Could you imagine life without your smartphone? For most people, the answer is probably no. But some celebrities deliberately do without it.
When is the next streetcar coming, is the café around the corner still open or what will the weather be like tomorrow? We use our smartphones for all these questions and many more these days.
The little all-purpose helper is now hidden in many pockets and it’s hard to imagine our lives without it. By 2024, more than 4.8 billion people worldwide will be using a smartphone, and this figure is expected to rise to around 6.4 billion by 2029.
But what prompts celebrities in particular to do without such a device and lead a life without a smartphone?
These celebrities live without a smartphone
Ed Sheeran, for example, is a self-confessed non-smartphone user. The singer hasn’t had a smartphone since 2015. In 2022, he told The Collectors Edition podcast that it made him “sad to use a smartphone”.
The overwhelming flood of incoming messages was to blame. After he gave up his smartphone, it was “like a veil was lifted from me”.
He now only opens his laptop “every few days”, answers his emails and then closes the laptop again. He doesn’t feel cut off from his surroundings, he says, it’s just “reduced contact”.
Singer Selena Gomez is another celebrity who gave up her smartphone very early on. She took a 90-day smartphone break back in 2016. This felt “refreshing, rejuvenating and calming” for her.
Singer Justin Bieber felt pressured by the constant accessibility of his smartphone. In an interview with Billboard in 2021, he said that he had learned to set limits for himself by going without. Now he no longer feels like he “owes everyone something”.
What alternatives do celebrities use?
But even in a life without a smartphone, communication is necessary from time to time. Ed Sheeran doesn’t just use his email inbox for this. He often uses Facetime on his iPad for phone calls. Elton John, who doesn’t have a phone himself, often calls here too, as Sheeran explained to the NZ Herald.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Ed Sheeran then used a flip phone. Because he had to be available by phone for the British health service NHS.
Comedian Aziz Ansari also used it, as he explains in his stand-up program “Nightclub Comedian” on Netflix. The flip phone is the only way for him to “not be constantly on my cell phone”.
