Tldr: simple redundancy is best.


Context

Been running a long term experiment about finding a healthy balance in making myself available to others, and guarding time for personal needs and development. Previous successes have included: the backpack experiment, moving to a two phone setup, and quite a few other tiny changes in my life as a priest that would be a little boring to list out.
What has been occupying my mind in the last few months, especially with the realization (prompted by making the Steam Deck my laptop replacement) that portable computers are finally here and they work amazingly well, is that having a phone number, seems stupid.

It's archaic tech in the worst way, there are better options for voice/video calling and for messaging, and it's highly centralized and completely falls apart in a disaster.

It's also used for all sorts of tracking and identity verification, with very few methods of blocking those tracking attempts being feasible.
With the Steam Deck, or any other portable pc, all necessary means of comunication can be maintained, a phone number is now an unecessarily complicated, and potentially harmful, redundancy.


Replacement

As I've pondered the ways to journey towards a phone number-less life, it's obvious the actual shift is going to be messy.

There are tons of options out there to replace telephone communication, all across the spectrum of corporate to more open: WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messanger, Discord, Telegram, Signal, Wire, Session, Keet, and probably some others I can't recall.

The first problem is do I just stick with one and start handing that out as my new "phone number." Or do I start a few, and give people some options in case they are already familiar with one of them.

And then while I don't have many, I do have some elderly people in my life and work as a priest who are not going to be able to make the jump to any of these options. I'm thinking the age cut off is about mid 80's, I know people in their late 70's and early 80's who use Facetime and Facebook Messanger to communicate with their children and grandchildren, so I think for the most part they'd be fine. But those in their late 80's and on up, I think they're not going to be able to make any sort of shift.

The final big problem to consider (there's lots of little problems, not going into those), is the jerk factor.

Everyone within my socio-economic and geographical region has a phone number. Trying to move away from that is going to threaten the status quo and make me stick out like a sore thumb. I'm going to be making everyone else's life difficult through this decision.

I think I'll ultimately be okay with that, but it does give me a reason to move slowely.


Process

My first intended step is to setup a bunch of those different messenger platforms. I'm guessing that having 4-6 will increase the likelihood that someone will already have an account on that platform.

Next step is only offering those as options to contact me. Just never give my phone number as an option, unless it becomes absolutely necessary.
Final step will be well down the road (I assume): finally getting rid of my phone number! I'm guessing this will take years to get all my present communication over sms transferred over to other platforms. But the day will happen eventually! Maybe...


Caveats

I understand a few roadbumps to my overarching plan: government stuff requires a phone number, the bank requires a phone number, doctors require a phone number.

On the one hand, I'd love to fully go off grid and not need to worry about any of those things, but that's not an option.

These are the reasons I think it will be years to fully get rid of my phone number, and I kinda think I might never be able to get rid of it.
Might just need to keep a dumb phone/local phone with a number I only use for government-banks-doctors for the forseable future.