24 hours of freedom
I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people nowadays probably couldn’t live without a mobile phone, whether it’s just a phone for calling and texting or a smartphone for playing games, tweeting and taking the occasional photo.
I more than anyone, being a computer student, find it often very difficult to put my phone down with the temptation of been connected to the internet while I’m out and about.
Recently, I opted to give up my phone for 24 hours to help a friend with some research they are carrying out into people’s smartphone habits and addiction; so throughout the day I had to make do with not been able to receive text messages, calls and emails with a small risk of not been able to be contacted in an emergency.
More than anything I ended up finding myself not missing being able to use my phone that much apart from when I had nothing better to do than play Angry Birds, but the thing I learnt and the thing that bothered me more than anything else about not been able to use my phone was something I didn’t expect when I signed up to not use my phone and that was not been able to check the time.
It sounds silly but when you can’t check the time its very disconcerting especially when you know you need to be somewhere by a certain time and not knowing if you’re late or embarrassingly early.
Being able to tell the time from a mobile phone is something young people take for granted because we think we don’t need a watch and every device we own does that job for us but when it comes to it, it’s something we shouldn’t take for granted because when our devices stop working we’re going to feel very lost.
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