The Disconnection Experiment

Dear Fellow Bloggers,
Recently I posted a blog "Growing Up Online," well at the end of that documentary a young man decided to go to the army in hopes that that move would help him disconnect from the Internet. So last week my professor ask that the class take part in a disconnection experiment. In my own personal life I am very dependant on my cell phone. I use my cellphone to check both school and personal emails, surf the internet, play online games and I use social media. Prepared to take part in this experiment, I decided to disconnect from my cellphone. I was excited and I believed that it would be easy for me. Boy was that not the case! This was extremely hard...Here are the questions that were given to the class to answer by my professor; my answers and responses to his questions are highlighted.

--What day did you choose to “disconnect?” (Month and day, please). I chose Saturday at first but I could not stop looking at my phone. So I tried it again on Sunday. April 13,2014

--What would you usually be doing on this day? How did your plans change because your “disconnected” status? Usually on I will sleep late, get up use my cellphone to play my online game for a while then check emails, use my mobile hot spot to do some homework and listen to Pandora. All of that changed because I was not suppose to use my cellphone. However, I found myself continuously picking it up even when it did not go off. I kept logging into my social media, I did not do any homework and I played the games Saturday over and over again. On Sunday morning I woke up determined not to play with or look at my phone. Lo and behold before I knew it I was playing Hay Day the best Internet farming game every created. When I caught myself I turned my phone completely off, got dressed and left the house.

-- What were your feelings that day? (freedom, liberation, misery, boredom?) Saturday I felt really bad wondering how I had let myself get so addicted to my cellphone and its many distractions. On Sunday I was miserable without it, until I left the house and left the phone there.

-- What media did you miss most and why? I really missed my cellphone. Not the television because most often I record my favorite shows and watch them when I can. But my phone was a while other story.

-- What sorts of things did you do instead? My partner and I went out for a walk , we talked a lot and went to see a movie. Afterwards we went out to dinner with more conversation and back home by late evening.

-- Were you able to completely avoid all media? If you could not, what was the “breaking point”? By Sunday I was able to avoid my cellphone, but I had to leave it at home to do so.