I can’t use a smartphone – and I’m not the only one.

Every time I turn on the TV or the radio, somebody somewhere is giving up their smartphone. All programme makers worth their salt, it seems, are recruiting bands of intrepid volunteers, confiscating their devices, handing out old-fashioned Nokias and recording the results. I can see the attraction: it’s a perfect narrative arc. Frustration, grief, yearning, acceptance, the ecstasy of reunion accompanied by deepened self-knowledge – for decades, romantic novelists have been following the same playbook.

But there’s a group of us who are completely invisible in this conversation – people who, like me, just can’t use smartphones at all. We’re not old and we’re not Luddites; we’ve got health conditions which make us sensitive to light. I’m a writer and I use a laptop set up so the screen is about three feet away from me with the backlight dimmed and the text enlarged, and I have a separate keyboard and microphone, I go online at home and if I’m out use a Nokia sparingly. Smartphones are just too small, too bright and too close.

Light sensitivity is a recognised medical symptom in ME, lupus, autism, migraine – and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, which is what I have. I know people with all these conditions (and others) who can’t use smartphones, or can, but only for maddeningly short periods, although other light-sensitive people are not affected in this way. It’s a very variable sensitivity with people reacting to different types and strengths of light.

And because it’s scattered across lots of different health conditions, light sensitivity is desperately under researched. In 2008, an EU scientific committee looking at the move away from traditional incandescent lightbulbs estimated that around 0.05% of the population (that’s tens of thousands of people in the UK) had underlying photosensitivity conditions which meant the change might put them at risk; LightAware, using a definition of light sensitivity not narrowly focused on skin, considers this an underestimate.

Am I calmer and more present than my peers who have the whole online world just a swipe away? I often find myself admiring tree shapes, a beautiful sky, or an interesting face, while everyone around me is absorbed in their screens. And limited screen time means I have to be highly focused and intentional when I do go online, so there are whole swathes of time-wasting stuff I don’t engage with.

But these positive aspects are being undermined by the way services are being actively changed so that people like me can no longer use them. Making smartphones the only way to buy rail tickets, pay for car parks or renew prescriptions discriminates directly against people who, because of their medical condition, simply cannot have one. Light-sensitive people are already at risk of social exclusion, and the assumption that “of course everybody’s got a smartphone now” is making it harder and harder for us to navigate daily life.

Age UK is campaigning against ‘digital by default’ which they argue is excluding millions of older people from being able to access essential services. But this should not be seen as a generational issue that will die away. Public services and private companies, priding themselves on their equality and inclusion policies, need to understand this and do better. And the media should recognise that in the debate about wellbeing and smartphone addiction, we smartphone incels have something vital and unique to say.

By Anna Lyndsey
Blogs are written by LightAware supporters in a personal capacity

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