Being old enough to have grown up and been a student before mobiles existed, I'd cope. I wouldn't get lost, I wouldn't panic knowing I was eating a great meal and couldn't share photos of it to my friend around the world instantly, I know how to write letters and buy stamps if I had no computer access. I'd keep a paper diary and probably buy a watch, although I spent a few years both watch and mobile-phone-less when younger and liked the freedom of it.
However, why would I bother? A smartphone isn't doing me any harm. I'm not addicted. I can and do ignore beeps telling me messages have come in, I turn it off every night before I go to bed and I've even deleted all the Facebook apps (mainly cos they're huge and kept being updated rather than any fashionable hate for the thing).
It's a tool. It's like saying "could you live without a car?" sure, I'd take the bus/train and cycle as much as possible but if I had a car and found it useful why give it up? I don't actually have a car. I bus/train and cycle as much as possible but it seemed the easiest analogy at the time
Two excellent posts with which I am largely in agreement.
In common with you both, I also predate the era of computers, let alone smartphones.
As a student, and later, as an undergrad, all my essays were written in longhand, or on my mother's typewriter, (an early present in undergrad days was a portable typewriter of my own.)
I still eat meals without consulting my phone (unless the person I am dining with is unconscionably or fashionably late, in which case, I do then check to see whether they have given an ETA or an explanation or apology for such tardiness); likewise, I know how to write letters (and still do), buy stamps and post them.
And yes, I still keep a paper diary, (and use it, it's invaluable), and wear a wrist watch.
Solitude, I like, - and have always liked - and, since my mum's demise two months ago, I find I have also come to appreciate and really relish and savour silence.
Agree that boredom and solitude and not needing to be active allows one to think, sometimes to think creatively.
I think the question to be asked of smartphones is: do you own the smartphone or does it own you? Do you determine when and how you use it, or, do you respond, like Pavlov's dog in the famous experiment, to the stimulus of the sound of the phone?
When I first acquired a mobile phone (cell phone to Our Transatlantic Cousins) around twenty years ago, I vowed that I would never become a slave to the thing.
If out walking, I never take it, and, at night, it remains downstairs, barred from access to bedrooms and bathrooms.
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