Me and My Phone

What could you live without?

I think I could live without my phone. My smartphone, to be clear. I wouldn’t want to give up my basic functions of communication. I’ve thought a lot about how my daily life would be different if I traded my Samsung for a flip phone. I think I could do it. I’m not sure, and I have yet to test it, but I think that it might have an overall positive effect on my life.

I rely on my phone a lot. From texting and calling to social media, from video games to news and other media, my phone is a constant in my life. It’s under my pillow when I sleep, and almost always in my pocket or around me during the day. It provides a lot of benefits to my life; access to the internet, connection with people, entertainment. I must also say, however, that it has negatives too. Such constant access to technology, the internet, and endless entertainment is incredibly distracting. I waste a lot of time on my phone. Playing games, scrolling through my instagram feed, and watching YouTube videos such my time away at often alarming rates. A little bit would be fine; but often, I am doing these things at the expense of other, more productive and important things I could be spending my time on.

This relationship with my phone creates an internal turmoil in me from time to time. I don’t think I’ll be switching away from my smartphone anytime soon. It’s too important and convenient for me, and I have yet to experience that flame of motivation and determination to push me into making such a decision. But it is interesting to contemplate how my life would be different. I think I would be bored a lot more. I wouldn’t have that constant in my pocket, to fill the empty moments. I would probably fill that time thinking about things and daydreaming. I’d turn into myself to find ways to fill the empty moments, and it might even be more rewarding than what my phone could offer. I’d still be able to call and text, as long as I had a flip phone. Texting would be a huge pain, however. I wouldn’t be able to check my email all the time, but I’d still have my laptop. I wouldn’t be able to Snapchat people, or connect with them through Instagram. Breaking away from that immediate, unrestricted connection and those incessant distractions would definitely be a positive. I’d still be able to watch YouTube, and browse the web through my laptop. I think the one place I wouldn’t want to compromise is my music. I have a lot of music in my phone, and I’ve spent a lot of time procuring a huge library of high quality music files, and my headphones are always near me. I could hardly carry my laptop around listening to music. I could just buy an iPod or some other portable music player though. It’d just be a little bit annoying.

I think our lives today are often characterized and filled with excess. I guess that isn’t always bad, but it’s important to check yourself once in a while, and determine what is important in your life and what isn’t. Maybe sometime in the future I will experiment with living without a smartphone, and all the connections and entertainments that come with. Maybe I’d die and give it up in a few days, and fall back to a relationship with my phone that runs deeper than I was aware of. Maybe it’d go well, and cause me to decide my life is better when I give up my smartphone. I know a few celebrities who have done that. Or maybe I’d go through with the experiment, but just decide I’d rather live with my smartphone. Whatever the outcome is, it’d be interesting to put something that plays such a large role in my life to the test.