We have all been entangled in the trap of a social media app, whether it is Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, or even Facebook and have lost copious amounts of time after being drawn in by one video or post and then needing to see another and another. Before you know it, it’s now 1am and you have to get up for school in 5 hours.

Hiding behind social media accounts and phone screens allows for people to portray whatever they choose, whether or not it is real. Teenagers find the courage to bully others when they are behind a screen and have no consequences to deal with. But these phones and computers that we hide behind also bar us from making any emotional connections with other people, we forget the skills we learned to make face to face interactions.

Recently I did an experiment to see exactly how dependent we are on technology throughout our daily lives. I went without my phone for 48 hours in order to discover what it would be like to not have the thing I feel that I am most reliant on. I use it for maps, communication, and my daily planning. At first it was fine, knowing that I had gained some sort of freedom from not having my phone on me, as well as knowing that I didn’t have to answer to anyone.

However, further into this experiment, I got a sense of overwhelming boredom. What is there to do when you don’t have a phone? Well at first thought, it was absolutely nothing. How could I make plans with my friends? Well, the answer to that question was that I couldn’t. After pondering what I was supposed to do without my phone, I came up with a simple solution, to take some time to myself and dedicate some time to my own mental health.

All in all, being without your phone for a while can be really beneficial to your mental health, and going on a cleanse every once in a while can really help clear any fog that you may have in your brain. Social media and technology in general can cloud our judgement and self- image and taking a break every once in a while can help you regain what you’ve lost and help rebuild your confidence.

Although I did feel like I was missing something throughout the time that I didn’t have my phone with me, there was also a sense of freedom to not having it.

Social media sites have a very sly way of drawing in unsuspecting teenagers, with videos of food and life fails and posts of skinny models and cute puppies. They lure us in with the things that we want to see and make it impossible for us to go without looking for a long period of time.