Loss of electronic identity | Sow There!

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If you talk to teens in America, I’d wager there would be a large percentage who believe survival is impossible without a cell phone. Without TikTok, Instagram, et al, life would soon have no meaning. As the younger generation reaches the age to vote, I would not be surprised to see a Constitutional amendment to require cell phones for all humans age 13 and older.

If solar flares wipe out our communication satellites, the collective wail of young people might be heard from space.

The Pew Research Center reports that by age 13 and 14, 92 percent of teens have a smart phone. This number increases to 97 percent by ages 15-17. Of the teens polled, 46 percent admitted they are on their phones “almost constantly.” Of ages 13-17, according to this same data, only 3 percent of this age reported they only check their phones a few times a week.

Who are these 3 percent? Are they hiking in the mountains? Are they such bad kids that their cell phone privileges are frequently revoked by parents? Or are they too busy playing video games to check their texts and social media?

I can poke fun from now until those kids have their own kids. However, the reality is that I’m equally dependent on my own device.

Last week I had a phone crisis.

It all started with a flying phone.

My coworker Terri and I transported 25 college students from a Chico hotel to the University Farm. We piled the students into our cars, four at a time, and cruised the three miles to the farm. As soon as the students exited the cars and slammed the doors, we were back for another carload.

At some point I reached for my phone to check if anyone had been left behind – but I couldn’t find my phone.

I searched the place between my car seat and the center console. I dumped the contents of my purse into the middle of a parking lot. I looked at my hands to make sure I wasn’t accidentally holding my phone. Checked my pockets.

People called my phone and I stuck my head into the front seat, the backseat and in the trunk.

Someone suggested I use my computer to “Find my Phone” …

At this point in the unfolding drama, Terri said she had noticed some “white papers” fly off the back of my car near the Smucker’s jam factory close to the Midway. She backtracked to this location and found my phone in the gutter. The Otter box protective case had prevented destruction, but there was a small chip on the upper right of the screen.

A smarter person would have immediately repaired the screen. However, it wasn’t broken so I didn’t fix it.

Now I know that a cell phone screen is similar to the windshield of a car. If you have a small “ding,” in a windshield, a crack can soon form, which can turn into a giant gash across the driver’s line of sight.

All that week I used my phone like a teenager, which means almost constantly. I took hundreds of photos in Baltimore and in Washington DC, and sent so many texts it’s surprising my fingers are not sore. At one point, I used my phone to rent a CapitalBike in Washington, DC, and pedaled joyfully around marble monuments until it started to rain.

This is when the phone started to act wonky.

As far as phone care, I did everything wrong.

My cloud storage has been full since the pandemic, and I am too cheap to pay for extra storage. I never took the time to learn another way to back up my data.

When I arrived back in California, it was a weekend. I had no phone and felt like I had been teleported back to 1992.

I found workarounds, and texted family on my iPad and chatted with mom on voice-over-Internet.

I had work to do, but soon realized I needed two-step verification (preferably on my phone) to access anything except my refrigerator. I had to remember passwords to email accounts I never used, and hoped I could remember my Apple ID password.

A big box electronics store quoted me $400 for an Apple certified screen replacement, but the young kid guessed I could not know whether there was water damage from that small ding (and now cracks) in the screen.

My family has a family plan, which means I had to track down the “master of the account” who lives in a different time zone and has a life of his own. He talked to the phone store in the mall, but when I showed up nothing went as the master of the account had arranged. The store clerk repeatedly reminded me that I was not the master of my account and that I should return only when I had been ordained as the keeper of the family cell phone codes.

Over those long, quiet days, I came to a point of acceptance:

— I could live without a phone.

— Eventually I could throw enough money at the problem to fix it.

— If I lost all my data, life would go on.

— I could live without access to 128 GB of data, including 14,000 photos, but I felt a dull ache when I realized I could lose the saved voicemail messages from my dad. He died a few years ago and sometimes I do replay his messages when I need to remember the sound of his voice saying “hey kiddo.”

On Monday I met Ben at the repair shop across from S&S, the one with the mannequin out front. Ben replaced the screen, determined there was no water damage and charged me $150.

I’ve learned my lesson. Losing a cell phone does not mean the end of the world, but I can and should take more precautions with this overpriced gadget for which I have become overly dependent.

Garden enthusiast Heather Hacking loves when you share what’s growing on. Reach out at sowtheregardencolumn@gmail.com, and snail mail at P.O. Box 5166, Chico CA 95927.