I think weÔÇÖve all been in this situation before. Uni work mounting up fast, bedroom a tip, and the incessant buzzing of group chats, emails, and texts leaving you with a sense of inexplicable dread. Eventually the to-do list gets so large that it paralyses you, and you spend your time feeling stressed and miserable, failing to attack any of your worries at the root cause. The days seem to pass too quickly, with each interval between sleep seeming to hurtle by in a blur of trips to the corner shop, scrolling through social media, and failed study sessions – courtesy of eduroamÔÇÖs dodgy connection.
This was the exact boat I found myself in last week, and whilst IÔÇÖm sure itÔÇÖll plague me again before long, for now I think IÔÇÖve found the easiest one step solution to the old too-overwhelmed-to-do-anything conundrum. I had just gotten home after a long day of running around without achieving anything, and the simplest of things happened – my coat got caught on the door handle and at the same time my phone buzzed twice in a row. However stupid it sounds, this was the final straw. All of a sudden, I wanted to throw the phone at full force across the room, snap it in half, and stomp on it. Instead, I took a deep breath, turned the damn thing off, and put it in a drawer. Immediately my sanity returned. The pathetic woman who had been driven to vocal cries of agony at receiving two notifications was gone. The incessant nervous buzzing sound in my head had been switched off. I showered, tidied my room, and slept like a baby.
My cold turkey phone break lasted for three days, and they were the nicest three days IÔÇÖd had in a long time. The deadlines were still imminent, of course, but suddenly I had all the time in the world to work on them. Time passed like it did in childhood, slowly and thoughtfully. In an hour of work I could achieve what would normally take three, the mornings could be spent cooking breakfast, going for walks, and reading a book, and the evenings were long enough to watch films, write diary entries, and indulge in my hobbies.
Whilst we tell ourselves that phones are a necessity to get by in the modern world, I found that when leaving the house without mine I was at no disadvantage to anyone else. If you wear a watch make doubly sure not to forget your house keys, there really is no need to take a phone everywhere you go. I didnÔÇÖt even find myself missing out socially – if my friends wanted to make plans theyÔÇÖd simply let me know in advance, and by switching on my phone once a day to quickly respond to any stray messages I felt more than adequately connected to my social circles. In fact, the only point at which being without a phone caused any issue was when timing how long to leave my dinner in the oven.
The conclusion I came to was that overall, constant phone usage makes my life worse. I was eleven years old when I got my first taste of the portable touch screen life, and from that bright blue iPod touch to my current phone IÔÇÖve always had some sort of device glued to my hand. The most disturbing realisation I had in going phone free was how automatic I was in picking it up. I found myself searching through my pockets unthinkingly before even realising it was my phone I was after. Why had I looked for it? No reason at all, just a quiet moment that muscle memory decided to fix before my head even registered I was bored. How many hours had I lost over a decade of touch screen devices to this mindless scrolling?
This is where, I think for most people, phones get dangerous. All those in-between moments in a day, that could be spent simply living in the present or working on something that enriches our lives, all lost to scrolling. This is where all that time goes, why the days feel four hours long, and why we find ourselves looking back on the last week and struggling to remember what we did. I know itÔÇÖs not just me, as being off my phone made me see just how much time everyone else spends on theirs. Being out for coffee and the conversation drying up is a slippery slope to screens out all round the table. If someone gets a text whilst your walking then suddenly the whole group slows to a crawl whilst a response is written. Its not that phones are evil or the people who get them out at social events are being rude, but rather that as a generation we think of these devices as fundamental, necessary tools to go about every aspect of our lives -which simply isnÔÇÖt true.
So I suppose this is my manifesto for the week. Leave your phone at home for a bit. Be bored for a while. Listen to the birds singing. Those memories of summers long ago when the days were long and vivid are only a slide to power off away. 
Charlotte Harris
