Recently, events happened and I ended up without a phone for about a week and a half, Here’s what I learned.

I’m sure there aren’t many teenagers who are strangers to the dread you feel when you know you aren’t going to have a phone, no matter how long. How are you supposed to talk to friends, pass time, listen to music, or keep up with current events? I’m also sure that there are many adults who would roll their eyes at this concept, because “back in their day” they did all of this without a trusty iphone in there hands 24/7. And it isn’t as unaccomplishable as you might think.

One major change that happened over the past week or so was that I was going to bed a lot earlier, 9:30 or 10:00. I was tired and I wasn’t worried over checking instagram or snapchat so it just made sense.

I had more free time after school because my normal routine was to subconsciously spend hours on my phone, so I did my homework and read. I was doing my math days in a row for the first time since the beginning of the year and even got my first 100% on a geometry quiz.  I watched my grade slowly climb up from the D I had let it drop to. I’ve always been bad at math and never put a ton of effort into it but I started feeling lots of reward for it after just investing a little time in it.

I read three books and it was also much more rewarding than what I normally did. I also payed attention more in school, when I have my phone I’m pretty much always half listening to the teacher, half listening to whatever I was playing through my headphones. But without it I found myself actually using the work time to complete work instead of like most of my classmates, blowing the time off on my phone.

What I didn’t like was not being able to listen to any song I wanted to, having to be at the mercy or the radio and whatever CD’s I had. And since it is such a big part of my life I missed social media.

Although I missed it, when I did get back on my phone things on it seemed less important, receiving endless “streaks” snapchats or scrolling through insta posts all day wasn’t as enjoyable as it used to be. Not having a phone taught me that I didn’t need to be dependent on my phone. That you can accomplish more without being reliant on something that takes up your time. It put life into perspective.