After I sent my last “Merry Christmas” texts to my close friends, I shut off my phone for seven days of no Wi-Fi. I was on a cruise through the Caribbean and it’s proven to be tough to get cell service from the middle of the ocean.
The first few days were a nice break from the endless refreshing of my social media apps. It was strange not to hear my phone buzz with a group message every few minutes. But I got to enjoy the beauty of the islands where I actually was, instead of looking at where everyone else was through a screen.
Towards the middle I started considering all the things that could have been going wrong at home that I would have no idea about. I started to feel empty with the lack of knowledge of any sort of news or any ideas on what was going on in my outer world. On the other hand, it was nice not to be bombarded with the negative weight that global news seems to carry these days.
Once I accepted the fact that I wouldn’t know what restaurant my friends ate at that Tuesday night or where they were going for New Year's Eve, I was able to refocus on the happenings of my own trip.
On New Year's Eve, I started to waiver. I so badly wanted to see my Instagram feed full of sparkly black dresses and New Year's Eve toasts. I wanted Snapchats of countdowns and overhead scans of parties. I wanted Facebook pictures of the same poses in front of a “Cheers to 2016!” banner. Most of all, I wanted to wish my best friends a happy new year. But all of this was put aside and instead I enjoyed New Year's Eve on the deck of a boat with my family in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
When I returned to America and could finally see 3G on the top left corner of my phone, I admittedly felt a little bit of relief. As my plane taxi-ed on the tarmac over 700 messages rolled in accompanied by 12 Snapchats, 18 Facebook notifications, four Instagram requests and 40 GroupMe’s. I opened everything, stalked my friends' pictures of the week I missed and responded to “are you still on the planet” texts to my closest friends.
Here’s the moral of the story: I didn’t miss anything. Seven days without Wi-Fi meant seven days of freedom from FOMO (fear of missing out), no pressure to show off everything I was doing and uninterrupted focus on where I was at the time. I will admit, I missed it. I missed my Wi-Fi connection, but I realize now I didn’t need it. Now that I know that, I can use it when it’s the right time (like when I am procrastinating my homework) but when I’m doing fun things I need to be seeing the world through my own lens and not the one of my iPhone.
