I Exist Only Inside Your Smartphone, But I Have A Nokia

Kids under 16 will no longer be able to have social media accounts in Australia thanks to a new law being introduced by the Albanese government, and thank fuck for that.

It’s 9pm on Thursday night in Edinburgh right now, and it has been a Very Long Week.

I am going away for a long weekend, and I won’t be taking my iPhone or my laptop with me—just my Nokia.

If you need me, you’ll know the name of my childhood dog. You’ll have the landline to my parents house memorised. You’ll know what the best concert I ever went to was, and who I went with.

You’ll have the right number.

Parasocial Relationships Make Me Paranoid

“You’re the most online person I know!” “What do you mean you’re making a rug?! You don’t know how to do that” “I love you, you’re such a rock to me” “I miss you so much my girl” “You’re my dream girl” “Are you ok? You haven’t been online.” “Noticed you haven’t been tweeting much lately, everything okay?” “What’s going on with your Instagram?” “Can we please have a FaceTime? I want to meet you in real life but you’re so far away” “Can I have your number so we can text instead of message on Twitter?” “You’re the funniest person I’ve ever met”

That last one was particularly entertaining to receive, considering all of these messages are DMs that I have received in the past seven days alone—from people I Have Never, Ever Met.

These are people who do not know what my voice sounds like when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I’m angry, when I’m tired, when I’m confused.

These are people who have made an image of me in their heads via solely through the pictures they have seen me post on my Instagram stories; the people who are then confused when they meet me because they thought I would be taller, or shorter, or skinnier, or stronger.

These are people who read my tweets and now they think they know my core values and my entire personality—but they don’t know the name of the dog who was my closest companion for 11 straight years.

These are the people who have my number on WhatsApp, but wouldn’t know what number to dial if they had to use a payphone to call me in an emergency because they weren’t there the year I first got a phone and learnt my best friends number off by heart while sitting around a camp fire with our parents at our favourite camping spot.

These are the people who have made me want to be a recluse ever since I was a little girl.

And now Australian kids might finally have a chance to grow up in a world where their teenage years aren’t controlled by Meta…

And yes, that includes WhatsApp: an app that has been owned by Meta since 2014.

When the Albanese government announced it will be introducing a social media ban for under-16s, there was an outrage. Many posts I have read that are very anti this new law have claimed that kids will not be able to contact their parents without a social media account, because kids need to use WhatsApp to contact family.

Breaking news: phone calls and SMS messaging still exist in an app-centric world.

Last week, my trusty iPhone was taken to the Apple store for a repair after nine lovely years together, because after four months of it sending my location to random contacts at random hours of the day, I decided it was time to Grow Up And Pay For A Repair instead of prevailing with a dodgy tech gadget.

(My eagerness to save money always outweighs my frustrations towards my 9-year-old iChild).

“We’ll email you when it’s ready,” the staff at the Genius Bar told me. Since they are all obviously absolute tech genius’ in order to get a job at Apple HQ, I expected it would be back in a few hours. After all, they were pretty confident they just needed to put in a new battery.

How hard could that be?! I take batteries out of my remote controller all of the time :) It’s simples :)

The lovely old Scottish woman asked me if I had a physical sim, and told me to take it out and keep it with me “just in case”.

So when 5pm came and the Apple Store on Princes St closed without an email popping through on my laptop, I found a very random and shady-seeming cheap store among the streets of Edinburgh’s New Town and popped my sim in.