Four hours without a phone may not sound too bad for some but for others that sounds like an impossible mission. I would consider myself to be one of the people that finds it more difficult than not. I also believe it depends on how busy your day is. If you have more of a slow day with more downtime I think it would be much more difficult but if you have a busy day it might make it easier to not want to check your phone every two minutes.
For my JRM class I was asked to take four hours of my day to not be on my phone at all, for anything. The day I choose to do this assignment was a busy one so depending on what you personally believe I may have taken the easier way out. I took on this task over this past weekend on Friday. I decided to make Friday my errands day since I didn’t have any classes and I only had work for a little bit. I ran to the grocery store with a few of my friends, did laundry, and cleaned up my dorm room. All and all I’d say it was a pretty productive day.
Not being able to be on my phone at all was a bit of a struggle for me just because I do find myself using it a lot to text or Snapchat friends. When I went to the store it was a lot easier than when I was back in my dorm just because I was out and about. I will say I did use my phone to check the time though (but that was it). When I was back in my dorm doing laundry and cleaning it was much more difficult because whenever I started to get bored of what I was doing I wanted to just take a break by checking my phone. This made me think of one of my class readings, a UNL study news article written by Alex Coe. In the article, a professor mentioned that the primary reason that students check their phones is that “because they say they get bored in the classroom”(Coe). I will say though it made me much more productive not using my phone because I didn’t waste any time scrolling through my Instagram feed and getting sucked into watching videos. In the article https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/03/how-to-curb-you-smartphone-addiction-in-2018.html the author mentions how in a research study that the constant want to check your notifications interferes with being able to focus. I was able to get my stuff done so much quicker than I would have if I was using my phone.
I definitely felt weird not checking my phone for a few hours because it’s not something I’m used to especially when I’m not in class. I did feel like I focused on everything happening around me much more because I didn’t look at a screen once while doing any of the things I was doing. This article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/business/cell-phone-addiction.html is very interesting because the author talks about how he went on a much more intense and longer phone restriction journey. He talks about how he found himself wanting to check his phone in between just small actions such as waiting the 3 seconds it took to put his card chip in when paying for something. I found this so interesting because I, unfortunately, noticed myself wanting to do the exact same thing when I was out grocery shopping. I’ll try to even check my email for the mere seconds I’m waiting. That was very eye-opening and will make me think about it whenever I am out. While I didn’t necessarily love the experience I also didn’t hate it. I think not being on your phone for a bit at a time is a good thing that we all need to do. It allows you to be more aware of your surroundings.
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