Ed Sheeran revealed that he has not owned a phone in nearly a decade, explaining that his decision was rooted in the notion that he was "losing real-life interaction."
"I haven’t had a phone since 2015," Sheeran, 33, said during an appearance on Jake Shane's podcast "Therapuss," "I got rid of it in 2015… I found I had the same number from like age 15 and I got famous and I had 10,000 contacts in my phone. I just was losing real-life interaction so I got rid of it."
Sheeran explained that he now has an iPad, which he uses once a week.
"I moved everything onto email which I reply to once a week. I have an hour of my time on a Thursday or a Friday, [I] sit down usually in the car. I blast all the emails, catch up, do all of the talking to whoever and then that’s it," he said.
Not having a phone has also inspired him creatively.
"I go for dinner with my wife and she will go to the toilet at a restaurant, and she can sometimes take a while and usually 10 years ago I would take out my phone, flip through Instagram but when you’re just sitting doing nothing, that’s when I’ll think of a lyric or a melody," he said. "You’ll have an idea about where to go next with your career. Boredom is what makes someone think of an iPhone."
Sheeran previously opened up about how a phone was negatively impacting 'his mental health, saying that it put him in a "low place."
"I got really, really overwhelmed and sad with the phone. I just spent my whole time in a very low place," he said in 2022, according to OK magazine.
Sheeran shared that he noticed a dramatic improvement after deciding to get rid of his phone.
"It was, like, a veil just lifted... I didn't so much cut contact with people, I just limit contact with people," he stated. "Now, I have an email... and every few days, I'll sit down and open up my laptop and I'll answer 10 emails at a time... And then I'll go back to living life and I don't feel overwhelmed by it."