Last week during a cleaning blitz of my apartment, I discovered something that totally took my breath away. It was a heritage cell phone – a Nokia 6230.

Usually, when I see people using prehistoric, brick-heavy, smartphone predecessors, they make me feel physically sick – especially flip phones –ew. But this was different. The discovery of this old-school Nokia was special.

For some reason, as I held it in my hand, life momentarily slowed right down. Mesmerized by the non LCD-screen and the chunky silver plastic keypad, I was immediately taken back to a time when life seemed much simpler; when cell phones weren’t our video cameras, photo albums, diaries, navigation systems, alarm clocks, and Google portals.

The Nokia 6230 came out in 2004, the same year that Facebook was created in a Harvard University dorm room. During this Nokia era, I used my cell phone for three things and three things only: making phones calls, sending SMS and playing Snake, which was arguably the greatest game ever created.

Am I right? Finding this phone reminded me of all of my old Nokias; including a 5110 and a 3310. During this Nokia dreamtime, batteries lasted five hours (a-hem, iPhone 5), we had no apps to get addicted to and we didn’t overshare every detail of our lives. Internet browsers didn’t crash our phones, duckface selfies didn’t exist, and we didn’t document everything online in the hope of getting likes, share and retweets; we actually lived in the moment. Best of all, these phones were smash-proof. Even if you dropped a Nokia 6230, and the impact caused the back case to fly off, and the battery to slide across the floor, you could clip it all back together in a matter of minutes.

So I knew immediately I wasn’t throwing this out, and I wasn’t selling it. It was going straight onto my mantelpiece next to a family photo. This was an antique, a treasure. And most importantly, it was proof that once upon a time we lived happy lives without smartphones.

We were more courteous, we had longer attention spans and we used to doodle on napkins while waiting for friends in restaurants. We smiled at each other on the street, we understood the concept of waiting, and when we said ‘Let’s catch up’ we meant in the real world, not using emoji via Facebook chat.

Don’t get me wrong – we weren’t perfect. People were still rude, they complained, they started fights and they argued. But at least they did it all with a lot more eye contact.

I’m an iPhone and social media addict. Truth be told, I love social media so much that I’ve made it my full-time job. But with all of the amazing tech innovations and creations, come intense demands; to respond, to react, to answer, to engage, to listen and to reply. And to do it all right now.

Holding this phone in my hand I wished, for the first time in a long time, that we could turn back the clock to an era when Miley Cyrus wasn’t twerking, when we didn’t experience FOMO, when unfriending and blocking people wasn’t a common occurrence, when adults didn’t use the expression ‘nom nom’ to describe a delicious meal, and when we didn’t feel obliged to say happy birthday to someone we haven’t seen since Grade 3 just because we got a Facebook notification.

I imagined, for a moment, what life would be like if I resisted the online culture of immediacy, and the expectations that came along with it, and replaced my iPhone 5s with a Nokia 6230. It’s a romantic (romantech, actually) idea to be less tech-dependent and less reliant but sadly, it’s unrealistic. With everyone else in the world using smartphones to send emails, iMessage, LinkedIn invitations, WhatsApps, tweets, Facebook messages and Snaps, I need one too, just to keep up. It’s essential. I mean, the first thing I did when I found this Nokia 6230 was Instagram, Facebook and Tweet it using a Sierra filter. And lucky I did, because it’s getting heaps of likes, shares, and retweets.

Posted on 2/27/2014

Written by Jordana Borensztajn

Jordana Borensztajn is an iPhone and social media addict, and a comedian and corporate speaker. Right now, she’s cruising eBay, looking for old Nokias to add to her collection. If you have any, please tweet her at @JordanaOZ or hit her up onFacebook. Please note: Jordana is not interested in receiving any information about flip phones.

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