What a week of life without a mobile phone showed. Personal experience: how I lived one day without a smartphone

Can you live without a phone? That's the question students were asked in a new documentary made for BBC iPlayer. It's a scary thought, but how do you know if you have a phone addiction problem?

Here are the surefire signs of gadget addiction that will help you identify the problem. If you're reading this article on your phone, consider this the ninth sign.

The first thing you do in the morning is check your phone.

The first thing that interests you in the morning is that you might have missed some significant posts on social networks, and not the main functions of your body. And at the same time you are sure that there is nothing wrong with this.

Even if you love to be in social media and publishing new posts should not be the first thing you do in the morning. Checking Facebook before you get out of bed is bad idea, since you can get stuck on social networks for several hours, forgetting about really important things.

Selfies are more important to you than calls from family members

And you don’t understand why they keep calling you. You can’t put off such an important task to chat with your relatives.

You regularly stay up late at night scrolling through your news feed.

Are you still awake at 2am because you can't tear yourself away from your phone? Don't worry, you are not alone. A huge number of people are doing the same thing. First, you check Instagram, then switch to VKontakte, decide to see what's new on Facebook, and then do it all again. All you do is just scroll through your news feed and look at memes, your friends' updates and new photos. It basically takes up all your time.

A dead battery is your worst fear

Because the only thing worse than the chance of being out of reach of your online friends is your own thoughts, which begin to bother you if you don’t know what to do with yourself.

Your phone is full of videos you took at concerts

It annoys everyone, even the people filming it. You can't stop and continue filming even when you know very well that you will never watch this video again. A huge number of these videos take up all the memory of your phone, but you can’t even imagine that you can watch the next concert without shooting a new video.

Absolutely all applications on your phone are open

Have you received a new message? Or not? You're not sure, so it's best to check all the apps at once. What if you missed something, and a post appeared on some social network that you simply had to watch?

You don't have time to chat with friends

You spend a lot of time on Instagram, but you don't even have one hour a day to chat with real people who want to actually talk to you. And at the same time, you sincerely believe that this situation is due to your exceptional employment.

You catch all the Pokemon from the comfort of your own bed

Even this one popular game couldn’t force you to go outside, and you continue to spend time at home, in the company of your phone. Well, do you need any more evidence of addiction?

And how did we live without them before...

I use cell phone for more than 15 years and am very accustomed to always having a source of communication at hand.

With the advent of smartphones, from a simple “dialer”, devices turned into real ones pocket computers with limitless possibilities. Navigation, banking, reading books, watching videos, music - this is not a complete list of tasks that our “pocket assistants” solve.

I carry my iPhone almost always and everywhere. There are isolated cases when I don’t take it with me - for example, swimming or other water procedures. Like everyone else, I use it – from regular calls and messages, to payment services and corporate chats with colleagues.

I bet you can't

Last weekend, we had a long argument with friends about the need to constantly use a smartphone. As a result of this lengthy discussion, a dispute was born in which I stated that I could easily live for a day without using my phone or tablet completely.. But with one condition - it will be Saturday. I want to tell you about the results of my experiment.

So, Friday, September 11, 23 hours 58 minutes. I turn on silent mode and put my iPhone in my desk drawer. There are 24 hours of complete freedom ahead.

The first question appeared immediately after I put the phone away. How will I get up tomorrow? I don't have an alarm clock.

However, remembering that the TV also supports this function, I set the clock on it and set the alarm - I hope I don’t oversleep :-)

11:00 Have you ever woken up to a screaming TV? I highly recommend it - an unforgettable experience. In the first seconds, I didn’t understand what was happening at all.

I usually start my morning with 15 minutes of reading the news and checking my email. And I do this without getting out of bed. This time I had to click on TV channels and get the latest information from there. I didn't like it.

Another traditional activity that I do every Saturday is a short jog or bike ride, depending on my mood. In both cases, I usually use the application RunKeeper, as well as one of the music services.

No phone - no statistics and music. In fact, it turned out that I ran 15 minutes less than usual. But for myself, I noted that I was somehow bored, something was missing - without music it’s not so interesting.

14:00 The next adventure awaited me literally 2 hours later, when I got into the car and drove to the center. Caught in the third traffic jam in the metro station area "Mendeleevskaya"– there is no navigator, I decided to park the car and move on by metro. And then another surprise awaited me. How to pay for parking, if there is no SMS or application?

After running around the neighborhood for at least 10 minutes, I found a parking meter and paid for parking my car.

15:00 Well, where is he? For the first time that day, I desperately missed my phone. The fact is that at 14:30 I was supposed to meet a friend. After waiting for him for about half an hour, I realized I needed to call him somehow. Of course, it was possible to ask passers-by for a phone number, but this violated the terms of the dispute.

Eureka! I remembered that I recently learned that in Moscow street telephone sets They seemed to be free. A great reason to check it out.

15:15 I looked for it for a whole 15 minutes, but still found it! Here it is - free!

By the way, I noticed that the devices are actively used. Of course, it’s free and unlimited.

What did I hear from my friend on the phone? It turns out that over the past 2 hours, he repeatedly called me and wrote that he would be late. No phone - no up-to-date information.

16:40 Transaction refused when trying to buy coffee. Moreover, both cards from one bank did not work. So what to do - neither call nor look at the bank app. One good thing is the city center and the bank, quite popular - a lot of offices.

I had to go into one of them. It turned out that the 2 accounts to which these cards were linked had run out of funds, and all that was needed was to transfer money to them from another. Hmm... Be under iPhone hand or iPad, the problem would be solved in 1 minute. And so, 20 minutes are lost.

How boring it is to walk without music. Before, when I didn’t have a phone that could play music, I always carried a player or radio headphones with me.

17:35 I'm seriously thinking about buying some budget smartphone. Having suppressed this momentary weakness, I set off in search of the establishment I need. Do you know how long I was looking for him? 20 minutes! And all I had to do was turn into the courtyard of the house, which I had walked around several times.

The most interesting thing is that none of the five passers-by knew either this establishment or this address. How I dreamed of any mapping application at that moment.

19:50 Out of old habit, I'm looking for a free phone.

Found it, called, you can go pick up the car.

Traffic jams even on Saturday. It’s impossible to navigate the metropolis without navigation.

21:20 After standing in a traffic jam for at least 15 minutes—the road was being repaired—I ran home. At that moment, I heard the sound of a phone vibrating coming from the box. I almost got him out of there, but I remembered in time about the “free day” - a habit.

21:40 I can’t call, I can’t write - I decided to go for a motorcycle ride - at least I won’t get stuck in a traffic jam. I come to Vorobyovy Gory - the Moscow motorcycle crowd usually gathers there and immediately another problem.

There are so many people, I can’t find anyone I know, although I usually do it without problems. I don’t see a “people’s telephone” nearby. I decided to turn to one of my motorcycle brothers for help. And in order not to violate the terms of the dispute, I asked him to talk to my friend himself. Why didn’t I do that during the day? :-)

00:50 I return home - the plan has been exceeded. My phone was in the box for 24 hours and 50 minutes.– 17 missed messages (3 were), 25 SMS, 27 letters and 27 notifications from other “communication services”. I wonder how much it would be on a weekday?

Summing up results my experiment, I can safely say that living without a smartphone in the city very uncomfortable. Plunging into the urban jungle without the usual source of information turned out to be quite an undertaking. In just one day off, I spent at least 1.5 hours of “extra” time.

It's scary to admit, but without mobile gadgets really hard. Of course, if I were in the taiga, I could live without a phone for a month. But not in the city. By the way, if I carried out my experiment on a weekday, I wouldn’t last even 4 hours without my phone.

Under this heading there should be a list of ten effective steps polished by self-discipline. I don’t have them, instead of a list, just a small story from my life. It started with a situation in which I almost died. There is no point in describing it completely, but I will leave a small sketch.

Run to the road. Along the way, joke something to reassure your loved one. She also saw it from the side, and then ran after me, observing my snow-white shoulder blade. Thank God - taxi. Crossroads, we turn left, I get into the car. And the taxi driver is standing. Why? Because the light is red. The driver refuses to drive towards it, saying they will take away his license. Well, it’s okay, now he needs to change the front seat. It was the longest red traffic light in my life. I make jokes along the way.

The ambulance, thank God, is a two-minute drive away (I must say that I was lucky as many times as needed to stay alive). Eh, I would give a lot for a photograph of the eyes of lovely women from the ambulance. A guy runs up to them completely covered in blood, but at the same time he smiles and tries to joke. I think I walked in saying, “Doctor, I have a little problem.”

In the same place where I was holding the wall, they treated me, bandaged me and took me to the surgeon. The blood stopped flowing down my legs, which calmed me down a little.

And so, I am isolated in the hospital. From the hustle and bustle of work, from hundreds of urgent work matters and urgent issues. This was the first small step.

I couldn’t resolve any serious issues from the hospital; even the Internet almost didn’t work there. Little by little, work calls almost disappeared. The deputies dealt with current issues, and the customers, knowing what my situation was, also tried not to bother me. Something else was interesting. After a stormy first two days, family and friends stopped calling. Everyone knows where, everyone knows that everything is ok with me, I’m just resting. Why should I call?

By the way, when I was able to walk, I really got busy important issue. I started catching a pigeon. And after several days, and dozens of different traps, my efforts were rewarded.

On Facebook I wrote about this incident like this: “You grab a pigeon and throw it at another pigeon flying past. A sort of analog hospital x-box.”

But I digress. At the end of my hospital week, the phone only distracted me a couple of times a day. But, on at this stage, refuse cellular communication and it was not in my thoughts. The inertia of thinking would not allow it. I understood perfectly well that the number of calls would be the same a week after I returned home. But life decreed otherwise.

I am a conservative person and I can use one phone model until it starts to fall apart in my hands. Even in this case, I take glue... well, you get the idea. A couple of days after the hospital, I went to a cell store and bought a shiny new phone. This action seemed interesting to me. And the next day the phone broke down and was taken to the service center.

But I could no longer use the old device, since the SIM card was cut off for the new one. The situation is not hopeless, of course, but with the purchase temporary phone, I decided to wait. And after 2 days there was a turning point. During a walk, one of my good friends told me about the existence of adapters from microsim to sim. And that by some miracle, just such an adapter, which he did not need, is lying right now at his house, next to which we passed.

But I thanked him and refused. I liked this growing feeling of freedom from the invisible cellular leash. For myself, I decided that I would wait until I returned from phone repair and then I would get in touch. But after a week I accepted final decision- I no longer need a permanent cell phone.

As you have already noticed, the path to this decision was not easy. A list of 10 steps, in my case, would start like this:

1. Do something stupid;
2. Make sure that as a result of the first step, your back is cut into two parts by a glass window;
3.…
10. You gave up your cell phone.

And now main question. WHY DID YOU, FOOL, REFUSE SO NECESSARY THING? The longer I was without my phone, the easier it was for me to find the answer. Now I can formulate it this way: the phone, every day, took at least an hour of my life.

1. Minute confirmation calls from colleagues and relatives, from the series: “Should you take coffee in a poppy seed?” or “Will you be at the meeting tomorrow?”;
2. I went to pee - check if they called you. They called! Call back urgently!
3. Left a loved one - call 3 times and let them know that the brick did not fall. Forgot to call? It doesn’t matter - they’ll call you;
4. Mobile meetings. In most cases, resulting from an abundance of caution in the decisions of my colleagues;
5. Communication with customers on issues that should have been resolved by my subordinates, not me.

But there are also outgoing ones, the need to make them is a separate topic for conversation.

Total, at least one hour a day. I don't sleep for about 16 hours a day, it turns out that one hour takes up a sixteenth of my entire life. This is a lot for such an insignificant thing. Even watching cats on the Internet is more useful, it at least improves your mood. And a good mood means health. The phone did the opposite; over time, it became a source of only negative emotions. If they call, now we need to get together and resolve some issue. Technical, organizational, monetary, emotional. You need to solve it, even if the issue is insignificant, and your occupation is at the moment priceless.

How did I cope with the need to be connected? There was a solution for every aspect of my life.

1. The most important thing. I'm lying a little when I say that I gave up cellular communications. For many years now I have been walking with either a laptop or a tablet. This is mine workplace. Skype is always on there, you can always find me. The key difference is on incoming message I answer when it's convenient for me.

Every day I have periods when I sort out the questions that have accumulated over the course of several hours. This is my job. Then I also sort out Skype. In fact, distracting calls did not disappear, but were transformed into a format convenient for me.

2. If they need to find me right now (this also happens, although rarely), the following scheme works: they call my wife, and I absolutely always warn her where I am and with whom. As a result, you can contact me within 5 minutes. (Yes, yes, I take advantage of the fact that others have not given up cellular communications. If they refuse, I’ll come up with something else.)

3. All work issues were painlessly divided into three areas. Some of the questions were sent via Skype and email. Some of them are covered by my deputies, without even bothering me about the little things. Some of it is collected and transferred to me, via Skype, by the referent, if it’s completely impossible without me. But the last one is almost unnecessary, insurance.

4. What if I need to call someone? The solution is also very simple. I always have a charged but switched off phone in my car with a zero SIM card and money on it. Required numbers I store phones on the Internet, I remember important ones. I’m always 15 minutes from the car, if further, I can throw it in my pocket. Not including. I've used it a couple of times in 2 months.

5. There are other aspects. But all of them can be solved without problems. It’s possible even without a tablet or laptop, although it seems crazy.

You can also tell us how the behavior of people who used to expect a call from you is changing, and now they understand that it cannot be. In a nutshell, this greatly simplifies mutual understanding. The unnecessary essence disappears and it becomes simpler. But the article turned out to be too long. Here you can simply believe me, well, or not believe me.

To summarize, we can say that it is not always possible for a person to refuse a cellular leash. This is not always justified or effective. There are situations when this absolutely cannot be done. And we must admit that the advent of cellular communications has made the world much more comfortable.

However, I have not used a permanent cell phone for 2 months now. And so far, I can’t think of a single reason why I would want to chop off an entire hour from my day. Think about it, maybe for you this is not as fantastic as it seems.

Why not just stop answering your calls?

That's possible. Both options have their pros and cons.

Why not give up electricity?

1. Any action has a zone of effectiveness. It looks something like this: | - / ++++++++ / - |. This can be expressed in words like this: “Everything is good in moderation.” Moreover, even positive phenomena have this zone. Such, for example, as modern technologies. Or let's take medicine, for example. On the one hand, thanks to “emergency medicine” a person began to live not 30 years, but 70. On the other hand, modern medicine- business, human health is not the main thing. Therefore, tons of chemicals contained in drugs, on the contrary, shorten a person’s lifespan.

2. Or another example. Cities are the result of modern technology; they are effective for humanity as a whole. However, everyone strives to live on earth in their own home. Since living on earth is more effective for an individual. The latter is a privilege, although it is a departure from modern technology. The situation is similar with the refusal of cellular communications. It is more important to the community than to the individual. For a person, refusal is a privilege.

3. It is not immediately clear from the article that it is not talking about refusal modern technology, but about the transition from 20th century technologies to 21st century technologies.

Running a red light is a 1000 ruble fine.

Taxi drivers know this better than you and me, but taxi drivers may have a large trail of other fines.

Full story for those who are not on Facebook

“And so, yesterday late in the evening, in several places on my back, they sutured the muscles, and then the skin over the muscles. A couple of stitches even settled on my leg. They stitched it up without general anesthesia, which made it possible to talk with the doctor during the process.

I’ll start from afar to clarify the origins of my stupidity a little. I grew up in a small town where there were about 20 abandoned buildings in varying states of completion. Like every guy who lived in the area, I spent my entire childhood there. My love for industrial and abandoned objects has remained throughout my life.

It is clear that such a hobby teaches a certain caution. But, as usually happens, trouble strikes there and then when you absolutely do not expect it.

My wife and I decided to take a walk on a sunny summer Sunday. But I don’t really like walking just like that, so we chose the industrial zone of the city, where we had never been before, for the purpose of our walk.

I must say that, unlike the city of my childhood, everything was done normally in this industrial zone. Everything is fenced, everything is guarded and, naturally, I wouldn’t go anywhere with my wife.

We walked along the fences and were almost back out into the city, but my attention was drawn to a gate that had been broken down by the roots. Behind the gate was an abandoned wasteland. The only object on it was a large brick booth, with glass windows around the perimeter, 2-3 human heights high. Apparently abandoned for a long time and often visited by local boys.

I walked around the booth from all sides. Main entrance closed, but on the right side of the booth there was a broken window. More precisely, the lower part of the glass was broken, but the upper part remained hanging, like a huge guillotine.

So that you don’t think that I’m completely stupid, the glass hung very securely, I gave it a good tug several times. Thick, dense, Soviet glass, standing firmly in the grooves.

There is trash thrown inside and outside the booth, obviously to make it easier to get in and out. I'm pretty sure it was he who disoriented me. The booth seemed to be frequently visited. And I carefully began to climb. Then a scene begins that makes me shiver when I remember it.

Behind the large, dense, reliable Soviet glass there was a second one, similar, only much smaller and hanging right near the ceiling. At first I heard how it fell and only then I was upset that I was without a T-shirt. A second later I find myself inside the booth and feel water running down my legs. Well, it feels that way.

There was no time to be upset or think. Climb back out of the booth, cut my leg - to hell with it. Find a T-shirt from your wife and squeeze her back forcefully (thank you horror movies). Run to the road. Along the way, joke something to reassure your loved one. She also saw it from the outside. Thank God - taxi. Crossroads, we turn left, I get into the car. And the taxi driver is standing. Why? Because the light is red. The driver refuses to drive towards it, saying they will take away his license. Well, it’s okay, now he needs to change the front seat. It was the longest red traffic light in my life. I make jokes along the way.

The ambulance, thank God, is a two-minute drive away (I must say that I was lucky as many times as needed to stay alive). Eh, I would give a lot for a photograph of the eyes of lovely women from the ambulance. A guy runs up to them completely covered in blood, but at the same time he smiles and tries to joke. I think I walked in saying, “Doctor, I have a little problem.”

I must say that the latter was detrimental, since they could not move for 10 seconds. Rumor has it that there are still stories about me in the hospital.

In the same place where I was holding the wall, they treated me, bandaged me and took me to the surgeon. The blood stopped flowing down my legs, which calmed me down a little.

On the way in the car, I tell my wife to tell the children (and everyone else) about my stupidity, how to eat it without lies and embellishment, let them learn.

Well, then the hard part began. Yes, yes, even harder. I ended up on the surgeon's table. And he said the key: “First we stop the bleeding, then we anesthetize it.” What does it mean to stop the bleeding in my case? The doctors will correct me, but this is how it feels - a lot of cotton balls are stuffed inside your wound, around its office. Wow, how loudly I pretended that I wasn’t screaming a bit. But only once a day.

When a person finds himself in such a situation, for the first hour he is in high spirits. There is nothing strange in this, considering the amount of adrenaline that is released into the blood.

In such cases, I become completely stupid - I laugh and joke without interruption. This seems wild to those around me; I suspect that the vast majority want to hurt me even more so that my behavior will finally begin to match my appearance.

Amusing the person who is currently sewing up your muscles and skin is a dangerous business. So basically I pestered the nurse. At some point, she really started to get angry.

But, somewhere in the middle of the operation, the adrenaline in my blood ran out. What made the surgeon happy was that I stopped laughing and vibrating because of this. It’s strange that I remained conscious at all, considering that by that time the amount of blood lost was approaching two liters.

How do people with local anesthesia feel during surgery? I don’t know about others, but in my case, I got to the table quickly. Perhaps this is why the only desire at this moment is to make the best possible impression on the surgeon. For some reason unknown to me, this seemed important. And when I stopped laughing, I started talking to the doctor (after asking his permission first).

What he was talking about emerges vaguely. I only remember that I told him about water in space, which boils while remaining cold. This surprised him greatly. And it scared me. It seemed that the person delving inside me should know everything in the world. And without a certificate of omniscience, one should not even approach a living human body.

It was very painful twice. The first time the blood was stopped, well, I already told you. The second time was when the skin was pulled out with tongs to begin sewing. Then the local anesthetic took effect and everything became normal. You can’t feel your back, the sounds make you feel like someone is knitting a sweater very quickly behind your back. Only for some reason you twitch a little. At the end of the operation, the surgeon also relaxed a little and began to joke: “Oh, there’s still a wound and we’ll mend it.”

After the operation, when I was being wheeled along the corridor, covered in blood, on a table, the thought came that it was time to joke a little more. Coming face to face with some tense guy in line, I said, looking him straight in the eyes: “Life is better than you think right now.”

I think he will remember.”

PHOTO Getty Images

While I was working, the phone was an essential item for me. They could call me at any time, I was constantly in touch. And from work I called my daughter to find out where she was, when she was going home, to tell her what she had for lunch, to ask how her day went and to help with her homework if needed.

But when my daughter grew up and went to study in another country, my rule of “staying in touch” stayed with me. And when I left work, the phone was still my constant companion. Not so much out of necessity, but out of habit: you never know. I laughed at myself: what could happen so urgently? But she continued to keep it close at hand. Without him, I felt somehow uneasy.

However, everything changed when I bought a house three hundred kilometers from Moscow. A real village house with carved shutters, a Russian stove, and a well on the property. Only without mobile communications: It’s simply not there. And to my surprise, I realized that I could live calmly without her and feel great about it.

Goodbye city!

I leave my Moscow apartment and get into the car. There are five hours of travel ahead. And the phone, of course, is with me, it lies next to me so that it can be seen and heard. Finally I pass Vyshny Volochok and turn onto the road that goes through the forest. I am glad that I will be in the village soon. But then I start making stops. I stop when I see a stone that would be suitable for a border on the property. I get out of the car to stretch my legs. I'm looking for a place to look for mushrooms. And all the time I wait for the mobile phone to speak, because I know that in a few meters the “dead zone” will begin.

During the journey, as usual, my friend called me a couple of times. good friend find out how I'm going. Another message came from the website kniga.ru. And I didn’t expect any more calls from anyone, because I warned everyone that I was leaving for three days and would be offline. But I drive slowly, with stops, because it seems to me that right now someone will call me or send me the most important message, or something very important will come to mind and you will need to urgently call someone.

Finally I get there. And then I start to panic that I am “unavailable.” I unload my things from the trunk. I run to the well for water. I still have my mobile phone in my pocket, although I know that it doesn’t receive reception here. But still I continue to hope: what if?

Getting used to silence

I light up the stove so that the house can warm up before nightfall and the firewood has time to burn out, I haul in more firewood for future use, put things away... And all the time I look at the phone, and there is a crossed out circle - a miracle does not happen, the network does not appear. But it’s already starting to get dark, and you still need to close the gate and bring the remaining things into the house so as not to run outside in the dark.

All. Tired. Trained. I pour myself some tea and go out onto the veranda to admire the view before it gets completely dark. Before my eyes is an overgrown area, trees are noisy, the sun is setting, air, silence, beauty. I’m starting to “recover”: the panic subsides - first from hopelessness, because there is no network anyway, and then because it’s just very good. Busy city thoughts leave your head and simple and very reasonable village thoughts come - about what needs to be done today and tomorrow and what about the cold weather in general. And now - quickly turn on the water, dry the bed linen, make dinner and go to bed not too late, so as not to oversleep the Saturday grocery store, and then the Zhiguli, which will bring milk from the neighboring village.

And in the house there is a mobile phone with its crossed out circle, and now it’s just an alarm clock. And there are three whole magical days of rest ahead! Just like before, when there were no mobile phones and we went away for as long as we wanted. And only once a week we went to the post office, ordered a long-distance telephone conversation, to report that everything was generally excellent, about the details at the meeting, and that time flies quickly and we will see you soon. And when they met, they talked about the most interesting, funny and beautiful things, because by that time all the troubles had already ended and were remembered as funny adventures.

Human connection instead of mobile

For three days I live in peace and quiet. I don’t rush to call anyone if a problem arises, but calmly think it over and find a solution myself. I think well here when I’m doing something around the house or in the garden, when I go for water or light the stove. Everything around gives your thoughts calmness and solidity. I just forget about the phone, and I like that I can go to my neighbors without calling, I like meeting someone on our village street and chatting about everything in the world. And how much you learn while waiting for the grocery store! No internet needed. And in the evenings we go to visit each other and again talk for a long time, share news and plans, agree on when we will go for mushrooms...

But three days of my village life will end, and I will come home to the city, and my mobile will again “walk” with me around the apartment. First, closer to the bathroom, then to the kitchen, then to the TV, then next to the pillow... On the way back, everything will happen in the reverse order: first the network will appear, then the same friend will call to find out how the road is and how I got there, and a message will come from kniga.ru. And it turns out that no one tried to call me during these three days. Why, exactly, if I warned everyone that I was leaving? I myself will not be at all upset that I lived for three whole days without a single telephone conversation. And I won’t call anyone on the road and I won’t dial anyone from home, why? To report live about the traffic jam I get into at the entrance to Moscow, about how tired I am from the long journey?

No, it’s better to call later, when the impressions have subsided and all the most interesting, funny and beautiful things have appeared in my memory - that’s what I’ll talk about. And send photos from my wonderful, beloved and so convenient mobile phone. But for some time I will still forget to take it out of my bag when I come home.

We cannot imagine life without a mobile phone. One day I felt it myself. I simply drowned my cell phone in the sea. I couldn’t return home right away. I was on an island where a regular ship visits once a day. Could be bought at a local store new phone and a SIM card, but I decided to do without extra expenses and experiment on myself: can I live for a day without a mobile phone?

My behavior immediately changed. Obviously, it was impossible to do without communication completely. Therefore, it was necessary to stay close to pay phones, especially those that accepted payment credit card. It turned out that the population of pay phones has decreased significantly. But I noticed three or four things and made sure they worked. From one of them I called my husband, complained about my bitter lot and told him not to dial my number in vain and not to worry. But the feeling of a chain around my neck, limiting my freedom of movement, did not leave me all these days.

The second trouble is that it turns out that I’m so used to the fact that everything necessary telephone numbers are at hand, in the memory of the mobile phone, that I didn’t remember most of them. Fortunately, all the most important and most necessary numbers were still in my head. I restored some by calling home. At the same time, it turned out that a ballpoint pen and a notepad are a must-have in your purse.

Thus, the work that I had to do was not affected due to lack of communication. On the other hand, both my colleagues and my family, knowing about the adventure that happened to me (and I viewed the drowning of my cell phone as an adventure), did not try to “call me” at any cost and were not worried about the fact that I was not on the phone. lines.

A modern telephone is a small computer that allows you not only to talk to the whole world, but also to carry out many other things. useful functions: connect to the Internet and receive a wide variety of information from there, listen to music, read e-books, play games. I also lost all these joys overnight. Oddly enough, it turned out to be not difficult to do without these optional functions of a mobile phone, although not entirely convenient. But there appeared several pleasant hours of “golden boredom” or, as the Italians say, “sweet idleness”, “dolce farniente”. Thanks to this watch, I watched the evening sunset and had a nice conversation with the man at the next table in the cafe. The pace of life, especially at the end of the day, has slowed down sharply. A blessed evening without a cell phone seemed like an extra day off.

I regretted not having a mobile phone only once. Namely, when I returned home the next day. The return journey took three hours. To have fun, you could buy some book at the store. But I decided: save, save, and took only the local newspaper. The newspaper was enough for an hour. For the next hour I looked at the seascapes and other passengers. Almost all of them sat with their noses buried in their own precious piece of glass, which fate had deprived me of for a whole day. More fortunate than unfortunate.

Let me summarize. For us, a mobile phone is not only a means of communication, but also a communicator, a memory book, and entertainment. Thanks to him, the world has become more “closer” for us, the pace of communication has accelerated. We almost never write letters to each other. We have become more hasty in communication and less obligatory. Why rush to make it to the appointed time if there is always the opportunity to “reschedule” the meeting? Thanks to the mobile phone, almost everything has disappeared from our memory. important phones, which is not good. The mobile phone has also become a universal toy for us and has discouraged us from taking it on the road. good book or willingness to communicate with companions.

All of the above has both negative and positive sides. But in any case, our lifestyle has changed greatly. One of the new phobias is nomophobia, the fear of being left without a mobile phone. The percentage of people suffering from this rather serious mental disorder is surprisingly high - 66 percent.

What I felt during the day without a mobile phone, Czech journalist Tomas Geisler experienced himself for six months. For almost six months he tried to do without a mobile phone and without the Internet. And he got by. It seems that he set a record for staying without a mobile phone. At the same time, he had to seriously change some already established habits: to arrange a meeting on regular phone(and constantly walk around with change in your wallet to pay for the call), use a regular paper card when traveling, and not an Internet card in your mobile phone, evaluate how much better real friends are than friends on social networks, and generally understand what lures us social media. According to the journalist, the fact is that any action we perform on social networks causes our body to produce the hormone dopamine, which gives us a feeling of satisfaction with what we have done. Dopamine acts like a mild drug, like drinking tea or coffee. On social networks we can perform many seemingly important actions (likes, shares), for which we receive a dopamine reward. Hence the addiction to virtual communication.

But Tomasz Geisler still couldn’t manage without the Internet for six months, as without a powerful reference tool. But having allowed himself access to Google, he still did not log into any social networks or even email didn't check. And, by the way, it was working with the Internet that helped Tomas write a book with virtually no access to libraries.