My phone won’t leave me alone
Illustration by Zoe Arntsen, Illustrator
After a long day of socializing, all I want to do is shower, get in bed and watch TV — but my phone has given everyone in my contacts unlimited access to me at all times.
Why is it that when I receive texts from my closest friends, I feel physically repulsed, the weight of expectation bearing down upon me (no offense). It’s because phones have made us too accessible.
There's a reason I have 142 unopened text messages.
Every time I go to school, work or see friends, I spend much-needed time preparing myself for all the social interaction I will experience once I step out of my front door. This is how we were intended to interact with each other.
I know I shouldn’t feel intense anxiety when receiving texts from my closest friends — I mean, they are my friends after all — but something about the feeling of people waiting for my timely response makes me not want to respond at all.
I let message upon message stack on top of each other until opening my phone becomes a nuisance altogether. Completely opposite from people my parents' age, I’d much rather run into people at the grocery store or on campus and schedule plans and catch up there.
The long-term effects of having complete access to our phones have made me crave less interaction through screens. I constantly wish that I weren’t so reliant on my phone; it would be so freeing to enjoy life without it, but I have created a notion for my friends and family that my phone will always be with me, I will always be reachable, and therefore, I have no days off.
Unlike 20 years ago, when the separation between work and personal life was more distinct, my iPhone now serves as my work phone, home phone and laptop. It is expected that I be on call at all times, making balance difficult.
I am almost 20, and while I’m very young, for a short period in my life, I still experienced the luxury of limited access. It sounds crazy, I know; these are the times we dreamed of. Access to talk to the people we love most at any given moment — but maybe it all came on too strong.
When I was in elementary school, I would call my friends on the home phone, and if I didn’t have their number, I would talk to them the next time I saw them. Now that I’m in college, it's expected that we all text each other all the time.
It feels like I can’t fully enjoy in-person moments with friends and family because when I hear the patronizing buzz notifying me that someone’s texted me, I feel like I’m obligated to respond.
Maybe I’m just too cynical about the whole thing, and I should just appreciate the access cell phones have provided. Don’t get me wrong, I am so thankful for the ability to talk to my family members who live across the country, but the constant access my contacts have to me during my alone time is just too much pressure.
Putting on Do Not Disturb is the simple solution, but there is more that can be analyzed here. Perhaps, as a collective, we need to place more emphasis on in-person interactions. The truth is, constant access is not going away; we will just have to adapt to it while simultaneously finding ways to protect our peace.