I am not sure how to treat this experience. On the one hand, it was kind of cool and almost hipsterish, the kind of experience you would snapchat or post an Instagram story about. Except, it was not an option. On the other hand, it was genuinely hard to control the urge to casually check my screen. Unlocking my phone has become such a routine in my daily life and during these 8 hours I realised how mindlessly I have been using it throughout the day. As an individual with a short attention span – activities that are not super entertaining and require patience, i.e. standing in a line, were a burden without my phone. What made it even harder was the context of the campus. Everyone is so close physically to each other and this facilitates 24/7 communication cycles, both online and offline. Seeing people interact in different spaces often communicates messages, because spaces here often have intrinsic meaning. Being in a different city would have probably been easier. Due to physical proximity we experience on campus, in the past years I have grown accustomed to last minute planning, so for the detox day I did not have specific plans, which looking  back seems like a bad idea. As back home, my friends do not leave 3 minutes away from me, so I do not expect to have an easy access to face-to-face communication, as it requires more time and commitment. On campus I have the expectation of seeing people often, however, without my phone, how do I know if someone is in the library, capstone corner, dining hall, or lounge? How do I know if they are free or busy? It seems socially unacceptable to just stalk people and demand their attention.  

In spite of my overall frustration with the experience, a few useful things were achieved during the day: I have, finally, redecorated and cleaned up my room. I changed the location of the furniture in my room, I hang out more with my roommates, cleaned up the common area, almost did my laundry, and did readings that were not assigned for any of my classes.

Sherry Turkle points out, that checking the phone gives people the option of knowing who is interested in them, who gets out of their way to reach out to them. Not knowing this for 8 hours was a discomfort and I experienced a relief when I finally checked my phone and knew who messaged me and what has happened in my communities during the day. In the end, I was disappointed to learn that the world did not collapse without my online presence.