While they haven’t started smashing their
smartphones on purpose (or have they?), young people are turning their cracked
cellphone screens into the latest in shabby chic. Or is that trashy tech?
Whatever it is, it’s catching on as fast as torn
T-shirts and ripped blue jeans. Once considered mortifying — damage requiring
immediate repairs or replacement — the spider webs of a cracked smartphone
screen increasingly are seen by teens and 20-somethings as inevitable badges of
honor, cool battle scars that impart a kind of rough street cred in the mobile
world.
“It’s an accident when it drops, but nobody wants
to pay the money to get it fixed,” explained 18-year-old Kaitlyn Wilson of
Liberty, who was visiting the Apple store on the Country Club Plaza recently.
“So, whatever, you have a cracked phone. If you were the only person with a
cracked iPhone
5 screen protectors for you would
probably run out to get it fixed. But everybody else’s is cracked, so why not
leave it?
“Then Sharpie it, and make a design out of it on
Pinterest.”
Sharpie it?
“Color it in,” said Wilson, a student at Maple
Woods Community College. “I’ve had friends that tried to crack their screen on
purpose so they could Sharpie it.”
Others have used food coloring or nail polish to
add color to the cracks.
“My phone was cracked for a long time, and then my
friend’s phone cracked, too, and she was like, ‘Oh look! Look what happened!’”
Wilson said. “You know, excited about it. She just didn’t care to get it
fixed.”
Even young people who don’t regard a cracked screen
as cool aren’t immediately seeking repairs, said Brett Butler, 18, who just
graduated from Lathrop High School and will attend the University of Central
Missouri in Warrensburg in the fall.
“After my friend dropped her phone and had it crack
she went five months before having it fixed,” Butler said. “And then a week
after getting it fixed she dropped it and it cracked again. This time she
decided she’d just leave it because it wasn’t worth the hassle. It still
worked, and she could still see her screen.”
A cracked phone that still works can be meaningful,
said Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory University and author of
“The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and
Jeopardizes Our Future.”
“A cellphone is their peer umbilical cord, their
whole social life,” he said. “But it’s a fragile instrument. So in a way a
cracked cellphone that still works means, ‘Hey, my phone may have hit the
ground, but it’s a survivor.’ And by extension the phone’s owner is a survivor,
too, because it’s a reflection of them.”
And an expression of individuality.
“The problem is all of these smartphones are pretty
much the same,” Bauerlein said. “The crack on the screen makes it unique.”
Further, it shows the owner has “been around.”
“Kids want to be cool and worldly and independent,”
he said. “Their beat-up cellphone shows that they’re experienced. It gives them
a kind of street cred.”
But the trend comes with a caveat. Cracked screens
are only cool if you have the means to fix them. Without insurance,
professional repairs can cost hundreds, and do-it-yourself options online are
dicey.
“Only if you’re fairly comfortable can you regard
the cases of deterioration or damage to your cellphone as a sign of status,”
Bauerlein said. “If you’re poor, then it’s just damaged.”
Adults, apparently, aren’t on board with this
trend.
In a Best Buy store in Overland Park, Janet Martin
was checking out the latest Android smartphones. Her badly cracked Samsung
Galaxy S3 sat nearby on a counter. This substitute teacher in her mid-40s
didn’t think the cracks were cool, or a status symbol.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “I
feel terrible with this. It’s definitely new phone time.”
The trend toward keeping cracked screens concerned
her.
“Frankly that kind of bugs me,” she said. “My
daughter just got an iPhone, and I bought the insurance,” she said. “If this
really is the coming trend, and she’s not going to want it repaired or
replaced, why did I waste my money on the coverage?”
A spokeswoman for Apple declined to say whether
sales of the company’s Apple Care insurance policies were up or down in the
last year.
But Ryan Arter, owner of Mission Repair, a
cellphone repair business in Olathe, has seen the effects of the trend.
“My son cracked his screen and he said, ‘Dad, look
at how cool this is. I’m going to leave it this way,’” Arter said. “And he has
a father who owns a business fixing these phones!
“I finally convinced him after a couple of weeks
that there was danger to leaving it cracked. One, it can further crack, and
shards of intimate
apparel online can go in your hands or your face. In addition, that screen
protects the electronics inside the phone. If it’s cracked, the ability for
liquid or sweat to get in and further damage it is increased.
“It does look kind of neat. But eventually the
phone will start losing functions. And then it could be a more costly repair if
you wait to have it fixed.”
Meghan Reynolds, another teen with a cracked
cellphone, isn’t worried.
“My contract’s up in four months anyway” the
17-year-old Overland Park girl said. “I’m just going to ride it out. And if I
can be cool while doing it? Bonus!”
