Twice this week I have realized that something is not right in my relationship with my cell phone. The truth is that you have to be a complete fool not to have realized it before because, on average, you spend about four hours a day interacting with the device, if not more. But, you see, the crash – like all crashes – occurs suddenly due to the most unexpected thing.
In my case, it happened three seconds after sending a WhatsApp to one of my daughters. I had to ask you about a matter that is not relevant here. It was a bit urgent. The shipment might seem normal if it weren't for the fact that at that moment I was in the living room and she was in her room, and we don't exactly live in a mansion. Between her and me, there was barely six meters of distance. That's when I started to open my eyes.
(In parentheses. We are scandalized by the abuse of screens in children, adolescents and young people. And it is no wonder. At two years old, there are already scared babies. Babies. Read it today in 'La Vanguardia'. However, we talk about this without being surprised of the legion of adult junkies tied to their cell phones like prisoners to shackles. Now everyone is tearing their hair out about AI when the truth is that, long before, we allowed ourselves to be subjugated by supposedly harmless technology.)
The second time I detected the 'little problem' was when, upon arriving home, my partner reproached me for being more attentive to the screen than to our conversation. Oh. Since the pandemic I have developed the unpleasant ability to have a real conversation, face to face, at the same time as ten other virtual ones. On a normal day, the WhatsApp inbox is filled with questions, unfunny memes, uninteresting press releases, people from communication agencies rushing me for ditto, and various other sources of distraction. Meanwhile, yours truly is responding or not, forwarding or not, or typing something fickle to someone whom I do miss, with the mistaken idea that, by doing so, the longing and desire for contact will disappear. How deluded some of us are to think that everything is said in a WhatsApp... With how easy it is to call and talk.
I resolve my contradictions regarding why I don't get off WhatsApp by entrenching myself in work, in necessity. The excuse of inevitability, because I am neither important nor am I Manuel Jabois. Only a few can afford to move to the side, close the beach bar or switch to a 'dumb' mobile. And even fewer can stand up and confront what is beyond their control.
Many of us mortals have been fooled for a long time. I would say that almost all of me is inside my phone. So, one day, you get the funk and you run out to buy Catherine Price's book following the BBC's advice. The author, a journalist, proposes a month-long therapy to avoid our daily addiction. In 'How to cut off with your cell phone' (Grijalbo), Price gives four easy tricks that, oh wonder, fit in a WhatsApp.
'Writing'...
