Zeroization

Wired has a bunch of reasons you might reconsider having a cell phone. I just got rid of mine a few months ago. My top reasons from the article:

It’s horribly expensive
Total Cost of Ownership. Apply that idea to everything, not just cars and mortgages. The fact is that most cellphones will cost you thousands over the life of the contract. Short of paying-as-you-go with a Wal-Mart crapdybar, you’re in it for a good $1,000, and about $2,000 or so with a smartphone.

And if you get a new cell phone, locking you into a new contract, you just perpetuate it even longer.

It enslaves you to a one-sided contract
This is the magic that allows the previous item to happen, but is sufficiently vile to warrant an entry of its own. Everyone is at it, but the most iconic example of how times have changed is AT&T: Ma Bell has reglued itself together with almost Marxian inevitability, but now has the advantage of having countless customers under astonishingly abusive contract terms. Take that, deregulation.

Market power anyone?

It makes you perpetually available
If it’s on, they can get you. If it’s off, they wonder why they can’t get you. It’s a lose-lose situation for your Zen.

This is perhaps the top reason. If you have one, it simply becomes an expectation that your are always available by phone. There’s no room for uninterupted serenity or leisure.