What happens when something essential to your life also makes you feel kinda lousy?
I’ve often wondered this about my phone. Over the years, it has become my friend, companion, assistant, and appendage. I reach for it like a security blanket. Sitting on the sidelines at flag football? Start scrolling. Wake up early? Roll over and gaze into the blue abyss. Sometimes, I’ll grope for it, unsure what I’m even searching for: Solace? Distraction? An epiphany?
I can waste hours on TikTok and Instagram, sucked into the beguiling thrum of infomercial-ish content. A miracle perimenopause drug? A gorgeous hotel I can’t afford? I’ve begun to follow people I don’t know, growing invested in their life’s dramas, clicking Shopify links to ogle their super-cozy, totally versatile, wildly unaffordable sweat shirts. Oh, and if my own posts do really well? It’s like I’ve won the world’s tiniest Oscar.
I’m hardly alone, even though my phone often makes me feel lonely. A September 2026 Pew survey found that over half of US adults say they spend too much time on their smartphone. (A mere 3 percent say they spend too little time on these devices. Who are these people?)
Meanwhile, 45 percent of Americans actually have tried to cut back on smartphone use; a quarter of them say they were highly successful.
Shortly after this survey, an idea floated through my feed: The Global 24-Hour Digital Detox Challenge, hosted by The Offline Club (which, ironically, has a robust online presence). Held in conjunction with World Mental Health Day on Oct. 10, it urged people to abandon their screens for 24 hours.
Could I do it? Here’s the thing: I need my phone. In fact, my phone isn’t universally horrible, and it’s often quite useful. Text threads with friends are my touchstones. Sending people relatable Instagram reels early in the morning is a love language in a world where scheduling dinner takes a tribunal. Wordle and Connections before work, while slurping my iced Market Basket coffee, ground me. And, fine, I sometimes enjoy getting lost in unhinged Threads discourse about Elizabeth Holmes.
Plus, as a mom, I legitimately require the damn thing: to track my fourth-grader walking home from school across a busy street, to monitor my 10 sports scheduling apps, to make sure my dad hasn’t fallen in the night. It has become completely crucial to my routine.
But did it have to mangle my psyche? When I can’t find my phone, I’ll tear through the house in a frenzy, begging my family to call it, straining to hear the ring. Sometimes, it’s already in my hand when this happens.
What bothers me most is the passive, soul-sucking scroll — and what it stirs up inside me. Content creators telling me that, in your 40s, “not everyone is a friend.” (Does someone at pickup secretly hate me?) A stranger with a hand-cam revealing “9 signs someone is low-key wealthy.” (Will I retire by age 95?) A totally relatable nutritionist peddling protein hacks, all while 6 pounds of cottage cheese rot in my fridge.
These messages were like Doritos for the brain — satisfying but devoid of substance — and, yet, like a suburban Pavlov dog with a short attention span and a misguided, quasi-masochistic belief that the key to my best life lurked on the Internet, I always returned for more.
Until this week. After my son mocked me for having my phone at the table for the 100th time, I decided I’d conduct my own smartphone detox. No Instagram. No TikTok. No pesky dinging apps. Just my own brain. (Terrifying!)
Ground rules: On my laptop, I could text using iMessage and check email, which I considered necessary for work. But that tiny pocket square of procrastination and occasional doom? Tucked away in a drawer.
Here’s how it all went down.
9 p.m. Normally, I’ll fall asleep using my phone to stream “The Golden Girls” or chiropractic ASMR (go on, judge me). Instead, I lay in monastic silence. This is discomfiting. An onslaught of unpleasant yet wildly disparate thoughts emerge: Did my son need a Latin tutor? Where was my birth certificate? Should I open a Roth IRA? However, according to my Apple Watch — you didn’t expect me to go completely cold turkey, right? — I fall asleep by 9:30 p.m., earlier than normal.
1 a.m. I awaken like clockwork. Perimenopause does that. Typically, I’d reach for my phone for a quick check-in. (Bad! I know!) I resist.
6 a.m. I blunder downstairs. This is where the chaos begins. Normally, I’d settle in with coffee and Wordle. Instead, I grope for Augmentin, a sinus infection antibiotic, and pop open the orange bottle. Down the hatch. Then, coffee in hand, I actually look at the bottle: I have taken a different “A” medication — my son’s Adderall.
6:05 a.m. Crack open my laptop and consult ChatGPT. It tells me to call Poison Control immediately. Already hyped up on coffee and an unprescribed medication, I reach for the phone. This is an exception, right?
6:10 a.m. I am reassured and advised to eat a banana. Phone back in drawer.
7 a.m.-7:30 a.m. As my kids prep for school, I declutter my email inbox. This time is normally spent Wordling. I send a text from my laptop confirming my son’s birthday party arrangements and text another friend about a carpool snafu, then realize that I can’t reach her: My laptop won’t let me iMessage Android users. I do not give in.
7:30 a.m. A story is due soon. I have to reach three sources to ask why their restaurants are closing. I don’t have their emails — too slow, anyway — and I can’t find their numbers on iMessage. I need to use my phone. But that’s fair, right?
7:45 a.m. My laptop pings with my Wordle text group, sharing scores. I feel a pang of nostalgia. Should I just … nope. I won’t play. Not yet.
9 a.m. My laptop pings again. It’s a text from my dad. What’s he doing awake at 9 a.m.? He likes to sleep in. I want to check Find My Phone to pinpoint his location, like a good adult child. I reassure myself that, if he’s texting, he’s alive. I persevere.
9:15 a.m. I receive an onslaught of texts about my son’s birthday party. I’d usually reply with emojis: hearts and stuff. But I can’t do that from my laptop. Will I look rude, not using a heart? Not even a little thumbs-up? Again, I resist. Hopefully, the relationships will endure.
9:30 a.m. A colleague and I are due for a 1:1. We move our conversation to Slack, since I can’t use my phone. So easy! So efficient. Who needs a phone?
10:45 a.m. I file my stories and find myself in a lull. I’m also incredibly hyper, thanks to Adderall. I want my phone. I feel drawn to it, magnetized: I long to post about the med mishap, hate-like a pesky influencer’s home organization tips, scroll the news, and check my teen’s PowerSchool. (Did he do OK on his Latin test?) But I cannot. I will not.
I feel untethered. Quavery. Is this what life was like in the 1990s? I don’t even remember. Determined to find somewhere to put my energy, I wash a bunch of blankets that don’t need washing.
12 p.m. I need to conduct a phone interview. Normally, I’d grab my phone early, start scrolling, end up eight photos deep on a high school classmate’s vacation and begin planning my own before reminding myself that we just bought a new boiler. None of that distraction today. I pick up the phone promptly at noon for its intended purpose and have a productive 45-minute call. When it ends, my phone goes back into the drawer.
12:45-3:45 p.m. I work for three hours straight with absolutely zero idea of what’s transpiring in the outside world. This is freeing.
3:45 p.m. My fourth-grader should be walking home by now. Normally, he texts when he’s leaving school. Nothing. I remind myself that I walked home in the 1980s unmonitored and somehow survived. These are different times and different roads, though. I’m about to check Find My Phone when he materializes and demands a snack. Phew.
4 p.m. My high-schooler needs to meet with his tutor, but he’s downstairs playing video games. Normally, I’d text her to say he’s running late. Not my problem, I tell myself. I am unreachable. He trudges up by 4:05 and says something about Google Meet not working, but at least he’s solved the problem himself.
4:30 p.m. I have an appointment and need to use my phone to pay for parking. Since I don’t want a ticket, I allow it. Normally, I’d walk and scroll until I reached my destination. Now, I try to appreciate the nice fall day: crimson leaves, crisp air. I feel enlightened, and a touch smug.
5:30 p.m. Darkness falls. I’ve been asked to reach out to two prominent motherhood influencers for our upcoming Working Mothers Summit, and I feel the urge to scan their latest social media — but I know I’ll get distracted by “8 ways to spot a narcissist” or take a quiz about what my parenting style says about my hair. So I compose old-fashioned emails to each of them, and I pretend I’m in my college computer lab circa 1998.
6 p.m. Dinner. Kids have practices, and we have nothing to eat. My husband suggests Chipotle. We order, but I use his app, not mine. (They forget my queso.)
7 p.m. We call my dad every night, and there’s no way around it: I need to use my phone, unless my son talks into his Apple watch, which rarely goes well. What the hell: My 24 hours are almost up. I place the call. Then, I busy myself with folding laundry, phone stashed away once more.
9 p.m. Sweet relief. I open my precious apps and feel a perverse sense of pleasure, looking at all the hearts and DMs. They like me; they really like me! It’s like Christmas morning: a GameChanger alert about a basketball game actually close to home; a health alert telling me that my resting heart rate, despite the Adderall fiasco, was only 70 bpm.
But, better yet, I assess my phone usage: 14 minutes on Instagram today compared with — gotta be honest — four hours the day before. Four hours! I feel like I’m staring at a Biore pore strip, confronted with the toxins inside me.
I made it. Today, I’m back to my routine, more or less: monitoring GameChanger, checking PowerSchool, and sharing my Adderall mishap on Instagram. But I also feel a sense of discipline, that tech doesn’t rule me and that I can’t be totally manipulated by the goblins inside my smartphone.
Am I ready to embrace a fully analog life? Nope. Could I, even if I wanted to? Also no — modern parenting, and modern life, isn’t arranged that way. I still need it to tell me when basketball practice starts. But, just maybe, I don’t need it to tell me how to feel about myself. I suppose I’ll really find out tomorrow, when I post this story on Instagram.
Kara Baskin can be reached at kara.baskin@globe.com. Follow her @kcbaskin.