Disconnected

As an assignment for my Technology for Leading and Learning class at USF, I was asked to remove myself from social media and all forms of technology for 12 hours. If I’m being completely honest, my presence on social media is already a bit lacking. I don’t use social media as often as most, and I am likely to check it maybe once a day. As far as texting, I only text my immediate family and close friends. However for emails and the use of a computer I am a frequent user. So with this understanding of my technology usage, I can say that my day of disconnection was difficult, but not as difficult as anticipated.

In order to complete my school work, I printed off assignments ahead of time. I also transferred all of my electronic due dates into my paper calendar. As a side note, I am already a frequent user of a paper calendar, but nevertheless I do have electronic calendar usages that I had to transfer over. Once all do my school work was settled, I unplugged myself from electronics. I put my phone and computer in my drawer and did not touch them for 12 hours.

During this time away from technology I can say that things took me longer to get done! When working on simple assignment, I had to write things down by hand which took much longer. For example, when reading my assigned readings for my Introduction to Literature class, I had to take notes by hand rather than by the computer.

As for my time away from social media, I have to say I missed Facebook the most. More as a time filler than anything, I found myself noticing how many times a day I would have been scrolling through my news feed. Particularly when waiting in line for food or waiting for my classes to start, I felt the need to be productive in some way. Ordinarily I would use this spare time to catch up on what was going on in the lives of my friends. However, instead I found myself eavesdropping on others conversations and noticing things happening around me far more often because of this lack of anything to fill time.

I was surprised at how much I missed Netflix. As someone who eats in the dining hall alone quickly between classes, I have a routine of watching a quick 20 minute episode while I eat. I found myself looking out the window a lot when I ate, and again eavesdropping. A lot can be discovered about others by simply listening in on others conversations whether accidentally or not.

Now that I am back online, I can say that you do not realize how helpful technology is until you don’t have it. From typing being faster than writing, to electronics filling times of boredom, technology is an integral part of life. When I turned my phone and computer back on I found 11 emails, 6 texts, 1 Pinterest notification and 2 Facebook notifications. While this is not a significant amount, it was enough for me to realize that my lack of presence on technology did make me miss things that connected me to the world. While none of the notification, texts or emails were in any way urgent, it goes to show how many times daily communications occur through electronics, and should a person unplug from electronics full time, a part of their life would disappear.