To a Gen-Z high school kid, it always sounds awfully prejudiced for adults to tease you about constantly staring at your cell phone all day. What many of these teens won’t admit is that the second the device disappears, they’ll cave to the stereotype’s cruel exposition. They’ll find themselves lost and without a purpose.

To teens, the world of media pretty much sets the limits for whatever their definition of the real world is. Speaking from experience as a teenager myself, this is true. It seems that whatever you see on your phone is what it means to have a life. Your goals, and aspirations are based off of what others are posting and sharing on their pages. 

As a kid, you always hope that nothing tragic happens to that beloved device, happenings of the sort include, losing it, dropping it in water, deeply cracking the screen, or god forbid the insides just stop working all together. Unfortunately for me, my phone decided for itself that it had had a good run, and proceeded to painfully pass away – Rather, in otherwise less dreary terms, it had an internal motherboard malfunction. 

Now this was probably the most frustrating endeavor I’ve had to struggle through in a very long time, which seems ridiculous (but it really was). During a global pandemic there isn’t much to do except for taking walks and entertaining yourself on the internet. Lucky for some people, books are an easy first choice after any sensation of boredom. However, for most, picking up a book is like pulling out teeth. As my phone sadly rested blank and lifeless on my desk, I started to eye the copy of George Orwell’s “1984” sitting close by. As any other desperate teen would do, I ignored it. 

I ended up deciding to take a drive around, listen to music, and go get coffee instead. Quickly, I realized that since my phone was dead, bluetooth was a no go. I’d have to make a sacrifice and listen to the radio, yuck! Realistically, the radio wasn’t that bad, even though the commercial breaks seemed to last forever.  

Eventually, I ended up getting to finish a ton of homework that otherwise would have been  procrastinated, and went off to bed hoping my cell would fix itself overnight. No luck. Instead of complaining more, I drove myself to the Apple store where they told me it’d be an easy trade with the warranty, and my new phone was a breath of fresh air.

Facetime calls were put on hold, as well as snapchat and tik tok. As I realize now, it wasn’t the absolute worst thing in the world. During my time in real life, I looked out the window a lot, and got to know what it was like to have unstrained eyes. Not having a phone wasn’t something I was prepared for, but it was something I needed desperately. 

Getting home with the fully functioning device made me realize that there is a world outside of your tiny little screen, and if you take the chance to put it away and look it up, I promise you won’t regret it.  After this lesson that I didn’t know I needed to learn, I really thought to myself why I hadn’t taken the chance before, and side note: I finally picked up that book.