I gave up my smartphone for a week

Your parents will often remind you whilst they see you on your phone (though you’re only half-listening) that, “it was only twenty years ago, that we just had to meet people, at the pre-agreed time and place. And if they weren’t there, well, you’d just have to make a smoke signal and hope the local blacksmith could give you a lift home on his cart.”

I’ve romanticised this past reality as you can see. I sensed purity in living it – a liberating simpler, sexier Game of Thrones life. So I decided to go ahead and piss off all who rely on me and ditch my phone for a week.

The first day phoneless was tits. I arranged to meet a mate at the pub and he was two hours late (having forgotten my endeavour and texted me to let me know) by the time he arrived I was very drunk and alone.

A reconstruction

Phones make us flaky. Also what do you do when you’re waiting awkwardly for someone? You look at your phone and look like you’re doing something important.

It is the smartphone and tablets practicality in this way that let’s us cram as much communication as possible in the short intervals and long-ass procrastination opportunities that so often present themselves.

I realised when I gave up my phone that having one takes over my life. Even when I dream, I’m the bloke in Temple Run being chased by a mob of angry baboons, leaping over dark crevices to escape the never-ending threat of capture.

Help

I should switch to CandyCrush. The dreams would probably be more pleasant.

I worry how much all this phone facetime is doing to our imaginations. I haven’t imagined I was a cowboy in weeks and my expressions have become a fixed list of emojis which makes me sadface.

My experience from the first day left me sombre, misanthropic and hung-over for the second. Yeah, it was great.

The feeling of anxiety in the back of my mind for the bottom of my pocket to constantly monitor my phone had gone and was replaced by a headache.

On day three, the headache had gone and the ballache of inconvenience naturally grew in its stead, to complete the eternal cycle of life angst.

Just not the same as seeing it on Instagram

07I’d forgotten my house key and forgotten that I’d said I’d meet a mate at the pub.

Clueless, I went off and did what I liked as I had done the entire day – uninterrupted, my planned routine un-diverted and all with the intended natural dosage of distraction.

Like Jesus would have experienced.

I couldn’t help but wonder what I missed out on during that day if I had have had my phone on me. Simultaneously, I loved that I’d found Jesus and that maybe I go to the pub too much.

Solution? Instead of using our iPhones (the one ringer to rule them all), we could try using what have become our shitty ‘festival’ phones’.

Ol’ reliables that don’t break or get stolen, don’t run out of battery and that are so out-dated that people will think you’re being ironic.

Almost 9 out of 10 of us 16-24s use smartphones, maybe it’s time you for you to be the hipster minority, man.

I caved after four days and got my phone back, this article was originally a weeks experiment (you try being without Googlemaps and texting, I was lost, both emotionally and physically).

I thought having a smartphone meant I was missing out on the simple pleasures in life – which is partly true, but it also made me realise that our collective consciousness as a generation has transcended into a digital bubble.

A bubble where we can find out what we all have in common with one another and share photographs of what we had for dinner. “That musaka looks yum, Lizzy :P”.