As I checked my email on Monday night, I listened to my iTunes on shuffle, checked my phone to see if anyone had texted me and mildly paid attention to the television my roommate was watching intently. I read the sixth email in my inbox, an assignment for the Etownian, and my mouth hung open: 24 hours without technology.
The assignment went on to explain that I had to give up all forms of modern technology. I couldn’t check my email. I couldn’t text or call anyone. I couldn’t get on Facebook, Tumblr or Twitter. I couldn’t even do any homework that required me to research via the Internet or type anything up.
I considered rejecting the assignment. I send around five emails a day at minimum. I usually receive at least 10 emails. A lot of the work I’m doing for classes this semester involves using a Microsoft Word document or being on Blackboard. To not affect my school work and to not further destroy my sleep schedule, 24 hours was impossible.
I negotiated. I got my editor down to two hours, but I decided that I would see how long I could last and hope that it was at least two hours.
I waited through the week for Friday afternoon, figuring that I’d have plenty of time between my morning class and dinner to function without technology. However, after spending about 20 minutes or so in an attempt to figure out what to do, I fell asleep.
On Saturday, I tried again.
Hour one flew by. My roommate was still asleep, so I sat in the quiet of our room and wrote in a notebook. I attempted poetry and scribbled a drawing of a Gatorade bottle or two. I found myself checking the clock on my wall often. I had never noticed that the number 12 is a different color than the rest of the numbers.
Hour two was not as quick. I became annoyed at the noise of the contraption outside my window which had never seemed so loud.
Hour three and hour four were spent reading for class. I figured I might as well get some work done. The ticking of the clock started to test my nerves.
Hour five went downhill, mainly for the sheer fact that I realized it was hour five. I walked around outside for a while, looking at the effects that fall has had on the campus. But I couldn’t shake that it was hour five. I had decided earlier that I at least wanted to get to that point, and I had made it that far. It wasn’t going to kill me to turn my phone back on. Within ten minutes I was texting and watching a movie.
Still feeling a bit in withdrawal after the fact, I’m using unnecessary technology while writing this article. It is quiet in my apartment, and instead of using the silence to focus, I plugged in my headphones and am currently swaying to the music of Michael Bublé. I’ve now checked my phone 15 times since I began writing this article. I feel obnoxiously a part of my generation, and I know that many of them would not even last as long as I did.
However, I’d like to point out that, as a college student, it’s impractical for me to devote 24 hours to being unplugged from technology. The concept is great, getting people to connect by being in the same physical space, getting their brains to function without bright screens constantly moving across them, etc. But I belong to a generation that was raised with the technology we use daily.
We’re 90s babies. We were raised on Nickelodeon and Minesweeper. We remember life before cell phones, and we watched them evolve to be the devices they are now, meant for so much more than calling. We can type texts without looking at the keys or the screen. We use music to fill silence. We know more about fictional worlds in books, movies and video games than we’ve ever desired to know about our world. We think in statuses and tweets. We Google everything.
We’re not equipped to survive without the technology around us. Not having it drives us crazy. I realize how stupid that sounds. It’s not necessary to check Facebook 12 times a day, but we do it. Why? Because we have this need to feel connected to the world around us by more than a physical space being shared. Because we grew up with it. Because, above all else, we like it.
We can deny it, we can spend a couple hours focused on something else, but we can’t function successfully without it forever.
We’re wired in and we’re okay with it.