![]() Instead of typing and recording messages, I returned to having actual conversations on the phone. Good friends sent text messages during New Years Day, called or responded to my calls. My defiance turned into a social experiment: I bought a smarter phone but uninstalled the application that, Facebook says, “one billion people around the world use … every day to stay in touch with their family and friends.” App-stinence The notifications made me wonder whether I should be using non-Facebook-owned alternatives and stop spending so much time on convenient but seldom meaningful chats. By the end of 2016, the ubiquitous chat app started to send me annoying periodical reminders that it would stop working because the operating system of my beloved Nokia phone was no longer supported. I had installed WhatsApp in 2012 only because all my friends had it. My initial reasoning for such a drastic step had little to do with mindfulness or the want of being disconnected. It felt strange, uncomfortable, daring and good. During the first minutes of 2017, I saw my friends typing on their phones while mine remained unusually silent.
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