12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You

by Tony Reinke

This all means that my phone marks a place in time and space—outside of me—where I can project my relationships, my longings, and the full scope of my conscious existence. In fact, hold up the word “desire” in a mirror and it will read “erised,” the name of the magic mirror in the Harry Potter books.21 In the ancient Mirror of Erised, you see the deepest longings of your heart revealed in vivid color. Our shiny smartphone screens do the same. Too often what my phone exposes in me is not the holy desires of what I know I should want, not even what I think I want, and especially not what I want you to think I want. My phone screen divulges in razor-sharp pixels what my heart really wants.22 The glowing screen on my phone projects into my eyes the desires and loves that live in the most abstract corners of my heart and soul, finding visible expression in pixels of images, video, and text for me to see and consume and type and share. This means that whatever happens on my smartphone, especially under the guise of anonymity, is the true exposé of my heart, reflected in full-color pixels back into my eyes. Honestly, this may explain the passcodes. To get into a phone is to peek into the interior of another’s soul, and we may be too ashamed for others to see what we clicked and opened and chased around online.