How I survived the death of my phone

One day you’ll look up from your phone and the sky will be green

A couple weeks before spring break, my phone passed away. It left me without warning and I have to admit it was pretty traumatizing. I didn’t even get to say goodbye, and that’s something I doubt I’ll ever recover from. I admittedly spent an overwhelming amount of time trying to resurrect my phone, but it was unfortunately beyond my help.

I was faced with the decision of either having my parents send me a new phone in the mail or waiting to get a new phone over spring break. I figured waiting two weeks wouldn’t be all that hard. Was I wrong? Partially. Do I regret it? Not one bit.

The first few days without my phone were difficult. I felt myself physically itching to swipe a lock screen or tap a Snapchat notification. It didn’t occur to me until later how scary my dependency had become. Towards the end of the first week, the absence of my phone was demoted to a mere afterthought. Whenever I needed to check an email or send a text, I was able to pull out my computer. Otherwise, I had almost completely forgotten my dependency on my phone.

Who doesn’t have a phone these days? Wherever I turn, noses are buried in phone screens and ears hidden snug underneath headphones. Understandably so. Phones provide access to social media platforms like Snapchat, extensive genres of music, and even apps that track steps, diet, and healthy lifestyles. What I’ve always sort of noticed even in my own behavior is an unyielding dependency on technology, which made my two weeks without my phone that much more significant.

Whenever my friends and I would sit down for a meal, they would tease me by taunting, “DISCONNECT TO CONNECT,” and place all their phones face down in the middle of the table. What started out as a joke, though, became a way of unplugging our minds from technology and investing ourselves in reality.

We collectively came to the realization that real and important social interactions are often lost because we’re all too busy surrounding ourselves with the virtual world.

The week before spring break, being without a phone was basically routine. What struck me most was how quick and painless the transition to my phone-free lifestyle had been. All my worries related to my lack of a functional phone were easily pacified. Alarm? Digital clock. Email and text? Face-to-face conversations. Snapchat? Not urgent. Facebook? Unnecessary.

The original purpose of a phone was to call and eventually text. I doubt people in the ’90s walked around staring at the keypads of their mobile bricks. This new era of technology has created a terrifying sense of necessity when it comes to social media, and it’s making it harder and harder for us to live in the moment and truly connect with people. Cyberspace has, quite frankly, made us lazy.

Some of the remaining connections we have with people to whom we haven’t spoken in years have been reduced to the like button on an Instagram photo. Others are only validated by Facebook’s affirmative “Friends” checkmark.

If you haven’t already made the effort to disconnect, I would highly recommend doing so. Life is too short to spend most of it with your face buried in a screen.

If our parents graduated high school and college without Google, we can surely go a couple weeks without Snapchat.

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