iHate iPhones - Why I Don't Want a Smart Phone

Not too long ago, Bill Gates and the PC world had Steve Jobs pinned to the mat. No one was talking about Apple, no one gave a damn about Macs. Then there was the iPod, iTunes, the iPad, and of course, the iPhone.

I’ve got nothing against Apple. They put out some solid products, and Steve Jobs is one of the sharpest CEO’s in the country. But the iPhone takes everything I hate about the spread of technology and amplifies it.

I think it started with Facebook. A virtual world that went on forever, that never closed, whose options you could never exhaust. It was easy to spend every free minute on Facebook, and lots of people did just that. But the virus was limited by the technology that carried it. Facebook made it hard to get some people out of the house, but once you succeeded, they were yours. You could go out to dinner and leave Mark Zuckerberg at home.

Enter the iPhone. Now Facebook is literally everywhere. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve come in after a night out and found a half dozen pictures of myself posted on Facebook, with a handful of comments already spiraling out into cyber space. It’s almost a cliché; you’ll see a picture of yourself with someone out at a club, not remember seeing them there, and then have a light bulb-moment: your only interaction with them that night was when they came up, waving their iPhone, and forced you to pose for a picture so they could tag you in a status message about the crazy night out they were having.

Sometimes it’s kind of disturbing. I know employers check up on the social networking sites; I don’t want to miss out on an interview because I look like an idiot in some acquaintance’s iPhone supplied photo montage of a night at the bars.

It’s not just Facebook, either. Everyone who gets an iPhone immediately starts filling it up with apps. Words with Friends, Angry Birds, whatever. As a platform for all the things you can use to distract yourself from real life, the iPhone has no rival. If you find having real conversations annoying, problem solved. Download a few more games and spend your evenings out hunched over your phone.

It’s not like there’s any substance to this stuff, either. Words with Friends doesn’t reward you for building your functional vocabulary; it rewards you for memorizing bizarre two letter combinations you can use to get rid of those pesky Q’s, X’s, and U’s. Texting doesn’t teach you to write or communicate; it teaches you finger speed and AOL acronyms.

Before I start getting a bunch of angry comments, I know that in large part, the iPhone is amoral. You can use it as a tool to bring people together, or to drive them apart. I’ve read The World Is Flat; I know all the great things technology can do to bring people together. I know that it’s all in how you use it.

Once you get to a certain point, though, you can stop speculating about how technology might be used, and just look at how it actually is being used, and I don’t see iPhones driving a lot of communal bonding. Instead, I see a lot of stupid games, a lot of vapid text messages, and an endless supply of awkwardly posed pictures. So whatever potential the iPhone has, there’s clearly something about the darker side of the iPhone that’s extremely hard to resist. And that is exactly why I don’t want one. Not because I’m better than everyone else, but because if anything, I’m worse. I can see myself sinking into the constant supply of apps and never resurfacing. And frankly, the thought terrifies me.

So please, stop texting about what you’re going to do and just do it. Go someplace exciting enough that you can remember it without photographic evidence. Make your life entertaining enough that you don’t need a list of approving comments to feel like you had a good time. Because in the end, ignoring the people sitting around you so that you can play iPhone games is a lot like refusing to take a girl out because you want to stay home and masturbate. It takes the edge off a real human need, and makes it easier to hide inside yourself.