Disconnected
Life, unplugged
We live in an age where technologies is involved with almost everything we interact with on our daily lives, be it entertainments, to transportation, to cooking, to even education. We became so accustomed to the advancing technology that we sometimes wonder how people survived before. How did people cook food without having a timer on their oven, or take road trips without google maps or cruise control. How did they communicate without iMessage or Facetime, or how they entertained themselves without Netflix and smart TVs. They lived in an age when SMS and normal phone calls were the norm. An age without smart advanced technology that did almost most of their tasks for them. We are so dependent on the Internet that it raises a very important question; Can we survive without the internet in this day and age?
Sometimes we need to disconnect to Reconnect with what matters
I believe that being connected all the time isn’t healthy. We aren’t supposed to know the whereabouts of everyone at all times, or what they had for lunch, or what did they do with their day, or what country they’re traveling to. This constant feed of unnecessary knowledge is only causing us to live in an everlasting state of comparison with those we’re “connected” with through the internet’s social media.
We have become so attached to knowing what that person thinks about a particular event or product, that we almost never take any action without consulting the internet’s opinion on it, and it would actually drastically change our decisions, whether for or against.
I thought to myself, why not try to disconnect from social media for a while? So i decided to challenge myself into using an older phone that is considered to be obsolete in 2019 for a week. A blackberry bold from 2013 or so that i had lying around. I popped my SIM into it and started using it as my primary device, and left my iPhone at home.
So in order to not be completely disconnected from everyone around me, i managed to get twitter working in the Blackberry through the browser. It was so outdated, that it was mainly text based, and pictures aren’t embedded into the feed, which makes it less captivating than how Twitter usually is. So it was the perfect medium to share my experience throughout the week.
Some of my friends were actually very confused of why would someone willingly do this to themselves, and i agree with them. This week was difficult. Even though, i had access to my personal laptop and even iPhone at home, it was hard to get through the day without a smartphone given what we use our phones for other than communication.
The things that i have noticed during this week are quite interesting. The first thing that i started feeling was phantom vibrations in my pockets, and i would keep putting my hand on my pocket to see if i got anything before i realized that I do not have my smartphone on me. And it actually took a while to get over it.
In addition to that, i would constantly check the phone to see if someone texted me at all. And honestly it is really annoying. Not because i don’t have any notifications, but because of the fact that i kept checking. It felt like i was an addict looking for my fix.
After a few days, this started to happen less frequently. I would stop checking it, and honestly, it felt like freedom! It felt so good, that i actually seriously thought of doing this permanently but then quickly scraped that away because that will actually negatively affect my life, since work is dependent on me having a smartphone.
Nevertheless, that was an awesome experience! One that everyone should try to do every once in a while. Just to get perspective on their lives, and actually live in the moment.