I have always been approximately eighteen months behind whatever the current thing is. I have made peace with this. I arrived on Facebook when everyone who was interesting had already left for Instagram. I got on Instagram when people were already quietly embarrassed about it. I downloaded TikTok, looked at it for eleven minutes, and deleted it.
I am not an early adopter. I am what you might call a reluctant eventual adopter. Or, more accurately, a person who adopts technology approximately when his children express visible frustration at his not having adopted it yet.
My relationship with my current smartphone follows a predictable pattern:
Month 1: Genuine enthusiasm. I explore features. I download apps. I take photographs of things that don’t need photographing.
Months 2–6: The phone and I establish a détente. I use it for six things. It occasionally suggests other things. I decline.
Months 7–18: I notice that the phone is slower than it used to be. I investigate. I am told this is normal. I am unconvinced.
Month 19: My children explain that my phone is now two models old and that certain apps no longer work correctly on it. I defend the phone. The phone does not defend itself. A replacement is eventually obtained.
What I’ve concluded, after years of this cycle, is that my actual use case for technology is quite narrow: communication, directions, the ability to look up who played that one character in that thing. Everything else is feature I aspire to use and don’t.
I take some comfort in the observation that most people’s actual use cases are also narrower than the marketing suggests. We are all, in the end, mostly calling people, getting lost, and settling arguments about actors.
My children tell me I am a Luddite. I tell them the Luddites were skilled craftsmen defending their livelihoods, which is a more interesting story than refusing to learn the new settings menu.
They are not consoled by this distinction.
Neither, honestly, am I.