I didn’t grow up with smartphones – will going back to a Nokia 3210 simplify my life?
Nu phone, who dis?”
It’s a phrase I expected to be typing out with nostalgic joy – for the first time in two decades – as I switched on the new and improved Nokia 3210. Twenty-five years after its original heyday, the iconic mobile phone of my youth has had a relaunch for 2024 – a savvy response to a rising backlash against the insidious side effects of heavy smartphone use. Alas, I waited in vain: to be able to send such a pithy response, I’d have first had to receive a text message. But no one – not even my 72-year-old mother – sends text messages anymore. They use WhatsApp.
It’s just one of a vast number of examples of how every facet of life has adapted to revolve around devices in the smartphone era. And it doesn’t take long to realise that there’s not one inch of my existence that isn’t, in some way, facilitated by a palm-sized screen: my work, my social life, my love life, my travel, my finances.
In times gone by, I always proudly identified as “an analogue girl” (largely because it sounded cuter than “luddite
