Have you ever thought about what your life would be like if you didn’t depend on your mobile device? That’s what happened to young Sean Evans of Michigan. While studying law at the University of Michigan, he realized that he needed maximum concentration to prepare for his exams. This situation, coupled with a diagnosis of ADHD, led the young man to make the decision to ditch his smartphone and trade it in for a TCL flip phone.
He adopted a totally analog lifestyle, where he had no access to Tik Tok or any other social network. He could communicate via iMessage through his laptop, but if they wanted to talk to him they would have to call him. Through Esquire, he recounted his experience with digital disconnection, where he also experienced limitations such as not knowing how to find his way around without Google Maps in the palm of his hand.
Technology and modern life
Who does not have a mobile device today? Almost without realizing it, we have subordinated our lives to a small device that stores our memories in the form of photos and videos, stores all our passwords, recognizes our face, serves as a music player, agenda, calendar, means of communication with other people, among many other functions.
What started as a device to make and receive calls and messages, has become one of the fundamental pieces of our life. I do not know if this progress has been for better or worse, but it is undeniable that most of us depend on our phone today, and beyond its many functions, it is also an element that makes us lose a lot of time spent on social networks.
Life change: back to analog
The idea of leaving technology behind and returning to a more analog lifestyle is becoming more and more popular. This was the case for Sean Evans, a young law student at the University of Michigan. What prompted a young college student to trade in the benefits of a smartphone for an analog cell phone? During exam time, he realized how much time he was wasting on his smartphone; instant messaging, social networking and other applications.
Despite having eliminated those she thought she was most distracted by, the reality was that she was still wasting time scrolling, losing concentration and study time. This fact, along with his ADHD diagnosis, pushed the young man to give up all these distractions and return to a TLC Flip phone given to him by his sister.
How did he communicate with the world?
The young man kept his laptop through which he continued to communicate with his friends via iMessage. Still, he realized how many people hate talking on the phone, since no one was calling him. He explained “Texting has become so integrated into how we communicate that asking friends to actually dial my number felt like asking them to send a telegram”. He found that the phone conversations they were having were much more “efficient and meaningful”.
Cons of not being connected
Like everything else, digital disconnection also has its disadvantages. Evans recounted his experience of giving up technology in Esquire, where he described how it had changed his life for better and for worse. Despite having adapted well in terms of instant communication, he admitted to missing GPS applications such as Google Maps. He explained that “In new places, I would have to plan ahead, sometimes I would get lost, I would have to call my girlfriend for street navigation to ask if she was nearby”. Although he enjoyed this new lifestyle, he acknowledged that he feared losing the ability to understand the basic logistics of using technology on a daily basis.
The new model that Apple intends to bring to the market is not analog at all!