It isn't yet.
> Sooner or later people have to use it, unlike alcohol.
So far I've avoided having a smart phone, I've not had a mobile phone since flip phones - I went off always being contactable about that time, having had bleeding edge sat phones for decades.
I have a land line, an answering machine, travel, purchase, am part of several overlapping businesses and deliver work for clients.
eMail, cash, debit cards still get me by <shrug>
Would you care to elaborate how you don't think a phone is not “practically necessary”?
I have never personally met someone like you. I've never known someone who personally met someone like you either. Theoretically, nothing is a necessity. That's why I wrote “practically”. Practically nobody lives like you do.
Can you rephrase sans the cascading negatives. To restate, I have a full life in a G20 country, I don't own or use a smart phone.
> I have never personally met someone like you.
There are many people on the planet.
> Practically nobody lives like you do.
There are many people like me .. you don't met them via your smart phone.
But I've had plenty of moments in my life without a phone, be it the battery is dead, or I've lost/broke it. And I've survived fine.
I've had to re-engineer some parts of life, but yet I remain...