By Angie Arrant
On Feb. 6, I sold my soul to the devil for a grade. Well, sort of. I gave my phone up for a week for my journalism class.
Initially, the class was attempting to identify a professional who could talk about the effects that phones have on teenagers. A teacher suggested that someone should be the guinea pig of the project and give up her phone for a week to investigate how she did without it.
I’d like to say that I volunteered to give up my phone, but I didn’t. The person who needed her phone the most had to give it up and that was me. On the weekends, when I go to work, I have to arrange my own rides to and from work. Sometimes I get Ubers or Lyfts to and from work, but those are apps that require a phone plus Internet. My primary concern, however, was how I was going to get to and from school. Because I had moved, I relied on my friends for school transportation. Now, I would have to ride the bus.
On that Monday, I reluctantly turned in my phone to Ms. Lanier. When I got to my first block, I felt fidgety without my phone. I kept wanting to check my phone, but then I remembered I didn’t have it. When I got to lunch, I felt lonely. Usually during lunch, I get on Instagram and interact there. Since I gave up my phone, I had to talk to other people.
On the bus, I became really irritated because I always use my phone to listen to music. I had to suffer through a 30-minute bus ride with people yelling about how their boyfriend didn’t come see them to tell them bye. It irritated me to no end. When I don’t want to hear people, I put my headphones in and go to the Spotify app on my phone. Unfortunately that couldn’t happen.
That night I sought a solution to my problem. I downloaded music onto my laptop, just like my dork days in middle school when I didn’t have a phone. My phone had Spotify on it, and my entire playlist was already made. To make things worse, my laptop doesn’t support downloading Spotify music, so I had to use a different app. I got lazy and only felt like downloading songs from artists like New Edition, Daddy Yankee, Tory Lanez and JayZ, all of whom I can’t stand to hear after a while.
On Tuesday morning, I woke up fine and barely noticed that I was phoneless. I got bored listening to my seven songs on the entire 90-minute bus ride, but I was fine. When I got to school, that all changed. My friends and I were going through some drama, so I was going to attach a letter to a pigeon to send to them, only pigeons are hard to catch.
Thursday morning, I was in hot water. I woke up late, and by the time I had showered and gathered my materials and told my mother bye and reached the bus stop, the bus drove right past me. Since I didn’t have my phone, I couldn’t organize my ride or see what bus stop the bus was close to so that I could get dropped off at that bus stop. That day I stayed home and enjoyed my day off even without my phone. Friday morning I had hoped to get my phone back at 8:25 because that is the exact time that I gave it up on Monday morning, but I had to wait all the way until 3:55 because my journalism teacher wouldn’t let me have it back. It frustrated me because I really wanted to check my messages but–anything for a grade right?
Although I made a deal with the devil for a grade, giving up my phone was not sinful (more or less). After being without my phone for an entire school week, I realized that I didn’t need my phone. In fact to this day, I barely even use it any more (to my friends’ dismay). I don’t carry it with me most times when I leave the house like when I go get my nails done. When I do have it, it is off and away. I think that a lot of teens should give up their phones and realize that they do not need their phones to survive. I learned to survive without it.
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