Fixing Social Media

Finding a time to do this proved challenging. I had to wait for my husband to get back to the US since I have a child in school and after school so I am on call for any emergency. I don’t have a land line. I just started a part time job and my desk phone doesn’t work. Then my shower started leaking to the apartment below and the tile man has rescheduled twice. 

The Monday holiday was the day and my husband will be home to meet him, and he originally called so that’s the phone number the guy has. Going out with a kid and no cell phone seemed risky.  Luckily she just got her first journal with a little padlock on it and is really into reading, so some reading and writing will make up part of the day.  

I turned off the phone as soon as we successfully met friends for dinner out Sunday night.  They were texting until the minute they walked into the restaurant. I had given my parents, brother and best friend my husbands phone number for emergencies, even though most of the day today my daughter and I were out and about without any way to reach us.

After our dinner out with friends Sunday night, we came home and brushed our teeth and instead of looking at Twitter and letting her watch a video I invited my daughter to read with me in the bed.  We sat together and both read two chapters of our books.  Then I tucked her into her bed and she went to sleep more peacefully than usual. 

I realized that I would have to have my husband wake me up, he would still set an alarm on his phone. I discovered last April that all 4 travel alarm clocks I owned were broken in different ways, the last one when it went off at the wrong time and wouldn’t stop during the middle of the night.

We went to the Museum of Science first thing in the morning, before the tile guy came to fix the shower.  At the museum we stopped by the members ticket booth to get tickets for a 4D show (in addition to 3D you get wet and, as it turns out, get kicked in the back by a frog), and then went straight to the new Dogs exhibit before it got totally crowded.  It was pretty good, the first part is a sort of archaeological dig where the kids unearth skeletons of humans and dogs living together 12 thousand years ago.  One of the main things to do is find all 12 scents hidden throughout the exhibit, so you experience it like a dog.

We quickly discovered that by leaving my phone at home, we also had no camera.  Twice she asked me to take a photo and the first time I realize this, and the second I reminded her. 

We went to the cafeteria for lunch at 11am hoping to beat the crowd, everyone else had the same idea so it was already a line out the door.  We got a lot of food to share and mixed a bunch of sodas at the self serve fountain.  We got seats by the window, though mine faced a wall.

After lunch, we went down to the basement to take part in an engineering challenge.  By now we were used to not being able to photograph our results, luckily they gave her a magnet to remember her participation.  I found out that she has two other such magnets so far this year, installed in her school locker.

We went to the lobby Starbucks for a quick coffee and dippin dots and sat and watched the kinetic sculpture for an hour.

Then we got our jackets out of the locker and went to the T. We just missed one so there was a long wait and she asked to go “on your notebook” and wrote about how bored she was and “I hate this class”.

We took the T to Copley and walked down Newbury Street to Trident where I had a pre-ordered book I hadn’t picked up for a week.  She read 3 picture books in the kids area while I looked at books in nearby sections, then we got drinks and an ice cream sandwhich in the upstairs part of the café. She was very upset I wouldn’t buy a toy to play with (“since we don’t have your phone”) I wrote out tick tack toe as soon as we sat down, and then she drew out hang man.

She suddenly saw a giant chapter book she’d heard of and decided to buy it.  Then we went to Newbury Comics and got a graphic novel. We couldn’t find the pay phone that had been suggested to me, so we took the T home.  I showed her a broken down pay phone on the main street near our apartment and showed her the emergency call box that is still in operation, and was used to report a fire a few months ago when the 911 system was down.

Back home, I read some of the Sunday NY times I’d saved and some of the book I’d been reading last night and she read her graphic novel.  It was relaxing not checking my phone.  When I finally turned it back on, there were no calls or voicemails missed, or even texts. I am about to check Twitter but I have no desire to check Facebook.  I also realize that I check Twitter just to have something to read and I’m just as happy with a book or magazine. 

In the end it may be more about society than the individual.  Not being able to find a pay phone to make a single check in phone call was a bit ridiculous.  I’m glad to know that the emergency call boxes are still there, and in use, since these interim backup systems I recall from the past, like pay phones, and people having land lines and voicemail to check, are truly gone now.  It was different doing this challenge with my kid along and partly through her eyes, but in the end she got into it to and didn’t even get “on her ipad” until after dinner tonight.

It was an interesting experience for me overall since I realised how little my phone is of use to me and how much I've spent on purchasing this device in the past five to seven years. I had planned a list of activities that I will be doing on this day without my phone, from cleaning my room, doing laundry to finishing class assignments. But most importantly, I had to come up with unusual ways of communicating with my long distance family and partner. Planning being my forte helps me get through things smoothly and so, I was well prepared and geared up to take on this challenge of experiencing phone detox for twenty-four hours.

Throughout the day, I spoke to my partner through Skype and that turned out to be a much better experience than WhatsApp or Google Duo. On Skype, we could share screens and hence we worked, critiqued each other's assignments and watched a movie together. It was an enjoyable date that I never saw coming. I felt like we could connect at a deeper level with respect to the kind of work we put into our assignments. The power of screen sharing proved to be magical for us. I could do everything on my laptop other than WhatsApp, and the people who mattered to me the most (who I talk to on a daily basis) were already informed about my little detox activity. This helped me resolve my anxiety.

While a phone is definitely a conveninvent device and since it was a 1 day thing I didn't mind not using it. But on the hindsight, playing music on the laptop while cooking, or even talking to my partner on Skype while cooking was a bit difficult because of the size of it. I was struggling with placing the laptop right without damaging it. Sound matters to me a lot and I had feared initially that my laptop wouldn't give me that level of music experience as my phone, but to my surprise, it was pretty good. So, I was happy to discover something new about my laptop on this day. Even though I watch movies on it at full volume I never got to compare the sound quality until now. This was a happy feeling and just when I thought I could get by the day easily, it was laundry time. 

My phone is what gets me by when I'm doing laundry and not having it by my side did scare me. I had carried a book to read, to pass twenty-eight whole minutes while my clothes were getting washed. But, I just wasn't able to read in that environment, it was noisy and made me feel uncomfortable. Time suddenly stopped for me and I started thinking about how I would've been sitting here with my phone and watching some Shazeb Sheikh (dance) videos instead. To get over those thoughts I started walking around the area just to curb my boredom. It was tough but I made it. This is when I realized the need to be entertained all the time and how my phone would assist me with that. Eventually, my mind started overthinking and it led to depressing thoughts. Fortunately, it didn't last long since the laundry was done by then.

The day was going as planned and connecting with my partner differently spiced things up in our relationship. Moreover, since I've stopped using social media, it was a relaxing experience for me overall. Besides, I'm not a techno savvy person, hence this phone detox day helped me understand the differences and importances of the gadgets I own. I also took the day to organize my thoughts and saw that I could spend time with myself and it wasn't as scary as I had thought it would be. 

I had planned activities for the day, but had completely forgotten about the night when I set an alarm to wake me up. Since I didn't have my phone to rely on, I felt incomplete and uncertain. But then I somehow liked the thrill element attached to this. This would test how much I am in routine if I sleep at the same time that I do every night. Next morning, when I woke up, I was very anxious to check the time on the analog clock. To my excitement and relief, I found that I had woken up at the exact same time that I do every day even without the alarm. So I decided to delete my alarm and try waking up on my own for the coming week to see if I could eliminate the need for it completely. This was one of the most empowered feelings I've had lately. 

To sum up my experience, I would like to conclude by saying that while it freaked me out by just thinking about the fact that I won't be able to speak to my loved ones,  I realized that alternatives are always there and to my luck even better! Also, I overcame my fear of losing touch with my loved ones and came out feeling strong and energetic.

Right after I powered down my phone, turned off the lights, and slid into bed, I knew I wouldn’t be able to complete the 24-hour phone challenge, at least not for all 24 hours. I had to wake up on time. Upon this thought, I shot up from bed because I needed — a strong emphasis on needed — my phone’s alarm clock to predictably blare chimes at 9:00 am. Without a roommate or a trusty alarm clock, I knew I would miss my early morning classes. I reached into my desk, begrudgingly switched on my phone, and navigated to the alarm clock. I was off to a bad start. 

On top of this, I thought that using my high functioning laptop weakened the challenge’s legitimacy since I could perform most phone tasks on my laptop. I could text. I could check my email. I could even open up TikTok on my laptop. I felt like a cheater. At the same time, as I reassuringly told myself, the act of taking out a phone, of swiping down to see recent messages, constitutes an “addiction” and this challenge tested for just that. In his article, “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds,” Tristan Harris smartly compares our phone addiction to slot machines. With a computer, it’s definitely harder to become addicted to a task, or a slot machine-like notification, especially after sliding the laptop back into the bag. Bearing this in mind, I reluctantly kept my computer accessible during this challenge.

There are three things I absolutely need to have on me before I leave my room. That is, I need my Totoro wallet with my keys and ID, my Vaseline chapstick for those dry winter days, and my phone. It’s no wonder that the next morning when I walked out of my room, my pockets felt surprisingly lighter. Without my phone, I hurried to my classes, knowing I couldn’t jam out to my favorite Spotify tunes or cruise to Michael Barbaro’s voice on The Daily. My ears felt empty, like they could and should be filled with viscous sound and voice and music, and that bothered me. In this newfound phone silence, I ended up perceiving sounds around me like the buzzing construction and the chirping, energetic tourists. Somehow, I still felt melancholy without my phone, until I started looking around me. Why was every other student on this campus wearing Airpods or headphones? Where was the chit chat, the smiles, the friends stopping to exchange catch-ups? These environmental observations and contrasts, both frustrating and real, could only have manifested without the presence of my phone.

There were other things I missed that day. I missed Shazaming a song I grooved to at a restaurant and I missed photographing pictures of food for future memories and Yelp. I missed telling the time and being on time and I missed sending texts to my friends when I thought of them during the day. This only convinced me that I was not only addicted to my phone, but my brain had also hard-wired functions of my reality to an all-knowing, all performing app. My phone contained my memories and pieces of my livelihood I felt eerily drawn to, and I didn’t enjoy that feeling one bit.

And yet through this challenge, I became acutely aware of the benefits of less phone time. Time passed slowly in class, but I remained more present and aware of what other students were saying and how people responded to each other. I glanced at my computer a lot less during class. To tell time, I glanced at the top of the Cambridge Savings Bank while traversing Harvard Square. I even finished all my reading for the weekend in one day, which is unheard of for me. If I had extended this challenge to a week or a month, I could foresee myself caring less about the apps I use in social situations and more about my general mental health and personal relationships. The no-phone challenge reinvigorated my want to use my phone less, connect with people in my classes and in my dorm, and overall make me less reliant and more skeptical and inquisitive about the apps I use every day.

Jess Eng is a third-year Undergraduate at Harvard studying Folklore and Mythology and Statistics.