The Moral Panic In Your Hands
Most of us are probably in agreement about the role phones are having in our lives. Why has that become so divisive?
Hello and welcome to Many Such Cases.
A good deal of you likely know me as somewhat of an anti-phone writer. This is something I’ve always rolled with, because, well, it’s nice that a single person knows me as any sort of writer at all. Whatever got you here is fine by me. I’ve always seen myself as a sex and culture writer, with phones representing one particular intersection of the two alongside film or celebrity gossip or fashion or whatever else. Of course, what has become apparent over the last decade is that phones are a much more prominent intersection than these other arenas. In many ways, phones are now the avenue through which we experience all of this — not only film or celebrity gossip or fashion, but all of sex and culture are now mediated in our day-to-day by our phones.
As such, I have always emphasized that reality in my work. My most-read work on Substack speaks to that topic. I’ve been asked on various podcasts to discuss it. And so, here I am as an anti-phone writer. But that label isn’t entirely accurate: I’m on my damn phone. I love a lot of things my phone provides. I don’t know that I’d be the writer I am or have the audience I have without my phone. Referring to it as just a “phone” is itself reductive, too. If I am anti-”phone,” we are obviously not talking about landlines or flip phones or even specifically a device that allows for texts and calls. I am maybe more specifically referring to an iPhone, but even that isn’t quite accurate. “Phone” has instead, in my mind and clearly in the broader cultural context, come to refer to something that is both an all-encompassing object and not even an object at all. It is a universe of networks and apps and interfaces backed by the world’s most powerful and wealthy corporations who employ our brightest minds to make their products 1 percent more addictive. It is a device loaded with opportunities to burn your day away with ease, and it is also a device through which many of us could not possibly otherwise navigate day-to-day life or socialization. And for all the good phones do offer, the bottom line is that they do not at all need me to come to their defense. Meta and Apple and several of the other companies with the highest market cap in the world already have that covered.
It seems I have to clarify all this as part of my stance every time I am asked to discuss it. No, I’m not just talking about an item that allows you to call your grandmother several thousand miles away, or the thing that lets you keep up with your friends from college in a group chat, or even the unlimited library of information it connects you with. I’m talking about the fact that your brain would prefer you be look at AI generated ragebait slop on Instagram Reels than hold eye contact with a loved-one. And you know that’s what I mean.
Now, with all that said: phones are so obviously not the only problem plaguing us right now. I also do not support legislation that regulates the individual’s usage of phones. I’m not really sure I even support the idea of a national ban on phones in schools. I *absolutely* support the idea that schools should be empowered to ban smartphone usage during the school day, and that children’s learning outcomes would be better if they did.
There are plenty of people I respect that feel differently about phone usage and the extent to which it’s a problem, including Taylor Lorenz, who kicked off much of this discourse this month. Most of us who are engaging in this debate with any sort of nuance at all essentially all have the same stance, even if we frame it differently. Katherine Dee, for example, wrote on her Substack last week that the whole anti-smartphone thing is a grift, and I actually completely agree with much of what she said:
“The classroom phone debate is a red herring.
Nobody actually thinks kids should be scrolling TikTok or worse—Pornhub during class. Nobody thinks poor black and brown kids are using their smartphones as “word processors” in class either. Be so fucking for real.
Phone bans in schools are good policy. Fuck, bring back computer labs and teach technology skills in contained environments. Personally, I didn’t learn jack shit in school because I was toggling between mobile games on my iPhone and MMORPGs. And while we’re banning phones in school? Let’s expand that ban to sidewalks and normalize desktop computers in computer rooms again.
… the latest suite of “think of the children” policies create the infrastructure for much broader censorship. The problem isn’t the phone bans themselves—it’s how they’re being used as part of a larger authoritarian project that most people can’t see coming, in large part because of the media conversation.
Again, it’s like we’re all largely on the same page! And yet, it’s been flattened into a black and white issue. You can’t say “phones are probably bad” without it implying that you want Trump himself to come and nab your iPhone from your fingers.
Many want to call this whole conversation around phones a moral panic, and maybe for those who do actually want some sort of federal ban on them, that label is accurate. But the term “moral panic” has itself been reduced to the point of meaninglessness — anything that someone generally doesn’t agree with or doesn’t think is as big of a deal is now subject to the label.
The Salem Witch Trials were a moral panic. The idea that Marilyn Manson caused the Columbine shooting was a moral panic. There have indeed been moral panics that mirror some of the same themes we’re seeing with phones, such as the comic book moral panic or that of violent video games. Even so, concerns about phones and the assertion that children in particular would benefit from using them less is not a moral panic. It might tick some of the requisite moral panic boxes, like fear surrounding new technologies and impacts on children. Those who are calling for a federal ban on phones may well be elevating this all to a moral panic. But criticizing phones and their dominance in our lives does not a moral panic make.
Yes, I am concerned about authoritarian censorship and the ways phone bans could be used to facilitate it. I’m also concerned about the authoritarian role the tech corporations who want us on our phones are already perpetuating. I am concerned that phones are contributing to (not exclusively causing!) the decline of sex and our increased isolation. I am concerned about the ways many of us, from a younger and younger age, are wired to look to our phones above all else. I am concerned about the fact that criticizing this reality is being swept up as a “moral panic,” that suggesting we reconsider our relationships with our phones aligns you with a yet to be realized fascist future.
People with more money than God are already fighting to keep you on your phone. Why do you feel so compelled to help them?