Light Phone III: A Device That Allows You to Experience Life and the World Around You
I would love to say that I was a self-aware, mature, and mindful adult regarding smartphone usage, but I would be lying. Like most Americans, I had fallen into the annual $7.6 trillion ecosystem designed to keep us on our phones. That’s larger than the GDP of every country on Earth, with the exception of the U.S. and China. Infinite scrolling through dopamine-hacking algorithms had become my reality for over a decade. It scares me to think how many hours, days, and years I’ve actually accumulated staring at a smartphone screen. The average American spends around five hours a day on their phone, and roughly seven hours a day on all types of screens, including televisions, tablets, and other devices. The accumulation of these hours turns out to be a staggering twenty-one years of a human life. If you don't believe this is you, go to your phone's settings and look at the usage statistics. And when you do, try not to make excuses or be in denial—I know I was.
For years, I accepted this as normal human conduct. Before touching the floor in the morning, before going to sleep, or even on the toilet, we check notifications, emails, headlines, messages, and social media feeds. The "smartphone," a kind of digital Pandora’s box that we willingly carry in our pockets every single day. Open it, and out pours anxiety, worry, outrage, misinformation, doomscrolling, echo chambers, sleep disruption, addiction, and the unbearable weight of the world. Every ping, vibration, and notification conditions us like Pavlovian dogs, training us to respond instantly and compulsively to stimuli manufactured by corporations whose business models depend on capturing our attention for as long as possible; a colonization of our nervous system.
Like most people, I told myself things about smartphones that I now understand are completely untrue. Things like, “having a smartphone is a 21st-century necessity,” or “It’s important to stay connected.” I didn’t think there was an alternative to this lifestyle, until one day, my smartphone stopped working.
At first, I refused to give up on that specific device. Years of photos and videos were trapped inside, and because I had not backed them up, the phone had become a vault containing fragments of my life that I could no longer access. Since the device wasn’t insured, I took it to a repair shop expecting a quick fix, and the hope of recovering everything kept me from buying a new one. A few days turned into a week. A week turned into two. I kept waiting, hoping it could still be repaired while my friends and colleagues began to ask about it—genuinely worried, as if I were missing something vital.
At some point, inconvenience gave way to adaptation, and I started noticing something strange beginning to happen.
I began using parts of my brain that had long gone dormant. I noticed details around me that I hadn’t seen in years: the way people avoid eye contact in public because they’re staring at screens, the texture of silence while waiting in line, the shape of trees against the evening sky, the rhythm of my own thoughts, uninterrupted by the need to know what is going on in the world. I began witnessing different hues in life and started carrying a book to keep me company, to help soothe the years of phone addiction. My reading increased drastically, and daily conversations arose because I didn’t have a digital pacifier to turn to when experiencing an awkward silence or a minute of boredom.
I became present again.
After a month without a phone, I realized something that would have sounded absurd to me just a couple of months earlier: I didn’t need a smartphone to survive, and I was able to adapt. More importantly, I realized I didn’t want to go back. Like a prisoner emerging from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, I felt liberated. In my case, by accident—a stroke of luck rather than discipline—and once I experienced life outside the constant pull of the "smartphone," I had no desire to place the shackles back on myself.
I began to research alternative devices. I wanted a minimalist phone that gave me the essentials: calls, text, camera, directions, calendar, hotspot, Bluetooth, and perhaps music and podcasts. Something that allowed me to continue the path I had accidentally encountered. No emails, internet, or social media. A device whose objective wasn’t to profit from the most important resources I held: my time, my focus, and my peace of mind. I wanted the best minimalist phone available.
After a week of research, I came across the Light Phone III. It stood out in quality, style, and design. I could sense the love and passion that the founders, Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang, had put into their creation. I read their message wholeheartedly, and their mission was unlike anything I had heard. It was subversive. “Light creates tools that respect you. Objects that empower you to be your best self. Technology intentionally designed to be used as little as possible. Things that serve you, not the other way around.”
When I finally received the package in the mail, I felt a rush of excitement. It came in a black box with a simple phrase printed on the front. It read, “A tool for a better life.” As I read these words, I felt moved and grateful. I knew it marked the beginning of a new chapter; one that would have a long-lasting ripple effect in the days, months, and years to come, and would allow me to be with myself and the world around me.
The Light Phone III let me rediscover a truth that now feels obvious: there is a place and a time for everything. I do not need to answer emails immediately. I do not need to know every breaking headline the second it happens. I do not need to Google my most recently intrusive thought, and I do not need to carry the emotional burden of the entire internet in my pocket twenty-four hours a day.
Some things can wait.
For years, I accepted this as normal human conduct. Before touching the floor in the morning, before going to sleep, or even on the toilet, we check notifications, emails, headlines, messages, and social media feeds. The "smartphone," a kind of digital Pandora’s box that we willingly carry in our pockets every single day. Open it, and out pours anxiety, worry, outrage, misinformation, doomscrolling, echo chambers, sleep disruption, addiction, and the unbearable weight of the world. Every ping, vibration, and notification conditions us like Pavlovian dogs, training us to respond instantly and compulsively to stimuli manufactured by corporations whose business models depend on capturing our attention for as long as possible; a colonization of our nervous system.
Like most people, I told myself things about smartphones that I now understand are completely untrue. Things like, “having a smartphone is a 21st-century necessity,” or “It’s important to stay connected.” I didn’t think there was an alternative to this lifestyle, until one day, my smartphone stopped working.
At first, I refused to give up on that specific device. Years of photos and videos were trapped inside, and because I had not backed them up, the phone had become a vault containing fragments of my life that I could no longer access. Since the device wasn’t insured, I took it to a repair shop expecting a quick fix, and the hope of recovering everything kept me from buying a new one. A few days turned into a week. A week turned into two. I kept waiting, hoping it could still be repaired while my friends and colleagues began to ask about it—genuinely worried, as if I were missing something vital.
At some point, inconvenience gave way to adaptation, and I started noticing something strange beginning to happen.
I began using parts of my brain that had long gone dormant. I noticed details around me that I hadn’t seen in years: the way people avoid eye contact in public because they’re staring at screens, the texture of silence while waiting in line, the shape of trees against the evening sky, the rhythm of my own thoughts, uninterrupted by the need to know what is going on in the world. I began witnessing different hues in life and started carrying a book to keep me company, to help soothe the years of phone addiction. My reading increased drastically, and daily conversations arose because I didn’t have a digital pacifier to turn to when experiencing an awkward silence or a minute of boredom.
I became present again.
After a month without a phone, I realized something that would have sounded absurd to me just a couple of months earlier: I didn’t need a smartphone to survive, and I was able to adapt. More importantly, I realized I didn’t want to go back. Like a prisoner emerging from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, I felt liberated. In my case, by accident—a stroke of luck rather than discipline—and once I experienced life outside the constant pull of the "smartphone," I had no desire to place the shackles back on myself.
I began to research alternative devices. I wanted a minimalist phone that gave me the essentials: calls, text, camera, directions, calendar, hotspot, Bluetooth, and perhaps music and podcasts. Something that allowed me to continue the path I had accidentally encountered. No emails, internet, or social media. A device whose objective wasn’t to profit from the most important resources I held: my time, my focus, and my peace of mind. I wanted the best minimalist phone available.
After a week of research, I came across the Light Phone III. It stood out in quality, style, and design. I could sense the love and passion that the founders, Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang, had put into their creation. I read their message wholeheartedly, and their mission was unlike anything I had heard. It was subversive. “Light creates tools that respect you. Objects that empower you to be your best self. Technology intentionally designed to be used as little as possible. Things that serve you, not the other way around.”
When I finally received the package in the mail, I felt a rush of excitement. It came in a black box with a simple phrase printed on the front. It read, “A tool for a better life.” As I read these words, I felt moved and grateful. I knew it marked the beginning of a new chapter; one that would have a long-lasting ripple effect in the days, months, and years to come, and would allow me to be with myself and the world around me.
The Light Phone III let me rediscover a truth that now feels obvious: there is a place and a time for everything. I do not need to answer emails immediately. I do not need to know every breaking headline the second it happens. I do not need to Google my most recently intrusive thought, and I do not need to carry the emotional burden of the entire internet in my pocket twenty-four hours a day.
Some things can wait.
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And when everything no longer demands your immediate attention, something unexpected happens: your mind becomes quieter. Time slows down. The world begins to feel real again.
Perhaps the greatest irony of modern life is that the devices designed to connect us to everything have often disconnected us from ourselves and the world around us. The smartphone promised efficiency, connection, and empowerment, but for many people—the great majority, I would argue—it has become an instrument of mental and emotional depletion. We are overstimulated, overinformed, perpetually distracted, and increasingly unable to sit alone with our own thoughts. Light Phone III isn’t meant to cut you off from technology. After all, you still have access to emails, the internet, and social media on a desktop or laptop. It simply allows your attention to be where it matters in the moment, and restores the boundaries that modern life has erased, and right now, boundaries are desperately needed. One thing has since become very clear to me throughout this journey: our attention is our life, and reclaiming it is perhaps one of the most revolutionary acts of our time. |
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