How Dangerous is Your Phone?

To go without a phone is paralyzing. You cannot cancel on someone five minutes prior to meeting, you cannot get lost, you cannot remind your contact list that you look the same as you did yesterday; you can’t wake up, get a date, use the bathroom or order food.

Honestly, it’s not surprising that the dinosaurs didn’t make it.

At the same time, these tiny vessels that contain our entire lives are arguably one of the most dangerous weapons we carry — not against one another, but against ourselves. Phones have the ability to turn on us in a split second; they are robots, after all. They don’t care about us.

The point here isn’t to make you doubt technology, though, but rather to encourage that you look at your “friend” in a new light. Much like those who think adopting a baby lion is a fun idea until the lion grows up and gets stung in the ass by a fat bee during a particularly hungry point in the day, phones can turn on you in a second. Snap your fingers once and Lil Jon appears. Snap them twice and your phone has just ruined your life.

Luckily, a test has been developed to determine exactly how dangerous your phone is, accompanied with strategies to disarm the ticking bomb.

1.  Shit Talking Meter

In your list of text messages, you’ll notice that there is a search option at the very top of the screen. One by one, type in all of your friends’ names, your bosses’ names, your siblings’ names, etc. This will pull up every text where you have mentioned them in some capacity. Consider how well you know yourself, who has made you mad within the last two years, who you think about when drinking and then, without even opening the conversation — just delete.

Other key words and phrases to S&D (search and delete): “no offense,” “honestly,” “the worst.”

2. Play Paste-Roulette

Open up a new text. Do not put a recipient unless you select yourself. Double check that you have selected yourself. Now double tap to paste. You might be thinking, But I haven’t copied anything yet! HAHAH. That’s what you think. Remember that time you copied an entire paragraph from your date’s LinkedIn two weeks ago? Exactly. Picture accidentally sending him or her that.

Save yourself now and become a frequent copier of the word “the.” Become compulsive about it, because accidentally sending someone the word “the” is always safe.

3. Browser Search History

Open your phone’s browser and you’ll see page after page ankle boots you’ve been considering. Clear. Clear. Clear. STOP. You’ve just landed on that time you searched, “Weird rash left butt check itchy doesn’t hurt nearest Chipotle.”

Clear your browsers twice a day.

4. Instagram Creep History

Open Instagram. Go to the user search bar. You will see a horrifying list of everyone you’ve stalked in the past day. This is fine and well until you forget, hang out with whoever you’ve been stalking, go to show them “this awesome account they just HAVE to follow,” and there it is: their name in your search bar.

Clear your Instagram after every search.

5. Scan for Screen Shots

Nudes are a terrifying thing to keep on your phone despite the fact that they remind you how fantastic your butt you looked last night for some reason. Arguably scarier than nudes, however, are screen shots of conversations that you have used as a tool to explain to your best friend the entire trajectory of your conversation with him. The chances of you accidentally texting said “him” this very conversation are far greater than someone finding a picture of your butt cheek among a deluge of selfies. If you’re going to screen shot, delete. It. Immediately.

This advice may sound paranoid, or crazy or obsessive. But dinosaurs may not actually have died from climate change. Someone found a prehistoric iPhone, saw that T-Rex had been googling Pterodactyl on the reg, told Pterodactyl, and poor T-Rex died of shame.

Now: how dangerous is yours?