Every Sunday, I go to a 50-minute workout class where the instructors encourage the attendees to put their phones away for the duration of the class. Once, I even saw an instructor call out one of the participants for being on their phone (specifically, taking a selfie) while on the stair master. I was embarrassed for them. Just this morning in the same class, I saw two different people go to their storage cubby to check their text messages during a break in the program at nine in the morning on a Sunday.
Nearly every day, the first thing I do when I wake up is check my phone, and even though I know it’s not good for me, I do it anyway. I catch myself scrolling through social media during medial tasks like brushing my teeth or loading the dishwasher. I have the most shame around admitting how often I park in my spot at my apartment complex, get out of the car, and start scrolling Instagram during the 30-second walk to my unit…or when I take a “mental health” walk in the evening after a long work day and subconsciously unlock my phone a quarter of a mile in for virtually zero reason.
It’s pretty obvious that as a society, we’ve adjusted to spending more time being invested in what’s on our phones and the instant gratification that comes with a good scroll session: it’s much easier to access than most ways to get dopamine, like exercising or hanging out with friends. In a world where everything is being posted online at any given time of day, you become accustomed to following along with it on your screen because it’s become such a normalized way of living.
According to Pew Research, about 53% of US adults say they spend too much time on their smartphone: and 64% of adults age 30-49 feel that way, too. So why have we collectively accepted this fate? This is the question I started thinking about after attending Phoebe Bridgers‘ The Lost Tour during its 3-day run in Los Angeles at the Intuit Dome over Halloween weekend.
The tour, which is Bridgers’ first solo run in three years, was announced back in June, along with the no-phones policy. Bridgers played a run of pop-up, no phones allowed shows in the US that spring, so this wasn’t too much of a surprise to the fans who were locked in (pun intended, because in order to attend, you have to lock your phone up).
Prior to The Lost Tour, I had only ever been to two shows where phones were banned: Vampire Weekend’s Lollapalooza after show in 2018, and an album release show for Janelle Monáe back in 2023. Both experiences were memorable, on a smaller scale, but the anticipation around Bridgers’ first album in six years and its subsequent tour, which is her first arena run to date, was on another level of excitement.
I arrived Friday evening with a pen and notepad in hand, eager to utilize a different muscle in my brain to quickly jot down any notes that came to mind instead of using my Notes App or taking a video to commemorate any given moment of the performance. Unfortunately, my pen was confiscated at security—”It could be used as a weapon,” a security guard apologetically said as I left it behind (of course, I saw several people in the arena with pens aplenty)—a frustrating blip in an otherwise seamless phone-free experience.
While most shows I go to bring an abundance of phone usage, it was refreshing to witness the start of the show without a sea of smartphones in the air, preemptively recording before a human is even onstage. With no device to distract you, you’re forced to pay attention to what’s going on around you, soaking in the moment without worrying about the quality of the video you’re taking and how it’ll perform on the internet. I’ve fallen victim to this mentality, wondering what moment I should capture in a grainy video. In a world where you see more and more people attending shows, events, and festivals for the “clout,” there is no way to prove you were actually INSIDE The Lost Tour, making it not only a mysterious experience, but an exclusive, un-replicable one.
Photo by Wes Ellis
In hindsight, I didn’t necessarily give Bridgers’ decision all that much thought: just that experimenting with a phone-free tour was a cool idea that she wanted to see come to life in a world where every single culturally relevant moment is posted online, repurposed for different platforms. I thought that the decision was more focused around this being her first arena tour, and opting for a phone-free show would make them feel more intimate (I first saw her back in 2018 at a 400-capacity venue).
But about halfway into the evening, she mentioned that the absence of phones or any sort of recording device gave her the freedom to be vulnerable when performing an album about her late father, which inevitably brings up a lot of emotions. It’s an obvious component of the decision, but one I didn’t necessarily think of right off the bat. I can’t imagine the added layer of anxiety any sort of performer may have to navigate in the age of smartphones, and her referencing shows with phones being “a totally different type of show” (I’m paraphrasing since my pen was taken from me – RIP) makes me wonder if this will be something artists try to replicate in the future.
Photos by Wes Ellis
Her comment stuck with me. I’d been thinking about the no-phones policy as something that primarily changes the audience’s experience, but it also changes the performer’s. If Bridgers can only be fully vulnerable on stage when she knows a moment won’t be clipped, captioned, and circulated within minutes, then what are the rest of us giving up when we film everything? We’re not just distracting ourselves. We’re changing what the people we’re giving our time and money to are willing to give.
I’d love to say I walked out of that show a changed person, ready to throw my devices in the trash, but I’d be lying. I immediately grabbed my phone to Facetime my best friend, who had seen Phoebe a week prior, to debrief on the experience I just had (We got Billie Eilish AND Muna as special guests)! But I didn’t immediately upload my low-quality videos to Instagram and TikTok, and I didn’t feel the need to share my perspective on the internet as soon as my phone was back in my hands. Despite the phone ban not being my decision, it felt liberating.
The next morning, I was back to checking my phone before my brain was fully alert. But I keep thinking about those mere 2.5 hours hours where, my brain was without the constant question of what to capture, what to post, and what I might be missing elsewhere.
Maybe that’s the real point of The Lost Tour. It doesn’t ask us to quit our phones forever, which isn’t realistic. It shows us, for one evening, what it’s like when the option is removed, and how rarely we choose that on our own. The same people who couldn’t make it through a workout break without checking their texts sat through a full concert without them, and, as far as I could tell, nobody minded all that much.
The Lost Tour continues in Ireland next month before heading to the UK and Europe. Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend is out now.
Check out our review of the album HERE.
Header photo by Matt Grubb for Phoebe Bridgers
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