By laypeople virtually all having smartphones, then creating an assumption that everybody should also have one, it drags monastics in. Why is it that monastics get dragged in? Because the efforts to not have a smartphone (by outsourcing needed online tasks to lay stewards) eventually end up exceeding the efforts to just conform and get one. I personally really do not like smartphones.
I personally held off having one for as long as I possibly could, succumbing only about 8 months ago (when I had 9 years seniority). I absolutely needed one to arrange plane tickets, and make other travel plans (did you know there is a $60 surcharge for arranging a plane ticket by phone now?). That was in Malaysia, where WhatsApp is the goto App to communicate and arrange everything (and only works well on a smartphone). There was no communal monastery computer where I was staying (but you could get a smartphone and a SIM card).
To me, my smartphone is mostly like a modem. When in Southeast Asia, in many places (like the monastery where I was staying, called Nandaka), you can’t get Internet access except by 3G (as in, no broadband is available whatsoever). So you need a smartphone with a SIM card, which are suprisingly cheap (and laypeople are willing to donate them). But wait, you say, why not just have a USB 3G/4G USB modem (in the laptop), and no smartphone? Because the cellular reception can be so poor, that you hang the smartphone in the window from a string, suspending it stock still, in the one spot where you get marginally decent signal strength. Then you use wifi hotspot so your laptop can use the 3G connection wirelessly across the room, from a desk. Thus the smartphone is acting like a modem did, back in the late 1990’s.
Please see here for more on this.
So in summary, I would appreciate it if laypeople would:
- Quit putting smartphones on some sort of pedestal, as being sacred, and therefore necessary.
- Quit “ensconcing” apps like WhatsApp, which are smartphone-centric (meaning, you need a phone number to sign up, you need SMS to receive activation codes, and the desktop client lacks voice and video chat). Alternatives like Wire work great from a laptop (even the video chat), never needing a smartphone.