Yes, It Really, Really Is the PhonesThe world is bad for many reasons. But you can't address them if you can't look up from your phone.Kieran McLean is a writer in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), New Zealand, and is the secretary of its People Against Prisons branch. You can subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter if you want to read more of his work. I have a problem: I’m addicted to my phone. Anytime I’m uncomfortable, I pull it out to disappear into a numb, atemporal trance. When I’m sad, I go on my phone. When I’m bored, I go on my phone. When I wake up at night, plagued by rational fears my family in the U.S. might get sick or hurt in environmental disasters, I reach for my phone to dispel them. It’s a slot machine in my pocket that constantly invites me to spin it. Whenever I feel the slightest discomfort, I displace myself from the present by opening my phone. Subscribe to Mental Hellth to unlock the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Mental Hellth to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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