Theodore Roosevelt would have thrown your phone into a lake.
Not immediately.
Teddy was, despite popular memory, a fairly thoughtful man. He would have listened politely as you explained that your smartphone allowed instant access to the world's knowledge, real-time communication with loved ones, navigation, entertainment, photography, news, weather forecasts, banking services, and approximately seventeen thousand photographs of your dog.
He would have found this remarkable.
For perhaps five minutes.
Then he would have watched you spend forty-three consecutive minutes scrolling through videos of strangers arguing about airline etiquette.
And into the lake it would go.
Few Americans have ever been less suited to modern life than Theodore Roosevelt.
This is a man who, as a child, suffered from severe asthma and responded by declaring war on weakness itself. His father famously told him, "You have the mind but not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should." Roosevelt took this advice with characteristic moderation and proceeded to spend the rest of his life boxing, hunting, hiking, ranching, exploring, riding horses, and generally behaving as though exhaustion were a personal insult.
When his wife and mother died on the same day in 1884, Roosevelt did not retreat into a carefully curated wellness routine. He did not begin a podcast. He did not post cryptic messages online. He went west to the Dakota Territory, bought a ranch, and attempted to out-stubborn the frontier.
This was not necessarily healthy.
It was, however, very Theodore Roosevelt.
Modern Americans speak constantly about self-care.
Roosevelt spoke constantly about strenuousness.
These are not the same thing.
In his famous 1899 speech, "The Strenuous Life," Roosevelt urged Americans to embrace challenge, effort, and discomfort. Easy lives, he argued, produced weak citizens. Comfort was not the goal. Growth was the goal.
He wrote:
"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life."
Imagine introducing this man to screen-time reports.
Every Sunday, millions of Americans receive a notification informing them exactly how many hours they spent staring at their phones.
Most react with mild horror.
Then they continue.
Roosevelt would treat these reports as battlefield casualty figures.
One suspects he would become particularly fascinated by the average American's relationship with boredom.
For most of human history, boredom was unavoidable. People experienced it constantly. They sat with it. Endured it. Occasionally solved it by inventing new hobbies, writing books, learning instruments, building furniture, or starting revolutions.
Today boredom survives only in brief intervals before being assassinated by notifications.
Standing in line?
Phone.
Waiting for an elevator?
Phone.
Sitting in traffic?
Phone.
Watching television?
A second phone.
Many Americans now consume media while consuming media.
Roosevelt once spent months exploring wilderness areas inhabited by grizzly bears.
Modern citizens cannot survive six minutes at a stoplight without consulting Instagram.
This would concern him.
A lot.
What Roosevelt understood, perhaps better than anyone in American political history, was that character is often built in moments of inconvenience.
Not great moments.
Not dramatic moments.
Small moments.
The decision to finish something difficult.
The willingness to endure discomfort.
The ability to focus.
The discipline required to continue when one would rather quit.
Unfortunately, modern technology has devoted billions of dollars toward ensuring that nobody experiences these moments unless absolutely necessary.
Entire industries now exist to remove friction from daily life.
Food arrives without cooking.
Entertainment arrives without searching.
Transportation arrives without walking.
Conversation arrives without speaking.
Romance arrives without leaving the house.
Even exercise increasingly arrives through subscription services.
This would strike Roosevelt as deeply suspicious.
Not because he hated technology.
Roosevelt loved innovation.
He admired progress.
He embraced modernity.
The problem was never the technology.
The problem was what happened when convenience became the highest social value.
Roosevelt once remarked:
"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
This statement has aged poorly in one specific respect.
Modern Americans spend considerable energy trying to avoid exactly that.
The internet is filled with advertisements promising passive income, effortless success, optimized productivity, life hacks, shortcuts, and techniques for becoming wealthy while performing as little labor as possible.
One occasionally encounters videos explaining how to make six figures without leaving bed.
Theodore Roosevelt would probably leave bed specifically to fight these people.
The strangest development, however, may be the modern relationship between risk and anxiety.
Americans live longer than Roosevelt's generation.
We are wealthier.
Safer.
Healthier.
Less likely to die from infectious disease.
Less likely to die in industrial accidents.
Less likely to be eaten by wildlife.
Yet we often appear more anxious than ever.
Roosevelt would find this paradox fascinating.
Partly because he believed courage was not the absence of fear.
It was action despite fear.
One of his most famous observations remains relevant:
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena."
Not the commentator.
Not the observer.
Not the person posting reactions online.
The participant.
The person doing something.
Roosevelt's entire worldview revolved around this principle.
Life was meant to be lived, not merely observed.
The internet has created unprecedented opportunities for observation.
The participation rate appears less impressive.
This helps explain why Roosevelt would despise doomscrolling.
The modern citizen may consume a hundred crises before breakfast.
Wars.
Elections.
Economic collapse.
Climate change.
Celebrity scandals.
International conflicts.
Local controversies.
All delivered directly into the nervous system before coffee.
Roosevelt understood that human beings were not designed for this.
He spent years reading history, studying politics, and leading a nation. Yet even he experienced the world in manageable portions.
Modern Americans wake up every morning and attempt to emotionally process the entire planet.
The results have been mixed.
To be clear, Roosevelt would not advocate abandoning technology.
He would not become one of those people living in a cabin writing manifestos about civilization.
He liked civilization.
He just believed civilization should occasionally go outside.
One imagines him staring at a modern family seated around a dinner table.
Four people.
Four phones.
Minimal conversation.
Everyone physically present.
Everyone mentally elsewhere.
The silence would probably last several minutes.
Then Roosevelt would stand up, collect every device, and begin walking toward the nearest body of water.
The family would protest.
He would ignore them.
The phones would disappear beneath the surface.
A great calm would settle over the proceedings.
Someone might even start a conversation.
Theodore Roosevelt spent his life arguing that citizens become stronger through engagement with the world. Through effort. Through challenge. Through participation.
Not because hardship is inherently noble.
Not because suffering is desirable.
But because meaningful things generally require some discomfort.
Friendships require effort.
Communities require effort.
Families require effort.
Democracy requires effort.
Character requires effort.
The phone is not the enemy.
The temptation to live through it might be.
And if Roosevelt occasionally seems excessive in his enthusiasm for discomfort, it is worth remembering that he spent much of his life watching Americans search for easier ways to live.
More than a century later, we appear to have found them.
Whether we are happier remains an open question.
Somewhere, one suspects, Theodore Roosevelt is looking up from a hiking trail, observing a nation staring into glowing rectangles, and reaching a conclusion.
The phones are staying.
The lake is still an option.
— John Handcock