I recently came across this article that details how the author turned his iPhone into a “dumbphone”. He removed anything with a feed as well as the Internet browser and email. Being able to check anything and everything whenever he wanted from something in his pocket was starting to wear on him.

I love my iPhone and everything that it can do. I love reading about and testing new apps. I really related to what the author was saying though and decided to take on a similar experiment. I removed Facebook, Twitter and Instagram from my phone last weekend and am planning on keeping them off for the foreseeable future. 

Four days later I am still alive and to be honest, my mind is much more clear. All of these services are great in their own way, but because they all go in indefinitely it can be overwhelming to keep up with everything. I still keep up with everything but only once or maybe twice a day via my computer.

Yesterday I grabbed some pizza for lunch and didn’t take my phone out once. If this were a week ago I would have had my phone out the entire time that I ate. I would have been concentrating more on my Instagram or Twitter feed then my delicious pizza. It was very refreshing to just sit and watch the world go by and not have to look into a tiny screen to do so.

- Steve

Image: NBC

Don’t miss Alec Baldwin’s latest Here’s The Thing, in which AB (that’s what those who work with him call him) discusses network news with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, whose self-portrait is humble and astute as it is charming and impressive. Williams is a natural-born newsman unintimidated (or unimpressed) by his own celebrity, confident in his traditional approach and unafraid to go off the book, too.

(Also, did you know Williams lived in Elmira, NY for a period of his youth? He’s practically one of our own! I’ve been to Elmira! We’re practically brothers! I digress…)

Anyway, I loved Williams’s insightful comment about social media, about the ego of self-broadcast and the way it’s changed our perspective on the world around us. It’s the smartest thing I’ve heard on the subject in a while. Kudos, too, for his observation that we don’t know a thing about social media’s impact on society, history, humanity, or anything else, yet. If social media is the internet’s second generation, then we’re barely old enough to be able to making broad statements about how we’re now dumber, or farther apart, or less verbal or whatever they’re saying. We won’t know for a few more generations, and even then it’ll just be speculation.

Reminds me to keep my own social media expectations in check. Welcome its advantages but put its innovations in perspective, especially where interpersonal communication is concerned.

Download this gem and press play while cutting your onions tonight. Just like I did last night. Made angel hair with lemon and ricotta. Delicious.

I digress…

-Ben