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I didn’t think that the 24 hour challenge would be that difficult since I would be able to (and was planning on) using my laptop during the challenge. I am a sophomore in college with few responsibilities. I could check my texts, view my calendar, and do pretty much anything that I would conceivably do on my phone on my laptop. This ultimately did feel like cheating, but I tried to restrain myself from texting on my laptop throughout the day to simulate a day without instantaneous communication as much as possible. However, I was relegated to communicate at a more specific time and place than I would have if I had access to my phone. If I had not used my laptop, I would have had to make many accommodations to get through the day.

I decided to not use my phone on Monday. The only commitment I had during the day was a small group meeting for a class, and I had not made any lunch or dinner plans with friends. I honestly did not really need to be as aware of the time as I would have been with more commitments. I only told my mom and one friend that I was doing the challenge, since I would still be able to answer texts via iMessage if necessary.

I started the challenge twice. I originally planned to not use my phone from when I got into bed and turned off the lights on Sunday night until the same time on Monday evening. However, I had forgotten to a.) charge my physical alarm clock and b.) had set an alarm on my phone to wake up at 7am out of habit. I started the challenge at 7am on Monday as a result, after I turned off the (many) alarms set on my phone.

I go down rabbit holes on the Internet at two key times: when procrastinating and when I can’t fall asleep. I sometimes have very bad insomnia. When I feel too tired to fully engage with content but not tired enough to fall asleep, I will essentially “scroll myself to sleep” rather than reading a book since it feels like less mental effort. I couldn’t reach across my desk to grab my phone when I couldn’t fall asleep on Monday, but did actually fall asleep after lying in the dark for a while. What a concept!

The type of device definitely influences my level of procrastination – functionality wise, my phone is a smaller, more accessible, more addictive version of my laptop with even more features. I definitely procrastinate more with my phone than with my iPad or computer. It feels like a whirlpool that I am sucked into – I lose most awareness of the outside world when I hold the small device up to my face. I only use my iPad to read class readings or take notes. I do sometimes procrastinate on my computer, but I am more conscious when I am doing it.

I don’t have any social media apps installed on my phone besides messaging platforms. However, I do have a (bad) habit of looking at different news sites and public TikToks and Tweets as my main form of procrastination. I open Safari, look at a currently open tab or search something that pops into my head (like a TikTok account or tag that I was looking at earlier), and hop from link to link to link to link mindlessly reading things that are interesting to me until too much time has passed and a wave of anxiety has washed over me. I actually don’t check on my own social media accounts that often because when I am logged into a platform, I feel more compelled to check it and engage (I haven’t logged into Instagram or Facebook since November). I check social media accounts related to people I know consciously, but I check TikToks and public tweets with reckless abandon – these platforms admittedly do act as some of my most relied upon news sources.

When I felt like I needed a break while working on Monday, I actually read one of the books that I checked out from the library a few weeks ago to provide myself with a better option than going down an Internet rabbit hole as a break. I felt very refreshed after reading some of Jia Tolentino’s essays in Trick Mirror on actual, physical paper instead of on the screen of my phone on The New Yorker website.

I admittedly felt frustrated during the 15 minute walk to and from my class meeting. I had thought of a song that I was excited to listen to right before leaving and suddenly realized that I could not listen to music while walking. I don’t call many people unless I am texting them and the conversation becomes more involved and time-sensitive, but I do call my mom too often. I missed being able to call her.

The three things I missed most about having my phone easily accessible can be met by using other devices or analog items:
• Music and podcasts (iPod, except I love Spotify and the ability to stream music)
• The ability to check the time/have notifications from my calendar (watch + physical planner)
• The ability to call (a flip phone would do)

Since I try to use my phone consciously (except when I am procrastinating), the challenge did not feel super different from any other day in terms of working and communicating with people. However, I did not go anywhere where I would have felt more comfortable knowing that my phone was on me and did not need to use my phone to navigate anywhere. Not being able to use my phone can prohibit me from immediately doing things that I need or “need” to do, as well as things that I actually enjoy and miss.

I went without my phone for 24 hours from 10:30 pm Saturday to 10:30 pm Sunday.

I often wake before I want to and when I can’t fall back asleep, I reach for my phone. Because this wasn’t possible I laid awake ruminating as insomniacs are wont to do — but eventually I did fall back asleep and it was glorious. On another day, would the blue light and search for something satisfying have kept me up? Those intermittent rewards are never enough.

I spent the morning with my partner, two kids, sister, parents and grandmother. It helped that I was at my parents’ house — an environment in which I spent years pre-smartphones. I know how to sit in that space.

Still, there were times I wanted to reach for my phone — even just physically looking at the end table next to me, touching my back pocket — but it wasn’t there. I focused on drinking my coffee while it was actually hot.

There were times my daughters asked for my phone — for instance, when they wanted me to play music for their dance party. It felt good to be able to tell them I didn’t have it on me.

The times I wanted my phone most were when I wanted to take photos of the family and when something would come to mind that I wanted to tell a friend and I was worried I would forget. I also felt like I was missing out on socializing with my friends virtually, even though I was with my family physically. I’ll admit I did turn on my computer. I legitimately had an assignment for another class due by 9 pm Sunday, but I wasn’t only doing the reading and writing for that class — I also talked to people on Slack and looked at Facebook, where I liked a number of photos my cousin had posted from my grandmother’s birthday party the previous day and where I also found out my friend’s dog died. I commented there and did remember to reach out via text the next day.

It was especially strange to do errands without my phone, the feeling that if someone needed something else from the store I wouldn’t find out until I returned. Or if something happened with the kids or my grandmother, I wouldn’t be able to respond in time. And I had to listen to the radio instead of “my” music, sitting through songs I didn’t know!

Later, I was driving from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts and my mom was the navigator. If she hadn’t been, I would’ve needed my phone then. Although I have a good sense of direction, it’s been blunted by GPS use.

It was fortunate the challenge ended when it did because I would have stopped at that point anyway — at 10:37 pm my daughter started having trouble breathing and we made an emergency detour. I used my phone to find the hospital and then to communicate with my mom who had my eldest in the waiting room.

The definition of addiction “a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence.”

Based on this definition, I think it is accurate to describe my relationship to my smartphone as addictive. The compulsion to check my phone throughout the day was certainly there and withdrawal did increase my anxiety. When I have access to my phone I check it chronically, as a matter of habit, even though it rarely makes me feel better and often makes me feel worse about myself and the world.

–Anne G.

Introduction

As a foreigner who arrived in Cambridge just a few weeks ago, the idea of getting rid of my phone for 24 hours seemed at first to be exciting (“being unreachable in the era of super traceability/availability happens once in a blue moon”), as alarming (“getting lost in a city with a -7°C temperature appeared not equally thrilling”). However, a university assignment sounds like a medical prescription: something that you should do for your own good. Just a few days ago, I was at the doctor who suggested that I should avoid certain foods (“that are also my favorite ones: pizza, pasta, bread…”), as they could be the possible causes of my current physical inflammation. He recommended that I follow these instructions in order to become aware of what is happening to my body, what are the triggers, and finally which actions should be designed and deployed in order to treat the symptoms and avoid the inflammation becoming chronic. Since the rapid development of ICTs and their pervasive availability, a series of symptoms and pathologies have been mainly denounced and analyzed: some of them already existed and have been strengthened by ICTs (from the general lack of attention to phenomena of cyberchondria), while others are completely new (consider FOMO or the “Nomophobia”). I believe that our effort in “fixing SNS and ICTs in general” should consist exactly in detecting these symptoms and treating them so to avoid them rapidly exacerbate and silently becoming chronic. I believe that the no-phone-day prescription acts in this direction and it may be considered as a first “detoxing” step to understanding and discerning what specific features and elements of ICTs revealed as negative for our personal development (i.e., our identity, social relations, and well-being in general). In fact, although a day is not enough to understand the beneficial effects of this prescription, 24 hours are sufficient for the observation of the clear radicalization of the symptoms triggered by our phones in terms of needs, perceptions, and feelings. 

No Phone Day Plan: Feelings, Needs, and Perceptions

As a visitor here, my plan for a no phone day was to find a good library where I could study and also enjoy the sunny hours by exploring Boston without a specific itinerary. However, before going out, I decided to peek at some old notes about the city that I had written before leaving Italy. In retrospect, I think that I should have brought at least four items with me to get through the day: an analog wristwatch, a paper city map (including a course to develop the skills to use it properly), a diary with main (and emergency) numbers, and a camera (just for pleasure). During the day, beyond continuously touching my pocket as I was looking for my phone, what I really felt was the impossibility (as a sort of deprivation) of being able to communicate in real-time to distant people what I was seeing (not sharing on social media, but the simple communication), i.e. the beauty of the places I was discovering. In this regard, I believe that our phone has become an extension of ourselves as much as it has become natural to satisfy immediately our need to call or talk with someone/ or a specific person (inasmuch as in a certain way always reachable). For this reason, I think that my generation is developing the need to be sometimes “offline”: we need to be disconnected for a while. Soon, we won’t have space anymore to develop real loneliness and the real need of speaking with someone, since we are being overwhelmed by information and connections (very often weak of contents and authentic communication). In a similar way to what happens to heavy smokers, the hyper-connection through our phones makes us unceasingly needy of connections until states of nausea (and high-levels of stress) that often lead us to the need to go offline.  I met new people in the city because of that need to communicate (I am usually an extrovert person) and I wrote my number on a piece of paper (and a person’s hand) to remain in contact. I started to write what I was feeling in spending time on my own to respond to this need for communication and the fear of forgetting these feelings. Although it has been liberating being unreachable for some hours, I experienced a little sense of solitude in not receiving the usual messages and calls from home, friends, and colleagues (the same calls and messages that I often critique for interrupting my work!). I got lost twice and, each time, after realizing that I could not use maps on my phone, I asked people for information, most of whom had to consult their phones to help me. I was (irrationally) saddened when I discovered that I couldn’t take a photo of what I believed unique in that moment, the city at sunset, for realizing immediately (and rationally) that wasn’t so unique and I could come back at any time in the next few months. Yet, I felt to have lost something. In the era of hyper-technological availability, taking a picture, placing a call, sending a text message, and consulting an online map has become so easily and quickly part of our social fabric that their absence creates a strong sense of lack, impairment or deprivation.

Concluding Reflections and Open Questions

My 24 hour no phone challenge has completely confirmed for me that our ubiquitous digital ICTs not only have reshaped existing human needs, but they have created completely new ones: the need to reach someone in real-time virtually, the necessity to describe and share our reality in simultaneous ways, the need to hyper-photograph ourselves and the world (and often the need to hyper-share it), along with the loss of faith in our orientation skills, in our capacity to enjoy solitude, and in our capacity of memory. Our relationship with technology is certainly describable in terms of addiction, but specifically, as a dependence to delegate to technologies ever more of our capacities, daily tasks, actions, decisions, and even our life choices. It is a dependence that will impoverish us and, in some cases, harm us if we don’t find the right balance to adopt and, above all, the positive features to strengthen. 

Is it the delegation of certain functions that have made us unable to develop certain skills, by leading us to be increasingly needy, as well as demanding more and more to technology? Is it the technology that is betraying our expectations and impoverishing us? Or are we the ones that are impoverishing ourselves? Are we traitors to ourselves?