Phoneless Unicorn
PHONELESS UNICORN – September 26, 2024 – White Plains, New York, USA
All four members of the Dushku family sat together in their living room. A TV screen flickered on one wall, showing a program they all supposedly wanted to watch.
Mason Dushku looked up from his phone. He had grabbed it to check work messages before getting distracted by a news site. He then read a funny article which led to two more. Now his attention returned to the living room like he was coming up for air after sitting on the bottom of a pool. He noticed that the heads of all his family members were bowed toward their phones. His wife, Terra, laughed as she watched a short video. His fourteen-year-old daughter, Aila, scrolled through a social media site. Twelve-year-old, Liam, played a game.
“What are we doing?” Mason asked, loudly enough to catch everyone’s attention. “We’re sitting here like we’re spending time together, but we’re lost in our own little digital worlds.”
Mason’s wife and kids returned glances that showed they did not see independent phone time as a problem. “Guys, it’s like we’re all plugged into the Matrix. It’s not natural,” Mason continued. During the past week, he had read articles about phones negatively affecting brain and personality development in teenagers. He felt a mixture of worry and guilt as he stared at his own kids.
“Hey, maybe you two need a digital cleanse for a while,” Mason called to Aila and Liam.
“What does that mean?” Aila asked with an eye roll.
“It means taking a break from your phones. Giving your brain some different inputs.”
“Not interested,” Aila replied. “Why shouldn’t we have our phones when you and mom have yours?”
“I think we should all go on a digital cleanse. I’m willing to do it,” Mason answered.
His wife turned to him and said, “Not interested.”
“Come on. This will be good for us.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the point?” Liam interjected.
“The point is to expand your mind and maybe talk to each other more. To prove you don’t have to be attached to a digital babysitter.”
“How long? One night?” Liam asked.
“I was thinking a whole week.”
Aila and Liam’s eyes grew wide and they said together, “No way!”
The more he explained the idea, the more Mason stubbornly liked it. Over the next fifteen minutes, he negotiated until Aila and Liam agreed to give up their phones for a week. The deal involved $100 for each of them and Mason losing his phone for a month. Terra refused to participate but agreed to act as enforcer by collecting the phones and storing them in a safe place.
“And you can’t use your phone while we’re around,” Mason said to his wife. “Or let us use it, even if we beg.”
Terra sighed like it was a great burden, but assured them she could handle it. “I’m curious what people will say at your work,” she said to Mason. “Phones are kind of an important part of what you do.”
Mason shook his head and said, “They’ll be supportive. I’m not worried about it.”
On the first day of the digital fast, Terra collected phones from her husband and children and put them inside a locked cabinet. Before Mason turned his over, he set up an auto-reply message to let anyone trying to text him know that he would be away from his phone for a while and they should send him email instead. Then he said goodbye to his wife before leaving for the train.
“What if there’s an emergency? How will you get a hold of me?” she asked.
“Everyone around me will have a phone. If there’s a real emergency, I’m sure I can borrow one.”
“What if I need to talk to you?”
“We still have landlines at my office. And I’ll have my laptop and email. It’s not like I’m trekking through the wilderness.”
Mason reached his regular morning train into Manhattan and settled in for the hour-long commute. He glanced around at his fellow passengers, noting how most of them stared at phones. “I’ll look out the window and appreciate the fall colors,” Mason thought in a self-satisfied way. He calmly focused on the scenery until his mind began wandering. He automatically reached for his phone for an update on sports scores and interesting news. He smiled after remembering his new lifestyle experiment and decided he should take some time re-reading work proposals. He opened his laptop and fought the tug to browse the web. “I’m trying to disconnect. That’s why I lost the phone,” he told himself.
Mason used all his energy concentrating on a new work account. Ten minutes from his stop, a brilliant plan filled up his mind like warm water in a bathtub. He jogged most of the way to his office so he could share it with his team. He made it through the rest of his day barely thinking about his phone, but returned home to find his kids experiencing acute withdrawals.
“I’m so bored. I need to talk with my friends,” Aida complained.
“How about talking to me instead?” Mason replied. “We could play a game. Or go to the park.”
Aida did not appreciate the suggestions but trudged along for a family walk outside. Later that night, Terra reminded Mason of the concert they were supposed to attend the following evening. One of their favorite bands was playing on Long Island and they bought tickets for the show a month earlier through Ticketmaster. Mason remembered the instructions that appeared after his purchase: Your phone is your ticket. Do not print your receipt.
“What are we supposed to do?” Mason asked Terra.
“We’ll just use my phone. I think this qualifies as extenuating circumstances. Your digital detox will still count.”
“No. This is an important part of the experiment. It’s not fair that they assume everyone has a smartphone and they force you to use it. I’ll just do a little work around.”
Mason found the barcode that was supposed to appear on his phone and printed it out. Then he cut it into a small strip and taped it to his wife’s phone. “There. Now we won’t need to turn it on.”
Terra rolled her eyes and sighed. “Whatever you say.”
The next day, Mason rushed home from work so he and Terra could get to the concert on time. He had never been to the venue, and when he bought the tickets, he assumed he would use his phone for navigation. Instead, he wrote out directions on a piece of paper and asked Terra to read them while he drove their car.
“This is ridiculous,” Terra said as she stared at his handwriting.
“C’mon, we can do this. We don’t need a phone leading us around. People got places way before smartphones existed.”
“I already know we’re getting lost.”
As Terra predicted, after forty-five minutes, they reached Long Island and confused a turn. Terra suggested asking her phone where they were, but Mason insisted they could make it on their own. He stopped at a gas station and walked inside with his list of directions.
“I’m trying to get to the Paramount in Huntington. Do you know where that is?” Mason asked the attendant.
“No idea. Why don’t you use your phone?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t have a phone?” the attendant asked in complete shock. “I’ve never met anyone without a phone.”
“Yeah, I’m like a unicorn,” Mason said sarcastically.
The attendant held out his phone to Mason. “You can use mine.”
Mason recoiled. “No. Can you look it up and tell me?”
The confused attendant pulled up the correct address and then recited turn by turn directions how to get there. Mason wrote them down and returned to his car. Terra read as he drove and they reached the Paramount with plenty of time to spare. They walked in after a successful scan of the printed bar codes and Mason grinned with satisfaction.
The couple held hands and listened to the warm up music as they waited for the concert to start. Mason looked around at people taking pictures with their phones. “Isn’t it nice to just sit here peacefully and listen to the music without distractions. No worries about what others are doing or trying to prove to Instagram you’re having a good time.”
“Whatever you say,” Terra answered with a smile to show she was humoring him.
Mason spent the rest of the week finding new reasons to live without a phone. He was sure his creative juices flowed faster than they had since college. He swore his memory improved. He liked telling people about his experiment and comparing himself to a unicorn.
His kids, Aida and Liam, did not see things the same way. The minute their week-long sentence ended, they eagerly grabbed for their phones and the $100 reward they were promised.
“Tell me what you learned,” Mason prompted.
He got two shrugs in return.
“Well, I’m a lot better already and I still have three weeks to go. By then, everyone will say I’m a genius.”
During the first week of his experiment, Mason did not run into any complications at work. But on day eight, his boss asked him to stop by her office. They had always gotten along and shared a mutual respect. But Mason knew her overriding priority was keeping clients happy, even at the expense of employee relationships.
“I need to talk with you about giving up your phone,” Mason’s boss said as he sat down in front of her desk.
“It’s an experiment,” Mason replied defensively. “And so far, it’s helped me think deeper and be more creative. And I haven’t missed any deadlines.”
“That’s great. But you know this is an advertising agency and you’re working on a campaign for Verizon.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So, they’re in the business of selling phones and data plans. Don’t you think your new fascination with losing your phone is a conflict of interest?”
Mason squirmed. “Even if I’m a little conflicted, that doesn’t mean my ideas aren’t good.”
“What’s this I hear about commercials pushing moderation in phone time? I doubt Verizon’s going to like something like that.”
“Why not? They could position themselves as the responsible phone company. With all the results coming out about phone addiction and overuse, I would hope someone wants to sound reasonable. It reminds me of cigarette advertising back in the day.”
Mason knew his boss had a particular soft spot when it came to the history of advertising for the cigarette industry. She admired the people who had taken a stand and decided tobacco’s harmful effects could not be ignored. The more Mason talked about responsibility, the more he tugged on her heart and tortured her with potential guilt. Her outlook on Mason’s moderation themed commercials softened.
“I guess it can’t hurt to make a few spots and see what they think. Nothing final. Can you have a few rough samples ready in a week?”
“Absolutely!” Mason replied enthusiastically and got to work filming some of the scripts he had already written.
A week later, he sat in the room as Verizon’s marketing team reviewed the concept. Everyone smiled as the meeting began. The smiles disappeared after Mason showed his first commercial.
“You’re telling people to cut back on phone time? That they need less?” one confused executive asked.
“I hate it,” another executive said in disgust.
Everyone in the room piled on with criticism. They sent Mason and his team back to the drawing board until they returned with commercials showing people frantically using as many phones as possible. Mason’s boss concluded that, “Sometimes you just have to keep your customers happy.”
Mason finished his month without a phone, as he promised. After that point, he began carrying one around again. He decided life was too inconvenient without direction navigation and instant communication, especially if the rest of the world expected you to have them readily accessible. But Mason did not forget the private lessons he learned about unplugging and deep thinking. He vowed to never let his phone become his adult pacifier. He used a picture of a unicorn as his screensaver to remind himself that he could choose to be different.
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