One day without a cell phone: Guest columnist opts to see what it feels like to be cell phone-less for one full day on campus

By Adam Lamberts

Students are always on their cell phones. 

“Everywhere I go I see someone texting or talking on their phone instead of talking to the actual person right next to them,” one of my English professors at Winthrop once said. 

This wasn’t the first time I heard a professor say something along those lines. While the rest of the class directed their attention to Virginia Woolf’s essay “Street Haunting,” the words of my teacher still lingered in my mind.

I couldn’t stop thinking, “Was it true? Have cell phones created a bubble around us from our environment? Have we become socially unresponsive robots, who will slowly lose our ability to interact with other people?” 

My theatre-/creative writing-major mind quickly took me to a future where humans live in an alternate reality similar to ones found in Walt Disney’s Wall-E and Warner Brothers’ The Matrix. Fifteen minutes of daydreaming and fighting off robots later, I decided to take it upon myself to go a whole day without using my cell phone. 

It was a Tuesday when I decided to carry out my no-cell phone for a day experiment. I informed my fiancée and my family that I would be going without my phone for the day, so they wouldn’t worry about me and think I died. I thought that going without a phone would be simple. I didn’t own a phone until halfway through high school, and I survived without one then; surely college wouldn’t be that much different. 

Besides keeping in touch with my fiancée throughout the day, I realized that my cell phone served another important use: a timepiece. 

When I was in the library studying for a class, I realized how much I depended on my phone to keep track of time. There were not too many places with a clock around; the only place I found with a clock in the library was in the study area behind the computers on the main floor. With all the different study groups going on, it was difficult to concentrate on the reading and note-taking I had to do for class, but I had to stay near a clock at all times and make sure I was not late for class because it wasn’t like I could take out my phone and check what time it was. 

I made it to all my classes on time that day, and I always made sure that I was around a clock. Walking to class, I noticed something I was not aware of before: almost everyone was on their cell phones. Students were talking on their phones while they crossed the street; others were walking on the sidewalk texting. 

One time I had to step off the sidewalk and go into the grass because someone had their head down texting and were not paying attention. 

My thoughts of Wall-E came back to me as I remembered the people who had become oblivious to their surroundings. As I was watching the inattentive person walk on by, I thought about how that person could have been me just the other day. I occasionally text on my way to class, and I make it a habit to always call my fiancée after my last class of the day. 

Could I have caused other people to dodge me as they walked on the sidewalk? Perhaps I could have. 

When my day without a cell phone ended, I was welcomed to eight unread text messages and two new voicemails. My experiment taught me how easy it is to neglect your surroundings when preoccupied with a cell phone, and I made it a resolution of mine to be more aware of my environment. Although I had survived a day without a cell phone, not being able to talk to my best friend and fiancée for a day was a difficult feat in itself and I limited my experiment to one day. 

However, maybe there is another Winthrop student out there who is willing to take the one day without a cell phone experiment and possibly extend it to two days or even further.