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December 29, 2018 08:34 pm

Could You Live Without Your Smartphone?

Three-quarters of Canadians own smartphones-- and 94% of 15- to 34-year-olds. But this week the Globe and Mail profiled "digital refuseniks" who are "deliberately logging off -- and they say it's done wonders for their imaginations and peace of mind." They are hidden among us, neither jobless nor friendless, and living quite happily. Cut off from Uber, yet somehow thriving. For example, Tony North does not live for his smartphone, because he's never had one. "I just didn't want to get into the habit of distraction," he says simply, in an interview conducted over landline from his home in Paris, Ontario. The high-school teacher spends about 20 minutes a day [on his laptop] on his one social-media platform, Facebook, which he uses to keep in touch with family back home in Australia. In fact, you could blame Australia for Mr. North's desire to be digitally unleashed: He remembers leaving home to travel overseas, and the wonderful feeling of being uncontactable that came with it. "It was such a feeling of freedom, and I guess I wanted to keep a bit of that." As a teacher of English and drama, Mr. North, 53, is worried about the consequences of teenagers' near-constant devotion to their online lives (his own two children, 12 and 13 years old, do not have phones). In drama class, he makes his students put away their phones and engage in face-to-face exercises: "I'm basically forcing them to interact," he says. "When I ask for evaluations at the end of the semester, it's one of the things they most seem to appreciate...." Canadians between the ages of 18 and 34 spend nearly five hours a day online, according to a 2017 survey from Media Technology Monitor... "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?" the Atlantic magazine asked last year in a cover story designed to keep parents up at night, frozen in the blue light of further bad news. North says in the extra time "he reads many novels and enjoys quiet moments of reflection and watching the world go by." And 18-year-old Bethany March is also severely limiting her phone use. ''I saw the way that people got so invested, not just in their phones, but in social media, and I didn't want to be that person," she says. "So many times people would be zeroed in on their phones. It was just rude, to be honest. I'd think, 'I'm here with you, talk to me.'" 71-year-old John Moir insists that living without a smartphone makes him really experience new locations, "rather than trying to be in two places at once," adding that "Whenever I tell people I don't have a phone, they say, 'Oh, that's so great. I wish I didn't have to have one.'" That's "one thing digital refuseniks never have to worry about," the article concludes: "Who is the servant in their digital relationship, and who is the master."

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