As a millennial, I can confidently say that my phone rarely leaves my side. Doing homework? I’m catching up on what I missed on Twitter after every other sentence in my textbook. Eating dinner? It takes one hand to hold a fork. I have two functioning hands and you bet the less dominant one still performs while checking my messages. Showering? They invented Life Proof cases for a reason and that reason is to text while I am in the shower. Do you really sleep with your phone in hand? Of course I do.
But in all seriousness, we (yes, you too!) are glued to our phones. We can’t function in society without them.
“How am I going to get anywhere without my navigation?”
“How am I going to know what time it is?”
“How am I going to stay in contact with anyone?”
“What if I have an emergency?”
Before this conversation with my roommate, I would’ve rather tipped at a coffee shop than put my phone down for 15 minutes. All the above questions surface in my head when I think about leading a normal day without the help of my phone. But by simply putting my phone away for a 15 minute walk with my roommate to acknowledge the world around me, engage in a real life conversation and recognize the people I am passing on the street, I noticed the importance of learning to want to occasionally pry my phone out of my own hands for a little bit each day.
Now don’t confuse this with some movement about detaching ourselves from our I-Phones, or you poor Android users (if there are any of you still out there), because we all know that’s not realistic and no one wants to do that anyways. Instead, think of it as an opportunity to lose your phone for a day, or a few minutes a day in order to save yourself from having that weird indentation in your pinky finger from holding your phone 24 hours a day that everyone keeps telling me about.
