Unlike nearly 98 percent of Americans under the age of 50, I don’t have a smartphone. Actually, I’ve never had a smartphone. I’ve never called an Uber, never “dropped a pin,” never used Venmo or Spotify or a dating app, never been in a group chat, never been jealous of someone on Instagram (because I’ve never been on Instagram). I used to feel ashamed of this, or rather, I was made to feel ashamed. For a long time, people either didn’t believe me when I told them that I didn’t have a smartphone, or reacted with a sort of embarrassed disdain, like they’d just realized I was the source of an unpleasant odor they’d been ignoring. But over the past two years, the reaction has changed. As the costs of being always online have become more apparent, the offline, air-gapped, inaccessible person has become an object of fascination, even envy. I have to confess that I’ve become a little smug about being a Never-Phoner—a holdout who somehow went from being left behind to ahead of the curve.