A humorous call to unplug, reset boundaries and escape the chaos of smartphones ruling our daily lives.
REMEMBER when choosing your ringtone was basically a personality test? When a dead prepaid line was the worst thing that could happen, not your entire digital life collapsing?
Back then, phones were humble and uncomplicated, unlike our current devices that think they own us. Fast forward to today – everyone’s smartphone has become a pocket-sized portal to chaos. It is like carrying a tiny nightclub, scam factory, therapy session and crime scene all in one.
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You scroll, you tap, you doomscroll again, and next thing you know, you are emotionally drained, mentally “fried” and somehow subscribed to three Telegram channels selling “miracle slimming tea”.
When “smart” turned dimwitted
Somewhere between “there’s an app for that” and “let AI write your love letter”, we lost the plot. Smartphones were supposed to make us smarter but here we are arguing with strangers at 3am, taking selfies at funerals and believing that our cat needs its own Instagram account.
And don’t get me started on the recent headlines: Siblings stabbing each other after online squabbles? Scammers sweet-talking innocent makciks into sending their life savings to “Prince Jonathan from UK”? Paedophiles stalking our children on the dark web, like digital cockroaches?
What used to be a tool has turned into a trap. We handed our lives to little glowing rectangles – and they are glowing brighter than our sense of judgement.
The Snake Game was safer
Once upon a Nokia 3310, “Snake” was a game – a cute one – and you controlled it, not the other way around. Nowadays, the snakes are in your DMs, your WhatsApp groups and your crypto “investment” chats.
That indestructible 3310 brick could survive the apocalypse, floods and three elections. Drop it on the floor? The floor apologised. Battery life? Ten days. Current smartphones can’t survive a sneeze.
And privacy? Darling, the 3310 didn’t know your location, your search history or your shoe size. It just rang when someone missed you – remember that feeling?
Today’s children can swipe before they can say “Assalamualaikum”. They learn ABC from YouTube and moral values from influencers who think empathy is a skincare brand.
One small WiFi outage and suddenly you are hearing screams from every bedroom like an exorcism scene. “Mummy, the internet’s down!” No darling, your spirit is.
Parents, don’t act innocent. You are there too, scrolling Facebook at the dinner table while pretending to “supervise homework”. The family looks like a panel of zombies at a tech convention. We used to tell kids, “Don’t talk to strangers”. Now, strangers talk to them through games.
And parents? Some are too busy arguing in comment sections to notice their kids being digitally groomed. We are raising a generation that knows how to edit videos but not how to hold a conversation without emojis.
Scammers, stalkers and scroll-zombies
Malaysia is the all-you-can-eat buffet of scams. There is love scams, parcel scams, investment scams, cat adoption scams and soon we’ll get “no-scam scams”: “Hello ma’am, I’m here to make sure you’re not scammed – please give me RM500.”
Then, there are the stalkers, lurking online like ghosts in fibre optics. We have built a world where strangers know where you had lunch, what your pet’s name is and how many times you’ve “liked” your ex’s photo. Creepy isn’t even the word; it’s creepy with WiFi speed.
As for us adults? We have turned into scroll-zombies. We scroll at traffic lights, we scroll while the nasi goreng burns, we scroll at funerals. Some people cry less for the deceased and more for their dead phone battery.
Tell someone to put down their phone for five minutes and they act like you asked them to donate a kidney.
Time for solutions before Makcik throws a slipper
Alright, enough clowning. Makcik loves drama but she loves solutions more. So here’s how we rescue our fried brains before they are served as digital rendang.
- At home: Operation unplug-lah
- No-phone zones: The dinner table is not a charging station. Declare it sacred territory, like your mum’s Tupperware.
- Lead by example: Parents, don’t tell kids to “put away the screen” while you are watching 37 WhatsApp videos from your aunt’s group.
- Retro Sundays: Pick one day a week to go analogue. Play cards, argue over Monopoly, talk. You know – human stuff.
- At school: Teach WiFi with wisdom
- Digital manners 101: Not every meltdown needs a selfie, especially the ones captioned “life’s tough”.
- Scam-spotting 101: Not everything glittering online is gold.
- Reward offline wins: Give gold stars for finishing real books, not for racking up 100k likes on “study vlogs”.
- At work: Detox without drama
- Stop the 24/7 nonsense: Your boss can wait till morning. This is Malaysia, not the International Space Station.
- Digital tea breaks: Step away from the screen, get some kopi, look at a tree. Remember trees? Green, tall and blissfully WiFi-free.
- Encourage real talk: Slack is for tasks, not therapy sessions.
The dumb phone renaissance
So, what’s the cure? Go dumb again – bring back the phone that couldn’t track you, couldn’t tempt you and couldn’t send your private photos to the cloud.
The kind that could fall down five flights of stairs, survive a flood and still we can play Snake on it while the world ended. Those phones didn’t care about your followers or your filter, they didn’t send “seen” receipts to start fights, they didn’t make you feel like a failure because you didn’t have a morning routine that involved crystals, smoothies and journaling. They were gloriously boring and that is exactly what we need.
Makcik’s closing sermon: Unplug or be unhinged
Listen here, my digital darlings: The future doesn’t need to be unplugged, just unpossessed.
We don’t need smarter phones; we need smarter boundaries.
We don’t need faster downloads; we need slower mornings.
We don’t need more apps; we need more hugs, more books and more nasi lemak without notifications.
So yes, call me old-fashioned, call me nostalgic but I’ll take a dumb phone that gives me peace of mind over a smart one that gives me trust issues.
Because let’s face it, the real problem isn’t that our phones got smarter; it’s that we, somewhere along the way, forgot how to be.
Azura Abas is the associate editor of theSun.
Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
