If I were to graph the number of apps installed on any device I own since I got my first Android phone in the summer of 2011 (an HTC Inspire), it would be left-skewed. A combination of concerns about battery life and storage space, the realization that some websites offer better experiences than their respective apps (especially Facebook), and an overall desire to just have few sources of information has led to delete nearly everything but preloaded apps.
What’s left? Not much.
What’s more, I haven’t actively searched for a new app in a while. I’m not sure if this says more about me being burned out on data and notifications (they feel so distracting, and I know I have written/read less because of them) or about the maturity of the app market.
I remember when “apps” became part of the lexicon some time in the summer of 2008. I had just moved to Chicago and I still had a Motorola RAZR that might have been cutting-edge in 2005, during my first year of college. When I got online for the first time ever in my first Chicago apartment – via a Dell desktop PC – the App Store was only 2 months old and Google Chrome was less than a week old. On my PC, I didn’t really think of “apps” except for Web browsers and games, and even then I thought of them as “programs.”
In 2009, I had my first brushes apps like Shazam and Grindr that offered something a lot different than what had been available from a PC or Mac. In 2010, I learned about Instagram and was for the first time jealous of people who had iPhones (I still had a dumb phone of some sort at that time). In 2012, I found out about Uber and was briefly enamored with it before it revealed itself as an ethically-challenged organization.
But since then, there haven’t been many “a-ha” moments for me in using mobile apps. The ones I use every day are based on age-old phone conventions like being able to send text messages (starting with SMS and now evolving into iMessage, LINE, etc.) and photos.
There’s also DuckDuckGo (a search engine, one of the oldest forms of exploring the Web), Lyft (since I can’t stand Uber), Flickr (for photo backup) and Tumblr (where I do some of my creative writing). There are ways to pay for my coffee (Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks) and then there’s Yo, which is a novel way to get updates on RSS feeds, Twitter accounts, etc. Although it started a gimmick, I think Yo has a lot of potential. There’s Pocket, my favorite. And 1Password, which simplifies so many headaches.
Part of the reason for the paucity of apps on my phone is that I have never been in love with social networking. With Tumblr, I can just publish from time to time and not worry about my real identity. But I steer clear of Facebook and Twitter on mobile since they just demand too much attention for too little return. I also don’t use Snapchat that much (with like 2 or 3 people max) and have never used Secret (I don’t get it) or any dating app like Tinder (I’m married). All this makes me feel old.
What is the future of social networking? Bleak, I hope, since it seems to make so many people anxious or unhappy, worrying about what others are doing and keeping track of when certain people are awake or active. I liked this passage from Tyler Brule:
“I have a theory about social media: that is exists not because people are dying to share everything but because of poor urban planning. The reason these channels have developed on the U.S. west coast stems from millions of people being lonely and trapped in sprawling suburbs. Apparently, the Swiss are among the lowest users of social media in Europe. I’d venture that this is due to village life, good public transport and a sense of community.”
In America, for someone born after 1980, there are so many barriers to meeting up with others unless: 1) you have a car; 2) have access to good public transportation. #1 is an issue for the cash-challenged Millennial generation, yet so much of American infrastructure – from sprawling parking complexes to office parks located in the middle of nowhere – assumes the ownership of one. #2 is surprisingly rare – I would venture to say that one can only comfortably be out and about in a city without having a car as back-up in exactly two American cities: New York and Chicago.
What fills the void? Social media and messaging apps. Maybe part of my own gravitation away from social media has been the fact that I have lived in one of these two cities for the past 7 years. Plus, no longer being single has also eroded a lot of the youthful fascination that once made, say, Facebook so exciting to use. It’s hard for anyone who joined Facebook after roughly 2006 or 2007 to know what it was like in the early years, when it was all single college students who send each other Pokes and edited each other’s Walls at will.
Less social media (and storage space – I settled for a 16GB iPhone 6 Plus) has led to a pretty spartan, utilitarian home screen. But it’s also, I suspect, left me happier since I don’t have to keep tabs on others as part of a lonely suburban existence.
