The craving is not for the phone. It is for the interruption.
Something in you has learned that the moment before a notification arrives is less bearable than the notification itself. Even a disappointing one. Even silence dressed as a message that turns out to be nothing. The reaching is the point. The reaching means you are not sitting with whatever was there before it began.
This is worth examining. Not the phone. Not the screen time. What was there before you reached.
Most people cannot answer that question clearly. They have been reaching for long enough that the silence before it has become theoretical. They do not know what it feels like to sit in it because they have not sat in it for years. The phone arrived before the question could form.
The withdrawal is from the question. The phone is just the nearest exit.
Vickram Aadityaa
