Please Stop App-ing Me!

I am App-ed out.

There are Apps for everything these days. I remember when Apps first started to appear. I was still a content flip phone user and therefore protected from the lure of having so much information at my fingertips. Then my flip phone flipped out. I took the plunge and invested in an iPhone 4.

I resisted the temptation to download Apps for the longest time. Then the appeal of Google Maps caught me off guard. What do you mean I won’t have to use a paper-based road map to help me get where I’m going? First it was Google Maps and by the end of 2016 I had over 30 apps on my new and improved iPhone.

When my granddaughter and I are in the same room, she takes over my iPhone and downloads more apps. Mostly games but then there was this thing called TikTok. I had never heard of it back in 2017 but she was enthralled. She uses it to video herself doing all sorts of funny things like spinning in a chair while some weird music plays or makes me record her on the slow-motion speed as she jumped into a swimming pool. She was only eight and had a much better handle on these complicated Apps than I had on just trying to figure out how to use the Ticketmaster or iTranslate App.

By the time 2020 rolled around, I had so many apps on my phone that it looked like something had been ripped out from Highlight Magazine’s hidden picture page. It took me a while to hunt through my phone screen so I could find what I was looking for. I was constantly swiping at my phone, bombarded by a collage of colored squares filled with cryptic symbols. I’m not Egyptian! I don’t do symbols!

Recently, a new colleague wanted to know if I had Slack on my computer or iPhone. I do not have Slack, nor am I going to download Slack on any of my devices. There are so many ways to communicate these days and for the love of French fries, I do not need a new communications app on my iPhone or my computer!

Apps such as GoToMeeting, 7shifts, Blink, Beekeeper, Asana, Connecteam, OurPeople and Monday.com are out there, just waiting for you to press the download button so you can connect and reconnect to the same people over and over but in a hundred different ways. It’s insane how many ways there are to communicate with people.

Hey! I can now message you on Linkedin! And look! I can see you on Snapchat! Oh, guess what? We can Zoom!!!

I long for the days when all I had to do was answer the ring from my rotary phone. Trying to guess who was on the other end of the phone line was like pulling out the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks. You never knew what, or who, you were going to get. Further back, we relied on letters to be carried across the country. By the time we received bad or good news, the drama had long since passed. Nowadays not only do we know about everything seconds after it happens, we can get a loved one on the phone in the blink of an eye.

Having caller I.D. has taken all the fun out of guessing who might be trying to find you because Caller I.D. has given us a choice. We can decide if we even want to talk to the person on the other end of the line or if we are just not in the mood for a chat. With rotary phones, we had to deal with the caller one way or another. If we didn’t want to talk to that person, we hung up or pretended there was static on the line, telling the caller we couldn’t hear them. Then we could hang up.

Purchasing my first answering machine was a big deal because I could listen to who was trying to find me. Then I could decide if I wanted to call them back. These days a caller knows you don’t want to talk to them, especially if you disconnect the call after only two or three rings.

I’m putting my foot down. Sorry, not sorry. I can’t learn how to use another communication App. My brain wasn’t meant to be scattered in so many places. All the ways we can be contacted in 2021 are exhausting and I don’t need to learn a new way to get up into someone’s business.

“But it’s how we communicate now, and you can get to me immediately,” he says. “It’s the sign of the times,” my colleague says again. (Insert overwhelmed fainting emoji here)

I’m already drowning in App-worlds. If someone can’t get a hold of me using email, Instagram, Facebook, text messaging or by calling me on my iPhone or home phone, then they don’t really need to get a hold of me. I’m still waiting to master the art of telepathy. Until then, I’m hitting the delete button.

Better yet, make my day and send me a handwritten letter.

I promise to write back.