What I Learned Without My Phone. Phone Addiction is Real.
I was without service for two days. Two. Days.
And here's what I learned. I am an addict.
I use my phone for basically everything important in my life. It snowed yesterday without warning. No warning! That's what life is without a phone.
I couldn't do something as simple as know the expected temperature for the day.
Worrying that something would happen to Willow with her shoulder and the school wouldn't be able to call me.
I do not own a radio. Who does these days? The phone is my radio. Pandora plays all of my favorite songs on demand.
Inari asked me a question I didn't have an answer for and you know what? I couldn't Google it! Who's life is this?!
I have grown up with technology. Yes, I am among the eldest of the Millennials, the "Oregon Trail" generation.
Knowledge comes with instant gratification. You wonder something? You have the answer in seconds.
Social media. How am I supposed to keep up with what Israel is up to against Palestine? How can I post a picture of my cat, or gush about a friend's new puppy?
Turns out the world of social media keeps ticking without even noticing you're gone.
In-depth studies have shown that the majority of the things I miss, especially the social media, activate a part of the brain called the Amygdala.
So to, does learning things rapid fire. You get a little reward every time, your brain fires off some Dopamine when you click and learn. Put on repeat. You become an addict.
Now, it isn't just one social media but several. Pinterest, snapchat, Steemit, instagram, what's app...
It's your fitness tracker, your pokemon game, your gps, your recipe finder, your cute cat videos, gossip sessions, face time. You check your bank account information, email and credit Karma, find out what the local theater is playing and when.
Summon an Uber, watch TEDX and listen to audio books. It's endless.
And many, many others.
Just so you know, the amygdala is the same part of the brain triggered by sugar and... Cocaine.
So, what else did I learn?
Well, I learned that I am incredibly zoned out much of the time.
I was SO aware of my surroundings! The world stopped being background noise to the phone and came into sharp focus. I made eye contact with people. Smiled at them, and they smiled back.
It was alarming to see how many people on the bus were just like me. Zombies looking down, not seeing or hearing anything around them.
I got shit done. I finished the first draft of an entire chapter yesterday. And then? Started on a second one.
BOREDOM IS GOOD FOR YOU. I remember a study once that said your functioning IQ went down by a certain percentage for each electronic device running in proximity to the subject. The distraction was so great, they were, during that time, completely dumbed down.
This experience has given that study anecdotal evidence. My mind woke up without my phone!
And what did I do as soon as it was turned back on tonight? Start texting and blogging and listening to music.
I'm an addict, you know. 🌱
Thank you for reading!
Love to you!
I at one point had no internet at home, and no phone, period. Nothing. I was cut off. For months. Because I couldn't afford it.
I would visit Starbucks to use their wifi several times a week. That was it. Then my mom gave me a prepaid flip phone for my birthday; any time I couldn't afford refill cards, I was cut off again.
Then I was able to get an "Obama phone," which is even simpler in design, but I don't have to pay for it (it should be called a "Reagan phone," who started the program, or a "Bush phone," who extended it to cell phones, and it's paid for with one of those fees at the bottom of phone bills, not income tax). So I regularly had a phone that didn't get cut off.
The only reason I have internet at home is because I am able to ride a hotspot now. When that hotspot goes down, I can't do anything about it, and am without internet for days again.
I haven't had a smartphone in years. I used to. They are expensive.
Sometimes I have to drive a car, and I must confess, that's terrible, particularly when I'm alone. I can hear that I get messages and that people try to call me, and I really have a need for maps, but to be able to access my phone properly I need to stop the car - which may often be a non-trivial task. Fumbling with the phone while driving, that's quite bad, typically also very illegal, I think most car drivers do it from time to time - me too - but I find it very difficult and very slow.
Also, it seems like there are more dimensions here ... "no phone", "no internet" and "no terminal". If I understand it right, your phone is efficiently your internet terminal, no phone means no internet? Not so with me, I hate interacting through the telephone, I spend unhealthy amounts of time with my laptops and work station, and I frequently take the laptop with me when I'm leaving home.
I regularly lose my phone or destroy it, and I'm generally slow to replace it when it happens - but I'm not going offline. Losing my phone merely means that the people expecting to get in touch with me by phone or messages will have a problem. The latter is the worst, with the phone calls people will at least know that they didn't get through ... yes, plus that it's more difficult to get online while I'm on the go, both because I have to find my laptop and because I have to find some wi-fi. There are hotspots in most of the trains and quite some public places here in Oslo, so as long as I carry the laptop in my rucksack I'm usually fine - though worringly, the hotspots are slowly becoming sort of obsolete as everyone have Internet on the go through their telephone subscription.
In the easter I had a whooping 36 hours without a laptop and almost without internet. The two things I was craving for was maps and reaching out to my local crypto trading customers. Big mistake not to buy an old-fashioned paper map!
With my local bitcoin trading, many customers expects me to have a phone, and many customers expects me to react immediately when they try to buy or sell bitcoins. After all, with the local bitcoin trading I'm delivering a value-added service, availability and speed is of the essence.
Now the schools here are sending important information to parents by SMS - only. I think it really sucks. I know several people that are rejecting the idea of having a cell phone. (Those people aren't technofobs, most of them are nerds, they just don't want to give up their privacy or they resist for other reasons). Also, I want to access this information through any device, not only my telephone. Even if I have it with almost me all the time, I want to have the freedom to leave it intentionally at home.
(I've given myself and tiny 1% vote to lift my comment above the "spam")
You have a minor misspelling in the following sentence:
It should be millennials instead of millenials.Lmfao. There are others as well, bot.