

The friendships I maintained during my experiment—with people I spoke to on my landline and in person—were
solid and real. I really
connected with
the people I was talking to, and that made me feel more grounded in the world, a little more human. A little more like my buddy Thoreau. Yep, just called him my buddy.

Those seven days made me appreciate the little things again. Spending time with my friends, reading books and full articles in newspapers, savoring quiet moments of contemplation, having an awareness of the world around me—I was fully present within my experiences.

Of course—and I was naïve to think it could have been any different—just a few days after my cleanse ended, I went right back to my old ways. I had so many ideas and hopeful dreams about disconnecting on a regular basis and had made all these promises to myself, but the siren song of my iPhone was just too strong. At the end I was left merely with the knowledge of how things could be, how I wanted them to be, even if I was not able or ready to truly change my lifestyle. Thoreau would have been so disappointed.

Being without a cell phone made me think of Confucius’s famous saying “No matter where you go, there you are.” During my experiment, wherever I was, whatever I was doing, I was
there
. Nothing—no texts, calls, e-mails, or television—could pull my focus. I was fully present. I felt each thought, fear, self-reflection, and insecurity as it occurred.

But the week after, reunited with my phone, I wasn’t truly focusing on anything at all. I could escape any uncomfortable situation—or any situation at all—by texting a friend or checking Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or
Tinder or Tumblr. (I freely admit that when I’ve run out of social media to check I have also been known to Google myself.) After a full week of focusing on the here and now, I was checking my phone every few minutes; I was texting dozens of people at once. It felt terrible. Introspection was dead (again). My interactions with other people consisted mainly of half conversations in which I would smile, nod, and say
Yeah
or
Wow, that’s amazing
, having no idea what they’d actually said because I was too engulfed by the stream of texts, e-mails, and instant messages on my phone.

My social media and phone addiction has metastasized as the years have passed. I have owned two Nokias, two PalmPilots (’memba those?), four BlackBerries, three iPhones, and two iPads, all of which I treated like newborn children and none of which I could go without for more than thirty minutes at a time. (Or, more honestly, five or six minutes. Fractions of minutes.) I can’t help but laugh when I think back to what I used to consider “addicted” and “dependent” behavior when it came to simpler talk-and-text cell phones—or even my beeper in high school! I loved that beeper! It was see-through! And I could text my girlfriend 143143143 to let her know I was thinking of her, and there was no way for those numbers to lead to an all-out text battle. Those early devices were just my gateway. Then I got my first BlackBerry at the end of 2006 and learned the uses (and misuses) of instant e-mail, BBM, the Internet, and Gchat on a mobile device.

While I was gazing at my phone year after year, the
social media stratosphere was changing and expanding. Friendster (RIP) gave way to Myspace (basically RIP), and Facebook modified its policies to include everyone—not just college students. And then Twitter and Instagram and Tinder and Tumblr were born. (Seriously, I have to stop writing about Tinder—I can already feel a livid text from my wife on its way.) Through social media, we could now hear “firsthand” the thoughts and feelings of celebrities. We knew what kinds of fur pillows Kanye liked and the fact that he loved Persian rugs and cherub imagery (thank God he stopped writing about that). Reality television swallowed scripted programming. You could follow real-life drama minute by minute. We were all connected, twitching with near-constant anticipation of what would happen next, who would say or text what, instigated and propelled by the never-ending stream of information.

My parents’ generation has watched these new forms of communication and entertainment infiltrate our society, but for a while they denounced this new media as a negative distraction or wrote it off as something they didn’t understand, like heavy metal music or obscure indie films or college kids’ obsession with David Lynch. At first our parents looked at our social media and smartphone use with the same expression they bore that awkward moment when you came home from college with a boyfriend or girlfriend with sleeves of the tattoo variety. Even now, as older generations have also begun to become obsessed with and addicted to social media and smartphones, it’s still significant
that they have spent the vast majority of their lives
off-line
, where the greatest degree of their persona-building and important decision-making took place. Their friendships and (at least first) marriages did not begin, thrive, or end because of Facebook—though more recently, many in their generation are getting divorced and mentioning Facebook as a culprit. But still, the nuances of their lives weren’t chronicled on a twenty-four-hour news feed from the time they were born until they were in an assisted living home where Matty B decided to film his viral YouTube music video. (My grandmother is actually in a Matty B video.) There was a
purity
to their lives then.

When my mother started using Facebook, she often forgot her password and didn’t sign in for days at a time. My father is obsessed with his iPad and its magazine and newspaper applications (and of course with Hearts Online) but doesn’t frequent many of the communication apps (except for SnapChat. He loves SnapChat). There was also that three-month stint in 2010 when he became compulsively obsessed with Foursquare and full disclosure: He did upload his first Instagram a few months ago. It was of a German couple he’d never met getting married on a float. It remained his only post for months. It was very strange.

But something eventually broke and now he posts pictures of our family dog and his steak dinners just like everyone else. From the day I sat down to write this book to the present day, both my parents have let the social media addiction take over. But the difference is that they
can
put
it down when they need to and their lives haven’t been molded and shaped and severely affected by it. They enjoy it. It’s a pastime, no more, no less.

So that’s how my parents react to social media. And conversely there’s our generation. A girlfriend once broke up with me via e-mail because she caught me having a Gchat conversation with an ex that had started because of a Facebook status. So it’s a little different for us.

We can’t sit in one place and have a conversation with someone without wondering if something is or isn’t happening
somewhere else
. We want more; there is always something else, something better
out there
. Many of us feel less secure in our relationships and friendships, even with friends we communicate with on a regular basis. We feel lonely, despite keeping in touch.

Our generation has spent roughly half our lives without these gadgets and apps, and the other half becoming addicted to and dependent on them. Many of us can dial back to the time none of it existed. We remember our clearer minds, activities, communication styles, and attention spans before the world changed, though sometimes it feels like a faint and distant memory. I, for one, remember the accountability that went along with the absence of cell phones—the absolute requirement that we could not be more than fifteen minutes late to meet someone or they’d think we were rudely standing them up. I remember awkward conversations that had to happen in person or over the phone and the way that living through those difficult moments and knowing I had the ability to speak my mind changed me, made me stronger,
more confident, and independent. I remember dinners with friends during which we all paid attention to each other and then spent hours after the meal together, without one of us leaving because we had made plans on our smartphones in the interim. I remember privacy and loyalty in relationships and having so much to talk about at the end of the day because we had not spoken since the morning. I remember coping with my feelings by taking the time to contemplate and simply sitting with my own thoughts. I remember Sunday mornings with the paper, reading and discussing articles without distraction, and feeling proud that I knew what was going on in the world. I remember how much easier it was to be loyal without a stream of photos or updates from our exes tempting us to stray, or any means to impulsively text or e-mail. I remember reading a book without distraction and enjoying my life without having the urge to broadcast every detail to everyone else. I remember these things with nostalgia because for me and many others, they have ceased to exist.

O
ne of my best friends—we’ll call her Donna—recently sent me an e-mail. The proportions of its craziness both shocked me and felt strangely familiar. She wrote:

This morning I was waiting for the subway and managed to drop my iPhone
onto the tracks. It would have been run over by a train. I panicked! Without hesitation, I jumped onto the tracks to retrieve it. Two very nice men pulled me back up. Everyone on the platform thought I was pulling an Anna Karenina. So embarrassing. I was waiting for the express, but the local came first and I boarded immediately.

Anyone who’s lived in New York City knows never to wait near the edge of the subway platform for fear of falling onto the tracks (or getting pushed by a random lunatic). My friend grew up in the city and is well aware of this rule. Nevertheless, this responsible twenty-nine-year-old, the same twenty-nine-year-old who got a near-perfect score on her SATs and went to Princeton, risked her life and voluntarily
jumped onto
the subway tracks, just to save her iPhone. A piece of
plastic
.

The rational part of me says: I can’t believe that we are so desperate to hold on to our phones that we’d put ourselves in danger. But the truth is I’m pretty sure that if this same friend dropped her iPhone onto the subway tracks tomorrow, she wouldn’t hesitate to attempt this feat again. And neither would I.

I think about the many times I wasn’t able to tear myself away from my phone to pay attention to the person right in front of me. Or all the times a person right in front of me has been too busy calling, texting, e-mailing, tweeting, and updating a status to give me the time of day. A year ago, I was working rather late on this very book. I was trying to reword an anecdote, and I asked my wife to help me. She said, “Hmm,” and looked down for a while. I assumed she was thinking about it, mulling over all of the different ways she could help my poor anecdote. About ten minutes later, I became skeptical. This seemed like an inordinate amount of time to be thinking. I leaned over and realized that she was playing Candy Crush. Not only was she playing the game, but she was buying more lives, which meant she had played at least three rounds in the previous twenty minutes. I was alarmed and exclaimed that I thought she was helping me
with my book! Her response was that she had received an e-mail, checked it, responded, and then had forgotten about helping me and decided to start up a game of Candy Crush. The fact is, I can’t blame her. I spent an hour this morning trying to beat Level 287 in Candy Crush instead of finishing this chapter (btw, I’m really proud of being on Level 287). And even as I sit here now attempting to write, my father is sending me repeated FaceTime requests that come directly to my computer. He thinks it’s funny to FaceTime when he is fifteen feet away from me.

About six months ago, a friend called me to ask me for job advice. She called my work line early in the morning (which is never a good plan if you want my full attention, because it means that I have my iPhone fully in front of me while I talk on the landline). She was deciding between staying in her job at a prominent advertising company or leaving and opening up her own agency (which she absolutely did not have enough experience or connections to do). At around minute seven of the conversation, I became immersed in my iPhone on a group text discussing the affair one of our friends was having with another (far more juicy than the job hunt!) and I found myself making the unavoidable and totally distracted “Oh yeah, that’s amazing” and “Yeah, definitely” and “Wow . . . Wow . . .” comments that are code for “
I AM NOT PAYING ATTENTION
.” Before I knew it, my friend had said, “You know what, you’re right. Okay, I gotta go. I love you!” and gotten off the phone. I assume it was the “Yeah, definitely” default that gave her the justification to and confirmation that she should quit
her job and start her own company. Which is exactly what she did. Sadly, she did not have much luck (which I could have told her would happen had I been listening!) and she closed down her agency within a year, couldn’t find a job, and went to business school. Oh well.

It never feels good to know that you aren’t being a good friend. The guilt always surfaces once you see how annoyed your friend is when you leave them for the night. Afterward, you think,
Oh God, I shouldn’t have checked my phone in the middle of that
—but at the time, you see the text notification or hear the irresistible chime of a new e-mail and your hand reaches for the phone before you even realize you’re doing it.

In informal surveys of my friends and colleagues, one out of every two people I talked to check their phones immediately after sex, and almost 10 percent check their phones
in the middle of the act
. The smartphone has become the modern post-sex cigarette, no less addictive and far more irresistible.

I speak from experience. I’ve been known to check my phone immediately after going to bed with someone—and there were definitely a few instances when I heard it buzz or saw the notification pop up and interrupted
whatever
I was doing to check it. Like most people, I wasn’t even waiting for any particular message; it was just to relieve the anxiety I feel after a period of time when I haven’t checked my phone. I can recall a particular time four or five years ago when I was “in the act” and suddenly saw my iPhone light up. I saw a small green box, which meant it was a
text message—much more thrilling than the blue box (e-mail), beige box (Instagram), or orange box (Twitter). My ex-girlfriend happened to see it too and knew me too well. “You have to be kidding me” were the words I think I got (by the way, not words you want to hear “in the act” for any reason whatsoever). I tried to force the argument that she had already ruined the moment so I might as well just check the phone. That didn’t work. She went the dramatic route and exclaimed that if I checked it, it would show how truly
NOT
devoted I was to our relationship (ah, women . . .). I weighed my options. And then something miraculous happened. Her phone, next to mine, also lit up. It was green. Like two cowboys (cowgirls?) walking into opposite sides of the local bar, we stared at each other. Who would make the first move? Suddenly we were on an equal playing field. “Why are you looking at me like that? I’m not going to answer it!” she said. I was back to being the loser who couldn’t resist. At this point, it was clear that the night from
that
angle was over. So I reached over and checked my phone.
CNN Breaking News—Samsung unveils the Galaxy Smartphone on Verizon.
Are you kidding me? I looked over at my girlfriend. She was texting back her ex-girlfriend who had happened to text her that she would be coming into town the next day. Man, I really lost that one.