No Contact

Last week, I unintentionally eavesdropped on a conversation between two 40-something women and a teenage girl. The girl was discussing plans for an upcoming trip to a less-developed country, concerned about how she would contact her parents throughout the adventure. My ears perked up when I heard one of the older women say something like, “You may not believe this but there was a time when we didn’t have cell phones and weren’t able to make contact all the time. We would have to track down a pay phone, and until then our parents just had to hope we made it to wherever we were supposed to be.”

That’s how I grew up. No cell phones, no email, no text messages. When we walked out the door, we were gone until we came back. Our parents may have jumped when the phone rang, but they didn’t spend the evening constantly checking their smartphones for messages. After-school arrangements had to be made in advance, and if things changed, our parents had to call the school to leave us a message. We carried dimes (and then quarters) in case we needed to make an emergency phone call. Now I can’t remember when I last saw a pay phone.

These days many kids have cell phones, often provided by parents who feel they can allow their children more independence if they can be reached in an emergency. But as I listened to this conversation, I got to thinking: Do cell phones actually discourage independence? Are they really serving as a kind of tether to keep us more connected? And is there an unhealthy temptation to use them as a sort of “Big Brother” device?

When my siblings and I went out, our parents had to trust we were going where we said we were. They could call ahead to friends’ houses to make sure parents were there, or drive us to the movies, but they couldn’t call our pocket an hour later and listen for the sounds of the popcorn machine in the background.

As for us kids, we had to be more self-reliant. Without mom a simple phone call away, we had to solve our own problems, find alternate resources, maybe sometimes do without. We couldn’t get advice on mixing whites and colors from our dorm laundry room or put our teacher on the line if we had a conflict. We couldn’t call mom while she was driving home from work to ask her to bring snacks over to rehearsal. If we were stranded after a game we had to find our own way home. Sure maybe it wasn’t safer, but it required some independent thought.

And what about trust? Do cell phones have a negative impact on that too?

In my work as a therapist, I can’t tell you how often cell phones get mentioned as a cause or accelerator of relationship problems. Countless clients have told stories of trust breeched by spouses looking through their call records or reading their text conversations. Would we read another person’s diary or listen in on their home phone calls as casually as we may scroll through their cell phone?

How about personal boundaries? Does the fact that we can access people all the time mean that we should have access them at any time?

Again, clients complain of partners who constantly “check up” on them by repeatedly calling their cell phones. When we call our partner’s cell phone and they don’t answer, how many of us start suspiciously questioning “Where is he?”, “Who is she with?”, or “What are they doing?”, rather than calmly thinking, “She must be busy”, “I’m glad she’s not rudely interrupting a conversation to answer the phone,” or “Oh yeah, he’s driving.” We seem to have a lot more tolerance for home answering machines than unanswered cell phones.

Maybe some of this mistrust is well-placed. Clearly cell phones can help people deceive. Instead of being chained to the kitchen by a curly cord, we can now have private unwatched conversations. Some of us may engage in more deceptive behavior like deleting call records and text messages, quieting down partying friends, or sending calls to voicemail to be dealt with later (“Sorry I missed your call, I had to turn the ringer off in the library.”) I hope that is the exception, not the norm.

My children aren’t old enough to have cell phones yet, so maybe I’m naïve, but right now I’m thinking I may just send my kids out with a quarter in their shoes.