Recently, I broke probably my most prized possession… my phone. So for the past couple days I’ve had to do things other than constantly listening to music, texting my friends,and yes, as much as I hate to say it, mindlessly scroll through my Instagram feed.

I’ve never really considered myself to be someone who’s ‘obsessed’ with their device. I always presumed that I use technology an acceptable amount. But not having it for a while has made me realize how completely false this is. I’d  forgotten what it was like to not listen to music everyday on the bus, or having to email my friends when I needed to ask them something, and to have to actually think of the answer to a question I have, and not just Google it within 30 seconds of thinking of it.

Over the past week I’ve had time to contemplate on what life would be like if it were like this constantly. What on earth would I do with my time? Well to begin with I would most likely wake up quite early, having not been up on my phone for who even knows how many hours, and perhaps just lie there for a few minutes, taking in the calmness and serenity of not having to get up and check my notifications. Then, I would walk downstairs and prepare myself a nice, healthy breakfast. Maybe then I would take a walk outside, think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my day. In the afternoon, perhaps I would paint. Without pressures of media and the outside world, I would be free to create art without pressures of approval from the media for my work. I might then, practice my violin, maybe even pick up one of those other instruments I always talk about learning, but never seem to get round to. Then I might practice another language, yet another thing I’ve always wanted to do. Perhaps French or Spanish. At night, before going to bed, I would write in my diary, contemplating on the day I’ve had and what I’ve done.

This experience made me realize just how reliant we have become, not as individuals, but as a generation, on our devices and our technology. We depend on it for the things that should be natural to us, and has become an inseparable part of our lives. Whilst we have beneficial uses for technology,  The accessibility to information that technology brings and dependency one it means that people, especially the younger generations tend to be at a loss without it. And I suppose it’s understandable to some extent. Why feel to need to maintain knowledge when it’s simply a mere google search away? Why learn a new language when we have the accessibility to automatic translators? Why maintain basic social interaction, when the majority of our relationships can be based online? It all seems so much simpler to just sit back and leave our lives in the hands of technology. However, technology really is not the main issue here. Technology will be here, and it will be advancing more and more each and every day. The problem is how we, as human beings, decide to use it.