Alright everyone, if you read my article two weeks ago, I talked about how my professor challenged her class to turn off all forms of communication for 24 hours and write a reflection paper afterwards. I decided to finally do it! Here are my thoughts on the experience.
This challenge was way harder than I thought it would be. I turned my phone off at 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday and didn’t turn it back on until 6:20 p.m. on Wednesday night. I chose this time because I didn’t have any homework to do and I was in a fight with one of my friends, so turning off my phone seemed like the best idea. When I turned my phone back on, I had nine emails, one Snapchat, 13 Facebook notifications, 20 GroupMe notifications, and 19 text messages. I missed a meeting with my Spanish teacher and a notification from my boss saying that she’d pay me extra if I went to an event. Every other message was from people that I saw on campus later on in the day.
One of my friends that texted me saw me earlier and said “Wow, hey Kayla thanks for texting me back!”
After that, I had to explain to her what I was doing and she understood.
Anyone that I told about the challenge said similar comments to “I wouldn’t be able to last” or “How would your teacher even know? Just use everything and lie.” I think that those comments are the comments that really made me go to the end. Society is brainwashing everyone into thinking that they have no choice but to use their phone. I could understand why, because the 24 hours wasn’t a walk in the park, but there were certain times that I was actually more at peace than I’ve been in a while. I had time to sit by myself, clean up a thing or two. I even showed up to my friends’ rooms spontaneously, which felt weird, but it was also cool.
I didn’t have an alarm to wake up to, but I told my roommate to wake me up in the morning. That was annoying because if she forgot about me, I would’ve missed all of my classes! A positive thing about my phone is that it will never forget about it, it’ll always wake me up when I need it to! I didn’t have my clock to look down at every five minutes and there are no clocks in my room, so when I was getting ready, I had nothing to watch for! I just hoped that I was on the right track. When I left for class, I asked a random guy what time it was, his facial expression read “Do you not have a phone? What is wrong with her...,” but then he told me. I didn’t keep my phone in my pocket because I figured that I would be tempted so I kept it in the room. This meant that while I was out and about, I would touch my pockets frantically, realize that I don’t have a phone, and then calm myself down. I did this about 54 times in 24 hours.
The emotions that I experienced varied throughout the 24 hour period. When I first started, I felt empowered! I told myself I could do it and it would be a piece of cake! Two hours in, I went through a withdrawal stage. I told myself I couldn’t do it and I’m missing out on everything that’s going on with my social media and I just need to turn it on really quick, just to see! When I went to sleep, it was hard because when I wake up out of my sleep in the middle of the night, I play on my phone for a little while, then go back to sleep.
From time to time, I think that I could take mini breaks from everything, but I would have to take it very slow. Going an entire 24 hours was tough, so I would start off taking two-hour breaks, working my way up to four- and six-hour breaks. Eventually, I could possibly do another 24 hour period, but I cannot tell the future.
Based on the prompt and my emotion, I would encourage everyone to try this challenge, again! I went through withdrawals, but looking back on it now, I'm glad that I did it.
