Personal Experience of Spending a Day Without Technology

In the modern era of technology, where tech gadgets are touching the heights of advancements, we human beings are closely connected to them. Now we don’t get bored waiting for someone or when there is load shedding. We can easily keep up with all our friends and relatives or just listen to our favorite song at a click of a button or play some awesome game on our beloved cell phones. Gadgets have made our life easier, a luxurious, fun-filled, exciting, enjoyable, and little bit of addicted as well. There have proved to be our best friends. (Shubham Gupta, 2018)

In doing this activity I realize that we can be very productive in many ways, only when we don’t get distracted by gadgets. Here is my experience, I started this activity last Thursday at exactly 4:00 in the afternoon (right after our class). 1 hour passed by and I don’t know what to do, I just sit on the couch watching TV until I fell asleep and when I woke up, I pick up my phone (since I use to pick it first whenever I woke up). But, I didn’t turn it on, of course, no playing of games and any means of communication either. I just hold it for a while and realized that I was not supposed to use it. So, I stood up to get a book on a shelf and started reading it, every single flip of the book I can’t stop to wonder if what my friends are up to or is my mother chatted me (since my mom is in abroad), but I managed not to be tempted by it. I enjoy reading the book entitled “A damn good kisser” it is a fanfiction book. I have a lot of books at home, before I used to read 1 to 2 books per day since I’m still not into using my phones. But, today I don’t have time to read them all because I’m already into using gadgets rather than reading, and honestly, it is my first time again ever since to read a book and it really feels great to be back on reading such thing even just for a day. After reading some books I’m really bored I want to talk and chat with my friends but how could I, I can’t communicate with them. So, what I did is that I grab a pen and start doing doodle, it is also one of my favorite thing to do when I do nothing or I’m bored. For the following hours of the day, I spare my time cooking for dinner and washing the dishes, and right after I’ve done all the chores, I stay in the living room with my sister and father we spend our time talking about things and a few moments later I feel sleepy so I head to my room and I didn’t notice that I already sleep so early knowing that it is still 8:00 PM and I usually sleep by 12:00 AM whenever I use my phone. Students who spend several hours each day staring into mobile phones or smartphones tend to change their sleeping habits and stay up late to use the devices (Shusuke Murai, 2015). Yes, it’s true because for me I used to stay up all night every day just to scroll, scroll and scroll in my news feed even though it was very late at night and there were no updates anymore. But, because I don’t have my phone with me, I sleep earlier that day and it really made a difference.

On the next day, I woke up without feeling so fatigued and exhausted. I feel so good after sleeping for a perfect 8 hours. I shower and left home by 8 since I still have class and I didn’t feel sleepy while I was in school. When I arrived I check the time but unfortunately, my phone is still off. So I just go to my designated room instead. While in school whenever we don’t have the class or an even just vacant time I still used my phone in playing games, but this time I just have a chat with them. Honestly, life without gadgets for just an hour was scary first, then somewhat uncomfortable the next day and also leaving my house without using my phone is so hard because I used to wear headsets whenever I ride a jeepney.

And when 4:00 PM strikes I got excited knowing that my 24 hours activity is already finished and it makes me more excited because finally, the long wait is over. I turn on my phone and check my SNS, first is I checked my Facebook and surprisingly there are lots of messages coming especially a message from my mom, and she keeps on asking me why I did not go online last Thursday and I explain it to her since I forgot to tell her about this activity and somehow she understands but she also scolded me for not telling her *hahaha*.

Using gadgets has an advantage and disadvantage here is some of it.

Some advantages are as follows: Promotes Independent Learning (students can learn without the assistance of their parents and teachers. The internet has turned out to be a treasure trove of information. They use the internet for their lessons and use online libraries to prepare their assignments too. It is very helpful for them to improve their skills and knowledge through this well-equipped technology), Enhance Communication (In the earlier times, people use to communicate by writing letters which used to take days or even months to deliver; nevertheless, now E-mail has made things extremely easy.), Speed up Work (This technology helps the student to work efficiently. A student can complete their lengthy dissertation writing tasks in less time period.), Teachers Educate Students in an Exciting Way (Now teachers can provide an exciting educational atmosphere to the students through these gadgets. Videos, images, and other graphic lessons can deliver to the students through these latest technologies. This generates an exciting learning atmosphere and endorses interest in the education field.) If there are certain advantages of these gadgets, on the other hand, there are disadvantages too: Addiction (Most commonly seen, students gets addicted to gaming, texting, or talking on the phone or online. It causes their learning and at home, they detract from their studies.), Creativity (Students become less creative and less capable of amusing them.), Lack of Interest In Studies (Now everything is dependent on the students themselves, whether they develop poor education habits and lazy attitude or learn useful stuff available. Moreover, it also makes student forgetting their basic learning, they totally based on the internet instead of books and take assistance from their teachers. Most of them misspell words because they use spell checkers.)

In conclusion, it really takes discipline not to let social media steal your time (Alexis Ohanian) and yes, we can even live a moment without it only when we have a discipline about not using it. Taking everything into account, innovation has influenced our lives profoundly. We just can’t envision living without it. It has expanded our life expectancy and nature of living. Where it has brought people closer in various ways, it has also contributed towards drifting people apart from each other. Without it, our lives would have been less difficult, harder, poorer, secluded, unoriginal, disengaged, and perilous (Shawn). And it is one of the advantages of using it. To be able to expand our knowledge and make our life easier. Gadgets play a vital role in the educational field to improve their skills and knowledge. It is very important for us since we need to improve our knowledge power to gain success in the future. Teachers can enhance their teaching skills and strategies also. In short, this technology is very important for both students and teachers but on the other hand, this technology has disadvantages too. Gadgets make the world a great and easy place to live. The growth of gadgets of ever-increasing difficulty opens new panorama for human ability. Gadgets provide a secure, at ease, and well-nourished life for billions of human beings. People need advanced technology to stay active and strong.