Lizzie Conklin

My phone is in black and white — “grayscale,” as it’s officially known. I set the color filter of my screen this way almost nine months ago, and at this point, I don’t even notice it anymore. I only think about it when someone else mentions it, which is surprisingly often. Giving my phone to someone so they can put their number in — “Whoa, what is this?” Responding to a text with an onlooking neighbor — “Your phone’s black and white?” Sometimes these comments are positive, sometimes they’re not. I once had a drunk boy tell me through laughter that it’s not the 1930s anymore — I’ll let you decide which side of the scale that comment landed on.

The most common question I get, and the one I unfortunately have the most difficulty responding to, is “why?” It’s a good question; I would probably ask the same thing. But the answer isn’t always easy to explain. Let’s just say, it started with professor Laurie Santos.

In the spring of 2022, I took “Psychology and the Good Life” with professor Santos. While there were many things I took away from that course, the one that most affected my day-to-day life was learning that one way to work on your relationship with your phone is to make it more boring looking — to turn it grayscale. This definitely wasn’t pitched as a fix-all method to make you feel compelled to never look at your phone again, but it was such an easy change that I figured, why not try it? So, I tried it.

I’m an English major, and there’s something discussed in the literature world called conflict. This is essentially when a character encounters an obstacle keeping them from achieving their goal. There are a handful of general conflict types that people have recognized, such as character versus character, character versus self, character versus society and character versus technology. It’s that last one that I couldn’t shake from my head as I stared for the first time at my newly black and white phone screen. 

When I was learning about literary conflicts in my middle school English class, character versus technology was presented with the examples of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt.” Essentially, character versus technology was science fiction. It was the day we lost control over our own ingenuity, a fear of that which we are capable of creating. 

In the practically minute-by-minute news cycle we live in, cell phone addiction feels like an old topic. Of course phones are addictive, that’s pretty much the point of most of the popular apps — to keep you engaged. I, along with many of my friends, watched ​​The Social Network in horror. But aside from that first week where we all swore we were never using social media again, I don’t think any of us really made any significant changes with our phone or social media usage; I certainly didn’t.

Now, I know this piece might have seemed like it was gearing up to tell you that changing my phone to black and white was the answer, that turning a 21st-century technology the same color as the first TVs made it nothing worth checking impulsively throughout the day. Wouldn’t that be easy, if the answer to all our modern woes about cell phone addiction could be cured with a simple change of display? 

Unfortunately, I can’t say from my personal experience that this is the answer. I’ve noticed no change in my phone usage, if screen time is any indicator. And although I wouldn’t say I was ever honestly concerned that my phone usage was anything abnormally unhealthy, there were definitely still times I found myself reaching for the device when there were more productive things I could have been doing. 

Maybe we’ve opened a Pandora’s box with smartphones. Maybe we’ve bitten into the Apple of the Tree of Knowledge. Regardless of the dramatic description used, it’s clear that for many of us, phones have become their own point of conflict. Even if it’s less noticeable than a semi-murderous man-made creature or child turning against their parents. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, none of this is to discredit the ways that smartphones make our lives better, because believe me, that’s not my intention. I just thought it was interesting that when I did eventually try to turn my phone display back to its default, it only took me about 30 seconds until I switched it back to grayscale again. The sudden change had hurt my eyes. I’d never realized before just how blinding all of the colors had been.