How our smartphones change the way we see ourselves

All my senses connect with my smartphone. But the most significant is touch. I never stop touching it

The sense of touch knows no distance; it is about proximity, about peeling away layers.

As the French writer Roland Barthes says of touch, "of all the senses, it is the most revealing of facts, unlike sight, which is the most magical."  

Touch can be destructive, even profane. Touch exposes – it reveals the truth, removes its aura, and strips things of their prestige – it erases distance. You coalesce with what you touch.

When I touch the phone screen, I control my device. Through my device, I feel I control the world. And so the smartphone gives me a sense of freedom.

Illusions

But this idea of control – over the world and over other people – is an illusion. Nonetheless, it is powerful. I can quickly delete what does not interest me and magnify what does with a swift gesture of the fingers.

The smartphone also brings with it a sense that all the things there are in the world are within the user's grasp and easy to manage. This too is an illusion.

And it is one that pushes against some very fundamental concepts.

Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher and author of The Event of the Thingpoints out that the word "something" comes from the Latin verb "obicere," which means "to confront," "to oppose," or "to lodge an objection." In this way, a thing can also be referred to as an "object", or something which is defined by the characteristics that separate it from our will.

Derrida wrote: "One thing is the other, the completely different other". In the digital world, this sense of the independent entity of a thing, or an object, is missing.

With my smartphone, I don't experience any sense of resistance.

If a smartphone is smart, it's because it eliminates reality's ability to resist. Its smooth surface conveys a sense of ease. On these sleek screens, everything seems easy to manage, everything is accessible.

The absence of resistance in the digital world can lead to a reduction in the richness of experience, but like so many users, I am less concerned with the potential impoverishment this absence might cause. What matters to me is that the world aligns with my needs.

In this way, the smartphone promotes the users' sense of self over everything else. With just a few taps, I can subject the world to my needs. I can reshape it according to my preferences and define the nature of my interactions with others.

A little more conversation, a little less interaction, please?

Even when communicating with other people, I can ensure their presence is less present. Text messages can replace voice calls. There can be words without intonation or emotion.

Even if I do choose voice communication, I can send an audio message containing only what I want to say.

I can choose symbols instead of words in text messages, which are designed to carry precise meanings, free from the ambiguity of words and the richness of natural language.

This narrows the language of communication, stripping away secondary meanings and connotations. Consequently, even during direct communication, the presence of other people is diminished. They disappear as a voice, and a conduit of emotion. Interpretation becomes narrower, moments of silence wane. 

Other people become nearly absent. It is as if I am engaging in a totally disembodied form of communication.

What bothers me in mobile communication is when the other person asks, "Where are you?" I often respond with sarcastic astonishment: "I'm on the network", convinced location is irrelevant and communication now transcends geography.

Perhaps the residual need to discover place is a reaction against this greater feeling of absence and a desire for a semblance of the old physicality of communication.

The smartphone delusion

There are other forms of absence imposed by the smartphone, on view all around us.

Today, our ever-present devices the greatest enemy of both spatial and social relations. The smartphone has dismantled all social bonds, from family ties to complex social interactions, turning society into a world of faceless beings.

Each of us is absorbed in our phone, trapped in our own world, fixated on our device, indifferent to the presence of those around us. Our eyes are drawn to our screens even while sitting among family, colleagues, or fellow bus passengers, present among them but not truly engaged.

This intensity to exclude our surroundings and focus on self adds to smartphone delusion illusion of power over the world, including my "self". I occasionally feel like a victim of the very device itself. It can betray its owner.

The smartphone becomes an effective informant, constantly monitoring its user. As soon as we enter its algorithmic world, we can feel oppressed by it. It chases us, directs us, and programmes us, showing us what it deems relevant to our concerns.

If I search for a specific topic, it anticipates related suggestions. It also informs those who contact me about my daily minutes—whether I've seen their messages, if I've deliberately avoided responding when I wake up and open my phone, and how late I stay up at night.

Thus, we are subjected to this digital laboratory, behind whose façade are various actors manipulating us, distracting our minds and time.

It seems we are not using our smartphones so much as they are using us, revealing our secrets, manipulating our faculties, affecting our relationships, and defining our interests.