Technology Addiction: 6 Months Without a Smartphone

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6 Months Without A Smartphone

I have held a cellphone in my hand or pocket since my 17^th birthday, just over 14-years ago.

It was around the time when texting through T9 was becoming popular.

My dad had to pick up my phone bill as a parcel because it didn’t work in the regular mailbox.

It came in a box that consisted of at least 300 – 400 pages, and it gave every detail the phone did throughout the month, including every text sent and received, every call sent and received.

It seemed like the bill tracked it anytime I looked at my phone.

To save trees, Bell Mobility decided not to list everything in such incredible detail, and soon-there-after I would get the account on a more reasonably one-sided paper bill.

My technology addiction began as soon as I got my phone, I credit that to why I have neck and back problems today, but thanks to yoga, it has been able to rectify most of my back issues.

Technology Addiction Treatment

However, it makes me wonder how we went hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years without these now tiny computers that fit ever so eloquently in our pockets.

When I’m in public, I observe people on their phones.

It looks like many hypnotized zombie-like sheeple, all looking down, moving about in a conformed, orderly fashion.

I see young kids to the elderly, looking down at their hands instead of whomever they share “quality time with.”

“e have allowed our technologies to control our lives, and it has distanced us from one another.

My millennial generation is fucked.

They can’t even hold a conversation with another in person, that is, face-to-face, looking them straight.

Instead, they are slaves to their smartphone devices, and when they try and hold a conversation, it almost always is through text.

These last six months have taught me some of if not the most important lessons I have ever experienced.

Instantaneously, like a baby being cut from the umbilical cord from its other, I found that I had so much more time. Time to me, is more valuable than gold, or any currency, even cryptocurrencies.

It took about 7 to 10 days to get over the phantom vibrate phenomena, where I was convinced that my phone was vibrating in my pocket when there was no telephone in there.

Then, finally, it took about two weeks for me to fully get over the habit of reaching down to grab that little computing buddy so that I could get lost in the world of Google, well, reading some science article, probably.

Technology Addiction Journal

I have several categories that I have compared from my first semester of college, from 2016 to this last semester of a college in 2017, and it is as follows (I’I’veept a daily journey since 2013 where I input this information in a daily journal):

The average amount of sleep I got:

With a phone: 6 hours per night

Without a telephone: 7.5 hours per night

The average amount of words I wrote a day:

 With a phone: 1000 to 1500

Without a telephone: 2000 to 3500

The average amount of pages read a day:

With a phone: 18

Without a phone: 31

My grades in college:

 With a phone: C’C’snd B’B’sr 2.0 to 3.0

Without a telephone: B’B’snd A’A’s.0 to 4.0

My overall mood and anxiety on a 1 – 10-point scale (1 being in a horrible misery type state and 10 being as cool as a cucumber):

 With a phone: 6.5

Without a phone: 8

Depression levels (1 being suicidal down as low in the dumps one can get, and 10 being as high on life before being on Pluto):

With a phone: 6

Without a telephone: 8.2

In summary:

I gained 1.5 hours of sleep on average a night

My mood and anxiety levels improved by 2.5 points

My depression levels dissipated just over a couple of points

I increased my writing by a whole page or over 1000 words and a day

I have over doubled the amount I read a day

I went up an entire grade point on average in psychology from C to B+ averages.