Mandatory car, mandatory smartphone

I'm old enough to remember a time when not everybody owned a car or, indeed, any motor vehicle. When I lived London in central London I managed without one for years.

Where I live now, owning a motor vehicle is essentially mandatory. There's no public transport to speak of, and every place I need to get to is too far to walk. Most of Britain is now like this -- cars have become so entrenched in our lives that planners and developers don't even consider the needs of non-motorists. Since everybody now owns a car, they assume, why should anybody go to the effort and expense of providing for somebody who doesn't?

Consequently, to live any kind of normal life, we now all need a car. Never mind that cars are expensive and a huge source of pollution; never mind that they kill thousands of people every year. You have to suck it up and buy one, and few people complain.

Of course, we would have complained, had the situation been foisted on us overnight. Instead, it crept up on us with such stealth that nobody really noticed what was happening. By the time we realized that our country had become a mass of tarmac, full of gridlocked, frustrated motorists, it was too late to do anything about it. In fact, we buy ever more cars, because there's no alternative. A car is now mandatory for almost every British adult.

Things are going the same way with smartphones.

I'm old enough to remember a time before smartphones. I've watched the smartphone rise from a niche toy for the tech enthusiast, to an essential part of everybody's life.

We've already reached a point where being without a smartphone is hugely inconvenient; it's only a matter of time until life is actually impossible without one. Since everybody now owns a smartphone, the argument runs, why should businesses and services go to the effort and expense of providing anything except a smartphone app? Because they don't, we all have to suck it up and buy a smartphone, whether we want one or not. And hardly anybody complains.

The analogy between cars and smartphones is, I think, a good one. Most of us think the benefits of owning both a car and a smartphone exceed the dangers, even when we know what those dangers are. Many of us aren't particularly concerned about the long-term effects of either cars or smartphones. Many of us buy a new, shiny car or smartphone whenever we can afford one -- both have the potential to be seen as status symbols.

The difference between cars and smartphones is that we understand, at least in outline, what dangers cars pose to us. As a result, cars are subject to stringent regulation. We have driver training, speed limits, emissions caps, drink-driving laws, road-worthiness tests, and so on. The regulation probably isn't strict enough, but at least there is some.

Smartphones, on the other hand, are scarcely regulated at all. Anybody can legally own and operate one, even those of us too young to interpret the information they bring to us. No training is required, not even about basic on-line safety. The tech giants raise their middle fingers at the meagre, half-hearted regulation that is supposed to protect our privacy.

Unlike motor cars, smartphones aren't dangerous in themselves. They're not even expensive. The problem with smartphones is not that we all have to have one -- it's that we all have to have one that is full of creepy spyware and tracking tools.

De-Googling your smartphone isn't a solution: commercial and governmental smartphone apps aren't distributed through channels that are readily accessible to de-Googled devices. Instead, to obtain the apps that make modern life feasible, you need to use a vendor-approved app store, and thereby sign over your privacy to one of the mega-corporations. These corporations know everything about us, and there's good evidence that they're leaking our personal information to governmental agencies. It's also getting into the hands of criminals, by various routes.

There's the additional problem that young and vulnerable people don't have the experience and training needed to cope with carrying the Internet in their pockets.

It's probably too late to change our societal dependence on smartphones, just as it is our thralldom to cars. But we can at least argue for regulation, just as we have for cars -- robust legislation to preserve our privacy, whilst at the same time protecting the vulnerable. And, yes I'm aware these two goals aren't entirely compatible, so there's a delicate balance to be found.

I've tried to engage the half-wits who run for public office these days, to make them aware of the approaching catastrophe, even though it's like trying to explain quantum physics to a dog. The dog likes the attention, and may even look sympathetic; but five minutes later he'll be looking for something to eat, fight, or shag -- just like our politicians, really.

Still, I believe it's important to keep trying.

Published 2026-03-23, updated 2026-03-23

Mandatory car, mandatory smartphone

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