As has been the theme of many of my blogs, screen time has remained an issue for me. I remember this past school year, as May was coming to an end, just praying to God that I would figure out a way to manage my time better and eliminate as many distractions as possible. Despite my prayers, my screen time continued. I was not productive throughout the day, and I still had hours and hours of reels I had scrolled through.
However, as funny as God can be, He did answer my prayers. Just not in the way I expected.
As I was leaving work and loading up the Mini Cooper I was driving, I put my belongings on top of the car. We drove off, got onto the interstate, and after a few minutes, I remember looking out the window and seeing something drop from the top of the car in my peripheral vision.
At first, I couldn’t believe it. I immediately checked my pockets and looked around the seats, hoping I had somehow imagined what I had just seen. Within a few seconds, though, I realized that was definitely my phone I had watched fall from the car.
We whipped around and, sure enough, recovered it from the side of the interstate. The phone was essentially destroyed. The front screen was shattered. The back was shattered. Even the case was broken. Functionally, the phone was unusable.
As my shift ended and I returned home, I realized my phone wasn’t entirely broken. When I was in a completely dark room, the screen would illuminate just enough for me to enter my password. Even then, the phone was still glitchy and practically unusable, but it technically functioned. I could make and receive calls. I just had to be mindful of where I was when using it.
I decided not to get a new phone.
I looked ahead at my calendar and realized that, at the end of June, I was going to Basic Camp for the Army, where I wouldn’t be able to use my phone anyway. At that point, I had only about three weeks left before leaving, so the need to replace it didn’t seem that significant.
At first, it was challenging. I still had access to media to an extent. When I was at home, I could use my computer or watch movies. When I was in my car, I had to connect an iPod just to play music. But that got old pretty quickly. I kept playing the same music, and for most of my days, I was without my phone. I had nothing but my own thoughts to play with.
But the real kicker came in July when I went to the Army.
We were only allowed to use our phones for about an hour at the end of each day, but that didn’t really matter to me because, you know, I didn’t have a phone that worked. So, for the next 30 days, I was almost completely disconnected from the outside world.
A lot of what we did sucked, and the days were long, often ranging from 14 to 20 hours. When that happens, it forces you to do several things.
First, I was always bored; there was nothing to do except sit outside and look at the same view every day. But my boredom led me to do a number of things.
It forces you to connect with the people around you. That wasn’t necessarily difficult because we were all trauma-bonding. At the same time, though, it was odd. Some of the people I became friends with felt like my closest friends, even though outside that environment, they were probably people I would never have talked to.
Then, when I was alone, there was nothing to distract me. My thoughts naturally began to turn toward bigger questions. Where was I going in life? Am I doing the right things? What does the rest of the year look like for me?
I’m not alone either. Dr. Arthur Brooks describes a similar experience in his Big Think Interview .
When I look back, that month and some change I spent without my phone was one of the most memorable periods of my life, and I attribute a lot of that to not having access to it. At the end of the day, phones are a necessity. They enhance communication, but if we’re not careful, we can lose that connection in the first place.
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