What are your favorite 5 apps on your phone?

Between the Scrolls and the Silence: My Favourite Ways to Spend Time on the Phone

The telephone has travelled a remarkable distance in our lives. What was once a device meant merely for conversation has become a little universe held comfortably in the palm of the hand. It carries our photographs, books, music, memories, correspondence and, sometimes, an astonishing amount of useless information.

My phone, therefore, is not merely a means of communication. It is a window — and what I choose to look through that window says something about who I am.

One of my favourite pastimes on the phone is reading. I enjoy exploring articles, essays, poetry and interesting pieces of information that happen to catch my attention. There is something wonderfully serendipitous about beginning with one subject and, twenty minutes later, finding oneself wandering through an entirely different landscape of knowledge. The internet can sometimes resemble an enormous library without a librarian, where every corridor leads to another door.

I also spend considerable time writing. A thought can arrive at the most unexpected moment — while having tea, listening to music, taking a walk or simply staring out of a window. The phone allows me to capture that thought before it disappears into the ordinary noise of the day. Sometimes a single sentence becomes a paragraph; a paragraph becomes an idea; and an idea may eventually become a piece of writing.

Music is another favourite companion. My phone gives me access to songs from different eras and different corners of the world. I particularly enjoy returning to old melodies. There is a strange magic in a familiar song: the first few notes can unlock a room in the mind that we had forgotten existed. Music does not merely entertain us; it preserves emotional geography.

I also enjoy watching meaningful videos and documentaries. I am far less interested in endlessly consuming content than in discovering something that leaves me with a question, an insight or a new perspective. A good documentary can sometimes accomplish in an hour what several pages of ordinary conversation cannot.

Of course, there is also the inevitable scrolling. Social media has its charms. One encounters photographs, opinions, humour, celebrations, sadness and occasionally a sentence of such unexpected wisdom that it makes the entire scroll worthwhile. Yet I have learnt that scrolling is rather like eating snacks: easy to begin, difficult to stop, and not always nourishing.

Perhaps my most enjoyable phone pastime, however, is connecting with people. A brief message can cross distances that geography once made formidable. A photograph, a greeting or a simple “How are you?” can remind someone that they have not been forgotten. In an increasingly hurried world, such small gestures possess an understated tenderness.

But I also believe that the phone should have a boundary.

There are moments when I deliberately put it aside. A sunset does not need to be photographed to be beautiful. A piece of music does not always need to be recorded. A conversation does not become more meaningful because it is documented. And silence, perhaps the rarest luxury of modern life, cannot be scrolled through.

The real pleasure lies in using the phone without allowing the phone to use us.

Technology is a wonderful servant but a poor master. My favourite pastime on the phone, therefore, is not any particular application. It is the opportunity to learn, create, listen, remember and connect — and then, when the moment demands it, to switch the screen off and return to life itself.

After all, the most beautiful things in life rarely glow from a screen.

Some of them glow only in the heart.