It Really Is That Damn Phone

Source: it really is that damn phone, Shimon Davis, 23:12, uploaded 2026-05-18.

Shimon Davis begins with a claim that he expects most viewers already recognise: the phone has become an obsession that damages the life it once helped people escape. Social media supplies stimulation that ordinary experience cannot match. An endless feed can then make a walk, a book, study, or a quiet meal feel empty because the real world moves more slowly than the stream on the screen.

He answers the familiar defence that a feed can teach useful things. Some people use it responsibly, and some of the material can be good. Davis still estimates that only a small part of what a person consumes helps them. He gives no evidence for his figure of ten percent, so it works as a judgement about the balance of his own feed rather than a measured ratio. The rest of the stream keeps the viewer afraid of missing news, trends, gossip, and other people’s lives.

Insecurity as a business

Davis argues that this fear is profitable. Feeds show sadness, conflict, status, wealth, and promises of self-improvement because insecurity holds attention and can be converted into sales. His examples move from alarming news to expensive online courses. He also makes a distinction between people who offer something in good faith and those who exploit pain. His complaint is directed at a system that makes scrutiny uneven: people accept harmful products from large companies whilst treating an individual creator’s price as the main moral problem.

The argument then turns from consumption to expression. People want to be seen, heard, understood, and appreciated. Davis treats this as an ordinary human need rather than a defect. A person explains an opinion because they want somebody else to understand it. Social media gives that need a platform, then distorts it by placing the work of a few people with millions of views beside the work of everybody else. Three people in a room would feel like an audience. Beside a post with a million views, the same three people look like failure.

Comparison makes the distortion personal. A beginner compares the start of their work with somebody else’s mature practice. A person hesitates to post again because the first post received little attention. Another person leaves a cruel comment because being noticed offers a brief answer to their own hurt. Davis gives the example of a viewer who called his friend Jalen Jenkins a one-hit wonder under a video. The comment does not help either person. It turns private anguish into a public judgement of a stranger.

The screen and consequence

Davis thinks the screen weakens the sense that speech and action have consequences. People write things they would not say to somebody standing in front of them, project assumptions onto strangers, and mistake a profile for a whole person. His proposed correction begins with curiosity: ask a question before deciding who somebody is. The larger correction is to remember that online conduct still enters the lives of real people and can return to the speaker when the screen no longer protects them.

The source of the video is a visit from Davis’s seven-year-old cousin. The child had grown up with phones, tablets, a games console, and a virtual-reality headset. When punishment removed the electronics, he first stood outside looking bored. He touched a tree, examined its leaves, threw rocks, and began to play. Davis contrasts this with his own childhood, when children had to be called back inside and new school clothes returned covered in grass stains. The example is personal and does not establish a general difference between generations. It gives his complaint a concrete form: boredom lasted long enough to become contact with the world.

Davis keeps the phone’s benefits inside the argument. It has earned him more money and connected him with more people than any job or school. Technology, cameras, games, and online friendships can all matter. His claim is that these gains do not exhaust what a life can contain. A person can watch television whilst scrolling, take a phone into the shower, and need a video beside every meal until concentrated reading or practice feels intolerably slow.

Practice instead of the feed

The alternative appears in Davis’s guitar. He describes playing for eight to twelve hours on some days and missing the instrument whilst travelling. Practice gives him peace and leaves a result that he can hear. Eight hours of scrolling may provide a few ideas or songs, yet the same time spent with the guitar changes what he can do. The contrast matters because his answer is not productivity for its own sake. It is sustained contact with an activity that means something to him.

His practical advice stays simple: put the phone down, go outside, get sunlight, eat with care, and notice what enters the mind. The difficulty remains real. He describes phantom vibrations and the pull of a device even when it is not nearby. Control is possible, but the video offers no tested programme for achieving it.

The final movement widens the advice beyond phones. Other people’s attacks often come from their own need to be seen and heard. Davis asks the viewer not to take those attacks as a complete account of who they are. A person can keep part of themselves private, continue their own work, and become “lost treasure” that an audience does not fully possess. The world remains beautiful in his account. The screen only prevents people from meeting enough of it.

Limits

The video is a personal argument built from observation, family stories, and Davis’s experience as a creator. It names no research and does not establish its claims about damaged eyesight, headaches, attention, depression, or the effects of screens on children. Its strongest evidence concerns the tension Davis can see in his own life: the same phone supports his work and connections whilst competing with the guitar, nature, relationships, and forms of attention he values more. The description links to Davis’s own self-mastery book but gives no sources for the video’s wider claims.