As I sit down to write this, my phone lights up with Facebook messages, BBC updates, and missed calls from my mom. Writing is and always will be my form of escape, but it is only worthwhile when I leave every electronic device behind and carry an old notebook and a cheap ballpoint pen. This is becoming more difficult to do as time goes on—realistically, I can only leave my phone behind for about an hour before I start to miss important calls and emails. Escaping the “real world” shouldn’t be a once-a-month activity; it should be part of our everyday routine.
I find that at the end of the day the phrase “please just leave me alone” runs through my mind a multitude of times, but I never physically talk to anyone during the day. I answer texts, emails, Facebook messages, or Snapchats, and up until midnight I could still receive an email from a professor who has more stamina than I do. The working world travels inside my phone, and I hate it. I hate that I panic when I don’t have internet. I hate that when I lose service for a day I am welcomed with a barrage of irritated voicemails and texts. I hate that all of my attention is centered on a screen and not on my surroundings or the people in front of me.
Having my smartphone on me at all times is expected, and if I didn’t, within 24 hours I would be completely lost as to what is going on, not only on a social level, but on a professional level. My email inbox would take about twenty minutes to clear out. I would have to explain to about ten people why I had not answered their message, and in about an hour I will have regretted “escaping.”
I miss the time when I didn’t have a phone. I would come to school and listen to stories about how Jane had a crush on Bobby and why Lilly and Rachel were fighting again. It was exciting to walk in every morning and know that everyone had a story to tell. When I went home, I left school at school—the two were not one and the same. Now, there is not a difference between the classroom and my bedroom at home. In my opinion, that is more unhealthy than eating McDonald's every morning. My mind feels as if it were addicted to caffeine, but I don’t have much choice. That is horrifying.
I don’t want to spend my life as a slave to my phone, but it has become such an integral part of Western culture that I would not be able to get by in the world without it. It depresses me, and yes, I understand all the advantages of having the world at my fingertips, but that is too much responsibility for me. At the end of the day, I want to spend an hour or two alone—that includes being away from people living in an invisible, electronic world.
