I went without my cell phone for five months.
I’m sure most of you cringed at that last sentence, and believe me, five months ago I would have done the same thing. I did not decide to go without my phone, but long story short, I had gotten into trouble and as a punishment, my parents took my phone away. I thought I couldn’t live without my iPhone, but since then I have realized there are more important things.
At first I was sort of numb about it, I didn’t really know what to do. I was so used to using social media or texting during my free time. My laptop was also broken, so it suddenly felt like I didn’t have anything. Without my phone or my laptop, I was in “the real world” as you can say, without any technology. It’s crazy to feel so out of touch with the world because of a little device.
Living without a phone has definitely made some things harder and caused problems, especially when I am driving places and need to call someone or trying to get in touch with friends (I had to rely on the Internet to message someone on Facebook or use someone’s phone to make plans.) Especially in a world thriving on status updates, pictures and tweets, it was easy to feel “out of the loop” without access to mainstream social media.
While all of my friends were talking about who posted what on Instagram, I of course had no idea what they were talking about. Even when I met new people and they wanted to text me there was always that awkward “Well I don’t exactly have a phone right now so…”. Pretty much every teenager I know has a cell phone, so it really made me feel out of place.
Even though most teenagers would say that not having a phone for so long would kill them, after a while, I just accepted it. I focused more on school; I got better grades and paid more attention to the real world instead of new posts on Instagram. Being a junior and having to apply for colleges pretty soon, those grades are definitely going to help me.
I just recently got my phone back, and words cannot even describe how happy I was. For the first few days, I hardly ever took my eyes off my phone, but I am trying not to get back into that habit. I think it’s okay to post, tweet or upload things about my life, but I don’t want that to take up all of my time. I have now learned that I am capable of achieving a goal if I stay focused on what I want. Students should try doing this too, because it’s not going to matter how many “followers” you have when applying for colleges.
This was definitely something new that I experienced, because I had never gone so long without my cell phone. It made me more mature and responsible, but I would never want to experience that again. Mostly because I need my phone to contact people and it was hard to do that without one. It’s good to take a break from staring at a screen, but I would never want to experience another five months without it.
– By Taylor Maloch