The other night around 8 p.m., I plugged in my nearly dead phone. Returning to my mirror, I continued through my five minute makeup routine, awaiting a “here” text.

To the millennials, five minutes apart from the one thing attached to your body the majority of the day equals five text messages, three snapchats, and possibly a phone call (or more) from your worried mother. When I went to see how much time I had to devote for my hair, my phone refused to light up. Thinking it simply died, I checked out my window to assure my ride hadn’t yet arrived. Ten minutes pass. Still nothing. No light. No “charge me” symbol. Just dead.

Panic set in. It had been thirty minutes since I plugged in my phone, and I realized I had no way of contacting anyone. My parents were out to eat and I hadn't set up messages on my computer. My nails were chewed down by anxiety within fifteen minutes, and within thirty, I found myself walking to my friends house to borrow her phone.

When I really thought about it, it disgusted me. We walk around with our heads down and our hands wrapped tightly around the device that holds our lives inside a screen with a passcode. But why? Why are we so focused on what everyone else is doing when we should be focused on the present?

Day one without my phone had me sitting in my house until work because I had no contact with anyone. Day two, I ran into my friends and fell asleep on the beach. I worked out without music and felt extremely unaccomplished. Day three had me checking my porch incessantly for a box and angrily speaking to at&t on a borrowed phone.

The time I had to myself, disconnected from the “world at my fingertips”, helped me just be alone with my thoughts. I had no one to share them with. When I woke up, the first thing I saw was the old cranberry bog out my window, not the time and 5 late night texts.

It’s important to have some time away from our devices. There’s something to be said for living in the present, being with who you’re with, and truly being alone. On the other hand, we can’t escape the reality of the presence social media and the internet has in our lives. It makes everything from finding your friends to keeping in touch to looking up anything you would ever want to know easier, but it can also prevent people from having the alone time they need.

So, unplug every once in a while, but accept the fact that our lives revolve around social media and the internet and there’s not much any of us can do to change that.