I lived a week without technology, and I survived.

Yes, you read that correctly, I survived.

In our generation of endless texting and social media, a world without our devices seems obscene. I am no exception to this technology-craving, endlessly tweeting, ferociously snap chatting age. I wish I could tell you that I spend most of my days looking at the beauty of the world, engaging in face-to-face conversation, and learning about people without stalking their bios. But, in reality, my eyes are constantly glued to the screen of whichever device has the most battery and I am profusely stalking the Instagram explore page to find out about the lives of people I have never met. It is a sad world we live in, where the destiny of our relationships can be determined by the swipe of a button.

Needless to say, it was not easy for me to give up my device. Turning it off felt as though I was giving up a mere part of my existence. If that statement doesn’t outline the epitome of the problem that technology has created, I’m not sure how else to state it, this generation is obsessed. Anyways, as I turned off my devices and prepared myself for a weeklong trip to the lake, I wasn’t quite sure how I would get by. My phone is my sidekick, the one I turn to when all forms of fun have drained and I need an escape to a digital world. For this week, my escape would become something almost peculiar, human interaction. While skeptical of how fun this could truly be, I was willing to give it a shot. And what I learned even turned out to surprise me.

In many instances, we don’t really understand what we have until it is gone. In my case, I learned just the opposite. By loosing one thing, I gained an insight of so much that I tend to overlook each day. Behind the screen of my phone, conversations seem endless, they are entertaining, and they give me something to do. But what I came to really treasure from my detox was the true beauty that lies in personal conversation. In the substance that lies in emotion and in the legitimate interest that arises when face-to-face conversations actually take place. It is sad to realize the loss we are creating as technology furthers in development. We are able to do everything with the help of an app, that we forget the importance of helping one another. We forget the importance of valuable family time that doesn’t come along forever. While technology advances, humanity divides. It took me a week of realizing my own obsession to the world we have created to in turn see its flaws.

We have lost a sense of excitement and adventure, and in turn created robots solely fixated on when the newest Iphone will be released. We have turned playground time into Ipad and cellphone time. The sad reality is, we have come to ruin the most beautiful part of existence, connection. We no longer create social connections through effort and relationships; we do so through apps that pair us to one another. We allow technology to single-handedly control our lives down to the core of what makes us all individuals. In reality, what is individualism anymore? Do we even know how to express ourselves outside of the captions we create on our pictures? While I know I am no exception to our generation today, seven days taught me a lot about a world without a device. I was able to feel a relaxation that I haven’t been able to experience in months because of the constant need to keep up. We tend to leave our lives behind us in the urgency we feel to document every moment instead of truly just living.

What I learned over seven days taught me what I had chosen to be oblivious too. We live in a world that has lost contact with what is truly important, and created a generation that merely lives off the number of likes and friend requests received. It is time for us all to take a detox, to get back what is so important in this life. Maybe if we all took the chance to look up from our screens, we would realize that they have simply become our masks. While it is so easy to hide behind the persona of a profile, it is time to go out in the world and create an image of yourself that no Instagram or tweet could ever capture, but instead an image that is real, an image that if all technology disappeared you would still be proud of.