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The “Bad Habits” singer revealed that he “got rid” of his cell phone almost a decade ago during a recent appearance on ‘Therapuss’ with Jake Shane.
Ed Sheeran’s bad habits do not include aimlessly scrolling on his cell phone all day.
In fact, the “Shape of You” singer, 33, hardly even has access to one these days since he “got rid” of his mobile device almost a decade ago. “I haven’t had a phone since 2015,” he admitted on the Wednesday, June 5 episode of talk show Therapuss with Jake Shane.
The revelation came up after Sheeran offered to give host Jake Shane his email address in lieu of exchanging numbers. “I don’t have a number,” he said, “… that isn’t me playing you off either.”
Sheeran shared that only recently did his team give him a phone for instances where it’s necessary, like at the Boston Celtics game he sat at courtside with singer Reneé Rapp for the NBA Eastern Conference Finals on Thursday, May 23.
“I have something to like video stuff that would then go up on social media,” the “Perfect” artist explained, “but it’s not like an active working phone.”
Sheeran said his decision to do without a phone came about in December 2015 after realizing how many contacts he still had saved from before he got famous. “I had the same number from like age 15, I think,” he shared, “and I got famous and I had 10,000 contacts in my phone that would just… people would just text the whole time. And I was just constantly in touch with a lot of people.”
The dad of two — who’s married to childhood sweetheart Cherry Seaborn — went on to say how the pressures of texting people back-and-forth and sometimes not responding in a timely fashion contributed to his phone-free policy as well, saying, “I feel like with phones, everyone expects you to reply, and if you don’t reply, it’s rude.”
“Sometimes you’re just not in a headscape to reply, you’re busy or doing whatever,” he continued, “but then you reply, then they reply back… and suddenly you’re in like 40 conversations at once.”
Sheeran concluded, ultimately, “I just was losing real-life interaction, so I got rid of [my phone], I got an iPad, I moved everything onto email, which I reply to once a week.” He added that his preferred method of communication now is just “a better way” to “limit your time” texting others all day.
The x singer is on a bit of a festival run currently after performing at places like the Boston Calling music festival and BottleRock Napa Valley Festival in California in May. This month, he has performances slated at Italy’s Lucca Summer Festival, Fan Fest EURO 2024 and the Hurricane Festival in Germany, and Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands.
He’s touring through the rest of Europe until September, when he’ll perform at Brazil’s Rock in Rio along with Imagine Dragons, Travis Scott, Katy Perry, Shawn Mendes and other headliners.
