Last week, I was on a call with a carrier’s support line trying to return my new iPhone I’d bought through its store, which meant transferring service to a backup phone. Unfortunately, I’d left that backup phone at my parent’s house across town — so when the carrier cut service and the call went dead, I had to drive half an hour to get my backup handset.
It was the first time I’d been completely without a mobile connection since college. If I had an accident or got lost, I was on my own. Heck, I couldn’t even text my dad that I was coming home. My smartphone dependency reared its head and I felt bereft and isolated without a lifeline to the world in my pocket.
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On Thursday morning, tons of AT&T customers nationwide felt the exact same thing when a service outage abruptly cut them off from mobile networks. Several hours later, service was restored, though the carrier still hasn’t disclosed why this happened or whether it could happen again.
While its network was down, AT&T told affected customers to lean on Wi-Fi for their smartphone needs, which can keep folks connected in a pinch if they stay in one place and don’t need to use cell network-only services like SMS. But for everyone else who had to drive to work or otherwise leave their house or office, the outage was a reminder of how much our daily lives are routed through smartphones.
It’s such an obvious reality that it requires little explanation — anyone hitting a dead zone on a long drive discovers they can’t alter their GPS route through their maps app or stream a new song. Same thing when you don’t charge your phone and it dies late at night. An annoyance, but usually a temporary one. When outages last an unforeseeable length of time, it shows how much our daily flow depends on an endless stream of information and connection.
Let’s take work as an example. For better or worse, having email and occupational messaging apps like Slack on our phones has slid modern workers into the expectation of being reachable at all times. If you can’t respond to outreach, you could suffer consequences — even when the lack of access isn’t your fault. Losing access to news and activity feeds can stop people in some industries — like, admittedly, journalism — from working entirely.
For families, constant communication is crucial to make sure kids get picked up and driven to sports practice and tutoring, dinners get coordinated and schedules are followed. When the constant flow of updates dry up, tempers flare and parents may fear the worst.
And losing service while on the go means you can’t even triage your problem. Is service down for everybody or just you? Does the problem lie with your device, its software or the network?
All of which is to say that smartphones have trained us to expect a constant flow of information that we unconsciously use to course-correct by the minute. All that hustle and productivity culture leads us to squeeze in one more email or task if we hear that our next meeting got delayed; if a friend cancels evening plans, we can immediately reach out to someone else or pivot to a night tackling necessary chores.
Cut off the flood of updates and info, and we’re left scrambling to do what people did before smartphones: make inferences and take action with incomplete information. Which can be unsettling, if not downright harrowing for those who take comfort in GPS and news updates.