Seattle woman has lived her whole life without a smartphone. She recommends it

A lot of Seattleites are feeling overwhelmed by the news lately — the impact of President Donald Trump’s latest flurry of far-ranging executive orders, the devastating LA wildfires, plane crashes in D.C. and Philadephia, topped off by Elon Musk’s latest post on X. It can get to be so much that people are turning off their cellphones.

That is not an option for 77-year-old Patti Gorman, a service learning coordinator at Seattle Central College. Gorman has never had a smartphone.

“I figured it would be an electronic leash,” she explained. “I think it would tie me to people in a way that I wouldn’t want to be tied.”

Gorman is becoming a rarity. According to the Pew Research Center’s latest “Mobile Fact Sheet,” 98% of Americans now own a cellphone of some kind. More than 90% own a smartphone, a percentage that has rocketed up from just 35% when Pew first studied smartphone ownership in 2011.

Gorman said her desire to have clear separations between her work time and relaxation dates back before cellphones were widely available. She remembers a moment when she worked at an agency and her boss called her while she was on vacation.

“I said to him, ‘Why are you calling me?’” Gorman recalled. “[He said], ‘Well, I needed to speak to you about this.’ And I said, ‘No, I am on vacation.’ I’ve always set limits around things like that. There’s work time, and there’s vacation time.”

Her example confirms the conclusions of David Levy, professor emeritus in the Information School at the University of Washington and author of “Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives.”

Levy said the challenge of maintaining boundaries between work and leisure dates back more than 100 years.

“I think back to email as much as 30 years ago, where people were just concerned that they were getting two more email messages when they had 50 messages in their inbox,” he explained.

That concern has become more pronounced with smartphones and their capacity to addict people through a sophisticated algorithm of content tailored to their desires, fears, and habits.

For Gorman, witnessing smartphones take hold and keep her own children rapt has been a reminder about what she values and hopes to maintain in her own life.

“My philosophy about life is, ‘Pay attention to what's going on in the moment,’ and whether it be talking to another human being or being out in nature, which I like to do a lot, those phones take away from that,” she said.

She sees the negative impact of social media and smartphones as isolating people from each other and causing a loss of community.

“I know there are people in my own family who don't even want to answer the telephone,” Gorman said. “They would rather text. They don't even do the email anymore. I think just a lot of avoidance of talking to another human being is becoming part of our society, and I think that's really detrimental.”

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Levy said that people use their phones to disconnect from the moment, especially if they feel momentarily bored or have a moment between classes or appointments or tasks. Scrolling through their phone fills those spaces.

As one of his sources from “Mindful Tech” put it: “It's clear to me that I have been using this outlet as a way to dissociate from the moment because I am overwhelmed.”

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Although she believes smartphones and social media tend to make people insecure and are filled with “just so much terrible stuff,” Gorman has seen the downside of living in a world without a phone, especially when it comes to traveling.

She admits to borrowing people’s phones when she’s waiting for someone to pick her up from an airport. She also realized how difficult it can be on a recent trip to Portugal and Barcelona.

A year and a half ago, Gorman’s husband relented and purchased a smartphone. Now, they sometimes FaceTime with their granddaughter. Gorman will also text her daughters when they don’t respond to her voice messages.

In those exchanges, she misses all the body language and non-verbal signals that she sees in real face-to-face conversations.

“They can sound happy and wonderful and look totally depressed,” she said. “There is energy that goes between people when they can see each other and that really adds to connecting with somebody.”

Even though her husband has given in, Gorman is adamant that she will spend the rest of her life without owning a smartphone herself.

“But, you know, how many more years do I have?” she said.