How to use a smartphone

Today, anyone who does not have one, by choice, refusal, or lack of means, can be considered a marginal. This short text does not claim to provide a user manual to be followed to the letter, but may help raise awareness of the fact that this formidable communication tool has also imposed itself as a vector of alienation and control.

In 2008, a publisher, L'échappée, published a small book, now out of print, by the Grenoble collective Pièces et main-d'œuvre: The Mobile Phone, Gadget of Mass Destruction, of which here is the summary:

IT IS THE MOST STUNNING technological development in History. In ten years the mobile phone has colonized our lives, with the active participation of the public, and for the benefit of industry. This onslaught marks the victory of technological marketing over the evidence. Not only are the ravages — ecological, health-related, social, psychological — of the mobile phone denied, but it is not excluded that its possession will become mandatory in order to survive in Technopolis. On a planetary scale (electronic waste, massacres of populations and endangered species), national (surveillance, technification of social relations, advertising bombardment), local (pollution, plundering of resources and public funds) and individual (addiction, deterioration of health and social autism), let us discover this gadget that has become an absolute scourge.

The image above is bitterly ironic and speaks for itself.

Rest assured (if that is possible!), the author of these lines owns a smartphone and uses it extensively, first and foremost to seek out information that the so-called mainstream or establishment media do not provide, or knowingly distort, going so far as to lie, to the point where he no longer pays any attention to them. Since the Covid crisis, he has "turned off the TV and turned on his brain," and he invites everyone who reads this text to do the same without delay. He also uses this smartphone to carry out quick searches on the Internet, like everyone else, but he imposes a certain discipline on himself: limiting the amount of time he spends browsing, making choices, listening to videos that matter to him—having listed them beforehand—at appropriate times (for example, while getting ready in the morning, doing the dishes, etc.), only carrying the phone with him when it is genuinely useful, turning it off well before going to bed, and setting aside time for reading on paper—in other words, the good old books that are genuine tools of culture. Once again, the image above says so much.

This text, however, is by no means intended to provide a list of tips and recommendations or to issue warnings. There are tons of those to be found here and there, online and elsewhere.

For those who read this and are concerned about the health and well-being of children and young people, we need to think about how best to intervene with them, so as to teach them, as far as possible, how to use this object intelligently—an object that calls itself "smart" but whose power to alienate raises questions about the very notion of intelligence.

It can never be repeated often enough: no screens before the age of 12, and careful monitoring of potentially destabilizing and dangerous access to the Internet: social media, pornography, etc. In fact, the aim should be to teach children and young people how to draw upon their own intelligence, by clearly explaining the issues involved in using this gadget, so that they can discover for themselves the appropriate way to behave and make it their own discipline—an element of their autonomy, a factor in their emancipation and freedom. Educational contributions along these lines would be very welcome.

NB: When it comes to this issue, could China be at the forefront? In this video, which is less than four minutes long, the solution seems to have been found:

"Faced with the scourge of screens, China has a radical solution: sending children to re-education camps where they no longer have access to their phones."

Real barracks for teenagers: quasi-military discipline, and the parents pay for it! The idea is to "save" their child, isn't it, by replacing one form of conditioning with another. From one form of alienation to another...