Turning Out The Nightlight

What a railway historian taught me about phones and loneliness

In the last post, I promised I would unveil Phone Free Will’s first ever special guest star.

Coming up, as they say on Morning TV. But first: back to the early days of the experiment.

When I started this in January I reported that one of the strange side effects of a consistent phone break was a weird loneliness. For me it shifted after a couple of weeks. Back then I wrote a piece about it, The Lonely Spaceman on the 9.17.

In that piece I speculated whether the London commute was a colder, more disconnected place since the phone was introduced. I imagined that in the days of ruffled newspapers, people might have smiled and talked to each other.

Frankly, I was just guessing.

Fortunately, Christian Wolmar, the unparalleled social historian of the railway agreed to a brief interview. I was thrilled. If anyone could reveal the truth about the social side of the pre-phone commute, it’s him.

“No, it’s always been pretty terrible,” he said.

This was a shame. I double checked. Surely people must have spoken to each other more?

No, not really. They used newspapers or anything they could get hold of as a social shield so they didn’t have to.

It was a crucial point. The social shielding effect of the phone is formidable. I’ve seen how the phone can help people cope with being thrown together on the tube - it kind of disembodies you, so you don’t feel your unwanted closeness to others. And I’ve noticed that for me, sitting opposite people without a phone is - unintentionally - confronting, almost indecent.

Christian told me the commute was always about avoiding unintentional company. The trouble, he speculated, with saying hello to anyone on the commute is that they might start talking back, and you don’t know if they will ever stop.

He has a point there. And that danger is surely especially acute if the person in question is commuting in high vis.

Then he added an afterthought.

Of course, there were the Commuter Clubs, he said.

Wait, what’s that?

Trains had compartments back then. They formed clubs and played bridge games and the like. (I googled this afterwards, and found a New York Times article about a bridge tournament that was played on the commute in the 1980s).

And then, of course, the evening train would be licensed. People used to drink together on the way home, he said.

I said he was making the pre-phone commute sound very social indeed. He assured me these were isolated incidents.

Ah well, he’s the expert.

Before we wrapped up, Christian did offer some cheerier news - we’d both made the same observations on the train and tube: we have passed the age of peak phone.

We had both noticed more and more people seem to be reading books on the tube each day. Still a tiny minority of course. But when I told him about seeing a full house of five book readers in a row on the Central line, he was politely excited.

We aren’t back at Commuter Clubs yet. But maybe in a few years…

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Times Square In Your Pocket

Though I would dearly love a world where the morning train was full of wine and bridge (or indeed poker, a game I actually know how to play), I’m not running this experiment to force people to talk to each other.

I’m using the dead time of the commute to train - to practise the active discipline of being without a screen. The goal isn’t to improve the journey, but to reclaim my mind for everything that happens after it.

And part of that training seems to be going through a spell of loneliness, even as I’m surrounded by other people.

I’ve since heard from two other people tackling their phone use who’ve reported feeling loneliness in the early days. But neither of them were using the commute for their phone free time.

And crucially, for me the feeling passed pretty soon after I wrote the original piece - and not because of any change in commuter behaviour.

So I was likely wrong to say the loneliness was a result of being surrounded by phone-using commuters phubbing me.

I might have been experiencing a general phone use withdrawal symptom.

I remember when I was a kid and going to bed, I felt lonely at night. It was a great comfort to me to imagine the world was still busy and alive somewhere. I used to remind myself that while it was quiet where I was, in New York it would be bustley, electric and exciting.

Perhaps the phone fills that little reassurance we need of a busy world. Over and above close connection with people we know, perhaps we need that ambient connection with our human tribe.

Perhaps glancing at a busy, infinite social scroll is the adult equivalent of trying to remember a bustling Times Square from a quiet childhood bed. A reassurance that the world is still alive.

And when we finally put the phone down, the nightlight goes out. We are left alone in the dark, forced to learn how to process that sudden, cold little patch of blues.

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The Loneliness Paradox

So the phone could well be something that comforts us by reminding us of the scale of our tribe, even as it acts as a social shield against real company.

And the irony is that by showing us a beguiling simulacrum of bustle, phones have made us more lonely in the real world. We have unwittingly trained in an instinct to overuse its formidable power as a social shield. Picking it up has become a default that has rippled throughout all incidental gatherings.

A friend with young children told me the other day that at her four year old’s swimming class, every single one of the mums and dads in the little viewing area were on their phone.

We found ourselves talking about what a shame it was for the kids. At that age, they look up to us when they have dived or done something impressive.

But later I wondered whether the greatest loss might have been felt not by the kids, but by their parents. It can be a lonely time, and the more smiles and incidental connection you get from peers, the better. Not that that conversation never happens now - of course it does. But it surely is reduced by omnipresent phones.

If I can use the dead time of the commute to get rid the automatic instinct to pick the thing up all the time, it will be well worth it.

If Christian is right - and the commute has always been terrible - then we may as well use it as a training ground.

So when we do get where we’re going, we have the capacity to look up.

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This is part a series of articles following 1,000 hours of doing nothing - here’s the embarrassing story of how it all began.

If you know someone who’s tired of their phone use (or if you know someone whose phone use you are tired of) feel free to share with them.