‘A Sign of Contradiction’: Life Beyond the Smartphone — An Interview with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

In this compelling interview, guest writer Rob Marco sits down with the respected Catholic author and composer to explore the challenges of smartphone addiction and how to overcome it.

Image: Vitaly Gariev, Unsplash.com

Author’s note: I recently had the opportunity to correspond with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski on the topic of our societal addiction to smartphones. It was a fascinating conversation and I don’t believe we are talking about it enough in our culture. In this interview Dr. Kwasniewski gives his perspective and the reasons for living as a Catholic husband, father, and academic without ever having owned a smartphone while also providing pragmatic suggestions and resources for escaping from this addiction. — Rob Marco

Peter A. Kwasniewski holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Thomas Aquinas College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America, with a specialization in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. After teaching at the International Theological Institute in Austria, he helped establish Wyoming Catholic College in 2006, where he taught theology, philosophy, music, and art history and directed the choir and schola until 2018. Today, he is a full-time writer, publisher, and speaker whose work appears at many websites, especially his Substack, “Tradition and Sanity.” He has written or edited more than thirty books and his writings have been translated into over twenty languages. Dr. Kwasniewski is also a composer whose sacred choral music has been performed around the world.

I want to set the stage here before we begin here that you are not, nor have you ever been, a Luddite; is that an accurate statement? What has your relationship with technology been in your life as a Catholic?

Yes, very accurate. When I was in high school in the 1980s, the first personal computers were coming in. My dad bought an Apple II (not even a “+”) with 48K RAM and the 5¼” floppy discs. After a few more iterations of that line, we got our first Macintosh with, I think, 128K of RAM and a 3½” hard-shell disc, and so on. I was the youngest member of the public library’s computer club, which was mostly retired guys, to whom I used to give presentations on BASIC programming or even on making a musical score (the first music software was just coming out). For my Eagle Scout Project, I overhauled the same public library’s computer room and wrote easier instruction manuals for all the software. Ever since, I’ve been using computers, primarily for word processing, spreadsheets, and music composition. Right now I have a nice Dell tower and a 35” ultrawide curved monitor. I run a publishing house, Os Justi Press, that utilizes print-on-demand technology via the online platforms Kindle Direct Publishing and Ingram Lightning Source. So, I guess all of that means I’m not much of a Luddite!

That being said, you do not currently own a smartphone as I understand. Did you ever own one? If so, what led you to abandon its usage at present? And if not, was it ever a temptation to own one?

I’ve never had one, nor has my wife. We’ve tried to be low-tech in certain ways—for example, we’ve never had a TV or a microwave. We use an old Bose stereo system. We take pictures with a Canon camera. We have a regular phone in our house (which is amusing, because people will try to text the number, but nothing happens!). I use a Garmin dashboard GPS (remember those?) if I need one. For years I’ve bumbled along with my flip-phone, which I use almost exclusively for travel or to get security codes. It can text, but you have to cycle through letters with the number pad, so anything beyond “OK” or “No” is a pain in the neck.

You are active on select social media platforms, and obviously use the internet and related media as needed in your work as an academic. So this isn’t about being contra technology, per se. In your opinion what makes the smartphone different from, say, having a laptop and high-speed internet or wifi, or maybe a Gameboy or Walkman?

Some would say far too active! I’m on Substack, Facebook, X, and Instagram.

For me, what makes the smartphone different is that it is too powerful a tool—the ultimate technological Swiss army knife. This is an immense source of distraction. Who wants to carry their office—and their work—around with them all the time? Personally, I’m already inclined to work too much, so I’d rather be genuinely away from work when I’m not at my desk. Plus, who wants to be always accessible, always on call, or always thinking about who might be trying to get in touch with me if only I just click that button? My quiet time, my private time, is not yours or anyone else’s.

Beyond that, my wife and I were disturbed early on as we observed how addictive these phones are. It seems like once people get them, they can’t stop looking at them. They look at them in the airports and on airplanes, in restaurants and cafés, while walking around, alone or with friends. People seem to become not just dependent on but dependents of their phones and feel insecure apart from them. Since I’ve worked from home for the past seven years, and my wife is a homemaker and an artist who uses a room at home as her studio, we don’t have to go out much, so it was relatively easy for us to sit out the smartphone craze and be sideline observers.

It was not long, of course, before articles and books began to pour out on the psychological and social and even spiritual problems arising from smartphones—we’ve read authors like Paul Kingsnorth, Rod Dreher, Ruth and Peco Gaskovski, Jon Haidt, Robin Phillips, Patricia Snow, and above all, Byung-Chul Han. The more we learned, the more resolved we were against it. We feel like we’ve dodged a fatal or paralyzing bullet.

I should add here that there’s a complicated relationship between internet and smartphones. The internet causes harm enough all by itself, and, in spite of the fact that much of my work is currently internet-based, I would love to see a world in which the internet no longer existed. It’s not as if the human race didn’t get along well enough without it for thousands of years. But the smartphone is the ultimate tool created by and for the internet: it is like the concentrated essence of “connectivity,” which, as Byung-Chul Han explains, is not the same as relationship. It crystallizes, intensifies, magnifies, and accelerates everything that is wrong with the internet. From that point of view, a world with internet but without smartphones would already be significantly better for human beings.

I’m not sure if you are familiar with this concept of “interstitial time,” those little down moments when we may be waiting for a bus or in between classes. I’ve noticed that since the smartphone has become ubiquitous in the social landscape, that these untethered moments have been co-opted by the phone. It is rare to see someone reading a book, engaging in conversation with a stranger, or even just daydreaming. One might say “so what, big deal?” But in fact, such moments can be vital to fostering creativity and creative thinking. What do we gain, and what do we lose, with the filling of these “interstices” via smartphone usage?

Yes, it’s awful. So few people are daydreaming, scribbling a poem or making a sketch, looking around at nature, reading a fat novel, or interacting normally with the folks around them. Few know how to entertain themselves or even how to be patient with the boredom of waiting. True solitude is an almost non-existent resource at this point. Many little “crosses” that used to mark most days of most mortals are now evaded by perpetual scrolling, immersion in constant news and notifications, visual stimulation overload; one can fidget endlessly. It’s as if T.S. Eliot’s line “distracted from distraction by distraction” had finally found its ultimate realization.

What do you think is the social damage caused?

There’s been deracination, denaturalization, dehumanization, depersonalization, call it what you will, but the phenomena are unmistakable. I was reading the other day about how young women and young men barely know how to talk comfortably to one another in a date setting, as their social and conversational skills are so stunted. (In her powerful essay “Look at Me,” Patricia Snow discusses research that suggests that the very presence of a phone, even if turned off, has a stifling or superficializing effect on conversations, and that smartphones foster autistic behaviors.) There are even professionals charging big bucks to teach twenty-something-year-olds how to talk to other human beings.

We have chosen to conduct a gigantic, uncontrolled social experiment upon ourselves, and the result is people withdrawing into solipsism, isolation, alienation. Loneliness, depression, body dysphoria, doomscrolling, pornography… you name it, there’s an epidemic of it. I’m not saying the smartphone alone is to blame—but it is the magical portal, so to speak, through which a lot of these evils are freely flowing. No honest person can deny this.

Statistically speaking, younger people are smoking and drinking less, and engaging in less sexual activity outside of marriage, than previous generations. But maybe there was simply a transference of addictive behavior and dopamine hits to technology (like smartphones) that wasn’t available to Gen X at that age. That’s my own pet theory, but would you say there’s any truth there?

Absolutely. The addictive nature of the social media and smartphone combination has been well studied and no one really denies it anymore. In fact, when people hear that I don’t have a smartphone, most of the time the reaction is: “Wow, I wish I could do that, but…” or “I’ve thought about doing that too…” or “I know I’m too attached to my phone…” It’s almost as if people feel instantly guilty and some even become defensive. This, to me, suggests that most users realize, at some level, that they are hooked, attached at the hand rather than the hip, co-dependent, and using the device as a kind of combination stimulant and tranquilizer. Just notice the effort it takes for many users to put their phones down or put them away or turn them off completely, much less to leave them off for hours or even days at a time.

I’ve also read that sexual attraction and activity between couples is decreasing, and the most popular theory is that the virtual world conjured up by the phone—be it through innocent channels or more perverse ones—is just a lot easier and more interesting than dealing with a real interlocutor or romantic partner, which is rather demanding. I mean, people are demanding, but no one used to have a serious problem engaging. If you have a sort of technological drug always on hand, the theshold of engagement may suddenly become rather steep.

Nine out of ten Americans own a smartphone. Do you think this has any bearing on how we structure our society? (For example, requiring QR codes to scan for events or travel, or the need for apps to do work in certain professions, assuming everyone owns a smartphone, etc.)

This has been a regular source of irritation to me and, I imagine, to anyone who chooses not to have a smartphone. However, I believe it’s very important for there to be people out there who insist, in every situation, on having an alternative. For example, once in an airport in Europe, I was expected to have some document on my phone. I simply said, I don’t have a phone, so this piece of paper will have to do. They made a bit of a fuss but in the end they let me through. I feel it’s the same way with cash vs. electronic payment. Certain powerful elites would love to get rid of cash entirely and replace it with electronic transactions so that the government could control economic access by “social credit.” This is why it’s more important than ever to take out cash and use it for purchases. Make sure the businesses realize that they cannot get rid of cash without suffering real economic consequences. Similarly, let’s make sure that we do not surrender our entire Lebenswelt to the smartphone.

As I said earlier, I run my own business, so no one is forcing or expecting me to comply with a company policy. I have met individuals over the years who’ve said they would prefer not to have a smartphone but their employer requires or expects it. This strikes me as a real imposition, a form of manipulation. As we see more and more evidence of the harms it brings, employees should have the right to decline having a smartphone if they don’t want it. Sadly, I’m not sure enough people care about this issue (yet) to exert the kind of social counterpressure that would be needed to support that freedom. Once again, we see how modernity, boasting of its freedoms, strips them away one by one.

Have you felt at a disadvantage being in the ten percent minority? Or would you say the opposite—that you have an advantage somehow in not being dependent on a smartphone in your daily life?

Both are true. It’s particularly inconvenient not to have a smartphone when renting a car away from home. If I’m traveling in the USA, I’ll take my Garmin GPS with me, it’s not large or heavy. But even so, sometimes newer-model rental cars don’t have the right electric port for it. Recently in North Carolina, I had to sit in four different rental cars before I found one with the classic round port as opposed to the ubiquitous USB port. Also, as you know, many folks rely on WhatsApp and Signal, and even if one could get these to run on a desktop computer, that’s not what they were designed for.

Yet I have to say, I experience it as a huge freedom not to have a smartphone. My life is simpler that way. Quieter. Less cluttered. My use of the internet and of social media is strategic, focused, and limited to when I’m at my desk. I listen to classical music on external speakers rather than earbuds, which lets the music fill the space of a room and create an ambience.

I should mention here that Wyoming Catholic College, which I helped establish in 2006 and where I taught until 2018, has a unique no cell-phone policy on campus. The students check in their phones at the start of the semester and receive them back at the end. They are allowed to check them out if they are going on a trip out of town (and in Wyoming, unlike most parts of the USA, this really is necessary for safety, as it’s still a wilderness up there, and you can easily get stranded in a dangerous situation). What this means is that for 99% of their time as students, they live cellphone-free lives. To the surprise of many outsiders, the students generally love this policy once they get used to it, saying it frees them up for their studies, their friendships, and their appreciation of the beauty of the place where they are. More schools and colleges need boldly to implement this kind of policy in order to provide their students with the gift of a phone-free environment—one that is optimal for learning and relationships.

I’ve been tempted to go to a flip-phone, but like most people I have a plethora of excuses (need Google maps to navigate while traveling, too inconvenient with work, etc). What would you say to people like me to counter their fears of abandoning their smartphone, that it is indeed possible to live without one?

For years I’ve been wondering if there might be some better solution—something that is not nearly as powerful as a smartphone, which, as Neil Postman would say, is a form of technopoly because it uses us rather than we using it, but something that is a step up from a flip-phone. And it finally exists: the Light Phone III—a new device, pleasantly boxy and retro, that slides into the gap between dumb phones and smartphones. It’s like the former in having no internet access, and therefore, no apps, no websites, no email—there’s your freedom. But it’s like the latter in its texting functionality, GPS capability, and hotspot provision, plus it has a camera (with a shutter, no less)—there’s your practicality, no more hauling a dashboard Garmin around, or pressing ‘7’ four times to get the letter ‘S.’

So, I ordered this product, but haven’t yet received it, as they are fulfilling tens of thousands of orders over a space of about six months. Maybe we can do a follow-up interview after I’ve used it for a while.

Some people say all we need to do is exercise self-control and then we’ll be fine with our smartphones. What’s your response?

Undoubtedly, if we could exercise self-control in the face of repeated temptation and addictive behaviors, we would be a lot better off. But for the various reasons I’ve mentioned, I think the vast majority of smartphone users are not going to self-regulate and perhaps would even admit that they are not able to. Familiarity with fallen human nature would tell you that. (On all this, see Clement Harrold’s superb article “How I Kicked My Phone Habit.”) Samuel Johnson once famously remarked: “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” This is probably truer for most people than we might flatter ourselves into thinking.

One possible temporary fix is Nick Stumphauzer’s clever program “Shift,” featured recently on Matt Fradd’s Substack. You plug your phone into a computer, run the program, hit the shift key, and it turns your smartphone into a dumbphone (the apps disappear, etc.). You unplug the phone and voila!, you’re free to go on a weekend retreat without the lure of the machine. When you’re back, you plug it in, hit shift, and the smartphone’s back. Another quasi-solution is the Wisephone, which looks like a standard smartphone but has roughly the same functions as the Light Phone III. You can add apps, but only in a roundabout way that is sufficiently inconvenient to make a person think twice before doing it. Personally, I see Shift and Wisephone as only stopgap measures, but that’s better than nothing.

As a Catholic, do you think there is a spiritual component at play here regarding the smartphone? Some may argue it is neutral, a tool that is neither “good” nor “bad”—like the internet. For others (including myself), it can sometimes feel like an idol of sorts, this golden calf we worship through how much attention we give it, and how anxious we get when we misplace or break it.

No doubt about it. My son Julian describes it as a “pocket palantír” and I think that captures the paradox of power and weakness, of an expanded world together with a confinement or enclosure. Spiritually we are supposed to be awake, alert, and active. Smartphones seem to dull the senses, lure and bind the attention, create passivity, and cause an epidemic of time-wasting, in addition to whatever worse moral habits they may facilitate. Any spiritual master would say “put that thing down, put it away, if you want to have a serious interior life, if you want to acquire the habit of silence, of listening to the still, small voice.” And who would not be nervous when recalling the Lord’s statement: “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment” (Mt 12:36). How many trillions of idle words are transmitted daily through smartphones!

Do you have any advice for young parents on how to handle “the smartphone issue” with their kids?

I find it striking—as one can read on Jon Haidt’s remarkable Substack After Babel—that even progressivist governments around the world are beginning to pass legislation to restrict social media access for children and teenagers. To my mind it is a non-negotiable that children should be allowed to experience a normal childhood and youth, immersed in the natural world, without the burden of all that comes with smartphones. It is an act of tremendous love to ensure this for them.

It’s much easier, of course, for parents who homeschool to control the home environment. For example, when our children were growing up, my wife and I didn’t have internet at home at all. If they needed internet, they’d go to the local library or come to my office on the weekend. Unquestionably, no one needs or should have a smartphone under the age of 18. If you’re looking for a basic means of communication, a flip-phone is more than sufficient. It also seems to me that if older children can be helped to see the downsides of smartphones, perhaps they won’t even want to have one. Parents could read and discuss a good book on the topic with their high-school-aged children.

Earlier, you mentioned a number of authors who have influenced your views in this area. Could you list specific recommendations for us?

The best articles to read (although it’s hard to choose from what is already a vast literature) are Patricia Snow’s “Look at Me,” Clement Harrolds’ “How I Kicked My Phone Habit,” Rod Dreher’s “Smartphones Are Our Soma” and “Total Freedom, Total Servility” (and just about anything Dreher writes on the topic), Paul Kingsnorth’s “Solitude” (I can’t wait to read his forthcoming book Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, due out in September). I highly recommend the Substacks of Jon Haidt (After Babel), Ruth and Peco Gaskovski (School of the Unconformed), and Robin Phillips (The Epimethean) (I endorsed Phillips’ book Are We All Cyborgs Now?: Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine). For a deeper philosophical analysis of these things, I can’t praise too highly Byung-Chul Han’s Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld. Occasional Heideggerian opacity aside, it’s a brilliant and thought-provoking work.

In closing, what can one gain by being in the ten percent minority that forgoes smartphone ownership? Would you encourage others to do the same?

You win back your personal, intimate, interior space, alone with yourself and with God, and become more available to other real persons whose existence you once more notice as the primary fact of reality. You resist the seduction of constant stimulation, the analgesic of distraction, the exhaustion of accessibility. You start to find time again for little hobbies, for hanging out and chatting on the porch, for daydreaming, for lectio divina, for thumbing through a book of poems or paintings. I think, ultimately, you will feel lighter, freer, and happier.

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Rob Marco is a married father of three. He holds a MA in Theology from Villanova University. Rob has appeared on EWTN’s “The Journey Home” and his writing has been featured at Crisis Magazine, OnePeterFive, Catholic World Report, SpiritualDirection.com, and other Catholic publications. He is the author of Wisdom and Folly: Collected Essays on Faith, Life, and Everything in Between and Coached by Philip Neri: Lessons in Joy