A photo of a man using his phone. Source

In this day and age we are all obsessed with our handphones. On the MRT, almost everyone’s eyes are glued to their phones. This tiny piece of metal that fits in the palm of our hand has limitless capabilities. But what if one day, this precious device ceases to exist? I was inspired by this article in the New York Times where the author attempted to curb her smartphone addiction for one month, and shared how it changed her life. In this article, I will attempt to see how long I can last without using my phone, unless absolutely necessary. 

This speech by Dino Ambrosi shows how we are wasting our precious time scrolling through social media as demonstrated by the visualisation of how many months we have left for free time if an 18 year old lives until the age of 19. It was quite shocking to see that people spend a large portion of this time using their phones. 

For this challenge, I stopped using social media apps like Instagram and other apps on my phone. I restricted my phone use to messaging teachers and keeping announcement chats unarchived. When I saw my screen time on a random Sunday, I was appalled. I realised that I wasted 4 hours a day simply scrolling through Instagram and texting my friends. This precious time could be used to study or do something productive. With the Weighted Assessments coming up in Week 8 and 9, it was clear that I needed to stop mindlessly scrolling and focus on my work. 

Day 1(Tuesday)

I woke up in the morning and instantly felt the urge to unlock my phone and check my messages. I almost forgot that I was even attempting this challenge. But I resisted the urge and continued with my daily life. 

Throughout the school day, I occasionally felt the urge to use my phone and scroll through it, but I remained disciplined by keeping my phone in the pocket sleeves during recess so that I could spend more time having face-to-face conversations with my friends. Although my friends and I usually spend our recess times glued to our phones, it was refreshing to be able to talk to them while eating. Doing homework after school was also much more productive, as I did not constantly check my phone for messages and stayed completely focused on one task. 

The rest of the day was quite uneventful as I kept my phone switched off and tried to focus solely on my third language lesson, avoiding distractions. Unfortunately, in the evening, I started to have a sore throat. As I was staying in boarding as a member of the House Committee (A leadership role in RI boarding where you stay for another term as a Year 4 to help out and lead the Year 3 boarders), I had to use my phone to communicate with the Boarding Mentors and my parents to get permission to return home and rest, which racked up about 30 minutes of screen time. I was quite tired by 9pm so I went to bed early. 

Day 2 (Wednesday)

I woke up to an extremely painful sore throat that was accompanied with a runny nose and fever, so I did not go to school. I spent the morning going to the doctor and resting, so I mostly refrained from using my phone. In the afternoon, I had a productive session of homework that could only have been possible with the help of two useful apps installed on my phone: Forest and Things. 

Forest is a productivity app that can prevent me from using your phone. Using it is simple: I plant a virtual tree that grows bigger the longer I focus. The more virtual trees I grow, the bigger the virtual forest grows. While “planting a tree”, the app disables all other apps on my phone to keep me completely focused on my work.

The second app is Things. It is a simple to-do list app that I use to keep track of all the work that I have. It allows me to organise all my tasks by subjects. As I slowly tick tasks one by one off the list, I feel a deep sense of satisfaction. 

I managed to complete some homework and revision, and even completed Thursday’s Gap Day work in advance. Although staying at home for the whole day made avoiding my phone extremely difficult. At some point, I accidentally opened Instagram on my phone, but I immediately remembered that I was doing the challenge so I closed the app immediately. It was quite tough to get through the end of the day when I really wanted to relax and enjoy myself by scrolling through social media, but I picked up a book and started reading. I used my phone for about 30 minutes today, so I would consider it a success, given that I was at home for the entire day and did not have much to do.

Day 3 (Thursday)

Today was Gap Day, so it was another day of staying at home and studying. It was already the fourth day, so as expected, the urge to check my phone that I felt on the first day was weaker. It was probably the most uneventful so far. I completed my Gap Day work and did some revision in the morning and afternoon. At night, I watched two episodes of a TV show then went to sleep.

Being at home alone for most of the day made me quite lonely and bored, being deprived of much face-to-face interaction with any of my friends in school. The urge to text my friends and use social media became stronger and stronger.  However, I remained focused on my studies, and still managed to complete some school work. 

Day 4 (Friday)

Alas, the last day of the challenge had come. I had restricted the use of my phone to only for necessary tasks. I minimised my screen time during school hours and tried very hard to resist the strong urge to use my phone at home, which was growing stronger and stronger as the challenge went on. 

When I returned home after school, I really wanted to start scrolling through Instagram and message my friends on WhatsApp. I almost felt like I was “missing out” on something, although in reality, a bunch of pointless messages in the class chat and some social media posts were all I had missed out on. I decided that it was time to take a break, so I officially gave up on the challenge on Friday afternoon.

My thoughts on the challenge

It goes without saying that this challenge has helped me stay more focused on what is truly important to me, and has kept me away from the irritating distractions. On top of helping with my school work, I learnt the importance of genuine, face-to-face human interaction. In the two days that I was sick, I realised how important it was to have physical conversations with people. I had never felt so bored or lonely in my life before. Our phones have kept us distracted from the truly important things in life. Taking this break from my phone allowed me to appreciate the people around me more: my friends and family. I would highly recommend others to try this challenge too, especially during the peak of the Weighted Assessment period. Although I did not have the chance to, one can distract oneself from the phone by engaging in activities such as playing sports with friends, reading, or doing something that will keep you off your phone. This challenge made me realise that it was indeed possible to live without using my phone (but only for a few days). While phones are a useful tool in our lives, we should not let them take control of us, and see that there is much more to life than this tiny electronic device.