It’s been a difficult week for me and technology. On day two of my two-week break from my day job, my ten-year-old laptop died. I’d hoped to finish the first draft of the novel I’m working on during my break. No such luck.

On the same day that my laptop died, my phone had to be recharged four times, because the battery was draining completely every couple of hours, even when I wasn’t using it.

So it’s been a very expensive and frustrating week, and now I have a new phone and a new laptop. I will admit it is nice to not have to carry an extra battery for the phone with me all the time, and it’s nice to have a computer with a fully functioning keyboard, but the upgrades have been quite disturbing, too.

Having not updated my devices for a decade, all my apps were old versions. The new ones have a zillion more features than I’m used to. Almost none of the new features increase the apps’ functionality. The ‘upgrades’ are primarily aimed at urging me to consume more advertisements on my device and making it easier for me to spend money. I find it quite depressing.

The rebellious part of me has decided that, in response to the upgrades, I’m going to do my best to spend even less time on my devices. The computer is pretty well unavoidable, because of my occupation, and I’ve never been one to spend personal time on the computer. But the phone tends to be what I grab during my leisure time. I admit, I have six different e-reader apps on the phone, and I read tons of ebooks, which is what occupies most of my phone time. But I also play a couple of games on the phone, and I read the news. I’m easily sucked into social media on the phone, too. So there’s lots of room to limit my phone use.

First job was to delete the games. I’d already deleted one, several weeks ago, because I realised I was using it to procrastinate, and I didn’t even really like it. I haven’t missed it at all. So the other two games have now gone.

Then, while I was out and about this morning, I stopped by the library. I checked out an armload of books, and also a jigsaw puzzle. Books are fantastic, but I do need the brain rest that those games on the phone or scrolling social media provide. Jigsaw puzzles will serve the same purpose, with the bonus that a jigsaw comes without advertisements and auto-play videos, and invites others to join in the fun. 

I also need to remember my love of playing solitary Bananagrams. It’s not as fun as facing off in a frenetic game with my daughter, but I enjoy coming up with different challenges. Last night I tried making the densest board I could, with nearly every letter forming part of two words. Way more rewarding than scrolling through Facebook trying to find posts by my actual friends between drifts of advertisements.

Will I still read the newspapers on my phone? Yep. And I’ll still carry it with me, in order to stay in touch with my family and take photos. And I’ll maintain my presence on social media (not that I use it much in the first place). But I reject my new apps’ insistence that I share more information with them so they can feed me advertisements. I reject Apple Pay. I reject the notion that my phone is there for the purpose of selling me more and more and more things I don’t need. I reject the assumption that I will blindly agree to be nothing but a source of income for corporate executives.

My entertainment is going analog.

Will my stand have any impact on the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world? Nope. But it will have an impact on me.