According to the Pew Research Center, 97% of Americans own a cellphone. In 2024, nine-in-ten Americans are smartphone users, which is up from 35% in Pew Research Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership from 2011.
My own relationship with technology is a standard story for someone born in 1989. I enjoyed my childhood with the most aggressive form of technological intrusionsFinf in the form of VHS movies and books on tape borrowed from the library. In 2006, I got my first cellphone, a small Nokia with no internet and T9 texting capabilities. I was entering my senior year of high school. I have no memories of me or my friends using cellphones during the school day. We talked to each other in person throughout the day, and used AIM after school (shout out to my screen name: ReaderGirl14) or called each other on our house phones. I did get into text fights with my boyfriend and have many fond memories of the messages being broken up into nine parts since the texts were so lengthy.
I bought my first iPhone around twenty, and I’ve had a smartphone ever since. In normal life as a working American, the longest period of time I go without regularly using my phone is the course of one eight hour day, when I intentionally turn the phone off to take a self directed technology break. This is usually on a Sunday. As a rule, when I go into the bedroom to read at night before bed, I set my alarm and then leave my phone untouched until morning. I do check my messages when I wake up. Although I have no social media, my weekly screen time hovers around two hours. I routinely text my mom, sister, best friend, and talk to my husband either via text or phone from the mundane, “will you pick up eggs” to live photos of our dogs. I would categorize myself as a moderate phone user. However, as someone who had a technology free childhood and loves anything nonconformist, I’m intrigued and inspired by those who are able to successfully reject owning a smartphone. Brian Sutherland, fifty three, of Holderness, New Hampshire is one of these rare cell phone-free people.
Only two without smartphones
Sutherland did briefly have a flip phone some years ago, which he candidly recalls, “I struggled with regulating use – I was spending way too much time using it when I should have been doing better and more important things.” A high school guidance counselor at a mid-sized regional school in the southern White Mountains, Sutherland uses the landline in his office for work calls, relies on his low-tech digital watch to set manual alarms, and uses email to communicate with students and parents. He talks to his extended family and friends from the landline at home, and his wife and children can reach him via a Gizmo he keeps in his car (essentially a smartwatch starter for children that enables calls or texts for emergencies or communicating about family logistics.) Although Sutherland admits being at the same school that his children attend makes things easier, I don’t get the impression he’d readily buy a phone if his kids were to suddenly transfer to other schools. His wife, a locally based primary care doctor, does own and operate a smartphone which Sutherland confirms makes his choice to not have a phone possible.
“Information was a lot cleaner growing up, when it didn’t come at you from every direction”
When asked directly about his philosophy of going cellphone free, Sutherland states that since the 2000s, he has witnessed phones ruining the high school experience. From eerily silent students on field trips, to young women grappling with explicit content being circulated to the masses, to feelings of rejection when someone doesn’t immediately respond to a text or a snapchat, Sutherland has carefully tracked the destructive nature of cellphones, specifically amongst one of the most vulnerable populations: adolescents.
Sutherland’s middle daughter, who is a senior in high school, doesn’t have a cellphone. His oldest daughter got a phone when she was sixteen, and his youngest, a freshman, doesn’t have a phone either. Although Sutherland is not the type to elevate anyone to a higher status, he does admit the choice to limit his children’s interaction with technology has likely made them more successful academically, specifically citing the advantages to being phoneless in terms of attention and focus. In a school with about six hundred and fifty students, the Sutherlands might very well be the only two students without phones.
To sum up the acute danger lurking in our phones, most especially for young people, he succinctly says, “There are too many idiot things you can do with that powerful of a device. Smartphones prevent the ability to access an entire unseen world in your child’s life.” As more and more young people struggle to leave home, find meaningful careers and independence, one has to wonder if this has to do with the technological closeness that has happened in the last twenty years between parents and children. As Sutherland notes, phones have completely changed the landscape of adolescence, a time for freedom, exploration, and most importantly, making mistakes and figuring out how to make it better. I certainly would have had a different high school experience if my mom had been tracking me on Find My Friends or Life360.
Sutherland, someone who exudes a down to earth nature says, “Phones make everyone think they are smarter and more important than they are……I don’t need to be reachable at all times. My thoughts on a particular matter does not need to be shared and retweeted and viewed by hundreds.” Sutherland also struggles with the muddling of information that has come as a byproduct of smartphones being so insidious in our consumption of media. He says, “Information was a lot cleaner growing up, when it didn’t come at you from every direction, unfiltered and on a constant 24 hour 365 days a year cycle. We get stories of Hamas fighters brutally murdering Israeli citizens on October 7th, we also get stories about Hamas hostage takers treating their prisoners with great care, and we get stories of Israeli citizens showing extreme anger and hatred towards family members calling for the end of the war and the return of the hostages. None of that fits into an easy black hat and white hat way of thinking that perhaps old fashioned media allowed us to operate in.” Many of us can relate to the confusion we feel about finding authentic news but also to the repulsion we feel in our inability to turn away from the barrage.
In addition to being free of the media’s chokehold, Sutherland says that he has more autonomy over his free time. When waiting at an appointment, he brings a book or watches other people on their phones. In the car he drives either in silence or listens to sports radio or NPR. Currently, the radio in his car is broken. To navigate, he uses printed google maps and when he makes a plan, he sticks to the plan avoiding last minute changes over text. Over the years Sutherland has employed the use of airport paging to locate a friend to coordinate a pickup, and utilizes an old iphone with no data for tickets to Red Sox games with his son. Sutherland does say that society is centered around the convenience of having a phone but at no point did I sense he was curious about what life is like on the other side or that the minor roadblocks are enough to deter him from being phone free.
Not the picture I want
Awaiting the birth of our first child any day, I find myself thinking ahead to the type of childhood I’d like for our offspring to have – one where they are looking outward, taking the word in, instead of looking inward to a world that is superficial, dangerous, and deeply addictive. Most terrifyingly, it’s a world I can’t control. Of course part of being a parent is letting go of control, but when I imagine a family afternoon with our new baby, the three of us on our phones certainly isn’t part of the idyllic family portrait I’m creating.
I’m sure, without needing to conduct a high level study, that Brian Sutherland’s quality of life is higher than a teenager who is averaging seven hours of screen time a day and higher then mine who is just as addicted to my phone as the next person. I’m sure he’s observing more, sleeping better, and worrying less about what other people think of him.
And if nothing else, his posture has got to be better.
