My husband and I traded in our smartphones for flip phones for the summer. It was a move meant to give us back our attention spans, presence, and hopefully some peace. What it gave us was the most wholesome summer I can remember. Here are my five takeaways:
- It’s good to be bored. And by bored, I mean thinking and daydreaming. A lot of us pull out our phones when we have 30 seconds of downtime to avoid being alone with ourselves. It became transformative to let my brain do its thing in those in-between moments.
- Connection, baby. When your head is up, you make eye-contact and chat more with others. You don’t feel hurried. You live fully in the present moment with kids, friends and family.
- My Attention Span is Back. Without something buzzing in my pocket, I watched sunsets and my children splashing in the surf, and I read for hours uninterrupted. I have memories instead of dozens of pictures that will never see the light of day.
- It’s inconvenient. Forget the digital wallet, Google and GPS. I had to use my brain like it was 1999 and it slowed us down, in both frustrating and good ways. We got lost in Halifax briefly but figured it out and felt a huge sense of accomplishment.
- A little bit of fear but more resolve. Once you detox from the digital world, you truly see the level of screen addiction. I saw parents scrolling while pushing their kids on the swing and people sitting on the beautiful boardwalk at Rissers on their phones. It has made me double down on my use of technology and resolve to create space from it as much as possible.
