Sunscreen out, screens off: break up with your smartphone this summer

You’re cramming in those last few chapters, a few more papers, deadlines and presentations. The end is near, the academic year is almost over. The cold days of Dutch winter are slowly making way for longer, warmer days. As you sit behind your laptop in a crowded, boilingly- hot Polak building, you’re fantasizing about the days of which you can hang out at the beach, no papers on your mind, as you sip on your cold bottle of coke and scroll through your Instagram feed instead of canvas.

Wait... what ?

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With summer break approaching quickly, I started thinking of my summer plans. I am off to work at an outdoor activities lodge on an island in Canada. No signal, some WiFi and I will be spending most of my days outside. A part of me started to freak out. ‘Why do I want to do that?!’ As a communication and media student, we are ought to know most about what is going on in the digital world, and all the important things of our studies and lives revolve around, well, the worldwide-web.

As a media student I am all for the advantages modern communication technologies provide us with. However, I think it is time for us to take a real critical look at our smartphone behavior. Especially since I was still stressing out about what I would do without my phone this summer. In order to prepare for this adventure, I downloaded an app called ‘Moment’, in order to log my smartphone behavior. The results shocked me.

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I picked up my phone over a hundred times that day and spent 31% of my waking life glued to my screen. As someone who is not even that into their phone and only uses it for news consumption, texting and the occasional Instagram scroll, I started realizing how much we rely on these tiny devices, which are keeping us away from the ‘real people in the real world’. Checking our phones has become a habit. We forgot what it is like to be bored, or what to do in uncomfortable situations. Because, instead of facing these situations, we face our phones.

I am not saying that everyone needs to abandon their phones for two months to go hang out in a forest, but I am sure that limiting your time spent online will make you feel more present in the now. You can post that selfie a few days later, and you don’t need to reply to every text right away.

The status update can wait, how about updating your friends in real life first?

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Written by: Effie