This topic is quite interesting to me since I just had a no smartphone experience for almost a month. Was it difficult? Yes! But you kind of get used to it. Like the prompt said, being away from smartphone brings you closer to your environment and the people around you.
My phone went bad last month but instead of fixing it, I chose to wait and get a new one. I thought I was strong enough to stay without a phone and it'll probably be an opportunity to take a break from social media. While I was away from Social media, I couldn't help the boredom and disconnection I felt. I felt like there was so much happening in the world and I was left out. These phones were designed to make depend on them for a lot of things and I didn’t realise it until I had to stay without one.
At some point I wanted to go ahead and fix my phone, or just get a smaller phone but I guess my will to get a better phone was stronger than I thought. While I believe that smartphones have a lot of disadvantage, they have just as much number of advantage too. We're way past the Stone Age and the smartphone addiction is just one of the prices we have to pay for evolution.
In my season of phonelessness, if there's a word like that, I had a backup. You guessed right, my laptop. Even if It couldn't do everything a phone could, it went a long way in helping me maintain my sanity. It made it bearable but it also made me realise how important a phone was for it’s
Portability- You could carry it around and still go about your day or responsibilities.
I know it definitely does have a negative effect on human connections but it has also played an equal role in connecting people. Smartphones have solved a good percentage of barriers limitations and misconceptions. I don’t even have to travel to have friends around the world.
Myles Munroe once said,
“When the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable.” The issue lies with who wields the power or in this case the phone. To much of everything is bad so what we need to do is to learn balance. For everything that exists they should be a limit and we choose the limits.
I believe in the advantage than the disadvantage. It might have bad impacts but it has good as well. If we can learn balance and it’ll go a long way.